Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (8 page)

“Your
room?” the woman asked again.

“Yes. My
room. You can stay here until you move into your own. I’ll try to help you
out—tell you what to do, such as there is.”

The woman
started to cry again. Mary led her to the bed and gently encouraged her to sit
down on it.

“What’s
your name?” Mary asked.

“Bailey.
Bailey Hall, that is. I just got married. I’m married.” Her voice still had
some of the flat monotone pitch about it. In spite of that, Mary didn’t think
she’d ever heard a voice so buttery and rich. There was a slight thickness, a
touch of hoarseness that gave it a sexual dimension, flattened or not. The fact
that she was repeating herself reminded Mary that she was still in shock and
probably would be for some time. Mary dug out the Ding Dongs and opened them.

“Have
one. They’re yumsters,” Mary said.

Bailey
ignored the offering.

Mary
wished she knew a little more about first aid and all that. All she knew to do
was be kind to the poor woman and wait until she came to grips with what was
happening as best she could. You couldn’t ever really get used to where you
were and what was happening to you. There was no way to adjust to it. All you
did was go from hour to hour, waiting to be tortured.

“Bailey Hall,”
Bailey said repeating herself clearly. “My husband was killed recently.”

“I’m
sorry,” Mary said. “Look, you need to eat. If you get too weak, they’ll kill
you—or worse.” Mary realized how poor her timing was right after she said it
and wished she hadn’t. It could have waited, she knew. All she did was lamely
point out the horror in an obviously horrible situation. She wasn’t too sure
Bailey had even heard her, though. She just stared.

To Mary’s
surprise, Bailey took one of the cakes out of the package and scarfed it down
with two big bites. She stuffed her mouth, chewed and swallowed hungrily while
she stared blankly into Mary’s face. Mary detected a glint of steely strength
in her green eyes that she was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago. Mary got the
feeling Bailey was looking right through her.

“More,” Bailey said.

*
 
*
 
*

He was standing. He knew
that because he could tell which way was down, and he could see his feet. He was
leaning against a thick plate of some yellowish translucent material. Its
consistency was swirled and imperfect like melted glass. He could see movement
and light on the other side. He could see his right hand at the end of his
wrist. Like a drunk after a wild bacchanal, he was completely naked and had no
idea how he had gotten there.

I’m whole,
he thought sluggishly.

His entire face hurt; and
when he felt it, it hurt more. He could taste blood in his mouth. He swabbed
his tongue around the inside of his mouth and worked up a bolus of spit and
spit a long bloody string of saliva down between his feet.

Fucking
sonsofbitches,
he thought.
Wonder
what they found out.

He found a small
grape-like thing stuck in his leg just above the knee. Its surface was wrinkled
and shrunken. It was attached and dangled by a little thin thread, and he
snatched it off his leg and tossed it like a bug.

He wanted his brain to
work, to think clearly. He breathed as deeply as he could. He exhaled and then
forced himself to do that exactly nine more times. After the tenth, he
discovered that his brain was, in fact, working better. He repeated the in-out
ten more times. He’d never had a mantra and understood it had to be given to
you, or some such crap, so he made up his own.

Fucking,
in. Sonsofbitches, out. Fucking, in. Sonsofbitches, out.

The
enclosure was about the size of a large shower. With his mind clearing, he
moved and stretched and flexed his back. For the first time, he was feeling
normal and strong. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so
body-confident. He was ready to kick the shit out of something, anything. He
could see the shapes moving around on the other side of the plate and the
quick, darting movement of the bastards who’d done this to him made his blood
boil.

“Fuck
you!” he bellowed at them. He wanted to kick the plate but knew he’d just
fracture his foot.

I won’t
give the bastards the satisfaction,
he thought.

“Fuck
you! Hey! Fuck you!” He worked up another bolus of red spit and let it fly at
the plate.
Smack!

“Fuck
you!”

The
shapes ignored him. His mind cleared more. Then the thought hit him like a
rock.

I’ve been
drugged. That ampoule in my leg. It delivered an adrenal or something like it.
I’m wired.

The effect
of the drug was growing stronger fast and rage built up in him like white-hot
magma. He wanted to gnash his teeth and tear something living to pieces with
them. He stood in the middle of the chamber and bellowed as the rage consumed
his reason like a storm.

He heard
a sound like a buzzing insect, and the sound stirred memories of nasty, biting,
nagging, hateful, fucking bugs and insects like the ones that time in that
fucking nest that stung him like demons and he wanted to shred the godamned
thing with his teeth.

When the
wasp flew out of the hole in the wall of the chamber, its buzz filled his head
like insufferable music. He saw it in his peripheral vision as a dark flash and
spun on it in a fury of flailing, slapping and grabbing hands. The wasp was as
big as a cigar butt though Phil could see through his white rage that it wasn’t
really a wasp, but an alien, evil insect thing. It hovered just out of his
reach as he jumped and swiped at it.

The wasp
dashed down at him so fast even his rage- heightened reflexes couldn’t stop or
deflect it. He felt it hit his chest like a rock then saw it fly back up to its
position and hover there. He was so focused on the wasp’s destruction that he
didn’t see the drop of blood forming over the pin-hole-sized wound the strike
left in his chest. A second later, he felt the fiery sting in the place where
it hit him, then the wasp flashed down and struck him again in the neck this
time. He batted wildly at it with both hands again and again as the wasp
attacked. He missed and missed; and, with each strike, he grew more inflamed
and frustrated until he wept like a child with rage.

He began fumbling, making
uncontrollable movements that caused him to stumble and bang into the walls as
he struck at the attacking wasp. Then, suddenly, he collapsed into a naked,
twitching heap on the chamber’s floor.

The wasp hovered and
waited until it could detect none of the big, fast, swishing movements. When it
was sure no big movement remained, it approached slowly and hovered just a few
inches over Phil’s body.

His rage was now
completely sealed, capped off in his paralyzed body. Seething with useless
fury, he watched the wasp land on his leg. From there, it began to scurry in
all directions over his body as if searching, hunting something. Devoid of all
tactile sensation, he watched it as if he were seeing it crawl over someone
else.

The wasp had won the
battle. He was the loser and was at the mercy of this alien insect. It could do
with him as it pleased, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He
expected it to start eating him any moment. The raging child in him bawled in
anger.

The wasp crawled to a spot
on his gut just below his navel and stopped there. It arched its abdomen high
and swung the tip of it until it was pointed straight down just a centimeter or
so from his skin. He watched helplessly as the female wasp’s needle-like
ovipositor made contact with his skin and pierced effortlessly. Deeper it sank
until its two-inch length was completely imbedded.

Eggs,
he thought with
horror.
The damn thing is laying its
eggs in my body.

In his
mind, he screamed.

Phil’s
heart beat faster, as reality, like that sickening needle, sank in.

Over the
next hour Phil watched helplessly as the wasp pierced him a hundred times or more
and deposited her eggs in him. In his arms, his legs, his groin, his chest, his
abdomen, the wasp planted egg after egg. It worked quickly and efficiently,
fearless in the unhuman knowledge that its victim was completely and totally
its own to use.

In spite of the paralysis,
he sometimes felt the slow, stiff pressure of the needle as it pierced him.

*
 
*
 
*

When Bailey whimpered,
Mary spooned closer to her and smelled the warm musk of her hair. There was no sexual
urge, no lust, just the comfort of one human body to another, and the contact
soothed them like a balm. Mary touched Bailey’s hair and pulled it gently back
from her ear. She saw a thin scar running straight in a lateral line from the
back of her ear to the base of her neck. That was unusual. They usually didn’t
have to cut quite that high. The scars were always so straight and so perfect
that they sometimes looked drawn on.

God,
they’re good at what they do,
she thought.

Mary noticed then, for the
first time, that Bailey wasn’t just attractive, but truly beautiful. In spite
of the condition of her coarse dark hair and the scars, she was a genuinely
lovely, young woman. She was in her early twenties, Mary guessed, and her face
possessed the strong, straight line of jaw that accompanies nearly all
beautiful faces; and her mouth, though not sensual in the extreme, was supple
and her lips full and generous. Mary rose up on one elbow with the sole purpose
of getting a more favorable view of Bailey’s beauty. It contrasted sharply with
the dismal surroundings and it refreshed her. She gently stroked Bailey’s hair.

Mary’s
libido had evaporated long ago. The stress and shock of captivity had boiled it
away. It wasn’t possible to endure the bizarre and alien torment of this place
and think of, much less do, anything other than stay alive. With all of her
resources spent on base subsistence, sex was a luxury her body just couldn’t
afford. No more now than a dim memory, the tint of sexual attraction added no
color to Mary’s vision of Bailey.

Oh, well,
she
thought
. You might have made my little
heart thump at one time.

Bailey
whimpered and her eyes fluttered. Mary knew that when she opened them she’d
puzzle over her surroundings or just draw a mental blank for awhile as her mind
denied the reality of where she was. Mary did that herself, even now.

You poor
thing,
Mary thought.
You’ll
wake up on board an alien starship in the arms of a woman, and it won’t be a
nightmare at all.

Bailey
opened her eyes and stared out at the brown wall. Mary could see the confusion
and panic grow in those bright eyes.

“No . . .
” Bailey said. Her voice was so soft Mary could barely hear it. Mary found
Bailey’s hand and held it.

“I know,”
she said.

“I’m
asleep, right?”

Mary
didn’t respond. The answer was too cruel. She knew by her silence, though, that
the brutal answer had been given nonetheless.

Bailey
started to pucker and her lower lip began to tremble. Mary pulled her closer;
and, when she did, she felt the walls she’d carefully built to protect and
shield herself from this world’s ugliness and pain crumble in the relentless
dull and alien light, and she cried for the first time since she’d been taken.

She sat up and rocked
Bailey gently and hummed to her and the tears streamed down.

*
 
*
 
*

Phil lay
limp on the floor of the chamber and watched the wasp perched on the wall
grooming itself. His drug-induced rage had diminished, but the feeling of
abject hatred he had for the insect and this place was alive and well. The wasp
scurried in a few meaningless circles, then crawled through the two- inch
diameter hole in the wall. The hole pinched and sealed shut, closing the wasp
back into the nest or jar or the hell it came from. Phil was relieved that it
was apparently finished with his body and gone, but he felt cheated of never
again having the remotest of chance to slowly smash it flat or burn it alive.

He
couldn’t see the heavy, irregular plate when it opened, but he heard it slide
and felt the warm, fresher air on his face around his eyes.

The hands
and arms that reached in and jerked him out of the cell were massive and
powerful. Phil was lifted up and turned around and over like a toy, and the
world on the other side of the cell’s plate flashed by as if he were on a carnival
ride. He saw a flash of human bodies by the dozens lying limp and saw alien
hardware hanging by attachments that stretched up toward lights. The face of
one of the root-like creatures flashed by. He got a glimpse of several more of
them working next to limp human bodies as he was hefted up.