Deep beneath the Florida forest in the dark heart of the springs, dwelt a mental presence more powerful than anything she’d encountered. Moni’s eyes burned. They’d unleashed her nightmare upon the world.
As the alien teeth squeezed behind her windpipe and past the base of her skull, Moni closed her eyes and tried remembering Aaron’s face one more time. His smile, with such confidence in her. He was the only one who believed, and she loved him for that. If only she hadn’t let him down. He deserved better.
Her vision blurred into a mix of flashing colors. The air stopped flowing into her body. Suddenly, the pressure seizing Moni’s lungs unlocked. The teeth withdrew their roots and halted their advance just before reaching her brain. Moni snapped her eyes open. Aaron stood behind the ranger, who had the syringe jabbed into his neck. The infected man’s skin turned pale as he drooled purple sludge.
Skillings ran over and shoved him. “What the hell did you do? That was for Moni.”
“I don’t care what your agenda is. Moni is coming out of this alive.” Aaron regained his footing and stood up to her. “I’d rather let this dirt bag play test subject. If it cures him, believe me, she’s next.”
“Neither of you are walking away from me today, get that straight. Now, let’s see if it works on this bastard.” Skillings kicked the seizure-ridden ranger off Moni.
Aaron heaved the rock off Moni’s chest and helped her sit up. He wrapped his arm around her and felt for the pulse in her neck, perilously close to the open wound on her shoulder blade.
As much as she yearned for his comfort, she gently steered him back.
“Careful, my love.” Gazing into his eyes, she didn’t see him flinch when a poisonous half-alien declared her love for him. “I nearly watched you die once already today. Don’t scare me like that again. Please, don’t come near me.”
“You showed the world today, Moni. You could have surrendered to the pain, but you fought an army of them. I’ll never stop fighting for you, and I can’t stay away.” Aaron glanced at Blake with a grin. “This might be what we’ve been waiting for.”
Moni watched the purple fade from Blake’s eyes. His familiar light gray returned. She approached slowly, fearing a game of possum. Moni motioned to Aaron and Skillings to back away, and they swiftly listened. She tore strips out of his jeans and wrapped them around his wounded arms to stem the bleeding, just in case. His fingers twitched, causing an involuntary seizing in her neck.
Moni placed her palm on Blake’s forehead. She didn’t detect a hint of the alien tech activity in his brain. Instead, she found his memories stirring. The little boy watching his grandmother craft Navajo jewelry. Racing through the desert flats with his brother. Meeting this mysterious and beautiful woman in the middle of the desert where such flowers didn’t belong. Moni cradled his hand and rubbed her thumb across his knuckles.
“Can you hear me, Blake?”
Blake’s grey eyes focused on her. They were confused, panicked.
Blake began coughing up vile purple blood. His body violently shivered. His face twitched and froze with his cheek muscles tight. His pupils lost focus. Moni felt his brain screaming for oxygen. The medicine had banished the alien tech, but with his body chemistry altered to depend on them, Blake couldn’t survive on his own. Within seconds, Moni detected that his brain activity ceased. His body finally lay at rest.
Moni tried screaming. She only strained her throat and made her eyes water with deadly acid. She wiped her tears and placed them over Blake’s eyelids as she closed them forever. Her tears didn’t burn him. The medicine hadn’t changed his body. Perhaps nothing could.
She stood and faced Aaron. Staring at the unaltered body, he shook his head, devastated. She wished she could promise him there was another way for her to become human.
“Burn these bodies. Let the aliens die with them,” Skillings said. She cast an eye at Moni. “Then there will be only you.”
The inevitability of the situation didn’t escape her. She locked eyes with Aaron.
Standing only feet apart, it was as if they were watching each other through a portal from opposite sides of the universe. She could only savor the precious moments they had left.
Aaron tapped his fingers to his heart. “I love you, Moni. I want you to hear that out loud.”
“I already heard you think it, but it sounds sweeter from your mouth. When I’m around you, that’s the only time I feel any human left in me.”
“There is plenty of human inside you.” Aaron shrugged off the awkward look from Skillings as he engaged in this seemingly one-sided conversation. “Come back to the lab with me and we’ll find it. The scientist who designed this medicine is brilliant. This dosage was a rush job, but if you give her more time…”
“Please, don’t. I can’t stand this anymore, seeing you raise your hopes and get them crushed.” She bowed her head. The disappointment weighed more heavily on her heart than she could convey, even with her thoughts. “This isn’t the time. My fight isn’t over.”
“What do you mean the fight isn’t over?” Aaron asked. “Isn’t that all of them?”
“Are you hiding another possessed freak?” Skillings stormed over to her with a hand gripping her pistol. “Don’t hold out on me.”
“Both of you should know this. When I touched the ranger, I saw it, and it saw me too. There’s an alien in Florida. Not nanotech. Not a mutant. An alien resurrected.”
79
Moni could have fled before the military got there, but she no longer ran from her problems. She ran to them.
When the tanks came, she got on her knees and put her hands behind her head. Skillings stood beside her, gun drawn triumphantly and her chin raised high like a big game hunter.
Moni told Aaron not to worry as they sealed her inside several layers of anti-contamination sheets and bound ropes around her ankles and waist.
She spent hours locked inside a dark box with her hands chained by some acid-resistant metal alloy. They’d bandaged her shoulder blade tightly so it wouldn’t bleed all over, but they hadn’t treated the wound.
Moni overheard the thoughts of her guards.
“Monroe got mauled by her coyotes, and we’re supposed to let her sit in this box? I should toss a grenade in with her.”
“How’d she go from leading the invasion to saving Colon? Did she get inside his head? Is that why he charged in there solo?”
“Here he comes!”
A wall slid away, leaving a window of bulletproof glass. Behind that barrier, she recognized a face she’d only seen on TV.
Defense Secretary Arnold Stronge scrutinized her with blue eyes that did little to hide their contempt. He wore a Washington-insider suit with a U.S. pin on one lapel and a bronze Marine Corps medal on the other. He brought two people with him, a heavily-armed marine and Skillings. A long way from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, Nina modeled the federal look with a pants suit and her short hair tied back tightly. Her nostrils no longer flared when she saw Moni, yet she stared into her eyes with an air of superiority. At least Skillings regarded her as somewhat human. Stronge observed her like some animal stored in a crate. She listened for his thoughts, but his head remained clear, focused.
She looked straight at Stronge and projected a question into his mind: “Where’s Aaron?”
“Stay out of my head,” the defense secretary said. “If you don’t want us to burn you inside this box, use an interpreter.”
Stronge nodded to Skillings, who couldn’t suppress her grin. No matter what Moni said, her longtime rival could make it sound however she wanted. She could threaten the secretary of defense and get her killed, or get Aaron locked away for life.
“Nina, listen, I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry about Sneed. I’m sorry about your accident. I’m sorry about Agent Carter.”
Skillings nodded. Carter brought that on himself, she thought for Moni’s benefit. He wanted me to lay down my life for him, but when shit got real, you were more concerned about
saving my ass than he was.
No wonder she didn’t say that out loud.
Stronge approached the glass and gave her the closest thing to a face-to-face stare down that he could.
“What else is out there?” he asked. “The lake has all dried up. Your army, the coyotes, bats, all those critters, dropped dead. Where have the aliens retreated to?”
Moni told Skillings about how she accidently infected three men, which allowed the alien nanotech to spread under their direction despite her attempts to halt it. When they destroyed the other infected humans and Colon took out the alien machines, Moni had shut everything down, from the possessed mutants to the microscopic bacteria in the groundwater.
Skillings fed Stronge the story the way she heard it, almost.
“She lost control, let three thugs jump her, and let them walk away infected. A fourth man, a park ranger, caught the purple bug after she deserted him in a fight,” Skillings said. “I killed one of them. And I witnessed Moni and her boyfriend terminate the other three. She claims she shut the rest down.”
“Oh did she? How generous of her to wave the white flag after we already had her aliens defeated,” Stronge said.
Moni sent Skillings another message and she relayed it. “She claims that she called off the attack on the Indian River Lagoon as well. She reminds us that we were losing that one.”
“I never meant to hurt your soldiers. I saved Colon out there and fought four infected men so he’d have cover to destroy the habitat.”
“She claims she helped Colon today.” Nina shook her head. “I heard the brave man didn’t make it.”
Stronge grumbled and the creases on his forehead deepened. The story of Moni rescuing the military’s top brass may be conveniently omitted from the report to Congress, but he couldn’t dismiss it here.
“Colon sacrificed his life for his country. That’s what a real defender of our nation does.” Stronge shot her a judgmental glare.
Moni knew damn well she could have incinerated herself from the outset and honorable men like Colon would still be with their families.
“Sure you helped him. But that wasn’t enough,” Stronge said. “This invasion isn’t over. You know that, right?”
Skillings faced Moni, who shrugged and looked away. Closing her eyes for a moment as the horrible image flooded back, Moni returned her gaze to the woman and delivered her message.
“While your main force has been playing in the sandbox out here, they hatched a real alien in Florida,” Nina told Stronge. “That’s what happens when you start listening to an old codger who calls himself the Lagoon Watcher.”
“That tree-hugging pain in my ass,” he muttered under his breath. “We knew about the mutant. They say it’s not infected, but it created an alien habitat in the underground springs. Now we know why.”
Stronge let some thoughts slip into his head. His frustration boiled over after that the four-spined monster decimated his SEALs. Moni hadn’t detected any such creature when she’d tapped into the alien mental network.
“Moni said the alien is still young and not at full ability,” Skillings said. “She thinks she can kill it.”
“I don’t remember asking for your help,” the secretary of defense told Moni.
“She thinks you need her,” Skillings said. She rolled her eyes before relaying Moni’s next message. “But she wants you to ensure her boyfriend’s release first.”
“Now she’s making demands! Does she know that at any moment we could tag her with a dart of that ‘antidote’ that fried her ranger friend like an overcooked hotdog?”
Blake’s stiff, pale face haunted her mind. By surrendering, she’d put herself at their mercy. There’s no way they’d let her reach Florida without their cooperation. Besides, Aaron couldn’t run forever. She needed to get his life back.
“You’ve been unable to reach the mutant and the alien it’s guarding, but I can,” Moni told Nina. “If I do this for you, I want an agreement in writing that Aaron won’t be charged for helping me avoid capture. You saw what he did. He saved little Ramona. He even wanted to go back and help you in Columbus. I wouldn’t let him.”
Skillings locked her mouth shut. She didn’t have to forward that message. She could make something up, say that Moni flatly refused to help after being threatened.
You murdered four officers, including Sneed, then Aaron helped you get away, Skillings thought. I can’t let that go.
Moni nodded and crossed her hands over her stomach. Nothing she did could erase what she’d done. She couldn’t look Skillings in the eyes and allow her to think the officer deserved anything less than full retribution.
“I can’t make any excuses for myself, but I can for him. Aaron loves me. He also fears me ever since this happened. If not for him, you and I would both be dead today. Now I’m asking you, put your feelings aside and think about what’s at stake. We can finally end this. Why do you care if Aaron walks?”
Listening for Nina’s thoughts, Moni heard nothing but mental meditation as the woman lowered her head and steadied her breathing.
Nina told Stronge about Moni’s demands. “If there’s an extraterrestrial out there, Moni will kill it. I’d be pissed too if it made me look like her.”
Stronge glanced at her and cringed. Moni was glad they hadn’t hung a mirror in there.
Folding his hands before his face, Secretary Stronge focused and cleared his mind before making a decision. Moni considered implanting a thought into his head. Manipulating people who anticipated her efforts had a low success rate, and Stronge didn’t sound like a man who bluffed on his threats.
“We’ll hold Aaron Hughes for questioning,” Stronge said. “Once you show me proof that you destroyed all traces of the aliens, besides what’s in your bloodstream, we’ll let him go. He can walk, as long as it’s not in your direction.”
Moni understood the double meaning there. Yes, Aaron would be free. She wouldn’t.
Moni caught one thought inside Stronge’s head before he left: Once she’s done, we’ll have just one more contaminated body to destroy.
80
The last time Moni had driven down Interstate 10 through the Florida Panhandle she had Aaron beside her in a little Prius, speeding west, unsure of a destination. They had ditched their home state before she even realized the mess she’d left behind. Now she peered out the window of an armored truck as part of a military caravan rumbling east from the Air Force base in Pensacola down the eerily quiet highway. Just over an hour later, they neared the heart of a waterlogged forest.
Somewhere deep under that soil, the man-devouring monster Moni had left behind awaited her.
At the sight of the military vehicles, civilian cars swung around in the opposite direction from where the soldiers were headed. Most storefronts were closed in the middle of the day. The few families that stayed home watched anxiously from their windows as the parade of black and green combat vehicles rolled down their small town road on the way to the springs, which mixed with their main source of drinking water. A couple with young kids ran for their SUV.
They’d seen what happened out west. The military’s record of protecting people from this wasn’t good.
As they crossed into Peacock Springs, she considered what the alien liked about this place. The underwater caverns were easily accessible. The caves offered plenty of cramped spaces to brew their toxic cocktail. If things went wrong, the alien had multiple escape routes through hundreds of miles of tunnels.
The military had filled her in on the victims butchered by the alien’s mutant body guard: a young boy and his father in a fishing hole, a teenage girl in her bedroom and her father with a futile rescue attempt, two Russian tourists going diving, and four people who lived within a few miles of the springs that had gone missing. They wouldn’t discuss the military casualties, but she felt the specter of loss and the heat of revenge on the minds of the soldiers around her.
Sitting on a metal bench with her stomach choked by guilt, Moni
wished she had stayed in Florida and fought this battle for them. The only person she’d saved was herself.
I should never have left Florida until I confirmed all of them were dead. How many people have they killed because I ran? No more. I’ll destroy their first born.
Moni expected the invaders inside her to rattle her head in protest. She hadn’t heard from them since she killed the infected ranger.
The armored truck stopped in the middle of the forest. A marine approached her window with his gun drawn. Moni waved at him with the gloved hand of her yellow containment suit. Only the translucent facemask revealed that she wasn’t a giant banana. Several marines inspected her fastenings before they let her out.
“Holy shit! No! Don’t tell me that’s who I think it is.”
The Lagoon Watcher ran up with steam blowing off his balding scalp and stringy long hair. His muddy shirt and jeans looked like they’d been worn for a week. She was glad she had the suit protecting her from his stench because he apparently hadn’t showered either. His red, bleary eyes betrayed a lack of sleep.
The off-beat scientist peered into her facemask and pointed at her. “Of all people, why would you bring her here? She’s the one who started this. I would have stopped the invasion in Florida, and the collapse of the lagoon ecosystem, if not for her.” He sent her a bitter glare through her facemask. “You’re the worst possible individual they could dig up to salvage this disaster.”
Sheez, thanks for the vote of confidence.
Moni didn’t even try changing his mind. She listened to the thoughts of the soldiers around her in the tent city agreeing with him. The soldier with a rifle aimed at the back of her head thought: Make a run for it, alien witch, so I can shoot you.
She picked up a familiar sensation, like catching the aroma of a favorite dessert while strolling down the street.
“Aaron! You’re here.”
She swung around and Aaron came running between the tents, hurtling over the roots and wires. With her contamination suit keeping her toxins inside, Moni could finally embrace him. She felt the muscles of his arms and back through her gloves. Aaron squeezed her so tight her suit nearly popped.
Silence the Living (Mute Book 2) Page 41