The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  She watched him for a reaction, but was only shrugged off with the statement, “Then I’ll do it.”

  “No! None of us will do it! We need to find something they’ll eat that we can buy at the store, Dad.” She could feel her blood pressure rising with her anger and a fear that seemed misplaced. Her father wasn’t going to hurt her, but the cold feeling of lurking danger at his comments cut deep. Cage was off somewhere on the other side of the house, and she wished to hell she had some backup right now. She knew her brother wouldn't agree with sacrificing a live animal, either.

  It was becoming exhausting, repeatedly pulling their father back off the ledge. He seemed convinced he needed to jump. It was a constant battle to find anything to distract him from this idea that he could simply go out at night and battle these creatures by hand. He seemed to believe he would be the victor. Somehow, their night out in chain mail—however petrifying—had only convinced him he was right. It had convinced the twins it wasn’t worth carrying the extra weight.

  “Come in here,” Cage called from the living area, and Joule and her father headed down the steps to see what he had. She hoped it was distracting enough.

  Ironically, it literally was.

  “Look.” Cage sat in front of a wildly waving machine, as though the thing wasn’t going bonkers in front of him. “I'm curious if, instead of using a solid cut of meat, which is really heavy, and making it move, we can use this instead.” He pointed to the thing Joule still hadn’t figured out.

  “So I'm thinking if we tack little bits of meat all over—” he moved his hands around his contraption, “—it will be lightweight enough to keep moving, because at this cut-down size, the air should be pretty forceful. But the extra weight of the meat will slow it down a bit. It won’t be so erratic as it is right now, and maybe it will look more like something alive.”

  Joule looked again and finally figured out what it was. Cage had modified their father’s Halloween inflatable. After cutting down the fabric in the normally wildly waving ghost, he’d taped it back together until it was only a small piece that now jumped in the generated wind.

  Cage turned it side to side, demonstrating his new bait. As he did, Joule felt some of the air escaping out the top hit her in the face. She held up a hand to block it.

  “See?” he said with a smile, blasting her again. “I think it's strong enough that we could put little pieces of meat on it, and hopefully it moves enough that it will attract the hunters.”

  “It's worth a try.” Anything was worth a try. Anything that didn’t involve combat. “I think we might only get one use out of it, though.”

  Cage nodded. Nate stood by, still not speaking. And that bothered Joule as much as anything, but she tried to work around it.

  “I hope,” Cage continued as though he needed to fill the space—and Joule appreciated the effort, even if their dad didn’t—“that they'll tear at the fabric and not get to the mechanism on the bottom.” He held up the huge swath of fabric leftover from the original ghost, which had been about ten feet tall.

  Well, she thought, they wouldn’t be putting that out for Halloween again. But with the hunters on the prowl, Halloween yard ornaments were a thing of the past. She sucked in a breath as she remembered. “Two years ago, someone vandalized all the Halloween decorations down the street…”

  She watched as her brother caught on, but her father was too busy frowning at the setup, as though it still required his analysis.

  “Maybe it was the night hunters?” Cage asked. “Out even earlier than we thought?”

  “Maybe.” But there was nothing more she could do with that idea except tuck it away for later. She turned her attention back to the contraption her brother still hadn’t turned off. “I say we do it. It’s as good a plan as any.”

  And it was excellent bait to keep her father away from rushing into the fray.

  “Alright,” Cage said, thinking out loud. “Maybe… chicken skin, meat strips, things like that. Definitely raw.”

  “Go for it.” Joule watched her brother head into the kitchen and set out the chicken. It would be warm by the time they put it in the yard, more like live meat—as much as it could be. At least she was not setting out a live animal. She was not going full “Jurassic Park goat” tonight.

  And hopefully, never.

  While Cage got to work, cutting thin strips of meat and hooking them to the fabric with toothpicks, Joule watched. She almost protested the toothpicks, but then thought, who cares if they all get toothpicks stuck in their throats?

  Joule broached another idea she had. Nate was standing by still listening, and she wanted his attention for this. So she carefully turned and caught her father’s gaze for once, then motioned to Cage and opened her new topic. “Do you remember the vet who used to come to our animal biology class?”

  “Dr. Brett,” Cage said, showing he did remember the man. The vet would come into class once every few months, bringing an animal to show off or use for a demonstration. The students would learn training, diagnostics, musculature, and more. They often discussed what kind of veterinary care was required if it was a pet or a farm animal.

  “Well, what if we contacted him?” Joule asked. “He gave us his card.”

  Cage shook his head pretty quickly. “He left town.”

  The vet had stopped coming to class about six months ago and Mrs. Beaman hadn’t been able to find anyone to replace him. “I know. I think all the vets moved away. They were pretty much driven out of business when no one had any cats or dogs left.”

  “Is anyone even left locally?” Cage asked her, still pinning meat chunks to his fabric moving-bait setup. Their dad stayed strangely silent.

  Joule shook her head. “Probably not. Shockingly, there are only two left. One doesn’t even have an office you can go into. They're fully mobile, because they go to farm to farm. The big animals are the only ones left. And the other vet has a very small practice now, and they only treat exotics—birds, sugar gliders, things like that. Pets that never leave the house are the only ones still around.”

  “So there's no one to really call,” Cage said.

  “True. There’s no one local who can come and help evaluate things. But Dr. Brett gave us his card. I’m hoping the phone number on the card will have a message or tell us how to contact him. I say we call him and find out.” She waited a beat before pushing her agenda a little more. “He probably won’t know specifics about them, because they’re not dogs. But he does know animal physiology, and we can tell him what we figured out. Maybe he can help.”

  Her brother nodded, a smile forming on his face. His eyes showed that he was clearly thinking through her idea. Joule felt hopeful about Cage’s setup for the meat, so they didn’t have to put out a live animal. And she was starting to feel hopeful about the idea to call the vet. When he’d been in class, Dr. Brett had been genuine and welcoming to the kids, telling them to use his first name and call him Dr. Brett. Joule hoped he’d be the same now.

  But then she turned to look at her father, and found he was walking out of the room having not said a word.

  39

  Joule headed downstairs, her hand in her hair, her feet thumping down the steps. She didn't quite have the fully-awake coordination to make her descent gracefully.

  Cage sat at the table, cutting fabric for his wind contraption. Beside him sat the old chewed up one—what was left of it anyway—along with scissors, packing tape, safety pins and other fabric. It looked as though he was trying to build the whole thing out of a different color. Maybe the bright white of the original ghost hadn’t been their best bet.

  “How long have you been up?” she asked.

  “About fifteen minutes,” he replied. “Just had the urge to get working.”

  The night before, the machine had done its job. The smell of the meat and the movement of the wind in the fabric had brought the hunters right to it. It might not have looked like a live animal, but it was good enough.

  As the three of
them had sat watching in the hallway, the night hunters had attacked the little moving bait. However, as the Mazurs quickly discovered, it only worked once. The hunters had torn into it, shredding the makeshift critter. They ate meat pieces and fabric scraps alike, before seeming to declare it had nothing left to offer and trotting off toward the east.

  Despite the fact that they had torn the fabric and meat off of it and left the machinery beautifully intact, there was no way to go out and reset it at night. So they’d left the cameras on, gone to bed, and waited until daylight.

  “Is Dad still asleep?” Joule asked as she slid into the chair beside her brother, watching as he worked.

  “I think so.” Cage didn’t look up at her, but stayed focused on lining up his fabric. He had some design in mind, making it narrower at the top this time. “I haven't seen him.”

  She sighed as the thought settled in. It was good that her father was finally getting some sleep. It took a moment to let the swirl of feelings in her chest settle down before she said it out loud.

  “I think he hasn't been sleeping well.”

  Though he didn’t say anything in response, her brother seemed to agree. Maybe there just wasn’t anything to be done for it other than to say it and know that they all understood.

  Turning, she looked up the stairs toward the bedrooms, hoping that her father's door remained closed. Leaning in close to her brother, she asked more softly this time, “Do you think he’ll ever be okay again?”

  Joule watched as her brother's shoulders deflated with the thought she'd given him. This time, he set down the work and his eyes darted toward the ceiling. “I think so.” He paused. “I hope so. I just don't think he was ever prepared to go on without Mom.”

  “I don't think any of us was prepared for that,” Joule said. For a moment, she resented that she and her brother—the kids—were having to pick up the slack in the family. In that same moment, she felt horrid because they were the kids.

  Her father had lost the person that he’d chosen to spend the rest of his life with, and he'd been thrust into a big, bold, scary rest of his life without the best person he could have possibly had by his side. He’d made a choice, and then had it ripped away from him in one of the worst ways possible.

  Joule had grown up expecting to outlive her parents. Not at this age, certainly, but she’d always known one day, she would lose her mother. “Do you think he’ll ever get married again?”

  She watched as her brother’s head snapped back at her question.

  “Jesus, Joule. It's been less than a month!”

  Her brother was being obtuse, and she hoped her sigh conveyed that adequately. “I'm not talking about tomorrow. I'm actually talking about how good he and Mom were together.”

  With a small nod of acknowledgment, Cage turned back to his task and spoke downward toward the table, as though the words didn’t merit looking at her directly. “I'm guessing he'll never find anyone who fits him the way she did. And the same would have been true if it was the reverse.”

  At least her brother did seem to understand that her line of thinking wasn't that of trying to marry their dad off. Certainly she didn't think “a wife” would solve whatever problems he was having. Right now, adding anything more to the mix might collapse the delicate balance their family was barely maintaining.

  “How long do you think until he gets his head out of his ass?” Joule asked boldly this time, taking the conversation somewhere she hadn't dared before.

  “Give him time,” Cage replied as he taped together two pieces of fabric and held it up to inspect his work. “I mean, he lost his wife.”

  That time, it was Joule who snapped. “I lost my mother! I never had a life without her, and neither did you. He did have a life without her. They made an agreement with each other when we were little if they ever had to choose, they would choose us over each other. And that’s exactly what she did! He did have a life before mom. I’m not saying his loss isn’t huge, but so is mine! So is yours!”

  “Fair.” The word was barely whispered into the air, and it seemed to signal the end, or at least as much conversation as they could handle on this topic at once. Maybe ever.

  “Are we going to school tomorrow?” The topic change felt necessary and was welcome. She felt her blood pressure drop.

  “I don't know.” Her brother still didn’t look up. “Do we need to?”

  “I’m supposed to have a Chem exam,” she said, the words tumbling out as though they were of little consequence. But it was true. “You know, we all take our exams when we show up. So, maybe we don’t need to go. I can make it up. But I called Dr. Brett’s number and it lists the new office number—which, of course, isn’t open on Sundays. I didn’t want to leave a message, so I thought I’d call tomorrow when they’re in.”

  When she paused and nothing changed in Cage’s movement or acknowledgment of her words, she pushed on. “I'd rather call from home, in case he’s busy and has to call us back. And I'd rather not wait until the end of the school day.”

  Another pause in the conversation and she waited while Cage seemed to think about it. It always goes like this these days, she thought, even if one of them was ill. They stayed home or went to school together. Maybe it was just an offshoot of their father saying we don't split up. So if she wanted to stay home, Cage would stay with her.

  As Joule had that thought, a second one crashed in close on its heels. “What does Dad do when we're at school?”

  “He builds things. He designed some of the traps.”

  “He did,” Joule said, “but that was just a day or two here or there. What does he do during the rest of the time?”

  Her brother's hand stopped moving but there was no answer coming. Instead, Cage changed the subject. “Actually, I think our next question is, What do we do next?”

  “Well, depending on what the vet says, I don't know.” She shifted in her seat, her stomach rumbling for something. There wouldn’t be eggs and bacon today. “But my thought was that we put a little tracking device in that meat.” She pointed to the fabric her brother was designing as a delivery system. “Maybe we can do more with that than just study how they attack and when. Maybe they don't chew well. Maybe they’ll swallow a small tracker.

  “Then, maybe, we can figure out where they go.”

  40

  Cage watched silently as Joule spoke into the phone. She’d put the call on speakerphone and now reintroduced herself to the veterinarian. She’d mentioned he was on speaker phone and that Cage and her dad were there with her, following their mother’s instructions on phone etiquette to the letter.

  Dr. Brett was very kind, acting as though he remembered the two of them from class and that he was glad they’d decided to call with questions. He acted as though this kind of out-of-the-blue call was exactly why he’d handed out the cards.

  He didn't offer any explanation for why he had left town. Maybe there was just an implicit agreement that it didn't need to be said. He was, however, very open to questions. “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  “We saw a video of an older man, out at night in a wheelchair. He was trailed by several… of these dogs…” Cage heard the pause as his sister wasn’t quite ready to use their new term yet. She went on to explain how the night hunters had licked him and left.

  “Honestly, it sounds like he has a disease of some kind. I wouldn't be able to tell without looking at him. And I'm no human MD. But dogs can certainly detect—and will often turn their noses up—at cancers, diabetes, things like that.”

  There was a pause, but he seemed to be thinking, and the Mazurs waited Dr. Brett out. “I haven't known those things to actually make a dog turn away in the past, but it could. I know for a fact many medicines can be detected as a smell on the skin. Even things as simple as garlic. That’s an example of something we humans can smell well after it’s consumed and digested, and we don't have noses anywhere near as sensitive as a dog’s.”

  Caged look to his sister and Joule n
odded, indicating he go ahead. “Hi, Dr. Brett, this is Faraday,” he introduced himself. “We have something really odd to discuss with you, and we'd like to know that you can keep it between us…”

  Though Joule nodded along, supporting what Cage was saying, Nate simply stood there with his arms crossed, listening and making no commentary on the conversation.

  This morning, Nate had gotten up at the usual time, though the kids had told him they weren't going to go to school. He’d puttered around the house, but given Joule’s question the day before, Cage watched more carefully now. As he did, he came to the realization that his father hadn’t really done anything. He hadn't even spent time making food or eating anything. In fact, Nate had been up for several hours and had nothing to show for the time.

  Cage took a deep breath and pulled his thoughts from his father to the vet on the phone. He had no idea how his information would be received, but he felt the only thing to do was dive in. “My sister and my father and I got one of the dogs.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “One of the dogs?”

  “The ones who come out at night,” Cage clarified carefully, knowing there was no common language for the new creature.

  “You caught one?” the vet asked, his tone bordering on incredulous.

  “Well, not so much.” Cage felt himself wanting to skirt around the words, but there was no good way to do it. “It was dead.” He felt the lump in his throat as the thoughts tumbled through his brain. It was dead because his mother had killed it. His mother was dead because it had killed her.

  “What about this dead dog?” the vet asked cautiously. “Go on.”

  “Have you seen one?” Cage asked, suddenly realizing it was better to lead by getting information first rather than just throwing it out there without being able to even see the man’s reaction.

  “No,” the vet replied, but quickly amended his answer. “Not actually, aside from a few instances from a distance. I saw some on the street one night, but I didn’t look for long. I saw that they move in packs. But…”