Colony Z: The Complete Collection (Vols. 1-4) (14 page)

Eric
Billups didn’t like blood.

Yet it was covering him from head to toe.

“…Donna…?” He whispered quietly to the corpse laying in front of him, almost in a pleading voice. “Donna, come on…wake up.”

But Donna didn’t wake up. Donna would never wake up again.

Eric stared at the nightmare that had unfolded over the past 24 hours, and there were no other word to describe it other than ‘hell’. Pure hell.

And it had all begun so naturally, with him reading his two year old daughter a bedtime story. Everything was quiet, serene, platonic. Why should anything bad have happened? Sure, the news lady told them to lock their doors at night because strange things were going on, but strange things was all they were to Eric and his family. Nothing that could actually hurt them.

“And they all lived happily ever after…” Eric finished in the rocking chair, cradling his little girl to him. There was hardly ever a night when he would read her a bedtime story and she wouldn’t fall asleep halfway through. Eric finished them anyway, though, because he liked the simplicity of them. He liked to believe that, somewhere out there, there were still happy endings.

Eric closed the book and tucked his daughter into her crib before dimming the lights and leaving the room. He traveled up the stairs to his own master bedroom, to see his wife at their mirror, removing her makeup. And not the stuff she normally wore to work, but the kind she wore when she had been out doing something important. The kind she wore when she was ‘with the girls’.

“Where were you?”

She jumped, hearing his voice, then turned back to him.

“I told you, I was with Helen and Andrea.”

Liar.

Eric crossed the room to his wife, grabbed her arm, and forced her to turn to him.

“Damnit, woman, tell me the truth.”

There was a silence in the room then. One that no one seemed prepared to break. Donna looked into her husband’s eyes, her own filling with tears, and then looked at the ground.

“…you don’t understand, Eric-“

“The hell I don’t!”
He said, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake the baby. “I sit in this house
all day
waiting for you to come home. I take care of our daughter, I read her bedtime stories, I tuck her in…and what do you do? What do
you
do, Donna?”

“I-I don’t…” She stammered, but the words couldn’t come out.

“You cheat on this family!”
Eric released her angrily. She hit the wall harder than he thought she would, but he almost didn’t care. “I ought to kick you out of my house.”

“I’m not cheating on you, Eric…”

“Just save it, Donna.” He said, snatching his things from the bed. The couch would be more comfortable tonight. But who in the hell made up the rule that the man has to leave? Even when the woman is sleeping around with some other guy, the man has to sleep on the sofa.

“Eric, please listen to me, I just-“ Donna reached for him, but Eric shoved her away. She fell back into the wall again, her tears glistening now. He hadn’t hurt her, and he knew it, but he felt guilt anyway. It would be so easy just to slip back into the normal routine…let things go on the way that they should have…

No. Not this time.

Eric gave his wife one final glare before leaving the room and slamming the door behind him. He heard Donna burst into sobs as he left.

But he didn’t really care anymore.

While
Carlos, Nathan, and Jennifer sat trapped in a storm cellar with what they would eventually find out was a tree on top of them, another group of teenagers sat together in the night.

But these teenagers were much different than their counterparts.

They also sat in a storm shelter, but this one was stocked full of food, water, and emergency supplies. And this one had not trapped them inside.

There was also a great deal of alcohol in the storm cellar. Alcohol, a speaker system, and cigarettes.

Sara, Jasmine, and Robert didn’t know about the zombies roaming the Earth above them. They didn’t care about any of that. All they cared about was getting drunk and stoned out of their minds. But they needed a place where no one would find them…and where better than the storm cellar in Jasmine’s backyard? Her parents would never know she was still there.

It seemed genius to them.

Sara, who was fifteen, had been a dancer since the 6
th
grade. A dancer who was constantly told she wasn’t good enough. Her parents told her she would never amount to anything every time she brought home a bad report card, and her grandmother wouldn’t even take her in when they kicked her out for smoking a cigarette in her bedroom.

Dancing disappeared. Soon Sara was simply a girl who had once had a dream and now had no one and nothing. She lived with her boyfriend, Robert, who was four years older than her. And that was about all there was to it. Getting high? That was her only escape, and she cherished it.

Jasmine, Sara’s best friend, hadn’t lived quite the same life. Jasmine had everything she could possibly want and more. With rich parents, perfect grades, and a personality to match, everyone loved Jasmine. Sara suspected even her own boyfriend loved Jasmine more. Jasmine, however, refused to date anyone. Why?

Well, mostly because Jasmine was a slut.

Pretty, sure. But a slut, all the same.

And that was her weakness, and she knew it. So Jasmine drank. It made it easier to do what she did. When she wasn’t thinking straight, she was more fun, and people loved her that way. And that was who she wanted to be.

Of the three, Robert had the least going for him. Robert had no dreams, no beliefs, and no plans. He was satisfied with living in a beat-up trailer park with his semi-cute girlfriend. He dealt weed, smoked until morning, and drank more than was probably normal for a nineteen-year old kid. But who cared? Chicks liked it, and he didn’t much mind it himself.

And, yet, some power stuck with Robert that night over the girls he sat with. Something decided he was meant for more. Because, when something stomped on the cellar door, it was he who was smart enough to turn off the lights and quiet the girls. And then it was he who was smart enough to take out the gun he kept in his pocket, because it was he who, when he heard about the ‘strange things’ going on, was smart enough to buy one.

It wasn’t Jasmine’s parents up there. No, it was something else. And Robert knew it.

So Robert opened the trap door. And Robert shot down the giant, ape-like thing that stood over him. It didn’t stay down for long. As it began to stand again, Sara and Jasmine stuck their heads up through the hole and screamed in unison.

“What the hell is that?”
Jasmine yelled.

“Get back down there!” Robert said, trying to get the girls to calm down and retreat. But they didn’t like the idea of being in a dark, smelly basement when all hell broke loose. No, they wanted to be right out there with it.

“I’m out of here, guys.” Sara said, pulling herself out of the whole and twisting her arm away from Robert.

“Ditto.” Jasmine responded.

There was nothing Robert could do to stop them.

“Don’t-“

“Robert,” Jasmine said angrily. “If we wake up tomorrow and find out that you killed some innocent guy, I’m blaming it all on you.”

“Have you
seen
that thing?” Robert burst out. “That’s not a guy, Jasmine, that’s some kind of thing!”

“You’re psycho, Robert!” Sara said, tears in her eyes. “And he’s gonna die…ohmygod, what are we going to do, Jasmine?”

“…we’re gonna make sure we don’t take the fall for it.”

“You can’t prove I did this, alright? The gun isn’t even registered to me. And even if it was, it doesn’t matter…God, just take the damn thing!” He threw the gun across the lawn, trying to prove his point. This wasn’t violence, it was safety.

Jasmine gave Sara a look of pure determination, as though they were doing something important. She pulled the key to the storm cellar out of her pocket and turned it over in her hands.

Robert noticed this and realized what she was going to do.

“No way…” He said, starting to pull his way up through the opening. But both girls ran at him at once and shoved him back down with all the strength they had. When the door closed, Jasmine clicked the lock and collapsed onto it, along with Sara, who followed suit.

Robert pounded on the door, but Jasmine smiled in relief. They were safe.

“…we did it.” She said to Sara. “We did it.”

And that was when the dead guy’s friends showed up to claim them.

Only Robert survived that night…and Robert’s thoughts joined those of the three who were in the same situation as himself.

What would happen when he ran out of air?

Eric had only been asleep for an hour or two when he heard the sound of breaking glass. He thought, at first, that Donna had finally snapped and decided, if he was going to leave her, she might as well destroy the house before he did.

But Donna was sleeping. Eric could hear her light snoring from down the stairs. There weren’t any lights on in the house. Something else was happening, and Eric felt uneasy.

He stood, his first instinct on the baby and making sure she was safe.

Traveling to the nursery felt like it took about five years, even though Eric was practically running. It was moments like this that traveled in slow motion, as though the world wanted you to be able to picture it in your mind for years and years to come.

When Eric reached the nursery, he knew the image would never escape his mind.

A huge
thing
was holding his daughter up into the air. Her eyes flew open and she began to scream. This wasn’t Daddy, like she’d expected. This was a stranger, and she was terrified.

Daddy wished he could have comforted her.

“NO!” He screamed, running at the thing. But it opened its gargantuan mouth and bit down on his daughter’s arm so hard it drew blood.

This was when Eric reached it and tackled it to the ground, snatching his daughter away and yelling for Donna to come quick as he did.

She must have heard the racket downstairs and realized it was serious because, when she finally did show up, she showed up with a gun. She saw the beast standing over her husband, and her bleeding daughter crying on the floor a few feet away. The struggle was obvious.

Donna pointed the gun at the thing and shot three times, until it landed on the ground next to Eric, crying out its last cries of pain.

She ran to her child, picked her up, and carried her into the kitchen, trying desperately to wash the blood off her arm and into the sink, praying it was the blood of Eric or the thing and not her own. But the blood would not stop flowing, and eventually Donna could see the bite marks.

Once Eric knew the thing was dead, he left the nursery and found his wife where she stood at the sink.

“I need a bandage, Eric,” She said as calmly as she could. But then her emotions broke and she wailed.
“I need a bandage!”

Eric ran to the first aid kit down the hallway and snatched the gauze and bandages. He brought them to the kitchen, where his wife was trying desperately to calm her daughter, the gun sitting on the kitchen counter within her reach. Eric grabbed it and stared at her in shock.

“…where did you get this?” He whispered.

She didn’t answer.

“We don’t keep guns in the house, Donna.”

“Well we do now.”

“Where did you learn to fire a gun?”

“Damn it, Eric, where do you think I’ve been spending all my time?”

That shut Eric up. She sighed deeply.

“…I wasn’t with some guy, Eric. I didn’t know how to tell you this…because I know you hate violence and…and I was scared that, when I told you, you’d take the baby and…and leave.”

“What are you talking about, Donna?”

“You know how everyone keeps saying there are weird things going on?”

“…what about them?”

“…I saw one of those…those
things
before today, Eric. On my way home from work one night. It was just…standing in an alleyway eating out of the garbage…eating
raw meat
out of the garbage. I stopped the car and I just…stared at it…and it stared back at me and I saw its
eyes…
they’re evil things, Eric.”

“What-“

“So I bought a gun and stared going to the shooting range…because…because it made me feel safe.”

“But…but the makeup…”

“I never wanted you to know, Eric,” She said, finally hushing her daughter and finishing the bandage on her arm. “I just…I just wanted to do it in case. I…I wanted you to think I’d been out with Helen or Andrea…I…I didn’t want you to know.”

“…Donna, I was going to leave you…”

“Well, from now on, you’re going to have to trust me. No more secrets.”

“No more secrets?”

“No more secrets. Now help me get her into our room. We’ll clean up her nursery in the morning.”

“…do we tell anybody about this?” Eric asked, unsure.

“There’s nobody to tell, Eric…who’s going to believe us?”