Unable to face the girl, Moni directed an anguished glare at Blake. Without any mental signals, he understood.
The ranger knelt down and wrapped the child’s shoulders with comforting hands. He spoke in Spanish, which Moni didn’t understand, but she saw an immediate impact upon the girl. She climbed into his arms and pressed her face into his neck, nestling against his trim beard. The child understood, even if it hadn’t sunk in yet.
Moni typed out a message: “Where will you take her?”
“Immigration would deport her, like most of the children from Guatemala that come here alone. She told me her mother fled after her father was killed. She knows nothing of her grandparents. I can’t let her go back. There’s a couple I know in Columbus, right on the border, that takes in orphaned migrant children. They’ll shelter her until we can find the next closest relative.”
Moni couldn’t suppress her admiring grin. Most officers she worked with passed on kids to child services or juvenile cops like her. Blake thought of the child before the crime, just like Moni had. She couldn’t make that mistake again.
Moni showed him her phone: “Did the girl describe who did this?”
“Coyotes. I asked her if they howled or barked. They didn’t. Either way, it’s not like coyotes to attack a large group of people. Her mother told her to run. When she looked back, she saw a man that wasn’t from their group. I know it sounds strange, but the coyotes didn’t pay him any mind.”
She quickly typed: “What did he look like?”
“She didn’t stop running for a closer look. I gotta say, that was a smart move.”
Just as she feared, not only had she infected animals but a person as well. Moni thought of all the possibilities, people she’d scuffled with, or brushed up against in the casino, or sat in the booth at the diner after her. Had a purple-eyed freak with razor-sharp nails and an acid-drenched tongue stalked her for hundreds of miles? Or could the host be building an army of misshapen desert beasts until it can overwhelm Moni, its biggest obstacle? All the threats those little beasties in her head made seemed deadly serious now. Once they disposed of her, they’d wipe out Aaron, Blake, and everyone in the region.
While Moni kept watch on the mountainside for an ambush, the ranger had the girl sit on a rock facing away from the bodies as he examined the scene. He stepped carefully, not disturbing a grain of evidence, as he circled between the bodies. Occasionally he stopped and stared at something on the ground. Then he paced around the perimeter. By the time he’d completed his round, he faced Moni all perplexed.
“There were coyote prints all right, mighty big ones too. Here’s what I don’t figure. They left paw tracks all around the bodies and the truck but there are no tracks leading to or from the scene. It’s as if they popped out of thin air, struck like a gang of outlaws, and vanished just as quickly. I saw the same pattern this morning six miles away near an old, broken down car that’d been stripped clean of metal.”
Even with the coyotes’ enhanced abilities, Moni couldn’t explain this so she shook her head. She didn’t see any signs of them burrowing up through the sand. They might have covered their tracks or backfilled their holes. What else could it be?
She considered giving Blake her sat phone number. That way she could hurry to help him and the girl if the possessed ones jumped them. No doubt, the vengeful bastards would love skewering the people she cared about. But she’d told Aaron that she’d only share the number with him. If the military got hold of her location through her phone, they’d pounce. She trusted Blake, though, and she wouldn’t mind hearing his voice during the cold nights under the stars. Yet, she couldn’t guarantee that the fed wouldn’t tap his calls, especially after him stumbling into this mess. Still, speaking with Blake felt like breaking another promise to Aaron.
The sound of a helicopter pattered off to the east. Closing her eyes, Moni felt the mental signatures of eight men aboard. Each of them had a soldier’s mission-driven mentality.
Blake gazed through his binoculars. “Ah, can’t see much beyond this mountain. Must be border patrol, maybe National Guardsmen. They probably caught sight of the wreckage from a drone or satellite feed. Why can’t they trust us to police our land?”
Moni waved goodbye, wishing they hadn’t cut short her time with him, and paced away. She would have run faster, but she couldn’t let him think of her as anything besides human. As for the girl, Moni simply couldn’t endure the sight of another devastated child she couldn’t possibly help.
“Maggie, wait!” Blake shouted after her. “The girl’s gotta go with you.”
38
When the ground shifted on land, he could usually find his footing. Not so underwater. Harry Trainer felt like a fish trapped in its bowl as it tilted over. He turned toward the water-moving force and drew his knife. He feared his flashlight would reveal demented eyes. Instead, he found tumbling rocks and plumes of sediment swirling through the water. Only one thing down there could be as bad as getting skewered by the mutant – burial alive in a cave in.
Chunks of limestone streaked from the cave ceiling like dirty comets. Trainer propelled his body upwards with a hard stroke. His head scraped the ceiling, but the projectile missed him.
“I’m hit,” one of the SEALs cried over the radio.
“Where are you?” Dobbs asked from somewhere within the cloud of sediment. “Stay away from the walls. Don’t make it worse.”
None of us bumped the walls and triggered this cave in. So could it be—
The wall to Trainer’s right crumbled. An explosion of debris slid toward him, momentarily held back only by water pressure. Trainer pumped his flippers together and ripped his arms through the water with vigorous strokes, hoping the lung-burning effort would be enough to escape becoming encased in the wall. As much as he loved fossils, he didn’t want to become one.
Something seized his ankle. He tried kicking it off. It wouldn’t relinquish its grip as it pulled him away from the cave-in. Trainer curled up, reaching toward his feet and swung his knife. A flashlight shined in his eyes, making him hold up just before giving the pale-faced Dobbs a scalping.
“It’s me!” Dobbs radioed with high-pitched wheezing. “Where are the others?”
The SEAL had narrowly avoided the cave in, but not without injury. Blood seeped from the lower half of his wetsuit. Trainer shined his light down the soldier’s leg until he found it, a deep gash on the back of his calf. His foot bent at an unnatural angle. He could set a human bone, just as he’d done for animals many times, but not underwater.
Another light shone upon him as the sediment settled to clear the water, this one from further ahead. Louis Pierre’s determined face emerged from the darkness. He nodded to the two men.
“This is Pierre. I’m here with Dobbs and Mr. Trainer. Dobbs is injured,” he radioed. “Murphy, Benitez, Spears, what is your status?”
The SEAL leader’s brow furrowed with worry through his face mask.
“Benitez reporting, sir. We took some bumps but we’re good to go. We don’t see you, sir.”
They surveyed the rubble behind them. From what they could make out through the clouds of silt, it looked like a dump truck had unloaded tons of rocks into the tunnel. There were a few gaps between the boulders, but they didn’t appear to lead all the way through.
Pierre took the blunt end of his flashlight and tapped on the rocks blocking their way. Trainer remembered that old trick, use Morse Code when boxed into a cave and pray that someone hears you.
“Can you hear that?” Trainer asked.
“Negative, sir,” Benitez replied. “I attempted to radio the surface but they haven’t responded.”
“The cave in must have swept the swarm communication balls out of our range,” Trainer said. “We’re cut off.”
While the lieutenant tried signaling his men, Trainer cut off the sleeve of Dobbs’ wetsuit and knotted it tightly above his wounded calf to slow the blood flow. It’s bad enough they had to worry about conserving oxyg
en, which Trainer had burned excessively during his sprint, but Dobbs had to battle the blood loss clock as well.
Bell-like percussion rang from behind the debris. It sounded like them clanging their knives on their air tanks.
“I hear you,” Pierre said. “We’re on the other side of the rocks.”
There was at least 15 feet of loose, heavy rock between them. Trainer scrawled a message for Pierre: “Dig out?”
He shook his head.
Trainer held his questioning palms up.
“Attention team,” Pierre announced. “Don’t attempt to dig through the rock pile. You might cause another cave in. We’ll exit separate ways. Do you still have your maps?”
“Yes, sir,” Benitez replied.
“Double back through the entrance, and retrieve the bodies on the way,” Pierre ordered.
Trainer studied the map. The crew behind the rocks should have enough air to make it back the way they came, assuming their tanks and hoses weren’t damaged. That familiar pathway wasn’t an option for Trainer’s group. They’d make for a narrow sinkhole further on down. He checked his psi. After all that exertion, he figured he had 25 minutes of air, assuming he kept his breathing under control. That could be tough if he must haul Dobbs around. They better start moving.
Checking Dobbs’ tank, he saw that his psi had taken an even bigger hit, 22 minutes left. Trainer placed his hand on his chest and signaled for him to take it easy. The soldier nodded. He couldn’t blame him. Everyone’s a hero until they see their own blood hovering over them in a crimson cloud.
Done with his instructions, Pierre turned toward Trainer and pointed down the tunnel. They just pushed off when they were shaken by a loud crunch, like a giant insect getting squashed on the other side of the collapsed wall. It carried the unmistakable burst of an air tank rupturing. His entire face inside the mask feeling numb, Trainer stared at Dobbs, his eyes bloodshot with terror.
“It’s here!” Benitez cried. The final transmission over his radio was a gurgling scream, caused by mind-breaking pain where the victim didn’t care about sucking liquid into his lungs, for that was a far less terrible way to die. The thwack of a spear gun firing sounded on the far side of the debris.
“Get out of here!” one of the SEALs shouted.
His radio carried the pop of the blunt impact of bone on bone. Trainer flinched as he imagined the agony of a femur being wielded like a baseball bat. A body slammed into the wall over and over, each time spilling air bubbles from a tank. The entire cave shook.
Finally, the pounding ceased. In its place, dozens of scraping sounds arose. Trainer’s skin crawled as he imagined what vulnerable body parts the mutant was carving off its victims, what sharp instruments it dissected them with. The rock barrier separating Trainer from the same fate was no more than Styrofoam to that carnivore.
While Trainer hung back paralyzed with fear, Pierre dove into the debris pile and started digging at loose rocks.
“Stop, sir,” Dobbs said. As the leader ignored him, the injured SEAL bumped Trainer with his arm. “Help me stop him before he causes another cave in.”
The other three were beyond saving, but they could still breathe the Florida air again.
Trainer yanked on Pierre’s flipper. He kept digging, all while a vile slurping sound carried from the other side. He grabbed the back of the soldier’s dive belt and tugged. That got his attention. Pierre set his gaze upon him with eyes swollen in despair. It reminded the Lagoon Watcher of how he’d felt when he first saw the devastation of the estuary he had sworn to protect. Slowly, Trainer made a throat slashing gesture with his thumb across his neck. He pointed his light at the injured Dobbs and then towards the way out.
Pierre glanced once more at the debris wall, shuddering at a bone snapping sound, and went over to assist him with Dobbs. Once they got the injured man off the rocks, he swam okay on his own. The resistance from the water as he kicked his injured leg made him wince. They could have gone much faster without him. After listening to the mutant dispatch the other three men, Trainer couldn’t let that happen to Dobbs if for the simple fact that hearing it feed again would make him vomit into his face mask.
They finally left the rocky tunnel and entered a narrow passage with a smooth, silt bottom and an arching overhang of limestone. The occasional pillar descended to the floor, resembling trees of rock. Pierre halted so abruptly that Trainer nearly bumped into him. Hooking his fingers on a nook on the ceiling so he stayed in place, Pierre studied the terrain with his infrared scope. That couldn’t be good. When he passed him the scope, Trainer found that indeed it wasn’t. The entire length of the tunnel glowed with the alien heat signature. They were no longer arrows, but distinct symbols. The Lagoon Watcher had never seen anything like them, elegant, yet foreboding. If only his camera worked in infrared, he would have taken a picture. He didn’t need to understand them to get the message. They were marking their territory on this planet. This place was forbidden for Earth natives under penalty of – he knew damn well.
His hands trembling as he took the pH sample, Trainer found the acidity level three times higher than it should be. It wouldn’t harm their skin, but it was unusual for a freshwater spring. Trainer bottled the most crucial sample yet.
“Is that what I think it is?” Dobbs asked.
Dobbs shined his light on the three-hole pattern in the limestone wall. They matched the imprint of the mutant’s hooking tendrils. It could have left them hours ago, or just now. Trainer nodded as his blood ran cold.
“Wrap it up and let’s go,” Dobbs said.
The scientist clipped the water sample to his dive belt and, together with Pierre, gave Dobbs a boost. The three of them didn’t get far when Trainer heard it. Just a tiny scrape, like a knife across a stone counter, from behind them. It might have been nothing, a rock tumbling from its perch, disturbed by them swimming by. It could have been his imagination. After hearing the fatal struggles of those men, Trainer feared he’d have many sleepless nights with those sounds filling the silent room. If only he could make it to a comfortable bed again. Even his old prison cot would do.
His desire to live outweighing his nerves, Trainer ducked his head down and flicked his flashlight behind him for a momentary look. He set eyes upon the most gruesome face he’d ever seen.
39
Did she hear that right? Blake wanted her to take the little girl, an orphaned Guatemalan who didn’t speak a lick of English, into the desert? She couldn’t enlighten him to the tragic irony of his request or why it was the worst idea possible. As bad off as she’d be in federal detention, the girl would be in much greater danger shadowing her.
She thought about manipulative words she could place into his head so he’d back off. It made her feel dirty, like slipping a drug into a date’s drink. Moni started typing on her phone’s notebook app.
The ranger ushered the girl towards Moni with an assuring arm around the child’s shoulders. “Ramona, seguirla.” Pointing at Moni, Blake had no idea he steered the child into the arms of the woman who spawned destruction everywhere she went.
She showed him her message: “I can’t. No place for her out here.”
“If the feds get her, she’ll spend years tied up in the system, living in a concrete box. Take her to Patty Estevez in Columbus. She shelters children like her. I’d do it myself, but my truck is tracked with GPS, so they’d see that I high-tailed it away the second before they got here and give chase.”
She typed out: “Can’t walk for miles in the desert with her.”
“I know about your ATV. Saw the tracks.”
He smirked as her eyes widened. So much for being stealthy.
“I could have cited you for illegal ATV use in a park, but I’ll let it slide. I’m not going all cheesy and calling this a favor for me. It’s for little Ramona here. The least we can do is give her a better life like her family wanted. I’ll stay behind and entertain the fed while you two scatter.”
As the whirring of the militar
y chopper closed in, Moni explored the girl’s eyes. Such innocence shattered by fear. One week earlier, she’d been snug in her bed in Guatemala with her mother. Now she had no mother. What did a six-year-old know about borders and immigration law? Yet, she knew terror vividly. Dying screams were etched into her brain, promising years of nightmares to come. Moni had also grown up with nightmares, her mother’s wailing at the hands of her father. For so many years after her mother died, Moni had no caring arms she could turn to for comfort and to build brighter memories.
In a flash, Ramona had become alone, another lost child with nowhere to rest her head. Even with Moni’s irreparable flaws, she was the girl’s best hope.
With a begrudging smile for Blake, Moni slipped on her gloves and reached for the child’s hand. The girl looked at the ranger until he nodded, and then apprehensively took Moni’s hand. Knowing the child couldn’t possibly run away before being spotted by the oncoming helicopter, Moni hoisted her over her shoulders like a sleeping bag and carried her west. By the time the chopper hovered over the valley, she was behind the mountain ridge.
Moni set the girl down and studied her face. No signs of purple ooze. At least she’d survived their first minute together.
Alonso Colon surveyed the corpses through his binoculars before the chopper touched down. He’d heard how the cartels had beheaded their rivals and let their bodies rot by the side of the road, but Colon knew immediately that couldn’t explain these almost clinical decapitations. No human could have done this, no ordinary human.
The dust swirled below the Sikorsky HH-Pave Hawk as it settled into a flat stretch of land a good 40 yards from the scene, far enough so not to disturb the evidence. He had a good idea what he’d find. That didn’t make it any easier on his stomach.
Three SEALs leapt from the helicopter the moment it touched down and scanned the mountainside through the scopes of their M4A1 assault rifles. When they shouted clear, Colon followed, packing similar firepower but keeping it secure over his shoulder so he appeared more diplomatic as he approached the state ranger. The man didn’t move, not in retreat or in welcome.
Silence the Living (Mute Book 2) Page 20
