Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (43 page)

14

Following her plan, she’d taken five loops now, and hadn’t run
into any opposition. She was well into the areas that were off limits, but she
didn’t care. She was on edge, twitchy. She felt as if the walls themselves were
somehow aware of her trespass. At the last juncture she’d past, her feet went
cold when she glimpsed her own shadow cast in an unexpected place.

She checked her watch.

She had no way of knowing exactly how many loops she had to
traverse before she came to the last one. If she were right, that one would
terminate at the central tube just in front of the opening to the shuttle bay.

She’d passed many openings that were clamped shut with seams, and
she wondered briefly what was behind them; but she left to her active
imagination alone the gruesome discoveries those chambers promised. The chamber
coming up ahead, however, gave her no choice but to view the contents
firsthand. The large seam was bloomed open. The sound of alien machinery buzzed
and hissed out of the chamber like angry, biting flies.

The tube she was in measured close to twelve feet in diameter. The
opening to the chamber was easily ten feet wide itself; the largest she’d seen.
She looked around for another option and found nothing. If she was going to
make it to the shuttle bay she had to go right past it. She moved slowly up to
the edge of the opening and peeked inside.

She’d never actually seen it before, so it took her a moment to
match it up to the description Mary gave of it. She felt the actual sight of
it, the reality of it, bounce off her belief system like a flat stone off
water then slowly, inexorably sink in. She felt herself blanch and she leaned
on the wall for balance.

There was living material, bits and pieces and chunks and strips
of living things all over the lab. Some of it hung in odd racks, neatly, like
samples. The flattish table structures were covered with it; and as she scanned
the objects on the closest one, she could make out a human head sectioned open
in neat symmetrical layers like a classroom model.

They keep
it alive. It’s all alive.

She watched an unattended strip of flesh on the table curl up
suddenly at the ends as if it had just been put in a hot frying pan. As she
watched, the realization slowly sank in that all the bits and pieces and chunks
of flesh were moving, squirming, vibrating or twitching. She looked more
closely at the disembodied head and prayed that it couldn’t be so. Her prayers
were squashed flat when she watched the slack lips twitch and the one remaining
eye in that ruined head blink slowly.

She’d heard once as a kid that if you cut off someone’s head, they
could still see for exactly twenty seconds. The memory of that formerly fascinating
fact made her sick.

One entire wall of the chamber was covered with large containers
that grew out of the wall like gigantic pods. Through translucent, milky glass,
she could see shapes of living things floating in them, some obviously human
and some obviously something else entirely. The slow movement of limbs inside
the pods suggested that whatever was in them was still alive. As she looked at
one, a human face drifted out of the white fog and seemed to look out
forlornly, then sank away and disappeared like an apparition. Another contained
just pieces of what was formerly a complete organism, the parts drifting and
undulating like strange fish. Against another wall were strange alien
containers that looked like organic bird cages. Inside them were the sick fruit
of the aliens’ gruesome labor; things not quite done, things made of a little
of this and a little of that. Some looked oddly like the thing that had killed
Jim, but not quite. Some looked as if they’d been thrown together with no plan,
with limbs clawing the air at odd, useless angles. In one cage, the thing
inside it, something about the size of a bat, flopped wildly against the floor
and bars like some bizarre wind up toy. It moved with such frenetic intensity
that she couldn’t begin to tell what it was. She sensed that the movement
wasn’t entirely voluntary.

This was the laboratory Mary had talked about; the place where
they tried this or that. It was the place where they tested and tried to do new
things.

She saw three aliens in the lab, but no goons. The aliens, as
always, were very intent on the tasks at hand. That didn’t mean they were
blind. What it did mean was that if she timed her dash just right, she might be
able to get past the opening without being seen.

She had to act fast. The longer she was in the tube, the greater
the chance of being caught. She knew they wouldn’t just ignore her if they
caught her in this section of the ship. In all likelihood, they’d carry her
right into the hellish lab in front of her. She peeked around the corner again
and found two of the aliens where she’d first seen them near the back of the
chamber. They had their backs to her, standing close together working on some
unfathomable task.

The other one, though close and facing her way, was bent over a
squirming piece of flesh, poking at it with probes in one hand; and, in the
other, irradiating it with strange light. Its head was covered with alien gear
and what looked like goggles that protruded out at least a foot from its head.

There was no better time than now.

She checked her watch and prayed a silent prayer. Then, after
taking a few more deep breaths, she held her breath and just walked normally
across the opening to the other side. When she was across, she had to clamp her
hand over her mouth to keep from screaming out the tension. She felt her knees
go momentarily weak as if the bones had softened in them.

She forced strength back into her legs and trotted off.

She went about two hundred feet more in a long loop that
terminated precisely where she’d predicted the last loop would—right at the
juncture of the central tube and the opening to the shuttle bay. She could see
through the opening to the large vertical plate separating the staging area
from the air lock and knew the area was empty.

She checked her watch again.

She’d known the shuttle bay would be empty even before she’d set
out for it. Using her watch and pen and paper, she’d calculated exactly when
the shuttle bay would be abandoned based on her last recorded time of a
shuttle arrival, which she clearly remembered from her surveillance. She was
there squarely in the window when no activity would take place. She had time to
spare—and for the moment, sanctuary.

She trotted across the staging area to a point directly under the
small access tube. She removed the canvas bag from her shoulder, then her
shirt, then her pants, and stuffed them both into the bag. She looped the bag’s
strap around her neck and swung it out of the way.

Then Bailey opened her palms, spread her legs some and made her
suckers exude the thick fluid that would help her achieve the required
adhesion. When she did that, it felt something like working up a mouthful of
spit from dozens of mouths.

She placed her palms high against the wall, as she pressed her
belly against it. She willed her new anatomical enhancements to stick fast;
then by carefully reversing the adhesion from belly to hands and back again,
she began to climb the smooth, vertical wall.

She climbed by inches, and it took her a few minutes to work out
the perfect rhythm, but once she had it down, she was soon making good time. It
was hard work, and the amount of fluid she had to exude was far more than she’d
anticipated.

That, combined with the loss of water from sweating, quickly took
its toll.
 
By the time she was
three-quarters of the way up, she was dying of thirst. She’d thought about
bringing a bottle of water with her and now wished to hell she had.

By the time she reached the access tube, her hand suckers were
nearly dry.

She climbed over the edge then flopped down into the tube, panting
and sweating. She lay there and rested until she thought she could move again.

Recovered from the exertion, but still overheated, she left her
clothes in the bag and scooted down the tube naked. She was soon dripping sweat
as if she’d been rained on.

Thirsty.

If she didn’t get to some water soon, she was sure she would go
mad.

Her main concern now was making herself heard when she reached the
seam. Yelling and screaming through it to the other side was an untested idea;
and if she were wrong about it, the entire trip would be for naught. Worse than
that, the dripper at the far end of Phil’s tube was the only water she knew of
in this end of the ship. If she couldn’t get to that water, she didn’t think
she’d be able to walk, let alone slime her way back down the vertical wall of
the shuttle bay.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known it was going to be
a one-way trip.
 
She just hadn’t admitted
it to herself.

The seam was just up ahead. She hoped she’d have enough strength
to pierce its tissues with her voice.

She saw the thing at the same time it saw her. It was the legs
that shocked her most. They stuck out from its round body at almost right
angles and put it in a stance like a Sumo wrestler. The human arms protruded
out of its chest from the same point like strange, thick antennae. Its flesh
was mottled gray and pink; the color of one of those gray things and the color
of sunburned skin. The combination on that round body gave it the impression of
being a grotesque globe with legs. Its head was human, or mostly so, and she
could make out an expression of dim loathing in it that chilled her.

It was easily three hundred pounds, and it was right in her way.
There was no way around it.

She approached it cautiously and tried to be non-threatening. She
didn’t know if it would attack. It looked sick to her and filled with malice,
but it was, or had been, human.

“Hi,” she said and smiled. “I’ll just be getting past you here,
okay?”

She started to inch past it, keeping her distance, trying not to
touch it. She wished she had a weapon.

The creature’s mouth twisted around and the tongue worked. Sounds
came out that were nothing close to words and more like the mindless babble of
the insane.

“That’s nice,” she smiled and continued to move past it. That
close, she could see surgical scars crisscrossing the thing’s bald and soiled
head. A chill of fear went through her.

The creature reached one long arm over the other and grabbed
Bailey’s wrist with one swift, fluid motion. The grip was very tight, the touch
dry and cool. The sense of danger went off the scale.

“Let go, please,” she said, not looking right at it.

The thing cocked its head back and forth and grimaced, the loose lips
coming back over long, stained teeth like a horse’s. More of the unintelligible
babble poured forth, mixed with a deathly sick stench. She couldn’t make sense
of the sounds, but the sense of lunacy came through loud and clear.

The creature brought Bailey’s arm up to its face, turned its head
to get a good angle and tried to bite a chunk out of it.

Bailey’s reflex was so sudden and powerful that nothing could have
held the arm. She would have pulled it right off had the thing’s grip not
broken.

She ran for her life, feeling naked and vulnerable and wishing
she’d kept her clothes on if only as a thin veil against the thing’s onslaught.
She moved her legs as fast as she could. The loss of water and the exertion of
the climb had taken its toll, and she felt herself slowing with each step.
Utter, draining fatigue rolled over her seconds later.

There was no place to go, no looking glass to pass through, or
rabbit hole to hide in—no asylum—and she cried and screamed from the injustice
of it.

A desperate plan came to her like a burst of odd-colored light.
She stopped in her tracks, stiffened and wailed and raged her anger and
frustration at the only
fucked
up choice left and waited for the monster to
catch
her. It
wouldn’t work unless she let it
catch
her.
Goddamn
it!

The thing was surprised by the fact that the prey-food had stopped
moving. It reached out and clamped a hand on her neck and yanked her around. To
rend and tear and feed was its only desire. It reached out with its other hand
and didn’t so much touch her breasts as test them for strength and resilience.

It felt to Bailey as if her breasts were being massaged by a
machine and each deep, rolling probe of the monster’s fingers hurt her. As the
thing squeezed and mashed and pulled at her flesh, Bailey concentrated, blocked
out the horror, and worked up what fluid she had left in her hand suckers.