Hunger

by Michael Grant

  Orc took the beer in a fist the size of a bowling ball and drained it down his throat.

  Orc’s fingers were too big to handle anything delicate. Each finger was the size of a kosher salami. Each joint was made of what looked, and felt, a lot like wet gravel. Gray stones that fitted loosely together

  His entire body, except for a last few square inches of his sullen mouth and the left side of his face, and a little bit of his cheek and neck, were covered—or made of—the same slimy gray gravel. He had always been a big kid, but now he was a foot taller and several feet wider.

  The tiny human portion of him seemed like the creepier part. Like someone had cut the flesh off a living person and glued it onto a stone statue.

  “Another,” Orc growled.

  “No,” Albert answered firmly. “First we see if you can really do this.”

  Orc rolled himself over the side of the truck and stood up. Albert felt the entire truck rock back and forth. Orc came around to the door and stuck his hideous face in the window, forcing Albert to shrink back and to clutch the cooler.

  “I can take the beer,” Orc said. “You can’t stop me.”

  “Yes, you can take it,” Albert agreed. “But you made a promise to Sam.”

  Orc digested that. He was slow and stupid, but not so stupid he didn’t understand the implied threat. Orc did not want to tangle with Sam.

  “All right. I’ll see about them worms.” Orc belched and lurched toward the field. He was wearing what he usually wore, a pair of very rough-sewn canvas shorts. Albert assumed Howard had made them for his friend. There was no such thing as pants or shirts in Orc’s size.

  Howard held his breath as Orc stomped into the field. So, for that matter, did Albert. Every hideous detail of the memory of E.Z.’s death was permanently imprinted on Albert’s brain.

  The attack was immediate.

  The worms seethed from the dirt, slithered with impossible speed toward Orc’s stone feet and threw themselves against his unnatural flesh.

  Orc stopped. He gaped down at the creatures.

  He turned with creaky slowness back toward Albert and Howard and said, “Kinda tickles.”

  “Pick a cabbage,” Howard called out encouragingly.

  Orc bent down and dug his stone fingers into the dirt and scooped up a cabbage. He looked at it for a minute, then tossed it toward the truck.

  Albert opened the door of the truck and bent cautiously down toward the cabbage. He refused to step down. Not yet. Not until they were sure.

  “Howard, I need a stick or something,” Albert said.

  “What for?”

  “I want to poke that cabbage, make sure there’s no worm in it.”

  In the field the worms continued their assault on the creature whose rock flesh broke their teeth. Orc scooped up three more cabbages. Then he came stomping back.

  The worms did not follow. At the edge of the field they slithered off Orc and retreated into the ground.

  “Beer me,” Orc demanded.

  Albert did.

  He wondered how Sam was doing with lining up kids to work in the field. “Not very well, I’d guess,” he muttered to himself.

  The answer to the problem of food was so simple, really: farms needed farmers. Then the farmers needed motivation. They needed to get paid. Like anyone. People didn’t do things just because it was right: people did things for money, for profit. But Sam and Astrid were too foolish to see it.

  No, not foolish, Albert told himself. Sam was the main reason they weren’t all under Caine’s control. Sam was great. And Astrid was probably the smartest person in the FAYZ.

  But Albert was smart, too, about some things. And he had gone to the trouble of educating himself, sitting in the dusty, dark town library reading books that made his eyelids droop.

  “My boy’s going to need another beer pretty soon,” Howard said, yawning behind his hand.

  “Your boy gets a beer for every one hundred cabbages he picks,” Albert said.

  Howard gave him a dirty look. “Man, you act like you paid for those cans with your own money.”

  “Nope,” Albert said. “They are community property. For now. But the rate is still one per hundred.”

  For the next two hours Orc picked cabbages. And drank beer. Howard played some game on a handheld. Albert thought.

  Howard was right about that: Albert had thought a lot since the day he walked into the abandoned McDonald’s and began grilling hamburgers. He had a lot of standing in the community because of that. And the Thanksgiving feast he’d organized, and pulled off without a hitch, had made him a minor hero. He wasn’t Sam, of course; there was only one Sam. He wasn’t even Edilio or Brianna or anything like the big heroes of that terrible battle between Caine’s people and the Perdido Beach kids.

  But at that moment Albert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about toilet paper and batteries.

  Then Orc screamed.

  Howard sat up. He jumped from the car.

  Albert froze.

  Orc was shrieking, slapping at his face, at the still-human part of his face.

  Howard ran toward him.

  “Howard, no!” Albert yelled.

  “They got him, they got him,” Howard cried, anguished.

  Orc was struggling, staggering, then running toward the truck, his great stone feet pounding six-inch-deep impressions into the dirt.

  One of the worms was on his face.

  In his face.

  He tripped at the edge of the field and fell hard onto neutral territory.

  “Help me. Howard, man, help me!” Orc cried.

  Albert broke his trance and ran. Up close he could see the worm, just one, but its black snake’s head was buried in pink flesh, boring through Orc’s cheek.

  Up close Albert could see the blur of the tiny paddle feet driving the worm into strained flesh.

  Orc had the tail of the thing in his fist and was pulling hard. But the worm wasn’t letting go. Orc was pulling so hard, it seemed he might pull the last of his living flesh away from the rock skin surrounding it.

  Howard grabbed on, too, and he was pulling. Weeping and cursing and pulling, despite the danger to himself if the worm should release its grip on Orc and turn against Howard.

  “Bite it!” Albert shouted.

  “My tongue!” Orc wailed, his speech garbled as the worm slid another inch through his cheek.

  “Bite it, Orc,” Albert yelled. Then he knelt, and with all his might delivered an uppercut under Orc’s chin.

  It was like punching a brick wall.

  Albert yelled and fell back on his behind in the dirt. He was sure his hand was broken.

  Orc had stopped screaming. He opened his mouth and spit out the worm’s head, along with a gob of blood and saliva.

  The rest of the worm came free. Orc smashed it onto the ground.

  There was a one-inch hole in Orc’s face.

  Blood spread down his neck and disappeared like rain on parched soil as it hit the rock flesh.

  “You hit me,” Orc said dully, staring at Albert.

  “Brother saved your life, Orc,” Howard said. “The brother just saved your life.”

  “I think I broke my hand,” Albert said.

  “Beer me,” Orc said.

  Howard raced to comply.

  Orc tilted his head back and squeezed the can until the tab burst. Yellow liquid shot from the can and gushed into his mouth.

  At least half of it ran, foaming pink, from the bloody hole in his cheek.

  TEN

  81 HOURS, 17 MINUTES

  “SHE WAS IN my dreams, in my head. I saw her,” Drake said.

  “You’ve lost what little mind you had left,” Diana said.

  They were in the dining hall. No one was dining. Meals at Coates amounted to a few cans put out for kids to fight over. There were kids who had eaten boiled grass to ease the hunger pangs.

  In the echoing, abandoned, damaged dining hall it was Caine, Drake, Bug, Diana, and th
e girl who said her name was Orsay.

  The girl was maybe twelve, Diana figured.

  Diana had noticed a look in the girl’s eyes. Fear, of course, she’d been hauled in by Drake once Bug got back from the power plant. But that wasn’t all of it: the girl, Orsay, looked at Diana like she recognized her.

  It was not a good look. Her expression made the hairs on the back of Diana’s neck tingle.

  “I never saw her before in my life, but I saw her in this dream I was having.” Drake glared hatred at the girl. “Then I woke up and found her skulking around, hiding.”

  It was an unusual feeling for Diana, being in a room with Drake where she was not the main object of his hatred.

  Caine said, “Okay, Drake, we get it. Back before all this started I’d have said you were nuts. Now?” He waved a languid hand at Diana. “Diana, read her. Let’s see.”

  Diana went and stood beside the girl, who looked up at her with frightened, protruding eyes.

  “Don’t be scared. Of me,” Diana said. “I just need to hold your hand.”

  “What’s happened? Why won’t anybody tell me anything? Where are all the adults? Where are your teachers?” Orsay had a voice with a built-in tremble to it, like she’d always been nervous and always would be.

  “We call it the FAYZ. Fallout Alley Youth Zone,” Diana said. “You know about the accident at the power plant back in the day, right? Fallout Alley?”

  “Hey, Caine told you to read her, not give her a history lesson,” Drake snapped.

  Diana wanted to argue, but Orsay’s expression, her look of terror mixed with pity for Diana, was weirding her out. It was as if Orsay knew something about Diana, like she was a doctor with a fatal diagnosis she hadn’t quite nerved herself up to deliver yet. Diana took Orsay’s hand.

  As soon as she took Orsay’s hand she knew her power level. The question was whether she should tell Caine the truth. In Caine’s universe there were only two possible categories of mutants: those who were unquestioningly loyal to Caine, and those who needed to be disposed of.

  At least Orsay wasn’t a four bar. If she had been, there was little doubt in Diana’s mind that Caine would have turned her over to Drake.

  “Quit stalling,” Drake growled.

  Diana released the girl’s hand. She ignored Drake and spoke to Caine. “She’s a three bar.”

  Caine sucked air and sat back in his chair. He considered the terrified girl. “Tell me about your power. Tell me the truth, all of it, and you’ll be fine. If you lie to me, I’ll know I can never trust you.”

  Orsay looked up at Diana as though she might be a friend. “Do what he says,” Diana said.

  Orsay twined her fingers together. She sat with her knees knocked, her shoulders pressed in as though she were trying to get them to meet.

  “It started happening, like, maybe five months ago. Mostly at night. I thought I was crazy. I didn’t know where it was coming from. My head would be filled up with these pictures and sometimes sounds, people talking, flashes of faces or places. Sometimes they were really short, just a few seconds. But sometimes they went on for a half hour, one thing after another, craziness, people being chased, people falling, people having…you know, like, sex and all.”

  She looked down at her twisting fingers, embarrassed.

  “Yeah, we get it, you’re all sweet and innocent,” Drake sneered.

  Diana asked, “How did you figure out you were seeing people’s dreams?”

  “It usually only happened at night,” Orsay said. “And then, one night I had this really vivid dream of this woman’s face, this kind of nice, red-haired woman, right? But she wasn’t even around, yet. She arrived the next morning. I hadn’t seen her before, not in reality, just in her husband’s dream. That’s when I figured it out.”

  “So you’ve been up in the forest this whole time? You must have been lonely.” Caine was applying a bit of his smile, a fraction of his charm, putting her at ease.

  Orsay nodded. “I’m used to being lonely.”

  “How are you at keeping secrets?” Diana asked. She made her voice casual, but she stared hard into Orsay’s eyes, hoping she would get the message, hoping she knew how great a danger she was in.

  Orsay blinked. She was about to say something, then blinked again. “I never told anyone anything I saw,” Orsay said.

  Caine said, “Interesting question, Diana.”

  Diana shrugged. “A good spy needs to be discreet.”

  When Caine looked blank, Diana added quickly, “I mean, I assume that’s what you’re thinking. We have Bug, who can sneak into a place, maybe overhear some conversation. But Orsay could actually get into people’s dreams.” When Caine’s expression remained skeptical, Diana added, “I wonder what Sam dreams about.”

  “No way,” Drake said. “No way. You heard her, she gets anyone’s dreams who happens to be nearby. That means she’s in our heads, too. No way.”

  “I doubt she wants any part of your dreams, Drake,” Diana said.

  Drake uncoiled his arm and lightning quick wrapped it around Orsay, who yelped and froze stiff. “I brought her in. She’s mine. I say what happens to her.”

  “Just what is it you want to do with her?” Diana asked.

  Drake grinned. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll cook her and eat her. Meat is meat, right?”

  Diana glanced at Caine, hoping to see some sign of revulsion, some acknowledgment that Drake was going too far. But Caine just nodded as if he was considering Drake’s claim. “Lets find out what her range is first, huh? Orsay: How far away can you be and still get someone’s dream?”

  Orsay chattered her answer, shaking with fear. “Only like…like…like from the ranger station and the nearest part of the campground.”

  “How much distance is that?”

  She tried to shrug, but Drake was squeezing her, like a python, taking advantage of every exhalation to tighten his coils. “Maybe two hundred feet,” Orsay said.

  “Mose’s cabin,” Diana said. “It’s twice that far from the campus.”

  “I said no,” Drake threatened. “She was in my head.”

  “We already know it’s a cesspool in there,” Diana said.

  “This is uncool, Caine,” Drake said. “You owe me. You need me. Don’t mess with me on this.”

  “Don’t mess with me?” Caine echoed. That was the step too far.

  Caine jumped up, knocking his chair over backward. He raised both hands, palms out. “You really want to challenge me, Drake? I can blow you through the wall into the next room before you can unwrap yourself from that girl.”

  Drake flinched. Started to answer, but he never had a chance. Caine had gone from calm and contained to crazy in a heartbeat.

  “You stupid thug,” Caine raged. “You think you can replace me? You think if I was out of the way you’d be able to go down the hill and take out Sam and the rest? You couldn’t even beat Orc! You nobody!” Caine screamed, spit flying from a mouth moving as fast as it could but still not fast enough for the fury within.

  The blood had drained from Drake’s hard face. His eyes burned furiously, his arm twitched, almost out of control. He looked like he might choke on his own bottled rage.

  “I’m the brains!” Caine shrieked. “I’m the brains! I’m the brains and the power, the true power, the four bar, the one. I am the one. Me! Why do you think the Darkness kept me for three days? Why do you think…Why do you think it’s still in my…in my…”

  There was an abrupt change in Caine’s voice. For a second it was as if he was sobbing, not raging. He caught himself and righted his voice, swallowed hard. He looked unsteady and reached for a chairback to hold himself up.

  Then he saw the not-quite-pitying look in Diana’s eyes, and no doubt the shark’s cold gleam of triumph on Drake’s face as well.

  Caine roared, an incoherent, lunatic howl. He extended his hands, aiming down and to either side of Drake.

  There was an earsplitting sound, stones ripped apart, as the floor expl
oded upward in a geyser of shattered floor tile and dirt.

  The pillar of rock and debris shot up, slammed into the already-scarred and damaged cathedral ceiling and tumbled back down again, a rain of gravel, as Caine’s howl fell silent.

  The only sound was the off-key, musical patter of falling debris.

  Caine stared, blank. Blank.

  It went on for too long. But no one dared speak. Then, as if someone had thrown a switch, Caine’s expression became human once more. He smiled a shaky smile.

  “We can use this girl, Drake,” Caine said calmly. Then, to Orsay directly, “We can, can’t we? We can use you? You’ll do whatever I tell you to do? And you will obey only me?”

  Orsay tried to find her voice but couldn’t even manage a whisper. She nodded vigorously.

  “Good. Because if I ever doubt you, Orsay, I’ll give you to Drake. You don’t want that.”

  Caine slumped, used up. Without another word he weaved his way to the door.

  Lana patted her dog, Patrick, on his thick ruff. “Ready?”

  Patrick made his little whimpering sound, the one that meant, “Come on, let’s get going.”

  Lana stood up and checked the Velcro strap that held her iPod in place on her arm. She made sure the bright yellow headphones were in place—her ears were too small for the standard earbuds.

  She dialed up her “running” play list. But, of course, she didn’t really run now. Running made hunger unbearable. Now she just walked. And not as far as she had run.

  Back in the old days, before the FAYZ, she’d done neither. But that, like so much, had changed. There was nothing like dragging through the desert without water or a clue, and then being made a captive of a swift-moving coyote pack, to make you think you should get in shape.

  She liked to begin in silence. She liked to hear the sound of her sneaker treads, almost silent on the carpeted hotel floor. Then satisfyingly loud on the blacktop.

  Her route began at the front door of Clifftop. It was an automatic door, and it still worked. It was weird, still weird after all this time, that the door’s sensor should be patiently awaiting the signal to open wide the doors to the outside world.