Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) by David Coy

upper and
lower rows of small, pointed teeth.
    It hunched over Phil’s body and stared him in the face with those
shark-like eyes, cocking its head back and forth and grimacing like a curious
chimp. Phil remained stock still. It studied the arm that had taken the burr,
getting down very near it. The cutting device hissed close to the arm. When the
creature touched Phil’s arm, some reflex jerked the arm back away from the
alien touch. The being moved with the speed of a lizard and dropped the cutting
device, leaving it dripping blood and dangling from its umbilical. It reached
with one hand and leaned down hard on Phil’s neck to hold him down. Phil tried
to struggle and managed to get his arms up under it to push it off. The thing
felt almost soft, the bones elastic and more like cartilage than bones. It was
surprisingly slippery despite the rough appearance of the skin. The spines were
sharp against his hand. The sensation of contact with the pliable bones under
the wet, loose skin set off a dark, grinding impulse to tear it to shreds with
his hands. All he could do was struggle lamely against it and absorb with each
movement more of its tactile repugnance through his hands.
    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 knew 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