The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

– a blank wall.

  One-eighth inch of steel. Four inches of lead, which Christopher seemed to remember was good for stopping radiation, but fairly soft. Concrete and steel rebar – hard but brittle.

  Would it be enough? Would it hold?

  It was the kind of thing designed to resist radiation, direct missile strikes.

  But this?

  Christopher remembered how fast the things had burrowed through the earth. And then remembered the other things. The ones that had buzzed right through the steel of a moving school bus like it was so much tissue.

  The shelter was a bunker. It could resist almost anything.

  But not this.

  "We have to get out of here," he said.

  52

  MO VISIBLY RESTRAINED laughter. "I do not think they can get in," he said. He looked at his shoulder, which was still bandaged, the once-white gauze wraps now bright red again. "And I do not feel much like traveling, e kare." He smiled. "We are safe." Turned to Amulek, "Is that not right, my –"

  And the smile died. Amulek didn't look firm. Didn't look sure. He looked scared.

  Christopher seized the chance to change Mo's mind – a task which he suspected might be difficult at the best of times.

  "Did you see what was happening out there?"

  "Of course, e kare." Mo's smile returned. Though now it seemed strained. The smile itself no less a mask than the tattoos that covered his skin. "I saw you and my grandson in danger. I helped. It is what we do for family, yes?"

  Christopher shook his head. "No, not that. Did you see what they were doing?"

  "They were trying to catch hold –"

  "Not them. The other ones."

  "The fallen ones?" Mo's smile dropped away. "I did not understand them. I have not seen this before. Why were they laying down before you?"

  "They weren't laying down, Mo," said Christopher. "They were coming up."

  "Up?" Mo looked at Amulek again. The teen nodded. "What does this mean?"

  "These things don't stay the same, Mo. You may not have seen it because you and Amulek have been down here all this time. But they change. They change to fit their needs. And the things on the ground dug their way to us. Either as an ambush or because they knew somehow that we were underground." Christopher thought of Lizzy and Hope. Knew that the second idea was the right one. "They know we're down here, Mo. They're coming for us."

  "But the walls...."

  This time Christopher didn't just shake his head; the negative gesture seemed to envelope his entire body. "Didn't you hear what I said? They change. I saw them turn into living buzzsaws, Mo. They –"

  (turned my baby into one of them one of them one of them)

  He gulped. "They cut their way through a moving bus, Mo. A moving bus. Didn't bother with the windows or the door, they...." He searched for a word that would communicate what he was trying to say. "They evolved. Right there, right then. Cut their way through steel." He looked at the walls to the downward-sloping pipe they stood in. Smacked one of them. It didn't bong, didn't make a hollow sound. Just a wet slap that was swallowed in the near-dark of the tunnel.

  It was solid.

  It was secure.

  It was nothing.

  "We have to leave," he said again. "Now."

  And a sound rolled through the air. A thing part bass beat, part earthquake. The sound of a heavy drill or a jackhammer – maybe both.

  The sound of my girl, coming home.

  Coming for daddy.

  53

  "WE HAVE TO LEAVE," he said. Pleading now.

  Mo shook his head. "I do not know how that is possible." He closed his eyes as though praying. Maybe he was. Then opened them. "Things have changed while you were gone, e kare." He sighed. "They have gotten worse."

  Christopher couldn't understand how that was possible. His brain balked at the proposition, all thought stopping just as completely as a horse confronted with a thirty-foot wall.

  Finally he managed, "How worse?" And as he said it the horse apparently found a doorway to squeeze through, because the answer came. He didn't wait for Mo's answer, but said, "The girls. Maggie."

  Mo nodded. Another one of those strange, pummeling vibrations roared through the floor. It traveled up Christopher's legs and suddenly he knew what it was like not to be in an earthquake, but to be the earthquake itself. His teeth chattered, vision jittered. Every bone in his body felt like it was trying to vibrate its way to freedom.

  The sound/sensation faded. His vision returned and he saw Mo leaning on Amulek. The boy was holding his grandfather up, but even as he did the big man waved him away. "Come," he said.

  Back down the pipe. Yet another descent with no apparent escape. Christopher felt terror recede for a moment, replaced by an anger that bordered on the ridiculous.

  When are these bastards going to give us a fair fight?

  But of course that wasn't going to happen. If Aaron was right, it couldn't. The zombies were soldiers, an occupying force. And soldiers didn't win fair fights – or didn't do so when they had the choice. Overwhelming force, easy wins. Those were best.

  The sound/feeling rattled a bit more of Christopher's brain free when he, Mo, and Amulek entered the decoy area, the "man cave." He noted that the game table had been cleaned off. Mo was a tidy soul.

  He didn't think Mo was going to do well in the long run. Not in this messy, chaotic world.

  Or maybe he will. Maybe he'll bring a bit of order to it.

  Fat chance.

  The rattle/roar came again. Here, though, it wasn't as strong. So the things were burrowing through the front area. The entry pipe.

  Mo opened the hatch at the back of the room, then the false wall that allowed access to the main shelter. He caught Christopher's eye as the sound rolled through again. Closer this time. Harder.

  They heard something crack back in the entrance.

  "Already?" said Mo. His voice was hushed. Not with terror, but awe. The look on his face was that of a man who has made peace with his death before a coming tidal wave and now can simply revel in its overwhelming power.

  Christopher didn't need him doing that. None of them did. "Snap out of it, dumbass," he said. "Get a move on!"

  Mo's face grew stern, the lines of his tattoos straightening into a death mask. Then they curved again. He smiled.

  "I nearly forgot myself. Thank you, e kare." He stepped through the false wall hatch and into the corridor beyond.

  Christopher felt something touch his arm. Amulek. The teen was gazing at him with something new in his eyes. He dipped his head low. A near-bow. A thank you that was beyond mere thanks. It was a pledge from one warrior to another. A promise to stand together, friend to friend.

  Christopher bowed back. He gestured for Amulek to follow his grandfather through.

  Something else cracked in the entryway. He couldn't tell if they were noises beyond the metal walls, or if the things had already chewed their way in. Regardless, time was almost up.

  He stepped back through the hatch as well.

  And heard the screams.

  54

  "HOW LONG HAS THAT BEEN going on?"

  "It started –" Mo said, then stopped as the noise hit them again. The screams waxed and waned, bouncing through steel hatches and the space between them and Ken's family.

  Not just Ken's family. Buck and Sally, too.

  All of them. Lizzy, Hope, Maggie, Buck, Sally. They were all shrieking in their separate spaces. Christopher tried to remember what Mo had said: "Mama and baby and kitty are in the sleeping room. Big sister and your large friend are in the kitchen." Two groups separated from each other and from Christopher by thick steel hatches. But they were all screaming so loudly it sounded as though they stood just down the hall.

  That wasn't the weirdest thing, either. Tops on Christopher's list of things that were currently One Fry Short of a Happy Meal was that the screams started and stopped together. A long, writhing shriek began in unison, even Sally yowling at the top of his lun
gs, then the ululating cries would drop off as one, falling to nothing in the space of a single heartbeat.

  Each scream lasted about five seconds. Each pause lasted the same. The silence was almost as bad – a promise of future madness worse than madness itself.

  Christopher's feet planted themselves firmly on the floor panels for the first two cycles, then Mo said, "This is why I was outside."

  "Good thing you were," said Christopher. The screams had probably saved his and Amulek's lives as Mo took refuge from them and so saw the danger they faced and covered them as they ran to safety.

  Not safety. This. Whatever this is. But it's not safety.

  Nothing's safe. Not even my friends. My family.

  Another scream-chorus shook his body. Made his insides cold, his outsides try to crawl into his stomach. The shrieks were just wrong, they rattled him –

  He was already standing still. Even so, he felt himself go even more rigid.

  "You feel that?" he said.

  "What?" said Mo.

  The shrieks rose again. And with them....

  Amulek caught Christopher's eye. He nodded. The teen understood. Maybe Mo didn't because he hadn't really comprehended what Christopher was telling him before. Maybe because he didn't want to understand.

  The zombies were changing.

  They evolved to what was needed.

  The shrieks rose. And as they did, so did the drilling, jackhammering sound of the things outside.

  Buck, Maggie, Sally, Liz, Hope.

  They were calling the tunnelers. Calling the buzzsaws.

  Calling doom.

  55

  "WE HAVE TO SHUT THEM up." But even as the words came, Christopher knew they were wrong. It was too late for that. The monsters had been summoned. The worst ones: demons called up from the Deep, from Hell itself, to burrow into their last place of peace. To kill Christopher, Amulek, and Mo – or Change them.

  And what of the others? What was happening to them? What would happen to them?

  Something worse, surely. Worse even than merely shifting from normal to the zombies, to the things. Because the girls, Buck, Sally – they faced something different, and all different things were worse things by definition in this world. There was no good from the new, only evil.

  "Shut them up?" said Mo. "Kua whakatīwhetatia te tangata kōhuru e tāna i patu ai."

  The words flooded out of the big man in a rush, and though Christopher didn't understand any of them, he recognized the hard mask that the man's face became, the tone. Hell if I'll let you murder some little kids or guests in my home.

  "I don't mean kill them or anything," said Christopher. "We don’t –" He stopped as another shriek took over his senses. Another roll of drill-sounds-hammer-sounds rattled his mind a bit looser from moorings already damaged by too many shocks and surprises. "Forget it," he said. "We can't stop this." He was talking as much to walk through his own thoughts as to communicate them. He couldn't be inside himself – everything inside was shaken, unsettled. He had to talk to think. "We just have to stop the things from getting in."

  Another shriek/rattle. Pings came from the other side of the hatch beyond the false wall.

  "How do you suggest we do that?"

  For some reason Christopher thought of Headmaster Grossman. Leering as he pushed Christopher down on his desk. The pain of what followed. The shame of knowing that no one would believe him. The helplessness of day after day.

  Then... the power of the first match struck.

  Fire had always been his friend. Maybe it was time he gave it a final embrace.

  "Where are your weapons?" he said.

  56

  NEITHER MO NOR AMULEK spoke a word. They just moved. Fast and ready as though they had prepared for just this eventuality.

  Emergency Number 52 in the Underground Māori Survivalist Manual: Attacking Mutant Tunneler Buzzsaw Zombies.

  For a moment, Christopher was seized by the conviction that such a book probably existed. And he wanted desperately to see it. Then his brain gave itself a stern shove.

  They're moving. You move, too.

  He followed Mo. Amulek had already moved toward the sealed hatch that led to the decoy room, and was now shoving pallets of food in front of it. Christopher didn't know how much good that would do. He doubted Amulek believed it would accomplish anything – the kid had seen what the burrowers were capable of, and if they could get through steel walls and an even thicker steel hatch, piles of Ramen probably wouldn't slow them down much. But it was something.

  Sometimes something was the only thing. The only thing between you and hopeless helplessness and the mad damnation that was only a step beyond that last moment of despair.

  Maybe that was why Christopher was moving, too. Why Mo was moving. Just wrong-headed hope.

  It was enough. Had to be.

  Mo was staring at him. "Are you coming, e kare?"

  "Hell yeah," said Christopher. He moved. Movement was something.

  It would be enough.

  It had to be.

  You're lying to yourself. It won't be enough.

  I know.

  Then he stopped moving after Mo. Looked back for a moment. Amulek was still working. Ramen and candy bars and jars of peanut butter everywhere.

  Christopher smiled.

  It still won't be enough.

  Shut up, me. Don't be a dick.

  The smile widened.

  He ran to Mo.

  57

  MO RAN TO AN UNEXPECTED place: the toilet.

  Christopher was about to rebuke the big man for thinking of taking the most inappropriately-timed twosie in the history of dumpkind, but managed to tamp down on his usual sarcasm. Mo didn't have the symptoms: no hands on his crotch, no pee-pee dance.

  Something else was going on.

  Mo flushed the toilet. Then he jiggled the handle in a weird pattern that Christopher suddenly realized was "Shave and a Haircut": Jig-jig-a-jiggle-jig. When Mo danced the handle up and down twice ("Two bits!") to answer the silent couplet, the toilet fell apart.

  The tank separated, moving on some kind of hydraulic system. It shifted to the right. The bowl moved left.

  Below were a pair of holes: one was the pipe leading to the septic system. The other was a shallow circle with an iron ring.

  Mo caught Christopher's look. Smiled tightly. "I hope those who come here will be family. But I will not trust them all with weapons. Not right away. Perhaps this lack of trust is my failing."

  The girls, Buck, and Sally screamed again. Mo stopped for a moment. He swayed. Looked like the scream was calling him somehow. Christopher worried about that.

  Then he felt himself, weaving slowly back and forth. He worried even more.

  The scream ended. Mo shivered, a full-body shudder. Then he grabbed the iron ring and yanked it. The floor split into two pieces, revealing....

  "Awesome," said Christopher.

  58

  CHRISTOPHER WASN'T big into guns. He'd fired one a few times – hard to get along as an Idaho governor's son without having that experience for a photo op or two – but other than that and a basic knowledge that the end with the hole was the dangerous one, he didn't know much about them. He understood fire, things that went boom in a big way – he always had, since Headmaster Grossman, maybe before. But guns were something of a mystery. Like his computer: he understood it on a basic level, could use it when he needed, but he didn't know how to build one, break it down, or even how to tell the best ones from the mid-range models.

  Still, even he could tell that what he was looking at now was an awesome arsenal. There were easily a dozen handguns of varying sizes and makes. Another half-dozen long guns – some with scopes, some with ugly bulges sticking out of them that he couldn't pretend to understand. A pair of bright orange flare guns. Five shotguns, all of them black and looking like they had been pilfered from the bodies of angry special forces guys.

  Aaron would probably flip his jinkies over this.

  Th
at was a sobering thought. Not just because of what Aaron had done, what he had become – an enemy who was still somehow also a friend, and all the more terrifying for that fact – but because Christopher hadn't had a chance to see what became of him.

  He hoped Aaron had escaped the attack.

  On task, son. Winners focus.

  The voice in his head this time was his father's. Which made Christopher want to tell him to suck it, but Father had a point for once.

  Another scream rippled through the air. The jackhammers, the ripping metal, sounded closer. Too close.

  Inside? Maybe.

  Beside the guns sat what Christopher needed. What he understood on a basic level.

  He looked at Mo, and an honest-to-God grin shoved its way onto his face. "What I'm about to tell you is gonna sound weird. You'll have to go with it."

  59

  DIRT. REMEMBER DIRT on buzzsaws.

  "You are sure of this, e kare?"

  "No. Keep shoving."

  "I have not stopped."

  "Good. More peanut butter, Amulek."

  When he told his plan to Mo – all ten sentences of it – the Māori had been skeptical –

  (Of course. Because he's not insane.)

  – but he had gone with it. Christopher thought he did so mostly because Amulek had nodded when Christopher explained it to him. But that was enough. Any port in a storm.

  Amulek tossed him another family-size jar of peanut butter.

  Christopher ripped it open. Rammed a handful of bullets and as many shotgun shells as would stick into the brown goop. His hands were greasy and slick with peanut oil, and the mixture of smells – gunpowder, peanuts, soup, MREs – was making him sick to his stomach. Not to mention the screaming that still wracked the air every few seconds, the sound of metal being chewed apart.

  And then... sudden silence.