To save her struggling family, Luna enters a competition offering reward money to anyone who can successfully live without modern technology for a year. But when this social experiment turns sinister and her classmates start disappearing, her family’s livelihood might not be the only thing she’s in danger of losing. At first, the challenge is fun. But then things get dangerous. Kids start disappearing, including Luna’s friends. There are voices in the woods. Bloodred markings on the trees. And Luna increasingly begins to wonder if all these strange happenings are connected with the Retro Challenge. Unless she can figure out the truth behind who’s sabotaging the challenge, the next person to disappear may be Luna herself.
The freeway is coming. It will cut the neighborhood in two. Construction has already started, pushing toward this corridor of condemned houses and cracked concrete with the momentum of the inevitable. Yet there you are, in the fifth house on the left, fighting for your life. Ramey, I. The victim of the bet between two manufactured the seductive and lethal Roxy (Oxycontin), who is at the top of her game, and the smart, high-achieving Addison (Adderall), who is tired of being the helpful one, and longs for a more dangerous, less wholesome image. The wager—a contest to see who can bring their mark to “the Party” first—is a race to the bottom of a rave that has raged since the beginning of time.
When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival. The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.
The Persistence of Memory—Taking place in Barcelona, Spain, this story follows the rivalry of Scythe Dalí and Scythe Gaudí. Scythe Dalí thinks that gleaning is a sacred act and should be respected, he makes all of his gleanings spectacles, such as gleaning a newlywed couple with a combustion gun, a tribute to the volcanic winds of Pompeii. Where Scythe Gaudí seeks a humble life and gleans with the utmost respect and dignity. When Scythe Dalí crosses paths with Gaudí's nice, Penelope, he devises a plan to get back at his long-time rival, and glean the most precious person to him in the entire world.
Undevoured—Roland's childhood is marked by trauma and defiance. At eight, his abusive stepfather coerces him to jump off a pier and then throws him in when Roland hesitates. At thirteen, while swimming, Roland is attacked by a shark, but manages to kill it after a fierce struggle. At seventeen, Roland seeks revenge on Zane, an all-state wrestler who defeats him. Roland kisses Zane's girlfriend to provoke him, leading to a rematch. Zane, fueled by anger, loses, and Roland claims his varsity spot. This story is a deep dive into Unwind's original antagonist.
La Silla Del Diablo—When a string of brutal murders occur in a Medical college in a small Spanish town, Occult detective Harper Herrera investigates to find that a chair cursed by the devil has possessed faculty into doing its killing. Harper will have to solve the mystery, sit in the chair herself and summon the devil to break the curse and send El Diablo back to hell. The 368th installment of Weird Tales, the original publication of Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft and many more!
