Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) (7 page)

Traveling with
the rest of the tribe and all of their supplies wasn’t the issue with leaving. But there was a reason the team had stopped at this school in the first place. When Hannah was pregnant, Owen made it clear to the others that they weren’t going anywhere until she had given birth and the children were old enough to hold their own while traveling.

He had assumed that this meant five or six years old. They didn’t have the option of staying that long. Now that the gate was irreparable, they would have to make their way father south. It was time to find a permanent place to stay, rather than a building where each day was a struggle and ended with a lingering question mark.

The day had come. But now that it had, most of the members weren’t ready to leave. The school had become a home to them. Phillip and Willa had started a garden outside the window of their room. Now, the beautiful flowers only reminded Phillip of his loss.

The others had done their best to decorate their rooms with what they could find in the school. The cafeteria had been cleaned up and straightened out. They had built a fire pit in the school yard, and they finally had some sort of routine to their days. Several members of the tribe hadn’t imagined ever needing to leave. Even Owen had made the mistake of slipping into the daily routine, thinking it was permanent.

But nothing was ever permanent in this world. And now he was harshly reminded of it. He would have to be much more cautious from now on. He had almost lost his entire family in one night to the infected, and he would not allow it to happen again.

Owen didn’t think there could be any worse fate than watching his family die before him. And, in his recurring nightmares, he often dreamt that one of the children would become inflicted with the disease. And then the awful decision of what to do would rest on the shoulders of Hannah and himself. He didn’t think he could make that choice if it ever came.

Had a child of any other family in the Albion Tribe fallen ill, he would have been stern. He would have told them to do away with it, because their child was long gone. It would only be right to put them out of their misery. He had prepared for that moment. For when one of them fell ill and the others would have to kill their own.

But when it came to his own children, Owen would rather have killed himself instead.

This was the drive behind them packing up as soon as the daylight had shined down upon the school and the last of the lingering dead had disappeared. Owen would not let his people wait. They were to pack and leave in two hours, and no less. If they hoped to find another shelter far enough away and safe enough by nightfall, they would need to be several hours in front of the zombies, who did not come out during the day.

By eight in the morning, most were packed and ready to leave. Some were sentimental, others anxious to get a move on before one of the dead returned to terrorize them. Still others were grieving. Phillip Jacobson was one of those people.

Willa Jacobson had been well loved by the tribe, but no one was more sorry for what had happened than her husband himself. Something fundamental in Phillip changed that night. While a very young man, a year or two behind Owen himself, Phillip knew he would never be the same again. He had lost his one love, the only joy he had left in the world. And he grieved miserably.

Far into the hours of the morning he could be heard wailing from his apartment. Hannah tried to comfort him, but he would not hear it. Owen ordered several of the men, including James, to retrieve Willa’s body. They would have a proper burial before they left. But Phillip fought them so badly that James was forced to hold him back and threaten to tie him down if he wouldn’t stay still.

Finally, the body was recovered and placed in a box. There were no fancy ceremonies in the world of the Albion Tribe. Those killed that were still in one piece were placed in a box and buried in the ground. Most others, if murdered like Willa, would have been left where they had fallen, to spare the sight and grief the rest of the tribe would surely feel. But, in Phillip’s case, leaving her that way was no option.

The funeral was held after everyone was packed and ready in the yard. Owen had dug a hole and the box was placed in the ground. Phillip cried miserably and mumbled under his breath for the rest of the trip. He was practically useless for weeks afterward.

Hannah tried to shield the children from the funeral, but Owen wouldn’t have it. He wanted them to understand the seriousness of the night before. He wanted them to know the dangers that they were dealing with. These beings would not stop just because there were children. They didn’t care who they attacked. Michael and Judith Marie would be smart. They would be ready.

As the group forged a gravestone and left it for Willa, grabbed their things, and headed out through the rubble that used to be a wall, Hannah tried to make things right with her husband. She let Eric watch the children at the back of the line and attempted to take Owen’s hand as he led.

“I’m sorry, Owen…” She said as she reached for him.

“Leave me alone.” He ordered as he snatched it back. “Go watch our children.”

Hannah wanted to cry at the pain, but she did not. Instead, she nodded and went to the back of the line with Michael and Judith Marie. She would not argue with him; not now. Now she would learn what it was like to be an obedient wife. Her deepest fear was that, if she lost him, he would leave her and the children and never return. Her actions were that of a woman desperate for survival, not a woman who particularly cared for the barking orders of her husband.

She knew she had done nothing wrong. Sure, she maybe said too much when it came to what might have been. They hadn’t exactly been falling apart all that time ago, but they may as well have been. Sometimes she wondered if she would rather have a life in a normal world without him. If, in some alternate universe, she would be better off without Michael or Judith Marie. But she could not picture it. And the fact that her husband could put a fear into her such that she could not even explain.

From that night on, Hannah became more closed with her husband. It wasn’t until they had been on the island for several years and Helen had been born that she allowed herself to feel something for him again, and even then, she had spent so long playing the role she had been that there was no going back.

She had become a changed woman. A harder one. A stronger one.

But Owen was weakening.

The first night, the
Albion Tribe stayed in a small motel in what used to be Nashville, Tennessee. The large buildings and arenas were the perfect area for packs of zombies to stay during the daytime, and so they would not risk sleeping in a place like that.

They all packed into two rooms on the top floor. The children and Hannah were given a bed to sleep on, and the remaining women were to share the other three. It wasn’t a comfortable situation, but it was one the group had been used to before they were given the luxury of a school that was protected.

More than anything, the Albion Tribe was stealthy. Stealthy and quiet and unseen. The zombies were not like dogs. They could not smell fear, and they could not smell humans. In fact, Owen had discovered over time that they could remain in one place for several days at a time before they would be found at all.

He would not risk that here, but he was glad for the cushion of knowing they would not find them, if the tribe did everything right. Not tonight.

The rooms were not joined, and Owen put James in charge of the one across the hall. Each room held about fifteen people. Sleeping quarters were confined, but Owen had also found that spreading out was dangerous. Should anything attack, being parted could leave a small pocket of people unknowledgeable of the situation and vulnerable. Again, they had grown out of that while staying at the high school. Another mistake they would not be repeating.

Owen and James would sleep in front of the locked doors. When traveling, the watch-men often did not sleep at night, such was their anticipation of hearing footsteps in the hallway. It was especially difficult now that they had spent so much time away from the fear of the night, the terrifying sound of the groans and moans outside their windows. The chills that traveled up and down their spine when they heard a creak in the floor, assuming it meant death was coming.

Perhaps they were self-centered in believing they were the only survivors. But they would have been hard pressed to believe any other group of people could live this way. In fact, they had never seen another group of survivors in all of their travels. They certainly had enough trouble themselves, and they had been doing this for years. Owen and Hannah had started their company when the two of them were only sixteen years old.

Night fell. The tribe slept. All except Owen, James, and Hannah. Hannah lie awake, thinking about the failure her relationship with her childrens’ father had become. Owen sat against the door, thinking hard and planning for the long weeks of travel ahead. But he clung to the idea that an island would be the answer. Some place no one had thought to inhabit before. Somewhere across the water, where the infected creatures could not follow.

James was different than the other two in that he was not thinking about the future. James was thinking long and hard about his troubled past. James had joined Owen and Hannah because, when they found him cowering in an ice cream shop freezer, he had only been twelve years old. He had nobody else to turn to. Owen had coaxed him out, killed the zombie that had cornered him, and saved his life. And now he was so different than he had been.

James realized that he was now a true man, sixteen or not. Owen had begun a tribe at his age, and James had saved all of their lives the night before. Sure, there were older people in the Albion Tribe. People like Eric, who were well into their twenties, some older. But still, they found it in them to trust their lives with a man who had just left his teens. Some who slept in his room trusted a boy young enough to be their son.

He felt a sense of responsibility and a sense of pride. This pride began to fill his head. But it wasn’t all bad. No, feeling larger than life in this moment couldn’t be all that bad.

The
Albion Tribe kept on like this for thirteen days. It was a difficult journey, to say the least. Each day waking at the crack of dawn, hiking several miles, and then stopping off in some town, or whatever shelter they could find. If they were lucky, they would find a parking lot with several cars that still had gas and keys in the ignition. This didn’t happen often. After the Zero-Hour first happened, it was easy to find transportation. But gas didn’t hold well over years, and some cars had fallen apart too much to be used.

The group was lucky on their route. There was rarely a day when they wouldn’t find at least one car with enough gas in it to make several trips along the same road. Some days, they would make it across an entire state. Others, they barely hiked ten miles.

Once a car ran out of gas, that was it for the vehicle. There was no safe way to access gasoline at gas stations without electricity, and gas cans that were not empty were a rare find. At the end of it all, just before the virus took over completely, everyone was trying to escape. Technology was already out, but many still lived long enough to fill their tanks and drive. They drove and drove, thinking they would eventually find safety. Most never did, unless Owen found them first.

Owen, who was willing to fight the virus and those that carried it.

When it came down to it, automobiles were a risky find. But, on this trip, they paid off. Just two weeks after the team left Nashville, they found themselves in coastal New England.

They all gathered in a banquet room on the fifth floor of a high-rise hotel. They had made it east, as far east as they could get by land, but the time had come to discuss with the others what Owen’s plan really was. If he wanted to lead them over the water, he would need to convince them of his intentions first.

As everyone settled in, Hannah took the children and went into another room across the hallway. She didn’t want to hear the proposal or the argument that was sure to follow. She knew she would want to fight it, to say how she felt. And she had spent two weeks now refraining from preaching the ridiculousness of the idea. She needed her husband. She would not break. Not yet.

Once he saw his wife and children leave him, Owen spoke to the masses.

“We’ve made it this far, guys,” He began. “And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for all of your patience with me. We’ve been very fortunate.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, a silent crowd. They trusted him. Owen didn’t know if he liked this or despised it.

“I feel that we haven’t come far enough,” He stated simply, to the confused looks of the others. “We can’t continue to travel from place to place, hoping not to stumble upon the dead and hoping we won’t be found. It’s no life for my children, and it’s no life for any of us.”

Silence again. No one knew quite how to respond to their Alpha male, their fearless leader. Generally, they had agreed with what he said and spoke only words of praise to him. But, tonight, they heard the shaking in his voice. His announcement tonight was not a usual request. He wanted something more from them than they had given before.

“As I see it, there’s only one way for us to be safe from them.”

Nothing.

“I propose that we travel to the tip of the peninsula, and find an island to inhabit.”

The room erupted.

“Are you insane? We’ll be trapped there. And if they find us, they’ll camp out on the beach and wait for us.”

“We’ll run out of supplies. What will we live off of?”

“How will we repopulate? In fifty years, there won’t be any room left!”

“Owen, this doesn’t make any sense.”

The Albion Tribe’s unelected leader remained silent. He waited patiently for everyone to settle and sit down before opening his mouth to explain.

“Fire and water. That’s what they fear. That’s all that they fear. Fire and water. They can’t swim. We’ve seen how easily their spirits fall and they give in. After a few weeks of staying there, they’ll leave the beach and give up on us. We’ll send a team of men back to land to get us supplies every couple of weeks. It’s simple. It’s effective. And it’s going to keep your families alive. Yes, we’ll grow quickly. Yes, we’ll have to one day find a larger area. But this virus has shown a cycle. It will end. Unless we give it a reason to continue.”

“What are you saying, Owen?” Eric asked angrily. “I’ve trusted you to lead us in the right direction. You. You who are younger than many of us here.”

“And this is the right direction, Eric!” Owen blurted out passionately, though he normally kept personal feelings out of his arguments. “We cannot afford to worry about generations below us. We need to worry about the people here right now. The virus lapses. I’ve seen it. The victims are starting to get their human qualities back.”

“What?”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this?”

“How could you possibly know something like that?”             

Again, Owen put up his hand for silence.

The room quieted.

“The night we were attacked,” He began slowly. “James killed a very large zombie. Stabbed it right through the chest. That creature…that being…it had understanding in its eyes. It knew it didn’t want to kill us. It knew we were protecting ourselves. I saw it. I always knew the virus had to be temporary, that the disease could be cured with time. But if we all become infected, we run the risk of destroying human life as we know it. Without us, no one will ever remember how things used to be. The zombies may very well go on hunting the humans without knowing life could ever be any different.”

The room was painfully silent now.

“It’s just a hunch, but you have to trust me when I say to you, we have to protect ourselves for more than just our own safety. It’s like preserving something. If we really are the last ones, and if we aren’t I still strongly believe the others are too corrupt to be of any use, we must preserve ourselves so that, maybe, one day, this curse will end, the world restored, and lives will be saved. Maybe not in our lifetime, and maybe not even in our childrens’ lifetime, but these mortal beings, curable or not, will die. And when our grandchildren are born, most of the zombies will be dead and gone. And it will be up to them to restore Earth back to its original glory. And we can start them down that road right now by doing the right thing and keeping ourselves safe. By keeping ourselves smart.”

Nothing.

“What do you say?”

James stood and crossed the room to where Owen had planted himself behind a table.

“If the virus is starting to wear off already, why should we wait? Why not take back America right now, while they are weakening?”

“Don’t be a fool, James,” Eric stood angrily. “There are fourteen men in this group, and not one of us is capable of taking out three-hundred million of the infected. Maybe more. He said one. One single zombie showed signs of humanity and thought. One is a far cry from what we will need to take back our world.”

“But to wait until we’re dead? It’s only been four years. If the virus is already wearing off, in a few more years we’ll be able to fight…”

“No, James,” Owen said. “That zombie was huge. Strong. No disease would have greatly affected that creature when it was still a man. It only wore off so quickly because it never fully had the body in the first place. Do not overestimate our position. We will not live to see days like we did before this happened. But we can work to be sure that those days will be seen by our descendants. Do I have an agreement?”

Most men in the hall nodded. The women looked terrified but they, too, gave their approval. Even Aaron, the youngest other than Owen’s children, smiled an encouraging smile. When the night was over, only Hannah disliked the idea of migrating to an island. And she refused to voice her thoughts.

Owen’s speech could not have gone better.