HUN
GER
A G O N E N o v e l
MICHAEL GRANT
For Katherine, Jake, and Julia
Contents
Maps ix
One
SAM TEMPLE WAS on his board. And there
were
waves.
1
Two
THE ROOF WAS on crooked. The blistering bright
sun
stabbed…
12
Three
LANA ARWEN LAZAR was on her fourth home
since
coming…
27
Four
COATES ACADEMY WAS quite a bit the worse
for
wear.
39
Five
“BULLETS ARE FAST. That’s why they work,”
Computer Jack said…
54
Six
“LOOK, ALBERT, DON’T tell me we have a
problem
and…
69
Seven
“PULL OVER HERE, Panda,” Drake said.
80
Eight
ORSAY PETTIJOHN STOOD transfixed. Two kids,
the first human beings…
91
Nine
IT WAS MORNING. The buses were in the square.
Edilio…
104
Ten
“SHE WAS IN my dreams, in my head. I saw…
122
Eleven
“MOTHER MARY WANTS to draft two more kids,”
Astrid
told…
138
Twelve
THE ARGUMENT WITH Astrid about Albert’s club
had not been…
153
Thirteen
SAM KNOCKED AT the front door. He didn’t
usually
do…
167
Fourteen
“SHE’S BEEN LIKE this ever since.” Bug—the visible
Bug—waved
his…
181
Fifteen
SAM TOOK THE list from Astrid. He scanned the first…
192
Sixteen
SHE DIDN’T WANT to cut off her hair. She liked…
202
Seventeen
DIANA FOLLOWED JACK from the McClub. It was
a
relief…
220
Eighteen
PATRICK FIGURED IT was all a party. His master was…
235
Nineteen
THEY DROVE THE SUV through the hole in the fence,…
251
Twenty
BRIANNA HAD NOT found Sam on the road to the…
265
Twenty-One
JACK STRAINED AGAINST the door.
278
Twenty-Two
JACK WOKE TO pain.
285
Twenty-Three
“THEY’LL HAVE SOMEONE on the gate,” Sam said
“It’s
just…
302
Twenty-Four
SAM WISHED CAINE would come out after him.
That
would…
314
Twenty-Five
home.
Hunter’s…
324
Twenty-Six
“WHAT IS IT you want, Caine?” Sam’s voice,
calling
from…
336
Twenty-Seven
BRIANNA WOKE.
348
Twenty-Eight
THE PICKUP TRUCK’S battery was dead. It had
been
sitting…
363
Twenty-Nine
“WE CAN WAIT him out,” Edilio said to Sam. “Just…
373
Thirty
CAINE HAD FALLEN asleep, exhausted, on the
plant manager’s couch.
384
Thirty-One
COME TO ME. I have need of you.
399
Thirty-Two
BUG WAS LEERY now. Sam’s people knew about
him.
They…
411
Thirty-Three
HUNTER WAS HUNGRIER than he would have
thought possible. He’d…
428
Thirty-Four
EDILIO DROVE THE creepy little mutant, Bug, and
the
girl…
436
Thirty-Five
TWENTY-ONE HOURS WITH no food. Not a bite.
448
Thirty-Six
DRAKE CREPT TO the hole in the exterior wall. The…
464
Thirty-Seven
THE JEEP BLEW through the gate. Edilio drove
straight
to…
479
Thirty-Eight
EDILIO’S HANDS WERE gripping the wheel so
tightly, his fingers…
498
Thirty-Nine
DUCK ZHANG WAS having a fine time if you set…
508
Forty
THE SUN WAS sinking into the sea. Shadows
were
lengthening…
520
Forty-One
DUCK WAS SO high up, he could see smoke rising…
535
Forty-Two
DRAKE WAS FIRST up the trail. He was limping, one…
545
Forty-Three
DRAKE’S WHIP HAND spun Diana like a top.
552
Forty-Four
THE MINE SHAFT was collapsed.
564
Forty-Five
KIND OF LIKE the first time, Duck thought.
575
Forty-Six
CAINE STOOD IN darkness.
577
Forty-Seven
IT WAS LATE the next day before Edilio could bring…
582
Three Days Later
584
About the Author
Praise
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Maps
T H E
FAY Z
GE
TROTTER’S RID
a
old cannery
a
r
Alameda
m
p
l
A — hardware and day care
B — burned apartment building
C — church
D — town hall
E — Quinn’s square
F — Astrid’s house
G — Sam’s house
H — McDonald’s
I — Bully Row
J — firehouse
K — school
P E R D I D O
B E AC H CALIFORNIA
r
g
s
FAYZ wall
v
h
b
Avenue
b
f
c
b
ONE
106 HOURS, 29 MINUTES
S A M T E M P L E W A S on his board. And there were waves.
Honest-to-God swooping, crashing, churning, salt-smelling,
white-foam waves.
And there he was about two hundred feet out, the perfect
place to catch a wave, lying facedown, hands and feet in the
water, almost numb from cold, while at the same time his
wet-suit-encased, sunbaked back was steaming.
&n
bsp; Quinn was there, too, lolling beside him, waiting for a
good ride, waiting for the wave that would pick them up and
hurl them toward the beach.
Sam woke suddenly, choking on dust.
He blinked and looked around at the dry landscape.
Instinctively he glanced toward the southwest, toward the
ocean. Couldn’t see it from here. And there hadn’t been a
wave in a long time.
Sam believed he’d sell his soul to ride just one more real
wave.
He backhanded the sweat from his brow. The sun was like
2 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
a blowtorch, way too hot for this early in the day. He’d had
too little sleep. Too much stuff to deal with. Stuff. Always
stuff.
The heat, the sound of the engine, and the rhythmic jerking of the Jeep as it labored down the dusty road conspired to force his eyelids closed again. He squeezed them shut, hard,
then opened them wide, willing himself to stay awake.
The dream stayed with him. The memory taunted him. He
could stand it all so much better, he told himself, the constant
fear, the even more constant load of trivia and responsibility, if there were still waves. But there had been no waves for three months. No waves at all, nothing but ripples.
Three months after the coming of the FAYZ, Sam had still
not learned to drive a car. Learning to drive would have been
one more thing, one more hassle, one more pain in the butt.
So Edilio Escobar drove the Jeep, and Sam rode shotgun. In
the backseat Albert Hillsborough sat stiff and quiet. Beside
him was a kid named E.Z., singing along to his iPod.
Sam pushed his fingers through his hair, which was way
too long. He hadn’t had a haircut in more than three months.
His hand came back dirty, clotted with dust. Fortunately the
electricity was still on in Perdido Beach, which meant light,
and perhaps better still, hot water. If he couldn’t go for a cold
surf, he could at least look forward to a long, hot shower after
they all got back.
A shower. Maybe a few minutes with Astrid, just the two
of them. A meal. Well, not a meal, no. A can of something
slimy was not a meal. His hurried breakfast had been a can
of collard greens.
H U N G E R 3
It was amazing what you could gag down when you got
hungry enough. And Sam, like everyone else in the FAYZ,
was hungry.
He closed his eyes, not sleepy now, just wanting to see
Astrid’s face clearly.
It was the one compensation. He’d lost his mother, his
favorite pastime, his privacy, his freedom, and the entire
world he’d known . . . but he’d gained Astrid.
Before the FAYZ he’d always thought of her as unapproachable. Now, as a couple, they seemed inevitable. But he wondered whether he’d have ever done more than gaze wistfully from afar if the FAYZ hadn’t happened.
Edilio applied a little brake. The road ahead was torn up.
Someone had gouged the dirt road, drawn rough angled lines
across it.
Edilio pointed to a tractor set up to pull a plow. The tractor
was overturned in the middle of a field. On the day the FAYZ
came the farmer had disappeared, along with the rest of the
adults, but the tractor had kept right on going, tearing up the
road, running straight into the next field, stopping only when
an irrigation ditch had tipped it over.
Edilio took the Jeep over the furrows at a crawl, then
picked up speed again.
There wasn’t much to the left or right of the road, just bare
dirt, fallow fields, and patches of colorless grass broken up by
the occasional lonely stand of trees. But up ahead was green,
lots of it.
Sam turned in his seat to get Albert’s attention. “So what is
that up there, again?”
4 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
“Cabbage,” Albert said. Albert was an eighth grader,
narrow-shouldered, self-contained; dressed in pressed khaki
pants, a pale blue polo shirt, and brown loafers—what a much
older person would call “business casual.” He was a kid no
one had paid much attention to before, just one of a handful
of African-American students at the Perdido Beach School.
But no one ignored Albert anymore: he had reopened and
run the town’s McDonald’s. At least he had until the burgers
and the fries and the chicken nuggets ran out.
Even the ketchup. That was gone now, too.
The mere memory of hamburgers made Sam’s stomach
growl. “Cabbage?” he repeated.
Albert nodded toward Edilio. “That’s what Edilio says.
He’s the one who found it yesterday.”
“Cabbage?” Sam asked Edilio.
“It makes you fart,” Edilio said with a wink. “But we can’t
be too choosy.”
“I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if we had coleslaw,” Sam said.
“Tell you the truth, I could happily eat a cabbage right now.”
“You know what I had for breakfast?” Edilio asked. “A can
of succotash.”
“What exactly is succotash?” Sam asked.
“Lima beans and corn. Mixed together.” Edilio braked at
the edge of the field. “Not exactly fried eggs and sausage.”
“Is that the official Honduran breakfast?” Sam asked.
Edilio snorted. “Man, the official Honduran breakfast
when you’re poor is a corn tortilla, some leftover beans, and
on a good day a banana. On a bad day it’s just the tortilla.” He
H U N G E R 5
killed the engine and set the emergency brake. “This isn’t my
first time being hungry.”
Sam stood up in the Jeep and stretched before jumping
to the ground. He was a naturally athletic kid but in no way
physically intimidating. He had brown hair with glints of
gold, blue eyes, and a tan that reached all the way down to his
bones. Maybe he was a little taller than average, maybe in a
little better shape, but no one would pick him for a future in
the NFL.
Sam Temple was one of the two oldest people in the FAYZ.
He was fifteen.
“Hey. That looks like lettuce,” E.Z. said, wrapping his ear-
buds carefully around his iPod.
“If only,” Sam said gloomily. “So far we have avocados,
that’s fine, and cantaloupes, which is excellent news. But we
are finding way too much broccoli and artichokes. Lots of
artichokes. Now cabbage.”
“We may get the oranges back eventually,” Edilio said.
“The trees looked okay. It was just the fruit was ripe and
didn’t get picked, so they rotted.”
“Astrid says things are ripening at weird times,” Sam said.
“Not normal.”
“As Quinn likes to say, ‘We’re a long way from normal,’ ”
Edilio said.
“Who’s going to pick all these?” Sam wondered aloud. It
was what Astrid would have called a rhetorical question.
Albert started to say something, then stopped himself
when E.Z. said, “Hey, I’ll go grab one of these cabbages right
6 M I C H A E L
G R A N T
now. I’m starving.” He unwound the earbuds a
nd stuck them
back in.
The cabbages were a foot or so apart within their
rows, and each row was two feet from the next. The soil
in between was crumbled and dry. The cabbages looked
more like thick-leafed houseplants than like something you
might actually eat.
It didn’t look much different from a dozen other fields Sam
had seen during this farm tour.
No, Sam corrected himself, there is something different.
He couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but there was something different here. Sam frowned and tried to work through the feeling he was having, tried to decide why he felt something was . . . off.
It was quieter, maybe.
Sam took a swig from a water bottle. He heard Albert
counting under his breath, shading his eyes with his hand
and multiplying. “Totally just a ballpark guess, figuring each
cabbage weighs maybe a pound and a half, right? I’m thinking we have ourselves maybe thirty thousand pounds of cabbage.”
“I don’t even want to think about how many farts this all
translates to,” E.Z. yelled over his shoulder as he marched
purposefully into the field.
E.Z. was a sixth grader but seemed older. He was tall for
his age, a little chubby. Thin, dishwater-blond hair hung
down to his shoulders. He was wearing a Hard Rock Cafe
T-shirt from Cancún. E.Z. was a good name for him: he was
H U N G E R 7
easy to get along with, would banter easily, laugh easily, and
usually find whatever fun there was to be found. He stopped
about two dozen rows into the field and said, “This looks like
the cabbage for me.”
“How can you tell?” Edilio called back.
E.Z. pulled one earbud out and Edilio repeated the question.
“I’m tired of walking. This must be the right cabbage. How
do I pick it?”
Edilio shrugged. “Man, I think you may need a knife.”
“Nah.” E.Z. replaced the earbud, bent over, and yanked at
the plant. He got a handful of leaves for his effort.
“You see what I’m saying,” Edilio commented.
“Where are the birds?” Sam asked, finally figuring out
what was bothering him.
“What birds?” Edilio said. Then he nodded. “You’re right,
man, there’ve been seagulls all over the other fields. Especially in the morning.”
Perdido Beach had quite a population of seagulls. In the
old days they had lived off bits of bait left by fishermen and
food scraps dropped near trash cans. There were no more
food scraps in the FAYZ. Not anymore. So the enterprising
gulls had gone into the fields to compete with crows and
pigeons. One of the reasons so much of the food they’d found
was spoiled.
“They must not like cabbage,” Albert commented. He
sighed. “I don’t honestly know anyone who does.”
E.Z. squatted down before the cabbage, rubbed his hands
8 M I C H A E L