“Okay.”
Sam heaved a huge sigh. Then another. Then, “Okay. Okay. Tell me what’s in Lana’s letter.”
THIRTY-THREE
07 HOURS, 58 MINUTES
HUNTER WAS HUNGRIER than he would have thought possible. He’d been hungry for a long time, living on the slimy, tasteless, awful stuff they handed out at Ralph’s. Three cans of goo a day. That’s what kids called it. Only sometimes the word wasn’t “goo” but something harsher.
But now he was far beyond that. Now the days of three cans of goo seemed like the good old days.
After leaving Duck he’d been spotted and chased by Zil’s friends. He’d barely escaped. And in order to get away, he’d had to go the one direction they didn’t expect: out of town.
He had crossed the highway. Running, scared, feeling he was being chased even when he wasn’t. Feeling like at any minute Zil and his thug friends might catch him. And then…and he didn’t want to think too hard about what came then.
It seemed so crazy. So impossible. Zil had never been like his best friend or anything, but they had shared a house. They had been buddies. Not close, but buddies. Guys who would chill and watch a game or check out girls or whatever. Zil and him and Harry and…
And of course that was the problem: Harry.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Harry. It wasn’t really his fault. Was it?
Was it?
Hunter had slunk across the highway and it was like it was a border or something. Like he was crossing from one country into another. Perdido Beach on one side, something else on the other.
He thought at first about going to Coates. But Coates wasn’t the answer to any question that Hunter could think of. Coates meant Drake and Caine and that deceptive witch, Diana. Mostly, Drake. Hunter had seen Drake at the Thanksgiving Battle. Back at the time Hunter had not even known he was developing powers. He was a bystander, mostly getting in the way of the guys who were doing the real fighting. Standing there watching in sheer, wild-eyed terror as Sam fired massive jolts of energy from his hands and Caine picked up things and people and threw them around.
And the coyotes. They were part of it, too.
But it was Drake who had haunted Hunter’s nightmares. Whip Hand, he called himself, and that was accurate enough. But it wasn’t the whip hand that terrified Hunter. It was the sheer, insane violence in the boy. The madness.
No. Not Coates. He couldn’t go there.
He couldn’t go anywhere.
Hunter had spent the remainder of the night hiding in one of the abandoned homes that nestled up against the hills.
But he had not slept well. The fear and the hunger made sleep impossible.
Well, Hunter told himself, if he was still this desperate in two days, he had a solution. Not a good solution, maybe, but a solution. In two days Hunter would turn fifteen. Fifteen was the poof, the big step-off. Later to the FAYZ.
He had heard all about how to survive. How to stay in the FAYZ, fight the temptation. But he’d also heard that lately more and more kids were saying, forget it: I hit fifteen, I am out of here.
They said at the moment of the poof you were tempted with the one thing you wanted most. By the one person you missed most. If you could reject that temptation, you stayed in the FAYZ. If you gave in…well, that was the thing. No one knew what happened if you went for it.
Hunter knew what would tempt him to accept. A cheeseburger. Or a slice of pizza. Not candy, it wasn’t about candy. Not anymore. It was all about meaty goodness now.
If some demon came to him with a rack of Applebee’s ribs, Hunter had no serious doubt that he would reach for it, whatever the consequence.
He would trade his life for an In-N-Out Double-Double. The only hesitation in his mind was whether the demon would actually let him eat it or would just zap him into nonexistence, still hungry.
Hunter hid in the house all night and well into the morning, afraid to step outside. But no matter how hard he searched, he found nothing to eat. Nothing. The house had been cleaned out completely. The cupboards were all open, the refrigerator door wide open, all the telltale signs that Albert’s gatherers had been through.
Nothing. To. Eat.
Hunter stood vacant, hopeless, in the living room. He stared at the backyard and thought about the grass and weeds. Weeds were plants, after all. Animals ate them. They would at least fill his stomach.
Grass and weeds. Boiled. He could do that.
Then he saw the deer.
It was a doe. Hyper alert, with a face that managed to be both cute and stupid. The doe blinked her big black eyes.
A deer. As big as a calf.
Hunter was moving toward the back door before he’d thought through what he was doing or why.
He moved swiftly. He opened the back porch door. The deer, startled, took off in a bounding run. Hunter raised his hands and thought, Burn.
The deer did not fall over dead. Instead, it made a squealing sound Hunter had not known deer could make. The deer kept running, but one leg dragged.
Hunter aimed again and thought, Burn.
The deer stumbled. Its front legs kept motoring, but its hind legs were immobilized. It fell on its face.
Hunter ran to it. He found the deer still alive. Struggling. She looked at him with her big, soft eyes and for a moment he hesitated.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He aimed his hands at her head. In seconds she had stopped thrashing. The dark eyes turned opaque.
She smelled like a steak on the grill.
Hunter burst into tears. He sobbed wildly, out of control. It was like what he’d done to Harry. Poor Harry. And now this poor animal, who was just hungry herself.
He didn’t want to eat the deer. It was crazy. She’d been alive, munching weeds just a minute earlier. Alive. Now dead. And not just dead, but partly cooked.
He told himself he would not eat the deer. But even as he was telling himself he wouldn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t…he was finding the biggest knife in the kitchen.
Orsay Pettijohn was no longer hungry for dreams. She was hungry for food.
Since coming to Coates she had eaten barely enough to stay alive. The situation was desperate. Kids were going into the surrounding woods looking for mushrooms, chasing squirrels and birds. One boy had made a trap and managed to catch a raccoon. The raccoon had bitten the boy repeatedly before being beaten to death with a piece of rebar.
A girl named Allison had collected a bowl full of mushrooms. She had reasoned that cooking them would make them safe. She microwaved them till they were rubbery but fragrant.
Orsay had smelled them cooking and had been driven nearly crazy by the smell. One of the boys had attacked Allison, beaten, her and stolen the mushrooms as Allison wept and cursed.
Within a few minutes the boy was vomiting. Then he began raving, crying, shouting at things that weren’t there. He’d fallen silent after a while. No one had entered his room since to see if he was dead or alive.
Some kids had gathered grass and weeds and boiled them. They had not gotten very sick, just a little. But they hadn’t really gotten full, either.
Kids were thin. Their cheeks were hollow. They didn’t look like starvation victims yet, because the serious hunger was only a few days old. But soon, Orsay knew, bellies would bloat and hair would turn red and crisp, and deadly resigned lethargy would set in. She had done a report once on famine, never imagining it would be something she would experience.
More and more kids made dark jokes about cannibalism.
Orsay was less and less sure she wouldn’t go along.
Unless, of course, she herself was the meal.
She was lying in her bungalow, in the woods, out behind the school, watching an old download of a show that seemed to be from another planet. The download came with a commercial for Doritos. The characters ate food all the time. It was impossible to believe that world had ever been real.
Suddenly, Orsay was aware of another person in the room. She didn’
t see him or hear him. She smelled him.
He smelled like…like fish. Her stomach rumbled and her mouth watered.
“Who’s there?” she demanded, frightened.
Bug appeared slowly. He emerged from the background of Mose’s shabby room.
“What do you want?” Orsay demanded, not really afraid of Bug now that she knew it was him. The smell, the fat, luscious aroma of fish, had her slavering like a hungry dog.
“I need you to do something,” Bug said.
“Did Caine send you?”
Bug hesitated. He glanced aside and for a few seconds faded into the background again. Then he reappeared. His face was twisted into a very un-Bug-like expression of determination. He glanced warily over his shoulder as if fearing that some second version of himself was lurking, listening. “They have fish.”
“I can smell it,” Orsay whimpered.
“I brought some for you,” Bug said.
Orsay felt like she might faint. “Can I have it?”
“First you have to promise you’ll do what I say.”
Orsay knew Bug was a little creep. Who knew what he would want her to do? But she also knew she wasn’t going to resist. There was just about nothing she wouldn’t do for food. Fish would be much, much better than the other type of meat kids were considering.
“What do I have to do?” Orsay asked.
“We have to take a walk. Then you have to do your thing. There’s some, like, creature or whatever. They want you to watch its dreams. See what it wants.”
“The fish,” Orsay whispered urgently. “Do you have it with you?”
Bug drew a Ziploc bag out of the pocket of his hoodie. Inside was white, crumbly, smashed-up fish. Orsay lunged for it, tore the packet open with trembling fingers, and ate it like an animal, sticking her mouth into the bag.
She didn’t stop until she had turned the bag inside out and licked the plastic clean. “Do you have any more?” she begged.
“First, you do your thing. Then we go back to town and talk.”
“We’re doing this for the Perdido Beach kids?” Orsay asked.
Bug snorted. “We’re doing this for whoever gives us the best offer. Right now, Sam’s guys have some fish. So we’re with them. But if Drake gets hold of us, somehow, we’ve been on his side all along. Right?”
“I’m too weak to walk a long way,” Orsay said.
“We only have to get as far as the highway. A guy will be there with a car.”
THIRTY-FOUR
06 HOURS, 3 MINUTES
EDILIO DROVE THE creepy little mutant, Bug, and the girl he’d brought along with him. He wasn’t happy about having to do this. Mostly he wanted to stay in town. Nightfall could bring trouble. And Sam…well, Sam wasn’t acting like Sam.
Sam had looked like a zombie listening to Quinn and Albert’s confession last night.
And then, this morning, Bug told his story. It was every kind of bad news rolled into one shamefaced confession after another, and Sam had just stared. Fortunately Astrid had stepped up.
Sam, Edilio, Brianna, Taylor, Quinn, Albert, Astrid—the seven of them in Astrid’s living room, listening as Bug alternately groveled and whined.
Then, Astrid read Lana’s letter.
Sam:
I’m going to try to kill the Darkness. I’d explain what that means, but I don’t even know. I only know that it’s the scariest thing you can imagine. I guess that’s not too helpful.
I had no choice. It had its hooks in me, Sam. It was in my head. It’s been calling to me for days. It needs me for something, I don’t know what. But whatever it is, I can’t let it happen.
Hopefully I’ll be fine. If not, take care of Patrick. Cookie, too.
—Lana
“I knew she was having some problems,” Quinn said, sounding guilty. “I didn’t know about this, though. I mean…it’s like Lana used me and Albert so she could get back out to the desert.”
“That would be putting a convenient spin on your own sneakiness, Quinn,” Astrid had snapped.
“She brought up the gold to me,” Albert said thoughtfully, not at all intimidated by Astrid’s anger. “It was a good suggestion. So I jumped at it. But it came from her, originally. Maybe what we need to think about is whether Lana is working with this creature.”
“No,” Quinn said.
Everyone waited for him to explain. He shrugged and repeated, “No.” And then he added, “I don’t think so.”
“We need Lana,” Sam said, finally breaking his gloomy silence. “It almost doesn’t matter if she’s helping this thing. Friend or enemy, we need Lana.”
“Agreed,” Albert said, as though the conversation were one between him and Sam, like it was just the two of them debating what to do. For a guy who had been caught breaking various rules, Albert didn’t seem too worried.
But then he wouldn’t, would he? Edilio reflected. He had food. Food was power now. Even Astrid wasn’t really going after Albert, although she obviously didn’t like him much.
“We need to know what this creature is,” Albert said.
Sam looked at Bug, who had been ordered to remain visible. “What’s this Orsay girl’s thing?”
Bug shrugged. “She sees people’s dreams, I think.”
“And Caine wants her to spy on the creature.” Almost despite himself Sam was becoming more engaged. Edilio had seen the wheels begin to turn again in his friend’s head. It was a huge relief. “If Caine wants it, maybe we want it, too,” Sam had said, and one by one the others nodded agreement. “Albert’s right: we need to know what we’re dealing with.”
Which was how Edilio had ended up playing chauffeur to Bug and this strange girl.
“What’d you say your name was?” Edilio asked, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror.
“Orsay.”
She probably wasn’t bad looking, under normal circumstances. But right now she looked terrified. And gaunt. Her hair was all over the place. And although Edilio wasn’t one to complain, one or both of them back there smelled, and not just like Quinn and Albert’s fish.
“Where you from, Orsay?”
“I lived at the ranger camp. In the Stefano Rey.”
“Huh. That’s kind of cool.”
She didn’t look as if she agreed. Then she said, “You have a gun.”
Edilio glanced at the machine pistol on the seat beside him. Two full clips rattled with each bump. “Yeah.”
“If we see Drake, you have to shoot him.”
Edilio pretty much agreed. But he had to ask, anyway. “Why?”
“I’ve seen his dreams,” Orsay said. “I’ve seen inside him.”
They were off-road, heading vaguely toward the hills. They had found Hermit Jim’s shack—Edilio had a good sense of direction—but none of them had ever been to this mine shaft. All they had were the directions Caine had given Bug. The sun was setting behind the hills, turning them an ominous dark purple. Night would come too soon. No way Orsay could do whatever it was she was supposed to do in time for them to get back to town before full night fell.
“What exactly are you supposed to be doing?” Edilio asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re a freak, right? Bug wasn’t too clear.”
Bug looked up at the sound of his nickname. Then, as if in response, he faded from view.
“I can see dreams. I told you,” Orsay said, and looked out of the window.
“Yeah? You wouldn’t want to see my dreams. They’re kind of boring.”
“I know,” the girl said.
That got Edilio’s full attention. “Say what?”
“Long time back. You and Sam and Quinn and a girl named Astrid. And the other one. I saw you hiking through the woods.”
“You were there, huh?” Edilio said. He pursed his lips, not at all happy with the idea that some girl could see his dreams. He’d said his dreams were boring. Mostly they were. But sometimes, well, sometimes they weren’t something he wanted a stra
nger sitting in on. Especially a girl.
He squirmed in his seat.
“Don’t worry,” Orsay said with a trace of a smile. “I’m used to…you know. Whatever.”
“Uh-huh,” Edilio muttered.
The Jeep bounced and rattled as they went though a rocky patch. They had the top up and buttoned tight. It was dusty and Edilio didn’t trust Bug not to drop off and simply disappear.
Then, too, there were the coyotes. Edilio kept an eye out for them.
They were closing in on the hills. There was the fold formed by a spur, just like Caine had shown on the map he’d drawn for Bug.
There was a bad look about the place. The shadows seemed deeper than they should be for the middle of the day.
“I’m not crazy about this,” he said to no one.
“Do you have family?” Orsay asked.
The question surprised Edilio. People tended to avoid talking about family. No one knew what had happened to the families. “Sure.”
“When I’m scared I try to think about my dad,” Orsay said.
“Not me,” Bug said.
“Not your mom?” Edilio asked.
“No.”
“Because me, I think about my mom. In my mind, you know, she’s like beautiful. I mean, I don’t know if she was…is…in reality? Right? But in here,” Edilio tapped his head. “In here she’s beautiful.” He tapped his chest. “In here, too.”
They rounded the end of the rocky spur and there, in pitiless sunlight, a ghost town lay revealed.
Edilio put on the brakes.
“That look like what Caine told you?” he asked Bug.
Bug nodded.
“Okay.”
“Caine said go through the town. Past a building that’s still standing. Up a path. Mine shaft.”
“Uh-huh,” Edilio said. He knew what he was supposed to do. But he didn’t like it. Not at all. Less, now that he was here. He was not a superstitious person, at least he didn’t think so, but there was something very wrong about this ghost town.
He put the Jeep into gear and crept ahead, no more than ten miles an hour. The last thing he wanted to do was have to figure out how to change a tire.
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