A blank e-mail. No message.
It meant only one thing.
I hit SEND then picked up my bag. I exited the classroom, heard the growing commotion in the cafeteria. Shouts and yells. I swallowed and swallowed and hoped it was enough.
My father would be receiving the e-mail now. And I knew no matter what he was doing, no matter how busy he might be in that glass skyscraper, he would drop everything. On the spot. And come for me.
I made myself walk slowly, as if merely strolling outside. I avoided the front gate where traffic was heavy. I walked through the soccer field, the baseball diamond, then onto the street. A few midnight pedestrians turned their heads my way as they strolled past, their noses twitching. But I kept swallowing, and my eyes, brimming with frightened tears, were hidden behind my shades.
Only when I got home, thirty minutes later, only after I locked the door and lowered the shutters, did I fall to my knees, all strength and self-will clipped. I curled around my knees, and hugged my legs for they were my only comfort, and I pretended they were another warm-blooded person giving me solace.
And that is how my father found me fifteen minutes later when he flew into the house, quickly locking the door behind him. He gathered my quivering body into his, drawing me with his thick, muscular arms into his warm fold. And he did not speak as I sobbed into his shirt, dampening the front. He only stroked my hair back, and after a minute told me it was fine, told me I had done well, that he was proud of me, that I was a good boy.
But he had to leave me, a few hours later. After the moon had set and the sun had risen, he opened the front door and went out into the empty, sunlit streets. To my school. It was my tooth. He had to find it. If it were found in some isolated corner of the cafeteria, or next to a table leg, suspicions, still nascent and therefore likely to simply die away as all crazy heper rumors eventually did, would be confirmed. And if that happened, they would quickly put two and two together, and come for me within minutes, within seconds, they would race for me, they would eat and consume me.
But when my father returned hours later, minutes before the arrival of dusk, he came back empty-handed. He could not find my tooth. He was fatigued and his face fought fear, but he told me not to worry. Perhaps I had simply swallowed the tooth, he’d said, and the tooth was safely disposed of inside me.
I started to cry; I thought it was okay, I was home, he’d let me cry earlier. But he reprimanded me. “No more crying now. No more tears,” he said. “You have to leave for school soon, your absence might draw attention.” I managed to stop crying, but could not quell the trembling that quaked through me. I thought he would scold me again, but instead, he took me in his arms and hugged me tightly, as if to absorb the vibrations into his own body. I felt safe in his arms.
“I wish we’d just turn,” I said into his chest.
He stiffened immediately.
I went on. “Why don’t we do that, Daddy? I’m tired of being fake, hiding all the time. Why don’t we just turn? It’d be simple, I could find a way to bring home some of their saliva.” I was suddenly so lost in my own words, I did not register the anger in his face. “All we’d have to do is dab the saliva into a small cut on our skin. And then it will all be over, all this hiding and pretending. We can just become normal, like everyone else. We could do it together, Daddy.”
“No!” he said, and this word was like a shout rammed into my head, the echo of which would never stop resonating. “No.” He cupped my face with his large hands, brought his eyes level with mine. “Never say such a thing. Never think such a thing. Ever again.”
I nodded, more with fear than understanding.
“Never forget who you are, Gene.” His hands pressed tighter against the sides of my face. I don’t think he was aware of the force with which he held me. “You’re perfect the way you are. You are more precious than the sum of all the people out there.” And he spoke more words, promises and oaths and vows to never leave me, and eventually his voice softened, the timbral tone soothing me, coursing through my body until it seemed like his voice melded with the DNA of my molecules. He held me tightly in his arms until I stilled.
My missing tooth was never found. Probably, I’d swallowed it. But for weeks and months and even years afterward, I lived in this constant fear that somewhere out there, in some forgotten hole or crevice or crack, lay my tooth, dull and yellow, about to be discovered. Like my own excruciating existence: discarded and hidden, eventually to be discovered.
And yet. Although I lived in a tiny crack between two worlds, in my father’s arms was a universe of solace that was as high and wide and deep as love itself. And that day in his arms, I made a vow that would fuse so seamlessly into the core of my being that I’d forget ever consciously making it; until a decade later, when, floating on a boat down a river and seeing my name carved into a stone tablet, I would suddenly remember and commit myself anew to this vow: my father was my world and if he ever disappeared, I would search for him to the ends of this fractured earth.
4
NIGHT FALLS. AND with it, the day’s celebratory mood. The land blackens into a gloaming and the river, once smooth as plates of armor, is fraught with an urgent undertow. White splashes kick up against the river’s edge, ephemeral ghosts. Nobody utters the word hunter but the fear it generates is ever present in the tense lines grooved into our foreheads, in eyes that nervously scan the land, in tense backs that will not lie down to sleep this night. Although we have not eaten in days, our bodies have adapted to the lack of nourishment by tapping into inner reserves. But very soon—two days, at most—these reserves will be depleted, and we will start breaking down.
Sissy is sharpening her daggers, eyes fixed on the riverbank. Epap paces back and forth, the Scientist’s journal in hand, occasionally flipping through the pages. When it happens, it is sudden.
“Sissy…” David whispers, eyes saucer-wide.
There are three of them. Sprinting in tight formation, a mile behind us, racing along the bank. They are on all fours, their bodies cheetah-like, legs and arms extending out to the ground, grabbing it, thrusting it under them in a blur with every leap and kick. The lead runner drops off, rejoining the line at the back of the formation. A new lead runner takes its place in the front. I see what they’re doing: drafting off one another in a paceline, all the better to cut down on drag and exploit the lead runner’s slipstream. Running in a paceline will mean improving their net group speed by at least 10 percent—a significant advantage in a journey encompassing hundreds of miles.
In seconds, they are sprinting alongside us. They are a tapestry of horror. Their skin, partially melted in the daylight like warm plastic in an oven, has, with the arrival of night, petrified into solid, pulled-back folds. Splattered randomly about their bodies are splotches of hair, tufting out in ugly streaks. No, not hair; these are remnants of their SunCloaks now melded into the soft pliability of half-melted skin. They’ve become ragged stray animals, foaming at the mouth, diseased skin dripping off bones, skinned paws pounding the ground. Their eyeballs swivel around to gaze—with longing and devotion—at us.
The third hunter looks vaguely familiar. Somewhere behind all the melted folds of flesh is a face I almost recognize. A large bag is strapped on its back—on all their backs, in fact—bulging with what looks like heavy equipment and bundles of rope. There must be at least a ton of gear on them. Their staggering strength is horrendous and awesome.
And then they sprint past us.
“Sissy?” Jacob utters.
Not even a single look thrown back at us. Their loping pale bodies disappear over the crest of a short hill. They reappear on the rise of the next hill, but much farther away, smaller, their collective speed, if anything, even faster now.
“Sissy? What’re they doing?” David’s face is ridden with fear. He stares off into the distance where they have disappeared. “Why did they race off?”
Sissy turns to me, confused and anxious. “Do you know?”
I shake my head. Nothing about this makes sense.
“I don’t like this,” Sissy whispers, and for the first time in days, a genuine fear shifts in her eyes. “They’re getting craftier and stronger. They’re getting more innovative, more determined by the day.”
She’s right. This is the first time they’ve hunted prey with smarts and determination to match. They’ve become craftier out of necessity.
Sissy taps against her thigh. Frustration seethes in her eyes.
“We have to dock, Sissy!” Epap shouts. “If they’re in front of us, we can’t simply allow ourselves to drift toward them.”
She stares down the river. “It could be a trap. There might be another group of hunters behind us anticipating we’d pull over. Let’s not get outsmarted here.”
“I don’t think that’s their game plan,” I say. “That’s not how they operate. When it comes to hunting hepers, they’re irresistibly selfish. Altruism for the benefit of another group doesn’t enter into their thinking. If there is another group behind us, then the group that just passed us doesn’t stand to benefit at all.” I gaze into the river ahead of us. “No, I think there’s only one group. The one that sprinted ahead.”
“And they’re setting a trap?” Sissy asks.
“I think so.” I grimace. “I don’t know.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Epap says. “Let’s dock now.” He starts moving for the pole.
“Wait!” Sissy says. “Maybe that’s what they’re hoping we’ll do. Maybe they’ve circled around and are secretly trailing us even now from behind those hills. Maybe tricking us into docking is the trap they’ve laid; they’re just waiting for us to stupidly self-remove the only barrier we have between us and them: the river. We dock, and they’ll be on us in ten seconds flat.”
“What do we do, Sissy?” David asks.
A steely determination glints in her eyes. “We stay on the river. If they’ve laid a trap ahead, we charge through. Whatever they have for us, we fight. But we don’t wait for them, twiddling our thumbs. We chase our fate, whatever it is.” She looks at me. “That’s how I operate.”
* * *
For almost an hour, we see nothing. The boat flows down the surging river, every second fraught with tension, an eternity of uncertainty. I’m at the stern, eyes peeled, searching. The river froths white against the banks up ahead where it narrows. Don’t let up, I keep telling myself, not even for one sec—
The boat is suddenly stopped in its tracks as if we’ve hit a cement wall. We’re thrown forward and sprawl all over the deck. I’m almost tossed overboard—only a quick grab at the boat’s edge keeps me from plunging into the river. Sissy is the first on her feet, and she’s swinging her body around, trying to get a sense of the situation.