The Colony: Renegades (The Colony, Vol. 2) Read online

  He saw her eyes.

  Saw that she understood.

  And then realized that someone else was staring at him.

  Liz.

  The two-year-old hadn’t opened her eyes through all this. Now her eyes were open, and staring at him in a way that sent shivers not just through Ken’s spine, but through his soul.

  He tried to convince himself that it was all right. This was good. She was awake.

  Ken realized that everyone had stopped moving. Maggie was staring at the toddler, watching her with excitement. And he couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like for her to see her daughter hanging comatose for all this time.

  The entire world seemed silent.

  Liz smiled.

  And Ken’s stomach seemed to fall into his legs. It wasn’t the adrenaline surging through his body, either. He knew about adrenaline; knew it was a stop-gap and that he maybe had an hour before he crashed again and was back to being nothing more than a bleeding burden on the group. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t his injuries.

  It was the smile. Not the smile of an infant. Not the smile of his Lizzy.

  She spoke. The same high-pitched toddler voice, but it wasn’t “Lizzy go now” or even his favorite “Daddy kisses.” She looked at each person in the company, even straining her neck to look at Maggie, then said in a cold voice, “You are not family. You are renegades.”

  And then Liz started to scream. Her body contorted in seizure spasms, the movements of someone who has not only lost all control, but who never had it in the first place.

  Ken looked at Maggie. She was staring at their daughter in horror, trying to hold the baby’s flailing limbs, trying to keep her from hurting herself.

  Growling came from above them. The pounding of feet on the ceiling.

  “Good God,” said Buck. “She called them. She called them to us.”

  Ken looked at the man and wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, wanted to shriek at him and punch him into submission because how dare he say such a thing about Ken’s baby?

  But he didn’t.

  It was true.

  The monsters were among them.

  END OF BOOK TWO

  THE SAGA WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK THREE

  THE COLONY: DESCENT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga. Follow him on Facebook (at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings) or on Twitter @mbcollings.

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