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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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.
Decision Point (ARC) Page 3