Hunger

by Michael Grant

  I hunger.

  You will help me feed.

  Leave me alone, Lana protested feebly as her arms and legs kept moving, her head hung down like a dog. Like…like someone…

  I am the gaiaphage.

  What does that mean? Lana asked.

  She had more sense of herself now. She could reach into her memory and remember who she was and why she was here. She could recall the foolish hope she had nurtured of destroying the Darkness. The gaiaphage.

  But now she saw its hand in everything she had done. From the start it had been calling to her. Twisting her thoughts and actions to its will.

  She’d never had a chance.

  And now she crawled.

  Superman’s other girlfriend, Lana. Aragorn’s true love, Arwen. Lazar, shortened from Lazarevic. Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Lana Arwen Lazar. That’s who she was.

  She was unable to stop crawling. Down and down the mine shaft.

  Come to me.

  I have need of you.

  What need? Why me?

  You are the Healer.

  You have the power.

  Are you hurt? A flicker of hope at the thought that the creature might be wounded.

  Lana’s limbs were so heavy now, she could barely move. Barely slide her knees two inches across rough stone. Barely push her palms forward. But her eyes now registered the faint green glow she had remembered always from her first trip down this awful mine shaft.

  A glow like luminescent watch dials. A glow like the glow-in-the-dark stars Lana’s dad had pasted to her ceiling when she was little.

  The thought of her father tore at Lana’s soul. Her mother. Her father. So far away. Or dead. Or, who knew? Who would ever know?

  She imagined them seeing her. As if she were bacteria on a slide and her mother and father were looking down through a gigantic microscope. Seeing their daughter like this. Crawling in the dark. Terrified. Hungry. So afraid.

  Crawling toward the Darkness. Slave to the gaiaphage.

  She stopped moving, commanded by the voice in her head. She panted, waiting, sweat pouring off her.

  Place your hand on me.

  “What?” she whispered. “Where? Where are you?”

  She swung her weary head around, peering into the radioactive dark, seeing nothing but faintly glowing rock.

  No. Looking closer, forcing herself to look, she saw that it was not rock. Her unwilling eyes seemed to bore into the faint green glow and there began to see not a single mass of rock but a seething, pulsating swarm. Thousands, maybe millions of tiny crystalline shapes, hexagons, pentagons, triangles. The largest were perhaps half the size of her smallest fingernail. The smallest were no bigger than a period on a page. Each sprouted countless tiny legs, so that what Lana saw appeared as a vast ant colony, an insect hive, all green and glittering, pulsing like an exposed heart.

  Place your hand on me.

  She resisted. But she knew, even as she fought the gaiaphage’s will, that she was doomed to lose. Her hand moved. Trembling, it moved. She saw her fingers dark against the green glow.

  She touched it, felt it, and it was like touching rough sand on the beach. Only this sand moved, vibrated.

  For a moment there was only that simple sensation.

  Then, the gaiaphage showed her what he wanted.

  She saw creatures. A creature of living fire. A clockwork snake. Monsters.

  And she saw a Russian nesting doll.

  One doll…inside another…inside another…and another…

  Now she knew him, knew in a moment of blinding clarity what he was. Now she could feel his hunger. And now she sensed his fear.

  He needed her, this foul creature made of human and alien DNA, of stone and flesh, nurtured on hard radiation in the depths of space and now in the depths of the earth. The glowing food had all been consumed in the thirteen years the gaiaphage had grown and mutated down here in the darkness.

  It was hungry. Food was coming. When the food came, he would be strong enough to use Lana’s power to create a body. He had used her power to give Drake his whip hand, to make a monster of him. He would use her now, once he had fed, to create a monstrous body of his own. Bodies inside of bodies, bodies that could be used and then cast aside as another emerged.

  To move.

  To escape the mine. That was his goal.

  To walk the FAYZ and destroy all who resisted him.

  Sam’s day was a series of wild mood swings.

  Taylor bounced in to tell him that Mickey Finch had been killed escaping from Caine. But that Mike Farmer had survived. And now Caine was without hostages.

  Then a fire broke out in a house where two five-year-olds shared a place with two nine-year-olds. One of the nine-year-olds had been smoking pot.

  Fire Chief Ellen got the fire truck to the scene in time to keep the fire from spreading to the house next door. Water pressure still held strong at that end of town.

  The kids had all made it out alive.

  Then, as he was standing on the street with the sun rising and smoke pouring from the burned house, trying to decide how, or if, he should punish a kid for smoking weed and starting a fire, he felt a slight gust of wind.

  “Hey, Sammy,” Brianna said.

  Sam stared at her. She grinned at him.

  Sam breathed a big sigh of relief. “I should kill you, disappearing like that.”

  “Come on,” Brianna said, stretching her arms wide, “Hug it out.”

  She embraced Sam—quickly—then stepped back. “That’s all, big boy, I don’t want Astrid mad at me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So, when do we go take out Caine and get the lights back on?”

  Sam shook his head. “Can’t do it, Breeze.”

  “What? What?” What do you mean you can’t do it? He’s sitting there with no hostages. We can take him.”

  “There are other issues,” Sam said. “We’ve got trouble here between freaks and normals.”

  Brianna made a dismissive sound. “I’ll run around and slap some of them a few times, they’ll get over themselves, and we’ll get busy at the power plant.” She leaned close. “I found a way in through the roof.”

  That was interesting news. Interesting enough to make Sam reconsider. “A way into what? The turbine room?”

  “Dude, there’s a door on the roof. I don’t know where it goes, but it has to go into the turbine room. Probably.”

  Sam tried to shake himself out of his funk, but he couldn’t quite do it, couldn’t quite focus. He felt deflated. Weary beyond belief. “You’re hurt,” he observed.

  “Yeah, and it stings, too. Where’s Lana? I need some curing. Then we can do some butt-kicking.”

  “We lost Lana. She took off.”

  That piece of news rocked even Brianna’s eager confidence. “What?”

  “Things are not going well,” Sam said.

  He felt Brianna’s worried gaze. He wasn’t setting a good example. He wasn’t exactly taking charge. He knew all that. But he couldn’t shake off the indifference that sapped his every attempt to formulate a plan.

  “You need some rest,” Brianna said at last.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “No doubt.”

  The voices were familiar. Dekka. Taylor. Howard.

  “Sun’s coming up,” Taylor said. “The sky’s turning gray.”

  “We have to do something about Brittney and Mickey,” Dekka said.

  “I don’t deal with dead bodies.” Howard.

  “I guess we could, you know, send them back to town for Edilio to bury,” Dekka said.

  Taylor sighed. “Things are bad back there. I’ve never seen Sam like that. I mean, he’s just…”

  Dekka said, “He’ll get over it.” She didn’t sound too sure of that. “But yeah, maybe this isn’t the time to ask him to speak at a burial.”

  “Maybe we could just cover them up. You know, haul Mickey over here, maybe just put a blanket over them or something for now.”

  “Yeah. One of
these cars around here must have a blanket in the trunk. A tarp. Something. Get Orc to pop some trunks open, huh?”

  Which was how Brittney ended up nestled next to Mickey, under the shelter of a painter’s drop cloth.

  She felt no pain.

  She saw no light.

  She heard, but barely.

  Her heart was still and silent.

  Yet she did not die.

  Albert had no time to waste. He and Quinn had finally told Sam about their gold mission. About Lana going off with Cookie.

  They’d found Sam listless, not as mad as either of them had expected. He’d listened with his eyes closed and a couple of times Albert thought he might have nodded off.

  It had been a relief not to have Sam rage at them. But also disturbing. After all, they were delivering very bad news. Sam’s nonreaction was unreal. Sam wasn’t acting like Sam.

  All the more reason for Albert to get his act together. He’d sent a disbelieving Quinn off to fish.

  “I don’t care how tired you are, Quinn: we have a business to run.”

  And then he’d gotten down to work.

  The problem for Albert was melting the gold. The melting point for gold was three times higher than the melting point for lead, and nothing Albert could find achieved that temperature. Certainly none of the equipment at his McDonald’s, none of which was working now anyway, with the power out.

  Albert despaired until, rummaging through the hardware store looking for a solution, he noticed the acetylene torch.

  He hauled two torches and all the spare acetylene tanks he could find to the McDonald’s. He locked the door.

  He placed a large cast-iron pot on the stove and heated it to maximum. It wouldn’t melt the gold, but it would slow down the cooling process.

  He placed one of the gold bars into the pot, fired the torch, and aimed the blue pencil point flame at the gold. Instantly the metal began to sweat. Then to run off in a tiny river of molten gold.

  An hour later he popped his first six gold bullets from the bullet mold.

  It was exhausting work. Hot work. But he got so he could produce twenty-four bullets an hour. He worked without pause for ten hours straight and then, exhausted, starving and dehydrated, he counted out 224 of the .32-caliber bullets.

  Kids knocked on the door, demanding to be let in for the McClub. But Albert just posted a sign saying, “Sorry: We Are Closed This Evening, Please Come Back Tomorrow.”

  He drank some water, ate a meager meal, and did some calculations. He had enough gold to produce perhaps four thousand bullets, which, equally distributed, would mean just over ten bullets for each person in Perdido Beach. The job would take weeks.

  But he didn’t have nearly enough acetylene to manage it. Which would mean that in order to melt all the gold he would need the help of the one person least likely to want to help: Sam.

  Albert had seen Sam burn through brick. Surely he could melt gold.

  In the meantime Albert intended to distribute a single bullet to each person. Sort of as a calling card. A sign of what was coming.

  And then, a paper currency backed up by the gold, and finally, credit.

  Despite his weariness, Albert hummed contentedly as he sat with a yellow legal pad and a pen, writing out possible names for the new currency.

  “Bullets” was obviously not the appropriate term. He wanted people thinking “money,” not “death.”

  Dollars? No. The word was familiar, but he wanted something new.

  Euros? Francs? Doubloons? Marks? Chits? Crowns?

  Alberts?

  No. Over the top.

  Units?

  It was functional. It meant what it said.

  “The problem is, whatever we call them, we don’t have enough,” Albert muttered. If there were going to be just four thousand of the new…whatevers…they’d obviously have to be worth a lot, each one. Like, to start with, ten slugs should…

  Slugs?

  They were slugs, after all.

  To start with, if a kid had the original ten slugs he was given, then each slug would have to be worth more than, say, a single one-can meal. So he needed, in addition to the slugs, smaller units. A currency that would be worth, say, one tenth of a slug.

  But any attempt to make up paper currency would just send everyone running to find a copier. He needed something that could not be duplicated.

  An idea hit him. A memory. He ran for the storeroom that had long since been cleaned out of food. There were two boxes on the wire shelves. Each was filled with McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces—tickets—from some long-forgotten promotion.

  Twelve thousand pieces per box. Hard to counterfeit.

  He would have enough to make change for four thousand slugs at a rate of six Monopoly pieces per slug.

  “A slug equals six tickets,” Albert said. “Six tickets equals a slug.”

  It was a beautiful thing, Albert thought. Tears came to his eyes. It was a truly beautiful thing. He was reinventing money.

  THIRTY-TWO

  09 HOURS, 3 MINUTES

  BUG WAS LEERY now. Sam’s people knew about him. They had since the big battle of Perdido Beach. But now they had begun to take countermeasures. The sudden attack with spray paint had shaken Bug’s self-confidence.

  So when Caine drew him aside, careful not to let Drake overhear, and gave him a new assignment, Bug was dubious.

  “They’re out there waiting for anyone who comes out,” Bug argued. “Dekka’s out there for sure. Bunch of kids with guns. And probably Sam, hiding somewhere maybe.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Caine said. “Listen, Bug, you’re doing this: the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”

  So Bug was doing it. Not liking it, but doing it.

  He began by drifting into invisibility. Even when he was visible, kids tended to overlook him. They would forget he was there. Once he’d faded, they seldom seemed to remember him.

  He stood in the corner of the control room for a while, out of sight. Making sure no one—by which he meant Drake—was going to miss him.

  Things had calmed down a little since it became clear that Sam’s people were not going to rush in, guns and laser hands blazing.

  But the room was still tense. Drake and Caine paranoid, waiting for attack from outside, or from each other. Diana sullen, sleepy. Computer Jack obviously in pain from his injuries, popping Advil like crazy, but still pecking away at the keyboard. Drake’s bully boys had found some guy’s handheld game and were taking turns playing it till the batteries failed. Then they’d go off in search of more batteries.

  No one missed Bug.

  So he slipped out of the room, inches away from Drake, fearing the sudden lash of his whip as he held his breath.

  Outside, things were better than he’d expected. Dekka was sitting in the front seat of a car, half dozing, half arguing with Taylor and Howard. Orc was at the far edge of the parking lot idly smashing car windshields with a tire iron. And two, no three, kids with guns, concealed behind cars, around corners, all waiting for trouble. All bored, too.

  And in very bad moods. Bug heard fragments of grousing as he passed.

  “…Sam just takes off and leaves us here and…”

  “…if you’re not some powerful freak, no one gives a…”

  “…I swear I am going to cut off my own leg and eat it, I’m so hungry…”

  “…rat doesn’t taste as bad as you’d think. The trouble is, finding a rat…”

  Bug slipped past them and reached the road. Easy-peasy, as they used to say back in kindergarten.

  From there it was a long, long walk. With nothing to eat.

  Bug felt like his stomach was trying to kill him. Like it had become this enemy inside him. Like cancer or whatever. It just hurt all the time. He’d found his mouth watering when he heard the kid talking about eating a rat.

  Bug would eat a rat. In a heartbeat. Maybe he wouldn’t have even the day before, but now, he hadn’t eaten in a very long time. Maybe the time ha
d come to start eating bugs again. Not as a dare, but simply for a meal.

  He wondered how long you could go without food before you died. Well, one way or another, he was going to get some food. He’d managed to slip into Ralph’s before, and it was kind of on the way to Coates.

  Had to eat, man. Caine had to understand that.

  He’d get to Coates and find the freaky dream girl in plenty of time.

  Bug reached into his pocket and pulled out the map Caine had drawn onto a piece of printer paper. It was pretty good, pretty clear. It led from Coates, down around the hills, out into the desert. An “X” marked something Caine had labeled “Ghost Town.” A second “X,” almost on top of the town, was labeled “Mine.”

  On the map was a written message to anyone who challenged Bug. It read:

  Bug is following my orders. Do what he says. Anyone who tries to stop him deals with me. Caine.

  Bug was to gather up the dreamer, Orsay, and, using whatever guys he could round up at Coates, get her to the “X” labeled “Mine.”

  “I don’t know if it dreams or not,” Caine had said. “But I think maybe all its thoughts are dreams, kind of. I think maybe Orsay can get inside its head.”

  Bug had nodded like he understood, though he didn’t.

  “I want to know what it plans for me,” Caine instructed Bug. “You tell her that. If I bring it food, what will it do to me? You tell Orsay that if she can tell me the dreams of the Darkness, the gaiaphage, I will cut her loose. She’ll be free.”

  Then Caine had added, “Free from me, anyway.”

  It was an important mission. Caine had promised Bug first choice of any food they got in the future. And Bug knew he’d better succeed. People who failed Caine came to bad, bad ends.

  It was a very long walk to Ralph’s. The place was still guarded. Bug could see two armed kids on the roof, two by the front door, two by the loading dock in back. And the place was hopping, kids crowding at the door, pushing and yelling.

  Many were there to get their daily ration of a couple of cans of horrible food, doled out by bored fourth graders who had already grown cynical.

  “Dude, don’t try and play me,” one was saying as he turned a girl away. “You were here two hours ago getting food. You can’t just change clothes and trick me.”