“Help me!” Sissy is hoisting her side of the harpoon. I grab the other and together we lift it. It’s the weight of three large men. I place two fingers on the trigger; Sissy’s fingers are already there, and I lay mine atop hers.
Crimson Lips, on seeing the harpoon, skids to a stop.
“That’s right, back off!” Sissy shouts.
Crimson Lips’s head cocks to the side. She darts to the side, then torpedoes right at us, an ear-splitting scream issuing out.
Sissy and I squeeze the trigger.
It takes every ounce of strength in our combined four fingers. The harpoon tenses, then violently snaps, spasming as the projectile explodes out. Our aim isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough. Crimson Lips lifts her hand—a useless blocking reflex—and the sharp spearhead slices through her fingers. I see two stumps—the index and middle fingers?—flung in the air as the spearhead impales her left shoulder. Crimson Lips is spun around, collapses to the ground. Her pain-torched scream is horrific.
“C’mon, let’s go!” Sissy shouts, and she’s grabbing my hand, pulling me along. We make a wide arc around Crimson Lips as she squirms on her side, trying to pull out the spearhead. Without success. Weighed down and weakening, she grimaces with pain. Our eyes meet.
“Your designation is Gene?” Crimson Lips says.
I freeze in my tracks. The sound of my name on her lips chills me to the core.
“That’s the word she kept uttering,” Crimson Lips says.
“Who?” I say, stepping back toward her. And already, I know.
“Closer,” Crimson Lips says, her voice lower, huskier. “Come closer, Gene.”
Sissy pulls at my arm. “No, Gene! It’s just trying to delay us. There might be others on their way.”
Crimson Lips’s eyes fasten on mine. “The girl you left behind at the Heper Institute,” she says, her head slanting lopsidedly. “When it was finally over, she kept murmuring Gene, Gene, Gene.”
Blood drains from my face. When it was finally over. I blink hard, the earth reels on its axis—
Sissy smacks me in the face. “We have to leave. Now!” And she is pulling me along by the arm, forcing me to run with her.
Crimson Lips’s screams follow us all the way to the boat. The boys have flung off all three grappling hooks but the boat is still being held up by the harpoon rope. We follow the line and locate the harpoon gun, anchored between two boulders.
“Help me, Gene,” she says. “Hey, snap out of it, what’s the matter with you?” She starts kicking the harpoon gun on one side, hoping to upend it slantways between the boulders.
From the deck of the boat, David is yelling at us. “The hunter’s coming back!”
That’s all the incentive she needs. She delivers a powerful kick, dislodging the harpoon from horizontal to vertical. It disappears between the crack.
We leap into the river, swim after the boat. The sting of the cold water snaps me out of my daze, and I swim hard, stroking and kicking with fury. The boys pull us up, and we flop onto the deck, unable to do more than gaze at the stars above; they are so stationary, it hardly seems like we’re moving at all. Only by the fading screams of the hunter do I know we are once more on the move.
Epap comes to, groaning aloud. The boys rush over to him, but I’m already up on my feet, pushing them aside.
“Stay away from him, don’t touch him!” I say.
“What’s the matter?” Sissy says.
“He might be infected. He might be turning.”
By their blank stares, I know they have no idea what I’m talking about. “He got hit on the head by one of the grappling hooks. Those hooks were covered with their saliva.” I lean Epap gently back down to the deck, start carefully checking his vitals. “One measly droplet of their saliva gets into you, and you’ll turn. Transform. You’ll become one of them.”
Their eyes swing nervously over to Epap. He’s staring at me, eyes agog with fear and bewilderment.
“You haven’t heard of it because turnings are very rare. Most of the time, we don’t survive attacks, we just get devoured.”
“How long is this … turning process?” Sissy asks, worry etched into her face.
“It’s quick. Ranging anywhere from a couple of minutes to several hours. It depends on how much saliva was passed. If you’re infected by the saliva of more than one person, the whole process is exponentially speeded up.” I examine Epap’s skin, looking for any cuts or gashes. “I think you’re okay, Epap. You’re not showing any symptoms. They always appear immediately.”
“Like?” he asks nervously.
“Cold skin, shivering, profuse sweating, rapid heartbeats. But you’re fine. You lucked out.”
Ben throws himself at Epap, hugging him.
“Stay away from me,” Epap says, sitting up. “We don’t know for sure if I’m safe.”
“You’re fine,” I say. And the boys rush him, knocking him back down. In the midst of their tangle of arms, I see Epap’s face break into a smile. An arm shoots out from the pile—Jacob’s arm?—and grabs my hand. Before I know it, I’m pulled in, my body flung into the tent of their sobs of relief.
The boat pitches forward, gaining speed in the fast current. In front of us, the hulking silhouette of the eastern mountains looms ever closer.
5
HOURS LATER, I’M still awake. I move to the stern, away from their loud snores in the cabin and from Sissy steering at the bow. I need to be alone. Nothing moves in the moonlit plains; it is as still as a black-and-white photograph. The river is all sinewy muscles now, tendons rippling along its length, flowing quickly. It seethes forward, eager and angry in equal turns.
I am thinking of Ashley June.
Crimson Lips’s words reverberate in my head, even hours later. When it was finally over …
The last I time I saw Ashley June, she was on a monitor screen at the Heper Institute, hunched over the kitchen workstation, furiously writing a note. I still have that note in my pocket, damp and sodden, fraying at the edges. She had risked her life, fled into the bowels of the Institute, for the smallest possibility that I’d return and rescue her.
I’ve studied that note countless times. I know the shape of every letter, every curl and dot. I take it out now, the paper damp, her handwriting blurred with moisture.
I’m @ Intro. Will wait 4 U.
Never Forget
One last time, I run my finger over her handwriting. A wind blows, cold and harsh, and I already know what I will do next. I close my eyes, unable to look as I rip off a small piece from the corner of the paper. I release the ripped piece into the wind. It whips away, fluttering like a tiny moth as it disappears into the night. I rip off another piece; and another; and another. And as the moon rises higher, I release a hundred million of these pieces into the wind, the paper in my hand diminishing. Until there remains only a piece the size of a small fingernail clipping, so small I cannot tear it any further. For a long time I hold on to this piece. Then with a silent shout of grief, I release it, and it is gone, and there is nothing left in my hand.
6
I’M SHAKEN AWAKE. David’s pale face looms over me.
“What is it?” I say. The sky is dark, it is still night. “More hunters?”
David shakes his head. “No. Something else.”
“Epap? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine.” David pauses. “It’s something … We don’t know exactly…”
I’m on my feet immediately. The current is fiercer now, a torrent, as if the river’s patience has suddenly and decisively snapped. Sprays of water, kicked up like geysers, smack down on the deck, leaving the imprint of splayed hands. The sky is as dark and chaotic as the river, clotted scabs of black.
Everyone’s looking at me, fear written all over their wide eyes and pinched lips.
“The current’s fast because of all the recent rain,” I say, trying to calm their wrangled nerves. “But I wouldn’t get too spooked over it.”
“We lost the steering poles. The current ripped them out of our hands.”
“What?”
“But that’s not why we woke you,” David says. “Can you hear that sound?”
At first, I hear nothing beyond the slap of water against the boat. But gradually, I discern a faint hiss, like static over the radio, distant but unsettling. I shut my eyes, concentrating. “Ahead of us. Farther down the river.”
“I first heard it about ten minutes ago,” Epap says quietly. “It was on and off, fluctuating. But now. Listen to it. It’s getting louder. Closer.”
I stare ahead as far as possible. Which, in this darkness, is only about fifty meters. Even the riverbanks have disappeared from sight. Fear like a dirty fingernail scrapes along my spine.
“I think that sound is a waterfall,” Epap says. “The Scientist taught us that waterfalls make a hissing sound as you approach them from afar.” He turns to me, his face dotted with spray from the river. “What do you think, Gene?”
“I don’t know the first thing about waterfalls. Before now, I thought they belonged only in fantasy novels.” I stare into the darkness ahead. The hissing has become more like a sizzling sound. Louder, more ominous.
“I think this boat is headed right for a waterfall,” Epap says. “We need to get ready to swim for the riverbank.” He looks at me and I nod back. “I’ll untie the rope off the anchor point,” he says.
Over the next fifteen minutes, the river’s fury intensifies. We get spun like an out-of-control carousel. Raindrops fall as if flung down in fury. And that ever-present hissing gains volume. We gather around Epap. He loops the rope around our bodies, tying us securely with tight knots. We squint against the spray of water and cold wind, trying to keep balance on the bobbing, spinning boat.
“Look at me,” Epap says. “Everyone. Look at me. We need to jump off this boat, swim to shore—”