The Hunt (24 page)

174 ANDREW FUKUDA

“What?”

“I said I hope you don’t mind. I had to put on your clothes. My own stuff is . . . there’s too much of a smel in them.”

“No,” I say, eyes looking down, “it’s okay. Al that stuff they gave me are a few sizes too smal. I’ve never worn that outfi t before, it’s yours now.”

We stand at a slant, looking at everything but each other.

“I’m sorry for using up two bottles of water.”

“It’s okay. We stil have a half bottle left.”

As soon as I say the word
we,
it’s as though something breaks in her. Her head turns to mine; when I meet her eyes, they’ve weled up. She snaps her eyelids shut, and when she opens them again, her eyes have dried. She’s good, she’s practiced; just like me.

“Have you lived alone?” I ask her.

She pauses. “Yes,” she answers gently, sadly. “For almost as long as I can remember.”

as I can remember.”

Her story, told to me after we sit down, is not unlike mine.

She remembers a family: parents, an older brother. Cheerful conversation at home, laughter, feelings of safety once the shutters came down at dawn and the world was locked outside, meals around a table, warm bodies asleep around her. Then she remembers the day.

She was bedridden with a fever and stayed home while her parents and brother hiked to get some fruit. They left ten minutes after dawn. She never saw them again.

One day in a family, the next day alone. Solitude and loneliness her constant companions, their presence so enervating and cold, like two damp socks worn on a winter day.

That was ten years ago. She was only seven. At fi rst it was incredibly hard. To live. Not an hour went by that she did not con-THE HUNT 175

sider giving herself up at school. It would be so easy. To succumb.

Stand in the middle of the soccer fi eld during recess, prick her fi nger, let a droplet of blood seep. Watch them come fl ying at her.

The end would be brutal but swift. Death would be an escape from this unbearable loneliness.

But her parents had taught her two things. Ingrained them in her.

The fi rst was survival: not just the basics, but the nuances, the minu-tiae, every conceivable situation she might fi nd herself in. The second was life, the importance of it, the preciousness of it, the duty to persevere and never let it end prematurely. She hated how clinicaly they indoctrinated her: by the time they were gone, she had become a reluctant expert at survival.

Her beauty was a curse, especialy as she—

and classmates

around her— hit puberty. Attention, something she was repeatedly told by her parents to avoid, came her way with the force of a testosterone- fi led tidal wave. Boys would write letters to her, stare at her, converse with her awkwardly, throw spitbals at her, join the same clubs she did. Girls, seeing the social advantages of befriend-ing her, fl ocked around her. Nothing she did to minimize her beauty helped. Clunky, self- cut hair; an abrasive, caustic personality; aloof-ness; feigning disinterest in boys; even outright stupidity. But none of these helped. The attention kept coming.

One day, she realized her approach was al wrong. Her defense was too . . . defensive. It didn’t fi t her, and this kind of faux defensive life would eventualy be her undoing. She saw that. And she decided the best defense was offense.

Instead of tamping down her beauty, she played it up. She threw off the meek, stupid persona and instead exuded confi dence and poise. It was an easy act mostly because it didn’t feel like one.

More than anything, it gave her power. She controled the pieces, and instead of being pushed about by the horses and knights and queens 176 ANDREW FUKUDA

about her, she turned them al into pawns. She grew her hair long and in a way that complimented her svelte fi gure. She’d stare down the boys who gazed at her, grab the social knives meant to backstab her and use them to cut down her competition. She was ruthless until she was needed.

Eventualy, it became clear she had to get a boyfriend. As long as she was unattached, the boys would continue clamoring after her like magnet maggots. And too many questions about her would arise if she didn’t.

So she plucked the varsity quarterback, an obnoxious and surprisingly insecure se nior who played it cool when with her in public but in private boiled like lava. Kiling him turned out to be easier than she’d thought. For their one- month anniversary (teens can be so sappy), she suggested a picnic at a secluded spot a few hours away from the city limits. He was al over the idea. They brought wine and blankets. Once there, he drank too much— she kept pouring— until he passed out. She tied him to a tree that was, in the late autumn, stripped of leaves and would provide no shade in the late autumn, stripped of leaves and would provide no shade once the sun rose. She left him passed out and walked home.

She never saw him again. When she went back to the tree the next day, there was only a pile of clothes hanging off limp lines of rope, slightly bleached by the toxicity of melted fl esh. She took the clothes and rope and burned them.

As with most “disappearances,” the subject was taboo and spoken of only in hushed whispers. A perfunctory search was conducted and then abandoned after only twelve hours; the matter was fi led away as a DBS (disappearance by sunlight). She pretended to be devastated by this tragedy, her heart cracked by the loss of her

“soul mate.” At his funeral, she professed her undying devotion and love to him, promising that her soul was forever bonded with his.

THE HUNT 177

It achieved everything she hoped it would. Boys largely left her alone; girls sympathized with her tragic loss, and her stock rose even higher. Nobody questioned her lack of a dating life even as the other girls in the Desirables necked, armpitted, and otherwise hooked up at parties. She was the tragic fi gure in need of time and space. Give her a few years, she’d eventualy come around, her friends thought.

She continued to build the deception. She joined the HiSS (Heper Search Society), a group that operated under the theory that Search Society), a group that operated under the theory that hepers were stil at large and had infi ltrated society. The members of the HiSS sought to fl ush out these heper infi ltrators.

“Why put yourself in the midst of the very people most keen to sniff you out?” I ask.

Because, she answers, the HiSS was the one place no one would ever suspect you. Membership in that club was the eye of the storm, where neither suspicion nor accusation would blow your way. And there was an added benefi t: She would be the fi rst to know about another suspected heper. Her plan was simple: First confi rm that that person was a heper, then snuff out the suspicion as baseless.

“Then what?”

She turns to look at me, her mouth fashioning words and then stopping. “Establish contact,” she fi naly says. She sits on one end of the sofa, a leg bent under her, half turned toward me.

“You were good,” I say. “I never suspected. Not for a second.”

“You weren’t so good.”

“What?”

“You slipped a few times. I’d see emotions breaking out on your face. Or faling asleep in class. Granted, it was only for a split face. Or faling asleep in class. Granted, it was only for a split second— but the slight head nod of sleep was unmistakable.” Her eyes light up, remembering something. “I saved your butt more than 178 ANDREW FUKUDA

once. Like in trig class a few nights ago, when you couldn’t read the board. Even last night, here in the library with the Director.

Your hands started to tremble.”

“I remember that.” Then something occurs to me. “Why didn’t you ever approach me? At school. And here. When you had me al fi gured out? Just tel me you knew what I was.”

“Because it could have al been a ruse. You might have just been trying to bait other hepers into coming out. It was a real possibility.

So I just kept watching you. Even snooped around your house during the day.”

“So there
was
someone outside!”

Her shoulders slumped forward. “You should have come out. I was hoping you would. I stood waiting, hoping you’d open the door, step out into the sunshine. See me, standing right there in the sun with you. Al mystery gone, everything out in the open, just like that.” She pauses. “Just think how things would be so different. If that realy did happen back then instead of just now.”

I pick up the bottle at my feet, uncap it, and hand it to her. She I pick up the bottle at my feet, uncap it, and hand it to her. She nods her thanks. I watch her mouth as she tilts the bottle toward her, her upper lip pressing into the opening as her lips slowly part.

Water pours out; a thin trail snakes down her neck and gathers behind her colarbone.

“Wel,” she says, recapping the bottle, “here we are.”

I shift my legs under me. “You have a plan,” I say. “I saw you up to something in the Control Center, snooping around, asking questions.”

“What
was
a plan,” she says with mild frustration. “It wasn’t going to work, I quickly saw that.”

“Which was?”

“I knew going in that I couldn’t let the Hunt take place. It would completely expose me— there’s no way I can keep up with the pace, THE HUNT 179

the running. And even if I could, I’d be breathless and sweaty by the time we reached the hepers. And even if I weren’t hot and sweaty— and I most defi nitely would be— there’s no way I could eat the hepers. Kil them, yes, I could do that, but eating them? No way.”

I nod. That’s exactly how I see things.

She continues. “So then I thought: What if I could somehow sabotage the whole Hunt? What if I could fi nd a way to lower the wals of the Dome at night? The hepers would be left out there exposed and for the taking. Everyone would be fl ying out there, hunters and staffers within seconds. Just like that, in one fel swoop, and no Hunt anymore.”

“Except?”

“Except there’s no way to lower the Dome wals. No button to push, no lever to pul, no combination of buttons to press. It’s al automated by sunlight sensors.” Her voice, which has been rising, suddenly stops. Then quieter: “So that took me to Plan B. That was what happened today. Except it turned out more like Plan B

Fail.”

“You used the sun protection equipment,” I say quietly, fi naly understanding why she and Beefy ran outside. “You used them to convince him. That with the equipment, he could get to the heper vilage even in the daytime. Where he’d have the hepers al to himself.”

She nods. “That’s what I told him. That’s what I was hoping for.

I knew the equipment wouldn’t work for long, not against the afternoon sun. But if it got him halfway there, close enough to see afternoon sun. But if it got him halfway there, close enough to see and smel the hepers, it wouldn’t matter anymore. His desire for heper fl esh would take over, he’d choose the taste of heper even if it meant dying in the sun.”

“You were right. That’s what happened. He totaly lost it.”

“He wouldn’t believe me at fi rst. But then I told him I didn’t care what he believed,
I
was going out to get the hepers al for myself, he 180 ANDREW FUKUDA

could stay inside and eat leftover pasteurized blood and pro cessed meats for al I cared. He saw me fl ying out with the protective blanket, saw how the equipment seemed to be realy working. So then he came out himself.”

“It almost worked,” I say quietly.

“How close did he get to them?”

“You didn’t see?”

She shakes her head. “I fainted, completely blacked out. When I came to, you were walking back already, the Dome closed. I mean, I could see he didn’t make it.”

I’m glad she didn’t see. She would be asking me why I tried to stop Beefy. And I wouldn’t be able to answer her. Because even I don’t know. “Do you have a Plan C?” I ask.

don’t know. “Do you have a Plan C?” I ask.

She scratches her wrist. “How about I tel you after you tel me
your
Plan A?”

I pause. “Break my leg.”

“Excuse me?”

“Hours before the Hunt begins, fal down a fl ight of stairs.”

“For real?”

“Yes.”

“That’s pretty lame. There are so many holes in that, I can’t even begin.”

“Like what?”

“Wel, for starters, breaking a leg without spiling blood is possible, perhaps, but I wouldn’t want to stake my life on those chances.

For starters.”

I don’t say anything.

“Any other plan?”

“Wel, I just thought of another one. We have FLUNs now. We

“Wel, I just thought of another one. We have FLUNs now. We can just take out the other hunters.”

She stares incredulously at me.

THE HUNT 181

“What?” I ask.

“You’re not serious?”

“What? What’s wrong with that plan?”

“Where do I start? Ten seconds into the race, they’l be out of range. Leaving us behind. With the hundreds of spectators gawking at us, wondering why we’re so slow. We’l be barely out of the gate before we’re mauled to death.”

I raise my hand, then stop. Ever so slowly, it fals back down.

“Should I go on?” she asks, a friendly smirk on her face.

“No, it’s okay—”

“My Plan C, then,” she says. “I also only recently thought of it”—

a fl ash of humor in her eyes—“so we’l need to work out the kinks. But do you remember when the Director was teling us about the start of the Hunt? How an hour before dusk, the building wil be locked down to prevent any bandit hunters? Wel, that got wil be locked down to prevent any bandit hunters? Wel, that got me thinking. What if we were somehow able to disengage the lockdown? With al the hundreds of guests already here for the Gala, there’s—”