These things aren't going to take another of us. Not. One. MORE.
The last word still ringing in his mind, he shoved upward with all his strength again. Maggie flew. Did not return. More dirt rained down, and he heard her cry out with pain or fear or just the simple effort of a climb that should never have happened. But she was up. Over. Out.
He gestured at Theresa. The redhead moved forward. Faster than Maggie had done, though her face was red with flowing blood, black with blood that was already starting to congeal and cake into a death mask across her face.
Up. Dirt raining down. Gone.
Christopher let go of Amulek's hands. Made a stirrup with his own.
Amulek was already there. Hands cupped. Waiting.
"Go," said Christopher. "Get –"
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
He nearly fell over, the force of the psychic blast rolling over him, punching him in some mental center he hadn't even known existed. Amulek took a step back, too. Leaned into the wall of the tunnel. Then the teen shoved himself upright, hands still together. He gestured for Christopher to get in.
"You go!" Christopher shouted. Panic drove his voice higher.
Amulek jerked his hands, a tremor that spoke eloquently: I went first last time. Your turn.
Christopher didn't argue. He saw the set of Amulek's face and knew that the teen wasn't going to give in. That he'd prefer to waste time arguing over the question until the zombies came and took them both, rather than go first himself.
Christopher sighed. Put his foot in the teen's hands.
Amulek hurled Christopher up.
The throw didn't go as well as the others. Christopher bounced off the walls of the shaft, the reverse motion of what the Marauder must have done when it fell into this misplaced neighborhood of Hell. His face banged into a wall. He fell back. Hit his head behind him.
He flung his hands up. Not thinking, again just acting on some strange instinct that had risen to the fore of his mind.
He felt hands grab his right hand and wrist. Another pair of hands encircling his left wrist. A moment of stasis, hanging there in the middle of a terrible nothing. Then he jerked up as the hands drew him skyward.
He made it. Pulled himself over the crumbling edge of the shaft, onto dirt and grass. Barely rested an instant before he flipped himself downward.
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
He reached out a hand. Saw Amulek leap up from below.
The teen missed him by a good foot.
"He's too far!" screamed Christopher. "Grab my belt!"
Without waiting for acknowledgement, knowing as before that this was the only way, he scooted over the edge of the shaft. Pushed out into nothing, then pushed out still more.
He tipped.
Fell.
The fall was arrested at the last moment, Christopher jerking to a halt as he felt something yank at his belt, something pull at his feet and legs.
Amulek leaped. Grabbed. Caught hold of Christopher's right hand.
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
Then the teen jerked back. Almost fell away from Christopher's grasp.
Amulek opened his mouth and made the first sound Christopher had heard from him. A thin, whistling exhale. A mute scream.
The zombies were in the tunnel.
And they had Amulek.
127
AMULEK KEPT MAKING that horrible noise, that keening that sounded like the last whimper of a dying dog. The zombies' growl was so loud – both in mind and ear – that Christopher shouldn't have heard anything else. Just them. Just the creatures.
But he heard the mute panic, the silent wail of terror. He could see Amulek's eyes, glitter in anguish as he struggled to keep hold of Christopher's hand while something pulled, pulled, pulled him from below.
Christopher's wrist and arm were slick with sweat. Amulek started sliding down, lower and lower.
Whining. Whimpering silently.
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
Something about the call wriggled its way into Christopher's mind, even as the blood spouted anew from his nostrils, even as Amulek slid down a millimeter at a time.
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
What is it? What do I need to know?
What are they telling me?
For once, the creatures' call didn't make him want to just lay down and die. That aspect of the call was overwhelmed by panic. Not for himself, but for Amulek. For his new friend, for the newest member of the family.
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
And then, as Amulek slid to Christopher's fingertips – a hold that couldn't last – he knew.
"Jammer." He meant to scream the word, but all that came out was a croak. He said it again. "Jammer!"
"What?" Maggie grunted the word.
Amulek curled his fingers in Christopher's: the last second. Maybe two.
"Get the jammer!"
He felt the hands on his legs let go. Christopher slid another inch into the tunnel as they did. Worried that Amulek was going to fall for sure, was going to lose his grip.
Has he been bitten?
No. He'd have Changed.
But it was only a matter of time – and very little at that.
"Got it!" Maggie yelled.
"Pull out the battery!" shouted Christopher.
"But –"
"DO IT!"
GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN
And suddenly the tension was gone from his fingers.
Amulek had fallen.
128
CHRISTOPHER LOOKED down. Not wanting to see Amulek torn to pieces, Changed. But incapable of looking away.
He expected to see Amulek tumble down. Expected him to disappear in the teeming mass that he could barely make out in the tunnel below.
But Amulek wasn't falling.
At first Christopher thought – madly, wildly – that the teen had learned how to fly.
Been taking lessons from Ken, have we?
Then he saw Amulek's sweat- and blood-stained face. Saw the strain in his eyes. Understood. The teen's left leg was still being held, thrashing around as the things below him tried to yank him downward. But he'd managed to get the other leg up into the vertical shaft. He had pressed it against one side of the shaft, his back against the other side. He'd pushed hard enough that his body jammed in the shaft. Both arms were splayed wide, too. Pressing hard against the walls, keeping him securely trapped where he was.
But as Christopher watched, the teen began to lose purchase. The things –
(GIVE UP –
– GIVE IN)
– were pulling him down.
"Farther!" screamed Christopher. "Down farther!" And as the anchors that still held him – Aaron and Theresa – began lowering him further still, he screamed, "And take out the damn battery!"
He didn't hear it happen. How would he hear the sound of a battery being disconnected, over the growl-screams of the zombies, over Amulek's keening wail?
But he knew when it happened. Knew when Maggie yanked the battery free.
Because he felt a tickle in his mind. A subtle change as one more – then two – things shoved their way into his brain.
Kill
Kill.
KILL.
KILL.
The queens. Freed from the silence that had bound them.
And the things below, the zombies, stopped pulling on Amulek. The teen stopped sliding as they shifted their attention from human prey to enemies in their midst.
It was what Christopher had hoped would happen. When he heard the two voices in his head – so much the same, but ever-so-slightly distinct – he hoped that the zombies coming from ahead in the tunnel would be different from the ones following from behind. He hoped that, though the queens had been silenced, the zombies would have chosen sides. That some would be coming for Hope, some
searching out Lizzy.
And when the gag was removed, the queens sang out. And the creatures attacked one another.
It wouldn't last – it couldn't. One group or the other would be victorious, probably in a matter of mere minutes, if not seconds.
But for now, they weren't trying to kill Amulek.
Christopher moved down a bit more, and he managed to get a hand on the teen's arm. It was covered in sweat, just as his was, but he still held on. Amulek let go with the other hand, and there was a sickening lurch as he slid downward in the instant between letting go and managing to grab Christopher's forearm.
Then they were both holding each other's hands. Clasped tightly.
"Up!" shouted Christopher. "Pull us up!"
The things below shrieked. The sound of flesh tearing was clearly audible, the noise of the things' growls – now changed to battle shrieks of rage – clung to Christopher like ropes, dragging at him, pulling him down.
He gritted his teeth. Maggie's hands returned to his legs. The pressure on his belt – probably Aaron – pulled him up. Theresa yanked his ankles back in fits and starts.
He was out.
A moment later, Amulek was, too.
Christopher looked into the tunnel below.
He saw eyes staring at him. Dead, lost to the call of a victorious queen. But still malevolent, the thing's very existence a tear in Christopher's sanity.
It began moving up. Pushed from below. Christopher remembered the things, crawling up the sides of buildings, massing together to overcome any obstacle.
The thing growled.
"We've gotta get moving," he panted.
Aaron helped Amulek to stand. Theresa grabbed Christopher's hands and jerked him to his feet as well.
Then she reached down. Picked up Hope. The girl was still silent, unmoving.
Christopher glanced at Maggie. At the baby she picked up from the grass that surrounded them all.
Lizzy was not moving, either. But unlike Hope, her eyes were open. Looking at him clearly.
She was smiling.
Christopher knew now what queen's soldiers had been victorious below.
Lizzy's grin widened – a malevolent mockery of a smile that was all the more terrifying on the face of a toddler. "Run," she said. But it wasn't an instruction for escape. He knew the word was a taunt. A smile as the hunter finally brought down its prey.
"Run," she said again.
And laughed.
129
CHRISTOPHER STARTED moving automatically. Took three quick steps before he felt a hand jerking him back.
"Your turn to lower me," said Aaron. Then, without waiting for an answer, he lay on his back and started wriggling toward the hole. His head was over the void before Christopher managed to move.
Something inside him screamed. Shrieked why why what are you doing?
Another part of his brain recognized that Aaron had lain down on his back. And that meant he intended to bend not at the waist, but the knees. That he intended to go down as deep into the hole as possible.
The last part of his brain finally moved Christopher to action. He leaped toward Aaron, crashing to earth just as the cowboy started to bend backward into the tunnel. Christopher grabbed for Aaron's belt, found the thick leather with his fingers, clenched.
Aaron fell backward.
Christopher almost plummeted after him. A short fall, but it would have been a deadly one had Theresa not thrown her arms around his waist, pulling back with her whole body weight.
Christopher kept nudging toward the hole as Aaron pushed himself in and down, in and down. Christopher loosened his grasp slightly, his hands no longer holding onto Aaron's belt – it was out of reach – but to his thighs, then his shins.
He was sprawled out, lying flat with Theresa practically on top of him. And he could see.
The zombie that had started climbing out met Aaron halfway down the tunnel. Christopher wanted to scream, to cry out and ask why his friend had decided on this strange way to commit suicide.
Aaron moved.
The motion was so fast that Christopher almost couldn't see it. Just a blur of quick motion, the flash of something catching the light for the barest fraction of an instant.
The zombie jerked. Christopher thought for an instant that the thing was one of those that had strange, black growths all over their bodies. Then he saw that what he had taken for a dark outcropping of bone covering the thing's eye wasn't another evolution in the things' fearsome appearance.
It was the hilt of Aaron's knife.
"Pull me up!" shouted the cowboy. Christopher gritted his teeth and started wiggling backward. But not fast. And not before he saw the zombie that Aaron had stabbed throw its head back and howl. It began to jitter, the motion spastic and strange, and in doing so it lost its grip on the tunnel. It fell.
It crashed into the darkness below. Christopher couldn't make out any details, but the growl –
(GIVE UP. GIVE –)
– suddenly disappeared, replaced by screams of rage, by movement that hinted at confined mayhem.
He pulled Aaron the rest of the way up. The cowboy exhaled when he finally came back into the daylight, a powerful release of breath held too long.
No time to rest, though. Aaron rolled right over to his stomach. Pushed himself up. So did Christopher.
Theresa stood nearby, Lizzy in her hands, looking frightened as she wheeled around to take in their surroundings.
Christopher was glad to see the toddler had her eyes closed again. Though he thought he detected rage in the set of her small face. He didn't know if that meant they had won this particular battle, or if she was just angry that they had tried to thwart her plans. He supposed it didn't matter.
It's not like they can try any harder to kill us.
Christopher spun in a quick circle. Looking around. Looking for somewhere to run, for somewhere to hide.
Finding neither.
130
THEY HAD COME UP IN the middle of a field.
It didn't appear to have anything in it, just a never-ending field of brown dirt that extended into a grove of trees that bordered it on three sides. The fourth side ended at a field of some kind of grain – wheat, perhaps barley.
"Where now?" asked Theresa. She wheeled around, taking a few steps in one direction, then backpedaling and spinning to face the opposite way.
"Damned if I know." Aaron squinted into the sky, and Christopher figured he was probably getting his bearings by calculating his average shadow length divided by his stride length and taking into account the average size of his balls of steel.
Maggie just held to Hope. Cradled the child as close to her breast as she could, her mouth moving silently in a way that disquieted Christopher.
The sounds kept coming from the hole they had come out of. Grunts, groans, chitters. Something very bad was going on down there, and it was only a matter of time before it came for them.
Amulek was the only one who didn't seem lost. He walked toward the grove of trees with the sure step of someone who expects to be followed.
Christopher did just that. Fell into step behind the teen. Within five feet, Aaron was following as well. Both of them knowing that the others would come, too. Both of them understanding that when someone like Amulek began walking, he knew – always knew – that where he was going was a better place to be.
Christopher looked back. Theresa was still wheeling around. Maggie was still hunched over her child. Christopher opened his mouth to call them over.
The words died before they fully formed in his mind.
Hope's eyes were open. Staring. Looking old and cunning and out of place on a little girl's face – just like Lizzy's had looked just moments before.
The little girl smiled.
And Christopher knew what was going to happen. Knew the mistake he had made.
"No," he whispered.
131
HE SPUN AROUND MID-stride. Inertia kept his body shifting forward, moving
away from what he had seen for a few critical milliseconds. Long enough for the smile on Hope's face to shift from malicious glee to pure rage.
Maggie shrieked. She dropped Hope unceremoniously on the ground. Clapped her hands to the sides of her head as Hope fell to earth. Screamed again.
"Get out, get out!" she shrieked. And Christopher knew who – what – she was screaming at. Because he felt it, too.
Mine. Mine now. All MINE.
The voice in his mind was one of the queens. The thing inside Hope.
Hope fell from Maggie's arms, landing in a catlike stance on the thick soil. The little girl didn't hesitate. Just bared her teeth and ran straight for Theresa. The redhead barely had time to shout before Hope flew into her legs.
But the attack wasn't against her.
Hope scampered up Theresa's right leg, climbing it with the jerky, agile movements of a spider. Then she was level with what she wanted. Not Theresa – the woman was just something in the way, something between Hope and her intended target.
Christopher saw Lizzy's eyes open. They weren't glassy, weren't confused. They gleamed with malevolence. Wrath.
Fear.
Christopher ran at Maggie. At Hope. At Lizzy. Only a few steps.
Just a few steps. I can make it.
(MINE. DIE.)
Hope made a thin, mewling noise – a keen that reminded Christopher of the call of a wolf, a cry to mate or hunt or feed. That was when Lizzy screamed: a sound far too powerful to have come from such a small body.
Christopher was still running.
Just a few steps.
Theresa didn't know what was going on. Her body curved away from Hope, not like she was afraid of the girl but more as though she couldn't understand what was happening and simply wanted to take a step back so she could get a better view of events.
Hope was holding to Theresa's body armor with her right hand. Her left now curled, the fingers angled like talons. She raked down with them, and a trio of bright red lines appeared on Lizzy's chest.
Lizzy screamed.
(You DARE. KILL YOU.)
And Hope answered with a scream of her own.
The Complete Colony Saga [Books 1-7] Page 96