Moni, I was afraid they’d lock you away forever. I never want to let go of you.
She wished she could trace her fingers across his bare skin. She longed for the tingling of his hot breath on her neck.
Two large marines hooked Aaron underneath the arms and peeled him off her. By the way those soldiers shadowed Aaron with their pistols at ready, Moni understood Secretary Stronge’s message. Get the job done or something unfortunate would happen to your man.
“It’s okay, Moni,” Aaron said. “They haven’t hurt me. I told them we’re not as scary as we look.”
His dimples flashed as he winked. If only she could run her palm down those cheeks.
“I just want you to know, when I left you on the way to El Paso, it wasn’t because of how I felt about you. I went to wage war and I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“And I still keep showing up in the middle of your fights,” said Aaron. Then he thought: Maybe it is fate that’s bringing us together. What’s the point of resisting what the world is telling us?
“Fate is cruel,” she told him.
“Attention! This isn’t a picnic. Lives are at stake.” A soldier with the name Captain R. Dobbs labeled on his contamination suit hobbled over on a crutch. He had a heavy cast from the knee down and one arm in a sling. He should be in a hospital, but she understood why he wasn’t by viewing his thoughts. Standing in this spot, only feet from a hole drilled deep into the ground, gave him heart-wrenching flashbacks of his men’s flesh smoldering from acid and their eyes glowing purple. He wouldn’t leave these springs until he avenged his fellow Navy SEALs.
Captain Dobbs glanced at the concrete slab sealing the hole, and then faced her with a sneer. “Monique Williams, I understand you have an agreement with the Secretary of Defense?”
She nodded.
“We’ve already drilled a hole into the spring. The aliens have turned the water acidic. Will that be a problem for you? Do you want a wet suit? An air tank?”
She shook her head and grinned, flashing iron teeth.
The SEAL did a double take. “Well, then. Secretary Stronge has made your objective clear. Kill the mutant, the alien and whatever else you find down there. Then report back to us with proof.”
He tossed two heavy black sacks at her feet. Filling those bags would buy Aaron’s freedom.
Moni listened for thoughts from Dobbs, but his disciplined mind remained clear. She caught a spiteful glance from the woman soldier who’d delivered the body bags and quickly shouldered her M16. We’re saving the third body bag for her. I want the first shot.
No matter what happened down there, the military wouldn’t let Moni leave this place alive. She observed the dozens of guns around her, six of them already targeting her head. Moni’s best case scenario was ensuring Aaron’s survival, but their relationship would die with her.
“And how do you know she won’t join them?” the Lagoon Watcher asked as he jumped in front of Dobbs, almost knocking the limping soldier over. “She has extraterrestrial, biological nano-machines in her blood. Just look what they’ve done to her face! She’s more them than us. There’s absolutely no reason to trust her.”
Moni saw agreement in Captain Dobbs’ eyes. He had his orders, but he also had a duty to the 64 soldiers around him. Dobbs worried that she could unleash something even worse from the depths of the springs.
Before she could reach into Dobbs’ head and tell him otherwise, Aaron spoke up.
“Once Moni learned the truth about the aliens’ intentions, she fought against them. I was with her the whole way and, believe me, she could have infected or killed me at any time if that’s what she wanted.”
“I’m well aware that your iron-jawed lady has taken a liking to you,” Captain Dobbs said. “Consider that her extra motivation for this mission to go as planned, because you’re right here if it doesn’t.”
Shaking his head, Aaron stared at the concrete slab covering the dark hole in the forest floor. Moni pressed her hand against his chest, keeping him back. She stalked toward it and seized the chains anchored to the slab. As Moni dragged the concrete away, unsealing the hole, all the humans backed off. The front line of soldiers raised their guns.
Even with her enhanced eyes, she couldn’t see to the bottom of the hole while standing in the daylight. Moni tore off her facemask and took a deep whiff of air. The smell of sulfur, the fumes of decay from acid on iron, the pungent mix wafted from the hole. They had the right place.
“What are you doing?” Dobbs asked as she shredded the contamination suit with her iron nails, leaving stretch pants and a sports bra. The soldiers widened their perimeter around Moni and the pathway to the toxic cavern.
Moni had Aaron relay her answer. “She can’t make the infection down there any worse. She’d rather be comfortable while fighting for her life.”
Moni rubbed her shoulder blade. The minions inside her had closed the wound, but her muscle still ached. Her chest throbbed in pain when she extended her arms because of the damage the ranger’s teeth had wrought inside her. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting to be 100 percent healthy. Moni lacked any kind of game plan to fight a mutant that, she was told, had four spine-like limbs lined by tentacles that ripped through flesh and snapped bone. Her transformed body, powerful by human standards, felt fragile as aluminum foil. And the young alien, she’d felt a hint of its mental powers and they were more than she could fathom.
Moni’s feet refused to advance towards the underground passage that would become her tomb, unless she surfaced to a welcoming shower of bullets.
“I’ve received clearance from the secretary,” Dobbs told Aaron. “Give it to her.”
Aaron approached her with a capped syringe.
“Is that the same ‘cure’ that wasted Blake?” she asked.
No. It’s worse, he thought for her. Some NASA scientist here developed it. It’s a more potent version of the original ‘cure’.
“Based on what we know about the alien’s blood and nervous system, assuming they are similar to the infected creatures, this should kill it,” Aaron said.
“Based on what Ho knows, so I wouldn’t trust it,” the Lagoon Watcher said. “For all we know, it’ll give the alien a boner.”
A white-coated Korean scientist behind Trainer rolled his eyes.
With all of the Navy SEALs and marines keeping their distance from Moni, Aaron approached her with the syringe. Walking out so she could meet him a good distance from the hole, Moni’s heart pounded. She knew what would come next. He reached out his hand. She extended her palm to receive it, not just the vial of poison, but also a time-stopping brush with his skin.
They locked eyes. Aaron gazed at her not as she was now, this hideous thing with startlingly large pupils, carnivore teeth and leathery skin, but as the woman she was before. His knuckles rested in her palm.
Warmth rushed through her like the waters of a summer brook. They journeyed back, back to when the Indian River Lagoon was a healthy greenish-blue and they could sit on the edge of the pier without fear. She remembered what it was like to laugh at his jokes, to squeeze his hand. They could even dive into the water, soaking their clothes, and hold each other as they waded through the shallows.
“When I’m around you, Aaron, the way I love you, it reminds me that I’m human.”
This world is real. We can live here every day, Aaron thought. As long as I’m with you, you’ll never forget how to love.
The smell of the salty lagoon seemed so real, yet left a rotten sting in her nostrils. Reality tore at the page corners of their fairytale. Her future lay not with him, but in that deep pit at her feet. Down there, humans didn’t belong.
“One day I hope to return to you, but now I have to go,” Moni told him. “I’m not afraid to die. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again.”
You should know by now that you can’t shake me. Take care of business down there. I’ll make sure they don’t hurt you.
She scanned the soldiers, half of the
m aiming their assault rifles at the hole, and the other half targeting her. “Not sure you can stop them this time.”
Moni peered into the black depths. She took the syringe and withdrew her palm. Aaron stood uncomfortably close, to both her and the hole. He ignored Dobbs’ warnings to back away. Finally, she blew him a kiss goodbye and even cracked a smile. Most of the men were unnerved by her metallic teeth, but Aaron flashed a grin back.
Slipping the syringe into her pocket of her stretch pants, Moni closed her eyes and focused her mind on the subterranean domain at her feet.
Deep below, she felt them, two minds awaiting her, one oddly familiar and the other indecipherably complex. The first one swelled with hate. She couldn’t read the emotions of the second one.
Moni knelt on one knee and placed her palm on the ground. They knew she was here. They expected her.
“I’ve been waiting for you, Moni,” said a murky voice chiming through her head like a whale song. “Come save me.”
81
Moni dove into the darkness. Her stomach turned upside down as she braced for impact. As the narrow tunnel of eroding limestone approached its end, the air grew heavy with the stench of decay, a byproduct of the alien-generated toxins. She hit the water feet first.
Moni’s body shivered as sulfuric acid coated her skin, penetrating her pores. Every human instinct told her to hold her breath. That would get her killed. She must embrace this. Moni snorted the water through her nose and forced herself to gulp it into her lungs. A buzzing sensation shot through her bloodstream. Her body felt more energetic here than on dry land.
Her vision coming into focus, Moni found herself floating in a cave of porous rock above her and a smooth sandy bottom. The water was hazy, full of sediment as the acid rapidly eroded the limestone walls. She set down the two sacks for her prey against a crevice in the wall beside a fossilized ribcage large enough to belong to an elephant, or more likely, a mammoth that once roamed Florida. Her enhanced vision allowed her to see about six feet. What lurked beyond that, only her mind could tell.
She glided through the water as smoothly as an otter. Moni noticed purple symbols marked along the cave walls. Their strokes had been made with inhuman malice. A warning. A vow of rebirth. A destiny to fill the seas once more.
If this is their idea of a nursery room, then they should hire a new interior decorator.
Something stretched out across the sandy floor. It had the bubbly eyes and webbed feet of a toad. Either it had been the largest amphibian on earth or something growing inside it had stretched its skin loose until it exploded forth. The lifeless toad had a faint smile at the corners of its bloated lips.
A rush of water hit her from behind. The aurora from a hateful mindset closed in quickly. Kicking off the floor and gliding backwards, she couldn’t see far enough through the darkness to spot it.
Something about the way it thought, she’d encountered it before. Many times before.
“Welcome to daddy’s house!” it screamed through the water loud as an air horn. Her ears couldn’t decipher his words, but her mind could.
Four powerful limbs, as thick as tree trunks, emerged from the dark. They fanned out dozens of tendrils that lashed at her, smacking her face, her arms, her neck.
Moni could barely fight back. She couldn’t recover from the shock of what she knew to be true when she delved into the monster’s mind. She’d lured her father out on the bridge over the Indian River Lagoon just before the aliens destroyed it. He’d been immersed in the acidic waters.
The one thing she wanted from the aliens, the only thing she’d asked for, was to rid her of this man. They hadn’t.
Now, her father had come for her.
His tendrils snared her ankles and whipped her through the water into the cave wall.
“My little Moni. You thought you fed me to them to die.” He dunked her head into the cave floor, filling her mouth and nose with underwater muck. She couldn’t breathe. “They did worse. If only they had killed me. Instead, they turned me into this.”
Her father dragged her through the sand and hoisted her up just below the tunnel opening, the only source of natural light in this subterranean world.
“Look at me! Look!” That hideous face, it had her father’s eyes, the line of his cheekbones and his nose. That was it. The rest was all teeth. Below it, on the tendrils closest to his heart, dangled a silver pendant with a hair caught in the chain.
“You’re finally as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside.”
“You want to come inside my head, little girl? Let me share some of my fondest memories.”
A sharp tendril sliced into Moni’s forearm. When she was a small child, her father used to seize the skin on her arm and twist it so hard when she didn’t listen. One day, after she had woken him from a hangover, he’d whipped her forearm with his belt.
Her father’s tendrils snaked around her right leg, cutting off her efforts to escape. Moni clawed at them with her iron nails. He twisted her foot and her calf in opposite directions. It hung at an unnatural angle.
“I made you. Now I’ll take you apart, every joint, every bone, every inch of flesh.”
His furious voice sent her spine tingling. No matter how old Moni grew or how far she traveled, she couldn’t escape him. After she’d missed the bus and made her father late for work to drop her off at school, he’d stomped on her foot so hard with his boot that it turned black and blue. She couldn’t wear an open-toed shoe for two weeks.
Her scars, both physical and mental, wouldn’t let those memories fade. She’d been running her whole life seeking a safe place, not just from an invasion, but from him. Yet, she’d taken a stand against the aliens. She’d raised her army and proven fierce enough in combat to bite an animal’s face off. Moni couldn’t let her father victimize her again.
“I’ll kill you myself this time,” Moni told him.
Moni slashed her iron nails at the thicket of tendrils around her. Her left shoulder ached with every impact. Her wounded foot throbbed as it kicked through the water. She severed them, making her father yell in rage. Two of his bulky spines clapped together into a massive club and walloped her sternum, right where the ranger’s teeth had done their damage. Moni reeled. Her back slammed into the cave wall, snapping her head back into the rocks with a thud. She saw stars flashing in the dark water.
The grotesque form of her father drew near. Two of his spine appendages lugged a heavy boulder. She didn’t need to read his thoughts to know what he’d do with it.
“You were too scared to embrace the power the aliens gave you. You won’t hold us back any longer. ”
Moni tried squirming away. Tendrils seized her arms. Even her iron nails couldn’t break free in time.
Just as the stars from her aching head disappeared, a violet glow illuminated the cave. It wasn’t like the sharp purple eyes of the infected. This was a soft light. Translucent petals, slender yet firm, blossomed behind the monstrosity and enwrapped the boulder. Her father tried yanking the rock loose. His four spines got snared in its unbending violet lace.
“What are you doing? This wasn’t part of our deal!” her father shouted at the figure behind him.
“This is your chance, Moni.” A voice that rolled like the tides of the ocean sounded inside her head. “Let us both free.”
Moni tore away her father’s clutches and kicked off the cave wall with her good foot. Her senses told her the location of his mind inside that mutated body. She plunged her hands through the top of his head. Squeezing that sponge-like brain, she relished the jolts of pain his mind released as her nails sliced through its neural links. His fear of unavoidable death, his shock at the weakling daughter somehow overpowering him, all of this coursed through her father’s mind before Moni ground it into bits. The darkness swallowed his consciousness.
If her mother could see her now, never mind that she wouldn’t believe such a sight, would she be proud that she finally destroyed the man who’d tormented them
both? Moni let out a silent roar of triumph.
She didn’t celebrate alone.
As her father’s broken body settled to the cave floor, Moni caught full view of the source of the violet light. The alien glowed as if an electrical current surged through its skin. Its four spine appendages were no longer than human arms, yet it was still young. They rowed through the water gracefully. Each of them bristled with hundreds of long slender petals, like the smoothest, silkiest hair. Its ovular head, the size of a large cat’s, had no visible mouth or ears. The alien had six eyes, shifting colors between gold, blue, black, and purple, all spaced out to give it 360 degree vision. She hadn’t imagined the alien would appear so delicate.
“You saved me. I thank you.”
“Why would you need saving from the monster you created to kill me?” Moni asked.
“I didn’t turn your father into a monster. The seeds did. They care nothing for other forms of life, only their mission of reviving my species. They’re machines without compassion. I’m alive, like you.”
Moni thought of the syringe in her back pocket. Why engage it in conversation when she could end this right now? They’d manipulated her enough.
This was no helpless baby. It had been born with the collective knowledge of its species, stored inside its microscopic seeds as they scattered through the galaxy. She tried keeping up with its hyper-speed thoughts. It was like trying to count how many times a humming bird flaps its wings.
“You knew my father would kill you after he took care of me, but you were mistaken in thinking I’d be a better body guard for you.”
Before she could move, her awareness transported through dozens of feet of rock to the surface. She could peer into the minds of the soldiers above her, not only hearing their thoughts, but unfolding their memories like a great scroll before her. In all of them, she saw the same plan. They were to destroy her once they confirmed the mutant and alien were dead. Their guns were loaded with the same medicine she was set to inject the alien with.
Silence the Living Page 42