The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven

by Jonathan Strahan

  Millie’d thought the bottle would shatter. But maybe the glass was too thick, because though it whacked Max’s back with a solid thump, it didn’t break. Max dropped to the floor like he’d been shot. Jolly put her hands to her mouth. Startled at what she herself had done, Millie dropped the bottle. It exploded when it hit the floor, right near Max’s head. Vodka fountained up and out, and then Max was whimpering and rolling around in the booze and broken glass. There were dark smears under him.

  “Ow! Jesus! Ow!” He peered up to see who had hit him. Millie moved closer to Jolly.

  “Max.” Citron’s voice was hoarse. He reached a hand out to Max. “Get out of the glass, dude. Can you stand up?”

  Millie couldn’t believe it. “Citron, he just tried to kill you!”

  “I shouldn’t have talked about growing up. Jolly, can you find the candles? It’s dark in here. Come on, Max.” Citron pulled Max to his feet.

  Max came up mad. He shook broken glass off his leather jacket, and stood towering over Millie. Was his chest thicker than it had been? Was that hair shadowing his chin? Millie whimpered and cowered away. Jolly put herself between Millie and Max. “Don’t be a big old bully,” she said to Max. “Picking on the one-hand girl. Don’t be a dog.”

  It was like a light came back on in Max’s eyes. He looked at Jolly, then at Millie. “You hurt me, Millie. I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said to Millie. “Even if…”

  “If…that thing was happening to you,” Jolly interrupted him, “you wouldn’t care who you were hurting. Besides, you were choking Citron, so don’t give us that innocent look and go on about not hurting people.”

  Max’s eyes welled up. They glistened in the candle light. “I’ll go,” he said drunkenly. His voice sounded high, like the boy he was ceasing to be. “Soon. I’ll go away. I promise.”

  “When?” Millie asked softly. They all heard her, though. Citron looked at her with big, wet doe eyes.

  Max swallowed. “Tomorrow. No. A week.”

  “Three days,” Jolly told him. “Two more sleeps.”

  Max made a small sound in his throat. He wiped his hand over his face. “Three days,” he agreed. Jolly nodded, firmly.

  After that, noone wanted to play Loup-de-lou any more. They didn’t bother with candles. They all went to their own places, against the walls so they could keep an eye on each other. Millie and Jolly had the best place, together near the window. That way, if anything bad happened, Jolly could boost Millie out the window. There used to be a low bookcase under that window. They’d burned the wood months ago, for cooking with. The books that had been on it were piled up to one side, and Jolly’d scavenged a pile of old clothes for a bed. Jolly rummaged around under the clothes. She pulled out the gold necklace that their mom had given her for passing French. Jolly only wore it to sleep. She fumbled with the clasp, dropped the necklace, swore under her breath. She found the necklace again and put it on successfully this time. She kissed Millie on the forehead. “Sleep tight, Mills.”

  Millie said, “My wrist hurts too much. Come with me tomorrow to see if the kids two streets over have any painkillers?”

  “Sure, honey.” Warrens kept their distance from each other, for fear of becoming targets if somebody in someone else’s warren sprouted. “But try to get some sleep, okay?” Jolly lay down and was asleep almost immediately, her breathing quick and shallow.

  Millie remained sitting with her back against the wall. Max lay on the other side of the room, using his coat as a blanket. Was he sleeping, or just lying there, listening?

  She used to like Max. Weeks after the world had gone mad, he’d found her and Jolly hiding under the porch of somebody’s house. They were dirty and hungry, and the stench of rotting meat from inside the house was drawing flies. Jolly had managed to keep Millie alive that long, but Millie was delirious with pain, and the place where her hand had been bitten off had started smelling funny. Max had brought them clean water. He’d searched and bargained with the other warrens of hiding kids until he found morphine and antibiotics for Millie. He was the one who’d told them that it looked like only adults were getting sick.

  But now Millie was scared of him. She sat awake half the night, watching Max. Once, he shifted and snorted, and the hairs on Millie’s arms stood on end. She shoved herself right up close against Jolly. But Max just grumbled and rolled over and kept sleeping. He didn’t change. Not this time. Millie watched him a little longer, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She curled up beside Jolly. Jolly was scrawny, her skin downy with the peach fuzz that Sai said came from starvation. Most of them had it. Nobody wanted to grow up and change, but Jolly needed to eat a little more, just a little. Millie stared into the dark and worried. She didn’t know when she fell asleep. She woke when first light was making the window into a glowing blue square. She was cold. Millie reached to put her arm around Jolly. Her arm landed on wadded-up clothing with nobody in it. “She’s gone,” said Citron.

  “Whuh?” Millie rolled over, sat up. She was still tired. “She gone to check the traps?” Jolly barely ate, but she was best at catching gamey squirrels, feral cats, and the occasional raccoon.

  “I dunno. I woke up just as the door was closing behind her. She let in a draft.”

  Millie leapt to her feet. “It was Max! He sprouted! He ate her!”

  Citron leapt up too. He pulled her into a hug. “Sh. It wasn’t Max. Look, he’s still sleeping.”

  He was. Millie could see him huddled under his coat.

  “See?” said Citron. “Now hush. You’re going to wake him and Sai up.”

  “Oh god, I was so scared for a moment.” She was lying; she never stopped being scared. She sobbed and let Citron keep hugging her, but not for long. Things could sneak up on you while you were busy making snot and getting hugs to make you feel better. Millie swallowed back the rest of her tears. She pulled out of Citron’s arms. “Thanks.” She went and checked beside Jolly’s side of the bed. Jolly’s jacket wasn’t there. Neither was her penguin. Ah. “She’s gone to find aspirin for me.” Millie sighed with relief and guilt. “She took her penguin to trade with. That’s almost her most favorite thing ever.”

  “Next to you, you mean.”

  “I suppose so. I come first, then her necklace, then the penguin.” Jolly’d found the ceramic penguin a long time ago when they’d been scavenging in the wreckage of a drug store. The penguin stood on a circular base, the whole thing about ten inches tall. Its beak was broken, but when you twisted the white base, music played out of it. Jolly had kept it carefully since, wrapped in a torn blouse. She played it once a week and on special occasions. Twisted the base twice only, let the penguin do a slow turn to the few notes of tinny song. Churchy had told them that penguin was from a movie called Madagascar. She’d been old enough to remember old-time stuff like that. It was soon after that that they’d had to kill her.

  Millie stared at her and Jolly’s sleeping place. There was something… “She didn’t take socks. Her feet must be freezing.” She picked up the pair of socks with the fewest holes in it. “We have to go find her.”

  “You go,” Citron replied. “It’s cold out, and I want to get some more sleep.”

  “You know we’re not supposed to go anywhere on our own!”

  “Yeah, but we do. Lots of times.”

  “Except me. I always have someone with me.”

  “Right. Like that’s any safer than being alone. I’m going back to bed.” He yawned and turned away.

  Millie fought the urge to yell at him. Instead she said, “I claim leader.”

  Citron stopped. “Aw, come on, Millie.”

  But Millie was determined. “Leader. One of us might be in danger, so I claim leader. So you have to be my follower.”

  He looked skywards and sighed. “Fine. Where?”

  That meant she was leader. You asked the leader what to do, and the leader told you. Usually everyone asked Jolly what to do, or Max. Now that she had an excuse to go to Jolly, Millie stopped feeling as t
hough something had gnawed away the pit of her stomach. She yanked her coat out of the pile of clothing that was her bed and shrugged it on. “Button me,” she said to Citron, biting back the “please.” Leaders didn’t say please. They just gave orders. That was the right way to do it.

  Citron concentrated hard on the buttons, not looking in Millie’s eyes as he did them up. He started in the middle, buttoned down to the last button just below her hips, then stood up to do the buttons at her chest. He held the fabric away from her, so it wouldn’t touch her body at all. His fingers didn’t touch her, but still her chest felt tingly as Citron did up the top buttons. She knew he was blushing, even though you couldn’t tell on his dark face. Hers neither. If it had been Max doing this, his face would have lit up like a strawberry. They found strawberries growing sometimes, in summer.

  Leaders didn’t blush. Millie straightened up and looked at Citron. He had such a baby face. If he was lucky, he’d never sprout. She’d heard that some people didn’t. Max said it was too soon to tell, because the pandemic had only started two years ago, but Millie liked to hope that some kids would avoid the horrible thing. No temper getting worse and worse. No changing all of a sudden into something different and scary. Millie wondered briefly what happened to the ones who didn’t sprout, who just got old. Food for the easthound, probably. “Maybe we should go…” Millie began to ask, then remembered herself. Leaders didn’t ask, they told. “We’re going over by the grocery first,” she told Citron. “Maybe she’s just checking her traps.”

  “She took her music box to check her traps?”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s where we’re going to go.” She stuffed Jolly’s socks into her coat pocket, then shoved her shoulder against the damp-swollen door and stepped out into the watery light of an early spring morning. The sun made her blink.

  Citron asked, “Shouldn’t we get those two to come along with us? You know, so there’s more of us?”

  “No,” growled Millie. “Just now you wanted me to go all alone, but now you want company?”

  “But who does trading this early in the morning?”

  “We’re not going to wake Max and Sai, okay? We’ll find her ourselves!”

  Citron frowned. Millie shivered. It was so cold out that her nosehairs froze together when she breathed in. Like scattered pins, tiny, shiny daggers of frost edged the sidewalk slabs and the new spring leaves of the small maple tree that grew outside their squat. Trust Jolly to make her get out of a warm bed to go looking for her on a morning like this. She picked up three solid throwing rocks. They were gritty with dirt and the cold of them burned her fingers. She stuffed them into her jacket pocket, on top of Jolly’s socks. Citron had the baseball bat he carried everywhere. Millie turned up her collar and stuck her hand into her jeans pocket. “C’mon.”

  Jolly’d put a new batch of traps over by that old grocery store. The roof was caved in. There was no food in the grocery any more, or soap, or cough medicine. Everything had been scavenged by the nearby warrens of kids, but animals sometimes made nests and shit in the junk that was left. Jolly’d caught a dog once. A gaunt poodle with dirty, matted hair. But they didn’t eat dogs, ever. You were what you ate. They’d only killed it in an orgy of fury and frustration that had swelled over them like a river.

  Black Betty had a child,

  Bam-ba-lam,

  That child’s gone wild,

  Bam-ba-lam.

  Really, it was Millie who’d started it, back before everything went wrong, two winters ago. They’d been at home. Jolly sitting on the living room floor that early evening, texting with her friends, occasionally giggling at something one of them said. Millie and Dad on the couch, sharing a bowl of raspberries. All of them watching some old-time cartoon movie on tv about animals that could do Kung Fu. Waiting for Mum to come home from work. Because then they would order pizza. It was pizza night. Dad getting a text message on his phone. Dad holding the phone down by his knee to make out the words, even though his eyesight was just fine, he said. Jolly watching them, waiting to hear if it was Mum, if she’d be home soon. Millie leaning closer to Dad and squinting at the tiny message in the phone’s window. Mouthing the words silently. Then frowning. Saying, “Mum says she’s coming home on the easthound train?” Dad falling out laughing. Eastbound, sweetie.

  There hadn’t been an easthound before that. It was Millie who’d called it, who’d made it be. Jolly’d told her that wasn’t true, that she didn’t make the pandemic just by reading a word wrong, that the world didn’t work that way. But the world didn’t work any more the way it used to, so what did Jolly know? Even if she was older than Millie.

  Jolly and Millie’s family had assigned adjectives to the girls early on in their lives. Millie was The Younger One. (By twenty-eight and three-quarter minutes. The midwife had been worried that Mum would need a C-Section to get Millie out.) Jolly was The Kidder. She liked jokes and games. She’d come up with Loup-de-lou to help keep Millie’s mind off the agony when she’d lost her hand. Millie’d still been able to feel the missing hand there, on the end of her wrist, and pain wouldn’t let her sleep or rest, and all the adults in the world were sprouting and trying to kill off the kids, and Max was making her and Jolly and Citron move to a new hiding place every few days, until he and Jolly figured out the thing about sprinkling peppermint oil to hide their scent trails so that sprouteds couldn’t track them. That was back before Sai had joined them, and then Churchy. Back before Churchy had sprouted on them one night in the dark as they were all sharing half a stale bread loaf and a big liter bottle of flat cola, and Max and Citron and Sai had grabbed anything heavy or sharp they could find and waled away at the thing that had been Churchy just seconds before, until it lay still on the ground, all pulpy and bloody. And the whole time, Jolly had stayed near still-weak Millie, brandishing a heavy frying pan and muttering, “It’s okay, Mills. I won’t let her get you.”

  The feeling was coming back, like her hand was still there. Her wrist had settled into a throbbing ache. She hoped it wasn’t getting infected again.

  Watchfully, they walked down their side street and turned onto the main street in the direction of the old grocery store. They walked up the middle of the empty road. That way, if a sprouted came out of one of the shops or alleyways, they might have time to see it before it attacked.

  The burger place, the gas station, the little shoe repair place on the corner; Millie tried to remember what stores like that had been like before. When they’d had unbroken windows and unempty shelves. When there’d been people shopping in them and adults running them, back when adults used to be just grown-up people suspicious of packs of schoolkids in their stores, not howling, sharp-toothed child-killers with dank, stringy fur and paws instead of hands. Ravenous monsters that grew and grew so quickly that you could watch it happen, if you were stupid enough to stick around. Their teeth, hair and claws lengthened, their bodies getting bigger and heavier minute by minute, until they could no longer eat quickly enough to keep up with the growth, and they weakened and died a few days after they’d sprouted.

  Jolly wasn’t tending to her traps. Millie swallowed. “Okay, so we’ll go check with the warren over on Patel Street. They usually have aspirin and stuff.” She walked in silence, except for the worry voice in her head.

  Citron said, “That tree’s going to have to start over.”

  “What?” Millie realized she’d stopped at the traffic light out of habit, because it had gone to red. She was such an idiot. And so was Citron, for just going along with her. She started walking again. Citron tagged along, always just a little behind.

  “The maple tree,” he puffed. When you never had enough to eat, you got tired quickly. “The one outside our place. It put its leaves out too early, and now the frost has killed them. It’ll have to start over.”

  “Whatever.” Then she felt guilty for being so crabby with him. What could she say to make nice? “Uh, that was a nice line you made in Loup-de-lou last night. The one with eyes an
d spies in it.”

  Citron smiled at her. “Thanks. It wasn’t quite right, though. Sprouteds have bleedy red eyes, not shiny ones.”

  “But your line wasn’t about sprouteds. It was about the…the easthound.” She looked all around and behind her. Nothing.

  “Thing is,” Citron replied, so quietly that Millie almost didn’t hear him, “We’re all the easthound.”

  Instantly, Millie swatted the back of his head. “Shut up!”

  “Ow!”

  “Just shut up! Take that back! It’s not true!”

  “Stop making such a racket, willya?”

  “So stop being such a loser!” She was sweating in her jacket, her skinny knees trembling. So hungry all the time. So scared.

  Citron’s eyes widened. “Millie—!”

  He was looking behind her. She turned, hand fumbling in her jacket pocket for her rocks. The sprouted bowled her over while her hand was still snagged in her pocket. Thick, curling fur and snarling and teeth as long as her pinkie. It grabbed her. Its paws were like catcher’s mitts with claws in them. It howled and briefly let her go. It’s in pain, she thought wonderingly, even as she fought her hand out of her pocket and tried to get out from under the sprouted. All that quick growing. It must hurt them. The sprouted snapped at her face, missed. They were fast and strong when they first sprouted, but clumsy in their ever-changing bodies. The sprouted set its jaws in her chest. Through her coat and sweater, its teeth tore into her skin. Pain. Teeth sliding along her ribs. Millie tried to wrestle the head off her. She got her fingers deep into the fur around its neck. Then an impact jerked the sprouted’s head sideways. Citron and his baseball bat, screaming, “Die, die, die!” as he beat the sprouted. It leapt for him. It was already bigger. Millie rolled to her feet, looking around for anything she could use as a weapon. Citron was keeping the sprouted at bay, just barely, by swinging his bat at it. It advanced on him, howling in pain with every step forward.