Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (32 page)

The seam
at the far end of the chamber bloomed open and the alpha came through it
flanked by two other aliens. They came right to Gilbert and began to examine
him carefully, touching his arms and scrutinizing his new incisions. Gilbert
just stared forward and let them know with his face that he did not fear being
touched so. They lifted his arms up over his head and exposed his white ribs.
To this also, he stared.

I must
let them know I am not afraid,
he thought.
God’s will be done. I shall fear not.

Even the
alpha’s rustling voice failed to influence the blank stare.

“You said
your word
weather
,” the alpha rasped.
“What do you know of the weather?”

Without
making eye contact with the alien, Gilbert Keefer said what he had rehearsed
for days in his mind.

“My God
has given me all knowledge about the Earth’s weather.”

The alpha
studied the blank face. “Tell me of the weather,” it said.

The next
line had been rehearsed, too. So much so that Gilbert could have said it
backwards. He stared, refusing to look at the demon’s face.

“My God
will make a pact with you, and I will be the agent of His will.”

The
aliens rasped and rustled at each other for a moment, leaving Gilbert propped
on his scrawny knees, staring like a sphinx.

“What is
this pact?” the alpha asked, turning toward Gilbert.

“The true
believers must be spared your wrath as foretold.”

The
aliens rustled.

“It is
not possible,” the alpha said with a note of alien impatience. It held up its index
finger. The sheath peeled back revealing the stinger. “How would we know these
believers as you say?”

“My God
shall call them with my voice as His trumpet.”

“You will
choose?”

“As the
agent of my God, I will choose.”

“How many
of these types will you choose?”

“One
thousand.”

“And this
one thousand you and your god will keep?”

“Yes.
They will be the seed of a rebirth and a testament to the glory of my God
forever and always.”

The
aliens moved away and rustled and rasped at each other for some minutes.
Gilbert saw this as a good sign and thanked God for his good fortune. He looked
over at the writhing ornaments on the ledge and almost smiled.

The alpha
moved back, leaving the others standing apart. When he did, Gilbert rotated his
head back to the forward position, in perfect timing with the alien’s arrival.

“How much
space is needed for you and this one thousand?” it rasped.

“One
continent only,” the sphinx said.

“Which
continent?”

The next line
was also rehearsed. It was, to be sure, the most important one. Without looking
at the alien demon, Gilbert Keefer spoke the words his God had placed in his
care and his voice was as smooth as warm grease.

“The one
thousand shall inhabit the place called North America within the borders of
latitude 10 degrees South to 60 degrees north and longitude 130 degrees West to
50 degrees East. This shall be holy land and sacrosanct. It shall be the home
of the living God. As the agent of my God, I shall have all dominion over it,
and its resources, and all that lives therein.”

Having
said it, he allowed himself just the slightest hint of a smile. It was so
small, he was sure it didn’t show.

*
 
*
 
*

Cut me you fucker,
Bailey thought.
See if I care. Someday
I’ll get you—you and you’re fucking sisters, too.

She
watched the spinning light of the cutter’s blade contact the flesh of her leg
and part it cleanly. The pain rushed over her like flame.

Fuck you!
She cried in her mind.
Fuck you!

For ten
hours she endured. She watched her body disassembled and reassembled by the
spider-like hands of an alien being she could scarcely comprehend, and she
raged silently at it to die, to burn alive and die.

Later, as
she drifted in the soaker, her mind cooled and stilled enough to regain some
focus. She floated and let the little crawlers chew at the wasted tissue and
glue around the incisions. She had nothing against the crawlers except that
they were part of the ship. That was enough.

She
imagined dropping each one into boiling water like little lobsters and wondered
if they’d scream. She decided they would and indulged and embellished the
fantasy by scooping the little screamers out of the steaming pot with a strainer
and eating them until she was full. What she didn’t cook and eat, she casually
mashed flat one at a time on the heavy wooden cutting board with the round part
of a large kitchen spoon. She would stop from time to time and scoop the mush
off the table then plop it down the whirring garbage disposal.

Ha ha.

She saved
the best for the witch that cut her open and probed her flesh.

In this
fantasy, the witch could not die permanently, but was reborn after each hideous
death, with the memory of the last torment as a prelude to the next. Sometimes
she would kill it slowly and painfully and deliberately, using tools from her
dad’s toolbox; sometimes quickly and violently with clubs and iron pipes.
Sometimes, just for sport, she would chase it from a jeep driven by a smiling
Mary and whack at its ugly head and back with a baseball bat. Her favorite was
putting an imagined strong and specialized bio-engineered hand up its ass and
turning it literally inside out.

Yum.

I will
escape. I will escape and live. My hatred will allow it. My hatred will sustain
me.

The seam
finally opened and the vine extracted her from the pale fluid. It dropped her
wet and slippery body onto the rubbery floor of the chamber. She struggled up
onto her hands and knees then craned her neck out as the black tendrils wrapping
her face and head fluttered away. When the thick vine slid out of her gullet
she twisted her neck and undulated her head to rid herself of it.

She
collapsed there, and splayed naked, she slept.

When she
awoke, she was looking at the enormous foot of a big bastard just inches from
her face. She flinched away from it and sat up, drawing herself into a wet
knot. The goon was an especially nasty one. Its huge arms were covered with
tattoos stretched tight like evil drawings on a balloon.

She
didn’t see him at first because he was mostly hidden by the big bastard. He was
staring off into space, not looking at her. He still didn’t look at her when he
spoke.

“That
could be the last time you have to go through that,” Gilbert Keefer said.

The big
bastard stared at Bailey’s naked form through the deep pits that housed its
eyes. Like a rusty key, her shape fit into an old slot in some recess of its
brain and, turning there, released a hot draft of anger.

*
 
*
 
*

The hose
was one of those reinforced green ones, all coiled up with the cardboard
packaging still wired to it. Fifty feet in length. Kink-less. Guaranteed.

Ned
slipped the hose over his arm and joined his hand to

Phil’s on
the opener. Phil looked over his shoulder and saw two or three faces staring
blankly at him from the holes lining the tube. He recognized them, but had
never spoken to any of them. They didn’t speak English, anyway. He had a pang
of conscience about not including anyone else in the escape plans, but it was just
as well. They couldn’t save them all. They’d be lucky to save themselves.

They had
Bailey’s highly detailed map to guide them. The route would take them to the
far side of the section where Ned and Bailey found the shuttle-bay.

Ned went
into the tunnel first, saying he’d check it out since he knew what to look for.
He was sweating profusely from the long crawl. On his hands and knees and
rolling the coiled hose ahead, he started in, grunting just a little with each
roll of the hose. Phil hoped to hell he wouldn’t roll it off into the shuttle-bay.
When he was about halfway to the end, they heard the rush of air that signaled
the opening of the vents. A moment later, they could see the far chamber walls
flooded with light reflected from the Earth below—just as Bailey had described
it. The light brought into sharp relief the irregular surface and left
upward-streaking shadows.

They
crammed themselves together in the end of the tunnel and watched and waited.
The arriving shuttle opened up like a bizarre shell, just like Bailey’s report.
The opening pointed roughly in their direction, and Phil trained the binoculars
on it to try to see into the interior. Suddenly, a patch of color flashed past
his field of view. It was so close-up he had to put the binoculars down to get
the thing into perspective. Mary and Ned saw it, too.

“Oh,
God,” Mary said.

It was a
young woman, perhaps twenty, dressed in a bright red sleeveless top and neon green
shorts. She was in running shoes, and had a sweat band around her head.
Apparently the drug didn’t take or have much effect because she was wide awake
and in full control of her motor functions.

Phil
could imagine it. One minute she was enjoying her youth and vigor and the
beauty of nature—then
whap.
Now here she was, surrounded by giant bugs and creatures that looked more like
tumors than people. She sprinted to the bottom of the ramp and continued full
speed until she was stopped by the large window separating the air lock from
the rest of the chamber. She ran along it, looking for any way out, any escape.
She didn’t get far. One of the big bastards, moving at a surprising speed,
overtook her with a giant hand on her shoulder like a parent catching a running
child. It spun her around and raised a huge hand, continuing the strange
impression of child and abusive parent. The woman shook her head then covered
it with her arms.

The blow
came with such ferocity Phil could almost feel the shock of it from where he
was. It knocked her sideways and sent her to the ground as if she’d been hit
with a tree limb. She didn’t move. Nothing could have lived through such a
blow.

“Jesus .
. .” Mary said.

“Bastards,”
Ned added.

The goon
picked her up like a limp doll and threw her over its shoulder.

They
watched as the big bastards carried six more human captives out of the shuttle
in net bags. Then the four of them; two from the shuttle and the two bay
operators, dragged a complete, paralyzed steer down the ramp. Over the next
fifteen minutes, they hauled three more steers down and out of the shuttle-bay.
The gruesome process wasn’t neat, automated or mechanically assisted in any
way, but it was brutishly effective. The unwieldy cargo was off-loaded solely
by the muscle and strength of the chemically modified stevedores. They were
perfectly suited to the task. If you needed intelligence, enormous strength,
yet, some digital dexterity for finer manipulations, and good sight and
hearing—then the flesh, bone, and brain of Homo sapiens made perfect stock to
start with. Beef up the strength, prune and modify the brain and you’d be
there. Perfect slaves.

“They’ve
done this before,” he said in a whisper to Mary. “They know exactly what
they’re doing. They’re entire technology is designed to exploit—destroy. It’s
their reason for being.”

“They
have no remorse,” she replied. “None. Our pain and suffering means nothing to
them.”

Dead
serious, shaking his head, Ned whispered in, “That’s the scary part, they really
are one-sided in their thinking.”

At that,
Phil wanted to smile and exchanged looks with Mary.

“I guess
I didn’t say that exactly right,” Ned said, seeing the exchange.

Below,
the last goon walked out of the shuttle-bay, and the large seam squeezed closed.

They tied
the hose around Ned’s midsection and knotted it. After discussing the hose and
trying two or three ways to hold it, Ned settled on lying on his back with his
legs pressing firmly against the ceiling of the little tunnel. Thus wedged, he
could hold it easily. Phil would go first, being heaviest, while Ned and Mary
held the hose.

He didn’t
have the gear to rappel, and so went down hand over hand. Wrapping the hose
over one foot and under the other, he used his feet as a break. He’d explained
to Mary how to break like that, and even demonstrated it, but when she actually
got out into space she couldn’t quite get the hose folded into the required
loop around her feet. Cussing and grunting, she slid fast down the hose with it
clamped tightly between her legs.

“Whatever
works,” Phil said as he caught her.

Ned
pulled the hose back up and out of sight, then peeked out and waved. Phil waved
back.