The Hunt (The Hunt 1)

WE SIT IN the cabin huddled together, trying to stay out of the rain. Our sodden clothes cling to our thin

frames and concaved stomachs like mottled leathery skin. Every so often, someone will – driven by the illogic of hunger – open the food bag and find it (again) empty. All the berries and charred prai- rie dog meat long devoured.

With the heavy rain, the river current has picked up. We work shorter shifts steering the boat, our strength depleting quickly now. In the early afternoon, Sissy and I work together. Two hours later, we’re wiped out. We collapse in the cabin while Epap and Jacob take over.

I am exhausted but unable to sleep. A wind gusts across the river, rippling the surface already dappled by pelting rain. I rub my face, trying to chafe warmth into my cheeks. On the other side of the cabin, eyes closed, Sissy is curled on her side, her head resting atop her clasped hands. Her face, relaxed in sleep, is soft, the outlines stencilled in.

“You’ve been staring at me for the past few minutes,” she whis- pers, eyes still closed. I startle. Her lips curl upward in a faint smile.

“Next time just wake me. You could sear through steel walls with that stare of yours.”

I scratch my wrists.

Her eyes peel open; she sits up. Thick brown hair flops across her face, as tousled as the blanket she now lays gently over Ben snoring next to her. She yawns, extends her arms high above her head, her back arching. She walks over, stepping around a stockpile of sticks we’d brought aboard, and plops down next to me.

“The current’s strong,” I say. “Maybe too strong. I’m worried.” “No, it’s a good thing. Means more separation between us and

them.”

Only a few days have passed since we escaped from the Heper Institute. We were chased by a mob ravenous for our blood and flesh. By the hundreds they poured out of the Institute, banquet guests driven by bloodlust. Against such a horde, the six of us had virtually no chance of survival. Our only hope lay frailly and solely in the Scientist’s journal, a cryptic notebook that suggested an escape by boat down this river. The river, by luck, we found; the boat, by greater miracle, we also found. But the reason why we’ve been led down this river by the Scientist: that, we have not found.

“It also means less distance between us and him,” she says as if reading my thoughts. She looks at me with steady eyes that are soft and knowing. I turn my eyes away.

Yesterday, when I’d come upon Epap’s portrait of my father, it was the first time I’d seen my father’s face in years: the deep-set eyes, the strong chiselled jawline, the thin lips, the stony expression that, even in a drawing, hinted at a deeper grace and sadness.

Now I think of the secrets those eyes must have held, the agenda never uttered by those lips. On that very last day, my father had run into the home, sweating profusely, deathly pale. I saw the twin punctures in his neck. He had gone to such lengths to fake his

turning. When he ran outdoors moments before sunrise, I thought he was running to his death to save me.

When he was only running to his freedom and killing me.

I pick up two thin branches from the stockpile and start filing them against one another as if sharpening knives. “You think he left this boat for you, don’t you?” I say. “That he planned this whole elaborate escape for you. You want my two cents? The boat wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for him, and for him alone. It was his escape vehicle. Only he wasn’t bright enough to find it. Or maybe he built it himself but was hunted down before he could escape.”

She stares at the sticks, then at me. “You’re wrong. The Scientist promised us – almost every day – that he would one day lead us out of the dome. He spoke of a wonderful place where there was no danger or fear, where there was safety and warmth and countless numbers of other humans. The Land of Milk and Honey, Fruit and Sunshine. That’s what he called it. Sometimes he described it as the Promised Land. And whenever he spoke of escape, he spoke of it as our escape.”

“That was a big promise.”

She presses her lips together. “It was. But it was what we needed. You have to understand – we were born in the dome, all of us. And we honestly thought we’d end up dying in it after a long, harsh life of captivity. It was a miserable existence. The Scientist – well, he showed up out of nowhere. And with this one promise, he changed our outlook, our lives. He gave us hope. The boys – especially Jacob – were transformed. Hope does that to you.” She smiles. “We don’t even know what milk and honey look or taste like.”

“You put a lot of faith in one man’s promise.”

She looks at me. “You don’t know him the way we do.”

I almost flinch at her words that cut deep. But I’m able to con- trol myself. A life of training will make you an expert at hiding emotion.

“Don’t you want to find him?” she asks. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious where he might have gone?”

The sticks in my hands stop moving. Truth is, I’ve thought of little else.

Moonlight reflected by the river stipples across her face. “Tell me, Gene,” she whispers, looking into my eyes.

I pause, her words – You don’t know him the way we do – still ringing in my ears. The things I could tell her. That the man they know as the Scientist is the same man I have called Father; that I have lived with him, played with him, conversed with him, explored the metropolis with him, been told stories by him. I know that when he slept, his hardened face fell away to expose the face of a little boy, and that he snored only softly, his huge barrel chest rising and fall- ing, rising and falling, his hands lying lax at his sides. That my years with him were more than theirs, and deeper. That I have been loved by him with a father’s love, and that bond is greater than any other.

Instead, I rub the sticks harder against one another.

“You have the weight of the world on your shoulders, Gene,”

she says quietly.

I cross my legs under me, not speaking.

“Secrets,” she whispers, “they will eat you up inside.” She gets up and joins the others.

Later in the day, the rain stops. Sunshine breaks through a partial break in the clouds and the boys shout with jubilation. Jacob declares all is now perfect: they now have sunshine and speed. “Take that, you hunters!” he brazenly yells. The other hepers, laughing, egg him on. “Take that! Eat my dust!” Their laughter soars into the bluing skies.

But I do not share in their joy. Because every gained inch away from the hunters is another inch widening the chasm between Ashley June and me.

She has come to me in these last few days, unannounced through the most random of objects: the shape of the clouds, the silhouette of the ever-nearing eastern mountains. Every second that passes, every ripple of water left in our wake, and I feel the noose around her neck pulled tighter. Guilt pricks me. She is alone in the Heper Institute after sacrificing herself for me. Holding out for me, for a rescue I was unable to execute. By now she must know I am not re- turning. That I have failed her.

The boys are shouting, giddiness wrapped around their words, shiny and glossy. They are yelling about the Scientist, about the Promised Land.

The sound of footsteps running on the floorboards. It’s Ben. “Come join us on the deck, Gene!” he says, a bright smile on his

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bsp; face. “It’s so much warmer in the sunshine than in the cabin.” I tell him I need to stay out of the sun.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he says, pulling on my arms.

But I snap them back. “I can’t. I’m not used to the sun. My skin is burning up as it is. I’m not darkened like you hep—” And I’m only just able to stop myself.

His face falls. Then he slips away, into the bright glare of sunlight, leaving me alone in the cold shade of the damp cabin.

Over the next hour, sun columns pierce through the clouds. The land opens itself up, its soaked colours bleeding into the ter- rain. The verdant green of the meadows, the deep blue hue of the river. All afternoon, I hear their voices slipping through cracks in the cabin walls. Even in the close proximity of the boat, they feel a thousand miles from me.

Sun pours down, its hazy texture like grains of salt falling into the open wounds of my conscience.

Late afternoon. Like dogs bathing in the sunshine, they’re sprawled around the deck, soaking in the rays, napping. Their energies de- pleted, stomachs caved in and growling even as they sleep. It’s my shift again at the stern. I drink in the sound of water lapping under the wooden boards, a rhythmic, hollow sound that is strangely com- forting. The undulating bob of the boat prods me into sleepiness.

Epap is awake. He’s hunched over, scribbling something, com- pletely immersed in a drawing. Curiosity gets the better of me and I amble over, unnoticed.

He’s sketching an image of Sissy. In the drawing, she’s standing on a rock at the edge of a waterfall, one arm raised and staring ahead, her arm as slim as the horizon is long. The waterfall sparkles as if bejewelled by thousands of rubies and diamonds. She’s wear- ing a sleeveless silk gown, her chest bustier and waist narrower than in reality. In the drawing, someone is standing behind her. It takes a moment before I realise who it’s supposed to be. Epap, in a tight vest, his arms rippling cords of bunched muscles, his washboard abs reflecting moonlight. One hand is placed on Sissy’s waist, the other cooing farther down, lighting on her right thigh with an over- wrought tenderness. Sissy is reaching back and grabbing the back of his head with a passionate fist, her fingers intertwined in the strands of his wavy hair.