Hunger

by Michael Grant

  The morphine nightmare had faded and reality had begun to take on some of its usual definition. The ground was down and the sky was up. The stars were bright, the sound of his shoes on the concrete was familiar, as was the sound of his own breath, rasping in his throat.

  He had a while. How long, he couldn’t guess. A short while, maybe, to stop Caine.

  And kill Drake. Because now, for the first time in his life, Sam wanted to take a life.

  Drake. He was going to kill Drake. More than any high-minded concern for what Caine might do, it was the thought of Drake that kept Sam moving forward. Destroy Drake before the morphine wore off and the awful pain returned and left him crying and screaming and…

  Should have done it the first time he’d had the chance.

  Should have…

  The scene appeared around him, shimmering, unreal. The battle on the steps of town hall. Orc and Drake, the hammering fist of the gravel boy, and the slashing whip of the true monster.

  Sam had been busy with Caine. He’d barely survived. But he could have, should have, destroyed the psychopath Drake then and there. Put him down like the rabid animal he was.

  Reality was wobbly as Sam crossed the parking lot. No one there, now. Dekka gone to…gone to do what? His mind was foggy.

  Gone to destroy the mine shaft. Her and Edilio.

  Lana. If Lana was in there…If she…

  Sam’s step faltered. Lana was his only hope. Without her, he would not survive. She could heal him. She could end the pain. Renew him.

  So that he could…

  He sagged into a car. For a while, he couldn’t know how long, his mind went away. Consciousness failed. Not quite sleep, though, just a waking nightmare of memories and images and always the pain in his belly, the pain of his scarred flesh.

  Keep moving, he told himself. Which way? The town was ten miles away. But that’s not where Caine was heading.

  The side of the hill behind the power plant was glowing. Like it was burning in patches. A hallucination.

  He would never be able to walk that far. The drug would never last that long. Faster. He needed to move faster.

  He needed help. Someone…

  “Someone help me,” he whispered.

  He began the long, wearying walk up the sloping road toward the security gate. No way he could move overland. Not a chance. And even…

  Even…

  Sam’s head was playing tricks on him now. He saw a light. Like a flashlight. But coming from the ocean.

  He sat down hard. The light swept slowly over the parking lot, like someone out at sea was car shopping.

  The light crawled over the side of the power plant. It climbed the hill, then came back down. Someone was searching.

  But he was just a crumpled form on a road, too small to be spotted. The light would never land on him. It was like some sick game. The light would come his way and then veer off.

  He was invisible.

  “No, Sam,” he told himself as the realization dawned with ridiculous slowness on his addled brain. “Stupid moron. The one thing you have is light.”

  Sam raised his hands high. A pillar of pure green light pierced the night sky.

  The searchlight zoomed instantly toward him.

  “Yeah, here I am,” Sam said.

  It took Quinn a few minutes to beach the boat and climb up the rocks to reach Sam.

  “Brah,” Quinn said.

  Sam nodded. “Yeah. I look pretty bad. How…”

  “I was fishing. I saw the fire.” Quinn knelt beside him, obviously unsure what he could do to ease his friend’s suffering.

  “I look bad, and my head isn’t exactly on straight,” Sam slurred.

  “I’ll get you back to town,” Quinn said.

  “No, brah. Get a car.”

  “Sam, you can’t…”

  “Quinn.” Sam took Quinn’s arm and gripped it tight. “Get a car.”

  “Back off, doggies,” Dekka growled.

  The coyotes moved closer, circling, always circling. Each circuit just a little closer.

  “Which one of you is Pack Leader?” Dekka demanded. Desperate. How could she stop them circling closer and closer? “I have an offer. I…I can help you. I want to talk to Pack Leader.”

  One of the coyotes stopped moving and turned his intelligent face to her. “Pack Leader me.”

  The voice was high-pitched, strained, as though the act of attempting speech was painful.

  Dekka had only seen Pack Leader from a distance, but she knew this wasn’t him. Pack Leader had a nasty-looking face, a scar on his muzzle. He was old and mangy. This coyote was obviously younger.

  “You’re not Pack Leader,” Dekka said.

  The coyote tilted his head quizzically. “Pack Leader die. Pack Leader now.”

  Pack Leader dead? Maybe this was an opportunity. “If you hurt me,” Dekka warned, “my people will kill coyotes.”

  Pack Leader—the new Pack Leader—seemed to consider this. His eyes were bright and focused, but almost seemed to contain a trace of humor.

  “Pack eat dead human,” Pack Leader said in the eerie, grating voice of the mutated coyotes.

  “He’s not dead,” Dekka said.

  “Pack eat,” Pack Leader said.

  “No,” Dekka said. “If you try, we will—”

  There was a flash of tan and gray fur and something bowled Dekka over. She rolled and came up into a squat. Three coyotes were on Edilio. Blood was pumping freely from his chest.

  “No!” Dekka cried.

  She raised her hands and suddenly Edilio was floating up off the ground, along with three panicked, scrabbling, yip yip yipping coyotes.

  Pack Leader bounded away to a safe distance.

  And there came the sound of a car approaching at high speed.

  “Almost there!” Drake cried, ecstatic.

  The night wind whipped their faces as the torn-open Escalade bounced and flew. Overhead the fuel rod was like a cruise missile, keeping pace. Caine stood braced against the seatback, hands held high.

  Diana could only see the side of his face, but his was not an expression of wild joy like Drake’s. Caine’s eyes stared from beneath low brows. His mouth was drawn back in a grimace. It was the only time Diana had ever looked at him and found him ugly. No trace of the easy charm. The movie star bone structure was there, but now he looked like a shrouded corpse, a mockery, a fading echo.

  “Look! Hah hah hah! It’s growing back!” Drake shrieked, and waved the end of his hideous tentacle in her face. He was right. Within the blunt-cut disk a bump was forming, a new growth. Like a salamander’s tail, the whip could be cut, but would regenerate.

  “There! It’s the town,” Drake yelled. “There! Now you’ll see. Now you’ll all see!”

  “What is this place?” Jack wondered aloud. He glared at Diana, accusing, blaming her.

  Not my fault, Diana argued silently. Not my fault, Jack, not my fault you were weak and followed me, you stupid fool, you needy, stupid fool. Not my fault any of this.

  I’m just trying to survive. I’m just trying to get by, like always, like always.

  It’s what she did, Diana, survive. And always with style. Her own terms, no matter what anyone thought. It was her special genius: being used, but always using back. Being abused, but then returning the abuse, with interest. And remaining, always, Diana, cool Diana.

  Not her fault, any of this.

  “Look!” one of the soldiers yelled.

  Something was happening in the road ahead. Like a small tornado, like a whirlwind made of coyotes, and there, at the center of the madness, a human body.

  “Dekka,” Drake said with special relish.

  Dekka dropped the coyotes. Dropped Edilio, too. No choice. Nothing she could do to help him now.

  “Good-bye, Edilio,” she whispered.

  Now there was only the mine shaft. She ran.

  The Escalade skidded to a stop. Drake was out and running after her before the car had even stopped.
<
br />   She had a head start of no more than thirty feet. And Drake was faster than she was.

  The air cracked from the sound of his whip hand. She felt the breeze on the back of her neck. No way she’d make it back up the trail. No way.

  Dekka spun and raised her hands.

  Suddenly Drake’s legs were pumping in air. He rose off the ground in a vortex of dirt and rock. Like a slow-motion explosion had gone off under him. His whip hand twirled crazily.

  “I’ll kill you, Dekka!” he yelled.

  Dekka turned gravity back on, and Drake fell from ten feet up.

  She turned and ran again, and now the coyotes were around her, bounding along on both sides of the trail, moving ahead of her. They would easily cut her off.

  She powered up the hill, breath rasping in her throat. She turned a corner, and there was the new Pack Leader. She raised her hands. Too slow. They came from right and left. Leaped at her from all directions at once.

  Dekka went down beneath a snarling, yelping, slashing pile of coyotes.

  She screamed and tried to use her power, but iron jaws clamped her wrists.

  The powerful made powerless.

  The coyotes would have her.

  FORTY-TWO

  27 MINUTES

  DRAKE WAS FIRST up the trail. He was limping, one leg badly bruised by his fall.

  Jack was just behind him.

  Drake limped up to the snarling coyote pack gathered around their intended kill. One of the coyotes, a creature with bright eyes and an almost human expression of detached interest, snarled a warning.

  Dekka was pinioned, helpless. If she was conscious, she showed no sign of it. But she was still alive. Jack could see that she was still alive. And that in a few seconds, less, she wouldn’t be.

  “Don’t worry, my coyote brothers,” Drake said with a laugh. “I’m not here to stop you.”

  Drake looked down and shook his head mockingly at Dekka. “You don’t look so good. I don’t think this is going to end well for you.” Then he looked back at Jack and said, “So much for mutant powers. Right, Jack?”

  It was a warning. A threat. But Jack didn’t care. He was sick. So sick, so sick deep down inside. He wanted to throw up, but there was nothing in his stomach. He wanted to run away into the night. But Drake or Caine or the coyotes would come for him.

  Why was he here?

  Because you’re a stupid fool, Jack told himself. Smart stupid. Stupid smart.

  “Just a little farther,” Drake cried from up ahead. “Come meet him, Jack.”

  Jack stopped and looked back. He saw the fuel rod first. Floating along. Then Caine beneath it. Caine seemed almost bowed over, like he was carrying the weight on his shoulders. Like it was almost too much for him.

  Jack felt as if a weight were pressing down on him, a weight that wanted to squeeze the blood from him, crush him like a piece of ripe fruit. Tears were running down his face, although he didn’t remember when he had started crying.

  For all his supernatural strength, Jack felt as if his arms and legs were stone. Each step took all his strength as he fought against his own paralyzing fear and horror.

  Too much. All of it. Brittney, poor Brittney. And now Dekka. How many more would end up like them? And what about Jack himself?

  Jack didn’t think about what he was doing when he grabbed the nearest coyote by the scruff of its neck. The coyote yelped and tried to twist around to bite him. Jack threw the animal. It flew out of sight.

  He grabbed a second coyote and hurled it into the night. A distant thump.

  Two coyotes came straight at him, jaws open, teeth bared. Jack drew back and kicked the first. His foot connected with the animal’s snout. The coyote’s head ripped from its shoulders and went rolling down the trail a crazy bowling ball. The coyote’s body stood for a few seconds, even seemed to take a step. Then it fell over.

  The other coyotes stared. Then they stuck their tails between their legs and hurried away.

  “What’s the matter, Jack? Squeamish?”

  Drake seemed to grow stronger with each step while Jack felt watery and weak despite his display of superhuman strength. It wasn’t part of him, that strength. It wasn’t him.

  Drake stood over him at the top of the rise. He was outlined in moonlight, his whip hand twitching in the air.

  “I just didn’t like seeing it,” Jack said. His stomach was in his throat.

  Drake’s whip reached for Jack and wrapped almost gently around Jack’s throat. Drake pulled him close. Drake’s mouth tickled his ear as he said voicelessly, “Back my play, Computer Jack.”

  “What?” Jack said desperately.

  “Back my play,” Drake said. “And I’ll let you live. I’ll even let you have Brianna.”

  Jack placed his hand on Drake’s whip. He pried it off his neck. It was almost easy. It would be easy now to yank that hideous arm right off.

  Drake laughed uneasily. “Don’t start down that path, Jack. You’re not the type for rough stuff.”

  Drake turned away and bounded ahead.

  Caine labored up from below. Diana, the witch who had brought all this horror to Jack, was beside Caine. He could almost swear that she was helping Caine walk.

  Lana had dropped the gun in the cave. Useless now.

  Tried to explain…tried to form images that explained…But the gaiaphage didn’t care, really, it had moved on, not concerned any more by the girl with the power of gravity.

  Someone shot Edilio, Lana thought, marveling at the idea. Someone. Edilio.

  She had a flash of sensation, the feeling of the gun bucking in her hand.

  Someone…

  She gasped as the gaiaphage split open her mind and poured the images into her brain. Images of monstrosities.

  The largest was a shaggy thing like a grizzly bear with eighteen-inch spikes at the ends of its paws…creatures that were all sharp edges, as if they’d been assembled out of razor blades and kitchen knives…creatures of glowing inner fire. Things that flew. Things that slithered.

  But when she saw them, she didn’t just see the surface. She saw them inside and out at once. Saw their construction. Saw the way they were folded into one another, one inside another, monster within monster. Like a Russian nesting doll.

  Destroy one and liberate the next.

  Regeneration. Adaptation. Each new incarnation as dangerous and as deadly as the one before.

  The gaiaphage had conceived of the perfect biological machine.

  No, not his conception. He had reached into a mind, an imagination infinitely more visionary than his own.

  Nemesis. That was the gaiaphage’s name for him: Nemesis.

  Nemesis with infinite power held in check only by the twists and turns, the blind alleys and sudden high walls inside his own damaged brain.

  Nemesis and Healer, used and brought together here, in this way, to make the gaiaphage unstoppable, unkillable.

  Only one piece was missing. The food. The fuel.

  It is coming, the gaiaphage said.

  Soon.

  Someone had shot Edilio. And had tried to shoot Dekka.

  Lana’s shattered, overwhelmed mind, flooded with the gaiaphage’s plans, held on to that single fact.

  Someone had…

  From far, so far away, she felt the gun buck in her hand as she squeezed the trigger.

  No. No.

  Edilio falling.

  No.

  Lana’s mind exploded in a wave of fury so powerful that the gaiaphage’s imagery faltered. The fire hose flow of plans and details faded.

  I hate you! Lana screamed wordlessly.

  The gaiaphage pushed back, forced her down inside her own brain.

  But more slowly than it had before.

  “He’s going to go after you, Caine,” Diana whispered in his ear.

  Caine’s arms ached. He could no longer feel his hands. Holding them up. Using the power. Using it to carry…

  “Drake will try to kill you,” Diana said urgently. “You
know it’s true.”

  Caine heard her. But her voice was so tiny, her warning so insignificant compared to the steady throbbing pressure inside his chest.

  The gaiaphage’s hunger was his hunger now. Feeding it would be feeding himself.

  Not true, Caine told himself.

  A lie.

  “Do this, and you will die, Caine,” Diana pleaded. “Do it, and I’ll die.

  “Stop, Caine.

  “Don’t do it.”

  Caine tried to answer, but his mouth was dry and clenched.

  Step by step. Up the trail. To it. To him.

  Jack was up there. And Drake. Drake talking to Jack. There was a dead coyote lying in the path, headless.

  And Dekka, maybe alive, maybe not. Not his concern. Her problem. Shouldn’t have backed Sam. Shouldn’t have fought against Caine.

  Not his problem.

  He reached the top of the trail. There was the mine shaft entrance.

  The fuel rod hovered in the air.

  Feed me.

  Caine moved closer.

  “Do it!” Drake cried.

  “Caine, stop!” Diana said.

  Caine moved more easily now on level ground. Closer. Close enough. He could hurl the rod from here. Like a javelin. Right into the shaft.

  Like a spear.

  Easy.

  “Don’t,” Diana said. Then, “Jack. Jack, you have to stop this.”

  “No way,” Drake snarled.

  “Shut up, you psychotic!” Diana shouted in sudden rage, all subtlety abandoned. “Go die, you filthy, stupid thug!”

  Drake’s eyes went dead. The dangerous, giddy light went out in them. He stared at her with black hatred.

  “Enough,” Drake said. “I was going to wait. But if it has to be now, let’s do it.”

  His whip lashed out.

  FORTY-THREE

  13 MINUTES

  DRAKE’S WHIP HAND spun Diana like a top.

  She cried out. That sound, her cry, pierced Caine like an arrow.

  Diana staggered and almost righted herself, but Drake was too quick, too ready.

  His second strike yanked her through the air. She flew and then fell.

  “Catch her!” Caine was yelling to himself. Seeing her arc as she fell. Seeing where she would hit. His hands came up, he could use his power, he could catch her, save her. But too slow.