Two rows in front of me, Phys Ed’s head suddenly twitches violently backward. A short line of saliva flies off his fangs and swings upward, splatting across his face diagonally. He shakes his head.
“Pardon me,” he murmurs.
The Director stares at him, then proceeds. “Another aberration is their rather grotesque tendency to leak minuscule beads of salty water when they get hot or are under stress. Under these extreme conditions, they also emit large amounts of odour, especially from the underarm region, which itself, especially in male adults, contains a nest of body hair. It is common for them—”
Phys Ed’s head snaps back again. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, “didn’t mean to interrupt. But can no one else smell it? Heper odour?” He turns around, and for one awful moment, his eyes settle on mine. “Don’t you?”
“A little. Just a little,” I offer.
The Director’s eyes turn to me. A chill spreads down my body.
Controlled breathing; keep eyelids halfway down; don’t dart my eyes back and forth.
“It’s really thick, it’s getting into my nose, into my head, it’s hard to concentrate.” Phys Ed points to an open window. “Mind if we close the window? I can barely concentrate—”
Abs, sitting two seats away from him, suddenly jerks her head back, snaps it forward again. “Just now. I smelled it, too. Heper. Pretty strong odour. It must be wafting in from outside through the open windows. What is it, heper mating season?”
The Director heads over to the open window. His face is placid, unreadable, but he’s clearly thinking deeply. “I smell something as well. The breeze is bringing it in?” His voice rises indecisively at the end. “Here, let me close the window, see if that helps. The hepers must be really sweating it during the day. Wonder what they’re up to.”
The lecture continues, but barely anyone is listening anymore. Everyone is curious, sniffing the air. Far from cutting off the heper odour, closing the window has only intensified the odour. It’s me; the smell is emanating from me. How long before the others realise this? Their fidgeting and agitated head shakes grow more frequent and violent by the minute. I’m not helping matters – or myself – much: I’ve got to keep up the act, and my own head shakes and neck snaps are an exertion that in turn releases more odour.
Ashley June suddenly speaks up. “Maybe they’ve been sneaking in here during the day. Into this building. That’s why their odour is everywhere.”
We look to the podium to see what the Director will say. He’s gone. Uncannily. And in his place is Frilly Dress, who, as usual, has materialised out of nowhere. “Impossible,” she says, her voice shriller than usual. “There’s no way a heper would come in here, into the hornets’ nest. It’s certain death.”
“But the odour,” Ashley June says, her mouth watering. “It’s so strong.”
Suddenly her head snaps back, viciously. Slowly she turns around, her head lowering. She gazes at all of us, at me. “What if one of the hepers snuck in here last night? What if one of the hepers is still hiding in this building?”
And just like that, we are flying out of the doors, the escorts right next to us, at first trying to coax us back into the lecture hall, but then, as we spin around corners and leap down floors (“The odour’s getting stronger!” shouts Crimson Lips next to me), the escorts join in the frenzy, feed into it. Gnashing teeth, saliva trailing us, hands shaking in the air, nails grating against the walls.
It’s hard to separate myself from the group. That’s my plan: to peel away, steal back to the library, and hope no one thinks much of my absence. But every time I turn a corner to get away, they’re right there with me. It’s my odour. And with all this running around, it’s only getting worse. I was hoping they’d all sprint past me, giving me the opportunity to fly down the stairs and out of the door before they can double back. But they stay right with me. It’s terrifying, to be so close to their teeth and claws. They will not be unaware for much longer.
What causes the group to leave me is more by accident than design. I black out – probably for no more than a second or two. One moment I’m running, the next I’m flat on the ground, the group sweeping past me and disappearing around a corner. The lack of water. It’s parched my throat, dried my muscles, ossified my brain now. I’m past my breaking point.
When I come to – it’s really more a greyout than a blackout – I know I have to move. The group will double back when they lose the scent; they’ll follow the trail right back to me, lying weakened and prone on the floor, sweat on my forehead, the odour running off me in rivers. Move, I tell myself, move. But it’s tough even to prop myself up. I feel as dry as attic dust, yet as heavy as a waterlogged sack of flour.
There is silence in the hallways, then the sound of footsteps growing louder. They’re realising. They’re coming back now.
Fear jump-starts my body. I roll over, leap to my feet. Doors. I need to put as many doors between me and them. It’ll slow them down, cut off my scent even a bit. Every little bit counts.
I push doors out of my way; seconds later, I hear those same double doors slammed open, like shotguns popping. I’m not even racing down flights of stairs anymore; I’m leaping down them, one flight at a time. The pain ricochets up my legs, shoots up my back.
They’re catching up. No matter how fast I try to push myself, no matter how treacherously I bound down the stairs, the sound of the group behind me looms ever closer. Hard, scrabbling sounds, quick whispers of clothes being whisked this way and that. Only a matter of time now.
Unless . . .
“It’s this way!” I shout. “The scent is this way, it’s really strong now, I think I’m on to it!”
“How did he get so far ahead of us?” someone shouts, a floor above.
I slam through a set of doors, run halfway across the hallway, then plunge through another set of doors and start leaping up stairs, three at a time.
“Wait for us!” someone shouts right below me.
“No way! I’m virtually on top of it now.”
“How’s the slow kid beating us?” Gaining so fast, just a matter of seconds.
Through another set of doors, a mad sprint down the long hallway. I take a quick look backward: the horde is coming on me like a rabid wave, Gaunt Man leaping from floor to wall to ceiling, Phys Ed darting along the crease where wall meets ceiling, the others all apace, their faces stoic, their fangs bared. Three seconds.
I throw myself through the set of doors in front of me. They swing open with a weird touch of familiarity. I see why: I’m back in the lecture hall. I’ve made full circle. The hall is completely empty. Everyone has joined the chase.
Where do I want to die? I wonder. At the back? Standing dramatically on a desk? Near the lectern?
And that’s when I see the window.
Jump up, heave it open.
Not a millisecond later, the group flows in like a black wave. They’re so synchronised: on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, there’s no jostling for position, no elbowing. Just a coordinated rapid sweep into the lecture hall, eyes spinning, nostrils flaring.
“It jumped! It jumped outside!” I yell, perched in front of the open window, pointing out. Even before I finish yelling, four of them are up there on the perch, jostling for position, peering through the window with me, their heads disconcertingly close to mine. A strong breeze thankfully picks up, gusts through the window.
“I can smell it everywhere! It’s like it’s right here, hiding, where?”
“It’s gone—”
“We can chase it down, can’t have got far—”
“Maybe,” I say. “If we go quick, we should be able to get to it.”
They are bunching their legs, readying to leap out of the window, when a whisper freezes them in place.
“You’ve been had.” A wet, quiet, sinister whisper, seething with threat.
It is the Director.
He’s not looking at us, merely glancing at his nails, marvelling at their pastel gleam in the
moonlight. His voice is quiet, seemingly indifferent to whether anyone is listening.
“Some of you here think you’re so smart,” he purrs. “You think you’re such a quick study, that you know better than the experts here. A couple of days at my establishment and suddenly you think you’re smarter than the specialists who’ve devoted their lives to this fine Institute. Did you really think that the Institute I run would be so careless as to allow a heper to be on the loose, to roam unchecked through the grounds?” He studies his nails.
A pause, then he continues, his voice even softer now. “And did you really think a heper would be so stupid as to be caught outside the protection of the Dome after dusk?” He puts his right hand down. “They might be animals, but they’re not stupid. Like some of you here.”
It is deathly quiet. “There is arrogance and ignorance in spades here. Funny how often they go hand in hand. You need to remember who you are. You were selected by luck – not by merit, not by demonstrated ability, not by anything earned. Dumb luck. And now you saunter into my Institute and think you run the whole damn place.
“There is no heper. Yes, there is a discernible smell of heper that has blown in from the outside. It is more pungent than usual, yes. But there is no heper, not inside, not the way you think. You’ve all been victims of mass hysteria.”
Beefy, despite the Director’s words, suddenly shivers. With desire. He can’t hold back, he can’t deny the heper smell in his nose. Saliva from Phys Ed, hanging from the ceiling, drips down onto a chair. They can still smell me. They can’t help themselves.
“Ah,” continues the Director, observing these reactions, “the power of mass hysteria. Once you’ve been told there’s a face of a heper imprinted on a tree bark, you can’t unsee that image so easily, can you? No matter what we say, you’ll still see a heper. The conviction proves to be . . . sticky. Not so easy to unring a bell once it’s been rung. Look at you all. You’ve almost got me convinced.”
Something lands on my hair, sticky and slightly acidic. I glance up; Abs is up there, hanging upside down. She’s gazing at the Director, trying to control herself. More saliva drifts down, silvery and shiny like a spider’s thread.
“It’s understandable, your susceptibility to mass hysteria. You’re all heper virgins: you’ve never seen, smelled, or even heard a heper before, not a live one, anyway. So at the first hint of suggestion, you’re all gone, lemmings charging off a cliff. And there’s no breaking out of it now. We’ve seen this happen time and again here at the Institute, with the new hires. They come here, wet behind the ears. Some come to see a heper behind every shadow and lose their ability to function. Eventually, they lose the ability to perform even the simplest of tasks.”
His head revolves, looking at each of us in turn. “We are not without our options, however.” At this, he glides away into the peripheral darkness. Frilly Dress emerges moments later, her face beaming.
“It’s a programme I came up with. The new hires were getting too distracted, so we had to come up with a way to, well, desensitise them. The option of sniffing acidic powder to numb the smell nerves in the nostrils was considered, but not seriously. My plan was more humane.” She nods towards the back of the lecture hall.
A beam of mercuric light cuts through the lecture hall. An image lights up on a screen above her. We see a large room, like an indoor arena of sorts. Dotted around the perimeter are wooden posts sticking out of the ground like tree stumps. Thick, hardy leather straps are tethered to each post. Even on video, a palpably ominous air hangs over everything. A sense of sour dread seeps off the projected image. Nothing good happens in there, I think. My insides contract and chill, become lined with a film of frost.
The place looks strangely familiar. I search my memory banks, trying to—
And then I recall. The lottery pick. The old, emaciated heper picking out the numbers. It was filmed right from this arena.
Frilly Dress, sensing the rapt attention, pauses dramatically. She tugs on her earlobe. “This converted work space is now affectionately called the Introduction. The name says it all. It is where you will be introduced to your first live heper. In the flesh, in the blood, right before you.”
Crimson Lips lets rip a huge snarl. Beefy starts grunting. Drool streams down now from the ceiling in rivulets.
“Calm down. Nobody is going to be eating a heper. Not today, anyway. Not one fang, not one finger, will so much as touch heper flesh. The leather straps that bind you to the posts will ensure that.” She picks up a long ruler and uses it to indicate a circular trapdoor on the ground that looks very much like a manhole. “The heper will emerge from this door on the ground. It will come out, after you’ve all been secured to your posts, and for about five minutes, you will get to see and hear and smell the heper. The only senses you will not be using – for now – are touch and taste, obviously. But that heper will be sufficiently up close and personal. And you will be able to smell it – real heper, rather than your hysterical imaginings. It will set you straight. The Introduction has been incredibly successful with our new hires. After this exposure, they’re no longer heper virgins. Their ability to focus and not be distracted by faint heper odours is much improved. We think the programme will be just the ticket for you all.”
“So there is heper in this building!” Gaunt Man says, his voice loud and gruff. “That’s why heper smell is so strong!”
“There’s one heper. And you haven’t been smelling it. It stays in its quarters. And that door you see in the photo is steel-reinforced and locks from the inside. It is completely safe in there. Has been for the past three years. And the silly thing has enough food stored up in there to last a month.”
“But how do you get it to come out at the Introduction? How do we know it’s going to come out when we’re there?”
She scratches her wrist. “Let’s just say that we offer choice morsels it can’t refuse. Fruits, vegetables, sweet chocolate. Besides, it knows it’s in no danger. It’s done this a dozen times, knows that everyone is securely tethered to their posts. As long as it stays in the safe zone and doesn’t stray too close to a post, it’s fine. Nobody can touch it. It’s free to gather up the food to its heart’s content.”
“Is it the one who—”
“Now, really,” Frilly Dress interjects. “Do you really want to keep asking me questions, or would you rather move on down to the Introduction?”
Judging by the speed with which we zoom out, turns out it’s a rhetorical question.
We are as giddy as schoolchildren on a field trip to the amusement park. It takes us five minutes to get to the arena, or rather, to descend there. Turns out, the four floors above ground are just the tip of a very cold, black iceberg. Whole flotillas of floors exist beneath the ground. The farther we descend, the colder and darker it becomes. There is no sign that anyone lives or works or uses or visits these ghost floors anymore. We descend into the depths of the earth, the pull of claustrophobia closing in on me.
By the time we arrive at the bottom floor, I’m spent. My knees feel as if a jackhammer has done a number on them, and my head spins crazily from the spiralled descent. No one else is fatigued; if anything, the energy level has risen as anticipation draws to a climax. There’s a lot of chatter, a lot of teeth grinding.
“Are there enough posts for all of us?” Ashley June asks. Everyone is jostling for position in front of the closed double doors.
“Don’t you worry, any of you,” Frilly Dress answers. “There are ten posts inside. Only seven of you. The posts are equidistant from the centre, none has an advantage over another. A food item is placed near each post so all of you will get a chance to see the heper up close and personal.”
Despite her words, they’re still pushing. I separate myself inconspicuously to the side.
“What are we waiting for?”
“Just a bit longer. Paperwork needs to be processed upstairs. They’ll let us know when we’re good to go.”
“How?”
&n
bsp; Frilly Dress shakes her head. “You’ll see.”
“Is it really as great as she put it?” Phys Ed asks his escort.
“Better than advertised. So much better.”
“I can smell it!” Beefy says. “Stronger than ever!”
“Nonsense,” chides Frilly Dress. “The heper’s still in its chambers.” But she seems uncertain, her nostrils moistening and flaring.
“It’s the same smell! We’ve been smelling this heper all this time.”
I take two steps back, slowly moving away from them.
“Getting stronger by the second.” More drool and shivers.
I play along. But those doors had better open soon, because this is a small enclave we wait in, and in such tight, unventilated quarters, my odour is amplified.
Gaunt Man’s head flicks violently towards me. He’s not just hissing; he’s slobbering in his saliva. Foolishly, I meet his eyes. He is staring at me with a dawning realisation, his eyes blinking, blinking, blinking with a new—
At that very moment, the double doors swing open, an expulsion of steam and smoke enveloping us.
Shouts of excitement as we sweep into the room. The expanse, with its high arching ceiling (rounded and ballooned like an indoor sports stadium) and wide spread of the dusty ground beneath, catches me by surprise. The heper’s door is on the ground, in the very centre of the arena, shaped and sized like a manhole. Ten wooden posts are spaced evenly around it. We disperse quickly, each of us running like kids choosing horses on a carousel. As Frilly Dress said, there’s more than enough for all of us, but that doesn’t stop general bedlam from ensuing. It’s the morsels. Hunters are fighting over posts positioned before morsels deemed most attractive to the heper. Abs and Ashley June are having a feline fight over a post in front of a bunch of bananas.
The Hunt Page 9