The Hunt

I'm not even racing down fl ights of stairs anymore; I'm leaping down them, one fl ight 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 real y strong now, I think I'm on to it!”



“How did he get so far ahead of us?” someone shouts, a fl oor above.



I slam through a set of doors, run halfway across the hal way, 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 virtual y 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 hal way. I take a quick look backward: the horde is coming on me like a rabid wave, Gaunt Man leaping from fl oor to wal to ceiling, Phys Ed darting along the crease where wal 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 hal . I've made ful circle. The hal 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 mil isecond later, the group fl ows in like a black wave.



They're so synchronized: on the wal s, the fl oor, the ceiling, there's no jostling for position, no elbowing. Just a coordinated rapid sweep into the lecture hal , eyes spinning, nostrils fl aring.



“It jumped! It jumped outside!” I yel , perched in front of the open window, pointing out. Even before I fi nish yel ing, 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 thankful y picks up, gusts through the window.



“I can smel it everywhere! It's like it's right here, hiding, where?”



“It's gone—”



“We can chase it down, can't have gotten 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, marveling 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 days at my establishment and suddenly you think you're smarter than the specialists who've devoted their lives to this fi ne Institute. Did you really think that the Institute I run would be so careless as to all ow a heper to be on the loose, to roam un-checked 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 smel 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 smel in his nose.



Saliva from Phys Ed, hanging from the ceiling, drips down onto a chair. They can still smel 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'l still see a heper. The conviction proves to be . . .



sticky. Not so easy to unring a bel 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, smel ed, or even heard a heper before, not a live one, anyway. So at the fi rst 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. Eventual y, 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. Fril y Dress emerges moments later, her face beaming.



“It's a program I came up with. The new hires were getting too distracted, so we had to come up with a way to, wel , desensitize them. The option of sniffi ng acidic powder to numb the smel nerves in the nostrils was considered, but not seriously. My plan was more humane.” She nods toward the back of the lecture hal .



A beam of mercuric light cuts through the lecture hal . 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 chil , become lined with a fi lm of frost.



The place looks strangely familiar. I search my memory banks, trying to— And then I recal . The lottery pick. The old, emaciated heper picking out the numbers. It was fi lmed right from this arena.



Fril y Dress, sensing the rapt attention, pauses dramatical y. She tugs on her earlobe. “This converted work space is now affection-ately called the Introduction. The name says it all . It is where you will be introduced to your fi rst live heper. In the fl esh, 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 fi nger, will so much as touch heper fl esh. 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 wil come out, after you've all been secured to your posts, and for about fi ve minutes, you will get to see and hear and smel the heper. The only senses you will not be using— for now— are touch and taste, obviously. But that heper will be suffi ciently up close and personal. And you will be able to smel 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 odors is much improved. We think the program 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 smel is so strong!”



“There's one heper. And you haven't been smel ing 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 sil y 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 fi ne. Nobody can touch it. It's free to gather up the food to its heart's content.”



“Is it the one who—”



“Now, real y,” Fril y 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 fi eld trip to the amusement park. It takes us fi ve minutes to get to the arena, or rather, to descend there. Turns out, the fi ve fl oors aboveground are just the tip of a very cold, black iceberg.



Whole fl otil as of fl oors 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 fl oors anymore. We descend into the depths of the earth, the pul of claustrophobia closing in on me.