Orion Colony Complete Series Boxed Set J.N. Chaney (books for new readers .txt) 📖

The infected seemed as surprised to see it as the alien animal did them. One minute they were crashing into one another and the next tearing into the other. The alien animal wasted no time trampling and skewering them with its giant horns.

Hannah drove a safe distance then left the crawler idling as we watched the battle unfold. Some voice reminded me that we should probably get going, although I wasn’t going to be the one to give this idea a voice. I wanted to watch like everyone else.

At first, it looked impossible for the infected to win. Every time the creature turned, it trampled another infected under its hoof. Dozens of them fell. What the infected lacked in size, they made up in number. I had vastly under-guessed how many infected there were. We had to have killed a hundred, maybe more at the beach. I thought that was all of them. I was wrong.

More and more of them came from the jungle interior, jumping and clawing at the alien animal with their hands. They used rocks and sticks to take it down. Over and over, they tried, sacrificing many of their own number for the sake of victory.

Finally, they took down the beast like a swarm of ants attacking a scorpion. I watched on, dumbfounded as a pair of infected holding something that looked like moldy cauliflower ran up and threw it on the alien beast.

They wrestled the animal down to its left side. It still kicked out and bit anything it could get its mouth around.

A billow of black spores erupted on impact. The black cloud descended on the animal like it was given a tranquilizer. The beast stopped squirming. The infected holding it down released their hold on the animal, allowing it to rise.

Like a drunk after a long night out, it stumbled its way to its feet once more. Instead of bright orange eyes, black orbs looked around. Ebony veins began spreading from its mouth and ears.

“Uh, Hannah?” I said, still not daring to move my eyes from what I saw in front of me. “Now would probably be a good time to go.”

25

The ride back to the colony was finally quiet. Once we were out of the jungle and back on the plains to where the main part of the Orion rested, I allowed myself to relax.

Relax might not even be the right word. More like I collapsed from exhaustion. No one had slept the night before. As the suns rose, I was just grateful not to run into anything crazy on our way back. The ride would have been nearly peaceful if the memories of what we had all just been through weren’t so fresh.

“So much chaos and so beautiful all at the same time,” Lou said under his breath as those in the back of the crawler looked at the landscape around us.

I couldn’t disagree with him. The twin suns of orange and yellow, the vibrant greens of the grass and foliage—hell, even the alien chirping of the birds—it was all strangely beautiful.

“They—whatever the infected are now—they turned that beast into one of them,” Doctor Allbright said out loud as she worked the problem over in her mind. “What if they turn other animals? Other colonists? How many of them were there?”

“All great questions we don’t have answers to,” Stacy added.

“However, they’re able to turn animals, they didn’t seem interested in Mutt for some reason,” David pointed out. “Maybe there’s something in that we can use to our advantage.”

“A bigger question is, are they going to remain content to stay in the jungle or will they come looking for us?” I asked, musing over those thoughts as I looked down at my hands and armor. The knife on the back of my palm was covered in black blood and gore. My chest plate was spattered with the same, as were my arms and legs. I ached in a dozen different places, and the back of my neck and head felt like they were on fire.

“Look on the bright side,” David said, lying down flat on the crawler as if he were going to take a nap. “We’ve got a working crawler and armor now. All we need is a few weapons, and we can give those things a fight to remember.”

After that comment, we all remained quiet. Each of us lost to his or her own thoughts of the future.

I looked up to catch Stacy’s eyes on me. She didn’t look away, as if she were embarrassed I caught her. She just stared into my eyes with a silly grin on her lips.

I couldn’t help but grin back. Despite what we had just been through, I found her smile intoxicating.

I was about to ask her what she was smiling about when she answered the question for me.

“That haircut looks good on you, Slade,” Stacy said. “There’s an actual human being under there. I wasn’t sure what we’d find once we trimmed it all off. An animal, maybe.”

“The animal’s still there,” I told her. “Maybe I’ll let him out later.”

“Well, tell him he’s welcome any time,” Stacy said. “We’ll need more of him before this is all over, I’m betting.”

I thought about the kiss she had given me on my cheek. Of how right it felt, of how long it had been since I had kissed someone. Heck, how long it had been since I’d let anyone get close to me.

“Come—hear me—”

Everyone in the crawler snapped to attention besides Lou, who had drifted to sleep. The words crackled from the crawler cabin, where a radio sat next to the passenger side seat.

Even though it was only three cracked words that came in, I thought I recognized Iris’ voice. Were we really that close to the Orion already? We’d only been traveling that morning. It wasn’t even noon yet.

“This is Expeditionary Force One,” Elon said, grabbing the