“I’ve got you! Just hold on.”
Mariella’s distressed expression instantly shifted into a sneer. The little hand clasping the teacher’s palm bore down so hard that her knuckle bones snapped. She screamed, and dropped the girl. The hand that had been embracing her teacher grabbed her by the seat of her pants and hurled her over the girl’s head. Mrs. Mint nosedived into the water. The top of her head slammed into the mucky canal bed.
An eight-year-old girl couldn’t possess strength like that, the teacher thought as she trashed around underwater. Finally, her feet found the bottom. When she lifted her head and chest above the water’s surface and drew a breath, she found Mariella watching her with eyes that emitted a solid purple glow. The expression of a shy, frightened little girl long gone, she resembled a vengeful goddess. Mrs. Mint had miserably failed at protecting this astonishing creature. Now, no one would protect her.
Mrs. Mint stepped back. Her legs were snared in the coil of the python slithering around her. It squeezed until she fell to her knees. She found herself submerged up to her shoulders. Despite sitting in the clutches of a man-eating snake, the teacher felt that the real menace wafted towards her through the water with deceptively skimpy arms, and hair dripping with muck. Those purple eyes entranced her mind. She couldn’t move a muscle. For once, Mrs. Mint went speechless.
She’s only a little girl. This can’t be happening. The Lagoon Watcher is the killer. He kidnapped her.
But that’s not what he said. He said he came to help her. What the hell happened to her?
When Mariella seized the hair atop her teacher’s head, Mrs. Mint feared that she would soon find out. The grown woman throttled the little girl’s single arm with both hands. It didn’t help. Mariella plunged her teacher’s head into the canal. She couldn’t even kick with the snake around her calves. She punched the girl in the legs and stomach. Mariella didn’t relent. Mrs. Mint couldn’t breathe. Soon, that became the least of her problems.
Her ears burned. Then her mouth. Then her eyes. She felt them invading her body through every opening. They were smaller than grains of sand. She probably wouldn’t have noticed them if they didn’t stab her with blistering pain on every surface they touched. It felt as if she had a blowtorch blazing down her throat. The fluid encasing her skull boiled. She realized that the invaders had caught a ride on her arteries as she felt flashes of stinging lightening shoot through her heart, and down into her arms and legs. The lower half of her body numbed as its suffering dulled in comparison to the brutal shredding of muscle and tendons around her neck and collarbone.
Somehow in her frantic struggle, Mrs. Mint popped her head above water. She opened her mouth to draw a breath. The air didn’t seep through her lips. She felt her saliva drip down her throat and out her open windpipe. As her severed head bobbed in the water, her darkening vision caught a glimpse of purple eyes hovering over her like a vulture awaiting the demise of its prey.
It didn’t have to be this way, if only I would have looked out for the child, Mrs. Mint thought. I deserve this.
No. That’s not a child. No human child could do this. She must be—
The teacher’s thoughts faded away, but her brain would prove useful.
Chapter 35
The shadows in the Enchanted Forest loomed long and large as the sun descended toward its date with nightfall. When the darkness smothers the trees, Moni knew that would signal her chances of finding Mariella in the dense wilderness as worse than remote.
Even with Aaron at her side hacking away at the bushes and providing her words of overly optimistic encouragement, Moni prepared herself for the worst with every step. Having Mariella in her life, for even this brief time, had been a gift from God. Like everything else she had cherished—her mother, what had once been a loving relationship with Darren—this too would crumble to dust in her fingers. The only thing that would remain was the voice of her father repeating the word “failure” inside her skull.
Thankfully, Aaron’s naïve enthusiasm kept her from admitting defeat after five hours of searching.
“She must be somewhere around here,” Aaron said as he scanned the forest. The visibility measured less than 20 feet in most places because of all the foliage. “The rangers said her tracks and the teacher’s tracks led up to the canal and then went cold. She probably chased her in the canal for a while, caught the kid and then turned around. I bet the teacher knew enough to go south, but she could still get lost on her way to the trail.”
“And why didn’t she just use her cell phone?” Moni asked.
“She could have lost it, or the battery died, or the water shorted it. There are plenty of ways to waste one. I’ve trashed like five phones on research missions. Believe me, my dad lets me hear it every time.”
Moni squeezed his hand and nodded. The possibility existed, however slim, that Mariella and her teacher were out there. Judging from her experience in the mangroves the morning after the girl’s parents were murdered, Mariella could hide for hours on end. She wouldn’t let anyone find her until she felt like it.
“Please Mariella, come back!” Moni shouted into the woods. “If you hate school that much, I promise you’ll never have to go again.”
Aaron sent her a glance of admiration for that ploy. He probably wished that his parents had made him the same offer, Moni thought. She clasped her hand around his bicep as they strolled through the increasingly shadowy forest.
The harmony between them got interrupted by a rustling of leaves in a patch of slash pines ahead of them. Even knowing that bobcats, wild boars and snakes populated these woods, Moni disregarded her fears, and charged towards it shouting for Mariella. Aaron’s hesitation lasted only a split second before he followed her.
The sharp palm fronds swiftly parted. When Mariella poked her head out, Moni nearly spilled over onto her face. A grin spread across the girl’s lips that made her brown eyes light up. She sprang from the palms and hugged Moni around the waist with her head buried into her stomach. As Moni patted her on the back, and wiped away her tears, she found it remarkable that Mariella’s excitement at seeing her didn’t seem any more or less intense than it did when she had picked her up after a typical day at school. This kid had toughened up.
“You had me so worried, baby. Please don’t run off again.” As soon as the words left Moni’s mouth, she wondered what had happened to the carefully rehearsed chewing out she had reserved for the girl after she had once again put lives in danger by running away. Her relief at seeing Mariella alive put any such condemnation on the back burner. “Praise the Lord that you didn’t get hurt out here. You must have an angel looking out for you.”
Shrugging her shoulders, the girl offered a smirk. Moni scooped Mariella up in her arms, consulted the GPS map on her phone and headed back towards the trail.
“Wait a minute before you go hurrying off,” Aaron said as he jogged behind them.
Moni didn’t realize how fast she skipped through the forest until she saw that the young man who carried nothing but a small backpack trailed her even as she had the girl weighing her down. It reminded Moni of how robbers could carry huge televisions all by themselves when the alarms sounded.
“Come on, boy. Hustle it up,” Moni said with a playful grin. A few minutes ago, she thought she’d never smile again.
“Why are we running off? Mrs. Mint is still out here. If Mariella was hiding here, her teacher can’t be far away.”
Moni shifted the girl on her hip so she faced her. “Baby, have you seen Mrs. Mint?”
Biting her lips, Mariella shook her head. Her dour eyes met the darkening forest floor.
“Maybe her teacher couldn’t find her, or she could be hurt,” Aaron said. “We can’t leave her out here all night.”
Moni agreed with him, but only for a few seconds. Then she stared into Mariella’s pleading eyes, and felt the girl’s trembling fingers clutching at her jacket. She couldn’t spend another minute in these woods.
“You do whate
ver you want, but I’m taking her home now,” Moni said.
Aaron groaned and snapped off a branch in frustration. He followed her anyway.
* * * *
Sneed bumped his way through the medics to become the first greeter for Moni and Mariella when they emerged back onto the trail. His nostrils flared with anger. To Moni, he seemed more like an actor who took great pleasure in playing the part of an obnoxious jerk.
“Here’s our hero, and she’s rescued the girl and not the teacher. I’m deeply shocked,” Sneed said as he scampered at Moni’s heel like a yapping dog. “Once again, everybody dies except the little girl, and the detective—and I use that title very loosely.”
Moni ignored him, along with the medics, and ramped up her pace towards the parking lot.
“The girl is totally freaking out. We’ve gotta get her out of here,” said Aaron, who apparently didn’t mind masking his true feelings when it meant backing Moni up in front of Sneed. “I’m sure the teacher is still out there. If you want, I’ll go back and help look for her.”
“That won’t be necessary, kid.” Sneed jutted his finger into Aaron’s chest. “You and that professor of yours have a date with the Lagoon Watcher in the county jail tonight.” He paused for a moment and watched Aaron squirm. “I can’t understand what the hell that old coot is jabbering about. I need some scientific mumbo-jumbo translators, and you and your buddy fit the bill.”
“I guess that’s better than the other thing that could happen to us in jail,” Aaron said. “I’ll see you ladies later. Call me.” He waved at Moni as he halted on Sneed’s leash.
Meanwhile, the lead detective reigned in Moni’s rope. “Hold up!” Sneed snorted. “Aren’t you going to hand her off to the medics? They need to check her out. Who knows what kinda crap she picked up in these woods.”
Moni took one glance over her shoulder at the two medics wheeling a pint-sized stretcher after her. The strides of her brisk trot grew longer.
“Thanks for the warm thoughts, honey, but my baby is fine. How many times do I gotta tell you there’s nothing wrong with her?”
Chapter 36
“I don’t choose who dies. I have nothing to do with it,” the Lagoon Watcher crowed from behind the table as he shook his cuffed wrists, which had a chain connected to his ankle restraints. “It’s all done at the molecular level—maybe even the sub-molecular level. We’re talking chemical and genetic manipulation. It’s like a virus, but fully sentient and intelligent.”
Harry Trainer nodded at his three interrogators as if he had just made a brilliant point that would make them throw open the door, strip off his orange jumpsuit and let him walk on home. Apparently, he didn’t notice Sneed’s dumbfounded gawk, Aaron’s amused smirk, and even his friend Swartzman shaking his head with a frown. The accused murderer had rambled on for a half hour without any of the three men getting more than a sentence or two in at a time. As Trainer recited the whole ecological history of the lagoon—practically from the Big Bang—Aaron had déjà vu from his high school days when he just planted his head on his desk and dozed off.
No worries. All they had was a trail of dead bodies, a swarm of psychotic animals, sixteen missing explosives and a toxic lagoon. Meanwhile, this guy kept playing the Mr. Green card. Every time they asked him how he did it, he insistently denied responsibility. He blamed polluters and politicians for laying the foundation for what he called a “computerized bacteria invasion.”
Trainer’s hair looked frazzled and nearly electrified; he sported a bandage covering the cut an eight-year-old supposedly inflicted on him. With all that, and the gaunt cheeks tracing the outline of his jaw, he resembled just the kind of street-corner sign man that warns of tiny invaders.
“I haven’t got the foggiest idea what you’re yammering about,” Sneed said. “Don’t you dare screw with me, old man.” He cocked his head towards the suspect with such a menacing scowl that even the Lagoon Watcher took notice. Trainer straightened his back in his wooden chair. “I have enough evidence to lock you away until your final breath. You might even earn a date with a syringe just like the ones you were carrying in your jacket in that elementary school—you sick son of bitch. You can forget an insanity plea. No jury will accept that from a man with a doctoral degree hanging on his wall. As I see it, you’ve got two options. You can admit what you did, tell me where you hid the bombs, and help us clean up this toxic shit. Maybe then, a jury will have just an ounce of pity for you. Option Two: You can keep speaking in riddles like you’re fucking Nostradamus. If you wanna see where that’ll end you up, I’d be much obliged to show you.”
The Lagoon Watcher tried throwing up his hands. His shackles prevented him from raising them above chest level. “You didn’t even consider the truth for one second. The evidence clearly demonstrates the impossibility of my involvement. I tried to prevent this calamity. It’s the Big Sugar and the Big Cattle and the…”
“Quit sticking the blame on everybody else!” Sneed growled. “You murdered all those people in cold blood.”
“I would never!”
“You took their heads. Where did you put them? In some secret lab of yours? Where did you take the explosives? If you kill any more…”
“Explosives? I don’t know a thing about that. But if that’s the subject we’re on, what about all the rocket exhaust from the launches at the Space Center? How could you blame me—the defender of the lagoon—for what’s going on when you’ve got tons, and tons of airborne debris from these launches seeping into the water? Wouldn’t you think this played a bigger role in triggering the bacterial mutations?”
“Okay Harry, that’s enough.” Swartzman finally waved his friend quiet. Aaron noted that it took bringing up the sore subject of NASA’s launch emissions, which nearly got Swartzman canned, for him to interject. “You’re not doing yourself any favors with these tirades. Pretend this is a research paper and just get to the point.”
Aaron had read plenty of academic research papers—reluctantly, of course. They were about as clear-cut as the user manual for the space shuttle. It didn’t matter that his professor might understand it. Of all the people in the room, only Sneed’s opinion truly mattered regarding Trainer’s fate. Aaron didn’t want anything for the Lagoon Watcher short of an extended stay in the slammer after his kidnapping of Mariella, and his brawl with Moni. Yet, he could see through the political ramblings. He recognized the man’s basic point: there’s no way he could have managed all of this, at least not by himself.
After nearly losing Mariella in the Enchanted Forest following Trainer’s arrest, Aaron knew that the threat against the girl, and Moni hadn’t ceased. He’d love to take the girls windsurfing out there one day and see them laughing and smiling without a fear in the world. Yet the lagoon still reeked of decay.
“A research paper might be kind of ambitious right now, Mr. Watcher. I mean, Mr. Trainer,” Aaron said. His professor rolled his eyes as if Aaron had wasted perfectly good air by opening his mouth. The Lagoon Watcher focused on him with those erratic blue eyes, momentarily calm. “We’ve done some investigating and I know you’ve gotten down and dirty digging for answers too. It can’t hurt to compare notes. Right?” The man nodded as eagerly as a kid who had been asked whether he fancied visiting an amusement park. “So what have you seen in the water?”
“Well, all kinds of fascinating phenomenon,” the Lagoon Watcher began. Already, Sneed crossed his arms and leaned his head off to the side in a sculpture of disinterest, as much as The Thinker is a sculpture of calculating thought. Aaron reassured Trainer by scooting forward in his chair. “Dolphins have become mischievous thieves for their masters. When you see a bird flying all crooked, and following you around town, you know it’s one of their spies. Gators and snakes are like the frontline soldiers. And that turtle you tagged, Herb, it’s a real wild one. It swims like a barracuda.”
“Come on, Harry. We all know you gave that sea turtle lifts on your boat to spook me,” Swartzman said.
“You think I’m giving the turtle rides? I couldn’t even catch it in a speed boat,” Trainer said. The professor covered his face with his hand and sighed. “These enhancements are part of their remodeling of the local species. Now, they’ve started melding two or three species together and finding new tasks for them. They’re crafted to adapt to their environment, however hostile it may be to other forms of life. It’s amazing that it all starts with the little guys.”
“You mean the bacteria?” Aaron asked.
“No, no, no. I’m talking about the other little guys—the smaller ones.”
Aaron and his professor exchanged puzzled glances.
“You’ve seen them right?” the Lagoon Watcher asked. “The carbon-mechanical hybrids? That’s one name for them. Really, there is no category for organisms, or machines, like this. Herb, how do you think their nervous system functions?”
“There’s nothing unusual in the infected animals besides bacteria,” Swartzman said. “The bacteria are the source.”
“No. The bacteria are their weapons,” the Lagoon Watcher said. “They’re the foot soldiers. They’re not the generals. That would be the smaller guys.”
“If there really is something else in the infected animals, how come we haven’t seen it in their blood?” Aaron asked.
“Are you examining the blood of dead animals?” the Lagoon Watcher asked. Aaron nodded. “Well, there you are. Try capturing a live infected animal. Don’t bother with blood that’s been outside of its body for more than a few seconds. You need to get a piece of live tissue under a microscope. Otherwise the little goobers will scurry off.”
“Oh right, because these hybrid beings are smart enough to know when a microscope is coming and recognize the second their hosts die,” Swartzman said.
“You got it,” Trainer said, without detecting his friend’s strong hint of sarcasm. “They’re real clever. Now do you see how this works? Bacteria are dumb. They can’t control an animal, much less a person. But these hybrids imbed themselves into the nervous system, and the brain. They rearrange the chemistry, and the interior makeup. We’re talking more than just redecorating here. The hosts acquire the same biological preferences as the bacteria. They crave iron and sulfur. They relish baths in sulfuric acid—like what the lagoon is turning into. I don’t understand how they do it, but somehow they tinker with the genetic code, and the hormones get all out of whack. Then the animal takes orders from their hybrid masters.”
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