The Colony: Descent (13 page)

The others had
moved off.  They took the light with them, leaving Ken alone with Maggie in the
dark.  But that was all right.  Dark was okay, was tolerable if she was there.

Not just near, but
truly
with
him.

“You okay?” he
asked.

She made a noise
that sounded like something caught in a bear trap halfway between a laugh and a
sob.  “Are
you
?”

He shrugged. 
Realized she couldn’t see that and said, “I don’t know.  What’s going on? 
Where are the kids?  I mean, where are…?”  His voice fell away, molding itself
to the blackness around them.  He felt stupid.  The last thing he knew, Maggie
wasn’t even speaking to him because of what had happened to Derek.  And here he
was, asking about “the kids.”

He realized his muscles
had all tightened, as though preparing for a blow.  So when he felt something
touch his chest he twitched before his body realized it wasn’t a punch, it was
a caress.  His wife’s hand on his chest, like it had on so many nights after
they made love or lay in bed just talking about the kids or life or nothing at
all.

“I’m sorry,” said
Maggie.  “I know none of this was you.  I know Derek… you didn’t….”

“I didn’t have
anything to do with it.”

Her hand clenched a
bit.  “I just said that.”  She sounded tired.  Irritated.  She didn’t move her
hand away, though.  That was something.  She was still his wife, determined to
stay with him.  No matter how much he irritated her, no matter how they grated
on one another.

That was marriage. 
It wasn’t “being in love.”  It was a determination to
stay
in love, even
through the times when love felt like distant memory or unattainable goal. 
“Happily ever after” wasn’t a fairy tale, it was just the name you gave to a life
already-lived with a person you loved enough to decide to stay with them even
through the days when you didn’t love them at all.

Ken put his hand on
Maggie’s.  Not hard, but tenderly.  Asking forgiveness with his touch as well
as his words.  “No, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said hurriedly.  “I
meant….”  He swallowed.  So often in life people contented themselves with
saying something acceptable, or something merely adequate.  He wanted to do
better here.  He wanted to say something
right
.  Something
good
. 
Something that would matter to Maggie and pay honor to his son.

“Derek died to
protect you,” he finally said.  “And if I’d tried to stop him he never would
have forgiven me.”  Ken shrugged again, and didn’t care that the darkness
cloaked his motion.  Maggie would feel the movement.  And she would know what
he was trying to tell her.  “He would have done the same thing if it had been
me.  Or one of the girls.  He was always like that.”  He fell silent for a
moment before adding, “He was born to be a hero.”

Maggie’s hand moved
away from Ken’s chest.  He felt empty again.  Had she decided not to forgive
him after all?

Then the hand found
his arm.  It ran down his bicep.  Touched his forearm.  Fingers interlaced with
his.

She leaned her head
on his shoulder, and for the first time since the world fell Ken felt like he
had not merely
located
his wife, but truly found her.

“Can you stand?”

Ken thought about
the question.  He wasn’t shivering as he had been, and he felt better than
before.  A long way from whole, but on the mend.  Still weak, though.

“I don’t know.”  He
tried shifting his legs.  They felt like rubber-coated noodles.  “How are the
girls?”

“That’s why I want
you to stand.”

“You can’t just
tell me?”

Ken heard the grin
in Maggie’s voice.  “You wouldn’t believe me.”

The smile did it. 
The idea that something was right – or if not right, then at least “not wrong”
enough to warrant a smile – helped him find a reserve of strength.

Maggie slid under
his arm.  She froze.  “Is this your bad arm?  The one you had to cut your
fingers?”

“No.”  Ken eased
himself up.  Leaning on his wife for support.  He suddenly remembered a teacher
he’d had in Sunday School years ago, a lesson about God creating Eve from
Adam’s rib because that meant they were supposed to walk side by side and lean
on one another for support.

Ken didn’t know if
Genesis had envisioned a zombie attack, but the symbolism worked here.

He realized
something as he wobbled to his feet.  “How’d you know about me doing that?”

“Aaron told me.  Interesting
guy.”

“He is.” Ken leaned
against the cool concrete wall.  “He tell you anything about himself?”

“That he used to be
a rodeo clown.”

Ken snorted.  “So
nothing new.”

“Not a thing. 
Interesting, but not exactly forthcoming.”

“How’s he handling
Dorcas?”

Maggie was quiet a
moment.  “His lady?”

Ken was startled
that Maggie would need clarification.  But when would she have really gotten a
chance to know Dorcas’ name?  She had only seen her for a few minutes before
Dorcas died.

Only she didn’t
die, did she?  Nothing so lucky.  Nothing so clean
.

And then there was
the question itself.  Would Aaron think of Dorcas as his lady?  The two had
only known each other a few hours.  But still, there had been something between
them.  Ken didn’t know exactly what it had been.  But something important. 
“Yeah, the one we lost in the airplane,” he finally said.

“He won’t talk
about her,” she said.  “Christopher asked, and Aaron told him he didn’t feel
like talking about it.”

“He said that?”

“The exact wording
involved a face full of knuckles, but that was the idea.”

Ken almost laughed,
then realized something: Maggie had no trouble with Christopher and Aaron. 
Dorcas’ name had been easily misplaced, but not the others’.  That meant….

“How long have we
been down here?” he said.

“Not sure.  At
least a few days.”

That rocked him. 
And at the same time Ken realized something that had filtered in only
subconsciously until now.  His nose wrinkled.  “What’s the smell?”

“That’s you, my
dearest husband.”  Maggie took a step, leading him in the darkness.  He heard
one of her feet splash through the stream in the middle of the tunnel.  “You’ve
been out a couple days, but your body’s been pooping and peeing up a storm.”

“Oh, geez.”  He
tried to push away from her, embarrassed and sickened at what he must look
like.  Now that he knew what it was, the smell was overwhelming.

Maggie’s grip
tightened around his midsection.  “Don’t be stupid.  You’ll fall.”

“I must be
horrific.”

“Yes, you are.  But
that’s a separate matter, and it predated the end of the world.”  She kept
splashing forward, and he realized she must be using the stream as a guide in
the darkness.  Her hand went out from time to time as well, likely letting go
of him in order to trace the wall of the tunnel.  “I washed you off as best I
could, but we’re a bit limited down here.”

“I’m so sorry.”  He
cringed mentally at the thought of his wife cleaning his bodily wastes.

“Don’t be stupid. 
I’ve done it a million times with the babies, and I just pretended you were a
giant baby with a hairy butt.”  She laughed quietly.  “More or less situation
normal.”

He laughed as
well.  “So how am I not dead?”  Even as he said that, his back twitched,
sending a shock of pain down the back of his left leg.  He twisted, almost
falling.  Maggie steadied him, holding most of his weight until he got his feet
under him again.

Not at one
hundred percent, I guess.  Not even close.

“You had an
infection,” Maggie said when he regained his balance.  “At least, Aaron thinks
you did and he seems to know a lot about emergency first aid.  Buck had found a
bunch of antibiotics in people’s coats and purses when we were looking for the
EpiPens for you earlier.  He shoved ‘em in his pocket and we used them to keep
you alive.”

Ken remembered the
monsters shoving things in his throat.  Not tentacles trying to plant eggs in
his body, but the survivors trying to force-feed him pills, maybe food.  “Lucky
no one got hurt.”

That drew another
laugh.  “Actually, you decked Christopher a few times.  No one else, just him. 
You must be secretly jealous of his good lucks or something.”

“So you noticed.”

“I’m only human.”

It was getting
lighter in the tunnel.  He could see a glimmer ahead and to the right.  Could
hear voices, too.

“What about the
bite?” he said.  He looked at his arm and could make out the crescent, scabbed
over and starting to scar.  “Why didn’t I turn?”

“Aaron has some
ideas,” she said.

“And?”

“And he wanted to
wait until you woke up before sharing them.”

“Why wait?”

She was quiet for a
moment, then spoke hesitantly.  “I imagine because his ideas depended a bit on
what ended up happening with you.”

The light was in a side
tunnel that branched off from the main one.  There was a slight lip to step up,
so the water that streamed down the main tunnel didn’t enter the lateral line.

Ken reached the
T-intersection.

He turned the
corner.  His mouth dropped open.

Maggie laughed.  “I
told you you wouldn’t believe it.”

Buck was sitting
cross-legged on the ground, back against the cement wall of the side tunnel. 

And on his lap: Hope.

She was dirty, her
face grimed with dust and soot and a thousand other things.  Streaks showed in
the gunk where someone – probably Maggie – had tried to clean her off.  That
had proved to be a lost cause.

Still, through the
multiple layers of dirt Ken could see his daughter’s face.  Her eyes.  And it
was Hope again.  Smiling.

“Daddy!” she
shouted.  But she didn’t move from Buck’s lap.  She looked happy there, and the
big man looked pleased at her decision to remain with him.  Buck hadn’t struck
Ken as a fatherly type, but he wondered now how much of that was because of the
man and how much of that had been the effect of his mother.

How much of our
lives are determined by the nets cast by others? he wondered.  How many of us
died in the Change… and how many were set free?

Aaron was sitting
against the opposite wall, a hand in his mouth as he took a pill.  He
dry-swallowed it with a grimace.

“We’re all taking
the antibiotics Buck found,” said Aaron, as though Ken had challenged his
movements.  “We’ve all probably got loads of infected wounds, and better safe
than sorry.”

Christopher was
taking a pill as well.  His other hand held a small, battered-looking
flashlight with a weak beam: the source of the illumination that Ken and Maggie
had followed to the tunnel.

And Liz….

The toddler was
curled up, completely naked, asleep and snoring lightly, half on the hard
concrete tunnel floor, half on something else.  Her fingers held loosely to
soft hairs, her head propped up on a moving pillow.

Looking at his
sleeping baby, Ken knew what had dragged him out of the water.  What had lain
with him and kept him warm in the dark.  What had saved him.

The male snow
leopard glanced at him.  It licked its lips, a pink tongue lapping once over
massive fangs, then turned to look at Liz as though to verify she hadn’t
wandered from her spot against his rumbling chest.  Apparently satisfied, it returned
its head to rest on the large paws that seemed to splay halfway across the
tunnel.

“Dad?” said Hope.  Ken
diverted a tiny piece of his attention from the big cat to his older daughter. 
She wore a huge smile.  “Can we keep him?  Can we keep Sally?”

Ken was a teacher. 
A
high school
teacher.  And even in a genuinely nice place like Boise,
that meant he’d brushed up against all manner of insanity.  Teenage pregnancy,
drugs.  Girls beaten by boyfriends who they insisted “really loved them.”  But
he always felt like he could help.  Could at least offer some advice, even if
it wasn’t taken.

However, when faced
by a request that his daughter be allowed to keep a very obviously male
predatory cat she’d inexplicably decided to name Sally, he found that words
failed him.

Aaron chuckled. 
Christopher sounded as though he tried to do the same, but it came out a sort
of mangled snort that made a chunk of half-dried blood explode from one of his
nostrils.  He grimaced.

Buck did the most
surprising thing.  He wrapped his big arms around Hope in a huge bear hug.  “Of
course
we can keep him, honey.”  Then he stared at Ken with eyes like
bullets wrapped in velvet.  “
Right
?”

“Uhhh….”  Ken
nodded.  Mostly because he felt like something needed to happen and when
confused his body tended to default to a nod.  That was the great to a happy
marriage: when in doubt, agree.  So as a well-trained good husband his body was
falling back on its established pattern.

Hope squealed and
clapped.  The snow leopard – Sally – looked at the girl with an expression that
seemed decidedly stern, as though reminding her that there was a sleeping baby
in the area.

Hope clapped small
hands over her mouth.  “Sorry, Sally.”  She looked around the group.  “We have
to be quiet.”

“Right,” said
Buck.  Another hug to Hope.  “We’ll be quiet, Hope.”

Ken looked at
everyone as well.  Not to urge them to silence, but almost feeling like he was
in one of those strangely real dreams we all find ourselves trapped in from
time to time.  And unsure whether we want to wake up screaming… or let the
dream continue forever.

He looked at Christopher
and Aaron, shoulder to shoulder against one wall.  Legs out like they were
resting against a tree in a forest, shooting the breeze on a campout.

Then Buck and Hope,
sitting together like a girl curled up with her favorite and long-absent uncle.

And let’s not
forget Liz’s new babysitter, Sally.

Ken looked at his
wife.  She was watching the group with a strange expression.  It reminded him
of last Christmas.  The family had been together: Derek and Hope in their
chairs around the table, Liz in the high-chair she was just starting to grow out
of.  Maggie stared at them all and got this look in her eyes, like she was
seeing them all for the first time.  “My family,” she said.

And that was the
right thing to say.

People said
adequate things all the time.  Not many right ones.

Ken looked at the group
in the tunnel.  The survivors.

The family.