The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  He threw himself back, barely missing the acrylic door.

  “Ken!”

  It was Maggie. She didn’t sound panicked. She was happy, he could hear the smile in her voice.

  He clambered in the cab. Not all the way – there wasn’t room – but he poked his head in.

  The toddler stopped crying when he did, and for a wonderful moment he thought it was because she had seen him. Then she giggled and he realized she was being licked rapidly on the nose by Sally. The snow leopard looked like he was grinning, and his huge pink tongue was lapping at Liz like she was a cool drink of water after a too-long thirst.

  Ken felt like he had come home. He would often walk into the house – was it even there anymore? – and hear Liz laughing. Running up, not to him but to his briefcase or his papers or some other thing he carried that had caught her eye. And that was all right; that was the way it should be, in a way. He was her father, and if he was doing his job she shouldn’t feel like he was a rare treat, but rather a permanent and comforting fixture in her life. Not an amusement, but a security blanket with strong arms to wrap around her.

  She didn’t laugh at him, she laughed at Sally. A hand batted out and punched the snow leopard, hitting him right on his truncated ear. Ken’s heart lurched again, this time in fear that that the snow leopard would revert to its wild roots and attack the little girl.

  Sally didn’t seem to register what had to be a painful punch. He just kept licking, lapping, and Lizzy kept laughing.

  Maggie looked at him, smiling. She didn’t say “She’s back, our baby is here again.” She didn’t have to. Ken saw it in her eyes, and it was as loud and clear as if she had written it in hundred-foot letters in the sky.

  Buck looked morose. He was staring at Hope, waiting for her to wake. She slept on. Moaned once, but did not move her body. Still locked in whatever coma or fugue commanded her body during the attack.

  Ken touched Buck’s shoulder. He thought it strange that he, the parent, should be comforting a comparative stranger about the continuing insensibility of his own daughter. But he also knew Buck wasn’t really a stranger. Not anymore. They had all shed blood for one another. They were all family, and that was right, and Buck was worried about this girl in his arms the same way he would worry about a sister, niece, mother, daughter. She was his and he was hers.

  That was right, too.

  The thresher lurched.

  Ken worried for a moment about what new horror that portended.

  Then he realized that the driver had downshifted. Slowing down.

  “We walk from here,” he said. “Or most likely run.”

  46

  KEN SAW WHY THE DRIVER stopped: there was another roadblock. A city bus had overturned and spun halfway through a building. It sprawled halfway across the street, blocking too much of it for the thresher to pass.

  Everyone got out quickly. Sally first, leaping down to the asphalt, landing silently. He favored his left front paw, but did not whine or whimper. Just looked around like an advance scout.

  The rest of the survivors piled out. The driver and Theresa came last.

  Theresa hugged the driver, and Ken could tell that whatever he and the others had been through, these two had had similar experiences. Had been bound by pain and death and sacrifice. Family.

  “Where’s Brandon, Elijah?” she said.

  The huge man shook his head. He tried to talk, choked, tried again. “When you were being attacked, he hit them with the RPG.”

  Theresa’s face shone with the dread certainty of someone who knows the end of a terrible story, but cannot help but listen to the whole of it. “He could have run,” she whispered.

  Elijah shook his head. “There wasn’t time, and you know it. And he didn’t know how to drive the –“

  Theresa cut him off with a gesture. She hugged him again. “I know,” she said. Her voice was a harsh whisper. “I know, you dumb bear.”

  Elijah hugged her so tightly Ken thought he could hear Theresa’s ribs creak. Then he released her and Ken could see wetness shining on his face. “Your brother let himself die so we could live,” he said. “Let’s not waste that.”

  Theresa nodded. The harshness came back into her expression, her eyes deadened. She looked at the group.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got places to go and things to do.”

  She looked at the still-crying Lizzie and the still-silent Hope as she said this.

  Ken didn’t like the look she gave them.

  47

  THE RUN WAS BLESSEDLY short. Ken could feel the survivors – at least the ones he knew, if not Elijah and Theresa – going slower and slower with each passing yard, foot, inch.

  They had to move around piles of debris, over crashed cars. One time they even had to help one another under a pile-up of construction scaffolding that had formed a weird tunnel that all-but-completely blocked the street. It was strangely beautiful, and Ken couldn’t help but feel like he was being born again as he crawled through one side of the tunnel and came out another.

  They heard the growl. The call to surrender. But it was far, and weak.

  They had time, they had entire minutes. And that seemed better than anything Ken could remember. An eternity of safety. He almost didn’t know what to do with himself.

  Start a new hobby, Ken.

  Build a business, Ken.

  Sail around the world, Ken.

  Figure out what the hell’s going on with your kids, Ken.

  The last was troubling, and impossible to figure out. At least for now. He shelved it.

  They ran around a final series of half-demolished buildings. The structures stood gray and already seemed to be crumbling in the harsh light of the day, an apocalyptic scene that seemed months into the dissolution of society, not mere days.

  How far can we fall? How fast?

  The speed at which everything had crumbled was astonishing. The rot had set in, not merely among the undead, but among the basic structures of life before the Change. Everything was moving too fast. Ken felt like he was on top of an ice floe heading toward a waterfall. Trying to keep upright, trying to balance, trying at the same time to jump to a new location that would no doubt provide footing just as treacherous as the spot he had just abandoned.

  They turned a final corner.

  No more buildings ahead. Just empty space. A long straightaway for a while, more buildings in the distance, but nothing for at least half a mile.

  But Elijah was slowing down.

  “A beauty, ain’t she?” he said.

  Ken didn’t understand. And then he did. He looked at the one thing between them and the next bit of civilization.

  Buck was a bit faster on the uptake. “Are you totally fricking kidding me?” he said. He glanced at Maggie, apparently remembering her giving people an earful over choices of language in front of the kids. She didn’t look back, and Buck looked relieved that “freaking” wasn’t on the forbidden list.

  Elijah nodded. “That’s my baby.”

  Then he turned to face the group. Theresa did, too. And they were both holding guns. Theresa had hers pointed at Buck, and Elijah’s was directly centered on Maggie.

  No, Ken realized. Not at Maggie and Buck.

  They were aiming at Hope and at Lizzie.

  48

  KEN MOVED. THE CALM before had been the eye; now he was the hurricane.

  But before he could take more than a step, someone grabbed him. An arm went around his throat, cinching in tight. He felt the hand at the end of the arm clasp something.

  Figure four. A good one.

  The thoughts were automatic. They were also the last ones that were fully-formed and conscious before black threads began weaving across his vision.

  A proper choke hold does not cut off air. Going without air is not a full choke to martial artists. It is suffocation, and suffocation can be endured for seconds or even minutes.

  A choke, a true choke, however, is much more dangerous. It cuts off
both air and the passage of blood from heart and lungs to head. It causes the brain to lose oxygen. It causes unconsciousness in seconds. If held longer than ten or twelve seconds it can cause paralysis, brain damage, death.

  Ken saw the black move across his eyes.

  What’s going on? Wazzgoinon?

  He saw Christopher move at him. Saw a boot kick out and catch the young man in the solar plexus, dropping him. Maggie screamed. Buck clearly wanted to move but just as clearly didn’t know what to do while still holding Hope and facing down the barrel of a gun.

  Ken disappeared into black.

  49

  TOK-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  Ken had a Big Wheel trike when he was a kid. He loved the feel of the plastic grips, the streamers his parents bought him and the way they waved behind the grips when he went so fast it felt like he could fly.

  But he especially –

  (Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.)

  – loved the sound. The big plastic circle at the front going over the seams in the sidewalk cement, followed by the sound of the two smaller back wheels following suit.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  It was the Big Wheel that he rode back to consciousness. The Big Wheel that he took back with him, riding on it and somehow smiling even though the worst had happened.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  (Aaron did it Aaron did it he knocked me out and dropped Christopher and what the hell is going on?)

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  Ken opened his eyes. The Big Wheel disappeared.

  He couldn’t see anything. He thought he was blind for a moment, wondered if Aaron had held the choke too long. Another irony: to survive the zombies and be destroyed by his friend.

  Then he realized that he could feel fabric across his eyes. The darkness wasn’t absolute, it was the filtered black of a blindfold.

  At the same moment he felt thick fingers. Heard a familiar voice.

  “I’m going to take this off. Please don’t act crazy or it goes back on.”

  The blindfold came off. It wasn’t much brighter without it. Ken was sitting in what he instantly recognized as a train.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  It was moving. Railspan by railspan passing below the turning wheels, taking them God only knew where.

  Aaron was kneeling in front of him. The cowboy stared at Ken with concern.

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on,” he said.

  END OF BOOK FOUR

  THE COLONY: SHIFT

  1

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

  The words hung in the air, and somehow they didn’t seem to make it to Ken Strickland. He heard them, but understanding eluded him. Just like the reason he was here escaped his understanding.

  The world had ended.

  He had lost his son.

  His daughters were... changing. Into what, he had no idea. He only knew that they vacillated between the two- and seven-year-old he knew, and a pair of strangers who seemed to want the destruction of the few people who had managed to survive the first days of the end of the world.

  Maggie... at least she was still his. Still his wife, still his love.

  But where was she?

  The words the cowboy had spoken remained in midair between them. Caught in a stasis of unreality far greater than that of men and women who turned on one another, than that of insects swarming and attacking and dying in the millions, even greater than the dead rising up to attack the living.

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

  Ken didn’t understand the words, so he ignored them. Turned away from them, mentally and literally. He craned his neck around.

  He was inside a steel box. Corrugated sides, top. It was gunmetal gray, nearly featureless. It smelled like feed, a gamey smell that was nearly pleasant and brought to mind horses and cattle and farms – things that spoke of life and a world that had been, a world that should still be. He was in an empty shipping container.

  A boxcar.

  The box that should have contained life but had somehow become a tomb swayed slightly. It jounced minutely. Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok. The sound of steel wheels passing over rolled steel. The sound of rails that had born this burden millions of times without complaint, unaware that this would perhaps be the final passage that they would see.

  Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

  Ken wondered briefly how the train was even moving. When the world end, shouldn’t that mean trains stopped? What good would schedules be when there was no one waiting at the terminal? When cargo would only be met by bloodthirsty killers?

  How had he gotten here?

  He tried to stand, lurched a few inches upward and then fell to his side as something blocked his feet. He looked down and saw his hands and feet were bound with zip tie cuffs, the kind favored by cops as convenient ways to deal with drunks and common criminals.

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

  Tok-tok. Tok-tok. Tok-tok.

  And now he remembered. Remembered being saved by newcomers Theresa and Elijah, who had appeared out of nowhere to whisk them away from attacking hordes. Theresa had run dozens of them over in a school bus, plowing through the monsters just in time to save Ken and his friends; then Elijah had shown up and mangled many more with a John Deere thresher.

  They abandoned the farm equipment near a train, of all things. Elijah had mentioned something about Theresa’s brother, how he had stayed behind to cover their escape – a death sentence – because he “hadn’t known how to drive” something. Elijah must have meant this vehicle, this cruising iron beast that Ken had at first been surprised to see, then willing to use.

  And then their rescuers had turned on them. Theresa, a chubby redhead who had gone to so much trouble and seen the sacrifice of her family to rescue Ken and his friends and family. Elijah, a huge black man with a smile so bright it dazzled. They had turned guns on Ken.

  No. Not me. They aimed them at the girls. At Hope and Lizzy.

  And before Ken could move... before he could even think about stopping them.

  Aaron. The cowboy who had saved them all time after time. He had attacked Ken from behind. Had choked him unconscious.

  And now he was looking at Ken. Sitting across from him, holding a flashlight that was the only illumination in this mobile jail cell.

  Ken maneuvered himself into a sitting position. He pushed himself up to the wall of the boxcar. Stared at a man he would have given his life to. A man who had betrayed him.

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on.”

  The words finally made it across the wide gap between them. Penetrated a pain-fogged body and an exhausted mind.

  “Yeah,” he said. Bitterness writhed through the word. “I guess you could say that.”

  2

  AARON HAD A STRANGE look on his face as he started speaking. The shadows the flashlight cast on his face might have had something to do with it, but Ken thought it was more than that. The cowboy looked like he was about to have the birds and the bees talk with a two-year-old, or something else equally disconcerting.

  He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. He had to use the same hand that held the flashlight: the other had had its fingers dislocated and thumb badly broken during one of the times he had defended Ken and the other survivors from an onslaught of zombies.

  It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that, if this was the end?

  Aaron hunched down in front of Ken.

  “You wonder why we have stories and legends about zombies in the first place?”

  Ken shook his head. Again, the words didn’t seem to penetrate. He had been choked, burnt, concussed, his back knocked partially out of alignment, two of his fingers cut off. It all threw up a wall that shielded him from comprehension. He had to focus on the word
s, had to expend more energy than usual on what Aaron had said.

  “Because people are weird,” he finally said. “Because Hollywood people and novelists are messed up in the head.” He shrugged. “I dunno.” He aimed a glare at Aaron. “Where’s my family?”

  Aaron ignored his question. “Yeah, I thought that, too. Enjoyed a lot of good zombie movies in my day. Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later. Hell, I even liked that Warm Bodies flick. Cried a bit when the dead guy got the girl.” He leaned in a bit. “You notice how half of them have live zombies, half of them have undead ones? Ones that rise from the grave?”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t think the people who made up all those ideas were really making them up at all.”

  In spite of himself, in spite of his need to know what was happening to his family, Ken finally asked the question he knew Aaron was hoping for. “What do you mean?”

  “I think those ideas – the ideas of live zombies and dead ones – were... well, put there, for lack of a better word.”

  3

  THAT CUT THROUGH THE blur, the fog that had become a constant companion in Ken’s mind.

  “Put there?” he said. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Again Aaron passed his unmarred hand over his forehead. Again the flashlight scarred the darkness of the freight car.

  “I think this is an invasion,” he said. “I’ve seen ‘em before. Been a part of ‘em before.”

  Ken shook his head. “What does an invasion have to do with –”

  “The most successful invasions start in one of two ways,” Aaron continued, talking over Ken as though he had never spoken. “Either the invading force infiltrates the enemy, taking them over from within, or they attack with overwhelming force and crush them as fast as possible.”