The Colony: Descent (14 page)

Christopher held up
the flashlight and gave it a small jiggle.  Light and shadow danced a perfectly
synchronized jitterbug on the walls.

“I’m gonna turn
this off.  Save some batter-trees.”  He wiggled his eyebrows at Hope and she giggled
as though sharing a private joke.

Christopher flicked
the switch on the flashlight.  Darkness fell around the group again.

Ken felt his way to
the nearest wall and slid down.  He felt shaky.  Weak.  The sight of his children
had invigorated him, the sight of the snow leopard had shocked his system into
a momentary overdrive.  But both effects were wearing off now.

He just felt tired. 
Tired and achy.  His back and left leg hurt most of all, even more than the
stubs of his left pinky and ring finger, but all his half-healed scrapes and
sprains were throbbing.  Dull palpitations that joined into one pulsing pound
that reverberated up and down his frame.  Better than the lancing pain he’d
been having, but still far from comfortable.

“How long have we
been here?” he asked as he sank down, trying to ignore the stench that wafted
up as his shredded pants shifted, the crinkling noises that his clothes made.

“We’ve been here
for seven poops,” said Hope in a bright whisper.

“Hope,” Maggie said
in a warning tone.

Hope giggled.  Ken was
struck again by the strangeness of this moment.  Not just at the fact that he
was hearing his daughter laugh in a glorified sewer under the crumbled remains
of civilization, but that she was giggling at all.

He saw her as she
had been in the elevator: reaching eagerly for the zombies that tried to kill
them.  Cooing as they tried to destroy the survivors.

Her eyes rolling
back.  Laughing as death loomed.

And now… she was
fine?

What’s going on
with her?

Ken didn’t know. 
But he suspected it wasn’t over.  Perhaps this was a lull, but it wasn’t the
end of the storm.

“We’re not sure how
long we’ve been here,” said Maggie.  “We were afraid to move you, so we
couldn’t leave.  Just tried to feed you and give you water when you seemed up
to it, and kept watch.”

“
No one
could leave?”  Ken was flabbergasted.  “Didn’t anyone try to, I don’t know,
explore
or find a way out or anything?”

“Don’t need to
explore,” said Buck.  “I know exactly where we are, and where to get out.  Assuming
it’s still there since our arsonist-in-training blew up in the universe.”

“Big assumption,”
said Christopher.  “And it wasn’t the universe, it was just a jet. 
Part
of a jet.  And I saved us, by the way, so you’re welcome.  Again.”

Hope giggled.

Ken was starting to
feel disoriented.  The survivors’ voices were coming at him from everywhere in
the darkness.  It was like having a conversation with a convocation of ghosts.

“Well, it’s what
we’ve got, so it’s what we’ll use,” said Buck.  Ken noted he wasn’t nearly as
nice-and-lovey sounding with Christopher as he was with Hope.

“Clucky, be nice,”
said Hope.  Apparently Ken wasn’t the only one who registered the edge in the
big man’s voice.

“Sorry, Chicken,”
said Buck.  Hope squealed as though tickled.

Ken’s
disorientation increased.  Clucky?  Chicken?  Christopher and Hope had silly
code words for flashlight parts?  Hope and Buck had pet names?

He felt like he had
left a familiar room, only to return and find every piece of furniture shifted
a few inches to the right.  Everything was still there, but the configuration
was just wrong enough to be jarring.

“Anyway,” said
Buck, “I know where we are.  But the way out’s a bit of a walk.  And we decided
to stick together.  Until you got better, or….”

Maggie’s arm
circled Ken’s.  She squeezed him.  “Until you got better,” she said firmly.

“But how?” said
Ken.  “You said…
three days
?”

Aaron laughed.  A
low, rolling chortle that danced around the tunnel.  Ken smiled.

“Probably,” said
Aaron.  “Probably about that.  You’re a pretty regular guy.”

Ken felt sure the
others would be able to see by the glow of his blush.  “Gross.”

That drew another
chuckle from Aaron.

Ken felt a sudden
stab of jealousy.  He could only imagine what the first hours after the explosion
had been like: terror, frantic, feeble searching for each other in the
darkness.  But now… now there was rest.  Peace, however momentary.  A drawing
together of the group.  He was grateful, but a bit of him felt piqued that he
had missed so much of whatever bonding had drawn such smiles to their faces.

“Anyway,” Aaron
continued, “Buck assured us the water in the tunnel’d be pretty clean, and as
for food….”

“Yeah?”

Ken felt Maggie’s
arm on his.  Shaking.

Panic grabbed him. 
He tensed, ready to run, to scream and fight and flee.

Then realized he
wasn’t feeling her terror.  Wasn’t feeling a seizure, grabbing her preparatory
to her becoming a zombie.  It was something else.  Something he had all but
forgotten in the past hours –

(
No,
days
,
Ken, it’s been days….
)

– of danger and
pain.

Maggie was
laughing.  Laughing her hardest laugh, which meant she was all but silent.  He
couldn’t see her in this black inkwell, but he had seen it often enough to know
what she looked like now: mouth open wide, gasping for breath that would not
come, shaking as her body struggled to cope with overwhelming paroxysms of
near-hysterical laughter.

She finally
inhaled.  Got enough control over her body to actually make a noise, a single,
thin “
Heeeee
” that seemed to melt into silence as fast as it came.

He loved that
laugh.  Stupidest laugh in the universe, and he’d told her so.  But he told her
so with a smile, because every time she laughed like that it meant she was
truly happy.  That something wonderful had happened in her mind.

He loved her
perhaps most of all when he heard that sound.

She did it again. 
A rarity.  And a sign of how very funny she thought something was.  “
Heeeee
.” 
The whispery laugh danced into the darkness.

“What’s so funny?”
Ken finally said.

“You hungry?” said
Christopher a moment later.

Ken was.  He hadn’t
realized it until this moment, but he was famished.  His stomach rumbled
audibly.

“Either the creeps
found a way in, or that’s a yes,” said Christopher.  “I thought you would be. 
We fed you as much as we could, but you got all bitey sometimes, so….” 
Maggie’s silent laugh got even more energetic.  “I’ll go get you something,”
said Christopher.

The flashlight
flickered on.  Christopher pushed up against the wall, then stepped gingerly
past the snow leopard, walking down the side tunnel.  It curved sharply to the
right only a few feet past the big cat, and soon Christopher was gone.  The
light fluttered in the tunnel behind him, growing dim but never quite
disappearing.

Ken looked at
Buck.  “So… Clucky?”

Buck’s face, which
had been smiling down at Hope, now darkened faster than a thunderhead about to
dump a Noachian downpour on an unprepared populace.  “That’s what Hope calls
me,” he said.  The tone made it clear that
only
Hope called him that.

“You knew about
this place?” said Ken, partly to shift the subject away from the pet names
issue, partly because he was curious how Buck knew what was down here.

Buck nodded.  “You
guys found us up in that lawyer’s office.  Me and my mom?”

Ken nodded.

“We were in the
middle of a lawsuit against the city.  I am – was, I guess I should say – a
contractor for county.  My mom owned the business, took over after my dad died.” 
He was silent a moment, pensive.  Then he looked around, taking in the
surroundings.  “I did a lot of work down here.”

“You get hurt or
something?”

Buck rolled his
eyes.  “Nothing so interesting.  Just a contract dispute between the county and
some of the contractors who’ve done work for them.  It’s the sort of thing that
happens all the time with public works – one project goes to shi – uh, crap,”
he amended, looking at Hope, who was watching him with what Ken could only
describe as hero-worship in her eyes, “and everyone starts blaming everyone
else.  Soon there are delays, then damages, and then everyone sues everyone
else.  I was up there for a deposition.  But when I saw the plane going down, I
knew there was a storm drain entrance we could get into nearby.  Figured we
might be safe for a bit down here.”

“Good thinking,”
said Ken.

“Clucky
saved
us,” said Hope.

Buck hugged the
little girl tightly.

“He sure did,” said
Christopher, reappearing around the bend.  “Clucky is
awesome
.”

Buck glared at the
young man.  Christopher put on a face of such sincere innocence Ken had to
laugh.  “Hey, man, I was
agreeing
with her.  You are a force to be
reckoned with.  Clucky.”

“Christopher –“
Buck’s voice rumbled into the darkness.

Christopher laughed
quietly.

Maggie sighed in a
way that told Ken this was not a new discussion.  “Do I have to separate you
two boys?” she said.

“What?” said
Christopher.  His innocent face got even more innocent, if that were possible. 
Before the Change, he had been the son of Idaho’s governor, and Ken figured he
must have learned a thing or two about pretending virtue from his father.  The
expression he was wearing would have made God Himself look a bit dicey in
comparison.

Buck sighed. 
Clearly trying to be the bigger person in the dispute.  He looked back at Hope.

Christopher
laughed.  “Just hassling you, brother.”  He held out a hand to Ken.  “You said
you were hungry, right?”

Ken looked at what
Christopher held.

“Where the heck did
you get
those
?”

Christopher was
holding what first appeared to be a handful of candy.  But only a moment later
Ken saw that they were energy bars, the kind of things a lot of his students
crammed into their mouths before working out or instead of eating lunch.

It wasn’t just two
or three, either.  Christopher’s hand could barely close around the
brightly-wrapped sticks of processed carbs.

Ken had never liked
the things.  Even the best of them generally tasted to him like someone mixed
caulk with a dab or two of artificial flavor.  But now, looking at the things
in Christopher’s hand, he felt his mouth go dry then fill with saliva an
instant later.

He reached out, and
Christopher stepped forward – again, gingerly stepping around the still-lolling
form of Sally – to hand two of the bars to Ken.

Ken looked at them
only a half-second before tearing them open and wolfing one down in two quick
bites.

“Easy, son,” said
Aaron.  “You don’t want to make yourself sick.  You’ve been eatin’ okay, all
things considered, but still might be good to pace yourself.”

Ken tried to slow
down.  Found he couldn’t.  He took another huge bite and then looked at
Christopher in order to try and distract himself.  “Where’d they come from?” he
said again.

Christopher jerked
a bar-laden hand over his shoulder.  “Tunnel collapsed when the jet blew up. 
Must’ve been a GNC or some kind of health store above the tunnel.  A bunch of
shelves came down in the rubble.”  He grinned again.  “Energy bars and soy
protein muscle builder and our trusty flashlight here.”  He hit a dramatic
muscle pose, clearly for Hope’s benefit.  She giggled.  Sally licked his chops
and snuffed as though he’d heard this joke one too many times.  “We may be
hurt, but we can be well-lit and
huge
.”

Ken gawked.  Long
enough that Christopher dropped his pose.  “It’s okay, man.  There’s plenty
back there.  We’ve got plenty to live on for a while if we need to.”

“It’s not that,”
Ken said.  “If the tunnel fell down over there, where else did it fall?”  He
looked around at the survivors.  “What else fell
in
?”

Buck snorted,
surprising Ken.  “There’s nothing to worry about.”  He jogged his chin in
Christopher’s direction.  “Our pet arsonist over there dropped most of several
buildings right over us.  The tunnel’s completely sealed in three directions,
probably nothing but rubble above us for a hundred feet or so.”

“I apologized
already,” said Christopher, and again Ken heard the tone of a person going over
an old argument.  The sound of brothers rehashing an old dispute at a family
reunion.  “How was I supposed to know the explosion would be that big?”

“I’m still
impressed that he got a 737 to blow up in the first place,” Aaron said.  “It
ain’t as easy as the movies make it look.”  He squinted.  “How’d you know
there’d be enough fumes in the tanks to create explosive pressure, instead of
just a flameout?”

“I figured the jet
was probably on approach when it went down,” said Christopher.  “Otherwise
there would have been a lot more fire damage around it.”

“Huh,” was all
Aaron said.  But he looked impressed.

“Still, you –“ Buck
began, in a tone that made it clear he was determined to drag the argument out.

Ken cut him off. 
He felt weirdly like the father of two very large pre-teens.  “Let’s hold off
on the argument, can we?”  He brought a low-simmering glare against
Christopher, then Buck in turn.  And felt a bizarre desire to add, “Or I’ll
turn this tunnel around and we’ll go home right now.”

Instead he said,
“Three cave-ins?”

Buck nodded and in
a more contrite tone he said, “Yeah.  Just rubble back where you were, around
that corner,” nodding in the direction Christopher had gathered the energy
bars, “and down one other side tunnel.”  He held out two big hands in front of
Hope.  She started playing a quiet game of patty-cake with the big older man,
which Ken thought rated an eleven on the Bizarro Scale.

“And the last
direction?”

“That’s the way
out.”  Buck said.  He looked up at Ken, peering over the top of Hope’s head. 
He mouthed a pair of words that made Ken shiver.

“We hope.”