Hunger by Michael Grant Page B

plenty of alcoholin the FAYZ, even though some kids had started drinking it.
    Could he stop them? Should he bother? If they were going to starve to death, why not let them drink?
    Little kids, drinking rum. He’d seen it. Drinking vodka. They’d make faces at the horrible taste and the burn of it, then they’d take another sip.
    Food poisoning last week, two kids sharing something they had dug out of the garbage. They’d staggered into Dahra’s so-called hospital with fevers. A hundred and four degrees. Vomiting. Vomiting the water and the Tylenol she’d tried to get down them. Thank God for Lana, she’d saved them, but it was a close call. Lana’s power worked better on wounds, things that were broken.
    There would be more electrocutions. More fires. More poisonings. More accidents. Like the boy who had fallen off the roof. He’d fallen two stories, and no one had seen him fall. His sister had found the body.
    He was buried in the town square now, next to the victims of the battle.
    Caine was still out there. Drake. Pack Leader. All of them still out there, somewhere. Sam had fooled himself into believing he was done with them, until Drake and his crew hit Ralph’s.
    In the old days if you had just a little money you could make a phone call and, thirty minutes later, there would be Papa John’s bringing you a giant pizza.
    Melted, bubbly, brown cheese. Greasy pepperoni. Just like that. Just like it was no big deal. He would sell his soul for a pizza.
    Astrid was religious, so probably no, she was not lying in her bed thinking of him. Almost certainly not. Although when they kissed she didn’t seem like she was pulling away. She loved him, he knew that for sure. And he loved her. With all his heart.
    But there were other feelings, in addition to love. Kind of attached to the love feeling, but different, too.
    And Chinese. Oh, man, the little white cardboard boxes full of sweet-and-sour chicken and lemon chicken and Szechuan prawns. He’d never cared much for Chinese food. But it beat cans of butter beans and half-cooked pinto beans and what passed for tortillas made out of flour and oil and water and burned on a stove.
    Someone would probably come and wake him up, soon, only he wouldn’t be asleep. They came almost every night. Sam, something’s burning. Sam, someone’s hurt. Sam, a kid crashed a car. Sam, we caught Orc all drunk and breaking windows for no reason.
    It wouldn’t be Sam, the pizza’s here .
    It wouldn’t be Astrid saying Sam, I’m here .
    Sam drifted off to sleep. Astrid came in. She stood in the doorway, beautiful in her gauzy nightgown, and said, Sam, it’s okay, E.Z.’s alive.
    Even asleep, Sam knew that was a dream.
    An hour later Taylor simply appeared, teleported into his room—she called it “bouncing”—and said, “Sam, wake up.”
    No dream, this time. It was often Taylor who brought the bad news. She or Brianna, if either was available. They were the fastest means of communication.
    “What is it, Taylor?”
    “You know Tom? Tom O’Dell?”
    Sam didn’t think he did. His brain was not focusing. He couldn’t seem to quite wake up.
    “Anyway, there was a fight between Tom and the girls who live next door—Sandy and…and I forget the other girl. Tom got hurt pretty bad from Sandy hitting him with a bowling ball.”
    Sam swung his legs over the side of the bed, but could not keep his eyes open. “What? Why did she hit him with a bowling ball?”
    “She says Tom killed her cat,” Taylor said. “And then he was cooking it on the barbecue in his backyard.”
    That at last penetrated Sam’s bleary brain. “Okay. Okay.” He stood up and fumbled around for his jeans. He had gotten over the embarrassment of being seen in his underwear.
    Taylor handed him his pants. “Here.”
    “Bounce back. Tell them I’m coming.”
    Taylor disappeared, and for a moment Sam tried to tell himself that this was just another dream. There was nothing, after all, that he could do about a