The Colony: Descent (7 page)

“Get ready,” said
Aaron.

Ken felt
Christopher’s body jerk.  Couldn’t tell if it was a laugh or a shudder.  “Get
ready
?” 
The young man whipped his gaze around, the implication that that kind of advice
was coming their way a bit late more than clear.  “For
what
?”

“This.”

Ken hadn’t really
seen Aaron fight before.  Bits and snatches, but it had been mostly cloaked in
darkness, made nearly invisible by competing events and Ken’s own fear.

Now….

Aaron didn’t just
move.  He
flowed
.

It was like
watching liquid mercury, fashioned into the shape of a man and poured into a pair
of cowboy boots.  The older man jumped the last ten feet between him and the
undead that were crawling up toward them from below in a move that would have
shamed an Olympic athlete half his age.  He seemed to stop in mid-jump, though,
an impossible trick of physics that made Maggie gasp.

Ken was shocked as
well, and would have staggered if he wasn’t already utterly dependent on
Christopher for his ability to stand.  Perhaps that was why he actually saw
that Aaron had snagged something – a piece of wiring conduit? – that hung down
in the middle of the slanted aisle.  The cowboy used it like a pole in a
jungle-gym, going from near free-fall to sideways motion, his heavy boots
kicking out…

… and catching the
lead zombie square in the temple.

Ken knew from his
own martial arts experience that the temple was the thinnest part of the human
skull – only about twice the thickness of an eggshell, and so particularly
vulnerable to fracture.

Then again, he
suspected that a lead plate would have crumpled under the power of the kick
Aaron brought to bear on the undead before and below them.

The thing’s head
caved in, going from smooth oval to concave polygon.  One of the monster’s eyes
literally flew out of its socket, seeming to leap away as a sentient creature
might from a doomed life raft.  But instead of swimming into the darkness it
just lay on the floor, a limp, slowly deflating sac of vitreous fluid.

The zombie itself
was knocked into a row of partially-askew seats.  Black-red gore spewed out of
its now-empty eye socket and from the crevasse Aaron had opened in the thing’s
head.

Ken could see into
its skull.  Where the brain should have been.  Only there
was
no brain. 
Just more of that grotesque viscous matter, like the thing’s brain had rotted
and melted and half-congealed in the space of an instant.  It made Ken ill to
see, and he suspected he would have vomited if he had the strength.

Aaron had rebounded
off the kick, using the wire conduit to pull himself back away from the rest of
the zombies.  Just out of reach.

So the wounded one
was still close to him.

But closer to the
other zombies.

It opened its
mouth.  And for the first time, one of the undead made a sound.  It screamed. 
A harsh, grating sound like dirt being churned in a river of blood.

Then it attacked.

Ken heard the
scream as two things: terror and triumph.  Terror because the crushed skull of
the zombie signaled the entry of one more uncertainty into their world.

Triumph because
someone else had understood.  Aaron had comprehended the message his
injury-addled subconscious mind had been trying to convey.

Clunk.

Down.

Like many
infrequent air travelers, Ken never really thought much about the specifics of
flying.  He just got on the plane at the terminal, got off at the other end of
the flight.  Hopefully his luggage made a similar flight.

But there was more
to it than that.  This cabin, for instance.  A quick look around showed that it
only took up about half the internal volume of the fuselage.  So what else was
there?

Baggage?

Landing gear?

Whatever there was,
it was underneath the passenger cabin.  And when Ken had heard that muted
clunk
he realized there was more to the plane than what he could see.

There was a below. 
Something they could flee to, if only they could find a way.

The injured zombie
threw itself at its once-brothers and sisters.  The lower portion of the plane
became a maelstrom of destruction, the thing that Aaron had maimed trying to
destroy anything it could lay hands or feet or teeth on.

The other things
tried to ignore it.  Tried just to crawl over and around and past it to get to
the survivors.

The injured zombie
snagged one of the others.  Ripped its nose off with a jerk of its teeth, even
though its jaw hung half-askew from the force of Aaron’s hit.  Then it slammed
the injured monster into the thin padding of a coach-level headrest.

More black-red gore
spewed in a weird mix of liquid and congealed clay.  Now two insane zombies
were in the mix, madness buying the survivors some time.

Aaron was bent over
behind one of the chairs in a nearby row.  The chairs had pulled apart,
spreading like fingers in a giant game of Cat’s Cradle, wires and oxygen tubes running
like webbing between them.  The chairs looked like they were taller than the
ones around them, but Ken realized that was just an illusion: the chairs were
the same, but the flooring they were bolted to had been pulled slightly
upward.  Torqued by the forces of the crash, buckled by the impact with the
building against which the plane slanted.

Aaron was pulling
up on the seats.  Lifting with all his might.  Ken could hear the sound of
metal creaking, could see the tendons in the cowboy’s neck standing out in
stark relief.

Buck lumbered
over.  Saw what the other man was trying to do.  He put down Hope’s silent form
in a movement that was almost too tender to be understood.  He placed her in
the row of seats behind the one that Aaron was pulling on, and Ken thought he
even saw the big man brush his little girl’s hair out of her face.

Then Buck leaned
over.  Grabbed hold of the undercarriage of the middle chair.

Pulled.

The sound of
tortured metal, the shriek of Buck as he shouted in exertion, almost masked the
sound of feet slipping over cloth.

Ken turned his
head.  It took far too long.  He felt like he wasn’t moving his own body, but a
huge robot.  One that was vast and ponderous and weighted down by the rust and weathering
of a thousand years.

The dozen undead
that had been behind them were
still
behind them.

Behind, and close
enough to touch.

Ken opened his
mouth to scream.  To warn the others.

All that came out
was a sigh.  Like a final whisper, a whimper to carry his soul into the night.

Dorcas yelled.

Only it wasn’t
really just a yell.  Ken thought that every feminist who had ever talked about
equal rights, every woman who had ever said something about equal pay for equal
work, every female who had ever tried to make the case that they were as good
and capable as men… every single one of those women must have been present in
that shout.  Dorcas sounded suddenly like a lion, like an enraged beast whose
domain had been trodden upon.

In that moment, Ken
wasn’t sure who he would bet on for best two out of three between Dorcas and
Aaron.

The older woman
roared that terrifying roar, and kicked her thick work boot out so hard that
the zombie that had been reaching for Ken and Christopher nearly folded in
half.  It stumbled backward, up the tilted surface of the center aisle, arms
flung out so that it caught – and effectively stopped – several other monsters
that were coming down toward them.

“Get out of the
aisle!” Dorcas screamed.

Ken felt himself
jerked to the side as Christopher leapt into one of the mangled rows.  He saw
Maggie following suit as well, as though everyone in the plane had fallen
captive to the siren power of Dorcas’ voice.

She was already
moving as she spoke, grabbing at something that was stuck in a nearby row.  She
twisted and pulled, grunting in what sounded like a mixture of determination
and agony – Ken couldn’t imagine how the exertion was acting on her shattered
arm.

But she didn’t stop
pulling.  She wrestled at the thing, grunting as she pulled it inch by painful
inch into the center aisle.

It was a huge,
soot-stained box that Ken finally realized was the drinks cart.  The heavy-duty
metal cart that the flight attendants would wheel down the aisle and out of
which they would dole out cheap sodas and cheaper snacks to the passengers.

Dorcas kicked at
it.  Again.  A third time.

Gravity finally did
its job.  The drinks cart flew away from Dorcas with a squeal of tortured metal
and broken wheels, bouncing as much as rolling.  It gathered speed quickly, and
in the few feet between the survivors and the zombies it was already going fast
enough to kill.

It hit the first of
the zombies – the one whose head Aaron had crushed – with a leaden thud.  Kept
going as though the thing were nothing more than a paper cutout.

The other zombies –
the “downhill” ones, at least – shattered like bowling pins in the path of a
wrecking ball.  Several got hung up on the cart, dragged downward toward the
flames and smoke that obscured the bottom/front of the cabin.

Ken looked behind
him creakily.

The other zombies. 
The “uphill” ones.  The one Dorcas had kicked was already on its feet.  It
looked like it had once worked for the airline: wearing a colorful outfit with
a small tag on its breast that said, “Brandi.”

Brandi snarled
silently.  Her fingers clenched.  Dorcas whipped around to face her, and Ken
bet even odds that his farm girl could take that zombie.

But that didn’t
matter.  There were still another ten or more
behind
Brandi.

Something popped. 
It sounded like a soda can opening, if that soda can was the size of a swimming
pool.

“Got it,” said
Buck.

“Get over here!”
shouted Aaron.

Ken looked.  Buck
had pulled the seats a bit higher.  Not much, maybe only a foot or so.

Enough?

He looked back at
Dorcas.  She was still staring at Brandi.

“Go,” said Dorcas. 
“I got this bitch.”

Christopher pulled
Ken away, and the last thing he saw of Dorcas, the older woman was kicking for
all she was worth, swinging what looked like a fire extinguisher – maybe a
piece of red luggage, Ken’s vision wasn’t so great right now – at an oncoming
monster.

Laughing.

It wasn’t
hysterical laughter.  Not the laughter of the cursed or the condemned.  It was
the sound of someone who has not resigned to death, but determined to
live
.

If only for a
moment.

Then he was away,
yanked in a jumble of smoke and fire and tumbling images.  He saw Maggie,
pulled along as well.  Saw Lizzy hanging from her chest, still empty-seeming,
devoid of whatever strangeness had taken hold of her and pronounced Ken and the
rest of the survivors to be “renegades.”

He saw himself,
tumbling toward darkness.  Descending into a black that reminded him of the
elevator shaft he had climbed down with Hope strapped to his chest.  Only this
was worse, because he wasn’t climbing, he had no power of his own.  And the
darkness was below a layer of smoke and fire and vaguely-seen demon things.

So this was… what? 
The basement below the worst parts of Hell?

Ken saw a face in
the darkness.  Aaron.

“Pass ‘im to me.”

Ken was moved into
place, shoved over, and handed to Aaron, who was standing in the darkness under
Hell.

Ken tried to help
the hands that moved him into place.  But he was limp and loose as Liz or
Hope.  A helpless observer.

He was pulled into
the pit by Aaron’s strong hand.  Placed quickly but carefully on something hard
and boxy.

“The girl,” said
Aaron.  In the bit of light that filtered from above, Ken could see that the
cowboy wasn’t standing after all – he was squatting, almost kneeling in the low
space beneath the passenger area of the cabin.  Aaron reached for something,
pulling a small shape into the baggage compartment.  Hope.

A second later,
Maggie followed, turning to allow herself to fit in while still strapped to
Liz.

Christopher slipped
in.  Aaron looked at the younger man.  “Dorcas?” he said.

Christopher jerked
his chin upward, where the sounds of scuffling could be heard.  And laughter,
Dorcas was still laughing.  Though the laughter was low, wheezing.  Tempered by
pain.

Aaron’s eyes went
cold.  Ken, remembering how Aaron had reacted just a moment ago when he thought
Dorcas was bitten, was sure the man would leap out of the hole under the seats,
would try to save Dorcas.

But apparently the
cowboy recognized a difference between someone being brought down from behind…
and knowingly sacrificing herself to save her friends.  He knew what she was
doing, and respected it.  So he didn’t go crazy, didn’t jump back into the cabin. 
He just reached his hand out and grabbed Buck’s blindly grasping fingers.

The big man barely
made it through the fissure he had opened.  He grunted, then yelped, and Ken
heard cloth tearing.  “Sonofa…,” said the gray man.  Not whining.  Not
anymore.  That part of Buck seemed to be gone.  He was just in pain, like all
of them.  But strong enough to still be alive, like all of them.

Above them, the last
strains of life-laughter ceased.

There were thuds as
things – silent things, things whose voices had been stolen along with their
lives and their free will – pounded toward the hole.

“Find something to
block ‘em,” said Aaron.  He pulled his head away from the hole, feeling around
in the near-dark.

They didn’t have
time.

The first dark
shape slipped through.  Into their space.

Among them.