He had gone from yelling to sobbing. “I’m fifteen years old. I’m fifteen.”

He sat down hard on the edge of the bed. “Oh, my God, Astrid. It’s in my head, all these things. I can’t get rid of them. It’s like some filthy animal inside my head and I will never, ever, ever get rid of it. It makes me feel so bad. It’s disgusting. I want to throw up. I want to die. I want someone to shoot me in the head so I don’t have to think about everything.”

Astrid was beside him, and her arms were around him. He was ashamed, but he couldn’t stop the tears. He was sobbing like he had when he was a little kid, like when he had a nightmare. Out of control. Sobbing.

Gradually the spasms slowed. Then stopped. His breathing went from ragged to regular.

“I’m really glad the lights weren’t on,” Sam said. “Bad enough you had to hear it.”

“I’m falling apart,” he said.

Astrid gave no answer, just held him close. And after what felt like a very long time, Sam moved away from her, gently putting distance between them again.

“Listen. You won’t ever tell anyone . . .”

“No. But, Sam . . .”

“Please don’t tell me it’s okay,” Sam said. “Don’t be nice to me anymore. Don’t even tell me you love me. I’m about a millimeter from falling apart again.”

“Okay.”

Sam heaved a huge sigh. Then another. Then, “Okay. Okay. Tell me what’s in Lana’s letter.”

THIRTY-THREE

07 HOURS, 58 MINUTES

HUNTER WAS HUNGRIER than he would have thought possible. He’d been hungry for a long time, living on the slimy, tasteless, awful stuff they handed out at Ralph’s. Three cans of goo a day. That’s what kids called it. Only sometimes the word wasn’t “goo” but something harsher.

But now he was far beyond that. Now the days of three cans of goo seemed like the good old days.

After leaving Duck he’d been spotted and chased by Zil’s friends. He’d barely escaped. And in order to get away, he’d had to go the one direction they didn’t expect: out of town.

He had crossed the highway. Running, scared, feeling he was being chased even when he wasn’t. Feeling like at any minute Zil and his thug friends might catch him. And then . . . and he didn’t want to think too hard about what came then.

It seemed so crazy. So impossible. Zil had never been like his best friend or anything, but they had shared a house. They had been buddies. Not close, but buddies. Guys who would chill and watch a game or check out girls or whatever. Zil and him and Harry and . . .

And of course that was the problem: Harry.

He hadn’t meant to hurt Harry. It wasn’t really his fault. Was it?

Was it?

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.