Hunger

At the worst of times, when his father had been out drinking with his girlfriend and they’d had a fight, Bug had learned to hide. His favorite place was in the attic because it was stuffed with boxes, and behind the boxes there was a spot where Bug could crawl under the eaves and lie flat on the insulation between cross-beams. His father had never found him there.

It seemed like forever before Bug began to catch sight of the brightly lit power plant. A glimpse through a crease in the hill, a glow coming from beyond a bend in the road. It felt like another forever before he came upon the second guardhouse, the one that squatted across the road with a chain-link and barbed-wire fence extending out in both directions.

Caine had speculated that the fence, which only one Coates kid had ever seen, might be electrified. Bug wasn’t going to take any chances. He walked along the fence, uphill, into the rough, away from the guardhouse for a hundred yards. He found a stick and began to scoop out the dirt below the fence. It wouldn’t take much, he wasn’t very big.

Bug felt very exposed. As long as he was digging with the stick, he was visible: sticks did not have the power of camouflage. The moon that before had seemed to cast no light at all now felt like a searchlight focused right on him. And the power plant itself was like some vast, terrifying beast crouched beside the water, blazingly bright in the blackness.

Bug crawled under the fence on his back. Dirt found its way inside his shirt, but he did not get electrocuted. Not that he really thought the fence was electrified. Still, better to be careful.

Bug stood up, brushed himself off, and began marching down the hill toward the power plant.

He was hungry. He would spy and do all the things Drake had told him to do. But first, he would look for food.

Sam tried to sleep. Wanted desperately to sleep.

He was in the spare bedroom at Astrid and Mary and John’s house. In the dark. On his back. Staring up at the ceiling.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, there were a half dozen cans of food. He was hungry. But he had had his ration for the day. He had to set the example.

Still, he was hungry, and the hunger didn’t care about setting an example.

Food downstairs. And Astrid down the hall.

A different kind of hunger, that. And there, too, he had to set a good example.

I am nothing but good examples, he told himself gloomily.

Not that Astrid would . . . although, how could he know for sure?

His head buzzed with a crazy list of things he had to do. Had to get people working on picking crops. Had to get people to start carrying their trash to one central location: rats were taking over the nighttime streets, scurrying from trash pile to trash pile.

Had to get a whole list of younger kids set up in houses with older kids. There were five- and six-year-olds living alone. That was crazy. And dangerous. One of them had thrown a hair dryer into a bathtub last week and blown out power in their home. It was just sheer luck no one had been electrocuted. Two weeks before that a second-grade boy, living by himself, had set his house on fire. Deliberately, it seemed. As a way to get someone, anyone, to pay attention. The blaze had consumed three homes, half a block, before anyone got around to telling the fire department. By the time Ellen had driven the huge old fire truck to the scene, the fire had almost burned itself out.

The kid had survived with painful burns that Lana had healed. But only after the little boy had writhed and cried in unbearable agony for hours.

Was Astrid still awake? Was she lying there in the dark? Same as him? Thinking the same thoughts?

No. She was thinking he was a jerk for authorizing Albert to bribe Orc with beer. Thinking he had no morals. Thinking he was losing it.

Maybe she was right.

Not helpful. Not helpful when what you needed was sleep. Not helpful to go over the list of things you needed to do, and the list of things you couldn’t do.

How crazy was it that he was reduced to fantasizing about a can of chili, the last slightly tasty thing he’d eaten? How long ago? A week? Fantasizing about canned chili. Hamburgers. Ice cream. Pizza. And Astrid, in her own bed.

He wondered what it would be like to be drunk. Did it make you forget all of that? There was still plenty of alcohol in the FAYZ, even though some kids had started drinking it.

Could he stop them? Should he bother? If they were going to starve to death, why not let them drink?

Little kids, drinking rum. He’d seen it. Drinking vodka. They’d make faces at the horrible taste and the burn of it, then they’d take another sip.

Food poisoning last week, two kids sharing something they had dug out of the garbage. They’d staggered into Dahra’s so-called hospital with fevers. A hundred and four degrees. Vomiting. Vomiting the water and the Tylenol she’d tried to get down them. Thank God for Lana, she’d saved them, but it was a close call. Lana’s power worked better on wounds, things that were broken.

There would be more electrocutions. More fires. More poisonings. More accidents. Like the boy who had fallen off the roof. He’d fallen two stories, and no one had seen him fall. His sister had found the body.

He was buried in the town square now, next to the victims of the battle.

Caine was still out there. Drake. Pack Leader. All of them still out there, somewhere. Sam had fooled himself into believing he was done with them, until Drake and his crew hit Ralph’s.

In the old days if you had just a little money you could make a phone call and, thirty minutes later, there would be Papa John’s bringing you a giant pizza.

Melted, bubbly, brown cheese. Greasy pepperoni. Just like that. Just like it was no big deal. He would sell his soul for a pizza.