Page 10 of Hunter's Valentine

“Recordings of felines are not useful for the hunt,” I explained. “It feels like I am shirking my duties.”

“Yeah, but they’re cute. It’s fine, unless you are addicted to them and watch them all day and night.”

I didn’t comment. I watch many, many of them.

She showed me red and pink shapes on the screen. “There. Those hearts.”

“Those are not hearts. They cannot pump.”

“Like I said, it’s symbolic. People tend to think that love comes from the heart, even though it really comes from the brain.”

“I see. I think.” I thought of how Xarc’n chests rumbled for those they were compatible with, and how my chest had done that for her. What I felt when we did the mouth-mating was like a hunger, but different.

As if sensing my thoughts, Sara’s stomach rumbled. She dug into her pack and produced a solid yet light cake of food that was very different from any of the others I had seen humans eat.

She caught me looking, broke off a piece, and held it out to me. “Want some?”

I took it and chewed. It was hard and unpalatable, perhaps even blander than our food bars, and my tongue detected very little protein or nutrients. It might be high in calories, but that was all. Where was the protein and all the vitamins? She couldn’t possibly live on such inadequate sustenance.

I opened my cabinet to retrieve one of our food bars. Unwrapping the waxed packaging, I broke off a piece for her. She took it, probably because I’d already taken some of her food. Many humans refused to take food from Xarc’n hunters because they worried it meant we would steal them away into our shuttles. But technically, she was already here.

“It’s tough,” she said after taking a bite. “But not too bad.”

That surprised me. “Usually, humans find our food bars to be unpalatable. You are the first to say that it’s ‘not bad.’”

“Well, you’ve tasted mine.” She waved her flavorless bar in the air.

I had to admit, hers was worse.

“Food at the bunker isn’t…great,” she admitted.

“You come from the underground shelter behind the large house,” I said. It wasn’t really a question, but I was interested to know if I’d guessed correctly.

She was silent for a beat, then changed the subject, denying me my hoped-for confirmation. “I have a question, and don’t take this the wrong way, but if hunters were created to fight ‘the scourge’”—she used our word for the creatures—“then why can’t you fight the big centipedes? I have seen you hunters take on the flyers and even the spitters without difficulty.”

“The centicreeps evolved here on Earth. We are not trained to combat them.”

She frowned at the name. “Centicreeps?”

“That is what we call them.”

“Why is it in English? All the other names, like flyers or spitters, are translated from your language.”

“Because they were first discovered here on this continent. The name was adopted planetwide.”

“Huh. Interesting. Now that you mention it, I didn’t see these bugs until after we’d gone down into the bunker. The internet was down by then, and the only way we found out about them was from our drone that we sent out to gather information. It didn’t last long. A flyer snatched it up mid-air on its second flight.” She wrinkled her nose. “So, if you can’t fight it, what happens if it shows up when you are hunting?”

“I can fight it if it is caught in a trap, or I pin it with a net. Conditions were not right this time. And other hunter groups have developed many effective ways to fight these creatures, but they all require more than one hunter.”

“And you hunt alone?”

“Affirmative. Except during the summer swarms, when I join one of the groups. That is how hunters have done it on other planets. Many now stay in groups permanently, but it is because they have females they must protect. I, however, am not interested in a mate.” I didn’t know whether I said that to reassure her, or to convince myself.

Sara also tried some of my vitamin water, which she said was quite tasty, so I mixed some up for her, and she filled one of her bottles with it. Then I offered her an Earth-made protein bar, which I collected to trade with other hunter groups.

“No thanks,” she said, even as her eyes lingered on it.

She was still hesitant to take food from me.

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