Free The Colony: Descent by Michaelbrent Collings

Buck.
    “Nothing,” echoed
Maggie.
    “Come on, then,”
said Aaron.  He looked at Christopher.  “You get Ken?”
    Christopher nodded,
glancing back at the hole.  “The creeps are coming in soon,” he said.  And Ken
could see he was right: they had cleared more than half the hole.  The thing
that had once been pinned was now falling apart.  Its legs had fallen – still
moving – to the luggage.  Soft internal organs had tumbled out.  One of its
arms torn off and thrown aside.
    One of the zombies
pulled off the skewered monster’s head.  Another started to push past it.
    “Down we go,” said
Aaron.

  30
     
     
    Christopher slung
Ken over his shoulder, but the young man didn’t stand up.  None of them did –
there was no room to do so.  The baggage area below the cabin was a tiny place,
contrary to what Ken had been led to believe by many movies – likely the same
ones that had taught him the crap about one’s ability to recover from massive
physical injury and deliver devastating scissor-kicks.
    So the survivors moved
forward into darkness, bent nearly in half, each of them holding onto someone. 
Aaron was the only one who didn’t have another human being in his care, and
that allowed him to burrow through the tossed suitcases.
    Down.
    Aaron tossed
suitcase after suitcase over his shoulders, descending to one level of
Samsonites and TravelPros and Tumis, then pulling that level out from under his
own feet and passing it up to Buck, who threw it to Maggie, who tossed it to
Christopher.
    Christopher then
tried his best to pile it behind him.  To make a wall that would seal them away
from the undead creatures that were still coming.
    Down, down, down. Like
moles knowing safety only in darkness; in the depths.
    It never went
completely black.  The plane was still on fire somewhere above them, and Ken
started sweating as the nearby flames grew hotter and hotter.  He wondered if
they were close to a fuel source.  He remembered the explosion outside his
school when an SUV exploded.  Remembered the heat burning his back and hair, and
knew that would be nothing compared to an explosion of jet fuel.
    He wondered if
Dorcas was one of the things behind them.  If she had been turned.
    Probably.
    The things were in
the baggage compartment now.  They still weren’t vocalizing, but Ken could hear
them nonetheless.  Throwing luggage around, looking for their prey.
    None of the
survivors spoke.  Silent and purposeful as the monsters from which they fled.  They
just kept moving down.  Kept pulling up the floor beneath their feet, turning
it into a roof over their heads.
    Ken wondered if he
should pray.  He hadn’t prayed in a while.  He didn’t feel like it now.
    What if there was
no God?
    Even worse, what if
there was ?  How would someone – even an omniscient being – explain all
this?  The loss of the world, the loss of his strength, the loss of his son ?
    “Damn,” whispered
Aaron.
    “What?” said Buck.
    “End of the line.”

  31
     
     
    Ken still couldn’t
move, but a fluting trill seemed to sound in his fingers and toes,
panic-stirrings of fear that had not merely weight and feeling, but sound . 
He could hear his terror, and the sound was horrific.  Horrific…
    … and strangely
sweet.
    He realized that he
could give in to the fear.  No one would blame him if he folded.  He could just
give up now.  Not because the things were growling their siren call, but
because his world was over.  He could just wrap himself up in the comfort of
terror and disappear in fright’s velvet folds.
    He could do that.
    He could give up.
    He didn’t have to do this.
    It was appealing. 
The world had ended in less than ten minutes.  And now, only six or seven hours
later, Ken had already seen two of the group’s bravest members – Dorcas and his
son – killed.  Or worse.
    What chance did he have?  What future could he look forward to?
    Life, he realized
in that instant, meant nothing