Hunger by Michael Grant

loud.”
    “Great. Now I’m arguing with myself.”
    “Not really, I’m just thinking out loud.”
    “Well, try thinking more and arguing less.”
    “Hey, I’ve been down here for, like, a hundred hours! I don’t even know what time it is. It could be three days from now!”
    He bent down and touched wet sand. Water surged over his fingers. It was cold. But then, everything was cold. Duck had been cold for a long time now. It was slow work walking when you couldn’t see where you were going.
    He raised wet fingers to his tongue. Definitely salt. So yes, it was the ocean. Which meant that yes, this cave opened onto the ocean. Which meant there was a pretty good mystery as to why he couldn’t see any light at all.
    He shivered. He was so cold. He was so hungry. He was so thirsty. He was so scared.
    And suddenly, he realized, he was not alone.
    The rustling sound was different from the water-sloshing sound. Very different. It was a distinctly dry sound. Like someone rubbing crinkly leaves together.
    “Hello?” he called.
    “No answer,” he whispered.
    “I know: I heard. I mean, I didn’t hear,” he said. “Is someone there?”
    The rustling sound again. It was coming from overhead. Then a chitter-chitter-chitter noise, soft but definite. He didn’t miss many sounds now, not with his eyes useless. Hearing was all he had. If something made a sound, he heard it. And something had made a sound.
    “Are you bats?” he asked.
    “Because if they were bats, they would totally answer.”
    “Bats. Bats are not a problem.” He chattered.
    “Bats have to have a way out, right? They can’t live in a cave all the time. They have to be able to fly out and…and drink blood.”
    Duck stood frozen, awaiting the bat attack. He would never see it coming. If they came after him, he would jump into the water. Yes. Or…or he could get mad and maybe sink through the ground and be safe in the dirt.
    “Yeah, that’s a great plan: bury yourself alive.”
    The bats—if that’s what they were—demonstrated no interest in attacking him and drinking his blood. So Duck returned to the question of what exactly he should do next. In theory he could jump into the water and swim out into the ocean.
    In theory. In reality he could not see his own hand in front of his face.
    He squatted in a dry corner of the cave, well away from the water. And in an area that seemed somewhat less populated by weird rustling sounds.
    He hugged himself and shivered.
    How had he ended up here? He’d never hurt anyone. He wasn’t some evil guy, he was just a kid. Like any other kid. He just wanted to go online and play games and watch TV and listen to music. He wanted to read his comics. He didn’t want to be able to sink through the ground.
    What kind of a stupid power was that, anyway?
    “The Sinker,” he muttered.
    “Weightman,” he countered.
    “The Human Drill.”
    There was no chance he would ever be able to sleep. But he did. Through the worst night of his life, Duck Zhang drifted into and out of a weird nightmare, asleep, awake, and something in between that made him wonder if he was goingslowly crazy. He dreamed of food. At one point he dreamed of a pizza chasing him, trying to eat him. And him wishing the pizza just would.
    Then at last he woke up and saw…
    Saw!
    The light was dim, but it was bright enough.
    “Hey! I can see!” he cried.
    The first thing he could see was that the cave did not open onto the outside. The mouth of the cave was underwater. That was the source of the light, it filtered up through the blue-green water itself. The open air couldn’t be too terribly far away, no more than a hundred feet maybe, but he would have to swim underwater to get there.
    The second thing he saw was that the cave was bigger than he’d imagined. It had widened out and was large enough that you could park five or six school buses and have space left over.
    The third thing he saw were the bats.
    They hung from the cave ceiling. They had