Man Hunt

by K. Edwin Fritz

  The women woke to the morning sunshine feeling refreshed, fed, and warm. It was by necessity that they all slept on the second floor of the massive fortress. Despite the disagreements that women living together inevitably bring, there was simply nowhere else available. The rest of this grand hotel from days gone by had been fenced, gutted, and utterly transformed.

  While the ground floor retained the closest resemblance to its former uses– offices, an impressive kitchen, and a large conference room were all still fully functional– it was the basement, of course, that had had the most extensive renovations. And while the third floor was technically the most unchanged, it was also the most disused. Only one corner office and the central foyer whose windows overlooked the front and rear lawns were ever used by anyone. All other rooms had been emptied and padlocked years before.

  Though each of these nineteen women had their own unique skills and island duties, each also maintained a physical strength that only touched upon their even greater strengths within. They had worked hard, most extraordinarily so, to overcome the demons that had brought them to this exotic, radical place and reach their current state of might and grace. But each had also suffered, of course. And ultimately this was the common bond that united them, for none ever forgot the abuse they had suffered by the hard hands and sharp tongues of the various men of their pasts.

  For most, their intense schedules made for an instant sleep entirely demanding of that recuperating rest which mysteriously keeps us all alive. The deeper, more relaxed slumber that allows for dreams, however, was assuredly rare. Yet when they did dream, these women, too, endured nightmares. True night terrors, in fact, because they almost always dreamed of days past and woke believing– for a few moments at least– that these pasts had returned and that their suffering had never been vanquished.

  CHAPTER 2

  DESIRE

  1

  Each morning, somewhere within the city's dusty ruins, hours of pure and wonderful silence were broken by the sound of hard rubber squealing against old asphalt, and all manner of nearby men woke instantly, their eyes popping open in a simultaneous fight-or-flight response that is ingrained into us all at birth.

  One young man among them– a man on that very cusp of ignorance and experience– had been surviving for three months since his release from the training rooms deep within the island's fortress. He had been careful to follow the women's strict rules during that time, and found himself proud of having accomplished no infractions. Already he had been transferred to the second stage of his formal education. He could only hope to progress as quickly to the third stage and then, perhaps, home.

  When he woke, his eyes scanned for the vehicle that made the sound even before they could be of use. Colors flashed across his mind: brown-red-green, yet he identified nothing.

  Panic quickly surfaced and began its process of domination. Only his most base and useful strength, courage, kept him sane. He fought the panic, knowing only that the drivers of the car yearned for it. Their greatest desire was for him and the others like him to live in complete and never-ending horror.

  In his fight, the young man began mumbling to himself, repeating a short series of soothing words he had taught himself through weeks of endured torture. Yet deep within him another fight stormed on. It was an incessant fight. Interminable. Perpetual. It was a fight he suffered in even his sleep now. In his nightmares.

  My name is 'Obe,' one half of him said. Obe like robe. Obe like globe. Obe like lobe and strobe and especially probe! My name is Obe.

  No! his other half insisted. It isn't! It's what they want you to think. What they forced into you. That's not your true self.

  It is! the first voice maintained. What came before is gone. 'Obe' is who you are now. Who you will always be.

  But the internal debate, like the susurration from his mouth, was easily ignored. Foremost on the young man's mind was the car. Already he was on his toes, ready to run. On the big toe of his right foot, as bare and filthy as a feral child, his toenail had torn on the pavement when he had pounced to position. He wouldn't discover it for hours.

  Obe's vision

  Obe like robe…Obe like globe…

  soon returned, and the colors morphed into objects. A red brick wall stood behind the empty green dumpster he had slept behind. Brown rust covered one whole wall of the dumpster, slowly reclaiming its components to nature. All around him the air was tinted gray, concealing every object, large and small, as long as possible from the approaching sunrise. The young man held his breath, stopping his mumbles with a cognizant effort, and listened.

  The car that woke him was not in sight, but he could hear its low, idling gargle somewhere very near. A thin, ominous cloud of dust had risen violently from the car's screeching arrival, and now a gentle wind blew it down the length of the alley where he waited.

  Then the car announced itself with a roar of its engine.

  "Silver!" he blurted out, then cursed under his breath for doing so. This was one word from his litany, and he was still learning to control it. I am not scum, he thought. I'm not guilty. I can outrun them. I can.

  A second roar dropped him to his knees, scraping the skin there despite the stiff fabric of his issued dark-blue jumpsuit. The string of words came again then, mumbled over and over. Maybe they'll just drive away, he thought over the muttered litany. Sometimes they just drive away. Tears were squeezing out of his eyes, drawing tracts of clean skin on his cheeks. He began rocking forward and back, further thinning the layer of skin from the flesh over his knees.

  A third, monstrous roar let loose from the car and Obe's throat

  Obe like lobe and strobe and especially probe!

  squeezed out a small whimper.

  "Silver," he said more quietly. Yet the simple sound forced another thin layer of sanity to rip away from the abused fabric of his mind. This was more taunting, more torture, than he had yet encountered out in the field. It was killing him. A sudden spasm of panic hit him, and he nearly bolted from behind the dumpster. He was primordial, knowing only RUN! in that moment of delicacy.

  But just before his basal instinct reached the point of no return, another nearby man yelled aloud, and it was thus that Obe was saved.

  When a fourth roar of the engine came, Obe was able to control his tongue while the weaker man finally jumped from his own hiding place and gave in to his own unspeakable urge to run. The car did not immediately follow, but watched, impressively patient. Obe, too, saw the man go, but what he saw as he looked closer drained the last of his panic as a surge of desire pumped him tightly in the chest.

  The stranger was wearing sneakers… sneakers so new they might have been on their maiden run right before Obe's eyes. Sneakers! he thought, amazed. NEW sneakers! He watched as the other man ran down the alley, and for a moment Obe slipped into an imaginary world where he ran without landing his bare feet on pebbles or cracked asphalt or the occasional chunk of some long-lost broken glass, and with ease his desire elevated to greed.

  Then the car engine screamed into life again, the tires squealing with bloodlust as the brake was gradually released. When they gripped the pavement solidly and tore off after the fleeing man, Obe flung himself against the brick wall at his back. The car raced past– his eyes could not help but find and focus on the mangled, bloodstained grill– kicking up dried leaves and a new cloud of dust. He could do nothing but cower, his mumbles returning full-blown. As the car shot through the end of the alley and screamed around the corner, Obe felt the shame of having again falling to their precise expectations.

  But soon the car's song of roaring engine and squealing tires was lost to the city's maze of concrete, and he knew it was over. He had survived.

  Obe

  like robe… Obe like globe…

  hugged his knees and allowed his silver litany to slow, fade, and eventually die as the cloud of dust settled over him.

  2

  Obe reached up and scratched his head through a mass of thick, dark
hair. It was stiff and coarse and hadn't seen so much as a bar of soap since the day of his release.

  My mind, he thought once more. How could I let them take my mind? So many memories had been obliterated from the constant, brutal torture and subsequent brainwashing he had endured. His family. His friends. Even his name. So little knowledge of his true self was left. He thought of himself as 'Obe', a pathetic label of some kind that he knew was not right. It suggested small things, weak things. Things that screamed till their throats were hoarse. 'Obe' was not his name, but he knew no other. His real name began with a 'C', he thought. Or perhaps a 'Ch' or 'Cr' even.

  It could be an 'M' for all you remember, he told himself. This loss, this empty part of himself, taunted him again, and he tried once more to remember what had somehow been stolen. But as always, there was only that sound of 'C', and he soon swore angrily.

  What his mind had retained were a few hundred scraps of disembodied images and sounds, most as meaningless as foreign road signs. But one, a vague knowledge of a loving brother, he held onto with desperation. It was the only piece of himself that was still wholly his. We played catch across a stream, he thought, only we used rocks. It was fun. We laughed a lot. He had no images of this memory, if that's what it truly was, but still his mind had always insisted the events themselves were true.

  Obe breathed out a full sigh, his ribcage exposing how much weight he had lost. He concentrated, forcing himself to think positively, and soon stood and stretched his back and arms. He'd escaped another hunt just now, as simple as it had been. He was another small step closer to home, to his brother. It felt good to stand so open to the world around him, to a form of vulnerability. He was, for the moment, unafraid.

  He turned and walked carefully on his sore feet in the direction the man in the green sneakers and the car had gone. His thoughts returned to the sneakers. How wonderful it would be to own a pair once more. To be able to run in comfort. His feet had been ripped apart one cut at a time the last few days. The women had taken his when he'd been transferred to the island's "blue sector". They said it was part of his education.

  Obe stopped at the end of the alley and observed the wide street it opened onto. To the left the street went steeply downhill. This was the direction the man had run. Good for him, Obe thought. Downhill is faster. To the right the hill quickly leveled off, and Obe could see how the road bowed in the center from decades of nature's abuse. The yellow lines that had once separated peaceful drivers were faded and rose higher, even, than the sidewalk. The surrounding buildings stood no more than four stories high and were tightly packed together. Most streets were connected by a wide alley like the one Obe had slept in, but occasionally the buildings were separated by only a two-foot walkway. Obe had slept in the walkways before but had grown to distrust them. Though they were a perfect harbor from the cars, they were also particularly susceptible to human invasion. One couldn't run very well in such a small opening, and it was far too easy to become trapped.

  Obe turned left– downhill– following the cooling trail of the green-sneakered man. His long legs carried him quickly. Subconsciously, one ear continued listening for cars. His eyes darted all around, falling constantly on splotch after splotch of faded darkness on the old asphalt that marked yet another murdered man. The first week he had actually kept track of these imprints of death. But having surpassed five hundred in that short time had been too demoralizing, and he stopped counting. Three months later, he still saw each one, noticed each distinctive pattern, and cursed the women under his breath.

  He knew turning right would have quickly taken him out of the structured blocks of town and into the misleading safety of the hills, but this morning Obe was curious. This area of the old city was new to him, and he wanted to explore.

  He unzipped the front of his jumpsuit, getting it snagged on one bent, metal tooth. He brought out a small chunk of stale bread about the size of an apricot and examined it for mold before pulling off a tiny corner and eating the rest.

  As he passed buildings, walkways, and alleys, he looked for a rain puddle to bathe off the layer of grime on the back of his neck so recently accentuated by dust. Here and there were the remnants of civilized life that so often mocked him. A hand-painted sign hanging on the inside of a barred window advertised "All Jewelry 25% Off". In the adjacent store, similarly hidden behind thick bars, was one reading "SCUBA DAN'S SCUBA WORLD." Further on he passed what looked like a once-prosperous restaurant. Inside he could see a faded chalkboard with all of the daily specials lost to some aged oblivion. Only the top line: "Crab Leg Nite Every Tue & Wed" was still barely legible. Two bars covering the right-hand window of this place had been bowed inward toward each other, and the glass immediately behind it had been shattered and lay on the ground. How exactly this feat had been accomplished Obe didn't know, but he was quite sure the culprit hadn't found the food he'd been looking for. Still further on, he passed a bicycle shop. Here he stopped and peered in, cutting the glare of the sun behind him by slipping his wrists through the bars and cupping his hands to the glass.

  In the murk and gloom of the store, he saw an empty room save for a dozen hooks on a pegboard wall and a single, spokeless wheel bent horribly out of shape and propped against the side of a dusty clerk's counter.

  Obe briefly recalled an old cartoon where cavemen traveled around on a single concrete wheel with a stick slid through its middle. He couldn't recall the cartoon's name, of course, or even if it was a panel comic in the Sunday paper or an animated show from Saturday mornings he assumed he shared with his brother, but he smiled at the memory anyway, glad to have had such a treat on a morning begun so poorly.

  Soon he came to a thick, white line painted on the road. This was unlike the forgotten yellow ones that ran down the center. This paint was still bright, and it cut diagonally across the road. To both the left and right he saw that it rose straight up the sides of buildings. Obe had stopped walking when he saw it,

  My name is Obe. Obe like robe. Obe like globe…

  and now he turned around and went the other direction. His heart thumped just a bit harder until he was safely away. The women had said he was not permitted to cross the white line. They'd hunt him if they saw him in the wrong sector. And they'd hunt to kill, not play.

  The man with the sneakers wore green, he thought. They're going to kill him for being in blue sector. It was a simple but obvious truth, and all he could do was move on.

  Minutes later he discovered a shallow pothole with a half-inch of two-day-old rainwater. He carefully placed one hand in and pulled drop after drop into his palm with the fingers of his other hand. Then he raised it to his lips and sucked the water into his mouth. It was stale, teeming with some kind of silt, and barely enough to swallow. But it was water, and his dry tongue savored every drop.

  He looked down at the remaining water still in the pothole. His reflection wavered in the rippling puddle, slowing quickly to reveal a face as dirty as the water itself. The thick hair was long, growing over the tops of his ears and reaching toward the base of his neck. Surrounding the nose he saw the small red blotches of acne he'd never quite grown out of. A pair of deep-set eyes looked back at him, their color hidden in the shadows made by the brows. Under the eyes, dark circles told a sad story of frequent nightmares and sleep deprivation. On the chin and cheeks fine hairs grew so sparse as to appear like just more dirt.

  It was the face of a teenager who had spent a long, lazy summer eating too much sugar and watching far too much late-night television. Obe wondered again if this was, in part, the face of his brother. He wondered which features would be the same, and which were unique. But again, yet again, he could recall nothing, and he slapped a hand at the reflection, destroying it.

  3

  Rubbing vigorously with his hands, Obe cleaned his face, neck, underarms, and chest, wishing again for that missing bar of soap or even a full basin of clear water. He moved away from the pothole feeling nevertheless refreshed. The car that had ruined
his rare, peaceful sleep and even his jealousy at the sneakers were now forgotten.

  He hoped to find more men that day. It had been three days since his transferal and he had yet to make an acquaintance in his new sector. He didn't allow himself to even think of the word 'friend'. Friends were things of the past, of his other life. Even before he'd been released from the fortress, he had given up the idea of making a true friend.

  Moments after his pseudo-bath Obe did finally meet another man, but he immediately proved to be neither acquaintance nor friend.

  He jumped from a walkway, screaming and flailing his skeletal arms like a sapling tree in a strong wind. Obe stopped, startled into immobility. The man's scream drew out long and wavering until it finally died in an empty sigh. He had a thick, full beard that tangled halfway down his chest with white hairs worming throughout its otherwise black mass. On top of his head grew another bush of wild black laced with crisp, white squiggles. His jumpsuit was also black, and even as Obe pulled back defensively and began his subconscious murmurs, he realized that this man was in his third and final stage of education.

  Obe had never met a man from the black sector before, but the rumors were that they were all crazy. And in direct accordance with this thought, the man in black bellowed another hoarse, eerie cry of pure desperation. He leaped forward, and Obe

  like lobe

  was suddenly sure there would be a car filled with murdering women nearby to hear.

  They'll find us, hunt us! Obe thought even as his mouth formed the word 'silver'. He'll get us both killed! He's insane! An instant later the man was ripping Obe's jumpsuit open and plunging a hand inside. He felt around, grabbing and scratching at Obe's belly, and his elemental scream did not falter.