playing on the rock pier that extended into the ocean. Fortunately there was no surf. But the rocks were like jumbled razor blades in places, sharp and slick. She ought to . . .
Later. Enough responsibility. She was not a responsible
person, and she was sick of having it forced on her.
Various adult vices were spreading through the population of the FAYZ. Some as benign as coffee. Others—pot, cigarettes, and alcohol—were not so harmless. Lana knew of
six kids who were confirmed drinkers. They had tried to get
her to cure their hangovers.
Some others were smoking their way through bags of weed
found in their parents’ or older siblings’ bedrooms. And on
H U N G E R
31
just about any day you could see kids as young as eight choking on cigarettes and trying to look cool. She’d once spotted a first grader trying to light a cigar.
Lana couldn’t cure any of that.
Sometimes she wished she was back at Hermit Jim’s cabin.
It was not the first time she’d had that thought. She had
often thought of the strange cabin in the desert with its quirky
little lawn—now all brown and dead, most likely.
It’s where she had found sanctuary after the crash. And
then again, briefly, after escaping from the coyote pack.
The cabin itself had been burned to the ground. It was
nothing but ash. And gold, of course. Hermit Jim’s stash
of gold might have been melted, but it would still be there
beneath the floorboards.
The gold. From the mine.
The mine . . .
She took a big gulp from the Styrofoam cup and burned
her tongue. The pain helped her focus.
The mine. That day was clear in her memory, but it was
the clarity of a well-remembered nightmare.
At the time she hadn’t known that the FAYZ meant the
disappearance of all adults. She’d gone to the mine in search
of the hermit, or hoping at least to find his missing truck and
use it to get to town.
She’d found the hermit, dead in the mouth of the mine.
Not disappeared, dead. Which meant he’d been killed before
the FAYZ.
The coyotes had come after her then and driven her deeper
into the mine. And there she’d found . . . it. The thing. The
32 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
Darkness, the coyotes called it: the Darkness.
She remembered the way her feet had felt heavy as bricks.
The way her heart had slowed down and thudded, each beat
like a blow from a sledgehammer. The dread that went deeper
than simple fear. The sickly green glow that made her think
of pus, disease, a cancer.
The dream state that had overtaken her . . . the heavy-
lidded eyes and mind gone blank and the feeling of being
invaded, of . . .
Come to me.
“Ah!”
She had crushed the cup. Hot coffee all over her arm.
Lana was sweating. Her breathing was labored. She took
a deep breath and it was as if she’d forgotten how until that
very moment.
It was in her head still, that monster in the mine shaft.
It had its hook in her. Sometimes she was sure she heard its
voice. A hallucination, surely. Surely not the Darkness itself.
It was miles away. Far beneath the ground. It couldn’t . . .
Come to me.
“I can’t forget it,” she whispered to Patrick. “I can’t get
away from it.”
In the early days after she had come out of the desert and
joined this strange community of children, Lana had felt
almost at peace. Almost. There had been, from the start, a
sense of damage done, an invisible wound with no specific
location except that it was inside her.
That unseen, unreal, unhealed wound had reopened.
She told herself at first that it would go away. It would heal.
H U N G E R
33
A psychic scab would form. But if that was true, if she was
healing, why did it hurt more with each passing day? How
had that dreadful voice grown from faint, distant whisper to
insistent murmur?
Come to me. I need you.
It had words now, that urgent, demanding voice.
“I’m going crazy, Patrick,” Lana told her dog. “It’s inside
me, and I am going crazy.”
Mary Terrafino woke up. She rolled out of bed. Morning. She
should go back to sleep: she was exhausted. But she would not
fall back to sleep, she knew that. She had things to do.
First things first, she stumbled to her bathroom and used
her bare foot to pull the scale across the tile floor. There was
a special spot for the scale: aligned with the center of the mirror over the sink, upper-right corner of the scale precisely in line with the tile.
She removed her sleep shirt and stepped onto the scale.
First reading. Step off.
Second reading. Step off.
Three times made it official.
Eighty-one pounds.
She’d been 128 pounds when the FAYZ came.
She still looked fat. There were still pockets of chubbiness
here and there. No matter what anyone else said. Mary could
see the flab. So no breakfast for her. Which was fine, given
that breakfast at the day care would be oatmeal made with
powdered milk and sweetened with pink packets of Sweet’n
Low. Healthy enough—and much, much better than what
34 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
most people were getting—but not exactly worth gaining
weight over.
Mary popped her Prozac, plus two tiny red Sudafed and a
multivitamin. The Prozac kept depression at bay—mostly—
and the Sudafed helped keep her from getting hungry. The
vitamin would keep her healthy, she hoped.
She dressed quickly, T-shirt, sweatpants, sneakers. Each
was roomy. She was determined not to wear anything more
body-conscious until she had really lost some weight.
She went to the laundry room and spilled a dryer full of
cloth diapers into a plastic bag. There were still a few disposable diapers in storage, but they were saving those for emergencies. They had made the switch to cloth a month
earlier. It was gross and everyone hated it, but as Mary had
pointed out to her grumbling workers, the Pampers factory
wasn’t exactly delivering anymore.
Down the stairs with the bag bump-bumping along.
Sam was with Astrid and Little Pete in the kitchen.
Mary didn’t want to interrupt—or be nagged about having
breakfast—so she let herself quietly out the front door.
Five minutes later she was at the day care.
The day care had fared badly in the battle. The wall it
shared with the hardware store had been blown out. So now
the gaping hole was covered by plastic sheeting that had to be
retaped just about every day. It was a reminder of how close
they had come to disaster. The coyote pack had been in this
very room, holding these same children hostage, while Drake
Merwin preened and gloated.
H U N G E R
35
Mary’s brother, John, was already at the day care waiting
for her.
“Hey, Mary,” John said. “You s
houldn’t be here. You should
be sleeping.”
John was working the morning shift, 5:00 a.m. to noon,
breakfast to just before lunch. Mary was supposed to take
over at lunch and work straight through until 10:00 p.m.
Lunch through dinner through sleep time, with an hour at
the end to work out schedules and clean up. Then she’d have
time to go home, watch some DVDs while she worked out on
the treadmill in the basement. That was the schedule. Eight
hours of sleep and a few hours free in the morning.
But in reality she often spent two or three hours exercising
at night. Going after those last few pounds. On the treadmill,
down in the basement, where Astrid wouldn’t hear her and
ask her why.
Most days she consumed fewer than seven hundred calories. On a really good day it would be half that.
She hugged John. “What’s up, little brother? What’s today’s
crisis?”
John had a list. He read it off his Warriors notebook. “Pedro
has a loose tooth. He also had an accident last night. Zosia
claims Julia punched her, so they’re fighting and refusing to
play together. I think maybe Collin has a fever . . . anyway,
he’s kind of, you know, cranky. I caught Brady trying to run
away this morning. She was going to look for her mommy.”
The list went on and as it did, some of the kids ran over to
hug Mary, to get a kiss, to get an appreciation of their hairdo,
36 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
to earn an approving “good job” for the way they had brushed
their teeth.
Mary nodded. The list was about like this every day.
A guy named Francis came in, pushed rudely past Mary.
Then he realized whom he had just shouldered aside, turned
back to her with a scowl, and said, “Okay, I’m here.”
“First time?” Mary asked.
“What, am I supposed to be sorry? I’m not a babysitter.”
This scene, too, had been repeated every day since peace
had come to Perdido Beach. “Okay, here’s the thing, kid,”
Mary said. “I know you don’t want to be here, and I don’t
care. No one wants to be here, but the littles have to be taken
care of. So lose the attitude.”
“Why don’t you just take care of these kids? At least you’re
a girl.”
“I’m not,” John pointed out.
Mary said, “See that easel? There are three lists on there,
one list for each of the daily helpers. Pick a list. That’s what
you do. Whatever is on the list. And you smile while you’re
doing it.”
Francis marched over and checked the list.
John said, “I’ll bet you a cookie he doesn’t pick diaper
duty.”
“No bet,” Mary said. “Besides, there are no cookies.”
“I miss cookies,” John said wistfully.
“Hey,” Francis yelled. “All these lists suck.”
“Yes,” Mary agreed. “Yes, they do.”
“This all sucks.”
“Please stop saying ‘sucks.’ I don’t want to have three-year
H U N G E R
37
olds repeating it all day.”
“Man, when my birthday comes, I’m stepping out,” Francis sulked.
“Fine. I’ll be sure not to schedule you after that. Now, pick
a work list and do it. I don’t want to have to waste Sam’s time
calling him over here to motivate you.”
Francis stomped back to the easel.
“Stepping out,” Mary said to John, and made a face. “How
many people have hit the magic fifteen so far? Only two have
poofed. People talk about it. But they don’t actually do it.”
The FAYZ had eliminated everyone over the age of fourteen. No one knew why. At least, Mary didn’t, although she had overheard Sam and Astrid whispering in a way that made
her think they might know more than they admitted.
A fourteen-year-old who reached his fifteenth birthday
would also disappear. Poof. If he let himself. If he decided to
“step out.”
What happened during what kids called Stepping Out
was now known to just about everyone. The way subjective
time would slow to a crawl. The appearance of the person you
loved and trusted most to beckon you across, to urge you to
leave the FAYZ. And the way this person transformed into a
monster if you resisted.
You had a choice: stay in the FAYZ, or . . . But no one knew
just what the “or” was. Maybe it was escape back into the old
world. Maybe it was a trip to some whole new place.
Maybe it was death.
Mary noticed John looking intensely at her. “What?” she
said.
38 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
“You wouldn’t ever . . .”
Mary smiled and ruffled his curly red hair. “Never. I would
never leave you. Missing Mom and Dad?”
John nodded. “I keep thinking about how many times I
made them mad.”
“John . . .”
“I know. I know that doesn’t matter. But it’s like . . .” He
couldn’t find the words, so he made the motion of a knife
stabbing his heart.
Someone was tugging at Mary’s shirt from behind. She
looked around and with a sinking heart saw a little boy
named . . . named . . . she couldn’t remember his name. But
She knew why they were there. They had both recently had
their fifth birthdays. The age limit for the day care was four.
At age five you had to move out—hopefully to a house with
some responsible older kids.
“Hi, kids. What’s up?” Mary asked as she brought her face
down to their level.
“Um . . . ,” the first one said. And then he burst into tears.
She shouldn’t do it, she knew she shouldn’t, but she
couldn’t stop herself from putting her arms around the little
boy. And then Sean started crying as well, so the embrace
was extended, and John was in there, too, and Mary heard
herself saying of course, of course they could come back, just
for today, just for a little while.
FOUR
106 HOURS, 8 MINUTES
C O A T E S A C A D E M Y W A S quite a bit the worse for wear.
Battles had damaged the façade of the main building. There
was a hole in the whitewashed brick so big, you could see an
entire second-story classroom, a cross-section of the floor
beneath it, and a jagged gap that didn’t quite reach to the top of
the first-story window below. Most of the glass in the windows
was gone. The kids had made an effort to keep the elements
out by duct-taping sheets of plastic over the holes, but the tape
had loosened and now the plastic and the tape hung limp, stirring with the occasional breeze. The building looked as if it had been through a war. It had been.
The grounds were a mess. Grass that had always been
trimmed to obsessive perfection in the old days now grew
wild in some areas and had gone yellow as hay in others. And
weeds pushed up through the circular gravel driveway where
once parents’ minivans and SUVs and luxury sedans had
&nbs
p; lined up.
40 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
The plumbing was out in half the building, toilets overflowing and reeking. The smaller buildings, the art classroom, and the dormitories were in better shape, but Drake insisted
on staying in the main building. He had occupied the office
of the school shrink, a place where in the old days Drake had
standing appointments for counseling and testing.
Do you still dream of hurting animals, Drake?
No, Doc, I dream of hurting you.
The office was an armory now. Drake’s guns, nine of them,
ranging from hunting rifles with scopes to handguns, were
laid out on a table. He kept them unloaded, all but two, the
guns he carried on him. He’d hidden the ammunition for the
other guns: there was no one Drake trusted. The ammunition, never enough of it, to Drake’s thinking, rested behind the ceiling tiles and in air-conditioning vents.
Drake sat watching a DVD on the plasma screen he’d stolen. The movie was Saw II. The sound effects were so great.
Drake had the volume up high enough to rattle one of the
few surviving panes of glass. So he didn’t at first hear Diana’s
voice when she said, “He wants you.”
Drake turned, sensing her presence. He flicked his tentacle
arm, the arm that gave him his nickname, Whip Hand, and
turned off the set. “What do you want?” he demanded with
a scowl.
“He wants you,” Diana repeated.
Drake loved the fear in her eyes. Tough-chick Diana:
snarky, sarcastic, superior Diana. Scared Diana. Scared of
him and what he could do to her.
H U N G E R
41
“Who wants me?”
“Caine. He’s up.”
“He’s been up before,” Drake said.
“He’s back. Mostly. He’s back and he wants you and Bug.”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll get there when I get there.” He flicked
his whip and turned the set back on. “Great, now I missed
the best part. Where’s the remote? I can’t rewind without the
remote.”
“You want me to tell Caine to wait?” Diana asked innocently. “No problem. I’ll just go tell him you’re too busy to see him.”
Drake took a deep breath and glared at her. Slowly the
whip moved toward her, the end twitching with anticipation,
wanting to wrap around her neck.
“Go ahead, do it,” she challenged him. “Go on, Drake. Go
ahead and defy Caine.”
His cold eyes flinched, just a little, but he knew she’d seen