Decision Point (ARC) Read online

  teeth together and kicked, kicked, kicked.

  Fourteen, fifteen.

  And bang.

  The door flew open so hard it slammed against the outside

  wall and whipped back to crunch against their feet. Annie cried

  out in pain, but Lilah just snarled. She grabbed her sister, pushed

  her up and shoved her out of the cage, then swarmed out after

  her. The thunder outside was a continuous bellow and the rain

  hammered down. Even so, Lilah crouched for a moment and

  listened for Henry’s footsteps, listened for him to yell.

  Nothing.

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  The kids in the other cages stared at her. A few reached out

  between the bars with desperate fingers, clawing at the air as if

  they could pull themselves out. Annie and Lilah stared at them.

  “Can we get them out?” whispered Annie, her words nearly

  washed away by the storm.

  “No,” said Lilah.

  Saying that word hurt as bad as getting punched in the chest.

  It hurt her heart to say it. It hurt worse to know that it was true.

  They had no tools other that the small metal rasp they’d used on

  their own bar and it would takes as many days to free even one

  of them as it had to cut their own lock. There was no time and no

  way. Lilah grabbed Annie’s hand and pulled her away.

  “I’m sorry!”

  Annie’s cry was as sharp and high as a gull’s call. The kids

  in the other cages began to scream. Not yell. Scream.

  Those screams chased the girls down the hall. They rose like

  the cries of storybook banshees to fill the night and howl louder

  than the storm itself.

  “Hey!” came the muffled voice of Henry from the other side

  of the building. Even with all of the rain and thunder he’d heard

  those screams. “Hey, what’s happening in there?”

  Lilah pushed Annie toward the outside door. There was a fire

  axe hung on the wall held by metal clips. Lilah paused and tore

  it free. It was far too heavy for her, clumsy and awkward. But it

  was a weapon. She stared for a moment at the wickedly sharp

  edge of the blade. Then she whirled and ran after her sister who

  was already out in the rain.

  Gameland was a massive sprawl of buildings, disused rides,

  concession stands, and other buildings whose nature Lilah didn’t

  know or understand. There were big tents near the center of the

  park and the girls ran away from them as fast as they could.

  Those tents had not been part of the amusement park but had

  instead been erected later. Scavenged, Lilah had been told, from

  a circus where everything –human and animal—had been

  consumed by the biters. Now the big tents rose above the trees,

  enclosing bleachers for paying customers who would sit and

  hoot, cry, call, boo, and cheer at the action. And that action took

  place inside any one of a dozen wide, shallow pits. Fighting pits.

  Kids –almost always kids—would be lowered down into the pits

  and zoms would be shoved over the edge. Sometimes the kids

  were given weapons, but not always. Sometimes all they had

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  were their hands, their fear and whatever skills they had managed

  to learn.

  Lilah and Annie had survived those pits for months. Even

  little Annie had killed down there. Killed and killed and killed.

  There were times she would be pulled out of the pit covered from

  head to toe in black blood, madness boiling in her eyes but a

  killer’s grin on her mouth. Lilah worried about her sister. She

  knew that ever since George had agreed to leave the house with

  Charlie, Annie had become strange. Scared at nights in the cage

  but fierce and maybe crazy down in the pits.

  Lilah wondered if she, too, had gone mad. She did not come

  grinning from the pits, but she fought with savagery that

  surprised even herself. With blades or hammers, with golf clubs

  or a tennis racket, with a screwdriver or her own bare hands, she

  had fought the biters and killed them.

  One hundred and nineteen so far.

  More than anyone else in Gameland.

  With each kill she felt herself grow stronger and felt herself

  grow colder. Meaner. Stranger.

  She wondered what it would do to her when she killed her

  first living person. She thought of Charlie and the Hammer. She

  wanted to use the axe on them so badly that it made her sick. It

  also made her excited in ways that she had never felt before. She

  was free. They were free, she and Annie, and Lilah had a weapon.

  They ran through the rain, which pounded down in sheets. It

  turned the ground to mud that was as cold and which clung to

  their feet, slowing them, trying to stop and hold them.

  “Keep going,” cried Lilah every time Annie slowed down or

  stumbled. “Don’t stop.”

  The best path out of Gameland was to the north, but it was a

  long slope uphill to the trees. Hard-packed dirt and lots of rocks.

  Annie fell over and over again, and Lilah had to haul her up time

  and again until finally they staggered forward at little more than

  a slow walk. Water ran downhill like a small river, chilling them

  to the bone.

  Suddenly the air above them flashed white and they looked

  up to see something rise into the night sky. A flare. It cast

  everything into a glow of ghostly white, and painted them like

  black bugs against the slope. Off in the distance, Lilah heard

  someone yell. Henry? No. The Hammer.

  “There!”

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  “Run, Annie … run!”

  “I … can’t …” Annie cried, but she tried. And fell. Got up.

  And fell again. Lilah hooked her under the arm and dragged her

  to her feet every time.

  They ran, but Annie was slipping too much. Lilah finally

  realized that they weren’t going to make it. The men were

  coming. They would catch them and they would do every bad

  thing they’d promised to do.

  To them.

  To Annie.

  “God,” cried Lilah, begging the rainy sky for mercy.

  “Please.”

  Lighting flashed again and again, the bolts coming one after

  another, and in their glow Lilah saw something off to the left

  hand side of the road. It was an old abandoned car, choked with

  weeds, rusted, sitting on rotted tires. Beyond it were others. Fifty,

  maybe a hundred of them. Without a moment’s hesitation she

  pushed Annie toward them.

  Back on the road there were big shapes moving their way.

  She saw the distinctive bulk of the Hammer leading them. No

  time, no time.

  “W-what—?” asked Annie, her teeth chattering from cold

  and fear. “What are you doing?”

  “Get in there,” snapped Lilah, pushing her toward one of the

  cars. It lay on its side, crushed up against a tree. The trunk hung

  open. Lilah shoved Annie inside and then tore wet shrubs and

  branches to cover her. “Stay here and be
quiet.”

  “Wait!” cried the little girl. “Don’t leave me. You can’t!”

  Lilah knelt quickly by her sister. She caressed her cheek and

  kissed her forehead. “Shhh, you have to be quiet. I’m not leaving

  you, Annie. I’m going to play a trick on the men.”

  “A trick?”

  “I’ve got to lead them away, like George used to lead the

  biters away from the house. Only instead of using noise, I’m

  going to leave a fake trail. You understand?”

  Annie clung to her. “Please don’t leave me alone. I’ll go with

  you. I can help.”

  “No. You know I’m faster alone. You need to stay here and

  be quiet. The biters can’t find you here and the men will follow

  me,” Lilah said, having to lean close to be heard with the noise

  of the storm. “I’ll lead them way up the road and then cut back

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  through the forest like George taught us.”

  “But—”

  “Trust me, Annie. I’ll be back for you,” Lilah said. “You’ll

  be safe here.”

  Annie stared at her with terrified eyes. “You won’t let them

  get me?”

  “I promise, Annie. I swear to god and cross my heart.”

  “You won’t leave me ever?”

  “I won’t. You know I won’t.”

  “Never ever?”

  “Never ever.”

  “Say it, Lilah,” begged Annie. “Say you promise.”

  “God, I promise to never ever leave you. I’ll keep you safe

  always and forever.” She kissed Annie’s cheeks. “But I have to

  go do this now. I promise I’ll be right back. Just stay here and

  wait for me.”

  Annie promised her, but she was crying when she made that

  promise. And Lilah was crying when she closed the trunk lid and

  moved off. The sobs hurt her so deeply. But they also made her

  clutch the axe with greater strength. The thought of what would

  happen to Annie if she did this wrong turned the cold of the rain

  into fire. It filled her chest and burned in the back of her throat.

  She ran through the rain.

  - 6 -

  George had taught the girls a lot about the woods. About the

  forest, and about tracking. As he learned it from books and

  firsthand, he shared it with his adopted daughters, rediscovering

  the ancient sciences of tracking and woodcraft, of stealth and

  deception. Lilah used everything she’d learned and she put her

  own thoughts into it. She was a natural at it because she had been

  born into a world of hunting and killing, and of thwarting hunters

  and not being killed.

  She let herself be seen on the road, waiting for lightning

  flashes so they could spot her. And then when the darkness fell,

  she ran off the path and circled back and laid false trails and

  broke branches so they could see the path of her flight. The

  Hammer led the chase, and he sent men along eight different

  false trails. Lilah could feel the seconds and minutes burning off,

  but she knew she was doing it right. The men would never give

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  Decision Points

  up, she knew that much. They hated her and Annie for making

  fools of them; and if they didn’t drag them back to the cages it

  would be harder to control the others. They had to win. And some

  of them probably ached to be part of the punishments. Not all of

  the men were that evil, but enough of them were.

  Enough.

  Lilah encountered two biters in the woods, but they were no

  problem. She had the axe and she had her rage. She left the

  bodies where they could be found and where they would mark

  false escape routes.

  The storm got heavier still, as if the universe itself was an

  audience at a new kind of Gameland, cheering on the winners

  and the losers with equal mad intensity.

  Finally, when the storm was at its wildest, Lilah left the road

  and went into the forest, working a long, random path back to the

  abandoned cars. Back to Annie. She had already worked out their

  real escape route. It was risky but the men would never expect

  the girls to circle around Gameland and head south. That way

  was filled with biters and the slopes down the hill were difficult.

  For them, definitely, but for two girls willing to take risks and

  who were as strong as life could make them … maybe not. Lilah

  thought they could make it. Down south there was a river, and if

  they crossed that then not even a pack of dogs could track them.

  There would be houses and buildings where they could hide, and

  animals to hunt in the woods. They would survive. She believed

  that with all her heart.

  Lightning whitewashed the forest and she saw it gleam off

  the curved corpses of the cars. Her heart lifted because there were

  no men around. Except for the rain it was quiet and still. Gripping

  the axe, Lilah crept forward, moving between the automobiles

  and trucks, moving as silently through the mud as she could until

  she saw the overturned car.

  Then her heart seemed to tear itself loose from the inside of

  her chest.

  The trunk lid was open.

  And Annie was not there.

  - 7 -

  Lilah ran forward and tore at the debris in the trunk, but there

  was no trace of her sister. The mud at her feet was a confusion

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  of puddles that told her nothing.

  Nothing.

  She reeled, feeling the ground under her tilt like one of those

  ancient amusement rides. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to

  die.

  She tried to scream.

  But as she opened her mouth, she heard Annie.

  She heard Annie scream.

  And she heard the harsh, grating laugh of the Motor City

  Hammer.

  - 8 -

  Lilah ran through the rain, tripping twice in deep puddles.

  The second time she fell so hard that the axe went flying from

  her hands and vanished into the mud. She gagged, coughing rain

  and dirty water from her mouth, and when she looked for the axe,

  she couldn’t find it. The mud and puddles had swallowed it

  whole.

  There was another scream. High and terrible. It rose and rose

  and then …

  It stopped.

  Cut short.

  Lilah rose screeching from the puddle and ran for a dozen

  feet on hands and feet, scampering like a dog. The storm winds

  stole her memory of where the screams had come from and she

  lost her way in the dark. Then she found the road and realized

  that this is where Annie must have been.

  The rain fell like sharp needles as Lilah staggered out of the

  woods and onto the muddy road. Gameland was back there, the

  tent and rusted rides painted white with each burst of lightning.

  In the distance, down the slope, she saw the Motor City Hammer

  walking slowly away, his black pipe cub loose in one hand,

  swinging as he walked.

  He was alone. Annie was not with him.

&nb
sp; Because Annie was there on the road.

  Lilah stood on trembling legs, staring at the scene. Reading

  the truth of it because it was there to be read. Annie had waited

  too long and gotten scared, had doubted that Lilah was going to

  keep her promise and come back. In her fear she’d crept to the

  road to take a look. And there she’d met the Motor City Hammer.

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  There were footprints and skid marks from scuffling feet, and

  as Lilah watched the rain filled them in, softened their edges, and

  melted them away.

  Annie was there. The scuff marks showed where she’d tried

  to run. It showed where she’d slipped and fell.

  She lay there in the rain.

  She looked like she was asleep. Eyes closed, lashes brushing

  her beautiful cheeks, head resting in a pillow.

  Except that it wasn’t a pillow.

  It was a rock.

  Lilah felt herself fall. Her knees buckled and she dropped

  down beside the little body. Annie’s pale hair was darker where

  it curled around the rock, and when the lightning flashed, the red

  was too red.

  Too red.

  Too red.

  Lilah gathered her sister up in her arms and held her gently.

  So gently. As if afraid to wake her up from a nap. She pulled her

  close and rocked her, crooning a little lullaby that George used

  to sing to both of them. The fires in Lilah’s chest burned out and

  the rain turned the ashes to ice, and still she held her sister.

  Lightning burst above them and the thunder roared.

  And still she held little Annie.

  It was raining and the world had ended.

  She knew what would happen next. What had to happen.

  George had schooled them on it. And Lilah’s earliest memories

  confirmed it. When Mommy had died the other survivors –

  George included—had known, and they had used sticks and

  clubs. You couldn’t call it ‘quieting’ Mommy. There had been

  too many screams. But it was the same thing.

  Annie twitched.

  Tears burned on Lilah’s face. They were the only heat in the

  world.

  Annie was going to wake up soon. And she would wake up

  hungry. Of course she would. There were no fairy tale endings

  to make this all right. Annie would wake up as one of them –a

  biter. Then she would want to bite.

  Anyone. Anything.