Hunger

sort of speech. Pack Leader, the faithful, fearful servant of…of it. Of it. Of the thing in the mine shaft.
    The Darkness, they called it.
    Caine swayed and before he rolled off the bed, Diana caught him, grabbed his shoulders, kept him up. But then she saw the warning sign in his eyes and muttered a curse and managed to get the wastebasket in front of him just as he vomited.
    He didn’t produce much. Just a little yellow liquid.
    “Lovely,” she said, and curled her lip. “On second thought, don’t eat any beans. I don’t want to see them come back up.”
    Caine rinsed his mouth with some of the water. “Why are we here? This is Mose’s cottage.”
    “Because you’re too dangerous. No one at Coates wantsyou around until you get a grip on yourself.”
    He blinked at another returning memory. “I hurt someone.”
    “You thought Chunk was some kind of monster. You were yelling a word. Gaiaphage. Then you smacked Chunk through a wall.”
    “Is he okay?”
    “Caine. In the movies a guy can get knocked through a wall and get up like it’s no big deal. This wasn’t a movie. The wall was brick. Chunk looked like roadkill. Like when a raccoon gets run over and over and over and keeps getting run over for a couple of days.”
    The harshness of her words was too much even for Diana herself. She gritted her teeth and said, “Sorry. It wasn’t pretty. I never liked Chunk, but it wasn’t something I can just forget, okay?”
    “I’ve been kind of out of my mind,” Caine said.
    Diana wiped angrily at a tear. “Answer the question: Can you give an example of understatement?”
    “I think I’m better now,” Caine said. “Not all the way better. Not all the way. But better.”
    “Well, happy day,” Diana said.
    For the first time in weeks Caine focused on her face. She was beautiful, Diana Ladris was, with enormous dark eyes and long brown hair and a mouth that defaulted to smirk.
    “You could have ended up like Chunk,” Caine said. “But you’ve been taking care of me, anyway.”
    She shrugged. “It’s a hard new world. I have a choice: stick by you, or take my chances with Drake.”
    “Drake.” The name conjured dark images. Dream or reality? “What’s Drake doing?”
    “Playing junior Caine. Supposedly representing you. Secretly hoping you’ll just die, if you ask me. He raided the grocery store and stole some food a few days ago. It’s made him almost popular. Kids don’t have a lot of judgment when they’re hungry.”
    “And my brother?”
    “Sam?”
    “I don’t have another long-lost brother, do I?”
    “Bug’s gone into town a couple of times to see what’s going on. He says people still have a little food but they’re getting worried about it. Especially since Drake’s raid. But Sam is totally in charge there.”
    “Hand me my pants,” Caine said.
    Diana did as he asked, then ostentatiously turned away as he pulled them on.
    “What defenses do they have up?” Caine asked.
    “They keep people all over the grocery store now, that’s the main thing. Now Ralph’s always has four guys with guns sitting on the roof.”
    Caine nodded. He bit at his thumbnail, an old habit. “How about freaks?”
    “They have Dekka and Brianna and Taylor. They have Jack. They may have some other useful freaks, Bug isn’t sure. They have Lana to heal people. And Bug thinks they have a kid who can fire some kind of heat wave.”
    “Like Sam?”
    “No. Sam’s like a blowtorch. This kid is like a microwave. You don’t see any flames or anything. It’s just that suddenly your head is cooking like a breakfast burrito in a Kitchen-Aid.”
    “People are still developing powers,” Caine said. “Any here?”
    Diana shrugged. “Who knows for sure? Who’s going to be crazy enough to tell Drake? Down in town a new mutant gets some respect. Up here? Maybe they get killed.”
    “Yeah,” Caine said. “That was a mistake. Coming down on the freaks, that was a mistake. We need them.”
    “Plus, in addition to some possible new moofs, Sam’s people still have machine guns. And they still have Sam,” Diana said. “So how about if we don’t do something stupid like try and fight them again?”
    “Moofs?”
    “Short for mutant. Mutant freaks. Moofs.” Diana shrugged. “Moofs, muties, freaks. We’re out of food, but we’ve got plenty of nicknames.”
    Caine’s shirt was laid over the back of a chair. He reached for it, wobbled, and seemed about to fall over. Diana steadied him. He