Hunger_A Gone Novel

by Michael Grant

  And it was cold.

  Duck noticed the sound of his own sobbing, and was dismayed to realize he was crying. He tried to stop. It wasn’t easy. He wanted to cry. He wanted to cry for his mother and

  father and grandmother and aunts and uncles and even his

  obnoxious big brother and the whole, whole, whole world that

  was gone and had abandoned him to this grave.

  “Help! Help!” he cried, and again there was no answer.

  Before him were two equally dark choices: The dark tunnel extending to his left. The dark tunnel extending to his right. He felt a slight, almost imperceptible whisper of breeze

  on his face. It seemed to come from his left.

  Toward air. Not away.

  Carefully, Duck made his way down the tunnel, hands

  outstretched like a blind person, down the tunnel.

  It was so dark, he could not see his hand in front of his

  face. No light. None.

  He soon found that it was easier if he kept one hand on

  the wall. It was rock, pitted and rough, but with bumps and

  protrusions that felt worn down. The ground below him was

  uneven but not wildly so.

  “Cave has to lead somewhere,” Duck told himself. He

  found the sound of his own voice reassuring. It was real. It

  was familiar.

  “I wish it was a tunnel. People don’t build a tunnel for no

  reason.” Then, after a while, “At least a tunnel has to go somewhere.”

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  He tried to make sense of the direction. Was he going

  north, south, east, west? Well, hopefully not too far west,

  because that would lead him to the ocean.

  He walked and occasionally started crying and walked

  some more. It was impossible to guess how long he’d been

  down there. He had no idea what time of day it might be.

  But he soon realized that the place where he’d fallen in was

  seeming more and more homey by comparison. There wasn’t

  much light back there, but at least there had been some. And

  here there was none.

  “I don’t want to die down here,” he said. He was instantly

  sorry that he had voiced that thought. Saying it made it real.

  At that moment he banged his head on something that

  shouldn’t have been there, banged it hard.

  Duck cursed angrily and put his hand to his forehead,

  feeling for blood, and realized his feet were sinking into the

  ground. “No!” he yelped.

  The sinking stopped. He’d gone up to his knees. But then

  he had stopped. He had stopped sinking. Carefully, cautiously, he pulled his legs up out of the hard-packed dirt.

  “What is happening to me?” he demanded. “Why . . .” But

  then he knew the answer. He knew it and couldn’t believe it

  hadn’t occurred to him earlier.

  “Oh, my God: I’m a freak.”

  “I’m a moof!”

  “I’m a moof with a really sucky power.”

  What exactly the mutant ability was, he wasn’t sure. It

  seemed to be the power to sink right down through the earth.

  Which was crazy. And, besides, he hadn’t intended to do any

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  such thing. He sure hadn’t said, “Sink!”

  He started walking again, careful of his head, trying to

  work through what had happened. Both times he had sunk

  he’d been angry, that was the first thing. He’d heard the stories of how Sam had discovered his abilities only when he was really scared or really mad.

  But Duck had been scared now for quite a while. He’d been

  scared since the FAYZ. It was only when he got angry that the

  thing happened.

  The thing. Whatever it was.

  “If I got mad enough maybe I’d sink clear through the

  earth. Come out in China. See my great-great grandparents.”

  He crept along a bit farther, toward a dim glow.

  “Light?” he said. “Is that really light?”

  It wasn’t bright, that was for sure. It wasn’t a lightbulb. It

  wasn’t a flashlight. It wasn’t even a star. It was more like a

  less dark darkness. Hazy. At a distance that was impossible

  to guess.

  Duck was sure it was a hallucination. He wanted it to be

  real, but he feared it wasn’t. He feared it was imagination.

  But he kept moving and the closer he got the less likely

  it seemed that it was a mirage. There was definitely a glow.

  Like a glow-in-the-dark clock face, a sickly, cold, unhealthy-

  looking light.

  Even close up it didn’t glow enough to make out many features, just a few faint outlines of rock. He had to stand and stare hard, straining his eyes for quite some time before he

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  could figure out that the glow was mostly along the ground.

  And that it came from a side tunnel of the main cave. This

  second shaft was narrow, far smaller than the main cave,

  which, it seemed to Duck, had gradually broadened out.

  He could follow this new shaft and at least see something.

  Not much, but something. Some proof that he wasn’t actually

  blind.

  But some little voice in his brain was screaming, “No!” His

  instincts were telling him to run.

  “There’s light down there. It must lead to somewhere,”

  Duck argued with himself.

  But although Duck had never been the most attentive student, and had very little information of a scientific nature in his brain, he was an avid fan of The Simpsons. He’d seen

  this glow, in cartoon form. And it featured in any number of

  comics.

  “It’s radiation,” he said.

  This was wrong, he realized, filled with righteous indignation. Everyone said there was no radiation left from the big accident at the power plant thirteen years ago, when the meteorite hit. But where else would this glow have come from? It must have seeped along underground seams and crevices.

  They had lied. Or maybe they just hadn’t realized.

  “Not a good idea to go that way,” he told himself.

  “But it’s the only light,” he cried, and began to weep with

  frustration because it seemed he had no choice but to plunge

  back into absolute darkness.

  And then, Duck heard something.

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  He froze. He strained his senses to listen.

  A soft, swishing sound. Very faint.

  A long silence. And then, there it was again. Swish. Swish.

  He’d missed the sound because he’d been focusing on the

  glow. It was a sound he knew. Water. And it did not, thank

  God, come from the radioactive shaft.

  Duck hated the ocean. But all things considered, he hated

  it a bit less than he hated this cave.

  Leaving the glow behind, and feeling carefully ahead, cautious about his bruised forehead, he crept on through pitch blackness.

  SIX

  96 HOURS, 22 MINUTES

  “ L O O K , A L B E R T , D O N ’ T tell me we have a problem and

  I can’t do anything about it,” Sam said, practically snarling.

  He marched along at a quick walk from the town hall to the

  church next door. Albert and Astrid were with him, struggling to keep up.

  The sun was setting out over the ocean. The dying light

  laid down a long red exclamation point on the water. A boat

  was out there, one of the small moto
rboats. Sam sighed. Some

  kid who’d probably end up falling in.

  Sam stopped suddenly, causing Albert and Astrid to bump

  into each other. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound mad. Although

  I am mad, but not at you, Albert. It’s just I have to go in there

  and lay down the law, and I’m sorry, but killer worms aren’t

  making it any easier.”

  “Then hold off for a few days,” Albert said calmly.

  “Hold off? Albert, you were the one who was saying weeks

  ago, months ago, we had to make everyone get to work.”

  “I never said we should make them work,” Albert countered.

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  “I said we should figure out a way to pay them to work.”

  Sam was not in the mood. Not in the mood at all. Losing

  a kid was a tragedy to everyone, but to him it was a personal

  failure. He’d been handed the job of being in charge, which

  meant everything that went wrong was on him. E.Z. had

  been under his care and protection. And now E.Z. was a pile

  of ash.

  Sam sucked in a gulp of air. He shot a baleful look at the

  cemetery in the square. Three more graves in just the last

  three months since Sam had been officially elected mayor.

  E.Z. wouldn’t get a grave, just a marker. At the rate things

  were going, they’d run out of room in the square.

  The front door of the church stood open. Always open.

  That was because it, and much of the church roof, had been

  damaged in the big Thanksgiving Battle. The wide wooden

  doors had been blown off. The sides of the opening were

  shaky, held up by a slab of stone across the top that made the

  wreckage look like a lopsided Stonehenge monolith.

  Caine had come close to collapsing the entire church, but

  it was built strong, so three quarters of it still stood. Some of

  the rubble had been cleared, but not much, and even that had

  only been pushed into the side street. Like so many ambitious

  undertakings that had fallen apart as kids quit working and

  could not be convinced to come back.

  Sam walked straight to the front of the church and mounted

  the three low steps to what he thought of as the stage, although

  Astrid had patiently explained that it was called a chancel.

  The great cross had not been replaced in its rightful spot, but

  stood leaning in a corner. A close examination would reveal

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  bloodstains where it had once crushed Cookie’s shoulder.

  Not until he turned around did Sam notice how little of

  the church was filled. There should have been close to 250

  kids, leaving aside the day care and the people on guard in

  various locations. There were closer to eighty present, half of

  those so young, Sam knew they’d been dumped there by big

  brothers or sisters looking for a bit of free babysitting.

  Astrid and Albert took seats in the first pew. Little Pete

  was at the day care. Now that Mother Mary had more help

  at the day care, Astrid could occasionally leave Pete there,

  although never for very long. As long as Pete stayed lost in

  his video game, anyone could care for him. But if Pete got

  upset . . .

  Mother Mary Terrafino herself was two rows back, too

  humble to insert herself in the leadership area of the church.

  Sam was struck by how good Mary looked. Weight loss. Probably from overwork. Or maybe she didn’t enjoy living on the kinds of canned food that, in the old pre-FAYZ days, people

  had donated to food drives. But she was quite thin, which was

  not an adjective normally applied to Mary. Model thin.

  Lana Arwen Lazar slumped in a back row. She looked tired

  and a little resentful. Lana often looked resentful. But at least

  she had come, which was more than could be said for most

  kids.

  Sam gritted his teeth, angry that so many had skipped this

  town meeting. Just what exactly did they have to do that was

  more important?

  “First off,” he said, “I want to say I’m sorry about E.Z.

  He was a good kid. He didn’t deserve . . .” For a moment he

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  almost lost it as a surge of emotion welled up from nowhere.

  “I’m sorry he died.”

  Someone sobbed loudly.

  “Look, I’m going to get right to it: we have three hundred

  and thirty-two . . . I’m sorry, three hundred and thirty-one

  mouths to feed,” Sam said. He placed his hands on his hips

  and planted his feet wide apart. “We were already pretty bad

  off for food supplies. But after the attack by the Coates kids . . .

  well, it’s not pretty bad off, anymore, it’s desperate.”

  He let that sink in. But how much were six- and eight-yearolds really grasping? Even the older kids looked more glazed than alarmed.

  “Three hundred and thirty-one kids,” Sam reiterated,

  “And food for maybe a week. That’s not a long time. It’s not a

  lot of food. And as you all know, the food we have is awful.”

  That got a response from the audience. The younger kids

  produced a chorus of gagging and retching sounds.

  “All right,” Sam snapped. “Knock it off. The point is, things

  are really desperate.”

  “How about the food in everyone’s house?” someone yelled.

  The light of the setting sun streamed through the damaged façade of the church and stabbed Sam in the eyes. He had to take two steps to the left to escape it. “Hunter? Is that

  you?”

  Hunter Lefkowitz was a year younger than Sam, long-

  haired like just about everyone except the few who had taken

  the initiative of cutting his or her own hair. He was not someone who had ever been popular in school before the FAYZ. But then, Sam reflected, the things that had made kids popular in

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  the old days didn’t mean much anymore.

  Hunter had begun developing powers. Sam was trying to

  keep that fact secret—he suspected that Caine was sending

  spies into Perdido Beach. He wanted to be able to use Hunter

  as a secret weapon if it came to another fight with Caine’s

  people. But secrets were tough to keep in a place where everyone knew everyone else.

  “Hunter, we’ve searched all of the homes and carried the

  food to Ralph’s,” Sam continued. “The problem is that all the

  fruit and veggies spoiled while we were all filling up on chips

  and cookies. The meat all rotted. People were stupid and

  careless, and there’s nothing we can do about that now.” Sam

  swallowed the bitterness he felt, the anger he felt at his own

  foolishness. “But we have food sitting out in the fields. Maybe

  not the food we’d like, but enough to carry us for months—

  many months—if we bring it in before it rots and the birds

  eat it.”

  “Maybe we’ll get rescued, and we won’t have to worry,”

  another voice said.

  “Maybe we’ll learn to live on air,” Astrid muttered under

  her breath but loudly enough to be heard by at least a few.

  “Why don’t you go get our food back from Drake and the

  chuds up there?”

  It was Zil. He accepted a congr
atulatory slap on the back

  from a creepy kid named Antoine, part of Zil’s little posse.

  “Because it would mean getting some kids killed,” Sam

  said bluntly. “We’d be lucky to rescue any of the food, and

  we’d end up digging more graves in the plaza. And it wouldn’t

  solve our problem, anyway.”

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  “Get your moofs to go fight their moofs,” Zil said.

  Sam had heard the term “moof” more and more lately.

  “Chud” was a newer term. Each new term seemed just a little

  more derogatory than the one it replaced.

  “Sit down, Zil,” Sam went on. “We have twenty-six kids

  who are in the . . . have we decided? Are we calling it the

  army?” he asked Edilio.

  Edilio was in the first pew. He leaned forward, hung his

  head, and looked uncomfortable. “Some kids are calling it

  that, but man, I don’t know what to call it. Like a militia or

  something? I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Mother Mary has fourteen kids working for her, including

  one-day draftees,” Sam said, ticking off the list. “Fire Chief

  Ellen has six kids at the firehouse, dealing with emergencies.

  Dahra handles the pharmacy herself, Astrid is my adviser.

  Jack is in charge of technology. Albert has twenty-four kids

  working with him now, guarding Ralph’s and distributing

  food supplies. Counting me, that’s seventy-eight kids who do

  various jobs.”

  “When they bother to show up,” Mary Terrafino said

  loudly. That earned a nervous laugh, but Mary wasn’t

  smiling.

  “Right,” Sam agreed. “When they bother to show up. The

  thing is, we need more people working. We need people

  bringing in that food.”

  “We’re just kids,” a fifth grader said, and giggled at his

  own joke.

  “You’re going to be hungry kids,” Sam snapped. “You’re

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  going to be starving kids. Listen to me: people are going to

  starve. To death.

  “To. Death.” He repeated it with all the emphasis he could

  bring to bear on the word.

  He caught a warning look from Astrid and took a deep

  breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that the situation

  is really bad.”

  A second-grade girl held up her hand. Sam sighed, knowing what to expect, but called on her, anyway.