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WE THOUGHT WE were finally free of theht, they come at us

We hear the pack of hunters ritty cries flung into the night sky, coarse and sharp like glass shards crushed underfoot The horse, nostrils flaring and eyes rolling back, rises froallops aith 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 shaking fingers are unable to loosen the on the boat frozen with fear, head tilted toward 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 beco second She stops suddenly, blade held aloft She’s staring into the distance She sees the toward us down a distantbehind the rise of a closer hill The hairs on my neck freeze into icicles, snap and break in the wind

They reappear, tenpurpose Silver dots, mercury beads, such quaint terms, my futile attempt to render the horrific into the innocuous, into jewelry accessories But these are people These are hunters Coe ans

I grab the younger boys, push the to ignore the wails screeching toward us, slippery and ith 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 spillages of le one of then of Crimson Lips, Abs, Gaunt Man, the Director—but the desire in their eyes is all too familiar It is the i desire to devour and consu into the swift river in a futile effort to reach us Their heads bob once, twice, then sink harmlessly away

For hours the re the banks We try not to look at the our eyes on the river and the wooden planks of the deck But there’s no escaping their screa despair The four Dome boys—Ben, David, Jacob, and Epap—huddle in the cabin forthe boat with the long poles, keeping well away frohter in slow degrees The reuid with the approach of sunrise and the inevitability of death, only screa

The sun rises slowly and glows dully from behind black clouds A filtered, diffused burn So the hunters die gradually, in degrees, horrendously It takes alles away and there is nothing left of them to see or hear or smell

Sissy speaks for the first tiht we’d seen the last of the, 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 forith propulsive insistence I stare down its length until it fades into the distant darkness I don’t knohat lies ahead, and the uncertainty numbs me with fear A raindrop lands on my forehead, then another, and another, until rainwater lines downveins I gaze up Dark, turgid clouds shift, then rip open Rain buckets down in dark, slanted bands The skies are coated as black as a ht

The hunt has only begun The hunt will never end

2

WE SIT IN the cabin huddled together, trying to stay out of the rain Our sodden clothes cling to our thin frames and concaved stomachs like mottled leathery skin Every so often, so and find it (again) e devoured

With the heavy rain, the river current has picked up We work shorter shifts steering the boat, our strength depleting quickly now In the early afternoon, Sissy and I work together Two hours later, we’re wiped out We collapse in the cabin while Epap and Jacob take over

I austs across the river, rippling the surface already dappled by pelting rain I rubto chafe warmth into my cheeks On the other side of the cabin, eyes closed, Sissy is curled on her side, her head resting atop her clasped hands Her face, relaxed in sleep, is soft, the outlines stenciled in

“You’ve been staring at me for the past few minutes,” she whispers, eyes still closed I startle Her lips curl upward in a faint sh steel walls with that stare of yours”

I scratch my wrists

Her eyes peel open; she sits up Thick brown hair flops across her face, as tousled as the blanket she now lays gently over Ben snoring next to her She yawns, extends her ar She walks over, stepping a

round a stockpile of sticks we’d brought aboard, and plops down next to me

“The current’s strong,” I say “Maybe too strong I’m worried”

“No, it’s a good thing Means more separation between us and them”

Only a few days have passed since we escaped from the Heper Institute We were chased by a mob ravenous for our blood and flesh By the hundreds they poured out of the Institute, banquet guests driven by bloodlust Against such a horde, the six of us had virtually no chance of survival Our only hope lay frailly and solely in the Scientist’s journal, a cryptic notebook that suggested an escape by boat down this river The river, by luck, we found; the boat, by greater miracle, we also found But the reason e’ve been led down this river by the Scientist: that, we have not found

“It also means less distance between us and hihts She looks atI turn my eyes away

Yesterday, when I’d come upon Epap’s portrait of my father, it was the first time I’d seenchiseled jawline, the thin lips, the stony expression that, even in a drawing, hinted at a deeper grace and sadness

Now I think of the secrets those eye enda never uttered by those lips On that very last day,profusely, deathly pale I saw the twin punctures in his neck He had gone to such lengths to fake his turning When he ran outdoorsto his death to save me

When he was only running to his freedo me

I pick up two thin branches froainst one another as if sharpening knives “You think he left this boat for you, don’t you?” I say “That he planned this whole elaborate escape for you You want my two cents? The boat wasn’t meant for you It was meant for him, and for hiht enough to find it Or maybe he built it himself but was hunted down before he could escape”

She stares at the sticks, then atThe Scientist promised us—almost every day—that he would one day lead us out of the doer or fear, where there was safety and warmth and countless numbers of other humans The Land of Milk and Honey, Fruit and Sunshine That’s what he called it Sometimes he described it as the Promised Land And whenever he spoke of escape, he spoke of it as our escape”

“That was a big promise”

She presses her lips together “It was But it e needed You have to understand—ere born in the do in it after a long, harsh life of captivity It was a miserable existence The Scientist—well, he showed up out of nowhere And with this one proave us hope The boys—especially Jacob—were transformed Hope does that to you” She smiles “We don’t even knohat milk and honey look or taste like”

“You put a lot of faith in one man’s promise”

She looks at me “You don’t know him the e do”

I almost flinch at her words that cut deep But I’ willemotion

“Don’t you want to find hihtest bit curious where he one?”

The sticks in ht of little else

Moonlight reflected by the river stipples across her face “Tellinto my eyes