Hunger Read Free

Diana asked.
    He didn’t answer. He didn’t understand the question.
    “Are you covered?” she asked, putting some irritation into her tone. She set the tray on the side table.
    Caine didn’t bother to answer. He sat up. His head swam as he did. He reached for the water.
    “Why is the roof messed up like that? What if it rains?” He was surprised by the sound of his own voice. He was hoarse. His voice had none of its usual persuasive smoothness.
    Diana was pitiless. “What are you, stupid now as well as crazy?”
    A phantom memory passed through him, leaving him feeling uneasy. “Did I do something?”
    “You lifted the roof up.”
    He turned his hands around to look at his palms. “Did I?”
    “Another nightmare,” Diana said.
    Caine twisted open the bottle and drank. “I remember now. I thought it was crushing me. I thought something was going to step on the house and crush it, squash me under it. So I pushed back.”
    “Uh-huh. Eat some beans.”
    “I don’t like beans.”
    “No one likes beans,” Diana said. “But this isn’t your neighborhood Applebee’s. And I’m not your waitress. Beans are what we have. So eat some beans. You need food.”
    Caine frowned. “How long have I been like this?”
    “Like what?” Diana mocked him. “Like a mental patient who can’t tell if he’s in reality or in a dream?”
    He nodded. The smell of the beans was sickening. But he was suddenly hungry. And he remembered now: food was in short supply. Memory was coming back. The mad delusion was fading. He couldn’t quite reach normal, but he could see it.
    “Three months, give or take a week,” Diana said. “We had the big shoot-out in Perdido Beach. You wandered off into the desert with Pack Leader and were gone for three days. When you came back you were pale, dehydrated, and…well, like you are.”
    “Pack Leader.” The words, the creature they represented, made Caine wince. Pack Leader, the dominant coyote, the one who had somehow attained a limited sort of speech. Pack Leader, the faithful, fearful servant of…of it. Of it. Of the thing in the mine shaft.
    The Darkness, they called it.
    Caine swayed and before he rolled off the bed, Diana caught him, grabbed his shoulders, kept him up. But then she saw the warning sign in his eyes and muttered a curse and managed to get the wastebasket in front of him just as he vomited.
    He didn’t produce much. Just a little yellow liquid.
    “Lovely,” she said, and curled her lip. “On second thought, don’t eat any beans. I don’t want to see them come back up.”
    Caine rinsed his mouth with some of the water. “Why are we here? This is Mose’s cottage.”
    “Because you’re too dangerous. No one at Coates wantsyou around until you get a grip on yourself.”
    He blinked at another returning memory. “I hurt someone.”
    “You thought Chunk was some kind of monster. You were yelling a word. Gaiaphage. Then you smacked Chunk through a wall.”
    “Is he okay?”
    “Caine. In the movies a guy can get knocked through a wall and get up like it’s no big deal. This wasn’t a movie. The wall was brick. Chunk looked like roadkill. Like when a raccoon gets run over and over and over and keeps getting run over for a couple of days.”
    The harshness of her words was too much even for Diana herself. She gritted her teeth and said, “Sorry. It wasn’t pretty. I never liked Chunk, but it wasn’t something I can just forget, okay?”
    “I’ve been kind of out of my mind,” Caine said.
    Diana wiped angrily at a tear. “Answer the question: Can you give an example of understatement?”
    “I think I’m better now,” Caine said. “Not all the way better. Not all the way. But better.”
    “Well, happy day,” Diana said.
    For the first time in weeks Caine focused on her face. She was beautiful, Diana Ladris was, with enormous dark eyes and long brown hair and a mouth that defaulted to smirk.
    “You could have ended up like Chunk,” Caine said. “But