succeeded. She gazed upon a thriving Mariella, in the form of an alien bio-machine bent on capturing a slice of earth at all costs. She had raised an amazing daughter, for sure.
“I love you no matter what, baby. Never forget that.”
As the grinning Mariella reached up and stroked her adopted mother’s cheek, Moni brought the gun to the girl’s forehead and blew a hole through her skull.
Chapter 49
Moni dropped the gun, and cradled the trembling body of her adoptive daughter in her arms while the last gasps of life escaped her. As her eyes traced the once delicate features of Mariella’s face that she had smashed with her bullet, she burst forth with an outpouring of tears and nasal great enough to raise the water level of the lagoon. Moni gripped the tiny hand that she had once held when she led the small one away from the men, and beasts who tried to take her. It had gone cold and limp for good.
She remembered the warm hugs they shared, and how the girl’s hair smelled as it rested on her shoulder. She remembered Mariella sitting on her lap on the couch, and coloring flowers for her. Only days ago, they were mother and daughter. Moni had promised her from day one that she’d defend this child, and keep all the people who would hurt her at bay. She never thought she’d be the one…
“You betrayed us!” thousands of voices screamed inside her head.
She had. Minutes after accepting Mariella’s invitation to her world, she had killed her adoptive daughter without any outside influence. Mariella had allowed herself to become vulnerable to Moni so she could give her a gift no person had ever received. And in return, Moni had murdered the only being who truly loved her.
I didn’t want to do this! I still love you!
Moni tried sending Mariella the mental message, but found no consciousness inside that battered skull. She clutched the girl’s body against her chest, and let the hollowed out head dangle over her shoulder. Mariella had rested her head on her the same way when she felt frightened, but now Moni didn’t feel a tiny heart beating against her chest. Even after what she had done, she begged for the girl’s arms to embrace her back instead of hang limp at her sides. Her baby’s life had left her for good, and Moni had made it happen.
An alarm rang through Moni’s mind. She gazed through the clear waters and spotted a bloated manatee with sullen purple eyes parting the sands of the lagoon bed like a corpse arising from the grave. A beard of sharp bones took the place of its whiskers. Its normally gentle flippers were armed with long, curved nails. The disfigured manatee lurked towards her. Then gators breached the lagoon floor with their snouts, and emerged into open water carrying abominations of nature on their backs-human limbs, second gator heads or nests of snakes. They converged on her looking ready to fight for that scrap of meat. Their jaws bared rows of daggers that hungered to avenge the assassination of their leader, even though they would cleave the flesh of one of their own. Just above the surface of the water, the bizarre flying creatures circled over her head. She had no path of escape.
As the mutants closed within ten yards of her, Moni shut her eyes and squeezed the empty vessel that had once contained her precious Mariella. She concentrated on the mental connection that existed between her and, not just the hosts, but the microscopic ambassadors as well. Without Mariella and with the aliens still not developed, Moni had the most powerful mind on the neural network-a mind that Mariella had assured her brethren they could trust.
“Stop! Everybody halt!” Moni broadcast to every being on the alien channel. The manatee and its gator army bailed out of their charge and sank their bellies onto the bottom of the lagoon. She saw the flying creatures dart away. The farming bio-machines ceased planting, and the great worm stopped undulating and spitting out organs. “That’s enough. This mission is canceled. Abandon all possessed organisms. Take down all structures. Stop converting the water and air. Let the atmosphere seep out the top of the bubble and then take the barrier down.”
“But the master species will die!” protested one of the dolphins, which were the smartest host brains left in the network besides Moni.
“Their DNA will remain in the ambassadors living in my body. Maybe one day-maybe-I’ll find a safe place to bring them to life. Until then, every one of you outside of my body is returning the lagoon to the humans, and then shutting down. I mean it. Even the smallest of you will turn off.”
At first, she noticed the downed gators and the manatee cease their twitching. They went limp-as limp as the poor child Moni held in her arms. As the great worm that once promised rebirth dissolved into particles smaller than dust, Moni gazed into Mariella’s brown eyes. They were as still and glassy as a doll’s. It relieved her that the girl couldn’t see what she had worked so hard in building getting torn asunder. She wondered whether Mariella would have killed her to preserve her world. In pulling that trigger, Moni had assumed so.
And yet, maybe Mariella would have sacrificed all of that, and chosen her love for her mother. The shattered mind in her arms had been denied that choice by the woman who should have nurtured her.
The moment Aaron saw the footage on his mobile phone of the yellow bubble cracking like a huge clay jug he turned the patrol car around and sped back to the spot where Moni had passed through the barrier. Not only did he feel relieved that he didn’t have to tell his dad how he “borrowed” a dead officer’s cruiser, he was totally stoked that Moni had somehow done it.
Aaron hadn’t exactly expected that Moni would save humanity, or at least Brevard County, when she blindly entered the bubble. That was especially true after she killed those officers. She had to be possessed during that, he thought. He feared it would never let her go.
Now the sight of the barrier crumbling made him feel like she had broken their hold, and ended the alien invasion for good. That same notion told him that Moni would emerge onto the beachside in the same spot she had left him. When he threaded the car through the dead man’s backyard once again, sure enough, he saw her.
He hadn’t expected that he’d find her lying naked and face down in the muddy grass, though.
“Stay right there. I’m coming,” said Aaron, not that he thought she’d go running through the street in that condition.
Moni’s skin didn’t look right. It seemed darker and thicker somehow. Aaron didn’t steal too long a glance before he grabbed a jacket out of the trunk and covered her. Rolling over and clutching the jacket against her shivering flesh, she didn’t look at her supposed prince charming. She glared at her hands and then yanked a braid from atop her head before her eyes. Instead of a bunch of hairs scrunched together, it resembled a bushel of hair fused into one.
“Those hair treatments you used on your braids combined with that nasty water, make something foul,” Aaron said. “Let me help you dry it off.”
He fetched a blanket from the cruiser’s trunk. It absorbed the water from her hair pretty well, but Aaron smelled something burning. Her damp hair had singed the blanket. She had swum in the acid, and strolled on out. Moni blinked at the damage she had caused the blanket. She didn’t seem at all surprised.
Suddenly, she reached out and grabbed his wrist. When she stood up, Aaron figured he better follow. They dashed through the yard away from the lagoon, even though putting weight on his tender foot made him buckle. Seconds after they started running, what Aaron heard behind him sounded louder than a hundred school buses falling from the sky. The entire yellow bubble started collapsing, and splashing down into the lagoon. The initial cracks widened into fissures, and then massive patches with narrow strips connecting them to the greater wall. It didn’t happen in random spurts like some avalanche; each layer fell together, level by level atop one another. It looked as organized as a planned building demolition. The problem was they didn’t bother moving the bystanders out of the way. Before Aaron’s eyes a wave of crystal clear water lapped ten feet onto land. He bounded backwards as the skin-scolding tide rolled in toward his feet. Moni gripped his arm and locked him against her side. She had already brought him far enough away. When the acid receded, it left everything it touched charred and withering. If they hadn’t moved, they would have been stripped of their flesh.
Aaron and Moni stood side by side, marveling at what remained of the former ecological treasure. Fragments of the yellow alien dome floated on the surface of the water like a great scab. Corpses of gators, manatees, dolphins and bizarre blobs of biomass bobbed in the water in place of buoys. It reeked so bad of rotten eggs and decaying raw meat, that Aaron coughed and covered his mouth. It didn’t bother Moni, though. The stench slowly
