Free Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) by Luke Shephard Page A

The tribe slept. All except Owen, James, and Hannah. Hannah lie awake, thinking about the failure her relationship with her childrens’ father had become. Owen sat against the door, thinking hard and planning for the long weeks of travel ahead. But he clung to the idea that an island would be the answer. Some place no one had thought to inhabit before. Somewhere across the water, where the infected creatures could not follow.
                 
    James was different than the other two in that he was not thinking about the future. James was thinking long and hard about his troubled past. James had joined Owen and Hannah because, when they found him cowering in an ice cream shop freezer, he had only been twelve years old. He had nobody else to turn to. Owen had coaxed him out, killed the zombie that had cornered him, and saved his life. And now he was so different than he had been.
                 
    James realized that he was now a true man, sixteen or not. Owen had begun a tribe at his age, and James had saved all of their lives the night before. Sure, there were older people in the Albion Tribe. People like Eric, who were well into their twenties, some older. But still, they found it in them to trust their lives with a man who had just left his teens. Some who slept in his room trusted a boy young enough to be their son.
                 
    He felt a sense of responsibility and a sense of pride. This pride began to fill his head. But it wasn’t all bad. No, feeling larger than life in this moment couldn’t be all that bad.
     
                 

The Albion Tribe kept on like this for thirteen days. It was a difficult journey, to say the least. Each day waking at the crack of dawn, hiking several miles, and then stopping off in some town, or whatever shelter they could find. If they were lucky, they would find a parking lot with several cars that still had gas and keys in the ignition. This didn’t happen often. After the Zero-Hour first happened, it was easy to find transportation. But gas didn’t hold well over years, and some cars had fallen apart too much to be used.
                 
    The group was lucky on their route. There was rarely a day when they wouldn’t find at least one car with enough gas in it to make several trips along the same road. Some days, they would make it across an entire state. Others, they barely hiked ten miles.
                 
    Once a car ran out of gas, that was it for the vehicle. There was no safe way to access gasoline at gas stations without electricity, and gas cans that were not empty were a rare find. At the end of it all, just before the virus took over completely, everyone was trying to escape. Technology was already out, but many still lived long enough to fill their tanks and drive. They drove and drove, thinking they would eventually find safety. Most never did, unless Owen found them first.
                 
    Owen, who was willing to fight the virus and those that carried it.
                 
    When it came down to it, automobiles were a risky find. But, on this trip, they paid off. Just two weeks after the team left Nashville, they found themselves in coastal New England.
                 
    They all gathered in a banquet room on the fifth floor of a high-rise hotel. They had made it east, as far east as they could get by land, but the time had come to discuss with the others what Owen’s plan really was. If he wanted to lead them over the water, he would need to convince them of his intentions first.
                 
    As everyone settled in, Hannah took the children and went into another room across the hallway. She didn’t want to hear the proposal or the argument that was sure to follow. She knew she would want to fight it, to say how she felt. And she had spent two weeks now refraining from preaching the ridiculousness of the idea. She needed her husband. She would not