Now, in the harsh light of day, under a sun as bright as this, he had no choice but to see, to believe.
Even if he didn’t understand.
The things that crawled out around the doorframe like roaches running out of a strangely vertical drain were tiny. Not just children like Ken had thought, but most of them babies. Toddlers at best. They had pushed into the tunnel, the tiniest of them looking barely big enough to have fought their way into this world in the first place.
Ken was struck with a horrific thought: what if they hadn’t? Half of humanity had changed in a period of ten minutes. What if one of the Changed had been pregnant?
What if one of the Changed had yet to leave the womb?
He shuddered.
Shuddered again as he saw what the tiny creatures did when they came into the light. They blinked, and he saw –
(It’s not possible, Ken, not possible
What of this is possible?)
– that most of them did not have scabbed-over eyes; rather, their eyes were enormous. Perhaps half the surface area of their faces. They were black and shiny as wet obsidian, though some of them had mottled crusts beginning to creep over the dark orbs: the scabs that were appearing on more and more of the creatures.
Some of the scabs seemed to be growing right out of the centers of the eyes. Not the skin surrounding the dark orbs, the scabs erupted like volcanic islands from the dark seas of the eyes themselves.
As he watched, the things blinked and cringed. He couldn’t see what they were cringing from, but then they scampered back into the tunnel, again seeming more roach-like than human.
The light. They couldn’t stand it.
He turned away. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about babies changing to something so deadly and bloodthirsty and alien and ugly.
What if that’s what’s happening to little Lizzy?
What if it’s something worse?
He had no answers to that. He looked at Maggie. She was sitting on one of the puke-green seats that were required fixtures in school buses worldwide, cradling Liz’s head. Liz’s eyes were closed.
Maggie met Ken’s eyes. “She’s asleep,” she said.
Ken noticed that Sally was laying in the aisle at Liz’s feet. He wondered what the he-leopard would do if he ever came to understand how misnamed he was.
Maybe he’d like it. The world’s first transgender cougar.
Though that couldn’t be. Ken knew from visiting the zoo with the kids that Sally and his mate were trying to breed. He wondered if Sally knew that his female was gone. Maybe dead, but certainly out of reach.
Sally raised his head and looked at Ken as if to say, “You have worse things to worry about than my love life.”
Ken had to admit this was true. But knowing he was hiding from reality in a series of half-inane thoughts didn’t mean he could come back. He had to escape from the skittering, chittering roach children outside, if only for a moment.
Buck was sitting across from Maggie. Like Liz, Hope was asleep or unconscious. Lolling in the big man’s arms. One of her hands trailed down to Sally’s fur, and Ken saw her fingers clench reflexively.
Sally purred. Put his head down.
Aaron and Christopher were in the back of the bus, rooting through something.
“It’s like Christmas,” whispered Christopher.
Aaron looked at the young man. “I worry about you, boy.”
Ken didn’t have the mental capacity to worry about what would excite Christopher. Once the son of Idaho’s governor, the kid had saved them all many times over, usually by finding a way to set something on fire or blow something up – be it something small like a firecracker or something slightly larger like a skyscraper or a passenger jet.
Movement beyond the two men caught Ken’s eye.
The zombies that had almost killed the survivors were still running after them. He couldn’t hear the things’ growl over the thrum of the school bus diesel engine. But he could feel it. Could sense it digging into his mind like a wedge into a split tree trunk, widening a rift to the point where....
What?
What would happen when he split wide open?
He didn’t know.
He saw Derek. He remembered holding his son on a long night when the child had a double ear infection. Little Derek, only three and weeping, asking Daddy to make it stop, make it stop. And Ken held him and rocked him in a dingey second- or third-hand glider chair he and Maggie bought from the Deseret Industries Thrift Store. Singing “Hush, Little Baby” over and over, praying silently to God to take his son’s pain away.
God answered eventually. The next morning they found blood in Derek’s ears and realized his eardrums had burst. No lasting ill effects, but scary as hell to parents who lived and died on their children’s smiles and tears.
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word....”
Ken realized he was singing under his breath. He looked at Maggie. She was looking at him. She was crying silently, twin tear-tracks painting platinum lines down her cheeks.
“... Daddy’s gonna buy you a mockingbird....”
He fell silent. The boy-thing behind the bus wasn’t Derek. Not really. It was a liar, a deceiver. A devil come to steal the hope that remained to the survivors.
“... And if that mockingbird won’t sing....”
As if it heard the words, the Derek-thing shrieked. The sound made it through the harsh chug-thug-pant of the bus engine. Piercing the way only a small child’s scream could be. But grating and deep as well. Something under the child’s voice, a thing singularly alien and holding knowledge and evil beyond the grasp of any true child.
Ken felt dirty hearing it. He felt like washing his hands, scrubbing until the flesh bled then washing until the muscle and tendon was gone and only pure white bone remained.
And then washing some more.
Maggie cried out. Despair.
Hope and little Liz did not awake, but both girls moaned. That terrible moan of pleasure-pain. The moan of virtue offered up, of innocence stolen away.
The Derek-thing’s scream ended.
Ken couldn’t go to Maggie, couldn’t sit beside her or even touch her. Sally was in the way, and Ken sensed that the snow leopard’s presence was the only thing keeping the power of Derek’s screams from overwhelming –
(hurting changing stealing)
– his daughters.
Something whined. At first he thought it was another piece of the sound that the zombies were making. Then realized it was coming from the wrong direction. Coming from somewhere ahead of him.
He turned and saw their rescuer – the strangely-masked driver in the full-body armor – holding up a small box that was whining and shrieking.
The box screamed in time with Derek. Its pitch was different, but the thing spoke in syncopation with the thing that had once been his son.
“Who are you?” he said.
The driver put down the box.
Took off the mask.
Ken heard Christopher gasp behind him. “No frickin’ way,” said the kid.
7
KEN HAD HEARD THE DRIVER’S voice. Raspy, craggy. But there had been something else underneath the gruffness. Something that he had recognized and that kept him from being surprised when the mask came off and revealed long curls of red hair.
The driver was a woman. A bit on the chubby side, perhaps about forty pounds north of what the celeb magazines would have considered an appropriate candidate for beach attire.
Then again, the writers of those magazines were probably either dead or zombies.
The world may have ended, but at least our girls and women aren’t going to be subjected to impossible body image standards anymore.
“What are you staring at?” the driver snapped. Her voice was just as cracked without the gas mask, and now Ken could see why. There was a half-healed wound curling around the side of her throat where it looked like someone had tried to yank her jugular out and only partially failed
. It looked like it had been a devastating wound, the kind of thing that would have necessitated major surgery and a long stay in the hospital before the Change.
Now... thick black thread, a hasty bit of sewing that passed for first-, second-, and last-aid. Maybe a few hours’ rest, and then back to the business of survival. Ken didn’t know who she was, but this girl was tough.
And, he realized, she wasn’t staring at him. Her eyes kept flicking to the mirror above her seat, the one that was positioned so the bus driver could keep an eye on the students at all times, but her gaze pushed beyond him, to....
Ken turned, following her gaze. He saw Christopher. Christopher’s mouth was agape. Still handsome as ever, managing to look more like he was on his way to a photo shoot than like someone on a one-way trip to the end of the world. But he was clearly dumbstruck by something. He was holding an axe in his hand, and Ken wondered where he had gotten that, but he wasn’t looking at it. No, he was looking back at Theresa.
And, abruptly, Ken realized that the kid looked exactly like Ken himself had once looked. Not youthful, it wasn’t that. No, it was the stunned look on the kid’s face, the look Ken had worn the first time he saw Maggie, walking into church in a blue blouse and a beige skirt.
Whenever he told the story Maggie would insist she hadn’t worn any such thing, but Ken knew she was wrong, because he could still remember the giant double-pump his heart did when she walked in (late, he remembered, always late to church). The prettiest girl he’d ever seen. And he knew somehow that, beyond beauty, he was seeing someone that would matter to him. Not love at first sight, perhaps, but definitely something more than hormones, more than simple lust.
He hadn’t thought of marriage in that first moment, but he had walked over to her after the services and done his best to strike up a conversation. Not usual for him – he wasn’t a ladies man by any stretch – but he had little choice. We are all rushing headlong at sometimes terrifying velocity toward our futures, and to try to avoid them is only to court disaster. And in this case he had no wish to avoid his future. Only to find out what part she would play in it.
Now, Christopher’s mouth moved up and down like a nutcracker in the midst of a nut shortage. Open, shut, open, shut.
The redhead at the front of the bus wasn’t amused. She frowned. “Are you an idiot or something?”
Christopher’s mouth snapped shut with an audible clack. The dumbstruck look disappeared – or at least faded – from his face. “No,” he said. He looked like he wanted to say something wittier, but the single syllable was all he could manage.
Christopher held up the axe in his hand. It was black, with a curved blade that looked like the kind of thing Ken associated with medieval movies. The word “Cass” was scrawled across the haft in thick red letters. “Where’d you get this?”
“Took it off some Goth chick,” said the driver. “She was ranting about vampires.” She shrugged. “Got her stories wrong, that’s for sure.”
“You stole her weapons?” That was Buck. Ken had almost forgotten about him. The big man gaped at their driver.
She returned his gaze evenly. “No, I didn’t steal them. But when she got bitten and turned, I used them to cut her into little pieces. If it makes you feel better, you can imagine me asking if I could cut her arms and legs and head off, pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top.”
The redhead looked like she might continue her sarcastic rant, but her eyes flicked down and forward and she screamed, “Hold on to something!”
Ken saw why.
He expected the redhead to brake.
She didn’t.
Is she insane?
8
“WHAT ARE YOU –?“
“Slow down!”
“Don’t –“
The words came fast and loud. Ken couldn’t even tell who said what. He heard Maggie scream. Only Sally remained aloof from the conversation, the snow leopard silent as the redhead at the wheel stomped the accelerator.
School buses aren’t made for speed. The thing didn’t leap forward; didn’t even lurch. But Ken could feel the torque pushing him back, felt his hand tighten against the support bar he was holding. He dropped to the nearest seat, wondering if they had survived countless attacks by zombies – both living and dead – only to fall prey to a woman with a demolition derby death wish.
There were three cars in the road ahead of the bus. Stretched across the entire length of the road, end to end. A red Suburban, two smaller vehicles. They were touching bumpers, almost as if –
They were put there.
Ken realized what he was seeing in the instant before the bus hit.
A roadblock.
He thought for a fraction of an instant that it must have been some group of survivors that did it. But why? Ken had seen enough end-of-the-world movies to know that eventually everything went to Hell, and people started trying to kill/rape/eat each other (not necessarily in that order), but it seemed that three days was a bit fast to have devolved to that point. Especially since there were so few survivors. Any humans left would probably be concentrating one hundred percent on survival, no brain space left for traps for their unwary fellow humans.
Then he saw the zombies, a full dozen of them, loping away as the bus hit the front right bumper of the Suburban and the front left bumper of the dark blue sedan that had been shoved against it.
They tried to stop us. This was a trap.
The implications of that were terrifying. The things had been getting smarter, there was no denying it. When they first appeared they were truly mindless, simple creatures only capable of killing. Indeed, when the Change occurred, the zombies couldn’t even get through doors at first.
Then they could. And before too much longer they were tracking Ken and the other survivors.
And now... traps. Ambushes?
They weren’t just getting smarter, they were planning. A progression of intelligence that was exponential.
He felt something cold in his gut, pressing against his bowels, making him feel like vomiting and crapping his pants. The things already outnumbered them a thousand to one, already had every physical advantage. If they had intelligence as well, the human race was doomed.
That was the last thought he had before eight tons of school bus slammed right through the two cars. Ken saw a zombie that hadn’t left its position behind the cars plowed over, hitting the front grill of the school bus with a wet thud before disappearing below the chassis.
Something blew up below the bus. The vehicle jounced, skidded to the side. It tore through a set of parking meters set into the side of the road.
Pwing-pwing-pwing.
The redhead grunted as she struggled to bring the bus back under control. Ken could feel the thing fishtailing, juking like a fish that had been half-hooked and still had a chance of escape.
The bus took one huge sideways lurch, and Ken realized that the small explosion he had heard must have been a tire – maybe several tires – popping. This was a large bus, one tire at each front corner and two on each rear corner. Hopefully just one of the rear tires had popped, allowing the other to remain as a whole backup. But he couldn’t tell, and it would be almost too much to hope for given their luck so far.
The bus kept slewing to the side as though drunk on the disaster that lay all around them.
It hit a piece of debris in the middle of the road. Ken didn’t think it had been placed there purposefully, but purposeful or not it sent the vehicle into a new slide. The wheels on the right side of the bus felt like they lifted up for a too-long moment before slamming back to the road with a tooth-jarring thud.
“Geez, lady!” screamed Christopher. “What are you –“
“Shut up,” she growled.
Christopher did. A minor miracle itself, since Ken didn’t think death or destruction had managed to silence the young man before this.
The bus moved forward. Still veering to one side, favoring its blown wheel –
(or wheels please don
’t be wheels just let us get a bit farther God I think I really think you owe us that)
– the way Ken favored his left leg due to a pinched nerve. He patted the seat absently.
We’ve both seen better days, haven’t we?
He looked at Maggie. She was white-faced, braced tightly into her own seat like she had found herself in a strange and particularly unpleasant carnival ride, but both she and Liz looked fine. As fine as the circumstances permitted. She nodded. Tried to smile.
He turned farther around so he could see Buck. The big man was looking at Hope, dangling silently in his arms. His big hands roved her body, not in a perverse way but in a way that clearly bespoke his concern and terror. Not for himself, but for her, worried that he would find evidence of broken bones or swelling that might indicate internal trauma. Buck didn’t look at Ken, but apparently sensed his attention because he pushed a big thumb into the air. “We’re okay,” he said. His too-high voice was pitched a bit higher than usual, fear strangling his vocal cords.
Ken glanced at Aaron and Christopher to make sure they were okay as well. Christopher was still holding the axe, and Aaron had an honest-to-god broadsword clutched in his one good hand. Ken wondered what kind of girl this “Cass” had been. Interesting, that’s for sure. And the world was the poorer for her loss.
Both Aaron and Christopher nodded, guy-speak for “We’re good.”
Ken nodded back. Turned to the driver.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
The driver glanced at him in the mirror above her head. She couldn’t look at him long, still wending between cars and debris that littered the road; occasionally slamming right through smaller items. But she looked like she was about to answer.
Then the bus bounced.
And again.
And he heard something skitter. Not on top of the bus, not beside it.
Beneath it.
And he remembered the tiny bodies that had flowed out of the storm drain. The things that had fled from the light.
He thought of the zombies, loping away from the vehicles they had pushed together in ambush.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 42