Hunger

wake up if anything happens.”
    “Doesn’t Josh watch the security cameras?”
    “He says he can’t see anything. Nothing ever happens. It’s just like pictures of the road and the hills and the parking lot and all.”
    “We stayed up. Mostly,” Alton said.
    “Mostly. How much is ‘mostly’?” Sam got no answer. “Get going. Go ahead. And stop fighting. You weren’t supposed to be hoarding food, anyway, Dalton. Serves you right.” He wanted badly to ask where the kid had found candy, and ask if there was more, but that would have been the wrong message. Bad example.
    Still, Sam thought, what if there was still candy? Somewhere? Somewhere in the FAYZ?
    Edilio’s bus began to pull away. Ellen was onboard and Sam figured Edilio would stop off and grab a couple of his soldiers to help with the drafting of workers for the fields.
    Sam could imagine the scenes that would be played out house by house. The whining. The complaining. The runningaway. Followed by a lazy, mostly wasted effort to pick fruit by kids who didn’t want to work in the hot sun for hours.
    He thought briefly of E.Z. Of the worms. Albert was taking Orc to the cabbage field this morning, to test Howard’s suggestion that he would be invulnerable. Hopefully, that would work.
    For a brief moment he worried that the worms might have spread. But even if they had, surely not to the melon field. It was a mile from the cabbages.
    A mile was a long distance to cover if you were a worm.

    “Beer me,” Orc bellowed.
    Albert handed Howard a red and blue can of beer. A Budweiser. That’s what Albert had the most of, and Orc didn’t seem to have any particular brand loyalty.
    Howard popped the tab and extended it out of the driver’s side window, reaching back. Orc snatched it as they drove down the pitted dirt road.
    Orc sat in the bed of the pickup truck. He was too big to fit in anything smaller, too big to fit inside the truck’s cab. Howard was driving. Albert was in the front seat, squeezed in beside a large polystyrene cooler. The cooler had the logo of the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was full of beer.
    “You know, we should have hung out more, back in the old days,” Howard said to Albert.
    “You didn’t know I existed, back in the old days,” Albert said.
    “What? Come on, man. There’s, like, a dozen brothers in the whole school and I didn’t notice one?”
    “We’re the same shade, Howard. That doesn’t make us friends,” Albert said coolly.
    Howard laughed. “Yeah, you were always a grind. Reading too much. Thinking too much. Not having much fun. Good little family boy, make your momma proud. Now look at you: you’re a big man in the FAYZ.”
    Albert ignored that. He wasn’t interested in reminiscing. Not with Howard, for sure, not really with anyone. The old world was dead and gone. Albert was all about the future.
    As if reading his mind, Howard said, “You’re always planning, aren’t you? You know it’s true. You are all business.”
    “I’m just like everyone else: trying to figure out how to make it,” Albert said.
    Howard didn’t respond directly. “The way I see it? It’s Sam, top dog. No question. Astrid and Edilio? They’re only something because they’re in Sam’s crew. But you, man, you are your own thing.”
    “What thing is that?” Albert asked, keeping his tone neutral.
    “You got two dozen kids working under you, man. You’re in charge of the food. Between you and me? I know you have a food stash somewhere.”
    Albert did not so much as blink. “If I have a secret food stash, why am I so hungry?”
    Howard laughed. “Because you are a smart little uptight dude, that’s why. I’m smart, too. In my own way.”
    Albert said nothing. He knew where the conversation was going. He wasn’t going to help Howard lay it out.
    “Both of us are smart. Both of us are brothers in a very white town. You with the food. Me with Orc.” He jerked a thumb back toward the monster. “Time may come you need some muscle to go along with all that planning and ambition of yours.”
    Albert turned to face Howard, wanting to send the signal clearly, unambiguously. “Howard?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I am loyal to Sam.”
    Howard threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, I’m just messing with you. We are all of us loyal to Sam. Sam, Sam the laser-shooting surfer man.”
    They had reached the deadly cabbage field. Howard pulled over and turned off the engine.
    “Beer me,” Orc