Hunger (40 page)

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.

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.

Diana fell. Her head smashed against a jutting point of rock. She made a sound like a dropped pumpkin.

Caine froze.

The fuel rod, forgotten, fell from the air with a shattering crash.

It fell within ten feet of the mine shaft opening. It landed
atop a boulder shaped like the prow of a ship.

It bent, cracked, rolled off the boulder, and crashed heavily in the dirt.

Drake ran straight at Caine, his whip snapping. But Jack stumbled in between them, yelling, “The uranium! The uranium!”

The radiation meter in his pocket was counting clicks so fast, it became a scream.

Drake piled into Jack, and the two of them went tumbling.

Caine stood, staring in horror at Diana. Diana did not move. Did not move. No snarky remark. No smart-ass joke.

“No!” Caine cried.

“No!”

Drake was up, disentangling himself with an angry curse from Jack.

“Diana,” Caine sobbed.

Drake didn’t rely on his whip hand now, too far away to use it before Caine could take him down. He raised his gun. The barrel shot flame and slugs, BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.

Inaccurate, but on full automatic, Drake had time. He swung the gun to his right and the bullets swooped toward where Caine stood like he was made of stone.

Then the muzzle flash disappeared in an explosion of green-white light that turned night into day. The shaft of light missed its target. But it was close enough that the muzzle of Drake’s gun wilted and drooped and the rocks behind Drake cracked from the blast of heat.

Drake dropped the gun. And now it was Drake’s turn to stare in stark amazement. “You!”

Sam wobbled atop the rise. Quinn caught him as he staggered.

Now Caine snapped back to the present, seeing his brother, seeing the killing light.

“No,” Caine said. “No, Sam: He’s mine.”

He raised a hand, and Sam went flying backward along with Quinn.

“The fuel rod!” Jack was yelling, over and over. “It’s going to kill us all. Oh, God, we may already be dead!”

Drake rushed at Caine. His eyes were wide with fear. Knowing he wouldn’t make it. Knowing he was not fast enough.

Caine raised his hand, and the fuel rod seemed to jump off the ground.

A javelin.

A spear. He held it poised. Pointed straight at Drake.

Caine reached with his other hand, extending the telekinetic power to hold Drake immobilized.

Drake held up his human hand, a placating gesture. “Caine…you don’t want to…not over some girl. She was a witch, she was…”

Drake, unable to run, a human target. The fuel rod aimed at him like a Spartan’s spear.

Caine threw the fuel rod. Tons of steel and lead and uranium.

Straight at Drake.

Drake, quick as a snake, twisted his shoulder and neck to the side. The fuel rod did not hit him full in the chest, but
struck his shoulder and sent him flying down the dark shaft.

The fuel rod disappeared with him.

There came a loud crash. Dust billowed out of the hole.

Silence.

No sound, but the skitter of falling pebbles inside the shaft.

“Oh, God, did it break open?” Jack moaned. “Oh, my God, I don’t want to die.”

Caine raised his hands and stood, arms outstretched, right before the mouth of the mine.

The ground began to rumble.

Rock snapped and creaked.

No!
the hated voice cried in Caine’s mind.

“I’m no one’s slave,” Caine grated.

No! You will not!

Caine faltered. There were knives in his brain, knives stabbing and stabbing, and the agony was beyond imagining.

“Won’t I?” Caine said.

Caine raised his hands high. He reached with his power into the cave and yanked his arms back.

Tons of loose rock, wooden support beams, the shattered fuel rod, a battered old pickup truck, the body of Hermit Jim, and the writhing, cursing figure of a wounded but still living Drake Merwin, came flying out of the cave. Like the cave had vomited up its contents.

The mass of it froze in midair. And then, as Caine formed his hands into a bowl, the suspended mass began to twirl. It swirled like a tornado.

And then, with Drake’s cries lost in the howling madness,
Caine swept his arms forward and threw the entire spinning mass down the mine shaft entrance.

The noise was so great that Jack clapped his hands over his ears.

Then, a slow-motion rumble and crack and a sudden, overwhelming, earthquake jolt as the mine shaft collapsed. Millions of pounds of rock closed the shaft forever.

Caine walked on wobbly legs to Diana. He knelt beside her. She wasn’t moving. He put his ear next to her lovely mouth. He heard no sounds of breathing.

But when he laid his palm on her back, he felt the slightest rise and fall.

Gently he rolled her over. The damage to the side of her head was awful to the touch. He couldn’t see clearly, tears filled his eyes, but he could feel a warm slipperiness where her temple should be smooth.

A sob escaped from him.

He heard heavy footsteps. Sam, moving like he was drunk, staggering.

“Sam,” Caine said calmly, not taking his eyes off the dark form of Diana, “if you’re going to kill me, go ahead. Now would be a good time.”

Sam said nothing.

Finally Caine looked at him. Through his tears Caine saw the way Sam wobbled, barely able, it seemed, to stay on his feet. He had been cut up badly. The pain must be excruciating.

Drake’s work. Drake had not killed Sam. But he had come
close. And it seemed impossible that Sam would survive for long.

Quinn was struggling under the burden of the body he cradled in his arms. The Mexican kid, Caine guessed, or maybe Dekka.

“So. This is the end,” Caine said dully. He stroked Diana’s cropped hair. “I love her. Did you know that, Sam?”

“It’s not over yet,” Sam said. His voice shocked Caine. He’d never heard more pain in a voice. He heard a barely suppressed scream beneath the words.

“She can’t live,” Caine said.

“Edilio’s hurt. Almost gone,” Quinn said. “They shot him. And Dekka…”

“Not me,” Caine said. “Not us. They were both like that when we got here.”

He was not interested in Edilio or Dekka. Not even interested in Sam. So sad that Diana would die this way, all her beautiful hair gone. She looked younger this way. Innocent. Not a word he or anyone else had ever applied to Diana.

“Lana,” Sam said.

Caine felt the faintest flicker. Lana. But where was the Healer?

As if he had heard the question, Quinn said, “She’s in there. She’s in there, with…it.”

Caine looked at the mine shaft. He had been down there before. He knew what lay inside. And now, the fuel rod, too.

“We need to…,” Sam whimpered, unable to finish.

Caine nodded. “She must be dead after that.”

“Maybe not,” Sam managed to say. “Maybe not.”

“There’s no way to get in there now, anyway. It’s a wall of rock. It’s a lot harder to move rock back out. I’d have to move the whole mountain,” Caine said. “Hours. Days.”

Sam shook his head and bit his lip as though he would bite it off. Caine saw him hold on barely as the pain passed through him.

“May have another way,” Sam said finally, staring back down the trail.

“Another way?” Caine asked.

“Duck,” Sam said.

And Caine did, instinctively. There was a rush of wind and a cloud of dust and all at once, there was Brianna.

And towing along behind her, like some crazy balloon on a rope, a kid floating in midair and looking like someone had just taken him on a roller-coaster ride from hell.

“Are we there?” Duck, asked, his eyes squeezed shut. “Am I done now?”

“You want to eat?” Zil roared from atop his convertible perch.

The crowd roared its assent. Though not every voice. Astrid clung to that fact: there was grumbling and uncertainty as well as acquiescence.

“Then grab on to the rope!” Zil cried.

The rope stretched across the plaza. It ended around Hunter’s neck. It would take no more than half a dozen willing executioners to do the foul deed.

Astrid began to pray. She prayed in a loud voice, hoping it would shame them, hoping that somehow it would reach through the madness.

“Grab on!” Zil cried, and he jumped down and seized the rope himself. The rest of his crew did the same.

Then four…five…ten…

Kids Astrid knew by name took hold of the rope.

“Pull!” Zil screamed. “Pull!”

The rope tightened. More came forward and took hold. But others, just a couple, changed their minds and let go.

It was a confusion of hands. A mess that turned suddenly to a shoving match.

The rope still tightened. It became a straight line.

And Astrid, to her eternal horror, saw Hunter lifted off his feet.

But the fight over the rope had turned nastier. Kids were pummeling one another, shouting, swinging wild fists.

The rope slackened. Hunter’s kicking feet touched the ground.

Kids rushed to pull on the rope. Others blocked their way. It was becoming a kind of full-scale riot. And then a couple of kids rushed at the meat, pushing past Antoine and Hank and Turk, literally walking over them in their desperation.

Astrid took advantage of the melee to climb to her feet.

Zil, enraged at losing control, at seeing the venison snatched away by desperate hands, shoved her hard.

“Down on the ground, you freak-lover!”

Astrid spit at him. She could see the color drain from Zil’s
furious face. He grabbed a baseball bat, raised it over her. And then he flew into the air.

In his place stood Orc.

Zil was dangling from his fist. Orc drew Zil to within an inch of his own frightening face. “No one hurts Astrid,” Orc bellowed so loud, Zil’s hair was blown back.

Orc took a slow spin. Then a second, faster one, and launched Zil through the air.

“You okay?” Orc asked Astrid.

“I guess so,” she managed to say. She knelt beside Little Pete and touched the egg-sized lump on his head. He moved slightly, then opened his eyes.

“Petey. Petey. Are you okay?” There was no answer, but for Little Pete, that wasn’t abnormal. Astrid looked up at Orc. “Thanks, Charles.”

Orc grunted. “Yeah.”

Howard appeared, threading his way through the scattering mob. “My man, Orc,” he said, and slapped Orc on his massive granite shoulder. Then, to the fleeing crowd, many loaded down with chunks of venison, he yelled, “Yeah, you better run away. You are some sorry fools messing with Sam’s girl. If Orc doesn’t get you, Sammy will.”

He winked at Astrid. “Your boy so owes us.”

“Yeah,” Orc agreed. “Someone better beer me pretty soon.”

“What happened to Edilio?” Brianna demanded. He was lying on the ground. Silent. Not even the sound of breathing.

Quinn answered. “Edilio’s been shot. I don’t think he has long.”

“I can’t believe Dekka let him get hurt,” Brianna said. “Where is she?”

Quinn’s involuntary glance was all Brianna needed. She flew to where Dekka lay, crumpled like a doll someone had tossed aside.

Brianna breathed hard. Stared. There was a rushing waterfall in her ears. A roar. Then a blur as the world around her screamed past and she hit Caine with all the speed and fury at her command. Caine went sprawling.

Brianna was on him before he could draw breath, and now a rock was in her hand.

“Breeze! No!” Sam yelled.

Brianna froze. Caine was on his back. He did nothing. He did not raise his hands. Barely seemed to notice her as she squatted, poised to hit him with the rock, poised to hit him a hundred times before he could flinch.

“No, Breeze,” Sam said. “We need him.”

“I don’t need him,” Brianna hissed.

“Breeze. Dekka’s gone. Edilio will be dead in a few minutes. If he isn’t already,” Quinn said, speaking for Sam, who was clenching his teeth with such force that Brianna thought his molars might splinter. “And Sam…”

“What can this piece of filth do?” Brianna demanded.

“We need Lana,” Sam managed to say.

Caine picked himself up and brushed the dirt from his shirt. “Diana is dying. The Mexican kid is dying. Dekka, well,
you saw her. And Sam doesn’t look too good,” Caine said. “Lana’s in there.” He jerked his head toward the collapsed mine shaft.

“What I don’t get,” Caine continued, “is how we’re getting in there to find her. The whole mine collapsed. It will take me a lot longer to dig out than it did to collapse it. I pull stuff out, more falls in.”

“Duck,” Sam said. “He’s going to drill a tunnel.”

“Um…what?” Duck said.

“Like when they rescue miners,” Sam said. “They drill a shaft down to the original shaft.”

“Um…what?” Duck repeated.

Quinn explained to an obviously baffled Caine, “It seems Duck has the power to sink right down through the ground.”

“I don’t really think I’m…,” Duck said.

“He can control his density,” Brianna confirmed. “That’s why I could carry him here. It was like carrying a backpack. But with more wind resistance.”

“He drills,” Sam said. “We go in. You’ve been down there, haven’t you, Caine? Is there a place where—” A spasm of pain rocked him so hard, he seemed to lose consciousness for a minute.

“Guys, I don’t really…,” Duck said.

“Don’t you want to be a hero?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Duck said honestly.

“Yeah, me neither,” Quinn admitted. “But, Edilio, he’s a hero. He’s the real thing. And, Sam…well, I don’t have to
tell you what Sam has done for all of us.” Quinn took Duck’s arm and said, “We need you, Duck. Only you. Only you can do this.”

“Dude, I mean, I want to help, but…”