Hunger (15 page)

Edilio leaped, a wild reaction that almost tripped him, but he caught his footing and ran.

He ran faster than he had ever run before, boots slamming down on the seething worms and faster, faster, faster until he sprawled, facedown, in the dust.

The dust beyond the field.

He yanked his feet toward him and frantically examined his boots. There were chew marks on the sides, on the heels. But no holes.

The worms had not penetrated.

Edilio looked at the shocked faces of the kids around him. He had been seconds away from impatiently ordering them into the field. Most wearing sneakers. None with experience seeing what the zekes looked like.

He’d been one hesitation away from ordering forty-nine kids to their deaths.

“Get back on the bus,” Edilio said shakily. “Get back on the bus.”

“What about lunch?” someone asked.

30
HOURS
, 41
MINUTES

SAM TOOK THE
list from Astrid. He scanned the first couple of matters and nearly crumpled it up.

“The usual?” he asked her.

Astrid nodded. “The usual. I think you’ll especially enjoy the—”

Computer Jack burst in like he was in a hurry.

People weren’t supposed to just come busting in, but Jack wasn’t just people.

“What is it, Jack?” Sam asked him as he slid into the oversized leather chair behind what had once been the real mayor’s desk and briefly was Caine’s.

Jack was agitated. “You should let me turn on the phones.”

Sam blinked. “What? I thought you had an emergency the way you came in here.”

“Everybody keeps asking me when I’m going to fix the phones,” Jack said in apparent agony. “Everybody asks me,
and I keep having to come up with stupid lies. They think I failed.”

“Jack, we’ve been over this. I’m really grateful for the work you have done, man, no one else could ever have pulled it off. But, dude, we have other issues, okay?”

Jack flushed. “You asked me to do it. I told everyone I was going to do it. Then you won’t let me do it. It’s not fair.” His glasses almost seemed to steam up from the heat of his indignation.

“Listen, Jack. You really want Caine and Drake to be able to dial up anyone they want down here? You want Caine to be able to reach out to kids? Threaten them? Sweet-talk them? Maybe offer to give them food in exchange for guns or whatever? Look how well he fooled everyone the first time around.”

“You just want to be in control of everything,” Jack accused.

The accusation stung. Sam started to yell but choked it off. For a few seconds he just struggled with his temper, unable to speak.

Of course I want to control things,
he wanted to say. Of course he didn’t want Caine filling kid’s heads with lies. Kids were desperate enough to listen to anyone who offered an easier life, even Caine. Did Jack not understand how close they all were to disaster? Did Jack not get how tenuous Sam’s control of the situation had become?

Maybe not.

“Jack, kids are scared. They’re desperate,” Sam said.
“Maybe you don’t see that because you’re busy with other things. But we are about this far”—he held up thumb and forefinger about an inch apart—“from total disaster. You want Caine to know that? You want kids talking to him or Drake at three in the morning, spilling their guts, telling him all of our business? You really want Caine knowing how bad things are?”

Astrid stepped in to cut off Sam’s increasingly angry rant. “Jack, what happened to get you all worked up?”

“Nothing,” Jack said. Then, “Zil. He’s busting on me in front of everyone, talking about how now that I’m a mutant and all, my brain must not work as well.”

“Say what?” Sam asked.

“He says people who get powers, their IQ drops, they get stupid. He said, ‘Exhibit A: poor old Jack, formerly Computer Jack, who can pick up a house but can’t get the phones to work.’”

“You know, Jack, I’m sorry if he hurt your feelings, but I kind of have stuff to deal with here,” Sam said, beginning to get really exasperated. “You’re the tech genius. You know it, I know it, Astrid knows it, so who cares what Zil thinks?”

“Look, why don’t you just work on the internet thing you’re trying to do?” Astrid suggested.

Jack shot her a poisonous look. “Why, so you can not use that, either? Make me look like an even bigger fool?”

Sam was ready to snap at Jack, tell him to shut up, go away, stop bothering him, but that would be a bad idea, so he took a deep breath, summoned all his patience, and said, “Jack, I
cannot make promises. I’m dealing with a lot of stuff. First priority, before we worry about techie stuff, is—”

“Techie stuff?” Jack interrupted. His voice was shocked and indignant.

“That’s not a diss. I’m just saying—” But whatever he was about to say was forgotten when Edilio appeared in the doorway. He didn’t rush in as Jack had done. He just stood there looking pale and solemn.

“What?” Sam asked.

“The zekes. They’re in the melon field now.”

“They’re spreading,” Astrid said.

“I could have got all those kids killed,” Edilio said. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. He was trembling.

“Okay. Enough,” Sam said, standing up, pushing his chair back sharply.

Finally.

Finally something he could actually do.

He should have been worried. And he was. But the emotion that filled his mind as he strode purposefully from the room was relief. “The list is going to have to wait, Astrid. I’m going to kill some worms.”

Two hours later Sam stood at the edge of the melon field. Dekka was beside him. Edilio had driven them there in the open Jeep, but he was not stepping foot on the ground.

“How you see this playing out?” Dekka asked.

“You lift them, I burn them,” Sam answered.

“I can only reach a little area at a time. A circle, maybe
twenty feet across,” Dekka said.

The word had spread that Sam was going to throw down with the zekes. So other kids had piled into cars and vans and now a couple of dozen watched from a safe distance. Some, looking like tourists or sports fans, had brought cameras.

Howard and Orc arrived as well. Sam was relieved. He’d sent word to Howard that he might need Orc’s help.

“T’sup, Sammie?” Howard asked.

“More worms. We’re going to see if we can do some pest control.”

Howard nodded. “All right. And what do you want with my boy?” He jerked his thumb toward Orc, who stood leaning back against a car hood, his weight almost flattening the tires and denting the sheet metal.

“We can’t kill all the zekes,” Sam said. “But Astrid thinks they may be smarter than your average murderous mutated worm. So we’re sending a message: don’t mess with us.”

“Still not seeing what Orc is here for.”

“He’s our canary,” Sam said.

“Our what?”

“Coal miners in the old days would carry a canary down with them,” Sam said. “If there was poison gas, the canary would die first. If the canary was okay, the miners knew it was safe.”

Howard took a moment to digest that idea. He laughed sardonically. “I used to think you were soft, Sam. Now here you are all cold and hard, wanting to send Orc in there to get chewed up.”

“It took them a while to get to his face last time,” Sam said. “If we see any worm activity, he comes right out.”

“Cold and hard,” Howard said with a smirk. “I’ll talk to my boy. But he doesn’t work for free. You know that. Four cases of beer.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

“Two, and if you argue anymore, I’ll show you just how cold and hard I can be.”

With the deal done, Sam looked over at Dekka. “You ready?”

“I am,” she said.

“Let’s do it.”

Dekka raised her hands high over her head. She aimed her palms at the nearest edge of the melon field.

Suddenly, in a rush, melons, vines, and a cloud of dirt rose into the air, a dark pillar. Worms could be clearly seen, writhing within the ascending cloud.

Sam raised his own hands to shoulder height. He spread his fingers.

“This is going to feel good,” he muttered.

Blazing fire shot in two green-white bolts from his palms.

Melons exploded like soggy popcorn. Vines crisped. Clods of dirt smoked and melted in midair.

The worms died. They died popping open from the super-heated steam of their own blood. Or they died shriveling up like ash curlicues, like Fourth of July snakes. Some did a little of each.

Sam raked his flamethrower up and down the pillar, aiming anywhere he saw movement. In places where he lingered, the dirt grew so hot, it glowed red and formed flying droplets of magma.

“Okay, Dekka, let go!” Sam yelled.

Dekka released her hold. Gravity worked again. And the whole molten, smoking pillar fell back to earth. It sent up a shower of sparks as it crashed. Some of the kids who were standing too close yelped as they were hit by droplets of what was almost lava.

Sam and Dekka both backed away hastily, but too late to save Sam a burn that went through his jeans and sizzled a teardrop-shaped spot onto his thigh.

“Water bottle,” he yelled. He grabbed the proffered bottle and doused the spot. “Okay, that hurt. Man. Ow.”

“I saw some very crispy zekes,” Howard commented.

“Let’s go again, Dekka. If you’re up for it.”

“I like melon,” Dekka said. “I’m not giving it up for these worms.”

They moved a distance to the left and repeated the whole sequence. Then to a third location and did it again.

“Okay, message sent,” Sam said when they were done. “Let’s see if they got it. Howard?”

Howard waved Orc over. The boy-monster lumbered wearily toward the field.

“First go into an area we blasted,” Sam instructed him.

Orc did. If his stone feet were bothered by the scorching heat of the singed soil, he showed no sign of it.

“Okay,” Sam said. “Now farther. Past the burned part. Try to pick a melon.”

“Someone ought to beer me,” Orc grumbled.

“I don’t have any with me,” Sam said.

“Figures,” Orc said. He plodded into fresh, unburned dirt. He leaned down to grab a melon and came back up with two worms writhing around his hand.

Orc flung the worms away and moved with some speed back onto safer ground.

Sam felt deflated. He had failed. Even at this.

In the process he’d used the promise of beer to turn an alcoholic kid into human bait.

“Not maybe my proudest day,” he said to himself.

The crowd, disappointed, shot sidelong looks of worry at Sam. He ignored them all and climbed into the Jeep beside Edilio.

“You want my job, Edilio? he asked.

“Not a chance, man. Not a chance.”

Nothing stuck to the FAYZ wall. Lana had discovered that fact. She had put on gloves and tried to tape a target to the barrier. The tape didn’t stick. Neither did rubber cement.

No one was going to be mounting posters of their favorite bands on the barrier.

She tried spray paint. It was fun to try. Fun to imagine that the barrier could be covered in graffiti. But spray paint sizzled a bit as if it had been sprayed onto a hot frying pan. Then it evaporated and disappeared, leaving no trace.

It was frustrating. Lana needed a target. And the notion of shooting at the wall appealed to her.

In the end she had dragged a chaise lounge from the pool area over to the tennis courts, where the barrier was most easily accessible. She leaned the chair up against the barrier—you could at least lean things against it—and taped a target to the chair.

It was not a bull’s-eye. It was a copy of a photo she’d found. A picture of a coyote.

Then she took the pistol out of her backpack. It was heavy. She had no idea what caliber it was. She’d found it in one of the houses she’d previously occupied. Along with two boxes of ammunition.

She had figured out how to load it. She’d gotten pretty fast at that. The clip held twelve bullets. There was one extra clip. It was easy to slide the old clip out and pop the new one in. She’d managed to pinch her finger pretty badly the first time she tried, but she was the Healer, and that had certain advantages.

But she needed to be able to do more than hold it and load it.

She raised the gun in one hand. But it was too heavy to hold very steady with just her hand. So she gripped it with both hands. Better.

She took aim at the coyote picture.

She squeezed the trigger.

The gun kicked in her hand.

The explosion was so much louder than it was on TV or in movies. It sounded like the whole world had blown up.

She walked forward, feeling a little shaky, to check the target. Nothing. She had missed. The FAYZ wall behind the target was unscathed, of course.

Lana took aim more carefully. She’d watched Edilio training his people. She knew the basics. She centered the front target in the middle of the rear target, made sure the top edge of front and back targets were level. Then she lowered the gun until the sights rested just beneath the coyote’s head.

She fired.

When she walked forward this time she found a hole in the target. Not precisely where she had aimed. But not too far off, either.

The hole in that paper filled her with pleasure.

“Looks like you have a boo-boo, Pack Leader.”

Lana fired two clips’ worth of ammunition at the target. She hit only half the time, but that was better than hitting not at all.

When she was done she could barely hear for the ringing in her ears. Her hands were sore and bruised. She could easily heal the bruising. But she kind of liked the feeling and what it represented.

Lana carefully reloaded both clips, slid one back into the gun, and put the gun in her backpack.

Come to me. I have need of you.

She slung the pack over her shoulder. The sun was going down, casting pale orange shadows against the gray of the FAYZ wall.

Tomorrow. She would be there soon.

22
HOURS
, 41
MINUTES

SHE DIDN’T WANT
to cut off her hair. She liked her hair long. But Diana took Caine’s threat seriously. She had to deliver Jack.

So she stood before the mirror and lifted the electric clippers she’d found in the bedroom closet of the former headmaster. There was no point in subtlety, no need to fool with scissors and mirror for hours.

The clippers made a strangely pleasing buzz. They changed pitch each time she pushed the blade into a tuft of hair.

In less than fifteen minutes her dark hair was in the sink and spilling out onto the floor. Her head was covered in a half-inch-long black burr that made her look like Natalie Portman in
V for Vendetta
.

She scooped the hair into a trash can and rinsed the sink.

Next she began removing the last traces of makeup from her eyes. There was nothing much she could do about the sculpted eyebrows. However, there was plenty she could do about clothing. Laid out on her bed was a black World of
Warcraft T-shirt two sizes too big, a gray hoodie, a pair of baggy boy’s jeans, and a pair of boy’s sneakers. She kept her own underthings. There was such a thing as getting too deep into the part, after all.

She dressed quickly and stood back to check the results in the full-length mirror that hung behind the closet door.

She was still obviously a girl. From a distance she might pass, but up close, no way.

She analyzed the problem. It wasn’t her body; that was covered effectively. The problem was that she simply had a girl’s face. The nose, the eyes, the lips, even the teeth.

“Not much I can do about my mouth,” she whispered to her reflection. “Except not smile.”

Then, as if arguing with her own reflection, she said, “You never smile, anyway.”

She rummaged in the bathroom until she found some medical supplies. Moments later she had a white bandage on the bridge of her nose. That helped. She could pass. Maybe.

She stepped out into the hall. No one there, which wasn’t surprising. Dinner, such as it was, had come and gone. Kids were hungry and weak, and no one had energy for much except lying in their rooms.

Diana knew better than to take a car. A guard was being kept at the entrance to Coates again. They’d be sure to stop her and summon Drake.

Drake might let her go. She was, after all, following Caine’s orders.

But then again, he might not. What better time to arrange an “accident” for Diana?

So she took a side door out of the dormitory, the door nearest the woods. She was acutely conscious of the crunch of her oversized boy sneakers on gravel and then grateful for the softer sound of pine needles and moldering leaves.

It was a long walk to skirt the gate. The woods were dark. Straight overheard, when she looked at the sky, she could see the rich blue of evening. But night fell early under the trees.

It took her an hour to work her way through brambles and over gullies. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the road—woods were woods, to Diana, one tree like the next. But at last, as night crept up on twilight, she climbed a slippery embankment and stepped onto blacktop.

She had no brilliant plan for getting to Jack. She couldn’t exactly knock him on the head and carry him to Caine. She would have to rely on other means. Jack had always had a crush on her, not that he would ever act on it.

A pity she looked like a boy now.

It was all downhill until she hit the highway. There at last were widely separated pools of light cast by the ever fewer functioning streetlights, and a faint glow from the empty storefronts that hadn’t yet burned out their last lightbulbs.

She was footsore and weary when she reached Perdido Beach and she badly needed a rest. It was going to be a long night, of that she was sure.

Diana walked down Sherman Avenue and onto Golding Street, looking for an empty house. They weren’t hard to find. Few homes showed any glimmer of light, and this one house was so shabby, so run-down, that she was convinced no one would be staying here.

The lights were off inside and repeated efforts yielded only one functioning light bulb, a Tiffany-style lamp in the cramped and overstuffed living room. There was a roll-armed easy chair decorated with lace doilies and she sagged into it gratefully.

“Some old lady lived here,” she said to the echoing emptiness.

She put her feet up on the coffee table—something the previous resident would no doubt have frowned on—and considered how long she should wait before risking the streets again. Jack’s place was only a few blocks away, but it would mean passing through the more densely populated center of town.

“I would sell my soul for some TV,” she muttered. What was that show she used to watch? Something with doctors and all kinds of soap opera plots. How could she have forgotten the name? She’d watched it every…every what? What night was it on?

Three months and she’d forgotten TV.

“I suppose my MySpace and Facebook pages are still up, somewhere, back in the world,” she mused aloud. Messages and invitations piling up unanswered. Where are you, Diana? Can I be your friend? Did you read my bulletin?

What ever happened to Diana?

Diana is
_________. Fill in the blanks.

Diana is
…

She wondered what everyone in the FAYZ wondered: Where were all the adults? What had happened to the world? Was everyone “out there” dead and the only life here in this
bubble? Did people in the outside world know what had happened? Was the FAYZ like some giant, impenetrable egg plopped on the Southern California coastline? Was it a tourist attraction? Were busloads of the curious lining up to have their pictures taken in front of the mysterious sphere?

Diana is
…lost.

She got up to search the kitchen. As far as she could see in the deep gloom the shelves were empty. They had been cleaned out, of course, Sam would have seen to that, marshalling his resources.

The refrigerator was empty, too.

Diana is
…hungry.

But she found a working flashlight in the kitchen junk drawer. With this she explored the only other room, the old lady’s bedroom. Old lady clothing. Old lady slippers. Old lady knitting needles stuck through a ball of yarn.

Would Diana still be here, trapped in the FAYZ when she was old? “You’re already old,” she told herself. “We’re all old now.” But that wasn’t quite true. They’d been forced to act older, to behave in ways that were very adult. But they were all still kids. Even Diana.

There was a book beside the old lady’s bed. Diana was sure it was a Bible, but when she shone the light on it, she saw a reflection from glossy raised lettering. It was a romance novel. Some half-undressed woman and a kind of creepy guy in what looked like a pirate outfit.

The old woman had been reading romances. The day she poofed out of the FAYZ she was probably thinking, I
wonder if spunky Caitlin will find true love with handsome Pirate guy?

That’s how I should reach out to Jack, Diana thought. Play the beautiful damsel in need. Save me, Jack.

Would Computer Jack respond to her now? Would he buy the act? Would he be her pirate?

“Just call me Caitlin,” Diana said, and smirked.

She tossed the book aside. But that felt wrong, somehow. So she picked it up and placed it carefully back where the old woman had left it.

She went out into the night looking for a kid who was very strong—and, she hoped, very weak.

Astrid plugged the cable into her computer and the other end into the camera Edilio had brought at her request. He’d told her a number of kids had taken pictures. The best of the photographers was an eleven-year-old named Matteo. This was his camera.

iPhoto opened and she clicked import. The pictures began to open, flashing through the viewer as they loaded.

The first half dozen or so were of kids standing around. Shots of the field. A greedy close-up on some melons. Sam with the look of cold anger he sometimes wore. Orc slouched against a car hood. Dekka self-contained, unreadable. Howard, Edilio, various people.

Then the moment when the ground rose up.

The moment when Sam fired.

Once the photos had loaded, Astrid began to go back over
them, starting with Dekka’s suspension of gravity. The boy had used a good camera and he’d gotten some very good shots. Astrid zoomed in and could clearly see individual worms suspended in midair. Or mid-dirt.

Then came a spectacular shot that captured the first blast of Sam’s power.

Several more, taken in just a few seconds, snapped quickly, some shaky, but some perfectly focused. Matteo knew how to use a camera.

Astrid clicked ahead, but then she froze. She backed up. She zoomed in tight.

A worm was turned toward the camera, twisted around so that its toothy mouth was aimed at the camera. Nothing unusual except that the next worm she panned over to was doing the same thing. The same direction, the same expression.

And the next worm.

She found nineteen separate images of worms. All were turned toward the camera. Pointing in the direction of the attack.

Aiming their devil grins at Sam.

With shaking hand she moved the mouse to an earlier album. She opened the photos she had taken of the dead zeke Sam had brought her. She zoomed in on the ugly thing, scanning carefully over the head.

Sam came into the room. He stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“How are you, babe?” He had started calling her that. She was still deciding whether or not she liked it.

“Rough evening,” she said. “I just got past a two-hour Petey meltdown. He noticed Nestor.”

“Nestor?”

“His nesting doll, remember? The little red things in his room, one doll fits exactly inside the other? The other night you stomped on it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

“Not your fault, Sam.” She wasn’t sure she liked him calling her “babe,” but she did like the feel of his lips on her bare neck. But after a few seconds she pushed him away. “I’m working.”

“What is it you’re seeing?” Sam asked.

“The worms. They were looking right at you.”

“I was the guy cooking them,” Sam said. “For all the good it did.”

Astrid twisted around to look up at him.

“Oh, I know that look,” Sam said. “Go ahead, genius, tell me what it is I missed.”

“With
what
are they looking at you?” Astrid asked.

Sam took a beat. Then, “They don’t have eyes.”

“No. I just checked again. They don’t have eyes. But somehow, in the middle of being levitated in midair and getting hit with blasts of light energy, they all twist around in midair to stare—at least it looks like they’re staring—in the same direction. At you.”

“Great. So somehow they can see. I think what matters is that I killed a bunch of them and they didn’t get the message.”

Astrid shook her head. “I don’t think you did anything
to them. I’m not sure it’s ‘them.’ What if they’re like ants? I mean, what if there really aren’t individual worms? What if they’re all part of one superorganism? Like a hive.”

“So there’s a queen worm somewhere?”

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s not so hierarchical, less differentiated.”

He kissed the nape of her neck, sending pleasant shivers down her spine. “This is all great, Astrid. How do I kill them?”

“I have two ideas on that. One is a practical suggestion. You’ll like it. The other is crazier. You won’t like the crazy idea.”

It was time to get Little Pete ready for bed. She stood up and called to him, using the trigger phrase he understood. “Beddy boody, beddy boody.”

Little Pete gave her a hazy look, as if he had heard her but had not understood. Then he got up from his chair and headed obediently up the stairs. Obedient not to Astrid’s authority, really, but to what was, in effect, programming.

“I have to go do a walk-through in town, and you have to get Petey to bed,” Sam said. “So give me the short version.”

“Okay,” Astrid said. “SUVs running just on their rims, no tires. The zekes can’t eat through steel. That’s the practical suggestion.”

“That could work, Astrid,” he said excitedly. “Four-by-fours, on their steel rims, use hooks on poles to snag melons or cabbages or whatever. It would take practice, but unless the zekes can fly, the pickers would be pretty safe riding in
the truck.” He grinned at her. “This is why I keep you around, despite your annoying superior attitude.”

“It’s not a superior
attitude
,” Astrid teased back. “It’s actual superiority.”

“So, what’s the crazy suggestion?”

“Negotiate.”

“What?”

“They’re too smart to be worms. They’re predatory and they shouldn’t be. They’re territorial and they couldn’t possibly be. They move and act as one, at least some of the time, and there’s no way. They were looking at you, but they don’t have eyes. I have no proof, obviously, but I have a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“I don’t think they’re zekes. I think they’re Zeke.”

“Talk to the superworm?” Sam said. He shook his head and looked down at the ground. “No offense, but the SUV tractor thing is why you’re the smartest person in the FAYZ. The other part? That’s why even though you’re smart, you’re not the one in charge.”

Astrid resisted the urge to say something cutting in response to his condescension. “You need to keep your mind open, Sam.”

“Negotiate with a killer worm brain? I don’t think so, babe. I think maybe your brain is overheating. I have to go.”

He tried to kiss her, but she dodged it. “Good night. Let’s hope Petey doesn’t have any interesting nightmares tonight, huh? Oh wait, nothing to worry about there, it’s probably just my overheated brain.”

Computer Jack clicked through a dizzying number of windows at an amazing speed. The mouse cursor flew across the virtual page, opening, closing, pushing aside.

It wouldn’t work.

It could work. Maybe. But not without more gear. A serious server. A serious router.

He’d found one server with nowhere near the capacity he wanted. It was old, not exactly state-of-the art, but it was functional. And there were certainly enough PCs and Macs in town that could be strung together, and enough for everyone to have his own ’puter, with plenty of spares that could be cannibalized for parts.