The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  Like Dorcas, Aaron had only one hand. He had already done the impossible, moving like that. But even he couldn’t grab onto the woman and her child.

  Maggie kept falling.

  25

  DOWN. DOWN. MAGGIE tumbled over Aaron’s body, over him. Past him.

  Ken’s vision telescoped. There were still easily a hundred thousand of the zombies at the base of the Wells Fargo Center, clustered so closely together that they looked like an oil slick. But more terrifying were the tens of thousands that were scaling the sides of the building, crawling impossibly upward, somehow sticking to the sheer walls, pulling themselves toward the survivors.

  And worst of all were the shrieking monsters that were crawling up the crane itself. Smoke billowing from below them, fire coming off their clothing and their very skin. It was a view of Hell worse than any biblical vision from Revelation.

  Most of the things were still fairly far away. But one of them had broken away from the horde. It was a huge creature, at least six-foot-six and broad to match. Pure muscle, from what Ken could see, dressed in what had once probably been jeans and a tank top.

  The thing was a terrifying mixture of light and dark. The zombie’s skin was utterly white to the point of being pink. Ken suspected that the thing must have been an albino before the world ended – unless this was one more symptom of the change.

  But the white, unblemished skin was only on the thing’s left half. Beyond that, a line bisected the thing neatly down the middle, separating it into right and left halves.

  On the right half, there was no white skin, no trace of once-humanity. All was black and crimson. Charred by the fire the zombie had willingly gone through to get at its prey. Its skin sloughed off in ragged sheets, exposing bone and muscle that were just as dark and burnt as the skin above them.

  Maggie screamed. Not just terror, but pain. So did Aaron, and Ken’s vision snapped back to his wife and the heroic older man.

  The cowboy had down his work well. He hadn’t stopped Maggie’s tumbling fall, but had slowed it enough that she could reach up and grab something.

  Aaron’s leg.

  Maggie dangled, her back to the structure of the crane’s tower. Liz’s head slumped forward and down, as though the toddler were curious to see what lay below them.

  The black/white monster growled, a noise louder than the others’ shouts. It sounded almost triumphant.

  It was only perhaps fifteen feet below Maggie’s dangling tennis shoes. Close to her, and coming fast.

  26

  AARON WAS SCREAMING. It was the first time that Ken could remember the cowboy making a sound like that. He realized the older man was holding onto the bars of the crane with his good hand and had somehow wrapped the mangled fingers of his right hand around a bar as well. Trying to hold onto Maggie’s weight.

  “I’ll get her,” Ken shouted. But there was no way that was going to happen.

  Christopher started moving down. Grappling with the still-writhing Hope, but clearly game to try and help Maggie.

  Dorcas had no chance. Her arm was too shattered for her to do anything but hang on; try to climb.

  And the black/white monster was now within ten feet of Maggie.

  Ken had survived all this. He had kept himself alive, had saved others.

  I’ll think of a way.

  Zombies on the walls.

  What can I do?

  Zombies under us.

  I’ve got to think of something.

  My wife. My baby.

  Nothing was coming.

  He had nothing.

  He realized that his only options were to climb down and die, or climb up and save himself and his son, but live with the fact that he had abandoned his wife and baby.

  He couldn’t make either choice.

  But even the refusal to make a decision, he knew, was essentially a default to the latter alternative.

  Maggie screamed.

  The huge zombie grabbed her foot.

  27

  NO ONE KNEW WHAT TO do. Everyone was frozen.

  Everyone but one.

  Derek.

  The nine-year-old moved. Too fast for Ken to react, too fast for Christopher to catch.

  “Mommy!” he screamed, and suddenly his weight was gone from Ken’s shoulders. The boy flung himself off Ken’s back, jumping from his father’s flesh to the steel of the crane and then climbing down so fast he was a blur.

  “Stop him!” shouted Ken.

  Christopher and then Dorcas each reached for the boy in turn. He danced out of range of both, agile as a monkey.

  The creature, the black/white beast, had pulled itself up to Maggie’s legs. One bite was all it would take. One bite, and she would be gone in a matter of seconds.

  The zombie opened its mouth.

  “Not...,” screamed Derek, rushing down headfirst past Aaron...

  ... the zombie reared back...

  “... my...,” the boy continued...

  ... the white/black abomination thrust its face toward Maggie’s leg...

  “... MOTHER!” Derek finished, kicking off into space.

  The zombie bit down.

  28

  THE TEETH SUNK INTO flesh.

  The world seemed to fall silent.

  There was only wind. The sound of smoke puffing past. And a scream.

  “NO!”

  Ken didn’t know who screamed. If it was him, or Maggie, or someone else. It didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was the sight of his boy. The sight of Derek, who had always been the one to take care of his sisters, who had always seemed more aware of others’ pain than of his own, putting himself between his mother and baby sister and the looming threat.

  The sight of the beast biting the child’s arm.

  The sight of Derek, looking up at the sky. His mouth opening.

  And then sound returned as Derek screamed. Not in pain, but madness. His eyes clouded over, and everything that had made him so special was suddenly... just... gone. Gone, and he was one of them.

  Bloody sweat exploded from the boy’s pores. His body convulsed with the change, and that bought them all some time. His hands and feet punched out, and his little foot caught the black/white demon under the chin. The thing growled and let go of Maggie to grab Derek... what had been Derek. To do so, the monster also let go of its hold on the crane.

  Derek and the black/white beast fell, both of them snarling with rage, reaching for Maggie and Liz as they plummeted. They disappeared into the smoke that still billowed up from the base of the crane.

  “They’re gone.”

  Someone yanked at Ken. Christopher, he thought. But he couldn’t be sure. A weight fell on his shoulders. A crying something.

  The voice came again. “They’re gone. Take care of your daughter.”

  “Shhh,” said Ken. Not even sure why he was saying it. Part of him realized that Christopher had passed Hope to him, then had gone down to help Maggie and the others. But the greater part of him – the part of him that mattered – didn’t understand why he was saying it. Why he was doing anything.

  “Get moving, dammit!”

  Again, he thought that was Christopher. And again, he couldn’t be positive. Ken moved his feet mechanically, just as he kept whispering, “Shhh,” mechanically, and wasn’t even sure if he would have noticed if Hope stopped crying.

  He couldn’t hear much. Just his son’s scream, “Not my MOMMY!”

  Just his son’s next scream, the pain of being bitten and then the rage as he became what had bitten him.

  And then the words, “He’s gone.” Over and over in Ken’s mind.

  The crane listed again. Shuddering.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. He kept crawling as the crane continued its mad tilt. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

  And he did not care that he lied.

  29

  THE SOUND OF THE CRANE continuing to tilt must have been at least as loud as it had been before, but Ken’s ears seemed to have
been stuffed with cotton. He barely heard the noise. There wasn’t enough room in his mind to hear what was going on around him and also replay the images of recent past.

  The thing that brought him back to the moment was a strange prickling in his stomach. The sensation was unnerving, one that he couldn’t place for a moment. Then he realized it was weightlessness, the feeling of his body hitting nearly zero-gravity as the crane dropped out from under him.

  Then the massive apparatus stopped moving, arrested by some piece of the Wells Fargo Center, or by the jib hitting part of the high-rise across the street. Either way, Ken fell into the metal with bone-crushing force. Hope, still clinging to him, screamed even louder and he realized that she was relying on him. She would die if he didn’t get her out of here.

  He clamped an arm tightly around her. Not as a rote motion, but like it mattered. He kissed her hair, surprised for some reason at how warm the top of her head was. She felt like she had been running around outside on a summer day.

  Would there ever be such a thing again? Or had winter come to stay?

  “I’m here,” he shouted. “Daddy’s here!”

  “Daddy?” She screamed the word back, divided into equal parts terror, surprise, and faith. The monsters were here, but now Daddy was here, and he would save her.

  Ken hoped her belief was less misplaced than Derek’s had been.

  Forget about that. That’s not for now. Time for that later.

  What if there is no later?

  He climbed. He didn’t look down, didn’t look back. His wife was back there. Liz was with her. Dorcas and Christopher and Aaron, too.

  But right now, the world – his whole world – was in his arms, and he had to climb away from the nightmare below. He held Hope, and she was fragile and bright, and he couldn’t lose her.

  The crane shuddered. Hope screamed, almost barking in her fear.

  “It’s okay!” he shouted. But he didn’t believe it. Not now. He could feel the thrum-thrum-thrum of feet and hands pounding up the crane. Could feel the horde pressing up the walls of the Wells Fargo Center. Could feel the very air thickening with the presence of the things coming ever closer.

  Then he was at the end of his climb. He flipped over the edge of the tower, and onto the jib. The jib, the projecting arm of the crane that was used to move large pieces of equipment and material, extended in both directions, forward and back. The counter jib stuck into the air high overhead, giving a final defiant middle finger to the forces that were bringing it down.

  The other end of the jib, the working jib, thrust downward at a steep incline. There was a catwalk-like sheet of metal that Ken thought he could walk on, but even so the angle of it scared him. One misstep and he would just go screaming forward until he either hit the end of the line or slipped off sideways, plummeting into one hundred fifty feet of empty space, to die or be caught by the zombie mob pressed into the streets below.

  Hope must have seen the same thing he did. He felt her arms tighten around his neck and chest. “Daddy,” she whimpered.

  And now he did look back. He saw Aaron and Dorcas, clinging to each other as though signed up for the world’s strangest three-legged race. Only they were running a two-handed race up a steep incline of steel bars and crosspieces. And no awards for second place.

  Beyond them, Christopher was with Maggie, the young man seeming to push Ken’s wife upward half by physical force, half by sheer charisma.

  Ken couldn’t see Liz’s face. He had to trust the toddler was still attached to her mother, and still alive.

  Beyond them... darkness. A thick black clot of bleeding, burning, smoking zombies. Climbing closer. Gaining.

  “Hurry!” shouted Ken.

  The others seemed to step faster.

  Ken turned to the gangplank.

  He stepped forward. One hand encircling Hope tightly, the other reaching blindly for a handhold. As soon as he found one he took another step and repeated the process.

  Step by agonizing step. Moving far too slowly. Knowing that to move faster would be inevitably to fall and to die. Knowing also that the zombies would hurl themselves forward without fear of death, single-minded in their attempts to reach their prey.

  Step by step.

  Clanks behind him. He looked over his shoulder. Dorcas and Aaron had made it. Then Christopher and Maggie. Liz still limp in the carrier on his wife’s chest.

  Maggie locked eyes with him. She was crying, the tears marking white paths through soot-stained cheeks. She reached out, her fingers extended toward him.

  Ken didn’t know exactly what she was reaching for. The memory of their family, perhaps. The world and life they once had. His protection. Maybe even... just him.

  Christopher said something, grinning that infectious grin of his as he urged her forward, onward.

  Downward.

  Ken turned back around. He kept moving.

  The end of the working jib looked like it had slammed into the side of the building across 9th Street. If so, they might be able to get from one building to another via this strange bridge.

  But it was impossible to really tell. The jib could go right through the building’s walls. It could also end twenty feet away. Perspective was a funny thing. And when you added panic, smoke, and a few hundred thousand building-scaling zombies into the mix, it got even weirder.

  Clank, cla-cla-cla-clank. The sound of the group slamming over the catwalk suspended high above concrete and a horde of monsters did nothing to help Ken’s peace of mind.

  Then something popped. A loud ping as of a steel tether letting go.

  The entire crane shifted. Laterally, this time. It pitched forward. Stopped. Again.

  A hard lurch.

  Ken lost his grip.

  30

  KEN WENT DOWN ON HIS back. Hard. A fraction of a second later he heard matching thumps and thuds that told him the rest of the group fared no better. He had only the barest moment in which to wrap both arms around Hope’s body before he began to slide down the catwalk.

  The horde below them surged and screamed, the zombies climbing over one another as though aware that they were only moments from seeing their enemies plummet to their midst.

  The metal of the catwalk was far from smooth. It was pocked by bolts, rippled by the forces that had sheered the crane off at its base. Still, Ken flew along it with the speed of a bobsledder. Screaming, holding to Hope.

  The end coming close. Closer.

  Closer.

  And he could see now that the jib didn’t touch the building beyond. It ended in mid-air, in dead space. He couldn’t tell how far it stopped from the side of the other building.

  He tried to reach for something that would stop him and Hope from flying out into the void, but they were moving too fast. The bars and braces of the crane’s lattice-like supports whipped by so fast they were a blur, and the only thing that happened when Ken reached out once was that there was a light bwang that was swallowed up instantly in the enormity of the crane’s structure, and he felt his arm go numb with the impact.

  He couldn’t stop them.

  They flew toward the end of the jib.

  And off into nothing.

  31

  THE BUILDING THAT THE jib leaned toward was the One Capital Center.

  Or rather, what was left of it.

  The building had been hit by an Air Force stealth fighter in the first minutes after the change had coursed through fifty percent of the world’s population. The jet had hit the building and exploded, blowing the upper floors clean off the building, shooting them – virtually intact – into the air.

  Ken hadn’t seen any of that. He and his friends only surmised it when they saw pieces of the stealth fighter, and had come across the top three floors of the One Capital Center sitting across the street several blocks over from where they belonged. The building had proved to be a necessary escape route, though it had also cost Ken the two smallest fingers of his left hand to use it.

  And now he was
headed back to the rest of the ruined building. Not walking, but flying. Screaming through space, shot off the end of the crane’s jib like some bizarre human cannonball.

  He and Hope fell, forward and down, in a short flight that ended faster than Ken was expecting. They hit and rolled, Ken cupping his body around his daughter, trying hard not to crush her. He felt glass bite his arms; felt other, harder things push into his flesh as well. But he didn’t see anything – his eyes were screwed shut so tightly his head ached. As though his body were convinced that if he saw what was happening, it would be the end of their momentary reprieve.

  They stopped rolling.

  Ken opened his eyes. He didn’t want to, but he knew that to lay wherever they were with his eyes closed would amount to a particularly stupid kind of suicide.

  He opened his eyes, and saw a pair of cowboy boots about to slam right into his face.

  Ken jerked to the side, and the boots slid past him, followed by the rest of Aaron. Dorcas, too, the older woman clinging to the cowboy.

  Ken got to his knees. He saw that he and the others had been catapulted into the remains of one of the floors of the One Capital Center. Everything was rubble, the effects of a building that had been hit by a plane carrying some serious weaponry. No way of telling what floor they were on, but it wasn’t the first one.

  “Help!”

  Ken’s hand shot out. He grabbed the newest person sliding across the detritus-coated surface of this place. He felt fingers curl around his palm, and realized that it was Maggie. She had slid into range, still on her back, little Liz lolling on her chest.

  He caught his wife.

  Hauled her to her feet.

  And held her. The horde was coming, but for a moment he didn’t care. He needed to hold onto Maggie. To remind himself she was here, she was really here. Without thought, another hand went around Hope, pulling her to him. The family.