The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  (Something was there in the blackness with him. Something young, but somehow old as well. It writhed up and down a ladder.... The ladder the thing crawled on was familiar....)

  He slapped Aaron's hand away. Grabbed the wand in the same motion. And in the next he flipped Lizzy roughly onto her stomach. He almost apologized to Maggie for treating her daughter so roughly.

  But Maggie's not here. Not really. Asleep. Just like Buck. Just like both the girls.

  Aaron started to reach for him.

  Christopher planted the wand in the middle of Lizzy's back.

  (... a ladder....)

  The view on the monitor shifted.

  Aaron's hand closed on Christopher's.

  And Theresa screamed. Mo said something under his breath – something harsh and biting: a curse, perhaps, or perhaps a bitter prayer asking how such a thing could be.

  (... a ladder....)

  No, not a ladder... a spine.

  "Good God," whispered Aaron. "What is that?"

  25

  "THIS IS WHY KILLING the girls wouldn't have mattered," said Christopher.

  He heard Aaron's question in his mind: "What is that?" And wanted to shy away from the answer. Because it was, in a way, madness. It was a look into the darkness that frightens every child. A glance into the nightmares that we grow out of. But the reason we grow out of them is because we live through enough nights where nothing comes for us that we manage to convince ourselves that the monsters aren't real.

  I survived a thousand nights. Two thousand. Ten thousand.

  The monsters never came.

  So they can't be real.

  There's nothing in the darkness.

  I'm safe.

  And what Christopher was looking at now gave lie to all that. Made a mockery of it in a way that not even the zombies – not the living ones, not the undead – could manage.

  The spine was easy to spot. It looked like a bridge on the ultrasound. Ridges of white, larger spaces of gray in a suspended series of slats that traversed the child's midsection.

  No. Not a bridge.

  A ladder.

  And on the ladder, climbing sideways from rung to fallen rung....

  She.

  How Christopher knew it was a she he couldn't say. But he did know. And she meant to bring a new order, a new creation to this world. The end of the world for humanity would be a new Eden for... whatever it was.

  She moved along Lizzy's spine. Long, languid. A bit like a centipede, with too many limbs, big enough and hard enough that the ultrasound picked them up easily. But at the same time, she was thin, and twisted along the bones, through the muscle with an ease that should have been impossible.

  Not only that....

  Christopher rubbed his eyes. "Did you see that?" he said.

  "Yeah," said Aaron.

  The creature had... moved. But not with that sliding, pulling motion. Suddenly it had seemed to phase out, gliding not through bone and flesh but through existence itself. It had fuzzed out on the ultrasound, and then reappeared a few inches away.

  Aaron turned Christopher gently toward him. "I think...." He glanced at the monitor, where the thing still writhed along the architecture of little Lizzy's spine. "I think you have a bit of explaining to do, son."

  26

  CHRISTOPHER ALMOST started talking.

  And that, he realized, would have been a mistake.

  He was a jumble of thoughts. A ragged tumble of panicked ideas and half-composed plans that had only now been proven to have both reality and validity. And if he had started talking right away, what he said wouldn't have made any sense.

  Hell, reality barely makes sense right now.

  So instead of talking, he just looked at it. At her.

  The thing danced. A strangely hypnotic motion along Lizzy's back. Up, down, in, out. Threading the toddler's spine like a needle. Moving in and out of the vertebrae in such a way that the spinal cord should have severed, the nerves should have been destroyed. But somehow... somehow Lizzy had walked. She hadn't even been impacted in the slightest.

  At least, not physically.

  After a moment, Christopher moved the infant off the table. He lay her on her stomach on the floor at his feet – careful to keep her near, so careful... because if she strayed too far....

  He shivered.

  He lifted Hope out of Aaron's arms. Put her on the table. Face-down.

  He put the wand on her back.

  Maggie screamed.

  "What's that? What's that thing, what's going on where am I what's that thing in my baby?"

  27

  CHRISTOPHER JERKED at the sound. So did Aaron and Theresa. Only Amulek and Mo seemed to take Maggie's screams somewhat in stride, though even they clearly hadn't noticed her return to consciousness.

  Christopher wasn't surprised that she had awakened. He had expected it. Had hoped for it. Still, he hadn't really been ready for the screaming.

  Then again, she had been through a lot. Son dead, then Changed into... something. Something not a zombie, but more.

  Then husband gone.

  She doesn't know he's back. She didn't see.

  And now this.

  She screamed again. This time no words, just a long, whistling shriek that cut off with a series of jitters as Aaron took her shoulders and gave her a quick set of shakes.

  "Maggie. Maggie!"

  She turned to face the cowboy. Screamed again. Clawed at his face. "Get away from us!"

  And of course that made sense, too. Because he'd been with Elijah. He'd been one of the ones who wanted to kill her little girls.

  Is he still after them?

  The answer came as Aaron somehow used his one good hand to wrap Maggie's flailing arms into a pretzel. "Stop," he said. Then, as she continued to scream that high-pitched shriek, he said it again. "Stop!"

  "Get away from us. Get away from my babies!"

  "Maggie, I'm not going to do anything to them. We're trying...." He glanced at the ultrasound monitor. "We're trying to help them!"

  Maggie's thrashing slowed. Petered out. Died. She looked at the monitor. Saw what was there.

  Another one of the things. Like the first it was long, gave the sense of being formed of segments like a centipede or millipede. But where the other had swung from bone to bone, had thrust bony legs through muscle and tendon, this one seemed to have flagella that waved in impossible currents as it swam through Hope's back.

  Up and down, back and forth in languid turns that reminded Christopher less of the motions of an insect and more of the smooth turns of a fish in a tank that was too small for it.

  "Please...." Maggie turned to him. He didn't know whether that was because she sensed he knew what was going on or simply because she didn't trust Aaron. Either way, he suddenly felt the weight of a mother's desperation, hope, love, anguish. It almost crippled him. "Please, tell me what's going on."

  He looked at Amulek. "Get her a chair." Then back at Maggie. "You're going to want to sit down."

  28

  MAGGIE SAT DOWN, BUT Christopher still didn't speak. He waited, waited. His thoughts were more or less ordered now, and he was pretty sure what he wanted to say.

  He just wanted to wait for Maggie to calm down.

  Sure. Because that's going to happen.

  But she did. At least enough that she managed to stop screaming, to stop talking, to stop whimpering. She sat in silence. Her hands twisted over and around each other in compulsive motions, but other than that she was still. As composed as could reasonably be hoped for. More so.

  Everyone here is strong. So much stronger than we could expect.

  Again, that sense of fate. That sense that all this – all that had happened – had brought them together. Brought them to this particular moment. This particular place.

  That it was... because it had to be.

  Christopher waited another moment. This time to see if Buck would wake. Then he realized it might be nice to have everyone but Mr. Crabbypants
know what was going on.

  He actually had to keep himself from grinning at the thought. At the look on Buck's face when he found out everyone knew more than he did.

  "Okay, here's what we know," he said. "Half the world turned into zombies in ten minutes. The whole world." He looked around. "Which Aaron says speaks to some kind of coordinated movement."

  "An attack," said Aaron.

  Christopher nodded. "Right. And there's also the fact that they kept looking up and doing their 'World's Creepiest Breathers' thing. Downloading. And whatever they downloaded turned their brains to slime."

  "This is very interesting, e kare. How do you know they are downloading? And what are they downloading?" said Mo.

  Christopher had to mentally readjust as he realized as the Māoris had been hunkered down here during a lot of the Change. They might well have missed a lot of what the survivors had seen.

  "Well," said Christopher, "we don't know. But did you see them breathing?"

  "Often."

  "Not just breathing," Theresa interjected. She sounded irritated. Like Christopher was doing a supremely bad job explaining things.

  I probably am.

  "Every so often – at least at the beginning – they'd all look up and breathe this weird gaspy panting. All in time, like they were all linked together. They didn't seem to see or hear anything around them when it happened, either," said Theresa. "Gave me and Elijah and my brother... gave us a chance to escape a few times." She paused in the middle of her sentence, and Christopher remembered that her brother had died protecting the survivors, just as Elijah had died trying to kill them.

  Aaron covered the uncomfortable silence. "We think they were downloading instructions. Or maybe whatever caused the Change in the first place was continuing to... evolve them." He spread his hands. "At first they were just zombies. Rabid humans, more like. Then they were could secrete acid. Then they could climb walls, and on and on and change after change. Eventually, even the dead rose up and came after us."

  Mo nodded, imperturbable as always.

  "Right," said Christopher. "And when you crack them in the head, the pink sludge – the receptor that their brain has turned into – is destroyed. So their communication is severed from... from whatever. And they go nuts."

  "What does that have to do with the girls? And that gizmo you made?" asked Aaron.

  "And why didn't the zombies attack us the last time?" said Theresa.

  "I'm getting to that," said Christopher. He flashed a quick smile at Theresa. She didn't smile back, but her glare seemed to be half-strength this time, which he counted as a win.

  Focus, Don Juan.

  "Fast-forward a bit. We found the girls all wrapped up in that spiderwebby stuff on top of the Wells Fargo Center. Along with their brother and with Maggie and Buck. Also: surrounded by zombies, who showed no signs of hurting them."

  "Wrong," said Aaron. "They tried to hurt them plenty."

  "No," said Christopher. "They tried to hurt us, and the others got caught in the crossfire. Or maybe they did try to hurt them, because the queens weren't old enough yet. Or –"

  "What the hell do you mean, 'queens'?" said Aaron. "You're not making much sense."

  "Sorry. Got ahead of myself." Christopher took a breath. "Let's just assume for a second that the zombies weren't trying to hurt the girls. Just go with me."

  "Okay," said Buck.

  Christopher looked to the source of the voice. The big man was sitting against one of the medical tables. He looked pale, with twin spots of bright red on his cheeks. But he was awake, and paying close attention.

  "How long have you been awake?" said Christopher.

  "Since you started on with the zombies being downloaded," said Buck.

  "That was the whole thing," said Christopher. "So you know everything I've said. Geez!"

  Buck scowled. "Whaddya mean, 'geez'?"

  "Just I... ahh, nothing." Christopher threw his hands in the air. "You take all the fun out of things, even when you don't mean to, Clucky."

  Buck bristled. "You –"

  "Focus," said Maggie. "This isn't the time."

  Christopher felt shame burn inside him. His whole life he'd had the tendency to act in wildly inappropriate ways.

  Good to know the Change didn't change everything, at least.

  He turned back to the monitor, which still showed the thing moving along Hope's spine. That was enough to bring him back on point. He shuddered. "So all that happened fast. But we're forgetting something else that happened. Something that killed a lot of people, but had nothing to do with the zombies. At least, not directly."

  It took a moment, then Aaron said, "The cell phones."

  29

  MO SPOKE. "WHAT OF the cell phones?"

  "If you tried to make a call, they killed you," said Aaron.

  "How?" Mo looked confused.

  Buck looked even more confused than the Māori. "You didn't try to make any calls?"

  "I have never owned a cellular phone, my friend."

  "What, do you just send messages by beating on hollow logs or something?"

  Amulek reddened, but Mo didn't take the slightest offense. "Logs are impractical. We use smoke signals. Also, we wrap paper messages around rocks and throw them very far." He rubbed his bad shoulder lightly. "Alas, this was my good hand." Then he grew serious. "I dislike things that masquerade as convenience but are in fact a leash binding you to the convenience of others."

  "Whatever." Buck rolled his eyes. "If you tried to call someone, there was this... what? I never did it, so what would you call it?" He looked at the rest of the group.

  "A feeling, I think you'd call it," said Aaron. "I tried to call someone, and all I wanted to do was lay down and die. Dorcas – a friend –" He swallowed, and his eyes grew bright for a moment. Then he blinked back the half-formed tears. "She saved me. Knocked the phone away. But we saw people who didn't have someone there to save them. They'd just lay down and died. For no reason. Just had their hearts stop with the cell phones at their ears." He shook his head. "Damn strange."

  "Right," said Christopher. He held out the TV remote. "But that brings me – nearly – to this." He looked at Lizzy. At Hope. "I think that whatever downloaded itself into half the world's population tried to download itself into all of us. But it couldn't. Some of us – half of us – had some kind of resistance. But whatever attacked us accounted for that, too. There was a more direct method of receiving the download."

  "The bite," said Theresa.

  Christopher nodded. "And the pretty lady wins a brand new car!" He looked at the others. "Somehow the bite focuses a direct... blast, for lack of a better term, of the download. A focused beam of the message. Enough to overcome whatever immunity we have. To Change even those of us who resisted the initial attack. That explains what happened to Ken, too: he only got a partial beam."

  "You mean, why he didn't change all the way?" said Maggie.

  Christopher hesitated.

  "She needs to know." Aaron waited.

  So why do I have to tell her?

  But he did. Told her about burying her husband. About the subsequent zombie attack. About Ken – what had once been Ken – coming back and saving them. Then about his leaving.

  "Where is he now?"

  "We don't know."

  "Was he still... was there anything still him?"

  "I think so. He seemed to recognize us. He saved us, after all."

  "But he didn't say anything," said Aaron. "We don't understand what happened to him, or what he is, how much of him may or may not be left."

  Maggie folded her hands across her lap. "He's still him," she said. Christopher couldn't tell if it was a declaration of faith, some kind of prayer. Or if it was the last grasping hope of someone who has found a lost loved one, only to be told she would lose him again.

  "So what comes next?" said Buck. His voice was gentle. That always surprised Christopher. The guy could be a major pain and a prize-winning bitcher, but as often
as not he also found a way to be the one who consoled those in the group who were suffering.

  Probably one of the reasons why Christopher liked him so much.

  To my eternal shame.

  "What comes next.... Right." Christopher pulled his gaze away from Maggie. Back to the TV remote. "So whatever is downloading is working – at least partly – on the frequencies of the cell networks. And even though I'm not a super-cool special forces guy or an awesome Māori warrior who can use a bow and arrow to shoot the nuts off a mosquito or even a lame out of work contractor –"

  "Hey!" Buck shouted.

  "– I still know a thing or two." He grinned. "Like how to bring down a cell network using only my mad skills and a few household items."

  30

  AARON FROWNED. "NOT possible."

  Buck nodded. "You can't bring down cell towers or satellites using a TV remote."

  "No, but I can stop a particular cell phone – or two – from transmitting or receiving transmissions." Christopher shook the remote in Buck's face. "That's right, sucker. Fear and tremble at my mighty anarchist skills." He pointed to the "volume up" button. "I cross a few wires, hook it all up to a cell battery, and I have a low range cell phone jammer. Highly illegal, and the kind of thing the FCC would normally come down on you like a hammer for. But since they're all wandering around looking for things to mangle – business as usual for the government, I guess – I don't feel bad using it. Also: saving the world."

  Aaron looked at the remote. "You'll have to show me how you made that."

  "Sure thing. You can come over to my place on Tuesday and we'll do that over beers and some chips."

  "What does this matter to my children?" whispered Maggie. "Can this save them?"

  "I don't know." Any jubilation melted from him. He looked at the ultrasound monitor again. "Here's what I think. I think...." His voice fell to nothing. His mouth was suddenly dry.