Mute

by Brian Bandell

  “What are your orders, sir?” the captain asked.

  Colon scanned the crowd. He couldn’t find his family. He wished he could hold his son and wife in his arms one more time.

  “I don’t know,” Colon replied.

  Chapter 46

  Moni sat on the couch in the hotel lobby with Mariella resting snugly on her lap, or that is what it would have looked like if anybody remained in the hotel to see it. Instead, the small one cradled the police officer while leading her through the parallel world of the alien consciousness. When before, it seemed like a fairly dispersed electrical grid, now, Moni marveled at the superhighway that ran through the lagoon. She felt every drop of water churning through the massive river as if it flowed around her skin.

  An offshoot group just outside the lagoon troubled Moni. The captive minds had been stirred into a frenzy of aggression. Some of them flickered out of existence, but more shot out of the lagoon and took their place.

  “What’s happening there?” Moni asked. She could have simply thought the question, but she felt like she shed her humanity each time she sent Mariella a mental message.

  The humans had attacked them. Even though it didn’t hurt them, the people had carried bad intentions. The humans would keep trying new methods until one of their assaults succeeds. So Mariella’s kind retaliated.

  After the way those alien thoughts neatly justified their actions in her mind, Moni nearly dropped it. Yet, the hell-bent disposition of the creatures there struck her as more than retaliation. Moni tapped into one of the hosts. Its bestial impulses screamed hunt and kill. It would eagerly dislodge its own bones and fire them at the people it faced. When it slaughtered them, it would plow over the females and children and gash every sack of blood. Bite their faces. Claw their bellies. Then it would drag all the remains home for…

  The shock of the savagery made Moni withdraw from the monster’s mind before she could no longer distinguish its urges from her own. The recoil blasted her all the way back into her body on the couch. Moni set Mariella aside. She couldn’t handle another journey through their world right now.

  Gazing out the glass doors of the hotel lobby, Moni scanned the nearly deserted street. The battle raged somewhere else on the beachside. Patrick Air Force Base would be a natural launching point for hostilities. The thoughts she pulled from Mariella’s head confirmed it. The armies of earth, and an alien world had engaged in their first full battle.

  Mariella’s people could hold them off for now, yet they were nothing but a spec on this planet. Eventually, the humans would overwhelm them if the fighting continued, Moni thought. If they kill those woman and children on the base, then they would never convince the humans that they wanted only a small home in the lagoon.

  The aliens had seen the way humans behaved, though. If they withdrew, the same people they let live would strike back twice as hard. They might succeed in breaking the barrier. With an entire intelligent species on the line, they couldn’t risk that.

  “I can see you’re fix’n to be stubborn about this one. Fine, I’ll play both sides.”

  Moni scrolled through her task force contact list on her phone, and found Colon’s number. When it rang four times, she felt a sour pit in her stomach. He probably didn’t make it.

  “Who’s this?” asked the brigadier general.

  “Officer Monique Williams, sir. Please, call off your men. Have them stand down.”

  “Are you here? Are you here with the girl?” Colon asked over scattered gunfire in the background, followed by a scream. “Bring her.”

  Moni nearly hung up. Maybe he deserved to have his ass chewed up, but the civilians on that base sure didn’t.

  “We’re nowhere near Patrick, but I got a good handle on what’s going on. You can’t win this fight. If you stand down and declare a cease fire, I can guarantee that the aliens will abide by it.”

  “Guarantee? What are you, their ambassador?”

  “No, the ambassadors are something else. I’m more like a…” She glanced at Mariella’s adorable face as she colored complex blue symbols on hotel stationary with those hands that had ripped a man’s throat out less than a day earlier. “Mutual family member. I’m watching out for the best interests of both sides. They’re not looking to hurt you, so stop giving them good reason to. The lagoon is their home now. It’s all they want. If you leave it to them, there won’t be another fight.”

  “Even if I agreed with you, I doubt the secretary of defense, much less the commander-in-chief, will cede United States territory to invaders.”

  “But this is all they have left,” Moni said. “Their home world was destroyed.”

  “Oh boy, they really got you, don’t they? Why don’t you and Mariella come here, and we’ll discuss this potential cease fire?”

  “No one comes near the girl. You get that?” Moni hung up before he could answer. It didn’t matter what he said, she couldn’t trust him either way. With the lagoon protected, the only high value alien target within their reach sat right beside her.

  Moni rose from the couch, and led Mariella up by her hand. She let go of it before she slipped back into the alien consciousness. The girl plopped back down on the couch.

  “I know you want to wait until more people leave the beachside, but your home is the safest place for you now. They know what you are. They’ll come after you harder than ever. I can only protect you so much, baby. You’re safer with your own kind.”

  The government knew about Moni as well. If Mariella retreated behind the barrier, who would protect Moni? She knew one way. The solution dangled enticingly in her mind. She craved it. Moni could live with her daughter forever.

  Mariella eagerly bounced up and sauntered toward the hotel doors. Moni jogged ahead and took the lead. They made it through the parking lot up to A1A. They heard screeching sirens. Moni grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her down behind the bushes. Perhaps they were evacuating some VIP, Moni thought. Her hopes were dashed when three police cruisers rolled to a stop in the middle of the road beside them.

  “Quit hiding and git yer bitch asses out here,” Tom Sneed hollered.

  Seeing that two feet of leaves, and branches wouldn’t shield her from Detective Sneed, and his posse of five officers, Moni stepped out from the bushes. Mariella cowered behind her, so the cops with guns and rifles drawn couldn’t get a clean shot at her—at first. If they took out Moni, the girl wouldn’t get far.

  “If you heard what happened at Patrick, you’d think twice about using those,” Moni said. She wished she believed that, but they were nearly a mile from the lagoon. Mariella’s friends couldn’t make it there before that hail of bullets travels ten feet.

  “You’re the one who better start thinking, and thinking fast.” Sneed inched towards Moni with his gun in her face. The other officers fanned out, and surrounded her. “You know about how those freaks are massacring us at Patrick. Why are you still on their side? That’s not a girl behind you. It’s an alien. The thing is putting its contaminated hands on you. Give it here. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Just because she’s an alien, she doesn’t have a right to live? She doesn’t have a right to defend herself?”

  “Defend herself? Hundreds of people were killed. A lot of them were minding their business driving over a causeway when your little friend decided to ‘defend herself.’ Was she threatened by a mom with her kids in a minivan? What about Matt Kane going fishing? Or some teenagers hanging out on the dock?”

  “That’s not how it was intended. They had no other option but to…”

  “But to what? Kill everybody in my county?” Sneed’s face boiled with rage. She had grown used to the contempt directed at her from his eyes, but this went far further. He gazed upon her with unmitigated hatred befitting a genocidal dictator. “Their deaths are on your hands, Moni. I did everything I could. You prevented me from saving their lives. All you had to do was tell me about the girl, and we would have been done with it. But that’s what a decent pers
on would do. You’re not one of those, are you Moni? Hell, you’re not even a person no more.”

  Staring into the barrel of Sneed’s gun, Moni had never felt so ready for a bullet between her eyes. She had taken an oath to serve and protect the people of Brevard County. Instead, she had overseen their slaughter. She’d given away their most precious environmental treasure without consulting anyone. Even her father resembled a saint compared to her.

  She shouldn’t listen to Sneed, Moni suddenly thought. Of course he blamed her—just like he always kept people of color down. That’s why he never invited her on his investigation teams. It should figure that the racist pig hates aliens without making an effort to understand them.

  “I’m more human than you are,” Moni told Sneed. “Because I realize that all intelligent life, no matter how different from our own, deserves a home. Unless you want full scale war, you better step back.”

  None of the officers moved an inch.

  “I’ve given you, and that demon too much space—that’s the problem,” Sneed said. “The way I see it, they took our lagoon, so we’ll take something of theirs.” He fixed his sights firmly on Mariella.

  The aliens wouldn’t even consider that offer, and Moni understood why. Mariella had the strongest connection to the alien consciousness of all the possessed beings. With the original species in gestation as its environment is prepared, they needed an independent entity with a capable brain to direct their network. The ambassadors are only as strong as the brain they inhabit.

  “No deal,” Moni said.

  “It’s not a deal. It’s a demand.”

  Based on the severe inflection in his voice, Moni ducked away from his gun. That didn’t save her from the ham-sized fist that clobbered her jaw. She tumbled on her back in the road. Mariella had squirted out from behind her before she fell. The girl dashed across the street. The officers surrounded her with their weapons drawn. Moni leapt to her feet and sprinted into the circle of guns. She heard Aaron calling her. Stepping out from the backseat of a cruiser, he begged her to stop. She couldn’t. Moni wouldn’t let them hurt her baby.

  When Sneed pressed the barrel of his gun against Mariella’s neck, she realized that she couldn’t stop them.

  Mariella reached out, and gently brushed her slender hand on Sneed’s wrist right behind his gun. The detective seized the little girl around the collar and yanked her toward him, but not in aggression. Sneed had grasped her in desperation so he didn’t collapse. When Mariella casually peeled his fingers off her, the great bulldog dropped on his belly with his cheek bouncing off the pavement.

  “My head…” he said weakly. Sneed ground his fingers into his temples. Moni remembered doing the same thing when Mariella had first started communicating with her. She hadn’t recognized it at first, but the headaches she had experienced must have been a side effect of uninvited whispers into her mind. What Mariella shoveled into Sneed’s skull must have resonated through there like a hundred roaring stadiums.

  Moni braced for the worst when she scurried through the thicket of guns, and scooped Mariella up on her hip, but the five other officers no longer posed a threat. Three of the men were cradling their heads, and nearly immobilized. One officer paced back and forth with his cell phone on his ear asking his mother if she was okay. The last one dashed down the street screaming, “Fire! Call 911!”

  “Damn, what’s happening to them?” Aaron asked as he gingerly approached Moni and the girl. She noticed him limping badly and wondered whether Mariella’s friends had tried to murder her potential boyfriend—a man who had defended the girl several times. “Is she doing this?”

  “Her people communicate through their minds. That’s why she doesn’t speak,” Moni said. “When they get loud with you, it’s like an invisible beat down. For real.”

  Aaron suddenly froze. Mariella had him transfixed in her gaze. He didn’t hold his head or run. His face flushed white as if he were going eye-to-eye with a king cobra.

  “I’m not here to hurt her. I just want to make sure you’re safe, Moni.”

  “We’re keeping each other safe,” Moni said.

  Something inside her yearned to tell him, “We don’t need you.” But her heart didn’t feel that way. Aaron had been the only person who stuck by her in the face of monsters like her father, Darren and Sneed—besides Mariella, of course. He risked his life staying on the beachside unarmed so he could be by her side for this world-changing event.

  “I’m taking her home to the lagoon.” The moment after the words left her mouth, something told Moni she shouldn’t have said anything.

  “Are you really telling me goodbye?” Aaron took a couple of woozy steps toward Moni. The girl in her arms hadn’t eased her stare one bit. Without hitting anything physical, Aaron’s head snapped back as if he’d ran smack into a light pole. “Ow! That hurts.”

  “So will this,” said a deep-throated voice from below and behind Moni. As she whirled around, Sneed fired at Mariella. Blood sprayed across Moni’s shirt. It wasn’t thick human blood. It was watered-down and appeared more light pink than red. It gushed out of the right side of Mariella’s chest. The girl reached up and grasped Moni so hard around the back of her neck that she nearly crushed her vertebra. With each passing moment, her grip grew weaker and weaker.

  Chapter 47

  Moni felt every ounce of the poor child’s agony. She dipped her fingers in the blood. She wished she could put it all back and stitch her baby together again. The smoldering grief swelled up inside her throat and nose so bad that she could barely breathe. No, it wasn’t grief alone.

  That bastard had shot her baby. Her child might bleed to death in her arms. Sneed had tried stealing Mariella away from her since the moment he saw them together. Finally, he had his wish. In no time, the spark of life that represented the only hope for a species, and Moni’s only remaining love on this earth would vanish, leaving nothing behind but a broken doll.

  As she saw the huffing Sneed climbing to his feet, intent on bringing his gun to the girl’s head and extinguishing the last remnants of her life, Moni drew her pistol. She shot him in the head. She shot Sneed again before he hit the ground. The bulldog wouldn’t get up from that.

  One officer had run down the street searching for help and another sped away in a cruiser looking for his mother, but the other three were coming around to reality now that Mariella lay in critical condition. Moni pumped a bullet into each of them as calmly as if she were putting away the dishes. The men fell dead. She swiveled around with her gun extended until its aim settled on Aaron. Her impulse told her what she must do. He stood in their way. He had brought those cops here and exposed the secrets of Mariella’s people. Now that Aaron knew Mariella’s identity, he would no longer defend her. He’d destroy her if someone doesn’t stop him.

  “Wha—What are you doing?” Aaron asked through trembling lips as he recoiled from the gun pointed at his face. He looked even more terrified of Moni’s gun than he did of Darren’s back at her house. Maybe the thought of who would shoot him scared him more.

  Moni wanted to explain. She couldn’t part her lips.

  “This isn’t you, Moni. You’re not in control.”

  No, they hadn’t conquered her mind. She sighed so she had proof that she could still talk. Moni had followed their instructions. She had agreed with them. For a split second, she glanced at the cracked melon that formerly served as Sneed’s head. She couldn’t argue with that.

  But, the three other officers. They were here under orders, just like I’ve done hundreds of times.

  They would have shot us. And if she let Aaron go, he’d call more officers and they’d catch them before they could reach the lagoon. In one simple pull of the trigger, they would have a clear path. Mariella might survive.

  “I’m sorry, Aaron.”

  “Wait! I’ll take you there!”

  She must kill him now. She refused. He had given her a chance when any other man would have fled from the lady cop with explosive ba
ggage in her past and a problematic child in her home.

  “Mariella’s losing buckets of blood,” Aaron said. “I don’t know a lot about her kind, but I know that’s not good. If I drive you both to the lagoon, maybe her people can save her.”

  Not waiting for her response, Aaron scurried to the police cruiser and got behind the wheel. The long-haired kid looked as suitable in the cop car, as a clown behind the wheel of a military hummer. Yet, it got him away from Moni’s pistol. She lowered the weapon and hustled into the back seat of the cruiser with the dying girl in her arms. Then it hit her. Every second she had wasted playing gangsta with that pistol had cost Mariella precious blood. She didn’t understand why the girl didn’t mentally cry out, and demand that she immediately take her to the lagoon for healing. Maybe she couldn’t. Maybe the weakened Mariella hadn’t been in her head during the shooting spree, Moni thought. If so, then she had ended four lives all on her own. That truly terrified her.

  Perhaps she had grown so used to Mariella’s thoughts intermingling with her own that they had become ingrained in her mind’s clockwork. If she lost Mariella now, a piece of Moni’s soul would die with her.

  She grasped the ailing child in her arms and rocked her back and forth. The lips and cheeks that once shined with such rich skin had gone pale. They grew chilly and clammy—the first traces of the icy grip of death. Her dark eyes appeared glassy and all too human for such a magnificent creature. When Moni grasped her hands, she didn’t feel the fluttering in her soul or the electric tingle separating her body from her consciousness. She got no response besides a slight twitching of the girl’s fingers. The ignorant cruelty of mankind had reduced an astounding being to an invalid. Moni had promised the child this wouldn’t happen. Like everything else she had loved in her life, she couldn’t save her.