The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (2 page)

1

I scream.

I’m too terrified to do anything else. My hands are on my head. I’m pitched forward. My eyes are clenched shut. Every muscle in my body has gone tight, as though clutched in rigor.

The monster knocks me back and I spill into a pile of bones and old skin. But I feel no weight on top of me. No gnashing of teeth on my body. The thing has missed its tackle, striking a glancing blow as it passed, but nothing more. Perhaps because I bent down. Perhaps because it can’t see well in the dark. I don’t know. I don’t care.

I’m alive. For now.

And I don’t want to die.

But I’m certain I’m going to and the events of the past few months replay in my mind. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it. And in a flash, I’m back at the beginning.

I’ve been told
that the entire continent of Antarctica groaned at the moment of my birth. The howl tore across glaciers, over mountains and deep into the ice. Everyone says so. Except for my father; all he heard was Mother’s sobs. Not of pain, but of joy, so he says. Other than that, the only verifiable fact about the day I was born is that an iceberg the size of Los Angeles broke free from the ice shelf a few miles off the coast. Again, some would have me believe the fracture took place as I entered the world. But all that really matters, according to my parents, is that I, Solomon Ull Vincent, the first child born on Antarctica—the first and only Antarctican—was born on September 2
^nd
, 1974, thirteen years ago, today.

Of course, I don’t buy my parents’ seeming lack of memory when it comes to my birth. When I broach the topic they start ducking and weaving like spastic boxers. What I’m sure of is that something strange occurred when I was born; something that frightened them enough to bury all record of it. And they’ve done a good job. I’ve searched in and behind every drawer in this house. I’ve scoured the attic and the basement. I’ve even flipped through every one of the thousands of books they have on shelves around the house in search of a hollowed-out core. I’ve found nothing. But occasionally, at a Christmas party or get together, someone who heard the story slips up and reveals a tidbit before covering their mouth and offering an, “Oops.”

They think they’re protecting me, but all they’re really doing is making me feel like a freak. More of a freak, I should say. Everyone else I come into contact with thinks I’m weird, too. My parents just feign ignorance.

In celebration of my uncommon birth, my family is celebrating in the most common way imaginable: a quiet dinner at home. In attendance are my parents, Mark and Beth, and my only real friend, Justin McCarthy. We eat in silence, first enjoying the hot orange grease of Maria’s Pizza, and then the fudgy, chunky center of a Dairy Queen ice-cream cake, all polished off by tall glasses of Cherry Coke.

Nothing like massive amounts of fat and sugar to make you feel older.

Though the party, if you can call it that, is a subdued affair, I look at the gifts with great anticipation, the way a lion does a zebra before pouncing—hunter’s eyes. I don’t want toys. Didn’t ask for any. Not interested, despite grandfather’s continuous donations of G.I. Joes. My parents always know what to get me. Because despite their constant lies about my past, they’re like me.

Smart. Uncommonly so.

Nerds. Geeks. Bookworms. I’d heard all the names at school. Being smarter than everyone in my class exacerbated the issue. No senior in high school likes to be upstaged or outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old with a cracking voice. Though I sometimes wonder if their real problem with me was my resistance to 1980’s pop-culture; I don’t feather my hair, wear friendship bracelets, or watch Music Television. It doesn’t matter now. All that went away when my parents decided to home-school me. My nervousness, tension and boredom has been replaced by excitement, learning and stimulation. Not to mention a name-calling cease fire.

Well, almost. My parents call me Schwartz. The name evolved from my mother’s first nickname for me: first and only, which was short for the “first and only baby born on Antarctica.” They quickly shortened it to FAO and then, thanks to the FAO Schwartz department store, I became Schwartz. After the movie
Spaceballs
came out a few months ago, my parents stopped using the name in front of Justin because, almost as a Pavlovian response, Justin would say, “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.”

The first gifts I open are books—fiction and non-fiction, popular and obscure—I like them all. Next come three boxes of Robotix kits. I’ll put the dinosaur-looking robot on the cover to shame with the creature I’ll create. The biggest box comes last. I tear into the bright blue wrapping paper as Justin slurps grease from a leftover pizza slice.

The loud slurp stops short and grease drips on to Justin’s plate. “Whoa,” he says.

To Justin, this is a “whoa” moment. He likes to blow things up. To me it’s a big letdown. My parents see my down-turned lips even as I fight to reverse them.

“You have to build it yourself,” mom says.

“The box says it mimics the pattern of a real lava flow,” dad adds.

I let out a grunt, wondering if my parents IQs have dropped. Or maybe they’ve finally given up caring? The gift is nothing more than a cardboard cone, some quick drying clay, a pouch of red-colored baking soda and a small bottle of vinegar. This is the
big present
? They had gone on about how surprised I would be. About how incredible the gift was. This is...simple.

Boring.

Justin punches my shoulder. It hurts. I know he didn’t mean it to, but I seem to feel pain more than other people. Justin’s dark brown eyes are impossible to see behind the tinted sports glasses he always wears, but I know they’re wide with excitement. I focus on that to avoid thinking about the pain in my arm.

“Are there any G.I. Joes we haven’t melted?” he asks.

“A few.”

“Let’s go!” Justin dashes from the dining room and takes the stairs two at a time. “C’mon!” he shouts from the top.

“Go ahead,” mom says. “He has to go home in an hour. Mass starts at six in the morning.”

Saturday morning mass is something I never understood. It’s a sacred time. Not mass, mind you. Saturday mornings. A bowl of Cocoa Pebbles starts the morning.
Starvengers
,
Gaiking
,
Robotech
and more
,
followed by Creature Double Feature, which promises at least one
Godzilla
movie, fills my day until noon. It is a TV line-up so good that I am sure God skips mass for it too.

 “May I be excused?” I ask with a sigh.

Dad chuckles. It’s the kind of chuckle that’s a substitute for calling someone stupid. I’ve heard the laugh enough to recognize the sound. “You don’t need to ask after we told you to go.”

I brush some of my long blond hair, which has garnered more than a few Einstein taunts, out of my face. Mom and Dad wear unreadable smiles. Like they know something I don’t. I hate that feeling—I’ve felt it every day of my life—so I slide off the chair, pick up the large, but light, volcano box and march it upstairs. When I hear mother giggle—just like the kids at school used to—a tear forms in my eye.

I’m such a wimp. No, wimp isn’t the word. That’s like calling someone a chicken. Means they’re afraid to fight—which also describes me—but that isn’t what I mean.
Crybaby
. That’s the word. One laugh from my mother and I’m all weepy. Of course, the laugh combined with the silly present confirms that they don’t take me seriously. And if they don’t take me seriously, they’ll never notice I’m not a kid anymore—if you ignore the fact that I’m about to bury a bunch of action figures in a miniature volcano—and that means they’ll never reveal the mysteries surrounding my birth. I’m not sure why the day I was born interests me so much. You don’t hear other kids asking about when they were born. But there is something in me, something raw, which longs to know more.

As I near the top of the stairs I wipe my eyes dry and focus on the soft rug lining the stairs. It feels squishy beneath my socks. I find it comforting. Through the banister rungs I see Justin hunkering over a fishing lure case filled with odd toys. I scuff my feet, sliding sock against rug. I walk like that all the way to the bedroom doorway.

“Put out your hand,” I say.

Justin does.

I reach out a single finger and touch it to Justin’s palm. A tiny blue arch of electricity zaps between us with a sharp crack. Justin yelps and flinches away, knocking over the box of toys. “Hey!” he shouts and then moves to retaliate with a finger flick.

I put the volcano box between us and raise an eyebrow.

Justin pauses. “Ugh, fine. Oh! I almost forgot.” He fishes into his pants pocket and pulls out a clear blue cassette tape. Then he closes the door. “My cousin made this for me. Said my mom wouldn’t let me listen to it.”

He puts the cassette into the shoebox sized tape-deck and hits play. Loud music, unlike anything I’ve heard before, fills the room.

I place the volcano box on the floor and let Justin tear into it. I sit down on the bed hearing the music, but not really listening. My eyes turn to the wall, where a five foot by five foot poster of Antarctica is tacked up. I’ve marked all the active United States bases—McMurdo, Amundsen-Scott, Palmer, Siple, Willard—as well as some of the larger foreign stations. A bright green circle marks one of the few bases that no longer functions: Clark. Snow and ice buried the site within a year of my birth. How does something like that happen? Even on Antarctica. Just another one of the mysteries no one seems to know anything about.

Though I haven’t been there since shortly after my birth, I miss the place. I’ve become an expert on the continent and hope to return when I’m old enough. There are so many interesting aspects of Antarctica I long to explore. The founder of Clark Station, Dr. Merrill Clark, is my personal hero. His search for evidence of a human Antarctican civilization—my geographic ancestors—captivates me. And I want to follow in his footsteps.

But it will be a long time before that can happen. I doubt my parents will let me go until I’m eighteen and they can’t stop me. Of course, I do understand some of the reasons I’m not yet able to go. I might be smarter than most adults, but I’m also smart enough to know I have the emotional fortitude of an eight year old. Happens with smart kids, I’ve read. Understanding how awful the world can be is hard for someone without emotional defenses. I should be more concerned with the outcome of the daily ant battles waged on our sidewalk than the starving children in Ethiopia. I stopped watching the news a year ago. The images tended to fuel my imagination, which was not a good thing.

 I’m painfully shy, especially around girls. I’m quick to cry, especially if someone is angry with me. And, though no one knows it, I’m afraid of the dark. Not just afraid, I’m
terrified
of the dark. It’s not a fear of what might lurk in the shadows, closets or under the bed. I’m afraid of my own thoughts. When my imagination is freed from the coils of intentional thought, it drifts to places far darker than deepest black. The horrors of school, of starving kids on TV, and of my parents’ mortality are passing thoughts by comparison.

I sometimes wonder if the dark thoughts are a true reflection of what lies within. Of my soul.

The words of the music finally sink in. “What’s a brick house?” I ask.

Justin shrugs as he places a volcano-shaped cardboard cone onto a sheet of plastic.

“Thirty six, twenty four, thirty six. Are those measurements? Is this a song about construction? Why wouldn’t your mother—”

“They’re measurements all right,” my friend says with a fiendish grin, then holds his hands in front of his chest like he’s gripping two baseballs. “For boobs.”

My immediate embarrassment is multiplied tenfold when I hear mother clear her throat. I spin toward the door, mortified.

“Forty-five minutes,” she says with a grimace. She closes the door behind her as she leaves.