Mute (46 page)

Following a heavy sigh, Aaron paused until he could
shake the image of the raw muscle on Swartzman’s face from his mind. “My
professor didn’t make it today. His last act was sending you those photos. Did
you get them?”

“Holy shit, yeah. What are they?”

Aaron explained everything, even what Moni had told
him about the aliens. It shocked him how readily the detective accepted every
word. When a giant, impenetrable bubble covers the lagoon, all skepticism must
fly out the window.

“A fine job you did, kid,” Sneed said. Aaron felt
guilty hearing the slightest praise. “We’re evacuating the beachside.
Helicopters are on the way to Patrick and Hoover Junior High. You better…”

“I’m not leaving without Moni,” Aaron cut in.

“Is that so, eh? I’m not fix’n to leave without
Moni, and her little friend, either. I’m set to drop in on her with a SWAT
team. Meet me at Hoover and you can tag along.”

Aaron agreed. Just as his father pulled the
Mercedes into his driveway, he told him about the change of plans. His dad
ignored him, shut off the car and marched toward the front door.

“Dad, come on. My friend is in trouble.”

He strolled inside without glancing back. Aaron
futilely yanked on the locked car door. He kicked its tire with his good leg.

A few minutes later, his father came outside and
placed down a change of clothes and some tennis shoes. He tossed Aaron a set of
car keys.

“Take mom’s wagon. I don’t want you getting a ding on
my Mercedes with all these freaks running around. And change your cloths. If
you’re trying to impress a girl, you shouldn’t look like you just crawled out
of the lagoon—even if that’s what you just did.”

“Thanks da…”

He slammed the door shut.

Chapter 45

The latest plume of black smoke rising from the
yellow bubble didn’t come from a destroyed bridge. This bomb had been delivered
by an F-16 defending its home base. Brigadier General Colon had never dreamed
about ordering an air strike in his backyard—literary, since he lived on base
with his wife and son.

The smoke cleared from the satellite image on his
computer, and he saw the result. He leapt from his chair and dashed to the
window. Less than 100 feet away, the bubble stood firm. Shifting into a deeper
shade of yellow, it completely obscured his vision and the radar signatures of
the enemy’s workings inside the lagoon.

The
detective must be right. Only an alien force could withstand firepower like
that.

None of their small arms fire or artillery had so
much as scratched the barrier. The invaders hadn’t waged a counter attack, but
the presence of the bubble had inflicted severe damage along the base’s
waterline. It had swallowed the loading dock and placed a steep obstacle on
south side of its longest runway to block air traffic. An enemy force could
assemble along the base’s edge and they’d never see it through the bubble until
it assaulted them. Colon wouldn’t let them neuter his base, no matter where in
the galaxy they came from.

“Sir, the civilians are in position near the
runway. We have three birds ready to fly,” a soldier radioed into Colon’s
command post. “We’re running out of parking, sir.”

“Those cars won’t be going anywhere for a while,”
Colon said. “Put them on the golf course. I don’t think many people will be
teeing off under the circumstances. Commence the evacuation now. The sick and
children go first.”

The next call came from someone a little higher up
the chain of command: Secretary of Defense Arnold Stronge. Colon had seen him
in formal processions, and the occasional morale-boosting visit to base, but he
hadn’t dealt directly with him while the heat of battle weighed on his neck.
Even the theft of the explosives hadn’t brought his full attention down on him,
although it would have if the media had caught on and made it national news.
But no one could sweep a 70-mile long extraterrestrial outpost under the rug.

“I’ve seen lots of conflicting reports about what’s
going on down there, brigadier general. Perhaps you can clear a few things up
for me,” Stronge said. “Is this some advanced terrorist organization? A
domestic scientist with funding from a hostile foreign government? I’ve heard
other rumors, but frankly, they’re not worthy of discussion.”

Up in Washington, talk of an alien invasion still
elicited snickers. It seemed a lot more plausible to someone who had watched
eight entire causeways dissolve in the lagoon like antacids.

“Mr. Secretary, I’m absolutely certain that this
invading force is neither foreign nor domestic. It’s not of this earth, sir.
The nanobiotechnology I described in my report is beyond our capabilities. And
this barrier that’s infringed on my base is as well. It withstood an
airstrike.”

“So you really did write that? I have a team
analyzing your
report
right now,” Stronge said. Colon couldn’t blame him
for his skepticism. “In the meantime, it’s clear this is a hostile force. Did
you hit it with the hardest ordinance you’ve got?”

“Negative, sir. We have a MOAB, but it’s too
dangerous to use this close to civilians,” said Colon, referring to a massive
ordinance nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs.

“Fine. Save it for when the evacuation is
complete.” The secretary paused and started grumbling to himself about
“motherfucking mars men.” Then he took a long chug of what Colon could only
guess was hard liquor and continued. “These so-called aliens haven’t attempted
to communicate have they?”

“Not that we can tell, sir. They might have
possessed a child. The police are attempting to locate her, but she doesn’t
speak.”

“A lot of good that’ll do then. Let’s give them a
message: ‘I don’t care whether you’re aliens from another country or another
planet. You can’t plop down on American soil and take whatever the hell you
want.’ Nail them with bunker busters until that thing cracks. Deploy your
forces along the lagoon and pulverize anything that comes out.”

The secretary opted for the old beehive approach—whack
it until the angry bees swarm at you and then blast them with pesticide. Colon
figured that the beings who built those mini cyborgs and the seemingly
impenetrable barrier were smarter than insects, but challenging an order from
Stronge would accomplish nothing besides wasting valuable time.

After Colon agreed, Stronge promised him that
backup to secure the base would arrive within hours. He disconnected the line,
leaving Colon and his men alone against an alien force. His men had been
trained well. They had prepared for battle against military, guerilla and
terrorist forces in virtually all terrains on earth. But they hadn’t encountered
anything like this.

“I wish I had the luxury of waiting on the arrival
of a few thousand more troops,” Colon said to himself. He gazed out his window
at the solid yellow bubble. “Lord knows what they have waiting for us inside
there.”

* * * *

The pellets smashed through a bullet proof window
that Colon had counted on as a shield. He took cover under his desk. The shards
of glass fanned out through the control room, and strange projectiles bounced
around like ping pong balls. He hadn’t seen what shot them. Colon had only
heard his men on the front lines say, “What the fuck is that? Fire!”

The bunker busters had been as ineffective as the
other air strike, but they drew the bees out of the hive just as the secretary
wanted. Stronge had assumed the soldiers would shoot the possessed animals to
bits. Colon heard plenty of shooting outside his window. More of it sounded
like the “thrap” of giant blowguns than gunfire.

Colon scampered underneath the window, and poked
his head up for a quick view of the situation.
Thrap. Thrap.
He ducked
back down as a figure crashed through his window, and slammed across Colon’s back
on its way down. Shrugging off the throbbing bone bruise on his ribs, he slid
across the floor, and drew his revolver on his attacker. He saw the blue eyes,
and blood-soaked brown hair of one of his sergeants. The soldier slumped
against the wall with his leg bent underneath him at a grotesque angle. Turning
his gun on the window, Colon aimed into the gunpowder-laden breeze.

“What’s going on out there, soldier?” Colon asked.
“No one’s responding to my calls.”

“There aren’t many of us left, sir.” The soldier
grunted as he twisted his deadweight leg into what would have been a normal
position, if his knee and calf hadn’t been carved in half. “They hit us hard,
and fast. Get the civilians out of here. Please, my children…”

Colon grabbed a pack of bandages to wrap the
soldier’s wound. By the time he returned, the man had gone cold, and his pulse
had stilled. He couldn’t have bled out that quickly. The marks on his head were
scraps from the glass. Colon put gloves on, and scoured his wounded leg for the
bullet. He pulled out a grape-sized wad of smooth, solid bone. It dripped a
syrupy purple liquid—the color of the infected tumors.

“Biological warfare,” Colon said, as he tossed the
alien projectile out the window. He removed his purple-stained gloves. Even
with a battle raging around him, he hit the bathroom, and washed his hands.
When he convinced himself that he didn’t have alien cyborgs swimming in his
bloodstream, he got on his radio.

“This is your commanding officer. Everyone fall
back to the airfield. Protect the civilians at all costs.”

Secretary Stronge probably would have demanded that
he defend the air base first, but Colon didn’t have time to call him and check.
He couldn’t bear the responsibility for more civilian deaths, especially after
he had invited the people on base, and then picked a fight with their hostile
neighbors. He should have told the secretary that his plan would end in disaster.
Colon knew he could have done so many things differently. Those were his bombs
that had blown up those bridges, and he’d done nothing besides make pointed
phone calls, and place a few lackadaisical watchmen on leave while an invading
force massed outside his window for weeks.

He couldn’t hold anything back now. If he did, no
human would leave his base with a head on their shoulders.

Colon dashed across the parking lot towards a jeep.
Jerking his head over his shoulder, he saw who had been firing on the command
center. From a distance, it seemed almost human, but the only truly human parts
it had were its legs and waist. The mutant had an oversized snake’s head
stuffed into a black turtle shell larger than a human torso. Its purple eyes
gleamed at him like the laser sights on sniper rifles. Those were its only
remotely biological parts. It had two jerky mechanical arms, one with a boat
propeller and one with a gardening spade on the end. A double-barreled gun
protruded from the middle of its shell. It must use its own infected bones for
ammo, Colon thought. He never imagined that microscopic machines could
manufacture something out of woodland creatures, and spare parts capable of
overpowering America’s finest.

“Run, sir!” shouted a soldier from behind a tree on
the edge of the parking lot. Despite the man’s lower rank, Colon followed his
advice and scampered for the jeep. He saw the soldier pump out several rounds
that bounced off the mutant’s shell. The creature returned fire with a bone
fragment that ripped through the tree as if it were an armor-piercing bullet.
Luckily, it missed the soldier, who felled the mutant with a clear shot to its
snake head.

“Come on in,” Colon shouted to the solder as the
brigadier general hopped into the jeep.

When he didn’t hear a response, he looked to where
the man had been standing. Colon gawked at the sight of a beast that had been
spliced together from a horse and a gator. Snarling at him, it clenched the
writhing torso of the soldier in its massive jaws. Blood spurted from the holes
its teeth tore into his flesh and cascaded down the creature’s neck.

Colon floored it. He ignored the road and rumbled
over the grass towards the airfield. Two projectiles punctured the rear door of
the jeep. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw two of the shelled mutants
speed-walking after him with their knees locked so they didn’t tip over. Over
near the lagoon, he spotted four more marching through the bomb-proof barrier
as if it were nothing but a curtain.

When Colon reached the airfield, he found a couple
hundred soldiers waiting for him—a fraction of Patrick’s original strength.
They formed a shield in front of the civilians, who lay flat on their bellies.
That wouldn’t save them if the second line of defense faired as poorly as the
first line had, Colon thought. And the formation prevented them from boarding
the helicopters. No one would survive unless they made a stand.

His wife and son were in that terrified mass
somewhere. There were so many manes of silky black hair and boys with buzz cuts
that he couldn’t tell his family apart. He nearly shouted their names, but he
bit his tongue before acting so selfishly. Each life on that airfield was the
most important thing in the world to somebody. Some of those family members had
already lost their loved ones to the horde, and were yet to find out.