“Choo-choo time,” he muttered. Tears came to his eyes. Derek would never ride the slide again. Not even if they had playgrounds in Heaven. Because he hadn’t simply died. Nothing so kind. Nothing so merciful.
Ken thought he might lose it. He had seen his own students pull each others’ guts apart, had cut his own fingers off to survive, had somehow waded through a city full of the living dead. And now he was going to be done in by the memory of a little boy laughing as he went down a slide.
“What?” said Dorcas. She glanced back at the door with eyes clearly expecting it to be flung open at any moment.
“Nothing.” Ken leaned forward. Tilting into darkness, but away from memory.
He slid down the broken floor. Dorcas came with him. He moved faster than he expected – a lot faster than the green plastic slide at the park – and started to panic when he realized he was going to roll off the edge of the floor and into a pile of broken shelving that featured several stake-like pieces of wood and metal.
Christopher snagged him, reaching out and stopping his forward momentum with a low, “Oof.” A similar noise nearby indicated that Buck and Maggie had stopped Dorcas.
Christopher helped Ken to his feet as Aaron came sliding down. The cowboy somehow ended the slide on his feet, not needing any help but seeming to just step off and start walking forward, gesturing for the others to follow.
Dorcas resumed her position under Ken’s arm. He glanced at Maggie as she did so, wondering – hoping – if his wife would try to take the older woman’s place.
Maggie didn’t. She didn’t even look at him.
Just turned her back and followed Aaron as he picked his way through the rubble.
78
THIS ROOM WAS A LARGE interior room of the building. No outside windows, so the only illumination was still Christopher’s light. A light that did little to brighten, and less to cheer. It served to highlight large objects in their path, but not much else.
Aaron was still in the lead, but Christopher was right beside him. Buck and Maggie followed them, the kids in their arms.
And Dorcas and Ken were left in back. With the noises.
At first Ken thought that the things had found them already. Strange sounds assaulted him at every step. And every time he heard something it registered as more than noise. It was a blow to the base of his spine, a pounding that ran the length of his already-pained left leg, then up to his back and through to the bottom of his skull before rattling around in his head like a bell clapper.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dorcas whispered, and Ken realized his entire face had pulled tight as a miser’s purse string, his mouth puckered and his jaw clenched. He tried to relax, but then heard another noise and his muscles contracted of their own accord.
“The noise,” he said.
Dorcas kept moving forward, but cocked her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
Ken gritted his teeth as the sound – now a combination of the zombies’ growl, sheet metal bending, and nails scraping plates – sounded again. “You’re not hearing that?” he said.
Dorcas shook her head. Her expression changed. And suddenly she didn’t look like the friendly, selfless woman who had risked herself time and again for Ken and the others. Now she looked like one of them. The skin seemed to fall from her flesh, the bones peeked out from her cheeks.
“What?”
Ken blinked. The zombie was gone. Dorcas was back. Back and she wasn’t hearing what he was hearing.
“Dorcas, I think I’m in trouble,” he whispered. His feet felt funny, too. He looked down and realized that he was leaving a steady trail of blood behind him, though he couldn’t tell what part of him it was coming from.
“Guys,” Dorcas whispered. “Guys!” Ken sensed rather than saw the halt of the parade of survivors. “We need to stop.”
Footsteps. Ken felt arms around him, displacing Dorcas’ arm and lifting him a bit higher than she had done. “Can’t,” said a voice. Ken recognized it as Aaron. But he couldn’t actually see the cowboy. Everything seemed far too dark.
“Where’s the light?” Ken said. “Why’d Chris turn off the light?” His voice sounded slurred and distant.
“Shit,” said someone else. And Ken had no idea who had spoken. “What’s wrong with him?”
“What do you think?”
Ken felt his body pulled forward, moved along by the hands that held him up, the arms that held him aloft.
He heard the sounds again. And this time knew it wasn’t just his injury-addled mind. Because someone cursed, and someone else said, “They found the door.”
79
KEN’S VISION WENT FROM a mixture of sparklers-and-hallucinations to sparklers-and-globby-black-things.
A moment later the globby black things killed the sparklers. All was dark.
He could feel himself being dragged. Could hear sounds.
Growls. The distant – but rapidly approaching – noises of the horde.
Voices.
“Spread out. Look for it.” Sounded like Aaron.
“You kidding? What are the chances it’ll –“ An unfamiliar voice. But whining a bit, so probably Buck.
“With all the different allergies people have, almost one in ten people need it or have a family member that does.” Aaron, farther away.
“Hold on, Ken.” A voice in his ear. Whispering. Dorcas. Or no, not Dorcas. Someone else. Who was that?
“Still bad odds.” Buck’s grumble.
“Add in the mothers who keep one for their kids, the odds go up.”
“Still, I –“
“Found one!”
“Just like I flrpp mrp mpt tpp.”
Even the sounds melted into one another.
Ken felt alone.
So this is what it feels like to die.
“Hold on.”
This voice was clearer. Understandable. And he could place it now. Not Dorcas.
Maggie. Telling him not to die. That he mattered to her.
He couldn’t smile. Couldn’t move a muscle. So he probably was dying.
But he felt better, just the same.
Everything disappeared.
80
SOMETHING BIT HIM. A stinging pinch on his outer thigh that rapidly shifted from discomfort to agony.
They found us!
Ken wanted to scream, but couldn’t. His jaw locked up –
(This is what it feels like to become one of them.)
– and he was paralyzed by terror, pain, and sorrow. The last because he knew the others must be dead. There was no way they would have left him to the zombies. So if he was being bitten, was changing, then they were all gone.
Dorcas, Aaron, Christopher. Even Buck.
And Maggie. Liz. Hope.
Something bit his other leg.
The paralysis broke. Ken’s heart rate seemed to quadruple, and he surged upward, swinging his arms at whatever was eating him.
His right fist connected with something that was both soft and hard. The thing popped, crackled.
“OW! Seriously?”
Ken blinked. The dark blobbies were floating away, trailing the last of the July Fourth sparklers in their wake, leaving behind something that resembled normal vision. Revealing not the expected monsters chomping on his legs, but....
“Christopher?”
The young man was holding his nose, which was spurting blood all over the front of his previously unmarked shirt. “You broge by dose,” he said.
Ken looked down. His right fist was still clenched. It ached. Probably less than Christopher’s nose ached, but enough to verify the young man’s claim.
Aaron was kneeling at Ken’s right. Grinning at Ken, then at Christopher. “You were too pretty anyway,” said the cowboy.
The younger man mumbled something that sounded like “Fug oo,” but probably wasn’t. Aaron chuckled.
Ken blinked. Wiped away a sheet of sweat that had appeared on his forehead. His hand shook as though the movement was a bit too fi
ne for it. His motor control seemed off.
“What... what happened?” said Ken.
Aaron plucked something off the floor by Christopher. Held it in front of Ken, along with a match he held in his own hand. “EpiPens,” said the cowboy.
“Wha?” Ken wasn’t processing this.
“The stuff people use for bee stings and peanut allergies. It’s basically just a shot of adrenaline.” Aaron stood. Held out a hand to Ken. He took it and, surprisingly, managed to stand. “You, sir, are banged up pretty bad. But we bought you some time.”
A scream sounded. Aaron looked up as though trying to pinpoint the source.
Something hit Ken. Wrapped itself around him like a constrictor. He almost panicked, almost swung at the thing. His nerves were pulled tighter than ukulele strings.
It was only at the last second that he recognized the strange shape as that of his wife. With Liz in front of her, between them as she held to him.
“What’s happening?” she sobbed.
He put his arms around her. And for a moment the world was fine again. For just a second, the space between seconds, he felt alive, felt right.
He had lost Derek.
Liz was unconscious.
Hope was... different.
But his wife still loved him. That was something.
“End of the world, baby,” he said. He kissed her hair. It smelled awful. Sweat and blood and the webbing she had been wrapped in and a thousand other things, none of them pleasant. But it was Maggie and he just wanted to drink her in.
“Love this, really,” said Buck. Ken looked over. The big man was still holding Hope, thrown over his shoulder in a rough fireman’s carry. “But we gotta get outta here.”
Ken nodded. He drew Maggie back. Kissed her on her lips, full-on. Not passionate, exactly, but not the “honey-I’m-leaving-for-work” peck either. A real kiss. He needed her to know what she meant to him. What it would mean to him if something happened to her.
He saw her eyes.
Saw that she understood.
And then realized that someone else was staring at him.
Liz.
The two-year-old hadn’t opened her eyes through all this. Now her eyes were open, and staring at him in a way that sent shivers not just through Ken’s spine, but through his soul.
He tried to convince himself that it was all right. This was good. She was awake.
Ken realized that everyone had stopped moving. Maggie was staring at the toddler, watching her with excitement. And he couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for her to see her daughter hanging comatose for all this time.
The entire world seemed silent.
Liz smiled.
And Ken’s stomach seemed to fall into his legs. It wasn’t the adrenaline surging through his body, either. He knew about adrenaline; knew it was a stop-gap and that he maybe had an hour before he crashed again and was back to being nothing more than a bleeding burden on the group. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t his injuries.
It was the smile. Not the smile of an infant. Not the smile of his Lizzy.
She spoke. The same high-pitched toddler voice, but it wasn’t “Lizzy go now” or even his favorite “Daddy kisses.” She looked at each person in the company, even straining her neck to look at Maggie, then said in a cold voice, “You are not family. You are renegades.”
And then Liz started to scream. Her body contorted in seizure spasms, the movements of someone who has not only lost all control, but who never had it in the first place.
Ken looked at Maggie. She was staring at their daughter in horror, trying to hold the baby’s flailing limbs, trying to keep her from hurting herself.
Growling came from above them. The pounding of feet on the ceiling.
“Good God,” said Buck. “She called them. She called them to us.”
Ken looked at the man and wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, wanted to shriek at him and punch him into submission because how dare he say such a thing about Ken’s baby?
But he didn’t.
It was true.
The monsters were among them.
END OF BOOK TWO
THE COLONY: DESCENT
1
“SO... WHAT DO WE DO? About her? About... them?”
No one else had wanted to say it. And Ken was a bit surprised that Christopher had been the one to get the words out. To say what they were all thinking. Even Ken himself.
What were they supposed to do?
The entire building seemed to shake. A horde – dozens, hundreds, thousands? – was somewhere above them. Coming fast.
Called. Summoned by Ken’s own child. By his baby, by the two-year-old girl his wife was even now holding onto, clamping the toddler’s arms down with one arm, Maggie’s other hand covering Liz’s little mouth.
But was that true? Was it Liz?
Or something else?
Liz didn’t speak like that. She said “Lizzy poops” or “Sez-me Stweet” or “Up-up-up!” She didn’t look at adults with cold eyes and say, “You are not family. You are renegades.”
But Ken’s mind kept replaying it. Kept hearing her saying just those words, those impossible things.
Her little nostrils flared above the line of Maggie’s fingers. She was breathing calmly. No longer screaming. But Maggie’s hand didn’t move away. Ken’s wife was staring at him, and it looked to him like she thought all this was his fault. Not just whatever was happening to Liz, but the strange behavior of their other daughter, the predicament they were now in, the fact they were on an unknown floor in the middle of a dark building, even –
(even Derek sacrificing himself saving her saving Maggie and keeping her from being bitten because I couldn’t I wasn’t strong enough or fast enough but he was oh God he was so fast too fast and he went down the crane and saved her but took the bite and changed and fell and was gone)
– for the fact of the apocalypse itself. Like Ken was the one who had changed the world, had rained death on the globe in a ten minute transformation that ended life as they knew it.
She glared at him. And that was another small death.
He looked away from her. To Aaron. The cowboy’s eyes were inscrutable. Ken couldn’t tell if the man was implying that they should leave Ken’s daughters behind, or take them with, or was just thinking about how to destroy the universe. The guy said he was an ex-rodeo clown, and that might be true. But he was also much more than that. He was good, and brave, and had saved everyone time and again. And he was the most dangerous person Ken had ever met.
Ken shifted his gaze to Dorcas. She was shivering. Shock or pain, he couldn’t tell. She was shrinking against Aaron, clearly drawing warmth and strength from the slightly shorter man. Her right arm was broken. Aaron had made her a sling earlier, but it was little more than a rag, the memory or intimation of first aid. Her face was a collection of bruises strung together by expanses of dried blood and split skin. The effects of a zombie who had gone insane – as they all did when they received grievous head wounds – and tried to beat her to death before Aaron saved her.
She looked at Ken for a moment. Then her eyes flicked down. She wasn’t looking for answers on the floor. Guilt had shone in her eyes. She wanted to run, wanted to escape, wanted to flee the monsters. And Ken could tell that included his daughters.
“I can’t believe this.”
Ken turned to the last member of the group. A late arrival, Buck was carrying Ken’s other daughter over his shoulder, hanging slack and loose as she had been for a while now. She had acted strange as well, vacillating between normal behavior and actually trying to be caught by the things that pursued them.
Ken didn’t want to hear Buck’s thoughts. The big man had mostly been a whiny pain in the ass. He had even attacked Ken for not letting him die at one point. So he didn’t want to hear the plans of a man who had already given up. Because Ken hadn’t given up yet.
Give up.
Give up.
Give in.
/> Give up.
Give in.
Ken shuddered. He realized he could hear the zombies’ growl. The low, thrumming sound that preceded them like lightning before a clap of thunder. And like lightning, it could be devastating. It seemed to have a psychic effect, a subliminal exhortation to annihilation. Hearing them could tip a survivor to submission.
Give up.
Give –
“You hear me?” Buck looked livid. His voice rasped in the near-darkness that gripped them all. “I can’t believe you. Any of you.”
He looked at each of the party in turn. Ken saw Dorcas look away from the man. Her expression one that suggested she knew what the big man was going to say next. Knew he was going to suggest leaving the girls – or worse – and not didn’t just know, but agreed with his inevitable next statement. Hated herself, but agreed nonetheless. Aaron’s expression mirrored hers.
Buck’s gaze reached Maggie’s face. He shook his head. “You’re their mother,” he nearly spat. Then he adjusted his grip on Hope before spinning to glare quickly at Christopher and then settling his eyes on Ken. “We’re not leaving anyone behind,” he said. “Not anyone.”
Then he spun on his heel and strode into the darkness.
2
KEN LOOKED AT MAGGIE. Only for an instant, then she was off and nearly running after the big man holding their other daughter.
She didn’t ask what he thought. Didn’t look like she cared.
Christopher went next. Still trying to staunch the flow of blood from his broken nose, and from the way he kept brushing at it Ken couldn’t tell if the young man was more upset about his cracked face or the blood on his designer shirt.
Aaron looked at Ken. “Can you walk on your own?”
Ken nodded, though he didn’t know if he could or not. He had a pair of adrenaline shots running through him, and he figured that was all that stood between him and total systemic collapse.
What do I have? An hour? Twenty minutes? And then what? Unconsciousness?
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 28