The Prey (17 page)

22

A
S
KRUGMAN AND
his two henchmen, along with Sissy and I, cross the cobbled town square, Krugman points above us. A long cable stretches from the roof of a nearby cottage out toward the fortress wall. “That cable line supplies my office with power,” Krugman says. “For all my toys and gadgets I keep there. Easiest way to find my office is to look up. The power cable will lead you right there.”

It does. Right out of the cluster of cottages, off the cobblestone path, into the meadows. All the way to Krugman’s office located in the corner tower of the fortress wall.

We climb up a tight spiral staircase inside the wall, the metal clanging under our boots as we corkscrew upward. At the top, we’re led down a long corridor and into his office. It’s impressive. Floor-to-ceiling windows span the diameter of the office and frame an impressive, panoramic view. The sharp, crisp tone of the interior is softened by the blending of traditional furniture. Rustic oak bookshelves line one side of the office, the shelves curiously empty of books but filled instead with framed pictures—clearly drawn by children—of rainbows and sunsets and ponies. On the other side of the office is a large flagstone fireplace. An oval carpet, wheat-colored with floral borders, lies in front of a fireplace. Above the fireplace hangs a framed painting of lush green meadows and blue lakes and flowers and a blazing hot yolk of a sun.

A girl—barely thirteen years old—steps forward. She serves each of the elders with a tumbler of whisky.

“Have a seat,” Krugman says, indicating an odd-looking sofa chair. We hesitate. “It’s called a chaise longue,” he says, noticing me studying it. “That’s the classic pronunciation, but of course, you wouldn’t know that. Look at that handwoven sea-grass base. The subtle creaking sound when you sit or lie on it, how it converts into a bed, just enough room for two to snuggle. The pared-down cushions, the organic aesthetics. Love it.” He smiles. “But you didn’t come here to ask about office décor, did you? Come, what questions burden you?”

Sissy and I look at each other. I start to speak, stop. I’m not sure how to begin.

Krugman, noting my struggle, smiles congenially. His chin presses inward, folding into a double chin. His black mole pops out, its hair fanning out like rat whiskers. He smiles, settles into his high-backed leather chair. “Here we are,” he says. “Have at me. With whatever ails you.”

I clear my throat. “First off, we want to thank you for everything. Your hospitality has been amazing, the welcome more than we could have ever dreamed. The food, the singing, the—”

“Where do the train tracks lead to?” Sissy says.

Krugman’s eyes swivel slowly around with relish, eyelids closing languidly before opening. They clamp down on Sissy like wet gums. It is almost as if he has been waiting for this very moment when he can finally stare at her unabated.

Sissy is unfazed by his look. “And that’s just to start with. Tell us why you were hardly surprised by our arrival. If I were living here and six travelers materialized out of nowhere, I’d be beyond myself with shock. Instead, it almost seemed like you were expecting us. Tell us why.”

“I can. It might take—”

“And tell us more about this village. Where do you get all the food? All the supplies. This furniture. The glass. The freaking piano. Up here in the mountain, you should be barely scraping by. Instead, you’re living in the lap of luxury. You might have impressed Epap and the others with this place, but to me, it all begs more suspicion than awe.”

“And tell us about the Scientist, about Elder Joseph,” I say. “How did he die? Who was he? When—”

Krugman smiles as if—

“… there’s something humorous about our questions?” Sissy says tersely, glaring at him.

Krugman leans back and bellows out laughter that jiggles his whole belly. The cyclopean mole on his chin peers out at us again. “Nayden nark, nayden nark,” he says, his eyes moistening. “I don’t think that at all. It’s just that the two of you are such a charming pair, the way you keep finishing each other’s thoughts. So cute.” He nods at the server. She walks past the two henchmen, leaving immediately.

“Fact is,” Krugman says as the office door swings shut, “I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with you. With Gene anyway. As the eldest male in the group, he’s the de jure leader, no?” He gets up from his chair, turns his back to us.

“It’ll be easier,” he says, “if I start at the very beginning. I don’t know how much you know, so let’s assume you know nothing.” For a long time, he stares outside. “This might be difficult for you to … accept. If at any moment you’d rather I—”

“We’re ready,” Sissy says. “Just tell us already.”

He slants his body sideways, staring outside. And that is how he speaks, not at us, but outside. “We call them
duskers
—the things that want to eat you, drink your blood.” Krugman turns to us. “But I see you’ve already been told. What do you call them? I’m rather curious, actually.”

“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, they’re just … people. We are the abnormalities, the freaks. The hepers.” I spit the last word out contemptuously.

“I’m about to tell you something that is going to, well, astound you, for lack of a better word. I’m sorry it’s coming at you all at once, but I’m afraid there’s no other way about it.” And now he angles himself back toward the window, keeping his eyes fixed on the distant mountains.

“Centuries ago, for reasons too complex to get into, the world was being torn apart by schism and faction between warring nations. The major superpowers—called America, China, India—were amassing mind-boggling arsenals of nuclear, cyber, and biochemical weapons. Smaller nations, afraid of being left out, were forced to pick sides and fall in line. In a world saturated with nuclear, cyber, and biochemical arms, and stacked to the rim with every arsenal of counterattack, it became clear: nobody was going to pull the trigger. To do so would be to commit catastrophic suicide, to annihilate the whole world in hours, if not minutes. Everyone would lose, there would be no victor.

“And so ensued a different kind of arms race, the objective of which was not to amass the most weapons, but to build a new kind of weapon. A secret weapon so unconventional and unanticipated that it would both take out the unsuspecting enemy nations and allow an actual victor to emerge from the rubble. But what was this weapon? What would it look like, what would it be?”

One of the elders walks to Krugman, whisky bottle in hand. He refills Krugman’s tumbler. Krugman’s fingers whiten against the glass. He throws his head back, gulps his drink down.

He continues. “A small group of renegade scientists in a little island country named Sri Lanka tried to engineer a new kind of weapon. They called themselves the Ceylonites, a grandiose name for what was nothing more than a band of postgrad engineering students with too much time on their hands, too much school debt to repay, and who, during a global depression, could not turn down an entrepreneurial opportunity of a lifetime. To develop military arms: not nuclear, not cyber, not biochemical. But genetic.”

He gives off a shrill laugh, high-pitched, the kind that is not itself convinced of the underlying humor. “A genetic weapon. In short, a genetically mutated supersoldier. Resistant to nuclear fallout. Resistant to every form of biochemical warfare known to man. And, being fully fleshed and free of computer chips, resistant to cyberattack. And not just resistant, but resilient. A supersoldier capable of attacking not through the well-protected channels of the sky, air, and cybernet, but through boots on the ground. What nation maintained defense systems against a land campaign anymore? All land defenses had long fallen into disuse, crumbling Maginot Lines as sturdy and useful as the cobwebs that filled them. But a land campaign by resilient supersoldiers would be brutal, surprising, devastating. What if such a supersoldier could be genetically engineered?”

Krugman pours himself another shot. He swirls the whisky in his hand, seeming not to notice the few drops that spill out. “What if, indeed? We shall never know. The financiers got cold feet and pulled the plug on the whole operation. But one fringe fanatic member of the Ceylonites, a twenty-seven-year-old man by the name of Ashane Alagaratnam, was obsessed with the experiments; even after financing fell through and the lab shut down, he stole supplies and equipment from the compound. Disavowed by the Ceylonite leadership, Alagaratnam continued his research in his hideaway, makeshift lab. The fool.

“The authorities eventually caught on, arrested all those involved. Except for Alagaratnam. By that time, he was on the lam, had gone dark, was off the grid. We know scant little about what happened over the next few years. But what we do know: he eventually ran out of money until he didn’t have enough finances to purchase even test mice. And so he used the only test mouse he could afford.”

“He used himself,” I whisper.

Krugman nods. “Something went wrong. Horribly wrong. Only he didn’t know it. The changes being wrought in him, they gestated under his skin, hidden from view. So he kept on experimenting on himself, oblivious to what he was unleashing inside. When the symptoms broke out, they did so slowly at first. Heightened sensitivity to sunlight, a growing disdain for vegetables coupled with a newfound relish for all meats, the rarer and bloodier the better. Then one day…”

“His symptoms became more obvious,” Sissy ventures.

Krugman laughs, his eyes briefly clenching shut. “To say they became more obvious … that’s putting it mildly.
Cataclysmic
is more like it. Alagaratnam kept a video journal, now a preserved historical artifact. You can see his rapid disintegration on-screen. The symptoms gushed out over the course of only a few hours. What started out as a zit-sized mark on his face, ended up a … cataclysmic explosion of nightmarish proportions mere hours later.” He takes another swig, chugs it.

“The saving grace was that this all took place on the small island nation of Sri Lanka. Obviously, that island nation was devastated, the whole population transmuted within a week. But at least the outbreak was contained. Outbound planes were immediately shot down, boats easily sunk. And that’s all we had to do to contain it. Watch the skies, monitor the seas. Let the sunlight kill the hideously transformed. Eventually, the transmuted people ventured outside only after dusk. That’s how they got their name, duskers. These weren’t zombie savages incapable of reflection and self-awareness, or brutes filled with hedonistic, prurient tendencies. But for their lust for human blood and flesh, they were otherwise … civil. Intelligent. They knew who they were, spoke and thought with self-reflection. When food whittled away—when there were no more humans, no more animals to feed on—they didn’t turn to cannibalism. They simply starved to death. Or ran, in group suicidal pacts, into the blazing sun.”

“And so that’s how it ended?” I ask.

Krugman’s eyes squeeze shut again, and his whole body starts jiggling up and down. No sound escapes his mouth. A line of tears streaks out, coursing down his chubby cheeks. The strands of hair on his mole lick up the tears.

“Really? That’s how it ended? I mean, really? Then how did all those duskers end up out there? Then why are we, centuries later, still dealing with them?” His laughter suddenly stops on a dime. “You can’t stop a contagion,” he says, his voice beginning to slur.

“What happened next?” Sissy asks.

“To this day,” he says, wiping at his tears, “we don’t know how the contagion leaked. Not with certainty, anyway. Some have speculated that a bird—with a smidgen of dusker saliva on its feathers—must have flown undetected from Sri Lanka to India. And then perhaps a kindhearted child picked up the wounded bird, and the dot of saliva rubbed against … a paper cut? Who knows?”

He runs his finger along the rim of the tumbler. “Things looked desperate for a while. Whole continents were taken over by the duskers, the world population left huddling in forgotten corners of the globe. The South Pole, with its twenty-four hours of sunlight, was initially very popular. That is, until the summer ended and the season of unceasing night began.” His lips press together. “All over the world, these were very dark times. When the demise of humankind seemed inevitable and imminent.”

“What happened then?” I say. “To humankind.”

“A miracle. Historical accounts are sketchy, but a game changer came out of nowhere.”

“A game changer?” I say.

“Actually, more like a destiny changer. Felt that way, anyway. On this little island off the coast of China called Cheung Chau. A young woman by the name of Jenny Shen, working alone and hidden in an otherwise abandoned island village, heroically found an antidote. I don’t have time to go into the details, but suffice it to say that the antidote was successful. Over the course of many decades, the tide turned. Eventually, we had the duskers on the run. Ultimately, ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the duskers were wiped out.”

“What about the remaining hundredth of one percent?” Sissy asks.

Krugman pauses. “They were immune to the antidote. For whatever reason, instead of killing them, the antidote only made the few stronger, stouter. Faster. Scarier. But this pesky group was small enough in number that we were eventually able to round them all up, encage them. They were about two weeks from orders of extermination when bleeding-heart liberals and the religious right joined hands.” He spits out the next few words. “They made strange bedfellows, let me tell you. With a unified, formidable voice, they urged that if humans were indeed the more enlightened species, then we could not subject duskers to execution. The liberal left championed the duskers’ inalienable rights. The evangelical right claimed that the duskers possessed souls capable of redemption, souls that could be saved. Blah, blah, blah. The fools, both camps. And the general public, too, for buying into it.

“The short end of it all is that the remaining duskers—two hundred and seventy-three of them—had their executions commuted and were instead sentenced to exile. After some debate, the international tribunals elected to throw the duskers into the desert. Into an abandoned city in the desert, to be exact, a perfect prison with already-constructed homes and hotels and buildings sitting empty. We erased their memories, then threw them out there. Gave them some raw materials to work with. We felt certain that the hundreds of miles of desert under a scorching sun made for an uncrossable buffer between them and us. And it has: it’s proven to be the thickest prison bar, the securest prison facility ever. A veritable moat of acid, an impassable galaxy between us and them.”