Hunger (21 page)

But then, an urgent whisper, “Hey! Hey, Duck!”

Duck stopped. The voice was coming from the direction of the church.

“Dude!” the whisper, louder now.

“What? Who is that?” Duck asked.

“It’s me, man. Hunter. Keep it down. They’ll kill me if they find me.”

“What? Who?”

“Duck, man, come here, I can’t be yelling back and forth.”

Reluctantly—very reluctantly because he expected some trick—Duck crossed the street.

Hunter was crouched behind a piece of rubble that still held a portion of stained-glass window. He stood up when Duck approached, which brought his face into the light. He didn’t look as if he was planning a prank. He looked scared.

“What’s up?” Duck asked.

“Come back here, man, so no one can see us.”

Duck climbed over the rubble, skinning his shin in the process.

“Okay,” Duck said, once he was in Hunter’s rubble hideaway. “What?”

“Can you hook me up, dude? I didn’t catch any dinner.”

“Uh…what?”

“I’m hungry,” Hunter said.

“Everybody’s hungry,” Duck pointed out. “I drank a jar of gravy for dinner.”

Hunter sighed. “I’m starving here. I didn’t get dinner. I barely got any lunch. I was trying to save up.”

“Why are you here?”

“Zil. He and the normals are after me.”

Duck had the definite feeling he was either being elaborately punked, or had wandered into someone else’s crazy dream. “Man, if you’re here to bust on me, just get it over with.”

“No, man. No way. I’m sorry about all that, you know, teasing you and all. I was just trying to get along with them, you know?”

“No. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hunter.”

Hunter hesitated, looking like he might try to bluster. But then he collapsed. He sat down hard on the ground. Duck knelt awkwardly beside him. The awkwardness was compounded when he heard the telltale sniffle. Hunter was crying.

“What happened, man?” Duck asked.

“Zil. You know Zil, right? We were having an argument. He goes totally nuts. He tries to kill me with a fireplace poker. So what am I supposed to do?”

“What did you do?”

“I was totally in the right,” Hunter said. “I was totally in the right. Only I didn’t get Zil because Harry came rushing in. He got in between us.”

“Okay.”

Hunter sniffled again. “No, man. Not okay. Harry goes down. He hits the floor. I wasn’t even aiming at him, he didn’t do anything. You have to help me, Duck,” Hunter pleaded.

“Me? Why me? All you ever do is pick on me.”

“Okay, okay, that’s true,” Hunter admitted. He had stopped crying. But his voice was, if anything, even more urgent. “But, look, we’re on the same side, here.”

“Um…what?”

“We’re freaks, man. You aren’t getting this, are you?” Irritation helped Hunter’s self-control. The sniffling stopped. “Dude, Zil is running around getting normals to come out against us. All of us.”

Duck shook his head in confusion. “What are you talking about, man?”

Hunter grabbed his arm and held it tight. “It’s us against them. Don’t you get that? It’s freaks against normals.”

“No way,” Duck scoffed. “First of all, I didn’t hurt anyone. Second of all, Sam is a freak and Astrid’s a normal, and so is Edilio. So how is it that all of them are trying to get us?”

“You think they won’t come after you next?” Hunter said, not exactly answering. “You think you’re safe? Fine. Go on. Run away home. Play pretend. It’s us against them. You’ll see, when it’s you hiding out from them.”

Duck disengaged himself from Hunter’s grip. “I’ll see if
I can bring you something to eat, dude. But I’m not getting involved in your troubles.”

Duck climbed back out of the rubble and headed down the street.

Hunter’s hissed words followed him. “It’s freaks against normals, Duck. And you’re a freak.”

Jack was sweating like he was in a sauna. His leg hurt. Hurt bad.

But more, the wires.

The wires.

Brianna would never see them. She would come rushing on, as fast as a speeding bullet. She would hit the wires at that speed and she would be sliced into pieces. Like a wire cheese cutter going through a brick of Swiss.

The image was painfully clear in Jack’s mind.

He could see Brianna hitting the wire. And being cut in half. Legs still running for another few steps before they realized they were no longer carrying a body.

“Take down the wires,” Jack said. The words were out of his mouth before he knew it. He hadn’t planned it. He’d just blurted it.

No one heard him except Diana.

He glanced at her and saw a flicker of a smile.

But Drake was busy and Caine was ranting and neither heard him.

Jack pulled his hands away from the keyboard.

“You have to cut down the wires,” Jack said, choking on the words.

And now Caine froze. And now Drake whirled.

“What?” Drake demanded.

“Take the wires down,” Jack said. “Or else I—”

The whip landed on his neck and back. Like the bullet wound, but so much worse for being on such tender skin.

Jack cried out in shock at the pain.

Drake was coiled to strike again, but Caine yelled, “No!”

Drake seemed ready to ignore the order, but contented himself with wrapping his tentacle around Jack’s throat. He squeezed, and Jack felt blood pounding in his head.

Caine walked over and in a reasonable voice said, “What’s the problem, Jack?”

“The wires,” Jack said, barely able to form sounds. “I don’t like what you’re doing.”

Caine blinked. He was honestly puzzled. He looked at Diana for an explanation.

Diana sighed. “Puppy love,” she said. “It looks like Jack’s gotten over me. There’s another girl playing the leading role in Jack’s shameful dreams.”

Caine laughed, disbelieving. “You’ve got a thing for Brianna?”

“I don’t…it’s not like…” Jack squeezed the words out.

“Oh, come on, Jack. Don’t be an idiot,” Caine cajoled him. “Let him go, Drake. Jack’s just losing focus. He’s forgetting what’s important.”

Drake withdrew his tentacle, and Jack breathed in deep. His neck and back burned so badly, he forgot the lesser wound on his thigh.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” Caine said, sounding like a disappointed
teacher. “Bad things happen sometimes, Jack, you have to accept that.”

“Not Brianna,” Jack said.

Jack saw color rising in Caine’s face, a warning sign. But he knew Caine needed him. Caine wouldn’t kill him, he was sure of that, no matter how mad he got. Drake might let his rage take over, but Caine wouldn’t.

“You think she’d defend you?” Caine asked. “She’ll come zooming in here, maybe carrying a gun, shoot anyone she sees, Jack. Now, get back to work and let me take care of making the big decisions.”

Jack turned back to the keyboard. He started to rest his hands on the keys. But he couldn’t do it. He froze there with his fingertips half an inch above the keys.

Not Brianna. Not her. Not like that.

“I could talk to her,” Jack said. “I could maybe get her to come over to your side.”

“Let me just deal with this,” Drake pleaded. “I guarantee you, he’ll get back to work.”

“That’s right, Drake,” Diana said. “Torture him into it. You’ll never know if he gets pissed off enough to maybe flood this room with radiation. Until your hair starts falling out.”

That had not occurred to Jack. But it did now. Diana was right, they wouldn’t really know what he was doing.

Caine was biting his thumb again, his habit when frustrated.

“Drake, cut the wires. Jack, figure out how to turn the lights off in Perdido Beach or I’ll tell Drake to not only put
the wires back up, but whip you till he gets too tired to lift his arm.”

Jack carefully concealed his feeling of triumph.

Drake started to object, but Caine snapped, “Just do it, Drake. Just do it.”

Jack felt a wave of some warm feeling flow through him. Something unlike anything he’d ever felt before. There was still the searing pain on his neck and back, and the all-but-forgotten pain on his leg. But the pain was secondary to this feeling of…something. He didn’t know quite what to call it.

He had stepped up to protect someone else. Brianna might never know it, but he had just taken a big risk for her. In fact, he had risked his life for her.

Diana drawled, “Our little geek is growing up.”

Jack began tapping away at the keyboard.

“But still so naïve,” Diana added.

The word bothered Jack, vaguely. He kind of knew what it meant, the word “naïve.” But now he was into the directory he needed, and there were commands to be learned, sequences to be deciphered.

18
HOURS
, 7
MINUTES

“
THEY’LL HAVE SOMEONE
on the gate,” Sam said. “It’s just around this bend. Stop here.”

Edilio braked, and the other two vehicles came to a stop behind them. Dekka driving Orc and Howard in a hefty SUV. A handful of Edilio’s soldiers in the third car. All the people Sam could round up. He’d tried others, but these were the ones who came when they learned they were to do battle with Caine and Drake.

Fear of Caine, and especially Drake, ran deep in Perdido Beach.

Sam turned in his seat so he could see Brianna and Taylor in the back. “Okay, girls, here’s our problem: I need to know where Caine’s goons are. I have to figure he left at least a couple of guys on the front gate. Armed, of course. They’ll have instructions to shoot anyone who comes down this road.”

“I can pop in and out before they can shoot me,” Taylor said. She wasn’t quite eager.

“Sam, I can plow past that gate and take a little tour inside
the facility and be back in thirty seconds,” Brianna argued. “They most likely won’t even see me.”

“If you’re going so fast, they don’t see you, how you going to see them?” Edilio asked.

She pointed at her face. “Fast eyes, Dillio, very fast eyes.”

Sam and Edilio both grinned. But it didn’t last long.

“Okay, listen to me, Breeze,” Sam said. “Do not go anywhere but to the gate. That’s not a suggestion, that’s me telling you.”

“I can do it all in no time,” Brianna argued.

“Breeze, I need you to hear me on this: do not go into that plant.”

Brianna pouted. “You’re the boss, boss.”

“Okay,” Sam said. “Take off—” He stopped, realizing he was talking to air.

“Long gone,” Edilio commented. “Girl doesn’t hang around.”

“I can help, too,” Taylor said, a little resentful.

“You’ll get your chance,” Sam said.

Dekka was climbing out of the SUV. “Did you send Breeze?”

“Yeah. She should be back any second now,” Edilio said.

“I’m ready to do this,” Dekka said. “Driving with Orc in the back? Boy is farting something terrible.”

“Cabbage,” Taylor said.

“Any second now. You know Brianna,” Edilio said.

The four of them waited. Sam kept his eyes on the road. Not that he would see her when she got back.

“Taking a while,” Taylor said. “I mean, for her.”

No one spoke after that. Not as two minutes passed. Then three minutes. Five interminable minutes.

“Oh, my God,” Dekka whispered. “Brianna.” She closed her eyes and seemed to be praying.

“She’d be back by now,” Sam said heavily. “If she was coming.”

He felt sick to his stomach. Sick down to his bones.

Lana felt the dread growing on her. She was prepared. She knew it was coming.

“What is this place?” Cookie asked, feeling something, too, no doubt, but only the ghosts, not the living, seething evil that was now so close.

“It used to be a mining town,” Lana said. “Gold miners, back in, like, the 1800s or whatever.”

“Like cowboys?”

“I guess so.”

They walked through the ghost town, the shabby, tumble-down wreck of a place that had no doubt once been someone’s dream of a future metropolis. The mines had mostly played out back in the late 1800s.

It was still possible to make out where the main street had been. And Lana supposed if you really thought about it, you’d be able to figure out which of the piles of sticks was the hotel, the saloon, the hardware store, or whatever. Here and there a tenuous wall or rickety chimney still stood outlined in silver. But roofs had mostly collapsed long ago, storefronts had pancaked. Maybe it was an earthquake or something that had
tumbled the weakened structures. Maybe it was just time.

Only one building seemed more or less intact, the roughhewn warehouse where Hermit Jim had hidden his gas-fired gold smelter and his pickup truck.

“That’s where we’re going,” Lana said, nodding in the direction of the structure.

Lana’s gaze was drawn beyond the building to the trail that led up the side of the hill. She knew she would have to walk up that trail, up that hill to the mine shaft, and dig the keys from the mummified miner’s pocket.

Not her favorite idea. Being even this close to the thing in the mine shaft laid shadows on her soul. She could feel it up there, the Darkness, and she had the terrible feeling that it could sense her closeness as well.

Did the Darkness know she was coming?

Did it know why?

Did
she
know? For sure?

“I know why I’m here,” Lana said. “I know.”

“Of course,” Cookie said. He seemed to think she was rebuking him.

Patrick was quiet, cowed. He remembered, too.

They were in the warehouse. Lana checked the propane gas tank. There was a gauge that showed it half full. That should be enough.

She knelt and checked the support for the tank. It rested on a sort of steel frame, rusted, but not, thankfully, bolted down to the ground or anything. The cradle rested on dirt. Good.

“What we have to do, Cookie, is get this tank into that
truck. In a little while I’m going to get the keys. We’ll back the truck up to the tank. But first, let’s see how it all works, huh?”

“You got it, Healer.”

She pressed her leg against the bottom edge of the tank, finding it came to the top of her thigh. She walked to the pickup truck and compared the height of the tailgate.

Good. Good. They were very close to being the same height. The tank was maybe two inches lower, which meant it would have to be lifted. Lifted and shoved. But there would be a system, had to be, because Hermit Jim would have had to carry the tank in his truck to get refills.

“Cookie. Look around for a toolbox.”

First things first. She made sure the nozzle was off.

Then she rummaged in the toolbox Cookie had retrieved until she found a wrench that fit the pipe fitting. The coupling that attached the hose to the tank was frozen up.

“Let me give it a try,” Cookie suggested.

Cookie was at least twice Lana’s weight. The coupling gave way.

Lana pointed to the rafters. A heavy chain hung down from a series of pulleys. There was a hook on the end of the chain, and an eyebolt on the gas tank’s frame.

“Jim would have had to refill the tank from time to time. That’s how he got the tank into his truck.”

Cookie hauled the hook down. The chain clanked and came easily, rolling through the well-oiled pulley.

Cookie hoisted himself heavily up onto the framework and attached the hook to the eyebolt.

“Okay. Good,” Lana said. “Now I’m going up to get the key.”

Something in her tone must have worried Cookie. “Well, um, Healer, we should go with you. Me and Patrick. It’s not safe out there.”

“I know,” Lana said. “But if something goes wrong, I want to know I have someone I trust who can take care of Patrick.”

That was the wrong thing to say if her goal was to soothe Cookie. His eyes were wide, his chin trembling.

“What’s going to go wrong?”

“Probably nothing.”

“Okay, I have to go with you,” Cookie said.

Lana laid her hand on his big forearm. “Cookie, you have to trust me on this.”

“At least tell me what the problem is,” he pleaded.

Lana hesitated. A big part of her wanted Cookie and Patrick, too, along for the walk to the mine entrance. But she was worried about Patrick. And even more, she was worried about what might happen to Cookie.

In the old days Cookie had been a big, dumb bully, a sort of second-tier Orc. He was still not exactly a genius. But his heart had been transformed by days of suffering, and whatever meanness had once been in him was gone. There was now in Cookie a sort of purity, he seemed so innocent to Lana. An encounter with the Darkness might end all that. The creature in the mine had left its stain on her soul, and she didn’t want that same thing to happen to her trusting and loyal protector.

Lana retrieved her bag. From it she drew a letter, neatly
sealed in a white business envelope. She handed it to Cookie. “Look, if something does happen, you take this to Sam or Astrid. Okay?”

“Healer…” He was reluctant to take it.

“Cookie. Take.” She placed it in his hand and closed his fingers around it. “Good. Now, listen, I need you to do something else while I’m gone.”

“What?”

She forced a smile. “I’m so hungry, I could eat Patrick. Look around this dump and see if you can find something to eat. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”

She turned toward the door and plunged out into the night before he could argue any further.

Lana slipped her hand into her bag, wrapped her fingers around the cold plastic grip of the pistol. She pulled it out and let it hang by her side.

She was going to get the key from the dead miner. If Pack Leader showed up to stop her, she would shoot him.

And if…and if she could not bring herself to come back out of that cave, if she found herself instead walking deeper into it, deeper, toward the Darkness, unable to resist, well…

Taylor was not Brianna. Breeze had an image of herself as a superhero. Taylor knew she was just a girl. Like any other girl except that she had the strange ability to think of a place and appear there instantaneously.

And now Brianna was very late getting back. The Breeze was never late. Brianna didn’t know how to be late.
Something had happened to her.

So it was Taylor’s turn. She felt it, knew it. But Sam didn’t ask her. He stood there staring down the road, like he was willing Brianna to appear.

Dekka was more upset than Taylor had ever seen her. Dekka was normally a rock, but the rock had some cracks in it now.

Edilio kept a poker face. Eyes straight ahead, waiting for orders. Patient.

No one wanted to pressure Sam. But everyone knew that with each passing minute, it was becoming harder to act.

It was up to Taylor. Sam didn’t want to send her. So it was up to her.

She would do anything for Sam. Anything. She supposed she was kind of in love with him, even though he was older than her and was totally into Astrid.

Sam had saved Taylor’s life. He had saved her sanity.

Caine had decreed that uncooperative freaks at Coates be kept under control. He had figured out that most powers seemed to focus through a kid’s hands, and with Drake’s help he had moved quickly and decisively.

It was called plastering. It involved encasing a kid’s hands in a block of cement. The blocks weighed forty pounds. The sheer weight rendered kids helpless. At first Caine’s flunkies had fed them in dishes on the ground, like dogs. Taylor and the others, including Brianna and Dekka, had lapped up bowls of cereal and milk like animals.

Then trouble had broken out between the kids left in
charge at Coates while Caine went down to grab control in Perdido Beach.

The feedings had grown less frequent. And then they had stopped altogether. Taylor had eaten weeds poking up through gravel.

Sam was the reason she wasn’t dead.

She owed him. Everything.

Even, she realized with a sinking in the pit of her stomach, the life he had given back to her.

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

Before Sam or anyone else could speak, she was gone. Just down to the end of the road so she could see the gate, not far, not as far as she was capable of teleporting.

One second she was with Sam and Edilio and Dekka. A millisecond later she was alone in the dark, her friends just out of sight behind her.

It was like changing a TV channel. Only she was inside the TV.

Taylor took a shaky breath. The gate was just fifty yards away. The power plant beyond was bright and intimidating.

They would expect her to either bounce into the guardhouse or directly into the plant. She wouldn’t do either.

A split second later she was on the hillside above the guardhouse, tripping because she had materialized on a steep slope.

She caught herself, glanced around quickly, saw no one, and bounced to a dark shadowed place behind a parked delivery truck just off to one side of the gate.

“Ah!”

A shout of surprise and Taylor knew she had made a bad choice.

Two kids, two of Drake’s thugs, both armed with rifles were right there, right next to her, hiding behind the truck. Waiting in ambush.

Surprise slowed their reactions. She could see it in their eyes.

“Too slow,” Taylor said.

They shouted, swiveled their guns, and she was gone.

She appeared three feet from Sam, who was still staring down the road.

“Taylor. What are you doing?” he asked.

He hadn’t realized she was gone. She laughed in relief. “Two guys with guns behind a big truck, just past the gate, to the left. I don’t think anyone’s actually in the guardhouse. It’s an ambush. If you guys went toward the guardhouse, these guys would be able to shoot you in the back. They saw me.”

Now it was Sam’s turn to be a little stunned.

“You…”

“Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t…”

“Had to. And look, I didn’t see Brianna anywhere.”

“Load up,” Sam ordered. He leaped into the Jeep. “Dekka?”

“On it,” Dekka said, breaking into a run for her own vehicle.

Edilio shouted to his guys to load up as well.

“Thanks,” Sam said over his shoulder.

Taylor felt amazingly happy over that one word
acknowledgment. “I could…,” she began, not really wanting Sam to say yes.

“No,” he said firmly. “And keep your head down.” To Edilio he said, “Straight to the gate, but pull over before you reach it. We have to move fast before they can figure out what to do. But, remember, there’ll be one more guy out there. The one that Taylor
didn’t
see.”

“Yep,” Edilio said. “We’re ready for that.”

Taylor wondered what they were talking about, but it wasn’t time for twenty questions.

The Jeep careened around the curve and hurtled down the hill to the gate. Edilio slammed on the brakes. Dekka’s SUV barely had time to avoid piling into them. The third vehicle followed more slowly.

Sam jumped out. Dekka leaped while her own car was still moving.

Both pelted down the hill.