She started the engine and hit the gas. Suddenly, a snake wrapped Moni’s legs together, preventing her from pressing the pedals again. The car rolled straight for the house. She screamed, but her lack of vocal cords allowed only silence to escape.
Moni’s nails shredded the snake’s scales. It wouldn’t release her. Spinning the wheel with one hand, Moni made the car sideswipe the porch instead of barreling into the house. A few more slashes left the snake in pieces. Moni straightened the wheel and backed the car within an easy hop of the roof.
So they gave you super powers but took away your driving skills? Aaron thought.
“It’s more complicated than that. Just keep your shoes on when you’re in this car,” she replied. “Jump on the roof. I’ll open the windows.”
A thump sounded on the roof as Aaron landed with Ramona in his arms. Moni rolled down the back driver’s side window and leaned her arms all the way back. Aaron lowered the girl towards the window. Moni caught Ramona’s legs and pulled her through the window before the snakes could snap at her. The creatures pounded the car with their heads, rocking the vehicle on its axels. Smoke wafted from all four tires as their acid burned at the rubber. Aaron wouldn’t have such an easy time.
His bat swooped down and whacked the serpents out of the way. Then he contorted his body into the backseat. Moni quickly closed the window.
“Let’s see,” Aaron said as he placed his arm around Ramona, who hugged him back as if she’d known him forever. “Me and the little lady would like to take a ride somewhere. How about, I don’t know, a place without a sea of snakes and a flock of angry spider vultures.” He looked at the girl with a grin. “Por favor?”
The little girl nodded.
“Absolutely. There’s just someone I have to rescue first,” Moni told him.
“If you insist on taking anyone with us, save these kids. They’re only in danger because I came here.”
Moni paused for a moment and reached out with her mind. She felt the kids in the house huddled together and scared, but with Nina and Carter there with them. If they cooperated with her, they could lower the kids into her car. That would never happen.
“Nina won’t let us near them”, she told him. “She should be able to protect them until the military arrives. We don’t want to stay that long.”
Moni’s breaths grew rapid as she extended her mental reach, feeling for Ranger Blake. She siphoned through thousands of minds around her, both human and infected. Not a trace of Blake. Had she been deaf to his final cries?
Wincing, Moni waited for their taunting voice, telling her what they’d do to her precious cowboy. Silence.
She hit the gas and sped away from the besieged house.
Blake’s born of the badlands. He can survive anything.
61
Moni had anticipated an army on the road out of Columbus. The street was clear and quiet, an invitation. The rampage in the neighborhood had ceased. She detected few living people on North Boundary Road while examining the battered houses, their windows shattered, roofs stomped on and fences toppled. As she passed the first house, she spotted human remains of bone and tattered flesh with the head stolen. Another addition to their brain bank in the worm.
They’d chosen to harvest instead of infect, at least with this victim.
She cracked open the window and inhaled the scent. Rotten decay of alien bacteria overwhelmed her senses. She couldn’t pick up anything remotely resembling Blake, or any man.
No that wasn’t Blake.
“Uck, close it!” Aaron gagged.
Come morning, every corner of this town would carry the stench.
Moni approached the ranger’s truck, its motor still growling. It had smashed windows and a dented frame as if a bat-wielding mob had clobbered it. Snake and coyote tracks surrounded it, yet only corpses of those mutants remained. Blake wasn’t inside. Perhaps he’d taken cover in a nearby house.
She glanced in the rearview mirror as she passed it. Moni stopped. He sat slumped behind the tailpipe, seated on the pavement with his arms on his knees as the exhaust fumes rose around him. Blake had his head lowered, covering his face with his cowboy hat. His rifle rested at his feet. His hands hung stiffly like branches.
Moni reached into his mind. Nothing.
Had they wiped it blank, like a hard drive erased? Had he gone into a catatonic state of shock after surviving the attack? Dozens of slain mutants littered the ground around his truck, most of them felled by gunshots.
“Why did you stop?” Aaron glanced around the devastated neighborhood nervously. “You know that guy?”
Moni opened the door and surveyed the scene. The creatures kept to the distant shadows, observing. She stepped out and held up a finger for Aaron, signaling for him to wait inside.
The boom of Moni slamming the door closed didn’t jar Blake from his meditation. Moni approached him with heavy steps, hoping he’d notice her and snap to. He’d been so sharp in the desert that he tracked her even when she moved like the blowing sand. Now, Blake didn’t lift his head, or utter a thought, even as she stood over him.
Moni felt something living inside his mind. Its life force radiated. She wished this man, this untamed cowboy could feel love for her, that he could overlook this monstrosity that had taken over her body and embrace the natural connection between them.
She recognized the feeling from this mind. It wasn’t love. It was pleasure. Twisted, sadistic pleasure.
Blake stood up. The brim of his cowboy hat lifted, revealing piercing purple beams. They shot from his eyes, his nostrils, his ears, and every orifice of his body.
His hand flung out and seized her neck.
Enduring the strain on her windpipe, Moni reached deeper into his mind, searching for any trace of Blake. She found none, not a voice, not a memory. Her desert ranger had been consumed.
In another life, a place where she remained a regular woman, the spark between her and Blake might have blossomed into love. When she roamed the desert she had often thought of him, wondering what part of the territory he was patrolling, fantasizing about a simple life with him in a cabin on some remote plain. Even after what had happened to her body, she could always dream. Now she’d lost even that.
More painful than the hand crushing her throat was Moni staring into the purple lights that should have been Blake’s compassionate eyes. Blake should have shot her in the head and turned her corpse into the military. If he’d done that, he’d still be alive. He had entered this doomed town because she implored him. She had understood the consequences, not him. When he had needed Moni to have his back, she ran off and left him facing an impossible fight.
Blake had died because he trusted her.
Every time she loved someone and tried to protect them, this is what happened. Her love was a curse.
Her fingers numbed as Blake’s grip tightened. Black spots clouded Moni’s vision.
“What’s the matter Moni, don’t you like the new me?” The thing spoke into her head with a voice as grinding as sandpaper. “You know you could never be with a human man, so I fixed your little problem. We can be together, sugar. I’m just like you.”
It paused, leaving time for her objection. She had none.
“Let’s have that kiss you’ve been dreaming of.”
Infected Blake opened his mouth, revealing purple gums and eroding teeth. Acidic mist carried on the ranger’s breath as he forced his jaws apart, cracking facial bones as his mouth grew larger than her face. As the human teeth dropped out, new teeth replaced them, ones of sharpened bone.
With a jolting whack, possessed Blake’s head reeled away from her. Another swing of Aaron’s bat struck his elbow, breaking his grip on her neck.
Aaron grabbed one of her braids, a rare strand not purple with blood, and pulled her towards the car. Moni moved in the direction her feet took her as she fixated on the former Blake. Infected Blake quickly recovered, yet didn’t give chase. Aaron helped Moni into the passenger seat and sped off.
>
Gazing back at Blake’s devious grin, Moni realized he didn’t need to kill her. Given the vision she had gleaned from him when their skin touched, nothing she could do would make a difference.
They’ll kill every last person here.
62
The persistent odor of gasoline made the Lagoon Watcher’s nose sting. That industrial stench didn’t belong in the midst of a pristine wildlife sanctuary like Peacock Springs. He should have smelled cypress and red maple instead of the spoils of mankind’s carbon-belching liquid.
The SEALs had placed open cans of gasoline on the edge of the sinkhole, right beside some iron tools conveniently left unattended. For the aliens, it was equivalent to freshly-baked cookies. The Lagoon Watcher had advised the military that the alien presence required these elements for survival.
This trap was better than the alternative, Defense Secretary Stronge’s insistence on bombing the springs into craters until the mutant’s dead body surfaced.
The political slickster had promised Trainer that he wouldn’t pulverize his precious swamp and upend Florida’s water table. To hold him to his word, Trainer had filed a pro se motion for a preliminary injunction against all military equipment other than light arms in the state park. The Fed had yet to respond. Uncharacteristically, they hadn’t tied a brick around his ankles and tossed him into a sinkhole. That’s one benefit of helping save a SEAL.
“It’s been three hours and nothing,” said Leonard Ho. Sweat dripped from his black hair as he sat beside Trainer in a bunker camouflaged with leaves, bark and dirt. “Baiting it is pointless. It’s not a stupid fish.”
Ever since saving the lives of three men with his errant gunshot, Ho had grown ten times as annoying.
“And what do you suggest? A giant mouse trap with a person on the trigger? Have any plump volunteers?” Trainer poked Ho’s soft belly.
Ho swatted his finger away. “We should send a probe down.”
“Here we go again with NASA, sending a probe when a man should do. You blame it on budget cuts, but I say it’s outright fear of failure,” Trainer said.
Ho blew a raspberry and looked away.
“I hope you have a probe with no iron. Otherwise, that’s like handing him a big lollipop.” Trainer stuck out his thumb.
“He’s got a point.” Trainer turned and faced Captain Roy Dobbs, whose facial bone structure resembled his younger brother Calvin Dobbs, the injured SEAL that Trainer had dragged out of the cave.
Dobbs hadn’t visited his little brother in the military hospital yet, so quick did the order come to lead 20 SEALs to Peacock Springs. Trainer had heard them speak over the phone several times. Captain Dobbs sounded more vengeful than compassionate.
Likely born with the same pale complexion as his younger brother, Captain Dobbs didn’t show it. His reddish, leathery hide bore the grittiness of several decades under the sun’s rays. In which corners of the world, Trainer could only guess. His demeanor suggested that he’d seen scarier things than a swamp monster.
“A probe would tell us what we already know, that it’s down there and it’s hungry,” Dobbs said. “If it wants to feed, it needs to come topside and meet our welcoming committee.” He nodded toward the sniper rifles manned by four of his troops.
“And then we purify the spring, right?” the Lagoon Watcher reminded him. “Not a flower petal gets disturbed.”
Dobbs’ half-hearted smile and shrug weren’t so reassuring.
“Danny Riggs showed me a map of these springs. They go for miles,” Ho said. “Why would it surface here when it can feed elsewhere?”
Trainer rolled his eyes. “The meal of least resistance. If you knew anything about nature, you’d know that rarely does one pass up an easy dinner.”
“We can’t assume that aliens act like what we think of as nature,” Ho said as he activated his tablet. “We must look at their past behavior and determine a pattern.”
“You want a pattern? I’ve got one for you.” Trainer snatched Ho’s tablet and tossed it in the dirt. “The aliens have turned every drop of water they’ve inhabited into a toxic cesspool. If that happens here, half of Florida loses its water supply. It would be the worst ecological disaster in national history, worse than the BP oil spill, worse than Three Mile Island. We’re talking millions of people choosing between infection and dehydration.”
Ho ground his teeth as he retrieved his tablet. The government scientist had treated this whole thing like a sponsored research project, not a matter of life and death. Nature doesn’t wait for scientists to make up their minds, and, as Trainer had witnessed all too closely, these purple invaders certainly don’t.
“I assure you, Secretary Stronge has authorized me to prevent that from happening by any means necessary,” Dobbs said.
Trainer was about to ask the SEAL what he meant by “any means necessary” when the bushes rustled. A small deer pranced out of the brush. It started lapping up the sinkhole water, right beside the iron tools. Ho pointed like a toddler and opened his mouth. Trainer clapped his hand over his kisser and shushed him.
“I love deer too,” the Lagoon Watcher whispered. “But the little fellow would die anyway if we don’t kill the infection.”
They waited and watched it drink. Before long, Trainer spotted a dark figure lurking just beneath the surface. With a spray of water as it snapped out, the creature seized hold of the deer’s throat.
The four SEAL snipers fired in unison, joined an instant later by Dobbs with his pistol. Ho turned away, curling up in a ball and shielding his ears from several dozen rounds. Trainer focused on the target, even as white puffs of smoke obscured it. The ravaged body flopped down beside the obliterated deer. That wasn’t right.
The Lagoon Watcher hesitantly left his shelter and approached the sinkhole to be sure.
“Damn.” He clapped a hand across his wrinkled forehead. “It’s a gator. An innocent gator.” They had blown it to pieces, but he still recognized its rough skin and broad snout. “What a waste of two beautiful animals.”
“The deer, I’ll give you, but the gator?” Ho peaked out from behind the enclosure at the carnage.
“My heart goes out to its scaly, cold-blooded family.” Dobbs stalked toward the sinkhole with his gun drawn on the pathway to the caves and his leery eyes on the shadowy depths. “Now why don’t you back away from the water before you--”
The water erupted behind Trainer.
A large reddish figure burst through the surface as if it’d been launched from the heart of the caverns. Dobbs quickly fired, but the bullet hardly slowed its momentum. Trainer turned to run. As he pivoted on his foot, Trainer slipped on a loose stone and fell on his side within a foot of the water’s edge. Trainer could roll away in a second. It wouldn’t take nearly that long for its long tendrils to snare him.
“What is that?” Dobbs shouted.
Its raw muscles were exposed, from its stubby limbs to its thick neck. This second gator had been skinned. Ribs and tailbone protruded from the reptile’s body as it bobbed in the water. Its rows of teeth, no match for the spring’s new top predator, had no flesh or gums covering their exposed jaw bone.
Pins and needles of terror pricking him underneath the skin, the Lagoon Watcher got to his feet with Dobb’s assistance.
“It’s warning us,” the Lagoon Watcher said in a trembling voice. He could tell what had done this by the deep cuts on its carcass and the hooking patterns. “If an alligator can’t survive down there, how can we?”
Dobbs gazed at the corpse defiantly. Soldiers don’t know the word doubt.
Just as quickly as it appeared, the skinned gator got sucked down the watery pit. The surface bubbled and gurgled, teasing them with what lurked below.
All four of his SEALs surrounded the sinkhole and aimed their rifles. Dobbs grabbed an underwater grenade from his belt and hurled it into the sinkhole. An explosion shook beneath their feet.
Nothing floated up from the bottom. Dobbs shook his head. “Motherfucker is s
lick as a ghost.”
“What the hell did you toss that explosive for?” Trainer asked. “It won’t wait around while your grenade falls on its head. You promised me that you wouldn’t destroy this treasured ecosystem. The mutant has done enough damage already.”
“Your NASA friend is right about this not being a dumb animal. It’s more like us than you think.” Dobbs studied Trainer with the smirk of a man forming an idea. “The best way to hurt an enemy that you can’t find is to threaten the one thing he’s sworn to protect.”
63
Aaron drove the stolen jeep between Columbus and El Paso with both his passengers asleep. Ramona curled up in the backseat while Moni, who hadn’t sent him any mental messages since their escape, slumped against the door in the seat beside him. He wondered whether she could hear his thoughts as she slept. Perhaps they lingered among her dreams.
His eyes longed to close and grant his body merciful rest. The jeep’s seats smelled of cigarettes, but they were so soft. Aaron would have thanked the owner for the ride, but all they found was his headless torso in his driveway with his keys in his hand. They had to ditch the FBI’s car because it had infected blood all over the driver’s side, and it probably had GPS tracking.
This day and night had lasted so long, with no more than an afternoon catnap in between, that he couldn’t remember what he’d last eaten for breakfast. It felt like an entire lifetime of turmoil packed into one day. And a full day was beginning.
A work day. Fuck.
Dashes of pink and orange swept across the eastern horizon as if a painter’s brush had colored in the night sky. As this dusty corner of the world filled with the dim light of the dawn and the stars slowly faded, something caught Aaron’s eye. A column of black smoke rose from the northeast. He would have guessed it was a burning building, but he knew of no towns out that way. The smoke was too thick to be a car set ablaze. It could have been a larger vehicle.
Silence the Living Page 32
