Hunger

by Michael Grant

Into the mine entrance. The beam searched and stopped when it found the object.

  The face was like a shrunken head, yellow skin taut against bones that waited patiently to emerge. The rough, patched denim seemed almost new by comparison with the ancient-looking mummy flesh and sere-grass hair.

  Lana knelt beside him. “Hey, Jim,” she said.

  She now had to choose between the gun and the light. She laid the gun on Jim’s collapsed chest.

  She found his right front pocket. Wrangler jeans. The pocket loose. Easy enough to reach in. But the pocket was empty. She could reach the hip pocket easily enough as well, but it was also empty.

  “Sorry about this.” She seized the waist of his jeans and rolled him toward her, exposing the other hip pocket. The body moved oddly, too light, too easily shifted, so much weight evaporated.

  Empty.

  “Human dead.”

  She knew the voice instantly. It wasn’t a voice you ever forgot. It was Pack Leader’s slurred, high-pitched snarl.

  “Yes, I noticed,” Lana said. She was proud of the calmness of her tone. Inside, the panic was threatening to engulf her, just one pocket left, and if the keys weren’t there?

  “Go to the Darkness,” Pack Leader said.

  He was a dozen feet away, poised, ready. Could she reach the gun before Pack Leader could reach her?

  “The Darkness told me to pick this guy’s pockets,” Lana said. “The Darkness says he wants gum. Thinks maybe Jim has a pack.”

  During her time as Pack Leader’s captive, Lana had come to respect the coyote leader’s ruthless determination, his cunning, his power. But not his intelligence. He was, despite the mutation that allowed speech, a coyote. His frame of reference was hunting rodents and dominating his pack.

  Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock, Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.

  No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader could reach her.

  Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.

  Inside, something cold and hard-edged.

  She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then thrust them into her own pocket.

  Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.

  Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.

  “The Darkness asked for it,” she said.

  Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she stood up.

  “I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked directly toward the coyote.

  But this was too much for Pack Leader.

  “Go to Darkness, human.”

  “Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up and fired.

  Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!

  Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.

  There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.

  In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard, far short of his objective.

  She was past him and running now, running blind and heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not in terror.

  Lana screamed in defiance.

  She screamed in triumph.

  She had the key.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  17 HOURS, 48 MINUTES

  BRIANNA WOKE.

  It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.

  Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm, left hip, left calf, left ankle.

  She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.

  The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.

  It hurt amazingly.

  She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.

  Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see actual flames.

  It was scary bright on the roof of the power plant. So she could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue in the fluorescent light. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening, she reassured herself, she wasn’t going to die. But oh, man, it hurt and it was going to keep on hurting.

  “Happens when you slam concrete at a couple hundred miles an hour,” she told herself. “I should wear a helmet and leathers. Like motorcycle guys.”

  That thought offered a welcome distraction. She spent a few seconds contemplating a sort of superhero outfit for herself. Helmet, black leather, some lightning-bolt decals. Definitely.

  It could have been worse, she told herself. It would have been worse if she were anyone else on earth, because when she had hit the deck her body wanted to go tumbling out of control. That would have broken her arms and legs and head.

  But she was the Breeze, not anyone else. She’d had the speed to slam palms and feet against concrete fast enough—barely—to turn a deadly tumble into an extremely painful skid.

  She limped at regular speed over toward the edge of the roof. But the way the building was constructed the edges sloped away, round-shouldered, rather than forming a nice, neat ninety-degree angle. So she couldn’t see straight down, though she could see the gate and the parking lot, all blazing bright. Beyond, the dark mountains, the darker sea.

  “Well, this was a stupid idea,” Brianna admitted.

  She had attempted to fly. That was the fact of it. She had tried to translate her great speed into a sort of bounding, leaping version of flight.

  It had made perfect sense at the time. Sam had ordered her not to enter the power plant’s control room. But by the same token she had to try to get the lay of the land, to see where all of Caine’s people might be positioned. She’d thought: What would be better than the view from on top of the turbine building?

  She’d been toying for a long time with the idea of flying. She’d worked out the basic concept, which amounted to running real fast, leaping onto something a little high, then jumping to something higher still. It wasn’t rocket science. It was no different from leaping from rock to rock while crossing a stream. Or perhaps like taking a set of stairs two at a time.

  Only in this case the “stairs” had been a parked minivan, and a low administrative building, with the final “step” being the turbine structure itself.

  The first two steps had worked fine. She had accelerated to perhaps three hundred miles an hour, leaped, slammed off the roof of the minivan, landed on the admin building, kept almost all of her speed, taken six blistering steps to regain whatever speed she’d lost, and made the jump to the roof of the massive concrete hulk.

  And that’s when things had gone wrong.

  She was just short of landing on the flat part of the roof and instead hit the shoulder. It was more like belly-flopping than it was the sort of airplane-landing-on-runway situation she was looking for.

  She’d seen the concrete rushing up at her. She’d motored her feet like crazy. She’d managed to avoid sliding off and falling all the way to the ground, but her desperate lunge had ended with an out-of-control impact that had come very close to killing her.

  And now, now, having reached this perch, she couldn’t actually see much of anything.

  “Sam is going to kill me,” Brianna muttered.

  Then, as she bent a knee, “Ow.”

  The roof was a few hundred feet long, one third as wide. She trotted—slowly—from one end to the other. She found the access door easily, a steel door set in a brick superstructure. This would lead down to the turbine room and from there to the control room.

  “Well, of course there would be a door,” Brianna muttered. “I guess I should pretend that was my plan right from the start.”

  She tried the doork
nob. It was locked. It was very locked.

  “Okay, that sucks,” Brianna said.

  She was desperately thirsty. Even more desperately hungry. Thirst and hunger were often extreme after she had turned on the speed. She doubted she’d find any food up on this roof the size of a parking lot. Maybe water, though. There were massive air conditioners, each the size of a suburban home. Didn’t air conditioning always create condensation?

  She zipped at a moderate speed over to the closest AC unit, ow, ow, owing as she ran. Brianna let herself in. Found a light switch. Her heart leaped when she spotted the Dunkin’

  Donuts box. In a flash she was there. But there was nothing inside but some tissue paper smeared with the crusty remains of pink icing and a half dozen brightly colored sprinkles.

  Brianna licked the paper. It had been so long since she’d tasted anything sweet. But the result was just a sharpening of the pain in her stomach.

  She found what she hoped was a water pipe, white plastic. She looked around for a tool and found a small steel box containing a few wrenches and a screwdriver. In seconds she had popped the pipe and was filling her stomach with ice cold water. Then she let the water pour over the burns on her skin and cried out at the agony of it.

  She next carried the screwdriver—it was large and heavy—to the steel door. She inserted it into the gap between the handle and the frame and pushed. There was no give. Not even a little.

  In frustration she stabbed at the door. The screwdriver made a spark and a scratch. Nothing more.

  “Great. I’m trapped on the roof,” she said.

  Brianna knew she needed medical attention. A visit with Lana would be great. Failing that, she needed bandages and antibiotics.

  But all of that was nothing compared to the hunger. Now that the adrenaline rush was wearing off, the hunger was attacking her with the ferocity of a lion. She had started the night hungry. But then she had run perhaps twenty-five miles. On a very empty stomach.

  It was a ridiculous situation to be in. No one knew she was up here. She probably couldn’t yell loud enough to make herself heard over the noise of the plant. Even if she could, she probably wouldn’t want to because if Sam had failed, somehow, then the guy who heard her would be Caine.

  Then she spotted the pigeon.

  “Oh, my God,” Brianna whispered. “No.”

  Then, “Why not?”

  “Because, ewww.”

  “Look, it’s no different from a chicken.”

  She retrieved the donut box. She tore the paper into little strips. She found an ancient newspaper and tore it up as well. She found a wooden pallet and with a saw from the toolkit, and superhuman speed, she soon had a small pile of wood.

  It was unfortunate that none of the workmen had left matches behind. But steel struck with super speed against cement made sparks fly. It was tedious work, but she soon had a fire going. A cheerful little fire in the middle of the vast roof.

  And now there were two pigeons, dozing and cooing in their sleep. One was gray, the other kind of pink.

  “Pink,” she decided.

  The chances of a regular kid catching them was close to zero. But she was not a normal person. She was the Breeze.

  The pigeon never had time to flinch. She grabbed it, hand around its golf ball head. She swung it hard, snapping its neck.

  Two minutes in the fire burned off most of the feathers. Five minutes more and the bird burst open.

  That was the end of her patience. She used the screwdriver to pry slivers of meat from the pigeon’s plump breast and pop them into her mouth.

  It had been weeks since she had tasted anything half as good.

  “The Breeze,” she said, squatting by her fire. “Scourge of pigeons.”

  She lay back, savoring her meal.

  In a minute she would get up and figure out how to escape this rooftop trap.

  But with food in her stomach the weariness of a day spent running at insane speeds over insane distances caught up with her.

  “I’m just going to rest my…”

  Duck sank, facedown, mouth full of dirt and rock.

  He was choking, gagging. No way to breathe.

  His head was pounding. Blood pounding in his ears. His chest heaved, sucking desperately on nothing.

  It was over.

  He was going to die.

  Wild with panic, he thrashed. His arms plowed through packed dirt with no more effort than if he had been swimming in water.

  He was no longer acting consciously, legs and arms kicking in a sort of death spasm as his brain winked out and his lungs screamed.

  “Duck! Duck! You down there?”

  A voice from a million miles away.

  Duck tried to sit up, very quickly. He had managed to turn himself over. But his head slammed into dirt, and he took a shower of gravel in the face for his efforts. He tried to open his eyes, but dirt filled them. He spit dirt out of his mouth and found that he could breathe. His thrashing had made a space for him.

  “Duck! Dude! Are you alive?”

  Duck wasn’t sure he knew the answer. He cautiously moved his arms and legs and found that he could, within limits.

  Sudden, overwhelming panic. He was buried alive!

  He tried to scream, but the sound was choked off and now he was falling again, falling through the earth.

  No. No. No.

  He had to stop. Had to stop the anger.

  It was the anger that had sent him plummeting toward the center of the earth.

  Think of something not angry, not fearful, he ordered himself.

  Something happy.

  Buried alive!

  Happy…happy…the swimming pool…the water…floating…

  Duck stopped sinking.

  That was good. Good! Happy. Floating. Happy, happy thoughts.

  Cookies. He liked cookies. Cookies were great.

  And…and…and Sarah Willetson that time she smiled at him. That was nice. That had given him a nice, warm feeling, like maybe someday girls would like him.

  Also, how about watching TV, watching basketball on TV? That was a happy thought.

  He was definitely no longer sinking.

  No problem. Just be happy. Be happy to be buried alive.

  “Duck?” It was Hunter’s voice calling down to him. It sounded like Hunter was at the bottom of a well. Of course it was the other way around: Duck was at the bottom of the well.

  “Happy, happy,” Duck whispered.

  He was not buried alive, he was sitting down in the movie theater. He was in the seats with the railing right in front where he could rest his feet. And he had popcorn. Buttered, of course, extra salt. And a box of Cookie Dough Bites.

  Previews. He loved the previews. Previews and popcorn and oh, look, there was a Slushee in the seat’s cup holder. Blue, whatever flavor that was supposed to be. Blue Slushee.

  What was the movie? Iron Man.

  He loved Iron Man.

  And Slushees. Popcorn. Swimming pools. Girls.

  Something was scraping against his face, against his arms and legs and chest.

  Don’t think about that, it might make you unhappy and mad, and boy, those are not helpful emotions. They drag you down.

  Way down.

  Duck laughed at that.

  “Duck. Dude.” Hunter’s voice. It sounded closer now, clearer. Was he watching Iron Man, too?

  No, Sarah Willetson was. Sarah was sitting beside him, sharing his popcorn and oh, excellent, she had a bag of peanut M&M’s. She was pouring some into his hand. Happy little football shapes in bright colors.

  The scraping had stopped.

  “Dude?”

  The voice was close now.

  Duck felt a breeze.

  He opened his eyes. There was still dirt in his eyes. He brushed it away. The first thing he saw was Hunter. Hunter’s head.

  The top of Hunter’s head.

  Slowly Hunter’s face turned up toward him with an expression of pure awe.

  “Dude, you�
��re flying,” Hunter said.

  Duck glanced around. He was no longer buried alive. He was out of the hole. He was across the street from the church, out of the hole, and floating about five feet in the air.

  “Whoa,” Duck said. “It works both ways.”

  “We should just get out. Take Sam’s deal. Walk away,” Diana was saying.

  “I’m in the root directory,” Jack was saying.

  Brittney knew she should be in pain. Her body was a wreck. She knew that. Her legs were broken. The control room door, blown from its hinges, had done that. She knew she should be in agony. She wasn’t.

  She should be dead. At least one bullet had hit her.

  But she wasn’t dead. Not quite.

  So much blood, all around her. More than enough to kill her. Had to be.

  And yet…

  “No one’s leaving,” Caine said.

  It was like being in a dream. Things that she should feel, she didn’t. It was like the way sometimes, in a dream—cause and effect went backward, or sideways, things not making sense.

  “We have no food,” Diana said.

  “Maybe I could go for some,” Bug said.

  “Yeah, right. Like you’d come back here if you found any,” Drake sneered. “We’re not here to feed ourselves. We’re here to feed him.”

  “Do you capitalize it when you say ‘him,’ Drake?” Diana’s sarcasm was savage. “Is he your god now?”

  “He gave me this!” Drake said. Brittney heard a loud crack, the bullwhip sound of Drake’s arm.

  With infinite caution, Brittney tested her body. No, she could not move her legs. She could only rotate one hip, and that only a little.

  Her right arm was useless. Her left arm, though, worked.

  I should be dead, Brittney thought. I should be with Tanner in Heaven.

  I should be dead.

  Maybe you are.

  No. Not before Caine, Brittney thought.

  She wondered if she had become a healer, like Lana. Everyone knew the story of how Lana had discovered her power. But Lana had been in terrible pain. And Brittney was not.

  Still, she focused her thoughts, imagined her useless right arm healing. She concentrated all her mind on that.

  “Trapped,” Diana said bitterly.

  “Not for long. We bust out of here and bring him what he needs,” Drake said.