Mute (48 page)

“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 baggage 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.

“Hold on back there,” Aaron said as he sped the
cruiser west down Pinetree Drive and blew through the stop sign at Patrick
Drive. Swerving to his left and cutting across the grass, he steered the
cruiser down a long driveway lined on both sides by thickets of palms that
shielded the lagoon-front home from the road. Normally, the foliage provided
privacy for the homeowner, but now it felt like getting stranded in an elevator
with a rattlesnake. If the owner had an ounce of sense, he would have gotten
the hell out of there.

They found the man of the house after the cruiser
plowed through his wooden fence, and skidded to a stop between his pool and the
lagoon. They found his arm, anyway, and the shotgun beside it.

Moni should have felt that familiar gag reflex she
got at gruesome crime scenes. Somehow she knew the man had it coming. He had
assaulted Mariella’s people, and he wouldn’t have treated these intruders in
his backyard any better if he had still been alive.

Moni stepped over the severed limb while carrying
the bleeding girl. She marched in awe towards the doorstep of the massive
yellow bubble arching towards the heavens. From so close, she felt as if she
were Abraham bringing his son up the mountain for a sacrifice before the
Divine.

With Mariella lying across her arms, Moni extended
the girl into the bubble. It felt so warm, like reaching into the womb. She
felt the small body slowly reanimate. Moni knew that Mariella would blossom
inside this place alongside her kind. She would lead their rebirth and abundant
growth. It would all happen away from human eyes. Moni couldn’t see her child
again. Unless…

“Moni! What are you doing?” Aaron shouted from
behind her.

From the other side, Mariella’s slender hands slid
into her palms. Moni grasped them and followed them inside.

Chapter 48

One step transported Moni thousands of light years
away, and eons back in time. The inside of the yellow bubble was unrecognizable
as the Indian River Lagoon, or any landscape belonging to earth.

Smog weighed heavily on the air. The crystal clear
water bubbled, and burped out steam, which congregated on the ceiling of the
dome. It gave it the illusion of an alien sky with translucent yellow and black
clouds. The creatures that flew up there weren’t birds. Their black wings where
moth-like and they had long tails that swept through the clouds like nets.

Along the water, Moni could see all the way to the
barren gray bottom. It resembled the dusty surface of Mars. Mariella’s kind
wouldn’t let that last for long. Out in the center of the lagoon, a massive
worm-like creature rolled its flabby body out of a ditch. Tendrils sprouted
from its flesh, and then broke off. Within seconds, the independent beings grew
into giant organs. They crawled across the bottom as slow as slugs. In their
wake, they left an aquamarine sludge. Moni understood the meaning at once. They
were like agricultural machines planting crops. Just as Moni’s ancestors did
when they came to America, they were harvesting the land.

Realizing who had explained the purpose of those
bio-machines to her, Moni turned and gawked at Mariella. The little one stood
ankle-deep in the lagoon flashing a healthy smile with her purple gums and
shimmering violet eyes. With the acidic water withering her pants away,
Mariella removed her clothes and tossed them into lagoon for disposal. As much
as it surprised Moni that the girl had just a thin scar on her chest from the
bullet wound, what really alarmed her was Mariella’s skin. Below her neck it
resembled the smooth, shiny black of obsidian stone. All of her human orifices
besides those on her face had been filled in and made solid. She had become as
featureless as a mannequin.

If
she could get better-than-new in a few seconds, was she really that close to
dying?

The question faded from her mind when she saw that
Mariella still possessed the face of that little girl Moni had pulled from the
mangroves. Of course she was different—all her life Moni had been shunned as an
outcast as well—but her Mariella still peered out at her from inside that
morphing body. She had fallen in love with that girl, and none other. That was
her daughter.

Yet, in this world, the roles were reversed. Moni
stood in ankle-deep water, but it didn’t burn her. She saw a thin yellow glow
around the edges of her hand. The same color as the protective bubble, it ran
down her entire body. It shielded her from the acidic water and gave her a
supply of oxygen so she didn’t suffocate in the carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere.

“You’re doing this so I can come with you? Why?”

Moni understood the answer the moment she asked the
question. After all she had done, especially to Sneed, and those three
officers, Moni had worn out her welcome in her land. Mariella’s people offered
Moni asylum in their home because of all she had sacrificed in helping them.

“I love being with you, baby. But I can’t live in a
bubble forever. And just in case you’re wondering, I’m not eating that
toothpaste-looking gunk in the lagoon. Hell no.”

They didn’t intend that she would. Those were only
the seeds. The full-grown version would appear more appetizing—with a few
changes in her digestive system.

“What kind of changes you talking about?”

Mariella tugged on her hand and led her deeper into
the lagoon. Moni fought the urge to swim as they waded so deep that her head
dipped underwater. If the bubble let her breathe in the hostile atmosphere, she
would last in the transformed water too, she realized.

The lagoon had become entirely alien. Gators
adorned with metal plates sifted their massive jaws through the sand until they
found the deposits of sulfur they were searching for. She no longer feared
them. They had been on her side the whole time. The dolphins with human arms
darted around carrying slabs of metal, or large stones. They deposited them
into the great worm, which would occasionally spit out a half-metal,
half-biological machine. Moni spotted many glowing purple eyes inside those lumbering
contraptions. She remembered her vision of the alien home world. Those were
their buildings and cars all in one.

“Are they here, Mariella? Did we resurrect your
people?”

Mariella grinned like a proud mother hen. Moni
realized that the girl hadn’t gone up for air. She breathed as well in the
acidic water as the mutated creatures did. Her jaw seized up with dread. The
pressure faded as she realized that this represented freedom for Mariella and
her kind. She had been out of place among humans, just as Moni had been. Now
they were both home. And they had a whole litter of children waiting for them.

Her companion called it a nursery, but Moni thought
it looked more like a large transparent stomach with squiggly things swimming
inside. Connected to the great worm by a tube, the alien womb swayed through
the water with the ghostly grace of a jelly fish. The beings inside were
aquatic creatures for sure, but unlike anything in earth’s oceans. Each of them
smaller than Moni’s hand, they had well-defined spinal columns—and not just
one. Four backbones extended out in opposite directions from a central body
with a heavily armored cranium. Each of the spines had a matching set of dozens
of appendages attached. The limbs on the ends resembled paddles while the others
grew bony pointers, and flexible tentacles. As they gestate over the next week,
they would grow slightly larger than the average human head and their hundreds
of tiny “fingers” would blossom. The ambassadors would release them when the
environmental conditions matched their home world exactly and the food supply
became plentiful.