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Kissing Astrid, stroking her hair, having her nuzzle close to
him, that was all that kept him from going crazy sometimes.
But instead of making out and talking about the stars or
whatever, they argued. It reminded him of his mother and
stepfather. Not happy memories.
He spent the night on the lumpy cot in his office and woke
early, before the sun was even up. He dressed and crept out
before kids could start arriving to bug him with more problems.
The streets were quiet. They usually were nowadays. Some
kids had been given permission to drive, but only on official
business. So there was no traffic. On the rare occasions there
was a car or a truck, you’d hear it long before you saw it.
Now Sam heard a motor. Far off. But it didn’t sound like
a car.
He reached the low concrete wall that defined the edge of
the beach. He jumped atop it and immediately spotted the
source of the sound. A low-slung motorboat, a bass boat they
were often called, was putt-putting along at no more than
walking speed. With dawn just graying the night sky Sam
could make out a silhouette. He was pretty sure he recognized the person.
Sam walked down to the water’s edge, cupped his
hands around his mouth to form a megaphone, and yelled,
“Quinn.”
Quinn seemed to be fiddling with something Sam couldn’t
see. He yelled back, “Is that you, brah?”
“Yeah, man. What are you doing out there?”
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“Wait a second.” Quinn stooped down, dealing with something. Then he turned the boat toward shore. He beached the shallow craft and killed the engine. He hopped out onto the
sand.
“What are you doing, man?” Sam asked again.
“Fishing, brother. Fishing.”
“Fishing?”
“People are looking for food, right?” Quinn said.
“Dude, you can’t just decide to take a boat and go off fishing,” Sam said.
Quinn seemed surprised. “Why not?”
“Why not?”
“Why not? No one’s using the boat. I found the fishing gear.
And I’m still putting in my guard-duty hours with Edilio.”
Sam was at a loss for words. “Did you catch anything?”
Quinn’s teeth showed white in the darkness. “I found a
book on fishing. Just did what they said in there.” He reached
down into the boat and lifted something heavy. “Here. You
can’t see it in the dark. But I’ll bet it weighs twenty pounds.
It’s huge.”
“No way.” Despite his foul mood, Sam grinned. “What
is it?”
“I think it’s a halibut. I’m not sure. It doesn’t look exactly
like the fish in the book I got.”
“What do you plan to do with it?”
“Well,” Quinn said thoughtfully. “I guess I’m going to try
and catch some more, and then I’m going to eat a bunch of
it, and then maybe see if Albert will trade me something for
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whatever I don’t eat. You know Albert: he’ll figure out some
way to fry them up at Mickey D’s and do fish sticks or whatever. I wonder if he still has any ketchup.”
“I’m not sure that’s the best idea,” Sam said.
“Why?”
“Because Albert doesn’t just give stuff away. Not any
more.”
Quinn laughed nervously. “Look, brah, don’t tell me I can’t
do this, okay? I’m not hurting anyone.”
“I never said you were hurting anyone,” Sam said. “But
look, Albert’s going to sell this fish to whoever will give him
whatever he wants: batteries and toilet paper, whatever else he
figures out he can control.”
“Sam. I got, like, twenty pounds of good protein here.”
“Yeah. And it ought to go to the people who aren’t getting
enough, right? Mother Mary could serve some to the prees.
They’re not eating much better than the rest of us, and they
need it more.”
Quinn dug his toe in the wet sand. “Look, if you don’t want
me to sell or trade the fish to Albert, okay. But look, I have
this fish, right? What am I supposed to do with it? Someone
needs to put it on ice before long. I can’t just walk around
town handing out pieces of fish, right?”
rising around him like a tide. Now he had to decide what
Quinn did with a fish?
Quinn continued. “Look, I’m just saying I can haul this
fish and any others I get up to Albert and he has a refrigerator
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big enough to keep it in good shape. Plus, you know how he
is: he’ll figure out how to clean it and cook it and—”
“All right,” Sam interrupted. “Fine. Whatever. Give it to
Albert this time. Till I figure out some kind of, I don’t know,
some kind of rule.”
“Thanks, man,” Quinn said.
Sam turned and headed back toward town.
“You should have come in and danced last night, brah,”
Quinn yelled after him.
“You know I don’t dance.”
“Sam, if anyone ever needed to cut loose, it’s you.”
Sam tried to ignore his words, but their pitying, concerned
tone bothered him. It meant that he wasn’t keeping his mind
secret. It meant he was broadcasting his foul, self-pitying
mood, and that wasn’t good. Bad example.
“Hey, brah?” Quinn called.
“Yeah, man.”
“You know that crazy story Duck Zhang’s talking about?
Not the cave thing, but the part about, like, flying fish-bats
or whatever?”
“What about them?”
“I think I saw some. Came shooting up out of the water. Of
course, it was dark.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “Later, dude.”
As he walked across the beach he muttered, “My life is fish
stories and Junior Mints.”
Something was nagging at him. And not just Astrid. Something. Something about Junior Mints.
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But weariness swept over him and dissolved the half-
formed thought. He was due at town hall before long. More
stupidity to deal with.
He heard Quinn singing Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”
to himself. Or maybe to Sam.
Then the sound of the putt-putt outboard motor starting
again.
Sam felt an intense stab of jealousy.
“You don’t worry,” Quinn said, echoing the song.
“I do.”
“Caine?”
No answer. Diana tapped at the door again.
“Hungry in the dark,” Caine cried in an eerie, warbling
voice. “Hungry in the dark, hungry in the dark, hungry, hungry.”
“Oh, God, are we back to this?” Diana asked herself.
During his three-month-long funk Caine had screamed or
cried or raged in various different ways. But this phrase had
been the one most often repeated. Hungry in the dark.
She pushed open the door. Caine was thrashing in his bed,
sheet twisted around his body, arms batting at something
invisible.
Caine had moved out of Mose’s cabin into the bungalow
once occupied by the headmistress of Coates Academy and
her husband. It was one of the few still-undamaged, untrashed spaces at Coates. The room had a big, comfortable bed with satin-soft sheets. There were prints of the kind baby
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boomers bought at Z Gallerie on the walls.
Diana moved quickly to the window as Caine cut loose
again, wailing like a lost soul about hunger in the darkness.
She raised the room-darkening blinds, and pale early sunlight lit the room.
Caine sat up suddenly. “What?” he said. He blinked hard
several times and shivered. “Why are you here?”
“You were doing it again,” Diana said.
“Doing what?”
“‘Hungry in the dark.’ It’s one of your greatest hits. Sometimes you change it to ‘hungry in the darkness.’ You muttered it, moaned it, shouted it for weeks on end, Caine. Darkness,
hunger, and that word: ‘gaiaphage.’” She sat down on the edge
of his bed. “What’s it all mean?”
Caine shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“The Darkness. Drake talks about it, too. The thing out in
the desert. The thing that gave him his arm. The thing that
messed up your head.”
Caine didn’t say anything.
“It’s a monster of some kind, isn’t it?” Diana asked.
“Of some kind,” Caine muttered.
“Is it some mutant kid or whatever? Or like the coyotes,
some kind of mutant animal?”
“It is what it is,” Caine said shortly.
“What does it want?”
Caine looked suspiciously at her. “What do you care?”
“I live here, remember? I have to live in the FAYZ along
with everyone else. So I kind of have an interest in whether
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some evil creature is using all of us for some—”
“No one uses me,” Caine snapped.
Diana fell silent, letting his anger ebb. Then, “It messed
you up, Caine. You’re not you anymore.”
“Did you send Jack to warn Sam? Did you send him to tell
Sam how to survive the poof?”
The question caught Diana unprepared. It took all her self-
control to keep fear from her face. “That’s what you think?”
Diana managed a wry smile. “So that’s why I’m being followed everywhere I go.”
Caine didn’t deny it. “I’m in love with you, Diana. You
took care of me these last three months. I don’t want you to
be hurt.”
“Why are you threatening me?”
“Because I have plans. I have things I have to do. I need to
know whose side you’re on.”
“I’m on my side,” Diana said. It was the honest answer. She
didn’t trust herself to convince him of a lie. If he thought she
was lying . . .
Caine nodded. “Yeah. Fine. Be on your own side, I respect
that. But if I find out you’re helping Sam . . .”
Diana decided it was time for a show of anger. “Listen, you
sad excuse for a human being, I had a choice. Sam offered me
that choice after he kicked your butt. I could have gone with
him. It would have been the smart move. I would have been
safe from Drake. And I wouldn’t have had to put up with you
trying to paw me every time you felt lonely. And I would definitely be eating better. I chose to go with you.”
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Caine sat up straighter. He leaned toward her. His eyes
made his intentions clear.
“Oh, here we go.” Diana rolled her eyes.
But when he kissed her, she let him. And after a few seconds of stony indifference she kissed him back.
Then she put her palm on his bare chest and shoved him
back onto his pillow. “That’s enough.”
“Not nearly enough, but I guess it will have to do,” Caine
said.
“I’m out of here,” Diana said. She started for the door.
“Diana?”
“What?”
“I need Computer Jack.”
She froze with her hand on the doorknob. “I don’t have
him hidden in my room.”
“Listen to me, Diana, and don’t say anything. Okay? I’m
telling you: don’t say anything. This is a one-time offer.
Amnesty. Whatever happened with you and Jack and Sam, it’s
forgotten, if . . . if you get me Jack. Bygones will be bygones.
But I need Jack. I need him soon.”
“Caine—”
“Shut up,” he hissed. “Do yourself a favor, Diana. Don’t.
Say. Anything.”
She bit back the angry retort. There was no mistaking the
menace in his voice. He meant it. This time, he meant it.
“Get me Jack. Use any resource you want. Use Bug. Use
Drake, even. Use Pack Leader, if that’ll help. I don’t care how
it gets done, but I want Jack in two days. Starting now.”
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Diana struggled for her next breath.
“Two days, Diana. You know the ‘or else.’ ”
Albert was supervising the sweeping of his club by one of
his crew, and reading about the melting points of various
metals—lead and gold, especially gold—when Quinn pushed
a wheelbarrow into the McDonald’s.
In the wheelbarrow were three fish. One was very big for a
fish. The other two looked more average.
Albert’s second thought was that this was an opportunity.
His first thought was that he was hungry and would definitely enjoy a nice piece of fried fish. Even raw fish. The strength of the hunger pangs caught him off-guard. He tried
to ignore the hunger, eating very little himself and making
sure that his crew were as well fed as possible, but when a guy
walked in with actual, honest-to-God fish . . .
“Whoa,” Albert said.
“Yeah. Cool, huh?” Quinn said, smiling down at his fish
like a proud parent.
“Are they for sale?” Albert asked.
“Yeah. Except for whatever I can eat. Plus, we got to send
some to Mary for the prees.”
“Of course,” Albert agreed. He considered. “I don’t have
anything I can use to make a batter. But I could probably dip
them in a little flour to give them a little crunchiness.”
“Man, I’ll eat ’em raw,” Quinn said. “I barely got them here
without chomping on them.”
“What do you want for all three?” Albert asked.
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Quinn was obviously baffled. “Dude, I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Albert said. “How about this: You get a free pass to
the club. Plus, you get all the fish you can eat. And, I owe you
a major favor in the future.”
“A major favor?”
“Major,” Albert confirmed. “Look, I’m doing some things.
I have some plans. As a matter of fact, they’re plans I would
like you to help me with.”
“Uh-huh,” Quinn said skeptically.
“I’m asking you to trust me, Quinn. You trust me, and I’ll
trust you.”
Albert knew that would hit home with
Quinn. Trust was
the last thing anyone offered Quinn.
Albert changed the subject, just a little. “How did you
catch these fish, Quinn?”
“Um, well, it’s not that hard to figure out. I used a net to
scoop up some little fish, you know, not like fish you could
eat. Then I used them as bait. You get the little fish in tide
pools and shallow water. There’s plenty of gear and boats.
Then you just need to be really, really patient.”
“This could be major,” Albert said thoughtfully. Then,
“Okay, I have a proposition for you.”
Quinn grinned. “I’m listening.”
“I have twenty-four guys on my crew. Mostly they guard
Ralph’s and move food around. But the truth is, there isn’t
much left to guard or to move around. So.”
“So?”
“So, I give you six of my best people. The most reliable six
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guys I can come up with. You take them and train them to
fish.”
“Yeah?” Quinn frowned, still not getting it.
“And you and me, we’re partners in the fish business.
Seventy-thirty. I give you workers, I haul the fish, preserve
it, prepare it, distribute it. And whatever we bring in, I take
seventy percent and you take thirty.”
Quinn arched a brow. “Excuse me? How come you get seventy percent?”
“I pay everyone under me,” Albert explained. “Your thirty
percent is just for you.”
“It’s thirty percent of nothing,” Quinn said.
“Maybe. But not for long.” Albert grinned and slapped
Quinn on the shoulder. “You have to stay hopeful, man.
Things are looking up. We have fish.”
Mother Mary smelled it before she saw it.
Fish. Fried fish.
The kids smelled it, too. “What is that smell?” Julia cried,
and ran forward, black ponytail flying behind her.
There followed a near riot. Preschoolers surged around
Quinn, who was carrying the fried fish piled on a napkin-
covered McDonald’s tray.
“Okay, okay, okay, everyone gets some,” Quinn yelped.
Mary could not move. She knew she should, she knew
she had to step in and impose order, but the smell had paralyzed her.
Fortunately, Francis—who had made such a scene over
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hating to work at the preschool—had decided after the first
day that he wouldn’t mind working a second day. Then a
third. He was on his way to becoming a regular. Once he’d