Dominant Species Omnibus Edition

by David Coy

She was pouring her second cup of coffee when Mike hobbled full speed through the door. The look on his face told her immediately something was very wrong.

  “Joan! You gotta help Peter!”

  “What?” she asked, yelling.

  “Come on! He’s got something on him.”

  She groaned inwardly. It was always something on this planet—something hideous to bite, stab or cling to you or infect you. She raced out with her guts in a knot. There was no telling what it was.

  “Where is he?” she yelled at Mike’s back.

  “Over under the dock!”

  The crew was huddled over a section of dock a few meters from the edge, bending down or on their hands and knees to look through the grate. One of the newer kids, Bobby Fellows, had a long piece of aluminum conduit and was jabbing down through the grate at something beneath it. From beneath the dock came a high-pitched, modulating whistle that grated on her nerves. A few of the workers had their hands over their ears to shut out the piercing sound.

  “Die!” Bobby yelled. “Get off him!”

  “What is it?” Joan demanded, getting down on her hands and knees to look.

  “He dropped the key to the lift and went under to get it,” one of the workers explained. “That’s when it got him.”

  “Die!” Bobby said, “Unnhh! Unnhh!”

  “Stop, Bobby!” she ordered.

  She brought her face down to the grate and looked. Peter had both arms wrapped around one of the uprights and was holding on for dear life. His right leg was wrapped with dark tentacles. She traced the tentacles back to the globular body a meter behind him. The creature had its other tentacles wrapped around another upright and was trying to pull Peter loose. Each time the creature contracted and pulled, Peter’s leg rose up from the tension.

  “What is that?”

  “We don’t know,” Mike said, “but it won’t let go.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “Peter!” she yelled. “Peter can you hear me?”

  “He won’t answer. He’s drugged or something,” someone said.

  “Shit! Give me that pipe,” she said to Bobby.

  She lifted the rod up and slipped it through a space directly over the creature’s body and guided it down until it rested right on it. She jabbed down at it and tested the consistency.

  “Tough as leather. Here. Everybody put your weight on this,” she said taking a high grip. “Now, on three. Ready? One, two, three!”

  In unison they rammed the rod down. She could feel it pierce the creature’s skin, slide through and into the ground underneath it. There was a single shriek-like whistle.

  “Hold this,” she said to Bobby. Bobby held on and gave it another sharp jab or two.

  She got down and looked. The creature had let go of Peter’s leg and was flailing aimlessly around the pipe jammed through its middle.

  “There. Pull on that for a while!” she shouted, fury in her voice.

  She ran to the edge of the dock, jumped down and started under it on her hands and knees. Peter was still clamped to the support with both arms. His eyes were closed as if he were asleep.

  “Peter,” she said pulling at his arms. “Peter, it’s me. Let go. Let's get you out of here. Peter?”

  He just groaned and held tighter.

  “Goddammit . . . ” she muttered, frustrated and afraid.

  He wasn’t about to let go. Some survival mechanism had taken over his entire system and glued him in place.

  “Peter!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Peter! It’s Joan! Let go! It’s all right! It’s dead!”

  She pulled at his arms, and then watched one eye slowly open and felt his grip on the upright lessen a bit. A moment later, she was able to unwind his arms and get him moving. Mike and another kid scrabbled under to help her, and they soon had him sliding toward the edge of the dock and open air.

  “Uh, Joan?” a kid named Larry said from above. “I think you’d better hurry up.”

  Joan looked up through the grate and saw his eyes fixed on the jungle’s edge. She turned and looked over her shoulder. It looked like a dark mass, like flowing mud from a distance. She squinted to sharpen her focus and could make out the individual shapes of the brethren of the thing under the dock moving on them from the jungle.

  “Screw this!” she cursed. “Move! Get him out of here!” She felt for the phone in her shirt and found the spot that should have held it flat and empty.

  “Shit! Tommy, go call security! Run! Go!”

  They pushed and wrestled Peter up onto the dock. Joan picked him up and fast-stepped toward the office. When she turned around to look, she saw the creatures flowing up over the edge of the dock like a dark wave.

  “Hundreds . . . hundreds . . . ” her voice cracked in astonishment.

  They made it to the office, clamored inside, closed the door and locked it. Tommy was there with a phone in his hand. “They’re on the way,” he said.

  No sooner had he put the phone down when Joan heard the first shots being fired. The sound confused her.

  She put Peter down on the floor and went to the window to look. She was expecting a few of the security guards with their little pistols. What she saw was some kind of special weapons squad, in dun-colored uniforms, charging in from the direction of the cloister firing at the intruders with automatic rifles. In a matter of seconds, the gunfire sounded like a steady buzz. They were amazingly efficient. The bullets hit the dark shapes by the hundreds, sending red and wet material in all directions until the air was filled with spray.

  In a matter of minutes, the squad had decimated the swarm of whatever’s, leaving chunks of dead things strewn over the dock like so much meat. When it was over, the soldiers walked around the mess, spraying bursts into a creature, here or there, that still moved.

  Joan went outside to get a closer look and approached one of the men.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Those things are vicious.”

  The soldier turned on her without a smile. “Go back inside,” he said, his voice even and without emotion.

  Joan was taken aback. She was only thanking him for saving her life. “I was just . . . ”

  “I said get inside,” he repeated with malice. His voice sent a chill down her spine.

  Joan turned and started back to the office, then stopped and took another look. A crowd of contractors had begun to form a rough perimeter around the battle, and the soldiers had moved on them now, pushing and shoving them with their rifles. They were rough about it; too rough in Joan’s opinion. She watched as one of the men, an electrician she knew only as Dirk, shoved a soldier back with both hands.

  Without warning, the solider dipped his rifle’s muzzle at him and shot him in the chest. The brief burst sent a bright spray of red behind him. His body crumpled like a sack onto the dock’s grate.

  “Hey!” Joan yelled. “Hey!”

  “Get inside, lady!” the one in front of her said.

  “But he shot that man!”

  The soldier turned his rifle on her causing her to take a deep breath. She walked backwards a few feet, then turned stiffly and walked through the office door.

  “Those guys mean business,” Mike said.

  “Did you see that?” Tommy asked, innocent disbelief in his voice.

  “Christ,” Joan said. “They’re killers.”

  What she’d just seen put to rest any latent notion she had about storming the cloister. These were the Council’s private guard—mercenaries hired to protect it from threats natural or otherwise. She hadn’t even known they were there. Nobody had.

  * * *

  That evening she related the story to Bill, who’d already heard most of it from Lavachek, who’d heard it from someone else by phone moments after it happened.

  “I should have guessed they had something like that,” he said. “There’s never been a shortage of soldiers ready to work for whoever pays. Especially now.”

  4

  His soul swam wounded to and fro i
n the currents of pain for eons. A veil torn, shredded, black as night wrapped him tight and blurred the demons that swam with him, wings ragged. Cruel, they caressed him with anguish and pulled him to pieces over and over. Clever as well, they left a tiny bit of his mind intact, carefully in place as a hated remembrance, like the clock from his grandmother’s house which rocked and ticked, rocked and ticked without end. A million times he willed death to come, and to help it, he yanked free of their demon’s grip like a terrified child, then dived and forced himself deep to drown. But the demons pulled him up and revived him with suffering yet again. He pleaded in babble, with words without meaning, but they understood his senseless cries and rocked their heads to the rhythm of his lament, their smiles rotten with hate.

  Then, without warning, the demons vanished. They vanished as if washed away by a flood of clean water, and the pain with them. For another eon the dim thought that sweet death had finally overtaken him glowed in the twilight of his relief. As time passed, life and the feelings of life slowly filled the void. Finally, he felt breath come into him like a strong, warm wind.

  * * *

  “How’s he doing today?” John asked, looking down at the stranger, as if he weren't there.

  “I’d say he’s much better actually,” Donna said. “His pulse is normal, his breathing is regular, and I’ve got his electrolytes well within the normal range. If I could weigh him, I’d say he’s maybe put on a little weight. I keep getting the idea he’s trying to move from time to time. I’m thinking about starting some physical therapy, you know, exercising his joints, but I’m not looking forward to that.”

  “You mean you don’t want to lay hands on him?” John teased. “That might be fun.”

  “You’re really sick,” she smiled. “Far sicker than he is.” He smiled back. The smile faded, however, when he noticed one of the patient’s eyes flutter.

  “Check this,” he said. “He’s trying to open his eyes.”

  Donna leaned over him and studied the movement. “Come on, Buster. You can do it. Open those pretty blues or browns, or whatever's.”

  As she watched, one, then the other, of the patient’s eyes fluttered open, and then closed, several times. Finally staying open, the eyes stared straight at her and blinked, slowly and thickly. She reached over and grabbed a small bottle with a little spout on it. “This is just sterile water, Buster. It won’t hurt.”

  She flushed his eyes with water and dabbed the excess from his face with a clean towel. “There. That’s better, huh?” The eyes stared straight at her, and she was sure now that they saw her. In only an instant, something about them made her very uneasy.

  The patient breathed deeply once or twice, and the foul odor that reached her made her back off and fan the air with her hand. “Gad!”

  “Hey, I’d say he’s trying to talk,” John said.

  The patient’s mouth opened slowly and stretched. It closed and opened, and the tongue worked out and back. She was afraid to irrigate his mouth because she didn’t know if he could swallow just yet. Putting liquid in there might cause him to inhale it.

  “You’re on your own, Mister,” she said. “Come on. Talk to us. Tell us something.”

  Finally, a sound, thin and shapeless, came up from him like a mist.

  “Helll . . . ” the stranger said.

  “What did he say?”

  “Quiet,” Donna commanded.

  “Helll . . . ” he said again

  “Is he saying hello?” John asked.

  “Quiet,” she insisted. It sounds more like help. Now shut up!"

  “Helll . . . ”

  A few more sluggish attempts followed, and Donna thought she saw him swallow, although his mouth was partially open at the time.

  John leaned in over Donna’s shoulder. “What’s your name?” he asked loudly.

  “You can forget it, John,” Donna said. “He can’t hear a thing.”

  “Oh. ”

  “Come on, Buster. Just say anything,” John persisted.

  The disconcerting blue eyes slowly closed, and the mouth dropped open and stopped moving altogether.

  “Well, I guess that’s all we’ll get for now,” Donna said, blotting his desiccated mouth with a moistened towel. “All that work must have tuckered him out.”

  John scowled and shook his head. “I don’t know why we’re bothering. He’s useless to us. Look at him. He’s so emaciated he looks like . . . like . . . he’s dead already. He can’t hear. He can’t talk. What a waste. I say we just euthanize him and bury him outside. Or better yet, just leave his carcass out on the dirt—at least his body would be some use to the bugs.”

  “Sorry. We can’t do that,” she said to John with a little smile.

  “I could,” John said with confidence.

  “Oh, I know you could,” she replied smiling, “And that’s why we can’t leave you alone with the sorry bastard.”

  She had to admit the patient was having a peculiar effect on them. These mixed feelings they were developing were quite pronounced, at least for Donna and Rachel. John, on the other hand, rarely had mixed feelings about anything.

  “I wouldn’t murder the sonofabitch if that’s what you mean,” he snorted.

  “Oh, I see,” she replied.

  “Oh, what?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, still bemused. “Skip it.”

  * * *

  The next day, the patient did open his eyes again, and Donna irrigated them. This time, they moved from side to side, giving the odd impression of sneakiness. Finally, they came to rest on her as she cleaned him, and she smiled down at him. The dim blue eyes stared back up, and her smile soon evaporated. Her doubts about him were growing. She kept thinking about Rachel’s strange comment about wanting him dead, but not yet. Perhaps it was just the desire to find out about him, to unravel the mysteries he held. What was he doing here anyway? Where did he come from? What was the bible book doing in his hand? Rachel was right: there were questions that needed answers.

  The patient's mouth opened and stretched out slowly like a fish yawning; Donna heard him take a deep breath.

  “I . . . ” he said, "I've . . . been . . . in Hell.”

  Those words flushed her doubts away, and she leaned over him and nodded that she understood.

  “You’re out now,” she said clearly and loudly. “You’re back among the living. We’re going to take care of you.”

  His eyes fluttered closed. Later, she saw one claw-like hand open and shut, then freeze there, as if it had never moved.

  That day, Donna steeled herself, put her hands on his strange, pale skin and started to slowly work his limbs, starting with his feet and ankles. The joints were so stiff they felt almost fused, but she applied pressure a little at a time until they moved just slightly, then a little more, then a little more still. By the next day, she had his ankles and knees loosened to the point that some of the motion was restored. By the end of the week, she could move most of his joints—wrists, shoulders, neck, elbows, knees and hips through nearly full articulation.

  He did not speak for the entire week, but when his eyes were open, he watched her with that strange empty stare.

  She never got used to the way his body felt. His skin was more like a loose rubbery covering over bone and gristle than skin. That dreadful impression made her want to wash her hands repeatedly, which she did, after each session. And how one arm got longer than the other was a mystery to her; she’d never seen anything like it.

  * * *

  Rachel was spending more and more time in the structure’s interior, especially in the laboratory with its alien technology. Occasionally, she would bring something back, something bizarre or especially peculiar to show and tell. Most of the devices were so far removed from anything they’d ever seen that their intended use was an utter mystery. None of them looked friendly. They had in common elements of shape and color that suggested a profound malevolence, but they were not entirely lacking in their own grotesque beauty. Some
seemed marvels of engineering with parts that moved in complex ways— puzzling anatomic structures from some fantastic organism.

  They fascinated Donna less than Rachel. They frightened Donna on some deep, unfathomable level. They fascinated John as well, and he scowled with mock repulsion at them the entire time. He turned and twisted them, trying to make them work.

  “This one looks like it’s for separating tissue,” Rachel was saying. “Look at this.”

  She held the spider-like device up and actuated it by slipping her fingers down into holes in its center. The fine-tipped legs moved slowly in and out, up and down.

  “See, look at that,” Rachel said. “Great precision, huh?”

  “Ugh!” Donna said. “Get that damned thing away from me.”

  Playfully, Rachel chased Donna with it into the shuttle. Donna screeched the whole way like a schoolgirl, laughing, finally darting around to the far side of the patient. Rachel feinted one way then the other with it trying to get at her.

  “Stop it, Rachel!” Donna laughed.

  “Give me your boobs! Give me your boobs!” she teased, wiggling it at her.

  “Get outta here with that!” Donna smiled.

  Donna saw the patient’s reaction first and held up her hand for Rachel seriously to stop it. He began to tremble as if shaken from the inside out. His head vibrated back and forth in hysterical denial. His arms and legs began to move aimlessly, uselessly in a lame attempt to get away.

  “No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” he repeated. Each "No" was separate from the others, as though to emphasize the terror of each moment the patient had suffered under some such instrument.

  “Rachel,” Donna said. “Put it away, quick.”

  Rachel swung the device behind her and backed slowly out of the room. Donna put her hand on the man’s shoulder to quiet him.

  “Sorry,” Rachel said to Donna.

  “It’s okay,” Donna said to the man. “It’s okay. It’s gone now. It’s gone now."