Hunger

yelled.
    Albert dug in the cooler, hand plunged into ice water. He handed the can to Howard. “Last one till he does some work.”
    Howard handed it back to Orc.
    Orc yelled, “Open it, moron, you know I can’t pop the tab.”
    Howard took the beer back and popped the tab. It made a sound just like a soda, but the smell was sour. “Sorry, Orc,” Howard said.
    Orc took the beer in a fist the size of a bowling ball and drained it down his throat.
    Orc’s fingers were too big to handle anything delicate. Eachfinger was the size of a kosher salami. Each joint was made of what looked, and felt, a lot like wet gravel. Gray stones that fitted loosely together
    His entire body, except for a last few square inches of his sullen mouth and the left side of his face, and a little bit of his cheek and neck, were covered—or made of—the same slimy gray gravel. He had always been a big kid, but now he was a foot taller and several feet wider.
    The tiny human portion of him seemed like the creepier part. Like someone had cut the flesh off a living person and glued it onto a stone statue.
    “Another,” Orc growled.
    “No,” Albert answered firmly. “First we see if you can really do this.”
    Orc rolled himself over the side of the truck and stood up. Albert felt the entire truck rock back and forth. Orc came around to the door and stuck his hideous face in the window, forcing Albert to shrink back and to clutch the cooler.
    “I can take the beer,” Orc said. “You can’t stop me.”
    “Yes, you can take it,” Albert agreed. “But you made a promise to Sam.”
    Orc digested that. He was slow and stupid, but not so stupid he didn’t understand the implied threat. Orc did not want to tangle with Sam.
    “All right. I’ll see about them worms.” Orc belched and lurched toward the field. He was wearing what he usually wore, a pair of very rough-sewn canvas shorts. Albert assumed Howard had made them for his friend. There wasno such thing as pants or shirts in Orc’s size.
    Howard held his breath as Orc stomped into the field. So, for that matter, did Albert. Every hideous detail of the memory of E.Z.’s death was permanently imprinted on Albert’s brain.
    The attack was immediate.
    The worms seethed from the dirt, slithered with impossible speed toward Orc’s stone feet and threw themselves against his unnatural flesh.
    Orc stopped. He gaped down at the creatures.
    He turned with creaky slowness back toward Albert and Howard and said, “Kinda tickles.”
    “Pick a cabbage,” Howard called out encouragingly.
    Orc bent down and dug his stone fingers into the dirt and scooped up a cabbage. He looked at it for a minute, then tossed it toward the truck.
    Albert opened the door of the truck and bent cautiously down toward the cabbage. He refused to step down. Not yet. Not until they were sure.
    “Howard, I need a stick or something,” Albert said.
    “What for?”
    “I want to poke that cabbage, make sure there’s no worm in it.”
    In the field the worms continued their assault on the creature whose rock flesh broke their teeth. Orc scooped up three more cabbages. Then he came stomping back.
    The worms did not follow. At the edge of the field they slithered off Orc and retreated into the ground.
    “Beer me,” Orc demanded.
    Albert did.
    He wondered how Sam was doing with lining up kids to work in the field. “Not very well, I’d guess,” he muttered to himself.
    The answer to the problem of food was so simple, really: farms needed farmers. Then the farmers needed motivation. They needed to get paid. Like anyone. People didn’t do things just because it was right: people did things for money, for profit. But Sam and Astrid were too foolish to see it.
    No, not foolish, Albert told himself. Sam was the main reason they weren’t all under Caine’s control. Sam was great. And Astrid was probably the smartest person in the FAYZ.
    But Albert was smart, too, about some things. And he had gone to the trouble of educating himself, sitting in the dusty, dark town library reading books that made his eyelids droop.
    “My boy’s going to need another beer pretty soon,” Howard said, yawning behind his hand.
    “Your boy gets a beer for every one hundred cabbages he picks,” Albert said.
    Howard gave him a dirty look. “Man, you act like you paid for those cans with your own money.”
    “Nope,” Albert said. “They are community property. For now. But the rate is still one per hundred.”
    For the next two