He snaps out of it with a quick flick of his head. “I digress. My apologies. The official who let that happen is no longer with us.” He scratches his wrist, once, twice.
“There are other myths,” he continues, “and other discoveries we will disclose to you over the next few days. But for now, absorb what we’ve just told you. Use this new knowledge to aid you in the Hunt: first, hepers are afraid to flee into the unknown; and second, they can be trained to be aggressive. And they do not mind having a woman lead them. Not this one, anyway.”
He slips away deeper into his dark corner; blackness swallows him. Nothing happens for the next few minutes. Nobody moves, nobody speaks. We sit, blasé faces and glazed stares. Waiting for someone, something, to break the silence.
Then I sense it. A prick at the back of my neck: someone from behind is staring intently at me. The last thing to do – I hear my father’s voice instructing me – is turn around. Moving so drastically while everyone else is stationary will only draw attention. Unwanted attention, as if there were any other kind.
But the prick sharpens until I can take it no longer. I let a pen in my hand fall to the ground; as I slowly swivel around to pick it up, I shoot a quick glance back.
It’s Ashley June, her eyes death green in the mercurial light. She’s sitting right behind me. I almost startle in my seat – “startle” is this reflex where we jump a little in fright – but tamp it down just in time. I close my eyelids halfway – a trick my father taught me to make sure my eyes don’t widen too much – and turn around.
Did she see me startle? Did she see me startle?
Somebody is at the lectern. Frilly Dress from yesterday. “How are we all tonight? Having fun?” She takes out a notepad, scans it, then looks up, smiling. “We have a busy schedule tonight. First, we’ll tour the facilities – should take most of the night. Then, time and darkness permitting, we’ll cap it off with a visit to the heper village just shy of two miles from the main building. If we’re running late and it gets too close to sunrise, then we’ll have to push it off till tomorrow.” She looks at each of us, reading our expressions. “Somehow I don’t think you’re going to allow that to happen. Shall we move on, then?”
What follows for the next few hours is a mind-numbingly tedious tour of the facilities. It’s nothing more than an amble along dark, endless hallways. And emptiness. That’s what strikes me the most: how still and empty everything is – the rooms, the hallways, the very dank air we inhale, mere remnants and echoes of a busier, fuller, livelier era. Our escorts follow us, silently. The second floor is where the staff and hunters are housed, and we bypass it. The third floor is the science floor, for obvious reasons: from one end to the other, it’s lined with laboratories. A smell of musky formaldehyde permeates the whole floor. Although the guide speaks glowingly about each laboratory – this one used to study heper hair, this one to study heper laughter, this one heper singing – it is obvious the laboratories have fallen into disuse.
“This whole thing’s a crock, you know that, right?”
“Excuse me?” I turn to the elderly man next to me. One of the hunters. We are in a lab previously used to study heper hair and fingernails. The man is leaning towards me, his gaunt frame tilting like a snapped pencil, his head slanted close to a sample of heper fingernails encased in a glass plate. His bald head is as shiny and hairless as the plate, but mottled over with age marks near his forehead. A few wisps of hair are combed across his gleaming head, like thin strands of night clouds across the moon. We are alone at the back of a laboratory; everyone else is clustered near the front of the lab, where the (apparently) more exciting samples of heper hair are on display.
“A crock,” he whispers.
“These fingernails?”
He shakes his head. “This whole tour. This whole training period.”
I take a sideways glance at him. This is the first time I’m seeing him up close, and he is older than I thought. Hair wispier, wrinkles deeper, the curve of his back more pronounced.
“Why do we need training?” His voice is gravelly. “Just let us have at the hepers, already. We’ll devour them in a minute. We don’t need training. We have our instinct, we have our hunger. What else do we need?”
“We need to draw this out. Savour the moment. Anticipation is half the enjoyment.”
It’s his turn to look at me. A brief look, but one that absorbs. I feel the suction of his brain taking me in. And then his approval.
I’ve been watching him a bit since yesternight. He stuck out, and I now know why. He doesn’t want to be here. Every other hunter (except me, of course) is ecstatic, has just literally won the lottery of a lifetime. But his feet drag just so, his eyes fail to shine with the glee the others have, and everything about him seems to spell r-e-l-u-c-t-a-n-c-e. In short, he’s everything I’m feeling inside. A thought comes to my mind, but I dismiss it outright: There’s no chance he’s a heper. A real heper (like me) would be covering up those feelings (as I’m doing), not letting them hang out like dirty underwear for all to observe.
As I study him – his stiff, arthritic gait whittled down by age – it hits me why he’s so sullen. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance. Not against the younger hunters, who’ll outrun and outgun him. By the time he gets to the hepers, there won’t even be bones left to gnaw on. This Heper Hunt is torture for him, to be so close yet so far. No wonder he’s bitter. He’s a starving man at a banquet who knows there won’t even be crumbs left on the floor for him.
“There’s more going on here than meets the eye,” he says, still bent over the glass plate.
I’m not sure what to say, so I wait for him to continue. But he doesn’t; he shuffles to the front of the lab and joins the others, leaving me standing all alone.
After touring the laboratories on the third floor, we are taken to the fourth floor. We go through it quickly; it’s really nothing more than a series of unused classrooms, the chairs inside propped upside down on desktops. At the far end is the auditorium. We stick our heads through the door to take a look. I smell a dusty dankness. Nobody wants to venture in, and we move on.
Eventually we wind up on the top floor, the fifth. The Control Centre spans the full length and width of this floor. The hubbub here is markedly different from the deadness of the lower floors. Clearly, this is the nerve centre to the whole operation. Numerous computers and TV monitors glow from one end to the other. Staffers are up and about, clipboards in hand, walking briskly between desks and cubicles and computer terminals. They’re all men, dressed in navy blue single-breasted jackets with peaked lapels and double vents, but slim to the fit and streamlined. Three buttons run down the front of their jackets, emitting a dim mercurial light. They’re curious about us, and I catch them stealing furtive glances. We’re the heper hunters, after all. We’re the ones who get to eat and drink heper flesh and blood.
Instead of concrete walls, large panel windows stretch from ceiling to floor, giving us an almost uninterrupted 360-degree view of the outside. From up here, it feels as if we’re hovering above the moonlit plains spread below us.
The group moves over to the windows facing east. The Dome. They all want to see the Dome.
It sits small in the distance, a marble sliced in half, glimmering slightly under the stars.
“There’s nothing to see,” an escort says. “All they do is sleep at night.”
“They never come out?”
“Hardly ever at night.”
“They don’t like the stars?”
“People. They don’t like people watching them.”
We stare in silence.
“It’s almost like they know we’re watching,” one of the hunters whispers.
“Bet there’s a bunch of them staring back at us. From inside one of those huts. Right now, as we speak.”
“They’re just sleeping now,” says an escort.
We’re all straining forward, hoping to catch some movement. But all is still.
“I heard the
Dome opens at sunrise.”
The escorts glance at one another, not sure if they’re allowed to respond.
“Yes,” says an escort. “There are sunlight sensors that trigger the Dome. The Dome rises out of the ground two hours before dusk and retracts into the ground one hour after dawn.”
“So there’s no way to manually open the Dome?” asks Ashley June. “From in here? A button to press or lever to pull that would open it?” There’s a protracted, intense silence.
“No. Everything is automated,” says an escort. “It’s all been taken out of our hands.” He has more to say, but he’s biting his tongue.
“Do you have any binoculars?”
“Yes. But there’s nothing to see. The hepers are all asleep.”
Everyone is so caught up with the Dome, nobody observes Ashley June slide away.
Except me.
I follow her from the corners of my eyes, turning my head when she slips altogether from my vision.
She drifts towards the back of the room where three rows of security monitors line the wall. Under the monitors sits a staffer, his head swivelling slowly from side to side and up and down as he scans the monitors above him. She stands very close behind him, edging closer, slowly, until a few strands of hair graze the side of his forehead.
He moves quickly, a slide to his right. She scratches her wrist, apologising, scratching harder, making sure the moment becomes light and accidental. On his chair, he swivels around to face her, then stands. He’s baby-faced and inexperienced, and his bleary eyes take a while to take in what’s before him. A young lady, and a beautiful one at that. This man, his world filled with an endless onslaught of digital screens, is taken aback by this sudden intrusion of flesh. Ashley June scratches her wrist more, trying to set him at ease. A moment passes, and he begins to scratch his wrist in return, cautiously at first, then faster and surer. His eyes begin to gain focus and brighten.
She says something, but I’m too far away to hear. He answers, energy now beginning to course through his body, and points at a number of different monitors. She asks another question, her body turning slightly towards the monitors, inching closer to the man. He notices. And when he answers, his head bobs enthusiastically on his narrow shoulders.
No doubt about it, she’s good at this flirtation game. And she’s up to something.
She raises her long arm, pointing at one of the monitors. Her arm stretches out effortlessly upward like the exclamation point at the end of a sentence that reads: I’m gorgeous! That arm has always done a number on me, all those years sitting behind her, especially in the summer months when she wore sleeveless shirts and I could view the whole length of her wonderful, perfectly sculptured arms. They were neither too thin nor too thick, just the perfect dimensions with perfect ridges that exuded both assurance and grace. Even the light freckles that sprinkle her arm, exploding in a splattering of dots as they disappear into her shirt, are more seductive than imperfect.
Slowly, I edge closer to Ashley June, positioning myself behind a small pillar. I peer around the pillar; she’s moved even closer to him. Above them, images from security cameras shine with a dull blur. At least a good half of them centre on the Dome.
“Can’t believe they’re running all the time.”
“Twenty-four/seven,” he answers proudly.
“And is there always someone watching these monitors?”
“Well, we used to station a staffer here. But, well, it became . . . there was a policy change.”
“A policy change?”
There is a long pause.
“Oh, c’mon, you can tell me,” Ashley June says.
“Don’t tell anyone,” the staffer warns, his voice hushed.
“OK. Our secret.”
“Some staffers became so lost in these images of the hepers that they’d . . .”
“Yes?”
“They lost their senses, they were driven mad with desire. They’d rush out at the heper village.”
“But it’s enclosed by the Dome.”
“No, you don’t understand. They’d rush out in the daytime.”
“What?”
“Right from this very seat. One moment they’re staring at the monitors, and the next they’re rushing down the stairs and out of the exit doors.”
“Even with the sun burning?”
“It’s like they forgot. Or it just didn’t matter to them anymore.” Another pause. “So that’s why there was a policy change. First, no more recordings—illegal bootleg copies were somehow winding up on the streets. And second, now everyone leaves this floor before dawn.”
“It’s completely unstationed during the day?”
“Not only is it unstationed, but look, the windows have no shutters. They were taken down. So now, the sun pours in during the daytime. The best security system. Nobody’s coming in here after dawn. Nobody.”
There is a pause, and I think that’s the end of the conversation when Ashley June speaks again. “And what’s that big blue oval button over there?”
“I’m not really supposed to say.”
“Oh, c’mon, it’s safe with me.”
Another pause.
“Like everything else you’ve told me, all the stuff you could get fired for disclosing, it’s all safe with me,” says Ashley June, this time with a hint of a threat in her voice.
“It’s the lockdown control,” he says tersely after a moment.
“What’s that?”
“It shuts the building down, locks all entrances, shutters all windows. There’s no leaving the building once lockdown has been deployed. Push it to set the system, push again to cancel—”
His voice gets drowned out by the approaching tour group, which has moved away from the windows and is now mumbling its way towards the back of the floor, towards the monitors. I slink back into the mix. Nobody’s noticed my absence. I don’t think.
By the time the group reaches the monitors, the staffer is back in his seat, his head swivelling back and forth, up and down. One of the escorts is speaking in a monotone voice, talking about the function of the monitors, how every square inch of the Institute is covered by a camera. But nobody is listening, they’re all staring at images of the Dome in the monitors. They’re still looking for hepers.
Except me. I’m watching Ashley June.
She’s slinked away again and is wandering around. Or at least pretending to. Something about her bearing – maybe the way she turns her head just so to read documents on desks or bends over as she passes by a control panel filled with switches and buttons – seems purposeful and deliberate. And she’s trying to go about unnoticed, but it’s near impossible. She’s a heper hunter, she’s female, she’s beautiful. She’s sizzling hot oil on your brains. Before long every male staffer around her has taken notice. She realises this, too, and before long, gives up. She rejoins us at the monitors, tilting her head up. She stands very still, immovable, unreadable.
I stare from behind, the line of hair streaming down over the nape of her neck, dark with a dull gleam. She’s up to something here in the Control Centre; I can’t shake that feeling. Digging for information. Looking for something. Seeking confirmation. I’m not sure. But what I am sure of: she’s playing a game the rest of us don’t even realise has begun.
Lunch is late that night; it’s well past midnight before we are taken down to a large hall on the ground floor and seated at a circular table. None of the escorts sit with us; instead, they retreat to their own table in the peripheral darkness. Without their hovering presence, the hunters are set at ease: our backs relax, we become more talkative. Lunch offers the first time I’m really able to meet the other hunters.
It’s the food we talk about initially. These are meats we’ve never tasted before, only read about. Jackrabbit, hyena, meerkat, kangaroo rat. Fresh kills from the Vast. Or so they say. The flagship dish is a special treat: cheetah, typically eaten only by high-ranking officials at weddings. Cheetahs are difficult to catch, not because of th
eir speed – even the slowest person can outsprint a fleeing cheetah – but because of their rarity.
Each dish, of course, comes wet and bloody. We comment on the texture of the different meats on our tongue, the superior taste to the synthetic meats we usually eat. Blood oozes down our chins, collecting in the drip cups placed below. We will drink it all up at the end of the meal, a soupy collection of cold animal blood.
What I most need is absent from the dinner table: water. It’s been over a night since my last drink at home, and I can feel my body desiccating. My tongue, dry and thick, feels like a wad of cotton wool stuffed in my mouth. The past hour or so, spells of dizziness have whirled in my mind. My drip cup gradually fills with mixed blood. I will drink it because it is liquidy and watery enough. Kind of.
“I heard they stuck you in the library.” It’s a man in his forties, sitting next to me, beefy with broad shoulders; he’s the president of SPHTH (Society for the Protection and Humane Treatment of Horses). His generous potbelly protrudes just above table level. My designation for him: Beefy.
“Yup,” I say. “Sucks the big one, having to walk outside. You guys are probably partying up in here all day while I’m cooped up all by my lonesome, bored as anything.”
“It’s the sunrise curfew that would get me,” Beefy says, his mouth full of flesh. “Having to leave everyone and everything, drop of the hat, forced to leave. And all alone out there, surrounded by desert and sunlight in the day hours.”
“You got all those books,” Ashley June says next to me. “What’s there to complain about? You can study up on hunting techniques, get a leg up on us.”
I see the elderly, gaunt man I’d met in the lab earlier scratch his wrist ever so slightly. He jams a piece of hyena liver into his mouth. His designation: Gaunt Man.
“I heard,” says another hunter, “that the library belonged to a fringe scientist with some pretty loony theories on hepers.” The woman, who looks fit for her age – I place her in her mid-thirties, a dangerous age, equal parts fit and savvy – sits across from me; she barely looks up from her plate as she speaks. Jet black hair, greased up, accentuating her angular pale chin. Her lips are luscious and full, crimson with the dripping of flesh blood, as if her own lips were bleeding profusely down her chin. When she speaks, her lips part across her teeth at an angle, as if only one side of her lips can be bothered to move. Like a lazy snarl. I think: Crimson Lips.
The Hunt Page 6