Mute

by Brian Bandell

  “Get off me!” Moni barked in his chest. The top of her head couldn’t even reach his chin. Something about being restrained like a caged dog resurrected the fight inside her. She arched her back against the wall and shoved him with both hands. She couldn’t create an inch of space. He wouldn’t even let her give Mariella a hug goodbye.

  “I’m not taking any more chances with you darlin’.” She felt the baritone in Harrison’s voice resonate from his chest as he spoke. “Nina learned the hard way that you can’t be trusted.”

  “That wasn’t my fault,” Moni said as she squirmed for breathing room and an eventual escape route. He pushed back so hard that her spine grinded into the wall until she couldn’t utter anything besides a grunt.

  While Moni struggled futilely, Tanya gathered herself up and resumed her pursuit of the eight-year-old girl. Moni heard the floorboards in the hallway creek under the DCF agent’s platform boots as she stalked toward the bedroom. She opened the door. Tanya shrieked.

  “What happened to her?”

  Chapter 29

  Moni and Harrison ran toward the sound of Tanya shouting from inside Mariella’s room. The girl’s empty bed had been soaked by rainwater. That wasn’t all that soiled it. A pool of muddy water had settled in her sheets. Black prints from reptilian scales stained the wall between the bed and the open window. Something had pried it open and ripped a hole in the screen big enough to snatch a little girl through.

  As the driving rain pelted the carpet and wall, Moni shivered with the horrendous feeling of déjà vu. The room of the last murdered witness had been covered with filthy animal prints. The mutilated body hadn’t been left behind this time. They had taken the victim outside, where she would get plunged into the canal and become the main course for the bacteria’s feast.

  Moni thought of Mariella’s pale, bloodless face without a neck below it. Those brown eyes would never sparkle again. Her lips, once soft pink, would never curve into a smile. Just as it had done to her parents, it would cut out her little heart and slurp away the blood.

  “Mariella!” Moni screamed as she stuck her head out the window. The only answer came from the rain bombarding her face. She peered down and saw chunks torn out of her lawn from the base of the window to the canal. Along the way, she spotted one of Mariella’s pink socks.

  “I’m coming baby!” Moni hollered. She punched out the damaged screen, and hoisted herself through the window. Her braids lashed through the soaked grass as she rolled across her back and onto her feet. “Hold on! I’m not letting you go!”

  She ignored the DCF agent’s protests as she hustled through tall waterlogged grass with her bare feet. When she reached the canal, she looked east toward the lagoon. The gray water rippled violently from a cascade of raindrops. Moni spotted a purple nightgown. She also saw what was underneath it—an armory of scales splitting the water before it. A rope fastened Mariella to the creature’s back as it whisked her down the canal. Thank God, the girl still had a head on her shoulders. The monster apparently intended on saving the bloody crescendo for its master.

  Her hands felt empty after carrying a gun a minute ago, but she didn’t have time for going back and strapping up. Even if ten starving gators were in that canal, it wouldn’t have delayed her for a second. She leapt into the water. The creature immediately swung around and faced her. A lump shot up Moni’s throat when the gator bared its endless rows of teeth. She dove underwater and circled around it. Her hands combed through the mud and leaves along the bottom. She found a rock. Moni surfaced nose to snout with the gator. Its purple eyes illuminated the raindrops and reflected off the narrow stretch of water between her and the beast. The gator surged toward her with such might, that it could have toppled an oak tree. Moni swung the rock. It bashed the gator across its jaw. That allowed her to swim around the possessed reptile’s business end and latch onto Mariella.

  The girl slowly turned her head and cast her eyes upon her last hope for survival. Mariella didn’t have a mark on her. She hadn’t resisted joining her parents in the lagoon. Maybe that’s what she wanted, Moni thought. While that’s a natural reaction for a child who has lost her parents, it made Moni feel so inadequate, like the inescapable bond she had established between her and Mariella meant nothing. No, of course it meant the world to that child, Moni thought. That bond couldn’t grow stronger unless she brought her home.

  Moni grabbed the rope across Mariella’s chest. It felt slimy. The rope slipped off the girl and coiled around Moni’s wrist. Then the other side of the rope rose out of the water to reveal what had really bound her to the gator—a snake with fangs dripping poison, which had a purple glow like that of a black light. The snake lashed its diamond-shaped head at Moni’s trapped arm. She grabbed her extra large shirt with her other hand and stretched it out over the snake’s target. Its fangs ripped through the cloth, but found nothing behind it and its head bounced off. Moni doubted the same trick would work twice. So she took advantage of the snake’s momentary confusion and pinched its jaw shut between her thumb and forefinger. As she squeezed its scaly head, the snake let her some slack and Moni freed her wrist. She pulled Mariella loose and hoisted her over her shoulder. The girl’s trembling arms clung around Moni’s neck. Her feet started sinking into the submerged muck while the water chilled her bones. She struggled to endure the sting of the wound on her hand from the prior night’s accident, as she supported the weight of the girl. Ignoring every ache, Moni rejoiced in the most magical embrace of her life.

  It wouldn’t count unless they both made it ashore alive.

  The odds of that occurring grew longer when a second snake poked its head out from between the scales on the gator’s back. Within seconds, it extended three feet long. It didn’t hiss, but it made its intensions plenty clear when it flashed its fangs at Moni. She released the first snake, and treaded backwards through the clumpy water. Turning her shoulder, Moni kept Mariella as far away from the mutant as possible. She hadn’t gone far enough.

  The gator thrashed around. It opened its gaping mouth, revealing a purple tongue. It smacked her with a stench straight from an exposed maggoty grave. With their purple forked tongues flicking from their mouths, the twin snakes gyrated hypnotically on the gator’s back. They weren’t merely on the gator. They were a seamless melding of several animals into one. The mutant stalked toward Moni until her back pressed up against the steep embankment of the canal. Rainwater poured down the slope and over her back; her spine tingled as three pairs of purple eyes shined above mouths that craved a taste of the iron in her blood. Most of all, they thirsted for Mariella.

  Moni’s ears rung. Blood splattered across her face. The gator reared its head high and splashed it down as it writhed from the bullet lodged into its back. Harrison fired the next one into the beast’s neck. It dove underwater for shelter.

  Before Moni could thank him, Mariella flew right off her back. Tanya carried her under one arm as if she were a loaf of bread. Brushing off Harrison’s extended hand, Moni dug her fingers into the grass at the canal’s edge and vaulted out of the water.

  “Where do you think you’re going with her?” Moni shouted at Tanya as she ran the woman down. Even after the exhausting scuffle in the canal, Moni easily overtook the hyperventilating DCF agent and seized her fatty arm. Her nails stabbed Tanya’s loose flesh like the prongs of a fork into a leg of lamb.

  “Let go!” Tanya yelled. She clutched the girl against the small mountains of her bosom. “You’re a horrible parent. I’m not letting you get her killed.”

  “Get her killed? I’m the only reason she’s alive! Who else is gonna save her from monsters like that? You think that’s the only time I’ve held one off?”

  “You did a fine job saving the girl—for the moment. But I bailed out both of you,” Harrison said as he paced across the backyard of Moni’s neighbor. Holding his gun at ready, he had it in a more suitable position to turn on Moni rather than toward the canal. “Now I’ve got to save you from doing something
stupid. Let the girl go. I promise, I’ll protect her.”

  Moni didn’t doubt that Harrison possessed more physical strength and a more reliable trigger finger for confronting the freaks that hunted Mariella. She didn’t doubt his sincerity either, but she couldn’t see Harrison risking his life like Moni had with her blind leap into the canal. After all, he had followed right along with Sneed’s plan of sacrificing Mariella’s mental health without any guarantee it would halt the killings.

  “You don’t understand how special this child is,” Moni said as she stared at Mariella’s longing eyes. If Tanya separated them, she wouldn’t survive another attack, which would come before long. Moni faced Harrison. “Until you really know her and love her, you can’t protect her. Are you ready to die for this child?”

  Jutting out his jaw and biting his bottom lip, Harrison didn’t answer. That supplied Moni with the response she expected. Mariella reached out for her. Moni took her hands, but Tanya wouldn’t release the girl.

  “You don’t have custody of her anymore,” Tanya said as she clasped her hands around Mariella’s waist. “She’s property of the state and I’ve de… Agh!”

  Tanya fell on her belly in the grass. A snake had its fangs hooked into her ankle. It dragged her toward the canal like it was the pulley on a tow truck. Tanya’s hands slipped from Mariella’s waist to her knees and down her calves. Moni could reach out and catch Tanya’s hands, but that would mean releasing Mariella—the monster’s real target. She couldn’t risk losing her again. Tanya ripped off Mariella’s remaining sock as she lost her grip and slid down the wet grass into the canal. Harrison dove for her hands like a wide receiver stretching for a ball. He caught one of them.

  “It bit me!” Tanya cried as her neck bent awkwardly against the edge of the canal. “It burns! Jesus, it burns!”

  Harrison posted his legs wide and pulled Tanya up by the hand. Then the rest of the snake’s melded body surfaced. The gator chomped down on the woman’s extended arm. The bone splintered with a crunch. Tanya howled in agony one final time as Harrison released the mangled arm before the gator could drag him under with her.

  He scooted across the grass away from the water with his limbs flailing, as if the hulking man was a boiling lobster. Harrison had witnessed shootings and fatal car wrecks, but Moni had never seen his eyes grow so wide or his skin go so pale. The huge hands, which only seconds ago held another living person, trembled uncontrollably.

  With Mariella balanced on one hip, Moni grabbed Harrison underneath the arm. She couldn’t lift him, but getting the momentum started brought him on his feet.

  “It still hasn’t gotten who it’s after,” Moni told him. Mariella pressed her nose against the back of her neck. She would never let them extinguish those sweet breaths from her flute-like windpipe. “We gotta go.”

  “I’ll cover you,” said Harrison, who had a glassy glaze over his eyes as if he couldn’t quite fathom the situation.

  Nevertheless, he trained his gun on the canal while Moni whisked Mariella between the houses to her driveway. She immediately saw the huge flaw in her plan. Harrison had parked his patrol car behind Moni’s Ford Taurus. She had no more than three inches to maneuver.

  “If only these were bumper cars,” Moni told the girl as she squeezed between the cars and heaved open her trunk. She hoisted out a shotgun and loaded it. Moni opened the back door and nearly tossed Mariella in. But the girl stuck on her like a tight pair of jeans. If she left Mariella alone in the car, someone or something could come for her.

  “Remember how you rode that horse?” she asked. Mariella nodded. “Well, saddle up on me.”

  Mariella strapped onto the officer’s back as she charged into her backyard. Aiming the shotgun with both hands, Moni vowed that she wouldn’t hesitate again. The pop of a gunshot sent such jolts up her feet that she nearly slipped. She couldn’t see where it had come from through the torrential downpour. Halting for a moment, Moni heard screaming from her neighbor’s house. She peered through the window and spied old Mrs. McCray in her hair rollers with her wrinkly face aghast. The woman started punching numbers into her cell phone. It didn’t take Moni any guesses to figure out who she called.

  The last thing I need is a swarm of blue on my home. I know it’s coming, but not when Mariella’s here. They still have their orders from Sneed.

  Sprinting across the drenched grass undaunted despite the second gunshot and a massive splash in the water, she found Harrison backed up against the side of her wooden deck, which hung about three feet above him. He trained his gun on a spot on the canal that had been trampled by gator tracks.

  “The damn thing won’t stay down,” he said. He eyed her shotgun as if she didn’t merit wielding such a weapon while he got a pea-shooter. “That’ll sure pack a wallop. Let’s both aim for the brain—all three of ‘em.”

  “I need your keys.” Moni pointed at the keychain dangling from his belt. “You blocked me in.”

  “And you’re counting on me staying here and becoming gator chow while you escape with the girl that Sneed ordered me after?” Harrison sounded much more alert than a minute ago. Firing a few rounds into a reptile and then seeing it spring back alive tends to generate some adrenaline. “I won’t be your human shield like Nina was.”

  So much for him covering their escape, Moni thought. With a scowl on her dark eyelashes and lips, Mariella flung her hand out for a slap on Harrison’s shoulder. Moni pulled the girl away before she made contact. That didn’t surprise her and she couldn’t blame her. A man who had sworn to protect the innocent had just broken his promise.

  The surface of the canal erupted as the possessed gator and its serpent cohorts leapt out of the water. It slid through the grass on its belly as nimbly as a killer whale coasting across the beach for its prey.

  “Shoot it!” Harrison ordered Moni. He pumped lead through the bottom of its gaping mouth. The monster did the gator roll through her yard.

  Moni raised her shotgun and targeted the gator’s skull. Then she heard scratching on the railing of the deck above her. She jumped out of the way. A gang of rats dove off the deck. Their eyes blazed purple. Vermin like these had shredded the last witness into kibble. With Mariella ducking behind her shoulder as she stayed fastened to her back, Moni punted two of the rats across the lawn. Harrison didn’t fare so well. One rat perched on his shoulder and started nibbling his ear into a bloody stump. Another rodent gnawed through his pants leg. He grunted and howled as their sharp teeth scraped his skin, but he didn’t take his focus on the three sets of even sharper teeth barreling towards him. Harrison fired twice more into the gator. Then his clip ran out.

  “Stop fucking around and shoot the bastard!” Harrison screamed at Moni as he fumbled for another clip on his belt while the rats made a meal of him.

  Moni shot out the gator’s eye. Purple goo splattered across the grass as if a gigantic grape had been squashed. The smoking remains of the eye roasted the grass until it browned.

  Its charge halted, the gator twitched its neck and flexed its jaws. Harrison finally turned on the rats and swatted them off. He felt for the remains of his ear. It resembled a raw bone that had been chewed up by a pit bull. With that distracting him, Moni slipped her hand around his waist and snatched his keys.

  She hadn’t even planned it. She saw the opening and took it. The Lagoon Watcher had infected enough animals for an all-day target practice—except the targets shook off their holes. Mariella didn’t belong in the middle of this, but if Harrison felt like going out with his guns blazing, she wouldn’t stop him.

  But I’m not helping him either, am I?

  When Harrison eyed her with intense hatred, Moni shelved that last thought. As long as Mariella survives, she shouldn’t regret a thing. He had spied on her. He came here to take her away.

  He’s a follow officer. We don’t leave our own behind. What will they think of me if I let this happen again?

  Moni realized that the approval of Sneed and his good ol’ boys c
lub doesn’t matter. After all, they thought so highly of her that they orchestrated this heist of Mariella. If they want the evidence Mariella supposedly knows, they need the girl alive, she thought. Moni agreed with them on that point. She knew they couldn’t stop the killings without the girl.

  She would have been the next victim when she dove into the canal after the girl, but Harrison had shot the gator. As the creature stirred once more with its one good eye and the rats scurried up his tattered pants, Harrison had become the new target.

  “Get these little bastards off me!” he cried as a rat bit his wrist, making him drop his gun.

  With Harrison’s car keys in one hand and a shotgun in the other, Moni turned her back on her fellow officer. She sprinted toward his patrol car with the girl on her back. Moni prayed for thunder. Only a force of nature so terribly loud could drown out the screams that echoed through her backyard.

  Chapter 30

  When his cell phone rang, Aaron rolled over in bed and covered his head with the blanket. The pattering of the rain on his window—not to mention some shots of whisky the night before—had lulled him into a long sleep. He didn’t realize just how long until he rubbed his eyes and read the time on his phone showing a quarter to eleven on a Saturday morning.

  After nearly getting his nose busted by an ex-con the day before, Aaron wouldn’t mind staying in bed all day. But he couldn’t resist answering the call of the woman who got him in all those wicked jams. He loved that his own parents considered him too much of a fuck-up to watch their house when they were away, but a police officer kept calling on his skills.

  “Hey babe,” he answered. Aaron couldn’t suppress a yawn. “Why you always waking me?”

  Moni responded with a soft whimper. He heard the whooshing of wind rolling over her speeding car.

  “Aren’t you wondering why I’m all slacking and sleeping so late?” he asked.