From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (82 page)

Ken felt like if he
spoke, if he did anything other than
breathe
, then it would fall apart.
It would disappear and be gone. Just a vivid dream dashed upon waking into the
nightmare of his new reality.

So he ignored the
others. Just kept his eyes locked on what he had seen, kept his heart locked
on hope, and kept his mind locked away from the impossibility of what he was
hoping for.

Whump.
Whirrrr.
Whump.
Whirrrr.
Whump.

If the elevator
doors had been closed, he wouldn’t have seen it.

If the elevator
light had been extinguished, the interior dark, he wouldn’t have seen it.

If he hadn’t been
kneeling next to the stroller, he wouldn’t have seen it.

If, if, if….

But he did. He
did
see it.

Just beyond the
dead man’s legs, trailing limply into the elevator, there was a small pile of
color on the brown floor.

Goldfish crackers.

That might not have
been enough. Might not have been enough to spur Ken to movement. They could
have come from anywhere, after all. Or they could have been flung there after
the zombies… did what they would have done to his baby.

But next to the
goldfish was another item. A sippy cup. Purple and pink.

And above both, on
the mirrored back of the elevator, someone had written something. The
lettering was tan, a color he recognized as well: Maggie’s lipstick.

“Ken: 9th Fl.”

Ken ran the last
two feet, leaping over the dead man.

“Ken!” Dorcas
joined him in the elevator. “What are you doing?”

“They’re alive.”
Ken leaned over, barely noticing how badly his back hurt, not even registering
his missing fingers, and grabbed the dead man’s legs. He shoved them out of
the elevator. Not far enough. He began muscling the dead weight out of the cab.

Aaron stood just
outside the elevator. He looked at the mirror in the back of the cab and it
seemed to Ken like the man’s face slackened. Not in hope, but in sympathy.

“Going up is a bad
idea,” he said. “Nowhere to retreat to if the things come again.”

“Seriously,” said Christopher,
taking up a position behind the older man. “We should get outta here.”

Ken didn’t stop moving.
“I can’t ask you to come with me. You’ve all saved me, and I can never repay
you.” He kicked the dead man’s trailing foot out of the track of the
elevator’s doors. “But I have to go.”

“Bad idea,” said
Aaron.

“Yeah,” said Christopher.

They both stepped
in.

Dorcas pressed the
round circle with a “9” in the center.

The doors shut.

The elevator
started to rise.

With it, questions
rose in Ken’s mind. What was happening? What were these
things
, that
had destroyed almost everyone and everything humanity held dear in less than a
day? Why did they stop moving and breathe in time, why were the times they did
so decreasing, and what would happen when that “countdown” reached zero? What
had killed all the insects? How come one had vomited acid?

What would he find
when he reached the ninth floor?

Ken looked at the
other survivors. At Christopher, to whom he had said less than a hundred
words. At Aaron, who had saved Ken’s life but who remained a complete enigma.
At Dorcas.

She caught his
gaze. Raised her shoulders as though unsure of why they were coming, and said,
“It’s still the right thing to do.”

Ken didn’t know if
he would find his family when the doors opened.

But he knew he had
family here with him.

END OF BOOK ONE

THE SAGA CONTINUES IN BOOK TWO

THE COLONY: RENEGADES

I like zombie
books. But almost all of them move from a place of despair – not merely that
zombies exist (as if that weren’t bad enough), but that humans are so rotten
that the zombies are probably the least terrible thing to deal with anyway.

I wanted to do
something different. Something that had never been done before. One thing I
wanted was to show a
real
collapse – a lot of books about apocalyptic
events seem to have a few bad things happen, then give their characters a few
days or weeks off to recuperate. I am a mean person. I wanted my characters
to twist in the wind, to bang and batter and bruise them to the point of
physical, mental, and emotional destruction.

More than that,
though, I wanted to write a
hopeful
zombie story. A story about humanity
running into something terrible… and banding together. Rising above the terror
and becoming something more than they once had been.

Horror is at its
best when it shows us not just the monsters among us, but the angels as well.

This meant that the
bad guys – the zombies – would have to be truly terrible, beyond anything ever
seen in a zombie story before. So I started putting together my own zombie
mythology. Then, when I had an evil threatening enough to prove my thesis –
that humanity is not only able to save itself against nearly infinite evil, but
noble and good enough to actually
merit
salvation – I began writing.

I outline most of
my books. I do so often enough that I can usually tell how long it will get to
take from point A to point B, and from there through to Z.

In the case of
The
Colony
, I was in for a surprise: getting from point A
almost
to
point B took over 200 pages. We’ve met
some
of our main characters –
some of the people whose stories I would like to tell, who have survived partly
by luck (you have to be lucky to survive any war), but partly by the fact that
they are smart and tough and
good
– but not all. We’ve met some of the
bad guys, but
not all
. We haven’t scratched the surface of the story.

I soon realized
that the story I wanted to tell might end up hitting half a million words. This
meant I could either release it all at once, or do a series of shorter books.
Many of my fans wanted the longer version, but a few things mitigated against
this:

1) A lot of my
other
fans email me regularly, asking when my next book will be out. Responding “a
few years… maybe?” seemed like a bad answer.

2) At a half
million words, I was worried that the weight – even the weight of
electrons
on a Kindle or a tablet device – might crush unwary readers who fell asleep
while reading.

3) I am a fairly
successful novelist, but my name is not King, Koontz, or Rowling. So waiting a
caboodle of time between books meant an increased likelihood of explaining to
my children that we would be cutting back on certain things, like Armani toilet
paper and unicorn rides and food.

4) Most important,
my wife told me to do it this way. My wife is very smart. She’s also nice and
takes care of me and the kids and is scorching hot. Not a woman I care to go against
if I can avoid it.

So you’re getting
this. If you don’t like cliffhangers, blame my wife.

But I do want to
reassure you about a few things:

First of all, if
you’re new to my books, I do know how to finish a story (ha!). So if you love
the tone, but hunger for a more complete story, pick up a copy of
Strangers
or
The Haunted
or
Apparition
or… well,
any
of my other
books.

Second, the day
this comes out, I will already be hard at work on Vol. II of
The Colony: Renegades
.
There are a lot of nifty things in store. In addition to finding out whether
Ken’s family is waiting for him on the ninth floor, we’re also going to find
out what happens when you have a bunch of severely injured people with no
medical care. Who Aaron is and how he survived in that stairwell is going to
be explained (a bit). The issue of where Christopher learned how to blow up
buildings is going to be discussed. We’ll get to know Dorcas better, and find
out some of her secrets.

And, of course, the
zombies. There is a reason for their existence, and eventually we’ll find out
what it is.

But that’s all assuming
the series sells well. ‘Cause there’s that whole “food for the kids” thing.

So if you want to
find out how this all ends, please spread the word about
The Colony
.
Click that “Give as Gift” button on Amazon and send a copy to your
zombie-loving friends… and your zombie-hating enemies. If you like it, leave a
review on Amazon and Goodreads. The more you buy, the faster I can finish.
Promise.

So enjoy. Tell
everyone. Start a cult about it and hand out literature and flowers at the
airport.

And keep on
reading….

-
Michaelbrent Collings

Michaelbrent
Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written
numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including
Strangers,
Darkbound,
Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True
Faerie Tale,
and the bestselling YA series
The Billy Saga
. Follow him on
Facebook at
facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings
or on
Twitter @mbcollings
.

And if you liked
The Colony: Genesis
, please leave a review on your
favorite book review site… and tell your friends!

Chronicler of the Undead

Copyright © 2012 Mainak
Dhar

All Rights Reserved.

www.mainakdhar.com

This is a work of fiction, and all characters and incidents depicted
in it are purely the result of the author’s imagination, or have been used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely
co-incidental.

As always, for
Puja & Aaditya

When there were still people around to talk to, I would introduce myself as a drinker with a writing problem. It sounded witty at the time, and certainly got a smile once in a while from the ladies. While I’d never have admitted it back then, it put a thin cover of wit over two problems that haunted me – the fact that I couldn’t seem to sleep without a drink and that for all my efforts, nobody seemed to want to read what I wrote. None of that matters now. There are no people left to read my books, and nobody left to listen to my attempts at wit. And yes, I think I will have to learn to sleep without alcohol.

Now it’s just me and this notebook, sitting in my house on the hill, watching Them rampage through what we humans once called our world with me as the only witness. Actually, there may be others out there, but after three months of not seeing another human being, I am beginning to wonder if anyone else survived, at least as a human. I’m certainly not going out to check. I may have been lucky so far, but am not about to tempt fate by venturing out among Them.

I sometimes wonder why I still live when those much younger, stronger, smarter and fitter than me perished. Maybe it’s just dumb luck. Maybe after laying our world to waste to fulfill whatever whim He wanted to satisfy, God showed a perverse sense of humor by leaving a good-for-nothing like me as the last remnant of the human race. But sometimes when I see Them at the foot of the hill while I scribble away, I wonder if I am being left alive for a purpose. Nobody may have cared much for my novel, but maybe this is what I was meant to write. Maybe this is what I was meant to be.

The chronicler of the undead.

Day 94. The day I was forced to go cold turkey
.

I am beginning my journal ninety-four days after everything got seriously fucked up. Why now? Not that there are any shrinks out there to analyze my motivations, but perhaps one of them would have taken a shitload of my money to tell me that this is when I got over the initial shock of what I have seen unfold. The more prosaic truth is that this is the day when the bungalow where I’ve been shacked up for the last three months finally ran out of alcohol. Now that I’m not wasted half of the time, I need to find something to occupy myself with, and why not get back to what I once thought I was meant to do? Write.

Of course, there’s no laptop, so I’m doing it the old-fashioned way, and my hands are shaking as I write on this old notebook.

Maybe it’s just the cold. It is bitterly cold here in Sikkim, given winter is almost upon us, and I’m thankful this bungalow still has a functioning generator. I have no idea how long it will last, and if it stops working before peak winter hits, then I am in seriously deep shit. But for now, it’s warm enough, and I can still afford the luxury of sipping hot soup from one of the several cans stockpiled in the attic.

They’re all over the valley down below, and I saw several hundred roam through the city, or what remains of it. It’s hard to understand what they’re trying to do, but they shuffle about, tearing down roofs and walls seemingly at random, and occasionally turning on each other. Those fights are never pretty affairs, and inevitably end with the loser being literally torn apart. I saw a fight this morning through my binoculars and it took some serious effort to keep my breakfast down.

All day, I watched Them and afterward, as I have done for the last three months, turned on my mobile phone for five minutes. Still no signal, and no hope of contacting anyone outside. I checked the radio yet again, and there was as usual no music other than the greatest hits of the Static Brothers. I left the TV on for some time as I always do, in the hope that someone will broadcast something and I’ll learn a bit more about what’s going on in the world, or if the world as I once knew it even exists. But partly, I leave it on because the hiss of the static at least provides some background noise, and makes things less lonely.

My hands are shaking even more as I end the entry for the day. Man, I could do with a drink. I just hope I can sleep tonight. They insist on coming out in even greater numbers at night, and I can hear their screeches and moans all around me. The alcohol at least helped shut some of that out. Oh yes, and it helped me ignore the stench they carry with them. Forget all the crap you read and see in zombie movies and books. What you most need to survive a zombie apocalypse is not a shotgun, but a bloody can of air freshener.