Hunger (Gone 2)

The attack was immediate.

The worms seethed from the dirt, slithered with impossible speed toward Orc’s stone feet and threw themselves against his unnatural flesh.

Orc stopped. He gaped down at the creatures.

He turned with creaky slowness back toward Albert and Howard and said, “Kinda tickles.”

“Pick a cabbage,” Howard called out encouragingly.

Orc bent down and dug his stone fingers into the dirt and scooped up a cabbage. He looked at it for a minute, then tossed it toward the truck.

Albert opened the door of the truck and bent cautiously down toward the cabbage. He refused to step down. Not yet. Not until they were sure.

“Howard, I need a stick or something,” Albert said.

“What for?”

“I want to poke that cabbage, make sure there’s no worm in it.”

In the field the worms continued their assault on the creature whose rock flesh broke their teeth. Orc scooped up three more cabbages. Then he came stomping back.

The worms did not follow. At the edge of the field they slithered off Orc and retreated into the ground.

“Beer me,” Orc demanded.

Albert did.

He wondered how Sam was doing with lining up kids to work in the field. “Not very well, I’d guess,” he muttered to himself.

The answer to the problem of food was so simple, really: farms needed farmers. Then the farmers needed motivation. They needed to get paid. Like anyone. People didn’t do things just because it was right: people did things for money, for profit. But Sam and Astrid were too foolish to see it.

No, not foolish, Albert told himself. Sam was the main reason they weren’t all under Caine’s control. Sam was great. And Astrid was probably the smartest person in the FAYZ.

But Albert was smart, too, about some things. And he had gone to the trouble of educating himself, sitting in the dusty, dark town library reading books that made his eyelids droop.

“My boy’s going to need another beer pretty soon,” Howard said, yawning behind his hand.

“Your boy gets a beer for every one hundred cabbages he picks,” Albert said.

Howard gave him a dirty look. “Man, you act like you paid for those cans with your own money.”

“Nope,” Albert said. “They are community property. For now. But the rate is still one per hundred.”

For the next two hours Orc picked cabbages. And drank beer. Howard played some game on a handheld. Albert thought.

Howard was right about that: Albert had thought a lot since the day he walked into the abandoned McDonald’s and began grilling hamburgers. He had a lot of standing in the community because of that. And the Thanksgiving feast he’d organized, and pulled off without a hitch, had made him a minor hero. He wasn’t Sam, of course; there was only one Sam. He wasn’t even Edilio or Brianna or anything like the big heroes of that terrible battle between Caine’s people and the Perdido Beach kids.

But at that moment Albert wasn’t thinking about any of that. He was thinking about toilet paper and batteries.

Then Orc screamed.

Howard sat up. He jumped from the car.

Albert froze.

Orc was shrieking, slapping at his face, at the still-human part of his face.

Howard ran toward him.