The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  Ken wondered if he should pray. He hadn’t prayed in a while. He didn’t feel like it now.

  What if there was no God?

  Even worse, what if there was? How would someone – even an omniscient being – explain all this? The loss of the world, the loss of his strength, the loss of his son?

  “Damn,” whispered Aaron.

  “What?” said Buck.

  “End of the line.”

  31

  KEN STILL COULDN’T move, but a fluting trill seemed to sound in his fingers and toes, panic-stirrings of fear that had not merely weight and feeling, but sound. He could hear his terror, and the sound was horrific. Horrific...

  ... and strangely sweet.

  He realized that he could give in to the fear. No one would blame him if he folded. He could just give up now. Not because the things were growling their siren call, but because his world was over. He could just wrap himself up in the comfort of terror and disappear in fright’s velvet folds.

  He could do that.

  He could give up.

  He didn’t have to do this.

  It was appealing. The world had ended in less than ten minutes. And now, only six or seven hours later, Ken had already seen two of the group’s bravest members – Dorcas and his son – killed. Or worse.

  What chance did he have? What future could he look forward to?

  Life, he realized in that instant, meant nothing without a hope for tomorrow. All the past built to the present, and the only purpose for the present was to provide for the future. His children were his hope. One was dead. The other two... changed.

  Why should he keep fighting?

  He realized he was trying to whisper something. His lips moving silently, and even he wasn’t sure what he was saying in the widening abyss of his mind. “Forgive me,” perhaps. “Leave me.”

  “Let me die.”

  The others were tearing around the small burrow they had created. Tossing suitcases and totes left and right. Maggie looked strange in the near-darkness, a weirdly bulbous creature with Liz hanging from her. Grunting as she moved things out of the way.

  Other noises came from behind Ken. He was laying where Christopher had put him –

  (When did he put me down?)

  – something sharp jabbing into his back. Staring at nothing, at the nothing above him that was as dark as any black hole in the deepest parts of space.

  Then the darkness shifted.

  Buck grunted somewhere.

  “You find anything?” said Aaron in a whisper.

  “No.”

  The darkness moved again. Ken had thought it might be his injuries speaking, his loss of blood or the concussions or any of a million other things overriding his senses. But now he was sure. The sky of tightly-packed bags and suitcases had shifted.

  Fingers poked through.

  They were stained. Smeared with soot and congealed blood. One of them ended midway to the first knuckle.

  The other suitcases moved some more.

  One of the things had found them. The moles had been trapped in their burrow.

  32

  NO ONE ELSE HAD NOTICED. No one else had heard.

  The fingers pushed aside a valise, but the soft bag didn’t move much, jammed up between a tote and a hardside Samsonite bag like Moe, Larry, and Curly wedged into a door.

  The fingers – one truncated, all bloody – twitched as they searched for ingress to the burrow.

  Ken watched.

  I can let it happen.

  No one else would know. Not until too late. It would be quick. Probably more merciful than running, too. What would running get them, after all?

  He saw Derek’s face. The boy throwing back his head and shrieking, blood erupting from the child’s skin as his pores hemorrhaged. Painful, yes.

  But quick.

  The fingers looked longer now. More of them, too. Another hand?

  Christopher made a noise. Not a eureka sound, more of a ”Maybe over here?” grunt.

  The luggage shifted a bit more. The Three Stooges were still wedged together, but Ken could see that wouldn’t last long.

  “No, dammit.” Christopher moved to a different spot.

  Just let go. Go to Derek.

  Ken saw his son as he had been. Beautiful, with blond hair that was so often sopping with sweat, his smile wide and slightly buck-toothed.

  But his son wasn’t like that anymore. He was dead. Bitten and then fallen into flame. He was dead.

  He had to be.

  And if dead then... what?

  In Heaven?

  One of the finger-tangles became a full-sized hand. Pushing through. Ken stared at it. Wondering if there was a God, if there was a Heaven.

  And realized that, right now, that didn’t matter.

  He was still breathing. His wife was still breathing. His daughters were still alive. Changed, maybe, but not dead.

  Derek had died to save them. And Ken wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t give in to self-pity and so destroy the entirety of what Derek’s life had built to.

  The past builds to the present. The present serves the future. And all of us have a purpose. Derek’s had been to save them.

  Ken’s might not be so noble, but he wouldn’t cut off his son’s gift.

  He drew in a breath. It seemed to take all his strength. Everything he had went into the conscious motion. Staring at the hands that pushed through the suitcases. Breathing in. Opening his mouth. He couldn’t scream. Just a wheeze, barely more than a whisper.

  “They’re here!”

  33

  MAGGIE did scream. She saw the fingers, she must have. Either that or the wall of bags that Christopher had made, rippling like it was possessed.

  Only possession was simple. Just ghosts. A little holy water, a stern-eyed priest with a heart of gold and you were fine, right?

  This was something far worse than mere demons. Far more evil than anything the Devil might conjure forth.

  Christopher stumbled toward the moving luggage. It wasn’t far to go in the confined space, but it seemed to take forever for him to lurch up the slanting cargo hold. He wedged his foot against some bent metal, then pressed his back into the bags the undead were pushing against. His nose was swollen and crooked where Ken had punched him earlier after being hit with one too many shots of adrenaline. His lips and chin and shirt were stained with blood. He looked almost as bad as some of the things that were trying to get to them.

  Only his eyes betrayed his full humanity. The zombies – undead or alive – didn’t have the capacity for the kind of fear Ken saw in Christopher’s gaze.

  “Find a way out,” said Christopher. He grunted and grit his teeth as something bore down on him from behind. Luggage started to fall down into the hollow space around the survivors like a slow-motion avalanche.

  Christopher threw his arms out. Trying to provide as much coverage as possible.

  One of his arms went near the questing hands that had already broken through. The fingers grabbed his arm. Clawed and raked at him. Christopher cried out as the hands pulled and pushed and scratched. Ken heard tearing as the young man’s shirtsleeve ripped.

  Blood started dripping off Christopher’s arm. But he didn’t move away. Just let the things dig into the meat of his body as though he was not only willing but absolutely determined to serve as the hors d’oeuvre in the things’ upcoming feast.

  Ken heard the others moving frantically. Maggie and Aaron and Buck tossing suitcases left and right, all stealth discarded in favor of speed as they searched for a way out.

  Ken couldn’t move. He just watched Christopher. Picked apart a single cell at a time. He remembered the things pulling apart the zombie that Aaron had pinned in their way. Wondered how long it would take Christopher to suffer the same fate. And saw in the other man’s eyes that he was wondering the same thing.

  But there was more, too. There was determination. Christopher wasn’t going to move. He would remain there until he died, until blood loss for
ced him to fall.

  Another person sacrificing a future for people he had never really gotten to know. Like Dorcas.

  And just as with Dorcas, Ken could do nothing. Nothing but watch.

  Then he felt hands grabbing him. Yanking him.

  He wanted to scream. Knowing the things must have found another way in. But he had exhausted the last bit of his energy calling out to warn the others.

  He had nothing left. No voice. No strength.

  He saw Christopher’s eyes. Open wide and knowing what was coming. Seeing the future clearly.

  And not unhappy.

  34

  THE FINGERS WRAPPED around Ken’s stomach, his arm.

  He waited for the bite.

  It didn’t come.

  Instead, the fingers tightened around him and then pulled him away from the things he had been laying on. He saw that the thing that had jabbed into his back had been a guitar case.

  For some reason that seemed terribly important.

  Then the hands spun him around and he was facing Buck. The gray-faced older man was panting with the effort of pulling Ken’s dead weight. His eyes flicked over Ken’s shoulders.

  “Go,” said Christopher, and Ken could no longer hear the guy but could hear the strain in his voice. How many of the things was he holding back? How long could he hold out?

  Buck seemed to have the same questions on his mind. The big man hesitated, then began to put Ken down.

  “Don’t!” Christopher half-shouted.

  “I can hold them longer,” said Buck.

  Christopher laughed. At least, Ken thought it was a laugh. It was an explosion of air, as though Christopher had started laughing and gotten gut-punched mid-chuckle. “Now you tell me.” Ken heard the young man grunt again. “No way to change places, Bucky.”

  “It’s just Buck.”

  Another grunt. “I know. But you look like a Bucky.” Sounds of shifting, and a bag fell on Ken. “Get going, man.”

  Buck hesitated. Then nodded. He started pulling Ken downward, farther into the burrow the survivors had created. He paused a moment.

  “Don’t,” said Christopher. “Just go.” Another grunt, and this one sounded weaker. The sound of someone whose will was strong, but whose body was going to give out soon. “Take care of yourself, Bucky.”

  Christopher laughed. A real laugh, not a punch-to-the-kidneys laugh.

  It was the laugh that followed Ken into the darkness as Buck pulled him away from the things. Down into black. Into nothing. But away from the monsters.

  Away from a friend.

  35

  THE NEXT MOMENTS WERE nothing but confusion for Ken. Pain had wrapped thick cotton around his senses, making it difficult to parse out what was happening. There was darkness. Faraway sounds of flame. Movement.

  Buck pulled him down – Ken thought it was down – then over something that jabbed hard at his ribs as he was dragged over it.

  “Where are you?” said Buck.

  “Here!” Both Maggie and Aaron answered in unison. Ken heard thudding.

  Buck altered course. Pulling Ken with him.

  Behind them, from the dark place they had just abandoned, Christopher screamed. Just once. A short, sharp shriek that knifed through the darkness.

  Buck moved faster. Dragging Ken over, then down. A sudden drop and he felt himself hit something hard and with a smell he remembered from somewhere. Smelled like... like the time he and Maggie had a blowout on the way home from a camping trip. Before Derek came along, just the two of them and they were so poor back then. Poor but happy. Ken changed the tire but they didn’t get moving. They got a blanket out of the car and went into the woods and made love.

  The thing under Ken was a tire. Big.

  Landing gear.

  Ken felt a flicker of hope. Landing gear had to be lowered. So maybe there was a way out of this. A way to escape the things behind them.

  Buck flipped him over. Propped him up. Ken found himself staring at Hope. She was slumped, still unconscious or comatose or whatever it was.

  Was she even Hope anymore?

  He didn’t know. He hoped so.

  “Leave me.”

  Ken was amazed he had managed to say the words, but glad. It made no sense for Buck to be hauling him along like this. No sense for the big man and the others to risk the group to save dead weight, someone who was shutting down.

  Dying.

  Ken couldn’t see Buck’s face in the dark. Couldn’t see much of anything. But he heard the big older man hiss angrily. “Don’t ever say that again,” he said. “Kids need their parents.”

  The big shape in the darkness moved. Stopped. “Don’t ever say that again,” it repeated.

  Buck left. The thudding that had been coming from the same direction Maggie’s and Aaron’s voices had come from increased. Like Buck was helping bang on something.

  Behind, in the cargo hold, there was a huge, cluttered pounding. Not just one or two bags this time. Lots of them, all falling at once.

  Christopher must have given out.

  Go with God, man.

  Still the thuds ahead. And behind, the sounds of hands and feet. Crawling. The undead did not speak, but their limbs made noise as they moved impossibly in the dark.

  He looked at Hope again.

  Her eyes were open. Or maybe he only imagined it. Maybe he only imagined the glitter in the darkness, the momentary flicker of light reflecting from eyes that shone like those of a coyote in the wild.

  Then something grabbed Hope. Lifted her away.

  Ken was alone.

  Alone in the dark, with only his thoughts and the sounds of the scuttling undead for company.

  36

  A MOMENT LATER KEN was grabbed again. This time he managed to convince himself not to panic internally. Even though he could hear the things coming to him. Even though he knew they were close.

  He just let himself relax. Let himself go with whatever was happening.

  Not like he could do much more, regardless. He managed to keep his eyes open, but didn’t have much more juice than that.

  He heard huffing and puffing. That calmed his nerves a bit. It had to be Buck. Maybe Aaron, but probably Buck. Certainly not one of the undead things behind him... as far as he could tell, they didn’t breathe.

  He wondered if he was changing into one of them. Maybe it wasn’t just his injuries that were getting to him.

  He’d been bitten, after all.

  And as soon as he thought that it seemed like his arm caught fire. The half-circle where the teeth had broken his flesh burned like a brand. He would have screamed if he could have, if he’d had strength to do so.

  But there was no strength. Just exhaustion. Pain.

  Ken’s head bounced off something. Not luggage or the huge wheel of the plane. Something hard.

  He didn’t make a sound. Just listened to his heartbeat crashing in his ears. Listened to Buck panting as the big man pulled him... where?

  No sooner did Ken ask the question than his forward motion ceased. He couldn’t see anything. But he could hear the sounds of the undead as they crawled close behind, searching in death-silence for their prey.

  Close.

  The meaty sound of bloody flesh on metal.

  Would Christopher be among them? Changed from friend to enemy and taking his place at the front of the undead?

  Buck started pulling Ken again. Over, then Ken dropped.

  But not before he saw two of the undead coming at him.

  37

  KEN DROPPED, AND EXPECTED the fall would be a short one. A few inches into some depression in the plane’s tortured structure. Instead, he fell what felt like several feet. He couldn’t do anything to stop the fall, didn’t even have the strength to throw out his arms in the instinctive reaction born in every human.

  He was careening through space, and helpless to stop it. Helpless to even try. Locked into himself, into a mind that had only pain and terror as its companions.

  Then s
omething caught him. Hands – too many to just be Buck.

  Ken felt himself slung up. Still a ragdoll, a bit of nothing masquerading as a man.

  He saw Aaron. Maggie. They had caught him.

  He saw Hope, propped against a broken piece of pavement and –

  Pavement?

  A thud announced the arrival of someone else. New, larger hands grabbed him. Ken felt his arm slung over a beefy shoulder and Buck said, “Let’s get moving.”

  “What about the other one?” said Maggie. “The young guy?”

  Ken saw Aaron pick up Hope. She still lolled. But Ken was less interested in that than in the fact that she was outside.

  They were outside the plane.

  They had made it.

  “We should get going,” said Buck. His tone made it clear what had happened to “the young guy.”

  Maggie made a strange hitching sound. Almost a sob. Ken wondered why she would be so upset about losing Christopher when she hadn’t even known him long enough to remember his name.

  Was it just the loss of a person? Or more? Had she sensed what an amazing young man he was, even in the few moments they had interacted?

  Buck started moving. Ken found he could keep his head upright, though it hurt from the base of his spine to the top of his head when he did. It would have been easier to let his head droop.

  But he didn’t want to. He had to see.

  More than that, he had to keep his head up. He couldn’t fight, couldn’t even run. Chances were he was going to die soon. But he could face his fate with his head held high. He couldn’t fight off the hordes the way Dorcas had done, couldn’t use his body as a shield like Christopher had. He couldn’t even get between a zombie and his loved ones the way Derek had.

  But he could at least face his fate.

  So he kept his head up. Kept his eyes open.

  The plane had smashed right through the ground, pounding the sidewalk and pavement into chunks that lay all around them. Fires were everywhere, which was a good thing, because without them it would have been impossible to see anything.