The Colony: Descent (17 page)

Run
.

It wasn’t a
thought, it was a command.  An impulse all-but-impossible to resist.

But Ken’s feet
didn’t move.

He leaned toward
the hole.  Toward the thing – then thing
s
– that scraped out of the darkness.

Christopher seemed
equally frozen.  “What…?” he began.  Then even his tongue froze.

The weak,
flickering beam of Christopher’s light began to shake.  Almost delicately at
first, barely a tremor.  Then the shaft of light – outlined by floating motes
of dust dislodged by the thing pulling its way into the tunnel, inch by
terrible inch – started to weave back and forth drunkenly as terror took
control of Christopher’s limbs.

Ken looked through
the flickering, strobing, twitching light.  Focused on the darkness of the hole
and the things coming out of it.

At first he thought
they were snakes, or perhaps some new kind of worms born in the Change.  Stubby
things, wet and slick and eyeless, inching forward with painful movements,
seeking the light.  One, then two.  Another.  Four, five.

It was the fifth
one that forced him to accept the obvious, the thing that his mind had been
trying to avoid admitting.

Not snakes.  Not
snakes at all.

Fingers.

But how could that
be?  The cracks were too small for the zombies to press in, there was no
denying that.  Besides, the fingers themselves were too small, almost….

Ken abruptly felt
what little food he had in his stomach rising into his throat.  He felt his
esophageal muscles tighten, stemming the flood of gorge that wanted to erupt.

“What is that? 
What
are those
?” said Christopher.  His voice wavered as much as his
flashlight, and Ken could tell that he was fighting against the conclusion that
Ken had already come to.

Ken didn’t answer. 
He took a step back, bumping into Christopher.  He almost screamed.  Only the
fact that he had locked his jaw, trying not to vomit in fear and disgust and a
sense of sheer
wrongness
at this sight, kept him from shrieking at the
contact.

He made a noise
that sounded a bit like someone holding a small animal underwater, drowning it
oh-so-carefully.  Oh-so-slowly.

“Hrk.”  It was
almost enough for the puke to start spewing.  He swallowed again.

More fingers.  A
hand.

No room.  No
room for a zombie.

“What is it?” said
Christopher again.  Ken felt the young man grab a handful of his shirt and
start pulling him backward.

The thing in front
of them pulled into view.  Not just fingers.  Hands.

No room for a
zombie.

Arms, bloody and
torn from its passage through dark tunnels too small for movement by any
earthly creature.

No room.

One shoulder, bone
poking through wet muscle partially sheared by sharp concrete edges and buried
steel points.  The joint crackled loudly as it pushed through.

“
What is it?
”
Christopher shrieked.

No room.  No
room for a zombie.

No room for an
adult
zombie
.

The thing pushed
its head out.  Eyes concealed by armored scabs but that nevertheless oriented
right on Ken and Christopher dully reflected the flashlight beam.

“The head’s the
hardest part.
” 
The voice in Ken’s head belonged to Doctor Baird, the man who delivered Derek. 
“Once the head’s out, it’s all over.  Now push, honey!”

The thing in the
hole looked through blinded eyes at Ken.  It chirped, a high-pitched sound that
made Ken’s teeth shake in their sockets.

Then it slipped
forward, sliding over a trail of its own ichorous blood, emerging like Hell’s
bastard version of a newborn from the darkness.  It fell head over feet,
thudding down the rubble.

It was a child.  A
child-thing no bigger than Hope, barely bigger than Lizzy.

It had broken its
legs in the fall.  Ken could hear the crackles as they reset.

Then he heard
something else.  The gentle sifting and soughing of dust over dirt, of silt
sloughing off cement.

There were other
holes, he realized.  Many of them no bigger than a cat.

Hope had been
right.  The zombies had found them.

Another set of
flayed fingers groped for the light.  Another.  More.

“Run,” said Ken.

Christopher pulled
him backward, yanking him as if they could outrun the hungry trilling of the
small things that fell into the tunnel behind them.  As if they could outrun
the memory of what they had just seen, the nightmares that would last the rest
of whatever lives they had left.

They heard
footsteps behind them.  Small, light, obscene.

“Run!” Ken
screamed.  Not for Christopher, but for the others.

He hoped that
whatever exit Buck had planned was close.  And usable.

When Ken stumbled
around the bend, back to where he could see the rest of the group, he was glad
to see that they were on their feet.  He would have been happier if they’d
already been moving, but at least they had taken his shout seriously.

“What did you see?”
said Buck.  He was holding Hope in his arms, and Ken could see at a glance that
the way he was holding her wasn’t just for porting her from one place to
another.  The man had his body half-hunched around her small frame as if to
provide a living suit of armor.

“They got in,”
Christopher said breathlessly.

“How?” said
Maggie.  She was holding Liz, the toddler still naked but back in her carrier
on Maggie’s chest.

Ken noted that Liz
had extended one hand toward Sally.  The snow leopard was standing just behind
Maggie, as close as he could get to Ken’s wife in the cramped tunnel.

Other than that one
hand, though, Liz was limp.  Her head fallen forward, her legs and her other
arm dangling.

What’s with her
and the cat?

A question for
later.  He heard the scuttling of myriad small hands and feet on the concrete
behind them.  Didn’t want to turn, didn’t want to see what the darkness might
be hiding.

But he had to. 
They all had to know.

Christopher spun as
though hearing Ken’s thoughts.

Maggie screamed.

The walls and
ceiling behind them were coated with bloody, moving
things
.  None of
them had much in the way of distinguishing features, all of them seeming like
jumbles of wet limbs stripped of skin.  They were climbing over each other,
sticking to the ceilings and walls, their feet and hands making horrible
suck-pop
noises each time they shifted.

They were all
small.  So small.  None bigger than Hope.  Most even tinier than that.

The light hit them
and they growled.  The same growl as the rest of the hordes, but lighter. 
Higher in pitch, but still pushing that same message into Ken’s head.

Give up.

Give in.

Maggie was still
screaming.  Sally roared, the bellow of the big cat nearly deafening in the
small space of the tunnel.

Aaron stepped past
Ken.  He was holding something: a length of rebar that ended in series of
barb-like frays, almost like a medieval halberd.  He pointed it at the things
that clambered toward them.

“I’ll hold ‘em
off,” he said.

Ken’s stomach
roiled.  He felt disoriented, the terrible realities of what had been done to
him and what he had done to others really setting in for the first time.

Still, he thought
he could have fought off the hordes again.  If they needed to.

But these… they
weren’t the hordes.  They were
children
.  They had been changed, they
had lost themselves.

But any one of them
could have been Hope.  Liz.

Derek.

Was his son one of
the horrible skinned beasts rushing their way?

“No,” he said.  He
grabbed Aaron’s shoulder with a shaking hand.  “We run.”

Aaron looked at
him.  “I can buy you time.”

“We won’t need it. 
We can outrun them.  We need to stick together.”  He pulled Aaron toward him. 
“We can’t lose any more people.  We
can’t.
”

He looked behind
him.  Buck was already moving, grabbing Maggie and pulling her into the main
tunnel.  Sally followed them closely, and Ken knew that the snow leopard was
tied somehow to his children.

More questions. 
More questions and no answers
.

Christopher ran
past.  Gagging and sputtering.  Looking sick.  The light went with him.

“Come on,” said
Ken.  “We can make it together.”

Aaron nodded
curtly.  He grabbed Ken and started pulling him.  “I hope you’re right.”

Ken hoped so, too.

Give up.

Give in.

It wasn’t the same
call after all, Ken realized after running only a few hundred feet in the dark
storm drain.  The call was stronger.  Harder to resist.  The only time it
abated was when Sally roared, which he did periodically as though to
consciously combat the effect of the small things behind them.

Give up.

Give in.

Ken heard them, the
wet/dry mixture of bones crackling and suction pulling and loosing as the
things scuttled over the ceiling and walls.

Something
splashed.  Another splash.

“They’re gettin’
closer,” said Aaron.  He sounded unconcerned, but Ken had finally figured out
that the mere fact of this observation was a sign the cowboy was worried.

“Where we going?”
huffed Ken.

“Buck said there’s a
way out of the tunnel up ahead.”

“Where?”

“Couple hundred
yards.”

A couple hundred
yards.  A block or maybe two.  The kind of trip that comprised a pleasant
stroll in normal times.  But in a tiny tunnel with a flashlight that was barely
hanging onto life as your only illumination it got harder.  Add two children,
injuries, a predatory cat threading between the group’s feet and it got
tougher.

That was without
the monsters.

Ken looked over his
shoulder.  He didn’t see anything at first.  Just darkness, a wall covered in
pitch that sprang into existence a few feet behind him.

Then he saw things
glinting in the black.  The darkness turned from a wall into the emptiness of
space, with perfectly paired stars twinkling along the outer rim of the galaxy.

More of the stars
winked into existence.  Eyes that reflected the weak light in the tunnel,
seemingly illuminated by hidden fires from within.

Ken remembered the
glowing acid the things vomited.  The pinkish ooze that had apparently taken the
place of brain matter.  Maybe their eyes really
were
glowing.  Certainly
it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened.

“Eyes front,”
snapped Aaron.  Ken turned forward just in time to avoid hitting a lip in the
floor of the tunnel.  He stumbled forward and only the cowboy’s strong grip
kept him from going down face-first.

If that happened,
he knew he wouldn’t get up.

“We’re almost
there!” shouted Buck.  Ken could see him ahead.  A huge shape lit from behind
by Christopher’s light.

Would they make it? 
Ken hoped so.  He honestly didn’t know if he could raise a hand against the
things behind him.  He knew they were just as changed as the adults had been;
knew they presented just as much of a danger.

But knowing
something wasn’t the same as believing it.  People know they shouldn’t drink
and drive, they know they should eat right.  They know all manner of things
that they don’t really
believe
– or at least don’t believe apply to
them.  And they die because of those distinctions.

Ken didn’t want to
find out if he could believe that it was worth attacking a once-child to save
his family.  Didn’t want to discover anew the depths of his savagery.

Buck stopped
suddenly.  The tunnel had ended, and at first Ken despaired, thinking it must
have collapsed.

Then he saw the
door built into the side.  Buck swung it open.

Daylight swam into
the tunnel.  Ken could barely look at it.  He groaned as his eyes tried to
adjust to long-absent brightness.  Tears streamed down his cheeks.

He kept pounding
forward.

Collided with
something soft.

It growled. 
Sally.  Not moving.

Ken blinked. 
Everything was a blur.  But he could see that Buck wasn’t out the door.

“Move!” he
shouted.  He heard the chitter of the child-things, the infant-things, the
things that had once laughed and played and now hungered for their blood.

“I can’t,” sobbed
Buck.

Maggie started
crying.

Ken shoved past
them.

He saw out the
door.

Looked right at the
fifty full-sized zombies standing directly outside.

Liz started to
scream.  A moment later, Hope joined in.  Not screams of terror, but ecstasy as
they surrendered anew to whatever power held sway over them.

Ken looked at
Maggie.  She couldn’t return his gaze.  Just held tight to their baby.

The chittering of
the things in the tunnel came closer.

The zombies outside
turned to gaze on them.

Then they parted. 
Moving aside to let something pass through.

Ken’s blood
chilled.  Then froze completely as a massive form passed between the dozens of
other zombies.  Six and a half feet tall, skin of pure white on one side of its
body, the other side charred.

It was the thing
from his dream.  The muscled beast, half charred, half pristine, who had
captured and bitten and turned his son.  Who had stolen Ken’s boy.

Beside the black
and white creature walked another figure.  Ken registered who it was at the
same time he heard Aaron curse.  The cowboy’s voice was strangled, halting. 
Not just afraid, but… lost.

The figure was
Dorcas.  Dark fluid pouring from a dozen wounds, black scabs covering one eye
completely and circling the other like an army laying siege.  She growled.

Give up.

Give in.

One more figure
moved to join the horde.  Lurching, walking on a body that had been impossibly
broken and just as impossibly mended again.  But not completely.  Never
completely.  The eyes rolled back, sightless but somehow still able to find
prey, to track the last vestiges of humankind.

Light brown hair
lay plastered against the forehead.  The skin was singed.  A face that should
have been unlined but was peeling away in curls.

The air left Ken’s
lungs in a gasp and felt like it was yanking part of his soul out along with it.

“Derek,” he
whispered.

END OF BOOK THREE

THE SAGA WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK
FOUR

THE COLONY: VELOCITY