The Prey (The Hunt 2)

“Gene! Let’s go!” Sissy’s voice is ringed with urgency.

“Tell me why the train is certain death!” I insist.

Krugman taps his palms down on the armrests as if affe

ctionately patting the heads of two toddlers. “Really, do you have to scream? Isn’t there enough screaming going on outside?”

“Okay, we’re leaving,” I say, turning around.

“It is not the train that’s certain death,” Krugman says, and his words flick out with such icy clarity, it is as if he has, for a moment, regained sobriety. “It’s the destination.” His voice then disintegrates into a wet mumble. “Much death and screaming there. Much. Muchly.”

“Tell us what’s in the Civilization.”

He giggles. “It will take time to explain. Much time. Muchly.”

“Gene, don’t fall for it! He just wants to—”

“—keep you from getting on the train?” Krugman says. “Then go, go I say. Off you go now, smack on the bottom, tussle of your hair, peck on your lips, off you go now, little darlings. Don’t let me keep you. Don’t miss your school bus on account of me.”

I walk over to Krugman, smack the tumbler out of his hand. It flies across the office, shattering against the wall. The sound jolts him; clarity shines in his eyes before a glassy fog clouds them again. He walks over to the window, the darkness outside framing him. A scream rips out from somewhere on the grounds below us, at the fortress wall. Its volume and proximity are terrifying.

“Gene!” Sissy says.

I ignore her. I need to know. “It’s the Ruler’s Palace, isn’t it?” I shout. “The train leads to nothing more than heper pens. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Krugman starts giggling. “Give the boy a cookie, please. Give the little detective a smiley face.” He wipes away a line of tears. “That’s only the tip of it,” he says. “You think you’re so smart, you think you’ve got this all figured out. You want the truth?”

Clair screams. A dusker, pale and glowing like the moon, slivers across the glass window like a leech. It can’t see through the one-way glass; it pauses, its face directly in front of the unmoving Krugman, its nostrils flaring. Then it skimmers away. Outside, a black wave of duskers is pouring over the fortress walls.

Krugman wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “The truth, now,” he says with a shaky voice. “Unvarnished for your consumption. Steady yourselves, little children.” He turns from the window towards us. “We’re all alone. Mankind was wiped out generations ago. The duskers took over the world. And we never took it back. We never found an antidote, a cure, a poison. We never found anything but death. The Civilization never existed.”

Sissy stops pulling me. She turns slowly, reluctantly, to face Krugman.

“After the dust settled, only several thousand humans survived. We eked out a horrendous existence. In the bowels of the Ruler’s Palace, imprisoned and force-bred. Our sole purpose in life was to live and die to satisfy the Ruler’s appetite. And it was insatiable. He tried to slow down, pace himself, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. We were too proximally close. And that was the same for each successive Ruler. None had self-control. The captive human population began dwindling at an alarming, unsustainable rate.

“One night, many, many generations ago, the Ruler at the time had a brainchild. A brilliant plan. He came to us and struck a deal.”

“With who?”

“With us. The humans. The Ruler agreed to release a couple hundred of us to form a commune here in the mountains. Hundreds of miles away, the journey too far for duskers to travel because it entailed—even by train—exposure to daylight. The humans agreed—as if we had a choice—and set off.

“This plan was all very secretive, of course, only the top brass knew. And for decades, the succession of Rulers has supplied all our needs and wants. It’s a secret that’s held up longer than anyone expected, down the line of Rulers. But I suppose all secrets, especially this one, will eventually leak out.”

He strokes the strands of his mole hair. “Of late, we’d gotten a whiff of rumors. About dissension within the Palatial ranks, about certain factions getting wind of the Mission. Even rumors of sun-protected boats being constructed, a whole armada. We discounted these rumors out of hand.” He stares into the blackened skies. “That was a mistake. We’d been lulled into a false sense of security. They always fulfilled their end of the deal.”

“Tell me about this deal. Tell me everything,” I say.

“We breed for them,” Krugman whispers. “That’s the purpose of this Mission. A breeding farm. We trickle in hepers to the Palace at a sustained pace like drips through an IV. We’re far enough removed from them that they can’t gorge on us, throw us into extinction in one uncontrollable binge session. In return, they supply us everything we need to survive and yes, even thrive. Food, medicine, materials. Tit for tat. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship in many ways. Not quite roasting marshmallows and singing ‘Kumbaya’ around the campfire with them, but you get the picture.”

“You’ve been sending children to them as food,” I say.

His voice lowers. “Save your judgmental tone, lad. I’ll tell you what I’ve done. I’ve propagated our species. I am the sole reason why we’re not extinct right now. I’m the reason why you even exist at all. So if I were you, I’d bite my tongue.”

“All those boys you sent. All the older girls…” says Clair.

Krugman turns to Clair, and his look is tender, his eyes moist with affection. “I’ve given you happy years. That’s what I’ve done. Music, smiles, sunshine, food, warmth. You’ve known not the tyranny of fear, imprisonment in cold wet cells, surrounded by death and violence, hearing the wretched sounds of a dusker eating a loved one. You’ve never had to live in fear of having your number drawn, of iron claws gripping around your limbs, pulling you away. Instead, you and all the other village children have lived in a paradise here, a veritable Eden. So what if I’ve had to fabricate some tales, make up stories about the Civilization? Ignorance is bliss, and bliss is what I’ve given all of you.”

“You’ve given them nothing but a death sentence,” I say.

“Oh, don’t we all have one!” he yells, spinning around to glare at me. “Don’t we all have a death sentence! The very second we’re born, aren’t we all sentenced to death? But come, see. I’ve only made death row manageable for them. No, more than that, I’ve made it happy, idyllic. Filled with laughter, singing, food. Look at the paintings on this bookshelf. Do you not see the childhood whimsy in them, the dreamlike bliss?” The folds of fat on his face tremble violently. “You. Just like the Scientist with your judgmental tone. You sound just like him after he returned to the Mission. He came back too good for this place.”

“Gene,” Sissy pleads, urging me to leave.

“That’s why there’re so many pregnant girls here,” I whisper, the truth becoming hideously apparent. “It’s how the Mission survives. How it … supplies the Palace. In order to keep receiving food, medicine, supplies, it needs to replenish…” I can’t finish the sentence.

“Tit for tat,” Krugman whispers. “Tit for tat.”

“And you send away the boys when they’re mere toddlers—why?”

Krugman’s eyes turn black.

“You send them away before they grow to be a physical threat,” I say, realizing. “Right? Because boys have no place here.”

Krugman stares outside. “No reproductive place.” And after a long pause, in a strained whisper, he says, “The elders take care of that end.” He does not look at me, only continues to stare outside at the darkness that shrouds the massacre on the streets.

“How long…” I begin to ask.

“Centuries. We’ve been here for centuries,” he says. A long pause. The faintest hint of remorse touches his brow, the quickening of a long-dormant conscience. “And yes, there have been birth defects over the years. Inbreeding will do that over the long term. A sad but unavoidable consequence. Which we’re always quick to remove. Out of sight, out of mind.”

A cold chill pours down my back. I remember now. The hooded person carrying a newborn two nights ago, scurrying toward the Vastnarium.

Krugman pours h

imself a refill, the whisky spilling over the tumbler and splashing his fingers. He continues to pour, not caring. “Why don’t you just wipe that judgmental expression off your face? You’d do the same. You have no idea the pressures we’ve faced. When we don’t meet our quota,” he says with sour, drooping lips, “they withhold food, supplies. Once, during a particularly dry spell, they decided to make a point. So they sprang a surprise on us. Among all the food delivered to us was an apple. So ordinary looking on the outside, but secreted within was a tiny razor blade that was contaminated with dusker saliva. It infected one of the girls when she bit into it. She turned.” He giggles. “And we finally realized why the Palace had made us construct the Vastnarium months before.”

His eyes meet mine in the glass.

“That was a warning to us. To keep us in line. After that, we tightened the screws around here. We increased … production. Girls’ feet were ‘beautified’ to keep them from wandering, leaving. Boys were sent off younger and younger. We learned to hose down the train’s shipments. Make sure everything was free and clear of … contaminants.”

Two milky-pale bodies skimmer across the glass. They scamper off as quickly as they’d appeared, leaving behind thin sticky trails in their wake.

Sissy walks up to me, turns my face to hers. “Gene,” she says. Her face looks like it’s aged ten years. “Let’s go. Let’s just go.”

“Or you can stay.” Krugman’s eyes look horrifically young, as if a little boy were peering out of a cage of fat and wrinkles and facial hair and dark circles and regret and fear. “Please stay. It’s over now. And I’ve accepted it. I just don’t want to die alone.”

I feel no sympathy for him. He has the blood of countless children on his hands. He did nothing to break the cycle of blood and death, but instead benefited from the horrific exchange. He sold out his own people for what? Food and drink and the freedom to slake his lust on a town of innocent girls.

“Let me tell you how things will end for you,” I say, walking to the door. “You will think you’ve prepared yourself for this moment but when they pour in like black water through a broken dam, you will scream. And you will be all alone. Do you understand? In a crowd of feasting pale bodies, you will be alone in a way you’ve never known loneliness.”