Dominant Species Volume Three -- Acquired Traits Read Online Free PDF Page B

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
     
     
    H is soul swam wounded
to and fro in 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,