Ken shook his head. "Minutes."
"Long enough."
Christopher gestured for Amulek, then handed Hope to the teen, who looked startled and slightly uneasy.
So the kid does have emotions. Good to know.
Then Christopher started running.
Running again.
"Where are you – wait for me!" shouted Theresa. She took off after him.
The sand was thick underfoot, and slowed Christopher down considerably. Still, he managed to set a decent pace.
"Wait up!" rasped Theresa. "What are you doing?"
There were sand dunes all around. They obscured any view of more than a couple hundred feet, but he could see they weren't placed randomly. They had enough space between them for purchasers to come in trucks and pick up their orders. And there was a large path between them that headed more or less consistently in one direction.
Christopher followed the path. Came around one last, huge dune.
"There," he said.
"What?" Theresa caught up to him as he slowed.
"Come on," he answered.
There was a small building to the right. A mobile office trailer that sat on concrete blocks, a set of dust-covered wooden stairs that led up to a white door set into the side. Above the door hung a simple sign: "OFFICE" in faded red letters. To the left and right of the door were small windows, one of them over a window air conditioner that jutted out of the side of the building like a strange tumor.
Christopher ran up the stairs.
"What are you doing? How do you know it's even unlocked?" asked Theresa.
"The Change happened during business hours," said Christopher. "I doubt the zombies bothered to lock up." He turned the doorknob. It rattled, then something clicked inside it and it turned in his hand.
He pulled open the door – there was barely enough room to stand on the steps and pull the thing open at the same time.
He wondered if it would be better to pull the door open slowly, or yank it open with a quick jerk. What if there were more of the things in there?
Screw it.
He yanked the door open.
The room beyond was empty. He waited a moment, listening for movement in any part of the trailer.
Nothing.
"Come on," he said. "The keys are in here."
"How do you know that?" Theresa demanded. But she came in the room with him.
It was a typical construction office: a few battered desks at the front where the secretaries probably sat. A table to one side with rolls of architectural plans, order sheets and invoices piled six inches high. A pair of doors in the back that would lead to the supervisor's or owner's offices.
"What if the driver got Changed and wandered off with the key?"
Christopher shook his head, then jerked open the drawers on the first desk. "No, the truck had the logo of the mine on the door. And there was nothing in the bed, which means they weren't using it for anything right now. So they wouldn't have the keys with anyone, since no one needed them."
Theresa didn't voice an opinion as to his logic, but she pulled open the other desk's drawers. Pawed through pens and pads of paper and hanging files. "Nothing," she said.
"Me, either."
He saw something useful, though, and grabbed it off one of the tables: a balled-up t-shirt that, when unrolled, revealed a beer logo on the back. He put it on, sighing in mock sadness as he did so. "Sorry, darling," he said. "I know you were hoping I'd go shirtless until the stars turned cold, but every good thing must come to an end."
Theresa rolled her eyes. "I'll try to find another reason to live."
Christopher went to the office on the right. Inside was a bare-bones desk, a computer on top that looked like it probably still used floppy discs and a screen that ran only monochrome green.
There were no drawers in the desk. Just a file cabinet on one side. He tried the top drawer, but it was locked. So were the others.
He looked at the desk again. There was a large paperweight that looked like it was made of granite. In the dim of the office, he could make out "Miners Are Dumb As A Rock" written on it in gold lettering. He picked it up and hammered it against the top drawer.
Two hits, and Theresa tore into the room.
"Chris!" she shouted, then stopped short when she saw him attacking the file cabinet. "I heard... I thought...." She cleared her throat, then glared at him. "You scared the hell out of me."
"Sorry." He slammed the rock into the file cabinet a few more times. By the fifth hit the front panel of the drawer was so bent he could reach around it. He felt the inside. A moment later, the lock pinged open.
He pulled the drawer open. Nothing but papers. The next held more of the same. He glanced at the door. Theresa was still there. "No one's called me Chris in a long time."
There was hardly any light, but he thought she was blushing. "I thought something was killing you or something," she said.
"You do care," he murmured. The last drawer was empty. "Damn." He looked at her. "You find anything?"
"It looks like a break room. Just a little table and some chairs with a few coffee cups on it." She swallowed. "A lot of blood on the walls."
Christopher grimaced. "Sorry about that," he said.
She shrugged. "At least it wasn't mine."
Christopher stood. Looked around at the bare office.
"We should get back," said Theresa.
"The keys have to be here."
"They're not. And more of those things are coming."
Christopher pushed past her. Into the main office. He was about to ransack the secretary's desk again when he stopped. Turned.
There was a bathroom to one side. The door was closed.
Silent.
He moved to the closed door. Held the knob as though waiting for it to move under his hand.
Nothing.
He twisted the knob. Knowing that the keys might be in there. But if they were, it was highly unlikely they had just wandered in on their own. Which meant....
The lock mechanism clicked under his palm. He shivered, the noise seeming almost painfully loud in the dark office.
The door swung open.
Eyes stared out at him.
Theresa gasped, and he heard a slap. He thought it might be her grabbing for the gun she had lost in the river.
The zombie just stood there. Waiting. Eyes looking straight ahead, mouth sagging open with the slack look of someone in a coma.
Only people in a coma didn't stand up. Didn't weave ever so slightly, as though caught in a breeze that no one could feel, no one could see.
Christopher fell back, hands going up to ward off the inevitable attack, the bite that had to come.
Nothing happened. The zombie didn't move. Its eyes remained fixed in the same position they had been, its mouth didn't clamp shut. There was none of that chittering noise, the growl didn't come.
The creature's pants were around its ankles, and the smell that came off it left no doubt about what this once-man had been doing when the Change took it.
Christopher took a step toward it.
"Don't," said Theresa.
He ignored her. Bent over and grabbed the waist of the thing's pants. "It's not doing anything," he mumbled. The words were as much to reassure himself as they were to put Theresa's concern to rest.
The pockets were hard to find. Bunched up and stiff, and he hated to think what might be all over them.
He felt in the first pocket, the one on the zombie's left. Came up with some kind of credit or swipe card – he couldn't make it out in the dark.
The other pocket jingled slightly when he moved to that side.
Yes.
He felt inside it.
And came up with change.
He froze there. He had been so sure. And now....
"Dammit," he muttered.
He let the pants drop back to the floor.
They clinked.
He looked at them. Back up at the zombie. Still unmovi
ng, unseeing. Dead to the world.
Bad choice of words.
He pushed his hand back into the pocket. Felt nothing. Then realized he could barely fit half his hand inside.
The other pocket was bigger.
He pushed his hand farther in. This pocket wasn't smaller after all. It was just twisted up at the bottom. He wriggled his fingers, parting the folds in the fabric.
The zombie moved.
The motion was barely more than a twitch, but Christopher felt it as a shockwave that rode up his hand, his arm, nearly stopped his heart.
He looked up. The thing hadn't moved.
Or had it?
"Hurry," breathed Theresa. He looked back at her. She was staring the thing in the face. Christopher looked up... and saw the thing had turned its head. Just slightly. Now it was looking down.
The thing's eyes found his.
It didn't move, other than that, but Christopher knew time was short. He pushed his fingers deeper into the pocket. He felt something hard and cool. Curled his fingers around a ring.
Something touched him. He looked behind him automatically.
Theresa was gone.
The hand on his shoulder was its hand.
He shouted. A sound of disgust, horror, hope quashed yet again. Expecting to be grasped in the too-strong hold of things that should be dead and unmoving but were instead stronger than anything Christopher had experienced.
The hand lay firmly on his shoulder. But the thing's fingers didn't curl with that bone-crushing force. Its eyes stared at him, but there was no fire behind them. None of that viciousness.
Christopher yanked the keyring out of its pocket. The pants fell again.
The thing made a sound. A moan, followed by the chirping noise he had heard before. A sound that could be nothing – or could be some kind of communication.
The thing shook itself. Its eyes were still clouded, but –
(the fire in its eyes)
– its fingers began, slowly, to turn inward. Christopher felt his flesh compress.
And something flashed out. Smashed the thing in the throat. Black ichor splashed across Christopher's face. The thing let go of him, fell back.
Theresa – one hand still holding the rock from the office – reached in and yanked the bathroom door shut.
A half-second later, the thing started to moan. Something slammed into the bathroom door from the other side.
Theresa dropped the rock. It thudded to the floor with a loud, hollow thock.
"What was that?" she breathed. "What just happened?"
Christopher looked at the keyring he still held. Just one silver key, teeth slightly blunt-looking in the way old keys had. There was a fob on the ring as well, a black leather circle with "DUMP" written across it in what looked like Wite-Out.
He straightened and headed to the door. "Come on," he said.
She was close at his heels as they exited the office.
As soon as the door opened, he heard something. He went still.
Heard it again.
The growl.
100
THEY RAN. CHRISTOPHER felt the sand reach up to pull at every footstep, dragging him back so the zombies that were coming would be able to find and kill him.
He heard slamming behind them. The sound of the thing still captive in the bathroom. Heard it growl, the sound mixing with the dimmer noise nearby.
Wood splintered.
They ran faster. Arrived at the dump truck. Aaron was already in the cab, Amulek and Maggie next to him, each of them holding one of the little girls on their laps.
Ken stood in the back of the truck, his head barely visible above the level of the truck bed's shell. Christopher noticed that he was gripping the side with a hand that had grown some kind of claws that dug deep into the metal itself. The lip of the metal was actually curled slightly in his grip.
What happened to him?
Is this even Ken anymore?
Ken was rigid, looking behind the truck. Staring into the darkness and the drifting curls of smoke that reached down from the sky from time to time, trying to find them in the black of night.
The growl came again. Louder. And Christopher realized that the sound wasn't just in his ears, it was in his mind. Just like when Maggie had screamed in the bunker, the deep, rasping sound rattled around his skull, blasting holes in his brain.
How is this happening?
But he knew. Knew that, just as the queens were growing up and growing stronger, so must the king. The thing that had taken little Derek was calling for....
What?
For us.
For the queens.
For the end.
He threw the keys into the truck. It struck him that Aaron and the others had waited ready. As though they knew he would find the keys. That he would find what they needed.
It warmed him.
It scared him.
What happens when I let them down?
And he would. He knew that. It was what he did. What he had done in his parents' eyes, what he had done in letting Heather transform into the junkie she became.
What he did when he left Carina to die in a blasted hospital that he should have checked, should have looked at better and harder.
I should have found her.
I'll let them down.
Then Theresa was clinging to the side of the dump truck, pulling herself to the top. He pushed her hips, helping her and expecting to hear her berating him for daring to touch her.
She didn't.
She pulled herself over the top. He followed, clambering up, over, and into the truck bed.
Ken was still looking behind them.
"Go," he rasped.
The voice came from Ken, but it wasn't Ken's. It was deeper, more animal.
And, like the growl, it sounded in his mind.
The truck thrummed beneath them. A rumble that rattled his feet and shook its way up his spine as the engine of a truck built solely to move heavy loads as efficiently as possible pushed the huge tires forward.
The smoke swirled above them.
It all made Christopher feel alone. Never mind being the last man on earth, he suddenly felt that this was the only "earth" left. Like there was nothing beyond the dunes that surrounded them, nothing above the smoke that cloaked the sky.
The truck rounded the first dune.
Found a road that led into the night.
101
THE GROWL FOLLOWED them. Christopher wondered if they were going to make it.
He looked at Ken. His friend –
(friend? once-friend? thing?)
– still stood as straight and unbending as a girder.
Then he moved. So fast that Christopher almost couldn't see it. Just a glimpse of green iridescence, wings flashing in the backsplash of the truck's headlights. A blur that streaked upward.
And gone.
Christopher looked at Theresa. She had seen it, too; was staring at the place Ken had been standing before exploding into sudden flight. Her mouth hung slightly open, as though she still couldn't believe this was happening.
Christopher knew how she felt.
The growl continued in his mind. In everyone's mind. Not just a threat, but a call.
He had spoken to the others. Had talked about the feeling that pulsed through them whenever a large group of the things came close –
(give up. give in.)
– but this was different. That had been an urge, a sensation that his mind attributed words to so it could make sense of what was calling it. So that it wouldn't go mad in the gray void of the things.
This, though.... It wasn't a feeling. It wasn't a rage-filled something that filled his mind.
It was....
Thought.
That was it. It was coherent. Comprehending.
(the king calls. the king will not be denied.)
He looked at Theresa. She was looking at him, and now her mouth was open all the way.
"Did you –" she began.<
br />
"Yeah," he said. "I heard it."
"The king...."
"Yeah."
(the king will not be –)
The sound broke off in his mind. Stopped so suddenly it was almost violent. One moment there was a presence, the next moment it left. Like Ken's flight through the smoke, leaving turbulence behind, then the swirls settling and no trace at all that anything had ever been there.
The thoughts did not come back.
Something thudded. The sound of something striking the metal of the truck. At first Christopher thought Aaron must have crashed into something, but the truck kept its lumbering course forward, unstopping and seemingly unstoppable.
He looked around. The thud hadn't come from the front of the truck, but from the back.
Ken had landed in the bed behind them. His wings folding behind him, hidden in his back as they had been before. Slight bulges showed over the level of his shoulders, but that was all that remained.
He was covered in gore. And Christopher knew why the sound had cut off in his mind.
"You okay, Ken?" He stepped toward his friend.
Ken growled. The blades shot out of his hand, and he thrust it in Christopher's direction. Christopher jerked to a halt.
The points hung inches from his eyes.
Ken didn't seem to recognize him. There was no friendship in his face, no knowledge in his eyes. Just a rabid rage that changed him from something once human into something all beast.
Christopher thought he was going to die.
Then Ken blinked. The feral light went out of his eyes.
He slumped.
"I... sorry," he said. His voice was still rough – halting and tense, like he hadn't spoken for days and needed a big glass of water to get rid of the frog in his throat.
"No problem, pal," said Christopher. He gulped, having trouble focusing on anything beyond the points that hung in front of him. "But would you mind...."
Ken shook his head. "Sorry," he muttered again. The blades retracted and he lowered his hand. Then he moved as far to the back of the truck bed as he could. "You should move to the front," he said.
Christopher did what he was told. Quickly and without question. He paused only long enough to take Theresa's hand and pull her to the front of the bed with him.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 90