The Colony: Velocity (The Colony, Vol. 4)

by Michaelbrent Collings

  God answered eventually. The next morning they found blood in Derek’s ears and realized his eardrums had burst. No lasting ill effects, but scary as hell to parents who lived and died on their children’s smiles and tears.

  “Hush little baby, don’t say a word….”

  Ken realized he was singing under his breath. He looked at Maggie. She was looking at him. She was crying silently, twin tear-tracks painting platinum lines down her cheeks.

  “… Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird….”

  He fell silent. The boy-thing behind the bus wasn’t Derek. Not really. It was a liar, a deceiver. A devil come to steal the hope that remained to the survivors.

  “… And if that mockingbird won’t sing….”

  As if it heard the words, the Derek-thing shrieked. The sound made it through the harsh chug-thug-pant of the bus engine. Piercing the way only a small child’s scream could be. But grating and deep as well. Something under the child’s voice, a thing singularly alien and holding knowledge and evil beyond the grasp of any true child.

  Ken felt dirty hearing it. He felt like washing his hands, scrubbing until the flesh bled then washing until the muscle and tendon was gone and only pure white bone remained.

  And then washing some more.

  Maggie cried out. Despair.

  Hope and little Liz did not awake, but both girls moaned. That terrible moan of pleasure-pain. The moan of virtue offered up, of innocence stolen away.

  The Derek-thing’s scream ended.

  Ken couldn’t go to Maggie, couldn’t sit beside her or even touch her. Sally was in the way, and Ken sensed that the snow leopard’s presence was the only thing keeping the power of Derek’s screams from overwhelming –

  (hurting changing stealing)

  – his daughters.

  Something whined. At first he thought it was another piece of the sound that the zombies were making. Then realized it was coming from the wrong direction. Coming from somewhere ahead of him.

  He turned and saw their rescuer – the strangely-masked driver in the full-body armor – holding up a small box that was whining and shrieking.

  The box screamed in time with Derek. Its pitch was different, but the thing spoke in syncopation with the thing that had once been his son.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  The driver put down the box.

  Took off the mask.

  Ken heard Christopher gasp behind him. “No frickin’ way,” said the kid.

  7

  Ken had heard the driver’s voice. Raspy, craggy. But there had been something else underneath the gruffness. Something that he had recognized and that kept him from being surprised when the mask came off and revealed long curls of red hair.

  The driver was a woman. A bit on the chubby side, perhaps about forty pounds north of what the celeb magazines would have considered an appropriate candidate for beach attire.

  Then again, the writers of those magazines were probably either dead or zombies.

  The world may have ended, but at least our girls and women aren’t going to be subjected to impossible body image standards anymore.

  “What are you staring at?” the driver snapped. Her voice was just as cracked without the gas mask, and now Ken could see why. There was a half-healed wound curling around the side of her throat where it looked like someone had tried to yank her jugular out and only partially failed. It looked like it had been a devastating wound, the kind of thing that would have necessitated major surgery and a long stay in the hospital before the Change.

  Now… thick black thread, a hasty bit of sewing that passed for first-, second-, and last-aid. Maybe a few hours’ rest, and then back to the business of survival. Ken didn’t know who she was, but this girl was tough.

  And, he realized, she wasn’t staring at him. Her eyes kept flicking to the mirror above her seat, the one that was positioned so the bus driver could keep an eye on the students at all times, but her gaze pushed beyond him, to….

  Ken turned, following her gaze. He saw Christopher. Christopher’s mouth was agape. Still handsome as ever, managing to look more like he was on his way to a photo shoot than like someone on a one-way trip to the end of the world. But he was clearly dumbstruck by something. He was holding an axe in his hand, and Ken wondered where he had gotten that, but he wasn’t looking at it. No, he was looking back at Theresa.

  And, abruptly, Ken realized that the kid looked exactly like Ken himself had once looked. Not youthful, it wasn’t that. No, it was the stunned look on the kid’s face, the look Ken had worn the first time he saw Maggie, walking into church in a blue blouse and a beige skirt.

  Whenever he told the story Maggie would insist she hadn’t worn any such thing, but Ken knew she was wrong, because he could still remember the giant double-pump his heart did when she walked in (late, he remembered, always late to church). The prettiest girl he’d ever seen. And he knew somehow that, beyond beauty, he was seeing someone that would matter to him. Not love at first sight, perhaps, but definitely something more than hormones, more than simple lust.

  He hadn’t thought of marriage in that first moment, but he had walked over to her after the services and done his best to strike up a conversation. Not usual for him – he wasn’t a ladies man by any stretch – but he had little choice. We are all rushing headlong at sometimes terrifying velocity toward our futures, and to try to avoid them is only to court disaster. And in this case he had no wish to avoid his future. Only to find out what part she would play in it.

  Now, Christopher’s mouth moved up and down like a nutcracker in the midst of a nut shortage. Open, shut, open, shut.

  The redhead at the front of the bus wasn’t amused. She frowned. “Are you an idiot or something?”

  Christopher’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clack. The dumbstruck look disappeared – or at least faded – from his face. “No,” he said. He looked like he wanted to say something wittier, but the single syllable was all he could manage.

  Christopher held up the axe in his hand. It was black, with a curved blade that looked like the kind of thing Ken associated with medieval movies. The word “Cass” was scrawled across the haft in thick red letters. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Took it off some Goth chick,” said the driver. “She was ranting about vampires.” She shrugged. “Got her stories wrong, that’s for sure.”

  “You stole her weapons?” That was Buck. Ken had almost forgotten about him. The big man gaped at their driver.

  She returned his gaze evenly. “No, I didn’t steal them. But when she got bitten and turned, I used them to cut her into little pieces. If it makes you feel better, you can imagine me asking if I could cut her arms and legs and head off, pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top.”

  The redhead looked like she might continue her sarcastic rant, but her eyes flicked down and forward and she screamed, “Hold on to something!”

  Ken saw why.

  He expected the redhead to brake.

  She didn’t.

  Is she insane?

  8

  “What are you –?“

  “Slow down!”

  “Don’t –“

  The words came fast and loud. Ken couldn’t even tell who said what. He heard Maggie scream. Only Sally remained aloof from the conversation, the snow leopard silent as the redhead at the wheel stomped the accelerator.

  School buses aren’t made for speed. The thing didn’t leap forward; didn’t even lurch. But Ken could feel the torque pushing him back, felt his hand tighten against the support bar he was holding. He dropped to the nearest seat, wondering if they had survived countless attacks by zombies – both living and dead – only to fall prey to a woman with a demolition derby death wish.

  There were three cars in the road ahead of the bus. Stretched across the entire length of the road, end to end. A red Suburban, two smaller vehicles. They were touching bumpers, almost as if –

  They were put there.

  Ken realized what he
was seeing in the instant before the bus hit.

  A roadblock.

  He thought for a fraction of an instant that it must have been some group of survivors that did it. But why? Ken had seen enough end-of-the-world movies to know that eventually everything went to Hell, and people started trying to kill/rape/eat each other (not necessarily in that order), but it seemed that three days was a bit fast to have devolved to that point. Especially since there were so few survivors. Any humans left would probably be concentrating one hundred percent on survival, no brain space left for traps for their unwary fellow humans.

  Then he saw the zombies, a full dozen of them, loping away as the bus hit the front right bumper of the Suburban and the front left bumper of the dark blue sedan that had been shoved against it.

  They tried to stop us. This was a trap.

  The implications of that were terrifying. The things had been getting smarter, there was no denying it. When they first appeared they were truly mindless, simple creatures only capable of killing. Indeed, when the Change occurred, the zombies couldn’t even get through doors at first.

  Then they could. And before too much longer they were tracking Ken and the other survivors.

  And now… traps. Ambushes?

  They weren’t just getting smarter, they were planning. A progression of intelligence that was exponential.

  He felt something cold in his gut, pressing against his bowels, making him feel like vomiting and crapping his pants. The things already outnumbered them a thousand to one, already had every physical advantage. If they had intelligence as well, the human race was doomed.

  That was the last thought he had before eight tons of school bus slammed right through the two cars. Ken saw a zombie that hadn’t left its position behind the cars plowed over, hitting the front grill of the school bus with a wet thud before disappearing below the chassis.

  Something blew up below the bus. The vehicle jounced, skidded to the side. It tore through a set of parking meters set into the side of the road.

  Pwing-pwing-pwing.

  The redhead grunted as she struggled to bring the bus back under control. Ken could feel the thing fishtailing, juking like a fish that had been half-hooked and still had a chance of escape.

  The bus took one huge sideways lurch, and Ken realized that the small explosion he had heard must have been a tire – maybe several tires – popping. This was a large bus, one tire at each front corner and two on each rear corner. Hopefully just one of the rear tires had popped, allowing the other to remain as a whole backup. But he couldn’t tell, and it would be almost too much to hope for given their luck so far.

  The bus kept slewing to the side as though drunk on the disaster that lay all around them.

  It hit a piece of debris in the middle of the road. Ken didn’t think it had been placed there purposefully, but purposeful or not it sent the vehicle into a new slide. The wheels on the right side of the bus felt like they lifted up for a too-long moment before slamming back to the road with a tooth-jarring thud.

  “Geez, lady!” screamed Christopher. “What are you –“

  “Shut up,” she growled.

  Christopher did. A minor miracle itself, since Ken didn’t think death or destruction had managed to silence the young man before this.

  The bus moved forward. Still veering to one side, favoring its blown wheel –

  (or wheels please don’t be wheels just let us get a bit farther God I think I really think you owe us that)

  – the way Ken favored his left leg due to a pinched nerve. He patted the seat absently.

  We’ve both seen better days, haven’t we?

  He looked at Maggie. She was white-faced, braced tightly into her own seat like she had found herself in a strange and particularly unpleasant carnival ride, but both she and Liz looked fine. As fine as the circumstances permitted. She nodded. Tried to smile.

  He turned farther around so he could see Buck. The big man was looking at Hope, dangling silently in his arms. His big hands roved her body, not in a perverse way but in a way that clearly bespoke his concern and terror. Not for himself, but for her, worried that he would find evidence of broken bones or swelling that might indicate internal trauma. Buck didn’t look at Ken, but apparently sensed his attention because he pushed a big thumb into the air. “We’re okay,” he said. His too-high voice was pitched a bit higher than usual, fear strangling his vocal cords.

  Ken glanced at Aaron and Christopher to make sure they were okay as well. Christopher was still holding the axe, and Aaron had an honest-to-god broadsword clutched in his one good hand. Ken wondered what kind of girl this “Cass” had been. Interesting, that’s for sure. And the world was the poorer for her loss.

  Both Aaron and Christopher nodded, guy-speak for “We’re good.”

  Ken nodded back. Turned to the driver.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  The driver glanced at him in the mirror above her head. She couldn’t look at him long, still wending between cars and debris that littered the road; occasionally slamming right through smaller items. But she looked like she was about to answer.

  Then the bus bounced.

  And again.

  And he heard something skitter. Not on top of the bus, not beside it.

  Beneath it.

  And he remembered the tiny bodies that had flowed out of the storm drain. The things that had fled from the light.

  He thought of the zombies, loping away from the vehicles they had pushed together in ambush.

  The noise below sounded like it could be large or small. Could be anything. A child-thing, an adult-thing.

  But not human.

  Something coughed below the bus.

  “What now?” said Christopher.

  The redhead was still looking at Ken.

  She looked terrified.

  So, Ken suspected, did he.

  9

  Ken wondered for a moment why the coughing sound should scare him so badly. There was no question that something was below them, below the bus, but it was more than that.

  It was….

  He didn’t have a chance to complete the thought.

  There was a high-pitched whine. Something that reminded Ken of a dentist’s drill, only with the unpleasantness of that tool notched up times fifty. Then it stopped.

  “What…?” said Christopher.

  Sally was suddenly on his feet, the snow leopard standing with legs outstretched, almost braced against the seat supports on either side of the center aisle. The leopard’s fur was standing on end and its head was lowered to an attack position. Its teeth were bared.

  Liz and Hope didn’t wake up. They didn’t even move when Sally got up. Just slept on.

  The cough came again, and Ken placed it. He had heard it first while hanging from the side of the top three stories of a building. A zombie had made that sound, right before it vomited acid all over itself.

  But that couldn’t be happening now, could it? Sure, the things had somehow gained an ability to cling to sheer vertical surfaces, but even that was very different from holding fast to the undercarriage of a school bus bouncing through a warzone of a neighborhood. And the zombies’ acid melted their own flesh. So if there was something down there, if it puked acid the stuff would just hurt it, not the bus.

  The cough again.

  And Ken realized he had heard it other times, too. Like in the elevator shaft, crawling down.

  Then the whine came again.

  The sound grew higher and higher. Then it changed in tone, sounding almost like….

  “It’s sawing through!” Buck shouted the words and then rammed back, jamming himself against the wall, pushing as far away from the center of the aisle as possible.

  Ken looked and saw the big man was right: what looked like a circular saw was biting through the steel floor of the bus.

  A moment later Ken changed his mind. What the thing actually was he couldn’t say, but it was not a saw. It was moving so quickly that he c
ouldn’t get a good look at it, but for some reason it brought to mind the Remington rotary-style electric razor Maggie had gotten for him a few years back. As a functional razor it had been something of a bust: Ken’s beard was so thick and coarse that he quickly discovered the three “precision” razors actually just yanked the hair out of his face as often as they cut it.

  But he did enjoy looking at the thing. It was sleek and somehow felt cooler than the disposable Bic razors he typically used.