The Hunt (25 page)

“Going to be a chaotic free- for- al,” I say, nodding. “Disengage the lockdown, and suddenly everyone’s going to be tearing out of this building, hunting down the hepers. Sheer pandemonium as al the guests and staffers rush out into the Vast. Nobody’s going to even notice our absence.”

“And two hours later and al the hepers are dead. Hunt over.

We survive. Us,” she whispers. And her eyes hook into mine.

Something stirs in me.

I stare at her, nodding slowly. Then I stop, shake my head.

“There’s one fl aw.”

“Which is?”

“We don’t know how to disengage the lockdown.”

Her eyes twinkle. “Yes, we do. And it’s easy. For us, anyway.

182 ANDREW FUKUDA

The other day, when we were visiting the Control Center, I was The other day, when we were visiting the Control Center, I was snooping around. A guy started teling me about how the lockdown works. Can you believe it’s a button? Push the button down, and lockdown is set for an hour before dusk; push the same button again and the setting is canceled.”

“No way. Can’t be that simple. For security, they’d have to—”

“And they already have a fail- safe system. The sun. They don’t close the shutters in the Control Center in the daytime, remember?

To keep people out. So that means the only time you can cancel the lockdown setting— before dusk— sunlight is pouring in. You can’t get to it.
They
can’t get to it. More effective than if that button were surrounded by laser beams and a moat of acid. It’s genius.”

“And so is our plan.”

“My plan,” she adds quickly, the suggestion of a smile on her lips.

“It realy might work,” I say, excitement uncharacteristicaly slipping into my voice. “That realy might work.” We rack our brains, trying to fi nd weaknesses in the plan. By our silence, I know we can’t fi nd any.

“I need to wash up. Shave.”

The water feels good on my face. I scrub my neck, my armpits, The water feels good on my face. I scrub my neck, my armpits, and then there’s no water left. I take out the blade, graze my skin just so. My nails are chipped in a few places, but nothing to worry about. Just a few more nights, then I get to go home. That’s the plan, so it seems.

When I walk back, she’s gone. I glance up at the clock. Just past six, ten more minutes of daylight.

Only she hasn’t left. She’s in the reference section, where the sunbeam is. She’s holding a book up in the air, her back to me.

The beam of light is hitting her square in the chest.

“So you found the beam.”

THE HUNT 183

She spins around and the sight of her face— haloed by the light—

stils me. There’s a gentle smile on her face, a daring display of emotion. I feel wals between us crashing down, dirt bricks and cement chunks hitting the ground, the feel of fresh air and gentle sunshine on pale, deprived skin.

“Hi.” Her voice is tentative but friendly, like shy arms extended, hopeful for but uncertain of an embrace.

We look at each other. I try not to stare, but my eyes keep snapping back toward her. “You found the beam.”

“Hard to miss. But what’s it al about?”

“You don’t know the half of it. So much more than meets the eye.”

I walk over to where she’s standing. “At just the right time of day, the beam shines at the far wal”— I walk her over—“then re-fl ects off this smal mirror, creating a second beam that shoots off to another mirror over there. It then hits this spot right around here, on this bookshelf right at this journal—”

It’s gone.

“Oh, you mean this journal?” she asks, holding it up in her hands.

“How did you—”

“It was the only book not shelved, just lying here on this table.

It’s been here for a while, even back to when the Director met us here. So I put two and two together. You must have forgotten to put it back.”

“Have you looked inside it? The Scientist guy, he wrote a whole bunch of stuff in it. Pretty out there.” I look at her. “He was just like us, you know.”

“How so?”

“You know.” My eyes look down.

“You know.” My eyes look down.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “No way.”

I nod. “But he was realy strange. Must have spent months just 184

ANDREW FUKUDA

writing up that journal, copying excerpts into it. Everything from textbooks to scientifi c treatises to ancient religious texts. And then there’s this realy weird blank page—”

“You mean this one,” she says, opening the book to the blank page. And before I can say anything, she continues, “The page that reveals a map when you hold it up to the sunbeam?”

I pause.
A map?
“Exactly,” I say in a low voice. “That’s exactly the page I was talking about.”

She stares at me, a smile cracking through her face. “Liar,” she says. “You
so
didn’t know about the map.”

“Okay, you’re right,” I say to her broadening smile. “I didn’t know about the map. But give me a look- see. Hold up that page to the beam. Sun’s going down, we don’t have much time.”

Sure enough, once she holds it up to the sunbeam, a map bleeds out of the page. But more: not just the outline of a map, but a tap-estry of rich colors splashing across the page like a painting.

“You should have seen this map fi ve minutes ago when the sunbeam was stronger. The colors were fl ying off the page, they burned into your eyes.”

The vista depicted on the map is detailed and comprehensive.

In the bottom left corner, I see the gray slab building of the Heper Institute. Right next to it is the Dome disproportionately large and sparkling. The rest of the map captures the land to the north and east, the stale brown of the Vast transforming into the lush green of the eastern mountains. Most curious of al is a large river fl owing south to north, painted in a verdant deep blue. My fi nger trails along it.

“The Nede River,” Ashley June says.

“Thought it was just a myth.”

“Not according to this map.”

My fi nger pauses. “Helo, what’s this?”

THE HUNT 185

Where the Nede River slants toward the eastern mountains, a brown raftlike boat is drawn. It’s anchored beside a smal dock.

Also noticeable is a thick arrow drawn from the boat and up along Also noticeable is a thick arrow drawn from the boat and up along the river channel, toward the eastern mountains.

“I know, I was confused when I saw that, too. It’s as if it’s saying that the boat is meant to journey down the Nede River. Toward the eastern mountains.”

“Doesn’t make sense. Rivers fl ow from mountains, never up them.”

“Do you think”— her voice lights up—“it was his escape route?

The Scientist’s?” She sees my confusion. “Everyone says he got burned up by the sun. But if he realy was a heper like you say, there has to be another explanation for his disappearance. Maybe he got away. By boat. This boat.”

Possibly,
I think. But then I shake my head. “Why would he leave a record of his escape route? Doesn’t make sense.”

“I suppose. But one thing’s for sure.”

“What is?”

“This map is for only hepers to see. Nobody else would be able to see this, even accidentaly. Not as long as you need sunlight to view it.”

I bend over to study the map more closely. The amount of detail is I bend over to study the map more closely. The amount of detail is astonishing the closer you get. Fauna and fl ora reveal themselves with surprising specifi city. “What does this al mean?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“We’l fi gure it out,” I say.

She’s quiet, and when I look up, her eyes are shiny with wetness.

She’s smiling. “I like it,” she says, “when you say
we
.”

My eyes linger on the smal creases at the ends of her lips. I want to extend my hand, trace those smal creases with my fi ngertips. I look into her eyes and smile in return.

186 ANDREW FUKUDA

She peers at my face as if it were a page, like a toddler learning how to read, enunciating in her mind the sylables of emotion on my face.

I’m unsure of what to do or say next; uncertainty fl oods the moment. So I turn my stare down, pretend to study the map.

“Where do you think they’l be sending the hepers?”

“Could be anywhere. It realy doesn’t matter, they could practicaly place an X anywhere on the map as long as it’s eight hours out.

Not west, is my guess. They wouldn’t want the hepers getting too close to the Palace. On a windy day, their scent might be picked close to the Palace. On a windy day, their scent might be picked up by the Palace staff. They wouldn’t want to run the risk of Palace staffers sabotaging the Hunt.”

She’s doesn’t say anything for a long time. When I look up, she’s rubbing her bare arms.

“The other night,” she says quietly. “When the Director was here.

Do you remember how he went on about the heper farms at the Palace?” She shakes her head. “He was just kidding, right? The whole thing about heper farms, the hundreds of hepers? That was just a fi gment of his sick fantasy, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I couldn’t get a read on him.”

She keeps rubbing her arms. “It’s so freaky, just thinking about it.

I’ve got goose pimples al over my arms.” She looks at me. “Do you get goose pimples, too?”

I walk over and stand close, looking at the tiny bumps on her arms.

“I do get them. But I cal them ‘goose bumps,’ not ‘goose pimples.’ ”

“ ‘Goose bumps,’ ” she repeats. “I like that better. Doesn’t sound as nasty as ‘goose
pimples
.’ ”

Before I can stop myself, I reach out and touch her arm. With my fi ngertips. Her skin, so soft, shivers under my touch. She draws ngertips. Her skin, so soft, shivers under my touch. She draws back.

“I’m sorry,” we both say simultaneously.

THE HUNT 187

“No, I am, I shouldn’t have,” I start apologizing.

“No, I— I—it wasn’t a fl inch. Like, I wasn’t drawing back in disgust or anything like that . . . it’s hard to explain.” And then she suddenly grabs my hand and places it, open palmed, on her forearm.

A jolt shoots up my arm, a skein of heat and electricity. I draw back my hand, but her eyes are fi led with invitation and longing.

“I just . . . ,” she starts.

The goose bumps on her arms pop up even more. This time, when the palm of my hand sinks into the soft give of her arm, she doesn’t fl inch back and I don’t remove my hand. We look at each other, the tears in her eyes a refl ection of the wetness in my own.

A short time later, she fals asleep on the sofa. It’s a total colapse.

Her body folds up like a failed origami piece, her head twisted to the side against the top of the sofa. Her mouth is slightly open, smal puffs of breath pulsing out. The way her body’s torqued, smal puffs of breath pulsing out. The way her body’s torqued, she’s going to wake up with a sore neck. I reach out to center her head on the armrest. In her slumber she complies, shifting her head at the gentle urging of my hands. So strange to be touching a person.

I sit on the other end of the sofa, my body heavy but relaxed.

Above us, the sleep- holds hover on the ceiling, two unblinking ovals staring down like al- knowing eyes, leering at me with mocking accusation. They have taunted me al my life, those sleep-holds. There was a time when I harbored a fantasy. In that fantasy, I live the normal life of a normal person. Every night, I take to the sleep- holds, my baby twins— in my mind, always girls— asleep in the next room, their cherubic faces made chubbier as they hang upside down. And my wife sleeps, hanging next to me, her face pale yet luminescent in the mercuric night light, her long hair spiling down to just touch 188 ANDREW FUKUDA

the fl oor, her feet graceful even in the straps of the sleep- holds.

And in my fantasy, there is no pulsating push- push of blood into my upside- down face; no pain from the sleep- holds tearing into the skin of my feet; no drip of tears faling to the ground beneath me.

Only calm and coldness and stilness. Al is normal. Including me.

I glance over at Ashley June, so wonderfuly drooped on the sofa, her chest rising and faling, rising and faling. Beneath closed her chest rising and faling, rising and faling. Beneath closed eyelids, slight bulges of her eyes move side to side. A spittle of saliva sits at the corner of her open mouth. I fi naly let my eyes close, sleep tugging me into a deep, blissful wel. It is new, this sensation.

Of faling asleep, lying down next to someone. I drift asleep, as intimate and daring and trusting an act as I’ve ever risked.

Hunt Minus One Night

AT FIRST, NO one is particularly alarmed when Beefy fails to show for breakfast. He’s notoriously diffi cult to rouse from sleep, something his now departed escort often complained about. Only after the dishes have been cleared from the table and we’re al moving to the lecture hal is a staffer sent scurrying to his room to check on him.

There is surprise, but not sorrow, when news of his disappearance breaks out. We’re in the lecture hal by this point, listening to a se nior staffer drone on about upcoming weather conditions (heavy rain and windy) and how they might affect the Hunt in two nights, when another staffer pigeon walks into the hal. He whispers something to his superior; the superior stands up and walks out, leaving the ju nior staffer at the lectern.

“One of the hunters has disappeared,” he says. He pauses, at a loss of what to say next. “Teams are now scouring this building in loss of what to say next. “Teams are now scouring this building in an effort to fi nd him. Another search team is surveying the grounds outside. There’s a possibility of a sunlight disappearance. But there’s no need to be worried.”