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They arrive that night many hours after dusk. It is taking them that much longer to reach us now. And the group is reduced in number, only the youngest and fittest among them, no more than a few dozen. They stay for only a couple of hours before they are forced to leave in the dark, hours before dawn, the moon and stars still shining.
I’m on watch duty when the sun rises. A subdued orange, still dim enough to stare at directly, peeking just over the eastern mountains.
“Is that it?” Ben, groggy-eyed, walks up to me. “Will they come back? Have we seen the last of them?”
Yes, we’ve seen the last of them, I am about to tell him. But I have not forgotten, even now, that below this green earth, beyond the reach of this sun, and away from the gentle brooking of water, waits a girl in cold and darkness who once took my hand into hers.
“Have we?” he asks again.
I flick my eyes away, unable to answer.
That afternoon, we dock again. David has seen a rabbit; sure enough, within ten minutes of hunting, he spears one, a fat, grey-and-white hare. He sprints back to us, his smile wide, holding up the bunny like a trophy. Sissy glances at the sun. There’s still time, she says. Let’s build a fire and have a feast today. Ben jumps up and down with joy, his voice barking out across the meadows.
Everyone sets to work. Sissy and David start skinning the rabbit. Ben and Jacob set off looking for firewood, but there is little to find. Just some dead grass, a few branches. Epap is furiously rubbing two branches together, trying to get a spark. I stand about, trying to look busy. There is some talk of breaking off parts of the boat, but that is quickly shot down.
“My sketchbook,” Epap suggests. “We can burn that. One page at a time.”
“Are you sure?” David asks.
“It’s fine,” Epap answers, and gets up.
“I’ll get it,” I say, trying to be useful. “In your bag, right?” I run off before he can respond.
His tassel bag is in the corner of the cabin. I undo the strap and flip open the flap. The sketchbook, its leather cover pockmarked with age, is large; I have to twist it out of the bag. A gust of wind sifts through the pages of the sketchbook, opening to a page with a drawing of the Dome. I pick up the sketchbook. He’s a fine artist, I’ll give him that much, his lines clean and his strokes restrained but expressive. I turn the page, then a few more. Almost all are portraits of the hepers, one on each page, their names written at the top. David. Jacob. Ben. Sissy. Most of them Sissy. As she cooks, reads a book, runs with a spear, washes clothes at the pond. Asleep in bed, her eyes closed, her face soft and peaceful. I start flipping towards the front, going back in time. The hepers, in their portraits, get more youthful.
“C’mon, Gene, what’s taking you so long?” Epap shouts, his voice afar.
“Be right there.” I turn over the page, am about to slam the sketchbook shut, when something catches my eye.
A different name at the top of the page. This one reads: “The Scientist”.
I look down at the portrait . . .
And the sketchbook falls from my hands.
It’s my father.
Acknowledgements
I WOULD LIKE to offer thanks to certain individuals who have supported and encouraged me over the years:
My teachers: Mr Pope of King George V School, and Professor Dan McCall of Cornell University. Their love for stories was intoxicating and infectious.
Early supporters of my writing career: Terry Goodman, Peter Gordon, and Many Ly.
Colleagues and friends from the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, especially: Tammy Smiley, Robert Schwartz, Douglas Noll, Jason Richards, and Mehmet Gokce.
Catherine Drayton, who is amazing, and who has been everything I ever hoped for in an agent, and more; the Inkwell Management team, in particular: Lyndsey Blessing, Charlie Olsen, and Kristan Palmer.
My wonderful editor, Rose Hilliard, whose keen eye, sage advice, and warm support make me want to high-five myself every day; my publisher, Matthew Shear, for making me feel not only welcomed but special at St. Martin’s Press.
My two sons, John and Chris, who broaden, deepen, and enrich my life; and, above all, Ching-Lee, to whom this book is dedicated.
The adventure continues . . .
Read the start of the next gripping book in this series
THE PREY
One
WE THOUGHT WE were finally free of them but we were wrong. That very night, they come at us.
We hear the pack of hunters mere minutes before they reach the riverbank: gritty cries flung into the night sky, coarse and sharp like glass shards crushed underfoot. The horse, nostrils flaring and eyes rolling back, rises from the ground with a start. Muscles fused to- gether, it gallops away with ears pulled back, the whites of its eyes shining like demented moons, into the vast darkness of the land.
We grab our bags, the six of us, flee to the docked boat on legs that judder under us. The anchoring ropes are taut, and our shak- ing fingers are unable to loosen them. Ben trying to quiet his own whimpers, Epap already standing on the boat frozen with fear, head tilted towards the sound of their approach. Tufts of his hair stick up like surrendering arms, mussed from a slumber into which he was never supposed to slip.
Sissy hacks away at the ropes. Sparks fly off the blade as her strokes become swifter, more urgent with every passing second. She stops suddenly, blade held aloft. She’s staring into the dis- tance. She sees them: ten silver dots, racing towards us down a distant
meadow before disappearing behind the rise of a closer hill. The hairs on my neck freeze into icicles, snap and break in the wind.
They reappear, ten mercury beads cresting the hill with unflinch- ing purpose. Silver dots, mercury beads, such quaint terms, my futile attempt to render the horrific into the innocuous, into jewellery acces- sories. But these are people. These are hunters. Coming to sink fangs into my flesh, to ravage me, to devour and savage my organs.
I grab the younger boys, push them aboard the boat. Sissy is hacking at the last rope, trying to ignore the wails screeching towards us, slippery and wet with saliva. I grab a pole, ready to start pushing off as soon as Sissy’s cut the rope. With only seconds to spare, she saws through the rope, and I push the boat into the river’s current. Sissy leaps on. The river wraps around us, draws us away from the bank.
The hunters gather on the riverbank, ten-strong, grotesque spill- ages of melted flesh and matted hair. I don’t recognise a single one of them – no sign of Crimson Lips, Abs, Gaunt Man, the Direc- tor – but the desire in their eyes is all too familiar. It is the impulse more powerful than lust, an all-consuming desire to devour and consume heper flesh and blood. Three hunters leap headlong into the swift river in a futile effort to reach us. Their heads bob once, twice, then sink harmlessly away.
For hours the remaining hunters follow us along the banks. We try not to look at them, affixing our eyes on the river and the wooden planks of the deck. But there’s no escaping their screams: full of un- requited lust, a keening despair. The four Dome boys – Ben, David, Jacob, and Epap – huddle in the cabin for most of the night. Sissy and I stay at the stern, guiding the boat with the long poles, keeping well away from the bank. As dawn approaches, the cloudy sky grows lighter in slow degrees. The remaining hunters, instead of becoming more languid with the approach of sunrise and the inevitability of death, only scream louder, their rage intensifying.
The sun rises slowly and glows dully from behind black clouds. A filtered, diffused burn. So the hunters die gradually, by degrees, horrendously. It takes almost an hour before the last bubbled scream gurgles away and there is nothing left of them to see or hear or smell.
Sissy speaks for the first time in hours. “I thought we’d journeyed far enough. Thought we’d seen the last of them.” It is only morning, and her voice is already spent.
“It’s been sunny,” I say. “Until the storm yesterday.” The rain and clouds had turned the day as dark as night and allowed the hunters to
set off hours before dusk and reach us.
Sissy’s jaw juts out. “Better not rain today, then,” she says and walks into the cabin to check on the boys.
The river surges forward with propulsive insistence. I stare down its length until it fades into the distant darkness. I don’t know what lies ahead, and the uncertainty numbs me with fear. A raindrop lands on my forehead, then another, and another, until rainwater lines down my neck and along my goose-pimpled arms like protruding veins. I gaze up. Dark, turgid clouds shift, then rip open. Rain buck- ets down in dark, slanted bands. The skies are coated as black as a murder of crows at midnight.
The hunt has only begun. The hunt will never end.
Two
