“Agh!” His toe throbbing, Aaron tripped and fell on his butt. The metal box landed on his stomach.
With a grin in Aaron’s direction as she grabbed the binoculars, Nina scanned the desert. She took the binoculars down, shook her head, and then looked through them again.
“What is it?” the driver asked.
“One of them looks like Moni,” Nina said. “There’s another four. I don’t know what the hell the others are. They’re sure as hell not human.”
“Your girlfriend is leading a gang of aliens.” Carter sneered at Aaron. “You should have brought more than one vial of that shit. If there’s any left over after we kill Moni, we’ll dose them too.”
“Wait!” Her gaze still transfixed through the binoculars, Nina held up a hand. “The four freaky-looking ones just changed direction – straight for us.”
Aaron recognized Moni’s voice instantly.
“Aaron! They heard what Carter just said about the vial. They’re after it. Get out of here.”
“Listen for a second.” He stood up on his sore toe and faced Carter and Skillings with his eyebrows furrowed together in desperation. “We’ve got to turn around and move fast, but not towards the city. Can you call in an air strike?”
“Who do you think is giving the orders on this mission, an FBI veteran, a lieutenant, or a slacker scientist whose only distinction is to befriend the biggest enemy our country has?” Carter asked.
“Um…” Aaron scratched his chin.
“Exactly.” Carter pointed at the seat with his gun. “Now sit your ass back down until I say you can move. Our mission is to deploy that medicine in that vial, and that’s--”
Something thumped the vehicle from the side. Aaron flew into Skillings, bounced off her elbow, and lost his footing. She dropped the binoculars and stepped over the fallen Aaron with her AK-47 drawn. The vehicle skidded off course and rumbled over harsh terrain. A rock crumbled as it hit the Bearcat’s grill. Skillings slipped to her knees.
Skillings gazed out the side window. As Aaron regained his footing, he saw her eyes widen and the color drain from her face. “What the fuck is that thing?” she asked.
Aaron glanced around her. Standing ten yards away, it resembled a cross between a man and a Texas horned lizard. The human side looked kind of familiar.
“Hold on!” Leonard shouted as he swerved the vehicle.
The mutant rammed them. The left rear tire sputtered and flapped. Its spikes must have done a number on it. Then the right side of the heavily-armored Bearcat got pounded like someone kicking a milk carton. Aaron’s lungs froze as the huge scorpion stinger passed by the window on the right.
“Holy shit, what’s out there?” Aaron asked.
“Why don’t you go topside and find out?” Carter held his AK-47 at ready. “Driver, can you take evasive maneuvers and call for backup?”
“Backup, or an air strike. Either is a good idea.” Aaron’s doubling down drew a scowl from Carter.
“That’s a negative on the first one, sir. We’ve lost the front axle,” Leonard said. “Air support has been called off on account of the acid rain in the area. The tanks could be redirected to our location, but they don’t move so quickly.”
“Stay in here,” Skillings said. “This ride is bullet proof. They can’t break in, right?”
Leonard and Carter, who both had more experience with these vehicles, didn’t offer any assurances.
Aaron’s heart jumped as a new beast leaped on the hood of the vehicle. Its face brought together the fearsomeness of a mountain lion with a sneering man and, piling on the ugly factor, it was mutilated with bite marks all over it. Purple blood stained its teeth.
This mutant had clearly sunk its teeth into another infected person, and Aaron knew of only one person of purple blood who drew their ire. Had Moni’s message been her final warning before she’d died? They had outnumbered her. His pulse pounding as sweat ran down the back of his neck, Aaron refused to believe it until he saw it, assuming he survived another minute.
Mountain lion man raked his claws across the windshield slowly, making it screech. Aaron’s spine tingled as he dreaded it scraping his bones. Its purple eyes targeted him directly. He knew exactly what it wanted.
The mutant vanished from view. They rocked the vehicle back and forth on its shocks like a riotous mob. Aaron lost his balance. He hooked his arm around a seatbelt so he wouldn’t slam into the window, or the gun-toting officers. Every surface in the Bearcat shook. The armor felt like aluminum foil.
They’re going to tear this vehicle apart! I better get out of here or they’ll kill me. The gas tank will explode. Screw this: run!
Aaron scrambled to his knees and eyed the hatch. A second later, it hit him. The insistence on running was not his own. It had been disguised like his voice, but he recognized the heavy-handedness with which the aliens had implanted thoughts in him. If they wanted him to leave, he better stay put.
The aliens wouldn’t limit their mental manipulation to Aaron.
He watched Skillings training her gun on the roof hatch in case they broke in. Carter shot up and reached for the hatch.
“Stop Carter, it’s a trick!” Aaron waved at him. “That voice in your head that told you to run, that was their voice. You’re safer in here.”
“Wrong. They’re safer when I’m sidelined and not out hunting with this.” Carter patted his AK-47. “I’m not going to sit here and die in this metal coffin. The fight is coming to them.”
“Damn it Cam, you can’t go out there!” Skillings’ face grew puffy and her eyes watered as she pleaded.
Aaron had never seen her face full of such raw emotion. She actually cared about this man. He hadn’t seen that coming.
“You can’t handle all of them alone.” Skillings grabbed his shoulder. “If I lose you…If we lose you, we can’t finish our mission. We need to give Moni that drug.”
“There is no mission if they slaughter us.” Carter yanked his shoulder free.
“They haven’t breached the hull,” Leonard said from the driver’s seat. “Unless they have explosives, we should be okay.”
Carter nodded in agreement. He started to sit down, then a scorpion pincer pounded the window beside him. Carter bolted upright. He bit his bottom lip as if his whole body were in agony.
“Stay here with me. We’ll face them together,” Skillings said.
“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not real,” Aaron said.
Carter didn’t even look at either of them. He unleashed a raging scream as he threw open the hatch and jumped outside with his AK-47 blasting lead. Aaron reached up and pulled the hatch closed before something terrible could follow him inside.
A second after it started, the firing of his automatic weapon ceased. The vehicle stopped rocking. A hyperventilating Skillings rushed to the side window.
Carter lay on his side in the dirt. A man in a cowboy hat and jeans lorded over him with the stolen AK-47. It was the infected ranger that Aaron had first encountered on the way out of Columbus.
Carter grabbed for his weapon back. The ranger booted him in the chest. He coughed up blood. The infected man stuck the barrel of the gun in his own mouth and sucked it like an ice pop. When the ranger withdrew it, the AK-47’s business end had been melted into scrap.
The moment Carter got back on his feet the ranger swung the gun at him. He raised his forearm to block it. Carter’s bone broke with a sickening snap.
“No!” Skillings banged on the window.
Cradling his broken forearm, Carter stumbled to his feet and scurried away. The ranger walked him down. With his cowboy hat bowed sinisterly, he wasn’t in a hurry to catch up with his prey. But the other one, the body builder with a scorpion’s claws and stinger, pursued him more urgently, as did Texas horned lizard man.
Aaron felt terrible that Skillings would have to witness the man she liked getting ripped apart. Clearly, they were baiting her to come outside, and open the hatch once more.
And th
en there she was. Aaron pumped his fist as the infected men turned and met the approaching Moni. A red-tailed hawk hovering over her head, she stared at them with the ferocity of a lioness guarding its cubs. She had a gruesome wound on her shoulder blade, yet she still moved swiftly.
Moni threw a quick glace toward the Bearcat.
“Stay inside, and make sure Nina does the same,” she told Aaron. “Tell her that I’ll save him.”
Moni rushed scorpion man and unleashed a punch. Before it landed, horned lizard tackled her down. She kicked him off and tried skirting around him, making her way for the injured FBI agent. Skillings shrieked, surely thinking that Moni wanted Carter dead most of all.
“She’s not going to hurt him,” Aaron said. “She’s…”
Aaron gasped as the ranger decked Moni with a right to the temple. She took two wobbly steps and fell to her knees. Instead of finishing her off, he left her to his partners and turned for Carter. The agent stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a rock covered in black ash. The ranger kept a steady pace toward him, slowing narrowing the distance.
“Nina, help!” Carter reached an outstretched hand towards the Bearcat.
Bad idea. She wouldn’t fare any better out there than he did. Aaron saw it on her face before she said a word. Skillings couldn’t leave him. Of course, Aaron felt the same way about Moni. He couldn’t hide behind armor with a front row seat to her death. But he’d be more distraction than help, especially without a gun.
“Stay here, Nina,” Aaron said. “Moni told me she’ll save him.”
“Save him? They’re competing for who gets the kill.” She grabbed her pistol from her bag and stuffed it down the back of her pants as a backup to her AK-47. “I’m not letting them kill my man. That won’t happen again!”
Moni was under the alien influence when she shot the Florida detective, but Aaron didn’t know how to explain to Skillings that she was different now.
“What are you waiting for?” Carter shouted at Skillings as the ranger drew closer. “After all I’ve done for you, you can’t abandon me like this!”
“If you go, they’ll kill both of you,” Aaron said. “It was his choice to go out there not yours.”
Not responding, Skillings marched toward the front of the Bearcat.
“Don’t leave. That’s an order,” Leonard said. “That would jeopardize our mission. Guard the syringe until we have an opportunity to stick Moni.”
“Move out of the way or I’ll shoot you first,” Skillings said coldly.
Skillings opened the passenger door and jumped out. She swung the door back behind her, but Aaron didn’t hear it close. He whiffed the smell of the infected desert, spoiled eggs.
His heart racing, Aaron lunged forward. Before he got there, Leonard leaned over for the door latch. The soldier snagged it.
“That was close,” Leonard said as he pulled the door shut, almost.
Something jammed it, preventing it from closing. Leonard swung his gun toward the door. It fell at his side as a pair of razor sharp claws made mincemeat of his face. Mountain lion man feasted upon the soldier in his chair, chewing his flesh into morsels not out of hunger or rage, but to intimidate. That’s how he’d indulge on Aaron’s flesh once they took what they wanted from him.
Mountain lion man moved on from the soldier’s carcass and took the center of the Bearcat. Fresh blood drenched his furry body. His glowing purple eyes with pupils black as diamond, focused intently on Aaron.
This time no glass separated them.
75
Colon climbed from the tank’s hatch and slammed it shut behind him, sealing himself off from his last chance for survival. He stood atop the armored shelter. Droplets of acid rain gnawed at his full body suit like swarming ants. With a rocket launcher strapped to his back, a belt of grenades around his waist and an assault rifle in his arms, he studied the scorched terrain of ashen rock and sand between his tank and the maar. A crudely-hammered crater penetrated below the yellow shield, creating a gateway into a watery world habitable for aliens, and hell for humans.
And that’s where he needed to go.
If I do this, I’ll never see my son again. I’ll never kiss my wife again. Just step back inside the tank, breathe the fresh air, and return home.
Perhaps the aliens had implanted those thoughts in his brain, but he couldn’t deny that part of him felt that way. If he didn’t brave this tunnel, other soldiers would. Were their lives and their families less valuable than his? This mission must fall upon the one who bears the most responsibility.
Colon leapt from the tank. His boots splashed in a puddle, spraying acid around him. He took off running before the corrosive liquid ate through the soles.
Colon looped around a pile of ash and corroded tumbleweeds. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something launch from the ash at his feet. No time to dodge it, Colon swiveled his hips and kicked the snake aside with his boot. The serpent recovered and reared back with its eyes glowing purple, creating a target that Colon swiftly pumped a bullet through. When the smoke cleared, more scales emerged from the sand. He’d run into a nest. Colon waved at his tank and began firing. His automatic weapon shredded the snakes in front of him as he ran toward the hole. He jumped over one snake as it sprang at him and batted away another with the barrel of his gun. Slithering bodies exploded from the impact of bullets as the tank gunner picked off the snakes in the rear
With nothing left of the snakes besides smoldering purple goo, he reached the charred ground surrounding the tunnel. It led to a steep decline, littered with shattered stones that offered no solid footing. He couldn’t scoot down on his back with the rocket launcher strapped behind him. Colon sat on the slope of stones. He held the assault rifle pointed between his toes with one hand and clutched the launcher atop his shoulder with the other. The grenades rested on his lap.
He moved carefully as his surroundings darkened. A sweltering breeze escaped the maar, an alien wind that befouled his world. That air didn’t belong on Earth, just as he didn’t belong in their breeding nest. Inside his stuffy suit, he felt like a potato wrapped in tin foil baking in an oven.
Pattering sounded on the stones all around him. Were rocks still settling from the explosions? The clatter intensified even from the ceiling.
A hundred thousand pinpricks of purple illuminated, beside him, above him, in front of him. It was as if he was suspended in a sea of glowing jellyfish. His sense of awe quickly gave way to revulsion in his gut as he realized what they were.
The possessed bugs sandblasted on his facemask, their antennae and pincers rapping against the glass.
With a roar, Colon rolled on his side down the embankment. He shielded his rifle and the launcher. It felt like barreling through a floor of crunchy cereal, except these bugs weren’t so tasty. Purple goo and brown bug parts splattered across his facemask.
Colon emerged into hazy daylight. The smoke had been thicker at the higher elevations outside the yellow shield, which must have amplified it. He swiveled his hips and dug his heels into the dirt to halt his descent halfway down the lip of the maar. In the light, the thumb-sized bugs resembled beetles, except they each had a lizard head growing out of their thoraxes. As Colon swatted them away, he wondered whether the aliens added the larger brains because insect minds were too simple for them. Then, the unearthly sights inside the dome captured his attention.
At the shoreline below him, the desert land melted, rocks disintegrating into sediment, as the Earth surrendered to the alien lake. This sturdy soil, built up over millions of years in this planet’s volcanic furnace, whipped by the strongest storms, finally succumbed in a cloud of black smoke. The intense heat from the reaction made it blurry to his vision, like staring at the exhaust of a jet engine. The yellow waters swelled higher.
An alien world had been carved onto the face of the Earth.
A voice entered his head: “We tried to escort you here, but you came on your own. Perfect.”
Colon wondered whethe
r they had accomplished with mind games what they couldn’t with brute force.
“Once we have your body, we’ll stroll right into your base and recruit your TERU team. Then, we’ll make a holiday in Florida. Rosa and Ernesto would be so happy to see us.”
His blood running hot, Colon raised his launcher. “You got that reversed. I’m the one invading your house.”
Gazing into the center of the maar lake, Colon spotted the grotesque mass of mismatched body parts, stripped metal and prized heads that formed the worm. That’s where they concentrated their power, like a great battery.
“Moni will slaughter your infected men,” Colon shouted. “You’ll be alone and helpless in your little pool. When that happens, I’ll be standing on these shores, watching you burn.”
A thousand voices cackled inside his head.
A pale white arm thrashed out of the water and raked across the shoreline. A tall figure slogged through the melting ground until it found solid footing. Human in shape, it had no eyes, no mouth, no ears, no nose. Lacking flesh and muscle, its body consisted of solid bone with purple tendons bending its joints mechanically, without wasted movement. The bone golem stalked Colon down.
His rectum tightened at the thought of that faceless freak driving its boney fingers into his body. Colon raised his assault rifle and blasted it with a volley of bullets. They tore out shards of bone. It pursued him undaunted, like a giant Styrofoam mannequin missing a few pieces. With no vital organs, this thing couldn’t be put down unless he completely dismantled it. Colon had no time for that. He shot its ankle. As the bone golem hobbled on one foot, Colon ran.
After Colon gained some separation on bone man and moved even farther from the only exit, he hoisted the rocket launcher atop his shoulder and looked through the infrared scope to pierce the smog. The fracking tower and pump were well within the Predator SRAW’s range. He wouldn’t have this shot for long.
The consequences of this choice weren’t black and white, they were all black.
Colon had known when he slid down that tunnel that he’d never come out. He’d leave his wife a widow and his son without a father. They’d have him only in memory. He wouldn’t see his son graduate high school, bring home his first girlfriend or buy his first car all by himself. If he didn’t launch that missile, his son may not live for any of those moments.
Silence the Living (Mute Book 2) Page 39
