The Colony Omnibus by Michaelbrent Collings

Author:Michaelbrent Collings [Collings, Michaelbrent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Occult & Supernatural, Omnibus, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Sci Fi & Fantasy, Zombies
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

On their honeymoon in Kauai, Ken and Maggie had spent a lot of time on the ocean, and significantly more time in their hotel room.

They had also hiked a good deal of the island. One of the hikes had led them to Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon stood out in Ken’s mind ever after as being exactly like the Grand Canyon in terms of size and magnificence. The only difference was that where the Grand Canyon was painted in sunset tones of oranges and yellows and pinks, Waimea was done primarily in tropical greens, with hints of red island soil peeking through. It was an awesome sight, full of life and seeming to stretch away forever, a crack in the land that extended until the low-hanging mists of the island swallowed it into a dream.

At one point, Ken became curious about how far down it actually was to the bottom of the canyon. He hopped a guardrail and, immune to Maggie’s concerns about becoming a widow on her honeymoon, leaned over a cliff and looked straight down.

Then, satisfied that it was every bit as high as he had thought it would be, he hopped back over the guardrail, into Maggie’s arms, and then they returned to the hotel room and did not come out for a good number of hours.

The heights hadn’t bothered him. Hundreds of feet, and he hadn’t blinked an eye.

Now he leaned out the side of the freight car and saw the ground only a few feet below him. It fell quickly away to a slope that dropped an additional five or six feet into a dry wash that could have been a riverbed at one time, and perhaps still was during the wettest parts of the year.

Only a few feet. And he felt like falling back into the womblike darkness from which he had just gone to so much trouble to escape.

To stare down an unmoving cliff, a piece of land that had been there tens of thousands of years and had trees that had taken root in its face: no problem. To look down and see the scrub sweep past, the dirt a blur below the train as it screamed over the tracks, to realize all at once the awesome weight of the train he stood on, and that if he fell beneath it the thing wouldn’t so much as lurch in recognition of his passing: a very big problem.

He felt like throwing up. Probably would if he didn’t wrench his gaze away from the land being chewed up beneath the passing cars.

Give up.

Give in.

The wordless shout was still there. Still getting stronger, bit by bit.

Ken looked straight ahead. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t recognize the land he was passing through. Not sure whether that meant they had been going for a long time, or if this was just a vantage point he had never had before: not often that he got to look at Idaho from the side of a speeding train.

The train wasn’t actually going that fast.

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