Hunger

take E.Z. home, man, he’s got two little brothers. They don’t need to be seeing this. We’ll bury him here.
    “If these things spread…,” Edilio began.
    “If they spread to the other fields, we all starve,” Albert said.
    Sam fought a powerful urge to throw up. E.Z. was mostlybones now, picked not quite clean. Sam had seen terrible things since the FAYZ began, but nothing this gruesome.
    He wiped his hands on his jeans, wanting to hit back, wishing it made sense to blast the field, burn as much of it as he could reach, keep burning it until the worms shriveled and crisped.
    But that was food out there.
    Sam knelt beside the mess in the dirt. “You were a good kid, E.Z. Sorry. I…sorry.” There was music, tinny, but recognizable, still coming from E.Z.’s iPod.
    Sam lifted the shiny thing and tapped the pause icon.
    Then he stood up and kicked the dead worm out of the way. He held his hands out as though he were a minister about to bless the body.
    Albert and Edilio knew better. They both backed away.
    Brilliant light shot from Sam’s palms.
    The body burned, crisped, turned black. Bones made loud snapping noises as they cracked from the heat. After a while Sam stopped. What was left behind was ash, a heap of gray and black ashes that could have been the residue of a backyard barbecue.
    “There was nothing you could have done, Sam,” Edilio said, knowing that look on his friend’s face, knowing that gray, haggard look of guilt. “It’s the FAYZ, man. It’s just the FAYZ.”

TWO
    106 HOURS , 16 MINUTES
    THE ROOF WAS on crooked. The blistering bright sun stabbed a ray straight down into Caine’s eye through the gap between crumbled wall and sagging roof.
    Caine lay on his back, sweating into a pillow that had no case. A dank sheet wrapped around his bare legs, twisted to cover half his naked torso. He was awake again, or at least he thought he was, believed he was.
    Hoped he was.
    It wasn’t his bed. It belonged to an old man named Mose, the groundskeeper for Coates Academy.
    Of course Mose was gone. Gone with all the other adults. And all the older kids. Everyone… almost everyone…over the age of fourteen. Gone.
    Gone where?
    No one knew.
    Just gone. Beyond the barrier. Out of the giant fishbowl called the FAYZ. Maybe dead. Maybe not. But definitely gone.
    Diana opened the door with a kick. She was carrying a tray and balanced on the tray was a bottle of water and a can of Goya brand garbanzo beans.
    “Are you decent?” Diana asked.
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t understand the question.
    “Are you covered?” she asked, putting some irritation into her tone. She set the tray on the side table.
    Caine didn’t bother to answer. He sat up. His head swam as he did. He reached for the water.
    “Why is the roof messed up like that? What if it rains?” He was surprised by the sound of his own voice. He was hoarse. His voice had none of its usual persuasive smoothness.
    Diana was pitiless. “What are you, stupid now as well as crazy?”
    A phantom memory passed through him, leaving him feeling uneasy. “Did I do something?”
    “You lifted the roof up.”
    He turned his hands around to look at his palms. “Did I?”
    “Another nightmare,” Diana said.
    Caine twisted open the bottle and drank. “I remember now. I thought it was crushing me. I thought something was going to step on the house and crush it, squash me under it. So I pushed back.”
    “Uh-huh. Eat some beans.”
    “I don’t like beans.”
    “No one likes beans,” Diana said. “But this isn’t your neighborhood Applebee’s. And I’m not your waitress. Beans are what we have. So eat some beans. You need food.”
    Caine frowned. “How long have I been like this?”
    “Like what?” Diana mocked him. “Like a mental patient who can’t tell if he’s in reality or in a dream?”
    He nodded. The smell of the beans was sickening. But he was suddenly hungry. And he remembered now: food was in short supply. Memory was coming back. The mad delusion was fading. He couldn’t quite reach normal, but he could see it.
    “Three months, give or take a week,” Diana said. “We had the big shoot-out in Perdido Beach. You wandered off into the desert with Pack Leader and were gone for three days. When you came back you were pale, dehydrated, and…well, like you are.”
    “Pack Leader.” The words, the creature they represented, made Caine wince. Pack Leader, the dominant coyote, the one who had somehow attained a limited