The son moved silently, hiding in the shadows of the massive spires. His father, the hunter, smiled.
“There’s no need for stealth.” The hunter laughed. “Not on this hunt.”
The son looked at his father in confusion. “We don’t need to be sneaky?”
“Not for hucows.”
The son regained a casual walk as he trailed behind his father.
“I always thought that these hunts were hard.”
The hunter smiled. “And when your mother asks, I want you to tell her it was tough.” He winked. “Trust me, you’ll understand when you’re married… From one man to another.”
Being called a man gave the son a small sense of elation. He straightened his posture a bit.
“Now what you wanna look for are the lights.” The hunter said. He scanned his surroundings. Most of the spires’ windows were dark, but after a moment he caught sight of a small blue glow in the distance.
“There.” The hunter said, pointing. “Do you see?”
“I… Think so.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get better at it.” The hunter said. “Come on.”
The pair walked along the long, open, empty streets. The son gaped at strange marvels that were peppered along their path.
“What’s that?” He’d ask, pointing at some strange object or another.
“That’s a sewer cap.” The hunter said. “It’s used to seal entrances to wetcaves.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s a streetlight. It’s used to distract predators.”
“And that?”
The hunter was happy to answer his son’s questions as they approached the hunting spot. Many of the objects had been explained to him by his father, though some he’d had to figure out on his own. Eventually the son asked the question that everyone asks on their first hunt.
“Who built all this?”
The hunter nodded in deep thought. “That’s a tough one to answer. I suppose you could say that we did… Our ancestors, anyway. You could also say that the ancestors of the hucows built everything.”
“Wow. So humans and hucows used to work together?”
The hunter thought on this. “It’s tough to say. Yes, I suppose that’s true, but it’s also true to say only humans built it.”
“Huh?”
By this point the pair had reached the spire with the glowing light. The hunter stepped through the darkened entrance and beckoned for his son to follow.
“You see, humans and hucows used to be one in the same.” The hunter said as the pair walked through ancient, dinghy hallways.
“The same?” The son asked in surprise.
The father nodded. “Yes. They say that many centuries ago, human beings were given a choice: To forsake their humanity and live in comfort, or to embrace their humanness and all the hardships that came with it. Our ancestors chose to flee these spires and their toxic comforts and live a natural life. The ancestors of the hucows, however, chose comfort… That’s what I was told, anyway.”
By this point the pair had reached a door. The father opened it. The son stepped past him.
The room was immense, an unbelievably large atrium, spanning outward and upward beyond sight. The floors ringing the chamber would have been entirely obscured by darkness, were it not for tiny white globes casting dim illumination on their surroundings. The humidity was nearly as overbearing as the stench.
The young boy gagged.
The hunter gave a weak smile. “Don’t you love the smell of hucows?”
The boy, shielding his nose with his shirt, shook his head.
The hunter laughed. “They’re not the most hygienic of beasts. Come on. We’ll grab a close one.”
The boy followed his father into the darkness. His eyes adjusted quickly; far quicker than his nose. He tried breathing through his mouth, but the pungent air clung to his tongue and throat and caused him to cough. Every breath he took was a struggle, and every step made him feel as if he were pushing himself deeper into suffocating asphyxiation.
Just as he felt he couldn’t go any further, a large form materialized from the darkness.
“There we are.” The hunter said. “Our quarry.”
The son approached the beast. It was about four feet tall and about eight feet around. It had a thin greasy film on its pale flesh, and save for its head sticking out from the middle of the mass of flesh, it had no defining features.
Its head was truly bizarre. An artificial material covered the creature’s eyes, and a tube was connected to its snout-like mouth.
The young boy frowned. “It looks a little like a person… But not really.”.
“Remember when I told you that hucows and humans used to be the same creature?”
“Yeah.”
“Both of our ancestors were given a choice about how to live. Our ancestors, yours and mine, chose one way, and this creature… Well, his ancestor chose different. Look.”
The hunter pulled the apparatus off the creature’s head, and the son reared back in disgust. The beast’s eyes weren’t in the middle of its face, but were instead located on either side of its head. They were large and bulbous and unfocused. Within a few seconds the hucow began grunting and whining and attempting to move, but its body was too massive and muscles too atrophied, and it only managed to cause small ripples to cascade across its acres of flesh.
The hunter handed the knife to his son. “Here. A quick, deep slash beneath its head should do it. This fat fold.” The hunter pointed to a tire of flab encircling the creature’s head. “Deep and long, and it should bleed out in a matter of moments.”
The son looked into the creature’s eyes. He hesitated.
“It’s okay to feel nervous.” The hunter said.
“But I don’t.” The son said. He wasn’t nervous. He wasn’t horrified. He wanted to feel some inkling of sympathy for the beast, as he did with deer or birds or gigacadas, but those animals all had a sort of dignity this poor, bloated humanoid lacked. If anything, the son felt disgust… Disgust that humans could become something so useless and twisted… Disgusted that the caretakers of Earth could be corrupted into such an unrecognizable shape.
The son looked at the knife and yet another wave of disgust washed over him. Death, the great equalizer of all things, was too honorable for something so low.
With a strong, decisive motion he plunged the blade into the creature’s body. The beast cried in pain, but these were soon reduced to gasping gurgles before falling silent.
“Very nice.” The father said, patting his son on the back. “Careful not to get any of its blood in your mouth, as it’s filled with all sorts of toxins.”
The son continued staring down at the foul creature. “Do we really eat these… Things?” He asked.
The father laughed. “With enough cooking and seasoning, even hucows are edible.” The father said. “But that’s the woman’s magic, and we men would do well to keep ourselves out of their affairs.”
The son nodded.
“Now, you killed it, you carry it out.” The hunter said.
The son boggled at the creature. “But it must weigh over a thousand pounds! How am I-“
“I’m joking, I’m joking!” The father said. “The robots that maintain this place will see that one of the hucows has died and carry it for us. All we need to do is alter the robot’s path a bit.”
And as predicted, within a few minutes a small, squat cart with numerous arms approached. The arms scooped the hucow’s body onto the cart and began slowly rolling away. The hunter ran up to the front of the robot, stopped it, then showed the son how to manually control the automaton.
They drove the quarry out from the darkness and back outside. The son thought the beast might look more appetizing in the full light of day, but the Sun only made its flesh appear more putrid… It was blotchy and bumpy and stretched and discolored.
He tried not to look at it.