The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  "Shut up, Clucky," said Christopher. He turned, hands still reaching as high as he could get them.

  The person holding the bow, holding Christopher's life in his steady hands, was a kid. He was also a younger version of Mo. Maybe fifteen years old. Eyes that were dark and capable, skin the color of tanned leather. He didn't have the tribal tattoos, but even without them Christopher felt strength roll off him. Different than Mo's. Less tempered, raw.

  More dangerous, because it didn't have the wisdom of years behind it.

  Christopher suddenly remembered Mo saying that behind the false wall to this place was where he kept his "greatest treasures," and suspected he hadn't been talking just about the tools and supplies.

  The bow the kid held was a simple one. It almost looked homemade. Dark wood, a rough-twined bowstring. And Christopher suspected it could power an arrow right through a deer.

  Christopher waited for the kid to say something. He didn't. He just stared.

  "He's dying," Christopher finally said. "I have to save him." He pointed at Mo.

  The boy still didn't make a sound. Nor did his eyes move. They remained pinned to Christopher's. A long moment.

  Then he lowered the bow. Nodded at Mo.

  Christopher nodded back, a quick "thank you." He turned to their benefactor. Wondering what would happen if Mo died on the cot.

  He doubted it would turn out well.

  22

  NO PULSE AT MO'S NECK. At least, Christopher didn't think there was a pulse. He wasn't a doctor.

  Hell, we didn't even think to check his pulse until now. Way to react under stress, Chrissy-poo.

  Not important. Get to what's important.

  What happened when you shocked someone who was still alive? Could it kill them?

  He didn't have time to think too hard about it. Sometimes planning was necessary. Other times it just got in the way of what had to be done. His father had always said "plan" could be just one more four-letter word.

  It was one of the few good pieces of advice Christopher had gotten from him.

  He flipped open the latches on the case.

  "Don't lay it on him, idiot."

  Buck's voice penetrated a fog that had dropped over Christopher's thoughts. Panic setting in. Action being replaced by simple motion: the first guided, the second as rudderless and useless as a storm-tossed ship. He shook himself, literally. Looked down and realized Buck was right: the red case had somehow appeared on Mo's motionless chest.

  "I thought you told me to do it," Christopher snarled.

  Buck didn't answer. Maybe sensing what was happening, how close Christopher was to losing what remained of his wits.

  (I buried the axe in her head I didn't save her how can I save this man?)

  He pushed the case to the narrow strip of cot that remained unoccupied by Mo's bulk, then flipped open the clamshell case. The heavy plastic halves cracked with the distinctive sound of a waterproof seal letting go.

  Inside the case, packed in foam rubber that had been cut to hold the pieces in place, were electrical leads; a few round pads; and a yellow-and-black box marked "AED" with an LED readout, one red button, and one green.

  On the opposite side of the clamshell, various pictures showed exactly what to do with the apparatus. Christopher didn't feel reassured.

  He realized that Mo's shoulder had stopped bleeding. Not because of any magic healing.

  The man was simply dead.

  The boy's arrow rose. He pointed it at Christopher. The string drew back. Wordless, silent, deadly. The creak of the string was the only sound, the tension the only thing standing between Christopher and a quick death in this near-tomb.

  The boy gestured. Christopher moved.

  23

  CHRISTOPHER LEFT THE machine in its packed position. He looked at the pictures. Skipped past the ones that showed a strangely androgynous figure –

  (can't offend anyone, not when someone's dying before you, who knows if it'll be a man or a woman who saves them, so very PC!)

  – checking another sexless form – this one recumbent – for clear airway and pulse.

  Two of the pads were already attached to the leads, and he slapped the tacky sides down on Mo's tattooed belly and chest – a body that looked younger and stronger than the man's years. Hopefully that strength would serve him here.

  Christopher replaced the pads. Waited.

  Nothing happened.

  The bowstring creaked behind him.

  24

  "YOU DOPE," SAID BUCK. He stabbed a finger forward. Hit the green button on the AED itself. "Helps if you turn it on."

  The LED glowed bright green, then a chirping came from the side of the machine. Christopher's finger stabbed toward the button automatically, but again Buck knew what to do. This time he didn't say a word, just took over completely, moving Christopher out of the way and taking his place beside Mo. But he moved without the brusqueness Christopher would have expected. The big man was gentle. Kind. He looked at Christopher and actually winked.

  "Thanks, Clucky," said Christopher. His voice quavered.

  Buck just nodded. Didn't bitch about the name. Too tense.

  The boy swung his arrow over to Buck.

  The AED's LED screen was blinking. "WORKING" scrolled across it in gray letters. "WORKING."

  WORKING...

  WORKING...

  WORKING...

  Christopher felt like screaming.

  How long could a teenage kid hold back a bowstring that strong?

  He looked at the boy.

  The arrowhead was motionless. Pointed right at Buck's temple.

  But the string fingers were shaking.

  Buck didn't have much time. And Christopher wondered if the rest of the survivors could take the kid after he killed the big man.

  The survivors were tired.

  They were hungry.

  They were wounded.

  No, if the hunter died, so would all of them.

  24

  "PRESS GREEN BUTTON."

  Buck's finger stabbed down before the word "BUTTON" had finished scrolling. It only got as far as "BUTT," and Christopher wanted to make a joke, but Buck moved too fast. His finger rammed the button. The AED hummed. The hunter's body grew taught. Then slack.

  The AED chirped. A heart rate? Christopher didn't know. He didn't know anything. Hadn't known shit since this whole thing started. Only that he was alone for hours. Alone and – if he were to be honest with himself – terrified.

  Then not alone. Still terrified. But somehow the terror was easier. A better kind of fear. Fear for others as well as himself, and that made it easier to bear.

  The chirping stopped. Buck goosed the green butt again. Mo's body flexed.

  The bowstring quivered. Buck was sweating even though the air was cool.

  Mo sat up with a gasp, a low-pitched scream.

  He swung a huge fist. Buck ducked.

  The fist caught Christopher in the nose.

  25

  PAIN. PAIN THAT WAS so harsh and hot it had color.

  It was blue.

  "Are you kidding me?"

  Blood was already pooling in his cupped hand. His brain flitted spastically, moving from the fact that this would mark the third time – THIRD TIME – that he'd had his nose broken since all this began to the fact that his hundred dollar shirt was forever ruined to the fact that that ship had sailed long ago and besides fashion was a low priority in a world where zombies ruled...

  ... to the fact that Ken had been the one who broke his nose the other two times.

  That sobered him. He would have given a lot for Ken to break his nose again. But Ken was dead on the side of an irrigation canal.

  Buck was pushing on Mo's chest. "Lay down."

  Mo, incredibly, shook him off and reached for Christopher. "I am so sorry, my friend," he said. "I do not know what came over me."

  "You died," said Buck. "So lay down."

  Like the presence of a snow leopard – and appare
ntly everything else – the man took his own death in stride. "Ah," he said. The sound conveyed a wealth of understanding. Christopher figured it was probably similar to the sound Jesus made when he strolled out of the tomb after the three days and cracked his back before tooling off to Heaven.

  Mo let Buck press him down, and his eyes were fluttering again. But he noticed the teen. "Amulek," he said. "Put that down." His words slid into one another, unconsciousness rising to claim him again. But he still sounded strong. More than that. He sounded....

  It took a moment for Christopher to figure it out. Then it was obvious.

  He sounded good. He was a good person. Which Christopher had figured was the case, but for some reason this one instant convinced him utterly of that fact. Mo could be believed, trusted, loved.

  He was going to be one of them.

  A sense of fate suddenly lit through Christopher's brain. A feeling that they were here, like this, because they had to be.

  Then it was gone. He wondered if it was real. If it had ever happened.

  Maybe I'm going insane.

  (the axe through her head my baby's head her head that wasn't a head anymore it was a saw a killing thing)

  I am going mad.

  Mo was laying down. His eyes shut. Then they snapped open. He stared at Buck. "The boy does not speak. But he is a good boy." He turned to the teen – Amulek, which Christopher was pretty sure was another Mormon name.

  So he's family with ol' Mo.

  "Amulek, take care of them," said Mo. Then he turned to Maggie. Searched her out particularly, carefully. "And you, whaea, please watch after him."

  Mo relaxed. His eyes closed. He seemed to be asleep.

  Christopher remembered this moment. One of the schools he'd been shipped off to was a Catholic boarding school. Religious convocations and classes had been required, and in one of them he heard this same story: Jesus hanging on the cross, looking at Mary and saying, "Behold your son," and at his best friend and saying, "Behold your mother."

  It wasn't that he was remembering scripture – in spite of the classes five times a day, Christopher mostly thought God was good for Christmas presents and pleading that Jodi Robbins would let him touch her boobs when they were both fourteen (He had granted that wish).

  So no, it wasn't that Christopher was a "Capital B" Believer, or even just a believer.

  That feeling hit him again.

  Something was going on. Something was binding them together. Something more than mere survival, than mere happenstance.

  Fate?

  Destiny?

  Or maybe I'm just going nuts.

  26

  SOMETHING TOUCHED CHRISTOPHER's hip. He didn't move, too busy trying in vain to catch what seemed like every drop of his blood as it waterfalled out of his nose. The touch turned into a nudge, then a prod.

  Christopher turned to face the annoyance. It was Hope, holding out a wad of paper towels she'd founds somewhere. He smiled – dumb move, another spear of blue pain jabbed its way through his head –then took the towels.

  And before he could put them to his face, something else started jabbing him. In the shoulder this time. He swung to it.

  It was Amulek. The boy had his bow slung around his back. His arrow wasn't in a quiver, it was just rammed through his leather belt, hanging there like he was a kid playing swords.

  He held something white. Gauze pads. Unsmiling, but he flicked them toward Christopher's nose and the message was clear enough: "Here. For your injury."

  Either that or he was deriding Christopher for bleeding all over the nice clean floor.

  Christopher took the gauze. Shoved a wad up each nostril and then held some below his nose.

  The kid moved to Mo. Moved Buck gently aside. He took something out of one of the wall cabinets. Went to his – what, grandfather? Uncle? Whatever Mo was to him, the kid rolled the big man over and looked at his wounded back. The teen's shoulders started bouncing.

  Christopher thought he was having a seizure.

  Or maybe Changing.

  He fell back a step. So did Buck.

  Then a strange sound bounced through the room. Maggie. She was laughing. And in that instant Christopher realized that the kid was doing the same thing. Laughing silently, the only thing coming from his mouth blasts of air as he wheezed out quiet approval of the ridiculousness of the situation.

  He pointed at Mo's back. Then at Maggie.

  She shook her head. "It wasn't me," she managed. The words were broken, separated by hitching breaths and tears that ran freely down her face. Maggie pointed at Christopher. "It was him."

  The teen pointed as well. His shoulders bounced even higher. Christopher finally realized what was so funny: the kid was laughing about the tampons.

  Christopher began to laugh, too.

  Buck snorted. Then chuckled. He didn't just laugh; huge guffaws rattled their way through and then out of his huge frame.

  It was a fine moment, even given the where and the when of it all.

  Something's happening.

  We're changing. Not into the zombies, maybe. But into something.

  And Mo and the kid... they're part of it now.

  Christopher saw Hope. She wasn't laughing. She was looking up. Not doing that in-out-in breathing thing that she did sometimes.

  But not participating in the moment. Looking up.

  Like she was searching for something in the ceiling.

  Or beyond.

  His laughter died.

  27

  A GRUNT DREW CHRISTOPHER's attention away from Hope's questing expression.

  It was Mo. Still asleep, but pain drew his features tight even in his unconscious state. Amulek was drawing needle and thread through the wound in his back one-handed, holding the big man sideways with the other. Buck moved to hold Mo for Amulek, and now the kid's fingers were sewing not just the surface wounds, but reaching inside the hunter, peeling back layers of torn flesh, drawing the needle through what lay beneath.

  The bleeding had started again, Christopher realized. Once Mo's heart was jumpstarted, the pump started pushing liquid everywhere – even through the faulty lines. But now the leaks were being mended rapidly, competently. The blood petered out. Didn't stop, but now it seeped where before it had streamed.

  "Where'd you learn that, kid?" said Buck.

  "He won't talk, Clucky," said Hope. She stood closer, looking at the operation with a mixture of childlike fascination, childlike revulsion, and... something else.

  We're going to have to deal with what's going on with them sooner or later.

  "Well, I talk," said Buck. He sounded irritable. Not a surprise, given everything that had been going on.

  "I know," said Hope. She put an arm around his hip and leaned into him. "I know," she repeated. And this motion didn't seem childlike at all. It was grown-up. Weary, wise in a way no child should ever be. But Christopher couldn't tell if that was because of what was happening to the girl, or just a side effect of the world falling into a deep crevasse in an ugly part of Hell.

  Amulek put out a hand, and for some reason Maggie was waiting with gauze and medical tape. She handed it to him, and Christopher wondered how she had found the gauze and tape – and how she knew the kid wanted it now.

  The survivors had always moved well together. It was how they had remained survivors. But had they always moved this well?

  We're changing, too.

  And on the heels of that thought, the screams began.

  27

  SEVERAL THINGS HAPPENED very quickly.

  Christopher tried to locate the source of the sound.

  He failed.

  He clapped his hands over his ears.

  He thought that it must be the contours of the pipe, that someone must be screaming from somewhere else. Amulek had been hiding somewhere – were there others? The rounded edges must be bouncing the scream around so much that he couldn't pinpoint the source.

  Then he realized that no matter how tightly his hands
went over his ears, he still heard the screams.

  They're in my head in my head in MY HEAD!

  He had been invaded like this before. The zombies had some weird power in their grunts and growls, something that punched through his eardrums and into his brain. It made him want to just give up, just sit down and forget about running, about fighting, about living.

  Still, this was different. It was more than a subtle sense, a malaise that infected him as he fled. This was agony and panic and rage all wrapped up in a ball of barbed wire that had been jammed into the space right behind his eyes.

  "Hope, stop!"

  He dragged his gaze over to the sound. Aware he had heard the words in his mind as well. Not as powerfully – so weak it was possible he had imagined them. But he didn't think so. He thought they had joined his overcrowded mind.

  What...?

  He saw Maggie, yanking Hope's arm. Hope had that aged look on her face. Nothing new about the skin, about the lines. But something in the eyes... she seemed old. Wise, but in a way that was so wrong. Not wisdom that came with good choices and life lived, but the wisdom of a conqueror that has plundered and destroyed. The wisdom of one who knows ash and char like she knows her own body.

  Hope was holding Lizzy's arm. So tightly that even through the baby fat, Christopher could see veins swelling to the surface of Lizzy's hand and forearm.

  It was Lizzy who was screaming.

  Hope made no sound. Hope was silent.

  Hope was, quite suddenly, dangerous.

  Maggie yanked the girls apart. Lizzy cried out again, and as she did another sound joined the din. A low rattle that was even more frightening than the sound in Christopher's mind.

  Sally.

  The snow leopard jumped in front of Lizzy. He moved like liquid, flowing between the girls. At the same time, he slammed into Maggie, shoving her away from her daughters. She screamed wordlessly as she fell back into one of the other cots in the room.