The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  Maggie’s arm circled Ken’s. She squeezed him. “Until you got better,” she said firmly.

  “But how?” said Ken. “You said... three days?”

  Aaron laughed. A low, rolling chortle that danced around the tunnel. Ken smiled.

  “Probably,” said Aaron. “Probably about that. You’re a pretty regular guy.”

  Ken felt sure the others would be able to see by the glow of his blush. “Gross.”

  That drew another chuckle from Aaron.

  Ken felt a sudden stab of jealousy. He could only imagine what the first hours after the explosion had been like: terror, frantic, feeble searching for each other in the darkness. But now... now there was rest. Peace, however momentary. A drawing together of the group. He was grateful, but a bit of him felt piqued that he had missed so much of whatever bonding had drawn such smiles to their faces.

  “Anyway,” Aaron continued, “Buck assured us the water in the tunnel’d be pretty clean, and as for food....”

  “Yeah?”

  Ken felt Maggie’s arm on his. Shaking.

  Panic grabbed him. He tensed, ready to run, to scream and fight and flee.

  Then realized he wasn’t feeling her terror. Wasn’t feeling a seizure, grabbing her preparatory to her becoming a zombie. It was something else. Something he had all but forgotten in the past hours –

  (No, days, Ken, it’s been days....)

  – of danger and pain.

  Maggie was laughing. Laughing her hardest laugh, which meant she was all but silent. He couldn’t see her in this black inkwell, but he had seen it often enough to know what she looked like now: mouth open wide, gasping for breath that would not come, shaking as her body struggled to cope with overwhelming paroxysms of near-hysterical laughter.

  She finally inhaled. Got enough control over her body to actually make a noise, a single, thin “Heeeee” that seemed to melt into silence as fast as it came.

  He loved that laugh. Stupidest laugh in the universe, and he’d told her so. But he told her so with a smile, because every time she laughed like that it meant she was truly happy. That something wonderful had happened in her mind.

  He loved her perhaps most of all when he heard that sound.

  She did it again. A rarity. And a sign of how very funny she thought something was. “Heeeee.” The whispery laugh danced into the darkness.

  “What’s so funny?” Ken finally said.

  58

  “YOU HUNGRY?” SAID CHRISTOPHER a moment later.

  Ken was. He hadn’t realized it until this moment, but he was famished. His stomach rumbled audibly.

  “Either the creeps found a way in, or that’s a yes,” said Christopher. “I thought you would be. We fed you as much as we could, but you got all bitey sometimes, so....” Maggie’s silent laugh got even more energetic. “I’ll go get you something,” said Christopher.

  The flashlight flickered on. Christopher pushed up against the wall, then stepped gingerly past the snow leopard, walking down the side tunnel. It curved sharply to the right only a few feet past the big cat, and soon Christopher was gone. The light fluttered in the tunnel behind him, growing dim but never quite disappearing.

  Ken looked at Buck. “So... Clucky?”

  Buck’s face, which had been smiling down at Hope, now darkened faster than a thunderhead about to dump a Noachian downpour on an unprepared populace. “That’s what Hope calls me,” he said. The tone made it clear that only Hope called him that.

  “You knew about this place?” said Ken, partly to shift the subject away from the pet names issue, partly because he was curious how Buck knew what was down here.

  Buck nodded. “You guys found us up in that lawyer’s office. Me and my mom?”

  Ken nodded.

  “We were in the middle of a lawsuit against the city. I am – was, I guess I should say – a contractor for county. My mom owned the business, took over after my dad died.” He was silent a moment, pensive. Then he looked around, taking in the surroundings. “I did a lot of work down here.”

  “You get hurt or something?”

  Buck rolled his eyes. “Nothing so interesting. Just a contract dispute between the county and some of the contractors who’ve done work for them. It’s the sort of thing that happens all the time with public works – one project goes to shi – uh, crap,” he amended, looking at Hope, who was watching him with what Ken could only describe as hero-worship in her eyes, “and everyone starts blaming everyone else. Soon there are delays, then damages, and then everyone sues everyone else. I was up there for a deposition. But when I saw the plane going down, I knew there was a storm drain entrance we could get into nearby. Figured we might be safe for a bit down here.”

  “Good thinking,” said Ken.

  “Clucky saved us,” said Hope.

  Buck hugged the little girl tightly.

  “He sure did,” said Christopher, reappearing around the bend. “Clucky is awesome.”

  Buck glared at the young man. Christopher put on a face of such sincere innocence Ken had to laugh. “Hey, man, I was agreeing with her. You are a force to be reckoned with. Clucky.”

  “Christopher –“ Buck’s voice rumbled into the darkness.

  Christopher laughed quietly.

  Maggie sighed in a way that told Ken this was not a new discussion. “Do I have to separate you two boys?” she said.

  “What?” said Christopher. His innocent face got even more innocent, if that were possible. Before the Change, he had been the son of Idaho’s governor, and Ken figured he must have learned a thing or two about pretending virtue from his father. The expression he was wearing would have made God Himself look a bit dicey in comparison.

  Buck sighed. Clearly trying to be the bigger person in the dispute. He looked back at Hope.

  Christopher laughed. “Just hassling you, brother.” He held out a hand to Ken. “You said you were hungry, right?”

  Ken looked at what Christopher held.

  “Where the heck did you get those?”

  59

  CHRISTOPHER WAS HOLDING what first appeared to be a handful of candy. But only a moment later Ken saw that they were energy bars, the kind of things a lot of his students crammed into their mouths before working out or instead of eating lunch.

  It wasn’t just two or three, either. Christopher’s hand could barely close around the brightly-wrapped sticks of processed carbs.

  Ken had never liked the things. Even the best of them generally tasted to him like someone mixed caulk with a dab or two of artificial flavor. But now, looking at the things in Christopher’s hand, he felt his mouth go dry then fill with saliva an instant later.

  He reached out, and Christopher stepped forward – again, gingerly stepping around the still-lolling form of Sally – to hand two of the bars to Ken.

  Ken looked at them only a half-second before tearing them open and wolfing one down in two quick bites.

  “Easy, son,” said Aaron. “You don’t want to make yourself sick. You’ve been eatin’ okay, all things considered, but still might be good to pace yourself.”

  Ken tried to slow down. Found he couldn’t. He took another huge bite and then looked at Christopher in order to try and distract himself. “Where’d they come from?” he said again.

  Christopher jerked a bar-laden hand over his shoulder. “Tunnel collapsed when the jet blew up. Must’ve been a GNC or some kind of health store above the tunnel. A bunch of shelves came down in the rubble.” He grinned again. “Energy bars and soy protein muscle builder and our trusty flashlight here.” He hit a dramatic muscle pose, clearly for Hope’s benefit. She giggled. Sally licked his chops and snuffed as though he’d heard this joke one too many times. “We may be hurt, but we can be well-lit and huge.”

  Ken gawked. Long enough that Christopher dropped his pose. “It’s okay, man. There’s plenty back there. We’ve got plenty to live on for a while if we need to.”

  “It’s not that,” Ken said. “If the tunnel fell down over ther
e, where else did it fall?” He looked around at the survivors. “What else fell in?”

  60

  BUCK SNORTED, SURPRISING Ken. “There’s nothing to worry about.” He jogged his chin in Christopher’s direction. “Our pet arsonist over there dropped most of several buildings right over us. The tunnel’s completely sealed in three directions, probably nothing but rubble above us for a hundred feet or so.”

  “I apologized already,” said Christopher, and again Ken heard the tone of a person going over an old argument. The sound of brothers rehashing an old dispute at a family reunion. “How was I supposed to know the explosion would be that big?”

  “I’m still impressed that he got a 737 to blow up in the first place,” Aaron said. “It ain’t as easy as the movies make it look.” He squinted. “How’d you know there’d be enough fumes in the tanks to create explosive pressure, instead of just a flameout?”

  “I figured the jet was probably on approach when it went down,” said Christopher. “Otherwise there would have been a lot more fire damage around it.”

  “Huh,” was all Aaron said. But he looked impressed.

  “Still, you –“ Buck began, in a tone that made it clear he was determined to drag the argument out.

  Ken cut him off. He felt weirdly like the father of two very large pre-teens. “Let’s hold off on the argument, can we?” He brought a low-simmering glare against Christopher, then Buck in turn. And felt a bizarre desire to add, “Or I’ll turn this tunnel around and we’ll go home right now.”

  Instead he said, “Three cave-ins?”

  Buck nodded and in a more contrite tone he said, “Yeah. Just rubble back where you were, around that corner,” nodding in the direction Christopher had gathered the energy bars, “and down one other side tunnel.” He held out two big hands in front of Hope. She started playing a quiet game of patty-cake with the big older man, which Ken thought rated an eleven on the Bizarro Scale.

  “And the last direction?”

  “That’s the way out.” Buck said. He looked up at Ken, peering over the top of Hope’s head. He mouthed a pair of words that made Ken shiver.

  “We hope.”

  61

  SILENCE HELD SWAY IN the tunnel again. Christopher clicked off the light. There was nothing but darkness and the trickle of water a few feet away and the soft purring of the snow leopard’s breathing.

  Ken took a bite of his second energy bar. He managed to reign himself in this time, nibbling rather than inhaling the food.

  He was going to ask about Sally. Clearly the snow leopard had been integrated into the group on some level. There was no way that Maggie would have let Liz sleep with the animal unless she was completely secure with the beast.

  But how could that be? Ken had seen the thing eviscerate several zombies, destroying them one bite and one crushing claw-swipe at a time. There was no doubt the animal was fierce and had the capacity for destruction.

  But....

  ... but when he attacked the zombies with the female snow leopard, neither of them went for Aaron.

  ... but he dragged Ken out of the water and probably kept him from dying of hypothermia before the others found him.

  ... but Liz was sleeping against his stomach, utterly at peace even though this was the girl who had trouble sleeping anywhere but her crib.

  So many questions, and he sensed that many of the answers might mean the difference between life and death.

  What was the snow leopard doing?

  Why hadn’t anyone left him behind?

  Why hadn’t he turned when he was bitten?

  Ken opened his mouth to ask.

  But before he could, before the questions did more than dance ever-so-softly across the surface of his mind, he started to shake. Tremors sped from toe to crown, pulsing through him with the strength and speed of lightning strikes. He dropped the piece of the energy bar that remained uneaten in his hand. It hit the concrete floor with barely a whisper, just a murmur of plasticized aluminum as the wrapper rustled against the ground.

  It was enough to alert Maggie, though. Either that or she heard his rank clothing as it shuffled back and forth in a series of near-microscopic twitches, pushed by the spasming muscles underneath.

  “Ken?” she said.

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He felt like his mouth had been filled with concrete, his jaw wired shut. Every muscle that wasn’t jerking back and forth was locked into painful stasis. Only his eyes felt like they were at all under his control, and they flitted heavenward, then back and forth as he sought something in the darkness. Something elusive, something hidden.

  “Honey?” said Maggie. He still didn’t answer, not even when he felt her arm on his. “Christopher, hit the light,” she said.

  “It’s getting low,” he said.

  “Turn it on.”

  The light sparked to dim existence. Hope said, “Daddy?” in a lost voice.

  Ken didn’t look at her. He was still staring upward, still looking back and forth along the line of the tunnel ceiling, still searching for something.

  And even in the light, he couldn’t find it.

  “Honey?” He heard the panic creeping into Maggie’s voice. She put a hand on each of his arms and shook him. He knew she was trying to get him to look at her.

  He didn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  Tears spilled over his cheeks.

  Then his eyes closed and he slumped.

  62

  STILL DARK. DARK, and Ken was alone. Then Matt Anders was standing over him.

  “Come on, Mr. Strickland,” said the kid. His voice scraped out at a volume so low that Ken had to strain to hear it. Nothing new there: the kid always spoke that way. Always quiet, never any trouble.

  Teachers were supposed to be like parents. They were supposed to like their students equally, to care for and pay attention to one exactly the same as to another. But Ken had his favorites. Maybe that made him a bad teacher. Or perhaps it just made him human.

  No matter what the case, Matt was a kid Ken liked. So when the boy held out his hand Ken didn’t think twice about taking it.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as he and Matt started walking down the tunnel. Water slapped and sloshed around their feet. The sound echoed around them and Ken felt like every step he took was one of many, like he was in the middle of an invisible mob, shuffling from side to side and waiting only for the word to be let loose. To attack. To destroy.

  “It’s just up here,” said Matt. He turned back and smiled. His smile seemed lopsided. The smile of a stroke victim.

  “Where is it?” said Ken. The smile scared him.

  “Just up here.” Matt disappeared around a sudden bend in the tunnel. Ken followed, afraid of what he might see but even more afraid of being left alone.

  Being alone was the ultimate terror now. Alone meant you had been left for dead. Meant you were worthless. Meant you were good only as meat to divert the beasts.

  Ken made the turn, and as he did he wondered where the light was coming from. He could see Matt, could see the tunnel walls and floor and ceiling.

  How?

  “Shouldn’t it be dark?” he said to himself. The words mumbled, fell out of his lips like dirt from the mouth of a corpse that has chewed its way up from the earth.

  And, saying that, he nearly tripped over Matt. The boy was on the tunnel floor. Twitching and writhing.

  Of course he is. It’s that he’s dead.

  And he suddenly realized that Matt was the boy who had changed under Ken’s hands. The boy had gone into a seizure when the Change first swept through Ken’s universe. Ken had held him down, had tried to help him... until Matt tried to kill him.

  Then Ken threw him out a window.

  As he realized that, remembered kicking one of his favorite students out a third-floor plate glass window, Matt changed. His eyes rolled back. Blood spurted from his unbroken skin. Ken backed up with a scream, ready for the boy to come for him.

  What’s
going on? What’s happening?

  But Matt didn’t get up. Instead, he suddenly threw his arms and legs wide. Harsh cracks split the air and Matt’s limbs twisted in on themselves. He didn’t scream. Just moaned as his head seemed to deflate like a punctured basketball, blood flowing out the back in a widening pool.

  His eyes rolled forward. “You killed me,” he said. His voice was normal.

  Ken backed away. Something bumped into him. Something soft. Warm. He turned.

  A man stood behind him, dressed in sweats and wearing a silver whistle around his neck. The man’s face was impossible to look at, a concave mass of bone and cartilage and blood. But Ken knew who it was, would have known in an instant even if he hadn’t heard the man’s voice issuing forth with impossible clarity from the gaping wound that was all that remained of his mouth.

  “You killed me,” said Joe Picarelli, the gym coach at Ken’s school.

  Ken shrieked and ran. Turned away from the coach with his eyeless face and his gaping sore of a mouth. Leapt over the still-crackling limbs of Matt Anders.

  Three steps.

  He stopped.

  A horde of undead were crammed into the tunnel. He recognized some, but not all.

  A fat zombie he had skewered with a lug wrench.

  A huge zombie, thickly muscled, half its skin perfectly white and the other half charred and black and peeling away from yellowed bone. The thing that had caught and changed and killed Ken’s son.

  The burnt monster reached behind itself.

  And drew out a small form.

  Ken stared at Derek. His son’s face was greasy and loose, as though about to slide away from the underlying muscle. The child’s eyes had the whites-only stare of the zombies.

  “You killed us all,” said Derek.

  Ken started to scream.

  He knew it wasn’t real.

  He knew it had to be a dream.