Hunger (37 page)

47
MINUTES

DUCK ZHANG WAS
having a fine time if you set aside the fact that no one seemed to be distributing food anymore and he was so hungry, he couldn’t see straight.

He’d reached the point where he bitterly regretted the lost hot dog relish he’d intended to give to Hunter.

But on the plus side he was no longer worried about falling through the earth all the way to its molten core. He had begun to figure out how to control this absurd power he had.

Duck was no genius, but it had finally occurred to him that his was the power of density. He could control the density of his body, without growing larger or smaller. If he went one way, he became so dense, he could fall straight into the ground. Like dropping a marble into a bowl of pudding.

Which, as he had discovered, was a bad thing.

But if he went the other way, as he was learning to do, he could float. Not fly, but float. Like a helium balloon. He could do it now even without having to experience violent mood
swings. He could simply decide to sink. Or he could decide to float.

Floating was much better. It turned the whole world into a sort of giant swimming pool. And this time around, no one was going to crash his party.

He was floating now about fifty feet above the plaza. He’d started off over by the school. He’d lifted off and then just…drifted. The only concern being that he not drift too far from town and end up having a long walk home. Worse still would be drifting out to sea. That could be bad. He could imagine, say, dozing off up here and waking up to find himself two miles out to sea. In the dark. That was a long, long swim.

“What I need,” he said to the rooftop below him, “is, like, wings or something. Or like a rocket pack. Then I could fly for real.”

“Like Superman.”

It was a happy thought. That did make it a little easier to stay comfortably aloft.

One of the other problems was that, unlike water, air was hard to move around in. Going up or down was easy. Going forward or backward was impossible. And even twisting around, for example, if you were lying on your back, well, that was not an easy thing to do, either.

As he was discovering.

He was, in effect, lying on his side at the moment, trying to come all the way around to face the ground. You couldn’t really push against air.

But that was okay. He’d figure it out.

One thing he was considering was picking some cabbages or melons. Not now, not with the sun going down. But maybe in the morning. All that lovely, lovely food right out there in the fields. And he would be able to float just above the ground, out of range of the zekes, but able to reach down and snag a nice, juicy cantaloupe.

Only problem was, how to get out over the field to begin with. And then, how to get back. If there was no breeze, he might stay hovering above a deadly zeke field forever.

That was not a happy thought. Not at all. To make his power really useful he would have to learn how to move once he was in the air.

Right now he was having a hard enough time just keeping his eye on the ground below.

Something was definitely going on down below. There was some big thing going on in the plaza. Someone had driven a convertible right onto the grass. Sam was not going to be happy about that. And now there were maybe fifty kids down there, all milling around like they were having a party.

Duck smelled the meat before he saw it.

He had to squint hard in the failing light. There it was, across the hood of the car. A deer.

Now someone was building a fire in the dry bed of the fountain. The smoke was rising toward Duck, just a whiff, really, although he supposed it could get to be irritating eventually.

He was drifting on the slight breeze, so he wasn’t too worried. What he was, was ravenous. The smell of meat was
overwhelming. No wonder kids were freaking out.

He couldn’t see who the kids were, just the tops of their heads, which didn’t tell you much. But then he saw that one boy was tied by a rope to the bumper of the car.

Suddenly Duck had a very bad feeling about this gathering.

He spotted a face he knew, Mike Farmer, one of Edilio’s soldiers. He was staring straight up at Duck.

Duck gave a little wave. He smiled. He was about to say, “Hey, what’s going on down there?”

Then Mike yelled, “There’s one up there! Look! It’s one of them!”

One of who? Duck wondered.

Face after face looked up at him. Even the boy who was tied up. Hunter. It was Hunter, and not looking good, either. Looking like he’d been beaten up.

Others in the crowd looked up at Duck. And then, Zil.

Duck found himself staring down at Zil. Meeting his eyes. Realizing in one terrible moment what was happening below. Sam, gone. Edilio, gone. No one in charge. All of the leaders off. And Zil with Hunter as his prisoner and fresh meat on the menu.

“A chud spy!” Turk shouted.

“Get him!” Zil shouted.

Someone threw a rock. Duck saw it rise toward him, arc gracefully, and fall away.

Another rock, closer, but still too low.

Then Mike raised his rifle to his shoulder and took aim.

Sam was on the bus. Sun shining so bright through the windows.

It was bouncing along. Quinn there beside him. But something was wrong with Quinn, something Sam didn’t want to look at.

Sam felt people staring at him. Eyes on the back of his head. Music playing from far away. Against Me! singing “Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart.”

Something was happening at the front of the bus. The driver. He was clutching at his heart.

I’ve been here
, Sam thought.
This happened.

This happened.

Only it would be different this time. Last time, so long ago, he had taken the wheel as the driver slumped over from his heart attack.

But had the driver had a tentacle around his throat?

And had Sam been screaming?

Sam lurched to his feet, startled to find himself doing it. He hadn’t intended to. But he was up and lurching from side to side, grabbing seatbacks for support, eyes staring at him.

The driver turned and grinned at him with teeth dripping blood.

The guardrail swung open like a big gate, and the bus roared through and plunged over the cliff. Falling, falling, the rocks and the sea rushing up at him, the whole bus full of kids not really reacting, not caring, just staring and the driver grinning, and now the worms…

Sam tried to cry out, but his voice didn’t work. He was
choked by the driver’s snake arm, choked and spinning.

Sam knew it was a dream, yes, had to be because the bus just kept falling forever and nothing could fall forever. Could it?

The dreamscape changed suddenly and he was no longer on the bus. He was coming around the corner into his kitchen and Astrid, not his mother, whom he expected to see, but Astrid, was yelling at someone he couldn’t see.

No time for this,
Sam told himself.
No time for dreaming.

No time to waste here.

Wake up, Sam.

But no part of his body worked anymore. He was glued down. Tied with a thousand tiny ropes that squirmed and writhed like snakes or worms.

And yet now, now, somehow he was moving.

He opened his eyes. Was he seeing this? Was he seeing the room, the floor, the dome ceiling a million miles away?

Was any of it real?

On the floor lay what looked like something washed up from the bottom of the deepest ocean. Pale and fleshy, moist. No more than eighteen inches long. It was pulsating slightly, just a ripple that moved it very slightly. Like a slug might move.

Sam felt sure he should know what the thing was. But he wasn’t even sure it was real. And he had to go now. Now or never. Up out of the dark pit and out into the world while the morphine lasted.

Not real, he thought as he moved past the slug.

Maybe, he said to himself, as he shifted one foot forward. Maybe none of it is real. Except for this foot. And that foot. One then the other.

Duck felt the breeze of the first bullet.

He zoomed upward as fast he could. Which was not very fast.

The second bullet was farther from its target.

Duck yelled, “Hey! Stop it!”

“Freak! Freak!” voices cried up at him.

“I didn’t hurt anyone!” Duck yelled back.

“So why not come on down here?” Turk shouted. Then, like he had said something brilliant, he accepted a high five from some chubby kid with a bottle of booze in one fist.

Maybe fifty faces were gaping up at Duck, orange highlights and black shadows in the light of the bonfire. Halloween colors. They looked strange. Little ovals with staring eyeballs and open mouths. He could barely even recognize them because this wasn’t how you looked at people, from way up high, them with their necks craning.

He saw the barrel of the gun, and the face behind it, one eye open, the other squinted shut. Aiming. At him.

“Get him!” Zil encouraged. “You get the first steak if you can hit him.”

“Mike!” Duck yelled. “You’re a soldier, dude. You’re not supposed to—”

Duck saw the muzzle flash. He heard the bang.

“Why are you shooting at me?” Duck cried.

Careful aim. A muzzle flash. A loud crack.

“Stop, man, stop!”

“You’re missing him,” Zil yelled.

“Let me have that stupid gun,” Hank demanded. He jumped out of the convertible and ran toward Mike.

It may have been Hank’s jostling that saved Duck’s life. The third bullet whizzed by.

Hank grabbed the gun away.

Meanwhile, Duck had risen another thirty or forty feet, higher than he’d gone before. He was up to a giddy height now. He could see the roof of town hall. He was higher than the steeple of the church had been. He could see the school in one direction, Clifftop in the other. He could see far out to sea.

He was probably a hundred feet up now, ten stories. And up here was just a bit more of a breeze blowing off the water, pushing him gently, like a loose helium balloon, back inland.

Too slow.

Hank fired. A miss. But a close one.

It was insane. He was rising, rising, but too slow, too slow, and Hank had all the time in the world to take careful aim, to line up the back sights with the front, to settle them just below his target, and squeeze off a round.

Duck tensed, awaiting the bullet. Wondering if it would hit his leg, his arm, and merely cause horrible pain. Or strike his heart or head, and finish him.

Hank squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

Hank threw the gun at Mike in disgust.

Mike frantically reloaded, but in the time it took him to slide in more bullets, Duck had floated and drifted higher and farther.

Hank fired. By the time the bullet had come close to Duck, gravity had slowed it. Duck could see it fly past his head. He saw the moment it reached its apogee. And then he watched it drop back toward the ground.

Duck threw up as he drifted over the church. Sacrilege, probably. But his stomach was empty, so not much rained down on the shattered building below.

Duck floated on. Away from the horror unfolding in the plaza. They were going to kill Hunter. Hunter, who had begged for his help.

Nothing he could do: he went where the wind blew. And nothing he could have done—except get shot—if the wind blew him the other way.

“Superpowers,” he said to himself, “don’t always make you a superhero.”

She had lost herself again.

She kept coming and going. One minute there, the next gone.

Sometimes she was inside herself. Inside her own brain. Other times she was somewhere else, looking at herself from a distance.

It was so sad seeing what had become of Lana Arwen Lazar.

Then she would be there, right inside her own lolling head,
looking out through her own red-rimmed eyes.

She walked now. Two feet. Walking.

Seeing the stone walls beside her.

Danger ahead—the gaiaphage felt it, and so did she. So did she. Had to be stopped.

Something Lana was supposed to get. Something she had dropped.

She stopped. The gaiaphage didn’t know what to call it. And for a moment Lana couldn’t make sense of the images in her head. The flat-steel surfaces. The cross-hatched grip.

“No,” she begged the creature.

“No, I don’t want to,” she cried as she knelt.

Her hand groped for it. Fingers touched it. It was cold. Her index finger curled around the trigger. If she could just raise it to her own head, if she could…

But now she was walking, and the weight was in her hand, so heavy. So terribly heavy.

She reached the truck, still locking the mine shaft entrance. She crawled onto the hood, sobbing. Slid through the shattered window, indifferent to the glass as it cut her palms and knees.

Why couldn’t she stop herself? Why couldn’t she stop this hand, that foot?

The light of the stars overhead was blinding as she stepped into the mouth of the mine shaft.

The enemy there, the danger.

Lana knew the enemy’s name. She knew what the enemy would do. When the gaiaphage had fed, he would be ready
for Dekka. More than ready.

But not yet.

“Don’t,” Lana said to Dekka. “Don’t.”

Dekka froze. There was a look of horror on her face.

The other one stood to one side. He carried a gun. Lana knew his name, too. Edilio. But he was not the danger.

“It’s Lana,” Dekka said.

“Lana, run to us,” Edilio said. He held out his hand.

Lana felt an overwhelming feeling of sadness. A sob that filled the world. It was as if that outstretched hand was all she could see, all she could feel.

She wanted so badly to reach for it.

“Come on, Lana,” Edilio urged.

Tears filled Lana’s eyes. Her head moved slowly, side to side. “I don’t want to,” her voice said.

Lana lifted the gun.

“I don’t…,” Lana whispered.

She took aim. Inside her head a scream a scream a scream.

“Lana, no!” Dekka cried.

Lana didn’t hear the shot. But she felt the gun buck in her hand. She saw the jet of flame.