Hunger

by Michael Grant

  “I never said you were hurting anyone,” Sam said. “But look, Albert’s going to sell this fish to whoever will give him whatever he wants: batteries and toilet paper, whatever else he figures out he can control.”

  “Sam. I got, like, twenty pounds of good protein here.”

  “Yeah. And it ought to go to the people who aren’t getting enough, right? Mother Mary could serve some to the prees. They’re not eating much better than the rest of us, and they need it more.”

  Quinn dug his toe in the wet sand. “Look, if you don’t want me to sell or trade the fish to Albert, okay. But look, I have this fish, right? What am I supposed to do with it? Someone needs to put it on ice before long. I can’t just walk around town handing out pieces of fish, right?”

  Once again Sam felt the wave of unanswerable questions rising around him like a tide. Now he had to decide what Quinn did with a fish?

  Quinn continued. “Look, I’m just saying I can haul this fish and any others I get up to Albert and he has a refrigerator big enough to keep it in good shape. Plus, you know how he is: he’ll figure out how to clean it and cook it and—”

  “All right,” Sam interrupted. “Fine. Whatever. Give it to Albert this time. Till I figure out some kind of, I don’t know, some kind of rule.”

  “Thanks, man,” Quinn said.

  Sam turned and headed back toward town.

  “You should have come in and danced last night, brah,” Quinn yelled after him.

  “You know I don’t dance.”

  “Sam, if anyone ever needed to cut loose, it’s you.”

  Sam tried to ignore his words, but their pitying, concerned tone bothered him. It meant that he wasn’t keeping his mind secret. It meant he was broadcasting his foul, self-pitying mood, and that wasn’t good. Bad example.

  “Hey, brah?” Quinn called.

  “Yeah, man.”

  “You know that crazy story Duck Zhang’s talking about? Not the cave thing, but the part about, like, flying fish-bats or whatever?”

  “What about them?”

  “I think I saw some. Came shooting up out of the water. Of course, it was dark.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Later, dude.”

  As he walked across the beach he muttered, “My life is fish stories and Junior Mints.”

  Something was nagging at him. And not just Astrid. Something. Something about Junior Mints.

  But weariness swept over him and dissolved the half-formed thought. He was due at town hall before long. More stupidity to deal with.

  He heard Quinn singing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” to himself. Or maybe to Sam.

  Then the sound of the putt-putt outboard motor starting again.

  Sam felt an intense stab of jealousy.

  “You don’t worry,” Quinn said, echoing the song.

  “I do.”

  “Caine?”

  No answer. Diana tapped at the door again.

  “Hungry in the dark,” Caine cried in an eerie, warbling voice. “Hungry in the dark, hungry in the dark, hungry, hungry.”

  “Oh, God, are we back to this?” Diana asked herself.

  During his three-month-long funk Caine had screamed or cried or raged in various different ways. But this phrase had been the one most often repeated. Hungry in the dark.

  She pushed open the door. Caine was thrashing in his bed, sheet twisted around his body, arms batting at something invisible.

  Caine had moved out of Mose’s cabin into the bungalow once occupied by the headmistress of Coates Academy and her husband. It was one of the few still-undamaged, untrashed spaces at Coates. The room had a big, comfortable bed with satin-soft sheets. There were prints of the kind baby boomers bought at Z Gallerie on the walls.

  Diana moved quickly to the window as Caine cut loose again, wailing like a lost soul about hunger in the darkness. She raised the room-darkening blinds, and pale early sunlight lit the room.

  Caine sat up suddenly. “What?” he said. He blinked hard several times and shivered. “Why are you here?”

  “You were doing it again,” Diana said.

  “Doing what?”

  “‘Hungry in the dark.’ It’s one of your greatest hits. Sometimes you change it to ‘hungry in the darkness.’ You muttered it, moaned it, shouted it for weeks on end, Caine. Darkness, hunger, and that word: ‘gaiaphage.’” She sat down on the edge of his bed. “What’s it all mean?”

  Caine shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “The Darkness. Drake talks about it, too. The thing out in the desert. The thing that gave him his arm. The thing that messed up your head.”

  Caine didn’t say anything.

  “It’s a monster of some kind, isn’t it?” Diana asked.

  “Of some kind,” Caine muttered.

  “Is it some mutant kid or whatever? Or like the coyotes, some kind of mutant animal?”

  “It is what it is,” Caine said shortly.

  “What does it want?”

  Caine looked suspiciously at her. “What do you care?”

  “I live here, remember? I have to live in the FAYZ along with everyone else. So I kind of have an interest in whether some evil creature is using all of us for some—”

  “No one uses me,” Caine snapped.

  Diana fell silent, letting his anger ebb. Then, “It messed you up, Caine. You’re not you anymore.”

  “Did you send Jack to warn Sam? Did you send him to tell Sam how to survive the poof?”

  The question caught Diana unprepared. It took all her self-control to keep fear from her face. “That’s what you think?” Diana managed a wry smile. “So that’s why I’m being followed everywhere I go.”

  Caine didn’t deny it. “I’m in love with you, Diana. You took care of me these last three months. I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “Why are you threatening me?”

  “Because I have plans. I have things I have to do. I need to know whose side you’re on.”

  “I’m on my side,” Diana said. It was the honest answer. She didn’t trust herself to convince him of a lie. If he thought she was lying…

  Caine nodded. “Yeah. Fine. Be on your own side, I respect that. But if I find out you’re helping Sam…”

  Diana decided it was time for a show of anger. “Listen, you sad excuse for a human being, I had a choice. Sam offered me that choice after he kicked your butt. I could have gone with him. It would have been the smart move. I would have been safe from Drake. And I wouldn’t have had to put up with you trying to paw me every time you felt lonely. And I would definitely be eating better. I chose to go with you.”

  Caine sat up straighter. He leaned toward her. His eyes made his intentions clear.

  “Oh, here we go.” Diana rolled her eyes.

  But when he kissed her, she let him. And after a few seconds of stony indifference she kissed him back.

  Then she put her palm on his bare chest and shoved him back onto his pillow. “That’s enough.”

  “Not nearly enough, but I guess it will have to do,” Caine said.

  “I’m out of here,” Diana said. She started for the door.

  “Diana?”

  “What?”

  “I need Computer Jack.”

  She froze with her hand on the doorknob. “I don’t have him hidden in my room.”

  “Listen to me, Diana, and don’t say anything. Okay? I’m telling you: don’t say anything. This is a one-time offer. Amnesty. Whatever happened with you and Jack and Sam, it’s forgotten, if…if you get me Jack. Bygones will be bygones. But I need Jack. I need him soon.”

  “Caine—”

  “Shut up,” he hissed. “Do yourself a favor, Diana. Don’t. Say. Anything.”

  She bit back the angry retort. There was no mistaking the menace in his voice. He meant it. This time, he meant it.

  “Get me Jack. Use any resource you want. Use Bug. Use Drake, even. Use Pack Leader, if that’ll help. I don’t care how it gets done, but I want Jack in two days. Starting now.�
�

  Diana struggled for her next breath.

  “Two days, Diana. You know the ‘or else.’”

  Albert was supervising the sweeping of his club by one of his crew, and reading about the melting points of various metals—lead and gold, especially gold—when Quinn pushed a wheelbarrow into the McDonald’s.

  In the wheelbarrow were three fish. One was very big for a fish. The other two looked more average.

  Albert’s second thought was that this was an opportunity.

  His first thought was that he was hungry and would definitely enjoy a nice piece of fried fish. Even raw fish. The strength of the hunger pangs caught him off-guard. He tried to ignore the hunger, eating very little himself and making sure that his crew were as well fed as possible, but when a guy walked in with actual, honest-to-God fish…

  “Whoa,” Albert said.

  “Yeah. Cool, huh?” Quinn said, smiling down at his fish like a proud parent.

  “Are they for sale?” Albert asked.

  “Yeah. Except for whatever I can eat. Plus, we got to send some to Mary for the prees.”

  “Of course,” Albert agreed. He considered. “I don’t have anything I can use to make a batter. But I could probably dip them in a little flour to give them a little crunchiness.”

  “Man, I’ll eat ’em raw,” Quinn said. “I barely got them here without chomping on them.”

  “What do you want for all three?” Albert asked.

  Quinn was obviously baffled. “Dude, I don’t know.”

  “Okay,” Albert said. “How about this: You get a free pass to the club. Plus, you get all the fish you can eat. And, I owe you a major favor in the future.”

  “A major favor?”

  “Major,” Albert confirmed. “Look, I’m doing some things. I have some plans. As a matter of fact, they’re plans I would like you to help me with.”

  “Uh-huh,” Quinn said skeptically.

  “I’m asking you to trust me, Quinn. You trust me, and I’ll trust you.”

  Albert knew that would hit home with Quinn. Trust was the last thing anyone offered Quinn.

  Albert changed the subject, just a little. “How did you catch these fish, Quinn?”

  “Um, well, it’s not that hard to figure out. I used a net to scoop up some little fish, you know, not like fish you could eat. Then I used them as bait. You get the little fish in tide pools and shallow water. There’s plenty of gear and boats. Then you just need to be really, really patient.”

  “This could be major,” Albert said thoughtfully. Then, “Okay, I have a proposition for you.”

  Quinn grinned. “I’m listening.”

  “I have twenty-four guys on my crew. Mostly they guard Ralph’s and move food around. But the truth is, there isn’t much left to guard or to move around. So.”

  “So?”

  “So, I give you six of my best people. The most reliable six guys I can come up with. You take them and train them to fish.”

  “Yeah?” Quinn frowned, still not getting it.

  “And you and me, we’re partners in the fish business. Seventy-thirty. I give you workers, I haul the fish, preserve it, prepare it, distribute it. And whatever we bring in, I take seventy percent and you take thirty.”

  Quinn arched a brow. “Excuse me? How come you get seventy percent?”

  “I pay everyone under me,” Albert explained. “Your thirty percent is just for you.”

  “It’s thirty percent of nothing,” Quinn said.

  “Maybe. But not for long.” Albert grinned and slapped Quinn on the shoulder. “You have to stay hopeful, man. Things are looking up. We have fish.”

  Mother Mary smelled it before she saw it.

  Fish. Fried fish.

  The kids smelled it, too. “What is that smell?” Julia cried, and ran forward, black ponytail flying behind her.

  There followed a near riot. Preschoolers surged around Quinn, who was carrying the fried fish piled on a napkin-covered McDonald’s tray.

  “Okay, okay, okay, everyone gets some,” Quinn yelped.

  Mary could not move. She knew she should, she knew she had to step in and impose order, but the smell had paralyzed her.

  Fortunately, Francis—who had made such a scene over hating to work at the preschool—had decided after the first day that he wouldn’t mind working a second day. Then a third. He was on his way to becoming a regular. Once he’d gotten over his attitude, he had proved to be really good with the children.

  “Okay, little creatures,” Francis yelled, “back away. Back slowly away from the food.”

  “Sorry, I probably should have warned you I was coming,” Quinn said sheepishly as he waded through a sea of kids and held the fish high above dozens of grabbing hands.

  Mary twisted her fingers together as she watched Francis and the other helpers get the kids into line. The smell of the fish was unbelievable. It made her stomach grumble. It made her mouth water.

  It made her sick.

  “Okay, guys, we have thirty-two pieces,” Quinn said. “How do you want to do this?”

  Francis glanced at Mary, but she could not respond. It was as if she were frozen in place.

  “Everyone starts with half a piece,” Francis decided. Then he warned, “And anyone who gets grabby gets nothing.”

  “Mary, there’s enough for you and your workers to have some, too,” Quinn said.

  Mary nodded. She couldn’t. Not for herself. For the others, yes. Of course.

  “You okay?” Quinn asked her.

  Mary gritted her teeth and forced a shaky smile. “Of course. Thanks for bringing this. The children haven’t had…they need the protein…they…”

  “Okay,” Quinn said, obviously nonplussed.

  “Save some for the babies,” Mary urged Francis. “We’ll purée it in the blender.”

  The sounds of gobbling filled the room. Many of these kids probably hated fish. Back in the old days. Even two weeks ago they would have turned up their noses. But now? No one would turn away protein. They felt the need way down inside. Their bodies were ordering them to eat.

  But Mary’s body was ordering her not to.

  It would be a sin, she told herself. A sin to consume the fish only to vomit it back up later. She couldn’t do that to the littles.

  Mary knew there was something wrong with the way she was behaving. She was surrounded by hunger that kids couldn’t avoid, and she alone was the cause of her own hunger. A warning sounded, but distant, barely audible. Like someone shouting to her from two blocks away.

  “Come on, Mary, you have to try this,” Francis urged. “It’s amazing.”

  Unable to manage a reply, Mary turned away, silent, and headed for the bathroom pursued by the slavering sounds of hungry children.

  THIRTEEN

  45 HOURS, 36 MINUTES

  SAM KNOCKED AT the front door. He didn’t usually do that. Astrid had told him many times he could just walk in.

  But he knocked, anyway.

  It took her a while to answer.

  She must have just come from the shower. Astrid worked out after dinner, when Little Pete usually liked to watch DVDs. Her blond hair was plastered down her neck, strands of it swooping down across one eye to give her a vaguely piratical look. She was wearing a bathrobe and carrying a towel.

  “So. You came crawling back, eh?” Astrid said.

  “Would it help if I were on hands and knees?” Sam asked.

  Astrid considered that for a moment. “No, the abject look is enough.”

  “I didn’t see you all day.”

  “It would have been surprising if you had. I wasn’t interested in being seen.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Are you asking if you may come in? ‘Can’ is meant to suggest ability. ‘May’ is proper when the question is one of permission.”

  Sam smiled. “You know you just get me hot when you do that.”

  “Oh? Then maybe I should go on to point out that both ‘can’ and ‘may’ are conside
red ‘modal verbs.’ There are nine modal verbs. Would you like me to tell you what they are?”

  “You’d better not,” he said. “I can’t take too much excitement.”

  Sam put his arm around her, drew her close, and kissed her on her lips.

  “Wimp,” she teased when he drew back. “Well, come on in. I have some delicious canned okra, a burned homemade graham-flour tortilla, and half a head of Orc’s cabbage left over from dinner if you’re hungry. If you wrap the tortilla around some shredded cabbage and a bit of okra and microwave it for thirty seconds you have something really disgusting but kind of healthy.”

  Sam stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Little Pete was camped out in front of the TV watching a DVD of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Jim Carrey, completely obscured by makeup, was rubbing his hands gleefully.

  “It was one of his Christmas presents,” Astrid explained.

  “I remember,” Sam said.

  Christmas had not been a great time for anyone. Christmas without parents. Without older siblings. Or grandparents. Without all the weird relatives you saw only at holiday time.

  Astrid’s parents had an artificial tree that Sam had found in the attic and hauled downstairs to set up. It was still set up, although they’d taken the ornaments off and put them back in boxes.

  Everyone had done what they could. Albert had put on a feast, though nothing to rival his great Thanksgiving production. By Christmas there were no pies to be had, no cookies, and fresh fruit or vegetables were all in the half-forgotten past.

  “We can’t fight over…you know…politics,” Sam said.

  “You mean you want me to just agree with you on everything?” Astrid asked, her voice signaling readiness to start it all over again.

  “No. I want you to tell me what you think. I need you,” Sam admitted. “But that’s kind of the point: I need you. So when we disagree, we can’t get mad at each other. As people, you know?”

  Astrid seemed ready to argue. Instead she exhaled a long, weary breath. “No, you’re right. We have enough to deal with.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  “Did you get any sleep last night? You look tired.”