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

  The space between the cars was only a few feet, once again. Not an interminable gap under almost any other circumstances.

  There were no ladders on the back of the next boxcar. Nothing at all that he could hope to use to transfer across in a safer manner.

  He had to jump.

  He backed up again.

  Ran.

  Leaped.

  He hit the roof of the boxcar and fell forward as his left leg collapsed under him. The pins and needles of pain that were ever-present in that limb exploded into spikes of agony.

  Ken tried to control the fall, to roll forward like he had been taught in countless hapkido classes. He tucked his head under and hit his right shoulder on the metal roof. Another bruise to go with the grape tones of the rest of his body.

  He rolled. Went over his back. Feet somersaulting forward. Saw the edge of the boxcar rushing at him.

  He couldn’t stop. He managed to flip over, going to belly and chest, arms and hands spread wide to gain as much traction as possible. The curve of the roof resisted purchase and he kept sliding. There were small grooves in the roof, but nothing deep enough for his scrabbling fingers to grip, no depression that would allow him to wedge a hand or a toe in and arrest his fall.

  His feet, kicking for purchase, abruptly kicked into void as his legs went over the side.

  27

  Ken was sure that gravity would pitch him over. But fate – so often a vengeful scourge of late – seemed at last to come to his aid. The train was rocked as another group of zombies no doubt boarded it en masse, and the sudden bounce pounded Ken upward a fraction of an inch, giving him just enough time to slow his fall.

  He was still hanging partially over the edge of the boxcar, his lower legs dangling into nothing. But he was alive.

  He wiggled forward like a worm. Sliding forward until he was on the top of the boxcar, only his feet hanging out. Then on hands and knees again.

  The metal was solid under him. The boxcar felt sturdy. Heavy. Immovable. It wouldn’t have minded if he fell, wouldn’t have noticed when he was plowed to tiny pieces beneath him.

  Ken’s brow furrowed.

  The train had bucked. Not once, but repeatedly. And that made no sense. The great length of rail cars, the three locomotives at the lead, had to weigh many thousands of tons. And there hadn’t been nearly enough zombies to cause something that size to shift. He had seen creatures in the hundreds, perhaps as many as one or two thousand.

  But not enough to bounce the train. Not enough to cause it to shimmy the way it was doing now.

  Ken stood and looked back.

  The things were gaining. Maybe twenty cars looked like they had black bugs crawling over them. That put forty or so between them and Ken. He had to hurry. But first… he had to figure out what was happening with the train.

  He looked a moment longer, but could see nothing.

  Nothing on the top of the train.

  He dropped back down to hands and knees, then to his stomach, and wiggled to the same edge he had just tried so hard to avoid. Poked his head over the side and looked down the length of the train.

  It turned out that only about nine out of ten of the creatures were actually moving forward.

  The rest were doing something else. Possibly something worse.

  28

  As Ken watched, a trio of the zombies clinging to the closest boxcar crawled down the side of the car. They didn’t bother holding onto any of the small handholds that Ken had had to navigate, and this no longer surprised him. The things had been changing constantly since they first –

  (took over)

  – appeared, and one of the changes had been an apparent ability to hold to surfaces without benefit of hand- or footholds. Ken didn’t know if all of them had this strange ability, but the three he saw now were clinging like flies to the side of the boxcar, skittering down headfirst so fast they looked like they were sliding as much as crawling.

  When they got to the end of the car, they leaned under it. Coughed.

  Ken had seen the things vomit like this before. Had seen the black that splashed out of their mouths and knew what to expect. He could imagine the hiss as it spewed from their mouths, the angry whisper of acid as it splashed on the tracks.

  They were trying to derail the train. That was what Ken had been feeling: not the impact of the zombies leaping aboard, but the train jittering as wheels tore over tracks that were melting and losing their strength.

  Then, as Ken watched, the trio that had vomited the dark dissolvent started to jerk. Vibrations turned to thrashing. They slammed their trunks against the side of the boxcar. Against each other.

  One fell. The train pulled it under.

  Another reared up, and Ken saw that it had been driven mad. The zombies lost whatever drive impelled them to attack only humans whenever they suffered serious head injury, and this one now had only half its head. The other half was a smoking ruin, a crater that Ken could see even at this distance.

  It had melted itself.

  Ken realized he had never seen the aftermath of a zombie’s secretion of this acid. Too busy running, fleeing, trying to stay alive.

  Another one of the zombies fell.

  The third didn’t fall. But nor did it remain on the train. A group of five or six other zombies swarmed over the side of the train and, lightning fast, threw their once-brother over the side.

  Gone.

  Ken was stunned at this new revelation. The zombies weren’t immune to the acid they made. And these had… if not died, then at least been put out of commission by the very act of destruction they visited on the tracks.

  Was it always like this? Was it like bees, who died once they stung, each vengeance a suicide? Or was it just that they had been hanging upside down and so the acid had dripped over their heads?

  More important, perhaps, was the attack by the others. They recognized the threat and acted to end it.

  Smarter. Every day, every minute, the things were getting smarter.

  Ken felt like a clock was ticking. Whatever edge humanity might have, whatever hope for survival, lay in its intelligence.

  But what if the things got too much smarter? What if they caught up to people? What if they surpassed them?

  The train bucked again. More zombies vomited acid, more went insane, more dropped off or were thrown under the tracks by the others. Each shudder was greater than the one before, each ripple through the train brought more danger of derailment.

  The clock was ticking. In more ways than one.

  29

  Ken stumble-ran across the top of the boxcar. The next one was a cakewalk, so easy it was almost a joke. It was a flatcar, an empty bed that swayed slightly with the shift of the wheels as they passed over the tracks, but other than that it was just a big flat slab about ten feet below him.

  There was a bad moment when he was gauging the best way to jump those ten feet. He didn’t want to hit and break a leg or an ankle, and he didn’t think his bad left leg would bear him up from that height. But landing and rolling was an equally bad call. The flatcar was just that – flat – but he still didn’t relish the idea of somersaulting right off the side. There would be absolutely nothing to stop his fall in that case – no handholds, no ladder rungs. Just a short drop to the ground where he would either be ground under the train or swarmed by the following horde.

  He glanced down, almost absently, and realized he wouldn’t have to jump and land flat or roll. There had been no ladder on the back of the boxcar, but the front wall had a neat line of rungs hanging off it near the top of the car.

  He lowered himself quickly, taking the rungs as fast as was safe. He needed to get to the front of the train. Not just to deal with the people threatening his family, but because they had to outrun the zombies. Impossible now, trailing close to a hundred cars.

  But what if he could release the back ones? What if he could find a way to separate the locomotive from everything else? He wasn’t an expert, but he figured the tr
ain would be able to go a lot faster.

  Fast enough to outrun the zombies?

  He hoped so.

  But he wouldn’t find out if they caught him first. Or if they sufficiently weakened the rails with their acid to derail the train. Or if the growl that still hammered at him finally overrode his will and rendered him helpless to act.

  So many ways to die. So few to live.

  He jumped off the ladder before reaching the bottom rung. A chancy move given the state of his left leg and his body in general, but he figured he needed every fraction of a second.

  Ken landed on the wood-clad steel top of the flatcar. It whumped solidly, making him feel like he was on secure footing for the first time in what seemed like hours. His left leg spasmed, but only enough to remind him it was in a bad mood generally. An irritation, not a crippling moment.

  He ran forward, tromping over the flatcar as fast as he could. He urged himself to greater speed, but the reserves were gone. He was at max speed given all he had been through. And he figured that even being upright at this point was a huge accomplishment.

  Pat your back later, Ken. After you’ve saved Maggie and the kids.

  Yeah, like you saved Derek?

  He almost stumbled then, the look in Derek’s eyes when he had been bitten suddenly all he could see. The train disappeared for an instant and all he saw was a black-white beast clamping its teeth on his son’s flesh, his son’s skin seeming to burst as blood oozed from all his pores.

  Derek had sacrificed everything to save his mother.

  Ken had a good example – the best – to follow.

  He forced the vision away. Not banishing it, just pushing it to the side so he could deal with the world around him. But he also held it close, so he could remember what his son had done. The love he had held for all of them.

  Derek had never hesitated. Nine years old and he had leaped into the arms of a monster to save his family.

  Could Ken do any less?

  “I’m coming, Derek,” he whispered as he ran. Barely aware he said it, but knowing it wasn’t a promise of death but of life. He was going to do his best to approach his child in bravery, in goodness, in love.

  He would sacrifice anything necessary, but like Derek had done he would save Maggie and the girls.

  “I’m coming.”

  The next boxcar was bouncing a bit, like one of its wheels was uneven. Still, Ken never hesitated as he ran and then jumped across the divide between the two cars. He caught the ladder that ran up the middle of the green boxcar. Climbed up hand over hand, moving fast, moving sure.

  He put his head over the top. Hand on the roof. Pulled himself halfway up.

  And before he had a chance to see anything, he felt a hand grab his ankle. Heard a familiar voice.

  “Hello, Ken,” said Aaron. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to keep your hands and arms inside until the ride’s come to a complete stop?”

  30

  Ken didn’t react. He acted. A pair of thoughts flew into his mind:

  He wants to kill my kids.

  He won’t.

  His foot flashed out. A perfect back kick in spite of the awkward angle of his body. His old hapkido teacher would have been proud.

  Aaron had one foot on the coupler that held the boxcar to the flatcar. The other stretched to the lowest rung of the ladder that Ken was still on. The cowboy’s good hand was hanging onto Ken’s leg, his bad hand and arm looped around the rung below Ken’s foot.

  Ken’s foot hit Aaron in the side of the head. The cowboy looked startled more than hurt. He weaved a bit, but managed not to let go of the ladder or Ken’s leg.

  Ken drew back for another kick, but Aaron shook him. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that again.”

  The growl rose in volume at that moment, as though the zombies were agreeing, angered that Ken had attacked the older man. It just made him angry. He kicked.

  Aaron let go. Punched and re-grabbed in the same motion. Ken’s leg went dead from the knee down. He bit back a scream.

  “I can do it to the other side, too,” said Aaron. He was calm as ever. “But that’d make it hard for you to keep walking.” He waited a moment. The growl got louder. “Not being able to walk would be inconvenient right about now.”

  Ken nodded. He hobble-stepped the rest of the way up the ladder, over the lip of the boxcar’s roof. Hard to do with his leg half-numb. Harder to do when Aaron still had a good grip on his calf.

  “Where the hell’d you come from?” he snapped.

  “Went down to find out what was going on with the train,” said Aaron. He chuckled. A sound without mirth. “Decided I’d better drop some of the cars.”

  “That won’t work. You’ll have to drop all of them.”

  “You a train expert?”

  “No.” Ken managed to stand. His leg felt like it was all pins and needles – most of them dipped in battery acid – but it worked again. He moved away from Aaron, worried the cowboy would sucker-punch him or attack him from behind again. Not that he could stop the man if he decided to hit him from the front, either. “It just seems like the things are going fast and –“

  “Relax. I agree. That’s why I went back to get you before heading to the engine.” He laughed again, and this time it seemed genuine. “Imagine my surprise when I found you gone.” He looked at the bit of plastic cuff still trailing from one of Ken’s ankles. “You’ll have to tell me how you did that.”

  “Why? So you can tie me up better next time?”

  Aaron ignored the comment. “After you,” he said, and gestured.

  “You want me to go in front of you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Last time I did that you choked me to unconsciousness.”

  “Fine. Let’s just stay here arguing about it until the zombies come and take over the train.”

  Ken looked over Aaron’s head. The zombies had taken over twenty cars. Twenty-five.

  “You go first.”

  Aaron sighed. “I know where your kids are.”

  Ken shook his head. “You go first. And I’m sure you’ll take me there eventually. You want my help. That’s why you were talking to me in the first place.”

  The cowboy let loose an exasperated sigh. But he turned and ran ahead of Ken.

  A moment later Ken followed. The growl oozed after them, a miasma that thickened the air around it.

  Ken barely noticed.

  He had managed to kick Aaron. Hadn’t beaten him, but even touching the cowboy felt like a victory.

  More important, he was moving toward his family.

  31

  Following Aaron across a moving train was a surreal experience. The man had to be in his fifties, but he moved like a teenager. A teenager who was half monkey.

  Ken was hard-pressed to keep up as the older man pounded across car after car. Aaron’s cowboy boots clanked across each roof, he leaped to another without pause or thought, and then looked back each time his boots came down on the next roof. Ken told himself Aaron was just checking on the zombies’ progress, but he knew it was really just to check on him; to make sure that he was keeping up.

  Holy crap, I’m chasing a man twice my age across the top of a train… and I’m having trouble keeping pace.

  Aaron jumped off the top of a boxcar and disappeared, falling into the dip created by another flatcar.

  Oh, hell no.

  But he didn’t have a choice. Ken had the luxury of moving carefully before, but not now.

  It wasn’t a question of pride. He was utterly out of that. Pride was something from the old days, something important when what you had to worry about was whether your clothes or your car measured up to what everyone else had. Keeping up with the Joneses was less important when all the Joneses – and Smiths and Browns and just about everyone else – was either dead or running around trying to make everyone dead.

  So no, not pride. But he didn’t trust Aaron out of his sight. What if Aaron got ahead of him and then decid
ed his plans would go easier without Ken and detached the part of the train Ken was still on?

  So when he got to the end of the boxcar, he jumped as well. He hit the flatcar – another long, wood-covered surface that looked solid but rolled and bounced like it sat on a bed of hyperactive springs – and rolled. A pair of hands grabbed him before he finished the roll and hauled him to his feet.

  “Nice,” grunted Aaron, and then he was off again.

  They hopped across two more gaps, traversed two more flatcars. Then they hit a boxcar that had no rungs, no way to climb up. Nor were there visible handholds or even a lip around the side. No way past it.

  Aaron didn’t look nonplused. Just turned to Ken and said, “This is going to take a bit of care.” His tone of voice was as even as ever.

  “What is?”

  Aaron moved his hands.

  Ken gawked. “You’re not serious.”

  32

  Aaron nodded, but Ken still had trouble believing it. Not until Aaron’s jaw clenched and he said, “Move, dammit!” did it really penetrate that the other man was serious.

  Ken looked at the cowboy’s cupped hands. At the top of the boxcar a good ten feet away. Back at the hands.

  “You want me to jump?” Ken said it more to himself than anything. An affirmation of the ridiculousness of the moment.

  Aaron answered anyway. “Unless you want to be the tosser and I’ll jump. But you didn’t trust me to go first before, so I figured you’d prefer it this way.”

  “Isn’t –“

  “No, there ain’t. And we don’t have a lot of time for jawing.”

  Ken knew he was right. He knew the other man was insane for even having this idea. He knew he was insane for backing up a few steps. Pitching himself forward as fast as he could.