Hunger (35 page)

“Someone’s shooting!” one of Drake’s soldiers yelled, rushing in.

“Yeah, guess who?” Diana said.

“Too soon,” Caine snarled. “I told him to wait. Jack. Do it.”

“I don’t want to rush and—”

Caine raised both hands, lifted Jack up in the air, and threw him into the instrument panel.

“Now!” Caine yelled.

They were out of the control room, at a separate monitor that showed the inside of the reactor itself.

Jack punched a sequence of numbers into a keypad.

The electromagnets switched off.

The cadmium control rods plunged like daggers.

It was all silent on the black-and-white monitor. But the effect was immediate. The vibration of the turbines, the steady hum that had been part of the background, suddenly dropped in pitch.

Lights flickered. The monitor picture wobbled then stabilized.

“Is it safe to go in?” Caine demanded.

“Sure, what could be dangerous about a nuclear—”

“Shut up!” Caine shouted. “Open it up, Jack.”

Jack obeyed.

They stepped into a vast room that seemed to be made almost entirely of stainless steel. Stainless-steel floor. Stainless-steel catwalks. Cranes. Caine had the impression of a gigantic restaurant kitchen.

What wasn’t stainless steel was safety yellow. Safety railings. The risers on steps. Signs in yellow and black warning of what surely no one who had made it here needed to be
reminded of: radiation hazard.

The dome overhead was like something out of a cathedral. But there were no frescoes decorating the painted concrete.

Caine felt abashed by the scale of the place.

At the center of it all, a circular pit, like some ghastly blue-glowing swimming pool. Not that any sane person would ever be tempted to jump in.

A catwalk went all the way around. And a robotic crane hovered over it. Down there, below, in the sinister depths, were the fuel rods. Each filled with gray pellets that looked like nothing much. Stubby gray cylinders of what might as easily be lead.

A massive forklift held a steel barrel in midair, poised. Right where the driver left it when he poofed.

“I’m starting the sequence,” Jack said, typing furiously, rattled, terrified, but giddy, too.

The robot moved faster than Caine had expected. It perched like a predatory insect above the too-blue water.

It was hot in the room. The emergency generators didn’t keep the air-conditioning running and the temperature began rising almost instantly.

“How long?” Caine demanded.

“To extract it, make it relatively safe, transport it to the used-fuel cooling facility and—”

“We aren’t going to have time for all that,” Caine said. “Drake’s already shooting. We need to get out of here.”

“Caine, there’s no way to—” Jack began.

“Just grab the fuel rod. Yank it up out of that pool. I’ll take
care of the rest,” Caine said.

“Caine, we have to follow procedure just to get the rod out of here. The only way out is through—”

Caine raised both hands. He focused on the convex dome over their heads, the containment vessel that would hold the radiation in if there was ever an accident.

He blasted the concrete with all his power. There was a wallop of sound that hurt Caine’s eardrums.

“What are you doing?” Jack cried.

“Caine!” Diana shouted.

The concrete would not give. Not at this distance. Not with nothing to use as a projectile.

Caine aimed his power at the forklift.

“Be ready, Jack,” Caine grated.

The forklift flew. Like an invisible god had kicked it. It hurtled in a straight line. So fast, it broke the sound barrier with a loud bang that was immediately swallowed up in the far louder crash of steel and iron blowing a hole through concrete.

“How strong you think that fuel rod is?” Caine asked.

“Are you insane?” Diana cried.

“Just in a hurry,” Caine said.

Drake squeezed the trigger.

A line of bullets chewed concrete just in front of Dekka.

Drake fought the recoil and raised the weapon just slightly, and the impacts advanced toward Dekka, who just stared at onrushing death.

Suddenly Drake was on his back. The gun, still in his hands, was blazing away at the ceiling.

A wheel bounced crazily around the room then fell onto a desk with a loud crash.

Drake let go of the trigger. He scrambled to his feet. He looked at the wheel, unable to make sense of it. How had a wheel gone flying through the air, through the hole?

Orc.

Drake ejected the magazine and racked in a replacement. He was bruised and shaken but not badly hurt. He crept back to the hole, cautious lest something else came flying in.

Dekka was no longer on the ground.

Orc was…

A massive gravel hand reached in and missed Drake’s head by inches.

Drake fired blindly at the hole.

Then he turned and ran.

01
HOUR
, 6
MINUTES

THE JEEP BLEW
through the gate. Edilio drove straight to where a shaken, bruised, and seriously angry Dekka was picking herself up off the concrete.

“What happened?” Sam demanded, leaping from the front seat.

The adrenaline was finally kicking in. But even now he felt strangely disconnected. Even now, rushing toward trouble. Like it wasn’t really his trouble. Like it was some other part of him that was doing this.

“I tried to fly,” Dekka said in a low growl. She shook her head and bent over to squeeze her knee. “Ow.”

“We heard something louder than gunfire,” Edilio said. “Like thunder. Or like an explosion.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t noticing thunder,” Dekka said.

Orc came loping over from one direction and Howard from the other.

“Orc, man, that was a seriously cool move,” Howard
enthused. He ran to his friend and slapped the monster on the shoulder repeatedly.

“I owe you, Orc,” Dekka said.

“What just happened?” Sam repeated.

Howard answered. “Drake, man. He took a shot at Dekka. Dekka goes zooming up. Then, bam, comes down hard. Orc, man, Orc snatches up this motorcycle, right? He yanks the wheel off it and throws it at Drake. Like a Frisbee.” Howard actually clapped his hands in glee. “Right through the hole you burned in the wall, Sammy. Like sinking a full-court shot.”

“Gonna cost you,” Orc grumbled.

“Oh yeah,” Howard seconded. “Gonna cost. Orc doesn’t save the day for free.”

“No one else heard a really big sound?” Edilio pressed.

“We kind of had guns going off, Edilio,” Dekka snapped.

“You okay, Dekka?” Sam asked.

“I’ll live,” she said.

“Dekka: what do you think would happen to a cave or a mine shaft if you turned off gravity?” Sam asked.

“Is this a quiz?”

“No.”

Dekka nodded. “Okay. I guess if I hit it a few times, on-off, on-off, like that, I guess it would start to crumble. Probably collapse.”

“Yeah.” Sam put his hand on her shoulder. “I have to ask you to do something.”

“I’m going to guess that you want me to crash a cave or a mine shaft. So?”

“So it’s not just some mine shaft,” Edilio said darkly.
“There’s a thing inside it. It’s…I don’t know how to explain it. It gets inside you. It makes you scared.”

“I need you to go with Edilio. Seal this thing in,” Sam said. “Howard? I need you and Orc to get back to town. I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but I need you two to keep an eye on things in town.”

“That’s going to cost—”

“Yeah. I know,” Sam interrupted Howard. “How about we negotiate later?”

Howard shrugged. “Okay, but I’m trusting you.” He pointed at his own eyes, then at Sam, making an “I’m watching you” gesture.

“What are you going to do?” Dekka asked Sam.

“I’m going to deal with Caine. I have to stop him here.”

“You don’t want to go at Caine and Drake by yourself,” Edilio objected. “No way. I’m not letting you kill yourself.”

Sam forced a laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Howard, as soon as you get to town, find Breeze if you don’t pass her on the way. If you don’t find Brianna, find Taylor. Tell them to send help. And tell them I need someone to let me know what’s going on with you guys at the mine.”

“Maybe should have turned on the phones, huh?” Edilio said. He winced, realizing too late that it sounded like sniping.

Sam said, “Yeah. Add that to the list of mistakes I’ve made lately.”

“Yeah, here’s one not to make, Sam: don’t go in there by yourself.”

“Didn’t I just say I wouldn’t?” Sam said evenly.

Edilio looked him in the eyes. Sam looked down and said, “But in case anything happens to me, you all take orders from Edilio.”

Dekka nodded solemnly.

“Do not do that to me,” Edilio said. “Do not die on me, Sam.”

The fuel rod. Twelve feet long. Sheathed in lead now, but still so dangerous, so deadly.

Jack held what looked like an oversized remote control. His eyes bulged. He swallowed convulsively. He tapped a button on the remote, and the rod stopped moving. He let go a shaky sigh.

The fuel rod hung from the crane, swinging just slightly. Caine found himself drawn to it, wanting to touch it. But it was hot. From twenty feet away it brought beads of sweat out on Caine’s forehead.

Caine heard footsteps coming up from behind. Without turning to look, he said, “You jumped the gun, Drake.”

“Not me,” Drake said, panting. “Howard spotted me.”

“And Sam?” Caine asked, mesmerized by the dull gray fuel rod, by the contrast between its devastating killing power and its featureless exterior.

“He just pulled up with the Mexican.”

Caine glanced at the hole he’d made in the dome. A loose chunk of concrete came loose, fell a long way, and clattered noisily down on some unseen equipment. Through the hole he could see the hillside, purple in the dying light of the sun.

It would take Jack another ten, fifteen minutes, to maneuver the fuel rod to the loading dock. In ten minutes Sam could be here.

“We can’t have Sam on our butts as we move,” Caine said. An idea occurred to him. Beautiful in its simplicity. Kill two birds with one stone.

“Time for you to prove you’re as tough and mean as you think you are, Drake,” Caine said.

“I don’t have to prove anything,” Drake snapped.

Caine met his lieutenant’s furious gaze. He moved close to Drake. Close enough to whisper if he wanted to, but no, he wanted this to be very public. “Drake, when I sent Diana to get Jack, you know what? She got me Jack. Now, someone needs to stop Sam, or at least slow him down. Should I ask Diana to take care of that? Because she might just find a way. Sam is a guy, after all.”

Diana, bless her twisted heart, immediately saw what Caine was doing.

“Oh, Sam?” She laughed in her knowing way. “You know he’s got to be frustrated with his ice princess. It shouldn’t be too hard for me to…slow him down.”

The line would have worked better before Diana had shaved her head and dressed to look like a boy, but Caine saw that Drake immediately took the bait.

“That’s what you want?” Drake asked. “You want me to take Sam down? Either he kills me or I kill him, right? Either way, that’s good for you and this witch here.”

“You’re stalling, Drake,” Caine said.

Caine could practically read the psychopath’s mind as the gears in his head turned over the possibilities. No way Drake could refuse.

No way. Not if he wanted to go on being Whip Hand. Not if he ever hoped to replace Caine.

“I’ll take Sam down,” Drake said in a voice he intended to be menacing but that came out sounding just a little wobbly.

He must have been less than satisfied with the effect. So with a low growl he repeated, “I’ll stop Sam right here.”

Caine nodded, offering just the slightest acknowledgment. He turned away from Drake and winked at Diana, who kept her expression carefully blank.

Poor Drake. It wasn’t enough to be ambitious. A leader had to be smart. A leader had to be ruthless and manipulative, not just a thug.

Great leaders had to know when to manipulate and when to confront.

Most of all, a great leader had to know when to take great risks.

“Let’s hope they built that fuel rod strong,” Caine said.

He raised his hands and the fuel rod rose, floated in the air, tethered at one end to the crane.

“Hit the release,” Caine ordered.

Jack said, “Caine, if it breaks open—”

“Do it!” Caine roared.

Even Drake took a step back. And Jack hit the button that released the robot crane’s hold.

Caine thrust his arms forward, palms out. The cylinder
flew like the bolt from a crossbow.

His aim was good. But not perfect. The cylinder scraped the concrete as it shot through the hole.

“That’s the quick way to do it,” Caine said.

“If we find it and it’s broken open, we’re all dead,” Jack moaned.

Caine ignored him. He turned to Drake. He saw shrewd calculation in his lieutenant’s eyes.

“I’ll take care of Sam,” Drake said.

Caine laughed. “Or he’ll take care of you.”

“I’ll catch up with you, Caine,” Drake said.

It was a warning. He left little doubt that if he survived the encounter with Sam, he’d be ready to take Caine down next.

“Tell you what,” Drake said. “I’ll bring you your brother’s hand. He took mine: it’s time I paid him back.”

Sam watched Edilio and the others drive off. He felt strangely peaceful. The first time in days.

The only life he was risking here was his own. And in his mind, he had a plan: If he did this, he was done. Done.

He’d made too many mistakes. He’d overlooked too many things. It wasn’t him who’d thought to try fishing, it was Quinn. And it wasn’t Sam who’d thought of using SUVs to keep harvesters safe from the zekes. It was Astrid.

Sam had been too late, too slow, too distracted, too unsure. He hadn’t moved in time to ration food. He hadn’t motivated enough people to help out. He’d let the resentment between freaks and normals get ugly. He hadn’t protected Ralph’s
from Drake, or the power plant from Caine.

Kids were sitting in the dark in Perdido Beach, thinking thoughts of cannibalism. And he was in charge, so it was on him.

Even now, Sam had the nagging feeling that he had missed something vital. Something. A resource.

A weapon.

Well, if he survived this day, he was finished. Let Astrid be in charge. Or Albert. Or Dekka. Best of all, probably, Edilio.

If he won this day, if he stopped Caine, and if Dekka closed the mine shaft, then that was enough. More than enough.

And if one of them failed? If Caine got through and Dekka did not kill the gaiaphage? It had Lana. It had been inside Caine’s mind. It knew what Lana knew, what Caine knew. Drake as well, no doubt. It knew all their strengths and all their limits. And if it became what it wanted to become, then what?

He was missing something.

But what else was new? Soon, it would be someone else’s problem. He was going surfing.

He didn’t need waves, not really. He could just paddle his board out and lie there. Just lie there. That would be fine.

But first…

Sam crossed the parking lot to the door of the turbine room. He expected to be challenged. He expected to be shot. But he reached the door and found it unguarded.

A relief. But not a good thing. Caine would have someone watching the door. If he was still inside.

He stepped through into the eerie and unexpected silence. The plant was shut down. The turbines were no longer turning. Normally you couldn’t hear anything. Now he could hear his own footsteps.

He found the passageway to the control room with the door forced inward. It took him a moment to make sense of the tools driven into the floor and bent back.

The control room itself was empty and darker than usual. Emergency lights glowed. The instruments and computer screens were all still on. But there was no sign of life.

A puddle of sticky, drying blood had been tracked all over. Red footprints.

It was not what he expected, this silence. Where was Caine? Where was Drake?

The power plant was a vast complex and they might be anywhere. They could wait for him in a hundred different locations, wait in ambush until he stumbled onto them. Caine could hit him before he had a chance to react.

Sam stood poised, uncertain. What was going on? He wished he had asked Edilio to send Brianna here. She could search the entire plant in two minutes.

Think it through, he ordered himself. They were here to steal uranium. They were going to take their prize to the mine. So how would they do it? Where would they be?

The reactor, of course. That’s where the deadly metal was.

“Not a happy thought,” Sam said to the empty room.

He headed down the hallway, following the helpful wall signs.

A massive steel door guarded the entry to the reactor. Caine had not bothered to close it behind him.

Down a long, echoing, dimly lit, long hallway. A second massive steel door, this one open as well, though there was a security keypad beside it and surely it must normally be kept closed and locked.

It had been deliberately left open, Sam realized. For him. Was it because Caine had released radioactivity into the area? Was that it? Was his body already absorbing a fatal dose?

No. Caine wouldn’t be shortsighted enough to contaminate the whole place so that the power could never be turned back on. The one thing he was sure of was that Caine would want the electricity back on someday, if only so that he could control it.

That made sense. It did not, however, put an end to Sam’s fears. If Caine had contaminated the place, then Sam was a dead kid walking.

He stepped into the reactor room. It was hot and airless despite the vast, arching dome overhead. It was impossible not to be frightened by the reactor core itself, that too-blue swimming hole full of pent-up power. Impossible not to know what it represented.

He walked around it, poised, ready, alert. He came around the far side of the reactor, and there, waiting, was Drake Merwin, his whip hand waving lazily at his side. He was leaning calmly against an instrument panel.

“Hey, Sam,” Drake said.

“Drake,” Sam said.

“You know what’s cool, Sam? I never paid that much attention in school, but that’s because I never saw how I was going to use any of that stuff.” Drake pulled what looked like an oversized remote control from his pocket. He tapped a button.

An urgent alarm blared.

“Walk away, Drake,” Sam yelled over the sound of the klaxon.

“I’m going to hurt you, Sam. And you’re going to take it.”

“What are you doing, Drake?”

“Well, the way I understand it, Sam, there are these control rods. Stick them in, and the reactor goes dead. Pull a few out, and it starts up. Pull them all out at once, and you get a meltdown.”

Something was rising from the ominous blue of the pool. Dozens of narrow poles that hung from a glowing circular collar.

“You’re bluffing, Drake.”

Drake grinned. “Keep thinking that, Sam. What do you think pretty Astrid will look like after her hair starts falling out in clumps?”