Hunger

hours Orc picked cabbages. And drank beer. Howard played some game on a handheld. Albert thought.
    Howard was right about that: Albert had thought a lot since the day he walked into the abandoned McDonald’s and began grilling hamburgers. He had a lot of standing in the community because of that. And the Thanksgiving feast he’d organized, and pulled off without a hitch, had made him a minor hero. He wasn’t Sam, of course; there was only one Sam. He wasn’t even Edilio or Brianna or anything like the big heroes of that terrible battle between Caine’s people and the Perdido Beach kids.
    But at that moment Albert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about toilet paper and batteries.
    Then Orc screamed.
    Howard sat up. He jumped from the car.
    Albert froze.
    Orc was shrieking, slapping at his face, at the still-human part of his face.
    Howard ran toward him.
    “Howard, no!” Albert yelled.
    “They got him, they got him,” Howard cried, anguished.
    Orc was struggling, staggering, then running toward the truck, his great stone feet pounding six-inch-deep impressions into the dirt.
    One of the worms was on his face.
    In his face.
    He tripped at the edge of the field and fell hard onto neutral territory.
    “Help me. Howard, man, help me!” Orc cried.
    Albert broke his trance and ran. Up close he could see theworm, just one, but its black snake’s head was buried in pink flesh, boring through Orc’s cheek.
    Up close Albert could see the blur of the tiny paddle feet driving the worm into strained flesh.
    Orc had the tail of the thing in his fist and was pulling hard. But the worm wasn’t letting go. Orc was pulling so hard, it seemed he might pull the last of his living flesh away from the rock skin surrounding it.
    Howard grabbed on, too, and he was pulling. Weeping and cursing and pulling, despite the danger to himself if the worm should release its grip on Orc and turn against Howard.
    “Bite it!” Albert shouted.
    “My tongue!” Orc wailed, his speech garbled as the worm slid another inch through his cheek.
    “Bite it, Orc,” Albert yelled. Then he knelt, and with all his might delivered an uppercut under Orc’s chin.
    It was like punching a brick wall.
    Albert yelled and fell back on his behind in the dirt. He was sure his hand was broken.
    Orc had stopped screaming. He opened his mouth and spit out the worm’s head, along with a gob of blood and saliva.
    The rest of the worm came free. Orc smashed it onto the ground.
    There was a one-inch hole in Orc’s face.
    Blood spread down his neck and disappeared like rain on parched soil as it hit the rock flesh.
    “You hit me,” Orc said dully, staring at Albert.
    “Brother saved your life, Orc,” Howard said. “The brother just saved your life.”
    “I think I broke my hand,” Albert said.
    “Beer me,” Orc said.
    Howard raced to comply.
    Orc tilted his head back and squeezed the can until the tab burst. Yellow liquid shot from the can and gushed into his mouth.
    At least half of it ran, foaming pink, from the bloody hole in his cheek.

TEN
    81 HOURS , 17 MINUTES
    “ SHE WAS IN my dreams, in my head. I saw her,” Drake said.
    “You’ve lost what little mind you had left,” Diana said.
    They were in the dining hall. No one was dining. Meals at Coates amounted to a few cans put out for kids to fight over. There were kids who had eaten boiled grass to ease the hunger pangs.
    In the echoing, abandoned, damaged dining hall it was Caine, Drake, Bug, Diana, and the girl who said her name was Orsay.
    The girl was maybe twelve, Diana figured.
    Diana had noticed a look in the girl’s eyes. Fear, of course, she’d been hauled in by Drake once Bug got back from the power plant. But that wasn’t all of it: the girl, Orsay, looked at Diana like she recognized her.
    It was not a good look. Her expression made the hairs on the back of Diana’s neck tingle.
    “I never saw her before in my life, but I saw her in this dream I was having.” Drake glared hatred at the girl. “Then I woke up and found her skulking around, hiding.”
    It was an unusual feeling for Diana, being in a room with Drake where she was not the main object of his hatred.
    Caine said, “Okay, Drake, we get it. Back before all this started I’d have said you were nuts. Now?” He waved a languid hand at Diana. “Diana, read her. Let’s see.”
    Diana went and stood beside the girl, who looked up at her with frightened, protruding eyes.
    “Don’t be scared. Of