The sensation vanished as quickly as it appeared. The alien withdrew its petal from her wrist. It could gaze deep into faraway minds, even without a physical connection like Moni needed.
“Maybe I deserve to be destroyed,” Moni said.
“That is not what you want. I know what you want.”
It drew memories of Aaron from her mind as easily as drawing a bucket of water up a well. They’d sat so close for hours in the car, their hands coming inches apart yet afraid to touch for more than a few moments. Their kisses, the taste of his lips from her final days as human, returned to her.
“It can be this way again,” the alien told her. “I can change you back. As quickly as the seeds turned you into this, I can have them make you human.”
Moni stared at her hands in the violet light. They were more like a charcoal-colored crocodile’s than a person’s. Acidic water comfortably filled her lungs.
Impossible. Give it up.
She’d told herself to stop dreaming about holding Aaron. Stop fantasizing that they could have a life together. A smile took over her face as she thought about stepping from the water, sucking in a deep breath of air, and running into his embrace without restraint. They could make her a woman again; allow her to feel all that he could give her.
Fighting the ambition for pleasure, she concentrated on a single thought: “At what cost? What would it cost the world if I let this one live?”
It stretched its spines out into a large X and fanned its ribbons out in a fabric as flat as a silk screen. The alien rotated like a Ferris wheel, showing the perfect symmetry of its body in all directions. Moni felt a tenuous tranquility.
“Our seeds have caused terrible suffering here. I assure you I’m not like them. I remember the lessons of my species’ collapse. The meteor that destroyed our world, our only home, was no surprise. We saw it coming many years before impact. We spent that time not preparing, not cooperating on space technology to divert the meteor or relocate our species. We waged war against each other, squabbling over a world that would become ashes.”
Even a species that could delve into each other’s thoughts had conflict. Moni had assumed that more understanding and empathy would lead to peace. For these aliens, mind reading only meant that enemies couldn’t hide their ill intentions. Every thought of envy, rebellion or scorn became a cause for conflict.
“The seeds, as I now call them, started as healing tools,” the alien said “They could repair any internal damage, even defective DNA. They were converted into weapons, first destroying from the inside, then possessing the less intelligent biological beings on our planet to drag them into our fight. When we knew it was too late and the meteor was upon us, the seeds were our only hope.”
“They were designed to ravage my planet,” Moni said.
“To heal and cultivate. That’s the ultimate goal. Now that I’m here, I’ll see that’s all they do.” It retracted its spines and balanced on all four of them, standing before her on the sandy bottom. The alien stood no taller than a small child. “I’ve learned about humans. They’ll always resist us taking your planet. We have no right to it. There’s no reason we should repopulate the Earth. If I’m the only one of my kind for now, that’s enough.”
And Moni thought she’d been all alone in the world. This creature offered to live by itself in a giant stinky fishbowl, with her feeding it. She preferred her old pet cat to this elaborate purple sea monkey.
The world wouldn’t be safe unless this thing died. She’d broken enough promises.
“That sounded so nice you could have written it on a greeting card. Why should I believe anything you tell me?”
“Because you can gaze into my mind just as easily as I can see into yours.”
The aliens’ thoughts decelerated. Like a high-speed camera playing back frames slowly, she could view every nuance of its mind. Hundreds of thousands of years of history were stored there. So were its emotions. The alien admired her. There were many times when she could have given up, set fire to herself and the seeds of another species inside her. It’s because of love she didn’t. All her hope rested on Aaron. Some part of her still loved them too. She associated them with little Mariella, the orphaned girl she needed to save. That’s why the seeds allowed Ramona to live. Her escape from their attack had been no mistake. Seeing Moni’s motherly instincts prevail against all logic proved that she could never extinguish all of them.
She couldn’t have both them and Aaron, until now.
“If the seeds thought I loved them, trying to kill me and Aaron was a funny way to further our relationship.” She drew the syringe from her pocket. “Remember what I did to the imposter girl. I can just as easily do the same to you and be done with this.”
“You did that while accepting the burden of our species inside your body. That wasn’t betrayal. That was bravery. I’m asking you to be brave now.”
She flicked off the cap, unveiling the needle. “I am.”
82
Aaron knelt upon the leafy ground a few feet from the hole, closer than even the soldiers and scientists in anti-contamination suits dared set foot. They hadn’t offered him any shielding. No matter what emerged from below, he wouldn’t run. He’d stand and face it, just like Moni.
One of two things would happen down there, and neither would end well for her. She may never come up. He couldn’t prepare for that possibility, never hearing from her, never knowing how it ended. Or Moni could surface with the two corpses as payment for his freedom, and the soldiers would annihilate her.
After she entered the hole, half the soldiers had traded their assault rifles for dart guns loaded with the same lab-engineered poison she wielded.
Aaron heard something claw at the limestone wall of the hole. He sprang to his feet. Four SEALs rushed ahead of him with Captain Dobbs limping behind them.
“Get me a visual and show Secretary Stronge,” Dobbs told a soldier with a camera and flashlight on his rifle scope. “Everyone else, provide cover.”
The lead SEAL aimed his poison dart weapon into the darkness. They could barely hear him through the mask and face shield. “It’s iron jaw!”
“I knew she’d do it.” Aaron pumped his fist.
He certainly wouldn’t call her “iron jaw” during pillow talk. Besides, filthy angel was a better description of the woman who scaled the limestone walls. Even with muck and grime all over her skin, her braids falling down her shoulders, he’d never seen her so beautiful. Her eyes gleamed with intensity as she stared at him like a liberated slave. She almost made it feel like the two dozen soldiers with their weapons trained on her weren’t there.
Moni hurled the two black sacks at Dobbs’ feet. She tried standing and stumbled. Her right foot was bent crooked. Aaron rushed forward and offered a hand.
“Stay back,” Moni warned him. “You don’t want to touch me now.” She retched as if ready to vomit. Aaron definitely didn’t want to come in contact with that.
Captain Dobbs focused on the sacks. One contained something large and lumpy while the other resembled a full-sized trash bag with a single spoiled fruit inside.
“Tell them I fulfilled my end of the bargain,” she told Aaron. “I want them to sign your release.”
But they’ll kill you.
“They might, but I won’t let them ruin your life for what I’ve done. Tell them.”
“Uh, Captain Dobbs?”
The SEAL pivoted around on his crutch and eyed him through his facemask. “You serving as her mouthpiece again? Spit it out, son.”
“She followed orders perfectly, sir. Moni killed the mutant and the alien. She wants you to sign my release.”
“Of course she does. But that’s up to Secretary Stronge.” He held his finger up to his ear piece as a message came in. “He wants visual confirmation of both corpses. Dr. Ho, get down here!”
Leonard Ho, a NASA scientist that Aaron had met briefly in the tents, shuffled nervously over to the body bags, even in full protective gear. He�
��d examined the mutant’s disemboweled victims, so Aaron didn’t blame the man for covering up. Using a long metal rod, he peeked inside the large sack while two armed soldiers watched alertly.
“That’s him. The big one,” Ho said in ashen-faced disbelief. “Eck! She really walloped it.”
Moni displayed a smile of sharp teeth. “It was my father. He thought I was still afraid of him. This time, I fought back.”
Aaron bucked his head forward in surprise. How the hell did your dad become that monster? Tell me later. You need to run.
“Not until you’re free.”
Ho examined the second sack with a long pair of tongs. He plucked out the bottom half of a spine, no thicker than a dog’s leg. Thin strips of lace hung from it. They were nearly translucent.
“This looks alien, but where’s the rest of it?” Ho asked. “There should be a head, a body, and more spines.”
Dobbs gave Moni a crossed look. With one word, he could order his soldiers to pepper her with poison needles.
“Tell him the alien’s body immediately started dissolving after I injected it,” Moni told Aaron. “I snapped off this piece as proof that it’s dead.”
Aaron repeated her message word-for-word. Dobbs asked Ho whether she was lying. Her explanation sounded plausible, the NASA scientist said, as the poison would consume the extraterrestrial from the inside out.
“Bullshit!” shouted the Lagoon Watcher as he crossed through the soldiers’ line of fire. He pointed his finger at Moni. Even he had the good sense to suit up this time. “You think the alien’s dead because that’s what she wants you to think. She’s planting thoughts in your head. Moni’s protecting the aliens so they can ravage our environment. She’s one of them!”
“By the look of the severed edge of this spine, there was chemical damage,” Ho said. “I usually don’t buy what you’re saying, Mr. Trainer, and this time is no exception.”
“She’s fooling you,” the Lagoon Watcher said. “She’s done this before! She murdered my lagoon!”
As Moni knelt, taking pressure off her injured foot and clutching her side, the Lagoon Watcher popped off his helmet and drew a knife that had been taped behind his neck. Aaron lunged at him, but he was already upon Moni. She fell on her hip and raised her forearm. The knife stabbed right through her arm.
The Lagoon Watcher freed the knife. Raising the blade up splattered Moni’s purple blood across his face. “Oh shit!”
Aaron lunged forward to her aid, but quickly reversed course from her spurting blood. He kicked the original hazmat suit Moni had worn to her and she wrapped it around her wounded arm. Moni hobbled up and stared her attacker in the eyes as he gasped for breath.
“Unless you want to wind up like me, you know what you must do.” Moni let Aaron hear the words she sent Trainer. “Use the knife.”
The Lagoon Watcher’s exasperated eyes focused on Moni. She returned the stare while shuddering in pain, yet clutching her gut instead of her bleeding forearm. The scientist had seen alien kind manipulate minds with messages many times. Aaron doubted that Moni would fool him. His lips twitching in agony, the Lagoon Watcher opened his mouth and gasped. Aaron had seen that look before, right before the consciousness fades and the invaders seize control. Please don’t unleash this plague again. He hoisted the knife and slit his own throat.
Dobbs stood over the Lagoon Watcher’s limp body and put a bullet in his head to be sure. Ho threw up on himself and ran away.
“Been waiting to do that,” Dobbs said. The captain faced Aaron. “Secretary Stronge and the attorney general signed your release papers. We won’t file any charges. Now the only matter left…” Dobbs shifted his eyes between the soldiers flanking Moni. They had her surrounded, with two SEALs standing at her back blocking her escape down the hole. “Is to extinguish the disease.”
The soldier to Aaron’s left raised his rifle with a poison-tipped dart at Moni. Aaron swatted the man’s arm to knock it down, but quickly realized 30 more soldiers had her in their line of fire. Feeling time grind slowly by, Aaron saw Dobbs open his mouth, his tongue rising to deliver the order.
Something crackled louder than thunder. His eyes were open. He even felt the muggy air on them, but saw nothing. The chirping birds of the forest ceased, as did all other sounds. It didn’t come from the outside world, but from within, like the link between his senses and his brain had been disconnected. Aaron called out Moni’s name. He didn’t hear his own voice.
After a few seconds, his vision and hearing returned. Aaron surveyed the forest in a daze, seeing the confusion on the faces of the soldiers, especially Captain Dobbs. Moni was gone.
How’d she learn to do that?
Dobbs ordered his SEALs to spread out and search for her. “Where’d your girlfriend run off to this time?” The captain gave him a rabid dog scowl.
Aaron presented his back to him. Let them try. They’ll never find her. By now she knew better than to venture into civilization again.
Moni. He called to her inside his head, hoping she could hear him wherever she was. I promised I’d follow you anywhere. I still mean it.
Her words came to him as clearly as if she stood right beside him. “When two people are destined to travel on the same road, they’ll always find each other. Keep listening for my voice.”
Epilogue
The horizon stretched on forever. Beyond it, awaited still more water. No longer could she survey the lush green landscape of Florida or even the barren hills of southern New Mexico. If she could elevate 20,000 feet from her vessel floating at the mercy of the Caribbean Sea, she’d see only her 20-foot-long block of fiberglass as a surface to stand. This was her home, the only place she was safe at this moment.
Moni didn’t want merely to survive. She yearned for her love beside her.
She watched the deep blue waters all day, from the reddish hues reflecting off them at sunrise, to the mirror image of the pink and orange clouds cast across them at sunset. With her new method of fishing, she could last out here for weeks, maybe longer without sneaking into port. Yet, she couldn’t move her boat from these coordinates. If she did, he’d never find her. She couldn’t risk another trip on land to deliver a message.
A yellow blip jutted out from the horizon, the first object she’d seen outside of her boat and the sea in days. Moni shot off a flare. The blaze arched through the clear blue sky and slowly descended to the water. The boat headed straight for her. She couldn’t see who was aboard from so far away, but it looked like a pleasure cruiser, more suited to jaunts between Florida and the Bahamas than the open sea.
She finally recognized Aaron’s wavy blond hair. The sun gleamed off his glasses as he guided his craft closer. They couldn’t take their eyes off each other on this long approach. As the thousands of miles that had once stood between them narrowed to mere feet, Moni’s heart fluttered. She’d waited so long for this.
Aaron tossed Moni a line. She tied it to her boat so they wouldn’t drift apart. He gazed up at her, since his craft was about a foot lower, and offered a bashful grin. Aaron gave a quick glance left and right.
“At least we have some privacy,” he said. “Miles of it.”
She offered her hand. He bypassed it and leapt aboard. Moni didn’t approach him at first. She let him get a look at her. Aaron raised his glasses. “Moni, you look…”
Moni thrust her body upon him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and nibbled her lips against his. Aaron resisted at first. When her tongue slipped between his lips, he couldn’t hold back. He indulged in her warm and wet embrace. There was no burning, only tingling while she tickled the inside of his lips as their tongues gently danced. She rubbed her bare hand on the nape of his neck and reached beneath his collar for a grasp of his strong shoulders. Moni no longer feared her sweat covering his skin. She relished it.
“Oh my God,” Aaron said in the middle of their kiss.
She broke away and let him take in the sight before him. Her teeth flashed white. Pinkish nails we
re growing in. Her skin had returned to its usual mocha color, a shade darker from the sailor’s tan.
“You’re human.” Aaron smiled and laughed. “I didn’t think it was possible. How in the world did you do it?”
With a coy grin, Moni led him to her boat’s especially large livewell, which normally stored live bait in circulated seawater. She’d made a few modifications. Moni opened the lid. It emitted a soft violet light.
Aaron shuffled backward as he cast his eyes upon their four-spined guest. That’s who had plunged him and the soldiers into darkness during their escape. She’d looked sick after leaving the cave, even holding her gut after getting stabbed in the arm, because it’d hid inside her.
Moni clasped her speechless man’s hand and brought her mouth to his ear so he could hear her soft voice.
“For you, baby, I’d do anything.”
About the Author
What’s the only subject gorier than murder? Try covering business in Florida during a recession. Brian Bandell is a senior reporter at The South Florida Business Journal covering the brutal sport that is real estate. He has won 14 awards from the Florida Press Club, including first place in both business writing and government reporting. He received another 15 awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, including first place for business writing in Florida and twice winning a Green Eyeshade for best business enterprise reporting in the Southeast United States. He received a B.S. in communication from the University of Miami. Brian grew up on Florida's Space Coast and now lives with his family in Pembroke Pines.
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