Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) Read Online Free

bodies, with which she shared the girl’s
shower filled her naughty fantasies and excited her budding libido far more
than those of the stringy boys.
    Mary Pope was the best mechanic in Potts County; a legend in
fact, for her ability to fix the things that mattered—and in a rural community
like Trader, Wisconsin—anything mechanical mattered. She had started her
repair business when she was just eighteen, and her native ability around tools
and her friendly disposition soon gained her a reputation for excellent
service. She took night classes and day classes and vendor classes and worked
hard; and before she was twenty-five, she was the most well-liked and admired
mechanic in Trader. The community depended on her abilities, and Mary did her
level best to fill that need.
    She hadn’t acquired the skill to fix and repair heavy machinery
without learning early to get in there and make the tool do what you wanted and
never mind about the busted knuckles and grease and dirt. Mary Pope, the
frog-eater, knew how to approach a dirty problem. It was her fearlessness that
allowed her to learn and get better and better.
    That was then, when the world as she knew it existed.
    There had been a puddle of hydraulic fluid about a yard wide right
under the pump, and she had followed a clear trail of the shiny liquid right up
to the split in the hose. She was sure she had the part; it was a fairly common
length for farm machinery. The seals might be a problem, but she probably had
those, too. She eyeballed the problem for the tools she’d need, and having made
that assessment, she started back to the truck. It was then that she heard the
sound.
    What she heard was the deepest, lowest harmonic she had ever
heard. It contained such bass that she didn’t so much hear it as feel it. The
sound literally rattled her teeth and vibrated her bones. At first she thought
it must be thunder rolling in from the distance, but the sound was too even,
too regular and too long to be thunder. She stood there and let it rumble her
until it stopped. The sound, combined with the earlier ion charge, had given
her a genuine case of the heebie-jeebies. She shuddered involuntarily then
shook it off and willed her mind to the task at hand.
    She had just tugged the hose free from its coupling and dodged the
stream of escaping hydraulic fluid when the shadow came from behind her and fell
on the tractor. She had been sure it was Jack, so much so that she didn’t
bother to turn around at first. “Go back to bed, Jack,” she’d said to the
coupling, “I’ve got it under control.”
    She still didn’t turn around when she asked, “Did you hear that godamned
noise. What was that?”
    She’d started to run the o-ring up the flange for a test fit when
she realized that she hadn’t received an answer to a direct question. No one
had ever accused Mary Pope of mumbling, and she was sure she had said it loud
enough and clear enough.
    It was standing on its back legs when she turned and was about the
same height as a person. The high, bright lights on the top of her truck were
full in her face, and she couldn’t make out its shape exactly. The only thing
she was sure of was that it wasn’t Jack, and fear hit her like a brick. It was
something about the electrical charge and the rumbling sound, and now this
thing twenty feet away that coalesced to form the bomb of fear that went off in
the primitive part of her brain. The feeling of panic was so strong that she
felt her bladder start to let go a little, a feeling she’d felt only as a child
when her father was about to strap her.
    She got the sense of an animal from it, and an alien muskiness
drifted to her to confirm it. When she said the words that reflex demanded,
they came out more as a choked sound than an order.
    “Get outta here!” she’d screamed at it.
    She’d shielded her eyes from the truck’s lights and stepped
sideways to get a better look at it. As she moved, she could feel it tracking
her. As