The surface of the canal erupted as the possessed gator and its serpent cohorts leapt out of the water. It slid through the grass on its belly as nimbly as a killer whale coasting across the beach for its prey.
“Shoot it!” Harrison ordered Moni. He pumped lead through the bottom of its gaping mouth. The monster did the gator roll through her yard.
Moni raised her shotgun and targeted the gator’s skull. Then she heard scratching on the railing of the deck above her. She jumped out of the way. A gang of rats dove off the deck. Their eyes blazed purple. Vermin like these had shredded the last witness into kibble. With Mariella ducking behind her shoulder as she stayed fastened to her back, Moni punted two of the rats across the lawn. Harrison didn’t fare so well. One rat perched on his shoulder and started nibbling his ear into a bloody stump. Another rodent gnawed through his pants leg. He grunted and howled as their sharp teeth scraped his skin, but he didn’t take his focus on the three sets of even sharper teeth barreling towards him. Harrison fired twice more into the gator. Then his clip ran out.
“Stop fucking around and shoot the bastard!” Harrison screamed at Moni as he fumbled for another clip on his belt while the rats made a meal of him.
Moni shot out the gator’s eye. Purple goo splattered across the grass as if a gigantic grape had been squashed. The smoking remains of the eye roasted the grass until it browned.
Its charge halted, the gator twitched its neck and flexed its jaws. Harrison finally turned on the rats and swatted them off. He felt for the remains of his ear. It resembled a raw bone that had been chewed up by a pit bull. With that distracting him, Moni slipped her hand around his waist and snatched his keys.
She hadn’t even planned it. She saw the opening and took it. The Lagoon Watcher had infected enough animals for an all-day target practice-except the targets shook off their holes. Mariella didn’t belong in the middle of this, but if Harrison felt like going out with his guns blazing, she wouldn’t stop him.
But I’m not helping him either, am I?
When Harrison eyed her with intense hatred, Moni shelved that last thought. As long as Mariella survives, she shouldn’t regret a thing. He had spied on her. He came here to take her away.
He’s a follow officer. We don’t leave our own behind. What will they think of me if I let this happen again?
Moni realized that the approval of Sneed and his good ol’ boys club doesn’t matter. After all, they thought so highly of her that they orchestrated this heist of Mariella. If they want the evidence Mariella supposedly knows, they need the girl alive, she thought. Moni agreed with them on that point. She knew they couldn’t stop the killings without the girl.
She would have been the next victim when she dove into the canal after the girl, but Harrison had shot the gator. As the creature stirred once more with its one good eye and the rats scurried up his tattered pants, Harrison had become the new target.
“Get these little bastards off me!” he cried as a rat bit his wrist, making him drop his gun.
With Harrison’s car keys in one hand and a shotgun in the other, Moni turned her back on her fellow officer. She sprinted toward his patrol car with the girl on her back. Moni prayed for thunder. Only a force of nature so terribly loud could drown out the screams that echoed through her backyard.
Chapter 30
When his cell phone rang, Aaron rolled over in bed and covered his head with the blanket. The pattering of the rain on his window-not to mention some shots of whisky the night before-had lulled him into a long sleep. He didn’t realize just how long until he rubbed his eyes and read the time on his phone showing a quarter to eleven on a Saturday morning.
After nearly getting his nose busted by an ex-con the day before, Aaron wouldn’t mind staying in bed all day. But he couldn’t resist answering the call of the woman who got him in all those wicked jams. He loved that his own parents considered him too much of a fuck-up to watch their house when they were away, but a police officer kept calling on his skills.
“Hey babe,” he answered. Aaron couldn’t suppress a yawn. “Why you always waking me?”
Moni responded with a soft whimper. He heard the whooshing of wind rolling over her speeding car.
“Aren’t you wondering why I’m all slacking and sleeping so late?” he asked.
Despite the slow set up pitch right down the center of the plate, Moni didn’t swing. She peppered the phone with short tense breaths that reminded him of a red-faced woman undergoing labor pains in one of those childbirth documentaries.
“Moni? What’s wrong?”
“That damn Sneed. He ordered officers over to steal Mariella.”
“What! Where is she?”
“Thank God.” She sucked in a relieved gulp of air. “She’s here with me. The Lagoon Watcher’s monsters took her before Sneed’s cronies did. They took her into the canal. They wanted to… But I… I dove in and grabbed her back. You don’t know how brave my little one was.”
“Sounds like you were plenty brave yourself,” Aaron said.
Moni groaned as if someone had just balanced a boulder on her spine. Aaron hoped that her reaction came from his flattery, but she reverted into exorcism breathing mode. Moni couldn’t get a word out that wasn’t mangled.
Aaron let the waters settle and then he asked her what happened.
“I ran away when I could have helped them,” Moni said in a sobbing voice. “Tanya Roberts, and Clyde Harrison are dead. I escaped with the girl. The monsters… they…”
“Dead? That’s terrible. Moni, the important thing is that you and Mariella are…”
“No! I mean I know it’s important, but the sheriff and Sneed won’t see it that way. I disobeyed a direct order to turn over the girl and the two people who were sent for her wound up dead. Who do you think they’ll blame?”
Her anguish hadn’t stopped Moni from thinking straight. Aaron agreed that they would try pinning their deaths on her. Even short of trumping up murder charges, Sneed could build a strong case that Moni had neglected her duties by fleeing the scene while they were in danger.
“Were there any witnesses?” Aaron asked.
“My neighbor watched from her window and called the police. I’m not sure how much she saw. I left before they got there.”
“Left? Where are you going?”
She didn’t hesitate before she told him; at least she trusted someone else besides the girl.
“I’m headed up the Space Coast Parkway towards Kissimmee. I’m going as far away from the lagoon as possible.”
He was glad Moni couldn’t see him shaking his head. She had cut and run while leaving two people she worked with to their deaths. And her next plan? Cut and run again. She was headed out of town with the only witness to the beheadings while the helpless citizens of the county she served continued getting murdered.
Harsh judgments like that came too easily, Aaron realized. He dwelled on Crystal Marshall, his former best friend who had moved away because he didn’t stick up for her against those racist punks. He couldn’t blame her for leaving. How could she take on all those kids by herself?
Moni fled because Aaron hadn’t done enough. He should have been there when the officers came for Mariella. He should have skewered that gator on his speargun. His whole life, Aaron had cowered away from moments like that. When they dumped the books out of his backpack in school, he had laughed it off and scooped them up instead of throwing down. When they picked on his little brother, he pretended like he didn’t know him.
His parents would never believe that Aaron could help someone like Moni. Maybe he couldn’t conquer the horde of mutants in the lagoon, or crack the secrets of the bacteria like Professor Swartzman, but Aaron could make good use of his crafty noggin. It had saved him from expulsion more than once.