Hunger

by Michael Grant

  He stood up. “So. Sam is running scared. But not scared of me. Good. He’s worried about his silly job as mayor of loserville. Good.” He tapped the top of Orsay’s head. “Hey. Anything about the power plant in Sam’s dreams?”

  Orsay shook her head. She was off again, off in some zombie trance reliving some strange hallucination of her own or maybe someone else’s.

  Caine clapped his hands together. “Good. Sam isn’t obsessing over the power plant. The enemy,” he said with a grand flourish, “is looking inward, not outward. In fact, we could strike at any time. Except.”

  He stared hard at Diana.

  “I’ll get him,” she said.

  “I can’t do it without Jack, Diana.”

  “I’ll get him,” she said.

  “You want Jack? I’ll get him,” Drake said.

  Caine said, “You’re thinking of the old Jack, Drake. You have to remember that Jack has powers now.”

  “I don’t care about his powers,” Drake snarled.

  “Diana will give me Jack,” Caine said. “And then we will turn off the lights and feed the—” He stopped very abruptly. He blinked in confusion.

  “Feed?” Drake echoed, puzzled.

  Caine almost didn’t hear him. His brain seemed to trip, to skip a step, like a scratch in a DVD when the picture pixilates for a moment before starting up again. The familiar grounds of Coates Academy swam before his eyes.

  Feed?

  What had he meant?

  Who had he meant?

  “You can all go,” he said, distracted.

  No one moved, so he made it clear: “Go away. Go away and leave me alone!”

  Then he added, “Leave her.”

  With Diana and Drake gone, Caine knelt before Orsay again. “You saw him, didn’t you? You felt him there. He touched your mind. I can tell.”

  Orsay didn’t deny. She met his gaze, unflinching. “He was in the little boy’s dreams.”

  “The little boy?” Caine frowned. “Little Pete? Is that who you mean?”

  “He needed the little boy. The dark thing, the gaiaphage, he was…” She searched for a word, and when she found it, it surprised her. “He was learning.”

  “Learning?” Caine gripped her arm tightly, squeezing meaning from her. She flinched. “Learning what?”

  “Creation,” Orsay said.

  Caine stared at her. He should ask. He should ask what she meant. What would the Darkness create? What would he learn from the mind of a five-year-old autistic?

  “Go inside,” Caine whispered. He let go of her arm. “Go!”

  Alone, he searched his mind, his memory. He stared into the trees at the edge of the campus as though the explanation might be hiding there in the early morning shadows.

  “And then we will turn off the lights and feed the—”

  He had not just misspoken. It wasn’t just…nothing. There had been a definite idea there, something tangible. Something that needed doing.

  Hungry in the dark.

  It felt like someone had a rope wrapped around his brain. Someone he couldn’t see, someone standing far off in the dark, invisible. The rope disappeared into gloom and mystery, but at this end it was attached to him.

  And out there, the Darkness held the other end. Yanked it whenever it liked.

  Like Caine was a fish on a hook.

  He crawled up onto the step. The granite was cold. He felt exposed and ridiculous sitting there, almost doubled over, beads of sweat forming on his brow.

  It still had its hook in him. It was playing him, letting the line go slack, letting him think he was free, then yanking back hard, making sure the hook was still set, wearing him out.

  Playing him.

  Caine flashed on a memory almost forgotten. He saw his “father,” seated in a deck chair with salt spray darkening his tan jacket, holding the long, supple pole, sawing it back and forth.

  Caine had gone fishing that one time, with his “father.” It hadn’t been a Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn kind of experience. Caine’s father—the man he’d grown up calling his father—was not a man for small, intimate moments, for worms in a bucket and bamboo poles.

  They were on a trip down to Mexico. Caine’s “mother” had been left to shop in Cancún, and Caine had been granted the high privilege of accompanying his father on what amounted to a business trip disguised as a father-son fishing trip.

  Caine and his father; a kid named Paolo and his father; a girl named…well, he couldn’t recall her name. The three fathers were doing business and fishing for swordfish aboard a seventy-foot power boat.

  The girl, what was her name?

  Oh, my God, her name had been Diana. Not the same Diana, of course, a very different girl, not very attractive, red hair, bulging eyes, not at all the same.

  Diana had led them, Caine and Paolo, down into the tight forward space where the anchor and ropes and so on were stored. There she had produced a joint, a small, tightly rolled marijuana cigarette.

  Paolo, an Italian kid a couple of years older than Caine, had shrugged and said, “No problem,” using his American slang. Caine had felt trapped. Trapped on the boat. Trapped in the company of the two kids. Trapped into getting high.

  Trapped.

  It wasn’t Caine’s favorite feeling.

  He’d sat there in that dark, damp, cramped space taking hits of the joint and wishing he was anywhere else.

  Paolo had tried to hook up with the girl, the pre-Diana Diana. She’d discouraged him and eventually Paolo had gone off in search of food. The girl had sidled up beside Caine and made it clear that she’d like to make the most of their privacy and the drug’s effects.

  Caine had rebuffed her, but she’d said, “Oh, you think you’re too cool, right? You think you’re out of my league, don’t you?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Yeah? Guess what? Your dad needs my dad. What if I go up on deck and tell my dad you forced me to smoke pot? I do that and guess what? Your dad loses this deal and he blames you.”

  Her eyes shone with triumph. She had him. She had her hook in him, no different from the loudly laughing men up on deck and their stupid fish.

  She was sure of it, that Diana.

  But Caine had laughed. “Go ahead.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “Fine. Go.”

  He had come to realize a basic truth that day: You can’t be trapped by other people, you can only be trapped by your own fear. Defy and win.

  On that day, that day on the boat, Caine had been less afraid than the girl. And he’d known intuitively that he held the winning hand.

  Defy and win.

  The problem now was that Caine was truly, deeply afraid of the creature in that mine. Afraid all the way down to his bones. Afraid down to the smallest, farthest, most secret recesses of his mind.

  He couldn’t bluff the Darkness. The Darkness knew he was afraid.

  There was a rope wrapped tightly around his mind and soul. The other end of that rope was held by the dark thing at the bottom of that mine shaft. Caine imagined himself cutting that rope, picking up an ax, raising it high above his head, bringing it down with all his might….

  Ruthless and unafraid. Like he had been with Diana.

  With both Dianas.

  “Have to,” he whispered to himself.

  “Have to cut it,” he said.

  “Maybe I will,” he muttered.

  But he doubted very much that he could.

  “He’s hungry,” Little Pete said.

  “You mean you’re hungry,” Astrid corrected automatically. Like Little Pete’s major problem was bad grammar.

  She was in Sam’s office at town hall. People were coming and going. Kids with requests or complaints. Some Astrid dealt with herself. Some she wrote down for Sam.

  One thing Sam was right about: This couldn’t go on. Kids coming in to ask for someone to arbitrate sibling rivalries, or asking whether it was okay for them to watch a PG-13 DVD, or asking Sam to decide whether t
hey could stop wearing their retainer. It was ridiculous.

  “He’s hungry,” Little Pete said. He was hunched over his Game Boy, intent on the game.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Astrid asked absentmindedly. “I could maybe find something.”

  “He can’t talk.”

  “Sure you can talk, Petey, when you try.”

  “I won’t let him. His words are bad.”

  Astrid looked over at him. There was a slight smile on Little Pete’s face.

  “And he’s hungry,” Little Pete said, whispering now. “Hungry in the dark.”

  “Because Sam said so, that’s why,” Edilio said for maybe the millionth time. “Because if we don’t pick the food, we’re all going to get very, very hungry, that’s why.”

  “Can I do it another time?” the kid asked.

  “Little dude, that’s when everyone wants to do it: some other time. But we got melons need picking. So just get on the bus. Bring a hat, if you have one. Let’s go.”

  Edilio stood holding the front door of the house, waiting for the kid to find his Fairly OddParents cap. His mood, already gloomy, was not improving as the morning wore on. He had twenty-eight kids on the bus, all complaining, all wanting to go to the bathroom, all hungry or thirsty, squabbling, whining, crying.

  It was almost eleven already. By the time he got them to the fields it would be noon and they’d be asking for lunch. He was determined to tell them to pick their lunch. Pick your lunch, it’s right there in front of you. Yes, I mean melons. I don’t care if you don’t like melons, that’s your lunch.

  Thirty kids, counting himself. If they worked hard for four hours they could harvest maybe seventy, eighty melons each. Which sounded like a lot until you divided it by three hundred-plus hungry mouths and you started to realize that it took a whole lot of cantaloupe before you felt full.

  What worried Edilio was the way so many of the melons were already rotting in the field. The way the birds were getting at them. And the fact that no one was thinking far enough ahead to wonder what they should be planting for the next season.

  Food rotting. No planting. No irrigating.

  Even if they harvested the available crops, it was just a matter of time before everyone was starving. Then, good luck keeping it all together.

  It turned out he’d been optimistic. It was almost one in the afternoon before they made it to the field after a hellishly unpleasant bus trip during which a full-on fistfight broke out between two sixth graders.

  Sure enough, the first words out of the kids’ mouths were, “I’m hungry.”

  “Well, there’s your lunch,” Edilio said, sweeping his hand toward the field and feeling great personal satisfaction at being able to rub their noses in it.

  “Those round things?”

  “They’re called cantaloupes,” Edilio said. “And they’re very tasty, actually.”

  “What about zekes?” one of the girls asked.

  Edilio sighed. “That’s the cabbage field, not here. That’s, like, a mile from here.”

  But no one moved. They all lined up obediently but kept close to the bus and far from the edge of the field.

  Edilio sighed. “Okay. Let the wetback show you how.”

  He sauntered out into the field, bent over, gave a twist to one of the melons, and held it up high so they could see.

  It was luck that saved him. The fact that he dropped the melon.

  He looked down at the cantaloupe and saw the dirt move.

  Edilio leaped, a wild reaction that almost tripped him, but he caught his footing and ran.

  He ran faster than he had ever run before, boots slamming down on the seething worms and faster, faster, faster until he sprawled, facedown, in the dust.

  The dust beyond the field.

  He yanked his feet toward him and frantically examined his boots. There were chew marks on the sides, on the heels. But no holes.

  The worms had not penetrated.

  Edilio looked at the shocked faces of the kids around him. He had been seconds away from impatiently ordering them into the field. Most wearing sneakers. None with experience seeing what the zekes looked like.

  He’d been one hesitation away from ordering forty-nine kids to their deaths.

  “Get back on the bus,” Edilio said shakily. “Get back on the bus.”

  “What about lunch?” someone asked.

  FIFTEEN

  30 HOURS, 41 MINUTES

  SAM TOOK THE list from Astrid. He scanned the first couple of matters and nearly crumpled it up.

  “The usual?” he asked her.

  Astrid nodded. “The usual. I think you’ll especially enjoy the—”

  Computer Jack burst in like he was in a hurry.

  People weren’t supposed to just come busting in, but Jack wasn’t just people.

  “What is it, Jack?” Sam asked him as he slid into the oversized leather chair behind what had once been the real mayor’s desk and briefly was Caine’s.

  Jack was agitated. “You should let me turn on the phones.”

  Sam blinked. “What? I thought you had an emergency the way you came in here.”

  “Everybody keeps asking me when I’m going to fix the phones,” Jack said in apparent agony. “Everybody asks me, and I keep having to come up with stupid lies. They think I failed.”

  “Jack, we’ve been over this. I’m really grateful for the work you have done, man, no one else could ever have pulled it off. But, dude, we have other issues, okay?”

  Jack flushed. “You asked me to do it. I told everyone I was going to do it. Then you won’t let me do it. It’s not fair.” His glasses almost seemed to steam up from the heat of his indignation.

  “Listen, Jack. You really want Caine and Drake to be able to dial up anyone they want down here? You want Caine to be able to reach out to kids? Threaten them? Sweet-talk them? Maybe offer to give them food in exchange for guns or whatever? Look how well he fooled everyone the first time around.”

  “You just want to be in control of everything,” Jack accused.

  The accusation stung. Sam started to yell but choked it off. For a few seconds he just struggled with his temper, unable to speak.

  Of course I want to control things, he wanted to say. Of course he didn’t want Caine filling kid’s heads with lies. Kids were desperate enough to listen to anyone who offered an easier life, even Caine. Did Jack not understand how close they all were to disaster? Did Jack not get how tenuous Sam’s control of the situation had become?

  Maybe not.

  “Jack, kids are scared. They’re desperate,” Sam said. “Maybe you don’t see that because you’re busy with other things. But we are about this far”—he held up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart—“from total disaster. You want Caine to know that? You want kids talking to him or Drake at three in the morning, spilling their guts, telling him all of our business? You really want Caine knowing how bad things are?”

  Astrid stepped in to cut off Sam’s increasingly angry rant. “Jack, what happened to get you all worked up?”

  “Nothing,” Jack said. Then, “Zil. He’s busting on me in front of everyone, talking about how now that I’m a mutant and all, my brain must not work as well.”

  “Say what?” Sam asked.

  “He says people who get powers, their IQ drops, they get stupid. He said, ‘Exhibit A: poor old Jack, formerly Computer Jack, who can pick up a house but can’t get the phones to work.’”

  “You know, Jack, I’m sorry if he hurt your feelings, but I kind of have stuff to deal with here,” Sam said, beginning to get really exasperated. “You’re the tech genius. You know it, I know it, Astrid knows it, so who cares what Zil thinks?”

  “Look, why don’t you just work on the internet thing you’re trying to do?” Astrid suggested.

  Jack shot her a poisonous look. “Why, so you can not use that, either? Make me look like an even bigger fool?”

  Sam was ready to snap at Jack, tell him to shut up, go away, sto
p bothering him, but that would be a bad idea, so he took a deep breath, summoned all his patience, and said, “Jack, I cannot make promises. I’m dealing with a lot of stuff. First priority, before we worry about techie stuff, is—”

  “Techie stuff?” Jack interrupted. His voice was shocked and indignant.

  “That’s not a diss. I’m just saying—” But whatever he was about to say was forgotten when Edilio appeared in the doorway. He didn’t rush in as Jack had done. He just stood there looking pale and solemn.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “The zekes. They’re in the melon field now.”

  “They’re spreading,” Astrid said.

  “I could have got all those kids killed,” Edilio said. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He was trembling.

  “Okay. Enough,” Sam said, standing up, pushing his chair back sharply.

  Finally.

  Finally something he could actually do.

  He should have been worried. And he was. But the emotion that filled his mind as he strode purposefully from the room was relief. “The list is going to have to wait, Astrid. I’m going to kill some worms.”

  Two hours later Sam stood at the edge of the melon field. Dekka was beside him. Edilio had driven them there in the open Jeep, but he was not stepping foot on the ground.

  “How you see this playing out?” Dekka asked.

  “You lift them, I burn them,” Sam answered.

  “I can only reach a little area at a time. A circle, maybe twenty feet across,” Dekka said.

  The word had spread that Sam was going to throw down with the zekes. So other kids had piled into cars and vans and now a couple of dozen watched from a safe distance. Some, looking like tourists or sports fans, had brought cameras.

  Howard and Orc arrived as well. Sam was relieved. He’d sent word to Howard that he might need Orc’s help.

  “T’sup, Sammie?” Howard asked.

  “More worms. We’re going to see if we can do some pest control.”

  Howard nodded. “All right. And what do you want with my boy?” He jerked his thumb toward Orc, who stood leaning back against a car hood, his weight almost flattening the tires and denting the sheet metal.