Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series)

by Coy, David

  “What’s wrong with her?” Eddie asked from a safe distance.

  “I’m not sure,” Donna said. “She was bitten by a centipede last year. The poison seems to have had a permanent effect on her.”

  “Oh,” he said in a not-understanding voice.

  They carried her to bed and laid her gently on it. She flowed languidly into the rumpled space and turned slowly away and whimpered, finally curling into a voluptuous ball, streaked and spotted with the sweat of her anguish.

  “Where does she go when she has those things?” John asked. “What’s going on in there?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t want to go there. I don’t think any of us do,” Donna said.

  Oddly, her seizures sometimes sent her into a deep and dreamless sleep that left her refreshed, and this time she awoke rested and strong in the morning’s red light. The first thing she did was eat some more.

  “I’m going deep inside today, please come with me,” she asked John.

  “Where?”

  “Inside. Inside the structure. Come with me.”

  “I’m in about as far as I want to go right now. I don’t even like it here much.” Rachel thought how unfortunate it was that John, of all people, seemed to have lost his sense of adventure. It hadn’t been that long ago that John would have been the one dragging her away to see something, to explore something new. That spirit had been one of the things that had attracted her to him. Now he traded that sense of adventure for safety and caution. She understood it. She just didn’t like that it had happened.

  “Please.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please. There’s something in it I want to find.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there’s got to be some interesting stuff in there, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then come with me.”

  He hesitated.

  “I’ll pack lunch,” she added with a smile.

  Unconvinced, he took another bite of breakfast.

  “I’ll fuck you when we get in deep enough,” she whispered and her sloe-eyed look of warm desire touched him like a moist hand. They were packed up, ready to go and standing at the entrance to the largest passageway a few minutes later.

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll get lost in this thing?” he asked, getting out his lamp and turning it on.

  “No,” she answered flatly, “and you won’t be needing that lamp.”

  “I’ll take it just in case, if you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The tunnel was about three meters wide and as many tall. The floor was relatively flat. As they walked inside and away from the morning’s red light, it became apparent why they wouldn’t need their lamps. The walls of the tunnel contained bioluminescent structures in random, irregular patches that filled the tunnel with soft illumination.

  “Why the light?” John asked.

  “Dumb question. Someone or something must have had a biological need to see in here . . .”

  “Fine, Miss Know-it-all . . .”

  They continued in, following the twisting and turning path. There were no side tunnels to confuse the route; John felt certain they could find their way back. It was the destination that worried him.

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what you’re looking for?”

  “No.”

  “When do we do it?” he asked, “We’re in far enough not to get caught.”

  “Be quiet," she said, smiling.

  They continued for some minutes; and as they walked, the light seemed to take on a more ominous cast, losing its softness and putting them on edge. John felt each step now, as each one propelled him farther and farther into this enigmatic structure. He wished they could stop, or better, just turn around and get the hell out of there.

  When they rounded the last bend and the tunnel emptied high into the chamber, he felt his mouth fall open.

  “What the fuck is this?” he asked, dumbfounded.

  The chamber was at least three hundred meters across and forty meters high. The entire space was a jumble of strange, dark devices and mechanisms that hung from a high network of branches and vine-like structures woven as an amorphous web throughout the space. The floor was covered with tables or what looked like benches, smooth and organic. Cages and containment devices of various kinds dotted the area. The cubic meters of strange, dark and alien tools hanging in the still air brought to mind some nightmare vision, all jagged and torn, like the wings of some wet and wounded bird. He blinked it away and scowled at the horrid thoughts the sight caused him.

  “What in hell is this place?” he asked again.

  At first he thought she was having another seizure, and he worried about being able to care for her himself if it were a bad one. As he watched her, he realized she was only breathing heavily, hyperventilating.

  “Rachel, what is it?”

  “I have to sit down . . .” she said, sinking to the floor.

  “Are you all right?”

  “This place . . . this place . . .”

  He squatted down next to her and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Awful? Is that the word you’re looking for?”

  “No . . . not just awful . . . hideous, horrible . . .”

  “Good, we’re in sync on that. It looks like we’ve made the find of the century, as sick as it is. These are artifacts of some extinct, intelligent race, right? I mean, these things didn’t grow like that.”

  “No. They didn’t grow like that,” she said thoughtfully.

  She rose slowly to her feet and took another deep breath. Without a word, she started down the incline to the floor of the chamber. John straightened his pack and started down behind her.

  Up close, the objects and structures and hanging devices were even more fearfully beautiful. Each one looked like a work of art—the art of Hell itself. The curves, edges, sweep and flow of each one held a particular horror that stabbed deep and twisted without touching them. The slick textures, pointed tips and gleaming edges seemed to probe and cut from a distance.

  “God . . .” he whispered. “Who could have made these things?”

  “It’s a laboratory.”

  “Whose?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  Rachel reached up and slowly put her hand around one of the hanging instruments, then pulled it down to get a better look. The vine-like umbilical lengthened soundlessly and allowed the device to travel easily. The tool was much like a scimitar, but with a longer and more pointed tip. One edge of the blade seemed hollow; and when she looked closer, she could see a translucent, tube-like channel running along it. She felt around for an appropriate grip, one she thought might be right, then lay her finger along a smooth trough on the instrument’s flank. A thick stream of milky fluid dripped from the pointed tip.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked. He was puzzled by the fact that she was terrified of the things one instant and seemed fascinated by them the next.

  “It’s alive.”

  “Alive? What do you mean, alive?” he asked, an emphatic mix of fear and puzzlement in his voice.

  “They still work,” she said, almost trance-like, turning the tool over. “They’re alive and they work.”

  They moved through the tangle of alien devices and equipment in slow motion as if ambling through a museum of twisted art. There were no signs of the designers of the technology. John thought that good fortune considering the nature of the tools and devices hanging there.

  “What do you think happened to them?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. If we look hard enough we may find out.”

  There were several sub-chambers adjacent to the space at the far side, and Rachel headed into the closest one.

  “Wait a second . . .” John pleaded.

  “What?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We have to see.”

  She went into one of
the smaller chambers, and John followed after, sighing away all hope on her now empty promise of carnal pleasure. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. It was as if she were following some internal map clearly drawn in her subconscious. “How in Hell do you know where you’re going,” he asked.

  “I’m guessing,” she said without turning.

  The short tunnel emptied into a chamber perhaps twenty meters wide, round and dome-shaped. The light inside was particularly soft and the air cool. The walls of the chamber were covered with what looked like alien hieroglyphs starting at the floor and reaching across the ceiling like vines.

  It took John a moment to realize what the objects on the flat protuberances were.

  “Is that them?” he asked.

  “I’d say so. What’s left of them?”

  “Burial chamber?”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  Rachel walked up to the closest one and touched the shrunken and paper-dry skin. A piece of it flaked away in her hand. “It’s hard to tell what they looked like,” he said.

  “I’m not sure they looked like much. The bones are frail and thin to begin with. They seem to lack bi-lateral symmetry—that is very strange. Head is irregular and somewhat pointed. These spines are odd. Cranium is large and irregular, too. Strange. They seem completely . . . ugly. Totally ugly . . . wicked and unnatural . . .”

  “I count about a hundred.”

  “Seems about right.”

  “I wonder what killed them.”

  “Unknown.”

  “Why so few?”

  “This may not be all of them. Get some pictures then let’s check out the other chambers.”

  “This place is starting to get under my skin really bad, Rachel.”

  “Chicken?”

  “Yeah. So? I feel like I’m looking at Hell and dead demons and shit.”

  “Maybe you are.”

  “That’s not funny. Besides, you’re twitchy, too. You said so.”

  “Superstitious?”

  “No. Just sensitive.”

  “Sensitive? Well . . .” she huffed.

  “Shut up, Rachel. You’re pissing me off.”

  “Pictures . . .”

  “I’ll get your goddamned pictures.”

  He got out his camera and started to shoot. Rachel headed into an adjacent chamber. He had just framed a close-up of the head of one of the dead beings when Rachel’s scream went through his chest like a cold knife.

  He was there in an instant, heart pounding and pistol drawn. The sight in the chamber stopped him like a punch to the head. “What in hell are they?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. Her voice was distant and weak. “I don’t know . . .”

  The figures were lined up in a neat row against the wall of the chamber. At first glance, they looked like some kind of alien sculpture. It took John a heartbeat to see that they were animate—or formerly animate—forms sitting, each lashed to its own pedestal. He didn’t bother to count them, but it felt like ten or fifteen.

  It was the expressions of horror in the faces and in the postures of the figures that wrenched him. Each was stiff, twisted and agonized as if they’d been made out of wire and violently bent and forced from the inside into the tortured forms. Some of them were barely recognizable as anything that could have ever lived. The others, though alien, were at least identifiable as living, and perhaps formerly sentient beings.

  A barely audible wet and slickering sound filled the space around them.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, with quiet urgency in his voice.

  Rachel’s eyes were wide, and she was breathing fast again, on the brink of panic. John felt his hand tightening on the grip of his pistol. He was resisting the urge to pull the weapon and start shooting—shooting anything.

  “We can’t leave,” she croaked. “We have to find out what they are.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t care what they are. Let’s go.”

  “We can’t . . .”

  “Forget it!”

  “We can’t! We have to stay!”

  John made a noise like a stallion’s grunt and turned in a tight circle of frustration. “This goddamned place is sick.”

  “We have to stay. We have to help them.”

  “Screw that!”

  “We have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that one’s human.”

  “What?”

  She took a step closer to one and leaned in to get a better look, her face tight and drawn.

  “Don’t touch it!” he warned.

  She watched as the tendrils entering the figure’s mouth and nose slid in and out slowly, eel-like. Dark stains ran down the figure’s face and body from the points of entry. She traced the tendrils up to the globular body on the top of the figure’s head. “They all have these things attached to them.”

  “What are they?” he asked.

  “Parasites. Everything on this planet is parasitic.”

  “You mean the goddamned thing is alive? That thing is still alive?” he asked, unable to comprehend what he was seeing or the words Rachel was saying.

  “I think so.”

  “Not for long . . .” he said and drew his pistol.

  “No!” she barked. “You can’t kill him.”

  “He’ll be better off . . .”

  “No! Put the gun away!”

  With another grunt, he holstered the weapon. “I don’t like this.”

  “I don’t either, but this person may know something about this thing we’re in and the beings who lived in it.”

  “You’re gonna try to revive him, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re nuts . . .”

  “We have to try. We could learn from him.”

  John just shook his head. Then something caught his eye.

  “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That thing in the thing’s hand or whatever.”

  She leaned over and took a close look. It took a moment to figure it out because she hadn’t seen many real, printed books except in museums. She was sure she had seen one very similar to this one on display as a child. The claw-like hand was clamped onto it so tightly that the surface seemed to have permanent indentations. She touched the cover with her finger and felt just a hint of remaining flexibility in it. If she could get it out of the figure’s hand, she was sure it would still be readable if she treated it gently.

  “It’s a book,” she said.

  “A book? What kind of book?”

  “They called them holy bibles.”

  About the Author:

  David Coy's short fiction has appeared in The Meat Socket and Black Petals magazines. A native of Michigan and an alumnus of Wayne State University, he enjoys quiet time outdoors camping and hiking, bird watching—and rolling rocks and logs to see what's eating what. He currently lives in Oregon with two dogs, an ugly cat and five chickens.

  The Dominant Species Series continues . . .

  Acquired Traits

  Branded as murderers and forced into hiding in the jungle planet’s deepest recesses, pilot John Soledad, biologist Rachel Sanders and Nurse Donna Applegate survive on their wits, frequent field remedies applied by Donna and occasional late-night raids on the colony’s storage warehouses for needed supplies. While the trio struggles to survive, another threat—one more virulent than the jungle’s life forms—threatens the very survival of the new colony. Rachel’s venom-induced visions are telling her something—revealing to her the terrible nature of the danger—and arousing what seem like memories of things and events ancient, dark and monstrous.

  Turn a Dark Phrase

  A Collection of Short Stories

  From the author of the Dominant Species Series comes a collection of frightening and captivating short stories. Each story will take you to some new and chilling place. There are alien parasites, murderous children, and people who get nothing more than they deserve in ways
only David Coy can dream up. Turn a Dark Phrase reminds us that the most horrifying things live in the darkest corners of the human mind.