Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (39 page)

“How’s ‘is?” he asked, very pleased with himself. It was an
irregular wooden needle about three inches long. It was thick, but tapered to a
sharp point.

“Great. Make as many as you can.”

Phil was looking for anything long and rod like that had some
flexibility—something that would make a suitable bow. Nothing popped out at him
from the pile. He dug down into it, determined to move the whole mess in his
quest, tossing the stuff behind him and to each side. There was little in the
way of the required shape. Nothing, that is, until he put his hand on the
perfect alternative—a thick, black, rubber bungee cord about twelve inches
long. He held it up and tested its elasticity.

Perfect.

With this as the propulsive force, any rigid arc to string it
across would suffice. He looked around and settled again on the aluminum chair.
He stripped off the sun-rotted nylon straps that acted as the back, then
muscled the back away from the seat where it attached. What he had left was a
three-sided tubular bow, the ends of which had a convenient hole for the metal
hooks of the bungee cord.

He mounted the bungee by its hooks through each hole in the arms
of the bow, pulled it back as far as he dared and let it go. The device
responded with a deep
thrump.
It wasn’t real snappy or fast, but Phil was sure it would launch
an arrow of the right weight at least a hundred feet, maybe farther, with some
degree of accuracy.

Arrows.

“Skip that for now,” he said. “Look for something we can make
arrows out of. Anything straight, thin, round, light.”

They both started digging and throwing stuff helter-skelter, looking
for material that might work.

Ned thought it was a grate of some kind at first, but when he
cleared the crap away from it, he realized it was one of those little carts, or
service things, that go in the corner that people put drinks and glasses on. He
took hold of it and wrestled it up out of the pile. He carried it over into a
clear spot and put it down.

The cart was about three feet wide by three tall and about two
feet deep. It had three shelves and there were wheels attached to the legs.
The shelves were made out of dowels that were the length of the shelves and
about three-eighths of and inch in diameter. The dowels were close together and
ran through holes in several support members running across each shelf. In
short, the entire cart was made up almost entirely of three-foot-long,
three-eighth inch, perfectly round, straight arrows.

“I’ll be damned,” Phil said.

“Pretty good, huh?”

“You bet. Let’s take it apart.”

A few minutes later, they had a pile of perhaps a hundred
featherless arrows. They were a little thicker and heavier than Phil would have
liked, but their size presented a secondary benefit: they could also be thrown
like spears.

They didn’t have a way to sharpen the tips. The only knife they’d
ever seen was the little pen-knife Gilbert had stabbed Tom Moon with so they
still had to use the oak slivers as arrow heads. Phil liked that idea because
he was sure the tips would get good penetration on flesh. In addition, the tips
were modular, and could be attached to anything, could even be used as booby
traps.

All that was missing was a way to fletch the arrows. They tested a
couple against the wall, and Phil was pleased with the somewhat slow but true
flight he got out of them. They decided fletching wouldn’t be an absolute
requirement at short range.

Once Ned got the hang of it, he was able to rip off splinters that
were fairly uniform in size and shape. A couple of hours later, they’d
fashioned about thirty arrows with wicked arrowheads wired to them. Most had at
least two splinters attached. Some had three tips wired into a sinister looking
tri-tip that Phil called those
Bastard
Busters
. Ned thought that was funny.
Bastard
Busters
. . . he repeated through a smile.

Next, Phil tore off the leg off a pair of jeans and knotted the
end. Then he looped a belt through one of the remaining loops to make a quiver.
He put the arrows in it and slung it over his shoulder.

With the makeshift bow, arrows and quiver, he was equipped with
the goofiest weaponry he’d ever seen. He’d done better as a kid with the stuff
in the garage. The only thing that kept him from laughing at the rig was the
knowledge that the poison that would go onto the tips of these improvised
arrows was as deadly as hell.

They spent the next several hours making more arrows and wound up
with a large plastic baggie with dozens of more splinters as extras. Once that
was done, they took it all back to Ned’s chamber to begin what Phil knew would
be the dicey and arduous process of coating the slivers with poison from the
backs of the frogs.

It took some practice, and Phil was sure that the first few had a
highly variable amount of poison on them. He didn’t want to injure the frogs by
rubbing the rough splinters over their skin too hard, but he wanted to make
sure he made good contact. He finally decided that a moderate amount of
pressure was necessary, and it didn’t seem to bother them too much. With the
particularly rough slivers, though, he dabbed them against the frog rather
than swiped it. He worried about those and put them in a separate pile and had
Ned mark them heavily with bands of ink down at the base. He used one frog for
about half the slivers then switched frogs. When he was just about finished, he
noticed that there was no feeling in the finger he was using to hold the frogs
down with. He was glad when he finished the last one. He wasn’t at all sure how
much poison could be safely absorbed through the finger tip with no ill
effects.

*
 
*
 
*

The impregnation and extraction process seemed to affect Mary
worst of all. As far as Phil could tell, she’d played host the most times. When
she stumbled into the tube, he helped her to her chamber and fed her. She lay
down on the bed, and he covered her with a light sheet. Her shirt was
unbuttoned, and Phil saw the near solid mass of fine, straight scars over her
torso. He could tell the new ones because they were the pale, reddish ones. She
twitched and mumbled for a while then slept soundly and Phil managed to get a
few winks in himself. He was glad this would be the last time for her. He
wasn’t sure she could take it again.

Much to his surprise, she woke up fully alert and renewed.

“Gimme a smoke,” she said.

Phil shook one out of his pack and lit it for her, then drew back
a blanket and showed her the weapons.

“Nice. Your kid make those?”

“Funny.”

Mary sniffed, then took a deep drag on the cigarette.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

That was a problem.

*
 
*
 
*

The new chamber Bailey shared with Gilbert was big and had several
sub-chambers and other accoutrements:
 
its own dripper, something like a small grotto, a small storage area,
and the raised ledge all around the biggest chamber. It also had its own view
port, an irregular window about the size of a garbage can lid in the floor of
one of the sub-chambers.

Bailey wanted to live. She wanted to be on the Earth again, to
walk on it and feel it under her feet—to smell it. This time she could see
California. There was some cloud cover and the angle wasn’t too good, but she
could make out what she thought was a smooth and shiny little patch that should
have been Lake Isabella. From there she looked south and found what she thought
was the minute area that might have been Haight Canyon and wondered if her husband’s
body was still down there. They’d been careful about not being seen when they
went there to camp, so it was possible it was still there, rotting in the heat
of the tent.

Her anger boiled up again and she breathed deep to cool it.

The chamber had its own seam; and when she heard it open she
turned toward it, prepared to smile her best welcome home smile.

It took her five full seconds to realize she was looking at
Gilbert Keefer. She could tell because his Gilbert Keefer face was stuck on the
front of the thing’s head like a too-small mask.

She’d always known that the world was full of strange fruit, but
she hadn’t realized until that moment just how strange some of that fruit could
be.

He must have given them a picture from a book in the dump as a
model—like you’d carry a picture from a magazine to the hair stylist to copy a
hair style.

It was not a good cut.

The color was right, and she guessed he’d forgotten to tell them
not to make him marble white because he was. The legs were too big, not
muscular big, just big—and the calves were disproportionately small. The chest
was broad and flat with big round plates where the pectoral muscles should have
been. The arms were short, and she swore that one was far shorter than the
other.

She’d seen pictures of Greek and Roman statues in those heavily
muscled, relaxed poses. She’d studied art some and had taken a class on
sculpture. She remembered about the relaxed
S
-shape that was a big deal with the sculptors at some point in
time.

It was that stance that did it; that was the tip off. Gilbert had
had himself modified into a bizarre facsimile of a Greek statue. His intention
was undoubtedly to get the spirit of the look, not the letter of it.

He was standing there as if to be admired with a look of pride
just barely evident. His head was cast to the side at an angle to help the
overall look along, but Bailey saw him glance at her to measure her reaction.

Bailey’s mouth dropped open. The thing that chilled her most was
that he’d had it done not to instill revulsion, but to reduce it. He’d failed
horribly.

Standing there like a ghastly work of art, he waited for her to
speak. While he waited, he swallowed with his mouth open. Bailey saw that
horrible gesture and screamed at the top of her lungs.

When he moved toward her, she could see that the right arm was in
fact three or four inches longer than the left. His pelvis had also been
modified, because he walked strangely, as if his customized physiology was
trying to maintain that
S
-shape
during locomotion. It produced the most hideous gait Bailey could imagine,
something between a limp and a rolling twist that heightened the freakish look.
Watching him move, she realized that the engineers had mistakenly converted
the perspective; they’d interpreted the stance and the arm length literally
from a two-dimensional picture. He still had his too-big aviator, tinted
glasses on.

She raised her hands to her face and screamed into them again.

He moved to within touching distance and reached out and took hold
of her wrists. His hands were the same narrow, long-fingered hands he’d had
before, now attached to thicker wrists and forearms. The death-colored hands
pulled hers down away from her face. When she realized that he had to twist his
torso so that the shorter arm could reach her, her terror turned to cackling,
hysterical laughter.

“Don’t
you know . . . one of your goddamned arms . . . is too short,” she laughed.
“They fucked up . . . your arms . . .

“Stop
laughing,” the little face in the head said. “Stop laughing or I’ll kill you.”

“Go
ahead, you fucker,” she said laughing. “I don’t give a shit.” She tried to
wrench her arms free, but couldn’t. “You fucking freak. You fucking . . .
fucking . . . freak . . .”

She
stopped struggling then lifted her head and laughed loudly. The statue grabbed
her hair and shook her head back and forth violently. The laugher changed to
screams of pain, and she reached up and grabbed hold of his arms. The statue’s
flesh was cooler than it should have been and was not quite substantial—as if
he was wearing a water-filled covering—like some strange “statue suit” for
Halloween night.

He held
her up by her hair and drew his face closer to hers. The aliens hadn’t remedied
his rancid breath, and she closed her eyes and held her own breath against it.

“Isn’t
this what you . . . wanted?” he asked smoothly.

Bailey
kept her eyes and mouth clamped shut, blocking out the hideous vision and its
scent.

“Open
your eyes.”

He shook
her head and issued a silent, open-mouthed protest. He continued to shake, and
knowing it was useless to resist, she finally gave up and opened her eyes.
Insulting him further wouldn’t help any, either. She looked into the sagging
eyes in that white mask and made herself smile.