Hunger

  “Cut it out, man. You know I’m not stepping out,” Edilio said.

  “You don’t even consider it?”

  Edilio’s silence was answer enough.

  “Where’s this all end, Edilio? Or does it never end? How many more of these fights? How many more graves in the plaza? You ever think about it?”

  “Sam, I dig those graves,” Edilio said quietly.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Sorry.” He sighed. “We’re not winning. You know that, right? I don’t mean this fight. I mean the big fight. Survival. We’re not winning that fight. We’re starving. Kids eating their pets. We’re breaking up into little groups that hate each other. It’s all going out of control.”

  Edilio glanced at Howard, who was a discreet distance away but listening in. Two of Edilio’s guys were within earshot as well.

  “You need to cut this out, Sam,” Edilio said in an urgent whisper. “These people are all looking to you, man. You can’t be talking about how we’re screwed.”

  Sam barely heard him. “I need to get back to town.”

  “What? Are you messing with me? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

  “Dekka can keep an eye on Caine. Besides, if he busts out, that’s good, right?” Sam nodded as if he had convinced himself. “I need to see Astrid.”

  “You know, maybe that’s not a bad idea,” Edilio said. He left Sam and went to Dekka, drew her aside, and spoke urgently to her. Dekka shot a tear-stained glance at Sam, worried.

  “Come on, I’ll drive you back to town,” Edilio said.

  Sam followed him to the Jeep. “What did you tell Dekka?”

  “I told her with the lights out, you needed to check on what’s happening in town.”

  “She buy that?” Sam asked.

  Edilio didn’t answer directly. And he didn’t look Sam in the eye. “She’s tough. Dekka will handle things here.”

  They drove in silence to Perdido Beach.

  The plaza was full of kids milling around. That many kids hadn’t been together in one place since the Thanksgiving feast.

  Sam felt a hundred pairs of eyes on him as he pulled up with Edilio.

  “This doesn’t look like a fiesta,” Edilio said.

  Astrid came out of the crowd, ran to the car, and threw her arms around Sam. She kissed him on the cheek, and then on the lips.

  He buried his face in her hair and whispered, “Are you okay?”

  “Better now that I know you’re alive,” Astrid said. “We have some very scared, angry kids here, Sam.”

  As if she had given a cue, the crowd rushed forward to surround the three of them.

  “The lights are out!”

  “Where have you been?”

  “We’re out of food!”

  “I can’t even turn on the TV!”

  “I’m scared of the dark!”

  “There’s a mutant freak murderer running loose!”

  “The water isn’t working!”

  Those that weren’t shouting accusations were asking plaintive questions.

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Why didn’t you stop Caine?”

  “Where’s the Healer?”

  “Are we all going to die?”

  Sam pushed Astrid gently, reluctantly away and stood alone to face them. Each question hit home. Each was an arrow aimed at his heart. They were the same accusations he had thrown at himself. The same questions he had asked himself. He knew he should put an end to it. He knew he should call for quiet. He knew that the longer he went without answering, the more scared the kids would get.

  But he had no answers.

  The assault of anger and fear was deafening. A seething wall of angry faces pressed all around. It left him numb. He knew what he should do, but he couldn’t. Somehow he had convinced himself that kids would understand. That they would cut him some slack. Give him some time.

  But they were terrified. They were on the edge of panic.

  Astrid was turned to face the crowd, back against the hood, pressed from all sides. She was yelling for quiet, ignored.

  Edilio had reached into the backseat of the Jeep to slide his gun forward onto his lap. Like he thought he might have to use it to save Sam or Astrid or both.

  Zil appeared, pushing his way through the crowd, five other kids acting like a star’s bodyguard, shoving people out of the way. He was cheered by some, booed by others. But when he raised his hand the crowd quieted, at least a little, and leaned forward in anticipation.

  Zil stuck one fist on his hip and pointed at Sam with his other hand. “You’re supposed to be the big boss.”

  Sam said nothing. The crowd hushed, ready to watch this one-on-one confrontation.

  “You’re the big boss of the freaks,” Zil yelled. “But you can’t do anything. You can shoot laser beams out of your hands, but you can’t get enough food, and you can’t keep the power on, and you won’t do anything about that murderer Hunter, who killed my best friend.” He paused to fill his lungs for a final, furious cry. “You shouldn’t be in charge.”

  Suddenly, there was silence. Zil had laid the challenge out there.

  Sam nodded, as if to himself. Like he was agreeing. But then, moving as slowly as an old man, he climbed up onto the passenger seat of the Jeep, and stood where everyone could see him.

  Sam felt anger building inside him. Resentment. Rage.

  It wouldn’t be good to let it out. He knew that. He kept his voice calm, kept his expression blank. He now towered over Zil. “You want to be in charge, Zil? Last night you were running around trying to get a lynch mob together. And let’s not even pretend that wasn’t you responsible for graffiti I saw driving into town just now.”

  “So what?” Zil demanded. “So what? So I said what everyone who isn’t a freak is thinking.”

  He spit the word “freak,” making it an insult, making it an accusation.

  “You really think what we need right now is to divide up between freaks and normals?” Sam asked. “You figure that will get the lights turned back on? That will put food on people’s tables?”

  “What about Hunter?” Zil said. “Hunter murders Harry with his mutant freak powers and you don’t do anything.”

  “I had kind of a busy night,” Sam said, his voice now poisonous with sarcasm.

  “So let me and my boys go find him,” Zil said. “You’re so busy not getting any food, and not stopping Caine and all, not keeping the lights on, so me and my crew will get Hunter.”

  “And do what with him?” It was Astrid. The crowd had backed up just enough to give her some breathing room. “What’s your big plan, Zil?”

  Zil spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Hey, all we want to do is get him before he hurts someone else. You want to, like, give him a trial or whatever? Fine. But let us go and get him.”

  “No one is stopping you from finding him,” Sam said. “You can walk around town all you like. You can admire your graffiti and count the number of windows you broke.”

  “We need guns,” Zil said. “I’m not going up against a killer freak without guns. And your wetback friend there says we regular people can’t carry guns.”

  Sam glanced down at Edilio to see how he had registered the insult. Edilio looked grim but calm. Calmer than Sam felt.

  “Hunter is a problem,” Sam acknowledged. “We have a big list of problems. But you trying to make trouble between people with powers and people without powers is not helping anything. Neither is calling people names. We have to stick together.”

  When Zil didn’t immediately answer, Sam went on, looking past Zil to speak to the whole group. “Here’s the thing, people: We have some serious problems. The lights are off. And it seems like that’s affecting the water flow in part of town. So, no baths or showers, okay? But the situation is that we think Caine is short of food, which means he’s not going to be able to hold out very long at the power plant.”

  “How long?” someone yelled.

  Sam shook his head.
“I don’t know.”

  “Why can’t you get him to leave?”

  “Because I can’t, that’s why,” Sam snapped, letting some of his anger show. “Because I’m not Superman, all right? Look, he’s inside the plant. The walls are thick. He has guns, he has Jack, he has Drake, and he has his own powers. I can’t get him out of there without getting some of our people killed. Anybody want to volunteer for that?”

  Silence.

  “Yeah, I thought so. I can’t get you people to show up and pick melons, let alone throw down with Drake.”

  “That’s your job,” Zil said.

  “Oh, I see,” Sam said. The resentment he’d held in now came boiling to the surface. “It’s my job to pick the fruit, and collect the trash, and ration the food, and catch Hunter, and stop Caine, and settle every stupid little fight, and make sure kids get a visit from the Tooth Fairy. What’s your job, Zil? Oh, right: you spray hateful graffiti. Thanks for taking care of that, I don’t know how we’d ever manage without you.”

  “Sam…,” Astrid said, just loud enough for him to hear. A warning.

  Too late. He was going to say what needed saying.

  “And the rest of you. How many of you have done a single, lousy thing in the last two weeks aside from sitting around playing Xbox or watching movies?

  “Let me explain something to you people. I’m not your parents. I’m a fifteen-year-old kid. I’m a kid, just like all of you. I don’t happen to have any magic ability to make food suddenly appear. I can’t just snap my fingers and make all your problems go away. I’m just a kid.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Sam knew he had crossed the line. He had said the fateful words so many had used as an excuse before him. How many hundreds of times had he heard, “I’m just a kid.”

  But now he seemed unable to stop the words from tumbling out. “Look, I have an eighth-grade education. Just because I have powers doesn’t mean I’m Dumbledore or George Washington or Martin Luther King. Until all this happened I was just a B student. All I wanted to do was surf. I wanted to grow up to be Dru Adler or Kelly Slater, just, you know, a really good surfer.”

  The crowd was dead quiet now. Of course they were quiet, some still-functioning part of his mind thought bitterly, it’s entertaining watching someone melt down in public.

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Sam said.

  “I lost people today…I…I screwed up. I should have figured out Caine might go after the power plant.”

  Silence.

  “I’m doing the best I can.”

  No one said a word.

  Sam refused to meet Astrid’s eyes. If he saw pity there, he would fall apart completely.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He jumped down. The crowd parted. He walked away through shocked silence.

  Not that many kids came up to congratulate Zil on exposing Sam Temple as a helpless, useless fraud. Not as many as he had a right to expect.

  But Antoine was with him, and Lance, Hank, and Turk. The four of them had become his crew. His boys. These four had been with him last night as he woke up the town of Perdido Beach.

  It had been a dizzy, crazy, wild night. Zil had gone from being just a guy to becoming a leader. The way the others looked at him had changed. Lightning quick. One minute they were his equals, now he was clearly in charge.

  That was cool. Very cool. Zil was the “Sam” of the normals, now. And the normals were still by far the majority.

  So why didn’t more kids crowd around him now? There were a few nods, some pats on the back, but there were also some very suspicious looks. And that wasn’t right. Not when he, Zil Sperry, had stood up face-to-face with Sam Temple.

  As if reading his thoughts, Lance said, “Don’t worry, they’ll come around. They’re just shaken up right now.”

  “They’re still scared of Sam,” Hank said. “They should be scared of us.”

  Hank was a short, skinny, angry kid, with a face like a rat. Hank talked constantly about kicking butt, to the point where Zil could barely stop himself from pointing out that Hank was practically a midget and wasn’t going to kick anyone’s butt.

  Lance was a different story. Lance was tall, athletic, good looking, and smart. Zil could hardly believe Lance was being so respectful to him, letting Zil take the lead and make the decisions. Back in the old days Lance had been one of the most popular kids in school—not at all like Hank, who was generally despised.

  “Hi.”

  Zil looked around and found himself face-to-face with a girl he knew vaguely. Lisa. That was her name. Lisa something.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I totally agree with you,” Lisa something gushed.

  “Really?” Zil had very little experience talking to girls. He hoped he wouldn’t start blushing. Not that this girl was beautiful or anything, but she was cute. And she was wearing a short skirt and makeup; almost none of the girls in the FAYZ seemed to bother trying to look nice and “girly” anymore.

  “The freaks are totally out of control,” Lisa said, nodding her head constantly like a bobble-head doll.

  “Yes, they are,” Zil agreed, almost wary, not knowing why this girl was talking to him.

  “I’m really glad you’re standing up to them. You’re, like, totally brave.”

  “Thanks.” Zil found his own head bobbing up and down now in response to her. Then, not knowing what else to say, he forced an awkward smile and started out of the church.

  “Can I—” Lisa began.

  “What?”

  “I mean, are you guys going to do anything? Because maybe I could help,” Lisa said.

  Zil felt a moment of panic. Do something? Like what? They’d already tagged town hall and busted some windows. Unless Hunter showed up, what was there to do?

  Then it dawned on Zil. If he did nothing now, he would lose everything. Lance and Hank and Turk and even Antoine would drift off, or just settle into being another bunch of dudes doing nothing much and slowly starving.

  It wasn’t over. It couldn’t be over.

  “Actually, I could use your help,” Zil said to Lisa. “I have plans.”

  “What are you going to do?” Lisa asked eagerly.

  “I’m going to put real humans back in charge. Get rid of the chuds. Run things for us, not for them.”

  “Yeah!” Turk said.

  “The six of us, here? We’re just the start,” Zil said.

  “Absolutely,” Hank agreed.

  “Zil’s crew,” Turk said.

  Zil waved that off modestly. “I think maybe we should call ourselves the Human Crew.”

  THIRTY

  13 HOURS, 38 MINUTES

  CAINE HAD FALLEN asleep, exhausted, on the plant manager’s couch. He woke slowly. Disoriented. Not sure where he was. He opened his eyes and everything around him, the dusty furnishings of the office, seemed to vibrate.

  He rubbed his eyes and sat up.

  Someone was sitting in the plant manager’s chair. A green man. Green from some inner light, like chemicals were burning inside him putting off a sickly glow.

  The man had no face. His shape was rough, like a clay model only half completed. When Caine looked closer he could see millions of tiny crystals, some no larger than a period, some almost as big as a sugar cube. The mass of crystals was constantly in motion, like frenzied ants crawling over each other.

  Caine closed his eyes. When he opened them again the apparition was gone.

  A hallucination. Caine had gotten used to hallucinations.

  He got to his feet, but he was shaky. He felt sick, like he had the flu or something. His face was beaded with sweat. His shirt was sticky on his skin.

  He needed to throw up, but there was nothing in his stomach.

  Through the glass he could see the control room. Diana, asleep or dozing in her chair, her feet up on the table. She looked strange without her hair. Caine loved Diana’s hair.

  Jack had his head down on the same
table, his face puffy, lips babylike as he snored.

  The two hostages leaned into each other, asleep.

  The dead girl, Brittney, lay on the floor in a heap. Someone had moved her. It looked like someone had tried to push her under the counter, out of the way. The pool of her blood was now a smear.

  The only one awake was Drake. He leaned against a wall, unblinking, whip arm coiled around his waist, a machine gun in his other hand.

  Caine staggered. He righted himself, squared his shoulders, wiped the drool from his mouth. He had to look strong. Drake looked strong, like he was the one in charge.

  Caine wondered how long it would take for Drake to finally decide to come after him. He hadn’t done so during Caine’s long months incapacitated. But now that Caine was giving the orders again, he knew Drake was chafing.

  Caine steadied himself and started toward the control room. He got as far as the office door when the memory storm swept over him, almost knocked him to his knees. He grabbed the door and held on to it, shaking.

  It came to him as hunger. Hunger deeper than anything he had ever felt himself. As if he had nothing inside his skin but a roaring, starving tiger.

  Hungry in the dark.

  Caine whimpered. He caught himself before he did it again, but the desperate sound was out of his mouth. Had Drake heard?

  Leave me alone, Caine pleaded silently with the voice in his head. I’m doing what you want, but leave me alone.

  Caine, looking down at the floor, saw Drake’s feet. Drake had arrived soundlessly. Or maybe Caine had been beyond hearing anything.

  “You okay?” Drake asked.

  “I’m fine,” Caine snapped.

  Drake said, “Good. I’m real glad about that.”

  Caine pushed past him, making sure to dig a hard shoulder into Drake.

  “What are you all doing asleep?” Caine demanded in a loud voice. “Sam could be outside right now, waiting for a chance to come back after us.”

  “We won’t have to worry about Sam for long,” Drake said. “Not once he’s fed.”

  Caine kicked Jack’s chair. He kicked the nearest of the hostages. “Wake up. All of you. It’s almost daylight outside. Sam may be planning something.”

  “What is your problem?” Diana demanded. “Did your monster overlord wake you up? Did he crack his crazy-brain whip and make you jump?”