Hunger

attempt to disguise his contempt.
    “Okay,” Caine said at last. “Jack, get everything ready. Drake, we’ll need a diversion. You attract Sam’s attention out front. Then you catch up with us.”
    “Let’s just grab a truck,” Drake suggested.
    “We can’t go up the coast road. They’ll see us right away,” Caine said. “We have to go overland. There are trails going up over the hills. We find a way to the highway. Cross it. Then get a vehicle and head into the desert.”
    “Why should we sneak?” Drake asked. “We’ll have the uranium, right? Who is going to mess with us? Who is going to take a chance on you dropping it?”
    “Let me ask you something, Drake,” Caine said. “If you were Sam, and you saw me and you and Diana and Jack all together marching up the coast road, and you saw that I was carrying this big, dangerous radioactive thing around, what would you do?”
    Drake frowned.
    “Oh, look: Drake’s trying to think,” Diana said.
    “This is why I run things and you don’t, Drake. Let me explain it in terms you might grasp. If I’m Sam, and I see the four of us, and I figure I can’t go after us…” Caine held up four fingers. One by one he subtracted them. He left the middle finger up.
    “He takes the rest of us out,” Drake said. He gritted his teeth, and his eyes blazed with suppressed rage.
    “So if the three of you want to just walk out of here all bold and brave, let me know,” Caine said, meeting Drake’s glare with one of his own. Then he leaned close to Drake, almost embracing him. He brought his mouth to Drake’s ear and whispered, “Don’t start thinking you can take me down, Drake. You’re useful to me. The minute I start thinking you’re no longer useful…”
    He smiled, patted Drake’s gaunt cheek, and with a hint of his old swagger said, “We’re going to reshuffle the deck. Sam thinks he holds all the cards. But we’re going to change everything.”
    “We’re going to feed the monster who has his hooks in your head,” Diana said coldly. “Don’t try to dress it up. We’re feeding a monster and hoping it will show its gratitude by letting go of your leash.”
    “Let it go, Diana,” Caine said. The bluster was gone.
    Diana glanced to see that Drake was out of earshot. “Bug’s not coming back. You know that.”
    Caine chewed at his thumb. Jack had the unsettling thought that he might be hungry enough to eat his own finger.
    “You don’t know that,” Caine said. “He might have had trouble finding Orsay. He wouldn’t turn against me.”
    “No one’s loyal to you, Caine,” Diana said. “Drake is itching to take you down. No one at Coates is rushing to bail you out. You only have one person who actually cares about you.”
    “You?”
    Diana didn’t answer. “I know it has a hold on you, Caine. I’ve seen it. But that monster of yours isn’t loyal to you , either. It will use you and throw you away. It will be everything and you will be nothing.”

    “Most of what I have to say is speculative,” Astrid began.
    Sam, Astrid, Edilio—almost from the start, they had been a team. They’d fought Orc when he was calling himself Captain Orc and trying to dominate the FAYZ. They’d foughtCaine and Pack Leader. They had learned to survive the Big One-Five.
    Now, the picture of something much more terrible was becoming clear.
    “From what Edilio has said, what Lana’s letter said, what we’ve learned of Drake’s story from Lana in the past, and all the little things we’ve pieced together.”
    She glanced at Little Pete, who sat in a chair by the window, looking out at the slowly sinking sun and nodding mechanically. “And from what I’ve been able to guess from my brother. Something…maybe some type of freak, a mutated human. Maybe a mutated animal…maybe something else entirely that we don’t understand at all…is in that mine shaft.”
    “This thing, this gaiaphage, has the ability to reach out, mind-to-mind, and influence people. Maybe especially people it has had some contact with. Like Lana,” said Sam.
    “Or like Orsay,” Edilio interrupted. “Someone with that kind of mind, you know? Like, sensitive, or whatever.”
    Astrid nodded. “Yes. Some may be more vulnerable than others. I am sure, now, that it is in contact with Little Pete.”
    “They talk?” Edilio asked skeptically.
    Astrid rolled her head, stretching her neck forward, trying to shake off the tension that tightened her jaw. Sam was struck by how