Free The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda

livelier era. Our escorts folow us, silently. The second fl oor is where the staff and hunters are housed, and we bypass it. The third fl oor is the science fl oor, for obvious reasons: from one end third fl oor is the science fl oor, for obvious reasons: from one end to the other, it’s lined with laboratories. A smel of musky formaldehyde permeates the whole fl oor. Although the guide speaks glowingly about each laboratory— this one used to study heper hair, this one to study heper laughter, this one heper singing
    — it is obvious the laboratories have falen into disuse.
    “This whole thing’s a crock, you know that, right?”
    “Excuse me?” I turn to the el der ly man next to me. One of the hunters. We are in a lab previously used to study heper hair and fi ngernails. The man is leaning toward me, his gaunt frame tilting like a snapped pencil, his head slanted close to a sample of heper fi ngernails encased in a glass plate. His bald head is as shiny and hairless as the plate, but mottled over with age marks near his forehead. A few wisps of hair are combed across his gleaming head, 58 ANDREW FUKUDA
    like thin strands of night clouds across the moon. We are alone at the back of a laboratory; everyone else is clustered near the front of the lab, where the (apparently) more exciting samples of heper hair are on display.
    “A crock,” he whispers.
    “These fi ngernails?”
    He shakes his head. “This whole tour. This whole training period.”

    I take a sideways glance at him. This is the fi rst time I’m seeing him up close, and he is older than I thought. Hair wispier, wrinkles deeper, the curve of his back more pronounced.
    “Why do we need training?” His voice is gravely. “Just let us have at the hepers, already. We’l devour them in a minute. We don’t need training. We have our instinct, we have our hunger. What else do we need?”
    “We need to draw this out. Savor the moment. Anticipation is half the enjoyment.”
    It’s his turn to look at me. A brief look, but one that absorbs. I feel the suction of his brain taking me in. And then his approval.
    I’ve been watching him a bit since yesternight. He stuck out, and I now know why. He doesn’t want to be here. Every other hunter (except me, of course) is ecstatic, has just literaly won the lottery of a lifetime. But his feet drag just so, his eyes fail to shine with the glee the others have, and everything about him seems to spel r-e-l-u- c-t- a-n- c-e. In short, he’s everything I’m feeling inside. A thought comes to my mind, but I dismiss it outright: There’s no chance he’s a heper. A real heper (like me) would be covering up those feelings (as I’m doing), not letting them hang out like dirty underwear for al to observe.
    As I study him— his stiff, arthritic gait whittled down by age— it As I study him— his stiff, arthritic gait whittled down by age— it hits me why he’s so sulen. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance.
    THE HUNT 59
    Not against the younger hunters, who’l outrun and outgun him.
    By the time he gets to the hepers, there won’t even be bones left to gnaw on. This Heper Hunt is torture for him, to be so close yet so far. No wonder he’s bitter. He’s a starving man at a banquet who knows there won’t even be crumbs left on the fl oor for him.
    “There’s more going on here than meets the eye,” he says, stil bent over the glass plate.
    I’m not sure what to say, so I wait for him to continue. But he doesn’t; he shuffl es to the front of the lab and joins the others, leaving me standing al alone.
    After touring the laboratories on the third fl oor, we are taken to the fourth fl oor. We go through it quickly; it’s realy nothing more than a series of unused classrooms, the chairs inside propped upside down on desktops. At the far end is the auditorium. We stick our heads through the door to take a look. I smel a dusty dank-ness. Nobody wants to venture in, and we move on.
    Eventualy we wind up on the