Hunger

by Michael Grant

  “Gaiaphage. That’s what Caine calls it when he’s ranting,” Diana said. “Shouldn’t you know your god’s name?”

  Brittney did not feel any change in her arm.

  A terrible suspicion came to her. There was an awful silence from within her own body. She listened. Strained to hear, to feel, the ever-present thump…thump…

  Her heart. It was not beating.

  “Gaiaphage?” Jack said, sounding interested. “A ‘phage’ is another word for a computer virus. A worm, actually.”

  Her heart wasn’t beating.

  She wasn’t alive.

  No, that was wrong, she told herself. Dead things don’t hear. Dead things cannot move their one good hand, squeezing the fingers ever so slightly so no one would notice.

  There could be only one explanation. Caine and Drake had killed her. But Jesus had not taken her up into Heaven to be reunited with her brother. Instead, He had granted her this power. To live, still, a while, though she was dead.

  To live long enough to accomplish His will.

  “A phage is code. Software that sort of eats other software,” Jack said in his pedantic way.

  Brittney had no doubt what God had chosen her to do. Why He had kept her alive.

  She could still see, barely, though one eye was obscured. She could see across the floor to where Mike had left the pistol, just the way she had told him to.

  She would have to move with infinite patience. Millimeter by millimeter. Imperceptible movements of her hip and arm. The gun was underneath the table, far in a corner, seven, eight feet away.

  Satan walked the earth in this evil trinity of Caine, Drake, and Diana. And Brittney had been chosen to stop them.

  Watch me, Tanner, she prayed silently. I’m going to make you proud.

  Quinn and Albert were silent as they drove back to Perdido Beach.

  The truck was heavier by many pounds of gold.

  Lighter by two kids and a dog.

  Finally Quinn spoke. “We have to tell Sam.”

  “About the gold?” Albert asked.

  “Look, man, we lost the Healer.”

  Albert hung his head. “Yeah.”

  “Sam has to know that. Lana’s important.”

  “I know that,” Albert snapped. “I said that.”

  “She’s more important than some stupid gold.”

  For a long time Albert didn’t respond. Then, finally, “Look, Quinn, I know what you think. Same as everyone else. You think I’m just all about me. You think I’m just into being greedy or whatever.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. Well, maybe,” Albert admitted. “Okay, maybe I want to be important. Maybe I want to have a lot of stuff and be in charge and all that.”

  Quinn snorted. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “But that doesn’t make me wrong, Quinn.”

  Quinn didn’t have anything to say to that. He was sick at heart. He would be blamed for losing Lana Arwen Lazar. The Healer. The irreplaceable Healer. Sam would be disgusted with him. Astrid would give him one of her cold, disappointed looks.

  He should have stuck to fishing. He liked that. Fishing. It was peaceful. He could be alone and not be bothered. Now, even that was ruined with him having Albert’s guys working under him. Having to train them, supervise them.

  Sam was going to blow up. Or else just borrow Astrid’s cold, disappointed look.

  They bounced out onto the highway.

  “The streetlights are out,” Albert said.

  “It’s almost morning,” Quinn said. “Maybe they’re on a timer.”

  “No, man. They aren’t on a timer.”

  They reached the edge of Perdido Beach. It began to dawn on Quinn that something very big was very wrong. Maybe even something bigger and wronger than losing the Healer.

  “Everything’s dark,” Quinn said.

  “Something’s happened,” Albert agreed.

  They drove down pitch-black streets to the plaza. It was eerie. Like the whole town had died. Quinn wondered if that’s what had happened. He wondered if the FAYZ was in some new phase. Just he and Albert left, now.

  Quinn pulled the truck up in front of the McDonald’s.

  But just as Quinn was pulling up to park, he spotted something. He turned the truck around to aim the headlights at town hall.

  There, spread across one wall, in letters two feet tall, was spray-painted graffiti. Bloodred paint on the pale stone.

  “‘Death to freaks,’” Quinn read aloud.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  16 HOURS, 38 MINUTES

  THE PICKUP TRUCK’S battery was dead. It had been sitting for more than three months.

  But Hermit Jim was a prepared guy. There was a gasoline-powered generator and a charger for the battery. It took an hour for Lana and Cookie to figure out how to start the generator and hook up the battery. But finally Lana turned the key and after several attempts the engine sputtered to life.

  Cookie backed the truck up to the gas tank.

  It took some hard, sweaty work to shift the tank into the truck’s bed.

  By the time they were done, so was the night. Lana cautiously opened the warehouse’s door and looked outside. In the shadow of the hills it wasn’t possible to speak of true dawn, but the sky was tinged with pink, and the shadows, still deep, were gray and no longer black.

  A dozen coyotes lounged in an irregular circle, a hundred feet away. They turned to stare at her.

  “Cookie,” Lana said.

  “Yeah, Healer?”

  “Here’s what I want you to do. I’m taking the truck, right? You should hear an explosion. Wait ten minutes after that. I’ll be back. Maybe. If not, well, you need to wait until the sun is all the way up—coyotes are more dangerous at night. Then walk back to the cabin, and from there head home.”

  “I’m staying with you,” Cookie said firmly.

  “No.” She said it with all the finality she could manage. “This is my thing. You do what I say.”

  “I ain’t leaving you to those dogs.”

  Lana said, “The coyotes won’t be the problem. And you have to leave. I’m telling you to. Either the explosion happens or it doesn’t. Either way, if I don’t come back, I need you to get to Sam. Give him the letter.”

  “I want to take care of you, Healer. Like you took care of me.”

  “I know, Cookie,” Lana said. “But this is how you do it. Okay? Sam needs to know what happened. Tell him everything we did. He’s a smart guy, he’ll understand. And tell him not to blame Quinn, okay? Not Quinn’s fault. I would have figured out some other way to do it if Quinn and Albert hadn’t helped.”

  “Healer…”

  Lana put her hand on Cookie’s beefy arm. “Do what I ask, Cookie.”

  Cookie hung his head. He was weeping openly, unashamed. “Okay, Healer.”

  “Lana,” she corrected him gently. “My name is Lana. That’s what my friends call me.”

  She knelt down and ruffled Patrick’s fur the way he liked. “Love you, boy,” she whispered. She hugged him close and he whimpered. “You’ll be okay. Don’t worry. I’ll be right back.”

  Quickly, before she could lose her resolve, she climbed into the truck. She fired up the engine and nodded to Cookie.

  Cookie swung open the creaking door of the warehouse.

  The waiting coyotes got to their feet. Pack Leader ambled forward, uncertain. He was limping. The fur of one shoulder was soggy with blood.

  “So, I didn’t kill you,” Lana whispered. “Well, the day is young.”

  She put the truck into the lowest gear and took her foot off the brake. The truck began to creep forward.

  Slow and steady, that would be the way, Lana knew. The pathway to the mine entrance was a mess of potholes, narrow, crooked, and steep.

  She turned the wheel. It wasn’t easy. The truck was old and stiff with disuse. And Lana’s driving experience was extremely limited.

  The truck advanced so slowly that the coyotes could keep up at a walk. They fell i
nto place around her, almost like an escort.

  The truck lurched crazily as she pulled onto the path. “Slow, slow,” she told herself. But now she was in a hurry. She wanted it to be over.

  She had an image in her mind. Red and orange erupting from the mouth of the mine. Debris flying. A thunderclap. And then the sound of collapsing rock. Tons and tons and tons of it. Then billowing dust and smoke and it would be over.

  Come to me.

  “Oh, I’m coming,” Lana said.

  I have need of you.

  She was going to silence that voice. She was going to bury it beneath a mountain.

  There was a sudden jolt. Lana glanced into her mirror and saw the deformed, scarred face of Pack Leader. He had jumped into the back of the truck.

  “Human not bring machine,” Pack Leader said in his unique snarl.

  “Human do whatever she likes,” Lana yelled back. “Human shoot you in your ugly face, you stinking, stupid dog.”

  Pack Leader digested that for a while.

  The truck lurched and wallowed and crept up the hillside. More than halfway now.

  Come to me.

  “You’re going to be sorry you invited me,” Lana muttered. But now, with the mine shaft entrance in view, she found she could scarcely breathe for the pounding in her chest.

  “Human get out. Human walk,” Pack Leader demanded.

  Lana couldn’t shoot him. That would break the window behind her and that would allow the coyotes to come at her.

  She had reached the entrance.

  She put the truck into reverse. She would have to turn the truck around. Her hands were white, tendons straining, as she gripped the steering wheel.

  Pack Leader’s evil face was in her way as she turned to check her backward course. He was inches away, separated by nothing but a pane of glass.

  He lunged.

  “Ahh!”

  His snout hit the glass. The glass held.

  Lana was sure the glass would hold. The coyotes had not yet grown hands or learned to use tools. All they could do was bang their snouts into the glass.

  You are mine.

  “No,” Lana said. “I belong to me.”

  The bed of the truck crossed the threshold into the mine. Now the coyotes were getting frantic. A second coyote leaped and landed on the hood. He got the windshield wiper in his teeth and ripped savagely at it.

  “Human, stop!” Pack Leader demanded.

  Lana drove the truck backward. The back wheels rolled up and over the mummified corpse of the truck’s owner.

  The truck was all the way inside now, as far as it would go. The mine shaft ceiling was mere inches above the cab. The walls were close. The truck was like a loose cork in the shaft. The coyotes, feeling the walls closing in, had to decide whether to be trapped by the truck. They opted to slither out of the way, back to the front of the truck where they took turns leaping on and off the hood, snarling, snapping, scrabbling impotently at the windshield with their rough paws.

  The truck stopped moving, held tight. The doors would no longer open.

  That was fine. That was the plan.

  Lana twisted around in her seat, aimed carefully to avoid hitting the big tank in the back, and fired a single shot.

  The rear window shattered into a million pieces.

  Shaking with fear and excitement Lana crawled gingerly out of the cab into the bed of the truck. This excited the coyotes even more. They tried to shove themselves through the gap between the sides of the truck and the mine shaft walls, trying to get at her. One furious head jammed sideways between roof and a crossbeam.

  They yapped and snarled and Pack Leader cried, “Human, stop!”

  Lana reached the valve of the LPG tank. She twisted it open. Immediately she smelled the rotten-egg odor of the gas.

  It would take a while for the gas to drain out. It was heavier than air, so it would roll down the sloping floor of the mine shaft, like an invisible flood. It would sink toward the deepest part of the mine. It would pool around the Darkness.

  Would he smell it? Would he know that she had sealed his fate? Did he even have a nose?

  Lana paid out the fuse she’d made. It was a hundred feet of thin rope she’d soaked in gasoline. She’d kept it in a Ziploc bag.

  She took a coil and tossed it into the dark of the mine. It didn’t have to reach far.

  She carried the rest with her, back into the cabin of the truck. She stepped on the brake, turning on the brake lights and illuminating the shaft in hellish red. It was impossible to see the gas, of course.

  Lana waited, hands gripping the steering wheel. Her thoughts were a jumble of disconnected images, wild jump-cuts of her captivity with the coyotes and her encounters with the Darkness.

  The first time she had—

  I am the Gaiaphage.

  Lana froze.

  You cannot destroy me.

  Lana could barely breathe. She thought she might pass out. The Darkness had never before spoken its name.

  I brought you here.

  Lana reached into her pocket and fingered the lighter. It was simple physics. The lighter would light. The gasoline-soaked rope would burn. The flame would race down the rope until it reached the gas vapor.

  The gas would ignite.

  The explosion would shatter the ceiling and walls of the shaft.

  It might even incinerate the creature.

  It might kill her, too. But if she survived, she would be able to heal any burns or injuries. That was her bet: if she could simply stay alive for a few minutes, she would be able to heal herself.

  And then she would be truly healed. The voice in her head would be gone.

  You do my will.

  “I am Lana Arwen Lazar,” she cried with all the shrill force she could manage.

  “My dad was into comic books, so he named me Lana for Superman’s girlfriend Lana Lang.”

  You will serve me.

  “And my mom added Arwen for the elf princess in The Lord of the Rings.”

  I will use your power as my own.

  “And I never, ever do what I’m told.”

  Your power will give me shape. I will feed. Grow strong again. And with the body I will form using your power, I will escape this place.

  Your power will give me freedom.

  Lana was shaking. The gasoline smelled, and the fumes were making her woozy.

  Now or never. Now.

  Never.

  “Pack Leader!” Lana shouted. “Pack Leader! I’m going to blow this mine to hell, Pack Leader. Do you hear me?”

  “Pack Leader hears,” the coyote sneered.

  “You get yourself and your filthy animals out of here or you’ll die with the Darkness.”

  Pack Leader leaped heavily onto the hood. His fur was up, the ripped mouth slavering. “Pack Leader fears no human.”

  Lana snapped the pistol up and fired. Point-blank range.

  The sound was stunning.

  In the glass there was a hole surrounded by a star pattern, but the glass did not blow out like the rear window had.

  Blood sprayed across the glass.

  Pack Leader yelped and jumped clumsily from the hood, hit. Hurt.

  Lana’s heart jumped. She’d hit him. A solid, direct hit this time.

  But the glass was still there. It was supposed to shatter. It was her only escape route.

  Your power will give me freedom.

  “I’ll give you death!” Lana raged.

  Lana took the pistol and used it like a hammer, beating on the glass, breaking it out, but only a little at a time. She kicked at it, frantic. It gave, but too slowly.

  The coyotes could take her if they made a concerted attack.

  But the coyotes held off. The injury of their leader had left them confused and rudderless.

  Lana kicked, crazy now, panicked.

  You will die.

  “As long as you die with me!” Lana screamed.

  A big section of the safety glass gave way, folding out like a
stiff-frozen blanket.

  Lana began pushing through. Head. Shoulders.

  A coyote lunged.

  She fired.

  She pushed the rest of the way out, scratched, skin ripped, oblivious to the pain. On hands and knees on the hood. She had to fumble for the rope. Rope in one hand, greasy. Gun in the other, stinking of cordite.

  She fired wildly. Once, twice, three times, bullets chipping rock. The coyotes broke and ran.

  She laid the pistol on the hood.

  She fumbled the lighter from her pocket.

  No.

  She struck the lighter.

  The flame was tiny and orange.

  You will not.

  Lana brought the flame toward the rope’s end.

  Stop.

  Lana hesitated.

  “Yes,” Lana breathed.

  You can not.

  “I can,” Lana sobbed.

  You are mine.

  The flame burned her thumb. But the pain was nothing, nothing next to the sudden, catastrophic pain like an explosion in her head.

  Lana cried out.

  She clasped her hands over her ears. The lighter singed her hair.

  She dropped the rope.

  She dropped the lighter.

  Lana had never imagined such pain. As if her brain had been scooped out and her skull filled with burning, white-hot coals.

  Lana screamed in agony and rolled off the hood.

  She screamed and screamed and knew that she would never stop.

  TWENTY-NINE

  16 HOURS, 33 MINUTES

  “WE CAN WAIT him out,” Edilio said to Sam. “Just sit tight here. You could even catch a few Zs.”

  “Do I look that bad?” Sam asked. Edilio didn’t answer.

  “Edilio’s right, boss,” Dekka said. “Let’s just sit tight and wait. Maybe Brianna will…” She couldn’t finish, and turned away quickly.

  Edilio put his arm around Sam’s shoulders and drew him away from Dekka, who was now sobbing.

  Sam gazed up at the massive pile of cement and steel that was the power plant. He scanned the parking lot, looking past the parked cars to the sea beyond. The black water twinkled here and there, faint pinpoints of starlight, a rough-textured reflection of the night sky.

  “When’s your birthday, Edilio?”