Mute (47 page)

A captain saluted Colon when he stepped down from
his jeep. Before he could issue a single order, the eyes of every human on base
were drawn to the west side of the airfield. The aliens had deployed their
army. They reminded Colon of the blocks he gave to his son that had one-third
of an animal drawn on each them and could be mixed and matched to form the
actual animals or fantasy creatures. In this case, everything had been
scrambled. They armored themselves in reptilian scales, fur, metal, and ghastly
pale skin. They wielded claws, long teeth, and junkyard scraps converted into
shanks. The only feature they all shared was the ravenous purple eyes. Although
their heads pointed as straight as sentinels, Colon felt that every single pair
of those thousand eyes gazed upon him. They were outnumbered worse than
two-to-one against an enemy that had a seemingly endless supply of backup a few
hundred feet away.

“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 person 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.