Decision Point (ARC) Read online

  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.”

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

  nights Henry went out for a longer break, and when he did, he

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  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.

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  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