Decision Point (ARC) Read online

  D E C I S I O N

  P O I N T S

  UNCORRECTED

  ADVANCE READER COPY

  D E C I S I O N

  P O I N T S

  E d i t e d b y

  B r y a n T h o m a s S c h m i d t

  WordFire Press

  Colorado Springs, Colorado

  DECISION POINTS

  Copyright © 2016 Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

  in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including

  photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system,

  without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except where

  permitted by law. This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places

  and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real,

  used fictitiously.

  Book Design by RuneWright, LLC

  www.RuneWright.com

  Published by

  WordFire Press, an imprint of

  WordFire, Inc.

  PO Box 1840

  Monument CO 80132

  Kevin J. Anderson & Rebecca Moesta, Publishers

  WordFire Press Trade Paperback Edition 2016

  Printed in the USA

  www.wordfire.com

  C O N T E N T S

  Introduction

  1

  Sisters

  3

  By Jonathan Maberry

  Sankofa

  24

  By Nnedi Okorafor

  The Prince of Artemis V

  34

  By Jennifer Brozek

  Aftermaths

  45

  By Lois McMaster Bujold

  Driving a Bargain

  57

  By Robert J. Sawyer

  My Father’s Eyes

  72

  By E.C. Myers

  Like Thief in the Light

  85

  By Alethea Kontis

  Clockwork Fagin

  98

  By Cory Doctorow

  Postcards

  128

  By Rebecca Moesta

  The Outbreeders

  143

  By Robert Silverberg

  Rivalry on the Sky Course

  156

  By Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  An Echo in the Shell

  172

  By Beth L. Cato

  The Milky Way Dance Hall

  184

  By Lou Antonelli

  Blood and Water

  193

  By Kate Corcino

  Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  The Boy Who Yelled “Dragon”

  214

  By Mike Resnick

  Newts

  221

  By Kevin J. Anderson

  Babydoll

  240

  By K.D. McEntire

  Shade

  254

  By Steven Gould

  Granted

  270

  By Jody Lynn Nye

  A War of Gifts

  278

  By Orson Scott Card

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  I N T R O D U C T I O N

  On every journey there is a path you choose to follow or the path

  you choose to make.

  Decisions, decisions—life is full of them, and many stories

  revolve around them. Hence the concept for the anthology you

  hold in your hands. The idea was gifted to me by my friend and

  fellow editor, Jennifer Brozek, whose own story herein is one of

  my favorites of her stories ever. I expanded the concept to cover

  a range of time and genres—not just stories of science fiction but

  also fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror—as well as writers both

  known for writing young adult stories and writers who aren’t.

  Before Y.A. became a genre designation, there were always

  stories about young people—some called them “juveniles” or

  various other titles. And the stories you’ll find here include some

  really good ones involving such characters, but because not all

  of them might be stocked in a bookstore as specifically Y.A., you

  might miss them. Twelve of the twenty stories here are making

  their first appearance in an anthology with this collection. Six are

  brand new originals, others are reprints. All have in common

  decision points that affect their outcomes.

  The stories include some from popular series such as Lois

  McMaster Bujold’s long running Vorkosigan Saga, Orson Scott

  Card’s Ender series, Jonathan Maberry’s Rot and Ruin series,

  and Steven Gould’s Jumper series. Then there are stories from

  newer series like my own Saga of Davi Rhii space opera series,

  Kate Corcino’s Spark series, and K.D. McEntire’s Lightbringer

  Urban Fantasy series, inspired by Peter Pan. Others standalone,

  including several from very popular young adult authors like

  Alethea Kontis, Cory Doctorow, Nnedi Okorafor, and Eugene

  Myers. All have been chosen for their variety in tone, plot, and

  even moral (if they have one). The idea here is to give you

  choices as well about what you’re in the mood for each time you

  Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  pick up the book. Or perhaps to just guarantee you a different

  reading experience each time you decide to open these pages.

  However the book touches you, I hope it’s as rewarding for you

  as it was for me during the three years I spent putting it together.

  The decision point is now yours—you already made one by

  deciding to open this book. More decisions follow—some

  thrilling, some frightening, some heartwarming, some more

  somber. All of them enjoyable in their own way. This book is

  intended to offer a lot of variety, not just to make you think and

  question, but to entertain you; to be the kind of book you can

  pick up and ready one story a day and find a different experience

  each time. So allow me to step back out of your way and let your

  journey begin. I hope you find it an enjoyable one.

  Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  Ottawa, Kansas

  January 2016

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  We begin with a long awaited origin story from Jonathan

  Maberry’s bestselling Rot and Ruin series, wherein two sisters

  face the kind of impossible choices that those living in a zombie

  infested world must face as they fight to survive.

  S I S T E R S

  ( A S t o r y o f T h e R o t a n d R u i n )

  By Jonathan Maberry

  - 1 -

  It rained the day the world ended.

  That’s how she remembered it.

  The rain fell cold and hard. That day and every time the world

  ended. For Lilah there wasn’t just one apocalypse. They kept

  happening to her.

  And each time it was raining.

  - 2 -

  The first time was when she was little. Too little to really

  understand what was happening. She was just learning to speak,

  barely able to walk, hardly able to form the kind of memories

  Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  that could be taken out later and looked at. She remembered a

  wom
an’s face. Her mothers, but Lilah didn’t really understand

  what that meant. George had to explain it to her later.

  Lilah remembered her mother holding her, and running. And

  other people holding her. And running.

  And the monsters chasing.

  Grabbing. Tearing. Taking. Biting. Eating.

  Always.

  One of them had bitten Mom. Lilah had seen it happen but

  did not know what the bright colors and loud shrieks meant. Not

  then. Not until later.

  She remembered the house where her mother and the other

  grownups had hidden. She remembered her mother screaming.

  Mommy, with her big, swollen belly. Screaming.

  That’s when Annie was born.

  Lilah did not understand birth, either.

  Or the death that followed.

  Or what happened when Mom woke up.

  She saw what the others did, though. She understood it on

  some level that ran so deep age didn’t matter. She screamed

  louder than the newborn Annie. She screamed louder than the

  people who swung clubs and pipes as Mom tried to bite them.

  She screamed so loud it made her spit red.

  After that Lilah didn’t have much of a voice. A whisper. The

  first words she learned to speak were said in that whisper, and

  every word since then. Every single word.

  It had been raining that night, the drops thudding on the roof

  and tapping on the windows and knocking on the door. The rain

  hissed in the trees outside. Lilah recorded it without having labels

  for any of those tings. Despite the rain, those memories were

  burned into her. She was too young for any of it, but the world

  ended anyway.

  - 3 -

  It rained the day George went away.

  George.

  Lilah never knew his last name. Last names didn’t seem to

  matter much. People in books had last names, and people in the

  stories George told. And maybe he even told her his last name,

  but she forgot because there was no need to remember it.

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  Decision Points

  George was the last of the grownups. The one who didn’t die.

  The others did. They went out of the house, one by one, over

  the weeks. Looking for help. Looking for answers. Finding

  nothing, it seemed, except the end of their own stories.

  George stayed with Lilah and the baby. He named her Annie.

  After that it was Lilah, and Annie, and George for years.

  And years.

  Sometimes George did go out, but never too far and never for

  too long. He waited for times when the biters weren’t so thick

  around the house and then he’d slip away, quiet as a mouse and

  vanish in the tall grass. Those were bad times. At first. Lilah

  would try hard not to cry because it scared Annie when she cried.

  So Lilah forced her raspy voice to be still, blinked her tears away,

  held the screams in, and waited.

  George always came back. He was the only one who ever

  did. Pushing a wheelbarrow full of cans from someone else’s

  kitchen. Bringing clothes and toilet paper and toys and books.

  Always books.

  Bringing weapons, too.

  Never bringing other people. There were none. They were all

  sure of that. No one but George, Lilah, and little Annie.

  Childhood was learning to be quiet, learning to hide, learning

  to trick the dead. George taught them to fight as soon as they

  could hold tools. They spent long nights together turning wood

  and duct tape and kitchen knives into weapons. Quiet weapons.

  George wasn’t a fighter. He told the girls that he used to sell

  shoes. He wasn’t a hero like the princes and champions in the

  books he taught them to read. He wasn’t big and full of muscle.

  He wasn’t as handsome as Prince Charming or Aladdin or

  Captain America. He never took karate or anything like that.

  Everything he taught them was what he could make up, and some

  stuff he learned from books he found that weren’t Disney books

  or comics. They all read as much as they could. They read

  everything. It was how George taught them about the world that

  was. A world Lilah and Annie would never know. Could never

  know because the dead rose and ate it all up.

  Eight years. Just the three of them.

  When Lilah was ten and Annie was eight George met a man

  in the woods. Not another biter. A living man. He was dressed

  like a hunter from pictures they’d seen. Camouflage clothes. But

  he smelled like one of the biters because he smeared something

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  5

  Edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  on his clothes that made the monsters think he was like them, and

  they didn’t eat each other.

  George almost killed the man because at first he couldn’t

  believe that he was alive. He couldn’t be alive because the world

  had ended and everyone died. Every single person except the

  three of them.

  But the man was alive. Really and truly alive.

  When George realized that, he went running from cover and

  grabbed the man and embraced him, weeping, kissing his face

  and hands, sobbing out loud.

  The hunter was happy to see him, too, but unlike George he

  hadn’t believed the world was destroyed. Not completely.

  “There’s a lot of us left,” he said. “We’re taking the world

  back from these zoms.”

  Zoms. He called them zoms. Short for zombies. A strange

  word that Lilah had read in books and which didn’t seem to fit.

  Zombies were dead people brought back to life to be slaves.

  These dead people ate the living. George usually called them

  biters or ghouls. Zoms was a new word.

  George was so happy that he brought the hunter back to the

  house to meet the girls.

  Lilah remembered that. She was absolutely terrified of the

  big man with all the guns and knives who smelled like a biter.

  And he was strange-looking. The man had the palest skin, almost

  as white as a corpse, and he had one blue eye and the other was

  as red as blood. He had lots of scars and he smiled all the time.

  Lilah hated him and tried to stab him with a spear. Annie

  threw stones at him. It took George a long time to convince them

  it was safe.

  Safe.

  Funny word.

  For Lilah ‘safe’ meant the three of them inside the house with

  the doors and windows shut. That was safe. It was the only safety

  she’d ever known.

  After a long, long time of talk and promises and even some

  yelling on George’s part –something he almost never did—Lilah

  stopped fighting. It took Annie a little longer to settle down.

  Unlike her big sister, Annie had never seen any adults other than

  George. They’d all died when she was a baby.

  They all sat in the living room, and the big hunter with the

  red eye sat on the floor. He’d taken off all of his weapons and

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  Decision Points

  given them to George to hold, just to prove that he wasn’t going

  to hurt them. Lilah and Annie crouched like dogs on either side<
br />
  of George, ready to run, ready to bite.

  “It didn’t all fall down,” said the big man. “We lost a lot of

  land, sure, but we’re taking it back. This is one of the last areas

  that hadn’t been cleared out yet, but my guys are out here doing

  just that.”

  “Your guys …?” asked George, and as she squatted next to

  him, Lilah could feel him tremble with excitement.

  The hunter took a couple of candy bars from his pocket and

  reached over to offer them to the girls, but Lilah recoiled. Annie

  hissed at him. The man’s smile flickered and he placed the candy

  on the floor and shifted back away from them.

  “They haven’t had much candy,” said George. “And I trained

  them to be careful.”

  “Stranger-danger,” laughed the big man. “I get it. It’s cool,

  and that’s smart. Big ol’ dangerous world and you can never be

  too careful.”

  The candy bars lay there, untouched.

  “You said you have people out here?”

  “Sure. Part rescue team and part hunters. We’re quieting the

  last of the zoms as we go.”

  George repeated the word, “’Quieting’.”

  “Yeah, it’s what we call it when we put the zoms down.

  Bullet in the motor cortex or a blade through the brain stem. Only

  way to get ‘er done.”

  “Quieting,” murmured Lilah, and then Annie repeated it.

  “Look,” said the big hunter, “these woods are still pretty

  thick with zoms. Not safe for you to be here. My camp’s a few

  hours walk, but we have food, a stockade, horses, and a hell of—

  oops, I mean a heck of a lot of guns. We could go there and get

  oriented, then I can have a team take you and the kids to the

  closest town.”

  “Town …” said George and he swayed as if he was going to

  faint.

  “Yeah. Towns all over. Closest is Mountainside, which they

  set up just after the problems started. Built around a reservoir and

  backed up against a mountain. And it’s up high because the zoms

  won’t walk uphill unless they’re chasing something. Big fence