Hunger

  “Yeah,” Sam acknowledged. “Head on home. Sorry to drag you out.”

  She peered quizzically at Sam. “What are you guys going to do about this?”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t know, but whatever I do, it’ll probably make everyone mad. Edilio can drive you home.”

  “No reason, it’s a five-minute walk.” Dahra patted his shoulder again and took off.

  When she was gone, Sam said, “I guess we’re going to talk to Hunter.”

  “You guess? Man, this ain’t something can be let slide,” Edilio said. “This is killing.”

  “Orc killed Betty,” Sam pointed out. “And Orc’s still free.”

  “You weren’t in charge then,” Edilio said. “We didn’t have a system.”

  “We still don’t have a system, Edilio. We have me being pestered by everyone with a problem,” Sam said. “That’s not a system. You see a Supreme Court around here, somewhere? I see me and you and about a dozen others even giving a damn.”

  “You saying we’re going to have it where kids can kill someone and that’s okay?”

  Sam slumped. “No. No. Of course not. I’m just…Nothing.”

  “I’ll get my guys, go look for Hunter,” Edilio said. “But I gotta know: What if he won’t come? Or what if he tries to hurt one of my guys?”

  “Come get me if that happens,” Sam said.

  Edilio did not look happy about that instruction. But he nodded and left.

  Dekka watched him go. “Edilio’s a good guy,” she said.

  “But?”

  “But, he’s a normal.”

  “There aren’t going to be lines like that, between freak and normal,” Sam said firmly.

  Dekka almost, but didn’t quite, laugh. “Sam, that’s a great concept. And maybe you believe it. But I’m black and I’m a lesbian, so let me tell you: From what I know? Personal experience? There are always lines.”

  NINETEEN

  18 HOURS, 35 MINUTES

  THEY DROVE THE SUV through the hole in the fence, veered around the twisted mess of chain link, and raced to a skidding halt in the parking lot of the power plant.

  The sheer size of the power plant was intimidating. The containment towers were as tall as skyscrapers. The big turbine building was blank and hostile, like a giant windowless prison.

  A door, almost insignificantly small, stood open. No light shone from inside, but Caine could make out a shape crouching within.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?” a young voice challenged.

  Caine didn’t recognize the kid, couldn’t really see him. The plant was very loud, so Caine pretended he couldn’t hear. He cupped a hand to his ear and yelled, “What?”

  “Stop! Don’t come any closer.”

  “Come closer? Okay.” Caine kept walking. Diana and Jack hung back, but Drake was striding quickly to catch up. Drake had an automatic pistol in his real hand. His whip slithered and squirmed at his side, a snake anxious for a chance to strike.

  “Stop! I said stop!”

  The doorway was just a hundred feet away now. Caine never faltered.

  “Stop, or I’ll shoot,” the voice cried, scared, almost begging.

  Caine stopped. Drake stood beside him.

  “Shoot?” Caine demanded, sounding puzzled. “Why on earth would you shoot me?”

  “That’s we’re opposed to do.”

  Caine laughed. “You can’t even say it right. Who are you, anyway? If you’re going to shoot me, I should know your name.”

  “Josh,” the answer came. “It’s me, Josh.”

  “It’s ‘me Josh,’” Caine mimicked.

  Drake snarled, “You better step off, me Josh, or me Whip Hand is going to hurt you.”

  The sudden explosion of bullets was deafening. Josh’s firing was wild, bullets shattering the glass of parked cars far off to their right.

  Caine dropped to the pavement.

  Drake never flinched. He raised his pistol, took careful aim, and fired.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  With each shot he advanced a step.

  Josh whinnied in terror.

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Each time the noise was stunning. Each time fire flashed from the barrel of the pistol, lighting Drake’s blank, cold eyes.

  Then Drake broke into a run. Straight for the door, pistol held level, firing carefully, precisely even as he ran.

  Josh fired back, but again the bullets went wild into the night, missing even the parked cars, doing nothing to stop Drake.

  Bang. Bang.

  Click.

  Caine stayed on the ground, staring, rapt, at Drake as he calmly ejected his ammunition clip. The clip clattered on the concrete.

  Drake held the pistol with the delicate end of his tentacle and fished a second clip out of the hunting vest he was wearing. Using his hand he slammed the clip into place.

  Josh fired again. More careful, this time.

  Bullets sparked the pavement near Drake’s feet.

  Drake raised the gun carefully, fired and moved, fired and moved, fired and now Josh was gone, running back inside the building, screaming for help, screaming that someone better help him.

  Caine stood up, feeling shamed by Drake’s cold-blooded performance. He hurried now to catch up to Drake, who was through the doorway and inside the building.

  Another loud bang, the sound different this time, muffled. The doorway was a bright rectangle from the muzzle flash.

  A cry of pain.

  “I give up! I give up!”

  Caine reached the doorway and entered the turbine room. There, on the floor between massive, howling machines, pitilessly lit by eerie fluorescent light, lay Josh. He sat, stunned, in a black pool of his own blood. One leg was twisted at an impossible angle.

  Caine felt a flash of anger. Josh was a kid, no more than ten. What was Sam thinking, putting kids in this position?

  “Don’t shoot me, don’t shoot me!” Josh begged.

  Drake raised high his whip hand and brought it down with sound-barrier-shattering speed on Josh’s upraised hands.

  Josh screamed and writhed in agony. The screaming didn’t stop.

  “Leave him,” Caine snapped. “Get to the control room.”

  Drake turned a feral snarl on Caine, teeth bared, eyes wild. Contempt and fury were in those eyes. Caine raised his hands, ready, waiting for his lieutenant to turn his whip against him.

  Instead Drake kicked the prostrate boy in his damaged leg and plowed ahead. Josh crawled sobbing toward the door to the outside.

  It all seemed unnatural, nightmarish. Drake stalking ahead, his gun smoking, his whip twitching. Caine heard Drake’s soldiers coming up behind, and Diana and Jack bringing up the rear.

  “Door’s locked,” Drake called back.

  Caine caught up to him and tried the doorknob himself. It was heavy steel set into a heavy steel frame, obviously a door meant to withstand explosion or attack. If he hit it with a direct shock-wave of telekinetic power, it might bust open. But in the confined area of the hallway it might also reverb and knock him on his butt. “It won’t be locked for long.”

  Caine glanced around, searching for something heavy enough for his purposes. Back in the turbine room he found a rolling steel tool chest, four feet tall, strongly built.

  Caine raised the chest off the floor and hurled it through the air, down the hall. It slammed into the locked door.

  He was immensely gratified by the spectacle of Drake flattened to the wall to avoid getting hit by the wrenches and sockets and screwdrivers that flew like shrapnel from the chest.

  The tool chest was crumpled, the door barely scratched.

  Caine drew the chest back and hurled it forward again. This time more tools spilled out and the chest was crushed to half its size. But the door was undamaged.

  Caine felt Diana’s hand on his arm. “Hey. Why don’t you see what Jack can do.”

  Caine was torn between the fear of failing if he continued to batter away ineffectually, and the
fear of being shown up by the computer geek. This had become as much a contest between him and Drake as it was an attack on the power plant.

  “Show us what you got, Jack,” Caine said.

  Computer Jack advanced uncertainly, urged on by Diana.

  He placed his hands against the door and tried to get a good grip on the floor with his sneakers. He pushed against the door, and his feet slid away beneath him. He fell to one knee.

  “It’s too slippery,” Jack said.

  “We have to be through that door before Sam shows up,” Caine said. “We need hostages, and we need that control room.”

  His gaze rested on a heavy wrench. “Look out.”

  Caine levitated the wrench, lifted it to the ceiling, turned it vertical, and with a sudden sweep of his hands plunged the wrench into the floor. It crunched through tile and concrete and stood like a climbing piton that had been hammered into a cliff face.

  Caine repeated the move three more times, driving heavy-gauge stainless steel into the floor.

  “Okay, use those.”

  Jack braced his feet against the tools, placed his hands against the door, and heaved with all his might.

  Edilio did not find Hunter. Instead he found Zil and a crowd of a dozen kids. They in turn had found Hunter. They had Hunter cornered on the porch of the house Astrid and Mother Mary shared.

  Why Hunter had gone there, Edilio could guess: Astrid would be calm and reasonable. She would shelter him, for a while at least.

  The scene, however, was anything but calm or reasonable. Astrid was wearing a nightgown. Her blond hair was untethered and wild. She stood at the top of the porch stairs and stabbed an angry finger at Zil.

  Hunter was behind Astrid. Not exactly cowering, but not getting out in front of her, either.

  Zil and his friends, who—Edilio noted with a sinking heart—were all normals, were angry. Or most were angry, some were just goofing around, glad of an excuse to get out and run around town in the middle of the night.

  Most had some kind of weapon or other, baseball bats, tire irons. One, Edilio noted grimly, carried a shotgun. The kid with the shotgun, Hank, had been a quiet kid back in the old days. He didn’t look quiet now.

  Edilio pulled his Jeep up to the curb. He hadn’t had time to round up any of his own people, he was alone. All eyes registered Edilio’s arrival, but no one stopped yelling.

  “He’s a murdering chud,” Zil was yelling.

  “What do you want to do? Lynch him?” Astrid demanded.

  That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what “lynch” meant. But Zil quickly recovered.

  “I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry.”

  “I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!” Hunter shouted.

  “You’re a lying mutant freak!”

  “They think they can do anything they want,” another voice shouted.

  Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, “We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals.”

  “They already did it!” Zil cried. “It’s the freaks acting all special and like their farts don’t stink.”

  That earned a laugh.

  “And now they’re starting to kill us,” Zil cried.

  Angry cheers.

  Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Give me that thing.”

  “No way,” Hank said. But he didn’t seem too certain.

  “You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone’s face off?” Edilio held his hand out. “Give it to me, man.”

  Zil rounded on Edilio. “You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He’s got powers, man, and that’s okay, but the normals can’t have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?”

  “Man, give it a rest, huh?” Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary than angry or scared. Things were already bad enough. “Zil, you want to be responsible if that gauge goes off and kills Astrid? You want to maybe give that some thought?”

  Zil blinked. But he said, “Dude, I’m not scared of Sam.”

  “Sam won’t be your problem, I will be,” Edilio snapped, losing patience. “Anything happens to her, I’ll take you down before Sam ever gets the chance.”

  Zil snorted derisively. “Ah, good little boy, Edilio, kissing up to the chuds. I got news for you, dilly dilly, you’re a lowly normal, just like me and the rest of us.”

  “I’m going to let that go,” Edilio said evenly, striving to regain his cool, trying to sound calm and in control, even though he could hardly take his eyes off the twin barrels of the shotgun. “But now I’m taking that shotgun.”

  “No way!” Hank cried, and the next thing was an explosion so loud, Edilio thought a bomb had gone off. The muzzle flash blinded him, like camera flash going off in his face.

  Someone yelled in pain.

  Edilio staggered back, squeezed his eyes shut, trying to adjust. When he opened them again the shotgun was on the ground and the boy who’d accidentally fired it was holding his bruised hand, obviously shocked.

  Zil bent to grab the gun. Edilio took two steps forward and kicked Zil in the face. As Zil fell back Edilio made a grab for the shotgun. He never saw the blow that turned his knees to water and filled his head with stars.

  He fell like a sack of bricks, but even as he fell he lurched forward to cover the shotgun.

  Astrid screamed and launched herself down the stairs to protect Edilio.

  Antoine, the one who had hit Edilio, was raising his bat to hit Edilio again, but on the back swing he caught Astrid in the face.

  Antoine cursed, suddenly fearful. Zil yelled, “No, no, no!”

  There was a sudden rush of running feet. Down the walkway, into the street, echoing down the block.

  Edilio struggled to stand. It wasn’t easy. His legs did not want to stay where he put them.

  Astrid had a hand over one eye but was steadying Edilio with the other.

  “You okay?” Astrid asked. “Did he shoot you?”

  “I don’t think so.” Edilio patted himself down, searching for but not finding any wounds except for a growing knot on the crown of his head.

  His vision cleared enough to notice the red welt where the bat had caught Astrid in the eye. “You’re going to have a shiner.”

  “I’m okay,” Astrid said, shaky but strong.

  Zil’s mob was gone. Disappeared. It was just the three of them left, Edilio, Astrid, and Hunter.

  Edilio picked up the shotgun and cradled it carefully. “I guess that could have been worse. No one got shot.”

  Astrid said, “Hunter, go inside and get some ice for Edilio’s head.”

  “Yeah. No problem,” Hunter said. He hurried away.

  With Hunter out of hearing Astrid said, “What are you going to do?”

  “Sam said bring Hunter in.”

  “Arrest him?” Astrid asked.

  “Yeah, because all of a sudden I’m like the sheriff, too,” Edilio said bitterly, touching the lump on his head. “I must have forgot the day where I signed up for that.”

  “Did Hunter really kill Harry?”

  Edilio nodded, a movement which sent bright shards of pain stabbing into his brain.

  “Yeah. Killed him. Maybe it was an accident like Hunter says, but either way I better take him and keep him in Town Hall.”

  Astrid nodded. “Yeah. I’ll talk to him. Make him see it’s the only way.”

  The two of them went inside. Hunter was not in the kitchen making ice packs. The sliding glass door to the backyard was open.

  Brittney Donegal recoiled from the door when the banging started. Mickey Finch and Mike Farmer were already across the room, back by the plant manager’s office. They were waiting for Brittney to give them some guidance because neither of them had a clue.

  Brittney was twelve ye
ars old, overweight, with a pimply face adorned by overbearing black horn-rim glasses. She wore sweat pants pulled up too high, and a pink frilly blouse that was at least one size too small. Her indifferent brown hair was yanked to either side in pigtails.

  She had braces on her teeth—braces that had not been adjusted in three months. Braces that were accomplishing nothing now, but that she could not figure out how to remove.

  Brittney had kind of had a crush on Mike Farmer, but he wasn’t exactly impressing her.

  “We gotta get out of here, Britt,” Mike whined.

  “Edilio said anything ever happens, we’re supposed to lock this door and sit tight,” Brittney said.

  “They got guns,” Mike cried.

  Another crashing impact. They all jumped. The door did not budge.

  “So do we,” Brittney said.

  “Josh is probably already heading back to town, safe, I bet,” Mickey said. “Mike’s right, we have to get away.”

  Brittney wanted nothing more than to run away. But she figured she was a soldier. That’s what Edilio had said. Their job was to protect the power plant.

  “I know we’re all just kids,” Edilio used to say. “But we may need kids to step up, someday, be more than just kids.”

  Brittney had been in the square the day of the big battle. It was Edilio who had killed the coyote that was all over her, snapping at her throat, then seizing her leg in a jaw like a bear trap.

  She had no scars from the coyote bite on her leg. The Healer had cured all that. And she had no scar from the bullet that had burned a crease across her upper arm. The Healer had taken all the wounds away. But Brittney’s little brother, Tanner, was one of the kids buried in the plaza.

  Edilio had dug his grave with the backhoe.

  Brittney had no romantic feelings for Edilio, but what she had went a lot deeper. She would rather burn for eternity in the hottest fires of Hell than let Edilio down.

  Brittney had no scars, but she did still have nightmares, and sometimes not when she was asleep. Mike had been there that day, too, hurt worse than her. But it had left Mike scared and timid, while it had left Brittney mad and determined.

  “Anyone comes through that door, I’m shooting them,” Brittney said in a loud voice, loud enough that she hoped to be heard by whoever was on the other side.