Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (40 page)

“I like
it,” she said as if she really did.

Gilbert
turned his head slowly away and stared placidly into space as if he’d just had
his tummy rubbed. He wanted to believe it, to hear the words. Bailey was amazed
and sickened.

All I
have to do,
she
thought
, is say the words. It’s always the same.

“I do, I like it—really,” she added sweetly.

He let go of her wrists and put one wiry hand up her blouse. It
found her left breast, clamped there and squeezed. The sensation made her whirl
with nausea.

They’d made him stronger by far, and she could sense it in his
grip. There would be no slapping him away like a fly this time.

“Take off your . . . clothes,” he said thickly.

The thought of standing naked and awash in the freak’s lust was
almost too much for her.

“I’m really not in the mood, my king,” she said hopefully.

He took up another gather of her hair and pulled it tight. He
would have his way this time. He looked at her full mouth and was overcome with
the lustful desire to suck it. He pulled her head close and kissed her.

It felt like having her face pushed into something rotten. His
mouth was wet with spit and splayed open like the thick petals of a stinking
flower.

When he tried to probe her mouth with his tongue, she could easily
have mistaken it for a thin, weak worm.

The tongue bumped into her clenched teeth time and again, trying
to get inside her mouth and she resolved not to let the nasty thing in at all
costs. He could fuck her, paw her, rub his hands over her tits and lick and
fuck her ass, but he would have to break her jaw to get his nasty tongue in her
mouth. That went for his dick, too.
No way.

She let him fumble with her clothes until he got them off. She
kept her eyes open but didn’t see much as he panted and groped her and lay his
cool, freak’s body on hers. She’d been raped before as a teen and knew he’d be
finished soon. He’d pump her and paw her and roll her around and pump her some
more until he came and then his lust would shut off as if from a faucet.

What was
it to get raped, anyway
? She thought
. I’ve been through worse things. Go ahead and fuck me, you
bastard. You just wait.

Gilbert Keefer penetrated her with a nearly inaudible grunt and
joined the ethereal ranks of fantasy victims that Bailey Hall cut, burned,
shot, beat and hanged in endless variety.

Just wait.

*
 
*
 
*

He’d had her, rolled her around, pumped her and slobbered on her,
all the while squeezing her with his spider hands and then, he’d fallen asleep.
During the entire ordeal, she’d taken her mind and her senses and fled to her
fantasy world, leaving her vacated body behind for his horrid pleasure.

Her mind and her body re-united like gentle sisters. When they
merged completely, and she was whole again, she could feel the statue’s warm,
musky breath on her neck and her mind knew the disgust of it.

She inched away from him and got up from the broad flat ledge that
was the bed. She turned and looked down at the freakish thing that had just
fucked her and felt her mouth pinch up in disgust. The too-small face was still
slack-jawed, and in sleep, hung askew as if the loose jaw had come unhinged
completely. Mouth open wide, the thing’s eyes twitched and it mouth-breathed
through some unfathomable dream, she was sure, of unspeakable and nasty things.

She was tempted to find something to kill him with; to bring to
vivid fruition just one of those sweet fantasies she’d conjured while he fucked
her. But she knew if she did, she’d be right back where she started from or
worse. No, she would bend and adapt; she would accept even the unacceptable for
now.

She brought her finger to within a millimeter of one of his closed
eyes and stiffened it like a dagger. Holding the finger in check, she played
through the fantasy in her mind and felt the finger go into his eye socket. The
warm fluid squirted and caressed her finger as she twisted it, formed it into a
hook and pulled the eye from his head. “Just wait,” she whispered.

She stepped into the dripper and let the lukewarm water rain down
on her. She wiped her arms, face and legs with the water and felt the stuff
he’d left on her come away like dirt and run down the drains. She indulged
another of her vengeful, but somewhat less brutal fantasies while she squatted
and relieved herself. “Sonofabitch . . .” she muttered. She put the ugly thoughts
of him aside and forced herself to think about what to do.

She wished she knew more about science, or biology or
physio-whatever.

Gilbert had been given the run of the ship and could go wherever
he wanted, even without the big bastard tailing along. There were seams Gilbert
called
security
seams
at key junctures, but they didn’t stop Gilbert. As long as
Gilbert was with her, she could go, too. He’d showed her some parts of the ship
as if he was giving her a tour of his workplace. He was very bright about such
things, she discovered, and he wasted no time in letting her know just how
bright he really was.

Lo and behold, they’d run right into the shuttle bay on one such
excursion. He’d told her all about that, too. She had a good silent laugh over
that.

It was the thing Gilbert called the
nerve bundle
that was really interesting. It was located in the
widest tube she’d ever seen.

“That’s its
spinal column
,”
he’d said.

“What’s spinal column?”

“The ship’s . . . spinal column.”

It was like a giant tangle of roots about three feet in diameter
that ran along the floor of the tube then sank into it about fifty feet down
from where they’d been. She couldn’t tell where it went from there. When they
were there looking at it, she’d reached down and touched it, feeling the energy
course along it, and Gilbert had a fit, yanking her hand off it like she was a
kid reaching for a hot pan.

“How do you know that’s what it is?” she’d asked.

Gilbert just smiled, just barely smiled. He was so in love with
his secrets.

She knew when she saw it that it would be possible to cripple or
kill the entire ship if she could damage that thing good enough. That convinced
her. That ugly mass of alien rope, if damaged, would stop it all; would stop
the pain; would stop the killing. She’d thought about sneaking down and hacking
it in two, but she had no tools. They were careful not to allow anything big
and sharp in the ship.

She made notes about everything. Her blue notebook was her
constant companion.

She’d drawn the routes to each area from memory and was pretty
sure she’d gotten them right. That took a lot of doing—some of the maps made a
real jumble on the paper. From where she was, she could get to any part of the
ship she knew about. She was fairly sure she could get back to the tube where
Mary, Phil and Ned were, but she couldn’t go alone—not yet. If she got caught,
she’d be fucked for good.

Phil would know what to do to the nerve bundle if she could just
tell him where it was and how to get to it. The problem was that Phil was in
another part of the ship and getting to him wouldn’t be easy. She’d have to
plan it out. First, she’d have to get Gilbert to pull some strings so she could
wander around on her own.

There was still the problem of opening the seams between here and
there since she didn’t have enough physical mass to work the security openers
alone. Some openers were easier to work, like the one that controlled the seam
for their chamber. It only took one person to open, and Gilbert could open any
seam, even the ones to the labs with a single touch. She didn’t understand just
how, but they must have given him some special access privilege.

She’d studied and studied her maps and thought she’d figured out
an alternate route; one that would take her to the shuttle bay without having
to open a single security seam. If she could get there and scale the wall to
the little access tube, she could make her way to the back seam of Phil’s
tube—all without being seen—maybe. Once she got there, it might be possible to
make enough noise for someone to hear her and let her in. The walls were thick
but not that thick and Mary’s cell was right there at the seam. It was a long
shot—but worth it.

The problem was the high wall in the shuttle bay. It was a simple
physical obstruction, nothing fancy. It might as well have been Mount Everest.

Think,
damn you . . . how can I do it? How? Find a way, Bailey. Find a way.

The answer came to her in the form of a bizarre image from the
dark reaches of her fantasy mind. She smiled at first because it was so funny
and weird, then she stared and focused and turned its strange form and weighed
it and made her decision.

Fuck it,
I’ll do it. I’ll fucking do it.

She’d do it for her dead husband Jim and for her sister and for
her father and for all the other people she didn’t want to see die. She’d do it
because she hated this ship and Gilbert and the alien things that hurt her so
much it burned her very soul.

Having made up her mind, she grinned. Then she lifted her head and
let the water fall on her face. It felt just like a rainstorm in the dripper.
The dark brown ceiling was covered with little black nipples that dripped the
water. It was the strangest thing, but kinda cool, too. She wished she’d
thought of it.

*
 
*
 
*

Using the few arrows they had left without tips, they practiced
throwing and shooting them at paper targets. Ned was pretty good. At the end of
the practice, he could hit a sheet of notebook paper fifteen feet away half the
time. And Mary, a bigger surprise, hurled the darts with a savageness and
accuracy that amazed them.

You just
never knew who could do what,
Phil thought
.

Phil found it hard to hit the targets with the bow. The range was
certainly better than throwing by hand, but his accuracy wasn’t too hot. It
felt like just what it was to shoot, and he accepted its obvious shortcomings.
He’d have to live with them.

If Phil had had his way, he would have spent the next week
improving the weapons, practicing, and learning to work as a team. He didn’t
think they had a week.

Later, when the hiss came at the opening, they looked at each
other and asked, “who’s next?” without saying a word. Phil glanced over at the
blanket that covered the weapons.

“Well, it ain’t Mary, she just got back,” Ned said. “How the fuck
do they know whose next, anyway? Fuck, it’s gotta be me. Right? Right? It’s my
turn.”

“I’m beginning to think it’s completely up to the discretion of
the goons,” Phil said.

“Ain’t that a bitch,” Ned said. “And I haven’t sucked up to a
single one of them.”

He got up and went to the opening and hopped down. He was right.
It was his turn. The big prick pushed him down the tube like he was a sixty
pound kid instead of a two hundred and fifty pound man.

Phil leaned against the opening and watched them stop at another
chamber down the tube. A small Asian woman climbed slowly down out of it and
folded her arms nervously. Her hair was long and stringy. She was thin and
pale—a perfect waif.

Fucking
bastards,
Phil thought
. Just
go, lady.

The goon nudged her, and Phil saw her face scrunch up into a cry.
She just stood there crying silently with her arms folded like a frustrated
child.
  
Phil wanted to go down and hold
her for a moment, to tell her it would be all right—even if it were a lie. The
goon shoved her again. Reluctantly, she turned and walked toward the forward
seam. She put her head down, and Phil could tell that she was still crying.

Phil looked at the huge, retreating shape of the goon and felt his
heart pound with the desire to reduce it to a bloody heap. He tried to calm
himself by clenching and unclenching his fists.

Losing Ned put their plans—what there was of them— back at least
twelve hours, maybe more.