Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (41 page)

“Now what?” Mary asked. She hadn’t meant to challenge him with it,
but Phil was like a spring that was being wound tighter and tighter by the
minute, and she didn’t want to wind him up any more if she could help it. She
watched him working his fists: open, close, open, and close.

*
 
*
 
*

The physical modification, as horrible as it was, had made Gilbert
very sexually active. That could work to Bailey’s advantage, as she saw it.

She wanted him in the right frame of mind when she did her
witchcraft.

She’d once had a boyfriend, an attractive older man, whom she’d
liked very much and who was very verbal during sex. He’d taught her that saying
it and doing it were two sides of the same coin; and if you understood that,
you could add some exotic spice to the act of lovemaking. Sometimes, much more
than just spice.

Her early attempts at verbal lovemaking weren’t very inspired.
She was only seventeen at the time, and it hadn’t been easy for her to get into
it at first. But under his artful tutelage, expletives like, “Fuck me! Lick
me! Oh, fuck me!” were stretched and molded like warm taffy into long,
lascivious commentary, hissed or whispered thickly into her lover’s ear.

Most men she’d known since, including her husband Jim, were stiff,
silent lovers, barely issuing a grunt, let alone dripping the sexually
lubricating poetry she was capable of.

Jim had found her gift fascinating and amusing but had a
puritanical streak she’d never quite broken down, so she hadn’t had much
face-to-face practice since she’d been with that older man. Still, she hoped she
wouldn’t be too distracted by Gilbert’s physical presence. She would have to
have all of her senses present so there would be no escaping the tactile horror
of the mushy, fabricated body or avoiding the concentrated disgust his groping
sired. After thinking it through, she decided she could stoke it to the
required sexual temperature under the circumstances in spite of having him
right there physically.

She waited until he was on top of her before she began.

It started simply enough, just a verbal mirroring of the physical
act itself. From there she slowly embellished, tuned and polished it until his
physical pawing and pumping began to take on shadings of the erotic surreal in
his mind. The claws sank deep in his libido, pulling him by the nipples, down
the tunnel of her choosing. She alternately jerked then caressed him along,
laughing through wet, full lips at his fawning desire, making the words wetter
with each throaty chuckle delivered slowly or by some dirty secret gushed
quickly into his mouth or ear.

At the end of the steaming tunnel lay the voluptuous demon of her
fantasy—the exact manifestation of her purpose and the chosen form of her
fantastic succubus. Lying there wet and oiled smooth in the sexual slick of her
illusion, it turned its corpulent form toward them, rolling, sprawling
sensually, squirming hungrily to feed and suckle. Her claws sank deeper. She
pulled him to it teasingly, sensually and with her mouth open wide and her
tongue wagging naughtily, she fed him to the demon’s wet desire with a final
lick of her long, pointed tongue.

“Yesssss . . . .yessssss . . . .” he said and came and slumped as
if the very life had been sucked out of him.

He had, of course, no way of knowing that Bailey Hall, for the
last four years, or slightly more, had made a good living by providing phone
sex to a very appreciative and growing clientele. It had been Jim’s idea to
start the business.

Later, pretending to sketch idly, she produced a carefully
detailed drawing in three views of the phantasm she’d conjured and put it
playfully under Gilbert’s nose. His mouth drew into a line for just a second,
and he looked at it for a long time. When she looked at his thin dick, it was
standing straight up.

And so her plan was laid. She would become the phantasm. The
aliens would change her into it because twisted Gilbert wanted it so. The
madness of it made her giggle, and she leaned over and, with the insane smile
yet on her pursed lips, air-kissed Gilbert’s slack face from a foot away.

*
 
*
 
*

Ned wasn’t well. He was sallow and pale and sweating profusely,
all bad signs.

The grubs created short channels that filled with blood,
interstitial fluid and their own waste—a perfect medium for bacteria. The
bacteria, in turn, would create metabolites and other toxins that could poison
within hours. The aliens were careful to clean those channels and seal them
well, apparently aware of the potential of infection from such fetid pockets.
Phil had assumed that the fluid the aliens pumped into them during surgery
contained some short-term antibiotic to counteract the potential of infection.
Short term,
because they were still susceptible
to infection between surgeries. Proof of that had been provided by the death of
Tom Moon.

Ned had every sign of having an infection from a not-so-clean
channel; perhaps his surgeon had become careless. Phil conveyed his fears to
Mary. She had a slightly different diagnosis.

“What is it then?” Phil asked.

“They’ve left a worm inside him.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“Does he know it’s there?”

“Probably. If he doesn’t, he will. The goddamn thing’ll be trying
to bore out soon.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

They were losing time, and his band of rebels had been struck a blow
before they ever started. With Ned sick, or dead, they wouldn’t have enough
soldiers
to launch an attack.

They’d have to wait and hope Ned recovered. If he didn’t, they’d
have lost before they began.

“We have to do something for him,” Phil said.

“What? What are we supposed to do?”

“You’ve got some little tools don’t you? Little probes and awls
and such?”

“They’re not tools. I made them out of goddamn coat hangers.
They’re doodles—little nothings. I know what you need.”

Mary pounded back to the hole. Phil stepped over and looked in at
Ned. He was lying on his side, facing away from the opening. Completely
motionless, he could already have died.

“How are you feeling, buddy?” Phil said in the slightly loud voice
reserved for the sick.

Ned turned his head and eyes toward Phil, but couldn’t quite make
contact.

“Not so good,” he said. “I’m really sick.”

He paused and let his head come back to rest on his arm. “Is it
what I think it is?”

There was no sense trying to hide the truth. Like Mary said, he’d
know soon enough. Phil climbed up into the hole and knelt down beside him.
“Mary thinks it’s a worm,” he said gently. “But we don’t know for sure.”

Ned coughed and pulled up his shirt exposing his huge side. Moving
slowly, his fingers felt a slightly inflamed area over a recent scar. His voice
was low and measured.

“That’s it right there. That’s where it is. When I feel it, I can
feel the sonofabitch move. He’s not very deep. You gonna dig it out?”

“Are you up to it?”

“I don’t know, I guess so. What the hell’s one more, eh?”

“We don’t have the right tools. It’ll be even rougher than what
you’re used to.”

Ned thought about it and tried to smile. “If you can handle it, I
can handle it,” he said.

Mary called Phil out of the chamber with a quiet summons. She
dropped the four little
tools
into
his hand then held up what Phil thought at first was a small piece of paper.

“I found this in a shaving kit in the dump a long time ago,” she
said. “There was only one. I was saving it for myself, you know, to do this
very thing if I had to—or something.”

It was a double-edged razor blade, wrapped in translucent paper.
Phil hadn’t seen one like it in years. He had a sudden vision of the dop kit it
must have come from, an old, worn, fold-open type, with a cracked plastic
liner, the property of an old and frugal gentleman. Darrel Dwight probably had
one like it. He lifted the edge of the wrapper and was greeted with a glint of
light off an edge of infinite sharpness.

“And there’s this,” she said and held up a little plastic sewing
kit with lengths of thread of various colors, as well as several needles. “You
can sew him up with some of this.”

“Go down to the clothes dump and get something clean to use for
bandages,” he said.

“Clean?”

“Do your best.”

*
 
*
 
*

A thin breech opened in the dark fortress of her madness, and the
light of clarity shined briefly through. The light fell on her twisted thoughts
and unraveled them like pale fingers on knotted rope.

Oh, God
help me. I don’t want this,
Bailey’s mind said
.

Her voice failed to respond.

She thought she was lying down, but didn’t know for sure. There
were weird and frightening surgical tools all around; most she’d never seen
before. Some were hanging on what looked like cords and some seemed to float in
the air. She’d never been in this chamber before. Not even her vivid
imagination could have conjured its dark and alien horror.

She was aware of being stretched out, spread-eagle. There was a
line of sharp pain running down her arms and on the inside of her legs. Her
palms stung as if scalded.

Don’t.
Please don’t.

There was motion all around and the familiar flash of thin alien
fingers here and there. They brought the odd machinery to her body, and it
hissed or hummed or stung her like fire, then vanished to be replaced by
another dreadful thing to sting or pinch or burn, again and again.

She felt a buzzing at the base of her skull, and her teeth
chattered from the vibrations. She knew they were entering her head and doing
something to her brain, maybe through just a little hole.

Stop.
Stop. Stop.

Finally, they were done and a goon lifted her and carried her to a
tank against one wall and unceremoniously dropped her in it. Still paralyzed,
she sank down into the pale fluid, totally submerged until a goon’s thick hand
lifted her head up out of it. The goon grasped a vine hanging over the tank;
and when it did, the end of the vine came alive in a tangle of flailing tentacles.
When it brought the tentacles in contact with her head, they wrapped around it.
Wrapped tight, they held her up and kept her from drowning in the thick fluid.
She felt the familiar crawling sensation right away. The things covered her
arms and legs in a thick squirming mass.

As she lay there, the pain slowly subsided from her limbs like the
heat of a summer day and left the just-right temperature of dusk. From time to
time, an alien would come and examine her body with what she took to be a view
scope submerged in the fluid.

She drifted and slept.

The goon returned, and, gripping the vine just right, caused it to
release the tentacles enveloping her head. She watched them flail wildly as the
goon moved the vine out of the way.

The goon lifted her roughly out of the tank and put her down on
her feet. There was a dripper in one wall, and the goon poked her toward it.
She moved dreamily to it and was glad to step in it and feel the familiar
sensation of clean water on her skin.

When she passed her hand over the back of her forearm to wipe it,
an action she’d performed perhaps ten thousand or more times, the hand stuck to
the arm as if glued there. The sensation startled her, and she made it let go
with a flash of her will, an act that surprised her further. She turned her
hand over to look and, there, attached to her palm, as if it had always been
there, was a soft and smooth, cup-like sucker, almost as broad as the hand
itself. The memory of the reason she was in the lab in the first place made her
bark a quick laugh.

She turned her arms over and saw the neat row of
silver-dollar-sized suckers along the inside of each arm. She looked down at
her torso and saw the random cluster of suckers on her belly starting just
under her breasts. Another straight row ran along the front of each thigh.
Turning her thighs outward one at a time, she confirmed the alien’s compliance
with the last aspect of the design specification:
dual rows of brownish suckers on the inside of each leg, running from
her crotch to the back of each strong calf in a graceful sweep.