Hunger_A Gone Novel

by Michael Grant

them an excuse to start swinging.

  “What’s up?” Zil mocked. “The Human Drill wants to

  know what’s up.” He gave Duck a shove. “One of your kind

  killed my best friend, that’s what’s up.”

  “We’re sick of it,” another boy chimed in.

  Various voices muttered agreement.

  “Guys, I didn’t hurt anyone,” Duck said. “I’m just . . .”

  He didn’t know what he was just. The hostile eyes around

  him narrowed.

  “Just what, freak?” Zil demanded.

  H U N G E R

  327

  “Walking, man. Anything wrong with that?”

  “We’re looking for Hunter,” Hank said.

  “We’re going to kick his butt.”

  “Yeah. Maybe rearrange his nose,” Antoine said. “Like

  maybe it would look better sticking out the side of his face.”

  They laughed.

  “Hunter?” Duck said, working to sound innocent.

  “Yeah. Mr. Microwave. Killer chud.”

  Duck shrugged. “I haven’t seen him, man.”

  “What’s that in your pocket there?” Zil demanded. “He’s

  got something in his pocket.”

  “What? Oh, it’s nothing. It’s—”

  The baseball bat swung with unerring accuracy. Duck felt

  the blow on his hip where the relish hung in his jacket pocket.

  The soggy sound of wet glass shattering.

  “Hey!” Duck yelled.

  He started to push his way through them, but his feet

  wouldn’t move. He looked down, uncomprehending, and saw

  that he had sunk up to his ankles in the sidewalk.

  “Okay, stop making me mad,” he cried desperately.

  “Stop making me mad,” Zil repeated in a taunting, singsong voice.

  “Hey, man, he’s sinking!” one of them yelled.

  Duck was up to mid-calf. Trapped. He met Zil’s contemptuous gaze and pleaded, “Come on, man, why are you picking on me?”

  “Because you’re a subhuman moof,” Zil said, adding,

  “duh.”

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  G R A N T

  “You want Hunter, right?” Duck asked. “He’s in there,

  man, behind all this stuff.”

  “Is that so?” Zil said. He nodded to his gang, and all

  together they climbed into the rubble in search of their true

  prey. Someone, Duck didn’t see who, smashed the stained

  glass fragment with his bat.

  Duck took a deep breath. “Happy thoughts, happy

  thoughts,” he whispered. He had stopped sinking, but he was

  still trapped. He squirmed his foot this way and that. Finally

  he pulled one foot free—minus the shoe. The other foot came

  out easier, and he managed to keep the shoe.

  Duck took off at a run.

  “Hey, get back here!”

  “He lied, man, Hunter’s not here!”

  “Get him!”

  Duck ran all-out, yelling, “Happy thoughts, happy

  thoughts, ah hah hah hah!” desperate to keep anger at bay,

  forcing his mouth into a grin.

  He made it across the street. He was well out in front of the

  mob, but not far enough ahead that he would be able to get

  inside his house and lock the door before they caught him.

  “Help! Someone help me!” he cried.

  His next step landed hard.

  The step after that broke the curb.

  The third step plowed down through the sidewalk and he

  fell hard.

  His chin hit concrete and crunched through it like a rock

  through glass.

  H U N G E R

  32

  9

  He was falling into the earth again. Only this time he was

  facedown.

  Zil and the others immediately surrounded him. A blow

  landed on his back. Another on his behind. Neither blow

  hurt. It was like they were hitting him with straws rather

  than bats. Then they could no longer reach him because he

  had fallen all the way through the cement and was sinking

  through the dirt.

  “Scratch one chud,” Duck heard Zil crow.

  Then, “What happened, man?”

  “All the lights went out,” someone said, sounding scared.

  There was a frightened curse, and the sound of running

  footsteps.

  Duck Zhang, facedown in dirt, kept sinking.

  Mary was lying in bed, in the dark, running her hands over

  her belly, feeling the fat there. Thinking, just a few more

  weeks of dieting, maybe. And then she’d be there. Wherever

  “there” was.

  The water bottle beside her bed was empty. Mary climbed

  wearily from her bed. She opened the bathroom door and

  flipped on the light. For a moment she saw someone she

  did not recognize, someone with sunken cheeks and hollow

  eyes.

  Then sudden, total darkness.

  In the basement of town hall, in the gloomy space kids called

  the hospital, Dahra Baidoo held Josh’s hand.

  330 M I C H A E L

  G R A N T

  He wouldn’t stop crying.

  They’d brought him from the battle at the power plant.

  One of Edilio’s soldiers had dropped him off.

  “I want my mom, I want my mom.” Josh was rocking back

  and forth, deaf to any words Dahra had, lost and ashamed.

  “I want my mom,” he cried.

  “I just want my mom.”

  “I’ll put on a DVD,” Dahra said. She had no other solution.

  She’d seen kids like this before, too many to keep track of.

  Sometimes it was all just too much for some kids. They broke,

  like a stick bent too far. Snapped.

  Dahra wondered how long it would be before she was one

  of them.

  How long until she was holding herself and rocking and

  weeping for her mother?

  Suddenly, the lights went out.

  “I want my mom,” Josh wept in the dark.

  At the day care John Terrafino lay zoned out, one eye half

  open, watching a muted TV while he fed a bottle to a cranky

  ten-month-old. The bottle wasn’t filled with milk or formula.

  It was filled with water mixed with oatmeal juice and a small

  amount of puréed fish.

  None of the baby care books had recommended this. The

  baby was sick. Getting weaker every day. John doubted the

  baby, whose name was also John, would live very long.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered.

  The TV blinked off.

  H U N G E R

  33

  1

  •

  •

  •

  Astrid had gotten Little Pete to bed, finally. She was exhausted

  and worried. Her eye hurt where the baseball bat had caught

  her. She had a gruesome bruise in yellow and black. Ice had

  helped, but not much.

  She needed to sleep; it was one in the morning, but it wasn’t

  going to happen. Not yet. Not until she knew Sam was okay.

  She wished she could have gone to the power plant with him.

  Not that she would have been much help, but she would at

  least have known.

  Strange how, in just three short months, Sam had come to

  feel like a necessary part of her life. More than that, even. A

  necessary part of her. An arm, a leg. A heart.

  She heard a noise from the street. Running. She tensed,

  expecting to hear the pounding of feet on
her porch. But no

  one approached.

  Was it Hunter coming back? Or was Zil still running

  around looking for trouble? There wasn’t anything she could

  do about it. She had no powers, or none that mattered, anyway. All she could do was threaten and cajole.

  By the time she reached the window, the street was empty

  and quiet.

  She hoped Hunter was hiding somewhere. They’d have to

  figure out what to do about that situation and it would be

  very tricky. Explosive, maybe. But it wasn’t going to be solved

  tonight.

  What was happening with Sam? Had he managed to stop

  Caine?

  332 M I C H A E L

  G R A N T

  Was he hurt?

  Was he dead?

  God forbid, she prayed.

  No. He wasn’t dead. She would feel it if he was.

  She wiped away a tear, and sighed. No way she could sleep.

  Not happening. So she sat herself down in front of the computer. Her hands were shaking as she touched the keyboard.

  She needed to do something useful. Something. Anything to

  keep from thinking about Sam.

  At the bottom of the screen were the usual icons for Safari

  and Firefox. Web browsers that, when opened, would just

  remind her that she was not connected to the internet.

  Astrid opened the mutation file. There were all the bizarre

  pictures. The cat that had melded with a book. The snakes

  with tiny wings. The seagulls with raptor talons. The zeke.

  She opened a Word document and began to type.

  The one constant seems to be that mutations are making

  creatures—humans and nonhumans—more dangerous.

  The mutations are almost all in the form of weapons.

  She paused and thought about that for a moment. That

  wasn’t quite right. Some kids had developed powers that

  seemed to be essentially useless. The truth was, Sam wished

  more mutants had developed what he called “serious” powers.

  And there was Lana, whose gift was definitely not a weapon.

  Weapons or defense mechanisms. Of course it may be that I simply

  have not observed enough mutations to know. But it would not

  exactly be surprising if mutations tended to be survival mechanisms.

  That’s the whole point of evolution: survival.

  H U N G E R

  333

  But was this evolution? Evolution was a series of hits and

  misses over the course of millions of years, not a sudden

  explosion of radical changes. Evolution built on existing DNA. What was happening in the FAYZ was a radical departure from the billion years’ worth of code in animal

  DNA. There might be genes for speed, but there was no gene

  for teleportation, or for suspension of gravity, or for telekinesis.

  There was no DNA for firing light from the palms of your

  hands.

  The fact is, I don’t

  The screen went blank. The room was dark.

  Astrid stood up and went to the window. She pulled back

  the curtains and looked out at total darkness. Not a light on

  in the street.

  She let herself out onto the porch.

  Darkness. Everywhere. Not a single light from the surrounding houses.

  Someone a few doors down yelled in outrage, “Hey!”

  Caine had reached the power plant. Sam had failed.

  Astrid stifled a sob. If Sam was hurt . . . If . . .

  Astrid felt fear like icy fingers reaching through her nightgown. She stumbled into the kitchen. She opened the junk drawer and found, after some searching, a flashlight. The

  light from it was faint and failed in seconds.

  But in the few seconds of light she found a candle.

  She tried to light it from the stove. But the gas ran unlit

  because it required electricity to fire.

  334 M I C H A E L

  G R A N T

  Matches. A lighter. Surely there were some matches somewhere.

  But there was no way to find them without light. She had a

  candle and no way to light it.

  Astrid felt her way to the stairs and climbed to Little Pete’s

  room. The Game Boy was beside his bed, where he always left

  it. If he woke up and found it missing, he would go nuts. He

  would . . . there was no telling what he would do.

  She carried the Game Boy down the stairs and used the

  light from the LED to search the junk drawer. No matches,

  but there was a yellow Bic lighter.

  She struck a flame and lit the candle.

  She had avoided thinking about Sam for the last few

  moments, intent on her search. But there was no escaping

  the fact that Sam had rushed off to stop Caine. And he had

  not succeeded. The only question now was: Had he survived?

  A line from an old poem bubbled up from Astrid’s

  near-photographic memory. “The center cannot hold,” she

  whispered to the eerily lit kitchen. The verse played in her

  head.

  Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  H U N G E R

  33

  5

  “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” Astrid

  repeated.

  The center, maybe. But surely, even here in the FAYZ, God

  listened and watched over His children.

  “Please let Sam be okay,” she whispered to the candle.

  She made the sign of the cross on her chest and knelt before

  the kitchen counter as if it were an altar.

  “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our

  defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.”

  In the old days when she had said this prayer, the devil was

  a creature with horns and a tail. Now in her mind the devil

  had the same face as Caine. And when the prayer went on to

  speak of “the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking

  the ruin of souls,” the picture in her mind’s eye was of a dead-

  eyed boy with a snake for an arm.

  TWENTY-SIX

  17 HOURS, 49 MINUTES

  “ W H A T I S I T you want, Caine?” Sam’s voice, calling from

  outside. He sounded angry, frustrated. Defeated.

  Caine bowed his head. He savored the moment. Victory.

  Just four days had passed since he had regained some measure of control over himself. And now he had beaten Sam.

  “Four days,” he said, just loudly enough for those in the

  room to hear. “That’s how long it took me to defeat Sam

  Temple.” Caine locked eyes with Drake. “Four days,” Caine

  sneered. “What did you accomplish in the three months I was

  sick?”

  Drake met his gaze, then wavered, and looked down at the

  floor. There was red in his cheeks, a dangerous glitter in his

  eyes, but he could not meet Caine’s triumphant scowl.

  “Remember this when you finally decide it’s time to take

  me on, Drake,” Caine whispered.

  Caine turned to the others and beamed happiness at his

  crew. Jack, still at the computer, a sloppy, bloody mess, but

  H U N G E R

  33

  7

  so engaged in his work that he was barely aware of what was<
br />
  going on. Bug, drifting in and out of view. Diana pretending

  to be unimpressed. He winked at her, knowing she wouldn’t

  respond. Drake’s two soldiers, lounging.

  “What do I want?” Caine yelled back through the charred

  hole in the wall. Then, carefully enunciating each word for

  emphasis. “What. Do. I. Want?”

  And then, Caine drew a blank. For a moment, just a

  moment before he recovered, he couldn’t think of what he

  wanted. No one else heard the hesitation. But Caine felt it.

  What did he want?

  He searched for an answer and found one that would do.

  “You, Sam,” Caine purred. “I want you to walk in here all by

  yourself. That’s what I want.”

  The hostages, Mickey and Mike, looked at each other in

  disbelief. Caine could guess what they were thinking: their

  big hero, Sam, had failed.

  Sam’s voice was muffled but audible. “I would, Caine. To

  tell you the truth, it would probably be a relief.” He sounded

  weary. He sounded beaten. Luscious, wonderful sounds to

  Caine’s ears. “But we all know how you act when there’s no

  one there to stop you. So, no.”

  Caine let out a loud, theatrical sigh. He smiled ear to ear.

  “Yeah, I thought you’d take that attitude, Sam. So I have an

  alternative. I have a trade in mind.”

  “Trade? What for what?”

  “Food for light,” Caine said. He put his hand to his ear as

  if listening. To Diana, he whispered, “Hear that? That’s the

  338 M I C H A E L

  G R A N T

  sound of my brother realizing he’s beaten. Realizing he just

  became my . . . what’s a good word? Servant? Slave?”

  Sam yelled, “Looks to me like you’re the one in trouble,

  Caine.”

  Caine blinked. A warning light was flashing in the back of

  his mind. He had just made a mistake. He didn’t know what,

  but he had made a mistake.

  “Me?” Caine yelled. “I don’t think so. I own the light

  switch, brother.”

  “Yeah, I guess you do,” Sam shouted. “And I’ve got you

  surrounded. And if you’re short on food up at Coates, my

  guess is you don’t have a lot with you here. So I’m guessing

  you’ll get hungry pretty soon.”

  Caine’s smile froze.

  “Well, there’s an unexpected development,” Diana said

  dryly.

  Caine bit his thumbnail and yelled, “Hey, brother of mine,

  do I have to remind you that I have two of your people hostage in here?”

  There was a long silence and Caine braced himself, thinking that Sam might launch another attack. Finally, Sam spoke.