Mute (29 page)

“Get off me!” Moni barked in his chest. The top of
her head couldn’t even reach his chin. Something about being restrained like a
caged dog resurrected the fight inside her. She arched her back against the
wall and shoved him with both hands. She couldn’t create an inch of space. He
wouldn’t even let her give Mariella a hug goodbye.

“I’m not taking any more chances with you darlin’.”
She felt the baritone in Harrison’s voice resonate from his chest as he spoke.
“Nina learned the hard way that you can’t be trusted.”

“That wasn’t my fault,” Moni said as she squirmed
for breathing room and an eventual escape route. He pushed back so hard that
her spine grinded into the wall until she couldn’t utter anything besides a
grunt.

While Moni struggled futilely, Tanya gathered
herself up and resumed her pursuit of the eight-year-old girl. Moni heard the
floorboards in the hallway creek under the DCF agent’s platform boots as she
stalked toward the bedroom. She opened the door. Tanya shrieked.

“What happened to her?”

Chapter 29

Moni and Harrison ran toward the sound of Tanya
shouting from inside Mariella’s room. The girl’s empty bed had been soaked by
rainwater. That wasn’t all that soiled it. A pool of muddy water had settled in
her sheets. Black prints from reptilian scales stained the wall between the bed
and the open window. Something had pried it open and ripped a hole in the
screen big enough to snatch a little girl through.

As the driving rain pelted the carpet and wall,
Moni shivered with the horrendous feeling of déjà vu. The room of the last
murdered witness had been covered with filthy animal prints. The mutilated body
hadn’t been left behind this time. They had taken the victim outside, where she
would get plunged into the canal and become the main course for the bacteria’s
feast.

Moni thought of Mariella’s pale, bloodless face
without a neck below it. Those brown eyes would never sparkle again. Her lips,
once soft pink, would never curve into a smile. Just as it had done to her
parents, it would cut out her little heart and slurp away the blood.

“Mariella!” Moni screamed as she stuck her head out
the window. The only answer came from the rain bombarding her face. She peered
down and saw chunks torn out of her lawn from the base of the window to the
canal. Along the way, she spotted one of Mariella’s pink socks.

“I’m coming baby!” Moni hollered. She punched out
the damaged screen, and hoisted herself through the window. Her braids lashed
through the soaked grass as she rolled across her back and onto her feet. “Hold
on! I’m not letting you go!”

She ignored the DCF agent’s protests as she hustled
through tall waterlogged grass with her bare feet. When she reached the canal,
she looked east toward the lagoon. The gray water rippled violently from a
cascade of raindrops. Moni spotted a purple nightgown. She also saw what was
underneath it—an armory of scales splitting the water before it. A rope
fastened Mariella to the creature’s back as it whisked her down the canal.
Thank God, the girl still had a head on her shoulders. The monster apparently
intended on saving the bloody crescendo for its master.

Her hands felt empty after carrying a gun a minute
ago, but she didn’t have time for going back and strapping up. Even if ten
starving gators were in that canal, it wouldn’t have delayed her for a second.
She leapt into the water. The creature immediately swung around and faced her.
A lump shot up Moni’s throat when the gator bared its endless rows of teeth.
She dove underwater and circled around it. Her hands combed through the mud and
leaves along the bottom. She found a rock. Moni surfaced nose to snout with the
gator. Its purple eyes illuminated the raindrops and reflected off the narrow
stretch of water between her and the beast. The gator surged toward her with
such might, that it could have toppled an oak tree. Moni swung the rock. It
bashed the gator across its jaw. That allowed her to swim around the possessed
reptile’s business end and latch onto Mariella.

The girl slowly turned her head and cast her eyes
upon her last hope for survival. Mariella didn’t have a mark on her. She hadn’t
resisted joining her parents in the lagoon. Maybe that’s what she wanted, Moni
thought. While that’s a natural reaction for a child who has lost her parents,
it made Moni feel so inadequate, like the inescapable bond she had established
between her and Mariella meant nothing. No, of course it meant the world to
that child, Moni thought. That bond couldn’t grow stronger unless she brought
her home.

Moni grabbed the rope across Mariella’s chest. It
felt slimy. The rope slipped off the girl and coiled around Moni’s wrist. Then
the other side of the rope rose out of the water to reveal what had really
bound her to the gator—a snake with fangs dripping poison, which had a purple
glow like that of a black light. The snake lashed its diamond-shaped head at
Moni’s trapped arm. She grabbed her extra large shirt with her other hand and
stretched it out over the snake’s target. Its fangs ripped through the cloth,
but found nothing behind it and its head bounced off. Moni doubted the same
trick would work twice. So she took advantage of the snake’s momentary
confusion and pinched its jaw shut between her thumb and forefinger. As she
squeezed its scaly head, the snake let her some slack and Moni freed her wrist.
She pulled Mariella loose and hoisted her over her shoulder. The girl’s
trembling arms clung around Moni’s neck. Her feet started sinking into the
submerged muck while the water chilled her bones. She struggled to endure the
sting of the wound on her hand from the prior night’s accident, as she
supported the weight of the girl. Ignoring every ache, Moni rejoiced in the
most magical embrace of her life.

It wouldn’t count unless they both made it ashore
alive.

The odds of that occurring grew longer when a
second snake poked its head out from between the scales on the gator’s back.
Within seconds, it extended three feet long. It didn’t hiss, but it made its
intensions plenty clear when it flashed its fangs at Moni. She released the
first snake, and treaded backwards through the clumpy water. Turning her
shoulder, Moni kept Mariella as far away from the mutant as possible. She
hadn’t gone far enough.

The gator thrashed around. It opened its gaping
mouth, revealing a purple tongue. It smacked her with a stench straight from an
exposed maggoty grave. With their purple forked tongues flicking from their
mouths, the twin snakes gyrated hypnotically on the gator’s back. They weren’t
merely on the gator. They were a seamless melding of several animals into one.
The mutant stalked toward Moni until her back pressed up against the steep
embankment of the canal. Rainwater poured down the slope and over her back;
 
her spine tingled as three pairs of purple
eyes shined above mouths that craved a taste of the iron in her blood. Most of
all, they thirsted for Mariella.

Moni’s ears rung. Blood splattered across her face.
The gator reared its head high and splashed it down as it writhed from the
bullet lodged into its back. Harrison fired the next one into the beast’s neck.
It dove underwater for shelter.

Before Moni could thank him, Mariella flew right
off her back. Tanya carried her under one arm as if she were a loaf of bread.
Brushing off Harrison’s extended hand, Moni dug her fingers into the grass at
the canal’s edge and vaulted out of the water.

“Where do you think you’re going with her?” Moni
shouted at Tanya as she ran the woman down. Even after the exhausting scuffle
in the canal, Moni easily overtook the hyperventilating DCF agent and seized
her fatty arm. Her nails stabbed Tanya’s loose flesh like the prongs of a fork
into a leg of lamb.

“Let go!” Tanya yelled. She clutched the girl
against the small mountains of her bosom. “You’re a horrible parent. I’m not
letting you get her killed.”

“Get her killed? I’m the only reason she’s alive!
Who else is gonna save her from monsters like that? You think that’s the only
time I’ve held one off?”

“You did a fine job saving the girl—for the moment.
But I bailed out both of you,” Harrison said as he paced across the backyard of
Moni’s neighbor. Holding his gun at ready, he had it in a more suitable
position to turn on Moni rather than toward the canal. “Now I’ve got to save
you from doing something stupid. Let the girl go. I promise, I’ll protect her.”

Moni didn’t doubt that Harrison possessed more
physical strength and a more reliable trigger finger for confronting the freaks
that hunted Mariella. She didn’t doubt his sincerity either, but she couldn’t
see Harrison risking his life like Moni had with her blind leap into the canal.
After all, he had followed right along with Sneed’s plan of sacrificing
Mariella’s mental health without any guarantee it would halt the killings.

“You don’t understand how special this child is,”
Moni said as she stared at Mariella’s longing eyes. If Tanya separated them,
she wouldn’t survive another attack, which would come before long. Moni faced
Harrison. “Until you really know her and love her, you can’t protect her. Are
you ready to die for this child?”

Jutting out his jaw and biting his bottom lip,
Harrison didn’t answer. That supplied Moni with the response she expected.
Mariella reached out for her. Moni took her hands, but Tanya wouldn’t release
the girl.

“You don’t have custody of her anymore,” Tanya said
as she clasped her hands around Mariella’s waist. “She’s property of the state
and I’ve de… Agh!”

Tanya fell on her belly in the grass. A snake had
its fangs hooked into her ankle. It dragged her toward the canal like it was
the pulley on a tow truck. Tanya’s hands slipped from Mariella’s waist to her
knees and down her calves. Moni could reach out and catch Tanya’s hands, but
that would mean releasing Mariella—the monster’s real target. She couldn’t risk
losing her again. Tanya ripped off Mariella’s remaining sock as she lost her
grip and slid down the wet grass into the canal. Harrison dove for her hands
like a wide receiver stretching for a ball. He caught one of them.

“It bit me!” Tanya cried as her neck bent awkwardly
against the edge of the canal. “It burns! Jesus, it burns!”

Harrison posted his legs wide and pulled Tanya up
by the hand. Then the rest of the snake’s melded body surfaced. The gator
chomped down on the woman’s extended arm. The bone splintered with a crunch.
Tanya howled in agony one final time as Harrison released the mangled arm
before the gator could drag him under with her.

He scooted across the grass away from the water
with his limbs flailing, as if the hulking man was a boiling lobster. Harrison
had witnessed shootings and fatal car wrecks, but Moni had never seen his eyes
grow so wide or his skin go so pale. The huge hands, which only seconds ago
held another living person, trembled uncontrollably.

With Mariella balanced on one hip, Moni grabbed
Harrison underneath the arm. She couldn’t lift him, but getting the momentum
started brought him on his feet.

“It still hasn’t gotten who it’s after,” Moni told
him. Mariella pressed her nose against the back of her neck. She would never
let them extinguish those sweet breaths from her flute-like windpipe. “We gotta
go.”

“I’ll cover you,” said Harrison, who had a glassy
glaze over his eyes as if he couldn’t quite fathom the situation.

Nevertheless, he trained his gun on the canal while
Moni whisked Mariella between the houses to her driveway. She immediately saw
the huge flaw in her plan. Harrison had parked his patrol car behind Moni’s
Ford Taurus. She had no more than three inches to maneuver.

“If only these were bumper cars,” Moni told the
girl as she squeezed between the cars and heaved open her trunk. She hoisted
out a shotgun and loaded it. Moni opened the back door and nearly tossed
Mariella in. But the girl stuck on her like a tight pair of jeans. If she left
Mariella alone in the car, someone or something could come for her.

“Remember how you rode that horse?” she asked.
Mariella nodded. “Well, saddle up on me.”

Mariella strapped onto the officer’s back as she
charged into her backyard. Aiming the shotgun with both hands, Moni vowed that
she wouldn’t hesitate again. The pop of a gunshot sent such jolts up her feet
that she nearly slipped. She couldn’t see where it had come from through the
torrential downpour. Halting for a moment, Moni heard screaming from her
neighbor’s house. She peered through the window and spied old Mrs. McCray in
her hair rollers with her wrinkly face aghast. The woman started punching
numbers into her cell phone. It didn’t take Moni any guesses to figure out who
she called.

The
last thing I need is a swarm of blue on my home. I know it’s coming, but not
when Mariella’s here. They still have their orders from Sneed.

Sprinting across the drenched grass undaunted
despite the second gunshot and a massive splash in the water, she found Harrison
backed up against the side of her wooden deck, which hung about three feet
above him. He trained his gun on a spot on the canal that had been trampled by
gator tracks.

“The damn thing won’t stay down,” he said. He eyed
her shotgun as if she didn’t merit wielding such a weapon while he got a
pea-shooter. “That’ll sure pack a wallop. Let’s both aim for the brain—all
three of ‘em.”