The Colony: Descent by Michaelbrent Collings Read Free Book Online

disappearing to the floor in its row of
seats.
    Ken didn’t know
what to make of that.  He didn’t have time to wonder if it was a trap, because
the two other walking corpses were climbing over the intervening rows of
seats.  They could have been on him in an instant if they had come into the
center aisle, but they seemed unaware of that.  They saw only him, their target
and prey.  A straight line seemed to be the only way they would move.
    Footsteps behind
him.  Several sets.  A scuffle.
    One of the zombies
reached him.  It moved awkwardly.  Ken had noted that the zombies moved better
the more of them there were, seeming to draw agility and strength from
numbers.  He couldn’t tell if that was what was happening here, or if this one
was struggling because it was born not of a living person but of a cadaver.
    Either way, the
thing’s tenuous movements bought Ken enough time to backpedal a bit.  The thing
reached out, grabbing at him with fingers stained and bloody.  Ken’s own hands
went back, and brushed into something.  He grabbed it reflexively, then yanked
it forward as the zombie lurched at him.
    The thing snapped
its teeth.  Silently.
    Ken was not
silent.  He screamed in terror, but didn’t run.  He couldn’t.  There was
nowhere to run.  His family was behind him.  He couldn’t let this thing
get past.
    Instead he used
what was in his hand: the flexible tube connected to an oxygen mask.  The thing
had a little give.  Not a lot, but enough that he could yank it forward and whip
it around the zombie’s head.
    Ken meant to throw
it around the thing’s neck like a noose.  Some thought in the back of his head
whispered that he might be able to hang the thing up in the tubing, stop it
completely right here.
    He missed.
    The tubing didn’t
get to the thing’s neck.  The zombie had its mouth open, trying to take a bite
out of its enemy.  The cord got hung up in its maw like a bit for a horse’s
bridle.  The thing gnashed down automatically, and Ken had no choice but to
continue his motion, wrapping the oxygen tube around the thing’s neck.
    The thing was stuck.  At least for a moment.
    But Ken felt
something odd.
    He looked at his
hand.  His right hand.  His good hand.  The hand that had grabbed the tubing.
    There was a shining
hemisphere of red on the meat of his hand.
    Teeth marks.
    He had been bitten.

  19
     
     
    Aaron thudded past
him, bypassing Ken to get to the third zombie, the one that was still climbing
over seats.  The cowboy had grabbed the severed arm of one of the passenger
seats and as the zombie jumped at him he swung it.
    The reinforced arm
hit the zombie with a muffled thwump .  Aaron wasn’t a superhero – the
zombie didn’t miraculously slam to the ground with the force of his blow – but
he changed direction a bit.  Enough to get hung up in a mass of willow-wires
hanging from a ceiling panel.  The thing struggled to get free, but Aaron just
kept pounding on it with the seat arm, and Ken heard the wet thud/crack of
flesh and bone breaking.
    The zombie didn’t
cry out.  Didn’t scream.
    Aaron didn’t,
either.  He panted with the effort of his attack, but that was the only sound
he made. 
    Ken saw it all
peripherally.  Most of his attention was on his hand.  He held it in front of
his face.  Looked at the half-circle of tiny holes.  They wept red.
    “Come on,” said
Aaron gruffly, and turned to go.  More movement in the plane.  Other bodies
were lurching to their feet.  In fact, Ken realized that all of the dead
were in motion.  But most of them were having trouble getting up.
    Seat belts .   They can’t get out of the
seat belts .
    The thought flitted
through his mind, bullet-fast and leaving almost no trace of its passage.
    Bitten .   I’ve been bitten .
    That registered.
    His hand shook.
    He wondered what it
would feel like.
    Would he feel the
blood come out of his pores?
    Would he feel
himself change?
    Would he know it
when he tried to