Hunger_A Gone Novel
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was always at his side, and Sam was profoundly grateful for
that. But right this moment, standing here in the shadow of
the hulking power plant, with images of Brianna filling the
next hole in the town plaza, he wished Edilio would shut up
and leave him in peace.
But Sam was the guy who made decisions. Win or lose.
Right or wrong. Life or death.
“I should have brought Astrid along,” Sam said. “She
knows the plant better than either of us do.”
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“They gotta be in the control room,” Edilio said. “Whatever Caine is up to, he’d want to have the control room.”
“Yeah.”
“Only two ways in, as far as I remember. Either in through
the turbine building or back through all the offices. They’ll
have both covered.”
“Yeah.”
“Kind of narrow hallways from either direction. Come
through the turbine room, maybe they won’t want to get
crazy and do anything that messes up the plant, right?”
Sam looked at him sharply. “You’re right. That makes
sense. I should have thought of it. Caine doesn’t want the
plant destroyed.”
Edilio shrugged. “Hey, man, I’m not just your good-looking
Mexican sidekick.”
Sam smiled. “You’re not Mexican. You’re Honduran.”
“Oh, yeah,” Edilio said dryly. “Sometimes I forget.” Then,
serious again, he said, “Caine didn’t come here to wreck
the place. He came here to take it over, use it somehow. Boy
doesn’t want to sit in the dark any more than we do.”
“But he’ll do what he has to,” Sam said.
“Yeah. If the other choice is him coming out peacefully
and letting us lock him up, or . . .”
Howard sidled up. “We standing around here all night or
what? Orc’s, like, let’s do this or let me go home and go to
sleep.”
“I kind of thought we’d take a couple of minutes to think it
over,” Sam snarled. “We’ve probably lost Breeze. But if you’d
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rather just have Orc go barreling in there alone, fine.”
“No, man,” Howard said, backing down quickly.
Sam laid his hand on Edilio’s shoulder and gave it a little
squeeze. “He may have hostages.”
“Yeah,” Edilio agreed. “My guys. Mike and Mickey and
Brittney and Josh.”
“Okay, as long as we understand,” Sam said. He made
eye contact with Edilio. Edilio gave just the slightest nod in
return.
“Here’s my plan. Taylor bounces in, carries a shotgun,
starts to blast. One, two, three rounds, then bounces out. At
that point we hit them all together, straight through the turbine room.”
“Yep,” Edilio said. “Straight through the turbine room.”
Looking perfectly casual, Edilio slung his knapsack off
his shoulder and began rummaging inside. He called over
to a kid named Steve, one of his soldiers. “Hey, Steve, man,
where’s my Snickers bar? I had it right here in my backpack.”
Steve frowned and headed over. The pockets of his cargo
pants were bulging.
Edilio drew a gun—too big, too brightly colored, and too
plastic to be real from his backpack. He pumped it once, leveled it at waist level, and fired.
A thin stream of watered-down yellow paint sprayed thirty
feet.
At the same time Steve drew twin cans of spray paint from
his pants, aimed, and fired.
Edilio and Steve both sprayed in a circle, twirling, hitting
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kids and cars and foliage.
“There!” Sam yelled.
Bug was almost completely invisible at night. But a lot less
invisible with a spray of yellow paint across his chest.
Bug bolted, looking like nothing more than a dancing,
racing streak of fluorescence. He pelted away, yelling, “Open
the door! Open the door!”
Dekka took a stance. “Make it look good, but not too
good,” Sam whispered.
Suddenly Bug tripped. Gravity had ceased to exist, but he
stumbled out of Dekka’s range, regained his feet, and hit the
door.
“Nice,” Sam said.
The door opened, and Bug fell into the darkness beyond.
“You think he heard?” Edilio asked.
“Yeah. He’ll be blurting it to Caine right about now. So we
go in hard and fast.”
“How?” Edilio asked.
“Right through the wall,” Sam said grimly. “Howard! Orc!”
he yelled. He pointed at the turbine room door, which had
slammed shut behind Bug. “Take out that door. Edilio, grab
your best guy and go with them. Make lots of noise. Make it
look good. Everyone else with me.”
“Lots of noise,” Edilio echoed in a worried voice.
Sam tightened his grip on Edilio’s shoulder. “If I were ever
going to have a Mexican sidekick, you’d be the guy.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Ready?”
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“Nope.”
“So let’s go,” Sam said. Then, louder, “Let’s go!”
They raced for the door that Bug had taken. Across the
parking lot at a crazy run. Edilio, Steve, and one other soldier,
half pushing Orc ahead of them as Howard drifted strategically slower and fell behind in relative safety.
Sam, Dekka, and the remaining soldiers kept pace, then
peeled off, dodging left and racing along the building.
Taylor stayed behind with two guys guarding the rear.
Orc ran straight for the door. He plowed into it like a bull,
full-speed, heedless. The sound of the impact echoed around
the parking lot.
The metal door crumpled but did not give. Orc reared
back and kicked it with his stone foot. He fell on his back, but
the door flew open.
Gunfire erupted from inside.
Orc stayed flat. The others dodged aside.
Edilio began firing through the doorway, an earsplitting
din. The muzzle flash was like a strobe light.
Sam and Dekka raced away, hugging the wall.
“About here, I think,” Sam said, panting.
The two of them stepped away from the wall, and Sam
raised his hands.
Blistering green fire exploded from Sam’s upraised palms.
The brick wall glowed red. Almost immediately the masonry
began to crack, and then Dekka made her own move. Gravity
beneath the wall ceased to exist.
The wall began to crack. Flakes of mortar and stone flew
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straight up in the air. Some of the smaller chunks caught fire
and burned as they rose. The wall was coming apart, but too
slowly.
“Orc!” Sam yelled.
The boy-monster rolled to his feet and came at a rush.
“Dekka, off!” Sam yelled.
The green fire died, gravity returned with a rain of dirt
and gravel, and through it ran Orc. He hit the weakened wall
with one massive shoulder. The cinder block collapsed in like
a
fallen pie crust.
Orc backed up, then hit it again and he was through. Sam
dashed after him, but unlike Orc he was not immune to the
heat he had himself created. It was like rushing into an oven.
He brushed against a bit of red-hot brick and yelped in pain.
Sam froze.
Inside, beyond the cinderblock wall, was not the control
room. Instead of breaking through to the control room and
catching Caine off guard, he was in an outer room filled with
old-style metal filing cabinets.
The whole plan had just fallen apart. The diversion was
now pointless.
Dekka was right behind Sam. “So much for the element of
surprise,” she said.
No time for regrets, Sam told himself, but it was a bitter
moment. Surprise might have saved lives. Surprise might
have allowed them to rescue the hostages.
“The next wall should be easier,” Sam said. “Take cover!”
Dekka jumped behind a row of filing cabinets as Sam
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attacked the inner wall. The temperature in the filing room
went from stifling to dangerous in seconds.
Sam’s light burned away paint and wallboard in a few seconds, but beyond it, inside the wall, was a barrier of dull, gray metal.
“It’s a radiation shield,” Sam yelled to Dekka. “Lead.”
The lead melted quickly at the touch of Sam’s probing fire.
Liquid lead dribbled down the wall and pooled, instantly
igniting anything it touched.
But now the file room was too hot for anyone. The air was
gone, and Sam was woozy, unfocused, forgetting what he was
doing.
“Orc! Grab him!” Dekka yelled as she dove back outside,
gasping for breath.
Sam felt himself lifted off his feet. It was curiously pleasant. Outside, the shock of cold air on his face snapped him back to reality.
He glanced to his right. Gunfire still kept the turbine room
doorway clear. Edilio was flattened against the wall, unable
to do anything but reload and keep firing blindly. His soldiers had been ordered back to safety behind parked cars.
The attack was failing.
Sam stood up, fighting nausea and dizziness. He faced the
wall again. He could shoot through the outer wall, through
the room beyond, and hit the lead shield. But his deadly light
was diffused at that distance. And he had no room to ply the
blowtorch back and forth and widen the hole.
He raised his hands and unleashed the power. The lead
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sheath melted quickly. But too late, Sam knew. Too late for
surprise. Too late.
And in the end, too little.
A red-rimmed hole about the size of a manhole cover
dripped melted lead like tears.
Then a familiar voice cried, “Sam!”
Sam ignored it.
“Sam, in three seconds I’m pushing one of my hostages
into this hole you’ve made,” Caine yelled. “One!”
Sam widened the gap as much as he could, working the
edges, melting lead.
“Two!”
He couldn’t stop, Sam told himself.
But if he didn’t stop, he had no doubt, none, that Caine
would make good on his threat. Caine could literally hurl one
of the hostages into the fiery hole Sam was burning.
Sam dropped his hands. The light died.
“That’s better,” Caine yelled.
“Come out now, Caine, and maybe I let you walk away in
one piece,” Sam blustered.
“Here’s the thing, brother,” Caine called back. “I have two
of your people. Give a shout-out, kids.”
“It’s me, Sam. It’s Mike Farmer! Mickey’s here, too. And
Britt, she’s . . . she’s hurt.”
Sam shot a look at Dekka. She stared back at him, stone
faced. Caine had said two hostages. So he was counting Brittney as dead.
And no mention of Brianna. The Breeze was not a hostage.
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At the same time, Sam told himself, Mike hadn’t listed her,
either. So at least she wasn’t lying defeated in that room.
The gunfire at the doorway had ceased. Edilio still stood
ready, but not knowing what to do next.
“Let them go, Caine,” Sam said wearily.
“I don’t think I’m going to do that,” Caine answered.
Sam ran his hand through his hair, beside himself with
frustration.
“What is it you want?” Sam asked. “What do you think
you’re doing?”
“I have the power plant, that’s obvious,” Caine said. “Stupid of you to lose it, Sam.”
Sam had no answer to that.
“What I’m going to do, Sam, is turn off the power to Perdido Beach.”
“You do that, you’ll be sitting in the dark, too,” Sam
shouted back.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Caine said with a laugh.
“But it turns out that’s not true. It seems we can turn off some
parts of the grid from here and not affect other parts.”
“I think you’re bluffing, Caine. I’ve seen the control room.
It would take you a week to make any sense out of it.”
Caine laughed easily. “Oh, man, you are right about
that, brother. Hey, it would probably take me a month. And
Diana’s no better at the techie stuff. And Drake, well, you
know Drake. But . . .”
Sam knew what was coming next. He closed his eyes and
hung his head.
“Fortunately, our mutual friend Computer Jack, here, he’s
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pretty much got it whipped. In fact . . . How’s it going, Jack?
Got it yet?”
There was a murmur, barely audible. Then, Caine again,
taunting. “Guess what, Sam?”
Sam refused to answer.
“Jack here says the lights just went off in Perdido Beach.”
Caine laughed, a wild, triumphant sound.
Sam caught Taylor’s eye. She teleported over to him. “Check
it out,” he said. The girl nodded once and disappeared.
“You sending Brianna to check it out?” Caine shouted. “Or
Taylor?”
Sam said nothing. He waited.
Taylor popped back into view, right beside him.
“I bounced to a bend in the road where you can see town,”
she reported.
“And?”
TWENTY-FIVE
17 HOURS, 54 MINUTES
D U C K H A D A R G U E D with himself all the way home.
Hunter’s problem was not his problem, he told himself. Okay,
maybe he was a freak now, too, like Hunter, but so what? He
had some stupid, useless power—why did that mean he had
to buy a piece of Hunter’s grief?
Hunter was a jerk. And all the people Duck liked were normals. Mostly. He liked Sam, of course, in a sort of distant way. But, man, how was he suddenly supposed to be choosing
sides in a fight he didn’t even know was happening?
However, he didn’t like the idea of just leaving Hunter hiding out hungry in the rubble outside the church. That seemed kind of harsh.
By the time he had reached the relative safety of his home,
Duck had talked himself out of doing anything one way or
the other. And t
hen he talked himself into the opposite position. And back again.
He found himself looking in the kitchen cupboards. Just to
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see. Just to see if it was even possible to help Hunter out.
There wasn’t much to see in the kitchen. Two cans of veggies. A jar of hot dog relish, but not even the sweet kind. A half-empty bag of flour and some oil. He’d learned how to
cook a sort of nasty-tasting tortilla with the flour and a little
water and oil. It was the current popular favorite in the FAYZ,
something even the most kitchen-impaired could kind of figure out.
He didn’t want to even think about what they’d all be eating in a week. From what Duck had heard, there was food in the fields, but no one wanted to pick it if there were zekes. He
shuddered at the thought.
But he supposed he could spare the hot dog relish. Not
exactly something good for you, but Hunter had sounded
pretty desperate. And nowadays everyone was eating things
that would have made them gag before.
Duck had a sudden vision of actual hot dogs. The real
thing, steaming hot, nestled in a tender white bun.
Duck’s aunt was from Chicago. She had taught him about
genuine Chicago hot dogs with, what was it? Seven toppings?
He wondered if he could remember them all.
Mustard. Relish. Onions. Tomatoes.
His mouth was watering at the thought. But then his mouth
would have watered at the idea of a real hot dog topped with
Brussels sprouts.
He made up his mind. It wasn’t about freaks versus normals. It was about whether he could just leave Hunter out there cowering all through the night.
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No. He’d bring him the relish and then, if Hunter needed
a place to hide, he’d let him stay in the basement here at the
house.
Duck slipped the relish into the pocket of his jacket and
headed with great reluctance back into the night.
It took only a few minutes to reach the church.
“Hunter. Yo, Hunter,” he called in a hoarse whisper.
Nothing.
Great. Perfect. He was being punked after all.
He turned and started to walk away. But around the corner came a group of seven, maybe eight kids. It took him only a second to spot the baseball bats.
Zil was in the lead.
“There’s one!” Zil shouted, and before Duck could even
react the seven boys were rushing him.
“What’s up?” Duck asked.
The boys surrounded him. There was no denying their
menacing attitude, but Duck was determined not to give