Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) (21 page)

“Owen, where are you going?”

…

“Owen?”

…

“Owen!”

But Hannah couldn’t get an answer from her boyfriend, no matter how hard she tried. He just expected her to follow him right out of the county fair and into the middle of nowhere.

Well, not exactly the middle of nowhere. She knew this town well enough to find her own way around. But the fact that her boyfriend was just running off into the woods surrounding the fairgrounds didn’t make her particularly comfortable. This was how people in scary movies died. And Hannah hated scary movies more than anyone would ever understand. There was something about a world with no hope, a world with no dreams or plans or imagination, that terrified her beyond words.

But, being sixteen and stupid, Hannah followed him anyway, despite the fact that she would already be in hot water with her parents if she was caught out here tonight.
Especially
if she was caught out here with Owen, who her parents weren’t exactly fond of in the first place. In fact, they’d probably ground her until she left their house for college. And her parents weren’t even all that protective.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t a nice guy. Of course he was. Owen was the most popular football player in school, and any girl would’ve killed to be his girlfriend. The other players were jealous of him, the teachers loved his positive attitude, and even the principal had a soft spot for him. But, for some reason, he only had his eye on Hannah, who wasn’t very pretty to begin with. If she was honest with herself, there was no real reason for him to date her at all. Hannah who didn’t like sports, Hannah who didn’t dress up, Hannah who barely even had time to come cheer him on at his games. Hannah who was nothing like Owen.

Hannah was average, if that counted a compliment. She wasn’t bikini-skinny, but no one could consider her fat. She was a curvy, normal teenage girl, finding her way into being a woman when most girls were just getting out of their training bras. She was more mature, somehow, than they were, even ignoring her body structure. Her voice was deeper, her eyes saw reality rather than immaturity, and she was smart. Insanely smart. And Owen liked that about her, despite the fact that none of the other boys did.

Even though he was running into the woods in the middle of the night with a girl who should’ve been fast asleep in her bed, Owen still wasn’t a bad kid. He was responsible, reliable, sweet, romantic, and funny. He wouldn’t be the kind to just run away and cause trouble, like a lot of guys on the team. There was a
reason
everyone liked him. Well, everyone except those who wished they were him. Owen wasn’t a forgettable kid. He took things seriously, and rarely screwed up. There weren’t rumors about him sleeping around and there weren’t secrets that he kept from anyone. He supported his players and he supported his team, no matter what the cost.

He was very much a leader, even if he didn’t necessarily consider himself one. And that leadership sometimes got him into trouble, as it was about to that very night, even though he didn’t know it yet.

His maturity was the very reason why her parents didn’t like her dating him. They didn’t like the idea that she was seeing a guy who was practically an adult already. Owen had grown up without very much parental guidance, and he had to figure things out for himself. His father had passed away when he was fairly young, after moving away to live with another family, and his mother hadn’t really cared about much after that. Owen had to get his own job, buy his own groceries, tuck himself in at night, cook his own meals. Sometimes he even had to take care of his own mother.

Hannah had never had that problem. She’d been handed everything on a silver platter and, while she was probably smarter than Owen when it came to books, she lacked the street smarts that he had. When it came to awkward and scary situations outside the doors of the school, Owen knew how to save her. The only place in the real world she’s really beat him in anything was if they played a game of Chess. And neither of them very much like games anyway.

And that’s how he knew she’d follow him. Because he was not only her ride home, but her safety net when it came to public encounters with other people. And she would be too nervous to try to climb into her bedroom window without Owen’s help, let alone walk home in the dark by herself.

So, Hannah ran into the woods to find her boyfriend, ignoring the whispers in the trees tonight. The ones that said things were going to change forever. And they were going to change soon. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her, or how she would never climb back into her bedroom window, or that she would never see her parents again. Hannah, unknowing of the future that stood well within reach, ran on into the night toward Owen.

But that didn’t matter. Because things were going to change right now, with Owen and Hannah leading the way and breaking down a barrier that was never meant to broken.

Andrew Collins didn’t become an FBI agent for this bullshit.

Standing over a dead body, injecting some purple-tinted serum the government had given him, Andrew was entirely too grossed out by the situation. The sad thing was
, it wasn’t the first time he’d gone through this process. And, judging by the complete lack of a reaction from the body, it wouldn’t be anywhere near his last.

“FBI business. I need you to clear out.” He had said to those who ran the city morgue just a few hours before. And they had listened. They had left. Just as they had several times before, even though he secretly prayed that they would put up some kind of fight against him. At least then he wouldn’t be doing this.

But now he was here, in this awkward position. Yet again. Waiting for something to happen in the eerie silence that filled the main basement room of the morgue. Nothing was probably ever going to happen anyway. No matter how long he waited.

Time passed slowly. He was forbidden from bringing any electronics other than a cell phone with him, and Andrew wasn’t much of a cell phone kind of guy. He didn’t have any games on it to pass the time away, and he didn’t have anyone all that interesting that he could call. This time, however, Andrew Collins had been smart and insightful enough to bring a book with him. Didn’t help that he wasn’t smart or insightful enough to pick up anything other than the only thriller novel he owned.

The Stand.
Well, at least it was Stephen King. And it was long. Long enough to keep him busy for the two hours that he was required to wait before re-stowing the body in one of the fridge-like shelves surrounding him.

After diving into his book for long enough, Andrew stood and stretched for several minutes before he picked up the body and slipped it into its place back in the wall, closing the giant sliding drawer and erasing the stupidity of his mission. Why should he expect the dead to rise anyway? What kind of serum would be able to do that?

None of them.

He was wasting his time. This was his
fourth
morgue visit. When he’d first been given this top-secret assignment, they’d promised him one visit. Just one. And then this pointless, stupid mission would be over and he would face the possibility of a promotion. He had a feeling that promotion was based entirely upon whether or not his mission was successful, as unfair as that was. So, when the serum didn’t work the first visit, he asked politely that they allow him back for a second. When that didn’t work, he was ready to get off the case. But they had continued to make him go.

And, every time, nothing happened. Every time, the dead stayed dead, just as it should be. In fact, Andrew figured, if they ever did wake up when he was around he’d probably just kill them again. There was something unnatural about bringing the dead back to life. Call it a conservative viewpoint if you want, but there was just something not right about walking dead. Something not traditional. Something…scary.

There was also something unnatural about the way the drawer at the end of the row was moving. Almost as if something was trying to get out. Andrew caught a glimpse of the movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward the unit almost violently. He didn’t have a gun on him, wasn’t allowed to bring it into the morgue, so he had nothing to protect himself other than the carving knife he kept on the table, just in case anything bad ever happened and he needed a weapon. He didn’t realize until that very moment how stupid it really was that he couldn’t have a weapon in here.

Then again, looking at the steel drawers, the bullets would ricochet all over the room, probably hurting someone else if you missed your initial target. It wasn’t entirely fair to risk that, when there might be someone who has just come back to life in the room.

Or maybe that government just wanted Andrew out of the way. What better way to kill someone?

The drawer continued to move, but it wasn’t the one he’d experimented on. In fact, he’d never so much as touched the drawer at the end of the row. He figured it was probably the after-spasms of someone who’d died earlier that day. Sure, he’d never seen it before. But he’d heard about it in movies. It made sense, to a certain extent.

Then he heard the whisper.

“…help…me…”

A voice was coming out of that drawer, and Andrew was sure of it. Reluctantly, he put down his supplies and crossed to it, gaining his courage to force it open with two hands.

As he slid out the drawer, he could see that inside was a man. A man who didn’t have the strength to sit up by himself. In fact, it seemed he was paralyzed. Only his lips and his arms moved at all, and neither of them moved very much. His eyes wouldn’t even open.

“…hello?” Andrew whispered. “Are you alive?”

“…help…me…”

“What happened to you?”

“…help…me…”

Andrew was really getting sick of this job. What was he supposed to do about a dying man? In a morgue, they’re all supposed to be dead. This wasn’t in his job description. The guy wouldn’t even tell him what was wrong, no matter how many times he patiently asked.

And he certainly couldn’t afford to bring help down here. Not with all of his supplies set up. Taking it down and hiding it away would take at least half an hour, if not forty-five minutes. This guy didn’t have that long. Besides, Collins would be thrown out of the FBI for exposing government secrets or something stupid like that. He thought about calling his immediate boss, but then decided against it. What was his boss supposed to do about it? He wasn’t Andrew’s babysitter.

And that’s exactly what he would say, too.

“Collins, figure out your own problems. I’m not your babysitter.”

Andrew would feel like the biggest idiot on the planet Earth. His job was to inject a serum into dead bodies and document his observations. That’s all there was to it. And he couldn’t even do something that simple correctly. To be fair, though, Andrew really wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about a dying man. It wasn’t part of the job at hand, and no matter what he did, someone was going to be in trouble. Maybe even dead.

You could just suffocate the guy.

Where did that even come from? He couldn’t kill an innocent man. Here was his chance to be a hero, and he wanted to be a villain. Whatever happened to being the innocent bystander? Andrew groaned and looked at the ground, unable to stomach this for much longer.

Oh, just do it before you lose the guts.

And then come back here in two weeks and do the whole thing all over again? Maybe even have to see this man’s dead body? And know that you killed him? No, Andrew couldn’t do that. Even if he was desperate, he barely had the stomach to inject the stuff into a stranger, let alone a man whose death he played a crucial part in.

Andrew was so sick and tired of coming back to this boring and useless little town to poke holes in dead people. It obviously wasn’t working. You just can’t bring the dead back to life, and nothing anybody told him was going to change his mind.

But maybe you can keep the live living.

He could be a hero, and make the government look good too. It was entirely all too possible. All he had to do was put the serum in the man’s body. If he survived, the government would be hailed for finding a cure for death. If he died…well, what difference did it really make? He would have been dead in the first place if Andrew hadn’t been there to open the drawer, right?

So, while his adrenaline was still pumping, Andrew got the syringe and poked the last hole he ever would ever stick into other man’s body. While injecting the serum, he watched the man’s face, hoping to get some kind of reaction. But, instead, all he got was silence.             

The mouth didn’t open again to plead for help. The faint breathing that had been there seemed to be gone.

Andrew prayed that this would work. Now that his body was relaxing and breathing again, he realized what he had done, and the severity with which he had done it. Not only had he probably killed a man, but he had just done it with a serum created by the government. If they did an autopsy on his body and anyone ever found out what had happened…

Collins would probably be nonexistent. The bureau didn’t like screw ups or mistakes. Especially ones that muddied their image.

Andrew let almost two more hours pass before he accepted the truth.

This man was dead.

Andrew had failed yet again.

Shaking, he pushed the drawer back in and went to sit near his worktable, knowing that if he left the job site before 5 a.m. without finding anything he’d be fired on the spot. There was nothing else for it but to sleep the night away and try to think of something that could be more helpful. Because this wasn’t working. This was going to get him killed. Just like the poor man in the drawer, whose life he had seen fit to steal.

He had no plan for action, no hail-Mary attempt to save his job and his future. He had only the hope that the body would be disposed of and no one would ever find out. Laying his head on his hands, he fell into a deep sleep thinking that very thing.

It wasn’t until two in the morning that the banging in the drawer at the end of the row started.