In seconds, they are sprinting alongside us. They are a tapestry of horror. Their skin, partially melted in the daylight like warm plastic in an oven, has, with the arrival of night, petrified into solid, pulled-back folds. Splattered randomly about their bodies are splotches of hair, tufting out in ugly streaks. No, not hair; these are remnants of their SunCloaks now melded into the soft pliability of half-melted skin. They’ve become ragged stray animals, foaming at the mouth, diseased skin dripping off bones, skinned paws pounding the ground. Their eyeballs swivel around to gaze—with longing and devotion—at us.
The third hunter looks vaguely familiar. Somewhere behind all the melted folds of flesh is a face I almost recognize. A large bag is strapped on its back—on all their backs, in fact—bulging with what looks like heavy equipment and bundles of rope. There must be at least a ton of gear on them. Their staggering strength is horrendous and awesome.
And then they sprint past us.
“Sissy?” Jacob utters.
Not even a single look thrown back at us. Their loping pale bodies disappear over the crest of a short hill. They reappear on the rise of the next hill, but much farther away, smaller, their collective speed, if anything, even faster now.
“Sissy? What’re they doing?” David’s face is ridden with fear. He stares off into the distance where they have disappeared. “Why did they race off?”
Sissy turns to me, confused and anxious. “Do you know?”
I shake my head. Nothing about this makes sense.
“I don’t like this,” Sissy whispers, and for the first time in days, a genuine fear shifts in her eyes. “They’re getting craftier and stronger. They’re getting more innovative, more determined by the day.”
She’s right. This is the first time they’ve hunted prey with smarts and determination to match. They’ve become craftier out of necessity.
Sissy taps against her thigh. Frustration seethes in her eyes.
“We have to dock, Sissy!” Epap shouts. “If they’re in front of us, we can’t simply allow ourselves to drift toward them.”
She stares down the river. “It could be a trap. There might be another group of hunters behind us anticipating we’d pull over. Let’s not get outsmarted here.”
“I don’t think that’s their game plan,” I say. “That’s not how they operate. When it comes to hunting hepers, they’re irresistibly selfish. Altruism for the benefit of another group doesn’t enter into their thinking. If there is another group behind us, then the group that just passed us doesn’t stand to benefit at all.” I gaze into the river ahead of us. “No, I think there’s only one group. The one that sprinted ahead.”
“And they’re setting a trap?” Sissy asks.
“I think so.” I grimace. “I don’t know.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Epap says. “Let’s dock now.” He starts moving for the pole.
“Wait!” Sissy says. “Maybe that’s what they’re hoping we’ll do. Maybe they’ve circled around and are secretly trailing us even now from behind those hills. Maybe tricking us into docking is the trap they’ve laid; they’re just waiting for us to stupidly self-remove the only barrier we have between us and them: the river. We dock, and they’ll be on us in ten seconds flat.”
“What do we do, Sissy?” David asks.
A steely determination glints in her eyes. “We stay on the river. If they’ve laid a trap ahead, we charge through. Whatever they have for us, we fight. But we don’t wait for them, twiddling our thumbs. We chase our fate, whatever it is.” She looks at me. “That’s how I operate.”
For almost an hour, we see nothing. The boat flows down the surging river, every second fraught with tension, an eternity of uncertainty. I’m at the stern, eyes peeled, searching. The river froths white against the banks up ahead where it narrows. Don’t let up, I keep telling myself, not even for one sec—
The boat is suddenly stopped in its tracks as if we’ve hit a cement wall. We’re thrown forward and sprawl all over the deck. I’m almost tossed overboard—only a quick grab at the boat’s edge keeps me from plunging into the river. Sissy is the first on her feet, and she’s swinging her body around, trying to get a sense of the situation.
I see what’s stopped us. A rope spanning the entire width of the river, now pulled taut by the boat. The contraption the hunters had been carrying must be a harpoon. They used it to shoot the rope right across a narrow river bend.
“I think my ribs are cracked,” Epap says, gritting his teeth. His hands fold gingerly before his chest as if cradling an invisible baby. “I can’t breathe, it hurts even to breathe—”
“Sissy!” I shout. “Give me your dagger! We’ve got to cut the rope!”
The sound of feet pounding the boards, then Sissy slides feetfirst toward me, splashing up water. She stares into the river, sees the rope. Horror dawns across her face. She’s about to reach down to slice the rope when she pauses.
“Cut it, Sissy!”
“What if they’re hiding in the water?”
“They can’t swim underwater!”
“Then where are they?”
“I don’t kno—”
Something splashes in the river a few feet from us, sending up a huge spray.
“What was that?” Jacob cries.
Then another loud splash, closer to the boat this time.
“Are they in the water?!” Jacob says, moving away from the splashes. “Is that them?”
“No!” I shout, “they can’t swim!”
“Then what—”
A thrack explodes next to my foot, sending up shredded wood chips from the deck. A large iron-cast grappling hook—black as night with four razor-sharp claws—is embedded halfway into the deck. The grappling hook is attached to a rope that extends all the way to the riverbank. And that’s where I see them. The hunters. They’re partially hidden behind a grassy knoll but the rope is like an arrow pointing right at them.
I fasten my hands around the grappling hook. A slippery emission coats it—their saliva—and I jerk my arms back. “Don’t touch the hooks!” I yell at the top of my voice. “Their saliva is all over them!”
“Now’s not the time to be delicate!” Sissy shouts back. “We have to pry them off!”
I stare back at her, dumbfounded by her ignorance. It’s possible she simply doesn’t know: if the hunters’ saliva gets into an open cut or sore and into our bloodstream, it will all be over. The turning will begin. I rip off my shirt, wrap it around one of the claws. “Don’t let it touch your skin!” I yell. “Use your shirts!” But I can’t wrench the claw free—it’s too deeply embedded into the wood.
Another grappling hook smashes into the deck on my right, narrowly missing David’s head.
The hunters spill out of the shadows, pulling at the grappling-hook ropes, their strength churlish and brutal. The boat lists toward the riverbank with discomfiting speed.
“Sissy! Cut the rope!” But she can’t hear me; she’s trying to pull the other grappling hook out. That one is embedded even more deeply—she’s not getting it out. I reach for her belt, grab a dagger, and then I’m reaching over into the water at the stern. But when I touch the harpoon rope that’s pressed against the boat, my heart sinks. It’s made of a hard synthetic material I instinctively know is resistant to cutting. It’ll take fifteen minutes to cut through with this knife. I try to shove the rope downward, hoping to dislodge the boat that way. But the rope is pressed too tightly into the wood.
By now the boat’s been pulled halfway to the bank, close enough to see a hunter—hissing, ankle-deep in the river—making a throwing motion. A grappling hook soars into the night sky.
“Watch out!” I shout.
Ben is focused on dislodging the first grappling hook; he doesn’t see this one in the air arcing down toward his head. Epap, still cradling his ribs, leaps up and pulls Ben away just as the hook smashes into the very spot he was kneeling. They fall to the ground, in front of the cabin, Epap’s body flopping to the deck. He’s been knocked out; I see an ugly gash down the side of his face where a hook must have struck him. Blood gushes out.
The hunters scream with ecstasy into the night.
The rope line falls right on top of Epap, and now I’m diving at him, shoving him roughly aside before the line can pull taut and pin him painfully against the deck, or, worse yet, sever a limb. Three grappling-hook lines are hauling us in now. And with such force, the far length of the boat lifts a foot off the water. The boat, listing at an angle, ripples faster yet toward the bank as if powered by a sideways motor.
Sissy is hacking away at one of the grappling-hook lines, but she gives up. They’re made of the same synthetic material as the harpoon rope. Her eyes focus with intensity, a hundred calculations made in seconds, a dozen options considered and discarded until there is only one remaining. She grabs David and Jacob roughly, pushes them into the cabin where Ben and I are still sprawled. Epap is still knocked out, his chest rising and falling with shallow rapidness.
“Listen to me,” she says. Water drips off her face. “I’m swimming for the bank. I’ll dive off this side of the cabin and swim underwater so they don’t see me. In the meantime, you all distract them. Keep pulling on those hooks.”
“Sissy, no!” Ben cries.
“It’s the only play we have left.”
“There’s got to be something else—”
She grabs Ben’s arms, hard enough to make him wince. “There isn’t, Ben.”
“Then let me go,” I say. “I’m a strong swimmer, I can make it.”
“No,” she says, sheathing her dagger into her belt.
“We both go, then,” I insist.