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

“The most successful invasions start in one of two ways,” Aaron continued, talking over Ken as though he had never spoken. “Either the invading force infiltrates the enemy, taking them over from within, or they attack with overwhelming force and crush them as fast as possible.”

  “Shock and awe,” murmured Ken.

  “Something like that,” said Aaron. “So what I think is that these zombies, they aren’t the first wave. The first wave happened decades, maybe centuries ago. Ideas that came into our minds, became a part of our subconscious, a part of our stories. The dead rising up, the living becoming hyper-fast monsters who live only to kill.”

  Ken shook his head. “You’re saying the zombie stories were some kind of propaganda? Some attempt to win us over to the idea of the walking dead?” He snorted.

  Aaron shook his own head. “No, Ken. You ain’t understanding me. I think those ideas came into our heads because these things – the things that caused the zombies – tried to change us before. Maybe they were too weak, or maybe we were too strong. But either way, they couldn’t change us. They could only give us glimpses. Shadows, dreams. Ideas that some of us took and wrote stories about, told legends about. They became part of our stories, and we never realized….”

  Ken stared at the cowboy, the once-friend, the once-savior who had become a traitor and kidnapper. “We never realized…?”

  “Never realized that the stories weren’t stories. They were intercepted communications. They were the enemy’s first attempt to take us over. To take us, to change us. To kill us and take our place.”

  4

  Aaron must have seen the disbelief on Ken’s face. Ken didn’t want to give away what was going on inside; was actively trying to mask his feelings. But what Aaron was saying was so incredible, so ridiculous –

  (so right, don’t forget that, you know he’s telling the truth)

  – that it was impossible for him to keep his feelings locked inside.

  The zombies had come to them before?

  The movies, the books, the stories were all evidence of previous… what… invasion attempts? Recon missions?

  It was all too crazy.

  Aaron touched Ken’s shoulder. “I know, it’s nuts. But it fits. The way it all happened at once. The whole world went bonkers in ten minutes, Ken. There was no outbreak, no gradual infection. Just half the world turned, and then turned on the other half in the space of ten minutes.”

  Ken nodded in spite of himself. Thinking of the way the things had turned their heads up, mouths open, panting in time. Like they had been on some sort of cosmic remote control. Like they were….

  Downloading.

  That was it. Like they were receiving information. Instructions, or alterations.

  Aaron seemed to be following Ken’s thoughts, unspoken or not. He made a jabbing motion with his good hand. “And they don’t die when you hit ‘em in the head. They go nuts.”

  Ken seized on that. Clutched it like a man about to drown, a man grasping crazily for anything that might serve as a lifeline. Even if it meant dragging that thing down to the depths and death right with him.

  “That’s right! That means the stories were wrong. So they couldn’t –”

  Aaron cut him off. “Misinformation. It won’t kill ‘em, but it cuts off the control of…” and he nodded upward, “… whatever’s controlling ‘em.” He was silent a moment before continuing, “They don’t want us attacking them that way, so they include a bit of over-confidence. Think about it: they say to our minds that all we need to do is hit them with an easy headshot. And the first time we do, we think, ‘Holy shit, don’t do that again.’ Keeps the army intact.”

  Ken thought about what did happen with the things when their heads were attacked. “What about that pink and black stuff that comes out? Where are their brains? And how did the ones in the airplane – the dead ones – rise from the dead? Explain that, Aaron.”

  He realized he sounded pleading. Realized that was no mistake. His sanity might hang on the reply. The answers Aaron was providing just made everything worse. It was one thing to realize that they had been hit by some hideous virus, a manmade mistake or a natural response to humanity’s long history of cavalier abuse of the planet.

  But an attack? An…

  … invasion?

  That was what it had to be. If the things were doing this, they had to be coming from somewhere above them. Somewhere not of this world. Somewhere alien. And somewhere that didn’t even view the world Ken understood as worthy of anything but extermination.

  Ken shuddered, and so did Aaron. Just a small twitch, but the cowboy looked as uncomfortable as he ever had. Any show of discomfort on the other man’s part always scared Ken. The man was a rock; the only time he’d let himself really succumb to emotion was when Dorcas –

  (one more lost, just like Derek, just like my boy)

  – had nearly died. Then he had been a force of nature, an unstoppable juggernaut. Now, he looked suddenly all-too-human. Just one more primitive cowering in the dark, praying the lightning wouldn’t strike too close.

  “Aaron,” Ken whispered, “what does this have to do with Hope and Lizzy? With Derek?” Because even though his boy had been bitten, he had come back. And there was no escaping the fact that even as a zombie his son had been different. Special. Almost revered.

  Aaron hesitated.

  And in that moment, the train rocked on its wheels. Then again, much harder.

  5

  Aaron froze. Ken was already immobile, propped against the inside wall of the boxcar. But he tensed. The motion felt stronger than the subtle bounce of train wheels over the seams of steel rails.

  It didn’t repeat.

  Aaron had been staring upward, an eerie analog to the stare of the zombies that he contended were the advance force of some other threat – perhaps something even worse.

  Now he looked back at Ken. And chose to ignore the question that had just been asked. He grabbed Ken’s arm instead. Ken didn’t understand why, until the cowboy felt his forearm, and something burned.

  The bite.

  So much had happened that Ken had – if not forgotten, then at least buried the fact that he had been bitten by one of the things. A half-circle of scarred flesh where one of the creatures had planted its upper teeth and bitten down hard enough to break the skin only a few days before. A descent through the passenger space of a crashed plane, a hellish walk through an inferno inhabited by the walking dead.

  Ken had been bitten. Bitten, but hadn’t turned. Hadn’t Changed.

  He might have figured that it was because the thing that bit him had been one of the undead, as opposed to one of the things transformed directly from life to unthinking psychopaths. But no, Dorcas had been bitten by the same things. Bitten while covering the exit of the rest of the group. She had stayed behind, knowing it was the last thing she would do, knowing she would be bitten.

  And then she had come back. And stood at Derek’s side. Along with the half-burnt giant who had Changed Ken’s boy.

  So the undead things’ bite could cause the Change.

  But not in Ken.

  Why?

  “You’re not special,” said Aaron. “We don’t think so, anyway. And we don’t think it’d be a good idea for you to get fully bitten to test the hypothesis.”

  That last word reminded Ken that Aaron was much more than a simple cowboy. He was very, very smart. Something more than the simple ol’ country boy he pretended to be. What exactly, Ken had no idea. Just one more mystery.

  Aaron traced the half-circle on Ken’s forearm. “You only got half-bit. We think that’s why you didn’t turn.” He looked at Ken. “We think that what started this all was a transmission. Some kind of radio- or radioactive-like wave that attacked our minds and caused them to change our bodies instantaneously.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  Aaron grunted. “All this is impossible. But that would explain the pink crap that explodes out of their heads when you hit them hard
enough. The brain gets changed. It’s not a brain anymore, it’s some kind of gel that exists to boost transmission from….” He nodded up. “And when they bite us, it focuses that transmission on the person who gets bit. Changes ‘em.” He traced the semicircle on Ken’s arm again. “You only got half-bit,” he said again. “Wasn’t enough to fully focus the transmission.” He looked Ken in the eye. “You got damn lucky, Ken. Damn lucky.”

  Ken thought about it. About the sense of it. It fit, but it was guesswork. Still, Aaron was speaking as if it was more than simple conjecture. He spoke as if he knew. Certainty in his voice. Ken almost asked what the cowboy was holding back.

  Then he realized that Aaron hadn’t answered one question. The most important question.

  “Aaron,” he said, and put as much force into his voice as he could. He tried to imagine that it was the cowboy that was bound, and he was the one who was free and held the only light in the car. “What does this have to do with my kids?”

  Aaron looked away. Looked down.

  “Ken,” he finally said. “I think we might have to kill them.”

  6

  When he said the words, he said them in a monotone. A voice that was bereft of concern. He might as well have been announcing that he had to go to the Laundromat: “Gotta go to the store. We’re out of milk. Might have to kill your kids.”

  Ken didn’t know if that meant he didn’t care about Liz and Hope. Maybe he did care, and this was the only way he could say it.

  It didn’t matter. Either way, it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was the words. The words that spoke of a death sentence for his family. For his remaining children.

  Derek’s gone. He wants to take Hope and Lizzy.

  Ken’s body moved without his involvement. As though it sensed that the children it had had a part in creating were in danger. The animal part of him that was separate from his conscious mind took over. He shoved his way up the wall, faster than he would have thought possible. Adrenaline seized him, pushed him instantly beyond himself. Everything disappeared around him, leaving only a dark tunnel with the pinpoint spot of light that marked Aaron’s location.

  He was standing in an eyeblink, and in the next moment launched himself at the light. A noise that might have been “No!” but might just as easily have been a wordless shriek bounced around the metal boxcar. His bound hands reached for the cowboy. Fingers outstretched. Palms out to grab the man. To throttle the danger away from his children.

  Aaron stepped aside. It might have been the distorting effect of the adrenaline, the curvature of space and time inflicted by Ken’s panic, but the move seemed almost casual. Aaron just stood and moved away. Ken slammed down with an “Oof” on the bare metal of the boxcar. Bounced. Air exploded from his lungs. He gasped. Tried to breathe. Couldn’t.

  A boot landed on the back of his neck.

  “Don’t. Do. That. Again.” The words were tight as overwound watch springs. Vibrating with tension. Barely-contained danger.

  Ken had felt something crack when he landed. He held himself absolutely still. Unwilling to reveal the pain of what had just happened.

  He heard a sigh. The light shifted and he could imagine the cowboy passing his hand over his forehead again. “None of this is what we want. And none of it is set in stone. But –”

  The train rocked again. Harder than before. Hard enough that Aaron’s boot came off Ken’s neck as the cowboy stumbled. Ken tried not to move, tried to remain on his stomach, as motionless as possible.

  The cowboy was silent a moment.

  Then the scuff of boots.

  The slide of a door. Light speared in.

  “Stay,” said Aaron. Ken felt like a whipped dog.

  The light disappeared.

  All was dark.

  The boxcar shifted again as something rocked the train.

  Ken smiled.

  7

  Ken waited ten seconds to be sure. Sure that Aaron wasn’t coming back. Sure he was alone.

  Sure that he had actually heard the crack.

  When Aaron stepped out of the way, Ken’s hands went under him. An automatic reaction, the motion of a person about to fall flat on his face. Not so helpful when your hands are bound together with zip cuffs, and all that happened was he ended up crashing his full body weight on his arms and wrists. It hurt. Hurt the stumps of his left pinky and ring finger, which were scabbed over but still ached like hell. Hurt the bruises and scrapes that covered his body. Hurt the back of his head, concussed and lacerated. Hurt the front tooth that he had lost and jammed back in its socket and which had miraculously stayed in place through the last hours or days or however long it had been since Aaron took him by surprise.

  The fall especially hurt his left leg, which had ached ever since he twisted his back when – it seemed like a hundred years ago – all this began.

  Mostly, though, it hurt his wrists, where the zip ties wrapped tightly around them. They bent outward, farther than they were designed to go, the ligaments and tendons straining at their limits. Pain speared through his wrists and forearms.

  He barely noticed it.

  He noticed the crack.

  The twin cables that looped around his wrists joined in the center, between them. And he thought – hoped – that the crack had come from there.

  That the cuffs had started to break.

  He stood. Twisted his wrists. There was little give. As far as he could tell, no more give than there had been. He slammed the cuffs down against his stomach, twisting his wrists at the same time.

  Nothing happened.

  Ken started to hear screaming. He jerked, spinning in the darkness. Trying to pinpoint the sounds. His children! They were shrieking! The high-pitched yells of Hope, the breathy screams of little Lizzy.

  A moment later he realized he was hearing his own fears. Reality had not bent to that extreme. Not yet. Not that he could hear.

  But it would. He had to get out of here. Had to find his wife and his children.

  After all he had gone through, all he had suffered, he was back where he had started: alone and unsure where his family was. If they were alive or dead.

  He slammed the cuffs into his stomach again, so hard that the breath puffed out of him. So hard he knew there would be a long, thin line of purple across his gut in the coming hours. Just one more painful voice to join the growing choir of agony that was his body.

  The cuffs didn’t give.

  The screams began. He thought they were in his mind. But here in the dark, here alone, it was getting harder to distinguish between reality and imagination, between truth and terror.

  One more slam against his stomach.

  Nothing.

  The train shuddered again. He worried about what was causing the shift.

  Another shudder, and he almost lost his footing in the black.

  And knew what he had to do.

  8

  Knowing is not the same as doing.

  There are untold millions of people – or had been, before the world ended, before it was (according to Aaron) invaded – who knew how to succeed in one endeavor or another. Who knew everything there was to know. But who failed in one particular: they never did. Because doing requires a first step. A moment of commitment, and a leap of faith.

  An opportunity to fail.

  Ken knew that his family was relying on him. But in a strange way that just made it harder to make that first move. Because standing here in the dark he could almost convince himself that Aaron was wrong, that all this would blow over, that no one was in danger. That the cowboy would never raise his hand against Ken’s family.

  Here, in the closed boxcar, Ken didn’t even have to close his eyes to stay in the dark.

  But then the screams started. The phantom cries that seemed to urge him beyond what he was capable of.

  Ken steeled himself. This was going to hurt.

  He had fallen before. Now he leaped. Jumped as high as he could, angling his body so that he would be
parallel to the steel floor when he hit the apex of his leap.

  Slammed down.

  He screamed. He couldn’t help it. Every muscle he had – including a few he had never been aware of – twitched. His wrists had ached before. Now they were on fire.

  The cuffs were still intact. His wrists still bound.

  He slogged his way to his feet. It was hard. Not just because his feet were bound, not just because he ached, but because his body was fighting him.

  Most people are not made to cause themselves premeditated pain. Most people will fight against it, no matter how necessary it may be. They may jump in front of cars, rush into burning buildings. But those are usually reactions without thought. To contemplate such things is usually to hesitate. To fear.

  The battleground is littered with the bodies of those who rush in. And with the cowering figures of those who have time to think of what lays ahead.

  Ken wrenched himself to his feet. Jumped. And again.

  The fourth time, the cuffs popped away. Flew into the darkness. He was free.

  No. Not free.

  His feet were still bound. And he had no idea how to loose the cuffs that bound them.

  9

  Ken felt his ankles. The cuffs were situated the same way his wrist cuffs had been: twin circles with the locking head in front.

  He flopped over on his stomach and kicked against the floor. Knowing it was useless, that his feet would get in the way of the cuffs and prevent any serious impact. Still, it was all that came to mind.

  The impact brought out a muted bong from the floor, a painful spasm from the back of his left leg. Both feet tingled, all ten toes went numb and then seemed to catch fire almost immediately.

  The cuffs, he was fairly certain, didn’t even touch the floor.

  He flipped over and felt them. He ran his right hand over them. He didn’t bother touching them with his left. The pain from his missing fingers radiated out and throbbed with his pulse; he doubted he would be able to feel anything less defined than a railroad spike. The small details of the plastic cuffs? Forget it.