The Prey (The Hunt 2)

I grab my bag, swing it onto my back. I’m the first to the cable ladder, the boys right behind me. Epap volunteers to head down first, and straps Ben’s bag around him. “Don’t look down,” I tell the younger boys. “Keep your eyes focused on the rungs in front of you. Slow and steady, all right?”

Epap is grabbing hold of the post, planting his foot on the top rung when he stops. “Sissy?” he says.

She hasn’t moved. She’s still standing in the same spot, her face wrought with conflict.

“C’mon, Sissy!” I yell. “We have to hurry.”

Then her face becomes smooth, her inner battle resolved. She looks at me with eyes that are steady but moist.

“Hey!” I shout. “Let’s go!”

“It’s not that simple,” she says.

“What’s not that simple?” I say.

“Running away.”

“What?”

“We have to go back.”

“To the Mission? Are you out of your mind?”

“We need to warn them about the dusker boats.”

I walk back to her. “We go back, we die. We leave now, we live,” I say. “It is that simple. If we leave now, we make it to the Promised Land. We see my father again. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.”

“I’m going back to the Mission.”

I stare at her. “To what end, Sissy? They’re dead anyway. Even if we do warn them, how far do you think they’re going to get with those feet?”

“I can’t do this, Gene. I can’t just leave them to be ravaged.”

I turn to Epap. “You talk some sense into her, will you?”

But he only looks at Sissy with wavering, uncertain eyes.

“Oh, c’mon, not you, too, Epap!”

Sissy stares out to the river. “The Scientist told us we never leave our own. If we simply walk away knowing what we know, we’d be betraying everything he’s taught us.”

I point east with an angry finger. “The Scientist wants us to head east. The Scientist wants us to go to the Land of Milk and Honey, Fruit and Sunshine. The Scientist is waiting for us there. We go east. That’s what the Scientist wants! So don’t go telling me about what you think the Scientist wants!”

Sissy’s voice is quiet next to my berating tone. “If we leave, it’s their blood on our hands. The village girls, the babies. Hundreds of them. I won’t be able to live with that.”

“Oh, c’mon Sissy, they brought it on themselves.”

“No!” she says, her voice rising. “We brought it to them! Don’t you get that?” Her eyes search mine. “It’s because of us they’re now in danger. If we never came, the boats would never have come out this far. But for us, the duskers would never have discovered the Mission.”

The wind whistles across the granite domes. Long strands of hair blow across her face, but she does not pull them away. “I’m going back,” she says. “It’s the only thing I know to do. I will tell them about the duskers. I will convince them all to get on the train, to leave immediately. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll manage.”

“Are you out of your mind? Sissy, we don’t know where the train leads! That’s why we left the Mission in the first place.”

“And that’s exactly why we’ll get on. Because we don’t know. It might lead to deliverance. But if they don’t get on the train, it’s certain death.” Her voice is steeled and resolute. “Their lives have been hard enough. I can’t leave them to be torn apart by duskers if I can help it. I won’t be able to live with myself knowing I abandoned them.”

I glare at her. “Sissy, don’t do this.”

She ignores me, turns to the others. “You all go with Gene. Help him find the Scientist. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

“No.” Epap blinks hard, his face pale. He steps toward Sissy. “I’m with you, Sissy. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Me, too,” David says, brushing tears from his eyes. “Let’s go back to the Mission.”

“And me,” Jacob joins in, his voice shaking, a small, brave smile breaking out on his lips. “I’m with you, too.”

And then Ben is running to Sissy, hugging her tightly around the waist. She ruffles the hair tufting out from the bottom of his winter hat. She looks at me.

I break my eyes away. The wind blows, and though it is no stronger than the previous gusts, it cuts through me as if I’ve been emptied out, all substance sucked out of me. I kick a rock over the edge.

“This is what you want then?” I say. “To be chased, to be hunted? To be their prey your whole life? Born prey, die prey?” I look at them in turn. “This is our chance to be more than prey. To escape all this. But instead you’re choosing to go back to it, like an escaped animal right back into the cage.”

Nobody answers. In the distance, the clot of dots on the river thickens.

“We can be free!” My voice cracks. I thrust my arms toward the eastern horizon. “That’s where we need to go. East. Where my father is.”

I’m suddenly dizzy and light-headed, the ground insubstantial beneath me. I bend over, wait for the world to stop spinning. “Don’t do this, guys,” I say, and my voice, whittled by the wind, has lost all strength. It is barely a whisper. “Don’t leave me by myself.”

For a moment, they don’t speak. They stand perfectly stationary. Only their hair, blown by the wind, ripples in this tapestry of stillness. Then David moves toward me, and though it is but a single step, it seems as if he’s closed the whole distance between us.

“Come with us, Gene,” he says. “Please?” And it is that last word that breaks me a little inside.

I turn my head, gaze at the eastern horizon. The wide expanse, empty and barren.

“Gene,” and now it is Jacob who is speaking. “Come with us. You’re part of us now. You’re with us. I really feel that. You fit so perfectly. We’re family. We won’t let you leave!”

Nobody has ever begged or pleaded for me. For a few moments, I don’t say anything, only feel a strange molten warmth fill pockets inside me where I’ve only ever felt emptiness. I turn to face them again. Ben gazes at me with eyes wide with hope and expectation. He sees written on my face the decision I’m barely aware of making, and he breaks into a wide smile. He tugs on Sissy’s arm with excitement. “He’s coming! He’s coming with us!”

Epap nods at me, his eyes warm. “We should get a move on,” he says. “It’s a ways back to the Mission. You take the lead, Gene. I’ll take the rear, what do you say?”

I see myself stepping forward, into their midst. I can almost feel their hands patting me on the back, the light dancing in their eyes, the surge of energy in my legs as I lead them back to the Mission.

But I haven’t moved. I’m rooted to the spot. Once again, I stare at the eastern horizon. I feel the pull of a million hands tugging me in two different directions.

“I get to walk behind Gene!” Jacob says, picking up his backpack.

And yet still, I have not moved.

And then Sissy, quiet for so long, speaks. But unlike the others, there is no excitement in her voice. “Gene.” That is all she says, just my name, quietly. Her voice is filled with an unbearable sadness that devastates me. She shakes her head as she looks at me, and in that small movement a thousand hidden words of realization and understanding pass between us.

The boys turn to her, confusion etched into their faces.

“Sissy?” Ben asks. “What’s the matter—”

“Gene won’t be coming with us,” Sissy says, her eyes never leaving mine.

“What? What do you mean?”