Read Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) Online

Authors: David Coy

Tags: #dystopian, #space, #series, #contagion, #infections, #fiction, #alien, #science fiction, #space opera, #outbreak

Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (15 page)

BOOK: Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series)
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There was
a patch of dark liquid in the spot about a foot wide. The technician was sure
it wasn’t blood but had scooped out a couple of lab-knives full of the moist,
sandy soil and bagged that up for later analysis, too.

That was
all of the physical evidence at the cabin. After examining the entire area,
they followed the tracks out and found more of both types of prints down the
hillside in front of the cabin and some big prints behind a cluster of granite
to the east. They followed the tracks back to where both types merged then
followed them all to a place about a quarter mile away. There, in a dry wash,
they found a large impression about forty feet long and twenty across and could
see where sage and grass and small juniper bushes had been mashed flat. That’s
where the tracks ended.

The tech
had photographed everything. Linda took her own pictures.

Bob and
the deputies had little to say about how curious the evidence was. She
couldn’t tell if they were naturally intolerant of the opinions of amateurs or
just stupid. “There’s no blood,” one had said, “That’s a fact.” The technician
said the tracks were odd, but he’d seen lots of odd things in his day. Linda
didn’t doubt that at all. When he smiled at her she could see green stains on
his teeth at the gum line.

Something
out of the ordinary had happened to Phil, that was sure, the Sheriff had said,
but they didn’t know that he was dead or even injured. They’d have to wait
forty-eight hours to see if he showed up before they escalated it, even if the
missing person
was
the Sheriff’s
nephew. Linda listened to Bob and knew from his tone that he was totally at a
loss. If he had any theories about what had happened that might be considered
out of the ordinary, he wasn’t letting on. No telling what people might think,
his being the sheriff and all that.

Linda had
already started to formulate her own theory while they were there. She
confirmed it later that day.

After
Bob, the deputies, and the tech had left late Saturday afternoon, Linda had
drawn up a pattern of the tracks with arrows going in the right directions.
That little map told the whole story, just like the ant trail.

It was
all as plain as day to Linda Purdy. When she’d first figured it out, she nearly
choked on the horror of it.

She
pulled the crumpled paper out of her jacket pocket, flapped it open with one
hand and looked at it for the hundredth time. She could see clearly how the
aliens had approached the cabin from where they landed their UFO in the
wash—and flew away; where the two kinds of aliens had split up; where the one
had been shot by Phil as it approached his position behind the truck; and where
they’d picked up Phil after they’d zapped him with a ray gun or something. She
could see clearly where they picked up the alien Phil shot on their way out and
the direction they’d marched back to the UFO in the wash and flew off.

She knew
she’d have as much chance as a snowball in Hell of convincing a single other
soul of what happened. The tech had samples of alien blood and a patch of alien
skin in those baggies, but they’d wind up in the trash before the week was out.
The depression in the wash was a UFO print. It would be gone and forgotten and
the mashed plants grown back up by spring.

She
folded up the map but before she could get it back in her pocket, she started
to cry again.

She
closed the cabin and the truck but left both intentionally unlocked, just in
case they brought him back from wherever they’d taken him. Then she got in her
Jeep and headed down to Edna’s. She’d told Buddy she’d stop in before she left
for Redondo Beach and have a bite to eat. She didn’t feel very hungry, but it
didn’t matter. She took the shotgun with her.

She
started to cry again after she closed the gate at the foot of the hill. About
halfway down, she noticed she was thirsty and wondered if you could cry
yourself thirsty. Stopping for food and drink at Edna’s, suddenly seemed like a
necessary, if not a very pleasant, idea.

Edna had
set out a nice plate of barbecued turkey and sandwich makings. Linda slapped
together a plain sandwich like she was dazed; and when she took the first bite,
was surprised by how hungry she was. Somewhere between the following hurried
bites of sandwich and a long pull of iced lemonade, she realized she hadn’t
eaten or drunk a thing since Saturday morning at daybreak.

While
they ate, Ronny kept talking about how crazy it was that someone would try to
kidnap Phil, his being such a tough customer and all. The talk just confused and
frightened Edna and she cried again. Linda kept her mouth shut and full of
turkey.

She left
Ronny and Edna without saying much since there wasn’t much to say anyway. The
only news any of them wanted was that Phil had been found and in good health.
Everything else was trite, without meaning. They all promised to call the
minute any of them got word. It sounded stupid to have to say it.

Driving
down the 14, Linda let the bitter thought leak out that it wasn’t just
possible, but highly probable, that she would never see Phil again. She had no
idea what the chances of him showing up, except that they were slim to none.
She knew nothing at all useful about alien abductions and all that crap, but
she had never doubted that it could happen. She knew in her heart that when it
really did happen, despite the alleged first-hand reports, the persons who were
abducted did not return.

It just made sense.

*
 
*
 
*

 

The only
plan they had was to go as far as they could, see and record as much as they could
and not get caught. It was elegant in its simplicity.

The tube
had three seams. One they called “the front seam”, one they called “the rear”.
One they called “the middle,” although it was actually only about a third of
the way up from the front and at the end of its own ten-foot long tube. It was
this one that the goons used almost exclusively. The front seam led to the
grocery and to another short tube that led to the dump. The seam opening to the
dump was nearly always closed—that is, until they’d found out how to work the
openers, and they’d already found several good reasons to make unscheduled
trips to it. There was another seam that opened to the tubes beyond the dump,
but that one, like most of the others, was off limits for now because it was used
too frequently. Beyond the grocery were the soakers. There were two seams
opening into the soaker chamber, one at each side of the thirty-foot-wide room.
These were always closed.

That left
the rear seam as the only likely port for exploration.

The idea
was that the tubes beyond the back seam were not in active use for some reason.
No one could remember a goon ever using the rear seam. Ned thought that the
entire section was separate from the rest of the ship and maybe devoid of any
accoutrements or features, just dead space like a bilge or empty hold. Why else
would they not use it? Maybe it was under construction or some unfathomable
alien repair. Whatever the reason, those tubes were the least traveled, as far
as they could tell, and therefore the safest to explore.

They’d
tested it earlier and discovered that the seam would open and close when just
Phil and Ned put their hands on an opener at the same time, their combined mass
providing just enough impedance, or aura or voltage, or whatever, to actuate
it. They saw this as a big plus, since it meant the reconnoitering team could
be smaller and hopefully less detectable. When Phil touched the opener this
time, the pulse of repugnance that shot through his hand from the organ’s odd,
rippled tissue made him want to jerk his hand away.

Based on
what they knew about how they were being rotated, Mary guessed that she would
probably be in the next group to be impregnated, and it wouldn’t do for her to
come up missing so she’d stay behind on this first excursion. No one knew when
the goons would show up in the tube for sure since spot visits for no known
reason weren’t unheard of. They might detect the absence of Phil and Ned as
well, but that seemed somewhat less likely unless they were looking for them
specifically. There was just no way to know. Phil and Ned would
proceed without her. It had been Phil’s call.

They’d
gathered up about a day’s worth of food and drink, a notebook, and a small
flashlight from Tom Moon and put it all in a blue nylon day pack volunteered by
Ned.

Mary
stuffed another can of something into the pack on Ned’s back and zipped it
closed. She patted it and smiled at them. “Tally ho,” she said flatly.

With
that, Phil and Ned stepped through the open seam and closed it from the outside.

They
stood at the juncture of the three tubes for a moment and considered which one
to take. Phil picked the one on the right and walked into it. The tube was
about ten feet in diameter, and the floor was slightly flatter than the walls,
giving the feeling that it was collapsing somehow. Phil couldn’t shake the
feeling that he was walking into an empty arterial structure or vein. He looked
closely at the floor and sides of the tube, looking for any sign of recent
passage. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he didn’t doubt that some
clue, some artifact of a goon’s passage through the tube might yet exist in
it.

He found
nothing.

They
moved like cats at first, padding silently close to the walls and peering
cautiously around the bends of the tube. Their confidence grew by the minute
and it occurred to them, almost simultaneously, that it made little sense to
skulk.

The tube
bent to the right in a long sweep and Phil sensed that it had made a complete
ninety-degree turn before straightening out again.

They
passed three or four junctures with tubes going off in all directions,
including a smaller vertical shaft, so deep it gave Phil a flush of vertigo to
look down it.

Each step
Phil took reminded him of just how large the ship really was. They weren’t
going in a straight line, but even the possibility that they were walking in
circles left an undeniable feeling of enormity of the alien vessel. The idea
of a thing being alive and being that big stretched Phil’s imagination. He
searched his memory for a reference to any natural advantage to such a physical
mass and found little to support it. Whalers, he knew, loved the big whales
because they had more blubber, but there was little advantage to the whale for
its size. Enormous size in the Earth’s oceans was the result of plentiful
food, an evolutionary perfect and efficient way to collect and consume it, and
dense water to buoy up the mass on all sides. Large size wasn’t a guarantee
against predation, either. Smaller killer whales in a pack could pursue and
kill even the largest of Earth’s behemoths. Big size didn’t always carry an
economy of scale— unless you were the whaler.

The tubes
were generally the same size, color and shape and the dim light from the light
organs lining them further homogenized their appearance. Phil dug a notebook
out of the backpack and started to sketch as they went along, noting the
distances in steps between major junctures and the angles of adjoining tubes.
His rough map-making would get them back to the seam easily enough if he didn’t
miss any major landmarks. “This place is a maze,” Ned said, his voice low.

“If you got lost in here, you’d
starve to death,” Phil replied. Looking ahead, Ned suddenly grimaced. “What do
you suppose that would be?” he said, pointing to a spot on the tube’s floor.

A scatter
of human debris lay in the tube just at a point where it leveled out from a
long incline from ahead. Most of the crap was empty cans and balled up
packaging. One of the objects was approximately spherical and as they moved
closer
 
and the tube’s dim, brown light
revealed more detail, Phil recognized it.

“It’s a
head,” he said with a frown. “It looks human.”

It was
clearly organic, but so distorted, it could have been almost anything made of
meat and bone. He kneeled down to get a closer look and touched it lightly with
the tip of his pen. The sickly scent of spoiled meat reached him as his got
closer. “Look at the mouth structure. Those are human teeth.”

“If you
say so,” Ned replied. “But where did it come from?” Phil looked down the tube
in both directions, then pointed in the direction they were already headed.
“The tube is on an upward slant starting from this point. My guess is it rolled
down from somewhere up that way.”

They
looked at each other and past each other, trying to decide whether or not to
proceed. The head felt like some kind of warning, like a totem, left by some
primitive tribe to turn away intruders.

“Christ,
this place is somethin’,” Ned said running his hand over his head. “Who’d have
ever thought that . . .” His voice trailed off, and his gaze dropped to the
head at his feet.

“Yeah, I
know. Let’s go take a look,” Phil said.

They
headed up the incline of the tube.

About
fifty yards up, Phil noticed a movement against the wall of the tube. He
stopped and held up his hand to Ned to do the same. Ten yards up and on the
left was a hole. It was small, perhaps four feet in diameter, and the source of
the movement.

BOOK: Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series)
10.4Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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