As she tried to wrap her mind around what she had agreed to, she saw a physical seal rising from the edges of the lagoon. A yellow surface that resembled blurry glass emerged from the water. She didn’t see any holes in it, yet it passed through the water as if it wasn’t there. It oozed around the wrecked bridge. When it rose underneath the cars marooned atop the bridge, the barrier solidified and hoisted them up. The glass formed a dome nearly as tall as the hotel. The cars and trucks slid down like raindrops off an elephant’s hide. Moni saw the drivers frantically waving their arms. Some dove out as their vehicles smashed ashore. The vehicles ripped through homes and restaurants. The people splattered. In seconds, nothing remained of the cars besides rising smoke and smoldering fires.
Now free of vehicles, the causeway aged and crumbled before her eyes. Soon it resembled ancient ruins. Within a few minutes, the massive hulk of concrete and steel beams collapsed into the lagoon, spawning enormous waves. The walls of water barreled for land. Before reaching shore, they sloshed harmlessly up the side of the yellow bubble. When they cleared, she saw the entire bridge lying on its side half-submerged in the acidic lagoon.
Moni gazed up and down the devastated waterway. The bubble had completely enclosed the lagoon as far as she could see, although it had formed a narrow crease to spare the southern tip of Merritt Island. The barrier thickened until she couldn’t see through it. Four columns of rising smoke, two to the north and two to the south, caught her eye. They were right on top of where the Melbourne Causeway and the Pineda Causeway should have been. She couldn’t see them underneath the bubble, but she knew. Everything in the lagoon had been claimed for the annexed alien territory, even the oblivious people who had been on the bridges.
“Those people weren’t supposed to die,” Moni said. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t know…”
They had told her about small sacrifices—relative to her planet’s population. Mariella’s people didn’t deserve to die but they were exterminated on their home world. Sure that she would meet them soon, Moni knew that she would love them all as much as she loved Mariella.
Chapter 43
Detective Sneed sat on the edge of his chair, re-watching the deposition video of that meandering Lagoon Watcher when his door flew open and slammed into the wall.
“What the hell are…” He bit his tongue when he saw Sheriff Brandt in his doorway with his face as red as a mule pulling the plow. “Excuse me, sir. I didn’t realize you had stopped by. I was fix’n to see you soon anyways. I found a ton of inconsistencies in the Lagoon Watcher’s statements that we can use…”
“Forget the Lagoon Watcher.” The sheriff often interrupted rookies, but never senior officers like Sneed. “Those scientists were right. This is bigger than one man. It’s bigger than all of humanity.” Sneed raised his eyebrows as he waited for the sarcastic punch line that would discredit those geeks. It never came. “For God’s sake, turn on your TV.”
Sneed usually left his desktop TV off; he didn’t need any distractions. Yet, he had a feeling the sheriff didn’t mean to watch a daytime soap opera with him. When he turned on a local station, he saw a flashing breaking news logo underneath a round yellow blob. At first, he thought it was some nasty clump of the bacteria that had floated ashore. Then, the helicopter camera panned out and he saw that the blob covered the lagoon from shore to shore. It shifted over to where the Melbourne Causeway should have been. There was nothing besides two black smokestacks and a plume of gray ashes—like the debris after the World Trade Center collapsed. Wrecked cars and smashed buildings lined the edge of the bubble. One homeowner strolled across his backyard and pelted his unwelcome new fence with shotgun shells. Even though the bullets didn’t make a dent in the bubble, Sneed thought that he would have done the same in the man’s shoes.
An olive blur flashed across the screen. The homeowner toppled over in a pool of blood. A gator with spindly horse legs dragged him through the barrier into the lagoon. The camera panned away.
How could he have missed it? The murders were precursors to the possession of the lagoon. Sneed decided he better turn off the prison cameras and kick the Lagoon Watcher’s ass until he tells him how to reverse this ungodly mess. And he would reverse it. He wouldn’t fail this city. No, it wasn’t his failure, Sneed thought. He hadn’t screwed this up. His investigation had been impaired because the key witnesses had withheld the real story.
“Sir, I know how we…”
“Here’s what I know.” The sheriff cut him off again. “It goes from the northern tip of the lagoon, into the Banana River on the east side of Merritt Island, and then stops down south at the Sebastian Inlet. Eight bridges that were in its way exploded simultaneously. The casualty count will be several hundred.” Sheriff Brandt lowered his head with a sigh. “The beachside has been completely cut off from the mainland. The only way out over land is the two-lane Kennedy Parkway all the way to the north. NASA has closed that road to public traffic. It has focused on securing the Space Center. Their bridges were destroyed too, so they’re pinned in by—I don’t know what the hell it is. Terrorists? Aliens? Good Lord, Sneed this is your case. You must have some kind of idea.”
Sneed opened his mouth, but all the answers he could think of would make him sound like an incompetent boob. The Lagoon Watcher had rambled on about these tiny Star Trek type things that controlled the bacteria. At least, he thought they were the ramblings of an aged hippie on a bad acid trip. Swartzman, and even his dopy student, had told him that the Lagoon Watcher had a point. How could he have believed them? That would have meant disregarding his investigation team’s work, which obviously had been muddled up by the uncooperative witness.
An incoming call spared Sneed from answering the sheriff’s questions.
“It’s from Patrick Air Force Base,” Sneed said.
“Put it on speaker,” the sheriff said.
Turning his head away from his boss, Sneed grimaced. Brandt’s massive ego wouldn’t let his lead detective take charge of this call.
“This is Sheriff Brandt. I’m here with Detective Sneed.”
“We’re in a tough spot here, boys,” Brigadier General Colon said before Sneed could even say hello. “I’ve patched Special Agent Cam Carter with the FBI into this call.”
“This case is officially under federal jurisdiction,” said a man with a deep voice, presumably Carter. Sneed expected him to tell the local yokels to go fuck off and hang up. “Have your officers set up a perimeter around the mainland side of the lagoon. Don’t let any civilians approach it. If something emerges through the bubble, shoot to kill. I don’t care if it’s a damn puppy. Send all your choppers and your best men to the beachside. I’m talking SWAT team—the toughest sons of bitches you’ve got. We’re commencing a civilian evacuation and it’ll be hell keeping this from breaking into a riot.”
Oh great, Sneed thought, now the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office gets to serve as tackling dummies for the FBI.
“And what, if you’ll don’t mind me asking, will your federal agents and soldiers be doing to defend our country?” Sneed asked.
“We’re doing plenty,” Colon snapped. “We won’t let any force—no matter where it came from—put our base under siege. The top federal priorities are this air base and the Space Center. No one exits north near NASA.”
“Do you realize how many chopper trips it’ll take to evacuate the entire beachside? We’re talking about over 50,000 people.” Sneed couldn’t handle any more spilt blood on his watch.
“I’ll put a call into state. We’ll get every helicopter in Florida into the county,” Sheriff Brandt said. “Our team will make it work.”
“That’s fine, but don’t forget that this is an ongoing investigation,” Agent Carter said. “We’ve examined footage of the explosions that destroyed the bridges. They’re consistent with the detonation patterns of the bombs that were stolen from Patrick. There were sixteen blasts—one for each missing bomb. That yellow shield is harder to explain.”
Sneed couldn’t fathom any explanation besides the work of those mini cyborgs that the Lagoon Watcher had described. He couldn’t admit that now. How much of a moron would he look like if he revealed that the main suspect had spilled his guts about the whole operation, and he didn’t do shit about it?
A familiar sensation of pain seared Sneed’s heart. He recognized it as a fleeting ember from the bonfire that had roasted him from the inside out when his brother had been gunned down.
As the higher ups discussed the logistics of their plan, Sneed saw an incoming call from the hospital. He knew only one person holed up in there with his direct dial. Sneed patched it into the conference call.
“Now hold on there partners,” Sneed said so loud that he cut off their jabbering. “All this strategizing won’t do us a lick of good if we don’t know what we’re up against. I’ve got somebody on this here line that had a first-hand run in with one of those mutated animals.”
“Boss?” Nina Skillings asked.
When Skillings woke up two days ago, Sneed had spoken with her briefly, but she hadn’t emerged from the post-surgery fog at that point. Hoping she had regained her senses, Sneed told her to recount her story.
“A pelican—of all things—crashed right through my windshield,” Skillings said. “I’ve got a head wrapped with bandages and this damn neck brace to prove it.”
“I wish you a speedy recovery,” Carter said. “Now let’s get back to work.”
“This officer nearly lost her life in the line of duty,” Sneed said. Sheriff Brandt actually showed some spine by nodding in agreement. Yet, he didn’t vocalize his feelings so the federal officers could hear them. “You should…”
“I can defend myself, thank you sir,” Skillings said. “But I won’t waste your time arguing whether I’m worthy of being on this phone with you. I saw what’s going on in the lagoon. If I hadn’t been struck by that damn pelican, I would have cut this mess off.”
“And how would you have done that?” Colon asked.
“That girl, Mariella, is the key to everything. She’s the sparkplug that makes it run. Right before the car chase, I got in a heated argument with Officer Williams about the girl. She got real defensive—almost to the point of shooting me. Remember how the girl drew a picture of a beheaded dog and the dog of her classmates got killed the same way? That wasn’t the only time Mariella has predicted a murder, or ordered one. She drew the marina fire that killed the teenager.”
“I appreciate your concerns officer, but that’s not a likely scenario,” Colon said.
“It explains everything,” Skillings countered. “How come an animal didn’t attack Moni before she caught the Lagoon Watcher, but a pelican saved him from me? He didn’t send that bird. The girl did. She knew I would have blown her cover so she had me taken out of the picture. She should have known that no stink’n bird could put me down for the count.”
Her story fit perfectly with what the Lagoon Watcher had said. Those little cyborgs had taken control of the girl. Skillings must still sell the story to Sheriff Brandt, who raked his fingers over his sweaty scalp before addressing her. “Officer Skillings, as much as I admire your bravery in the line of duty, we’ve got a lot of concerns that must…”
“She has it right. That’s what we’ve been missing,” interjected Sneed. “Officer Williams has been uncooperative ever since she took our key witness as a foster child. Everywhere that so-called child went, all kinds of deformed varmints followed. Moni played it up like they were victims. That’s bullshit. They were in on it the whole time.”
“Are you telling me that an eight-year-old girl has been calling the shots on the worst attack on American soil since 9/11?” Carter asked.
“This is not some little girl,” Sneed said. “After we caught the Lagoon Watcher, he told us about these things he found in the infected animals. They were like miniature robots mixed with living cells. He called them borgs or cyborgs. Anyway, they are what possessed the animals. I reckon they did the same deal with Mariella. Lord knows why Officer Williams is protecting the foul creature.”
“If that’s the case, why don’t you have a warrant out of their arrests?” Sheriff Brandt asked. “And why didn’t I see anything about cyborgs in your report on Trainer?”
“This information would have been helpful yesterday—before they detonated our bombs,” Colon said. “Why did you withhold his statement?”
“Cause I thought he was insane! I didn’t believe it until I saw the footage…” Sneed gestured to the TV screen, which showed a pier that had been tossed ashore as easily as a box of matches. The car underneath it had an old woman’s head lodged in the front window. “Will you quit blaming me and not the woman who abetted the murderer? Just because it’s not politically correct to accuse a black woman, that ain’t my fault.”
The other people on the call were silent for nearly a minute before Colon chimed in. “I wouldn’t have believed the Watcher before today either.”
“Looking back won’t help us now. There will be plenty of time for internal reviews of conduct later,” Carter said. “What’s clear is that we have a new facet to our mission. We must apprehend your Officer Williams and the girl.”
“Leave that to me,” Sneed said. “I’ve got GPS tracking on her vehicle and on her phone every time she makes a call. Last I heard she was on the beachside. No coincidence there, I’m sure.”
“What about Professor Swartzman?” Sheriff Brandt asked. “Didn’t you assign him to investigate the Lagoon Watcher’s claims?”
“That was the first thing I did,” Sneed said in an irritated tone. “Let me get him on the line.”
Sneed opened a new line and dialed Swartman’s cell phone number. It went straight to voicemail without a ring.
Where is that cocksucker when I need him?
He checked his cell phone to look up the number for the professor’s lab. Sneed discovered that Swartzman had sent him six photos about 25 minutes ago. When he opened the first one, Sneed saw a postcard from hell.
Chapter 44
Aaron ducked inside a flimsy trailer along the foot of the bridge he had taken from Merritt Island to the beachside. Letting out a grateful breath as he saw the phone, he hurried over and started dialing Moni’s number. Before he finished, Aaron heard a thunderous explosion that shook the phone from his hand. When he gazed out the window, he saw a 30-foot yacht tumbling through the air like a football in mid-kickoff. The massive yellow bubble that sprang out of the lagoon had provided the boot. Several palm trees snapped when the yacht hurtled through them. It grinded to a stop in the marina’s parking lot as a heap of shattered fiberglass and bent steel.
Most other boats were swallowed inside the bubble. They deteriorated into leaky, bare-metal skeletons as if 10,000 years had passed before Aaron’s eyes in under a minute.
Putting off breaking the news to Moni for just a few minutes so he could save his life, Aaron called his father. His parents lived five minutes away. He figured his dad couldn’t have anything more exciting going on during a Saturday morning.
“Hi dad. The world’s going to hell. I need a lift.”
His dad grumbled about Aaron not using his damn car, until he saw the pillars of black smoke rising from the lagoon. He hung up and sped over. Aaron limped down from the trailer—treading gingerly on his burned heel—and climbed into his father’s Mercedes.
“Jesus, do you have to smear my leather seats with your stinky wetsuit?” his dad asked.
“Good to see you too, dad. Don’t worry about the acid burns on my foot or the ten near death experiences I’ve had today. I won’t stain your totally righteous car.”
“You were in the lagoon?” His eyebrows arched as he saw the overturned yacht. Having never seen anything so astonishing behind his desk in the corner office, he gunned his most cherished posses
sion out of there. “Thank God you’re alive. Was anyone with you?”
Aaron lowered his head and turned away so his father couldn’t see the shame in his eyes, or his tears. “Professor Swartzman…” Those words, which had once rolled so casually off his tongue, stung him worse than the acid that had nearly consumed his foot. “He was with me. I… I couldn’t save him. I lost him.”
Instead of offering consoling words, Aaron’s father shot him a stern look. It drilled down his point that Aaron should have listened to him and picked a normal profession—one where he wouldn’t kill people with his ineptitude.
He offered no excuses this time. If Swartzman had taken another student with him, his professor might have made it out of the lagoon alive. Aaron could never change that, but he knew one person he could help.
“Let me borrow this for a sec,” Aaron said as he snatched his dad’s cell phone from his hip case and dialed up Moni.
Moni answered with a hollow, “Hello.” She sounded more distant than earlier that morning. But as long as she could talk, that meant the microscopic invaders hadn’t conquered her.
“Did you see what’s going on in the lagoon?” Aaron asked.
“I’m sorry,” Moni said. She paused. He dreaded the reason why she felt she owed him an apology over this. “I didn’t think it would happen this way. So many people got hurt. Even now they’re resisting instead of accepting it.”
Moni had known. Maybe she didn’t have the whole story, but Mariella must have told her they would take the lagoon. Moni would never allow that, even at Mariella’s request, Aaron thought. They must have brainwashed her.
“Is Mariella with you?”
“She’s right here. I won’t let them hurt my baby. I’m gonna make a break for it and take her home.”
If Moni went anywhere near the lagoon with the possessed girl, Aaron knew he would never see her again.
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