Mute
Page 36
Those were the woman’s last words. Without understanding why, she knelt down and stuck her head into the lagoon. Scrambling for air, she pushed against the ground and kicked her legs through the dirt. A tiny yet firm hand on the back of her neck wouldn’t let her reach the surface. She felt her husband’s strong hand grip her around the waist. She latched onto him and nearly left the water. A second later, he fell in with her. She saw her husband’s bushy eyebrows and cheeks beside her in the lagoon as they were drowned by their young daughter. The purple mist fogged the water. Her memories ceased.
They had murdered a family. First they crushed the blossoming mind of a little girl and then they baited her parents into the lagoon by posing as their precious child. They had conned everyone, including Moni.
Mariella wasn’t a person. She was a vessel they had used for luring unsuspecting people into their possession. Sure, they hadn’t beheaded Moni, and plugged her brain into the worm, but she had helped them much more by being so susceptible to their manipulation. As Moni gathered information from the thousands of minds around her, it became so obvious. No adult could function as a mute, and still monitor the human response to the invasion. A little girl would draw less suspicion, yet she needed a guardian that she could speak through. Moni had fiercely shielded Mariella from questioning, and aided their ruse to make the Lagoon Watcher the focus of the investigation. By tapping into her mind, and the heads of those around her, the aliens had a player in the other team’s huddle.
They had identified the witnesses and killed them. They staged Mariella’s kidnapping with the gator, so they could kill the two people who pursued her. They led Mrs. Mint into the forest, so they could exact revenge on her for not protecting their prized host. Their sea turtle knocked Professor Swartzman out of his boat, and drowned him in acid because he had learned too much. They would have killed Aaron too, if he hadn’t escaped. And they knew full well that building their bubble over the lagoon would ignite a massacre, and trap the people on the beachside.
“You selected their fate,” Mariella said. “When you decided that your father must die so you could live safely, you demonstrated the moral choice for us. We can’t live safely on this planet without the barrier protecting us, and housing our world’s atmosphere.”
When Mariella’s words wouldn’t unveil all, Moni delved into the alien bio-machine’s thoughts. Moni’s lesson hadn’t just extended to safeguarding their species. It meant killing when confronted. They had learned by studying Moni’s past about how colonizing humans exploited the weaknesses of others. Yet, humans would shrink from a dominating show of force.
“Is that what you have in store for us once the master species breaks free from their fish bowl? You’ll pound us until we’re so terrified that we won’t go near you?” Moni scowled at Mariella, whose shrugging pixie face didn’t look so cute any more. She wondered how many times an apparently innocent glace like that with some mental “suggestions” thrown in had influenced Moni into doing horrible things. Officer Harrison and DCF Agent Roberts died because she had left them to the gator. She had shot four police officers with the girl in her arms. Detective Sneed, who had been right all along, damn him, died at her hands. She had murdered the finest officer she had ever known—the man who would have stopped the massacre if it weren’t for her. Racist or not, he saved lives. She destroyed them.
Obviously detecting her thoughts as well, Mariella seized Moni’s hands and squeezed them tight enough to grind her bones into dust. Not anymore. She was one of them now. Moni had equal strength. Her mind no longer bowed. She wiggled one hand free and drew her pistol from her ankle holster. The acidic water hadn’t devoured the weapon yet, so she knew it could do the job at close range.
“We brought you into this world because we trusted you. You rescued us. We love you, mommy.” Mariella’s eyes sparkled with a violet hue as she emitted the words into Moni’s head. “We know how painful and disorientating it is to become a hybrid species. That’s why we always erase the consciousness. We kept you because you chose to value us over your own kind, and even your own life. You belong here with us.”
Mariella rested a gentle hand against Moni’s cheek as their eyes locked. She had seen such joy on the girl’s face when she rode that horse at the ranch. She had seemed so human. Moni thought she could rescue this girl like she had wished someone could have saved her from her abusive childhood. In some perverse way, she had succeeded. She gazed upon a thriving Mariella, in the form of an alien bio-machine bent on capturing a slice of earth at all costs. She had raised an amazing daughter, for sure.
“I love you no matter what, baby. Never forget that.”
As the grinning Mariella reached up and stroked her adopted mother’s cheek, Moni brought the gun to the girl’s forehead and blew a hole through her skull.
Chapter 49
Moni dropped the gun, and cradled the trembling body of her adoptive daughter in her arms while the last gasps of life escaped her. As her eyes traced the once delicate features of Mariella’s face that she had smashed with her bullet, she burst forth with an outpouring of tears and nasal great enough to raise the water level of the lagoon. Moni gripped the tiny hand that she had once held when she led the small one away from the men, and beasts who tried to take her. It had gone cold and limp for good.
She remembered the warm hugs they shared, and how the girl’s hair smelled as it rested on her shoulder. She remembered Mariella sitting on her lap on the couch, and coloring flowers for her. Only days ago, they were mother and daughter. Moni had promised her from day one that she’d defend this child, and keep all the people who would hurt her at bay. She never thought she’d be the one…
“You betrayed us!” thousands of voices screamed inside her head.
She had. Minutes after accepting Mariella’s invitation to her world, she had killed her adoptive daughter without any outside influence. Mariella had allowed herself to become vulnerable to Moni so she could give her a gift no person had ever received. And in return, Moni had murdered the only being who truly loved her.
I didn’t want to do this! I still love you!
Moni tried sending Mariella the mental message, but found no consciousness inside that battered skull. She clutched the girl’s body against her chest, and let the hollowed out head dangle over her shoulder. Mariella had rested her head on her the same way when she felt frightened, but now Moni didn’t feel a tiny heart beating against her chest. Even after what she had done, she begged for the girl’s arms to embrace her back instead of hang limp at her sides. Her baby’s life had left her for good, and Moni had made it happen.
An alarm rang through Moni’s mind. She gazed through the clear waters and spotted a bloated manatee with sullen purple eyes parting the sands of the lagoon bed like a corpse arising from the grave. A beard of sharp bones took the place of its whiskers. Its normally gentle flippers were armed with long, curved nails. The disfigured manatee lurked towards her. Then gators breached the lagoon floor with their snouts, and emerged into open water carrying abominations of nature on their backs—human limbs, second gator heads or nests of snakes. They converged on her looking ready to fight for that scrap of meat. Their jaws bared rows of daggers that hungered to avenge the assassination of their leader, even though they would cleave the flesh of one of their own. Just above the surface of the water, the bizarre flying creatures circled over her head. She had no path of escape.
As the mutants closed within ten yards of her, Moni shut her eyes and squeezed the empty vessel that had once contained her precious Mariella. She concentrated on the mental connection that existed between her and, not just the hosts, but the microscopic ambassadors as well. Without Mariella and with the aliens still not developed, Moni had the most powerful mind on the neural network—a mind that Mariella had assured her brethren they could trust.
“Stop! Everybody halt!” Moni broadcast to every being on the alien channel. The manatee and its gator army bailed out of their charge and sank their belli
es onto the bottom of the lagoon. She saw the flying creatures dart away. The farming bio-machines ceased planting, and the great worm stopped undulating and spitting out organs. “That’s enough. This mission is canceled. Abandon all possessed organisms. Take down all structures. Stop converting the water and air. Let the atmosphere seep out the top of the bubble and then take the barrier down.”
“But the master species will die!” protested one of the dolphins, which were the smartest host brains left in the network besides Moni.
“Their DNA will remain in the ambassadors living in my body. Maybe one day—maybe—I’ll find a safe place to bring them to life. Until then, every one of you outside of my body is returning the lagoon to the humans, and then shutting down. I mean it. Even the smallest of you will turn off.”
At first, she noticed the downed gators and the manatee cease their twitching. They went limp—as limp as the poor child Moni held in her arms. As the great worm that once promised rebirth dissolved into particles smaller than dust, Moni gazed into Mariella’s brown eyes. They were as still and glassy as a doll’s. It relieved her that the girl couldn’t see what she had worked so hard in building getting torn asunder. She wondered whether Mariella would have killed her to preserve her world. In pulling that trigger, Moni had assumed so.
And yet, maybe Mariella would have sacrificed all of that, and chosen her love for her mother. The shattered mind in her arms had been denied that choice by the woman who should have nurtured her.
* * * *
The moment Aaron saw the footage on his mobile phone of the yellow bubble cracking like a huge clay jug he turned the patrol car around and sped back to the spot where Moni had passed through the barrier. Not only did he feel relieved that he didn’t have to tell his dad how he “borrowed” a dead officer’s cruiser, he was totally stoked that Moni had somehow done it.
Aaron hadn’t exactly expected that Moni would save humanity, or at least Brevard County, when she blindly entered the bubble. That was especially true after she killed those officers. She had to be possessed during that, he thought. He feared it would never let her go.
Now the sight of the barrier crumbling made him feel like she had broken their hold, and ended the alien invasion for good. That same notion told him that Moni would emerge onto the beachside in the same spot she had left him. When he threaded the car through the dead man’s backyard once again, sure enough, he saw her.
He hadn’t expected that he’d find her lying naked and face down in the muddy grass, though.
“Stay right there. I’m coming,” said Aaron, not that he thought she’d go running through the street in that condition.
Moni’s skin didn’t look right. It seemed darker and thicker somehow. Aaron didn’t steal too long a glance before he grabbed a jacket out of the trunk and covered her. Rolling over and clutching the jacket against her shivering flesh, she didn’t look at her supposed prince charming. She glared at her hands and then yanked a braid from atop her head before her eyes. Instead of a bunch of hairs scrunched together, it resembled a bushel of hair fused into one.
“Those hair treatments you used on your braids combined with that nasty water, make something foul,” Aaron said. “Let me help you dry it off.”
He fetched a blanket from the cruiser’s trunk. It absorbed the water from her hair pretty well, but Aaron smelled something burning. Her damp hair had singed the blanket. She had swum in the acid, and strolled on out. Moni blinked at the damage she had caused the blanket. She didn’t seem at all surprised.
Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. When she stood up, Aaron figured he better follow. They dashed through the yard away from the lagoon, even though putting weight on his tender foot made him buckle. Seconds after they started running, what Aaron heard behind him sounded louder than a hundred school buses falling from the sky. The entire yellow bubble started collapsing, and splashing down into the lagoon. The initial cracks widened into fissures, and then massive patches with narrow strips connecting them to the greater wall. It didn’t happen in random spurts like some avalanche; each layer fell together, level by level atop one another. It looked as organized as a planned building demolition. The problem was they didn’t bother moving the bystanders out of the way. Before Aaron’s eyes a wave of crystal clear water lapped ten feet onto land. He bounded backwards as the skin-scolding tide rolled in toward his feet. Moni gripped his arm and locked him against her side. She had already brought him far enough away. When the acid receded, it left everything it touched charred and withering. If they hadn’t moved, they would have been stripped of their flesh.
Aaron and Moni stood side by side, marveling at what remained of the former ecological treasure. Fragments of the yellow alien dome floated on the surface of the water like a great scab. Corpses of gators, manatees, dolphins and bizarre blobs of biomass bobbed in the water in place of buoys. It reeked so bad of rotten eggs and decaying raw meat, that Aaron coughed and covered his mouth. It didn’t bother Moni, though. The stench slowly dissipated, along with the pieces of the barrier. The repairs had begun, but life in the lagoon wouldn’t become normal for a long time, Aaron thought. He just wished he knew where he got that notion from.
Turning to Moni, Aaron figured he better not ask the obvious, yet painful, question about Mariella. When he saw her emerge from the lagoon by herself that told him enough about her fate. But, the way she loved the little one, he never thought she’d do it.
“I know you did some bad things, and hell, I really screwed up too,” Aaron said. Moni finally locked eyes with him. Her exotic beauty, with her scalded yet resilient hair and bare shoulders, knocked him so far for a loop that he could hardly continue. “I don’t know how I’m so lucky that I made it through this with you. A lot of amazing people didn’t… They had us confused and we did horrible things that we would have never done. If we had been in control of our minds, we wouldn’t have let the people we care about get hurt.”
A single teardrop streamed down her cheek. He caught it with his palm. Moni drew closer and wrapped her hands around his shoulders. Every fiber of Aaron’s being wanted to lock lips with Moni and pour his heart into a most improbable kiss. He couldn’t do it without first asking one more question of her.
“You know who did this to us, Moni. But what I don’t understand is how you overcame their brainwashing. How did you destroy them?”
Moni parted her lips and started mouthing out words, but not a sound came out.
Also available from Silver Leaf Books:
JARED ANGEL
ENDLESS WAR OF THE GODS
In the world of Seibu, an endless war between the gods of Light and Dark threatens to destroy all life. Crevahn, mother of creation, struggles to save her newly created world and all life. Without the help of Vyas, a mighty jiva, and Malla, a humble human, Crevahn will fail. Will Vyas survive and maintain his sanity long enough in his battle against the God of Dark? Will Malla overcome her subordination and inevitable execution in her battle against the God of Light? Find out if the world will end or be saved in this high adventuring tale by debut novelist Jared Angel.
Betraying the God of Light, Electronic (only): 1609750616
and more to come!
BRIAN BANDELL
mute
Officer Monique “Moni” Williams, has never lived an easy life—with an abusive ex-con father, a two-timing, pistol-wielding ex-boyfriend and a racist boss—it’s hard to see how things could possibly get more difficult for her. After she meets a child that she bonds with, Moni must protect the girl from a mysterious threat stalking everyone near the Indian River Lagoon.
A serial killer is on the loose on Florida’s Space Coast, and Moni has been put in charge of the key witness in the biggest case of her life: an eight-year-old girl called Mariella. The child has gone mute after losing both her parents one harrowing night. Now, Moni struggles to protect the child and break her silence, while more reports of inexplicable deaths and animals with eerie purple eyes pile up. Her
bond with the child is tested by a police force demanding answers. What does the lagoon’s rotten stench have to do with a mute little girl? Can Moni save Mariella from what lurks along the water? Who is really facing the most danger? Find out in this suspenseful, page-turner that will keep you guessing until the very end.
Mute, Electronic (only): 1609750594
CLIFFORD B. BOWYER
THE IMPERIUM SAGA
Fall of the Imperium Trilogy
An evil tyrant weaves a tapestry of deception as he plots to conquer the Imperium. Only a few heroes are brave enough to uncover the mystery and face Zoldex directly. Follow the adventures of the heroes of the realm as they try to preserve the Imperium and confront Zoldex’s forces. Their hearts are true and their intentions noble, but will that be enough to overcome such overwhelming odds? Find out in the Fall of the Imperium Trilogy.
The Impending Storm, Print: 0974435449 / Electronic: 1609750004
The Changing Tides, Print: 0974435457 / Electronic: 1609750012
The Siege of Zoldex, Print: 0974435465 / Electronic: 1609750020
The Adventures of Kyria
In a time of great darkness, when evil sweeps the land, a prophecy foretells the coming of a savior, a child that will defeat the forces of evil and save the world. She is Kyria, the Chosen One.
From the pages of the Imperium Saga, The Adventures of Kyria follows the child destined to save the world as she tries to live up to her destiny.
The Child of Prophecy, Print: 0974435406 / Electronic: 1609750039
The Awakening, Print: 0974435414 / Electronic: 1609750047
The Mage’s Council, Print: 0974435422 / Electronic: 1609750055