The younger SEAL put a slug in one of the possessed men’s chest. He was thanked with a fist that shattered his dive mask and then his face.
The captain didn’t hesitate. He drew his knife, stabbed the nearest infected soldier in the head and seized his weapon. Dobbs fired two controlled bursts into the skulls of the possessed men, who only seconds ago were under his command. If he disposed of them with a heavy heart, Trainer didn’t see any sign of it.
“Unlock me!” Trainer pleaded. “Let me help you seal the hole.” He pointed to a heavy concrete slab positioned 10 feet from the hole that was designed as a plug. No way could one person drag it into place without help, and Ho would be as helpful as a yorkipoo.
Dobbs shouted but Trainer couldn’t hear him through the dive helmet. The captain pointed to the hole, made a throat-slashing motion, than mouthed an unmistakable “motherfucker.”
The captain ran behind the beehive-shaped bomb, unstrapped it and started pushing it on the roller track towards the hole. Dobbs grunted as the cone of the bomb nudged over the ledge and started nosing downward. As much as Trainer detested the idea of blasting the ecosystem, he wouldn’t object to preserving their lives.
A second geyser spouted from the depths of the cave, shoving the bomb backwards on its track right into Dobbs. While it didn’t explode, the impact tossed him into the air like one of those circus human cannonball acts, except the trunk of an oak tree became his unforgiving backstop. Trainer didn’t much care for the guy, but even he couldn’t look at the angles his limbs bent upon impact.
“Is he dead?” asked a breathless Ho, his eyes wide with shock.
“Why don’t you go check, and while you’re at it, find the keys to this.” Trainer yanked at his handcuffs. “I’ve seen you eating those protein bars, champ, but I don’t think you’re ready to haul that block and seal the hole by yourself.”
“I warned them about contamination,” Ho said as he hustled over to the fallen Dobbs.
“You should have warned them louder,” Trainer said. “Make your voice heard.”
“And get handcuffed to a generator like you. No thanks.” Ho knelt down and checked the heart rate monitor on Dobbs’ wrist. He sighed. “He’s alive, but there are broken bones and likely major internal bleeding.”
“The keys!”
“Uh, right.” Using a glove to avoid infection, Ho lifted the keys from Dobbs’ belt and freed Trainer.
The Lagoon Watcher rubbed his swollen, aching wrist and shut off the generator. He ran for the concrete slab and grabbed hold of the middle chain, one of four meant to drag it across the soft ground. Trainer looked to the other chains and saw them empty. Turning around, he spotted Ho still standing near the generator. The NASA man’s eyes fixated on the acid-puking hole in the Earth.
“That’s right, it could kill you or make you a purple-eyed zombie,” Trainer said. “But if I get infected first, who do you think they’ll have my body hunt down?”
Grimacing, Ho hurried over and grabbed a chain. He actually pulled a lot harder than Trainer thought. Perhaps the motivation to get the hell away from that hole boosted his adrenalin. Even so, the two of them had only covered two feet with eight left to go. That’s when another body arose.
The infected drill operator lumbered toward them. A deranged look on his ashen face, he wielded a long screwdriver. Ho dropped the chain and threw a rock at him. The possessed man didn’t blink as it bounced off his forehead. Ho pelted him with another rock and Trainer joined in. This time the man stopped and hunched over. He traded his tool for a dead soldier’s assault rifle.
The possessed man trained the weapon on them with a crooked smile. Purple drool hung out the corner of his mouth. At least the Lagoon Watcher’s body wouldn’t join their Earth-raping army.
Trainer closed his eyes. He waited for the first shot, not knowing if it would take him or Ho.
“Hey, Harry,” Ho said.
“Good knowing you, man. You NASA guys are braver then I gave you credit for.”
“Thanks…You may want to start pulling now.”
When Trainer opened his eyes, he saw the possessed drill operator lying dead with a Native American-style ax lodged in the back of his head. He’d seen that beauty this morning. It had hung on the wall in Danny Riggs’ dive cabin.
“Come on Lagoon Watcher,” said the bearded Riggs. “Hitch your truck up to this load. We’re filling holes today.”
The three of them dragged the concrete slab over the hole in no time. Their subterranean foe didn’t offer so much as an acid spitball.
It must want more time in its pool of infected water. Trainer could think of only one reason why.
73
The three Mexican gang members had sworn they’d hunt Moni down and kill her. She thought they had tended to their injured friend and left while she wandered into the desert. No. The aliens had made the malicious nature of their brains more potent, growing into their new mutant skins, and orchestrating the resurrection of the extraplanetary species.
The fat man with the bandana had grown even larger. His soft blubber had morphed into the coarse hide and spikes of the Texas horned lizard. Two horns protruded from the back of his head, piercing his bandana, and a beard of spikes lined his chin. The sharp barbs on his back ripped through his shirt.
“Did you enjoy slapping this poor human across the face so hard that you drew blood? That’s how you infected him. After you made the coyote knock his friend from the truck, that distraction allowed him to infect the other two. Your actions allowed us to create the specimens you see before you.”
Crouching in the feline posture of his mountain lion half, the skinny gang member pawed the dirt with razor sharp claws on his four paws and flashed a mouth of jagged teeth. The muscle-bound man’s arms were even bigger, like oil drums on his sides, and he gained the appendages of a scorpion – a set of pincers protruding from his ribs and a curved tail extending from the base of his spine to a deadly stinger hanging above his head.
Moni hadn’t taken her transformation far enough. No time to retreat and try again. They had her.
“Liar. You’ve lied to us from the very beginning.” Their voices came at her from every direction, like standing in the middle of an arena of spectators calling for her to be knocked out. “You promised you’d protect our Mariella. You promised you’d give us a home to resurrect our race. You promised to rebuild what you destroyed. Betrayal! That’s all you’ve done.”
As the other three surrounded her, Moni stared at the ranger. The purple in his eyes faded. She caught a fleeting glimpse of the light grey iris that enchanted her when Blake inhabited that amazing body.
“How can I support you deleting peoples’ consciousness? Stealing their bodies and hijacking their minds?” Moni asked.
“We thought that you, out of everyone, would understand what it’s like to be abandoned and rejected. We lost our planet and our species. If we don’t revive them, their memories will be destroyed. You’re the only human we allowed to see that, and you don’t care. We won’t let you sabotage our habitat again. For our race to live, you must die.”
The scorpion man stabbed his tail at her from behind. Moni spun out of the way and punched him in the mouth, right between the mandibles protruding from his checks. His jaw bone popped loose. Smiling as purple oozed from his lips, he popped it back into place.
“I’m going to erase all the mistakes of my life, starting with you,” Moni said.
She sprang at horned lizard man with a side kick aimed at his smooth belly. Moving faster than she expected, he turned his spiky back on her. Moni’s foot landed on a sharp knob, aching like she kicked a solid boulder. She recoiled and started limping. A scorpion pincer seized her arm and swung her around, right into the claws of mountain lion man. She caught his wrists before his paws could touch her, but she didn’t account for his bite.
The man-feline sunk his teeth into her left shoulder. His canines sliced through her muscle and scraped her collarbone. The crush
ing pressure of the mutant’s jaws on her bone made Moni open her throat wide to scream, though not a sound escaped. The incisors hunted for the vital artery in her neck, carving a scratch across her bone. As Moni tried pulling away, the second scorpion pincer grabbed her other arm, and then the muscular arm squeezed around her head as if it were trying to crack a watermelon in its biceps. Sharp pain shot up and down her body in so many places, Moni could no longer tell what hurt the most. Steam enveloped her as Moni’s pouring blood eroded the ground.
The possessed ranger watched Moni with a grin. A reminder of what they’d stolen from her.
Moni mule-kicked scorpion man in the groin. That allowed her to break his lock on her head and feast on lion face with her iron jaws. She tore out divots of its flesh, from the back of its neck to its ear to its forehead, and finally, she bit into its catlike eye. It had enough and backed off, but Moni still had the pincers on her arms. She ducked her head and rolled forward, making sure she threw scorpion man over her and emerged between his legs. Moni wound up behind him as his chest hit the dirt. A swift kick in the ass broke his grip.
The moment Moni regained her footing, the ranger shoved her from behind, right into the charging horned lizard. The reptilian tank plowed into her sternum, elevating off her feet.
A rock struck Moni on her injured shoulder as she hit the ground. She would have yowled in pain if she could make a sound. Her instincts told her to apply pressure to the wound, stop the bleeding and, above all else, stop using her left arm. She couldn’t. If she didn’t fight back with everything, they’d kill her, and then the soldiers.
Mountain lion man, his bloody face disfigured, pounced at her for another taste of her meat. Moni met him with a flying knee to the side of the head. When she landed, the ranger came at her from behind again, this time with a punch. She whirled around and grabbed his fist in her hand.
In that instant, Moni had a chance to hit the ranger back, to wallop the face she had once dreamed of kissing. She hesitated. He head butted her so hard that she fell on her ass. Her cranium rang like a bell.
“Still hold a flame, do you? Why is it that everyone you care about dies? And you still think you’re the hero.”
Colon inspected every inch of his sweat-drenched body as he changed uniforms inside the tank. He tossed the tattered clothes into a biohazard bag and sealed it. Protocol said he should have taken a decontamination shower. That wasn’t an option out here. Rubbing his body down with hand sanitizer was the best he could do.
“Check with the tanks watching Moni,” Colon told the driver. “Ask them if she’s following us.”
Colon feared that Moni, or whatever possessed her body, had set him up. That fiery voice in his head sounded so much like her, not the chilling tone of the alien machines. Just in case, he ordered two tanks to hang back and observe her while the other eight searched for a breach in the maar.
“Sir, they’re reporting that Moni is fighting four other possessed humanoids,” the driver said. “One of them is the man in the cowboy hat who attacked you. The others are unidentified.”
Colon remembered the mysterious figure the drone had detected during last night’s battle on the desert mountain. It had stayed on the periphery of the fight like a general giving orders. That was before the ranger got infected. All those attacks on animals and civilians that Colon had assumed were Moni, they could have been the other three gathering supplies to build this lake behind her back. Why else would she confront them now?
“Remove Moni from the target list,” Colon ordered.
Both the driver and gunner looked flabbergasted. “Yes, sir,” they replied.
“Anyone who keeps us alive is on our side,” Colon said. “She’s buying us time to disable their pumps. First, we need a way past that shield.”
The column of tanks reached the north side of the maar. The fracking tower and pump were well within their artillery range, if not for the yellow shield. In this section, the barrier came all the way up to the lip of the hole. Although the smoke prevented him from seeing any further, the maps told him that past the barrier the ground plunged at a steep angle for several hundred feet.
Colon asked the gunner whether the tank’s artillery could blast through the rock deep enough to burrow under the barrier. They could, but a hole like that would be unstable for heavy tanks. Something lighter could make it. Or someone.
The consequences of his decision hung over his head. He drew his phone and stared at his screensaver, a picture of Rosa hugging Ernesto. They deserved a world where they could sleep soundly at night, without fear of their floor caving in or a window shattering.
“Pound out a hole,” Colon ordered.
The tanks unleashed their artillery on the ground at the base of the shield. The cannon recoiled from the barrage and the ground rumbled from the impact. He didn’t watch it. Reciting the Lord’s Prayer, he fitted into a uniform, vest, helmet and hazmat suit. He grabbed a shoulder-fired missile. The Predator SRAW had a range of up to 660 yards, meaning he would have to approach the edge of a toxic lake in an acid rain storm. Its infrared camera would let him aim through the smoke, if something hiding within it didn’t find him first.
Colon checked the scope. The artillery had succeeded in creating a hole in the ground. The shield hadn’t adjusted to cover it, at least not yet. He slung the missile launcher over his shoulder and climbed toward the hatch.
“Sir?” the gunner asked. “Are you sure you don’t want backup? Several of us could take out the target while you stay in communication with base.”
That would have been standard protocol. The commanding officer wasn’t supposed to be the first one into the hell storm. Losing the leader could leave the group in disarray. Yet, there was nothing standard about this mission. Colon couldn’t in good conscience order more men to their deaths while he hid behind armored walls. He’d penned too many letters to their families while neglecting to tell them that his decisions had led to their loss. No more.
“Those bastards made this personal when they invaded my home,” Colon said. “If this is a one-way mission, then I’m personally going to take them out. Let me be the last life they claim.”
Moni had heard Colon’s thoughts clearly. She carried the burden of wiping the alien habitat off the map, but she’d never disable their machinery while under attack from four possessed men. Colon and his tanks couldn’t complete their mission if the four targeted them. The combined mental influence of those possessed brains could make even strong-willed men surrender to chaos and fear.
Scorpion man turned his gruesome face towards the tank formation and flexed the mandibles at the corners of his mouth. Taking a swift step toward the half arachnid, Moni felt the presence of mountain lion man rushing at her from behind. She sidestepped the feline’s attack and slung him towards scorpion man. The mutants collided, but didn’t go down.
With the hot fury of four sets of purple eyes beaming at her, Moni spun and sprinted south into the desert. They followed, and their size didn’t slow them down one bit.
74
Strapped to a bench in the back of the Bearcat while everyone but him brandished firearms made Aaron feel uneasy. Skillings and Carter had shelved their pistols for AK-47s as they sat on either side of him. The driver, Lt. Leonard also had military firepower and a helmet. The military man watched the desert on the outskirts of the acid rain cloud through the bullet-proof windshield.
All Aaron held was the cold metal box. Inside, the syringe could kill or cure, and he had one shot.
Aaron gazed at Carter’s bruised face and offered an apologetic smile. He snorted and looked the other way. The FBI man wouldn’t race to defend him once the fighting started, that’s for sure. As for Skillings, the message in her wrinkle-nosed-stare conveyed that she wouldn’t mind lightening their load on the way back by ditching him out here.
As Aaron watched the black smoke rise into the sky, the radio crackled to life.
/> “All TERU team members, we have a direct order from your commanding officer. Monique Williams is no longer a target at this time. Be advised that other possessed humans are in the vicinity of the lake and they are a threat. Don’t open your hatch for anyone without direct authorization.”
Moni was here! The news sent Aaron’s heart into a spiral of elation and worry. After all this time, he could finally have the human Moni back. First, she had to survive this fight long enough for him to reach her. Seeing the massive column of smoke dominating the desert ahead of him, he knew the aliens had become more powerful than ever.
“Has Colon popped a handful of Mollies?” Skillings asked. “Why would he take Moni off the target list? She started this invasion.”
“Mind manipulation,” Carter replied. “Once we get closer, they’ll try the same with us. If they ask you to run naked through the acid rain, don’t listen to them.”
Lt. Leonard snickered from the driver’s seat. He was the only one in a hazmat suit, since he couldn’t stop driving to change once they approached the cloud. “That would suck. But if you want to run naked inside our cab here, lady cop, be my guest.”
Carter chuckled over Skillings’ groaning. She looked ready to rise up and slap the driver. One authoritarian glare from Carter subdued her.
Aaron didn’t bother voicing his support for Moni. They considered him a convenient delivery device, nothing more.
“I’ve received word from base that possible hostiles are advancing from the alien enclave towards our area,” Lt. Leonard said. “Skillings, grab those binoculars and tell me if you can identify what they are and where they’re headed.”
Aaron undid his seatbelt and stood for a better view out the Bearcat’s window. He saw nothing besides the rocky desert and looming tower of smoke.
“Sit down, kid, before I break your feet.” Carter slammed the butt of his AK-47 on Aaron’s toe.
Silence the Living Page 38