The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  A cast? Some kind of healing solution?

  Ken didn’t know. Whatever it was, the thing seemed to move faster with each step.

  They all did.

  The broken creatures were healing.

  Ken looked down the road. The tidal wave of zombies had collected there, especially. A clot of broken, shattered, deadly once-humanity that completely cut off the survivors from any escape.

  They were ringed in.

  Some of the zombies were vomiting on themselves. Worse, some of them were puking on others, like medics seeing to the wounded. Working together to be in top condition to eradicate the enemy. Another evolutionary step in an enemy that was already beyond dangerous and yet kept finding new ways to become even more terrible.

  Many of the fallen zombies had shattered so badly they could move only feebly.

  But most of the things were already walking or crawling or slithering toward the survivors.

  44

  KEN WAS MOVING TOWARD the things. Moving toward them, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

  Because he had no strength. Buck was holding him up completely. And toward them was where Buck was going.

  “Get over here!” snapped the big man. He sounded different. It wasn’t just that the petulance and self-entitled whine was gone, either. He sounded... stronger.

  And to Ken’s surprise, both Maggie and Aaron moved to follow him. Buck tossed Ken into Aaron’s arms, then knelt and started pushing a piece of crumbling concrete to the side.

  “What are you doing?” said Maggie.

  “This is why I wanted to come down here in the first place,” said Buck. Ken had forgotten that. Had forgotten that it was Buck who had been the first one to advocate going into the plane.

  He knew. Knew about something down here.

  The muscles in the back of the big man’s neck bulged. He exhaled in a steady stream. The concrete started to rasp against whatever was under it. Moving an inch at a time.

  Aaron put Ken down. Moved to help Buck.

  Ken could see up. The zombies streaming down from the sides of the buildings, moving lower and then dropping. Lit by the still-burning plane.

  Above them, dimly visible through clouds of smoke... stars. The sky had taken no notice of humanity’s demise.

  The grinding noise stopped. “What’s that?” said Aaron.

  Buck shifted and started moving whatever had been under the concrete. This time the noise was metallic. “Storm drain access.” More noise.

  The zombies started growling.

  Give up.

  Give in.

  Ken heard his daughters start to laugh. Then scream. He didn’t try to look at them. Didn’t want to see.

  “Get in,” said Buck. “Hurry.”

  Ken felt himself dragged. Then stop, then dragged again, pulled into a hole.

  Down again. Down the elevator shaft, down the plane, down into the ground.

  Where will we go when we can’t go down anymore?

  The growling took on a different tone as he dropped into the darkness. Not just the call to despair: there was rage, too. And something else. Something even darker. Something he dared not think about, for fear it would drive him mad, or just kill him outright.

  Ken was in Aaron’s arms. Maggie stood beside the cowboy, holding their children –

  (Are they our children? Or something else?)

  – protectively, both of them ankle-deep in running water.

  Ken realized he must be standing in the water, too. But he couldn’t feel it. Couldn’t feel anything below his thighs. Everything was just cold.

  Buck dropped down into the tunnel. It was barely tall enough to let him stand. He reached up to grab the metal grid that still lay partially over the entrance.

  And a hand grabbed his.

  45

  BUCK SCREAMED. SO did Maggie. Aaron twitched, and Ken could feel the sudden indecision in the cowboy: hang onto Ken, or help Buck?

  Buck started batting at the hand, still screaming.

  The hand started hitting him back, flailing at Buck like the two were engaged in the most over-the-top slap-fight ever. Ken thought that was odd. The zombies were more of the claw-at-you/pull-you-to-pieces school of fighting.

  This kind of thing – what Ken’s high school students would have called a series of bitch-slaps – were not their style.

  “Stop it. Stop it, dammit!”

  Buck kept screaming. Kept slapping, even when the hand disappeared. Even when the feet popped into the hole.

  Even when Christopher dropped down among them.

  “Christopher!” Aaron screamed, and dragged Ken across the sluicing water in a huge, leaping step in order to engulf the young man in a one-armed hug. He let go and Ken caught a glimpse of Christopher’s grin. Then Buck hugged him. An even bigger hug.

  “How did you –“ Aaron looked on the verge of tears. He swallowed audibly. “They were coming in.”

  Christopher shrugged. “I held ‘em off. Tried to fight them when they got through. But they didn’t seem like they cared about hurting me. Just wanted past me.” He felt at his right arm for a moment, and Ken saw that his shirt sleeve was a mass of tears, the flesh of his arm shredded and rent as well. Then Christopher shrugged. “They just forgot I was there.”

  “So Dorcas....” The hope in Aaron’s voice was apparent.

  Christopher’s smile disappeared. He shook his head. “No.”

  “But they left you.”

  “I went around the side of the plane. She was there. She was... not her anymore.” He put a hand on Aaron.

  Aaron puckered his lips, then nodded. “It’s what she wanted.” He looked away, looking up and down the storm drain tunnel. “We should –“ He cut off suddenly. Looked back at Christopher. “What were you doing on the side of the plane?”

  Christopher’s mouth rounded into a geometrically perfect circle of surprise. He bolted toward the opening he had just come through. Reached up.

  Something thumped. An explosion.

  Then louder. Closer.

  Ken couldn’t feel the water below him. But he felt the ground leap up below them all. It sent him rocketing into the ceiling. Or maybe it was the ceiling that was punching its way down, slamming into the survivors.

  Ken thought he saw something slip through the storm drain opening.

  Zombie.

  Then his head collided with something hard.

  The darkness cocooned him. Enfolded him.

  Took him away.

  46

  KEN WOKE UP AND DIDN’T know how long he’d been asleep.

  He couldn’t see anything. His eyes were open – he was fairly certain of it – but all was dark.

  Still underground. The storm tunnel.

  His back was wet. He thought it was probably blood.

  I’m bleeding out. This is it.

  Then he realized that the fluid was flowing too fast to be coming from him. He was shivering, too. Wet, cold. He might not bleed out after all, but he couldn’t move. So he’d either drown if the water level rose any higher or just die of hypothermia.

  How long does it take to freeze to death?

  He tried to remember. Not that it would do much good, since he had no control over his body.

  Still, his mind dug into memory. It is the nature of human beings to assert control, even where the control is only over their own minds. Even where the control offers no real hope. Even where the control is only an illusion.

  The world was ending, Ken was dying, and he focused everything he had left on remembering what hypothermia would do.

  The hapkido studio he’d gone to for years invited first responders in from time to time to talk about emergency procedures – first aid, what to do in case of a fire, things like that. The master teacher believed self-defense was more than kicking and punching, it was learning how to put out a grease fire, knowing where the closest police stations were located.

  One of the people had been a paramedic who talked briefly about w
hat to do if caught outside in the snow.

  And just like that, Ken’s mind clicked to that moment. “Hypothermia takes a while to set in,” said the paramedic, a kid who looked like he was barely out of high school, complete with acne scars and the wiry body of a still-developing young man. But he spoke with ease and confidence. “The military has done studies showing people can be outside in freezing temperatures wearing next to nothing and be all right as long as they keep moving.”

  The man looked at the group, grinning a wide, good-natured grin. Ken realized the paramedic was probably dead now.

  “Of course, that’s if you’re outside. You fall into cold water, or you’re injured, chances go down. A lot. So don’t do that.”

  The class laughed.

  Ken didn’t laugh. Not then, not now. He shivered. The black around him seemed to grow heavier. He didn’t think the water was rising, but he didn’t know for sure: he realized he couldn’t feel it any more. He was just numb.

  Then a wave of heat swept over him. He was still cold, still freezing, but he felt hot as well.

  A part of him wondered how that was possible.

  Another part of him knew he was sick. Infected from his wounds, from the water, from the dirt and grime.

  Dying.

  He tried to call for help in the darkness. Couldn’t.

  No one was there.

  After everything that had happened, all he had gone through, he wasn’t even going to be able to die with his family.

  Were they even alive? Had the explosion –

  (What happened? What blew up? It was big, bigger than when the SUV blew up near the high school, that’s for sure.)

  – killed his wife? His daughters? What about Aaron and Christopher and Buck? Had Dorcas made it? Derek?

  Dorcas and Derek are gone. Changed.

  He shivered again. His tongue felt swollen.

  Cold and hot and cold and hot and cold and hot....

  Something moved in the darkness. A splash, barely audible over the sound of Ken’s own shivering. He realized he was almost thrashing in the tunnel, a half-beached whale on a concrete shore.

  The splashing grew closer.

  Ken hoped it was his family. Maggie or one of the other survivors. But he knew better. There was something alien about the way the thing was approaching. Something inhuman. Predatory.

  He tried to scream again.

  The scream resounded only in his mind.

  47

  THE DARKNESS GREW CLOYING, heavy. It had its own scent, its own life. It pressed on Ken’s chest, pushing down on him with such force that it grew hard to draw air. The zombies had stolen his son, the change had stolen his world, and now the darkness itself had come to rob him of his last breath.

  And the thing in the dark, the monster that prowled unseen... drew closer.

  The weight on Ken’s chest grew, and he realized it was terror.

  Why now? Why so afraid?

  He didn’t understand. He had been on the run since the world changed, since what he was starting to think of as the Change. Never a moment without danger, without fear. He had seen his family tormented, seen his son turned and then fall a hundred feet into an inferno.

  And he was more afraid now than he had ever been.

  Why now?

  Was it the fever? The injuries?

  The dark?

  The water slipped and sloshed around him. He felt the monster in the dark, questing, searching. He remembered the instant before the explosion, the glimpse of something slipping in through the tunnel’s entry point.

  One of them. It had to be.

  Why am I so afraid?

  Because you’re alone.

  He knew it was true. People are designed to be together. Even as they quarreled over rights to their own space, even as they fought genocidal wars over everything from minerals to metaphysics, the first thing any conqueror did was to go out among the populace. To become one with them. Because every person craved companionship. Because every human, no matter how holy or how corrupt, feared dying alone.

  I miss my family.

  The thing in the darkness was right over Ken. He could feel it there. And he was glad that Maggie and the girls were... wherever they were. Glad, but he also wished they were here. Even if that meant they would suffer his fate, there was a small piece of him that wanted someone to hold his hand at the end.

  No. I’m glad they’re gone.

  The thing bowed down.

  Ken felt teeth dig into his shoulder. He had time for one more thing. One more moment before he would be gone. Not time for running in a sick, broken body. Not time for screaming with a mouth that refused to follow his commands. He would go out alone, with only his thoughts for company.

  He did not wish for others to die to be with him.

  He wished them safety. Peace. Life.

  I love you, Mags.

  48

  KEN OPENED HIS EYES.

  He saw nothing.

  Am I dead?

  No. He couldn’t be. Heaven wouldn’t be dark like this.

  Hell?

  No. He didn’t think so.

  He hurt all over, but that in itself told him he was alive. Shivering, but no longer numb. He felt as though he was on fire: a cold flame that seared him the way dry ice would have done.

  He wasn’t wet anymore. He heard water nearby, but he wasn’t laying in it.

  He heard something rumble. Felt something warm beside him. Soft and vaguely comforting. Whatever it was moved.

  Ken fell asleep.

  49

  “WHAT THE –“

  “Don’t get too close.”

  “What’s it doing to him?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Someone do something.”

  “Like what?”

  The voices came into the darkness. A light flashed across Ken’s face. Then disappeared. The voices faded.

  50

  SOMETHING WAS PUSHING into his mouth.

  Ken heard the words, echoing through half-collapsed synaptic corridors: “What’s it doing to him?” Heard the words and though the words were only in his mind he transposed them over this moment and knew that something new was happening. The things were doing something to him.

  The thing pried his teeth apart.

  Ken tried to shake his head. He was still shivering, and all he managed to do was shiver a bit harder. Weak.

  The thing pushed at him in the darkness. Tentacular feelers pressing into his mouth, feeling his tongue, probing into him.

  He gagged. Bit down.

  Something screamed.

  The tentacles yanked on him. Jerked his face left and right. He felt the digits go down his throat. Deep. Deep.

  They left something there. Some foreign object.

  Don’t swallow it. Don’t swallow. Don’t....

  He passed out.

  51

  HE WOKE, HE SLEPT. He woke, he slept.

  Occasionally there were flashes of light, but mostly it was dark, black as pure and deep as any oceanic abyss.

  Things moved around him. Pressed at him. Forced their way into his mouth, into his throat.

  He woke, he slept.

  He tried to cry but could make no sound.

  He woke, he slept.

  Wondering what was being done to him. What he was changing into.

  He woke, he slept.

  And then only slept.

  52

  WHEN KEN OPENED HIS eyes again, he could see. Not much, but enough. He was still in the darkness. Still underground.

  A zombie was leaning over him. Its face caked by gore and dirt, its mouth hanging open. Bending closer.

  Ken’s panicked brain sent a message to his body, and to his surprise his broken body actually listened, balling up a fist and sending it smashing into the dark spot where the zombie’s nose should be.

  The thing rocked back, splashing into the streaming water behind it. It landed on its butt, one hand going down behind it for support and balanc
e. The other hand went to its face, clapped over the spot where Ken had just socked it.

  “Owww!” It glared at him. “You broge by dose.” The monster felt its face gingerly. Glared some more. “Again.”

  Ken blinked rapidly. He was confused. The zombie was talking?

  He tried to sit up. Found he could do it. He realized he wasn’t shivering, either.

  Splashing sounds drew his attention. He looked toward the noise and saw a pair of figures approaching. One so large he took up most of the tunnel, the other short and husky but moving with the fluid grace of a predator.

  “Buck? Aaron?” Ken’s discomposure increased.

  A moment later the things – which had been mere shadows on shadow only a second ago – drew close enough that Ken could see their features. It was the cowboy and the older man. Both of them grinned at him, then turned curious faces to the still-sprawled figure in the center of the tunnel.

  “What happened to you?” said Aaron.

  Ken looked at the zombie in the stream. Only it wasn’t a zombie. It was Christopher, face bloody and dirty and looking thinner than Ken had remembered. His cheek had been slashed open by something.

  The explosion.

  Christopher was trying to stop the blood rocketing out of his nose. “He hit me. Again.”

  Aaron laughed.

  “It’s not funny.”

  Aaron laughed harder. Buck joined in a moment later. Christopher looked at them both with irritation and shook his head. He gave up trying to catch the blood and just let it drip onto his already grossly stained shirt, snorting every few seconds to clear a clot.

  “Not funny.”

  Ken laughed now.

  “Ken?”

  Ken turned. Another figure was in the tunnel.

  He smiled. “Mags.”