Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  The monster lifted her off the floor in those strange arms as if she were a child. Then it opened its grisly, horse’s mouth and began to lower her down onto it. Bailey had a fleeting vision of being held up like a thing while the monster snapped at her flailing limbs, her blood flowing out of the gaping wounds and running over its maniacal face as it ate her alive, one bite at a time.

  Bailey looked into the thing’s lunatic eyes, and the rage in her exploded.

  “You sonofabitch!”

  She brought up both hands and jammed them down tight on the creature’s eye sockets. On the smooth, red skin, the fit was perfect. She tightened that strange grip then pulled with all her might. Before the thing could respond, she jammed down hard again and took another grip and pulled with a deep grunt. The creature slammed her down and knocked her hands loose with a blow to her forearms. Her hands came away with a smack. Then, the monster roared, the roars turning to whimpers.

  As Bailey stumbled away from it, she saw a thin line of blood running from each eye socket. When the thing swept the area in front of it with its antenna arms, she knew she’d damaged its eyes, maybe blinded it completely.

  She turned and ran. She left it there stumbling against the walls. She heard a sound over her shoulder. She hoped it was the thing’s tortured groaning and mustered enough strength to smile a crooked smile of delight. “Nasty bastard . . . ” she uttered weakly.

  She walked and shuffled a few hundred yards farther then collapsed.

  She tried to get up. She rested for a while then began to crawl slowly down the tube, one agonizing inch at a time. The seam was at least another hundred yards away, and she knew she’d never make it. Even if she did, she’d die there. The idea of getting someone’s attention by yelling at the top of her lungs was now a remote and implausible notion. The entire plan had been doomed from the start.

  She stopped after just a few yards and rested her head on the not-cool, not-hot surface of the tube. She didn’t know if she would die soon or not-so-soon, but she knew she would die. She turned her hand over and looked at the bizarre patch of tissue the aliens had given her. It looked so strange but felt so oddly natural. She smiled at it and made it contract once just so she could see it one last time.

  Then Bailey Hall closed her eyes and dreamt of bright, cold streams of water.

  * * *

  Water has little real taste, but it has sensation. The greater the thirst, the stronger the sensation. The sensation of water on Bailey’s mouth, tongue and throat was so extreme, it felt like the very celebration of life itself. She gobbled it, sucked at it and drank it in great mouthfuls. Her dehydrated tissues sang in a chorus of relief.

  She heard distant voices as if through a pipe. She drank.

  “Slow down. Slow down,” Ned’s voice said.

  “Fuck that,” she heard Phil say. “Let her drink.”

  “So she was just playing along with Gilbert?” Mary’s distant voice asked.

  “That’s a good bet,” Phil said. “I doubt she was really part of his bullshit at all. There’s no telling what she’s learned from him.”

  She swallowed water until her body told her to stop with a sharp cramp in her abdomen. She put her head back and drifted on the cool lake the water had formed for her. Then she was aware of being moved and of firm, caring, human hands on her arms and legs. She felt a familiar and gentle feminine touch on her brow. She opened her eyes and could see only a blur, but she knew the shape in front of her eyes was Mary.

  “More water . . . ” she pleaded.

  The edge of a plastic bottle was the hard prelude to the gush of wetness that covered her mouth and tongue once more. She gobbled and swallowed until the lake was full again.

  “What the fuck are those things?” Mary’s faraway voice asked.

  “I think those are how she climbed up the wall of the shuttle bay,” Phil said.

  “Oh, my God,” Mary said.

  “There’s no other way up to this section of the ship.”

  Mary reached out and touched one of Bailey’s suckers like it was an insect. Her voice drifted over the water to her.

  “I don’t wanna know,” Mary said. “Don’t take me there.”

  A corner of Bailey’s mouth curled up and smiled.

  * * *

  When Gilbert was a boy of ten, he’d been made to sit in the first pew after services and wait patiently while his mother and father met with the Reverend. Sometimes he’d have to wait for an hour, sometimes for two hours while they talked. On the times when the door to the manse was open to the church, he could hear his father’s voice drift out in long monotones.

  He would sit and rub his fingers over the smooth, stamped texture of the Bible’s cover and stare out the high square window in the painted cinder block wall and try to think of how the clouds were made. His father would come out finally and stand in front of him and ask the question he always asked.

  “Are you praying, Gilbert?”

  “Yes,” he’d say.

  “Did you ask God to guide your thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  Later, with the smell of corn and ham and bread on the table and his hunger gnawing at him, he was made to wait patiently while his father washed up. When his father finally came to the table, his thin face and hands would be polished red from the scrubbing he’d given them and the smell of soap would mix with the smell of the food.

  “Are you praying, Gilbert?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you say grace? Gilbert, please.”

  His mother would fold her hands and bow her head, and Gilbert would look at the sharp white part in her black, pulled-tight hair and say grace.

  They would eat then and Gilbert’s father would drone on about this or that while Gilbert watched the clouds out the v-shaped space in the lacy curtains behind his mother’s head.

  He’d finish his minuscule portions early but could not leave the table until his father and mother were finished. His father would eat slowly and sometimes, between bites, he’d lean over closer to his mother’s lowered head to make his point better by jabbing the tines of the fork in her direction. Gilbert would sit with his hands folded and think about what shapes he’d make the clouds in if he could make them.

  Finally released from the waiting, he’d go outside to look at the clouds from the front porch.

  Sometimes he’d watch summer storm clouds gathering, and the thunder and lightning in them filled Gilbert with awe and pleasure.

  He was watching clouds and waiting now. He’d never seen the clouds from this vantage, but his thoughts about them were as they’d always been. Clouds were power. They carried the weather and God’s weather controlled man’s work. It planned his days and his nights. It made the crops to grow and the rivers flow. Now God’s weather would carry the pestilence and God’s Judgment would come to pass.

  He had made it so.

  He turned from the wall port and side-stepped over to the ledge and sat down. He looked down at his big legs and his narrow feet with their twisted toes and thought nothing of them whatsoever.

  He knew Bailey had been gone too long, but there was nothing to do for it at the moment. It would be impossible to find her and she had been warned not to go into the restricted areas. If she did, there would be nothing to do. There would be plenty more where she came from, and now he knew that his covenant with the aliens would allow him to have any of them modified for any pleasure he wanted. Bailey wasn’t the only one with interesting thoughts about pleasure. He had some ideas of his own. There was no end to the combinations he could achieve with the aliens’ help. He thought about the clouds and how they combined and bled together and reformed into more and more interesting shapes.

  He laid his stone-white body down and dreamt images of freakish pleasure that ran over and under his loins like warm mud.

  The thought came to him to look at the trophy he’d taken from Phil Lynch; to hold it in his hand and touch it. He’d thought about destroying it, but like the gold
star he’d taken from the Jew, he believed it made a fine artifact and a relic of the events in the ship. He could see it encased in clear plastic in the museum erected in his behalf. He wasn’t quite sure what the little plaque next to it would say yet.

  He walked over to the box, picked it up, put it on the ledge and started to remove the clothes. When he lifted the shiny green slip that he’d carefully folded and placed over it and found the phone gone, his mouth drew into a straight, hard line.

  Then he lifted his head and closed his eyes in a great show of disappointment. He looked again and carefully lifted out the remaining pair of pants and underwear, hoping that the phone had shifted under them as he moved the box. He lifted the green slip again just to be sure. Then, holding the smoothly draped slip with two dainty fingers, he stared down into the empty bottom of the box and swallowed hard with his teeth apart and his mouth slightly open.

  * * *

  The shuttle bay seemed a likely place to start, so they’d made it their destination with the goal to find some weakness in it, something they could sabotage or destroy.

  Ned had argued that they should go back to the larvae cache, crack open the canisters and destroy every last one of the pupae in them. Phil thought it over again and held it open as an additional option.

  It was Ned who’d spotted Bailey lying unconscious in the tube. They’d moved her into one of the shallow cells that lined it. Mary had wanted to carry her back to her hole so she could care for her properly, but Phil suggested that Bailey was now a bona fide desperado—best to keep her hidden.

  Mary had managed to get Mary’s clothes back on her, working them over the odd attachments on her arms and legs while trying not to touch them. Then she helped her to sit up and lean against the wall.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Better,” Bailey replied. “I needed water.”

  “You sure did. You drank all we had.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mary gave her a compassionate smile. “Anytime,” she said, then reached over and took Bailey’s face in her hands. She was so glad to see her. She had worried about her so much. She resisted her lips and kissed her forehead instead. She could feel Bailey’s big smile through her hands.

  Phil sat down close enough to Bailey to touch her. They smiled into each other’s face. Bailey was like a lost child found. Phil held up the notebook. “Give me every detail,” he said.

  Bailey started and talked for over an hour. She’d taken notes on everything she saw, just like Phil had told her to. The drawings were up to the high standards they’d come to expect and she used them as memory joggers, recalling information she hadn’t yet written down.

  Phil was very interested in the fact that the ship was mostly empty; but it was the central nervous system that interested Phil the most, just like she knew it would.

  “How big in diameter is it?”

  “Maybe three feet.”

  “What’s it made of? Does it have a sheath, a covering?”

  “It feels rubbery. Like thick, soft wire all woven together.”

  “Can we cut it?”

  “That I don’t know,” she said. “It looks strong and tough.”

  Phil drummed his fingers on his knee. “That’s our target,” he said.

  “I knew it!” Bailey said. “I knew we could kill it!”

  “That might be stretching it, but the idea’s got potential.” Ned was standing and leaning heavily against the wall with one arm. He was the color of paste and still sweating profusely. His mouth drooped down in a perpetual open frown. He nodded his head just slightly in response to Phil’s comment.

  Phil studied him for a moment. The poor guy was sliding downhill fast. He hoped he could hold out.

  The nerve bundle was the logical target all right, considering their chemical weaponry. If they could administer the poison at the right point, they might be able to disable the entire ship.

  “It’s like this,” Phil said. “The central nervous system carries instructions to and from all sections of the body. The signals are processed by the brain. If the spinal column is severed all activity below that point ceases and all sensation, all autonomic functions fail. That’s why neck injuries are so debilitating—they cut ties to the brain at the worst possible point—just below the brain stem, short-circuiting nearly all bodily functions below it. An injury to the spine at the lower back does far less damage for the same reason—fewer systems below the point of damage to be effected.”

  “So we want to get to a point close to the brain?” Mary asked.

  “That’s right,” Phil answered. “The problem is, we have no idea where the brain is in this animal. It could be right under our feet, or the thing might have smaller, multiple brains that act like fail-safe backup systems for one another. It might not even have a brain as we think of it.”

  Bailey looked at Phil and blinked. The tip of a finger found its way into her mouth and she gnawed at it a little. “I don’t know where the head is,” she said. She obviously saw it as a personal failing.

  “It’s okay,” Phil said. “We’ll just have to find it.”

  They had to know where to strike. Without that information, the most they could do was piss it off, not disable it.

  “We’re going back to the barracks,” Phil said.

  “Why?” Mary wanted to know.

  “We need the antenna for the phone.”

  * * *

  Gilbert stood in the center of the chamber and thought about what to do. Recent events were stuck to his mind like leaves in tar. It was clear she had planned to get back to that Phil Lynch from the beginning. She was a liar and a fraud. He had told her too much. She was a liar. She had manipulated him.

  He swallowed and took inventory of the real damage done.

  If she’d made it back to Phil’s tube, they’d have the phone already. She had some detailed information about the ship now, not all, but some.

  He cursed himself for being careless, but it wasn’t his fault. She was the one who had lied, not him. She was the turncoat. He hadn’t done anything at all. If there was any blame to be laid, it had to be laid on her.

  He tried to imagine them calling someone and telling them about the “invasion” and almost smiled at what a ridiculous idea that was. It was, after all, God’s secret. No one would ever believe them.

  All the same, you never knew.

  He decided to tell the alpha about the phone. That was the best idea. It was her fault; he hadn’t done anything wrong. The alpha would understand and do a complete sweep of the ship, then he’d have the phone again and the rest of them would be turned into something—something ugly—something ugly and painful.

  * * *

  Linda’s words rang in his ears. “We have pictures, Phil, ” she’d said.

  “What time is it?” Phil asked.

  “Almost noon,” Mary volunteered.

  “Close enough,” he said and started to dial.

  If it were true, she might be able to tell him which end of the thing was heads and which was tails, provided those definitions worked on the godamned thing.

  The phone rang twice and Linda picked up the phone.

  “It’s me,” Phil said.

  “Phil, I’m sorry . . . ” Linda said. “I thought . . . ”

  “Linda, forget it. You said you have pictures. What kind of pictures?”

  “Pretty good ones. They look fakey as shit, but they’re not bad quality-wise.”

  “What does the damned thing look like from the outside?” There was a brief pause while she collected her thoughts. “Its . . . uh . . . like a football . . . uh.”

  “Go get the pictures.”

  “Hold on. They’re right here.”

  She pulled the pictures out of a folder and scattered them over the table.

  “It’s roundish and bloated,” she said, more confident this time. “It has eight things sticking out that Greenbaum calls rudimentary legs. There’s a bunch of machinery and shit on one
end of it that covers the whole end of it.”

  “Okay. Is it amorphous or bi-symmetrical? Does it have a right and left side? Does it have a head, a clearly defined head?”

  “Yes it does.”

  “Which?”

  “Uh, both. It’s the same on both sides and it has a head—a small head. I mean it looks small.”

  “Okay, listen. There’s a huge port they use for the shuttles. Try to find it and tell me where it is.”

  “Is it a hole?”

  “Not now, it would look star-shaped.”

  “I get it.”

  “Anything look like that?”

  Linda studied the pictures up close, squinting at them.

  “I don’t see anything that looks like that.”

  Phil got confused.

  “The shuttle bay is huge,” he said. “It’s got to be there.”

  “Oh, maybe that’s it . . . ”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a little thing toward the butt end.”

  “How big is it—the thing you’re looking at?”

  “Well, I can’t say for sure, not without measuring. I don’t know.”

  He thought for a second. “How big is the ship overall? Guess.”

  “Greenbaum says it’s almost seven hundred yards across,” she said.

  Phil let it sink in. That’s why the goddamned thing seemed empty. It was immense.

  “Okay, now—how far is the head from that opening?”

  “The head sticks out of the other end, not straight out but down at an angle.”

  “How far from the opening?”

  “Exactly?”

  “As close as possible.”

  “Hold on.”

  Using a pencil as a scale, she measured the distance from the opening to the head and compared it to the overall dimension. “Five hundred yards, give or take,” she said.

  “Okay . . . what’s that in feet? . . . that’s . . .” Phil did the math and provided his own answer. “ . . . Fifteen hundred feet, right?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Stay by the phone. Bye.”

  “Phil . . . ?”