The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7]

by Collings, Michaelbrent

  And every time Amulek turned the wheel, it ate up speed. Every time he slowed to make his way around a stopped car, the flames behind them came a bit closer.

  The fields caught fire as the flames to the north spat glowing embers across the freeway.

  Something boomed behind them. Theresa jerked and looked at Christopher.

  "One of the cars went up," he said.

  "Yuh," said Aaron. He sounded calm.

  How does he do that?

  Christopher started to sweat. He looked at Theresa, saw droplets beading on her forehead. Saw Buck wipe his arm across his brow, and watched as Maggie blinked away droplets that fell into her eyes.

  Getting hotter.

  He suddenly wondered if burning alive might be a worse option even than being Changed.

  Does it hurt? Would being Changed hurt as bad as burning to death?

  But he knew it would. Remembered the ones he had seen after being bitten – screaming, muscles spasming in agony. Blood bursting from the pores of their skin, coating faces and arms in red that came from no wound whatever. Just the body's own vessels rupturing under the pure agony of the Change.

  No, the fire had to be easier. And if the flame did catch them, at least they would die as themselves. The fire would destroy their brains. No receptors for the Change to take hold.

  That doesn't mean I want to die here, either.

  Amulek slapped the dashboard. A quick hit that sounded like boards clapping together. Christopher looked forward.

  Saw what the teen was warning about; what was coming.

  "Everyone hold on!" shouted Aaron.

  70

  WHAT WAS AHEAD WAS an inevitability. Something that had to happen sooner or later.

  But not now. Not now.

  A line of four cars stretched across the highway. Head to tail, they completely blocked passage across this stretch of road. The southernmost car hung askew, its rear hanging over empty space. An irrigation canal was below it. The northernmost car was aflame, half immersed in the fires that spanned that side of the road as far ahead as Christopher could see.

  Trying to go around to the south – impossible. The Marauder would crash into the canal, stranding them at the worst possible place.

  To the north – madness. Driving into the fire would mean a painful death. The Marauder might be good against mines, but even if it could make it through a forest fire unscathed, the people inside it would cook like so many slabs of beef in a smoker.

  The sane thing to do would be to stop. To use the Marauder's weight to push one of the cars out of the way. To make a hole, then to proceed forward with ease.

  There was no time for sanity.

  "Slow down!" screamed Buck.

  "Hold on!" Aaron repeated.

  The Marauder leaped forward as Amulek somehow coaxed a bit more power out of the beast.

  They hit.

  Short of an actual tank, the Marauder was bigger than any other vehicle Christopher had ever seen. Still, even tanks crunched their way over cars at a slow pace. Hitting them at top speed would not, he suspected, be the recommended way to do it.

  No choice.

  He had time to grab the metal frame of his seat. To jam one hand against the ceiling and press down so hard he thought he might push himself right through the floor below him.

  Then he pitched forward. A bright flare of pain raced from his elbow to his wrist as he simultaneously crashed upward hard enough that it felt like the hand and arm he had braced himself with were shortened a good six inches. He bounced off the ceiling, then bounced off something soft in front of him.

  His hand flew out, reflex acting in a futile effort to stop himself from bouncing around anymore. He felt something soft. And realized in that strange moment of time that felt like both forever and far too short that he had somehow managed to get his hand on Theresa's chest again.

  It flitted through his brain that if he survived this moment, she would probably kill him.

  Then the distinctive sounds of metal on metal, of glass shattering, drove thought from his mind. The Marauder jounced again. Leaned to the side far enough that he thought they might tip.

  Then the front thudded down, putting the vehicle at a steep angle. A moment later the back wheels slammed down as well, dropping the seat out from under him. His stomach lurched in an instant of no gravity, a strong enough feeling that he worried he would lose whatever food was still in his body.

  He slammed back into his seat. Still, he realized, holding onto Theresa.

  He heard Buck cursing. For some reason that drove home the fact that they had survived a full-speed crash into a blockade of metal, plastic, and glass.

  He almost grinned. Settled for letting go of Theresa – she didn't even glare at him, just looked around with a white face. Her throat was bleeding again where Ken had cut her, red streaming into her collar, staining it an even filthier color than it had already been.

  Maggie had tumbled into the center of the cargo space. At first Christopher worried that she'd been injured. But she looked up, caught his eyes. He realized she had thrown herself forward to cover up the girls. To protect them.

  Good mama.

  He felt a twinge of jealousy. Ridiculous to feel such a thing in this moment, but he couldn't help it. He was seeing more proper parenting in the apocalypse than he had ever witnessed when life was "good."

  His eyes flitted behind them. Saw the wreckage of the cars they had just slammed over and through. The two cars on the ends were almost untouched. The two in the middle had been crushed to half their height, the Marauder riding right over them without pause.

  "Everyone okay?" shouted Aaron.

  Grunts rose from everyone but Maggie. She was trying her best to check on the girls – no small feat considering the bouncing they were all enduring. The wobble that had originated from the damaged right rear wheel seemed to have worsened significantly in the moment of slamming over and through the roadblock. The Marauder was shimmying nonstop now, weaving drunkenly back and forth across the road.

  Maggie looked up. Christopher locked eyes with her. Saw anguish in her gaze. He didn't know what to do, what to say. Nothing was right – how did you comfort a mother whose children won't wake up? Whose children may already have lost what made them hers?

  She smiled. Not a happy smile – far from it – but a smile that made him feel like she registered his anguish on her behalf... and made him feel that perhaps it had helped, if only a little.

  Sometimes pain isn't nearly as bad as the thought that we are suffering alone. Sometimes just knowing someone understands is enough to ease the agony.

  He looked at Theresa. "You okay?" he asked.

  "Fi-i-i-ine." The Marauder slid sideways as she spoke, half driving, half skidding at an angle perpendicular to the one most people preferred to steer.

  He had to stifle a laugh. Now wasn't the time. Still, she glared at him as though he had brayed in her face.

  "You grabbed my boob again."

  "I'll make it up to you. D-d-d-d-inner at my p-p-p-place?"

  Her face was pinched, and the attempt at humor didn't seem to make it through her sweat-drenched expression.

  "It's getting real hot in here," said Buck. He looked at Maggie. Opened his mouth to speak. The Marauder took one of its power slides again, Aaron cursing as Amulek struggled to bring the vehicle under control. Buck's mouth slammed closed. He braced against his seat. Managed to keep from flying off and right on top of the girls in the aisle between the seats.

  "They o-o-o-kay?" he managed when the power slide ended – at least for the most part.

  "How should I know?" Maggie almost snarled the words. Fear turned to anger in the moment. Christopher put a hand on her shoulder.

  She sagged. "They're as-s-s-sleep."

  Another skid, and this time Theresa held onto Christopher. He looked away from her as she did, afraid that if he caught her gaze he might say something totally out of bounds – make some joke or perhaps propose marriage.
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  He looked out the back window.

  The fire was licking at their back bumper. Flames leaping up on either side of the road, fiery fingers reaching across the road, trying to grab the Marauder – to clasp hands around it and crush it in blazing fists.

  "Hurry!" he shouted.

  Aaron cursed again. And for some reason Christopher didn't think the cowboy was complaining about the fire. Christopher looked to the front seat. Aaron was looking out his window, to the south.

  Christopher followed his gaze.

  "No," he whispered.

  71

  A HORDE.

  The zombies were loping toward them, coming from the southeast – just ahead and off the right side of the Marauder. It wasn't the size of the horde that had scaled the Wells Fargo Center – easily a hundred thousand of the creatures all gathered together as one writhing, teeming mass. But it was enough that Christopher couldn't tell where they ended. They spread in a broad line across the fields ahead.

  Rushing toward the fire.

  Toward the Marauder.

  Toward the people inside.

  "How did they find us?" said Buck. "I thought we were jamming their signal."

  "Not important right now!" shouted Christopher. "What are we going to do?"

  He looked back again. The fire that had been so close behind had managed to draw so near that flame licked up the back of the Marauder. There was another explosion as one of the cars they had passed – perhaps one of the ones they had plowed right through – lost itself to the fire.

  Christopher looked away. No help there, no escape. He turned to the sides. Right, left – it was all the same: fire. Fire covering the fields to the right of them, flames tearing through the forest and igniting the trunks of the trees whipping past on the left.

  And the zombies – coming from ahead and to the right – the only place that wasn't covered in fire.

  Fire in three directions. Zombies in the fourth. Too many to break through, even if the Marauder had been at top form.

  Nowhere to run but straight into the clutches of the creatures streaming toward them.

  His question kept echoing in his mind: "What are we going to do?"

  And no one answered.

  Nothing could be done.

  72

  THE MARAUDER SPUN INTO another skid. This one was worse than any of the others had been – a jouncing, skittering sideways leap across the road. Maggie screamed. Buck tossed himself on top of her and the girls, using his own bulk to help pin them all down, to keep them in place.

  Theresa's hand found his. Clutched it.

  In that moment, stupid as it was, her holding onto him actually made everything seem worth it.

  Then the moment of irrational happiness passed and he settled back into the previous status quo – which basically consisted of alternating between thoughts of What now what now? and We're going to die.

  He glanced out the side window. Expected to see flame in the fields south of the road. Instead he saw the road itself. Saw zombies running toward them, thousands of them, operating in that weirdly concerted way. None crashing, none falling into each other. Just a perfectly-coordinated unit.

  I shouldn't be seeing this. Shouldn't be seeing this out the side window.

  The Marauder had spun completely sideways. Turned perpendicular to its proper course. Still skipping along the road, but if this didn't change they'd end up barreling into the burning trees north of the road.

  He looked at Amulek. Expecting to see the teen wrestling with the wheel again, trying valiantly to bring their sideways skid under control.

  Amulek was doing no such thing.

  Christopher was mostly behind the teen, but even with the small sliver of his face that was visible at this angle, he could tell Amulek wasn't fighting the wheel. At least, not to turn the car back onto the road. He was turning the steering wheel in exactly the wrong direction for that. Guiding the Marauder not back onto the highway, but forcing it off the road.

  Spinning the wheel again.

  Maggie: screaming. Buck: holding her down. Aaron: bracing for impact. Theresa: hand in his.

  Amulek opened his mouth in a wordless scream. Christopher remembered Mo, battling zombies in the bunker, screaming a Māori war cry. Christopher suspected that Amulek was shouting the same words, if only in his mind. Words in a different language, but Christopher had understood the gist of them, all the same: Screw you. My enemies will fall, my friends will stand. I spit in the face of the death that's come.

  The Marauder slammed off the road. Hit the soft shoulder with a grind and a lurch that ate up a good chunk of its speed. But it wasn't stopping.

  Aaron lurched over. Tried to grab the wheel from the boy, and Christopher could tell from his expression that he thought the kid had lost it.

  Aaron's good hand fell on the wheel. And Amulek shot out a hammer fist that caught the cowboy in the temple and knocked him clear across the cockpit with a single powerful blow. Aaron hit the passenger side window hard enough that Christopher thought he might crack the reinforced glass.

  The air suddenly heated up – a matter of twenty degrees in the space of a second.

  Then the soft shoulder disappeared. It was just dirt.

  They had entered the forest.

  They were in the fire.

  73

  ONE OF THE TEACHERS at a religious boarding school Christopher had attended was very fond of telling him he was bound for Hell. This had usually come with a vibrant description of the place: worms crawling in and out of the faces of the damned, screaming and wailing of the tormented, and an eternal flame that devoured everything but was never sated.

  Two out of three.

  Everyone was screaming as they flew into the forest. And the fire all around might not have been eternal, but in that moment it was the sum of Christopher's universe. A flickering light that consumed everything around them, that writhed its way up the trunks of the trees.

  All we need's the worms and we're in Hell.

  Christopher kept screaming, a shout that seemed ever farther away, as though he were losing track of himself.

  A trio of gunshots severed the scream. He went from full-throated roaring to silence in an instant as the explosions rattled around the Marauder's interior. He almost dove to the floor, probably only stopping because that space was more or less occupied by Maggie and Buck and the girls, and even Buck was in danger of slipping headfirst through the hole the acid had burned through the floor.

  BOOM.

  Another explosion. It finally penetrated that he wasn't actually hearing gunshots – the sounds were too high-pitched, with strange crackles at the beginning and end.

  Another explosion, and this time Christopher was looking out the right side window, watching as a tree with a boa of flame curling around its base and writhing its way up the trunk suddenly blew apart. The moisture in the tree had expanded too fast to be contained in its trunk, and the resultant explosion ripped the tree – easily fifty feet tall, and proportionately broad – right in half.

  The top half of the tree tore away. Spun in the air like a propeller. Plummeted and slammed into the ground only a few feet behind the Marauder.

  And Amulek kept driving. Pushing deeper into the fire. Deeper. The air getting hotter, so hot it hurt to take in breath. Christopher felt some of the hairs of his arm begin to singe.

  What's going on? What's Amulek doing?

  He's lost it.

  We're done.

  He glanced behind the Marauder. Saw motion everywhere: branches falling, fire leaping up from every flammable bit of grass or wood or leaf, and...

  ... and dark things that shimmered in the heat waves. Black lines behind them. Streaming into the woods like their own kind of forest fire. This one not of heat and brightness, but of cold and the black of the damned.

  The zombies had followed them. Followed into flame, and now this truly was Hell.

  Hotter, hotter.

  Christopher realized there were st
ill a few gas tanks in the back of the Marauder. And though he was fairly certain that Amulek had lost it and they were going to die in this place, he didn't want to go up in a ball of flame.

  Maybe that'd be faster. Better.

  He rebelled against the idea. They might die. But he was damned if he was going to help the process along.

  He tried to get out of his chair. Fell back, tried again. Fell.

  The black lines in the forest were coming closer. Still wavering in the heat, but looking less like mirages with every passing moment.

  Christopher crawled over Maggie and Buck. He stayed on hands and knees – the only way motion was possible in the cargo area given the pounding it was taking as it crashed through brush, especially if he wanted to avoid being tossed out the hole in the floor.

  Shouldn't we have hit something by now?

  He looked over his shoulder. Saw Amulek whipping the wheel back and forth. Spinning it expertly as he turned the Marauder from left to right and back again. Trees appeared in front of the vehicle, over and over, and each time Amulek moved the wheel just enough to miss.

  Christopher didn't understand. Clearly the kid didn't want to crash them into anything. But why would he care after sending them into this certain death in the first place? Surely one way to kill them all was as good as another?

  Christopher crawled to the back of the Marauder. There was a latch on the side of the tailgate, and he yanked it. The back tore loose, and as it did he realized he'd made a terrible mistake.

  74

  A FIRE NEEDS HEAT, fuel, and oxygen. And no matter how much of each it might have, it always hungers for more.

  The second Christopher opened the tailgate of the Marauder, he felt heat flash over him. It was almost a physical push, the temperature rising so fast that it nearly staggered him.