Hunger

swung open like a big gate, and the bus roared through and plunged over the cliff. Falling, falling, the rocks and the sea rushing up at him, the whole bus full of kids not really reacting, not caring, just staring and the driver grinning, and now the worms…
    Sam tried to cry out, but his voice didn’t work. He waschoked by the driver’s snake arm, choked and spinning.
    Sam knew it was a dream, yes, had to be because the bus just kept falling forever and nothing could fall forever. Could it?
    The dreamscape changed suddenly and he was no longer on the bus. He was coming around the corner into his kitchen and Astrid, not his mother, whom he expected to see, but Astrid, was yelling at someone he couldn’t see.
    No time for this, Sam told himself. No time for dreaming.
    No time to waste here.
    Wake up, Sam.
    But no part of his body worked anymore. He was glued down. Tied with a thousand tiny ropes that squirmed and writhed like snakes or worms.
    And yet now, now, somehow he was moving.
    He opened his eyes. Was he seeing this? Was he seeing the room, the floor, the dome ceiling a million miles away?
    Was any of it real?
    On the floor lay what looked like something washed up from the bottom of the deepest ocean. Pale and fleshy, moist. No more than eighteen inches long. It was pulsating slightly, just a ripple that moved it very slightly. Like a slug might move.
    Sam felt sure he should know what the thing was. But he wasn’t even sure it was real. And he had to go now. Now or never. Up out of the dark pit and out into the world while the morphine lasted.
    Not real, he thought as he moved past the slug.
    Maybe, he said to himself, as he shifted one foot forward. Maybe none of it is real. Except for this foot. And that foot. One then the other.

    Duck felt the breeze of the first bullet.
    He zoomed upward as fast he could. Which was not very fast.
    The second bullet was farther from its target.
    Duck yelled, “Hey! Stop it!”
    “Freak! Freak!” voices cried up at him.
    “I didn’t hurt anyone!” Duck yelled back.
    “So why not come on down here?” Turk shouted. Then, like he had said something brilliant, he accepted a high five from some chubby kid with a bottle of booze in one fist.
    Maybe fifty faces were gaping up at Duck, orange highlights and black shadows in the light of the bonfire. Halloween colors. They looked strange. Little ovals with staring eyeballs and open mouths. He could barely even recognize them because this wasn’t how you looked at people, from way up high, them with their necks craning.
    He saw the barrel of the gun, and the face behind it, one eye open, the other squinted shut. Aiming. At him.
    “Get him!” Zil encouraged. “You get the first steak if you can hit him.”
    “Mike!” Duck yelled. “You’re a soldier, dude. You’re not supposed to—”
    Duck saw the muzzle flash. He heard the bang.
    “Why are you shooting at me?” Duck cried.
    Careful aim. A muzzle flash. A loud crack.
    “Stop, man, stop!”
    “You’re missing him,” Zil yelled.
    “Let me have that stupid gun,” Hank demanded. He jumped out of the convertible and ran toward Mike.
    It may have been Hank’s jostling that saved Duck’s life. The third bullet whizzed by.
    Hank grabbed the gun away.
    Meanwhile, Duck had risen another thirty or forty feet, higher than he’d gone before. He was up to a giddy height now. He could see the roof of town hall. He was higher than the steeple of the church had been. He could see the school in one direction, Clifftop in the other. He could see far out to sea.
    He was probably a hundred feet up now, ten stories. And up here was just a bit more of a breeze blowing off the water, pushing him gently, like a loose helium balloon, back inland.
    Too slow.
    Hank fired. A miss. But a close one.
    It was insane. He was rising, rising, but too slow, too slow, and Hank had all the time in the world to take careful aim, to line up the back sights with the front, to settle them just below his target, and squeeze off a round.
    Duck tensed, awaiting the bullet. Wondering if it would hit his leg, his arm, and merely cause horrible pain. Or strike his heart or head, and finish him.
    Hank squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
    Hank threw the gun at Mike in disgust.
    Mike frantically reloaded, but in the time it took him to slide in more bullets, Duck had floated and drifted higher and farther.
    Hank fired. By the time the bullet had come close to Duck, gravity had slowed it. Duck