Hunger

discovered this ability the day of the FAYZ, when her grandfather had disappeared. They’d been driving in his pickup truck at the time, and the sudden disappearance of the driver had sent the truck rolling down a very long embankment.
    Lana’s injuries should have killed her. Almost did kill her. Then she discovered a power that might have lain hidden within her forever, but for her terrible need.
    She had healed herself. She’d healed Sam when he was shot; and Cookie, whose shoulder had been split open; and many wounded children after the terrible Thanksgiving Battle.
    The kids called her the Healer. She was second only to Sam Temple as a hero in the FAYZ. Everyone looked up to her. Everyone respected her. Some of them, especially the ones whose lives she’d saved, treated her with something like awe. Lana had no doubt that Cookie, for one, would give his life for her. He had been in a living hell until she’d saved him.
    But hero worship didn’t stop kids from pestering her at all hours, day and night, over every little pain or problem: loose teeth, sunburn, skinned knees, stubbed toes.
    So she had moved away from town and now lived in a room in the Clifftop Resort.
    The hotel hugged the FAYZ wall, the blank, impenetrable barrier that defined this new world.
    “Calm down, Patrick,” she said as the dog head-butted her in his eagerness for breakfast. Lana pried the lid off the ALPO can and, blocking Patrick, spooned half of it into a dish on the floor.
    “There. Jeez, you’d swear I never feed you.”
    As she said it she wondered how long she would be able to go on feeding Patrick. There were kids eating dog food now. And there were skin-and-bones dogs in the streets, picking through trash next to kids who were picking through trash to find scraps they’d thrown out weeks earlier.
    Lana was alone at Clifftop. Hundreds of rooms, an algae-choked pool, a tennis court truncated by the barrier. She had a balcony that afforded a sweeping view of the beach belowand the too-placid ocean.
    Sam, Edilio, Astrid, and Dahra Baidoo—who acted as pharmacist and nurse—knew where she was and could find her if they really needed her. But most kids didn’t, so she had a degree of control over her life.
    She looked longingly at the dog food. Wondering, not for the first time, what it tasted like. Probably better than the burned potato peels with barbecue sauce she’d eaten.
    Once, the hotel had been full of food. But on Sam’s orders Albert and his crew had collected it all, centralized it all at Ralph’s. Where Drake had managed to steal a good portion of the dwindling remainder.
    Now there was no food in the hotel. Not even in any of the mini-bars in the rooms, which once had been stocked with delicious candy bars, and chips and nuts. Now all that was left was alcohol. Albert’s people had left the booze, not knowing quite what to do with it.
    Lana had stayed away from the little brown and white bottles. So far.
    Alcohol was how she had managed to get herself exiled from her home in Las Vegas. She’d snuck a bottle of vodka from her parents’ house, supposedly for an older boy she knew.
    That was the cleaned-up story she’d managed to sell to her parents, anyway. They had still packed her off for some time to “think about what you’ve done” at her grandfather’s isolated ranch.
    Now, in the world of the FAYZ, Lana was a sort of saint. But she knew better.
    Patrick had finished his food as coffee brewed in the room. Lana poured herself a cup and dumped in a Nutrasweet and some powdered cream, rare luxuries that she’d found by searching the maids’ carts.
    She stepped out onto the balcony and took a sip.
    She had the stereo on, the CD player that had been in the room. Someone, some previous inhabitant of the room, she supposed, had left an ancient Paul Simon CD in there, and she’d found herself playing it.
    There was a song about darkness. A welcoming of darkness. Almost an invitation. She had played it over and over again.
    Sometimes music helped her to forget. Not this song.
    Out of the corner of her eye she spotted someone down on the beach. She went back inside and retrieved a pair of binoculars she’d liberated from some long-gone tourist’s luggage.
    Two little kids, they couldn’t be more than six years old, playing on the rock pier that extended into the ocean. Fortunately there was no surf. But the rocks were like jumbled razor blades in places, sharp and slick. She ought to…
    Later.