Hunger_A Gone Novel

by Michael Grant

  He sounded both more grim and more confident. “Go ahead,

  Caine, do whatever you want with the hostages. Then you

  won’t have hostages anymore. And you’ll still be hungry.”

  “You think I won’t turn the hostages over to Drake?”

  Caine threatened. “You’ll be able to listen to them scream.”

  He could feel the color rising in his cheeks. He knew Sam’s

  answer. It wasn’t long in coming.

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  “Two seconds after I hear anyone yelling, in we come,” Sam

  said. “It will be bloody, and I’d like to not have that. But you

  know I have enough people with enough power to do it.”

  Caine chewed his thumbnail. He glanced at Diana, willing

  her to have some solution, some helpful idea. He carefully

  avoided making eye contact with Drake.

  “So, I have a better idea,” Sam yelled. “How about I give

  you ten minutes to get out of there? And I give you my word

  you can go back to Coates.”

  Caine squeezed out a laugh that was half snarl. “Not happening, Sam. I’m holding this place. And you can go back to a very dark town.”

  There was no answer.

  The silence was eloquent. Sam didn’t need to say anything

  else. And Caine had nothing left to say. It felt as if there was

  a band tightening around his chest. Like he had to fight for

  each breath.

  Something was not right. Something was very much not

  right. The fears that lived in his nightmares were rising now,

  like an incoming tide inside his head. He was in a trap.

  “Stay tight,” Drake muttered as his soldiers exchanged

  skeptical, worried looks.

  Diana swiveled in her chair. “So what now, Fearless Leader?

  He’s right: we don’t have any food.”

  Caine winced. He ran a hand through his hair. His head

  felt hot.

  He turned quickly, feeling as if someone was sneaking up

  behind him. No one there but the girl, Brittney, on the floor.

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  How had he not seen this coming? How had he not realized

  he would be trapped here? Even if he could somehow reach

  his people at Coates, they were far fewer in number than the

  number of kids Sam could command.

  And none would come. Not here. Not with Sam surrounding the place.

  Sam could have fifty people sitting outside the power plant

  within a few hours. And what could Caine do?

  What could he do?

  They had taken the power plant. They had turned off the

  lights in Perdido Beach. But now they were trapped. It was

  impossible.

  Caine frowned, trying to concentrate. Why had he done

  it? In the space of a minute he had gone from crowing triumph to dismal humiliation.

  What he had done? It made no sense. It gained him nothing. All he had thought was: Take the plant. Take it, and hold it. Then . . .

  Then . . .

  Caine felt himself sinking, mind swirling down and down

  as if a pit had opened beneath him.

  The realization was sudden and sickening. He hadn’t taken

  the power plant in order to get food for his people, or even to

  show his power over Sam. He hadn’t been following his own

  desires at all.

  Caine, the color all drained from his face now, stared at

  Drake.

  “It’s for him,” Caine said. “It’s all for him.”

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  Drake narrowed his eyes, uncomprehending.

  “He’s hungry,” Caine whispered. It hurt him to see the

  dawning realization in Diana’s eyes as he said the words,

  “He’s hungry in the dark.”

  “How do you know?” Drake demanded.

  Caine spread his hands, helpless to explain. Words would

  not come.

  “It’s why he let me go,” Caine said, more to himself than to

  Diana or Drake. “It’s why he released me. For this.”

  “Are you telling me we’re living out some fever dream

  of yours?” Diana was poised between laughing and crying,

  incredulous. “Are you telling me we did all this because that

  monster out in the desert is in your head?”

  “What does he need us to do?” Drake asked, eager, not

  angry. A dog anxious to please his true master.

  “We have to bring it to him. We have to feed him,” Caine

  said.

  “Feed him what?”

  Caine sighed and looked at Jack. “The food that brings the

  light to his darkness. The same thing that brings light to Perdido Beach. The uranium.”

  Jack shook his head slowly, understanding but not wanting

  to understand. “Caine, how do we do that? How do we take

  uranium from the core? How do we move it for miles across

  the desert? It’s heavy. It’s dangerous. It’s radioactive.”

  “Caine, this is crazy,” Diana pleaded. “Drag radioactive

  uranium across the desert? How does this help you? How

  does this help any of us? What is the point?”

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  G R A N T

  Caine hesitated. He frowned. She was right. Why should

  he serve the Darkness? Let the creature feed itself. Caine had

  problems of his own, his own needs, his own—

  A roar so loud, it seemed to vibrate the walls, filled the

  room. It knocked Caine to his knees. He clapped his hands

  over his ears, trying to block it out, but it went on and on, as

  he cringed and covered himself and fought the sudden desire

  to void his bowels.

  It stopped. The silence rang.

  Slowly Caine opened his eyes. Diana looked at him like

  he had gone crazy. Drake stared incredulous, on the edge of

  laughing. Jack merely looked worried.

  They hadn’t heard it. That inhuman, irresistible roar had

  been for Caine alone.

  Punishment. The gaiaphage would be obeyed.

  “What is going on with you?” Diana asked.

  Drake narrowed his eyes and smirked openly. “It’s the

  Darkness. Caine is no longer running things. There’s a new

  boss.”

  Diana gave voice to Caine’s own thoughts.

  “Poor Caine,” she said. “You poor, screwed-up boy.”

  For Lana each step seemed too loud, like she was walking on

  a giant bass drum. Her legs were stiff, knees welded solid. Her

  feet felt each pebble as though she were barefoot.

  Her heart pounded so hard, it seemed the whole world

  must be able to hear it.

  No, no, it was just her imagination. There was no sound

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  but the soft cornflake crunch of sneakers on gravel. Her heart

  beat for her ears only. She was no louder than a mouse.

  But she was convinced it could hear her. Like an owl listening and watching for prey in the night, it watched and it waited, and all her stealth was like a brass band to it, him, the

  thing, the Darkness.

  The moon was out. Or what passed for the moon. The stars

  shone. Or something very like stars. Silvery light illuminated

  tips of brush, the seams of a boulder, and cast deep shadows

  everywhere else.

  Lana picked her way along, holding herself tight. The gun

  was in her right hand,
hanging by her side, brushing against

  her thigh. A flashlight—off for now—stuck up from her

  pocket.

  You think you own me. You think you control me. No one

  owns me. No one controls me.

  Two points of light winked in the shadows ahead.

  Lana froze.

  The twin lights stared at her. They did not move.

  Lana raised the gun and took aim. She aimed at the space

  directly between the two points of light.

  The explosion lit up the night for a split second.

  In that flash she saw the coyote.

  Then it was gone and her ears were ringing.

  From back down the trail she heard a wooden door creaking, slamming. Cookie’s voice. “Lana! Lana!”

  “I’m okay, Cookie. Get back inside. Lock the door! Do it!”

  she yelled.

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  G R A N T

  She heard the door slam.

  “I know you’re out there, Pack Leader,” Lana said. “I’m not

  so helpless this time.”

  Lana started moving again. The explosion, the bullet—

  which almost certainly had missed its target—had settled her

  down. She knew now that the mutant coyote leader was there,

  watching. She was sure the Darkness also knew.

  Good. Fine. Better. No more sneaking. She could march to

  the mine and take the key from the corpse. And then march

  back to the building where Cookie waited with Patrick.

  The gun felt good in her hand.

  “Come on, Pack Leader,” she purred. “Not scared of a bullet, are you?”

  But her bravado faded as she drew near the mine entrance.

  The moonlight painted the crossbeam above the entrance

  with faintest silver. Below it a black mouth waiting greedily

  to swallow her up.

  Come to me.

  Imagination. There was no voice.

  I have need of you.

  Lana clicked the flashlight on and aimed the beam at the

  mouth of the cave. She might as well have pointed it at the

  night sky. The beam illuminated nothing.

  Flashlight in her left hand. Pistol heavy in her right. The

  smell of cordite from the shot she’d fired. The crunch of

  gravel. Limbs heavy. Mind in something like a dream-state

  now, all focus narrowed down to a simple task.

  She reached the mine shaft entrance. There above it,

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  perched on the narrow ledge, stood Pack Leader snarling

  down at her.

  She aimed her flashlight and swung the pistol to follow the

  beam, but the coyote darted away.

  He’s not trying to stop me, Lana realized. He’s just observing. The eyes and ears of the Darkness.

  Into the mine entrance. The beam searched and stopped

  when it found the object.

  The face was like a shrunken head, yellow skin taut against

  bones that waited patiently to emerge. The rough, patched

  denim seemed almost new by comparison with the ancient-

  looking mummy flesh and sere-grass hair.

  Lana knelt beside him. “Hey, Jim,” she said.

  She now had to choose between the gun and the light. She

  laid the gun on Jim’s collapsed chest.

  She found his right front pocket. Wrangler jeans. The

  pocket loose. Easy enough to reach in. But the pocket was

  empty. She could reach the hip pocket easily enough as well,

  but it was also empty.

  “Sorry about this.” She seized the waist of his jeans and

  rolled him toward her, exposing the other hip pocket. The

  body moved oddly, too light, too easily shifted, so much

  weight evaporated.

  Empty.

  “Human dead.”

  She knew the voice instantly. It wasn’t a voice you ever forgot. It was Pack Leader’s slurred, high-pitched snarl.

  “Yes, I noticed,” Lana said. She was proud of the calmness

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  of her tone. Inside, the panic was threatening to engulf her,

  just one pocket left, and if the keys weren’t there?

  “Go to the Darkness,” Pack Leader said.

  He was a dozen feet away, poised, ready. Could she reach

  the gun before Pack Leader could reach her?

  “The Darkness told me to pick this guy’s pockets,” Lana

  said. “The Darkness says he wants gum. Thinks maybe Jim

  has a pack.”

  During her time as Pack Leader’s captive, Lana had come

  to respect the coyote leader’s ruthless determination, his cunning, his power. But not his intelligence. He was, despite the mutation that allowed speech, a coyote. His frame of reference was hunting rodents and dominating his pack.

  Lana shoved the corpse away from her, rolling it back to

  reveal the remaining pocket. The gun clattered onto the rock,

  Hermit Jim between Lana and the weapon.

  No chance now that she could reach it before Pack Leader

  could reach her.

  Lana fumbled for and found the pocket.

  Inside, something cold and hard-edged.

  She drew the keys out, squeezed them tight in her fist, then

  thrust them into her own pocket.

  Lana leaned out over poor, dead Jim and swept the flashlight until she found the gun.

  Pack Leader growled deep in his throat.

  “The Darkness asked for it,” she said.

  Her fingers closed on it. Slowly, knees creaking, she

  stood up.

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  “I forgot. I have to get something,” she said. She walked

  directly toward the coyote.

  But this was too much for Pack Leader.

  “Go to Darkness, human.”

  “Go to hell, coyote,” Lana answered. She did not move the

  light, did not telegraph her move, just snapped the gun up

  and fired.

  Once. Twice. Three times. BangBangBang!

  Each shot was a bolt of lightning. Like a strobe light.

  There was an entirely satisfying coyote yelp of pain.

  In the strobe she saw Pack Leader leap. Saw him land hard,

  far short of his objective.

  She was past him and running now, running blind and

  heedless down the path and as she ran she screamed. But not

  in terror.

  Lana screamed in defiance.

  She screamed in triumph.

  She had the key.

  TWENTY-SEVEN 17 HOURS, 48 MINUTES

  B R I A N N A W O K E .

  It took a while for her to make sense of where she was.

  Then the pain reminded her. Pain all down her left arm,

  left hip, left calf, left ankle.

  She had been wearing a denim jacket over a T-shirt, shorts,

  and sneakers. The hoodie was burned away on her left shoulder and arm, a skid burn. A three-inch oval was gone from her shorts on the same side.

  The skin beneath was bloody. She had hit the roof at high

  speed. The concrete had been like sandpaper.

  It hurt amazingly.

  She was on her back. Staring up at the bogus stars. Her

  head hurt. Her palms were scraped raw but nowhere near the

  scraped-to-the-meat injuries on her side.

  Brianna picked herself up, gasping from the pain. It was

  like she was on fire. She looked, expecting almost to see

  actual flames.

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  It was scary bright on the roo
f of the power plant. So she

  could see the wounds all too clearly. The blood looked blue

  in the fluorescent light. Her injuries weren’t life-threatening,

  she reassured herself, she wasn’t going to die. But oh, man, it

  hurt and it was going to keep on hurting.

  “Happens when you slam concrete at a couple hundred

  miles an hour,” she told herself. “I should wear a helmet and

  leathers. Like motorcycle guys.”

  That thought offered a welcome distraction. She spent a few

  seconds contemplating a sort of superhero outfit for herself.

  Helmet, black leather, some lightning-bolt decals. Definitely.

  It could have been worse, she told herself. It would have

  been worse if she were anyone else on earth, because when

  she had hit the deck her body wanted to go tumbling out

  of control. That would have broken her arms and legs and

  head.

  But she was the Breeze, not anyone else. She’d had the

  speed to slam palms and feet against concrete fast enough—

  barely—to turn a deadly tumble into an extremely painful

  skid.

  She limped at regular speed over toward the edge of the

  roof. But the way the building was constructed the edges

  sloped away, round-shouldered, rather than forming a nice,

  neat ninety-degree angle. So she couldn’t see straight down,

  though she could see the gate and the parking lot, all blazing

  bright. Beyond, the dark mountains, the darker sea.

  “Well, this was a stupid idea,” Brianna admitted.

  She had attempted to fly. That was the fact of it. She had

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  tried to translate her great speed into a sort of bounding,

  leaping version of flight.

  It had made perfect sense at the time. Sam had ordered her

  not to enter the power plant’s control room. But by the same

  token she had to try to get the lay of the land, to see where all

  of Caine’s people might be positioned. She’d thought: What

  would be better than the view from on top of the turbine

  building?

  She’d been toying for a long time with the idea of flying. She’d worked out the basic concept, which amounted to running real fast, leaping onto something a little high, then

  jumping to something higher still. It wasn’t rocket science. It

  was no different from leaping from rock to rock while crossing

  a stream. Or perhaps like taking a set of stairs two at a time.

  Only in this case the “stairs” had been a parked minivan,