Originally in YA anthology ‘After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia’ edited by Datlow and Windling.
Both single-topic anthologies, nor YA fiction (with their teen protagonists) tend to leave me cold, so good to have Year’s Best anthologies to pick the best, and this story is a cracker. Truth be told, whilst it has a teenage protagonist, and features a world gone to wrack and ruin through adults (!), it doesn’t read as a YA story. Small group of youngsters hunker down in deserted towns, fearing the moment when puberty turns a child into a child-killer….
