Free The Colony: Descent by Michaelbrent Collings Page A

without a hope for tomorrow.  All the past built
to the present, and the only purpose for the present was to provide for the
future.  His children were his hope.  One was dead.  The other two… changed.
    Why should he keep
fighting?
    He realized he was
trying to whisper something.  His lips moving silently, and even he wasn’t sure
what he was saying in the widening abyss of his mind.  “Forgive me,” perhaps. 
“Leave me.”
    “Let me die.”
    The others were
tearing around the small burrow they had created.  Tossing suitcases and totes
left and right.  Maggie looked strange in the near-darkness, a weirdly bulbous
creature with Liz hanging from her.  Grunting as she moved things out of the
way.
    Other noises came
from behind Ken.  He was laying where Christopher had put him –
    ( When did he put
me down? )
    – something sharp
jabbing into his back.  Staring at nothing, at the nothing above him that was
as dark as any black hole in the deepest parts of space.
    Then the darkness
shifted.
    Buck grunted somewhere.
    “You find
anything?” said Aaron in a whisper.
    “No.”
    The darkness moved
again.  Ken had thought it might be his injuries speaking, his loss of blood or
the concussions or any of a million other things overriding his senses.  But
now he was sure.  The sky of tightly-packed bags and suitcases had shifted.
    Fingers poked
through.
    They were stained. 
Smeared with soot and congealed blood.  One of them ended midway to the first
knuckle.
    The other suitcases
moved some more.
    One of the things
had found them.  The moles had been trapped in their burrow.

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    No one else had
noticed.  No one else had heard.
    The fingers pushed
aside a valise, but the soft bag didn’t move much, jammed up between a tote and
a hardside Samsonite bag like Moe, Larry, and Curly wedged into a door.
    The fingers – one
truncated, all bloody – twitched as they searched for ingress to the
burrow.
    Ken watched.
    I can let it
happen .
    No one else would
know.  Not until too late.  It would be quick.  Probably more merciful than
running, too.  What would running get them, after all?
    He saw Derek’s
face.  The boy throwing back his head and shrieking, blood erupting from the
child’s skin as his pores hemorrhaged.  Painful, yes.
    But quick.
    The fingers looked
longer now.  More of them, too.  Another hand?
    Christopher made a
noise. Not a eureka sound, more of a ”Maybe over here?” grunt.
    The luggage shifted
a bit more.  The Three Stooges were still wedged together, but Ken could see
that wouldn’t last long.
    “No, dammit.” 
Christopher moved to a different spot.
    Just let go.  Go
to Derek.
    Ken saw his son as
he had been.  Beautiful, with blond hair that was so often sopping with sweat,
his smile wide and slightly buck-toothed.
    But his son wasn’t
like that anymore.  He was dead.  Bitten and then fallen into flame.  He was
dead.
    He had to be.
    And if dead then…
what?
    In Heaven?
    One of the finger-tangles
became a full-sized hand.  Pushing through.  Ken stared at it.  Wondering if
there was a God, if there was a Heaven.
    And realized that,
right now, that didn’t matter.
    He was still
breathing.  His wife was still breathing.  His daughters were still alive. 
Changed, maybe, but not dead.
    Derek had died to
save them.  And Ken wouldn’t give up, wouldn’t give in to self-pity and so
destroy the entirety of what Derek’s life had built to.
    The past builds to
the present.  The present serves the future.  And all of us have a purpose. 
Derek’s had been to save them.
    Ken’s might not be
so noble, but he wouldn’t cut off his son’s gift.
    He drew in a
breath.  It seemed to take all his strength.  Everything he had went into the
conscious motion.  Staring at the hands that pushed through the suitcases. 
Breathing in.  Opening his mouth.  He couldn’t scream.  Just a wheeze, barely
more than a whisper. 
    “They’re here!”