Hunger

not logically be possible. She had known that Caine had gained some strange new power. She’d seen Drake Merwin for the dangerously sick creature he was. And Diana, of course, beautiful, seductive, knowing Diana.
    Dekka had felt the attraction of the girl. Diana had played her, teased her, mocked her, and left Dekka feeling more vulnerable than she had in a long time. But Diana had told no one Dekka’s secret. In the environment of Coates, that fact would have come back to Dekka very quickly.
    Diana knew how to keep secrets. For her own purposes.
    In those early days at Coates, Dekka had barely noticed Brianna. That attraction had come later, after Caine and Drake had made their move and imprisoned all the budding freaks at Coates.
    Dekka had been stuck beside Brianna, the two of them weighed down by the cement blocks encasing their hands. Side by side they’d eaten from a trough. Like animals. That’s when Dekka had started to admire Brianna’s unbroken spirit.
    You could knock Brianna down. But she didn’t stay down. Dekka loved that.
    Of course, nothing would ever come of it. Brianna was probably totally straight. And with lousy taste in guys, in Dekka’s opinion.
    “Not far,” Edilio said. “The ghost town’s just ahead. Be ready.”
    “Ready for what?” Dekka grumbled. “No one’s explainedany of this to me. All Sam said is, I’m supposed to crush some cave.”
    Edilio had his machine gun on his lap. He clicked the safety to the off position. He had a pistol wedged under his leg. He pulled this out, clicked the safety to off, and handed it to Dekka.
    “You’re starting to worry me just a little bit, Edilio.”
    “Coyotes,” Edilio said. “And worse, maybe.”
    “What’s the ‘worse’?”
    They slowed as they drove down the main street of what Dekka realized must have once been a town. All fallen down now. Sticks and dust and faded smears of cracked, ancient paint.
    “Don’t you feel it?” Edilio asked.
    And she did. Had for several minutes already, without knowing what it was, what to call it.
    “How close do you have to be to do your thing?” Edilio asked.
    When Dekka tried to answer, she found her mouth was too dry, her throat too tight. She swallowed dust and tried again. “Close.”
    The Jeep reached the bottom of the trail. Edilio pulled the car around so that it was facing away. He left the keys in the ignition. “I don’t want to have to fumble for the keys,” he said. “Hopefully the coyotes haven’t learned to steal cars.”
    Dekka found she was strangely reluctant to get out of the Jeep. She saw sympathy and understanding in Edilio’s eyes.
    “Yeah,” he said.
    “I don’t even know what I’m scared of,” Dekka said.
    “Whatever it is,” Edilio said, “let’s go kill it.”
    They started up the trail. They soon came upon the fly-covered corpse of a coyote.
    “We got one at least,” Edilio said.
    They stepped carefully past the dead animal. Edilio kept his machine gun at the ready, sweeping the barrel slowly, side to side. The pistol was heavy in Dekka’s hand. She searched each rock, each crevice, waiting, tense, clenching muscles she didn’t know she had.
    Slowly they climbed.
    And there, at last, the entrance to the mine.
    “Can you do it from here?” Edilio whispered.
    “No,” Dekka said. “Closer.”
    Dragging feet through the dirt and gravel. Like they were walking through molasses. Every molecule of air seemed to drag at them. Slow-mo. Edilio’s finger flexing spasmodically on the trigger. Dekka’s heart thudding.
    Closer.
    Close enough.
    Dekka stopped. Edilio, with exquisite slowness, turned to point his gun at the two coyotes that had appeared almost by magic just above the mine shaft.
    Dekka tucked her pistol into the back of her belt. She had some vague, distant memory of someone telling her, “Better if it goes off to shoot a hole in your butt than in your…”
    A million years ago. A million miles away. Another planet. Another life.
    Dekka raised her hands, spread them wide and…
    Movement from within the cave.
    Slow, steady. A hint of pale flesh in the shadow.
    Lana moved like a sleepwalker. She came to a stop just within the cave, under the overhang.
    She looked right at Dekka.
    “Don’t,” Lana said in a voice not her own.

    When Sam came to some time later, Brianna was kneeling beside him, a first-aid kit open on the floor. She was spraying cold liquid bandage onto his worst whip marks.
    “Drake,” Sam managed to