Read Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) Online
Authors: David Coy
Tags: #dystopian, #space, #series, #contagion, #infections, #fiction, #alien, #science fiction, #space opera, #outbreak
Mary considered the wall for a moment longer, her arms crossed
over her breasts.
“Maybe I should click my heels three times,” she said. She waited
just a moment more. “Well, here goes.”
Mary stepped into the foot holes and slowly leaned into the panel
until her naked body was posed just inches away from the tangled forms of the
connectors. The fit wouldn’t be perfect, since the layout was designed for a
larger physique, but all of the connectors would contact her flesh nonetheless.
She looked over at Phil and lowered herself down on the organisms. When her
body was in contact, she craned her neck out as far as possible and pressed
her forehead against the root ball placed there for that singular purpose.
Mary’s body stiffened and Phil thought he heard a muffled
moan
—one not
entirely painful. Suddenly, the formless, tangled mass of tendrils came to life
like a thousand snakes and swaddled themselves around her arms, her back, her
legs and head in neat flowing patterns like the grain in wood.
Then nothing.
He didn’t know what to expect, but hadn’t expected
nothing.
He
assumed she was still alive, and hopped over closer to see if she was breathing
and to his relief, he could see her scarred back swelling out against the tendrils
in an easy rhythm.
“Okay, fuck it . . .” Phil
said with resignation.
He leaned forward, stretched out and flopped down on the mass of
tendrils, his forehead bumping squarely into the red ball of the head
connector. The mass of tendrils felt just like he thought they would; like
cool, soft rope. A moment later he felt the snake-like tendrils flail at him
and slide over him then encase him, bonding him tight to the living wall of the
vessel.
There was warmth approaching heat in his arms and legs and his body
bristled against it. There was sharp pain in a dozen places and the stiff feel
of penetrating wire in his arms, abdomen and feet. The last probe pierced his
forehead causing a tight knot of momentary pain between his eyes. He clenched
his teeth. He could hear the probe sliding though bone.
The airlock bloomed into sharp relief before his eyes. The image
was so bright and crisp he could make out the smallest imperfections on its
walls—all of its walls. He’d expected the creature’s compound eyes to render a
multi-faceted image. Instead, his field of view took in the entire air lock as
one image with no edges, no dividing line left to right. He could even see Ned
behind the separator, welded to the control panel. Without trying, he could
make out the details in Ned’s bandage and the wet seepage that permeated it. It
was as if he was watching the entire scene on a panoramic screen and by
shifting awareness from place to place within it, his eye within eyes could see
any detail if he so willed. When he shifted awareness to Ned’s face, Ned was
looking
at him
with a grin, not at the shuttle.
His body didn’t feel forty feet long and fifteen feet high.
If anything it felt somewhat smaller than
before, tighter and neater, well defined and contained.
There was a voice in his head, perfect in fidelity, clear and cool
like spring water.
“Boo,” Mary said. The laughter that followed swept around him like
cool silk in a summer breeze.
“Well, how about this?” she said. “We’re no longer human,
Phil—we’re a godamned bug!”
She had that same giddiness he’d seen when she was bonded to the
control panel. There was a euphoric of some kind at work, perhaps a chemical.
He was feeling the silliness himself; a growing and carefree—and
inappropriate
joyfulness. He sensed a danger in it, a losing of one’s self to it that was
unsettling, and he fought to keep it under control.
There was a brief sound of the fine probe chattering slowly
through bone again and he suddenly felt Mary’s entire body, as if he had
somehow covered her like warm rubber. He could feel her breasts and thighs and
the muscles in her face in sharp relief like he was running his entire body
over some raised map. He swirled himself over her effortlessly, smoothly like a
form-fitting mist going from head to foot.
“Wow. Yumsters . . .” she said and caressed his mind with
laughter. “I like it.”
He
was
her skin and the lover of it at the same time.
“Ooooooo ” she said.
Something was wrong, he was being pulled in by
something,
losing
himself to
something.
The sensation of being something, someone other than one’s self
was centered, like a seed, deep in his libido and was sprouting out of control.
He felt Mary’s mouth and tongue on his body, not as a sexual kiss, but as a
devouring force. Beneath the ringing, excited laughter was a frantic
need
to
possess, to
have
him, to
be
him. He felt her body wrap around his like a moist cloak and suck
at his loins with savage recklessness. His newly gained crisp edges dissolved
under her wet mouth.
“Stop . . .” he said.
Her voice, which a moment before rang with innocence, now growled
at his resistance. He felt his body opening like a melon under the force of her
primal contact.
She squirmed into him like an eel at the base of his spine,
insinuating herself around his organs and flowing up and up and out into his
limbs and breast with open-mouthed abandon.
“Get out . . .” he breathed. “Mary get out . . . ”
“Don’t you like it?” she hissed and stiffened and flexed and pushed
deeper. It was as if she’d squeezed his very libido between her wet lips and
he dripped with the pleasure of it.
She forced herself deeper, twisting and turning, and he felt her
slick, swollen veins pulsing inside him. He wanted to moan but could only
breathe in with a slow, endless gasp of pure and lascivious delight.
He had to gain control. He had to somehow loosen her grip. If he
didn’t, he was sure they would remain so bonded until they died from the
pleasure of it.
“You’re killing us . . . ”
There was a growl deep from her breast. and she twisted, sending a
pulse of pleasure through him and down his abdomen.
“Mary, you’re killing us . . . ”
He tried to will the connector to release his head, but Mary was
too much in control. It had been her who sent the probe deeper into his brain,
down into the primal mid-brain, enabling this lewd bonding in the first place.
A peel of guttural laughter was the prelude to the thrust that
followed. It hurt.
That’s
enough.
“Stop!”
By focusing on it, he could still make contact with his physical
body. He willed the unattended connector holding his left arm to release,
stretched out his hand, groped around and found the back of her neck under the
mass of tendrils surrounding her head.
He squeezed.
A gasp of pain rang in his head.
“
Owwwwww ”
“Then get out. You’ll kill us.”
He felt her squirm in his groin. He willed the pleasure to cease
and transmuted it into his grandmother’s dry, sexless touch.
He squeezed again, harder.
“You’re hurting me!” she said.
“Then get out, goddamn it!” he yelled. “Get the fuck out or I’ll
crush your neck!”
There was a whimper and a sniffle like the sound of a disappointed
little girl—a schizophrenic little girl.
“It feels so good. ”
“Yes it
does. But you have to stop now. We have to go home. You have to make us go
home. Do you understand?”
“Yes . .
. ”
“Then get out.”
There was a sound of probe against bone and the sensation of Mary
being in
his body
ceased.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m all right. Are you?”
“Listen to me. This thing, these connectors, are dangerous. More
dangerous than any drug.”
“I know.”
“You’re the pilot, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then . .
. be that. Let’s go. Signal Ned to open the hole.”
There was
the sound of rushing air that faded to nothing, and he was aware of the vacuum
around him as a slight outward swelling and tightening of his hard skin.
When the port opened, the bright light flooding the chamber
turned it from dull brown to crystalline blue.
“I’m gonna let go of the ship now,” Mary said. “Are you ready?”
He took the fact that she was concerned with his well-being as a
good sign.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
There as a sudden
lightness,
a quickening that flowed through his body, reducing its mass to nothing
at all, and they drifted up from the connectors in the airlock as easily as a
skate off the ocean floor.
“We’re airborne . . .” he said with surprise.
“Weeeee ” she said.
They glided over the open hole and there was a sudden gain in
weight that pulled them down through it.
The earth loomed under them in razor-sharp relief. He thought he
could make out individual roads and structures on the globe below. Before he
tossed off that notion as ridiculous, he realized that he
really could
make
them out.
Adrift a thousand yards below the ship, he could finally make it
out in all of its hideous splendor. The ship looked more like a corpse than a
living thing; its surface mottled light and dark like a diseased leg. Swollen
bands ran its length in grotesque regularity. He could see the appendages Linda
had mentioned sticking out at right angles from the bloated form; shrunken and
useless extremities. There was a sense of great and infirm age about it.
Phil could see in it the horror of a sentient being captive to
the alien’s will. The head hung down from the anterior end of the ship on a
long neck like a sick giraffe. The mouth was splayed open and the edges of it
were torn and frayed. A silent cloud of debris spewed out of it and was
floating like dust around the end of the ship.
The frog’s poison had caused the mouth to peel open, probably
short-circuiting some alien-installed inhibitor to prevent just that. The
breech in the ship had occurred when the animal opened its mouth to roar its
pain and hate.
It was screaming still, the head twisting and writhing, fanning
the debris back and forth in a thin spray as the creature vomited into the
void. Soon it would surely die, and become a freeze-dried husk adrift in space,
better off by far than it was.
With his new eyes, Phil could see that much of the stuff adrift
around the ship was pupae. He could clearly make out the bodies of at least a
dozen witches in the flotsam as well. As he watched, a single, finger-long
capsule drifted straight at them, its casing split open down the middle,
revealing the immature wasp within. A thin string of fluid trailed behind it.
17
Linda locked and bolted the cabin door then propped the heavy oak
chair up under the doorknob. She’d closed and latched the windows and drawn all
the curtains but left just a sliver of space on each to see through if she had
to. She’d been in the cabin for three days now, coming out to amble around and
look and hope and cry only when the sun was high and the comforting calls of
quail or the random squawking of a scrub jay told her that the area was
intruder free. She was constantly armed with pistol and shotgun, never leaving
the pistol unholstered, or the shotgun further than an arm’s length away. At
night she slept with the shotgun lying along her right leg. So barricaded and
armed, she would wait until she was sure there was nothing more to wait for.
She’d tried to estimate the odds in Phil’s favor and then given up
immediately. The senseless algorithms she’d conjured made her sigh and shake
her head at the futility of trying to guess the odds of such an outlandish
thing. Besides, she knew what the odds were without benefit of mathematics. The
odds were slim to none.
Nonetheless, she would not give up hope. And as long as there was
a mere sliver of it left, she would persist in her vigilance. She would not
give up her watch until that
something
in her heart clicked off in response to the utter hopelessness of
Phil’s return. Be it a month, or a year or several years longer she would keep
watch. As long as her heart held out hope, the sentinel in her would persevere.
She put the shotgun down lengthwise on the bed, stripped off her
boots and lay down on the bed next to it. This was the bed they had spent many
blissful country mornings in, listening to the faint call of the chaparral’s
song birds in the morning’s slant light or savoring the soft hiss and moan of
the evening breeze through the pine tree just outside.
Getting to sleep was difficult and had been for some time. When
she tried, her thoughts invariably went to Phil; and when they did, a pain
would come to her midsection and she would sometimes yield to it and twist
tight into a knot, her arms wrapped around her knees. But tonight she resisted
and lay, eyes open, feeling the pain of a grief without benefit of closure and
prayed for it to end. Her hand rested on her womb as it had a hundred times in
the last few days.
At least
I have you,
she thought.
At least I have you.
Finally, hours later, she dozed off.
*
*
*
The deep bass note reverberated through the bones in her head and,
at first, she was certain she was dreaming it. When she bent up out of bed,
strained awake and still aware of the sound, the sense of danger was palpable.
She drew the shotgun closer to her and slipped on her boots. By the time she
got to the front door and peeked through the slit in the curtains, the only
sound she heard was the pounding of her heart in her ears.
Linda moved quietly from window to window, looking out and skyward
for the source of the sound. Seeing nothing out the back or side windows, she
returned to the front door and looked again. The full moon illuminated the
rolling landscape with its gray and ghost-like cast. She strained to see farther
down the road leading to the cabin. Shapes of boulders and clumps of juniper
and sage lined the road as it bent down around the hill. As she watched, heart
racing, a gray and shadowy little shape near the end of the road seemed to
shift and move. She felt her mouth fill with cotton.
As the shape continued to morph, she could make out the
unmistakable movement of what appeared to be legs, but the shape seemed to
shift larger to smaller and she couldn’t make sense out of the shape. Suddenly,
all the talk from Phil about the way the aliens mixed and matched parts and
combined them into new physiologies came into sharp relief in her mind. She was
sure that she was seeing precisely one of those abominations. She jammed the
muzzle of the shotgun against the glass, put her shoulder against the stock,
leaned in and pushed out the pane. The glass broke with a crunch, and the
shards fell out onto the wood porch with a crash. Her thumb found the safety on
the shotgun and clicked it off.
She could see the shape moving with its multiple legs straight at
the cabin. A moment later, she was able to make out that the shape wasn’t a
single entity but simply a cluster of people walking, and she felt a surge of
relief.
She unlatched the door, moved
the chair out of the way and then grabbed the flashlight from the table next to
the door. She went outside, shotgun at the ready, clicked the powerful light on
and pointed it down the road.
The cluster of people gazed back into the light. There were four
of them, but the only one Linda Purdy saw was Phil. She cried out his name.
*
*
*
Phil was leaning against the shower wall with his arms straight
out letting the water beat down on his neck and back, his eyes closed as if
sleeping in the steaming spray. Linda could see the incredible network of fine
scars on his body. Not one square inch seemed devoid of thin, straight and red
scars. Some were bright red, others paler; some short, some longer. She reached
into the shower and lightly touched his shoulder as if to soothe the pain she
was sure had once enraged that spot. Startled at the touch, he opened his eyes.
“How long have I been gone?” he asked, his eyes drifting closed
again.
“Twenty one days,” she said drying a tear. “But who counted?”
*
*
*
Dressed in some of Linda’s spare clothing, Mary and Bailey
spooned together on the large sofa, their eyes open and distant. The Indian
was dressed in a pair of Phil’s shorts, three sizes too large, and sat on the
rug with the same distant expression. Phil walked out of the bedroom and sat
down heavily in the Morris chair. Linda sat at his feet and wrapped her arms
around his legs. No one made a sound for many minutes. Finally, Bailey began to
whimper; and when the whimpering changed to crying, Mary held her closer and gently
whispered to her and stroked her hair. When Linda looked at Phil, he was
covering his eyes with one hand. She was sure no therapy existed for their particular
malady.
*
*
*
The next morning while the others slept, Linda, still armed and
vigilant, found Bailey sitting in the warm sun on the porch, sipping coffee
from a large white mug, her knees drawn up tight. Linda sat down next to her
with own cup, took a sip and looked over at Bailey with a kind smile. Linda had
seen the strange physical modifications on Bailey’s arms, legs and hands the
night before. She could see a large sucker on the palm of one hand and wondered
if such a thing might be able to be removed surgically. The idea that such a
thing could have been attached the same way was unfathomable to her.
“Good morning,” Linda said.
“We killed the ship, you know,” Bailey said flatly. “We killed
it.”
“I know,” Linda said. “Phil explained it all last night.”
“I’m glad we killed it,” Bailey said. “But some of them escaped.
I wish we had killed them all. I would have killed them all if I could have. I
would have murdered them all with a hammer, or burned them alive.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think they’ll come back?” Bailey asked Linda. She’d asked it
like a child would ask the nearest random adult about anything at all.
“I don’t know for sure,” Linda said. “But if I had to guess I’d
say no.”
“That’s good,” Bailey said. “I hope they don’t ever come back.”
“Who knows,” Linda said. “Now that we have one of their craft,
maybe we can figure it out, and the next time, we’ll invade their planet,” she
paused then added, “If not us, maybe our children, or our children’s children.”
She rested her hand on her womb again. When Phil was feeling
better and she was sure he was recovering, she’d tell him she was pregnant
with his child. It was something they both wanted.
“I hope when we get there we kill them all,” Bailey said. “We
should kill them all like ants.”
“Yes.”
Linda took another drink of coffee and watched a large black and
yellow wasp swoop back and forth like a pendulum inches from her feet, intent
on the scent trail of something edible in or around the porch. She hated
yellow jackets. They were always looking for a bit of meat and were often bold
enough to land right on your plate to try to take it. She kicked at it with a
booted foot. “Shoo,” she said to it.
Bailey had seen it, too. Linda could see the fear in Bailey’s
eyes.
“Those won’t bother you,” Linda told her. “They’re a native
species.”
~*~
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of the next book in the
Dominant
Species
Series
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