Published in 2009, Hunger is the second novel in the bestselling young adult dystopian series Gone by Michael Grant. Grant is an established author in the genre, having co-written over one hundred fifty books, including the popular Animorphs series with his wife, author Katherine Applegate. The Gone series continues the tradition of juvenile dystopias, most famously represented by William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which explore the construction of society in the absence of adults. Set three months after everyone fifteen and older vanished from a 20-mile quarantine zone, Hunger intensifies the stakes from the first novel. With food supplies nearly exhausted, reluctant leader Sam Temple must guide a starving community while his twin brother and rival, Caine, plans a violent power grab.

The novel delves into the darkest aspects of human nature when societal structures collapse. It examines themes of Scarcity as a Catalyst for Moral Collapse, as the constant threat of starvation drives the children to hoarding, violence, and ethical compromises. This desperation also fuels The Scapegoating of Difference in Times of Crisis, as resentment grows between the “normal” children and those who have developed supernatural abilities. Grant uses anxieties surrounding nuclear accidents and radiation to explain the mutations and monstrous creatures that plague the survivors. At the center of the conflict is the theme of The Burdens and Corruptions of Leadership, contrasting Sam’s struggle with the immense psychological weight of his responsibility against Caine’s ruthless hunger for control, which leaves him vulnerable to manipulation by a malevolent entity.

This guide is based on the 2014 revised paperback edition from Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, child death, suicidal ideation, ableism, disordered eating, bullying, animal death, substance use, physical abuse, and cursing.

Plot Summary

The second installment in the Gone series is set three months after a mysterious event trapped every child under 15 inside an impenetrable dome called the FAYZ (Fallout Alley Youth Zone), centered on a nuclear power plant in the coastal town of Perdido Beach, California. All adults and older teens vanished instantly, and some of the remaining children have developed supernatural powers. Sam Temple, a 15-year-old who can fire devastating light from his palms, serves as elected mayor, struggling to feed the community on dwindling canned goods.

While surveying agricultural fields for harvestable crops, Sam watches helplessly as a boy named E.Z. is killed in seconds by mutant worms: eyeless creatures with shark-like teeth that swarm from the soil and bore through flesh. Astrid Ellison, Sam’s girlfriend and adviser, discovers the worms possess abnormally large brains, suggesting a collective intelligence. The worms, nicknamed “zekes,” remain territorial within their fields but threaten the community’s only accessible food supply.

At Coates Academy in the hills, Sam’s fraternal twin and rival, Caine Soren, emerges from a three-month delirium caused by a prior encounter with the Darkness, a mysterious entity buried in a desert mine shaft. Diana Ladris, Caine’s shrewd caretaker and love interest, has nursed him through months of hallucinations during which he screamed about being “hungry in the dark” (158) and muttered the word “gaiaphage.” Caine announces a plan to seize the nuclear power plant, reasoning that controlling electricity gives him leverage over Sam. He sends Bug, a boy with chameleon-like invisibility, to scout the facility, while his psychopathic lieutenant Drake Merwin, who has a tentacle whip where Sam burned off his original arm, prepares for the assault.

Several subplots establish the community’s deteriorating conditions. Lana Arwen Lazar, a girl with the power to heal any wound, lives in isolation at a clifftop hotel, tormented by the Darkness’s psychic voice demanding she come to it. Mary Terrafino, who runs the day care for the youngest children, secretly has severe anorexia and bulimia. Duck Zhang, a quiet sixth grader, discovers he can control his own density: Anger makes him so heavy he sinks through solid matter, while happiness makes him float. After bullies led by Zil Sperry drive him through the bottom of a swimming pool, Duck navigates underground caves before emerging in the ocean. Zil uses the incident to stoke resentment between kids who have no powers and those who do, whom he derisively calls “freaks” and “moofs” (short for “mutant freaks”).

Sam convenes a poorly attended town meeting to address the food crisis. Howard Bassem proposes that Orc, a boy whose body has transformed into living gravel, harvest cabbages from the worm-infested field since the zekes cannot penetrate his stone flesh. The plan works until a worm finds the last patch of human skin on Orc’s face, nearly killing him; Lana heals the wound. Albert Hillsborough, an entrepreneurial boy, opens a dance club and begins building a primitive economy, planning to retrieve gold from a dead prospector’s cabin to back a currency system.

Astrid’s five-year-old brother, Little Pete, who has autism and whose panicked reaction to a power plant crisis years earlier created the FAYZ barrier itself, begins manifesting waking nightmares. Physically real monsters materialize in his bedroom. Pete murmurs that he silenced someone who is “hungry in the dark” (180), suggesting the gaiaphage is tapping into Pete’s extraordinary mind to learn how to create physical forms.

The crisis escalates when Hunter Lefkowitz, a boy developing microwave-like heat powers, accidentally kills his housemate Harry during a confrontation with Zil. Zil seizes on the death to rally an anti-mutant mob, and his “Human Crew” movement gains dangerous momentum. Meanwhile, Diana infiltrates Perdido Beach under Caine’s orders and lures Computer Jack, a tech genius with emerging super-strength, back to Caine’s side by promising him the technological challenge of the power plant’s systems.

Caine launches his assault on the plant. Drake shoots a young guard and savagely whips twelve-year-old Brittney Donegal, leaving her for dead. Jack shuts off power to Perdido Beach. Sam surrounds the plant, but Caine holds hostages and controls the reactor. Caine realizes with dawning horror that the gaiaphage has been manipulating him all along to obtain uranium fuel rods from the reactor.

Lana executes her own secret plan, driving a propane tank into the mine shaft to destroy the Darkness. At the critical moment, the gaiaphage seizes her mind and forces her to drop the lighter. It declares its name for the first time and reveals it needs her healing power to construct a physical body.

As Perdido Beach plunges into darkness, Sam breaks down under the weight of leadership before Astrid forces him back into action. She synthesizes the evidence into a theory: The gaiaphage is an alien organism that arrived on the meteorite that struck the power plant 13 years earlier, fed on underground radiation, caused the mutations in local children, and is now starving. If Caine feeds it uranium, it will use Lana’s power to build an indestructible body.

Sam splits his forces. Edilio Escobar, his trusted second-in-command, and Dekka, a powerful girl who can suspend gravity, head to the mine to collapse it. Lana emerges enslaved by the gaiaphage and shoots Edilio in the chest. Dekka drags him away as coyotes close in. At the power plant, Drake tortures Sam and threatens a meltdown using the reactor’s controls. Brianna, a girl who moves at superhuman speed, arrives and slices off part of Drake’s tentacle, catching the falling remote control and stopping the meltdown.

Caine extracts the fuel rod and races toward the mine. When Drake attacks Diana, whose head strikes a rock with a devastating impact, Caine throws the rod and Drake down the shaft. He turns against the gaiaphage’s control and uses his telekinetic power to collapse the mine entrance under millions of pounds of rock, declaring he is no one’s slave.

Lana remains trapped inside the mine with the feeding gaiaphage. Duck, carried to the site by Brianna, increases his density and plunges through solid rock, creating a shaft into the underground cavern. Inside, Sam and Caine find the gaiaphage: a vast mirrored mass of billions of crystals with Lana’s anguished face visible within it. Sam’s light and Caine’s telekinesis bounce off its reflective surface. Caine hurls Duck at the creature, and Duck increases his density to impossible levels, smashing through the crystalline mass and boring straight down through the cavern floor, dragging the gaiaphage into the earth’s depths. Duck dies in the fall.

Quinn, Sam’s former best friend, descends and finds Lana freed from the gaiaphage’s control. She heals everyone: Diana, Edilio, Dekka, Brianna, and Sam. Caine and Diana slip away.

In the aftermath, the community buries its dead and erects a cross for Duck, whom Sam eulogizes as an unlikely hero. Zil’s Human Crew had staged a near-lynching of Hunter, broken up by Orc, a confrontation that laid bare the depth of anti-mutant hatred. Hunter is tried and sentenced to exile. A Temporary Council replaces Sam’s solo leadership. Albert establishes a gold-backed currency, and Quinn’s fishing operation provides the first reliable protein source.

In the final scene, Dekka uses her gravity power to create ocean swells, giving Sam, who dreamed of surfing in the novel’s opening, his first wave in months. But in an ominous epilogue, Brittney lies conscious in her grave with no heartbeat, somehow alive, as Drake’s severed tentacle pulses beside her in the darkness.