The Hunt (28 page)

eyes puncturing me deep inside. I hear a few gasps coming from the tables.

“Wow,” I mouth to her.

The next piece begins. Ashley June and I separate. Now begins the The next piece begins. Ashley June and I separate. Now begins the obligatory dances with the wives of the offi cials, al streaming their way over to me, their high- offi cial husbands too disinterested in dancing or their wives (or both) to bother rising from their tables.

It’s taxing, the endless dancing and perfunctory smal talking, and after a number of dances, a fi lm of sweat starts forming on my forehead. I need to take a break, but there are simply too many women waiting in line.

“Do you smel something?” asks the woman in front of me. I’ve been dancing with her for the past minute, but it’s only when she asks that question that I realy see her for the fi rst time.

“No, not realy.”

“Smel of heper is so strong. Don’t know how you can al concentrate with that odor around. So distracting. I know they say you get used to it after a while, but it’s so potent it’s like it’s right in front of me.”

“Sometimes when there’s a westerly wind blowing, the odor blows inside from the Dome,” I say.

“Didn’t seem to be much of a breeze to night,” she says, glancing out the opened windows.

The next woman is even more direct. “I say,” she declares,

“there’s a heper in this hal somewhere. Smel’s quite pungent.”

“there’s a heper in this hal somewhere. Smel’s quite pungent.”

I tel her about the westerly wind.

“No, no,” she says, “it’s so strong it’s like you’re the heper!”

I scratch my wrist; she folows suit. Fortunately.

After the song ends, she curtsies and I bow; the next woman in line is already heading over. There’s a swift movement, and someone else cuts in. It’s Ashley June. Looking in her eyes, I can tel she 206 ANDREW FUKUDA

knows exactly what’s going on and she’s worried. The other woman is upset and about to complain until she realizes who it is.

She backs away. Ashley and I begin to dance. Some cameras start click-ing again.

This time, the dance lacks enjoyment. We’re too conscious of the people around, too fearful of a sheen of sweat that might appear on my face any moment, of the odor I’m emitting. I’ve danced too hard. When the number ends, I say (loudly, so others can hear) to Ashley June that I need to use the restroom. I’m not sure what good that’l do me, but I can’t exert any more energy dancing. Got to get away, give my body a chance to cool down. She tels me she’l wait for me.

I’m cooling down and doing my business at the urinal when somebody walks in. He stands at the urinal next to mine even somebody walks in. He stands at the urinal next to mine even though the whole row is otherwise unused. The whole restroom is empty, in fact.

“How long you going to last?” he asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Simple enough question. How long are you going to last?”

He’s a tal and imposing man, broad- shouldered. A prissy pair of glasses sits on his nose, completely at odds with the burly brawn of his body. The tuxedo is il- fi tting, a few sizes too smal and bunched under his arms.

I decide to ignore him, instead focusing on hitting the target sticker in the urinal. That’s what you have to hit, supposedly the lowest splash zone that gives optimum drainage. In most places, the sticker is of a fl y or bee or soccer bal. Here, it’s a picture of the Dome.

“Long or short?” the man says.

“What?”

“Long time or short time?”

THE HUNT 207

“Look, I stil don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The man sniffs. “I predict short. Maybe thirty minutes. Soon as you hunters are out of sight, that’s when the other hunters take you out.

You and the girl both.”

A reporter. Probably a paparazzi hack who’s snuck in using fake credentials, jonesing for an inside scoop. This is how they work: throw out an outrageous story to get a reaction, then report on the reaction. The best thing to do is ignore him.

I zip up and walk over to the paper towel dispenser by the door.

He zips up and puls up next to me, hand under the dispenser, blocking my way out. The dispenser spits a short towel into his hand.

“Use the FLUNs, that’s al I’m teling you,” he says, crumpling the towel in hand. “Use them early, use them without hesitation.

The hunters, especialy the colegiate kids, wil want to take you out early in the game. Be very careful.” Not once does he look at me as he speaks, just at the dispenser as if it’s a teleprompter.

“Who are you?” I ask.
And how does he know about the
FLUNs?

“Word to the wise?” he says. “Things are not as they appear.

“Word to the wise?” he says. “Things are not as they appear.

Take to night, for example. Look at the glamour of this banquet.

What did they tel you? That it was a last minute decision to host it?

Look at the food, the wine, the décor, the number of guests, and you tel me if this looks like something slapped together quickly.

And think about the so- caled lottery— as manipulatable a scheme as they come. Think you’re here by chance? Things are not as they appear.” He puts his hand on the doorknob, about to leave. Then he turns back to me.

“And the girl. The pretty one you were just dancing with. Be careful about her.” His eyes fl ick to me for the fi rst time. I expect to fi nd sternness in them, and it’s there. But the hint of kindness, I did not. “You need to watch out. She’s not who you think she is.

Don’t 208 ANDREW FUKUDA

let her lead you astray.” And with that, he brushes open the door and disappears.

Freakin’ weirdo,
I think to myself. I grab a paper towel and am about to scrub my armpits when a party of four or fi ve come boisterously in. They’re loud, unsteady, and clearly inebriated. I step out. I scan quickly for the paparazzi guy, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Come with me.” It’s Ashley June materializing out of nowhere, whispering at my side. “We’ve done our due diligence. Everyone’s whispering at my side. “We’ve done our due diligence. Everyone’s so hammered, they won’t notice we’ve gone. Come,” she says, and I do.

She leads me out of the hal, her slim fi gure weaving right through the dance fl oor, between dark moving shapes. Outside the banquet hal, the corridors are empty and the music grows dimmer the farther we walk away. I think we’re heading to her room, but on the stairwel we walk past the third fl oor and continue heading up until there are no more fl ights of stairs to climb. At the very top, she pushes open a door on the landing, and a burst of starlight fals on us.

“I’ve been up here a few times. Nobody ever comes,” she says softly. The Vast lies spread before us like a frozen sea, its plates calm and smooth. And above us a slew of stars, shimmering slightly, suggestive of an even deeper emptiness.

She leads me to the center of the roof, the smal pebbles beneath our feet shifting as we step. She stops and faces me.

I am right behind her. Our shoulders touch as she turns, and she does not pul away. She is so close, I can feel her breath on my lips. When she looks up at me, I see the refl ection of the stars in her eyes, wet as with the eve ning dew.

“Did your parents ever give you a designation?” she asks.

I nod. “They did. But then they just stopped using it one day.”

“Do you remember what it was?”

“Gene.”

THE HUNT 209

She is silent for a few moments; I see her lips gently mouthing the word, as if trying it on for size.

“What about you?” I ask.

“I don’t remember,” she says quietly. “But we shouldn’t be caling each other by our family designations anyway. We might get careless and inadvertently cal each other by our designations in front of others. It might draw unnecessary—”

“Attention,” I fi nish for her.

For a moment, we suppress the smile spreading on both our faces, as if my lips and hers are two sides of the same mouth. We stop ourselves, as we always have, and start scratching our wrists.

“My father used to tel me that al the time. Don’t draw unnecessary attention to yourself. Al the time. Guess yours did, too.”

She nods, a sadness crossing her face. Together, we look out at She nods, a sadness crossing her face. Together, we look out at the Vast, at the Dome sitting smal in the distance. From below us, we hear a group of partyers heading out, probably to the Dome, their drunken voices slurred and garbled. Their voices grow dimmer, then fade out altogether.

“Hey, let me show you something,” Ashley June says. “Can you do this funky thing? We need to sit down fi rst.” She then plants her right foot down on the bals of her foot and starts bouncing her leg up and down in a quick, vibrating motion. “When I’d get impatient or restless, I used to want to do this with my leg. My parents warned me against it, but I’d stil do it when alone. Once your leg gets going, it goes on autopi lot. Look, I’m not even consciously thinking about it, it moves on its own.”

I try. It doesn’t work.

“You’re overthinking this,” she says. “Just relax, don’t think about it. Make quicker, shorter jerks.”

On the fourth try, it happens. The leg just starts hopping on its own, a jackhammer bouncing away. “Whoa- ho!” I shout in surprise.

210 ANDREW FUKUDA

She smiles the widest I’ve seen; a smal sound escapes her throat.

“That’s caled ‘laughter,’ ” I tel her.

“I know. Although sometimes my parents caled it ‘cracking up.’

Ever heard that one?”

I shake my head. “It was just ‘laughter’ for us. And we didn’t do it much. My dad— he was always worried I’d forget myself and slip up in public.”

“Yeah, mine too.”

“Every morning, he’d remind me. Don’t do this, don’t do that.

No laughing, no smiling, no sneezing, no frowning.”

“But it got us here. Alive stil, I mean.”

“I suppose.” I turn to her. “My dad had this one realy odd saying.

Maybe your parents used to say it to you as wel? ‘Never forget who you are.’ ”

“ ‘Never forget who you are’? Never heard that one.”

“My dad would say it maybe once a year. I always thought it strange.” I stare down at my feet.

“When did yours . . . you know?”

“My parents?”

“My parents?”

She nods gently.

I stare at the eastern mountains. “My mother and my sister, years ago. I don’t remember much about them. They just vanished one day. Then my father, about seven years ago. He got bitten.”

We fal into a silence after that, comforting and shared. Music from the banquet hal comes at us muted and indifferent, a thousand miles away. Eventualy, our eyes drift over to the Dome, tran-quil and sparkling.

“Ignorance is bliss,” she whispers. “To night, asleep, blissfuly unaware of what awaits them tomorrow. The end of their lives.

Poor things.”

“There’s something you should know,” I say after a while.

THE HUNT 211

“About what?”

“The hepers.”

“What is it?”

I pause. “When I got water from the pond, I wasn’t like in and out.

I actualy interacted with them. Spent time there. And you know, I actualy interacted with them. Spent time there. And you know, they speak. They even read. They’re not the savages I thought they were, not even close.”

“They speak? And read?” She looks incredulously at the Dome.

Nothing moves inside.

“They love to. They have books in the mud huts. Shelves of them.

And they’re creative: they draw, paint.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t understand. I thought they were raised like barn animals. Why were they domesticated and trained?”

“No, I know this is hard to grasp, but it’s not even about them being domesticated or trained like circus animals. They’re beyond that. They’re, like, normal. They think, they’re rational, they joke around. Like you and me.”

A frown creases her face. She is quiet, muling something over.

“So you haven’t told them about the Hunt,” she says matter- of-factly.

“They have no idea,” I answer. “Sometimes ignorance
is
bliss.”

“What did you tel them about yourself?”

“The Scientist’s replacement.” I hesitate. “It would have been too .

. . awkward to say I was a heper hunter. Maybe I should have said something to them. Maybe I should have let them know about the Hunt.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she says. “What good would it have done? They’d stil be as good as dead.”

A zilion milion thoughts plummet through my mind over the next few seconds. Then: “Think we should do something?”

She turns to me. “Pretty funny.”

212 ANDREW FUKUDA

“No. I mean, seriously. Instead of our plan, should we do something to help them?”

Her eyes widen a smidge, then droop back down. “What do you mean?” she asks.

“Shouldn’t we . . .”

“What?”

“Do something to help them?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not. They’re us. We’re them.”

Deep surprise sets in her eyes. “No, they’re not. They’re way different from us. I don’t care if they can speak, they’re stil glorifi ed cattle.” She grips my hand tighter. “Gene, I don’t mean to come off as coldhearted. But there’s nothing we can do for them.

They’re going to die during the Hunt whether or not we use it to our advantage.”

“We could, I don’t know, we could tel them not to leave the Dome. That the letter informing them about the Dome malfunctioning is al a hoax.” I run my hand through my hair, gripping it hard. “This is realy hard, Ashley June.”

When she speaks again, her voice is softer. “If they die to night according to our plan, then at least their deaths give us a chance of a real life. But if we just sit on our hands, their deaths are not only meaningless, but wil ensure our deaths. We can make their deaths meaningful, giving us a chance of a real life, Gene.” Her eyes are wide and pleading. “
Our
new life, Gene. Together. Is that so bad, to make something good come out of this?”