The Colony: Velocity (The Colony, Vol. 4)

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  It was the Big Wheel that he rode back to consciousness. The Big Wheel that he took back with him, riding on it and somehow smiling even though the worst had happened.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  (Aaron did it Aaron did it he knocked me out and dropped Christopher and what the hell is going on?)

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  Ken opened his eyes. The Big Wheel disappeared.

  He couldn’t see anything. He thought he was blind for a moment, wondered if Aaron had held the choke too long. Another irony: to survive the zombies and be destroyed by his friend.

  Then he realized that he could feel fabric across his eyes. The darkness wasn’t absolute, it was the filtered black of a blindfold.

  At the same moment he felt thick fingers. Heard a familiar voice.

  “I’m going to take this off. Please don’t act crazy or it goes back on.”

  The blindfold came off. It wasn’t much brighter without it. Ken was sitting in what he instantly recognized as a train.

  Tok-tok.

  Tok-tok.

  It was moving. Railspan by railspan passing below the turning wheels, taking them God only knew where.

  Aaron was kneeling in front of him. The cowboy stared at Ken with concern.

  “I bet you’d like to know what’s going on,” he said.

  END OF BOOK FOUR

  THE SAGA WILL CONTINUE IN BOOK FIVE

  THE COLONY: SHIFT

  Also, check out this excerpt from MbC’s newest paranormal thriller, CRIME SEEN:

  Evan White looked at his hands again, as though this time he might see something different. As though this time they might hold answers; might tell him where his life had gone and how everything had turned to crap so very quickly.

  For the briefest instant it seemed like he was on the edge of an epiphany. An understanding that would shift not merely his perception but his existence.

  “I’m the one you’ve been looking for.”

  The voice sounded in Evan’s head, the memory bouncing around like a bullet in his skull, ripping apart bits of his mind. Peeling away his brain a layer at a time, drilling deep, revealing… what?

  The call had come on his cell phone. Just one more call, like so many that had come in the wake of… in the wake of what had happened.

  Tragedy brings out the worst in humanity. It brings out the leeches and the sycophants and the crazies. At first Evan thought that the call came from another one of the latter: just one more nut-job who had seen the case in the paper and wanted five seconds of vicarious fame. In a world where heiresses could sex their way to stardom and ninety percent of prime time news seemed to be devoted to what some anorexic starlet was wearing, Evan shouldn’t have been surprised. Shouldn’t have been disappointed.

  But he was. He felt his spirit die a bit with every call.

  “Do you have a name?” he said.

  The phone had sat silent in his hand for a moment. That was the first time he thought he might be talking to someone out of the ordinary. Not that he believed for a second it was the someone. No. But maybe not a nutter, either. Nutters talked too much, answered too quickly. A simple “Do you have a name?” would have been an invitation for a torrent of crazy, a deluge of insanity.

  Not silence.

  Finally, the man on the other end of the phone said, “That’s not important. What’s important is the look on your wife’s face when she died.”

  Evan went cold when he heard those words. Maybe the man on the phone was a kook. But Evan had to know.

  He had to.

  “Is this a joke to you?” he said.

  The man laughed. And the laugh was the thing that cinched it, the thing that guaranteed that Evan would go where the man wanted him to go, on the off chance that he actually knew something.

  Because whether this man was involved in the murder of Evan’s wife or not, the laugh was the scraping, scratching howl of a madman. The shriek of a devil who hadn’t quite figured out the best way to destroy his fill of happiness, to quench his fill of joy.

  Evan didn’t know what the man wanted, exactly. But the laugh told him that it involved pain. Misery.

  Death.

  The conversation played over and over in Evan’s mind. It kept on turning and returning, spinning around until he had checked it from all angles, listening to it until he could hear no more.

  Again he felt like he was on the edge of something, some realization that would… matter. That would even, perhaps, take away the image of his wife’s face as it had been when he saw her last.

  Then he realized it wasn’t epiphany he perched on the edge of. No, just a barstool. Backless, the kind that would let you spin around on a whim. In better places that might be because you were hoping to find a romantic attachment, maybe just people-watch. Here, though, you could probably spin around forever and never find anything good to look at. Torn faux leather gouged at Evan’s thighs and buttocks, biting through the cheap fabric of his suit pants, and a backless stool in this kind of place just meant you had a good chance of cracking your head open after the night’s bender stole your backbone.

  Evan looked at his drink again. Wondered if he should drink the rest. Probably not. He wasn’t even sure what it was. This wasn’t the kind of place you came to drink high-quality booze, it was the kind of place you came to drink angry and get angrier. The kind of place you came to get drunk, but what you ended up doing more often than not was getting in a fight.

  It was small, poorly lit even by the low standards for this kind of place. A few tables – one or two even had chairs – and the bar. The bar itself was sticky, made of a wood that had been burnt and stained by countless old cigarette butts and spilled drinks and blood until it was a dark, grainless brown that might be oak or cherry or walnut or Formica laminate for all Evan could tell.

  Bleed on a thing long enough, it stops being what it was, and turns to just a faded brown bar in a bad part of town.

  At the other end of the bar, a girl with short-cut hair that had been dyed in every color of the rainbow was holding the hand of a drunk. Evan thought at first she was a hooker, but something about her changed his mind. He couldn’t see her face, but something about the way she held herself didn’t say she was turning tricks.

  “I’ll read your palm one time,” said Rainbow Hair. “One time.”

  The drunk snorted. He was a big guy, dressed in flannels and jeans that had seen lots of wear. Maybe a dock worker. “Can you really do this?” he said, every other word nearly a mumble.

  “I’ve always seen the truth,” said the girl in a tone that was too bright to belong in this bar.

  The drunk laughed. “Tell me a lie. Lies are better.”

  You got that right, thought Evan. Then he turned away from the pair. They weren’t what he was here for. They weren’t who he was looking for.

  “No worries,” laughed the girl. “Whenever people see the truth, they always forget.”

  Evan’s cell rang. The ring tone was one Val had picked. He hadn’t changed it yet.

  “White,” he said into the phone, the typical answer he gave. He never needed more.

  The voice that answered wasn’t that of a lunatic in human shape. Evan didn’t know if he was happy or sad about that. He felt confused, felt like he hadn’t been able to get his head on straight since….

  Since Val. Don’t lie. Not to yourself.

  Regardless, the voice that came from his cell was a comfortable one, though with a hard edge hiding just behind it. Evan always thought of those old pictures of Japanese samurai when he heard this voice: men who were honorable, who were good. Who moved slowly and deliberately… until it was time to attack. Then, God help anyone who got in their way.

  “Anything?” Max Geist was as to-the-point on the phone as Evan was. Part of why they got along, he supposed: neither of them felt a need to pad their lives or conversation with things that weren’t necessary. />
  Evan sensed motion at the bar’s entrance. He wasn’t sure how – perhaps he glimpsed it in the mirror behind the bar, a reflection torn apart by innumerable bottles in colorful glass. Maybe it was a trace sound he registered subconsciously.

  Whatever it was, Evan spun on his seat. His free hand fell to his belt, brushing past the badge clipped there and circling the grip of the handgun holstered directly behind it.

  His hand relaxed almost as fast as it had clenched. The movement wasn’t someone entering, just someone leaving. The door to the bar had been propped open – apparently to better allow drunks and flies to find their way inside – and now Rainbow Hair was making her way out.

  Ken wondered what she looked like.

  He wondered why he cared.

  He remembered Val’s face.

  He turned away from that thought, turned his attention back to Geist’s question. “Nothing,” he said. “Haven’t seen anything.”

  He spun back to the bar. Sipped at his drink.

  “Well, it was a long shot,” said Geist. He sighed. “Don’t stay up too late.” And then he hung up. He didn’t say goodbye.

  Music had been playing on a juke box behind Evan. The song stopped at almost the same moment Geist hung up. Evan dragged his gaze away from the half-filled drink he had been nursing for what seemed an eternity.

  Quarters clinked. He heard that hollow click-clack of jukebox keys being pushed.

  And the same damn song started again. It was “You Spin Me Round” by Dead or Alive. Evan had nothing against the song – it was as good as anything from the late eighties could be – but he had heard it enough for one night.

  “How many times you gonna listen to that?” he said.

  The woman at the jukebox didn’t even look at him.

  “How many times you gonna keep listening to cranks?” she said. Her tones were clipped, almost harsh. Angela Listings, she of the Dead or Alive obsession, was Evan’s partner. She was currently wearing no-nonsense jeans, a t-shirt, and a jacket bulky enough to hide her service revolver. But no amount of cumbersome, off-the-rack, shapeless clothing could hide her beauty or her attitude.

  She was the kind of woman that men pursued… for about a minute and half. But most men didn’t like that she could beat them in a fight of wits or of straight-out fists.

  And she was the kind of girl you would take home to mother only if dear old Ma had a strong constitution and found perverse joy in meeting hard-ass bitches.

  She turned to him now. Oval face, with a deep tan that couldn’t quite hide the small spatter of freckles across her nose. Eyes that Evan knew could be wide and inviting when Listings wanted them that way. Now they were at half-mast, hooded like those of a bored viper seriously considering a random strike just because-screw-it-that’s-why. She was waiting for him to answer.

  How many times would he answer these calls? How many times would he trudge down dead ends, follow the same paths that ultimately led nowhere?

  He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders. “As many times as I have to.”

  Listings pursed her lips as though considering whether that answer was acceptable. Evan wondered what she’d do if she decided it wasn’t. Probably just sucker punch him or bite his nose off or something.

  Evidently he’d passed the test, though. She sat next to him. He raised his drink in mock salute and brought the glass to his lips.

  She intercepted it. Grabbed the glass away from him in a smooth motion that spilled not a drop of the murky liquid within, and shook her finger at him.

  “If we’re here looking for a killer, then this is official business and you shouldn’t be drinking,” she said. Then she tossed back the drink.

  “Thanks for the reminder,” said Evan dryly. It figured that Listings would be able to throw back alcohol like a Russian sailor, too. She probably wrote her name in the snow, including dotting both “I”s.

  “Lighten up,” said Listings. “We’ve been here for over an hour. I don’t think –“

  “Hey!”

  Listings and Evan both turned to find the drunk standing before them. Up close he was larger than he had seemed when seated at the other end of the bar. He was well over six feet tall, and Evan guessed he was upwards of two hundred fifty pounds.

  He revised his earlier guess – the guy wasn’t a dock worker, he was the dock.

  The big man was weaving, blurry eyes fading in and out of focus as he loomed over Listings. But his finger, which was roughly the size of a horse’s leg, was completely stable and in control as he jabbed it in her direction. “I know you,” he said. He paused, apparently gathering his thoughts.

  Evan took the moment to glance at Listings. She appeared completely at ease, leaning back on the bar, arms loose on the wood/Formica/whatever-it-was. A smile played about the edges of her lips, which worried Evan. It was rarely a good thing when Listings smiled.

  “You’re the bitch that keeps turning on that song,” said the drunk. “I heard it, like….” He weaved again. Evan started to stand, hoping he could keep everyone from losing their cool.

  The drunk shook himself. “… like, a billion times. Bitch.”

  Listings slid off her stool. Evan would have stopped it if he could have, but it happened too quickly. His partner getting to her feet was akin to a country warning off its enemies by priming all its nukes and putting them on a countdown.

  “Don’t,” said Evan.

  Listings flashed him a smile. She was gorgeous, and everything that had happened with Val – not just her death, but the things she had done to him before she died – just made him more aware of that.

  But under the beauty… danger.

  “I got this,” she said. Then turned to the drunk. “Don’t like the song?” she said.

  The drunk drew himself up even taller. Trying to stare down the woman who probably only weighed about half what he did. “Not after the first million times.”

  Listings moved uncomfortably close to the bear-man. In his face, in his space. “I thought it was a billion.” Even drunk, Evan figured the guy had to hear the implicit, “Are you too dumb to even count?” in her tone.

  The drunk blinked. For a moment he looked like he was going to back down. Evan really hoped that would happen. That would mean everyone left without broken bones or torn tendons or unnecessary trips to the hospital.

  Then he blinked again. His eyes both focused on Listings at the same time – a small miracle considering the amount of booze the guy had probably pounded – and he sneered. “Whatever. Hey, I just figured why you like this song. You maybe want me to spin you around?”

  He grabbed his crotch.

  Evan sighed. He wanted to hide his face in his hands. He didn’t, though. Partly because he felt a duty to keep an eye on his partner, no matter how much she didn’t need it. Partly because what was coming was going to have all the horrific fascination of a train wreck. He just couldn’t look away.

  Listings laughed. It was an almost painful-sounding laugh, a rip-rattle laugh that made it clear she wasn’t laughing with the drunk, she was laughing at him. “Classy,” she said. “I assume we’re doing pantomimes because you’re aware the smartest thing that ever came out of your mouth was a penis.”

  The big man’s hand clenched on his own groin, as though shock had caused him to clutch desperately for some tangible reassurance of his own manhood. “Wha…?”

  Before he could even process the first insult, let alone come up with a rejoinder, Listings had waded back in. She snapped her fingers. “Hey, I know you! I told your boyfriend his shoes were ugly and he tried to hit me with his purse. That was you, right?”

  The drunk’s hand remained clenched on the front of his pants. But his leer, which had frozen into a rictus of confusion, transformed to a snarl.

  “Listings,” said Evan. He didn’t know what else he was going to say, what else he could say, but he felt like he should say something.

  He suspected if he saw a tidal wave rushing down the center of Los An
geles, he’d probably feel the same urge to speak. And that it would probably have the same lack of effect.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to hit him,” said Listings. For a moment Evan dared to hope that they might get out of here without things turning violent. Then her smile widened – bad to worse – and she turned back to the drunk and said, “That would be animal cruelty.”

  The drunk’s snarl rippled over his entire body. His muscles clenched and he seemed to grow three inches in every direction.