Hunger (Gone 2)

Sam threw up his hands. “Maybe they heard about Caine, somehow. Maybe they’re on the way there.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. Albert wouldn’t be with them. Also, someone smacked Astrid.”

Sam’s face froze. “What?”

“She’s fine, but there was some kind of problem over at her house.”

“Zil,” Sam said through gritted teeth. He kicked savagely at a chair. Then, “Go, Breeze. Do what I told you to do.”

“But—”

“I don’t have time to argue, Breeze.”

“Guys? Guys?” Quinn reached across to shake Albert’s shoulder. He had fallen asleep.

“What? I’m awake. What?”

“Dude, we are lost.”

“We’re not lost,” Lana said from the backseat.

Quinn glanced in the rearview mirror. “I thought you were asleep, too.”

“We’re not lost,” Lana said.

“Well, all due respect, we’re not exactly not lost, either. This isn’t even a dirt road anymore, it’s just, like, you know, flat. And not even all that flat.” They had left the highway and turned onto a side road. From there onto a dirt road. And that had gone on and on forever, without so much as a twinkle of light anywhere. Then the dirt road had become more and more dirt and less and less road.

“If the Healer says we’re not lost, we’re not lost,” C

ookie grumbled.

“It’s not far,” Lana said.

“How do you know? I couldn’t find my way back here in the middle of the day. Let alone at night.”

She didn’t answer.

Quinn glanced down at the road, then back into the rearview mirror. The only light came from the dashboard, so he could see only the faintest outline of her face. She was looking out of the window, not the direction they were traveling but northeast.

He couldn’t read her expression. But he got a feeling off her. It was in the occasional sigh. In the absent way she stroked Patrick’s ruff. The distant tone of her voice when she spoke.

“You okay?” Quinn asked.

She didn’t answer. Not for a while. Too long. Then, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Lana said nothing.

Albert, by contrast, was easy to read. Albert—when he managed to stay awake—was all about the goal. He focused his gaze straight ahead. Sometimes Quinn noticed him nodding to himself, as if he was commenting on some internal dialogue.

Quinn was envious of Albert. He seemed to be so sure of himself. He seemed to know just where he wanted to go, who he wanted to be.

For his part, Cookie had his own goal: to serve Lana. The big ex-bully would do anything Lana told him to do.

There were two kinds of kids in the FAYZ, Quinn reflected, and the types were not “freak” and “normal.” They were kids who had been changed for the worse, and the kids who had been changed for the better. The FAYZ had changed them all. But some kids had become more than they were. Albert was one of those. Cookie, in a very different way, was another.

Quinn knew himself to be the first type. He was one of the kids who had never recovered from the FAYZ. The loss of his parents was like a wound that had never healed. Never stopped hurting. How could it?