The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  Arms that led to a broad, strangely-shaped chest.

  A chest that was covered in black tatters, a shirt that was barely itself. But still visible. Still readable.

  “I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP).”

  The shotgun fell from Christopher's fingers.

  "Ken?" he said.

  END OF BOOK SIX

  THE COLONY: RECKONING

  1

  Moans: a big man, tattooed and rocking back and forth on the floor, hands that were little more than bone and tatters of flesh tucked under his arms.

  Screams: a woman, a man, two little girls, deep inside the bunker and shrieking in strange syncopation.

  Roars: a snow leopard, growling in time with the women, the girls, the man.

  Scratches: pieces of flesh that were all that was left of an attacking horde, still scraping their disembodied way across the floor, questing for God-only-knew-what, blindly searching for something to rend, to tear, to destroy.

  And a single noise that was the strangest, the most terrifying of all: a grunt.

  The sound came from a lone form that turned a slow circle in the center of the room. The body was humanoid, but with slightly elongated arms that ended in bony ridges at the wrists, that bulged at a barrel chest which hinted at enormous strength.

  It was Ken. And yet, it wasn't. It was something both more and less.

  The Ken thing turned to Christopher. Caught his eye, and deep within his (its?) gaze Christopher thought he saw a spark of... something. Recognition? Understanding? Companionship?

  He couldn't tell.

  Whatever it was, it died as soon as it came. Then there was only something more primal. Animalistic.

  It reminded Christopher of the look he saw sometimes in Sally's eyes: the look in the snow leopard's gaze when he was about to attack something.

  It made him afraid.

  Ken had taken down dozens of zombies. Alone. He had been a one-man killing machine, with strange bladelike growths emerging from his hands, then rejoining the bones in his body when no longer needed. He had cut, broken, torn the things to pieces. They had wounded him in return, Christopher could see. But the wounds didn't seem to have affected him.

  And even as he watched, the wounds sealed. Healed.

  And were gone.

  Only smooth flesh remained under the tatters of Ken's clothing – his pants and black shirt, that ridiculous shirt: "I went to BOISE and all I got was this STUPID SHIRT (and a raging case of the CLAP).”

  Sounds.

  The remains of monsters.

  And something else.

  A sense of fate.

  2

  CHRISTOPHER HAD FELT it before. Had felt it before, when the Māori and his grandson had found them, nearly dead in the fields outside the bunker. Had felt it again when buried alive in the bunker itself.

  A sense that this had all happened before. That it might, indeed, all happen again.

  That they were being led to an inexorable ending. An inevitable finish in a war that had been fought countless times before and would be fought into infinity after them.

  This is part of it. Ken is part of it.

  Ken looked at him for another fraction of a second. Then suddenly stiffened. Whatever recognition there had been – if there had been any at all, if it hadn't been some bit of imagination on Christopher's part – was suddenly gone.

  Some of the noise stopped.

  It was the least of the sounds in many ways. The most alien, too, so it didn't really register fully in Christopher's mind. The filters that had kept Christopher sane in a world gone so completely mad had refused to notice what had happened around him for a moment. Until Ken swiveled in a quick circle. Until those bony sawblades sprung from his arms again.

  This time Christopher noticed that they weren't just saws. They buzzed like the jaws of some of the zombies, like the ones whose faces had split –

  (like her like my baby like my little girl)

  – into buzzsaws that could eat through solid metal.

  What had Ken become?

  And how?

  The buzzsaws hummed, and that was when Christopher finally realized: the scratching. The sound of the zombies around him – or the bits and pieces that were all that remained once Ken finished with them – had fallen silent.

  They were still.

  What's going –?

  And then he knew. He put together pieces that had only been hinted at before.

  There were two types of zombies. The ones that came from living hosts – that was how he had to think of them, like zombies were the result of some kind of parasitic disease – who were bitten and then instantly Changed to become creatures capable of much more than normal humans... but at the cost of all that made them human.

  And then there were the others. The ones who were a bit slower. A bit weaker.

  The ones who were dead.

  And he realized in that instant, that moment in the bunker below the thin skin of the earth, that he had never seen them together. There was never a "live" zombie when what he thought of as an "undead" was present.

  Like Clark Kent and Superman. Bruce Wayne and Batman. That other dude and Green Arrow.

  His thoughts spun wildly. A Ferris wheel that had somehow tilted off its supports and was now rolling its way over a cliff.

  They're coming. They left, and now they're coming.

  The things on the floor were motionless.

  And he heard sounds at the front of the bunker.

  3

  THERE WAS NO WAY TO stop them from coming in.

  The bunker had had a massive blast door that sealed itself shut. Then another door separating a kind of anteroom from the main part of the bunker. Both had been closed, but the buzzsaw zombies had gone through them like butter. Now they were nothing but gaping holes with torn bits of metal at their sides.

  Nothing between this central room and the front of the bunker. Mo – the big Māori with tribal tattoos covering face, chest, and legs – still moaned on the floor. His grandson, Amulek – another Māori, though he was a teen who had spoken not a single word the entire time the survivors had been in the bunker – went to him. He tore off his shirt and started binding his grandfather's wounds, apparently heedless of the new threat.

  But the zombies were coming. Unlike their "living" counterparts, these didn't vocalize. But they tripped over the mess of MREs, rations, and the remains of an explosion that Christopher and the others had arranged as a booby trap for the last wave of zombies. Small noises, but they sounded like gunshots in the hollow-pipe construction of the bunker.

  He looked at Mo. Incredibly, he managed to stand and hold out what was left of his hands and arms in what he clearly meant to be a fighting stance. He grinned at Christopher. "We shall die as hammerheads, e kare."

  Christopher held nothing but an empty shotgun. He turned it in his hands, a makeshift bat. He still didn't understand half of what the Māori said, but he muttered, "Hell, yeah."

  Amulek stood beside – almost over – his grandfather. He drew a knife with a ten-inch blade from a sheath at his hip.

  There was no question of getting the girls or their mother or Buck or Sally from their rooms in the bunker. They were the ones calling the zombies, so to do so would only make things worse.

  Aaron was right.

  Should we have killed them?

  Would killing them end all this?

  No time for that now.

  Now there was only survival.

  The first zombie came into view.

  4

  CHRISTOPHER HAD NO idea where the dead had come from. There were four of them, hunkered in the pipe, pushing in one after another. Two were so rotted away that they barely bore a resemblance to anything human. The other two had clearly died a few days before – at the onset of the Change. The day when humanity fought and lost a ten-minute war for the world.

  One wore the remains of a farmer's outfit: overalls and a
t-shirt. His right side was burnt, half-crushed by something. His stomach had started to distend. The other wore a business suit and seemed almost untouched save the spot where something – perhaps a bullet? – had torn his throat away.

  Ken's growl deepened. He hunched low.

  A gunshot rang out.

  Christopher looked at his shotgun. A stupid, foolish, plain ridiculous reaction. But it was the only thing he could think of. He was the only one carrying a firearm. Mo and Amulek held blades –

  (Old school, go warrior bad-ass, whoo-ah!)

  – so that left him, didn't it?

  Another shot.

  Then two more, so fast on top of each other that there was no way one person could have fired them. Two people were shooting.

  At the same time, a pair of the zombies stumbled forward. Still silent, but there was a malevolence in their death-shrouded eyes that made Christopher shudder. They turned, as did the others. And a bit farther back in the tunnel Christopher saw something that made him fear almost as much as the monsters.

  Aaron. The ex-special forces soldier –

  (Or maybe still-special forces soldier... he's never been totally clear on that....)

  – who had decided that killing the little girls among the survivors was the answer to the world's problems.

  And with him: Theresa. The chubby redhead clad in full body armor who had been the first one to put forth that idea.

  Both had saved the survivors. Several times. Both, Christopher believed, were good people at heart.

  But they were also convinced that the right thing to do was to destroy two-year-old Lizzy and seven-year-old Hope. And that conviction – that righteous belief – made them all the more frightening.

  Add to that the fact that Christopher was coming to believe they might have something to their point of view... it all terrified him. And he wasn't sure if it was just the fact that the little girls had turned into monsters or the idea that he might himself be willing to kill them that scared him more.

  Now, though, Aaron and Theresa were pumping round after round into the zombies. Aaron had a six-shooter, and he quickly emptied the cylinder. Theresa had some kind of more modern-looking gun – Christopher had only a basic understanding of guns, so he couldn't even begin to guess what kind she was using, or how many bullets it carried – so she kept firing after Aaron ran dry.

  The zombies, of course, didn't fall. Barely seemed to mind the bullets.

  Two turned on the newcomers.

  Two kept moving toward Christopher and the rest of them.

  He took a breath.

  And that...

  5

  ... WAS WHEN KEN MOVED.

  And ended the fight before it began.

  He cut the legs out from under the nearest undead, the whirring sawblades on his wrists slashing through flesh and bone like paper. No blood flowed – this was one of the decomposed zombies – only rotten meat and brittle bone.

  The zombie fell, still reaching for Ken. Ken tore its limbs loose, the saw blades whirring and cutting the arms to small pieces at the same time.

  Theresa's gun clicked. Dry. Empty.

  Ken turned to the next zombie. The man in the suit. He tore its head from its body, then drove a bladed fist right through its middle, cutting it from neck to groin. The thing fell in two halves. Ken ripped those halves in small pieces with hands and teeth, then turned to the remaining two.

  They flew at him.

  They fell.

  And Ken turned to Aaron. Dark ichor streaming from arms and face, bits of meat clinging to the blades that still extended from his wrists and hands.

  He growled again.

  There was no doubt what came next.

  6

  CHRISTOPHER HAD SEEN many things since the world ended. Impossibilities undreamed of by men sane and mad alike. But one thing he had yet to see was Aaron completely at a loss, completely terrified.

  The man fell back, not just afraid of his impending death but clearly unhinged by seeing....

  "Ken?"

  His jaw worked up and down, up and down, like he didn't know what to say, whether to speak or shriek.

  Christopher could certainly sympathize.

  Not that there was time for sympathy. Or anything else.

  Ken sprang toward Aaron. Aaron tried to jump back, but he tripped over a still-twitching piece of zombie arm – another first – and fell to the floor before he took a single step.

  Ken loomed over him. Theresa didn't even try to get between them. She shrank back against the side of the tunnel, saying, "What, what, what, what?" over and over again, her brain short-circuited into a panic-loop.

  Ken raised a buzzing arm. Christopher didn't doubt it could do exactly the same to Aaron that it had just done to the zombies that had dared attack the survivors.

  The last thing Ken had known before –

  (dying being killed)

  – being shot by Elijah, Aaron was after his family. So was that what he was remembering right now? Or was something else happening? Was he in the thrall of some other force?

  There was no way of knowing. The only thing that was not in doubt was that Aaron was going to die.

  "You don't know what's out there!" shouted Aaron.

  It was an insane thing to say. A nonsense thing. Of course they knew what was out there.

  But Ken halted. Just a fraction of a second.

  He lifted his gaze to the sky. The zombies had all done that, too. Had looked up and panted, breath moving in-out, in-out, in-out in perfect sync. Aaron thought they were downloading, brains turning to muck as they transformed from human minds to receptors for... what?

  That's the question, isn't it, Christopher?

  Ken shook his head. A frustrated motion, the rapid thrashing of an animal in a cage too small for it.

  He brought down his arm on Aaron.

  7

  CHRISTOPHER WASN'T sure how he felt about seeing Aaron die.

  No, that's not true. I don't want him to die. He's one of us. Not with us, maybe, but one of us.

  And that was it. He was one of the original survivors. He had been with Ken before anyone else who was still alive – and unChanged. He belonged on a level closed off even to Christopher.

  He deserved to live, at least from that viewpoint.

  But he also had aligned himself against the group. Against their decision to see the children to safety.

  And now he was going to end.

  But when Ken's arm fell, somehow Aaron's short scream kept on. And then when it did stop it was with a jerk. Not with the high-pitched edge of terror and pain, but with the clipped sound of a man yanked to the side.

  Christopher noticed that the saws on Ken's arm had disappeared as fast as they came to be. That he had grasped Aaron in his bony fist. Was hauling him toward the front of the bunker.

  Theresa moved. Whether to attack Ken or just because her body couldn't stand pressing against the side of the bunker anymore. Either way, she twitched toward Ken. Barely an inch.

  It was enough.

  The hand that wasn't dragging Aaron by the collar flashed out. The bone saw – literally, in this case, a saw not merely for cutting bone but of bone – slashed out.

  Theresa gagged. Blood flowed between the fingers she clapped to her throat.

  She fell.

  Ken continued forward through the large tube that served as the gateway to the outside.

  Christopher saw it all. Saw, but didn't believe. He had experienced the past moments in a mix of chaotic panic followed by a haze of mad disbelief.

  He followed Ken and Aaron. Stopped at Theresa, sure he would see a body bleeding out on the floor.

  But when he stopped, he saw her still looking up at him. It wasn't through the dimming light he had seen far too many times in the past days. Her eyes shined with tears of someone in pain but still living. He pried her fingers away from her throat. She had been cut there once before, a nasty wound that had barely had time to heal, and that wound h
ad now been joined by a twin. But... and he barely believed what he saw... the wound Ken had inflicted was shallow. A perfect cut that bled freely but somehow avoided being fatal.

  The slash had sent a message: Don't follow me. Stay. Or die.

  Christopher shrugged out of what was left of his shirt. It was dirty, scuffed. Bore no resemblance to the piece of art he had gotten at his last visit to Dolce & Gabana during his last trip to Los Angeles. But it was all he had right now. He pushed it against her throat.

  She grimaced, but pressed her hand against it.

  He winked at her. "You finally got me to take my shirt off."

  She glared at him. He waggled his eyebrows at her. She managed somehow to glare harder.

  Then hurried after Ken and Aaron. Pausing only to shout, "Make sure she stays there," at Amulek. The teen nodded.

  Then Christopher was in the tunnel. Following the cowboy... and whatever it was Ken had become.

  8

  KEN WAS ALREADY STANDING outside. Aaron kept trying to stand. His cowboy boots gouged twin grooves in the earth beneath him as he struggled to get his feet under him, but Ken held him down as easily as he might a toddler.

  Could he hold down Lizzy? Hope?

  Would they let him? Or would they command him the way they seem to command the others?

  The little girls had become something alien. Something frightening. Not like Ken. Different in a way that was even less understandable.

  But in the next moment his ponderings fled.

  He saw.

  He had seen hordes before. But not like this.

  These things spread across the horizon. Spewing over the eastern edge of the night sky in a pair of long lines that had a small, perfect break between them.

  Every once in a while a zombie would dash across that no-man's land –