Before too long, they come. Even as my classmates are still congratulating me, I hear their officious boots thumping along the hallway. By the time they open the door to my classroom, every student has taken his or her seat, standing up at attention as the team of four walks in. They are all immaculately dressed, silk suits with tight, clean lines.
“F3?” the squad leader asks from behind the teacher’s desk. Like his suit, his voice is silky, pretentious, but with undeniable authority.
I put my hand up.
All four pairs of eyes swivel and fasten on me. They are not hostile eyes, just efficient.
“Congratulations, you have the winning lottery combination,” the leader murmurs. “Come with us now, F3. You will be taken directly to the Heper Institute. Your ride is awaiting you in front of the school. Come now.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. But I need to pick up a few items from home, clothes.” And my shaver and scrubber and nail clipper and fang cleaner—
“No. Clothing will be supplied at the Institute. Come now.”
I’ve never been in a stretch carriage, much less one drawn by a team of stallions. The stallions are sleek black, merging seamlessly with the night. They turn towards me as I approach the carriage, their noses sniffing me out. I climb inside quickly. Students and teachers spill out of the school from the east and west wings, rushing over to gawk. But they all stand a respectful distance away, silent and still.
Because of the darkly tinted windows, it’s unnerving how pitch-black it is inside. I restrain the urge to stretch out my arms or to widen my eyes. Head bent down, I slide my body forward slowly until my knees hit the soft front of the leather seat. I hear more bodies following me in, feel the seat sag under the weight of their bodies.
“Is this your first time inside a stretch?” a voice next to me asks.
“Yes.”
Nobody says anything.
Then another voice: “We will wait for the other winner to get here.”
“Another student?” I ask.
A pause. “Yes. Shouldn’t be long now.”
I stare out of the tinted window, trying not to give away the fact that I can’t see a thing in here.
“Some papers to sign,” says yet another voice. A faint rustle of papers, the unmistakable snap of a clipboard. “Here you go.”
My eyes still trained outside, I swing my right arm in a wide arc until I hit the board. “Ooops, I’m such a klutz sometimes.”
“Please sign here and here and here. Where the Xs are.”
I stare down. I can’t see a thing.
“Right where the Xs are,” yet another voice chimes in.
“Can we just wait a bit? I’m kind of caught up in the moment—”
“Now, please.” There is a firmness in that voice. I sense eyes turning to look at me.
But just then, the limo door opens. “The other lottery winner,” someone whispers. A faint grey light from the outside spills inside. Not a moment to lose. I whip my eyes down, barely catch sight of the Xs, scribble my name down. The carriage tilts with the added weight. Then, before I can see who entered, the door swings shut and the interior is plunged into blackness again.
An ankle jams into my shin.
“Would you watch where you put your legs!” a voice snaps at me. It’s a girl’s voice, somewhat familiar.
I stare out of the window, not even trying to meet her eyes.
“Do you two know each other?” a voice asks.
I decide the safest action is to shrug and scratch my wrist. Something ambiguous that could be interpreted a number of ways.
The sound of wrists scratching in response. I’m safe for now.
“Please sign these papers. Here, here, and here.”
There is a momentary pause. Then she speaks with command. “My friends are outside. The whole school is outside. This is the best moment of my life. Can you please roll down these windows so they can see me? It’d be good for the school, for the community, to join us in this wonderful time.”
For a long time, there is no response. Then the window rolls down and the grey outside light ambles in.
Sitting across from me is Ashley June.
We ride in silence and darkness, the officials dispensing with small talk. The stallions stop at a stoplight; the clip-clop of their hooves comes to a momentary cease. The muffled, rumbling sounds of the crowd outside filters through: bone snaps, teeth grinding, the crackle of joints and ankles. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people line the streets, watching our passage.
Ashley June is silent but excited. I can tell. Snaps of her neck crack out in the darkness in front of me. I throw in a few snaps of my own, cracking my knuckles once or twice.
This is not the first time Ashley June and I have been in the dark in close quarters. It was a year or two ago, before I became the recluse I am today and just as Ashley June was beginning her meteoric rise in the ranks to the Desirable club. It was raining that night and the class was cloistered inside the school gym. Our gym teacher never showed, and nobody bothered to let the office know. Somehow – these things just have a way of happening – everyone started playing spin the bottle. The whole class, all twenty or so of us. The class divided into two circles by gender. The words – This is so lame, I’m outta here – were on my lips when the guys suddenly spun the bottle and got things going.
It whirled around in a blur, then slowed, coming to a stop at the boy sitting across from me.
Then it continued to inch forward slowly, as if through glue, until the bottle mouth, like the gaping mouth of a dying goldfish, came to a stop. Pointing right at me, dead centre, no question about it.
“Suck fest,” the boy next to me said bitterly. “So close to me.”
And it was as though an electric jolt shot through the girls’ circle. They started whispering, heads huddling together, casting me luring, excited looks. In a flash, a girl reached forward and spun the bottle. The bottle twirled fast, then broke into a slower blur. When it was crawling through its final rotation, girls leaning back in disappointment as the bottle passed them, and just as it was slowly passing by Ashley June, she reached forward and stopped it with her foot, the mouth of the bottle pointing at her.
“Wow,” she said, “figure that.” And because it was Ashley June, they let her get away with it.
A minute later, Ashley June and I were inside the closet. We stood mere inches apart, the walls enclosing us tightly. The smell of pine was thick inside, the darkness complete.
Neither of us moved. I heard the others talking outside the door, their voices miles away. I stared down at my feet, breathing through my nose in long, controlled breaths.
I thought to speak to her, this being the perfect – the only – opportunity to express what had been bottled up in me for years. Ashley June, I’ve had feelings for you for a long time. Since the first time I ever saw you. You’re the only one I’ve ever been drawn to, the only one I think of every day.
“Should we get a move on?” she asked in the darkness, her voice whispery and surprisingly low. My opportunity, so fleeting, gone.
We bumbled awkwardly in the confined space as we took off our arm sleeves. I grabbed the zipper, pulled at it, felt it give.
With our sleeves off, we paused. Now was the moment. Was she waiting for me to move first? Then the sound of her neck cracking, a loud bony snap. A low rumbling in her throat, then a snarl, so close, the hiss wetting the walls and ceiling and floor of the blackened closet enclosing me.
I let my mind go blank, an erasure, then a replacement with a primal urge manufactured in the imaginings of my mind. I opened my mouth and a snarl hurled out, its raw savagery and urgency catching me by surprise. My arms flew forward towards her and our forearms collided, nails gashing against skin. For a second, alarm shot through my mind: if blood was spilt, her ardour would quickly – in a microsecond – shift, and she would be at my neck, her fangs sinking razor quick through my skin, and the others o
utside would pour in just seconds later, diving inside in an orgy of blood. But caught up in the moment, I did not stop, we did not stop, but brusquely brushed aside arms, so many impeding us, shoved elbows and shoulders away, jostled for position. We knocked up against the walls confining us on every side, hollow thumps thudding as our elbows and knees hit against the invisible walls.
I got there first. Before she could regain her footing, I shoved my elbow into the socket of her armpit. The way I had read about in books, seen in movies. I had her. Her body tensed in anticipation as my elbow locked into her armpit. And just like that, her body lost all tension and softened. I swivelled my elbow in long, luxurious circles, and her body moved in rhythm. Salivary wetness slivered between and around her snarling teeth. I concentrated hard after that, keeping up with appearances, making sure that the snarls came out in the right fevered pitch, that my body oscillated with enough passion and frenzy.
Afterwards, Ashley June and I bent down to find our arm sleeves. In the dark, our arms bumped into each other; and in one unforgettable second, our hands briefly touched. The skin of her fingers brushed against the open palm of my hand. We both flinched back – I in surprise, Ashley in revulsion. She was quiet, perhaps collecting herself. I was about to push the closet door open when she spoke.
“Wait?”
I paused. “What is it?”
“Can we just . . . stand here for a bit?”
“OK.”
A minute passed. I could not see her in the dark, what she was doing.
“Are you . . .” she began.
I waited for her to continue. But for a long time she did not say anything.
“Do you think it’s still raining hard?” she said finally.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“It’s supposed to rain all night, the forecast said.”
“Did it?”
And again, she was quiet before speaking again. “You always walk to school, don’t you?”
I paused. “Yes.”
“You brought your umbrella tonight?”
“I did.”
“I walked to school tonight,” she said, and we both knew she was lying. “But I left my umbrella at home.”
I did not say anything.
“Do you mind walking me home?” she whispered. “I hate getting wet.”
I told her I did not mind.
“Meet me by the front gates after school, OK?” she said.
“OK.”
She then pushed open the closet door. We did not look at each other as we joined the group. The guys kept looking at me expectantly, and I gave them what they wanted: I mouthed, “Wow!” and bared my fangs. They scratched their wrists.
Later that night, after the last bell rang and the students poured out of school, I sat at my desk. I stayed there even as the din of the hallways subsided, even as the last students and teachers vacated the school, the clip-clop of horse hooves fading into the distance. Rain gushed down in thick columns outside, splattering against the window. Only after the dawn siren rang hours later did I get up and leave. The front gates were empty of people as I walked past, as I knew they would be. It was frigid by then, the rain still pouring down heavily, as if trying to fill the void of the emptied streets. I did not use my umbrella. I let the rain soak my clothes, seep all the way through to my body, the wet cold licking my chest, stinging my skin, freezing my heart.
The Heper Institute
THE RIDE IS long. Even the stretch carriage becomes uncomfortable and jarring after the first couple of hours – it’s not built for long-distance travel. Long travel is very rare: the appearance of the deadly sun every twelve hours restricts travel. But for the sun, travel distances would be much longer, and locomotive technology would probably have supplanted horses long ago. In a world where, as the saying goes, “death casts its eye on us daily”, horses more than sufficiently meet the short-distance travel needs.
Nobody speaks as we travel through the outskirts, along roads that get bumpier by the minute until they yield to the give of desert sand. Finally, some five hours out, we pull up in front of a drab government building. I step out, legs stiff and unsteady. A desert wind blows across the darkened plains, hot but somehow refreshing, sifting through the bangs of my hair.
“Time to go.” We are escorted towards the grey building, the officials’ boots kicking up slight puffs of dust. Several other carriages are parked off to the side, the horses tied but still jaunty from their journey, their noses wet and wide with exertion, heat steaming off their bodies. I quickly count the carriages: including the one I shared with Ashley June, there are five others. That makes seven lottery winners.
Nothing about the spare grey of the building’s exterior prepares me for the opulence of the interior. Marble floors glow with the ebony hue of old world craquelatto. Interior Ionic columns, scrolls curling off top and bottom, stretch high to impossibly tall ceilings that are outlined by a plaster cornice etched with curled fronds. A labyrinth of hallways and staircases criss-crosses in a dizzying disorientation. We walk single file, a few officials in front, a string of them tailing behind us, our boots click-clocking on the marbled floor, flanked by lines of mercurial lamps. Ashley June walks directly in front of me, an arm’s length away. Her hair is like a torched fire, leading the way.
The hallway leads to a large set of silver-crested double doors set between two Corinthian columns. But before we reach them, the lead official suddenly turns to a door on the left. The procession comes to an awkward halt as he knocks on the door. A moment later, the door swings open.
The cavernous hall is dark. In the middle is a circle of curved-back velvet chairs dotted about like the numerical digits of a clock; all but two of the chairs are occupied. Ashley June, in front of me, is escorted to an empty chair. I’m taken to the chair next to hers and sat down. The officials take their place a few yards behind us, standing at attention.
Seven of us sit in the murky greyness, hands laid on kneecaps, staring directly ahead, the tips of our fangs jutting out slightly. The hunters. We are perfectly still, as if the molecules in the air have been glued together, fastening everything in place.
The official, when she appears, catches us all by surprise. Instead of being dressed in military garb, she wears a flowery dress, the long sleeves adorned with pictures of dandelions and roses. She floats gracefully from the dark periphery to the centre of the circle, where a high-backed chair slowly ascends from the floor. Her bearing is one of homespun goodness, more matronly than military. She seats herself gracefully on the chair that continues to revolve slowly upward. As it makes a full circle, she makes eye contact with each person in turn, taking us in, studious yet affable. When her eyes meet mine, friendliness spills out towards me like the rays of a summertime dusk.
She speaks, and her voice is soft yet clear. “Congratulations to you all. Each of you gets to partake in a rare and splendid experience that the rest of the world only dreams of.” She pauses, her ears perching up. “Everyone will be dying to hear about the Hunt afterwards; you’ll all be plenty busy afterwards dealing with the media, especially the one of you who hunts down the most hepers.” She spins slightly on her feet; her dress sashays around her legs.
“To that end, we’ve prepared a potpourri of activity for you all. You’ll have so much to share with the media afterwards. Over the next few nights, your schedule will be jam-packed with events, from dusk to dawn. You might get restless, your mind on the Hunt in five nights. I understand.” A few heads flick back, almost indiscernibly. She pauses, and when she recommences, there is a seriousness lining her words. “But between now and then, I need to stress the importance of maintaining your focus over the next few nights. With the training. Learn your necessary skills, absorb the tidbits of advice we give you. These are not ordinary hepers, the classic hepers you’ve read about or been told about. These hepers are different, special: they’ve been trained in the art of evasion, they know how to be on the run and, when necessary, to strike back. O
ver the past few months, we’ve supplied them with weapons – primitive fare like spears and daggers – but you’d be surprised by how adept they’ve become at using them.
“So keep your focus. If you start daydreaming too much about their blood, about the taste of their warm flesh under you, the feel of their hearts beating swiftly under your nails, the skin of their necks just about to break under the sharp pricks of your fangs” – a glazed look enters her eyes – “the taste of that first squirt of blood in your mouth, gushing into a stream . . .” She shakes her head, clearing her eyes. “That is what you need to avoid. Focus on your training so that you can help yourself be the victor. Because remember: you’re training not only to hunt down the hepers, but also to beat out the other hunters. We’ve found from past Hunts that usually only one hunter comes to dominate the Hunt, who devours most, if not all, of the hepers. Out there in the desert, there’s no community spirit, no spreading the wealth. You get to the hepers first, last thing you’ll want to do is share the riches. No, inevitably, you’ll find yourself gorging on the embarrassment of riches set before you. You want to be that hunter, you want to be the winner. So train hard. Focus. To the swift go the spoils.”
Her face then breaks into rainbows. “You’ll be taken to your rooms momentarily. Rest well, because tomorrow will be a real treat. A sumptuous breakfast, then a tour of this facility. You’ll see the training grounds, the artillery room, the Control Centre, the meditation lounge, the dining area. And finally, at the end of the night, we’ll take you to . . . the heper village.”
Officials step forward from outside the circle and stand next to each hunter. The official on my right is a sullen grey statue. In his hand is a package.
“That’s right,” she says, still seated in the centre slowly revolving, “take the package. Read it when you get to your room. It has some invaluable information. Your escort will take you to your rooms now. You’ve all had an exciting and long night. Try to get some rest today. Turn in early.”
The Hunt Page 4