Read The Colony: Descent for Free Online

the child-thing had been a mangled mass of nothing. 
Just torn flesh and broken bone, loosely contained by threads that no doubt had
once been an outfit carefully chosen for the trip.  Not human, not even a
body.  Barely a carcass.
    But when the thing stood
up, Ken saw what Maggie had seen: the little round face, impossibly
unblemished.
    Tornadoes ravaged
entire neighborhoods but left one home pristine.  Earthquakes sunk homes into
the ground and left random bits of perfection standing on the city streets as
mute witness to the past.  And apparently airliner crashes had the same
indiscriminate quality.  Breaking a body but leaving a face perfectly intact,
the visage of an angel peering out from the husk of a demon.
    And he – Ken now
saw it had been a he – looked so much like Derek.  Or maybe not.  Maybe he just
wished it.  Maybe he just wished to see his son, even if seeing his son came at
the cost of death revoking its sovereignty.
    But no, Maggie saw
it, too.  So it wasn’t imagination.  It was a cruel joke, or a continuation of
the awful prank being played out on a cosmic level.
    The ash was still
frozen.  The flame seemed encased in ice.  Nothing moved.
    The father-thing –
    ( and Ken
wondered if it would look like him if it was a dark version of himself another
man who had also lost his son and failed his family )
    – broke the spell
first.  Clawed, pulled its way around.
    The boy/thing/beast/corpse
resumed its flight through the air.  Mouth open in a scream that never came. 
Silent.
    The silence was the
worst.  Because rage like Ken saw in the boy’s eyes, near-mindless evil of the
kind that could drive broken bones to grind against themselves and push a
shattered body into the air, that should scream .
    It should not be
silent.
    Ken didn’t
understand what was happening.
    The living had
turned to vicious, unstoppable animals.
    The dead were no
longer the dead.
    The boy flew
through the air.
    Straight at Ken.
    Ken couldn’t raise
his hands.  Couldn’t do anything.
    How could you stop
something that bore the face of your dead child?
    The boy-thing
reached with crooked arms that ended in mangled fingers.  His mouth opened wide
to show bloodied gums.  Not many teeth.
    But enough. 
Assuming that a bite from the once-dead could bring the change as fast and
easily as could a bite from the zombies spawned from the still-living.
    Ken thought that
was likely the case.  The one thing that was consistent in all of this was the
deadliness of the things they faced.  The only two choices seemed to be
conversion… or death.
    A bite would change
him.
    But he did not
move.
    He could not. 
Wasn’t sure he even wanted to.
    He whispered his
son’s name.

  15
     
     
    The face was
perfect.  A round face, like Derek’s.  Lightly tanned.  Button nose.
    The silent snarl
was not Derek’s.  Nor was the dried blood that streaked his cheeks and crumbled
out of his mouth like river clay.
    But it was close
enough to paralyze Ken.  Close enough to make him wonder why he was fighting,
if fighting would only result in death and, worse, in having to confront the
faces of the dead.
    The dead
boy/Derek/thing’s fingers were bent every which way, twisted and curling in on
themselves.
    Derek always bit
his nails too much.
    Filthy habit.
    Ken knew he should
be moving.  Should be doing something.  But he just watched as the thing jumped
over several seat backs, leapt over a smoldering fire, and then pounced.
    He’ll hurt
himself if he keeps that up .
    Ken looked for the
ash.  The ash that had hung for an impossible forever in the air.  It was
gone.  The miracle was over.  Time had started again, marching implacably
forward, resolutely pushing on to the inevitable dissolution of all things.
    The ash was gone.
    Derek’s gone .
    Ken shook his
head.  He moved.
    But he was too
late.  The thing’s fingers – the dead, broken fingers of the thing that had
once been a boy but never Derek, never his boy –