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.
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
