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

behind Bailey to get a foot or so away from it as she passed. Mary
had no magical leanings, but she got an unmistakable sense of bad juju coming from that
hole. It was so strong, she could almost see it pouring out like some mist. If
she discovered somehow that Gilbert cornholed Moon in there while he read the Bible
to him, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
    Sure
enough, just as they passed by, she caught just a glimpse of Tom as he popped,
ferret-like, out of the opening. Mary thought how annoying it was that the
sonofabitch always came up on her from behind somehow, never to her front. As
soon as she heard his little feet hit the floor, she turned to face him.
    “What?”
she asked testily. “What’s up?”
    Mary knew
Tom was thick and dim, but she didn’t think he was so dumb that he couldn’t
detect the extreme intolerance his presence puffed out of others.
    He cocked
his head and pursed his lips for a full two seconds before he spoke.
    She
waited patiently.
    “What are
you so antsy-pantsy about, anyways?” he asked.
    “I’ve got
gas. What’s it to you?” She watched that shitty little smirk cross his face and
she wanted to slap him as if he’d just shown her a mouthful of food.
    “Who’s
your friend?” His glance bounced off Bailey’s breasts and landed like a turd on
Mary. Bailey looked at Mary for direction, for some clue what to do. Mary figured
she’d let her decide on her own. She was a big girl.
    “Bailey
Hall,” Bailey said finally.
    “Any
relation to George?” the ferret smiled.
    “Who?”
Bailey was confused again. She looked at Mary and knitted her brow.
    “You
know, George Hall—the President.”
    Mary
rolled her eyes and let Tom see it. Bailey tried to smile open-mouthed and
brushed a strand of hair off her face.
    Poor
Bailey, Mary thought. Not much
in the sense-of-humor department right now.
    “George
Hall, the President?” Mary chuckled. “Jeezus keee..ryst . . . ”
    Tom’s
eyes dropped to the floor. “You think I’m stupid. You as much as just said so.”
He glared at Mary. Tom’s left hand went into a fist.
    Bailey
saw it. “Oh, jeez . . . ” she said and turned away from the blooming
confrontation. She knew where this could go. She’d seen it happen before. Too
much pride and a few wrong words could cause a fight real easy.
    Mary
watched Bailey amble away.
    Hell with
it , she thought. This is
ridiculous. No sense getting this dumb asshole’s panties in a knot over
nothing.
    She
reached out and put her hand on Tom’s shoulder like they were true buds. The
feel of wire and gristle under his clothes and his musky scent made her
slightly ill.
    “Tom, I
don’t think you’re stupid,” Mary said. This immediately softened Tom up. “It’s
just that you caught me at a bad time—if you know what I mean.”
    She just
patted his shoulder a time or two and walked away.
    For dinner, Mary opened
cans of vegetable soup and they had that and bread as the main course. They
drank the soup cold out of the can, and Bailey dipped her bread in it. Mary had
a tube of Pringle’s potato chips she’d been saving for a while and she popped
that open, too. They ate silently and while they ate Bailey would sometimes
drift off right in the middle of chewing and stay gone for as much as a
minute. She’d just stare with her mouth full of food, then come back into focus
and start up chewing again.
    Mary understood perfectly.
    Worse than the obvious
horror of being abducted by aliens was the fact that it was completely, utterly
unexpected and unanticipated. It wasn’t unexpected in the same way you would
not expect to get hit by a car, or not expect to fall down and break something,
but so far removed from the realm of possibilities as to be singularly
impossible.
    Sometimes it helped to
talk it out. “How in the world could you ever imagine that you would ever wind
up here in this place with these creatures controlling your life?” Mary said.
“No matter how low you might sink, how sick