and a lot of people. That’s one of the places I hang out, but there
are other towns. Like I said, we’re taking it all back.”
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
7
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
George began crying again. Annie, always so sensitive,
wrapped her little arms around him and started crying, too. Lilah
did not. She read a lot of fairy stories that had happy endings, but
she never believed that any of those stories ever really happened.
There were no happy endings.
In the morning, George agreed to go with the big hunter. He
filled his wheelbarrow with food, the girls’ favorite toys, some
of their precious books, and lots of weapons. The hunter seemed
to
be
impressed
with
the
handmade
weapons.
“You some kind of ninja?” he asked, bending to inspect the
spears and other deadly tools.
George laughed. “Not even close. I figured it out as we went.
Try something on a biter and if it works you try it on another one.
You don’t need to know a lot, but you need to be good at what
you do know.”
“Ain’t that the honest truth,” agreed the hunter.
“George says we’re not supposed to say ‘ain’t,’” said Annie,
and that made the Hunter laugh out loud.
“Well, I guess Mr. George us one-hundred percent correct,
little sweet pea,” he told her. “I never did have much schooling,
but it looks like you learned your lessons.”
“I taught them as best I could,” said George, his face flushing
with embarrassment.
The hunter nodded and then turned sharply to Lilah who was
reaching for her favorite spear. “Whoa, now, kiddo, you
shouldn’t play with grown up toys.”
Lilah snatched the spear up, spun the shat faster than the eye
could see and passed the tip of the blade through a loose fold of
the big man’s shirt. Then she held the spear ready, feet wide and
braced, weight on the balls of her toes. Ready.
The hunter’s smile vanished to be replaced with a snarl that
was as cold and mean as a hungry bear. “I can see you learned
more than your ABCs from ol’ George. That’s mighty
interesting. Now put that toothpick down before I—”
George, greatly alarmed, stepped between them. “Oh, god,
I’m so sorry! She doesn’t know any better. You’re the first adult
she’s met since … since …”
The smile came back slowly. “Hey, it’s all good,” said the
hunter. Then he chuckled. “Truth to tell I’m pretty impressed
with little spitfire here. She’s something to see, yes she is. How
old is she? Ten? My, my, pretty as a Georgia peach and mean as
8
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
a snake. Got to love that combination. Yes, sir, Miss Lilah, you
can go far in this world. Even in a world as big and bad as what
we got.”
“What we have,” said Annie.
The big hunter guffawed. “Got me again. Haw! Not too many
people pull a fast one on ol’ Charlie Matthias,” he said. “No
sirree bob, and here I am having a ten-year-old kid cut her mark
on me and her little sister correct my grammar. I am humbled. I
truly am.”
He
laughed
until
tears
ran
down
his
cheeks.
He was still chuckling when they opened the back door and
stepped out. There were biters out there because there were
always biters. Seven of them. George edged up with his own
spear, but Charlie waved him back. “Don’t get your panties in a
bunch,” he said. “I got this.”
He had a thick leather gauntlet on his left arm that covered
him from fingers to shoulder, and with his less heavily padded
right he drew a broad-bladed machete. Because he still smelled
of rot the biters didn’t swarm him, and even seemed bemused
while Charlie waded into them. The big hunter used his armored
left to grab the zoms and hold them still for the whistling blade
of the machete. He moved with the effortless efficiency of
someone who’d done exactly this a thousand times. Or ten
thousand. In seconds the zoms were cut to pieces. Most were still
alive, but none were whole. None were a threat.
George looked down at the twitching torsos and snapping
jaws and raised his spear to finish them.
“What for?” asked Charlie, annoyed.
“To give them peace.”
Charlie laughed as George, Lilah and Annie quieted the dead.
Killing the dead was important, almost a ritual for their family.
George told them that ever since the plague started everyone who
died, no matter how they died, came back as a biter. Every single
person. It was important to give everyone who needed it a chance
at real peace. Even the biters, whom they all feared. After all, it
wasn’t their fault they’d become monsters.
George looked uneasy because of Charlie’s laughter, but he
shook it off. Then they took their wheelbarrow and followed the
big man through the woods. His camp was five miles away and
it was starting to drizzle by the time they got there. Even with the
rain Lilah could smell the smoke from cooking fires, and soon
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
9
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
they saw the plumes of smoke rising into the cloudy sky.
There were forty men in the camp.
All of them tough-looking, big, brutal, and smiling. They
milled around George and the girls, laughing, slapping Charlie
on the back, staring at the little girls, appraising George.
One man, a massive man with immensely broad shoulders
and a badly scarred face pushed his way through the crowd. He
matched automatic pistols at his hips and had a long length of
bloodstained black pipe swinging from his belt. He stopped next
to Charlie, one hand on the big hunter’s shoulder and studied the
girls.
“What’ve you got here, Charlie?”
“A couple of fighters.”
“Do tell?”
“The tall one’s quick as lightning,” said Charlie and he
showed the cut on his shirt. “Never even saw that blade coming.
Rattlesnake quick.”
“Nice,” said the other man, who some of the others called
‘the Motor City Hammer’, or just ‘the Hammer’. “You thinking
of training her some more or putting her right into the games?”
“Oh, the games, no doubt,” said Charlie. “Raw talent like
that? Shoot. She’s ready to rock and roll.”
Lilah had no idea what they were talking about. These men
didn’t seem to be the kind who would want to play games. Not
Monopoly or dolls or Legos. And, besides, what did that have to
do with fighting?
George caught it, too. His smile faded. “What are you talking
about? Games? What’s that mean?”
Charlie squinted up into the rain, which was beginning to fall
heavi
er now, fat drops popping on the leaves of the trees around
the camp. “Storm’s coming,” he said. “Could be bad.”
As if to emphasize his observation lightning forked across
the sky and thunder rumbled like laughter behind the trees. Lilah
glanced up, too. She’d rarely been outside during the rain
because it was hard to hear the biters during a storm. Because
she was looking up she never saw who it was that hit George.
She heard the sound. Heavy and wet and wrong, and then
George fell against her, slumping, collapsing, his weapon falling
away, his flopping hands knocking the spear from Lilah’s hands.
His improbably heavy weight dragged her down into the mud.
Lilah hit her head the ground, jolting her neck, making stars
10
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
explode in her eyes. She heard Annie scream.
Then there were hands on her, grabbing her wrists and
elbows and ankles. Someone forced a thick pillowcase over her
head. She caught one last glimpse of George, his face wet with
rainwater and blood, sprawled on the ground.
That’s when the world ended again.
And it was raining.
Because it always rained when the world ended.
- 4 -
It was starting to rain.
“We have to try,” said Annie. “He’ll be back soon.”
“Shhh,” Lilah said, “let me think.”
The girls knelt by the door and looked out through the bars.
The hall was empty. The guard’s chair stood against the fall wall,
a magazine opened face-down on it, a beer bottle half-empty on
the crate he used as a table. Lilah knew the routine. This guard,
Henry, drank too much and he went out to the bathroom at least
six times during his shift. Lilah had no watch, but she’d learned
to count time. After all these months here she’d learned the feel
of seconds and minutes and hours. They crawled like worms over
her skin. Familiar and yet hateful. Another of the prisoners here
–one of the few adults who lived in a cage down the hall—called
it stacking time. You took those increments of time and built
walls around you. Lilah understood it. The more time here in the
cages the more she understood this world and what it was. In a
way it was like reading a book because she learned something
new every day.
Not just the rules of the games, but other stuff. How to watch.
How to understand what she saw. How to understand the guards
and what they wanted and what they thought. Knowing what the
guards would do if Charlie and the Hammer let them. Knowing
which ones might even have let them go if the world was a
different world. Knowing which ones would do bad things to
them if they could. Lilah and Annie knew all about those bad
things. They’d seen them happen, and it had torn holes in the
version of the world they’d always understood. Some of that stuff
wasn’t even in the books George let them read. It was sick stuff.
Bad stuff. Awful stuff.
It was stuff that might happen to Annie and her if they started
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
11
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
losing their fights down in the pits. Charlie told them that. So did
the Hammer. They knew it made them want to fight harder. They
knew it made they cooperative. It was simple math, too. Go into
the pits and fight the zoms with whatever weapons they let the
girls have, or get beaten up and handed over to the guards. No
third choice.
Annie was nine now and Lilah was eleven, at least by Lilah’s
reckoning. As best she could estimate they had been here in
Gameland for eleven months. Maybe a full year. It was cold
again and the rains had started the way they usually did in
January and February. It had been three weeks after New Years
Day when George had met Charlie and decided to bring him back
to the house.
There had been two weeks of travel with Charlie’s hunting
party. Terrible days marked by beatings and starvation to teach
manners. Then Charlie had learned that if he threatened Annie
then Lilah would do anything, follow any order. After that there
were fewer beatings but a lot of threats.
Except for the escape attempts. There had been savage
beatings after those. Twice Lilah peed blood, and that scared her
and Annie so bad they couldn’t speak for days.
Experience is a great teacher. That’s one of the things George
had said a long time ago. Lilah made sure she learned from
everything they experienced. Every single thing.
Like the timetable of the guards posted here in the Fighters’
House. That’s what they called it. From What Lilah had been told
by other prisoners, the Fighters House used to be the Funhouse
of an amusement park. Those were things the girls had read
about. Places where people went to be shocked and scared for
fun. How weird was that?
“He’s going to be back soon,” whined Annie.
“I know,” said Lilah, keeping her voice low. “It’s still early.
He hasn’t had that much to drink.”
“But—”
“We have to wait until he goes for a long bathroom break.”
“He doesn’t always do that,” protested her sister.
Lilah wrapped her arm around Annie’s thin shoulders. “He
does most of the time. He will tonight.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” lied Lilah. Actually, she hoped she was right. Most
12
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
Decision Points
took his magazine or a book with him. Pee breaks were too quick.
If he took something to read he’d be gone for at least twenty
minutes, sometimes more. This was a new magazine for him, one
Lilah hadn’t seen. Maybe he’d settle down on the toilet and read
it for a while.
The rain pinged against the plywood walls of the Fighters
House. In the other cages she could heard kids crying or talking
or snoring. One of them, a boy who had nearly lost the last couple
of fights in the pits, kept talking to himself in a language of made
up words. Lilah almost envied him. His mind was broken and
he’d escaped into a nonsense world. Maybe he thought he was
dreaming.
There was a fourteen-year-old girl in the cage next to them
who was shivering in her sleep. The guards thought she’d gotten
through her two-on-one pit fight without getting hurt, bit Lilah
knew better. The girl had been bitten and the fever was taking
her. Maybe the guards would come for her tomorrow and open
the cage without checking first. That would be nice. It would be
even nicer if it was Charlie or the Hammer, bit Lilah didn’t think
they’d be fooled. Not them. They were smart. Not book smart
like George had been, but animal smart.
She glanced at the shivering girl in the next cage. Her name
was Christine and she’d been hiding with a group of nuns in a
building in the hills. Lilah heard rumors of
what had happened
to the nuns. She really hoped Christine got to bite someone after
she turned.
A sound made Annie tense and Lilah looked up to see the
door at the far end of the hall open and Henry come back in. He
was whistling a song that Lilah didn’t know. It was a happy song,
and that made Lilah really hate him.
Henry walked down the hall to the T-junction where the two
sisters were caged. He looked up and down the side halls, nodded
to himself, and walked back to his chair.
Annie hung her head and clenched her fists. “We should have
gone.”
Lilah kissed her on the head. “We will, I promise.”
“Tonight?”
Lilah studied Henry and listened to the rain. If the storm got
heavier the noise would help them. She usually hated the rain,
but not tonight. She waited until Henry was concentrating on
what he was reading and then she pushed lightly on the door.
[ADVANCE READER COPY]
13
Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
They’d spent hours and hours very quietly filing at the metal, and
all they needed to do was give it one or two good kicks to pop it
open. It would make noise. The rain whispered to her that it was
going to help her this time. It promised that it was her friend this
time.
“Yes,” she said.
- 5 -
Henry did not move for over three hours. By then the rain
was hammering on the walls and ceiling and the noise was
deafening inside.
Perfect.
When he finally got up, he folded his magazine and tucked it
under his arm, gave the cages a quick inspection, then walked
toward the exit, once more whistling that song. The door banged
shut behind him.
“Now!” hissed Lilah. She and Annie laid on their backs near
the door and bent their knees. “Three, two— go! ”
They kicked out with all their strength.
And the door shuddered but did not open.
“Hey!” yelled someone else. The adult in the cage down the
row. “Keep it down … some of us are trying to sleep.”
“Again,” growled Lilah, and they kicked once more.
A third time. A fourth.
“Yo! What the heck are you doing down there?”
Five. Six. Seven.
“You’re going get us all in trouble.”
Eight. Nine. Annie was crying, her kicks becoming wild,
desperate, sloppy. But Lilah was getting mad. She ground her