by David Coy
“Have one. They’re yumsters,” Mary said.
Bailey ignored the offering.
Mary wished she knew a little more about first aid and all that. All she knew to do was be kind to the poor woman and wait until she came to grips with what was happening as best she could. You couldn’t ever really get used to where you were and what was happening to you. There was no way to adjust to it. All you did was go from hour to hour, waiting to be tortured.
“Bailey Hall,” Bailey said repeating herself clearly. “My husband was killed recently.”
“I’m sorry,” Mary said. “Look, you need to eat. If you get too weak, they’ll kill you—or worse.” Mary realized how poor her timing was right after she said it and wished she hadn’t. It could have waited, she knew. All she did was lamely point out the horror in an obviously horrible situation. She wasn’t too sure Bailey had even heard her, though. She just stared.
To Mary’s surprise, Bailey took one of the cakes out of the package and scarfed it down with two big bites. She stuffed her mouth, chewed and swallowed hungrily while she stared blankly into Mary’s face. Mary detected a glint of steely strength in her green eyes that she was sure hadn’t been there a moment ago. Mary got the feeling Bailey was looking right through her.
“More,” Bailey said.
* * *
He was standing. He knew that because he could tell which way was down, and he could see his feet. He was leaning against a thick plate of some yellowish translucent material. Its consistency was swirled and imperfect like melted glass. He could see movement and light on the other side. He could see his right hand at the end of his wrist. Like a drunk after a wild bacchanal, he was completely naked and had no idea how he had gotten there.
I’m whole, he thought sluggishly.
His entire face hurt; and when he felt it, it hurt more. He could taste blood in his mouth. He swabbed his tongue around the inside of his mouth and worked up a bolus of spit and spit a long bloody string of saliva down between his feet.
Fucking sonsofbitches, he thought. Wonder what they found out.
He found a small grape-like thing stuck in his leg just above the knee. Its surface was wrinkled and shrunken. It was attached and dangled by a little thin thread, and he snatched it off his leg and tossed it like a bug.
He wanted his brain to work, to think clearly. He breathed as deeply as he could. He exhaled and then forced himself to do that exactly nine more times. After the tenth, he discovered that his brain was, in fact, working better. He repeated the in-out ten more times. He’d never had a mantra and understood it had to be given to you, or some such crap, so he made up his own.
Fucking, in. Sonsofbitches, out. Fucking, in. Sonsofbitches,out.
The enclosure was about the size of a large shower. With his mind clearing, he moved and stretched and flexed his back. For the first time, he was feeling normal and strong. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so body-confident. He was ready to kick the shit out of something, anything. He could see the shapes moving around on the other side of the plate and the quick, darting movement of the bastards who’d done this to him made his blood boil.
“Fuck you!” he bellowed at them. He wanted to kick the plate but knew he’d just fracture his foot.
I won’t give the bastards the satisfaction, he thought.
“Fuck you! Hey! Fuck you!” He worked up another bolus of red spit and let it fly at the plate. Smack!
“Fuck you!”
The shapes ignored him. His mind cleared more. Then the thought hit him like a rock.
I’ve been drugged. That ampoule in my leg. It delivered an adrenal or something like it. I’m wired.
The effect of the drug was growing stronger fast and rage built up in him like white-hot magma. He wanted to gnash his teeth and tear something living to pieces with them. He stood in the middle of the chamber and bellowed as the rage consumed his reason like a storm.
He heard a sound like a buzzing insect, and the sound stirred memories of nasty, biting, nagging, hateful, fucking bugs and insects like the ones that time in that fucking nest that stung him like demons and he wanted to shred the godamned thing with his teeth.
When the wasp flew out of the hole in the wall of the chamber, its buzz filled his head like insufferable music. He saw it in his peripheral vision as a dark flash and spun on it in a fury of flailing, slapping and grabbing hands. The wasp was as big as a cigar butt though Phil could see through his white rage that it wasn’t really a wasp, but an alien, evil insect thing. It hovered just out of his reach as he jumped and swiped at it.
The wasp dashed down at him so fast even his rage- heightened reflexes couldn’t stop or deflect it. He felt it hit his chest like a rock then saw it fly back up to its position and hover there. He was so focused on the wasp’s destruction that he didn’t see the drop of blood forming over the pin-hole-sized wound the strike left in his chest. A second later, he felt the fiery sting in the place where it hit him, then the wasp flashed down and struck him again in the neck this time. He batted wildly at it with both hands again and again as the wasp attacked. He missed and missed; and, with each strike, he grew more inflamed and frustrated until he wept like a child with rage.
He began fumbling, making uncontrollable movements that caused him to stumble and bang into the walls as he struck at the attacking wasp. Then, suddenly, he collapsed into a naked, twitching heap on the chamber’s floor.
The wasp hovered and waited until it could detect none of the big, fast, swishing movements. When it was sure no big movement remained, it approached slowly and hovered just a few inches over Phil’s body.
His rage was now completely sealed, capped off in his paralyzed body. Seething with useless fury, he watched the wasp land on his leg. From there, it began to scurry in all directions over his body as if searching, hunting something. Devoid of all tactile sensation, he watched it as if he were seeing it crawl over someone else.
The wasp had won the battle. He was the loser and was at the mercy of this alien insect. It could do with him as it pleased, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He expected it to start eating him any moment. The raging child in him bawled in anger.
The wasp crawled to a spot on his gut just below his navel and stopped there. It arched its abdomen high and swung the tip of it until it was pointed straight down just a centimeter or so from his skin. He watched helplessly as the female wasp’s needle-like ovipositor made contact with his skin and pierced effortlessly. Deeper it sank until its two-inch length was completely imbedded.
Eggs, he thought with horror. The damn thing is laying its eggs in my body.
In his mind, he screamed.
Phil’s heart beat faster, as reality, like that sickening needle, sank in.
Over the next hour Phil watched helplessly as the wasp pierced him a hundred times or more and deposited her eggs in him. In his arms, his legs, his groin, his chest, his abdomen, the wasp planted egg after egg. It worked quickly and efficiently, fearless in the unhuman knowledge that its victim was completely and totally its own to use.
In spite of the paralysis, he sometimes felt the slow, stiff pressure of the needle as it pierced him.
* * *
When Bailey whimpered, Mary spooned closer to her and smelled the warm musk of her hair. There was no sexual urge, no lust, just the comfort of one human body to another, and the contact soothed them like a balm. Mary touched Bailey’s hair and pulled it gently back from her ear. She saw a thin scar running straight in a lateral line from the back of her ear to the base of her neck. That was unusual. They usually didn’t have to cut quite that high. The scars were always so straight and so perfect that they sometimes looked drawn on.
God, they’re good at what they do, she thought.
Mary noticed then, for the first time, that Bailey wasn’t just attractive, but truly beautiful. In spite of the condition of her coarse dark hair and the scars, she was a genuinely lovely, young woman. She was in he
r early twenties, Mary guessed, and her face possessed the strong, straight line of jaw that accompanies nearly all beautiful faces; and her mouth, though not sensual in the extreme, was supple and her lips full and generous. Mary rose up on one elbow with the sole purpose of getting a more favorable view of Bailey’s beauty. It contrasted sharply with the dismal surroundings and it refreshed her. She gently stroked Bailey’s hair.
Mary’s libido had evaporated long ago. The stress and shock of captivity had boiled it away. It wasn’t possible to endure the bizarre and alien torment of this place and think of, much less do, anything other than stay alive. With all of her resources spent on base subsistence, sex was a luxury her body just couldn’t afford. No more now than a dim memory, the tint of sexual attraction added no color to Mary’s vision of Bailey.
Oh, well, she thought. You might have made my little heart thump at one time.
Bailey whimpered and her eyes fluttered. Mary knew that when she opened them she’d puzzle over her surroundings or just draw a mental blank for awhile as her mind denied the reality of where she was. Mary did that herself, even now.
You poor thing, Mary thought. You’ll wake up on board an alien starship in the arms of a woman, and it won’t be a nightmare at all.
Bailey opened her eyes and stared out at the brown wall. Mary could see the confusion and panic grow in those bright eyes.
“No . . . ” Bailey said. Her voice was so soft Mary could barely hear it. Mary found Bailey’s hand and held it.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m asleep, right?”
Mary didn’t respond. The answer was too cruel. She knew by her silence, though, that the brutal answer had been given nonetheless.
Bailey started to pucker and her lower lip began to tremble. Mary pulled her closer; and, when she did, she felt the walls she’d carefully built to protect and shield herself from this world’s ugliness and pain crumble in the relentless dull and alien light, and she cried for the first time since she’d been taken.
She sat up and rocked Bailey gently and hummed to her and the tears streamed down.
* * *
Phil lay limp on the floor of the chamber and watched the wasp perched on the wall grooming itself. His drug-induced rage had diminished, but the feeling of abject hatred he had for the insect and this place was alive and well. The wasp scurried in a few meaningless circles, then crawled through the two- inch diameter hole in the wall. The hole pinched and sealed shut, closing the wasp back into the nest or jar or the hell it came from. Phil was relieved that it was apparently finished with his body and gone, but he felt cheated of never again having the remotest of chance to slowly smash it flat or burn it alive.
He couldn’t see the heavy, irregular plate when it opened, but he heard it slide and felt the warm, fresher air on his face around his eyes.
The hands and arms that reached in and jerked him out of the cell were massive and powerful. Phil was lifted up and turned around and over like a toy, and the world on the other side of the cell’s plate flashed by as if he were on a carnival ride. He saw a flash of human bodies by the dozens lying limp and saw alien hardware hanging by attachments that stretched up toward lights. The face of one of the root-like creatures flashed by. He got a glimpse of several more of them working next to limp human bodies as he was hefted up.
Phil’s body weight hovered around one hundred and ninety pounds, but he’d been hauled out and lifted up and over the creature’s shoulders like he was a rag doll. Draped over the immense back of the behemoth, he could see the backs of the massive legs and the bare feet with their thick fleshy pads. He wasn’t carried far. When the creature flopped him down on the flat-topped structure, Phil got a glimpse of the row of ten or more cells along the dark wall.
He got a full look at the creature that had carried him there. Its head reminded him of those fancy goldfish with the globular structures covering their heads, except in this case, the head wasn’t fish-like, but humanoid. The thing was massive, easily four hundred pounds. The musculature was distorted and overdeveloped, but not like the clean cut and appealing form of a body builder. It was just enormous and huge without detailing. The eyes were fixed and blank in the folds of its face and there was a dull, staring coldness about them like he’d seen in the eyes of many psychotics. The mouth was barely visible and buried in the globular folds surrounding it.
The huge hands straightened his arms and legs onto the table roughly. Then, as it turned to go, it patted him on the chest in mock comfort with one of those enormous hams. When it did, Phil saw the tattoo of the unicorn on the giant forearm, stretched and distorted by the underlying bone and muscle, and realized that he was looking not at an alien creature, but a human made alien by having been given some incredible growth hormone that exploded its bone structure and musculature. He managed to turn his head slightly and saw another one just like it at the wall removing a limp body from one of the cells. He watched it swing the body up over its shoulders like a sack and then lumber over to one of the tables and flop in down.
With effort, he turned his head back and saw the alien devices hanging from the attachments above like grotesque and menacing fruit. The devices had little relation to anything from any science he was familiar with. Many of them were dull metallic in construction, but some of the more formidable ones seemed to be biotic, alive, or nearly so. He thought he could see what looked like a rapidly pulsing vein in one of the more bizarre mechanisms. One dripped a clear fluid from the tip of a thin and sinister appendage.
The alien was at his side in a blink, touching his body, his face, probing his mouth with its quick fingers. It reached up and took hold of the device with the dripping appendage then worked the thin, wiry probe up his left nostril, and he could feel it, feel it, moving though his sinuses. He was sure the probe was moving under its own power, squirming in his head. He tasted a bitter taste in the back of his throat.
With the strength of his will . . . he forced the horror down deep. He sealed it there with his tightly closed eyes, then sank into the relative haven of shock.
Sleep was Mary’s benefactor. She dreamed about her muttly dog, Puck. In the dream Puck was humping the jeans-clad leg of her friend June while the two of them, with their heads tilted back like debutantes, laughed at the irony of it.
“This dog has a very, very misplaced sex drive,” June said clearly in the dream.
“Oh, I know,” Mary replied perfectly.
The hissing whistle sound sneaked around Mary’s barrier of sleep like an unwelcome guest and poked her meanly awake. She snapped to full consciousness, heart racing.
The whistling was down the tube to the left and when she heard the whimpering pleas of Fred Jones, she knew he was one of the ones this time. Sweet Fred. A man-child without a trace of guile. He had been the one who had oriented her to this horrific world. When her mind had sunk deep into the bog of denial, Fred had gently led her to the truth.
“Not me!” She heard him say. That was not like Fred at all. “Not me! I just went! No! No! I won’t!”
Big mistake, Mary thought. Don’t get mad. Just go. He should know better.
When she heard Fred’s scream she knew that a big bastard had grabbed him. It wasn’t fun being grabbed by a big bastard.
The noise woke Bailey. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Guy down the way won’t cooperate. Big mistake.” There was no rule against it, and Mary wanted to know what was going on so she got up, moved to the opening and looked out.
Fred was screaming and choking at the same time. The goon had him around the neck with one hand and was shaking him like a doll. It was shaking him and whistling that childish whistle at him, too, trying to make its point all too plainly. Fred finally stopped choking and screaming as if he was a strange toy someone just turned off. The goon shook him a moment more then let him go and he crumpled on the floor of the tube. The goon watched him for a second, then kicked him a little with its huge bare foot. The intention was obvious
ly to rouse him, but the massive foot’s inertia actually moved him two feet across the floor as if he’d been shoved by the leg of an elephant.
Gilbert glided out of his hole and around the two big bastards and squatted down next to Fred. His Bible, as usual was in his hand. He put his free hand on Fred’s shoulder and Mary couldn’t hear what he said, but she could imagine it. First “God this” and “God that.” Then he’d tell Fred he had “to go or he’d die.” They’d put him down a feed hole and that would be that—if he was lucky. “There were even worse things, Fred,” he’d say. There wouldn’t be a lot of sympathy in the thin voice, just reason—the kind of rock-cold reason that gives the listener only the most impossible of choices. After that, then some more “God this” and “God that” and Fred would get up and go. He might call it “tough love.”
Gilbert was tight with Tom Moon. They shared a hole. Birds of a feather flock together, Mary’s mother had taught her.
Distrust one, distrust them all.
It wasn’t like Fred had a real choice in the matter, anyway. They’d do with him as they wanted. It was common knowledge that for some reason, once a captive gave up, he was useless to them and nothing more than meat for the ship. If Fred got up off the floor now, his choice was made.
Slowly, Fred got up on one knee. Gilbert helped him the rest of the way up. There was very little loose dirt in the ship, but in a show of sudden resolve, Fred brushed dirt from the legs of his pants and the front of his plaid shirt and smiled at Gilbert. He held the smile and turned it to Mary. When she saw that smile, she thought it was the most insane smile she had ever seen. He was smiling like a mindless, spineless sap who’d just bought a used car he didn’t want from a smooth salesman he wanted to please. His ministry done, his holy job finished, Gilbert nodded knowingly to the big bastards that Fred was, “Okay now boys.” The goons ignored him completely and pushed Fred roughly down the tube.
