Hunger

and the closer he got the less likely it seemed that it was a mirage. There was definitely a glow. Like a glow-in-the-dark clock face, a sickly, cold, unhealthy-looking light.
    Even close up it didn’t glow enough to make out many features, just a few faint outlines of rock. He had to stand and stare hard, straining his eyes for quite some time before hecould figure out that the glow was mostly along the ground. And that it came from a side tunnel of the main cave. This second shaft was narrow, far smaller than the main cave, which, it seemed to Duck, had gradually broadened out.
    He could follow this new shaft and at least see something. Not much, but something. Some proof that he wasn’t actually blind.
    But some little voice in his brain was screaming, “No!” His instincts were telling him to run.
    “There’s light down there. It must lead to somewhere,” Duck argued with himself.
    But although Duck had never been the most attentive student, and had very little information of a scientific nature in his brain, he was an avid fan of The Simpsons . He’d seen this glow, in cartoon form. And it featured in any number of comics.
    “It’s radiation,” he said.
    This was wrong, he realized, filled with righteous indignation. Everyone said there was no radiation left from the big accident at the power plant thirteen years ago, when the meteorite hit. But where else would this glow have come from? It must have seeped along underground seams and crevices.
    They had lied. Or maybe they just hadn’t realized.
    “Not a good idea to go that way,” he told himself.
    “But it’s the only light,” he cried, and began to weep with frustration because it seemed he had no choice but to plunge back into absolute darkness.
    And then, Duck heard something.
    He froze. He strained his senses to listen.
    A soft, swishing sound. Very faint.
    A long silence. And then, there it was again. Swish. Swish.
    He’d missed the sound because he’d been focusing on the glow. It was a sound he knew. Water. And it did not, thank God, come from the radioactive shaft.
    Duck hated the ocean. But all things considered, he hated it a bit less than he hated this cave.
    Leaving the glow behind, and feeling carefully ahead, cautious about his bruised forehead, he crept on through pitch blackness.

SIX
    96 HOURS , 22 MINUTES
    “ LOOK, ALBERT, DON’T tell me we have a problem and I can’t do anything about it,” Sam said, practically snarling. He marched along at a quick walk from the town hall to the church next door. Albert and Astrid were with him, struggling to keep up.
    The sun was setting out over the ocean. The dying light laid down a long red exclamation point on the water. A boat was out there, one of the small motorboats. Sam sighed. Some kid who’d probably end up falling in.
    Sam stopped suddenly, causing Albert and Astrid to bump into each other. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound mad. Although I am mad, but not at you, Albert. It’s just I have to go in there and lay down the law, and I’m sorry, but killer worms aren’t making it any easier.”
    “Then hold off for a few days,” Albert said calmly.
    “Hold off? Albert, you were the one who was saying weeks ago, months ago, we had to make everyone get to work.”
    “I never said we should make them work,” Albert countered.“I said we should figure out a way to pay them to work.”
    Sam was not in the mood. Not in the mood at all. Losing a kid was a tragedy to everyone, but to him it was a personal failure. He’d been handed the job of being in charge, which meant everything that went wrong was on him. E.Z. had been under his care and protection. And now E.Z. was a pile of ash.
    Sam sucked in a gulp of air. He shot a baleful look at the cemetery in the square. Three more graves in just the last three months since Sam had been officially elected mayor. E.Z. wouldn’t get a grave, just a marker. At the rate things were going, they’d run out of room in the square.
    The front door of the church stood open. Always open. That was because it, and much of the church roof, had been damaged in the big Thanksgiving Battle. The wide wooden doors had been blown off. The sides of the opening were shaky, held up by a slab of stone across the top that made the wreckage look like a lopsided Stonehenge monolith.
    Caine had come close to collapsing the entire church, but it was built strong, so three quarters of it still stood. Some of the rubble had been cleared, but not much,