Hunger

by Michael Grant

  “Does it hurt, Sam?” Drake gloated. “It kind of hurt when you burned my arm off. Do you think it hurts like that?”

  Again. Slash!

  And the reward of a terrible groan.

  “They said I wet myself while they were cutting off the stump,” Drake said. “Have you done that, yet, Sam? Have you peed yourself, Sam?”

  Sam was on his side now, arms over his face, covering himself. The last blow hadn’t even brought a scream. Just a shudder. Just a spasm.

  “Time to mess up that face of yours,” Drake snarled, and drew back to bring all his force to bear.

  Down came the whip hand.

  There was a blur. Drake wasn’t even sure he had seen anything.

  And then it was his own voice crying out in shock and horror. It didn’t even hurt at first, didn’t hurt, just…

  Eighteen inches of his tentacle arm lay quivering, jerking spasmodically on the floor like a dying snake.

  Blood sprayed from the severed end. He drew it back to stare at the stump.

  The wire had appeared from nowhere. Wrapped around one of the catwalk ladders at one end. And at the other end, Brianna, holding the wire tight.

  “Hey, Drake,” Brianna said. “I heard about your idea for cutting me up with wire. Clever.”

  Drake’s mouth gaped open, but no sound came.

  The suddenness of it left him dazed, unable to respond. Frozen.

  The severed end still jerked and writhed. Like it had a life of its own.

  “The remote!” Sam cried out.

  Drake spread his fingers.

  The remote fell.

  “Breeze!” Sam shouted.

  Drake spun away and ran.

  Brianna’s body moved faster than humanly possible.

  Her brain moved at normal speed. So it took her several split seconds to see the remote falling, to realize that if Sam was yelling about it in his condition, it was very, very important.

  Another split second to guess that the glowing blue was not a swimming pool.

  The remote fell.

  Brianna dove.

  Her hand gripped the remote just nine inches above the surface of the water.

  If she plunged into that water…

  She tucked her feet, spun around in midair, and hit the rising control rods as hard as she could.

  It wasn’t elegant. She cleared the lip of the pool and skidded across the floor.

  But she had the remote. She stared at it.

  Now what?

  “Sam? Sam?”

  Sam said nothing. She leapt to him, rolled him over, and only then saw to her horror the mess that Drake had made of him.

  “Sam?” It came out as a sob.

  “Red button,” Sam managed to gasp.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  53 MINUTES

  EDILIO’S HANDS WERE gripping the wheel so tightly, his fingers were white. Dekka noticed.

  He was gritting his teeth and then forcing himself to unclench in an unsuccessful effort to relax. Dekka noticed that, too.

  She didn’t say anything about it. Dekka was not a talkative girl. Dekka’s world was inside her, not locked up but kept private. Her hopes were her own. Her emotions were her business, no one else’s. Her fears…Well, nothing good ever came of showing fear.

  The kids in Perdido Beach, like the kids at Coates before that, tended to read Dekka’s self-contained attitude as hostile. She wasn’t hostile. But at Coates, that dumping ground for problem children, being just a little scary was a good thing.

  At Coates, Dekka had belonged to no clique. She’d had no friends. She didn’t make trouble, kept her grades up, followed most of the rules, kept her nose out of other people’s business.

  But she noticed what went on around her. She had known longer than most that some of the kids at Coates were changing in ways that could not logically be possible. She had known that Caine had gained some strange new power. She’d seen Drake Merwin for the dangerously sick creature he was. And Diana, of course, beautiful, seductive, knowing Diana.

  Dekka had felt the attraction of the girl. Diana had played her, teased her, mocked her, and left Dekka feeling more vulnerable than she had in a long time. But Diana had told no one Dekka’s secret. In the environment of Coates, that fact would have come back to Dekka very quickly.

  Diana knew how to keep secrets. For her own purposes.

  In those early days at Coates, Dekka had barely noticed Brianna. That attraction had come later, after Caine and Drake had made their move and imprisoned all the budding freaks at Coates.

  Dekka had been stuck beside Brianna, the two of them weighed down by the cement blocks encasing their hands. Side by side they’d eaten from a trough. Like animals. That’s when Dekka had started to admire Brianna’s unbroken spirit.

  You could knock Brianna down. But she didn’t stay down. Dekka loved that.

  Of course, nothing would ever come of it. Brianna was probably totally straight. And with lousy taste in guys, in Dekka’s opinion.

  “Not far,” Edilio said. “The ghost town’s just ahead. Be ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Dekka grumbled. “No one’s explained any of this to me. All Sam said is, I’m supposed to crush some cave.”

  Edilio had his machine gun on his lap. He clicked the safety to the off position. He had a pistol wedged under his leg. He pulled this out, clicked the safety to off, and handed it to Dekka.

  “You’re starting to worry me just a little bit, Edilio.”

  “Coyotes,” Edilio said. “And worse, maybe.”

  “What’s the ‘worse’?”

  They slowed as they drove down the main street of what Dekka realized must have once been a town. All fallen down now. Sticks and dust and faded smears of cracked, ancient paint.

  “Don’t you feel it?” Edilio asked.

  And she did. Had for several minutes already, without knowing what it was, what to call it.

  “How close do you have to be to do your thing?” Edilio asked.

  When Dekka tried to answer, she found her mouth was too dry, her throat too tight. She swallowed dust and tried again. “Close.”

  The Jeep reached the bottom of the trail. Edilio pulled the car around so that it was facing away. He left the keys in the ignition. “I don’t want to have to fumble for the keys,” he said. “Hopefully the coyotes haven’t learned to steal cars.”

  Dekka found she was strangely reluctant to get out of the Jeep. She saw sympathy and understanding in Edilio’s eyes.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I don’t even know what I’m scared of,” Dekka said.

  “Whatever it is,” Edilio said, “let’s go kill it.”

  They started up the trail. They soon came upon the fly-covered corpse of a coyote.

  “We got one at least,” Edilio said.

  They stepped carefully past the dead animal. Edilio kept his machine gun at the ready, sweeping the barrel slowly, side to side. The pistol was heavy in Dekka’s hand. She searched each rock, each crevice, waiting, tense, clenching muscles she didn’t know she had.

  Slowly they climbed.

  And there, at last, the entrance to the mine.

  “Can you do it from here?” Edilio whispered.

  “No,” Dekka said. “Closer.”

  Dragging feet through the dirt and gravel. Like they were walking through molasses. Every molecule of air seemed to drag at them. Slow-mo. Edilio’s finger flexing spasmodically on the trigger. Dekka’s heart thudding.

  Closer.

  Close enough.

  Dekka stopped. Edilio, with exquisite slowness, turned to point his gun at the two coyotes that had appeared almost by magic just above the mine shaft.

  Dekka tucked her pistol into the back of her belt. She had some vague, distant memory of someone telling her, “Better if it goes off to shoot a hole in your butt than in your…”

  A million years ago. A million miles away. Another planet. Another life.

  Dekka raised her hands, spread them
wide and…

  Movement from within the cave.

  Slow, steady. A hint of pale flesh in the shadow.

  Lana moved like a sleepwalker. She came to a stop just within the cave, under the overhang.

  She looked right at Dekka.

  “Don’t,” Lana said in a voice not her own.

  When Sam came to some time later, Brianna was kneeling beside him, a first-aid kit open on the floor. She was spraying cold liquid bandage onto his worst whip marks.

  “Drake,” Sam managed to gasp.

  “I’ll take care of him later,” Brianna said. “You first.”

  The alarm had stopped blaring.

  He tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down. “Dude, you are hurt bad.”

  “Yeah,” Sam admitted. “Hurts. Like fire.”

  “There’s this,” she said doubtfully. She held up an ocher-colored blister pack. The label read “Morphine Sulfate Injection USP. 10 mg.”

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. The pain made him want to scream. It was beyond anything he could endure. Like his flesh was burning, like someone was pressing a red-hot iron against his skin.

  “I don’t know,” Sam said through his teeth.

  “We need Lana,” Brianna said.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Too bad I sent Dekka to kill her.”

  He lay there feeling waves of pain so great, they made him want to throw up. The morphine would dull the pain. But it would also probably take him out of the battle. No one else could stop Caine. No one else…

  He had to function…had to…

  He cried out in agony, unable to hold it in, unable to stop himself.

  Brianna tore open the blister pack and jabbed the syringe into his leg.

  A wave of relief swept through him. But with it, weariness, weirdness, and a dreamy indifference. He was sinking down and down and down into a dark place. Letting himself fall away, leaving Brianna staring down at him as he fell toward the center of the earth.

  A resource, some wisp of his remaining consciousness was thinking.

  A weapon.

  “Breeze,” Sam managed to say.

  “What, Sam?”

  “Breeze…”

  “I’m here, Sam.”

  It would be ready. The creature knew their powers. Knew their limits. Knew everything Lana knew. Probably everything Caine and Drake knew.

  But not everything there was to know.

  With a sudden, spasmodic lurch, Sam managed to grab her arm and squeeze it tight. “Breeze. Breeze…get Duck.”

  “I’m not leaving you, boss,” Brianna argued.

  “Breeze. The radiation. You were exposed.”

  He couldn’t see the expression on her face. But he heard the sharp intake of breath.

  “Am I going to die?” Brianna asked. She made an unconvincing laugh. “No way.”

  She was so far away now. Miles away from Sam. In another world. But he still had to reach her.

  “Oh, God,” Brianna cried.

  “Breeze. Get Duck. The mine. Lana.”

  He let go then, and fell into the pit and drifted from reality.

  Brianna hit town like Paul Revere riding a rocket. She zoomed down streets, banging on doors, yelling, “Duck! Duck, get your butt out here!”

  No Duck. Plenty of kids heard her yelling and ducked. Which on another day she might have found funny.

  She ran as fast as she could. Not fast enough to outrun her own fear. Radiation. She had touched the reactor pool.

  Was she already doomed?

  She ran into Astrid with Brother John and her own little weird brother pulling a red wagon toward town hall. At first she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Mary Terrafino was in the wagon, curled up and covered with a blanket that dragged on the pavement.

  Brianna hit the brakes and skidded to a stop in front of Astrid. Little Pete was chanting something at the top of his lungs. “Nestor! Nestor! Nestor!” Crazy. Like a crazy street person. Brianna didn’t know how Astrid could stand it.

  When Little Pete spotted Brianna, he stopped. His eyes glazed over, and he slowly pulled a handheld game from his pocket.

  “Brianna! Is Sam okay?” Astrid cried.

  “No. Drake tore him up.” She wanted to sound tough, but the sobs came bubbling up and overtook her. “Oh, God, Astrid, he’s hurt so bad.”

  Astrid gasped and covered her hand with her mouth. Brianna put her arms around Astrid and sobbed into her hair.

  “Is he going to die?” Astrid asked, voice wobbly.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Brianna said. She stood back and wiped her tears. “I gave him something for the pain. But he’s messed up, Astrid.”

  Astrid grabbed her arm hard, squeezing enough to cause Brianna pain.

  “Nestor,” Little Pete said.

  “Hey,” Astrid snapped at Brianna. “Get it together.”

  It shocked Brianna. She’d never thought of Astrid as weak and girly, really, but she hadn’t thought of her as tough, either. But Astrid’s jaw was clenched, her eyes cold and steely.

  “Nestor,” Little Pete repeated.

  “I’m supposed to get Duck,” Brianna said.

  “Duck?” Astrid frowned. “Sam was probably out of his mind.”

  “Duck,” Little Pete said.

  Astrid stared at him. Brianna saw the look, could almost hear the wheels spinning in Astrid’s brain.

  At that moment there was a commotion. Two dozen kids, some cavorting like they were at Mardi Gras, came around the corner into the town plaza. Creeping slowly behind them was a convertible with its top down and its lights flashing. The car’s CD player was blaring a song Brianna didn’t know.

  Splayed across the hood of the car was the half-mangled body of a deer.

  Walking behind the car, stumbling, dragging one leg like it wasn’t working right, face bloody, came Hunter. His hands were covered with something metallic, and wrapped in duct tape. A rope was around his neck. Holding the rope and sitting atop the backseat, like he was a politician at a parade, was Zil. Lance was driving. Antoine, whom Brianna knew to be a druggie jerk, was riding shotgun. Two other kids she didn’t really know were in the other seats. One of them was holding up a small, hand-lettered sign that read, “Free Food for Normals.”

  “What the…,” Brianna said.

  “Stay out of it, Brianna,” Astrid said. “Go help Sam.”

  “They can’t do this!” Brianna cried.

  Astrid grabbed her arm. “Listen to me, Brianna. Your job is to help Sam. Do what he said: get Duck.”

  “This is major trouble coming, Astrid.”

  “Bad things,” Astrid said. “Very bad things are going on. Listen to me, Breeze. Are you listening?”

  Someone must have spotted Brianna because suddenly there were kids rushing toward her from the procession, kids waving baseball bats and tire irons and at least one long-handled ax.

  “It’s a freak! Get her!”

  “She’s spying on us!”

  “Get out of here, Breeze,” Astrid said urgently “Find a way to help Sam. If we lose him, we’re done.”

  “These creeps don’t scare me!” Brianna yelled. “Bring it on, you punks!”

  To shock her, Astrid grabbed her face. She squeezed it hard, like a very angry mother with a very bad little child. “It’s not about you, Brianna! Now get out of here!”

  Brianna pulled back. Her face was flushed from anger. The mob was racing toward her. But “racing” meant one thing to them, and a whole different thing to her.

  Astrid was probably right. They didn’t call her Astrid the Genius for nothing. But Brianna knew if the mob lost her, they’d likely take it out on Astrid.

  “Take care of yourself, Astrid,” Brianna said.

  Brianna zoomed fifty feet away from Astrid and came to a stop. “Hey. Morons. I’m right here. You want a piece? You want a piece of the Breeze?”

  The crowd spotted her, turned, and went after her, veering away from Astrid.

  “Ge
t her!”

  “Get that mutant freak!”

  “Yeah, right,” Brianna sneered. “Come and get me.”

  She waited, a coldly furious grin on her face, until the first of her pursuers was within ten feet.

  Then she gave the mob a middle-finger salute and zoomed away at a speed even a car couldn’t match.

  THIRTY-NINE

  47 MINUTES

  DUCK ZHANG WAS having a fine time if you set aside the fact that no one seemed to be distributing food anymore and he was so hungry, he couldn’t see straight.

  He’d reached the point where he bitterly regretted the lost hot dog relish he’d intended to give to Hunter.

  But on the plus side he was no longer worried about falling through the earth all the way to its molten core. He had begun to figure out how to control this absurd power he had.

  Duck was no genius, but it had finally occurred to him that his was the power of density. He could control the density of his body, without growing larger or smaller. If he went one way, he became so dense, he could fall straight into the ground. Like dropping a marble into a bowl of pudding.

  Which, as he had discovered, was a bad thing.

  But if he went the other way, as he was learning to do, he could float. Not fly, but float. Like a helium balloon. He could do it now even without having to experience violent mood swings. He could simply decide to sink. Or he could decide to float.

  Floating was much better. It turned the whole world into a sort of giant swimming pool. And this time around, no one was going to crash his party.

  He was floating now about fifty feet above the plaza. He’d started off over by the school. He’d lifted off and then just…drifted. The only concern being that he not drift too far from town and end up having a long walk home. Worse still would be drifting out to sea. That could be bad. He could imagine, say, dozing off up here and waking up to find himself two miles out to sea. In the dark. That was a long, long swim.

  “What I need,” he said to the rooftop below him, “is, like, wings or something. Or like a rocket pack. Then I could fly for real.”

  “Like Superman.”

  It was a happy thought. That did make it a little easier to stay comfortably aloft.

  One of the other problems was that, unlike water, air was hard to move around in. Going up or down was easy. Going forward or backward was impossible. And even twisting around, for example, if you were lying on your back, well, that was not an easy thing to do, either.