The Prey

by Andrew Fukuda

  For a second, I’m confused. Why is she going down headfirst?

  Then it occurs to me. But of course. Of course she’d have to go down headfirst. Had she gone in feet first, the U-curve at the bottom of the well would prove to be far too narrow to curl around. Only swimming down headfirst would enable her to inwardly curl her body around the bend at the bottom before coming up headfirst on the other side.

  It’s also an all-or-nothing plunge. There’s no possibility of backtracking now, of coming back up for air, of second-guessing yourself.

  A snarl from behind, claws and nails scuffing dirt. Then a silence that can mean only one thing: the dusker is airborne.

  I know better than to waste time glancing back. I throw myself to the right, rolling hard even as the dusker hits the ground next to me. I spin my body, unhooking my right arm that’s caught behind my back, fling out my arm. The one still holding the GlowBurn.

  The stick is barely glowing, a dying ember that’s barely casting light. But it has enough juice to illuminate the dusker: its face startlingly close to mine, its right eye puffy with white discharge pouring out, but its other eye clear and hungry as it glares at me.

  I have one more card. I ram the stick into my mouth and clamp down on it. Then I twist my face away, ripping off the tip. Liquid gushes into my mouth, gooey and sticky and vinegary. I hold it in there.

  The dusker leaps at me—

  —is on me, straddling me, pinning my arms down, its one good eye shining with victory, saliva sputtering out of its mouth like boiling water out of the kettle spout.

  It has me.

  And in that split second—as its head drops swiftly down toward my neck, its fangs bared—I’m spitting out the GlowBurn fluid, shotgunning it out of my mouth. Wads of glowing green fluid splatter onto the dusker’s face.

  It screams, leaps back, hands covering its face. The sound of something crackling the air, a raw sizzle.

  I’m already scrambling for the well’s opening. Can’t find it, not in the darkness. There! A few steps away, where its gray surface ripples ever so slightly. My fingers break through the water’s surface, and I waste no time. I plunge myself in, water—biting cold—rushing past head, jawline, my neck, my shoulders.

  And just like that, I’m in. I’m underwater.

  The icy embrace of water is a shock to my system, cold fists clenching my lungs, shriveling up the air carried within. The sudden change in environment madly dizzying.

  And it’s a tight squeeze. The well barely wider than my shoulders. A panic threatens to overtake my mind even as I try to ignore the terrifying disorientation of being upside down, underwater, inside out with fear. At least I had the presence of mind to go in with my arms stretched out in front of me. If I’d gone in with my head leading, my arms would right now be pinned against my side. I’d be trapped.

  Small comfort, though. And certainly no time to be patting myself on the back. Because I’m still hemmed in. My lower (upper now?) body is still above water, my legs kicking air, futilely trying to find purchase. They feel like separate entities, twirling about like tentacles, a thousand miles above me. I envy them, for their access to air. I want to inhale through them like they’re straws.

  I hear the snarl of desire, muted, but frightening. Even underwater, I feel the rumble of its intensity rippling through the ice water. It is coming for me. For my legs, anyway. For a moment, I feel an irrational sense of relief. That I’m safe behind my legs, for the buffer they will offer me. The dusker can have at them, so long as it doesn’t get to me.

  My brain. My thoughts. Scattered. Not thinking straight.

  I start to thrash from side to side. I need air. In my panic, I’d forgotten to take deep breaths before diving in. I’m short of air. Already. I’m only scratching the surface—almost literally—of the distance I have to cover underwater, and I’m already sucking on emptiness.

  I twist and turn, trying to dislodge my trapped body, now thinking that I should have stripped out of my bulky, cumbersome clothing before plunging in. I jiggle, squirm. Somehow it works: the twisty motion causes me to slide down a few feet. My palms slide over the smooth, enclosing metal, searching for a grip. I find something, the smallest protrusion: nothing more than a nail incompletely screwed in. But it’s enough, just enough leverage for my finger to pull against and sliver my body down another few feet.

  Inch by inch, I pull myself down, until my whole body is underwater. But this is too slow, it’s no good. My eyes open, seeing nothing but blackness, the icy cold like a thousand pins pricking the skin of my body, void of air, this was all a mistake, I have to backtrack somehow, have to resurface, get air, precious air—

  From above, something grabs my foot.

  I scream. The last remnants of air bubble out of me, like a release of a half-inflated balloon.

  My shoe is yanked off, my foot almost ripped off along with it. I kick out, shrieking now into the black wet, urging my body downward.

  Something gives. Somehow. My body slides down a couple of feet. I start pulling, my fingers searching along the walls for traction, my shoulders hunched and narrowed as much as possible—

  A sharp fingernail grazes the exposed sole of my foot.

  My mouth snaps open to scream. Nothing escapes it. There’s no more air, no more sound.

  Don’t swallow water! Don’t! A drop of water into my air pipe will set off a fatal spasm. I kick out with my foot. It finds skin, rounded bone—the dusker’s cheekbone?—as I jerk my leg away, I feel strands of its hair caressing around my ankle, sliding down my foot.

  Panic ripples along the length of my body. I grapple against the slippery sides, desperate for traction. Then, a miracle: the slot suddenly widens. Just an inch or so on each side, certainly not enough to turn around, but it feels wide as a canyon. My body drops another two feet, then two meters, my arms pushing against the sides and pulling down, my legs kicking above me in shortened kicks. I’ve traveled down what feels like a galactic five meters. I feel the sharp ache of water pressure in my ears.

  Out of reach of the dusker. It will not venture down any farther.

  And then I feel its clawed hand like a pincer around my ankle. Its grip is sure and unflinching. I scream, bubbles gushing out. I kick out, but this only seems to incite it further. Its grip tightens. I kick out again, and this time my heel catches on something solid and large, like a head.

  It is underwater. Head submerged. As if itself suddenly realizing, it begins to thrash. I feel the release of its grip on my ankle, but its hand is caught inside the leg of my pants. With its movement confined by both the narrowness of the well and the tight pants leg, it is only able to partially slash through the pants material. It tears my pants into a webbed mesh inside of which its fingers become inextricably caught. Panic seizes the dusker as I pull it farther down the well; its scream, muted in the water, is accompanied by the sharp snaps of its fingers as they get disjointed, bent out of shape. I feel one final violent spasm, then nothing at all. The dusker has stilled. It has drowned.

  My eyes fling open, trying to see the bottom. But it’s all blackness. All I can do now is keep pulling myself farther down into the abyss, yard by yard. Then a chilling thought. What if instead of touching the bottom, I touch Sissy? Her drowned body, blocking the way, her clothes billowing around her, her face turgid and expressionless in death as her hair swirls about in slow motion?

  I squeeze my eyes, as if to shut off the image in my head, as if to banish the thoughts, and now I’m scrabbling downward, the temperature dropping around me, the sound of blood rushing in my ears—

  I’m not going to make it. I have nothing more in me.

  Air. None. A shrieking delirium takes over my mind, razor-sharp claws slashing at my chest. I want nothing more than the end of these spasms, for this final stage of drowning to pass and the repose of death to take over.

  Then my fingers touch something. Not the soft give of skin, but blissfully hard metal. The bottom of the well. I flail at the side
s, trying to locate the opening where the chute curls around to the other side of the wall. I can’t find it. Only when I push my body farther down and my head hits bottom do I see the opening. It’s right in front of my face.

  It’s horrifically small.

  My shoulders will barely squeeze through. Maybe. Or not. I reach in with my arms. There’s nothing left but to drown trying.

  It’s not long, this horizontal stretch. In fact, it’s short enough for my hands to cup around the edge on the other side. Grabbing that edge, I pull hard with my outstretched arms like a sideways pull-up, ramming my head and shoulders through. My head slides through, until it’s pulled even with my hands, and I’m looking up the other vertical shaft. The shaft on this side is much wider. All I need is to pull my body through, then kick up. Seconds away. Air is seconds away.

  But I’m stuck. Something is impeding my progress. It’s the dusker. Though drowned, its hand is still caught in the ripped shreds of my pants. It’s being dragged along by me, dead weight wedged somewhere in the well.

  I pull harder, feel a little give. I’m able now to pull most of my body out of the horizontal chute, and into the wider vertical shaft. But again, I feel my progress impeded. Its hand, dead and still, is still anchored into my pants, and no matter how much I kick at it, I cannot dislodge it. I’m stuck. Even drowned, the dusker has become a ball and chain of death.

  And so this is the end. Alone in a cold watery grave, the world rendered black. The distillation of my life, the loneliness, the discomfiture, the desperation, concaving into this narrow coffin. My body now unwinding, tension easing out of it. A spasm, then nothing; my muscles relax. Even the rush of blood in my ears, slowing, fading. My fingers slowly unclench, and when my arms float up, they are like twin trails of smoke above a funeral pyre.

  It is not so bad, death. It has taken so long to get here, that’s all. All these years.

  An angel appears above me, a gray silhouette. Hair pulled back as it descends on me, eyes wide, floating down like two doves. I am ready for her as she reaches down with her long arms, smooth as clay. She pulls at me, once, twice. I’m stuck; her body inches downward.

  Something dislodges from my leg, and the angel tugs me out, the release distant and inconsequential. I feel the press of her warm body against my back, soft and assuring. A slow drift upward, her arms under my armpits and clasped across my chest, the black walls sliding past us as we float up, out the well, past the ceiling of the Vastnarium, past the clouds, past the stars, to the heavens above, except there are no stars up here, no singing angels, no streets of gold, no milk, no honey, no fruit, no sunshine, but only blackness and darkness and then everything is no more.

  37

  I AM BROUGHT back to consciousness by rough, insistent heaves that painfully, rhythmically pound against my rib cage. A lull of nothingness follows; I’m slipping back into the gray.

  Then velvet lips on mine, dewy and sweet. Soft on soft, the lips alive and encompassing. Then becoming fiercer, the grip ironclad.

  Air gushes into my mouth, gliding down my windpipe. The rush of oxygen singes, an acidic whiteness splashing across my brain. Then I am choking, rank water gushing out my mouth, foul and tepid as if it has rotted in me for years. I gasp in air, the rich purity of oxygen bringing a blazing clarity.

  “Turn to your side,” Sissy says, helping me. “Cough it all out.”

  Water spurts out of me, more than I’d thought possible. With such force, it feels like chunks of my liver, my stomach, kidney are being vomited out. I remain on my side, too tired to move, for a minute. Sissy sits me up. Her fingers are pulling up my shirt, her hands exploring my body, across my chest, dipping into the grooves of my abdominals.

  “Sissy?” I sputter her name, water flicking off my lips.

  “Are you scratched? Cut? Are you bitten? Did it get you anywhere?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did it get you, Gene?! Tell me!” Her eyes are cauldrons of alarm.

  And suddenly I’m afraid, all over again, this new fear smacking alertness into my mind. Sissy’s right: if either of us has been so much as scratched by the dusker, we’ll start turning. The symptoms of this gruesome disintegration always show immediately, although the actual process can take hours to complete. She studies me with alarm, her hair pressed against her vase-pale face, water droplets spilling down her face like sweat.

  And we’re standing up, together, her hands grabbing at my shirt and pulling it off, my fingers undoing the buttons of her blouse pressed against her skin like barnacles. Under the glow of dying green light, our eyes roam over each other’s skin. My fingers glide across the soft span of her body, searching for punctures, scratches, cuts.

  Her hands drift down my right leg, to my ankle. She flinches.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Gene,” she says, her voice husked with fear, “your pants are all torn up down here.”

  In the longest two seconds of my life, she peels up the ripped material. Her mouth drops in horror. At the long gashes scratched across my skin, mostly whitish lines where fingernails grazed. But there is one long bloody gash. Where its claws broke skin and cleaved an opening for its contagious saliva to enter me.

  Our eyes meet. Then I’m kicking away from her.

  “Get away from me!” I shout. “Sissy, run!”

  But she doesn’t move, only stares intensely like she’s trying to inject a cure into me by her very gaze.

  “Sissy! You have to leave. Before I turn!”

  “Gene! Are you?”

  “What?”

  “Are you turning? I don’t think you are.”

  And it’s like I’m struck dumb by her question. I grab my chest as if an answer lies there. But she’s right. I’m not experiencing any of the symptoms of turning that my father drilled into my head all those years ago. No shaking. No sense of my internal organs ripping apart. My skin isn’t burning feverish hot.

  “You told us the symptoms always appear within a minute at most. But it’s been well past a minute, and you seem fine.” Her eyes sweep across my body. She stands up, walks over to the front row where I’d seen the spectating elders. The row is empty now, only a few GlowBurns left behind as they’d beat a hasty exit. She picks up a GlowBurn, snaps it.

  Green light blazes out.

  I don’t flinch or squint. I don’t even blink. The light doesn’t hurt me in the slightest. The opposite, in fact: it is the most radiant, beautiful color I’ve ever not flinched at. The color blurs, and I realize I’m tearing.

  I hear the crack of plastic, then liquid is splashed on my face.

  “Hey,” I say, “cut that out.” Bright glowing green spots splatter about my face and clothes.

  “Sorry,” Sissy says, suppressing a glad smile, “I just had to make sure.” She reaches up, wipes a few glowing beads from my face. Her finger wipes lightly over my cheekbones, resting there for one long second.

  “Gene,” she whispers, “you really are the Origin. You were cut, you should’ve turned. But look at you now.” Her eyes glisten with marvel.

  All I can do is gaze back, momentarily speechless. The dusker was slavered in its own saliva, its hands and nails covered in drool when it first plunged into the well after me. But perhaps by the time it cut me, water had washed away the saliva. “I don’t know, Sissy.”

  “It’s really true,” she whispers as if she hasn’t heard a word. “You’re the one. The Origin.”

  I shake my head doubtfully. “Its saliva might have washed away by the time it cut my foot. I mean, that’s a lot of water in that well. If it cut me with fingernails washed clean of any droplets of saliva, then I wouldn’t have been infected. And that could be the reason why I’m not turning. That could be all.”

  But she’s still looking at me with wonderment.

  “I need to check you,” I say, quickly. “Turn around.” She does, slowly, bringing the wet sheen of her back into the pale green light. My fingers lightly trail over her protruding should
er blades, drift down the valley of her spine. Her back, curved and smooth like the inside of a shell. My fingers come to rest in the small of her back. I hold still, sensing a shift in her. Her rib cage starts to expand and contract, faster, deeper. She turns her head, regards me from the corners of her eyes over her shoulder.

  “You’re okay,” I say, softly. “No scratches.” I pick up her shirt, and she puts it on. “You breathed air into me. How did you know what to do?”

  “The Scientist described it to us,” she says. “He was always afraid we’d drown in the pond back at the Dome.” She falls silent; she’s looking at the doors. They’re rimmed with the morning light outside. “It’s not safe out there,” she says. “Nowhere is safe anymore.”

  “They were in here,” I say. “A group of elders. Spectating our deaths.”

  She nods. “I saw them, too. Why would they do this to us? Why would they want to kill us? I thought the Civilization’s Order would have shielded us from being … killed.”

  I pick up my shirt, start wringing it. “We stepped over a line at the station platform. In front of the whole village. We physically attacked the elders, even if it was in self-defense. They couldn’t let that go. Not with all the girls watching. They had to make an example of us, Order be damned.”

  “We’ve got to get the boys,” she says, buttoning her shirt quickly. “Then we run into the woods, as far from here as possible. Forget about waiting for the bridge to lower for now. Let’s go.”

  I put a hand on her arm. “I need to tell you something. It’s huge.” I recap everything Clair told me. I speak quickly, all the time feeling the urgent need to get back to the cottage, to the boys.

  “East of here?” Sissy says, gobsmacked. “The Scientist’s still alive?”

  “It’s a lot to digest, I know. But what we need to do now is flee. We can digest and understand later. But now we run, we descend the mountain to where the river flows out and follow it east.”