The Prey (The Hunt 2)

37

I AM BROUGHT back to consciousness by rough, insistent heaves that painfully, rhythmically pound against my rib cage. A lull of nothingness follows; I’m slipping back into the gray.

Then velvet lips on mine, dewy and sweet. Soft on soft, the lips alive and encompassing. Then becoming fiercer, the grip ironclad.

Air gushes into my mouth, gliding down my windpipe. The rush of oxygen singes, an acidic whiteness splashing across my brain. Then I am choking, rank water gushing out my mouth, foul and tepid as if it has rotted in me for years. I gasp in air, the rich purity of oxygen bringing a blazing clarity.

“Turn to your side,” Sissy says, helping me. “Cough it all out.”

Water spurts out of me, more than I’d thought possible. With such force, it feels like chunks of my liver, my stomach, kidney are being vomited out. I remain on my side, too tired to move, for a minute. Sissy sits me up. Her fingers are pulling up my shirt, her hands exploring my body, across my chest, dipping into the grooves of my abdominals.

“Sissy?” I sputter her name, water flicking off my lips.

“Are you scratched? Cut? Are you bitten? Did it get you anywhere?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did it get you, Gene?! Tell me!” Her eyes are cauldrons of alarm.

And suddenly I’m afraid, all over again, this new fear smacking alertness into my mind. Sissy’s right: if either of us has been so much as scratched by the dusker, we’ll start turning. The symptoms of this gruesome disintegration always show immediately, although the actual process can take hours to complete. She studies me with alarm, her hair pressed against her vase-pale face, water droplets spilling down her face like sweat.

And we’re standing up, together, her hands grabbing at my shirt and pulling it off, my fingers undoing the buttons of her blouse pressed against her skin like barnacles. Under the glow of dying green light, our eyes roam over each other’s skin. My fingers glide across the soft span of her body, searching for punctures, scratches, cuts.

Her hands drift down my right leg, to my ankle. She flinches.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Gene,” she says, her voice husked with fear, “your pants are all torn up down here.”

In the longest two seconds of my life, she peels up the ripped material. Her mouth drops in horror. At the long gashes scratched across my skin, mostly whitish lines where fingernails grazed. But there is one long bloody gash. Where its claws broke skin and cleaved an opening for its contagious saliva to enter me.

Our eyes meet. Then I’m kicking away from her.

“Get away from me!” I shout. “Sissy, run!”

But she doesn’t move, only stares intensely like she’s trying to inject a cure into me by her very gaze.

“Sissy! You have to leave. Before I turn!”

“Gene! Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you turning? I don’t think you are.”

And it’s like I’m struck dumb by her question. I grab my chest as if an answer lies there. But she’s right. I’m not experiencing any of the symptoms of turning that my father drilled into my head all those years ago. No shaking. No sense of my internal organs ripping apart. My skin isn’t burning feverish hot.

“You told us the symptoms always appear within a minute at most. But it’s been well past a minute, and you seem fine.” Her eyes sweep across my body. She stands up, walks over to the front row where I’d seen the spectating elders. The row is empty now, only a few GlowBurns left behind as they’d beat a hasty exit. She picks up a GlowBurn, snaps it.

Green light blazes out.

I don’t flinch or squint. I don’t even blink. The light doesn’t hurt me in the slightest. The opposite, in fact: it is the most radiant, beautiful color I’ve ever not flinched at. The color blurs, and I realize I’m tearing.

I hear the crack of plastic, then liquid is splashed on my face.

“Hey,” I say, “cut that out.” Bright glowing green spots splatter about my face and clothes.

“Sorry,” Sissy says, suppressing a glad smile, “I just had to make sure.” She reaches up, wipes a few glowing beads from my face. Her finger wipes lightly over my cheekbones, resting there for one long second.

“Gene,” she whispers, “you really are the Origin. You were cut, you should’ve turned. But look at you now.” Her eyes glisten with marvel.

All I can do is gaze back, momentarily speechless. The dusker was slavered in its own saliva, its hands and nails covered in drool when it first plunged into the well after me. But perhaps by the time it cut me, water had washed away the saliva. “I don’t know, Sissy.”

“It’s really true,” she whispers as if she hasn’t heard a word. “You’re the one. The Origin.”

I shake my head doubtfully. “Its saliva might have washed away by the time it cut my foot. I mean, that’s a lot of water in that well. If it cut me with fingernails washed clean of any droplets of saliva, then I wouldn’t have been infected. And that could be the reason why I’m not turning. That could be all.”

But she’s still looking at me with wonderment.

“I need to check you,” I say, quickly. “Turn around.” She does, slowly, bringing the wet sheen of her back into the pale green light. My fingers lightly trail over her protruding should

er blades, drift down the valley of her spine. Her back, curved and smooth like the inside of a shell. My fingers come to rest in the small of her back. I hold still, sensing a shift in her. Her rib cage starts to expand and contract, faster, deeper. She turns her head, regards me from the corners of her eyes over her shoulder.

“You’re okay,” I say, softly. “No scratches.” I pick up her shirt, and she puts it on. “You breathed air into me. How did you know what to do?”

“The Scientist described it to us,” she says. “He was always afraid we’d drown in the pond back at the Dome.” She falls silent; she’s looking at the doors. They’re rimmed with the morning light outside. “It’s not safe out there,” she says. “Nowhere is safe anymore.”

“They were in here,” I say. “A group of elders. Spectating our deaths.”

She nods. “I saw them, too. Why would they do this to us? Why would they want to kill us? I thought the Civilization’s Order would have shielded us from being … killed.”

I pick up my shirt, start wringing it. “We stepped over a line at the station platform. In front of the whole village. We physically attacked the elders, even if it was in self-defense. They couldn’t let that go. Not with all the girls watching. They had to make an example of us, Order be damned.”

“We’ve got to get the boys,” she says, buttoning her shirt quickly. “Then we run into the woods, as far from here as possible. Forget about waiting for the bridge to lower for now. Let’s go.”

I put a hand on her arm. “I need to tell you something. It’s huge.” I recap everything Clair told me. I speak quickly, all the time feeling the urgent need to get back to the cottage, to the boys.

“East of here?” Sissy says, gobsmacked. “The Scientist’s still alive?”

“It’s a lot to digest, I know. But what we need to do now is flee. We can digest and understand later. But now we run, we descend the mountain to where the river flows out and follow it east.”