Hunger (Gone 2)

Sam’s face was mere feet from the first row of cabbages. The soil was alive. Worms. Worms as big as garter snakes were seething up from beneath the dirt. Dozens. Maybe hundreds. All heading toward E.Z., who screamed again and again in agony mixed with confusion.

Sam rose to his feet but went no closer to the edge

of the cabbage field. The worms did not move beyond the first row of turned soil. There might as well have been a wall, the worms all on one side.

E.Z. came staggering wildly toward Sam, walking as if he were being electrocuted, jerking, flailing like some crazy puppet with half its strings cut.

Three, four feet away, a long arm-stretch away, Sam saw the worm erupt from the skin of E.Z.’s throat.

And then another from his jaw, just in front of his ear. E.Z., no longer screaming, sagged to the ground, just sat there limp, cross-legged.

“Help me,” E.Z. whispered. “Sam…” E.Z.’s eyes were on Sam. Pleading. Fading. Then just staring, blank.

The only sounds now came from the worms. Their hundreds of mouths seemed to make a single sound, one big mouth chewing wetly.

A worm spilled from E.Z.’s mouth.

Sam raised his hands, palms out.

“Sam, no!” Albert yelled. Then, in a quieter voice, “He’s already dead. He’s already dead.”

“Albert’s right, man. Don’t do it, don’t burn them, they’re staying in the field, don’t give them a reason to come after us,” Edilio hissed. His strong hands still dug into Sam’s shoulders, like he was holding Sam back, though Sam wasn’t trying to escape any longer.

“And don’t touch him,” Edilio sobbed. “Perdóneme, God forgive me, don’t touch him.”

The black worms swarmed over and through E.Z.’s body. Like ants swarming a dead beetle.

It felt like a very long time before the worms slithered away and tunneled back into the earth.

What they left behind was no longer recognizable as a human being.

“There’s a rope here,” Albert said, stepping down at last from the Jeep. He tried to tie a lasso, but his hands were shaking too badly. He handed the rope to Edilio, who formed a loop and after six misses finally snagged what was left of E.Z.’s right foot. Together they dragged the remains from the field.

A single tardy worm crawled from the mess and headed back toward the cabbages. Sam snatched up a rock the size of a softball and smashed it down on the worm’s back. The worm stopped moving.

“I’ll come back with a shovel,” Edilio said. “We can’t take E.Z. home, man, he’s got two little brothers. They don’t need to be seeing this. We’ll bury him here.

“If these things spread…,” Edilio began.

“If they spread to the other fields, we all starve,” Albert said.

Sam fought a powerful urge to throw up. E.Z. was mostly bones now, picked not quite clean. Sam had seen terrible things since the FAYZ began, but nothing this gruesome.

He wiped his hands on his jeans, wanting to hit back, wishing it made sense to blast the field, burn as much of it as he could reach, keep burning it until the worms shriveled and crisped.

But that was food out there.

Sam knelt beside the mess in the dirt. “You were a good kid, E.Z. Sorry. I…sorry.” There was music, tinny, but recognizable, still coming from E.Z.’s iPod.

Sam lifted the shiny thing and tapped the pause icon.

Then he stood up and kicked the dead worm out of the way. He held his hands out as though he were a minister about to bless the body.

Albert and Edilio knew better. They both backed away.

Brilliant light shot from Sam’s palms.

The body burned, crisped, turned black. Bones made loud snapping noises as they cracked from the heat. After a while Sam stopped. What was left behind was ash, a heap of gray and black ashes that could have been the residue of a backyard barbecue.