Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits (27 page)

Peter and
Mike exchanged looks.

“What
bomb?” Mike asked.

“Never
mind,” Habershaw said. “Forget it. What people? What other people did you mean?
Who was with her?” His voice sounded far away in his own head.

“There
was a guy named John,” Mike said.

“One of
the pilots,” Peter added.

“Yeah.
And the nurse lady, Donna, and also Eddie Silk,”

Mike
continued.

“Eddie?”
Habershaw asked weakly.

“And the
biologist lady, Rachel,” Peter said.

“Yeah,”
Mike confirmed.

“Where
did they take them?”

“To the
jail thing,” Peter said.

“Which
one?”

“They took
them to the one down below your place,” Mike offered.

The
information rolled off his back like the blood. He leaned back in the chair and
winced. Then a numbness came over him, and the air around him felt thick and
quiet and too still to be real.

He closed
his eyes.

* * *

When he
woke up he was lying on the plastic sofa in the living room, and dim light was
coming through the window. The idea that it was the dawn’s light sank in slowly
like a rock dropped in mud. He wouldn’t make it back in time, but it didn’t
matter if he did or didn’t. If he got caught being off his post, so be it. It
just didn’t matter.

When he
rose, he felt wetness under him. He was sluggish and weak as if he hadn’t eaten
in days. When he looked, he saw a mottled pattern of thickened blood on the
plastic seat where he’d lain. He began to think he should have a look at the
wound.

He
stumbled into the spare bedroom and stripped out of his clothes. The entire
backside of his cottons was wet and heavy with blood. He turned the shower on a
gentle spray and got in. He turned slowly and let the water hit his back. It
hurt like hell, and he saw blood swirling pink around his feet. He felt dizzy.
Using the walls of the shower as support, he moved and shifted, letting the
water hit all of it. He wanted it clean when he looked at it.

He
stepped out of the shower, dried off as best he could, tied the bloody towel
around his waist—then collapsed in a heap.

Mike
heard the noise and got up. He found Habershaw lying mostly face down, right in
the bathroom doorway. On his back was an oval ring of about a dozen wounds. The
flesh around them had been torn so badly that he could see white bone in some.
Blood was seeping out of them and running all over the place.

“Oh, no .
. .” Peter said appearing at Mike’s side. “Maybe we should get a doctor.”
 

“He don’t
look so good.”

“There
ain’t no doctors left for us,” Mike said. “They all went to the coast.”

“All of
them?”

“Yep.”

Using the
shelter’s first aid kit and all their ingenuity, Mike and Peter stopped the
bleeding then dressed the wounds. Then they moved him to the bed and wrestled
him up on it facedown. The bandages weren’t exactly neat, but they did the job.

“That’ll
have to hold him,” Mike said. “Come on, let’s go. We gotta get to work. He’ll
be all right.”

Mike
thought about Peter’s question, and then looked at the bandages. He pressed
down on a corner of one that had come loose a little. Bill Habershaw was like a
father to him. He hoped he’d be all right—like he said—but he didn’t know for
sure. You just never knew for sure, especially when it came to being sick or
hurt. You couldn’t tell something like that in a million years. “It don’t
matter,” Mike said. “It don’t matter at all.”

A few hours
later, Habershaw got up, ate, and then drank a gallon of water. Then, his back
stinging and the bandages pulling at him, he made his way slowly to the truck
and headed back to the rig.

13

C
aptivity
didn’t sit well with Donna and she took every opportunity prod and dig at her
captors, even with the virtually useless weapon of speech alone. “You’d think
they could have flown us,” she said to the guard. “It would have been a lot
faster, don’t you think?”

“Keep
your mouth shut,” the guard, a steely-eyed veteran named Mahoney said, “or I’ll
put a gag in it.”

“Just
making conversation,” she said brightly at Rachel. “At least we know it can
talk now.”

Rachel
pinched her eyes closed then opened one at John. She worried that Donna would
antagonize the guards to the point where they would kill them on the spot. She
could see Donna’s mood building up to the I-just-don’t-give-a-shit point real
fast.

John saw
it, too. “Donna, relax,” he said.

“I’m relaxed.
He's the one who's not relaxed,” she said with a crooked grin.

Christ. She never stops.

“Shut
up,” Mahoney said to her.

They were
in the back of a small troop transport, being moved from the settlement to the
monolith. Hands secured behind their backs with restraints, they bumped along
and tried to keep from falling out of their seats.

Taken
from jail in the early hours of dawn, they’d been put in the back of the
vehicle with hardly a word from the guards. After a month of captivity without
so much as a walk outside, the sudden and brief exposure to so much open space
had been refreshing, in spite of the circumstances. The prisoners dawdled on
the short walk to the transport and breathed in the morning air and asked their
troubled questions. Contained in the back of the transport, Rachel felt the
oppression of stiff walls around her once more. She looked over at Eddie, his
head resting against the seat back, eyes closed, trying to sleep. From time to
time, his eyes would pop partway open on a big bump, then close again. He
didn’t appear very concerned, it seemed to her. Maybe he just didn’t give a
shit either.

“I have
to urinate,” Donna said to the guard.

“Piss
your pants,” the big guard named Mahoney said. “We’re not stopping.”

“Fine. If
you want to smell my piss for the whole trip, I don’t mind.”
 
She settled in her seat, lifted her head and
closed her eyes. Rachel was sure she was going to do it.

“Stop the
truck!” Mahoney yelled forward.

“Oh,
God,” Rachel said. Now she’s done it.

The
vehicle stopped. Mahoney gave Donna a disgusted look, opened the doors and
jumped out. Using his rifle, he waved her outside. She got up and jumped down
into the morning light.

“Turn
around,” he said.

“Please
don’t kill her,” Rachel said, leaning forward. “She’s just mean. She can’t help
it.”

Donna
chuckled into the air.

“You
people are like kids,” Mahoney said.

He
unlocked her cuffs and removed them. Rubbing her wrists, Donna walked a few
meters away, unzipped then pulled her clothes down, squatted and peed. The
guard looked away, but not too far.

When she
was finished, she came back, put her hands behind her back and obediently
turned around to be handcuffed again.

“Thank
you,” she said.

“Don’t
mention it. Anybody else have to piss?” he said gruffly into the vehicle. “This
is the first and last goddamned stop.”

“I do
sir, if you don’t mind,” Eddie said.

“Get in
there,” he said to Donna. “Get out, kid.”

Eddie
jumped down and turned around. The guard undid his cuffs and barked, “Hurry
up!”

Donna sat
down across from Rachel, lips pursed and eyebrows raised—the very quintessence
of victory.

“Very
funny. How was I supposed to know?” Rachel said, embarrassed. “He could have
been thinking about shooting you.”

“You
wish,” Donna said.

Eddie
walked a few meters toward the jungle’s edge. He could tell by the way the
plants had grown there—some of them with just their tops showing—that they’d
stopped next to a ravine. He’d have to decide in the next few seconds. He kept
walking until he was just a couple of meters from the road’s edge, pushing the
distance with each step.

“That’s
far enough, kid,” the guard said.

If he ran
and zigzagged, he might make it. He unzipped his cottons and glanced over his
shoulder. He could see the guard in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t tell
if the guard was looking directly at him or not. He wondered if he would be
able to hear his pee hitting the ground, or rather, not hear it. If he was
going to run for it, he’d have to do it now.

He closed
the zipper all the way up.

Eddie
bolted for the jungle. He lunged two steps right, then turned and took two
left.

“Stop,
kid!”

Eddie
tore right again and launched himself out over the tops of the foliage. The
ravine was steeper than he thought. He tumbled once cleanly through the air and
thought he would hit ground, but he continued over another full turn as the
branches and leaves slapped at him. He landed on his back in the soft dirt, but
the impact still knocked the air out of his lungs. Gasping for air and with
limbs flailing, he crashed down through the underbrush.

Mixed
with the sound of breaking stalks and thrashing leaves was the sound of
gunfire.

He rolled
and slid. Then, suddenly at a point of even sharper descent, his feet caught on
a thick root that flipped him and he started to tumble end over end. Finally,
he slid to a stop. He could hear faint voices far above and listened for the
sound of crashing brush that would signal the soldier’s pursuit. He kept very
still, breathed shallowly and waited.

Up on the
road, Mahoney stood at the point where Eddie disappeared into the green and
looked down into it. His partner, an athletic and lively solider, had trotted
up and was standing with him. “What happened?” he asked.

“The kid
bolted—the dumbass kid bolted.”

“Hey, if
that’s the way he wants to die . . .”

“He was
gone just like that,” Mahoney said, flashing open his hand.

“Well,
it’s your lucky day,” the other said with a toothy grin.

 
“Why’s that?”

“Because
it wasn’t Rachel Sanders that got away.”
 

“Yeah, I
guess you’re right about that there.”

They went
back to the truck and Mahoney got in the rear, slammed the door closed and
locked it. “No more stops!” he said before anyone could ask anything. Then he
read the looks of concern on their faces and softened. “He got away. He ran
into the green. I don’t think I hit him, but I might have. In either case he’s
dead. Forget it. No more stops.”

Donna
wasn’t sure the jungle could kill Eddie Silk quite so easily.

“The
kid’s got nerve,” John remarked.

“Shut
up,” Mahoney said.

They kept
quiet for the remainder of the trip. There was little to talk about anyway. It
was certain they’d get no more answers from Mahoney. Rachel was especially
gloomy and leaned back against her arms and stared at the floor. John watched
her, knowing full well that when she stared it wasn’t a good sign. He kept one
eye on her the entire trip.

They
arrived at the monolith with the sun at its highest. When Mahoney opened the
doors, the air rushed in at them like something hot and alive. The oppressive
heat hammered them. They marched across the open area toward the monolith’s
enormous portal, Mahoney at the rear and the other one leading the way. “I
can’t remember it ever being this hot,” John said.

“Me,
neither,” Rachel said in a monotone. “It’s a real scorcher. Maybe summer has
arrived.”

The
entire clearing was now a mountain of containers, and the lifts worked at it
like ants on something sweet, pulling off a bit of it with each visit and
hauling it away to the nest. Huge trucks were queued up next to the pile, their
beds stacked high with containers, waiting to be off-loaded. To the north were
rows of shelters just going in, moved over from the settlement.