The Prey (31 page)

Nightfall has begun.

I’m a city boy, unused to navigating the wilderness. I press on, panic cupping the back of my eyes. Ten minutes later, I’m forced to accept what I’ve been denying for over an hour. I’m lost, my inner compass gone kaput. I no longer know if I’m walking toward or away from the Mission. I’ve lost precious time.

With alarm, I note that a few stars are already peeking out in the twilight sky. Night is pouring into the world. Under my feet, right now, in the cavity of the mountain, hundreds of duskers are waiting for the day to recede to full darkness. The thought completely unnerves me. Shortly, the duskers will start scaling the walls of the cave, clinging to vines and other plants, and filter out of the openings through which sun columns beam down in the daytime. They will stream out in countless streams, cloaking the mountain like rising black oil as they race toward the Mission.

I hope Sissy and the boys made good time and are safely back in the Mission. I hope they will be able to convince the girls to get on the train, that they’ll be able to leave before the duskers arrive. As I walk, a growing sense of guilt begins to weigh on me. That I have deserted them. In the same way I abandoned Ashley June, I have betrayed them. I walk harder and faster, needing tiredness to rid me of thought.

A half hour later, I lean back on a tree trunk, breathing hard, eyes wide in the dark woods. I should be on the other side of the mountain by now, miles away, safely out of their path and downwind. Not lost and afraid in the darkness and silence of the woods. Days ago, with Clair leading us, the forest was teeming with wildlife. But now, there is only an eerie silence. As if all the forest dwellers have sensed the arrival of the duskers and have already fled.

When my ragged breathing quiets, I hear the faint sounds of a stream. I shuffle my way toward it, not because I’m thirsty and in need of water but because I remember a stream passes only fifty meters or so from the log cabin. Perhaps it is the same one.

It is a gurgling, fast-flowing brook. I bend down, splash water on my face. The ice water snaps me out of my cloud of fatigue and into the clear expanse of alertness.

An idea formulates in my head. Of a way out. It’s not perfect; far from it actually. But as the temperature plummets around me, the cold creeping down the nape of my neck, I realize that not only is this a viable method of escape, it is the only one. I hitch up the backpack, tighten the straps, and run alongside the river. Eyes peeled for the cabin.

Because inside the cabin is my father’s hang glider.

*   *   *

I almost run right by the cabin. A single wail is what saves me. It is flung up into the night sky, unnervingly close. It stops me in my tracks. And that’s when I see it. Not the log cabin, not at first, only a clearing. Within seconds I’m sprinting across the clearing and onto the front porch of the cabin.

As I turn the knob, a chorus of other cries, masculine and feline, rises into the sky, a pitched yearning to their joined voices. Thin cloud lines, dyed red from the setting sun, take on the appearance of deep bloody gashes. I stare at the woods encircling the clearing. No movement. East of me, the clearing falls away into a sudden cliff, a sheer drop. A dark wind blows across it. That’s where my father took off with the hang glider. Right off the cliff, into the skies, soaring above the Vast. And that’s where I’ll need to take off.

It’s dark inside the cabin. I take out a GlowBurn from my bag, snap it. The hang glider is right where I remember it, hung up on the bedroom wall. Now that I know I need to fly it, it seems both flimsier and more cumbersome at the same time. I examine it, trying to make out a method behind the madness of straps and bars. None of it makes any sense at all. There has to be something else. And then I remember. I open the chest of clothes, take out the odd-looking vest I’d seen days earlier. I unzip it, try to decipher the metallic hooks and cords and carabiners dangling from it. I put on the vest, fitting my legs through harnesses. Now the hang glider makes more sense: hooks attach to counter hooks, carabiners match up with same-colored carabiners.

A scream outside rattles the windows.

The window is a sheet of black now. Night has saturated the skies.

As if to officially usher night in, screams fly across the mountainside. But louder now, scraping against the cabin windows like fingernails across a sheet of ice. I hear faint cracking sounds, like toothpicks snapped—it takes a minute before I realize these are the distant sounds of trees being felled, trunks pulverized by the horde of duskers. The heper odors drifting across the mountain ranges are driving them into a frenzy.

I drop the hang glider onto the bed and run outside. From the front porch, I see the progress of their stampede. Tall trees in the distance shaking.

They’re coming. They’re coming. By accident or by design, the cabin is in their direct path.

I run inside. I consider closing the shutters, fortressing myself in the cabin. But I shunt that idea aside immediately—the cabin stands as much chance resisting the duskers as a matchbox in a fire. They’d rip this log cabin into shreds within seconds.

I pick up the hang glider, walk sideways down the hallway with it and out the front door. Cold wind gusts manically around me, the echoes of howls swirling in them.

It’s now or never, ready or not. I choose
now,
I hope for
ready
.

I latch a hook to a corresponding hook on the hang glider. I start walking toward the cliff edge even as I lock carabiners into place, slide cords through loops, all guesswork and no conviction at all in what I’m doing. I can only hope they’re going where they’re supposed to.

The ground begins to rumble under me.

Shrieks loft out of the forest behind and beside me. These are different in tone, rapturous, the cries of pleasant surprises, of unexpected discoveries.

I run. Dangling, still-unhooked carabiners bounce against my body like the nudges of a needy child—
fix me fix me fix me
—but it is too late for that. All I feel is the razor edge of their screams, slashing not only my eardrums, but the skin on the back of my neck, the skin on the back of my heels, reaching out toward me like claws on outstretched fingers. I pull the metal handlebar of the hang glider over my head, making sure I don’t trip as I run. A single stumble now will be a fatal mistake.

A pool of darkness begins to enfold around me.

Don’t look back. Don’t look to the side. Just keep your eyes on the edge. Run for the edge, run run run
.

And then it is there, the cliff edge racing toward me, the mouth of nothingness gaping wide beyond it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the hang glider but it is too late for second-guessing now. Ground rumbling, the air pierced with a thousand cries of lust, I fling myself over the edge, into the yawning chasm of bottomless black.

And just as I do, I hear a shout, a single word verbalized from behind.
Gene!

*   *   *

I am plummeting, my feet scrabbling empty air as the cliff face screeches past. There’s no wind. The hang glider flaps like a wounded bird, wings rattling with hysteria. A sick, panicky feeling settles into the pit of my stomach.

A terrific wind gusts out of nowhere. The glider latches on to it with an almost audible click. The night air—once so vacuous—suddenly gains the solidity of a palatial carpet under me, lifting me into the night sky.

Throat in mouth, clasping the bar with a white-knuckled grip, I glance down. Duskers are spilling off the cliff edge, dropping into the black abyss. The glider wobbles. I snap my eyes to the handle, focus on the heady task at hand. I lean my body this way and that, test out the flight mechanics in careful gradations. I’m a quick study at most things, and soon enough get a feel for flying the glider. Everything done slowly and smoothly, no rough jerks or sudden maneuvers. It’s not too difficult, once the initial fear is overcome.

In fact, it’s exhilarating. The sensation of soaring through the airy expanse, the surprisingly gentle, refreshing breeze on my face. Far below, emerging out of the mountain in a titanic waterfall, the Nede River flows out of the mountain. It shines beneath like a magnesium strip, a directional arrow pointing east. To the Promised Land. To my father. If this easterly wind keeps up, I will make good time.

I take one last look back at the mountain. The moon is now pouring its milky light on the mountainside, and I can see a blanket of silver and black dots streaming up like a cloak. Wave upon wave of duskers pouring out of the mountain’s innards. They will be upon the Mission before too long.

I have tried not to think of them, but my thoughts involuntarily swing to Sissy and the boys. They will have made it back to the Mission by now. For a second, an emptiness vaster than the night sky echoes in me.

I stare dead ahead. East. Somewhere out there, beyond the scope of my eyes, is my father.

I wonder how many girls Sissy has convinced to leave by train.

My father will be tanned, I think, no longer having to stay out of the sun. And perhaps fuller around the waist, with all the food and drink he will have consumed.

I wonder if Sissy and the boys are on the train now. If the village girls are piling in with them as the train engine revs up.

My father will have a beard, or a moustache, or perhaps a scruffy shadow. He will have hair on his arms, on his legs. The bags under his eyes will be reduced, or altogether gone, removed by months and years of deep, restful sleep. He will look different, my father, but, free from the masks he has worn his whole life, he will be his true, unveiled self.

I wonder if Sissy and the boys are fine. I wonder if they know they must leave immediately. I wonder if they know the sheer volume of duskers storming toward them.

I will, for the first time in my life, see my father really smile. I will see that purest of emotions he had learned to stifle. I will see his lips curl back, his teeth shine bright with a now-practiced naturalness, a brightness touch his eyes. His arms will remain at his side, no longer feeling the need to faux scratch his wrists. And that is what he will do when he sees me. He will smile. He will smile in the sunshine and not feel compelled to move into the shadows.

I wonder if Ben is not too tired from hiking all day. If David knows he’ll need gloves and a scarf because the wind whipping through the open cages of the train will be harsh and biting. I wonder if Sissy’s arm is better, if the brand has staved off infection. I wonder if they are thinking of me as I am them. I wonder if Sissy is needing to be with me. As I her.

Stars blink into existence above and around me, seemingly within arm’s length. As if I might reach up and dislodge them, and watch them drift down like snowflakes to the earth.

I stare east. See my father in the warm glow of sunshine, glowing and blurred like a fantasy. See him diminishing, fading, as all dreams, in the harsh light of morning, inevitably do.

I grip the bar tighter. Then angle my legs to one side, canting my body. The stars spin around me as I turn the hang glider, the moon swinging like a ball on a string. The silvered river rotates under me. And then the mountain is in front of me, its silhouetted peak leaning to the side, like a head cocked in surprise and confusion.

I’m flying west.

Back to the Mission.

40

T
HE
MISSION IS
nestled between two ridges in the mountain, and I miss it the first go-around. It’s the bridge—its two halves raised like bookends—that proves to be an invaluable reference point. I circle around, see a few specks of light flickering in the dark breast of the mountain. I fly closer until the Mission fully emerges out of the darkness, and I see the soft, illumined cottages. From up here, the village’s smallness and quaintness catches me by surprise.

My landing, I’ve already concluded—sadly, with resignation, and not a little trepidation—is going to be ugly, probably painful, potentially fatal, and dependent on gobs of beginner’s luck. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it—the fifteen minutes or so it’s taken to fly back—and have already decided that my best option is to land in the glacial lake on the far end of the Mission. But what seemed like such a good idea is in actuality incredibly difficult to achieve. From up here, the lake is the size of a small coin—a ridiculously small landing pad surrounded by cratered granite and thick coniferous forests with trees jutting up like knives.

Landing in the lake feels like crashing into a wall of ice. No give in the bracken waters. My legs, then body, are run against a metal shredder as I skid along the surface. The glider suddenly spears into the depths, coldness and bubbles and darkness flipping my world upside down and inside out. Completely disoriented, I unbuckle and wrest myself free of the vest, and kick away the sinking glider.
Watch the bubbles, follow them up, watch the bubbles
. I break surface and the wide open dome of the night sky spreads above me, filled with oxygen.

I swim to the lake’s edge, drag out my dripping mangled body. Cold. Need to hurry, limbs shaking like branches in a gale, mind already splintering into disjointed, haphazard thoughts. Stumbling along on unsteady legs, my jaw jackhammering away, I shuffle toward the nearest cottage, my arms wrapped around my chest, hands tucked under armpits. Frozen hand barely able to mold fingers around the doorknob. Dark inside. Throw open the chest, tear off the wet clothes, put on dry ones.

It’s then I realize I haven’t seen a single person.

I run out to the street, my teeth chattering.

My eyes scan the village square; nothing moves, no one is around. Just as I’m thinking that Sissy was able to convince everyone to leave, I see a group of girls. Their eyes, lidded and half-asleep, widen with surprise when they see me.

“Where are my friends?” I say. My first spoken words in hours come out shrill and jittery.

The girls only stare at me warily.

“Did you hear me? My friends: Sissy, Epap, the boys. Did they make it back here? Have you seen them?”