Hunger (Gone 2)

He sat down too suddenly and giggled a little at it.

Lana lay her hand against the gruesome hole.

“Don’t want no more rock,” Orc repeated.

The bleeding stopped almost immediately.

“Does it hurt?” Lana asked. “I mean the rock. I know the hole hurts.”

“No. It don’t hurt.” Orc slammed his fist against his opposite arm, hard enough that any human arm would have been shattered. “I barely feel it. Even Drake’s whip, when we was fighting, I barely felt it.”

Suddenly he was weeping. Tears rolled from human eyes onto cheeks of flesh and pebbles.

“I don’t feel nothing except…” He pointed a thick stone finger at the flesh of his face.

“Yeah,” Lana said. Her irritation was gone. Her burden was smaller, maybe, than Orc’s.

Lana pulled her hand away to see the progress. The hole was smaller. Still crusted with blood, but no longer actively bleeding.

She put her hand back in place. “Just a couple minutes more, Orc.”

“My name’s Charles,” Orc said.

“Is it?”

“It is,” Howard confirmed.

“What were you guys doing going into the worm field?” Lana asked.

Howard shot a resentful look at Albert, who answered, “Orc was picking cabbage.”

“My name’s Charles Merriman,” Orc repeated. “People should call me by my real name sometimes.”

Lana’s gaze met Howard’s.

Now, Lana thought, now he wants his old name back. The bully who reveled in a monster’s name was now a monster in fact, and wanted to be called Charles.

“You’re all better,” Lana announced.

“Is it still skin?” Orc asked.

“It is,” Lana reassured him. “It’s still human.”

Lana took Albert’s arm and drew him away. “What are you doing sending him into the worm field like that?”

Albert’s face went blank. He was surprised at being reproached. For a moment Lana thought he would tell her to take a jump. But that moment passed, and Albert slumped a little, as if the air had gone out of him.

“I’m trying to help,” Albert said.

“By paying him with beer?”

“I paid him what he wanted, and Sam was okay with it. You were at the meeting,” Albert said. “Look, how else do you think you get someone like Orc to spend hours in the hot sun working? Astrid

seems to think people will work just because we ask them to. Maybe some will. But Orc?”

Lana could see his point. “Okay. I shouldn’t have jumped all over you.”

“It’s okay. I’m getting used to it,” Albert said. “Suddenly I’m the bad guy. But you know what? I didn’t make people the way they are. If kids are going to work, they’re going to want something back.”