Hunger (33 page)

When he spoke, it was only about the things in his head. The world outside meant little or nothing to him. That included Astrid.

“Love you, Petey,” she said.

“He has her,” Little Pete said.

She was already out of the door when that last statement registered. “What?”

Pete’s eyes closed.

“Petey. Petey.” Astrid sat down beside him and put her hand on his cheek. “Petey…is Nestor talking to you?”

“He likes my monsters.”

“Petey. Is…” She barely knew how to ask the question. Her brain was fried. She was beyond exhausted. She lay down beside her brother and cuddled close to his indifferent body. “Tell me, Petey. Tell me about Nestor.”

But Little Pete was already asleep. And in seconds, so was Astrid.

It was in sleep that she began to fit together the pieces of the puzzle.

02
HOURS
, 53
MINUTES

TWENTY-ONE HOURS WITH
no food. Not a bite.

No likelihood of food suddenly appearing.

Jack’s stomach no longer growled or rumbled. It cramped. The pains would come in waves. Each pain would last a minute or so, and stretch out over the course of an hour. Then there would be a reprieve of an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. But when the pain came back, it was worse than before. And lasted longer.

It had started in earnest after about twelve hours. He’d been hungry before that, hungry for a long, long time, but this was different. This wasn’t his body saying, “Hey, let’s eat.” This was his body saying, “Do something: we’re starving.”

A new round of pains was just beginning. Jack dreaded it. He wasn’t good with pain. And this pain was worse, somehow, than the pain in his leg. That pain was outside. This pain was inside.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Caine demanded. “Have you got it, Jack?”

Jack hesitated. If he said yes, then the next round of this nightmare would begin.

If he said no, they would sit here and sit here and sit here until they all starved.

He didn’t want to say yes. He knew now what Caine planned. He didn’t want to say yes.

“I can do it,” Jack said.

“You can do it now?”

“I can withdraw a single-fuel rod from the pile,” Jack said.

Caine stared at him. Almost as if this wasn’t the answer he wanted.

“Okay,” Caine said softly.

“But I have to start by lowering the control rods all the way. This will stop the reaction, which means it turns off all electricity.”

Caine nodded.

Diana said, “You mean, there won’t be any power for anyone. Not just Perdido Beach.”

“Unless someone restarts the reactor,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Caine said, but distracted, like his head was somewhere else.

“I can lift out a power rod. It’s twelve feet long. Actually it contains pellets of uranium 235. It’s like a very long, thin can filled with pebbles. It’s extremely radioactive.”

“So your plan is to kill us all?” Diana said.

“No. There are lead-lined sheaths they use to carry the rods. They aren’t totally effective, but they should shield us for the time we need. Unless…”

“Unless?” Caine demanded.

“Unless the sheath is damaged. Like if you drop it.”

“Then what happens?” Diana demanded.

“Then we’re hit with massive doses of radiation. It’s invisible, but it’s like someone is shooting tiny bullets at you. They blow millions of tiny holes through your body. You get sick. Your hair falls out. You vomit. You swell up. You die.”

No one said anything.

“So we don’t drop it,” Drake said finally.

“Yeah. We carry it for miles and we don’t drop it,” Diana said. “While Sam and Dekka and Brianna are coming at us. I can’t see how that would be a problem.”

Jack said, “The closer you are, the deadlier it is. So if you’re a couple feet away, you’re dead real quickly. If you’re farther away, you die slowly. If you’re far enough away, maybe you don’t die until you develop cancer. And if you’re even farther away, you’re safe.”

“I choose farther away,” Diana said dryly.

“How long to get ready?” Caine asked.

“Thirty minutes.”

“It’s late enough now we should wait for dark,” Caine said. “How do we get out?”

Jack shrugged. “There’s a loading dock behind the reactor.”

Caine sagged into a chair. He bit savagely at a thumbnail. Drake watched, making no attempt to disguise his contempt.

“Okay,” Caine said at last. “Jack, get everything ready. Drake, we’ll need a diversion. You attract Sam’s attention out front. Then you catch up with us.”

“Let’s just grab a truck,” Drake suggested.

“We can’t go up the coast road. They’ll see us right away,” Caine said. “We have to go overland. There are trails going up over the hills. We find a way to the highway. Cross it. Then get a vehicle and head into the desert.”

“Why should we sneak?” Drake asked. “We’ll have the uranium, right? Who is going to mess with us? Who is going to take a chance on you dropping it?”

“Let me ask you something, Drake,” Caine said. “If you were Sam, and you saw me and you and Diana and Jack all together marching up the coast road, and you saw that I was carrying this big, dangerous radioactive thing around, what would you do?”

Drake frowned.

“Oh, look: Drake’s trying to think,” Diana said.

“This is why I run things and you don’t, Drake. Let me explain it in terms you might grasp. If I’m Sam, and I see the four of us, and I figure I can’t go after us…” Caine held up four fingers. One by one he subtracted them. He left the middle finger up.

“He takes the rest of us out,” Drake said. He gritted his teeth, and his eyes blazed with suppressed rage.

“So if the three of you want to just walk out of here all bold and brave, let me know,” Caine said, meeting Drake’s glare with one of his own. Then he leaned close to Drake, almost embracing him. He brought his mouth to Drake’s ear and whispered, “Don’t start thinking you can take me down, Drake. You’re useful to me. The minute I start thinking you’re no longer useful…”

He smiled, patted Drake’s gaunt cheek, and with a hint of his old swagger said, “We’re going to reshuffle the deck. Sam thinks he holds all the cards. But we’re going to change everything.”

“We’re going to feed the monster who has his hooks in your head,” Diana said coldly. “Don’t try to dress it up. We’re feeding a monster and hoping it will show its gratitude by letting go of your leash.”

“Let it go, Diana,” Caine said. The bluster was gone.

Diana glanced to see that Drake was out of earshot. “Bug’s not coming back. You know that.”

Caine chewed at his thumb. Jack had the unsettling thought that he might be hungry enough to eat his own finger.

“You don’t know that,” Caine said. “He might have had trouble finding Orsay. He wouldn’t turn against me.”

“No one’s loyal to you, Caine,” Diana said. “Drake is itching to take you down. No one at Coates is rushing to bail you out. You only have one person who actually cares about you.”

“You?”

Diana didn’t answer. “I know it has a hold on you, Caine. I’ve seen it. But that monster of yours isn’t loyal to
you
, either. It will use you and throw you away. It will be everything and you will be nothing.”

“Most of what I have to say is speculative,” Astrid began.

Sam, Astrid, Edilio—almost from the start, they had been a team. They’d fought Orc when he was calling himself Captain Orc and trying to dominate the FAYZ. They’d fought
Caine and Pack Leader. They had learned to survive the Big One-Five.

Now, the picture of something much more terrible was becoming clear.

“From what Edilio has said, what Lana’s letter said, what we’ve learned of Drake’s story from Lana in the past, and all the little things we’ve pieced together.”

She glanced at Little Pete, who sat in a chair by the window, looking out at the slowly sinking sun and nodding mechanically. “And from what I’ve been able to guess from my brother. Something…maybe some type of freak, a mutated human. Maybe a mutated animal…maybe something else entirely that we don’t understand at all…is in that mine shaft.”

“This thing, this gaiaphage, has the ability to reach out, mind-to-mind, and influence people. Maybe especially people it has had some contact with. Like Lana,” said Sam.

“Or like Orsay,” Edilio interrupted. “Someone with that kind of mind, you know? Like, sensitive, or whatever.”

Astrid nodded. “Yes. Some may be more vulnerable than others. I am sure, now, that it is in contact with Little Pete.”

“They talk?” Edilio asked skeptically.

Astrid rolled her head, stretching her neck forward, trying to shake off the tension that tightened her jaw. Sam was struck by how beautiful she still was. Despite everything. But he saw as well how delicate she seemed, how thin and fragile. She had lost weight, like everyone. Cheekbones more prominent than before, eyes bruised by exhaustion and worry. There was a welt just in front of her temple.

“I don’t think they talk, not like you mean,” Astrid said. “But they can feel each other. Petey’s been trying to warn me…I didn’t understand.”

“Short version,” Sam said in a low voice. “What do you think?”

Astrid nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I’m not…” Her voice trailed off. But she shook her head vigorously and refocused. “Okay, it’s some mutant creature. Origin unknown. It has great power to influence minds. That power is greater over people who’ve already encountered the creature. Like Lana. Drake.

“And possibly Caine,” Astrid added.

Sam said, “You think Caine has had a run-in with this gaiaphage?”

“You asked for the short version. So I’m leaving out the epistemology.”

Sam recognized Astrid’s favorite ploy: dazzling people with polysyllables. He managed a faint smile. “Go ahead. Leave out the…whatever it was.”

“Suddenly,” Astrid went on, “after months of relative quiet, Caine reemerges. We know from Bug that he was in some kind of a coma, or delirium, before that. But suddenly, he’s better. And the first thing he does is charge off to take over the power plant.”

“At the same time, Lana begins to feel the gaiaphage calling to her. And Petey is starting to talk about something being hungry in the dark.”

“Orsay says the thing is expecting to be fed soon,” Edilio said.

“Yes. And then, there’s Duck.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Duck?” He had not expected this.

“No one listened much to his story. Me included,” Astrid admitted. “But he kept saying there was a cave down there that glowed. Like from radioactivity. He said like something from
The Simpsons
.”

“Yeah?” Edilio prompted.

“The power plant is at the center of the FAYZ,” Astrid said. “We know it was going into meltdown when Little Pete reacted by creating this…this bubble. But why were things changing even before that? How did Little Pete acquire that kind of power?”

“The accident thirteen years ago,” Sam said, realizing it even as he said it.

“The accident. We’ve always said it was a meteorite that hit the plant. But maybe it wasn’t just a meteorite. Maybe there was more to it.”

“Like what?”

“Some people theorize that life on Earth grew from a simple organism that reached this planet by comet or meteorite. So, let’s say something as simple as a virus was alive on the object that hit the power plant. Virus plus radiation equals mutation.”

“So that’s what this gaiaphage is?” Sam asked.

“Please don’t act like I just told you the answer, okay?” Astrid said. “Because I’m totally off in guesswork. And it doesn’t really explain much, even if it’s true. Big ‘if.’ Really big ‘if.’”

“But?” Sam prompted.

“But maybe this thing that’s been living under the ground for thirteen years has been living on radiation. Feeding on it. Think about a virus that could survive thousands of years in the environment of space. The only possible food source would be hard radiation.”

The next part was hard for Astrid. Sam could see the way her lip quivered. “The power company lied: they never cleaned up all the radiation from the accident. It’s been under our feet all this time, seeping into the water, being absorbed into the food we eat.”

Astrid’s father had been an engineer at the power plant. She must be wondering whether he had known of the deception.

“They may not even have known they didn’t get it all,” Sam said. “The people who worked there—they probably didn’t know.”

Astrid nodded. The quiver stopped. The tight anger in her expression remained. “As the gaiaphage mutated, so did some of us. Maybe some kind of synthesis. I don’t know. But one safe guess is that the gaiaphage began to run out of food. It needs more. It can’t get to it, it can only attempt to make others do its will. I think—I believe—that the meltdown Little Pete stopped was caused by someone at the plant. Obeying the gaiaphage. Attempting to blow up the plant, which would spread radiation everywhere, kill everything nearby…except for the creature that lives on radiation.”

“Little Pete stopped the meltdown. Created the FAYZ. But
he did not destroy the gaiaphage. And the gaiaphage is still hungry.”

“Hungry in the dark,” Little Pete said.

“Caine’s going to feed it,” Sam said.

“Yes.”

“And then?”

“And then, the gaiaphage will survive and adapt. It can’t go on living in a hole in the ground, relying on others. It needs to be able to escape. To move freely. And to survive attacks from us.”

“Maybe it’s good if it comes out to fight,” Edilio said. “Maybe we can kill it.”

“It knows what powers we have,” Astrid said. “And it has had some help imagining ways to build a body that would be invulnerable.”

“Help? Help from who?”

Sam put his hand on Edilio’s arm, calming him. “From someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing,” he said.

“Nestor,” Little Pete said.

“Try some, dude. What are you, three years old?” Antoine tried to pass the joint to Zil. Zil waved it off.

“I’ve tried it before,” Zil said. “I didn’t like it.”

“Yeah, right.” Antoine took a long pull off the joint and began coughing like he was hacking up a lung. He coughed so violently, his knee hit the coffee table and knocked over Zil’s water.

“Hey,” Zil yelled.

“Oh, sorry, man,” Antoine said when he could speak again.

Lance took a hit, made a face, and handed it off to Lisa. She giggled, smoked, coughed, then giggled some more.

Zil had never had a girlfriend before. Girls didn’t like him. Not like,
like
. He had never been one of the popular kids.

In the old days Zil was mostly known for the strange lunches his mother packed for him. They were always vegan, organic, and always very “green,” with nothing disposable, nothing prepackaged. Unfortunately much of what his mother packed for his lunch smelled. Vinegar dressing for salads, tapenade or hummus reeking of garlic, stuffed grape leaves.

Zil loved his mom and dad, but the coming of the FAYZ had been liberating in one way: he’d finally been able to eat all the cookies and chips he’d wanted. He’d even done what his parents would have considered unforgivable: he had eaten meat. And he’d liked it.