The same man who held the vial also held the keys to their escape ride; Carter. The mutants showed no interest in the FBI’s black town car.
Aaron set Ramona down, opened the closet and searched for a makeshift weapon. The child-sized aluminum baseball bat would have to do. He pointed her to the corner of the closet. “Hide here. I’ll be right back.”
Ramona didn’t move. She couldn’t understand his words, but he figured his actions made what he wanted clear. The girl scooted closer with longing eyes and trembling lips. She had a clear message as well; please don’t abandon me.
He removed his watch and set it to a two-minute timer. Aaron handed it to her. “I’ll be back before this reaches zero, uh, cero. I promise.”
Her eyes heavy with worry, the girl cradled the watch to her chest and backed into the corner of the closet. Aaron closed her inside and then shut the door to the room. He just hoped they hadn’t sent a mutant that could pry open a door, or beat one down.
Gripping the short, lightweight bat in both hands, Aaron snuck through the hallway towards the neighboring room. He heard the FBI agent steaming on the phone.
“Where in fuck’s sake is my helicopter? I’m not hailing a cab here. I’m a federal agent requesting an evac. No, I don’t want excuses. You want to show Secretary Stronge you can beat the aliens instead of standing by while they slaughter us? Come here and prove it!”
Aaron craned his neck around the corner and scoped out the room. The FBI man stood a few feet from the window and trained his gun into the night. Three purple-blood-leaking mounds of feathers, beaks and hairy legs littered the floor. The agent focused on blasting whatever came through the window next while verbally bashing the poor bastard on the other end of the line.
Aaron raised the bat high and took a deep breath. He needed to approach the agent swiftly. Make a heavy step on this creaky floor and he’ll turn around and pop a slug in Aaron’s forehead. If he didn’t move fast enough, FBI man might end his call and turn around, or Nina might finish with the kids and resume kicking Aaron’s ass.
Aaron took three long strides on the balls of his feet. One of the remaining shards of glass hanging from the window frame caught his reflection. The agent turned around, just in time for Aaron’s bat to crack Carter atop his head. It made a ping that reminded him of little league baseball games, but there was no cheering following this hit. Carter crumpled to the floor.
Something started smoldering on the agent’s back. The man’s shoulder had landed in a pool of acid blood. Aaron dropped the bat and dragged him away. The agent was bad enough as a human; he didn’t want to meet the possessed version. After making sure the acid hadn’t penetrated Carter’s jacket, Aaron swiped the gun from his hand and started searching his pockets. Aaron found the car keys in the agent’s hip pocket. Reaching into the man’s jacket, Aaron grabbed for the evidence bag with Moni’s blood. Before he could fish it out, the agent seized his forearm.
“You signed your death warrant the moment you laid your hands on me.”
The agent punched Aaron behind the ear. His legs wobbled like jelly, allowing the trained killer to turn the tables and flip Aaron on his back. The FBI man pinned Aaron against the floor and wrestled his gun back. Aaron managed to slip one hand free of his grip and snatch the container of blood. It wouldn’t do much good now.
The agent aimed the gun between Aaron’s eyes. Aaron closed them. Unable to breath, Aaron thought of Moni, his best days with her. Even on the run, even when he couldn’t lay a finger on her, just being around her was more intimate than any experience he’s ever had with another woman.
Moni, if you can hear me, this is goodbye, Aaron thought. I’m sorry I couldn’t put you back the way you were. I just want you to know, I love you no matter what you are.
59
The road was literally littered with snakes. Their eyes sparkled menacing purple in the headlights of Ranger Blake’s truck. The engineers who designed this all-terrain vehicle hadn’t accounted for this.
“Not sure how acid proof my tires are, and I sure know my paint isn’t,” Blake said. “How about a detour?”
With Moni holding tight in the back, Blake steered his truck off the road and circled behind a house. They raced through a series of dirt backyards with scattered bushes. Someone yelled from the next house.
“Agh, damn it Spike, stop biting! Get off! Fucking dog!”
Before she could warn Blake, the man tumbled into their path with an infected bulldog latched onto his calf. He thumped off the hood and rolled over the windshield. The dog immediately released its crippled former master and gave them chase. A window on the next house exploded outward as two more dogs joined the pursuit, their mouths framed with blood.
Blake couldn’t go fast enough off road to escape the infected beasts so he steered back to the asphalt. No sign of snakes this time.
“How close are we?” Moni beamed into his head.
“Less than a minute,” he shouted back. “Assuming the way’s clear, which I don’t.”
The next moment, his windshield shattered. The front cab was a mess of matted black hair, skin-draped wings and sizzling purple blood – an infected coyote. Blood trickled from a glass wound on Blake’s cheek.
Blake simultaneously slammed the brakes and fired his pistol inside the cab. The shoulder wound merely stunned it for a second. Moni took the momentum from the abrupt stop and punched her hand through the glass. She seized the desert dog by the back of its neck before its foul tongue got a taste of Blake. He swung the butt of his rifle and turned its brain into mush.
“Ah shit,” Blake said as his jacket smoked from the alien blood.
He jumped out of the truck and hurled his jacket away. He gazed back at his ride as he saw steam rising from the passenger seat and dashboard where the creature’s toxic blood had spilled.
“There’s no car wash for that,” she told him.
Before he could respond, the pack of dogs was upon them. Moni punted one in the head.
“I hate to be an asshole and shoot a dog, but…” He clinically dispatched the other two with his pistol.
Something squeezed Moni’s legs. The snake coiled around her, constricting her stomach as it made its way up her body. Sizing her up face to face, the serpent silently unsheathed its fangs. Moni grabbed it below the head, turned her mouth sideways and bit the snake’s head off. Her iron teeth ground it to shreds. She spat its mashed head out in the dirt like a hefty wad of chewing tobacco.
Blake stared at her wide eyed. His suspicions of her being a skin walker all but confirmed, he raised his pistol in her direction and fired. Another infected dog lay dead behind her.
Moni detected more corrupted canines closing in, with dozens of snakes following them. She felt the presence of more mutants flying towards their position from all corners of the town, even the distant mountains.
Why’d I drag Blake into the middle of this?
Then Moni’s senses picked up something else, a familiar voice. Aaron begged her for help. She was so close.
Moni latched onto his exact location. If she broke into a sprint, she might be able to save him, but Blake couldn’t match her pace. Aaron had who left his home, became a fugitive and put his life at risk for her. Without Aaron in her future, she might as well immolate her infected body.
Yet, Ranger Blake likely wouldn’t survive this onslaught without her by his side. The man was compassionate with her from the start. He had rescued Ramona from the desert. He had brought Moni here when he could have put a bullet in her skull. Although he regarded her as a priestess of black magic now, Moni felt the chemistry with him from the moment they met in their wasteland home. She had carried this plague to his proud people’s land.
She locked eyes with Blake. He nodded at her, ready to tangle with the nastiest creatures the aliens could throw at them, finally confident she had his back.
Their voice filled her head.
“You’ll be alone Moni. We’ll take everyone you care about from
you. The only thing you get to choose is who dies first!”
“Your girlfriend is responsible for this, all the dead in this town and hundreds in Florida,” the FBI agent said as he held the gun inches from Aaron’s face. A red knot throbbed on his forehead from where Aaron had struck him before. “You aided her trip across the country to deliver more victims to the aliens. Treasonous bastard! The only way you’re useful is to die.”
Aaron stretched his arm across the floor for the baseball bat. He couldn’t reach it. Aaron couldn’t deny that he’d helped the last carrier of the alien infection flee across country and unwittingly unleash another disaster. The man had every right to hate him. But he didn’t know Moni. How could he, in the handful of seconds he had left, explain why he stuck by this amazing woman?
“No!” Ramona streaked into the room. The little girl grabbed the bat with her eyes framed red with anger. “Parar!”
“Get out of here kid before you get hurt.” The agent made it clear by his sneer that he’d be doing the hurting.
Not understanding him, Ramona stood firm. The agent’s gun slipped off target as he focused on the girl. Aaron smacked his wrist aside. The weapon immediately fired.
The burst of gunpowder made Aaron’s ears ring, muffling his hearing as the bullet ripped into the floor. He hammered his fist on the swelling bruise on the FBI man’s forehead, making him fall down woozy eyed. Aaron sprang up and cradled the girl in his arms. She wrapped one arm around his neck while holding fast to the bat with the other.
“You were amazing, chica!” Aaron said.
His ears still ringing from the gunfire, Aaron could hear the furious sprint down the hallway rushing towards the room, and Nina shouting, “Carter! I’m here!”
The stout woman with the scar-marked face rounded the doorway into the room, took one glance at her flattened friend, and set her eyes upon Aaron with intensity that made his loins shiver. He scooped Ramona up and dove out the window.
Aaron’s shin clipped the windowsill on the way out. He crashed down on his hip and slid down the sloping roof. Ramona screamed in his face and jabbed the bat into his ribs as Aaron tried to grab the shingles and halt their fall. A shingle popped loose. Finally, Aaron spread his legs wide and slammed his heels down on the roof, stalling their descent inches from the edge.
As Aaron’s head stopped spinning, the girl held tight to him. She continued bawling even louder. He quickly saw why.
Four freakish creatures, half vulture and half tarantula, stalked across the roof on sharp talons. As the mutants circled around them, their wormlike purple tongues dangled from their beaks, hungry to scrape the skin off their bodies. Ramona buried her face in his shoulder.
60
Wrapping his arms around the terrified girl would comfort her, but it wouldn’t keep them alive. Aaron set Ramona down behind him and plucked the bat from the kid’s hands.
He swung wildly, like a teetering boxer late in the fight desperate for a knockout. Vulture beaks cracked, wings snapped and prickly spider legs popped loose. For every one he crippled, another mutant landed on the roof.
“Help me!” Aaron yelled toward the window.
Nina crossed her arms. “What’s the matter? I thought Moni would protect you from her friends.”
Ramona released a harrowing scream, one that dragged out as she grew further from him.
High above Aaron, the orphaned child squirmed in the clutches of eight tarantula legs as the mutant flew away. Staring at her helplessly across the moonlit desert night, Aaron saw not just fear on her face, but resignation. This was the face of a child who knew death. If only the aliens would be so merciful.
Since they hadn’t infected her or killed her yet, Aaron knew the likely alternative. The aliens were collecting human brains and other bio-matter to form “the worm” – the energy source that would fuel their terraformed environment. Ramona’s brain would be hooked up to a massive blob where its mental capacity would strengthen the alien’s neural network like a server farm. The girl’s consciousness would forever be captive in a terrifying Frankenstein machine. But first, they would remove Ramona’s head.
“Damn it!” He slammed the bat on the last mutant vulture on the roof.
Footsteps bounded across the highest level of the roof. A shadowy figure leapt from the roof into the sky. Seconds later, Moni landed on the roof holding a long red curtain with something wrapped inside.
Moni released the breathless Ramona from the curtain without a touch and winked at her. Moni turned to Aaron, nearly knocking him over with the ferocity of her stare. Purple blood stained her body from the neck down, even smearing across her lips like sloppy lipstick.
“She’s still human, and, thank God, so are you,” Moni projected into his head. “They can burn the Earth to ashes, but I won’t let them take you away from me.”
“This whole town is under attack because I came here, isn’t it?” Aaron asked.
Moni spun around and cut down a mutant vulture with her nails. Then another, she snapped their long necks and ripped off their wings. That’s what they get for thinking they could pour their acidic poison on her love, Moni thought.
Despite the satisfaction she took defending Aaron, landing these blows had left a bitter aftertaste. Ranger Blake fought for his life at that very moment. She felt his mind still active, yet under extreme stress. She didn’t have long.
“We don’t need long. He’ll be ours soon!”
Trying to shake the alien voice out of her head, Moni reached for Ramona’s hand. The girl withdrew behind Aaron. No child would accept Moni like this, even after saving her life. Her whole career she had been a comfort blanket for the most vulnerable young ones. Now, she was the monster their parents had warned them about.
At least Ramona trusted Aaron, amazingly after a few hours together. He had that kind of effect on people, or was it just children?
“Now I got her!” Moni overheard a familiar voice think.
She could feel Nina Skilling’s fuming rage as she steadied her breathing and pulled the trigger. Moni dove on her belly. The bullet zipped over her head.
Moni snatched a vulture corpse from the roof and used it to block another blast from her gun as Moni charged Nina’s perch in the window. She grabbed the shooting hand of her former fellow academy trainee. She’d been much stronger than Moni when they sparred and grappled in the gym. Not any longer. With her palm over Nina’s hand, Moni yanked it aside so she couldn’t shoot her.
Their skin met, sparking a mental connection between them. Nina seethed with fury. Lying in a hospital bed because of Moni, Nina had watched on TV as the community she served got obliterated. Nina had visited the grave of their Detective Tom Sneed, her mentor, and cursed Moni for shooting him dead. With her dad long gone, Sneed had been the closest thing to a father figure in Nina’s life. She had nothing left but to hunt Moni down.
With a squeeze of her hand, Moni could have crushed Nina’s fingers and shattered her wrist. She didn’t.
“Recognize my voice, Nina?” Moni said inside her mind. “I know this is hard to believe coming from me, but we’re on the same side. They hurt me just as much as they hurt you. ”
“Don’t try that mental con job with me! I know what you are. You’ve come to wipe us humans out.”
A massive bruise shining on his forehead, Agent Carter staggered to his feet inside the room. He held his firearm on Moni with the steadiness of ingrained training. “You have five seconds to make this invasion stop or you’re dead.”
“Why wait five seconds?” Nina scowled as she stared down Moni opposite her in the broken window pane.
“Help! Help!” A skinny woman with black hair and tattoos all over ran into the room dragging three snakes behind. Their fangs had sunken into her bare legs. “Get them off!”
The bitten woman still inhabited her mind, but not for long. Children in a nearby room cried out, calling her name “Iǹa!” The gun Iǹa held would soon be turned on them. M
oni implanted that notion into Nina’s head and released the cop’s gun. Nina swung around and shot the doomed woman before going to work on the snakes. As more serpents slithered through the doorway, Carter helped her fend them off.
Moni quickly gave Aaron a boost onto the highest level of the roof, above the window. She passed Ramona up to him and then easily jumped up. Aaron dangled a set of car keys.
“They’re to the government wheels,” he said. “I just feel bad ditching them here without a way out.”
“I let them keep their guns,” Moni told him. “And even that, I might regret later.”
“Then they have a fighting chance, but do we? Look at that shit storm.” Aaron pointed at the orphanage’s snake-infested front yard.
Under the porch lights, the ground moved like bubbling oatmeal. Their brown scales didn’t leave more than a square foot of dirt visible between the front steps out to nearly 100 feet. Moni’s heart tore as she realized that Blake must have faced similar odds, only without her help this time.
Moni snatched the keys from his hand. “Wait here and keep your bat ready.”
She ripped through the shingles on the roof until she got her hands on some long wooden planks. Pinching the old nails between her claws, Moni plucked them out.
“Well, I know your next career after all this blows over,” Aaron said. “Moni’s Speedy Roofing.”
“I’ve always been better at breaking than building.”
With the wooden boards in hand, Moni took a few long strides and leaped toward the FBI’s town car. The snakes below her surged up like an emerging wave, eager to stick her with hundreds of fangs. As she made her landing, Moni shifted the wooden boards below her feet. She had expected to crush them, instead it sprang off the tangle of reptiles and whirled around. Moni flailed her arms for balance and pressed the car’s unlock switch on the keychain. She smacked a snake’s head out of her way with a board and lunged for the door handle. Moni hustled inside and slammed it closed, severing two snakes’ heads as it shut.
Silence the Living Page 31