All Beasts Together (The Commander) (46 page)

Tonya h
eld Keaton’s shirt in her fist, and Keaton gripped Tonya’s blouse tight under the neck.  Arm spittle covered Tonya’s face and less than an inch separated Keaton’s nose from hers.  Tonya took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.  Her body ached with anger, as close to taking a swing at Keaton as she had ever been.

“A Focus Gladchuck
filed a formal complaint against you for assaulting one of her people,” Tonya said, as calm as she could force.  Today her charisma wasn’t even touching the Arm.

“Gladchuck’s not half bad as a Focus but she has a telephone pole up her ass on her best days,” Keaton said.  “I can understand her, though, unlike my so-called Network Contact, Focus Rodriguez, who I swear is a real witch who controls her juice use with religious icons and other symbols.  I was raiding a Clinic and one of Gladchuck’s Transforms was there as a volunteer, about the stupidest thing I’ve ever
seen.  I was in full stalk and still didn’t do anything to Gladchuck’s Transform more than telling her to back off.  It’s not my fault she hurt herself running away.”

“Sounds like you have more control than Hancock.”

“Hancock’s got plenty of control, at least from your perspective.  She’s talked civil to tagged Transforms in person and everything.  Even to a Focus.  Tonya, I’ve got people spying on her night and day and the only mistake she’s made was the Kensington fuck up.  Which she heard about from me, in painful detail.  Only the damned bitch isn’t following all of my hints, only about eighty percent of them, so I’m not talking to her ‘cause I’m as pissed at her as I am at you.”

Oh
, that’s just fabulous, Tonya thought.  Even with Hancock graduated the two Arms didn’t get along.  “Who hunts Detroit?”

Keaton growled, loud, predatory.  Tonya’s
blouse tightened around her neck as the Arm’s clenched her fist tighter.  “Why are you so fucking interested in Detroit, you overbearing…”

“I’m trying to save your worthless hide from the Council, dammit, and I need…”

“…witless wonder.  I’ve been a Network member for too many fucking years to deserve this…”

“…cooperation, not spittle and drivel.  You’ve been totally useless ever since you took…”

“…treatment and suspicion.  I could have been taking tagged Transforms for years but I’ve honored…”

“…in Hancock as a student.”  Tonya’s blouse ripped, strained beyond its tolerance by the Arm’s gripping hand.  Keaton ignored Tonya’s instinctive charismatic ‘back off’ without even a flinch.  An instant later Keaton had hold of Tonya’s chin.  “Let go…”

“…every agreement I’ve made with you bitches.”

Keaton let go…and was out of the car.  Keaton’s face was livid red and she shook with anger.  “Here.  This is what I wanted to talk to you about but you…”

“You’re the one with the fucking…”

“…refused to even listen.”  Keaton tossed a thick manila envelope in through the open door, to land uncharacteristically askew, by the gas pedal.

“…attitude problem, not me.  This poaching you Arms are doing has…”

“We’re not fucking poaching! 
And I’m the one who hunts fucking Detroit!
”  Keaton turned and stalked off.

“…got to stop!” Tonya said, her last a futile bellow at Keaton’s back.  Had Keaton been the one who had taken Adkin
s’ Transform?  Were the two Arms working together against the Focuses now?

The Arm, elbows flying, kicked over a trash receptacle on the way by, yelled out a loud “Motherfucking cunt!” and then assaulted a VW Beetle
sitting innocently at the curb, parked and minding its own business.  Keaton tipped it over, twice, kicked in its front windshield and as she passed, emptied dry a semi-auto Tonya hadn’t even seen the Arm carrying into the Beetle’s gas tank.  It exploded.

Tonya
climbed into the driver’s seat, trying to keep her hands from shaking.  Sweat covered her back.  She picked up the manila folder as if it was a bomb, clearly true, as the folder label said, in Zielinski’s handwriting: “Information on Directed Withdrawal Scarring in a Chimera.”  The title itself made her sweat clammy.  She set it beside her to look at later, far far later, and went to start the car, only to pound the wheel and mutter a few choice obscenities of her own.

Keaton had walked off with the car keys.

Chapter
12

No Focus ever given the task to hunt Monsters, ostensibly as a good will gesture to the general public, has escaped unscathed mentally or physically.

“Inventing Our Future”

Henry Zielinski: February 29, 1968

The Focus closed her eyes again, meditated, and stuck a pencil on the USGS topo map of the area just east of Lake Geneva. 
She opened her eyes to discover where her pencil pointed and stood up from her cross-legged sitting position, graceful as a dancer.  Zielinski picked the map up from the ground and dusted off the dirt and dry grass before he rolled it up.  They had been on the hunt all night and Lori thought they were getting close.  He had been quietly observing her Monster-hunting techniques, glued to her left shoulder the entire time.  None of the Inferno Monster hunters challenged his position; he suspected Tim and Ann were glad to have him in the Focus’s care instead of theirs.

They
had been quite shocked at his firearms skills.  People did tend to forget about his background in surgery and his well-practiced hand-to-eye coordination.  Now with the rising sun he was more confident about the hunt.  He didn’t much like chasing Monsters at night, but as per their agreement, he had left all the timing issues to the Focus.

“I’ve got the Monster pack just northwest of Paddock Lake, and, finally a good
idea of their vector,” the Focus said.  According to the map, the pack headed toward Chicago.  He suspected the Madonna of Montreal had picked ‘now’ for their Monster hunt because of an attack on Carol, who he strongly suspected laired in Chicago.  “Back into the vehicles.  We know enough now to cut them off.”

This w
ould be interesting and dangerous.  Chimera metasense extended for miles, and they would soon be inside the Chimera’s range.  Both he and the Focus were sure a Chimera led the monster pack, even if the Focus couldn’t pick him out with her juice-pattern enhanced tracking tricks.

He
had never seen a Focus do anything like this before.  He had long wondered how Inferno was so successful at Monster hunting.  Now he knew.

As the line of Inferno vehicles rounded the corner on the rural dirt road, Tim shouted out “There they are!”  The line of vehicles stopped; Zielinski looked and saw nothing.  The Inferno monster hunters climbed out of the cars and trucks and took cover behind the vehicles and in the roadside ditches.  They loaded and positioned their weapons, tense with pre-combat nerves.  The sun dappled through low clouds, glinting on the old snow of the fields around them.

“They’re charging,” the Focus said.

Now he spotted their targets, a line of Monsters and part-Monster women running out of the forest a quarter mile away.  A red-furred gorilla led the group, and as Hank caught sight of the gorilla, it roared.  Hank froze in place, as did everyone but the Focus.

“Buck up, people,” the Focus said.  “That’s the Chimera, and that’s its charisma.”  She muttered code words.  Hank unfroze and sighted his weapon, waiting for the order to fire.  Lori had used one of her juice patterns to unfreeze them.  From what she told him earlier, many
mature Monsters had a fear-charisma attack.  Experience had taught her how to counter it.

“We’ve got four with weapons, not including the guy in front,” Shelly Darcie said
, peering over the cab of one of the pickups.  She was one of four Inferno fighters glued to binoculars.

“
Concentrate on the gorilla,” Lori said, taking out her Monster gun.  Hank settled farther into his ditch and made sure of his aim.  “Fire!”

Blood sprayed from the gorilla Chimera, hit by over a dozen Monster
-stopper rounds.  He went down.

The Chimera’s
harem hit the ground when he went down, seeking cover.

“They’re going to try and flank us to the left,” the Focus said. 
The Chimera and pack were out of her metasense range, but she somehow knew what they were doing.  Did Focuses have unpublicized Monster hunting instincts?  Hank wouldn’t be surprised.  “There’s a low spot, a culvert sixty feet to the left.  Into it.”

They crawled through the
late winter old snow and to the culvert.  Hank kept lookout where Tim and Lori pointed.  After far too many moments of quiet the ground ahead of them erupted with a roar, as a tiger Monster and a horse Monster (showing non-horse-like carnivorous teeth) sprung up and charged them.  He fired as they charged and hit once, twice, and spotted the Focus drop her Monster gun and charge to their right, away from the fight and in the direction of where the Chimera had fallen.  The more human part-Monster ladies fired at the Inferno troops as they charged, and Hank kept his head down, firing prone.

Hank wanted to watch Lori but couldn’t.  The
harem of Monsters and part-Monsters, or what was left of them, were getting far too close.  The horse Monster dropped, head blown off by Monster rounds, some of them his.  Then the tiger Monster was on them.

The Inferno Monster hunters were way ahead of him;
half of them had already dropped their firearms and taken out their swords.  He had been more than appalled by their sword collection, but they told him Monsters respected swords and swords made good weapons to use against Monsters, giving those with the heavy firearms enough room to finish them off.

Hank wanted nothing to do with any swords or knives, or hand-to-hand combat of any variety.  He had no skills or training in this area, and even less inclination to get involved.

Tim and Tina intercepted the tiger Monster and their swords shredded her like a blender’s blades.  Hank decided to trust their competence and fired once more into a part-Monster woman with a shrunken head and a beak, less than sixty feet away. He heard the roars of the Chimera turn into whipped puppy dog yelps.  Tim and Tina stopped chopping the tiger, which turned and ran from them, dripping blood.  He had never seen a sword fight like this before.  Definitely post-human in quality, already showing many benefits from the advanced Transform training.

“Rick’s hit, Do
c,” Tim said.  Hank grabbed his kit from where he had set it down, at his feet when they had reached the culvert and now twenty feet away.  He crawled over; out of the corner of his eyes he spotted the remaining pack members turn and flee.  One more dropped from Inferno gunfire before they fled out of sight.

Rick Henderson lay on the ground, his belly clawed open and his left arm in tatters.  Hank started to clamp
and sew; he smelled juice as he worked, the Focus pumping Rick for all he was worth.

The Focus put her hand on his shoulder.  “Slow down, I’ve got him,” she said. 
Zielinski slowed, relieved.

“Lori, what’s our status?” Ann asked.

“I couldn’t kill the boss Chimera, but he had a trainee with him, a rat, and I got him,” Lori said.  She stank of juice herself, only worse.  Was this the odor of bad juice?  He had never been able to smell it before.  “Six of the pack are dead, and they’ve left two wounded behind we need to finish off.”  She sat in the snow and shook her head.  “These Chimeras are going to be a big problem,” she said.  “They’re much much harder to kill than Monsters, at least with my tricks, and for Major Transforms those Chimeras weren’t strong at all.”

“We didn’t lose anyone, Focus,” Tim said.

“I know, but only because they’d never run into anyone who fought back before,” Lori said.  “They had no idea what they were doing.  It’ll never be this easy again.”

“In that case, Lori, I think we should chase them down and finish them off,” Ann said.  “Dead Monsters tell no tales.”

“We’ll give it a try, but don’t hold your breath.”

Hank finished with Rick five minutes later.  He
would live, but only because he was a Transform.  Even so, Rick wouldn’t be functional for weeks.

After they bundled up Rick and stowed him in one of their vans, they motored off in pursuit.

Enkidu: February 29, 1968

They moved at night, and this night’s march would take them into Chicago and into the confrontation with the Talking Arm.  Enkidu tried to keep his spirits up, but the message of the clouds shook him.  Disaster stalked
them
, which didn’t make any logical sense.  The Talking Arm was friendless, save for Gilgamesh, and he posed no threat.

He and his pack skulked up the bottomland between the Chicago ship canal and the Des Plains river,
slipping between the brush, invisible to the eye save for the clouds of steam they exhaled.  This was the only way into Chicago from the south that wouldn’t leave them exposed.

“Stop,” Enkidu barked.  Tonight, he w
ore his full Beast form, the great hulking wolf.

“Master?” Cleo asked, a whisper.
  Her form was invisible to the eye, another shadow among many.

“There’s something up ahead, close,” he said.  “I can metasense…”