The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  "Yes," said Christopher.

  Mo nodded, seemed to think about this. He looked at Amulek. Neither spoke – Christopher didn't know if the boy could – but something passed between them.

  "My grandson will go with you. He is young, but he also is toa. He will keep you safe."

  Ken looked at the boy. A good-sized kid, but no match for Aaron.

  He almost said the first words that came to mind. Which were both derogatory and an instruction that was technically impossible, given that they involved sexual relations with Mo's ancestors.

  Then he thought of Ken.

  Thought of him leading them to safety.

  Thought of the man, serving as the linchpin that had held them together.

  Thought of his face as he lost his boy to flame and death and something worse.

  Christopher thought of his friend. His first friend in a long time and, save perhaps Buck, his only friend in this new and lonely world.

  He took the shovel from Amulek. Small. Short handle. It would break his back to bury his friend.

  "Let's go."

  33

  AT FIRST CHRISTOPHER couldn't tell if it was dawn or dusk. Twilight came as a trickster, a thing that played games with his eyes and his mind. He finally had to look at the brightest part of the sky to determine where the sun was, then do a rough calculation. The train he had ridden – no passenger, but hostage – had run roughly east. And then they had traveled north. So the sun...

  Setting. It was twilight. Of course it was. He was going to be running into a zombie-infested world to dig a grave in the dark.

  He sighed. It was a joke, but one that was entirely unfunny. He looked skyward. "What did I do to piss you off?" he said.

  Something poked his back. A finger that might as well have been a rod of stone. Amulek urged him out of the shelter, through the camouflaged hatch that marked the difference between safety and menace, between sanity and madness.

  Christopher took a breath, then left the tunnel. He felt naked. Utterly vulnerable. His neck swiveled back and forth as he looked for zombies. For Aaron. For killer caterpillars, deadly attack gnats – everything and anything could have changed. Nothing else made sense, so why should he assume that the world was anything but one huge deathtrap?

  Haven't seen any of the bugs recently, actually.

  When this had all started the bugs had swarmed – sometimes killing people with millions of stings and bites, other times just coming in numberless swarms to strange places and dying of nothing at all.

  Where are they now?

  Another mystery. Another dangerous question unanswered.

  Amulek stood beside him. A moment later there was a dull thud as the shelter hatch shut. Once more looking like nothing more than a piece of the field, a flat stone that hid all the treasures Christopher could still call his own: safety, friends... family.

  He took a few steps, then walked over a row of asparagus. Headed back toward the canal that had almost claimed them all. Toward Ken's body.

  A few steps.

  And he realized that Amulek was not following.

  34

  FOR A MOMENT HE WAS certain the kid was dead. Three steps into this new world and he had lost his traveling companion, his protector.

  Christopher spun on his heel, the shovel raised, ready to slam it into the head of whoever – whatever – had claimed Amulek.

  Not that it would help. The zombies just got angrier when you bashed them, shot them, or otherwise messed up their noodles. No, head injuries were bad news.

  He swung low. And would have eviscerated his enemy if there had actually been one. Instead, the folded shovel just whistled through empty air while Amulek looked at him with a vaguely amused expression, then unlimbered his bow and nocked an arrow. He had four arrows in the hand that drew the bow. No quiver, but Christopher realized that if the kid could swing up the arrows one at a time and fire, he'd be a very fast shot.

  And Amulek looked very fast. Very fast indeed.

  I meet the weirdest people at the end of the world.

  Amulek knelt behind a row of asparagus. Then gestured for Christopher to keep going.

  "What...?" Then understanding dawned. "You're going to cover me?"

  Amulek raised his eyebrows. "You got it," he was saying. Then one eyebrow cocked as though to add, "Moron."

  Christopher laughed. Quietly. "Are you nuts, Legolas? I've got to get to the canal. You going to cover me all the way there?"

  Amulek didn't hesitate. He nodded.

  Christopher was taken aback.

  He stared at Amulek for a second. The kid stared back.

  Christopher turned and began the long, lonely walk toward the body of a friend.

  35

  HE HAD FELT NAKED BEFORE. Now, walking into a twilight that steadily deepened to night, alone but for his own thoughts and the soft tromp of his feet in the dirt, Christopher felt as though the skin had been stripped from his body. Raw, his nerves on fire. He twitched at every distant sound.

  He listened with his ears, his nose, his skin.

  His mind.

  Hoping not to hear the zombies' growl, hoping even more not to hear the call to succumb that came into his mind whenever they were near.

  He barely thought of Aaron now. What was mere mortal danger when you might lose your very self, your soul?

  He arrived at the canal faster than he thought he would. It wasn't bloated with rain anymore, but it still rushed along, a loud whisper that in other times had been comforting. Normal. The sound of places known and loved.

  Christopher turned, looking for his friend. Seeing nothing. He suddenly hoped he wouldn't find Ken's body. It would be easier. Safer. Just go back to the shelter and –

  What?

  That was a good question. And he didn't know the answer. So he kept moving forward. Because sometimes momentum is the only substitute for confidence.

  He found it a moment later. A mound that was his friend and yet wasn't. Face up on the ground, hands and arms half-buried in dried mud. Eyes closed, thank goodness.

  Ken's mouth was open. Christopher looked away as soon as he saw that. It was too much like that weird breathing thing the zombies had all done. Like they were tuned in to some master key that had them doing everything – even breathing – in sync. He couldn't handle his friend looking like that.

  Besides, he didn't want to look too closely at anything. Didn't want to see if rot had set in. If the appendages were loose or rigid. Didn't want to see any of it, because it was all his friend.

  He had seen dead bodies. Too many –

  (her head splitting open with the axe and she was dead dead already she had to be dead because nothing could live after that)

  – but he had yet to physically handle one he loved. He wasn't looking forward to it.

  The ground near the canal was soft. Loose dirt under a thin layer of weeds that had already grown out of control. He unfolded the spade. The edges were sharp, the point a cruel triangle meant to hack through anything softer than stone.

  He planted the tool in the ground. Pushed. It went in easily, but he didn't kid himself. This was going to be a hard job.

  Assuming the zombies don't show up. Or Aaron. Or something else that will probably try to kill me just to get on the bandwagon.

  He levered the blade. Picked up a mound of dirt. Turned to toss it in the canal.

  Froze.

  "Thought I'd find you here," said Aaron.

  36

  THE WORDS CAME FROM a strange place. Down, toward the whispering canal. Spoken in a near-whisper, but there was no mistaking the rough tone of the cowboy's voice.

  Christopher turned a bit further. And even when Aaron moved, it took a few seconds to see him. It looked at first like a piece of the embankment simply detached and glided across the nearby ground. A strangely tiny fault line that ran along an unknown tectonic plate.

  Then the shifting ground humped up slightly, revealing Aaron's glittering eyes beneath a thick blan
ket of mud. Weeds sprouted from the mud, seeming to root in his flesh, and Christopher was suddenly struck by the conviction that this was yet a new kind of zombie. Not the live ones, not the ones that rose from the dead. This one was a thing half-flora, half-fauna.

  The plants and mud shifted a bit more, exposing Aaron's outline. He had been mostly buried in the mud for an undeterminable period, but it had been long enough that rain or dew or both had sewn him thoroughly to the ground below his makeshift camouflage.

  One appendage of Aaron's getup pulled away, a mixture of sucking and tearing sounds as mud and dirt separated from one another. His left arm.

  It ended in a smooth round darkness. A gun. It pointed at Christopher's face, and he remembered Aaron hitting zombies while hanging upside down in a dark elevator shaft, hitting other targets from impossible distances.

  "Don't run, okay?" said Aaron.

  "I wouldn't dream of it."

  Christopher tried to sound flippant. But his voice cracked. He thought he might piss his pants.

  Aaron moved the gun toward Christopher. And he knew he was a dead man.

  36

  THEN AARON STOPPED. He stood slowly. Put the gun in the waist of his pants.

  "You going to bury him?" he said. Christopher nodded. "You bring an extra shovel by any chance?" Christopher shook his head. Aaron sighed. "Well that makes it harder, then."

  He looked around, then went to Ken's body. Grabbed the feet.

  Christopher didn't move. Didn't think he could move. What was going on now?

  "I'm not going to do anything," Aaron said a moment later. "I'll track you later, and don't you worry – I'll find you. But right now let's just bury our friend."

  37

  HAULING A DEAD BODY wasn't what he expected. Ken was loose, limp. Christopher would have thought that lifting something so unresisting would have been easy, but the body seemed to claw at the air itself, as though once at rest it did not wish to be moved anymore.

  It was heavy, too. Dense weight that dragged at Christopher both physically and mentally.

  He had never buried a friend before.

  Aaron seemed to know where to go. He pulled the body a dozen feet up the canal, to a patch of mud that looked tailor-made for burying a body.

  Christopher used the shovel. Aaron used his hands.

  "We can't bury him deep," said the cowboy.

  "I know," said Christopher.

  They dug. It took almost no time at all for Christopher's back to start aching. A dull roar that turned into a shriek in minutes. Then a kind of numbness, not just of body but of mind.

  Aaron dug his hands wordlessly into the mud. His right hand was a mass of broken bones, fingers crushed by one of the many attacks the group had endured. But he didn't make a sound, moving handful after noiseless handful of thick black soil. The shoulder of his shirt was stained black with old blood, but a moment later it was red, dripping.

  "You okay?" Christopher asked. The words came without thinking. Just one friend – one brother – to another. Aaron nodded but didn't stop digging.

  Digging.

  Digging.

  Christopher wondered where Amulek was. If he was just waiting for Aaron to make a move, or if he could even see them.

  And on that thought another pair of hands joined them. Brown, callused. Amulek dug into the dirt as well.

  "You the one who shot me?" asked Aaron. He didn't stop working.

  Amulek didn't respond. Didn't even acknowledge Aaron's existence.

  "He doesn't talk much," said Christopher.

  "So I see."

  "He wasn't the one who shot you."

  "Too bad. It was a good shot."

  Digging.

  Digging.

  Digging....

  The hole deepened and widened, and at the same time the world seemed to contract around them. Every time a stray sound drifted toward them, Christopher stopped and raised his head. The third time he did it Aaron looked at him and said, "I haven't seen any of the big groups. Just a couple little ones – five, ten."

  "What were they doing?"

  Digging.

  Digging.

  Digging.

  "Don't know. They seemed... lost. Like they were wandering around with their heads cut off, pardon the expression."

  "What about Derek? Or that big sonofabitch that bit him?"

  "Nothin'."

  Digging.

  "You worried about the girls?" said Aaron. "Or you think they're fine and dandy?"

  Christopher thought of the two facing off. Of Buck and Sally. He nodded. "I'm worried." He knew what Aaron was doing: trying to turn him, trying to put an enemy in the survivors' circle. But knowing didn't mean it wasn't effective.

  What if Aaron had been right? What if Theresa and Elijah had been right? What if the girls had to die to save the world?

  "Yeah, I'm worried about them," he said again.

  He caught a glimpse of Amulek looking at him. Didn't know if the look was approving or disproving, and figured it was useless to try and figure the human equivalent of a fortune cookie kept in the middle of Fort Knox.

  "Me, too."

  Digging.

  The hole was deep enough that the edges were at the level of Christopher's thighs. Aaron climbed out. Christopher and Amulek followed. Aaron took Ken's feet again, and once more Christopher took his friend's hands. Cold. So cold. Ken had hit him over and over with those hands – each time unintentional. The others had laughed. Christopher hadn't laughed, and it hadn't seemed at all funny at the times. But he would have given anything for Ken to jerk up, scream "Just kidding!" and sock him again.

  His friend didn't move. And that was well enough, Christopher supposed. The dead moved in this world, but it was never funny. It was serious. Deadly.

  That was the way of things now.

  Amulek stood slightly apart. Didn't help now, just watched. He seemed to know that he wasn't the right one for this part of the task. Christopher had read somewhere that in many primitive cultures only the family was permitted to bury their dead. And doing this he found out why: it was terrible, hard, heart-breaking.

  It made him feel better.

  He was the one to lower Ken into the ground. To cross his friend's hands over his chest. Ken still wore the tatters of his shirt, the one that had seemed so incongruous in this new order of things. Long sleeves, with “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP)” written across it.

  Christopher kissed his friend's cheek.

  Cold.

  It was a goodbye.

  Before the dirt even began to rain down, Christopher understood why those old cultures did this. Why new ones lost something when they delegated burials to machines or to professionals who felt nothing for the ones they buried. Ken was gone, but he was at least truly gone. He among so many seemed to have found a final peace.

  Wasn't that worth something?

  Aaron worked again in silence. No complaint, no sound of pain or even discomfort.

  Who is this guy?

  The same question – all the same questions. And even though Aaron had tried to give them some answers when they were his captives on a speeding train, still nothing made sense.

  The girls – were they really the key to all this? Aaron seemed to think it possible, and Theresa and Elijah believed (had believed, in the case of the now-dead Elijah) it a certainty.

  What do I believe?

  He didn't know.

  Aaron was staring at him. Christopher realized the burial was over. Words had been spoken, but he had no real recollection of what they were or even who said them. Just that they were the last words. The final words that marked the end of a good man, the end of one of the few remaining good things.

  "Goodbye," he whispered. Then it was over.

  He looked at Aaron.

  "I'm not going to do anything," said the cowboy. "Not even if Robin Hood here wasn't waiting to put an arrow in me."

  Christopher looked. Amu
lek had an arrow nocked and ready. It was pointed down, but there was no doubt he could bring it up and fire it in an eyeblink. Faster. And Christopher suspected that in that same eyeblink he could bury the other arrows he held in his draw hand in whatever target he wished, near or far.

  He nodded at Amulek. The kid responded by utterly failing to relax or move in the slightest.

  So much for me being the head of this expedition.

  "Still," said Aaron, "I was wondering if we could talk."

  38

  "IS THERESA ALIVE?"

  It seemed a silly thing to ask, but also terribly important. Like everything in this new and horrible world, it wasn't – couldn't be – just plain good. There wasn't anything "plain good" anymore. Just good mixed with bad... and bad-straight-up, on the rocks, 200-proof and ready to lay you flat with a single sip.

  Still, he wanted to know. Theresa had struck him with... well, love at first sight seemed a bit of a stretch. Particularly since there was that troublesome incident where she had him and his friends at gunpoint and threatened a pair of little girls with death.

  But still....

  He had felt something. Not love at first sight, but stupid at first glance? Certainly that, at least. She was utterly not his type. No trim athletic build, not a blond with a fast look in her eye. Not anything he liked. She was a redhead. Chubby. An attitude that made it clear she was used to leading any dance she deigned to accept.

  And he had felt like asking her out the instant he saw her. Only the fact that all his usual haunts were either rubble or populated by monsters kept him from doing so. "Hey, would you like to fight your way to Starbucks and have a coffee if there's any left and if we don't die first?" seemed a too-strange date offer.

  He remained tongue-tied.

  So the question "Is Theresa alive?" meant little. But everything. Because he had wanted to hold her from the first moment. More than that.