Dominant Species Volume Two -- Edge Effects (Dominant Species Series) (42 page)

“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.”

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.