The noise below sounded like it could be large or small. Could be anything. A child-thing, an adult-thing.
But not human.
Something coughed below the bus.
“What now?” said Christopher.
The redhead was still looking at Ken.
She looked terrified.
So, Ken suspected, did he.
9
KEN WONDERED FOR A moment why the coughing sound should scare him so badly. There was no question that something was below them, below the bus, but it was more than that.
It was....
He didn’t have a chance to complete the thought.
There was a high-pitched whine. Something that reminded Ken of a dentist’s drill, only with the unpleasantness of that tool notched up times fifty. Then it stopped.
“What...?” said Christopher.
Sally was suddenly on his feet, the snow leopard standing with legs outstretched, almost braced against the seat supports on either side of the center aisle. The leopard’s fur was standing on end and its head was lowered to an attack position. Its teeth were bared.
Liz and Hope didn’t wake up. They didn’t even move when Sally got up. Just slept on.
The cough came again, and Ken placed it. He had heard it first while hanging from the side of the top three stories of a building. A zombie had made that sound, right before it vomited acid all over itself.
But that couldn’t be happening now, could it? Sure, the things had somehow gained an ability to cling to sheer vertical surfaces, but even that was very different from holding fast to the undercarriage of a school bus bouncing through a warzone of a neighborhood. And the zombies’ acid melted their own flesh. So if there was something down there, if it puked acid the stuff would just hurt it, not the bus.
The cough again.
And Ken realized he had heard it other times, too. Like in the elevator shaft, crawling down.
Then the whine came again.
The sound grew higher and higher. Then it changed in tone, sounding almost like....
“It’s sawing through!” Buck shouted the words and then rammed back, jamming himself against the wall, pushing as far away from the center of the aisle as possible.
Ken looked and saw the big man was right: what looked like a circular saw was biting through the steel floor of the bus.
A moment later Ken changed his mind. What the thing actually was he couldn’t say, but it was not a saw. It was moving so quickly that he couldn’t get a good look at it, but for some reason it brought to mind the Remington rotary-style electric razor Maggie had gotten for him a few years back. As a functional razor it had been something of a bust: Ken’s beard was so thick and coarse that he quickly discovered the three “precision” razors actually just yanked the hair out of his face as often as they cut it.
But he did enjoy looking at the thing. It was sleek and somehow felt cooler than the disposable Bic razors he typically used.
The high-pitched sound returned, louder now. Sparks began flying from the portion of the bus that the whatever-it-was was working on.
Ken realized – belatedly – that it was coming through only inches from Sally.
Only inches from his wife and Buck. From his daughters.
He stood. It was an effort. His body had been through a wringer: cuts up and down the length of his frame, sprains and twisted tendons, torqued bones, two fingers he had cut off himself when they had been crushed and caught and doing so was the only way to escape a horde, and the whole thing ravaged by infection.
He had even been bitten by one of the zombies.
Bitten, but not turned.
Not Changed.
How did that happen? Or not happen?
No time to think about it. He was still standing. Still pulling his sore body upward, when the floor section fell away.
He saw what was beneath.
And screamed.
10
IT WAS ONE OF THE CHILDREN. One of the things that had followed them through the storm drain tunnel, a thing that had once been an infant and was now so much more and so much less.
Ken got only a quick look at it as a four-foot-long section of the floor of the bus fell away. The steel plate – disconnected from the rest of the floor in a rough rectangle – hit the street below with a clang and a bouquet of sparks before disappearing behind the vehicle.
The thing that had done this disappeared as well. But not because it had fallen. It was clinging to the bottom of the bus, holding on with that impossible grip that Ken had seen time after time. There was nothing to hold onto below the bus, at least not the way the baby-thing was holding. The thing had its hands – the things that once could have been called hands – pressed against the bottom of the bus. Clinging tightly to metal stained and slicked with dirt and oil.
Its body was half-flayed. The things that had followed the survivors into the tunnel had done so by forcing themselves through holes and burrows in a debris field, most of which were too small for them. They had peeled themselves bare of skin and muscle to do so. And did not seem to notice in the least.
The things felt pain, Ken had seen them react with rage when hurt or attacked. But apparently they cared less about the agony than they did about the possible escape of prey.
He glanced at Hope and Liz. His daughters, comatose and limp. Buck and Maggie had both pushed against the outer walls of the bus, shrinking as far from the hole as they could. Each held a child like a treasure in their arms. A prize that was worth more than anything, even their own lives.
Sally hunched at the edge of the hole. Strangely silent, waiting.
Glass shattered, and Buck shouted in agony.
11
KEN MOVED BEFORE BEING fully aware what he was doing, or what it was he was reacting to. He only heard pain, only knew he had to help.
Buck was family, as much as Maggie, as much as the girls.
There was no room in this world for people that did not love one another. There were no enemies among humans. There were only family and the others, the Changed.
Buck had backed away, pushed his bulk into the space between two seat backs, his backside and legs up on one of the seats, one hand holding the seatback in front of him, the other holding Hope. The hand that held the seat was what saved him.
Two zombies had climbed up the side of the bus. They were holding – impossibly holding, their hands adhering to sheer glass and metal – to the side of the bus, and it was easy to see they had broken the window by Buck’s head. Buck must have jerked forward, out of range of their biting mouths, but they had grabbed his hair.
They were pulling him. He wouldn’t let go of Hope, wouldn’t let go of the seatback. But he was being jerked back a bit at a time. Ken heard something like tearing cloth. Blood dripped down the big man’s forehead and he realized that Buck was being scalped by the sheer muscle power of the things outside.
One of them coughed. Black acid drooled out of its mouth. It didn’t vomit on Buck, but the side of the bus started to melt away. They were making a door. Making a way in.
12
KEN GOT TO THE HOLE that the infant-monster had somehow created, then stopped. He didn’t want to jump over it. Not just because he might fall, but because he was worried about what might snatch him out of midair.
If the things could pull apart solid plates of steel, what else could they do?
He stood there, standing across from Sally, who still waited for something to appear so that he could bat it out of existence with a huge clawed paw.
Nothing came into view. Ken could hear skittering, chittering. But nothing came.
He had waited too long. Buck was screaming, and he finally let go of the seat in front of him. It was a purely instinctive move, Ken was sure. Hurt someone badly enough and they will forget about survival in favor of stopping pain. Die to quench agony.
Buck had reached that point, with the skin peeling off him right above his eyebrows, raw red glistening through to the porous yello
w of bone. Screaming, shrieking, calling for God and Jesus and his dead mother.
He did not let go of Hope. Held her tight, held her safe.
The things leaned in through the widened gap they had created.
Pulled Buck toward them.
Maggie screamed as well.
More glass tinkled.
Ken saw another three zombies had pounded through the window next to his wife. Grabbed handfuls of her beautiful hair.
He froze. Not because of fear this time, but because he could not believe what was happening.
And the universe jerked sharply to the side.
13
KEN SPUN ON THE AXIS of a single toe, a deranged top spun by the hand of an angry child.
He heard screaming. Not Buck, not Maggie.
The redhead.
He turned a one-eighty, came to face front, and saw that their savior had her own attacker. A zombie was on the hood of the bus, reaching around the smashed driver’s side window to grab her jacket. It had hooked some mottled, scabbed fingers through her jacket and was drawing her toward the jagged edges of the glass that lined the window.
She spun the wheel, the movement sending the bus into a sharp sideways leap the twin of the one that had just sent Ken into his drunken rotation. He didn’t spin back around, though, because he fell sideways. Landed on his shoulder on the nearest seat. Pain pounded through the shoulder. Lanced through his left leg. His back.
The zombie on the hood of the bus fell sideways as well. The turn pushed it off the hood, so it was hanging off the side of the bus, hanging solely by its grip on the redhead’s vest.
She screamed in horror and disgust.
Turned the wheel sharply.
The bus slammed into a curb. Bounced up, the wheels leaving the ground before slamming back to earth so hard Ken’s teeth slammed against one another with an audible clack. He tasted blood in his mouth, felt teeth loosen in their sockets.
The zombie outside the bus growled.
The bus careened toward the storefront of a trio of businesses. What had once been a store selling board games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride next to a Jamba Juice and a place selling charmingly kitschy odds and ends.
Now they were none of those things.
Now it was after the Change. They weren’t stores.
They were just one big boot, and their redheaded savior intended to wipe the filth off her bus with them.
The zombie shrieked again, then the bus hit.
14
FOR MUCH OF HIS ADULT life, the sound of glass breaking had been an oddly comforting one. When he and Maggie went to Kauai on their honeymoon they went to the touristy places designed to steal as much money as possible from starry-eyed folks who were so enamored of the view that they barely felt their wallets lightening.
Ken felt it, though. He was a teacher who had gone into deep hock for the wedding and the honeymoon. So when they window shopped they just looked. It was enough.
Until Ken made fun of a Christmas ornament – odd to see in June on a tropical island – and in doing so poked it and sent it crashing to the floor. It broke, right under a sign that said, “You BRAKE You BUY!” The fact that the sign was misspelled struck both him and Maggie as tremendously funny, and the laughter they enjoyed – not to mention the good-natured ribbing he got over the years – more than offset the criminal expense of the trinket.
When he heard glass breaking, he usually thought of that.
But not here. Not in the bus. Not when the glass meant Buck was having his head ripped off, that Maggie was being pulled out to her doom.
And certainly not when it meant the bus was going through the plate glass windows of three different businesses in quick succession.
Ken was still facing more or less forward. He saw the bus’s hood careen off the concrete surface between stores, then edge back into the store, driven by The Redhead’s manic turn of the wheel. The glass of the display window tore into a million pieces, the bus bounced again. She turned back into the next store.
The zombie was pulled to pieces by a combination of glass cutting it apart and impact pulping it.
The pieces – many still moving independently, already frothing yellow – thud-thump-clunked over the side of the bus. They hit the two zombies that were pulling at Buck. They barely noticed the hits, kept pulling at him.
The Redhead careened into the last store. The last two zombies disappeared, leaving behind only Buck’s screams and bloody forehead as reminders of their passage.
Ken looked at Maggie.
The zombie that had her leaned in. Mouth open.
15
KEN WANTED TO SCREAM for her.
There was no one close enough to do anything. Buck was sobbing through blood. Holding tight to Hope like she was a comforting toy and he a huge child.
Christopher was down, he must have fallen during the intentional crash.
Aaron was on his hands and knees. Broadsword in good hand, but not in a position to use it and too far to hit the zombie.
Ken had no way to get to his wife.
The growl hit him. And he smiled in the instant it did. Because it wasn’t the usual one. Not give up give in but a feline shriek of rage.
Sally.
The snow leopard seemed to dance in the still-careening bus. He pounced away from the hole in the floor, jumping to the iron rod atop the nearest seat, balancing all four huge paws atop the metal that couldn’t have been more than an inch in diameter. A split second later he jumped to another bench back, then landed on the zombie’s arm and slashed it with one paw while his tremendous fangs bit down on the back of the zombie’s neck.
The zombie jerked. And went limp. All communications between what passed for a mind and the rest of its body instantly severed by the snow leopard’s crushing jaws.
The zombie slumped, falling half over Maggie. She gagged and said, “No, no, no-ung, nung, ung,” disgust turning her voice into a groan of horror.
Sally jumped back to the hole where he had been since it opened up below him.
And the zombie that the big cat had destroyed shuddered.
It grabbed Maggie.
Its mouth opened again.
16
MAGGIE’S MOAN-SHOUTS of disgust turned instantly to the more direct and sharper scream of pain and terror as the thing grabbed a double-handful of her hair. Sally growled and hunched, his back curving into a deadly arc as he prepared to leap back to the thing that had been destroyed once and did not have the sense to remain silent in defeat.
The cat didn’t jump, though.
Something reached up from under the bus. Reached up through the hole in the floor, and a hooked nail slashed at Sally’s paw.
The big cat’s growl turned to a yelp of surprise and pain. The baby-thing’s hand disappeared, but it had done its job. It had done enough
It had given the zombie at the window time to bite Ken’s wife.
17
THE THING WAS FAST. Faster than anything that had been through the end of the world should be, and certainly faster than anything that had just had its cervical spine severed by the bite of an angry predator could be.
The inconceivable stood on the shoulders of the impossible, and together they dropped toward Maggie.
Sally was too slow. Buck was dealing with his own pain.
Everyone was too far. Too far, but Ken was too close. Too close because he was going to see his wife die – or worse – the same way he had seen his son. Worse, because his son had disappeared in smoke and flame. His wife would not disappear.
Would not. But did.
She disappeared behind a silvery stretch of steel. Ken had an instant to see the zombie doubled, mirrored upon itself as its reflection gaped. Then it fell away, seeming almost to drip out the side of the bus.
Ken looked at Aaron in shock. The cowboy was frozen in position, one knee so low it almost touched the plate deck of the floor, his mangled left hand behind him, right hand extended directly in front
of his chin with pointer finger extended.
It took a moment to realize what had happened. To play things back in reverse and understand that the cowboy hadn’t been able to reach Ken’s wife anymore than had Ken himself. But he had something that could move faster than either: the sword. Too far to swing it, and in these close quarters he would have been just as likely to take off the head of a friend as that of a foe.
But he could throw it. And did.
He had used it like a javelin, throwing it point-first at the zombie, the blade passing so close over Maggie’s head that Ken could see wisps of her dark blond hair floating to the seat beside her.
If anyone else had done it, it would have seemed like an impossibility. It would have been a marvel.
With Aaron, it was just something he did. Who he was.
The zombie started twitching as it fell out of the bus, the pink ooze that marked a major head wound with these things spurting around the bright edge of the broadsword. It was still a danger, but now it was an indiscriminate one: it would kill anything it could, instead of just targeting people. Instead of just targeting Ken’s family and friends.
The zombie slid away like a fish being yanked on a string, but not before Maggie grabbed the hilt of the broadsword. She yanked it free, and the thing’s head split in two, the top half falling to the right in a spray of pink ooze while the bottom half fell with the rest of the zombie and slid for an impossible moment against the side of the bus before disappearing behind them.
Maggie flipped the broadsword in her hand, catching it almost lightly by the blade and then tossing it back to Aaron.
He snatched it out of the air. Nodded his thanks as though he owed her a boon for the return of the weapon, rather than her owing him for the return of her life.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 43