Hunger (Gone 2)

And yet…

“No one’s leaving,” Caine said.

It was like being in a dream. Things that she should feel, she didn’t. It was like the way sometimes, in a dream—cause and effect went backward, or sideways, things not making sense.

“We have no food,” Diana said.

“Maybe I could go for some,” Bug said.

“Yeah, right. Like you’d come back here if you found any,” Drake sneered. “We’re not here to feed ourselves. We’re here to feed him.”

“Do you capitalize it when you say ‘him,’ Drake?” Diana’s sarcasm was savage. “Is he your god now?”

“He gave me this!” Drake said. Brittney heard a loud crack, the bullwhip sound of Drake’s arm.

With infinite caution, Brittney tested her body. No, she could not move her legs. She could only rotate one hip, and that only a little.

Her right arm was useless. Her left arm, though, worked.

I should be dead, Brittney thought. I should be with Tanner in Heaven.

I should be dead.

Maybe you are.

No. Not before Caine, Brittney thought.

She wondered if she had become a healer, like Lana. Everyone knew the story of how Lana had discovered her power. But Lana had been in terrible pain. And Brittney was not.

Still, she focused her thoughts, imagined her useless right arm healing. She concentrated all her mind on that.

“Trapped,” Diana said bitterly.

“Not for long. We bust out of here and bring him what he needs,” Drake said.

“Gaiaphage. That’s what Caine calls it when he’s ranting,” Diana said. “Shouldn’t you know your god’s name?”

Brittney did not feel any change in her arm.

A terrible suspicion came to her. There was an awful silence from within her own body. She listened. Strained to hear, to feel, the ever-present thump…thump…

Her heart. It was not beating.

“Gaiaphage?” Jack said, sounding interested. “A ‘phage’ is another word for a computer virus. A worm, actually.”

Her heart wasn’t beating.

She wasn’t alive.

No, that was wrong, she told herself. Dead things don’t hear. Dead things cannot move their one good hand, squeezing the fingers ever so slightly so no one would notice.

There could be only one explanation. Caine and Drake had killed her. But Jesus had not taken her up into Heaven to be reunited with her brother. Instead, He had granted her this power. To live, still, a while, though she was dead.

To live long enough to accomplish His will.

“A phage is code. Software that sort of eats other software,” Jack said in his pedantic way.

Brittney had no doubt what God had chosen her to do. Why He had kept her alive.