Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (46 page)

15

He pulled the blankets back off the weapons and put his
arrow-filled quiver over his shoulder. He’d made up three such pants-leg
quivers. He’d kept the lion’s share of the arrows for himself and given the
others an even dozen each. Their entire war machine was composed of the arrows,
the bow, a plastic bag with maybe twenty additional poison tips in it, a
flashlight, the backpack filled with some food and water and, of course, the
frogs in the woven basket. Ned had added a weapon of his own—one of the wooden
legs of the little chair made a short, but acceptable, club that he’d stuffed
in the front of his pants.

It was just like Phil said it would be. He’d said they’d come for
Bailey and the phone and kill them all, or worse.

The stress had made Mary’s voice as stiff as wood. “Here they
come,” Mary whispered over her shoulder.

“How many?” Phil asked.

“Two big bastards. They’ve got a gray hunter with them. That must
be Gilbert behind them. Christ, you should see this. It’s worse than Bailey
described it.”

She paused and watched some more.

“Uh, oh. The hunter’s sticking its nose in every chamber.”

“Get ready,” Phil said.

“Try to recover your darts if you can,” he said to Mary, handing
her a quiver. “They’re all we’ve got.”

Staggering themselves in two teams, they’d abandoned their former
chambers and taken up positions farther up the tube. They were anticipating
that any shakedown would start with the holes Phil and Ned had occupied, much
farther down. When, and if, the searchers passed them, the element of surprise
would be theirs—they’d have them flanked. The hunter-thing changed all that by
checking for them in every hole and leaving nothing to chance.

“They’re at the Mexican’s hole. He’s coming out,” Mary said.

Phil looked up the tube and over at Ned who was watching closely
from the cover of the chamber’s opening. They made eye contact, and Ned gave
Phil a thumb’s up. Phil signaled back to Ned with an open palm for him to stay
put.

Mary watched for a minute more.

“They’re roughing him up,” she said and slipped back inside.

“Here’s the plan,” Phil said. “Better to take the offensive. We’ll
get them to chase us up the tube.”

Phil nocked an arrow in his bow.

“Let’s move,” he said and stepped down into the tube. “Show no
mercy.”

“What mercy?” Mary asked, her heart in her throat.

They stood there in the middle of the tube with their makeshift
weaponry at the ready. The hunter saw them first and reared up on its hind
legs, with its neck fully extended, and sniffed loudly. The goons stopped cold.
Standing side by side, their combined girth nearly filled the tube.

Phil could make out Gilbert’s ridiculous form standing a safe distance
behind the wall of flesh formed by the goons.

Fucking coward,
Phil thought.

Mary looked down at the knot of freaks just fifty feet away; and
as the memories of the pain and injustice of her abduction heated her blood,
the icy fear in her breast began to melt and her rage drove her to unthinking
blindness.

Without warning, she yelled like a banshee and ran a few steps up
and threw her dart like a javelin at the cluster of freaks in the tube in the
alien ship. The dart flew fast in a perfect arch, nearly grazing the tube’s
ceiling. It struck the smaller of the goons in the neck, driving its wicked tip
deep into its flesh. The goon staggered and slapped the shaft away. It felt at
the point of impact with its fingers and making a sound like a bull breathing,
it removed the dart’s tip and looked at it, collapsing to the floor just as the
other goon and hunter charged.

Mary turned and ran, reaching for another dart. Phil waited a
second or two longer, took aim and let his arrow go with a
thrump.
His shot
went low and the arrow stuck in the goon’s leg just above the knee. He turned
and ran as fast as he could.

It wasn’t fast enough.

The goon caught him by the denim quiver and spun him around. The
quiver came off in the creature’s huge hand, spraying arrows onto the floor.
Phil twisted loose and fell. When he hit the ground, the hunter leaped over him
like a hound jumping a fence. One of its rear feet clipped Phil’s temple and a
bright pattern of stars exploded in his head.

Its leg weakened by the dart’s poison, the goon stumbled and fell
against the wall.

As Mary streaked past Ned’s position, she got a glimpse of him
crouching in the opening. The dead end of the tube with its closed seam loomed
ahead like a trap.

When it got close enough, the hunter raised up and brought both
front feet down into Mary’s back, shoving her forward onto the tube’s floor.
She tumbled and when she turned around the hunter was straddling her in a
wide-footed stance, its neck extended out like a hyena’s.

Mary looked up into the face of the hunter and knew she was going
to die. Fixing her gaze on that flat and vicious face, a faraway note of
recognition called out to her like a distant greeting.

“Tom . . . ?” she said.

The hunter twisted its face into a feral smile and pulled its lips
back over its short, sharp teeth. Suddenly, the hunter snapped its head to the
rear, once, twice and Mary was aware of some activity behind it.

Phil managed to get his feet, spun and ran as hard as he could
toward the soakers. Sluggish, but not disabled, the goon plodded after him. He
could hear the sound of the thing’s feet pounding on the floor of the tube
behind him. The image of the running girl in the shuttle
bay
flashed in his mind. She must have heard the same sound before the big bastard snatched
her around and clobbered her to death.

As he approached the dripper he was running straight at the
lop-sided and retreating form of Gilbert. Bug-eyed, Gilbert looked over his
shoulder then dashed through the seam. The seam closed almost instantly.

Mary knew it was Tom Moon—or at least a vestige of Tom Moon who
loomed over her. She realized too, that like a dog gone mad, the thing had no
choice. It was about to tear her to shreds.

“Tom . . .” she said. “It’s Mary.”

The hunter cocked its head and snarled.

Phil sprinted past the clothes dump and into the dripper. After
that, there would only be the soakers then a thirty foot wall straight up. The
goon’s splashing feet were right behind him.

He was almost to the end when he heard a massive thump and splash
as the goon fell. He stumbled on the slight rise that marked the entrance to
the dripper and tumbled hard.

“Tom . . . please . . .” Mary pleaded.

The creature blinked its Tom Moon eyes slowly. Then, like a tree
being felled, it pitched gently over against the wall of the tube and remained
quite still. Inside the alien skin and muscles and skull, the last trace of
Tom Moon fluttered awkwardly toward a bright light and the soft sound of a
woman’s voice.

Mary clamored away from it and saw the darts, one in its side,
dangling by the wire wrapped around its buried tip, the other two hanging limp
in its rump. Ned and Bailey had killed it. She reached out and as gently as she
could, she closed Tom’s eyes in that alien head.

“It could have killed me, but it didn’t,” she said to Bailey. “It
was Tom. It was Tom Moon.”

Phil saw the goon lying face down, half in, half out of the
dripper, its arms stretched out straight. He breathed a sigh of relief, and was
amazed, yet again, at just how potent, if not fast-acting, the frog’s poison
was.

Mary and Ned appeared at the other end of the dripper. Mary’s
voice echoed through it.

“Are you okay!” she yelled.

“Yeah!”

They double-timed back and Phil paused to study the first goon
lying in a massive heap in the middle of the tube. The neat little stab in its
neck was plainly visible. It didn’t come as a surprise that there was a
relationship between the location and amount of poison delivered and the length
of time the fuckers would live after getting jabbed. Mary had stuck the goon
with a single dart to the neck and it had died quickly; Phil’s had received one
in the leg, and the goon had had nearly enough time left to kill him.

He scanned the area looking for the tip; and when he didn’t find
it, it dawned on him:

“That mother fucker,” he said, unfurling the goon’s big dead hand
just to be sure it wasn’t there after all.

“Who?” Mary wanted to know.

“Gilbert! He picked up the goddamned tip from the dart and ran out
with it. He’ll give the fucking thing to the aliens.”

“Bad news?” Bailey asked.

“You bet. The aliens’ll have the poison on the dart analyzed in
no time. It’s right up their alley, all that chemical weapons shit.”

“Do you think they can find an antidote?” Ned asked.

“Maybe. Probably. Shit! It won’t matter! They’re gonna swarm all
over us as soon as they can since they think we’ve got a real weapon. We’ve got
to move right now. Right now! Move! Get your asses moving!”

They gathered up the spilled darts and the rest of their war
machine and headed for the back seam.

*
 
*
 
*

The French woman and the Indian had moved down into the tube and
were standing there when the group approached. Phil could see the zombie-like
look on the woman’s face; it was a very common expression after any time at all
in the ship. She was in her late forties, perhaps fifty. She was staring at the
dead hunter and muttering under her breath. When Phil put his hand on her
shoulder, she shrank away from it like it had caused pain and sat down sloppily
against the tube wall.

“She’s a goner,” Mary said.