Hunger

Zil’s got a deer?”
    “Everyone is talking about it,” John said. “Turk is telling everyone that Zil caught Hunter. Hunter had this deer and was keeping it all for himself. Anyone who wants some meat just has to come and help them punish Hunter.”
    “At least,” he added, “any normal. No freaks allowed.”
    Astrid stared at him. John showed no sign of really understanding what he had just said.
    “Is Mary going to be okay?” John asked. “I mean, if we get her to eat some deer meat? Will she be okay?”

    “Ahhhhh!” Sam yelled as Drake struck again.
    Again and again.
    Sam on his knees now. Crying.
    Crying like a baby. His shrieks of pain melding with the harsh lunatic blare of the siren.
    If only there was some way to record this, Drake thought. If only he could tape this moment so he could watch it again and again.
    The great Sam Temple, bleeding and cringing and screaming out in pain as Drake brought his whip hand down again and again.
    “Does it hurt, Sam?” Drake gloated. “It kind of hurt when you burned my arm off. Do you think it hurts like that?”
    Again. Slash!
    And the reward of a terrible groan.
    “They said I wet myself while they were cutting off the stump,” Drake said. “Have you done that, yet, Sam? Have you peed yourself, Sam?”
    Sam was on his side now, arms over his face, covering himself. The last blow hadn’t even brought a scream. Just a shudder. Just a spasm.
    “Time to mess up that face of yours,” Drake snarled, and drew back to bring all his force to bear.
    Down came the whip hand.
    There was a blur. Drake wasn’t even sure he had seen anything.
    And then it was his own voice crying out in shock and horror. It didn’t even hurt at first, didn’t hurt, just…
    Eighteen inches of his tentacle arm lay quivering, jerking spasmodically on the floor like a dying snake.
    Blood sprayed from the severed end. He drew it back to stare at the stump.
    The wire had appeared from nowhere. Wrapped around one of the catwalk ladders at one end. And at the other end, Brianna, holding the wire tight.
    “Hey, Drake,” Brianna said. “I heard about your idea for cutting me up with wire. Clever.”
    Drake’s mouth gaped open, but no sound came.
    The suddenness of it left him dazed, unable to respond. Frozen.
    The severed end still jerked and writhed. Like it had a life of its own.
    “The remote!” Sam cried out.
    Drake spread his fingers.
    The remote fell.
    “Breeze!” Sam shouted.
    Drake spun away and ran.

    Brianna’s body moved faster than humanly possible.
    Her brain moved at normal speed. So it took her several split seconds to see the remote falling, to realize that if Samwas yelling about it in his condition, it was very, very important.
    Another split second to guess that the glowing blue was not a swimming pool.
    The remote fell.
    Brianna dove.
    Her hand gripped the remote just nine inches above the surface of the water.
    If she plunged into that water…
    She tucked her feet, spun around in midair, and hit the rising control rods as hard as she could.
    It wasn’t elegant. She cleared the lip of the pool and skidded across the floor.
    But she had the remote. She stared at it.
    Now what?
    “Sam? Sam?”
    Sam said nothing. She leapt to him, rolled him over, and only then saw to her horror the mess that Drake had made of him.
    “Sam?” It came out as a sob.
    “Red button,” Sam managed to gasp.

THIRTY-EIGHT
    53 MINUTES
    EDILIO’S HANDS WERE gripping the wheel so tightly, his fingers were white. Dekka noticed.
    He was gritting his teeth and then forcing himself to unclench in an unsuccessful effort to relax. Dekka noticed that, too.
    She didn’t say anything about it. Dekka was not a talkative girl. Dekka’s world was inside her, not locked up but kept private. Her hopes were her own. Her emotions were her business, no one else’s. Her fears…Well, nothing good ever came of showing fear.
    The kids in Perdido Beach, like the kids at Coates before that, tended to read Dekka’s self-contained attitude as hostile. She wasn’t hostile. But at Coates, that dumping ground for problem children, being just a little scary was a good thing.
    At Coates, Dekka had belonged to no clique. She’d had no friends. She didn’t make trouble, kept her grades up, followed most of the rules, kept her nose out of other people’s business.
    But she noticed what went on around her. She had known longer than most that some of the kids at Coates were changing in ways that could