Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

  He wiped the round, bloody tips of his fingers on his shirt front then craned his neck out at Gilbert. “If I ever even get the feelin’ you’re gonna do somethin’ like ‘at agin, I’ll kill you like a inseck.” He pitched the little knife down at Gilbert’s feet. “Don’t cut yourself with that,” he said.

  Standing just forty or so feet away, Mary had seen the whole exchange and wondered with all her might why Gilbert would do such a thing. What puzzled her even more was why Tom had left Gilbert standing there with his Bible, alive.

  * * *

  Linda Purdy awoke in a muddy pool of remorse.

  Maybe I dreamt it, she thought. Maybe I really didn’t do it.

  She was facing the window and felt the morning’s cool air and dull light on her face like gray paste. She heard the deep cooing of a pigeon, and even that was too loud. The room was spinning exactly, precisely, like a merry-go-round, and she could feel the centrifugal force pulling her off the bed.

  Oh, God. No. I did it. How could I? Oh, God.

  She pulled the bedclothes tighter and turned just enough to see George Greenbaum’s head. What she saw was an empty pillow.

  Thank God, he’s gone.

  She slid her hand slowly and cautiously over into that side of the bed just to be sure she wasn’t mistaken.

  The memories were vague. She remembered laughter and Southern Comfort and her bare legs up in the air. She remembered George’s face somewhere between them.

  Fucking Southern Comfort. Fucking on Southern Comfort. Oh, God.

  The thought of its taste made the room reel and spin even more.

  Never was there a liquor so sweet at midnight and so vile at dawn. His idea, she thought. All his fault. I hope he’s as sick as I am.

  She brought one leg out from the under the bedclothes and felt the air caress it like a wet rag. She drew it back in and curled up against the onslaught of spinning room, beach air and cooing pigeon.

  I can’t do it, she thought. I want to die now.

  She closed her eyes and felt the lids slap violently together. By not moving, she could stabilize the room somewhat. She lay there for another hour like that.

  When she finally managed to get up, the room’s cold air brushed over her skin like stiff branches. Stumbling to the bathroom, she had to hold her arms out to maintain balance. Breathing loudly through her nose, she propped herself up on the sink and ventured a look in the mirror. She expected to see the female counterpart of Dorian Gray’s portrait, but all she saw was an ashen and disheveled version of Linda Purdy. It puzzled her that she was in her bra and panties. The thought that some men, especially George Greenbaum, might like it that way rose up in her like a gag reflex. Visions of him groping her, fucking her, in her bra and panties, pushed her, right back down into that muddy puddle like a bully.

  Oh, God.

  She sat in the middle of the tub and let the warm water pound on her until it ran cold. The shower seemed to refresh her a little. At least the room stopped spinning.

  She was thirsty. She was so thirsty.

  On the way to the kitchen she looked at the sofa and had to blink to make sure she was seeing it. There was George Greenbaum, sleeping in his clothes on the sofa.

  He’s fully dressed, even his shoes, thank god! she thought and the sound of a cooing pigeon filled the air with music.

  Linda Purdy could handle a hangover. Years of partying at the beach had provided the test bed for the development of the concoction she about to make: Phase One—a big breakfast with lots of tomato juice, forced down; Phase Two—six or seven aspirin.

  She was just finishing Phase One, when George Greenbaum appeared in the dining room arch trying to smile. Linda looked up from her eggs and did the same.

  “Hi,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Great. Thank you. And you?”

  “Perfect. Perfect. Would you like some breakfast or a noose to hang yourself with?”

  “Neither. I think I’ll be off. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Quite an evening, what I can remember of it.”

  “Quite.”

  “See you soon.”

  “Ta. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some aspirin?”

  “Morphine if you have it.”

  “Sorry, I used the last of it.”

  George grinned. “I’ll call you in a day or two. Bye.”

  “Bye.” She wanted to hear it from him—just to be sure. “George?” she asked.

  Greenbaum waited.

  “Did we have sex last night?”

  He pretended to think about it.

  “I don’t think I could drink enough to black out that particular memory. No, we did not. I did undress you though. I didn’t think you’d want to wake up in your clothes. That’s very unladylike. You seemed to think it was very funny as I remember.”

  Linda smiled. So he’d been a perfect gentleman, almost. In spite of herself, a petulant feminine troll deep inside wanted to slap him for not making love to her when he clearly had the chance.

  “Thank you,” she said instead.

  “Any time.”

  She crawled back into bed with her robe still on and pulled up the bedclothes until they covered her nose and mouth. She closed her eyes and breathed her own breath and with her stomach full of nourishment and her brain re-hydrated and her veins flowing with pain killer, she started Phase Three.

  Wait.

  It was just short of noon. She expected to convalesce there until dusk at least.

  When the bedside phone rang, the chirping ringer sounded like an injured animal to her.

  If she could have stood the annoying sound for three more rings, she would have just let the machine pick up the call. She couldn’t though, and she reached over, picked up the phone and croaked “hello” into it.

  * * *

  When the seam above his head ripped open and the vine pulled him up out of the goop, Phil was way ahead of it. He clamped onto it high up with both hands long before the upward tug started, avoiding the sudden yank on his neck and spine he took the first time. When the vine released the tendrils around his head and pulled out of his gullet, he closed his eyes hard and let himself gag as loud as he possibly could. It felt better that way.

  Wiping his mouth, he looked in the corner for the body of Pui Tamguma and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t see it. He wondered if the larvae would eat their way out of a dead body and hoped they’d put him down a hole before that little phenomenon got tested.

  He was tired, but he wasn’t sick or exhausted or even especially hungry. He thought about the technology that could use his flesh then rejuvenate it. They used it as if it were a thing, a nest, a reusable host—fucking food. Then they healed what was left, and renewed it.

  I’m a field, a garden, a planter for their strange crop. In between plantings they condition the soil, fertilize it. Christ. They’ll use us right up.

  He leaned against the rubbery wall of the water tube and tried not to remember the last twelve hour’s pain.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He slammed his fist into the wall of the tube. It sounded just like he’d punched a side of beef. It looked like the wall actually shrank from the blow a little and encouraged that he might be having some effect on the thing, he punched it again and again in his rage.

  He stopped suddenly, breathing hard from the effort.

  The ship’s a slave, too.

  This animal might be hundreds, thousands of years old. And it might live for a thousand more years in a state of perpetual bondage to these fuckers. When I’m used up as an incubator, they’ll attach what’s left of my flesh to some other organic thing or organism. Maybe they’ll keep my brain alive, too. Who knows how long I’ll live like that. Maybe they can keep me alive forever, just cement me to something and keep me alive forever. Maybe we can’t die here at all. Maybe there is no goddamned escape here, not even death. Maybe Pui Tamguma has been revived like a zombie. I bet they can do that.
/>   Panic swelled in him. He breathed deeply and evenly, trying to regain his composure. After the tenth breath or so, he was close to being in control again. It didn’t do to have too much imagination. He looked at the fine, new scars on his legs and realized that the reality of the situation was bad enough.

  Why me?

  The question had no answer.

  Nobody’s keeping score. Except me.

  He put on a shirt and jeans that fit his frame, trying not to think about the fact that someone else had worn them, maybe for the last time. He found a pair of heavy work boots with high tops that were about his size. Boots could be a weapon; not elegant, but a weapon just the same. These had hard toes, probably steel, and thick soles. He liked the way they felt.

  He climbed in his chamber and lay down on the mat of blankets the former occupant had left. He’d made no attempt to personalize this dungeon for himself, not even in the smallest way. There were only the blankets and some plastic bags for carrying food from the grocery, and that was about it. He looked up at the dark brown ceiling and the dark brown walls and that dull light pressed in on him as if it had weight. He longed for the light and the air of High Ridge so much it hurt.

  Linda might be there now, he thought. It’s hers, that high, bright place. I’ve left her heaven.

  The sudden urge to see Earth was like an electric prod to his back. He shot up and out the hole and sprinted to the view chamber. His eyes were glued to the floating globe before he was all the way in.

  He let the image fill his eyes and heart and never had he felt such longing. He wanted to shoot down to it like a meteor, to fly at supersonic speed and spread his atoms over that blue and brown sphere on joyful impact with it. He’d never known it until now, this very moment, his home, his planet, his planet. He raised his arms out wide to it and let the clean blue light of it splash on him like cool water.

  God, my place, my home it is that beckons me with this light.

  He soared over the Earth’s richness and saw it for the first time.

  He saw its forests and plains and rivers and mountains and he could smell the earthen banks of sweet rivers and fields of poppies and wheat that flowed and rolled in waves and hissed gently.

  He walked on a mountain trail covered with wet clean, clear ice and snow and felt it crunch under his boots and the sun bounced off that white sheet and blinded him with its brightness.

  An ocean wave pushed him into the sandy ocean bottom and rolled him and tumbled him and ground his knees and hands into it as the water boiled around him and filled his head with its sound and his mouth with the primal taste of salt water.

  He ran down a rocky hillside and dug his boots deep into the soft earth in a long slide near the bottom. He spat dust then turned and ran back up to do it again. On the way up he felt the sun-heated, immutable mass of granite under his young hands as he pushed off the boulders in his climb.

  He stood there with his arms stretched out and let the memories come and savored each in turn until he could stand no more. Then, his arms fell to his sides like heavy, dead wood, and he slumped against the curved wall of the chamber. The images dimmed slowly and left his mind as blank as slate.

  * * *

  Mary had seen him walk in from the soakers, but decided to let him rest before she told him of her discovery. When she peeked into Phil’s chamber some time later and found him gone, her next stop was the view chamber. The Earth could pull, even from this distance, and she’d succumbed to the healing force of its gravity herself many times after being used.

  Phil was squatting like an aborigine when she entered the chamber, his arms resting straight out over his knees. She thought about leaving him to his meditation for a while but decided the news about the phone was too important. She walked over and squatted down next to him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  Phil raised his head slowly and opened his eyes then rubbed them with his palms. “Sure. Peachy.”

  Mary wasted no time. “Tom Moon found a cellular phone in the dump with a big battery, fully charged. I made an antenna, a dish, about this big out of tin foil.” She framed a space in the air with both arms open wide then grinned uncontrollably. “When I put . . . ” She had to put her hands over her mouth for a second to smother her hysteria. “When I connected the dish to the antenna and pointed it at Earth . . . ”

  “What happened?”

  “It worked. I got a good signal.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “The damned thing works!”

  “What do you mean works?”

  “I mean we can phone home, ET!”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Get up wise ass, I’ll show you.”

  She grabbed his wrist with a smile and pulled him to his feet. She glanced down at the Earth. “We’re over California right now. Perfect timing.”

  The antenna she’d fashioned didn’t look like it had been made from aluminum foil by hand. From a few feet away, and with a little imagination and forgiveness, it looked like it could have been factory-made. It was about the size and shape of an umbrella, and it took Phil a moment to realize that it was an umbrella, lined perfectly and smoothly with foil. The handle had been removed and a piece of thin, stiff wire about a foot long substituted for it. Running out of the other side was a piece of wire that terminated with a sleeve made of foil. This piece she carefully slipped over the phone’s own little antenna attaching it to the dish. The dish itself was perfectly uniform around the edges and very smooth on the inside.

  “Cool, huh?” she said.

  Phil just stared.

  “Now watch this. Come ‘ere.” Phil stepped up closer. Bailey was lying with her face to the wall. Mary toed her gently in the rump. “We’re gonna test the phone again. C’mon.”

  “It’s cool. I’ve seen it,” Bailey said and yawned.

  Mary eyeballed where she thought the Earth was relative to their position, then holding the antenna with one hand, she pointed the yard-wide dish down at it and turned the phone on with the other. The phone chimed a note, “Ready” displayed on the little screen, and the signal strength indicator jumped up to the halfway mark.

  “See that?” she said, handing the phone to Phil and pointing at the indicator. “I told ‘ya.”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “See?”

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  She turned the phone off with a forefinger and grinned. “Gotta save the batteries,” she said and started to giggle. “I dialed the operator and said . . . I says ‘Hello from outer space . . . I’ve been captured by aliens.’ The operator says ‘That happened to me once, too.’ What a riot, huh?”

  “Corny,” Bailey said, barely audible, not turning around.

  “Right. Lemme see,” he said and took it from her. He held the phone up to his ear to test it and sure enough, the aluminum foil sleeve slipped off the phone’s antenna.

  “Damn. You can kinda hold it like this,” she said and moved it around.

  It slipped off again.

  “I can fix that. Don’t force it. Give it back.”

  Knitting her brow, she put the dish down and considered how to modify the fitting.

  “Who should we call first?” she asked.

  Phil was already thinking about it and had an answer. “Linda,” he said.

  “Who’s Linda?”

  “Linda Purdy. My friend.”

  “Oh. Okay. That’s good. Whatever. I just thought you might want to call the Pentagon or maybe the cops. I don’t know. Silly me.”

  “No, no. Linda is the one to call. She’s exactly the one to call. Once we give her the complete picture she’ll run with it. We’ve only got what, a couple of hours of talk time. We have to make sure that at least one person gets the whole picture on tape right from the get-go. And we have to hold some battery power in reserve in case she needs more, or if we have to talk to someone else. We have to maximize it.”

  Mary thought about it.

  “Okay. But what abou
t the Pentagon. When do we call them?”

  Phil gently pushed the antenna down into the phone.

  “Look. It could take all the power we have just to find out who in the hell to talk to in the Pentagon. And think about it Mary, they would never, and I mean never ever believe a word of it anyway.”

  Of course. Of course. I got way ahead of myself, she thought with sadness. It was just wishful thinking.

  “We’re dead. Even with the phone we’re dead, aren’t we?”

  Phil considered the unsavory alternatives for a flash, then Mary herself finished the thought for him.

  “If we’re lucky that is,” she said.

  “Rescue isn’t just unlikely. It’s not possible,” he said in his most professional voice.

  Mary drummed her fingers on the rim of the dish and thought about it.

  “Everybody’s gotta die of something,” she said and sat down to work on the dish. “I’ll have this thing workable in a few minutes if you want to stick around.”

  “Sure. Where’s the notebook?”

  Bailey pulled it out from under the covers, held it up and wagged it slowly without turning around. Phil took it from her and thumbed through it looking for an empty page. He wanted to make notes about what he wanted to say. He didn’t want to leave anything out.

  The first couple of pages had neat notes with the date and times of various events in a straight column on the left. Most of it was a record of who was taken and when they returned. The last had an entry that read: “Phil returned from being incumbated. Seems okay. Picked silly clothes. ”

  Above that was: “6/22/06 7:06 AM—Gilbert stabs Tom with knife in his neck.”

  “What’s this?” he asked Mary.

  “What?”