Hunger

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.

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 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 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.”

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—”