The Colony: Shift (The Colony, Vol. 5) Read online

  The knife blade broke, the metal embedded in the thing’s neck. Ken was left with nothing but the hilt. Useless.

  The thing kept biting. Vomiting acid. Perhaps dying, but also seconds from killing Aaron.

  Ken pulled at it. No use. The thing was too strong.

  He looked around for something to use. Anything to serve as a weapon. Saw an open door leading to a small compartment: the area Aaron must have pulled the crowbar from. Inside hung several small tools and a few large pieces of metal.

  Ken grabbed one of the metal pieces. About fifteen inches long, a jaw-like structure at one end. He realized it was a replacement coupler, a knuckle that could be used in case one of the ones between the cars broke in transit.

  It looked like it weighed a ton. But to Ken’s adrenalized muscles it felt light as a feather.

  He spun back to Aaron. Swung it as hard as he could. It hit the zombie in the back of the neck.

  The thing’s head exploded. The force of the hit probably severed its spine as well, probably would have dropped it if the impact hadn’t simultaneously driven it right over the side.

  “You okay?” he said to Aaron.

  Aaron nodded, panting. Rain rolled in rills down his creased face, pearled in his beard. He looked at Ken strangely.

  “What?” said Ken.

  But there was no time to answer that. More of the things were coming.

  51

  The rain was falling sideways.

  Sideways, and more of the things were coming.

  The drops falling harder, bigger, faster.

  Sideways, and now there were five on the end of the gangplank, clambering over each other in their effort to get to Ken and Aaron. Probably that many on Christopher’s side.

  Sideways rain.

  Five zombies. That was all. But it was enough. Enough to kill them. To Change them and then run to the locomotive and take the rest of the survivors; the rest of the people the Ken loved.

  Sideways rain.

  Ken realized that no more of the monsters were climbing aboard the train.

  And the rain wasn’t flying sideways. The train had started moving. Was just going fast enough that they were racing into the drops. And in so doing it had also outpaced the rest of the zombies.

  “Back up!” he screamed. Then, louder, “Chris, move back!”

  “No argument here!” screamed the young man.

  Ken turned and pushed Aaron. The cowboy stumbled back, looking confused. Ken didn’t give him a chance to argue, though. “Move!” he screamed.

  The things that had made it aboard the train growled. The sound of feet slapping on wet metal.

  “Jump!” shouted Ken when Aaron reached the end of the walkway that spanned the length of the second locomotive. He put a hand on the cowboy’s back and propelled him across the gap between this car and the first locomotive.

  Aaron leaped, as much out of forced propulsion as by choice.

  Ken looked over and saw another form flying through the air. Christopher.

  Both men landed on the back of the lead engine, on the steps leading to the twin doors that allowed entry to the engine’s crew cab. Ken saw Buck standing in there, still holding Hope and Liz. Sally stood at his feet, the cat’s hair standing on end and its one remaining ear pricked forward, its teeth bared.

  Ken leaped.

  He didn’t make it to the steps.

  Instead, he slammed to the coupler between the first and second locomotives. He heard a voice as he landed. His.

  “Please, please, please.”

  He hadn’t realized he was saying anything, but wasn’t surprised. He had known there was no way to hold what little remained of the train. They didn’t have enough weapons, didn’t have enough manpower.

  All they could do was get rid of the back two locomotives.

  He thought the front engine was an independent locomotive. Could keep going without any help from the back two. He was sure he remembered that from that long-ago date to the train station.

  Pretty sure.

  He landed on the short span of metal between the first two engines, looked to the side. Panicked because he didn’t spot what he was looking for, then realized it was there, just painted. The same piece of metal that he and Aaron had helped Elijah use to separate the other cars from the engine – what the huge man had called a draw bar. It was here, but it had neon orange markings that had thrown Ken for a second.

  He reached down, his left hand gripping the metal of the locomotive, right hand reaching for that bar below.

  He heard a growl.

  Looked behind.

  Three of the things. One on the walkways to either side of the hood unit behind him. One looking down from above. Rain pounded down their faces, giving their already-wrathful features an added air of unreality. They seemed like things that had clawed their ways up from the depths of some dark, cold place to find this moment.

  The one above Ken was one of the ones that had no eyes. Only scaly growths where eyes once had been, where eyes – in a right world – still would be.

  It chirped. The sound high and piercing, almost a whistle. Then its head oriented downward. Not looking at Ken – no eyes to look with – but certainly knowing he was there. The thing snarled.

  52

  The rain was still falling. Dripping off Ken’s face, arms, back. His hand, reaching for that bar.

  He kept reaching as the thing jumped. As it flew toward him. Like he was on an inalterable autopilot, some setting he couldn’t control. And of course that was fairly true: if he could loose the train, get his family away… well, then it didn’t matter if he died or not. If they lived, that was enough.

  The thing fell toward him. Like it knew Ken was all that would separate the rest of them from their prey.

  The rain fell.

  Thunder finally came.

  A colossal crash roared out above Ken, the sound so loud that it nearly deafened him. So loud it did what the sight of the monster flying at him had not: it stopped him, just for a moment, from reaching for the bar that would cut the cab unit away from the two trailing engines.

  It was loud enough, somehow, that it shifted the flight of the zombie.

  The thing slammed backward, rocketing not into Ken but instead colliding with the forward bulkhead of the middle locomotive behind him. It slid down the metal, twitching, and disappeared under the wheels.

  It all happened so fast that Ken almost didn’t see the cratered mass of black and pink that the thing’s head had become.

  Two more claps of thunder exploded nearby. Ken looked up. Saw two more of the zombies dancing back. Pushed back.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, do it!” screamed a voice from somewhere unseen in the cab. A voice that was grating, harsh. Spoken through a throat badly-cut and just as badly-sewn in a mockery of medical care. Theresa.

  Another explosion. Not thunder. Theresa was shooting. Buying him time.

  Ken reached the bar. He prayed it wasn’t bent or mangled the way the one farther back had been. There was no way he had the leverage to pry something like that from this angle.

  He grasped the bar.

  Pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  He pulled again.

  The bar refused to move.

  More of the zombies appeared. Crawling up the sides of the middle engine to look at him. He only had a second. And doubted that Theresa could continue blasting them like skeets out of the air.

  53

  What’s going on?

  What am I doing wrong?

  Ken looked down. His gaze focused instantly on a pair of lines snaking below the knuckle he stood on. Maybe that was it. Maybe.

  He was still holding the replacement coupler. He swung it now. Hit each of the hoses. Both separated, one just falling apart and the other seeming to burst with an explosion of air.

  He grabbed the draw bar again. Still nothing. It wouldn’t pull.

  Sudden murmuring. Then Aaron screamed, “You can’t separ
ate it without slack! Brace! And get ready to pull!”

  Ken’s mind processed the instructions and figured out what was going to happen only a nanosecond before it occurred. He dropped the knuckle that was still in his hand and managed to grab a nearby grill and say a quick prayer that it would hold him.

  Then there was a shriek as brakes, both air brakes and mechanical pads, engaged.

  He slammed forward against the bulkhead of the engine. Saw two bodies fly forward and down and disappear under the wheels of the train in a spray of red and black. Two zombies gone.

  An instant later the back engines slammed forward, pounding him the opposite direction as they rammed the front locomotive. He nearly lost his grip, and his body screamed at him to hug the train.

  Ken ignored the impulse. Forced himself to lean out.

  He assumed that there were normally controls to insure that all the cars of the train braked at the same time.

  He assumed that someone – Elijah – had overridden them to cause precisely this effect.

  He assumed that the back engines had been meant to collide with the front one.

  Because the knuckles under his feet shifted.

  There was slack. For just an instant perhaps.

  He grabbed the draw bar again. Braced on the half of the connecter closest to the front engine. Pulled up.

  Something shifted under Ken’s feet.

  More explosions above. Too many to be from one gun. Elijah must be shooting as well. The guns that had pointed at Ken’s children now covering the family’s escape.

  The knuckle under his feet split in two.

  The front locomotive pulled away from the two engines behind it.

  The growls continued. But they quickly grew fainter. Drowned by the sound of gunfire, then the sound of the engine. Then the rain alone was enough to silence them.

  And then the rain was all there was.

  Ken shimmied to the right until he could put a hand on the guard rail beside the short row of steps that led up to the cab door on that side. He got himself centered on the steps, taking his time. It would be only too perfect to survive everything that had just happened, only to slip on a wet tread and fall off the train.

  Once he was sure of his footing, he walked up.

  Only a step, though. That was all he went.

  Theresa was waiting in the doorway. Her gun smoking, the rain puffing into steam where it touched the hot barrel.

  The bore looked enormous. Big enough to fall into. And he could see all of it, pointed as it was directly between his eyes.

  Beyond Theresa, he could make out Elijah. The big man had one hand on the train controls. But he was swiveled in his seat, pointing his gun as well. Ken couldn’t see what he was aiming at, but he suspected it was his family.

  “Now,” said Theresa, “we’re going to figure a few things out.”

  54

  “Theresa, now’s not the time,” said Aaron. He was still perched outside the cab, on the other stairs directly across from Ken.

  “Now’s the perfect time.”

  “We don’t –“

  Theresa looked like she was going to cut Aaron off, but Ken beat her to the punch. “No, Aaron.” He stared evenly at Theresa. “Explain things to me, Theresa. Explain why you would go to the trouble of saving us, only to kill us. Why you would drive right into danger for us, then tie us up.” He paused. Then added, brutally, “Why your brother thought it was worth dying for us, if you were just going to kill us.”

  Theresa’s face drained of blood, and for a moment Ken worried he might have gone too far. Her gun stayed on him, and whether he saw her knuckle whiten against the trigger or whether it was just a trick of the light, he couldn’t say.

  She stood like that, motionless, a statue of grief just out of the reach of the rain that stitched silver threads through the rapidly-graying day. Then she moved, almost jerking to action. Her gun stayed on Ken, but she reached behind her and pulled something from the back of her belt.

  Ken had seen it before. It was a box that she had had with her when she first appeared, blasting onto the scene in a school bus like the weirdest avenging angel who ever existed. She had been holding it when Derek –

  (No. Don’t think of him that way. Derek’s dead, it was just something that looked like him. Not your boy. Just a thing.)

  – appeared. When he screamed. And when he screamed, so did the box, emitting a high electronic peal.

  “What is that?” said Ken.

  “This?” she smiled. And gave the only answer Ken couldn’t have foreseen; the only answer that made no sense whatsoever.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  55

  The rain saturated Ken’s hair. It coursed over his forehead and into his eyes. But he blinked not because of that, but because he couldn’t really understand what Theresa had just said.

  “You don’t… you don’t know?” He blinked again, like if he blinked enough he would magically open his eyes one of these times and the world he had known – the world that actually made sense – would magically reappear. “Then what’s the point of –“

  Theresa flicked a button on the side of the box. The same grinding, electronic scream he had heard before came again. Quieter – much quieter – but it was there. It created a grating and somehow eerie background to the words Theresa spoke. A reminder that even now, even “safe” for the moment, they couldn’t escape the strangeness that had enveloped the world.

  “Me and my brother made it through the first few days. Met up with Elijah. Just us, hunkered down and trying to ride out what was happening.” She shuddered, memories skipping wraithlike across her features. “Then we met a guy. Said he was from the government. Some special forces guy who’d been sent from an army base.” She shook the box in her hand. “He had this. Said all this,” and she nodded, taking in the world, everything around them, “had happened so fast it had to be the result of some kind of broadcast. A signal.”

  Ken nodded. This was what Aaron had already told him. And it made sense. But still….

  “So what? Why lock me up? Why come after me and my kids?”

  Theresa was still holding the box. Her eyes flicked to Aaron. He nodded.

  She moved. The gun still pointed at Ken, but the box shifted toward the inside of the cab. There was a small cry – a voice that Ken recognized as Maggie’s.

  He barely heard it.

  What he heard was the squeal of the box as it increased. The volume rising as it moved toward his family.

  Toward the girls.

  He shook his head, not liking the implications of what had just happened. Not liking the conclusions his own mind jumped to.

  Theresa turned back toward him. “The soldier – Captain Martin, he said his name was – died before he could say much. But he was looking for the broadcast source. He had this thing on him.” She shrugged again. “Two plus two is four.” She swiveled so the box was aimed back into the cab.

  The shriek of the box couldn’t drown out the cry of fear that rose up in Ken’s heart.

  56

  “We weren’t there for you,” said Elijah softly. Even from the cab the big man’s deep voice carried clearly. “We were just following the sounds of the box. Trying to find the source – what we figured was the source. Trying to put things to rights. Or maybe just get humanity’s feet back under it again.” He shook his head. But like Theresa, his motions did not cause his aim to waver. “Just buy our side a little bit of time.” He grinned, a lopsided smile that spoke of dashed hope and life lost more eloquently than a long soliloquy could have done. “Just doin’ our best. But along the way we saw you needed help and went in to help you. Then we realized that your daughters were making the box sing loud and clear.”

  “They’re good people, Ken,” said Aaron. The cowboy spoke loud enough for his voice to carry over the thrum of the train’s engine, the clack of the wheels on the tracks. But it still sounded soft, caring. Like he was breaking bad news to a friend.


  “Good people?” Ken said. “Good people who were going to… what? Kill my kids?”

  Aaron looked down. Not like he was ashamed, but like he was trying to figure out the best way to say what had to be said. “Yeah. Good people. Like you and Maggie and Christopher and Buck are good people. Like Dorcas. Like your boy. Good people, because they’re all willing to do what’s right.”

  “Right isn’t killing –“

  “It is if the people you kill are the people who are killing everyone else.” Aaron looked up now, his eyes clear and piercing. “Ken, you willing to keep your family at the expense of the entire world?”

  “You don’t even know for sure the girls have anything to do with this!” Ken said. Desperation crept into his voice, cracking the edges of the words, raising them too high.

  Aaron’s eyes hardened a bit. “They’re in it,” he said. “They haven’t been acting right. Not from the moment we found them. And you want further proof,” he added, and jerked his chin toward the cab. Ken saw Sally there, looking down at them with curious eyes. “How many kids you know got their own personal leopard following them around?”

  Ken shook his head. Shook it and shook it like he thought he could dislodge what was happening, like it might all be a bad dream and if he just twisted his body hard enough he would wake up and find all had come back to normal. The family safe, Derek alive.

  Especially that.

  (Daddy, where are you?)

  He almost jerked in place as the voice came into his head. The sound of his firstborn, faint but clear in his mind. He had thought he’d heard it before, when Derek – the thing that Derek had become – had been chasing them. But now there was nothing like that going on. Now he was alone in the rain.

  Ken wondered if he was truly going mad. A body bent and broken beyond anything God could have intended, a mind pushed to the edge by loss and desperation.