Aaron staggered. He grabbed the side of the car for balance as she drew him into her mind. He experienced everything, the millions of machines inside her pleading for iron, the hot rumbling in her stomach from the gasoline breaking down, and her heightened awareness of the brain activity nearby, from the cashier in the store to the cat out back. She brought up a memory for him. Moni showed him the moment she changed, when she took a pill from Mariella that would adapt her body to the alien habitat of the Indian River Lagoon without erasing her mind – her reward for helping them. Then she showed him the betrayal, when she shot Mariella and destroyed their new beginning.
Moni had killed the last one who trusted her.
“Don’t make the same mistake, Aaron. If you get infected, or if there’s a choice between saving you and preventing them from escaping my body, you know what I have to do.”
With his palm still on her cheek, he sensed that she would hate letting that happen, but she was serious. A rush of passion swept from his mind into hers. When she opened her eyes, Moni found Aaron’s face inches from hers, their lips so close.
“I don’t care if you close this window right now and cut my head off. I’m coming with you,” Aaron said. “I have to go back to college and explain why my professor died out there on the lagoon with me, and why I couldn’t save him. How am I supposed to tell his children? I can’t sit at home and mope about what happened. I’m going to stop them from hurting another person – especially the person I care most about in the world.”
Moni clamped her hand against his and gently removed it from her face. She unlocked the doors. He stood there for a moment, wondering if she was serious, and then got back in. Moni grabbed a tissue and dabbed her eyes. Something crackled against her skin. Her tears had singed the tissue black – sulfuric acid tears.
5
At first, I thought I was drowning. I lifted my head above water and coughed the foul liquid out of my lungs. For some reason, I wasn’t short of breath, but, damn, the air stunk. It smelled like a cheeseburger left in the sun for a week. Had I gotten plastered and fallen into the water? It wouldn’t have been the first time.
I jerked my body, trying to get out of there. It did no good. I had sunk up to my shoulders in the soft muck of the Indian River Lagoon just inside the shallows. Why couldn’t I feel the limestone rock beneath my feet? The bottom of the saltwater estuary should have been firmer than this. I couldn’t even smell salt. What the fuck happened here?
Instead of its normal greenish blue, the water was too clear. It felt slick on my skin like grease. Tiny particles, almost like ashes, sifted through the water. The opposite shoreline should have been leafy with palms or mangroves, but the water’s edge had been stripped. The vegetation had withered into black dust and the backs of homes looked like they’d been doused with acid rain. I’d fished these waters for over 50 years, after hurricanes, after forest fires, and never seen it like this.
Something floated on the surface. A copperhead snake wrapped around driftwood. The wood fizzled as the chemicals in the water slowly dissolved it. The snake’s head extended underneath the water, stretching toward a better flotation device. The current pushed it toward my face. I tried paddling away. Two of my appendages moved, but I couldn’t feel my hands. It came straight for me. For a second, I thought about biting the scaly bastard. I really was spaced the fuck out.
Then I realized that the snake wasn’t reaching. It was limp as a rope. Its eyes bulged out as if its brain had blown up.
If the toxic lagoon could kill a tough-ass snake and chew through wood, how the hell was I still living? I searched for my last memories, and then it came to me.
Moni! That double crossing bitch.
The details were a blur, but I’ll never forget her vengeful voice celebrating her victory over me. It was the last thing I heard before an overpowering force within the lagoon claimed my body.
Moni didn’t count on me surviving. Good. She’ll never see me coming.
Biting my bottom lip like I do when I’m pissed, I grunted in pain and immediately stopped. I tasted blood in my mouth. Ah crap, were my teeth sharp.
Sick of marinating in the poisonous waters, I tried kicking free of the slime. I still couldn’t feel my hands and feet. I couldn’t feel my waist, my arms or my legs either. Was I paralyzed from the neck down? I twisted my neck until it strained, testing my vertebrae. It moved fine. Better than fine, ox-strong. I arched my back, feeling for the tingle down my spine. That’s when I felt them. I didn’t have one spine, I had many. Not two, not three, but four. I had four spines branching out from my neck. They were thick as tree branches. Instead of legs and arms, my spines had a kind of root system driven into the muck. Except, I could move these roots, like opening and closing a hand with two dozen sharp, tiny fingers. No damn way. Had someone drugged me? Had to. I figured I’d lift one of those so-called spines out of the water and see my hand with the good old tattoo of a burning Ace of Spades.
Gritting my teeth as I struggled, I finally freed one of my four appendages from the bottom of the lagoon. I swiftly hoisted it above water.
“Holy shit!”
6
Without his uniform, without the star of the brigadier general on his collar, Alonso Colon was just another man at home with his family, a family he was no longer certain he could protect.
Ready for bed but unable to sleep, he wore an old guayabera and shorts as he sat at the kitchen table across from his wife. She hadn’t closed her eyes for more than two minutes since the invasion, fearing a mutant freak would slip in and snatch their son. She watched little Ernesto playing on his tablet, lost in the fantasy world of his game. So innocent. Did he know how close his world came to ending when he was trapped on base during the attack?
“Rosa, you have to sleep some time.” He took his wife’s hand. It was steel cold. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Maybe you will tonight, but not always,” she said. “They’re shipping you away, aren’t they?”
He lowered his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. We’re at war now. I can only assume so.”
“We’re at war against what? Mutants? Bacteria? Aliens that we can’t see?” She gazed out the window into the night. Every creature, from cute little squirrels to lizards, she treated like a rabid transmitter of the alien infection. She even swatted at a duck on their patio with a broom until it quacked, revealing its innocence. “Every time you went overseas before I’ve worried about you, but we’ve been safe here. Now the war’s at home. Who’ll protect us?”
“If it comes to that, I’m sure the Air Force will find secure housing for you.”
“How do they know what’s secure when even their own base isn’t? Is there anywhere they can’t reach?”
He wished he knew the answer. Since the invasion halted, people kept congratulating him on his “victory.” Despite what he told the media under orders from the Pentagon, Colon knew the truth. The entire base, including him and his family, had been at the mercy of the alien mutants. They would have been slaughtered if not for the abrupt end of the invasion. No one understood why it stopped, even him.
Worse yet, no one knew when the aliens would return. Or where.
“Hey dad.” His son paused his game and approached the table in his ninja pajamas. He normally wouldn’t be up this late, but school was out for at least another few days. Besides, the boy had nightmares about the creatures that chased them. “I messaged Tommy a bunch of times. He didn’t answer. Mrs. Cutler sent me a message back. She said Tommy’s not around anymore. What’s she mean?”
Tommy was in Ernesto’s class. They played baseball and video games after school.
He was one of three children on base who were killed by the alien marauders.
“Oh God.” Rosa covered her face.
Colon knelt down and cupped his son’s hands in his. He shouldn’t have this conversation with his son at such a young age. He couldn’t hide the deadly nature of the world from him, not when he may one day need
to run. “You saw the monsters at the base didn’t you?” he asked.
The boy nodded. “They came from the water, right? Mom said stay away from the water.”
“That’s right. Now, some people didn’t stay far enough away and the monsters caught them.”
“Um…” Ernesto mumbled like he couldn’t comprehend this was real and not a cartoon. His lips trembled. Colon placed a steady hand on the back of his neck and brought their foreheads together. He felt his son’s rapid, steamy breaths.
“Life isn’t like a video game,” he told his son. “When something bad happens, there are no second chances. It’s just over.”
“So Tommy? The monsters, they got him?” Ernesto’s voice cracked.
Colon pulled his son’s head against his chest for a tight embrace. Ernesto clung to his father, his invincible hero who donned a mighty uniform, unaware his dad was just as mortal as the other soldiers and civilians who had perished in the invasion.
“I won’t let them get you,” Colon said.
Rosa came around behind Ernesto and joined the hug. She clutched her husband’s arm and directed her piercing stare at him. He understood the words his wife couldn’t say. If the aliens returned and he got redeployed, she wanted him to stay with them.
“They pretty much kicked our ass,” said Secretary of Defense Arnold Stronge as he and Colon walked the remains of Patrick Air Force Base. They surveyed barracks and hangers with holes punctured in them, some of them blackened by acid. Multi-million dollar jets and helicopters looked like they’d flown through a tornado of bricks. Every direction they turned, they found the pavement stained with blood, either red or alien purple. White-gloved soldiers loaded a line of coffins into the hold of a cargo transport, bound for Arlington National Cemetery after a sterilizing cremation.
“I don’t care what crap we tell the media. You know what really happened here.” Stronge turned and eyed Colon, who had a hard time remaining stoic. The defense secretary was a hawkish politician before his appointment, and a Navy SEAL in his younger days. He carried himself like a man who could still expunge a life with one finger. “They caught us completely unprepared. This is unacceptable. We haven’t had an attack on a base on U.S. soil like this since Pearl Harbor.”
“Sir, these weren’t bombers and fighter jets – that we’ve prepared for,” Colon said. “They were animals spliced together coming out of the water in waves. Shoot them and the alien bacteria kept them going, or even repaired them. The most effective tactic was to blow them to bits, and even then, more kept coming.”
FBI Special Agent Cam Carter hurried out ahead of them and held up his hand before they could approach an overturned military jeep. “Forensics team hasn’t checked it yet.” Carter slipped a glove on one hand and then wielded a pistol with the other. He peered through the smashed window into the cab.
The dark-haired man had too much of a tan for someone who lived full time in Washington, D.C. He’s probably one of the troubleshooters the FBI sends wherever the shit’s going down, Colon thought. Colon pointed at Carter rummaging through an Air Force vehicle, but Secretary Stronge simply nodded.
“Look what I found.” Carter pulled a severed forearm out of the jeep and raised the dead hand to his forehead in a salute to his military folks. “Attention.”
The FBI man wore the only smile.
“Don’t you dishonor our war heroes!” Secretary Stronge snapped.
Knowing that the person that the arm belonged to had once saluted him for real, Colon cringed. “Give it to the forensics team for identification, and don’t let me catch you touching Air Force property ever again.”
“Alright, can’t take a little dark humor, can you?” Carter wrapped the severed arm in a body bag and set it down. “If you want to get serious, let’s talk about what really happened here. Several reports mention a psychic attack from the aliens. Is that why your men were distracted in the heat of battle?”
“Distracted?” Colon arched his brow. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Videos caught several soldiers hiding in storage containers or bunkers instead of fighting. Some fled the base and wandered around aimlessly looking for relatives that don’t even live in Florida.” Carter crossed his arms and nodded to the defense secretary. “Not very professional.”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of this.” Stronge’s eyes widened as they headed toward the battered frame of the cafeteria.
“We know the aliens have psychic abilities,” Colon said. “Soldiers and civilians told me that they felt fear or confusion even before the invasion started, like their minds were playing tricks on them. But all that’s stopped now.”
Seeing a giant turtle shell with several bullet holes in it in their path, Colon halted both men with arms against their chests. He drew his service revolver and approached the dog-sized shell. Its legs resembled more cat than reptile. Colon kicked it over and aimed at its head. Its skull had been smashed in so he couldn’t tell what animal it’d been.
“They dropped dead or left, but can you explain why?” Stronge asked. “And don’t tell me you fucking did it, because I’ve seen how they manhandled you.”
Hanging his head, Colon knew that he couldn’t have saved a square inch of his home turf. What unnerved him most is that he didn’t know whether the aliens were playing possum. Could they have withdrawn to prepare a more opportune attack? After taking over enough human minds, did they learn about a more desirable territory to seize?
“I’m not so sure we finished them,” Colon said.
“We have scientists checking the lagoon,” Stronge said. “The aliens are gone.”
“But not all of the infected have been accounted for,” Carter said. “This all started with that girl Mariella and her police bodyguard Moni Williams. We haven’t found either of them. The aliens’ so-called surrender occurred less than 15 minutes after they evaded arrest, leaving four officers dead. Too bad nobody saw that coming.” He eyed Colon, the only one of the three of them who had a chance to expose Moni before she unleashed hell. Colon could have pointed out that it was Carter’s job to track them down and he hadn’t gotten anywhere, but decided on staying above it.
“We all have regrets,” Colon said. “I’m going to personally hand flags to the families of all the men, women and…” He drew a deep breath. “children who died here. When I do, I’m going to think about the things I could’ve done differently that might have kept them with us, but I won’t dwell on that today. Today, we need action. Until we’re sure no one else is infected, we can’t rest. I have a wife and son at home, and they can’t rest either.”
“Let me tell you something,” Stronge said as he leaned in Colon’s face. “I’ve got Congress and I’ve got a president that want to tell the American people they’re not about to have alien monsters in their living rooms or alien bacteria infecting their children, and right now, I can’t. Do you have any idea what’s going on out there? A mute man in Georgia got assaulted because they thought he was infected. You don’t want to know how many animals have been shot. People are afraid to send their kids to school. Some refuse to leave the house.”
“We had the CDC say the infection is under control,” Carter added. “The public isn’t buying it. I’d just as soon quarantine this whole county and torch what’s left of the lagoon.” He gasped at something over Colon’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
Colon spun around and saw a big black bird, a turkey vulture, picking at a fly-infested corpse in the gutter. It had been a dog. Colon couldn’t tell whether the canine had been infected, or whether the foul-faced bird had contracted the alien invaders.
“Orders, sir?” Colon asked the secretary.
“Do you have a protocol to tell whether it’s infected?” Stronge took a few steps closer and observed the feasting bird with his binoculars.
“Because if it’s not infected, you’ll spare its life? Please.” Carter approached the turkey vulture with his pistol at ready. “We can�
�t have it tampering with evidence.”
Because that’s something he would never do, Colon thought.
“We can’t make it a habit of shooting every creature that makes us nervous,” Colon said.
Carter aimed his pistol and caught the turkey vulture in the head with one shot. Its blood splattered on the pavement red, not purple. “A false positive is better than getting your face bitten off,” the FBI man quipped. Before Colon could get a word out, he fired back. “That’s the choice millions of people got to make now. And it won’t always be with animals.”
Shrugging, Colon grasped his point. This was bigger than defending his base. They had surfaced on his watch. Colon bore the responsibility.
“Secretary Stronge, sir. We shouldn’t let civilians fight this battle for us. Having experienced combat with this unique brand of adversary up close, I’m prepared to offer my services to form an elite strike force that’ll counter the alien presence wherever it turns up next. Carter will find them and I’ll eliminate them.”
“And why would we do this through the Air Force?” Stronge asked. “As far as I know, they don’t have flying saucers.”
“I propose a joint strike force, sir,” Colon said. “The Air Force will provide transport and tactical support. We’ll use troops and armored vehicles from the Army and Marines, and most certainly Navy SEALs.”
That brought a grin across his cheeks, as if Stronge wished he could suit up and blast some mutant’s head off. He nodded with a bit of a chuckle.
Silence the Living (Mute Book 2) Page 4