Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  Using its free hand, the being reached down and pulled from a slot in the table what was unmistakably an injection device. It jabbed the business end of the thing into Phil’s chest. A familiar warmth spread through him, and his hands fell away from the creature’s scrawny flanks like rope.

  * * *

  Mary got to the grocery, as she called it, just in time. If she’d let Tom Moon keep her any longer she’d have missed chow. She hoped the little prick would show up late himself, but she new better than that. That boy wanted his Twinkies. You didn’t come late and get what was left, because if you got there late, there wasn’t anything left.

  There were about twenty or so other captives there when she got there, milling around, waiting for the goons to come with food they could eat. When the door bloomed open, a pair of goons moved in, each carrying two enormous net sacks filled with food stuff. She guessed each one of those bags weighed a hundred pounds and they were carrying them like purses.

  Mary wondered why the goons were usually in pairs, rarely alone. Maybe they were husband and wife or something, but damned if you could tell by looking what the gender of the things were. Maybe they just worked the buddy system for security. It didn’t matter—just one of them could kill you easily enough.

  The goons spilled the boxes out onto the floor like they were feeding pigs, then left. Not even a grunt from them. That’s when it started, just like always. God, she hated this. There was hardly ever any real fighting over the food, although she had seen the little guys from Taipei or wherever, punch and drag a woman until she let go of a half pack of rice cakes of all things. She’d fought back the desire to jump in and help the woman, but didn’t want any enemies either. She was just going in to help her anyway when the big Canadian guy roughed up one of the Orientals and asked him how he liked it.

  The worst part was that all the food was out on the floor and you had to reach over and around all the other hands and sometimes two hands came down on the same bag of chips and if one of you was nice, a hand would drift over to a box of cookies or something else. It was the embarrassment of having to reach and make claim to the food that she hated most. There was almost always enough. They were very careful about making sure the incubators had enough food.

  The only food they ever got was packaged and ready to eat or canned. There was never any food that needed to be cooked, even if there had been a way to cook it. Almost everybody had a cardboard box or a noisy plastic bag or two to put things in. Since the food came only once every two days or so, you had to stock up while you could. She’d stopped by her hole on the way and picked up the laundry basket she used for that purpose. It was plastic and split on two sides but it had just enough capacity and strength for the job. Tom Moon had tried to con her out of it once and she’d told him she’d rather suck a goon’s dick than give it up to him. He thought it was funny. She’d meant it.

  The faces in the grocery changed all the time. Sometimes there were fewer than the time before and she always figured the missing ones had been killed or used for something other than incubation. She’d seen some of the other chambers and the unspeakable horror that went with them.

  Soon, a new face or two would find its way to the grocery with the same questions; the same pathetic, pleading questions, sometimes in broken English, for which no answers were possible.

  Fill up. Just grab some food. I don’t know any more than you do. Just fucking eat.

  In fact though, Mary had gathered quite a bit of information since she’d been taken. But she kept it to herself. She wasn’t really sure why except that most of what she knew was useless, really, and none of it brought her any closer to getting home. The exchange of information between humans where the need and the desire to know was so high could take place with cold efficiency. But Mary knew it didn’t do a new captive any good to tell them what you knew. That just sent them farther into shock. The vernacular that she’d taken such pains to develop was alien to a new captive, too, and she wasn’t entirely comfortable sharing it with the others somehow. Some of the words were goofy or weird, even to her, and she kept those definitions to herself. You could learn a new vernacular through osmosis, but not Mary’s, simply because she never used it around anyone else. She decided after about a month that she’d just keep what she’d gathered to herself completely. The long and short of it

  was that Mary’s particular news was just too grisly to tell and there wasn’t a damn thing to do about it anyway.

  It was odd to her how she had learned to turn her back on the suffering of others like that. She’d never have considered such a thing when she was alive. She was dead now after all. Nothing could suffer like she had for as long as she had and still be alive, surely to god.

  She didn’t think she could stand another cycle. But she knew what they did to those who were so sick and used up they couldn’t stand. Those poor souls were dragged down to another level of Hell. She’d seen all the faces change in the months she’d been here. She’d outlasted them all except Fred and of course, Tom Moon.

  God, she thought, what a sickening achievement that is.

  Mary looked up and saw a new face in the grocery. The woman was standing in the tube with her hair still dripping wet. It was her first cycle, Mary knew. You could always tell. She stumbled out of the tube with really ill-fitting clothes on and no shoes. That was a mistake almost everybody made the first time; no shoes. Most people would rather go barefoot than put on someone else’s shoes. The floor in the ship was just tacky enough to drive you nuts after a few days of walking on it. It pulled on your feet like taffy and would literally strip the skin off in time.

  The woman was still in shock but she hadn’t folded. If you folded up, they’d feed you to the ship, they might anyway but going into total shutdown got you a one-way trip down a feed hole.

  Total confusion, Mary thought. She feels like a bastard calf at a roundup.

  Mary studied her a moment more. She would have found her attractive in another life.

  “You’d better get some of this. You have to eat,” Mary said to her. It was longest bit of genuine advice she’d given anyone in months.

  The woman was dazed and had some difficulty locating the voice because several people were looking at her at the same

  time. Mary thought at first that she couldn’t understand English, but she was trying to find the speaker, all right. When the woman’s gaze fell on Mary, she waved at her to make contact.

  “Come on over,” Mary said.

  That brief human contact made the woman start to cry and the look was so totally pitiful it broke Mary’s heart. It was a good sign, actually. If she could cry, she could still feel something. The woman just stood there with her lips quivering. Mary saw a little girl there, just a little frightened girl. Mary plucked a few more items up into her basket, then added a package of Ding Dongs just for the woman. Chocolate could work miracles. She hefted the basket up under her arm and started to walk over to her when Tom Moon came out of the tube behind her like a tattered brown leaf and touched the new woman. She shrank from the touch.

  You didn’t like to be touched much after an extraction, especially by a rat like Tom. Mary decided right then that she would adopt this one. Tom had his beady sights on her; and that was enough. It was probably a mistake. Nobody lasted, and it was best not to get too attached.

  “Leave her alone, and go get yourself some candy or something,” Mary said to Tom. “Go on. Split. I mean it.”

  “You the only one allowed to have friends?” Tom said with a sneer. “I got some friends, you know. Some you’d like to have as friends I bet.”

  “Sure,” Mary said sarcastically.

  She took the woman by the arm and pulled her gently away from him. Come with me. Do you like chocolate, little girl?” Mary thought a little perverse humor might get rid of the trembling lower lip if she got the joke, but she didn’t get it and cried even more. “It’s okay. Come on.”

  It wasn’t at all okay, and Mary knew it. Mary
could see the fine lines of new scar tissue on the woman’s neck just under the collar of her shirt. At least she’d had sense enough not to pick a silk blouse.

  The tube leading out of the grocery to the holes was dark like all the tubes. There was just enough light from the few dim light organs along the ceiling to keep you from stumbling into the rubbery walls.

  When they had gone a ways in, the woman stopped cold in the tube and turned to Mary.

  “They cut me open,” she said plainly, unable to keep her lip from trembling.

  “I know,” Mary said.

  The woman started shaking her head as if to deny the experience. She shook her head and shook it. Her eyes rolled up in her head.

  “I know,” Mary repeated. “I know.”

  She s losing it, Mary thought. She put her free arm around the trembling woman and held her until she stopped shaking. Several other captives walked past like zombies with their plastic bags rattling against their legs. They saw Mary and the woman, all right, but seemed not to.

  They’re smarter than me, Mary thought. A lot smarter.

  Mary wanted to move along. It wasn’t a good idea to just stand around in a tube that the goons used for passage, too. The big bastards were often unpredictable, and anytime a captive got in their way was a good time to get hurt. Mary’s hole was at the very end of the tube, and they had some distance to go. Mary wanted to eat and then sleep. Blessed sleep. In her dreams, there was no pain. She pulled the woman gently along.

  The woman had to be guided every step of the way. When they came to the raised opening to her hole, Mary had to push her up into it. The holes were where they lived and the only refuge from the horror. The holes weren’t safe, but they were better than the rest of the ship.

  The goons came to the opening to the holes and called them out with a hissing whistle when they wanted to take them. The whistle noise sounded to Mary like the way kids who can’t quite whistle whistled. The first time Mary heard it, it was just a noise they made. After she knew it meant she was going to be used, it became the prelude to her nightmares, and the silly little sound itself took on dreadful weight. The whistling would start somewhere down the tube, and Mary would know they were taking people. Her heart would race until she thought it would burst when the sound started. Sometimes they’d pass by her hole and stop at someone else’s and whistle them out, not her. Then sometimes Gilbert would walk past and cast a sober, priestly look in at her to let her know that he knew she was all right this time. He did that to everyone, though, just to puff up his own importance. Sometimes he’d walk along and pare his nails with the tiny little knife he’d found. Sometimes he would nod to her in greeting and she was oddly encouraged by that. There wasn’t a lot in the way of normal human decency in the ship so even the sanctimonious nod of greeting from a hypocrite was strangely welcome if the timing was right.

  On the times when she was passed over, she would hear the whimpering pleas for it not to be them this time and she would fill with guilt. Sometimes she would see Gilbert standing there not listening to the begging. Sometimes he would seem to listen, then he’d tell them it would all be all right, but they had to go along—or die. Then he’d give them some “God this” and “God that.”

  She tried not to come out once when the goon stood there and whistled to her. When she didn’t move, the goon came in after her. It didn’t like doing that, and she could tell it was pissed and that she’d made a big mistake. The goon could barely fit through the opening. It grabbed her by the ankle with its enormous hand and pulled her out so roughly she thought it was going to pull her leg off. Gilbert took the opportunity to lecture her in front of the goons, even though they probably didn’t understand a word of it. He told her that she was very lucky to be alive and that if she ever did that again she wouldn’t live long enough to regret it. Useless stuff like that. But that was the last time she didn’t move when a goon whistled for her.

  There were about as many holes as there were people in this section of the ship. She knew there were more people than just the ones along this tube because she had seen them being pushed into the small stinging cells. She had also seen many different faces in the big chamber where they did the cutting and probing. She had once imagined that the ship was ten or fifteen miles wide. She didn’t think it was, but had no way of knowing it wasn’t. It was much bigger than this little section, though, she was sure of that.

  Mary had a fairly comfortable hole as holes went. She had put a little extra effort into the bed, which was the only meaningful accoutrement. They were allowed access to the blankets and the abundance of sleeping bags in the dump on a regular basis. It was always warm in the ship, and she couldn’t stand the idea of sleeping in a sleeping bag because of it. But the idea of being uncovered while she slept bothered her so she had a nice soft bed made of several sleeping bags as a mattress and a light blanket over that. She’d seen a pillow in one of the other holes once and had thought about copping it, but couldn’t bring herself to, so she’d made do with yet another sleeping bag rolled up as a pillow. There were other things in the dump, too, most of it completely useless. Tents, pot and pans, lawn furniture, coolers, kitchen stuff like silverware, and of course an abundance of can openers. There were occasionally cigarettes and matches or lighters to stoke them up with, too. That was a big plus. Sometimes, cigarettes would show up in the grocery, too. She couldn’t understand why the hell they gave them cigarettes.

  The dump was the only source of what human stuff they had. The really curious thing was that it had all been carefully and strangely filtered by the goons. The goons job, from what she could see, was number one, to catch them and, two, to keep them fed and alive. She had once seen a garden hose in the dump and wondered how they thought a godamned garden hose could help them stay one wit more alive in this place. One of the few times she’d smiled since she had been abducted was when she tried to think how she could fashion a weapon to kill Tom Moon out of that garden hose.

  Some of the other captives had dragged piles of the stuff back to their holes as if just having it around them could somehow save them, or at least remind them of who and what they were.

  Clutter was clutter to Mary, even in this place. She had her bed and her food basket and her can opener and her utensils, and her little handmade tools. That was enough.

  “What is this place?” the woman asked, looking around the small chamber. Her voice sounded like an odd recording.

  “This is my room.”

  Until that moment, Mary had never referred to the hole as “her room,” but that’s what it was. It was hers. No other humans tread here uninvited. Nevermind that she’d never invited anyone in. The hole was a possession as surely as the food basket.

  Its dark, curved walls enclosed a space some twelve by twelve feet. The floor was flatter than the walls, giving it an igloo feeling. The single dim light organ in the center of the ceiling burned with its odd light continually. She’d often wished there was some way to turn it on or off, but that was impossible. The walls were the same dark, rubbery texture as the rest of the ship. There was a single vent or port, about a foot wide, halfway up one side that breathed warm, moist air into the chamber half the time and sucked air out half the time. She had watched the smoke from her cigarettes drift up and out that vent and be pushed away from it when it exhaled. The fact that they always had air with enough oxygen in it baffled her, but a lot of things about the place baffled her.

  What little comfort she had, she got from the hole. It was her womb. She had taken possession of it at the end of her first cycle. Dazed and terrified beyond reason like this woman, she had crawled up into it when she saw others, like rodents, doing the same. There was a single thin blanket and some unopened cans of soup and lots of trash in the hole when she first moved in. She had pushed all the junk into one spot on the floor, wrapped herself up in the dirty blanket and, exhausted, slept a little. When she awoke, the empty cans and wrappers were gone. Room service had cleaned them out of the hole
. Room service was a pair of goons that came through every couple of days and removed anything that looked like trash. They used a long rake-like tool and dragged out all the junk they could reach. They weren’t too choosy about what was or wasn’t trash, but they seemed to know that stuff that was in a neat row wasn’t trash and everything else was. Mary learned early to keep her

  keepable stuff in neat rows.

  So the hole wasn’t completely uncomfortable, and it was, if not a home, her dark sanctuary. They gave her this brown chamber and kept it clean and ventilated so she could recover from the trauma they inflicted just so they could traumatize her all over again.

  “Your room?” the woman asked again.

  “Yes. My room. You can stay here until you move into your own. I’ll try to help you out—tell you what to do, such as there is.”

  The woman started to cry again. Mary led her to the bed and gently encouraged her to sit down on it.

  “What’s your name?” Mary asked.

  “Bailey. Bailey Hall, that is. I just got married. I’m married.” Her voice still had some of the flat monotone pitch about it. In spite of that, Mary didn’t think she’d ever heard a voice so buttery and rich. There was a slight thickness, a touch of hoarseness that gave it a sexual dimension, flattened or not. The fact that she was repeating herself reminded Mary that she was still in shock and probably would be for some time. Mary dug out the Ding Dongs and opened them.