The Hunted

by A. J. Scudiere

  They’d been caught up the renewed examination of the hunters. It seemed Dr. Brett had come here thinking he would tell them that they didn’t have a new species. But now that it was clear they did, he was diving in and squeezing out every bit of information he and his two new assistants could gather.

  The veterinarian glanced toward his wrist, his eyes suddenly going wide. “Shit. Yes. Sorry.”

  As the man apologized, Cage waved him away. He and Joule had far worse language in their back pockets than anything this man had said today. “We’ll clean all this up.”

  “Can I take pictures of the night hunters?” The vet was snapping his gloves off and reaching for his phone. Cage didn't comment, but he noticed the man had started using their terminology.

  The whole time they’d examined the hunters, Nate had stood a few feet back, just watching the goings on. Cage couldn't remember if his father had even said a word.

  He and Joule turned to the task of putting the organs back into the dogs. They hadn't taken many of the organs out of the bags, only a couple for the doctor to look at. So that, at least, was easy to clean up.

  Dr. Brett thanked them for the opportunity and said he’d stay in touch, but he was gone almost as fast as it had taken to look out the window and see the sun was already lower in the sky. Cage understood and hoped he made it home on time.

  The twins put the hunters back together, lifted them into bags, and stripped the table. Nate helped haul the bodies to the garage freezer, but then left before Cage even closed the lid.

  Cage noticed—though he didn't say so to his father—that they had not put any more creatures into the freezer, despite the large size of the unit. Clearly, Nate had bought it expecting to fill it up. That hadn’t happened.

  After dinner at the cleaned-down dinner table, in the room that smelled heavily of air freshener, they had voted not to put up the bait that night. Nate hadn’t voted, maybe realizing it was already two against one and there was no point.

  “We need sleep,” Joule said, as though needing to defend the choice. “I need to show up for school tomorrow. I'm assuming you do too, Cage.”

  “I have the same World History test you do.” It was a required class, and neither of them could afford to fail the course.

  He next broached the subject of college. “Are you coming with us next year, Dad? It's less than six months away.”

  “We want you to be near us, if you can do it,” Joule added between bites, her tone a little over-eager, a little too worried. “Or we could all stay here.”

  “There's not a good school for you here.” His dad had finally said something, but he didn’t look up. He continued eating his dinner as though he hadn’t spoken at all. He stabbed at his meat with the fork, seemingly angry at everything now, even food. “I like that you picked Stanford, and I think you definitely need to go.”

  “We want you to come, too,” Joule prodded.

  Nate nodded absently, but Cage could tell that it wasn't an agreement. It was merely an acceptance of what he and his sister had said. He’d seen that before from both of his parents. And that had been all Nate was willing to give. Dinner had gone on with him and Joule talking, but keeping the conversation simple.

  Cage had fallen into bed that night, exhausted from staying up watching the video of the hunters going after his mechanical bait each night. They’d learned a lot.

  But the previous night, the hunters had not come.

  It was another good reason to sleep the night through. Joule had suggested it that morning, as they’d finished a night with no hunters in view of the cameras and the bait still intact, waving its little fabric arms in the manufactured wind.

  Though his brain had run rampant even after he’d laid down, Cage had fallen asleep quickly. The alarm was going off before it felt as though he had even slept at all.

  Rolling out of bed, he almost hit the floor before his reflexes kicked in. He’d brushed his teeth, gotten dressed, and was sitting at the table eating a bowl of cereal when Joule came down the stairs. Fully dressed, she had her schoolbag slung over her shoulder, but the expression on her face worried him.

  She’d speculated, “Do you think they figured it out that our bait man is not real? Or that there's not enough meat on it to make it worth coming anymore?”

  He wondered, but before he could think about it, she looked at him and asked, “Where's Dad?”

  43

  Joule was exhausted. They'd not gone to school and had missed an English exam. Though the twins had been gung ho about showing up for their tests—on time—before, she’d lost some of that luster and was now thinking she would test when she could.

  At least the teachers just seemed glad when students showed back up to take the test. But now she and Cage had been out all day looking for their father.

  As soon as she’d walked down the steps, she’d asked where her father was. Cage didn't know… and that had changed everything this morning.

  They’d immediately searched the whole house, top to bottom, and found no sign of their father. They’d next checked the driveway and saw all three cars were still there. So they searched the house again, figuring surely they had just missed their dad the first time around.

  When that didn't work, Cage insisted Joule eat something.

  Grabbing a granola bar, she headed out the door behind her brother. They scoured the entire property. There were a good handful of acres that they owned, and Joule walked through the woods where they had seen the night hunter during the day before. She was now not only afraid that they wouldn’t find her father, but that she wasn't alert enough. What if one of the night hunters was out during the day and she didn’t see it until it was too late?

  She turned to Cage then. “Do you think dad would have come out here into the woods?”

  Cage shook his head as he held a branch out of the way for her, his eyes scanning as far in to the brush as he could. “I don't know. I don't think so. But I'd hate if he was out here walking around and we were at home worried.”

  She shrugged. “We already missed the test. The day is shot. I just want to find Dad.” She realized as soon as it was out of her mouth that it was a dumb thing to say. Of course, Cage wanted exactly the same thing.

  Nate had not turned up in the woods or behind the barn or in any of the corners of their property. They hadn’t seen him—or anyone—in the distance and they turned around, eyes still open, hope still on hold. Joule arrived back at the house, a little bit sweaty, a little bit irritable, and a lot afraid.

  She opened the door and immediately yelled into the empty space of the game room, hoping it would reverberate through the house. “Dad. Dad!”

  Cage had let her be the one to holler out, but he followed behind. Rather than sticking with her as she ran through the house yelling, he'd stayed and opened every door, checked every closet and every bathroom.

  Finding nothing in the far reaches of the house, but hearing Cage opening doors behind her, Joule turned back. She crossed paths with him in the living room as he was peering behind the couch.

  “Do you really think Dad's hiding back there?”

  Cage looked up, not appreciating her sense of humor. “No, I think he might have had a heart attack or a stroke and fallen over. I think it’s possible all we're going to see is a foot. So I’m looking everywhere.”

  Joule, duly chastised, suddenly began thinking of other options. “I'm going to go check the cars.” She'd run outside then, wondering if her father had fallen over in the backseat and they simply hadn't been able to see him. Each new idea brought a surge of hope—even that he might have had a heart attack and was lying somewhere, waiting to be found.

  Unfortunately, Nate Mazur wasn’t in or under any of the cars.

  She’d come back inside to find Cage standing in the living room, his hands on his hips as he turned a circle, as though he might see his father if he just rotated one more time.

  “What's next?” she posed, then answered her own question. �
�The neighborhood. We have to go around the neighborhood.”

  Cage, apparently having given up on finding their father in the house, motioned for her to lead the way. Then, as she was heading out the door, he remembered to stuff her pockets with cracker packs and more granola bars.

  He'd handed her a soda, popping the tab on it as he did and saying, “Sugar and fizz. It will help.” Then he darted back inside to get his own.

  They were down the street, soda and food in hand, as quick as they could be. She ate by rote, knowing she had to stay fueled, because if they found her father they might have to leap into action—save him, carry him, do some number of hours of rescue. So she ate and drank quickly, but tried to keep her eyes alert.

  Joule pulled out her phone and was dialing her father's number, wondering why she hadn't thought of that before, but the panic Nate Mazur had inspired by going missing was making her think in odd circles.

  “Good idea,” Cage said almost absently, his eyes scanning the houses they passed as though his father might peek out a window.

  They walked the length of the street and back up. Almost no one was out. The neighbors who had jobs had gone to work. In the distance around the corner, one mother pushed her child in a stroller, but she barely even waved to the two teenagers now almost running up and down the street. They passed quickly through the little neighborhood intersection, checking in every direction before turning around and heading back home.

  Joule warred with herself as she tried to keep her thoughts steady and her breathing even. Each time a thought crept in that her father had gone truly missing, she tamped it down. Nate Mazur was too smart for that. Nate Mazur knew how to stay alive. Nate Mazur wouldn't leave his kids like this. Nate Mazur…

  She dialed the phone again for something to do. Again it rang until it went to voicemail, but she'd already left a message. She'd already sent texts. And she'd already waited and gotten nothing back.

  Reaching the end of the long driveway, Cage turned to her and said, “What we need to do now is be smart. We've been panicked, but we need to toughen up and we need to figure this out. So we're going to go back into the house and we're going to figure out what we missed the first time.”

  Joule shook her head and shrugged at him, showing just how confused she was at his comments. “We didn’t do anything wrong. We haven’t been dumb. I don’t understand.”

  Cage looked at her. “We did what we should have, but we’re done with it. We were looking for Dad. I’m hoping he is in that house right now,” he said, his pace eating up the driveway and getting him closer to the door.

  “We're going into the game room, and if we’re lucky, he'll be sitting there watching TV wondering where we are. But if he's not, we need to play it smart now. We can’t find Dad, so we need to find information. We need to figure out if his phone is gone or if it's in the house. We need to figure out if he left us a note that maybe—I don't know—fell off of the table or behind the fridge. We need to figure out if anything is missing besides him.”

  Joule caught on. It was time to play detective, and she could do that. She could keep her head in the game and figure out where her father was. Her brother was right; Investigating was far better than panicking.

  Cage bolted through open the door, hope obviously still leading him. This time, he was the one yelling for their father as he barreled through the house, no longer checking in closets or behind couches. That had all been tried. He called out again, though there was no answer.

  “Dial his phone,” Cage commanded and Joule did it, but they didn’t hear it ring.

  “It's either not in the house or it's not on.” She wondered why and how they had not put tracking devices on their phones. She told her brother exactly that and he agreed, but suggested they do it later.

  They spent thirty minutes searching the house again, but not for a person this time. They found no note, either missed or misplaced, and no cell phone left behind. But they did figure out that the machete was gone, and so was the short sword her father favored.

  Joule stood in front of her parents’ closet and held the door open, pointing to the clothing that hung there. Two sets of chain mail hung next to each other—but only two. “Cage, his chain mail is missing. And look, look at these clothes in the bottom of the closet. I never saw him wear these.”

  Nate favored khakis and lightweight, light-colored pants. He liked button-down shirts. In a heap in the closet were heavy black pants; black, long-sleeved, tight-knit shirts; and the occasional dark, knit hat.

  That was when it hit Joule.

  “He’s been going out,” she said to Cage, but as she turned, her brother was closer than she expected, his face drawing into a tight knot of anger as he looked at the missing pieces.

  “Where do you think he is?” she asked, but Cage only shook his head in a tight way that said he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “We need to go back out. At least this gives us a better idea of where to start.” She pressed the issue, but Cage shook his head again and pointed out the window.

  “We have to close up, Joule. It's getting dark.”

  44

  The first night that Nate was missing, Cage lay in his bed wide awake and stunned.

  Though he heard the soft sounds of crying coming from his sister's room, and he understood them, he wasn't as far along in the process as she was. He'd not yet admitted to himself what had really happened.

  So the next day, he’d gotten them both up and ready and they’d gone out searching again. They’d done the same things—walking in the woods, checking down the streets, calling their father’s cell phone, with basically the same results.

  This time, they checked where they could in the backyards of neighbors, went farther down each street, hopped the fences at the back of their property, and combed through the open fields. They still found no trace of their father.

  It was Joule who turned to him as he dragged a long stick through a pond and hoped he didn’t snag on anything. She said, “We don't have a way to track dad's phone, but the cell phone company does!”

  She had a signal and so immediately called in. She was told that yes, a reasonable triangulation of the phone itself could be made if it was still on. If not, they could locate the last known point where the phone was active.

  Cage listened in as the man’s voice came over the line. “I understand that you’re looking for a person, and it’s important that you understand we can’t locate the person, only the phone.”

  Cage rolled his eyes as Joule replied sweetly, “Of course. But that would be excellent if you could run that for us.” Joule was keeping herself together in a way that Cage was unable to. Maybe it was because she'd cried herself to sleep the night before.

  But when she asked the operator for a time frame, she was told there was nothing they could offer. Their request would be placed in a queue and performed in the order received. “The number of requests we’ve been getting have been soaring over the past year. We have more coming in every day. I’m sorry.”

  They would have to get in line. Cage realized then that it didn't matter to the phone company that their father was missing. Every request in that line was for a missing person.

  His sister politely answered all the questions to make the inquiry official and said, “Thank you,” as she tried to hide the deep disappointment from her voice. But Cage heard it. Or maybe that was his own disappointment.

  That night, he'd fallen into bed, exhausted both emotionally and physically. Cage thought that would help him fall asleep immediately, but instead, he found that it was him who curled up into the fetal position as silent tears rolled down his face, dampening his pillow. He tried to imagine what had possibly gone so wrong.

  He wanted to run into the other room, shake his sister awake, and ask her, “Why did Dad not stay? Was it just because he couldn’t live without Mom? Did he really think he would win against the dogs? Or was it a suicide mission?”

  Cage did none of that. There wer
e no sounds coming from Joule’s room tonight, and he wasn't willing to wake her up if she was finally getting some rest. He prayed that his father would turn back up—and the strange way Nate had been acting recently, it seemed as if he might.

  But Nate didn’t come back Sunday, either. They hadn't gone out looking. There was nowhere else to look. The phone company wasn't going to call, not in twenty-four hours. So they’d made breakfast, talked casually, watched TV, and hadn’t left the house.

  “Are you ready for the World History exam tomorrow?” Joule had asked him over lunch of mac and cheese served on trays in front of the TV.

  “Are we going back tomorrow?”

  Joule paused as though thinking, though it was clear she'd already thought this through. Maybe she was just letting him catch up. “I think we have to go. It’s plausible that Dad will turn up in a day or two. If he does, we’ll all be glad we put in the effort to graduate. And if he doesn't, well, it will be even more important that we put in the effort to graduate.”

  Cage felt the hand reach into his chest, grab him, and squeeze hard. It was the first time either of them had spoken the idea out loud: If Dad doesn't return.

  “Do you have it all figured out?” he asked his sister.

  The look on her face—the way she suddenly stopped eating and stared into space—said clearly that no, she didn't. But it was equally as clear that she had been thinking about some of it.

  “I’m sure I’ve missed plenty. And it will pop up and bite us in the ass. I’m just trying to stay ahead of the tidal wave of crap that keeps coming.”

  That was something Cage understood. But Joule was way ahead of him, and he struggled to catch up to her as she started in again.

  “Like, right now, I just realized that I told Dad he had to pay for the house. And now, I don't think that we do.”