The Colony: Descent (12 page)

Ken woke up and
didn’t know how long he’d been asleep.

He couldn’t see
anything.  His eyes were open – he was fairly certain of it – but all was dark.

Still
underground.  The storm tunnel.

His back was wet. 
He thought it was probably blood.

I’m bleeding
out.  This is it
.

Then he realized
that the fluid was flowing too fast to be coming from him.  He was shivering,
too.  Wet, cold.  He might not bleed out after all, but he couldn’t move.  So
he’d either drown if the water level rose any higher or just die of
hypothermia.

How long does it
take to freeze to death?

He tried to
remember.  Not that it would do much good, since he had no control over his
body.

Still, his mind dug
into memory.  It is the nature of human beings to assert control, even where
the control is only over their own minds.  Even where the control offers no
real hope.  Even where the control is only an illusion.

The world was
ending, Ken was dying, and he focused everything he had left on remembering
what hypothermia would do.

The hapkido studio
he’d gone to for years invited first responders in from time to time to talk
about emergency procedures – first aid, what to do in case of a fire, things
like that.  The master teacher believed self-defense was more than kicking and
punching, it was learning how to put out a grease fire, knowing where the
closest police stations were located.

One of the people
had been a paramedic who talked briefly about what to do if caught outside in
the snow.

And just like that,
Ken’s mind clicked to that moment.  “Hypothermia takes a while to set in,” said
the paramedic, a kid who looked like he was barely out of high school, complete
with acne scars and the wiry body of a still-developing young man.  But he
spoke with ease and confidence.  “The military has done studies showing people
can be outside in freezing temperatures wearing next to nothing and be all
right as long as they keep moving.”

The man looked at
the group, grinning a wide, good-natured grin.  Ken realized the paramedic was
probably dead now.

“Of course, that’s
if you’re outside.  You fall into cold water, or you’re injured, chances go
down.  A lot.  So don’t do that.”

The class laughed.

Ken didn’t laugh. 
Not then, not now.  He shivered.  The black around him seemed to grow heavier. 
He didn’t think the water was rising, but he didn’t know for sure: he realized
he couldn’t feel it any more.  He was just numb.

Then a wave of heat
swept over him.  He was still cold, still
freezing
, but he felt hot as
well.

A part of him
wondered how that was possible.

Another part of him
knew he was sick.  Infected from his wounds, from the water, from the dirt and
grime.

Dying.

He tried to call
for help in the darkness.  Couldn’t.

No one was there.

After everything
that had happened, all he had gone through, he wasn’t even going to be able to
die with his family.

Were they even
alive?  Had the explosion –

(
What happened? 
What blew up?  It was big, bigger than when the SUV blew up near the high
school, that’s for sure.
)

– killed his wife? 
His daughters?  What about Aaron and Christopher and Buck?  Had Dorcas made
it?  Derek?

Dorcas and Derek
are gone.  Changed.

He shivered again. 
His tongue felt swollen.

Cold and hot and
cold and hot and cold and hot….

Something moved in
the darkness.  A splash, barely audible over the sound of Ken’s own shivering. 
He realized he was almost thrashing in the tunnel, a half-beached whale on a concrete
shore.

The splashing grew
closer.

Ken
hoped
it
was his family.  Maggie or one of the other survivors.  But he
knew
better.  There was something alien about the way the thing was approaching. 
Something inhuman.  Predatory.

He tried to scream
again.

The scream
resounded only in his mind.

The darkness grew
cloying, heavy.  It had its own scent, its own life.  It pressed on Ken’s
chest, pushing down on him with such force that it grew hard to draw air.  The
zombies had stolen his son, the change had stolen his world, and now the
darkness itself had come to rob him of his last breath.

And the thing in
the dark, the monster that prowled unseen… drew closer.

The weight on Ken’s
chest grew, and he realized it was terror.

Why now?  Why so
afraid?

He didn’t
understand.  He had been on the run since the world changed, since what he was
starting to think of as
the
Change.  Never a moment without danger,
without fear.  He had seen his family tormented, seen his son turned and then
fall a hundred feet into an inferno.

And he was more
afraid now than he had ever been.

Why now?

Was it the fever? 
The injuries?

The dark?

The water slipped
and sloshed around him.  He felt the monster in the dark, questing, searching. 
He remembered the instant before the explosion, the glimpse of something
slipping in through the tunnel’s entry point.

One of
them
. 
It had to be.

Why am I so
afraid?

Because you’re
alone
.

He knew it was
true.  People are designed to be together.  Even as they quarreled over rights
to their own space, even as they fought genocidal wars over everything from
minerals to metaphysics, the first thing any conqueror did was to go out among
the populace.  To become one with them.  Because every person craved
companionship.  Because every human, no matter how holy or how corrupt, feared
dying alone.

I miss my family
.

The thing in the
darkness was right over Ken.  He could feel it there.  And he was glad that
Maggie and the girls were… wherever they were.  Glad, but he also wished they
were here.  Even if that meant they would suffer his fate, there was a small piece
of him that wanted someone to hold his hand at the end.

No.  I’m glad
they’re gone.

The thing bowed
down.

Ken felt teeth dig
into his shoulder.  He had time for one more thing.  One more moment before he
would be gone.  Not time for running in a sick, broken body.  Not time for
screaming with a mouth that refused to follow his commands.  He would go out
alone, with only his thoughts for company.

He did not wish for
others to die to be with him.

He wished them
safety.  Peace.  Life.

I love you, Mags
.

Ken opened his
eyes.

He saw nothing.

Am I dead?

No.  He couldn’t
be.  Heaven wouldn’t be dark like this.

Hell?

No.  He didn’t
think so.

He hurt all over,
but that in itself told him he was alive.  Shivering, but no longer numb.  He
felt as though he was on fire: a cold flame that seared him the way dry ice
would have done.

He wasn’t wet
anymore.  He heard water nearby, but he wasn’t laying in it.

He heard something
rumble.  Felt something warm beside him.  Soft and vaguely comforting. 
Whatever it was moved.

Ken fell asleep.

“What the –“

“Don’t get too
close.”

“What’s it
doing
to him?”

“Don’t know.”

“Someone do
something.”

“Like
what
?”

The voices came
into the darkness.  A light flashed across Ken’s face.  Then disappeared.  The
voices faded.

Something was
pushing into his mouth.

Ken heard the
words, echoing through half-collapsed synaptic corridors: “What’s it
doing
to him?”  Heard the words and though the words were only in his mind he
transposed them over this moment and knew that something new was happening. 
The
things
were doing something to him.

The thing pried his
teeth apart.

Ken tried to shake
his head.  He was still shivering, and all he managed to do was shiver a bit
harder.  Weak.

The thing pushed at
him in the darkness.  Tentacular feelers pressing into his mouth, feeling his
tongue, probing into him.

He gagged.  Bit
down.

Something screamed.

The tentacles
yanked on him.  Jerked his face left and right.  He felt the digits go down his
throat.  Deep.  Deep.

They left something
there.  Some foreign object.

Don’t swallow
it.  Don’t swallow.  Don’t….

He passed out.

He woke, he slept. 
He woke, he slept.

Occasionally there
were flashes of light, but mostly it was dark, black as pure and deep as any
oceanic abyss.

Things moved around
him.  Pressed at him.  Forced their way into his mouth, into his throat.

He woke, he slept.

He tried to cry but
could make no sound.

He woke, he slept.

Wondering what was
being done to him.  What he was changing into.

He woke, he slept.

And then only
slept.

When Ken opened his
eyes again, he could see.  Not much, but enough.  He was still in the darkness. 
Still underground.

A zombie was
leaning over him.  Its face caked by gore and dirt, its mouth hanging open. 
Bending closer.

Ken’s panicked
brain sent a message to his body, and to his surprise his broken body actually
listened, balling up a fist and sending it smashing into the dark spot where
the zombie’s nose should be.

The thing rocked back,
splashing into the streaming water behind it.  It landed on its butt, one hand
going down behind it for support and balance.  The other hand went to its face,
clapped over the spot where Ken had just socked it.

“Owww!”  It glared
at him.  “You broge by dose.”  The monster felt its face gingerly.  Glared some
more.  “
Again
.”

Ken blinked
rapidly.  He was confused.  The zombie was
talking
?

He tried to sit
up.  Found he could do it.  He realized he wasn’t shivering, either.

Splashing sounds
drew his attention.  He looked toward the noise and saw a pair of figures
approaching.  One so large he took up most of the tunnel, the other short and
husky but moving with the fluid grace of a predator.

“Buck?  Aaron?” 
Ken’s discomposure increased.

A moment later the
things – which had been mere shadows on shadow only a second ago – drew close
enough that Ken could see their features.  It
was
the cowboy and the
older man.  Both of them grinned at him, then turned curious faces to the
still-sprawled figure in the center of the tunnel.

“What happened to
you
?”
said Aaron.

Ken looked at the
zombie in the stream.  Only it wasn’t a zombie.  It was Christopher, face
bloody and dirty and looking thinner than Ken had remembered.  His cheek had
been slashed open by something.

The explosion
.

Christopher was
trying to stop the blood rocketing out of his nose.  “He hit me.  Again.”

Aaron laughed.

“It’s not funny.”

Aaron laughed
harder.  Buck joined in a moment later.  Christopher looked at them both with
irritation and shook his head.  He gave up trying to catch the blood and just
let it drip onto his already grossly stained shirt, snorting every few seconds
to clear a clot.

“Not funny.”

Ken laughed now.

“Ken?”

Ken turned. 
Another figure was in the tunnel.

He smiled.  “Mags.”

She flew into his
arms.

He held her. “I
love you, Mags,” he said.

And this time it
wasn’t a goodbye.