Hunter had slunk across the highway and it was like it was a border or something. Like he was crossing from one country into another. Perdido Beach on one side, something else on the other.
He thought at first about going to Coates. But Coates wasn’t the answer to any question that Hunter could think of. Coates meant Drake and Caine and that deceptive witch, Diana. Mostly, Drake. Hunter had seen Drake at the Thanksgiving Battle. Back at the time Hunter had not even known he was developing powers. He was a bystander, mostly getting in the way of the guys who were doing the real fighting. Standing there watching in sheer, wild-eyed terror as Sam fired massive jolts of energy from his hands and Caine picked up things and people and threw them around.
And the coyotes. They were part of it, too.
But it was Drake who had haunted Hunter’s nightmares. Whip Hand, he called himself, and that was accurate enough. But it wasn’t the whip hand that terrified Hunter. It was the sheer, insane violence in the boy. The madness.
No. Not Coates. He couldn’t go there.
He couldn’t go anywhere.
Hunter had spent the remainder of the night hiding in one of the abandoned homes that nestled up against the hills.
But he had not slept well. The fear and the hunger made sleep impossible.
Well, Hunter told himself, if he was still this desperate in two days, he had a solution. Not a good solution, maybe, but a solution. In two days Hunter would turn fifteen. Fifteen was the poof, the big step-off. Later to the FAYZ.
He had heard all about how to survive. How to stay in the FAYZ, fight the temptation. But he’d also heard that lately more and more kids were saying, forget it: I hit fifteen, I am out of here.
They said at the moment of the poof you were tempted with the one thing you wanted most. By the one person you missed most. If you could reject that temptation, you stayed in the FAYZ. If you gave in…well, that was the thing. No one knew what happened if you went for it.
Hunter knew what would tempt him to accept. A cheeseburger. Or a slice of pizza. Not candy, it wasn’t about candy. Not anymore. It was all about meaty goodness now.
If some demon came to him with a rack of Applebee’s ribs, Hunter had no serious doubt that he would reach for it, whatever the consequence.
He would trade his life for an In-N-Out Double-Double. The only hesitation in his mind was whether the demon would actually let him eat it or would just zap him into nonexistence, still hungry.
Hunter hid in the house all night and well into the morning, afraid to step outside. But no matter how hard he searched, he found nothing to eat. Nothing. The house had been cleaned out completely. The cupboards were all open, the refrigerator door wide open, all the telltale signs that Albert’s gatherers had been through.
Nothing. To. Eat.
Hunter stood vacant, hopeless, in the living room. He stared at the backyard and thought about the grass and weeds. Weeds were plants, after all. Animals ate them. They would at least fill his stomach.
Grass and weeds. Boiled. He could do that.
Then he saw the deer.
It was a doe. Hyper alert, with a face that managed to be both cute and stupid. The doe blinked her big black eyes.
A deer. As big as a calf.
Hunter was moving toward the back door before he’d thought through what he was doing or why.
He moved swiftly. He opened the back porch door. The deer, startled, took off in a bounding run. Hunter raised his hands and thought, Burn.
The deer did not fall over dead. Instead, it made a squealing sound Hunter had not known deer could make. The deer kept running, but one leg dragged.
Hunter aimed again and thought, Burn.
The deer stumbled. Its front legs kept motoring, but its hind legs were immobilized. It fell on its face.
Hunter ran to it. He found the deer still alive. Struggling. She looked at him with her big, soft eyes and for a moment he hesitated.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He aimed his hands at her head. In seconds she had stopped thrashing. The dark eyes turned opaque.
She smelled like a steak on the grill.