Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) (19 page)

By this time, the clan didn’t have a general direction, and they pretty much went wherever they pleased, but that wasn’t always entirely true. They went straight down, from northern Michigan to southern Michigan. And their intention once they had a big enough group? To travel south, where they would be warmer. Or east, where they could get to the water. Winter would come, and they wanted to be as far away from harm as possible.

Besides, zombies didn’t like the heat. Or water.

As they got closer and closer to Detroit, Robert, Phillip, Willa, Hannah, Owen, and Aaron got quieter and quieter. And more and more nervous. Everything had been going to well…and it only made sense that something would eventually go wrong.

And wrong it went when the truck broke down in the middle of a back road one night. Try as Eric might, he couldn’t get it going again.

The group had a system. They would travel late in the night, circling towns in their cars, waiting to see if the zombie’s attacked anyone. Zombies didn’t like cars. Of course, once they were able to get their own, automobiles would no longer be a safety zone.

But if the zombies attacked someone, the group knew which houses to go to during the day to see if there were any survivors. It was awful, they knew, to be there and watch everything go down…but, at night, there wasn’t anything they could do.

So when the truck broke down, Aaron immediately began to cry and call for his mother. Willa held him close, but it wasn’t good enough.

Phillip and Eric, the two who knew the most about cars, tried their best, but something was wrong with the ignition. They weren’t moving anywhere in this vehicle tonight.

“…Owen, what do we do?” Phillip asked.

“We need to find shelter.”

“Find shelter where exactly?”

“Someone around here has to have a storm cellar or something.”

“…okay.”

And so Eric and Owen set off to find shelter, leaving Phillip to watch after the women and Aaron at the truck.

They roamed the backyards of houses, trying to keep as quiet as possible. They didn’t find anything, and they didn’t dare try one of the houses themselves, not when they could serve as a nest.

It wasn’t until they came upon a fallen tree that they believed they’d find anything at all.

“That’s blocking something,” Owen said quietly. “The tree isn’t that tall. Come on, help me.”

Owen and Eric pulled the tree away from the opening of a small storm shelter. The trunk had fallen right on the door…Owen prayed no one was trapped inside.

They looked at one another, and then Eric opened the door.

“Hello?” He yelled inside.

A girl screamed and ran to the stairs below them. They saw the glint of her in the darkness.

“Guys!” She yelled. “Nathan, Carlos, wake up! Wake up!”

There were sounds of scuttling and movement, and you could hear heavy breathing. The girl climbed the stairs, and Owen and Eric stepped out of her way. She practically fell onto the ground in relief.

“We were going to die…” She whispered to the grass. “We almost died…”

Nathan and Carlos, apparently the two boys who had been trapped with her, came crawling up the stairs. Each of them fell next to her on the grass, taking in the sweet scent. It was then that Owen realized the girl was crying.

“…is something wrong? Did anyone get hurt?” He asked.

“…Lucy died.”

“Who’s Lucy?”

One of the boys, the one who seemed older and looked like the girl’s brother, stood up from the grass.

“Lucy was our dog…we were almost out of air…man, it’s a good thing you came. We were minutes from dying, we’d all accepted it.”

“I wouldn’t have come at all. But our truck broke down and we need somewhere to lay low for the night.” Owen explained, and the boy looked surprised when he motioned to the storm cellar.

“Dude, I am not getting back in that thing. They trapped us in it!”

“As a matter of fact, they didn’t. It was just a tree. It fell in the door.”

“…I’m not going back in there. And neither is Jennifer.”

“That your sister?”

“Yeah…I’m Carlos, that’s Jennifer, and the other kid is her boyfriend, Nathan.”

“Well listen, Carlos, unless you want to be eaten alive, you’re all going to get back into that storm cellar. We’ll give it a couple of minutes to fill up with plenty of cool air while we go get our friends, and then we’re all going down there. And then, tomorrow, you three can come with us.”

“…come with you?” Jennifer was now standing up. “I’m staying here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Your house is probably a nest by now,” Eric said. “They take over anyplace that they’ve scared the people away from.”

“…a nest?” Nathan asked, now standing himself. “What kind of nest?”

“I’ll explain all of this to you when we’re all safe from harm.” Owen said. “You need to understand that there are some things I know that you don’t, and if you risk not knowing and you leave right now, not only are you risking your own lives, but you’re risking ours. Please let us stay here for the night, and I’ll tell you everything that there is to know about what happened to you.”

And that was how they all ended up in a storm shelter for the night, and how Jennifer, Nathan, and Carlos, living miracles, survived.

The three ‘living miracles’ didn’t take to the idea that the world was ending all that well. In fact, Jennifer broke down and cried for three of the hours that they spend hidden in the cellar, and Owen had to constantly open the door to bring the fresh air that she was using up quickly.

No one could sleep comfortably until she was calmed.

It was interesting to Owen that Nathan, a boy who seemed to have no idea what he was doing, remained as calm as he did in the face of the shock. He took one look at his girlfriend and, instead of hurting her with more tears, helped her by holding her and calming her.

And it didn’t seem like Owen was the only one surprised by this. Carlos, Jennifer’s older brother, was looking at the boy as though he’d never seen him before in his life.

“He picks now to be a good boyfriend,” He had said to Owen, as the two had been opening the door to let in some air in the middle of the night. “But you should’ve seen what he was like before. He’s the reason we’re stuck in this mess.”

“It won’t do any good to be upset about it,” Owen had responded. “You’re all lucky to be alive. You would have died in a night or two, regardless. At least then you had some warning and enough time to get down here.”

Owen didn’t realize until this moment how much older than Carlos he sounded. The funny thing was, they were right around the same age. He had no right to talk like the elder here, and yet the teenage boys around him didn’t have a problem with it. Hell, even Eric and Phillip didn’t argue and they were older by
years.

Something had changed about Owen. He just couldn’t put his finger on what exactly it was.

“Why don’t you get back inside?” He said to Carlos, as Carlos stared at the stars overhead the open hole. “And tell Hannah to come up…I want to see her.”

“Okay, Captain.”

“Carlos?” Owen said, pulling the boy back by his shirt before he could descend the steps.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Owen, okay? Just Owen.”

“…Okay, Owen.”

And then he was gone.

Before Owen, just Owen, had too much time to think about why he was Owen, just Owen, Hannah arrived. She didn’t say anything, either. She just stared at the starry night in wonder. It was hard to believe that, in several days, they’d really come this far.

“Hannah, why do you keep avoiding me?”

“…what?”

“You know what I’m talking about. You avoid eye contact, you avoid going with me when we split up, and you’re attached at the hip to Willa. You two are always talking and whispering…what does she know that I don’t?”

“Owen, I want to talk to you about home, for a minute.”

“Hannah, I-“

“No, Owen, this is more important to me. I want to talk about home. Why didn’t we go back?”

“Hannah, I told you, that’s where this…this Zero-Hour started. Our hometown. I know it hurts that we can’t go back there, but who’s going to believe us?”

“Owen, there are zombies
everywhere.
People are getting diseased
daily.
How can anyone not know? How can there
be
people giving us weird looks all the time and how can there
be
people still walking around like nothing’s going on? Willa says the news was talking about an infection, and how it seemed to be spreading.”

“But that’s all that they know, Hannah…all they know is what that news woman tells them. And she doesn’t know too much herself…I told you, babe, this is all happening by night. This is all happening while they sleep. These things…they’re smart. They pick houses that are easy targets and invade. Sometimes they’ll try to infect who’s inside so they can join the ranks- I think that’s what they were going to do to Willa and Phillip- and other times they’re just hungry. When morning comes, you better believe whoever was in that house isn’t there anymore.”

“There have to be other survivors, Owen. People who can tell the media what’s going on…people who can get word around.”

“Why do you care so much about them, Hannah? You have us.”

“Because I want my parents!”

“Hannah-“

“No, Owen.
I am sixteen years old and I want my mother. I want my mother to tell me everything’s going to be okay. I want my father to be here. I want to feel safe and sound and like everyone is going to live. I’m sick of saying this is the end of the world. Who says it has to be? Who says we can’t convince the world that they’re coming?”

“Hannah, we tried that! Don’t you remember? The second that monster attacked us we tried to tell the world the truth. And who listened to us? No one, Hannah. They called us freaks, a bunch of punk kids ran us out of town. There is nothing left there for us, Hannah. Humanity is blind. We won’t know they’re coming until they’re already here.”

“…what about the government? Owen, they have to know something. They have to be able to do
something.
Why don’t we catch one and bring it in? I mean…what other proof do we need?”

Owen sighed and put his face in his hands. It was like she believed he hadn’t already thought of this.

“Hannah, the government already knows.”

“What…?”

“The government has known from square one, don’t you get it? Didn’t you see the guy’s badge? Didn’t you pay any attention to the dead man on the floor?”

“No…”

“Yes. He was FBI, Hannah. That’s about as official as you get. They started the god damn thing. They created the infection…do you really think they’re going to publicly admit that? No. They’re going to keep it a secret, try and hush it up…and they’re going to destroy everything in the process.”

“The government started the infection…”

“And we spread it.”

Hannah’s eyes grew wet and Owen pulled her close to him. He would just as soon not have anything to do with the stupid outside world. The people who knew nothing of what would happen to them.

And Owen had the oddest feeling that…tonight?

Tonight was the night.

It would happen tonight.

“Starting tomorrow, Hannah, I don’t think we’ll be seeing those people anymore. I think it’s ending tonight, as we stand here talking. People are dying everywhere…I think all that will be left in the morning are the survivors of the night…see if I’m wrong.”

Owen knew what this meant. This meant his family, his friends, everyone he had known since he was just a jock at the high school, would be dead come tomorrow. Part of him wanted to jump up and save them…part of him wanted to go to them and try to stop this from happening…but he couldn’t leave Hannah behind. And she’d want to come.

“Owen…do you want to know what Willa and I have been talking about?” Hannah asked softly.

“…of course I do.”

“Owen…I’m pregnant.”

What?

“…what?”

“...oh, Owen, please don’t be mad. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know how, I just…I am, Owen. I am and now I’m pregnant and this baby…I can’t lose my baby like Willa did. What do we do?”

And, just like that, Owen’s leadership of the clan had been made a personal adventure to seek shelter for his firstborn.

Little did he know that his firstborn
s,
Michael and Judith Marie, would be facing personal adventures of their own.