Moni looked up. She wished she hadn’t.
Purple eyes hovered in the night sky. Not just one pair. She counted seven. They circled her like a pack. That’s exactly what they were.
“When you gave Aaron your blood so he could destroy us, you proved you have no loyalty. Your life has no use for us anymore, and so you die!”
A bat-winged coyote swept down at her. She shot it in the torso but that didn’t stop its momentum as gravity sent its mangy-haired body toward her. Moni leapt aside. Its paw, now pumped up more like a bear’s, lashed out and raked across her forehead. Her flesh tore. A patch of braids got ripped from her scalp. Her purple blood poured down the left side of her face. Her infected blood spilled everywhere. Moni swung her fist like a hammer upon the back of the coyote’s neck, snapping it instantly. Then she put the bullet where it belonged, right in the beast’s skull.
Moni whirled around and kicked the next coyote in the mouth before it closed the distance. As it reeled from the blow, she aimed the pistol between its eyes. Savage jaws sunk into her right triceps and hoisted her off the ground. The mutant coyote flew and chewed for a few agonizing seconds until its paws touched down with her writhing body underneath them. Another coyote scurried over and snapped at her feet so she booted it away, but the motion drove the other mutt’s teeth deeper into her flesh. If Moni had a voice, she would have screamed her lungs inside out. Without such distractions, she switched the pistol to her left hand and blew the mutt’s brains out. Rubbing her arm, Moni’s multiple puncture wounds hurt so badly she couldn’t lay her fingers on them. A normal human would have no use of that arm now, might even lose it. They’d made her stronger than that. As for the limits of that endurance, she’d rather not find out.
She sprinted for the helicopter dead set on grabbing an assault rifle. All seven soldiers filtered out and met her with weapons drawn. Moni kicked into a slide just as they started firing.
A coyote swooped into her path and absorbed the bullets meant for her. They’d missed its head. The infected beast turned on the soldiers, along with the rest of the pack. They put down a few of them, but more mutants streaked out of the sky. Moni thought about capitalizing on this distraction and running away. Already, three soldiers were dead. The rest wouldn’t make it, not without help. Moni charged into the fight, grabbing a coyote by the nape of the neck in each hand and smashing their skulls together three times until they broke. When she finished, her right arm throbbed like hell.
The pilot screamed as a coyote’s jaws clamped around his leg. Moni sank her metallic nails into the beast’s throat and dragged them up through its mouth, cracking its jaw bone in two.
The pilot collapsed as the infection started taking hold. Moni stood over him and gazed into his eyes as she listened for his thoughts.
“Please. Don’t.”
She’d promised him she wouldn’t hurt him if he flew with her. He clamped his hands over his chest. He couldn’t speak, only gurgle as his blood boiled.
“I’m sorry. It’s better this way,” she beamed into his head.
Before they claimed his brain, Moni ended his suffering with a gunshot to the temple.
A hail of bullets zipped through the air. The spotlight of the second helicopter illuminated the mountaintop as it hovered overhead. By now, only two members of the first chopper’s crew were alive and fending off coyotes. Their air support blasted the winged mutts below. Hearing the thoughts of the gunners, Moni realized they were aiming at her as well.
She skirted behind the grounded helicopter. One of the soldiers trailed her with ill intentions. Moni closed the distance to him in an instant and smacked his rifle away. He punched her in the face, snapping her head back like a balloon. What concerned her more were the acidic fumes on his glove from where her blood had drenched it. Moni grabbed the back of his helmet with one hand and elbowed his facemask. After he blacked out, she ripped off his contaminated glove. The bullets came closer as the second helicopter circled. Moni dove to the other side of the grounded craft, right under the acid-salivating mouth of a waiting coyote.
The beast set its full weight upon her. This was no skinny, half-starved desert dog. The aliens had infused it with muscle. It spread its wings over her, ensnaring her like a net. Moni rolled and pushed its jaws away from her face, but its paws pinned her shoulders against the rocks. Her grip weakened as the ragged flesh wound on her right arm throbbed. The mutant’s slimy tongue dangled over her eyes, lathering her with its acrid slobber. Its breath stunk like a bin of rotten, maggoty meat.
“Ever wonder how you taste? We’ll share with you. Listen inside its head as we devour your face.”
“You’re forgetting something.” Moni replied. “I’m hungry too.”
Moni yanked the coyote’s neck aside and bit the side of its head. She didn’t go deep the first time. It was more of a nibble. She didn’t have the instinct to eat something still alive, especially a disgusting mess of coyote and spare bat parts. With the second bite and the third and on and on, her metallic teeth sunk deeper. She didn’t care about taste. It was the exhilaration of rendering live flesh and crunching bone between her teeth and drinking the foul blood of her enemy. That wasn’t a human pleasure.
She tossed the mangle-faced carcass off her and looked for the helicopter. The flying coyotes had besieged it. Gunfire rang inside its cockpit. The craft spun and tilted at a dangerous angle. Moni thought about leaping up there and helping them. Not enough time. The helicopter barreled into the mountainside. Its rotors shattered, sending fragments through the air. No saving the soldiers now. Moni turned west and broke into a sprint. She didn’t get more than 20 steps.
Four pairs of purple eyes blazed in the darkness at the base of the mountain. She turned left and saw three more. In every direction she looked, they had her surrounded.
50
Alberto Colon slapped a hand over his forehead in disbelief when Martinez’s helicopter went down. Both birds were gone. That’s 14 men likely dead.
The eyes of the men and women in the command center queried his face. What did they expect? Panic? Sorrow? A stoic leader? Colon grabbed his water bottle and flung it into the wall.
He thought he’d trained his men for anything. Then he heard them scream about flying coyotes, a joke under any other circumstance. He should have anticipated that deadly combination.
Could Moni control those mutants? He kept his eyes glued to her heat signature on the infrared drone. She remained on the mountain, but she wasn’t the only human there. A lone figure stood at the base of the mountain on the north side. This one hadn’t disembarked from one of the helicopters. Colon hadn’t seen when the loner had showed up. He didn’t engage in the fight. He just stood there like a spectator, although he probably didn’t have a good view of the action from that vantage point.
“We’ve lost all contact with both helicopter crews, sir,” said his first lieutenant.
The words felt like a knee to the stomach, even though he already knew them to be true.
“Our next wave will do a med evac for them,” Colon said. The two armored gun trucks, each with ten soldiers, neared the base of the mountain. “Fifteen soldiers will intercept Target A. The other five will aid the helicopter crews. Position two armored vehicle units each between the combat zone and both El Paso and Las Cruces. We can’t let them reach population centers.”
“What about this guy here?” asked the first lieutenant, pointing to the loner on the north side of the mountain. “Should someone check him out?”
“He’s an oddity, not a threat at the moment.” Colon turned on the frequency for his soldiers in the field. “Scale that mountain. Shoot every coyote, anything with wings, anything with purple eyes. Nothing is innocent. And if you see the helicopter crew members alive, make sure they can talk or you shoot them too.”
Each gun truck had three heavy-caliber mounted machine guns and armored sides that would crumple bullets like aluminum darts. That provided plenty of cover for the soldiers to sni
pe at Moni.
“Your brothers sacrificed everything to trap Moni on this mountain,” Colon said. “She’s not leaving unless it’s in a box.”
The pack of infected coyotes encircled her. Agents of shadow, they moved silently with eyes full of purple malice. No matter how fast she turned, she couldn’t keep sight of all of them. Her mental senses confirmed the dire news: she had thirteen beasts around her and no escape route from their flesh-rendering claws.
Moni waited. She closed her eyes. It wouldn’t matter where the first blow came from. Instead of clenching her fists, she opened them, keeping her nails ready. She heard nothing besides her frantic breathing. The coyotes were barely panting. Moni opened her eyes.
Why aren’t they trying to finish me off?
The mountainside rumbled, shaking her balance.
“You betrayed us. We will rip your body to pieces and stain this mountain with your blood. Your innards will be treats for the vultures.”
She lunged at the nearest coyote. It skirted back and avoided her. The pack behind her rushed forward. Moni spun to meet them. They halted just out of her fist’s range. Presenting her back to more beasts, Moni whirled around and swung. Her hand whiffed air, as the mutants failed to advance. They were holding her in place. What could be worse than their canine teeth?
The ground shook once more, dislodging rocks that tumbled down until they found new resting places. Whatever caused it had gotten closer. It stirred the insides of this ancient volcano so that it shook once more. The coyotes wagged their tails. Moni felt their excitement as another possessed mind arose from the depths of the earth.
Screw this.
Moni rushed the wall of coyotes. Two reared up and shoved her in the stomach with their paws, spilling her down on her back. Moni sprang up and swiped her nails at them. They quickly backed away.
“You’re wasting energy. We’ve let you exploit our powers long enough. Now see what we can really do.”
The ground trembled so deeply a vibration ran up her spine. Whatever they’d sent after her could move the earth itself. Moni closed her eyes and listened for its thoughts. Instead, she heard a bunch of soldiers acquiring their targets. Moni leapt in the air an instant before a hail of bullets sprayed through the pack of winged coyotes around her. That carried her above the gunfire but into the face of a flying coyote. She grabbed it by the ears, keeping its teeth away from her throat, and hung on as it flew, quickly losing altitude. It thudded to a landing outside the pack. Moni let go and slid through the dirt on her belly.
Two heavily armed trucks charged up the mountain with guns blazing as the soldiers fired from the truck beds. Their armor could deflect bullets, but not toxic-fanged foes dive-bombing them from the air. Four corrupted canines swooped at the first truck, but three of them got their heads blown off, so they landed as corpses. The fourth coyote caught a gunner from the side. Its teeth ripped out his jugular. Another gunner quickly dispatched the coyote with a shot to the temple, and then delivered a merciful bullet to her infected comrade.
They are fending for themselves pretty well this time, Moni thought. She sprang to her feet and ran before the pack could remember her. Reanimating with its wings broken yet its body intact, the coyote she’d flown on pounced at Moni from behind. She stumbled on a smooth stone, losing ground as its jaws closed in.
As it hit her high, she rolled forward, tucking her chin to her chest and slamming its head on the rocks. Moni flipped over and scampered up through a cloud of dust. The mutant thrust its hind legs into her calves, knocking them out from under her. Her shoulder bounced off the unforgiving rocky ground. It swiped its claws at her head. Moni caught it. She had enough of this shit. She bit its ankle so hard she snapped bone.
Its acidic blood pooled into her mouth and she formed a mental connection with them. Moni saw it – their birds-eye view of Aaron driving his truck with Ramona sitting beside him. That view came through monstrous eyes high above them.
“You’ll never take him away from me! He’s all I have left.”
Moni crushed the coyote’s skull between her hands and sprinted down the mountain. No matter her wounded arm or the blood all over her face, she could recuperate another time. She’d run her legs into stubs until she reached him.
Behind her, Moni heard a terrible eruption of rocks and metal, like the mountain had reverted back into a volcano. The soldiers cursed and then screamed.
“Holy fuck, what is that? It’s huge!” a soldier thought. “I better...”
Rapid bursts of gunfire rang out. She heard a heavy vehicle get upturned from the ground, rupturing its hard metal shell. One by one, the voices died away. The gunfire halted. Then silence. The mountain stilled, purged of human life.
That had been meant for her.
Moni’s feet whisked her across the barren terrain with only the moonlight watching her now. She’d failed her country by not containing the infection, even in the most isolated place. She let them forge an army even more horrendous than the one from the Indian River Lagoon. Those soldiers, dozens of men and women protecting their country, threw their lives upon the pyre ignited by her mistakes.
Moni’s eyes stung as she thought of them. Even though she encountered them briefly, she had heard their most intimate thoughts as death overcame them. They had said goodbye to sons and daughters who cried every time they left, to spouses they never spent enough time with, to fiancés left with diamond rings that became a painful memento, to parents who sent them care packages with their favorite foods. They all died. And she lived, roaming the desert with this damn curse entwined with her very DNA, contaminating everything that belonged in this world.
What made her think she could restrain them within her skin? They’d manipulated her so easily in Florida. She couldn’t even pinpoint the moment they escaped her, or maybe it’d been more than once. Why couldn’t she just lock herself inside a steel box?
Because she could eat her way out, she realized. They’d make her body ache until she did whatever they wanted, just like the way they’d made her drink gasoline, eat iron and turn herself into this…mutant. She was no more human than the pack of winged coyotes were animals.
If only she’d known what’d been in store for her, she’d have spent more time in Aaron’s warm embrace before her body changed. She’d have told him she loved him when she still had a voice.
Now, Aaron needed her. The infected horde stalked him and Ramona. By letting him transport her blood, she’d made him a target they’d never stop hunting.
Moni drove her legs harder as she thought of the coyotes shredding the roof off the truck and disemboweling Aaron as easily as they did the soldiers. They’d chew off his beautiful face and spit it out on the rocks so she could see it when she arrived too late.
No matter how hard she ran, she realized she couldn’t reach him before they did. Heightening her senses, she picked up the scent of gasoline. It came from a running motor, not south toward the road but a little north. She reached the vehicle in a few minutes. The truck had been abandoned with its lights off. The V8 motor purred like an anxious mountain lion. She figured the infected pack had snatched the driver.
As she approached it, Moni detected a familiar mental signature. Ranger Blake Natonaba hid underneath a blanket a few paces from the truck, intent on surprising anyone who approached. She was considering whether she should play along or yank off his cover when he made the decision for her. Blake sprang up and flung the blanket down in one fluid motion. He shined a flashlight on her face. The aim of his rifle followed.
Blake recognized her instantly. She smiled. He didn’t put the weapon down.
“Looking for a ride in the middle of the night, Mrs. ah, what is it again? Maggie? Oh wait, that’s not it. You look more like a Monique Williams.”
51
The way Ranger Blake Natonaba glared at Moni skewered her heart. Before, he’d scoped her up and down like a sexy Amazon adventuring in the desert. Now, he observed her i
ntently as if she was a venomous cobra that could kill him in a blur of movement. Monitoring his thoughts, Moni shuddered with shame as he regarded her skin as bizarre and alien. The fresh stains of purple blood on her face and shirt put a cap on it. Blake held his rifle at ready to blow a hole in Moni’s skull in an instant.
Moni didn’t move. If she reached for her phone to type a message, he’d likely view that as a threat and shoot. Even the alien nanotech couldn’t repair that damage, and they certainly wouldn’t have any incentive to once her brain died. At this point, her willpower was the only thing keeping the beasties inside her from turning on her body, leaving the other human host in full command.
“My people tell many stories that have been passed down from the beginning of times,” said the part-Navajo ranger. “One of them is the skin walkers. They’re ruthless witches. They change into animals to spy and kill. They place curses on their enemies, control their minds, make them do horrible things. When my people heard about the coyote attacks and the mutilated cattle, they told me I should be careful because a skin walker was at work. I didn’t believe them. Then I met you.”
Moni looked down at her hands, her bloody claws. If she’d seen something so hideous reach for her in the night, she’d fear it too.
“Well, maybe you’re not a skin walker, but you’re sure as hell some kind of murderous witch. I should never have trusted you with poor Ramona.”
Rage boiled in his light gray eyes as the chilling wind ran through his long black hair. She wanted to tell him that she didn’t skin those cows or slaughter those Guatemalan immigrants. Blake must have assumed she’d killed Ramona the minute they left his sight.
The helicopters and gunfire went quiet just before she appeared, Blake thought. If that many soldiers couldn’t take her, I don’t stand much chance of capturing her alive and bringing her in. Only one option.
Silence the Living Page 26