Hunger

floating. Then falling. And Howard waspressed flat against the wall.
    “Orc!” Howard shouted.
    Dekka hit the ground. Not really a problem for Orc. He didn’t like Dekka much. She just ignored him, mostly, and looked away whenever he was close to her. Disgusted by the sight of him.
    Well, who wasn’t? Orc disgusted himself.
    Then he saw the face behind the gun. Drake. Drake had gone after Orc with his tentacle and whipped him. It hadn’t hurt much, but Orc still hadn’t liked it. Drake had been trying to kill him.
    Orc didn’t like Drake. That didn’t mean he liked Dekka. But Sam did, and Sam had been fair with Orc. Sam had gotten him beer.
    Orc wished he had a beer right now.
    Save Dekka, and Sam would probably reward Orc. Saving Dekka—that had to be worth at least a case. Maybe something from a foreign country. Orc hadn’t tried any of that beer yet.
    Drake was a hundred yards away. Dekka was half that distance. A motorcycle was parked just five feet away.
    Orc grabbed the motorcycle. He held the front wheel in one hand, the handlebars in the other. He twisted hard and the wheel came off easily.

    “Someone’s shooting!” one of Drake’s soldiers yelled, rushing in.
    “Yeah, guess who?” Diana said.
    “Too soon,” Caine snarled. “I told him to wait. Jack. Do it.”
    “I don’t want to rush and—”
    Caine raised both hands, lifted Jack up in the air, and threw him into the instrument panel.
    “Now!” Caine yelled.
    They were out of the control room, at a separate monitor that showed the inside of the reactor itself.
    Jack punched a sequence of numbers into a keypad.
    The electromagnets switched off.
    The cadmium control rods plunged like daggers.
    It was all silent on the black-and-white monitor. But the effect was immediate. The vibration of the turbines, the steady hum that had been part of the background, suddenly dropped in pitch.
    Lights flickered. The monitor picture wobbled then stabilized.
    “Is it safe to go in?” Caine demanded.
    “Sure, what could be dangerous about a nuclear—”
    “Shut up!” Caine shouted. “Open it up, Jack.”
    Jack obeyed.
    They stepped into a vast room that seemed to be made almost entirely of stainless steel. Stainless-steel floor. Stainless-steel catwalks. Cranes. Caine had the impression of a gigantic restaurant kitchen.
    What wasn’t stainless steel was safety yellow. Safety railings. The risers on steps. Signs in yellow and black warning of what surely no one who had made it here needed to bereminded of: radiation hazard.
    The dome overhead was like something out of a cathedral. But there were no frescoes decorating the painted concrete.
    Caine felt abashed by the scale of the place.
    At the center of it all, a circular pit, like some ghastly blue-glowing swimming pool. Not that any sane person would ever be tempted to jump in.
    A catwalk went all the way around. And a robotic crane hovered over it. Down there, below, in the sinister depths, were the fuel rods. Each filled with gray pellets that looked like nothing much. Stubby gray cylinders of what might as easily be lead.
    A massive forklift held a steel barrel in midair, poised. Right where the driver left it when he poofed.
    “I’m starting the sequence,” Jack said, typing furiously, rattled, terrified, but giddy, too.
    The robot moved faster than Caine had expected. It perched like a predatory insect above the too-blue water.
    It was hot in the room. The emergency generators didn’t keep the air-conditioning running and the temperature began rising almost instantly.
    “How long?” Caine demanded.
    “To extract it, make it relatively safe, transport it to the used-fuel cooling facility and—”
    “We aren’t going to have time for all that,” Caine said. “Drake’s already shooting. We need to get out of here.”
    “Caine, there’s no way to—” Jack began.
    “Just grab the fuel rod. Yank it up out of that pool. I’ll takecare of the rest,” Caine said.
    “Caine, we have to follow procedure just to get the rod out of here. The only way out is through—”
    Caine raised both hands. He focused on the convex dome over their heads, the containment vessel that would hold the radiation in if there was ever an accident.
    He blasted the concrete with all his power. There was a wallop of sound that hurt Caine’s eardrums.
    “What are you doing?” Jack cried.
    “Caine!” Diana shouted.
    The concrete would not give. Not at this distance. Not with nothing to use as a