The Colony: Descent (9 page)

No one else had
noticed.  No one else had heard.

The fingers pushed
aside a valise, but the soft bag didn’t move much, jammed up between a tote and
a hardside Samsonite bag like Moe, Larry, and Curly wedged into a door.

The fingers – one
truncated,
all
bloody – twitched as they searched for ingress to the
burrow.

Ken watched.

I can let it
happen
.

No one else would
know.  Not until too late.  It would be quick.  Probably more merciful than
running, too.  What would running get them, after all?

He saw Derek’s
face.  The boy throwing back his head and shrieking, blood erupting from the
child’s skin as his pores hemorrhaged.  Painful, yes.

But quick.

The fingers looked
longer now.  More of them, too.  Another hand?

Christopher made a
noise. Not a
eureka
sound, more of a ”Maybe over here?” grunt.

The luggage shifted
a bit more.  The Three Stooges were still wedged together, but Ken could see
that wouldn’t last long.

“No, dammit.” 
Christopher moved to a different spot.

Just let go.  Go
to Derek.

Ken saw his son as
he had been.  Beautiful, with blond hair that was so often sopping with sweat,
his smile wide and slightly buck-toothed.

But his son wasn’t
like that anymore.  He was dead.  Bitten and then fallen into flame.  He was
dead.

He had to be.

And if dead then…
what?

In Heaven?

One of the finger-tangles
became a full-sized hand.  Pushing through.  Ken stared at it.  Wondering if
there was a God, if there was a Heaven.

And realized that,
right now, that didn’t matter.

He was still
breathing.  His wife was still breathing.  His daughters were still alive. 
Changed, maybe, but not dead.

Derek had died to
save them.  And Ken wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t give in to self-pity and so
destroy the entirety of what Derek’s life had built to.

The past builds to
the present.  The present serves the future.  And all of us have a purpose. 
Derek’s had been to save them.

Ken’s might not be
so noble, but he wouldn’t cut off his son’s gift.

He drew in a
breath.  It seemed to take all his strength.  Everything he had went into the
conscious motion.  Staring at the hands that pushed through the suitcases. 
Breathing in.  Opening his mouth.  He couldn’t scream.  Just a wheeze, barely
more than a whisper. 

“They’re here!”

Maggie
did
scream.  She saw the fingers, she must have.  Either that or the wall of bags
that Christopher had made, rippling like it was possessed.

Only possession was
simple.  Just ghosts.  A little holy water, a stern-eyed priest with a heart of
gold and you were fine, right?

This was something
far worse than mere demons.  Far more evil than anything the Devil might
conjure forth.

Christopher
stumbled toward the moving luggage.  It wasn’t far to go in the confined space,
but it seemed to take forever for him to lurch up the slanting cargo hold.  He
wedged his foot against some bent metal, then pressed his back into the bags
the undead were pushing against.  His nose was swollen and crooked where Ken
had punched him earlier after being hit with one too many shots of adrenaline. 
His lips and chin and shirt were stained with blood.  He looked almost as bad
as some of the things that were trying to get to them.

Only his eyes
betrayed his full humanity.  The zombies – undead or alive – didn’t have the
capacity for the kind of fear Ken saw in Christopher’s gaze.

“Find a way out,”
said Christopher.  He grunted and grit his teeth as something bore down on him
from behind.  Luggage started to fall down into the hollow space around the
survivors like a slow-motion avalanche.

Christopher threw
his arms out.  Trying to provide as much coverage as possible.

One of his arms
went near the questing hands that had already broken through.  The fingers
grabbed his arm.  Clawed and raked at him.  Christopher cried out as the hands
pulled and pushed and scratched.  Ken heard tearing as the young man’s
shirtsleeve ripped.

Blood started
dripping off Christopher’s arm.  But he didn’t move away.  Just let the things
dig into the meat of his body as though he was not only willing but absolutely
determined to serve as the hors d’oeuvre in the things’ upcoming feast.

Ken heard the
others moving frantically.  Maggie and Aaron and Buck tossing suitcases left
and right, all stealth discarded in favor of speed as they searched for a way
out.

Ken couldn’t move. 
He just watched Christopher.  Picked apart a single cell at a time.  He
remembered the things pulling apart the zombie that Aaron had pinned in their
way.  Wondered how long it would take Christopher to suffer the same fate.  And
saw in the other man’s eyes that he was wondering the same thing.

But there was more,
too.  There was determination.  Christopher wasn’t going to move.  He would
remain there until he died, until blood loss forced him to fall.

Another person
sacrificing a future for people he had never really gotten to know.  Like
Dorcas.

And just as with
Dorcas, Ken could do nothing.  Nothing but watch.

Then he felt hands
grabbing him.  Yanking him.

He wanted to
scream.  Knowing the things must have found another way in.  But he had exhausted
the last bit of his energy calling out to warn the others.

He had nothing
left.  No voice.  No strength.

He saw
Christopher’s eyes.  Open wide and knowing what was coming.  Seeing the future
clearly.

And not unhappy.

The fingers wrapped
around Ken’s stomach, his arm.

He waited for the
bite.

It didn’t come.

Instead, the
fingers tightened around him and then pulled him away from the things he had
been laying on.  He saw that the thing that had jabbed into his back had been a
guitar case.

For some reason
that seemed terribly important.

Then the hands spun
him around and he was facing Buck.  The gray-faced older man was panting with
the effort of pulling Ken’s dead weight.  His eyes flicked over Ken’s
shoulders.

“Go,” said
Christopher, and Ken could no longer hear the guy but could hear the strain in
his voice.  How many of the things was he holding back?  How long could he hold
out?

Buck seemed to have
the same questions on his mind.  The big man hesitated, then began to put Ken
down.

“Don’t!” Christopher
half-shouted.

“I can hold them
longer,” said Buck.

Christopher
laughed.  At least, Ken thought it was a laugh.  It was an explosion of air, as
though Christopher had started laughing and gotten gut-punched mid-chuckle.  “
Now
you tell me.”  Ken heard the young man grunt again.  “No way to change places,
Bucky.”

“It’s just Buck.”

Another grunt.  “I
know.  But you look like a Bucky.”  Sounds of shifting, and a bag fell on Ken. 
“Get going, man.”

Buck hesitated. 
Then nodded.  He started pulling Ken downward, farther into the burrow the
survivors had created.  He paused a moment.

“Don’t,” said
Christopher.  “Just go.”  Another grunt, and this one sounded weaker.  The
sound of someone whose will was strong, but whose body was going to give out
soon.  “Take care of yourself, Bucky.”

Christopher
laughed.  A real laugh, not a punch-to-the-kidneys laugh.

It was the laugh
that followed Ken into the darkness as Buck pulled him away from the things. 
Down into black.  Into nothing.  But away from the monsters.

Away from a friend.

The next moments
were nothing but confusion for Ken.  Pain had wrapped thick cotton around his
senses, making it difficult to parse out what was happening.  There was
darkness.  Faraway sounds of flame.  Movement.

Buck pulled him down
– Ken
thought
it was down – then over something that jabbed hard at his
ribs as he was dragged over it.

“Where are you?”
said Buck.

“Here!”  Both
Maggie and Aaron answered in unison.  Ken heard thudding.

Buck altered
course.  Pulling Ken with him.

Behind them, from
the dark place they had just abandoned, Christopher screamed.  Just once.  A
short, sharp shriek that knifed through the darkness.

Buck moved faster. 
Dragging Ken over, then down.  A sudden drop and he felt himself hit something
hard and with a smell he remembered from somewhere.  Smelled like… like the
time he and Maggie had a blowout on the way home from a camping trip.  Before
Derek came along, just the two of them and they were so poor back then.  Poor
but happy.  Ken changed the tire but they didn’t get moving.  They got a
blanket out of the car and went into the woods and made love.

The thing under Ken
was a tire.  Big.

Landing gear
.

Ken felt a flicker
of hope.  Landing gear had to be lowered.  So maybe there was a way out of
this.  A way to escape the things behind them.

Buck flipped him
over.  Propped him up.  Ken found himself staring at Hope.  She was slumped,
still unconscious or comatose or whatever it was.

Was
she even Hope anymore?

He didn’t know.  He
hoped so.

“Leave me.”

Ken was amazed he
had managed to say the words, but glad.  It made no sense for Buck to be
hauling him along like this.  No sense for the big man and the others to risk
the group to save dead weight, someone who was shutting down.

Dying.

Ken couldn’t see
Buck’s face in the dark.  Couldn’t see much of anything.  But he heard the big
older man hiss angrily.  “Don’t ever say that again,” he said.  “Kids need
their parents.”

The big shape in
the darkness moved.  Stopped.  “Don’t
ever
say that again,” it repeated.

Buck left.  The
thudding that had been coming from the same direction Maggie’s and Aaron’s
voices had come from increased.  Like Buck was helping bang on something.

Behind, in the
cargo hold, there was a huge, cluttered pounding.  Not just one or two bags this
time.  Lots of them, all falling at once.

Christopher must
have given out.

Go with God, man
.

Still the thuds
ahead.  And behind, the sounds of hands and feet.  Crawling.  The undead did
not speak, but their limbs made noise as they moved impossibly in the dark.

He looked at Hope
again.

Her eyes were
open.  Or maybe he only imagined it.  Maybe he only imagined the glitter in the
darkness, the momentary flicker of light reflecting from eyes that shone like
those of a coyote in the wild.

Then something
grabbed Hope.  Lifted her away.

Ken was alone.

Alone in the dark,
with only his thoughts and the sounds of the scuttling undead for company.

A moment later Ken
was grabbed again.  This time he managed to convince himself not to panic
internally.  Even though he could
hear
the things coming to him.  Even
though he knew they were close.

He just let himself
relax.  Let himself go with whatever was happening.

Not like he could
do much more, regardless.  He managed to keep his eyes open, but didn’t have
much more juice than that.

He heard huffing
and puffing.  That calmed his nerves a bit.  It had to be Buck.  Maybe Aaron,
but probably Buck.  Certainly not one of the undead things behind him… as far
as he could tell,
they
didn’t breathe.

He wondered if he
was changing into one of them.  Maybe it wasn’t just his injuries that were
getting to him.

He’d been bitten,
after all.

And as soon as he
thought that it seemed like his arm caught fire.  The half-circle where the
teeth had broken his flesh burned like a brand.  He would have screamed if he
could have, if he’d had strength to do so.

But there was no
strength.  Just exhaustion.  Pain.

Ken’s head bounced
off something.  Not luggage or the huge wheel of the plane.  Something hard.

He didn’t make a
sound.  Just listened to his heartbeat crashing in his ears.  Listened to Buck
panting as the big man pulled him…
where
?

No sooner did Ken
ask the question than his forward motion ceased.  He couldn’t see anything. 
But he could hear the sounds of the undead as they crawled close behind,
searching in death-silence for their prey.

Close.

The meaty sound of
bloody flesh on metal.

Would Christopher
be among them?  Changed from friend to enemy and taking his place at the front
of the undead?

Buck started
pulling Ken again.  Over, then Ken dropped.

But not before he
saw two of the undead coming at him.