Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (17 page)

Then she tortured me, going after my fingernails and my ego, until I understood the boy’s death was my fault because I told him my real name.

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I woke from my Keaton nightmare in an abandoned bachelor apartment, the bachelor fled.  I had three bullet wounds, two in my left leg and one in my hip.  No exit wound on the last one, dammit.  I also had a rash in all the warm spots of my body, between my toes, in my crotch, under my breasts and in my armpits.  Even more embarrassing, zits covered my face.  Random phantom pains plagued me and I wasn’t even hungry.

I never did figure out what I did
to the now fled bachelor, if anything, or how I got shot.

It took me over a day to get home.  I was a fucking wreck.

Gilgamesh spotted the Crows start
ing to move all around him just as he got ready for bed.  He quickly put his pants back on and slipped out of his dark house.  To his surprise, the Crows slid northwest.  He followed them, despite their unexpected motion.  He hadn’t expected any activity tonight with all the Crows skittish over Keaton’s new captive Arm and Hancock out of town.

Three blocks on the way, Wire pulled up in a car and stopped.

“Get in,” he said, from behind the wheel of his staid white Ford.

Gilgamesh almost ran.  He still feared cars.

“Come along, you can do it,” Wire said. “There’s dross.”

Gilgamesh shivered as the craving for dross burned inside of him.  Need fought with fear, and despite his terror, reason won out.  He took a deep breath, cringed as he reached out for the handle, but he got into Wire’s car.

Wire took his foot off the brake and the car rolled forward.  Gilgamesh huddled on the far side of the passenger seat.  He tried not to look at Wire, and he tried not to look outside the car.  He didn’t want to see how dangerously fast the world flew by, though if he trusted the speedometer, Wire never exceeded thirty.

The trip took forty minutes and neither of them uttered a word.  Gilgamesh sensed the dross ten minutes before they arrived.

Wire parked the car along the side of a narrow dirt road and led Gilgamesh to the edge of an undeveloped ten-acre lot.  They were miles from Philadelphia, miles from any major roads, and in the quiet night Gilgamesh heard the rustling of small animals in the underbrush.  Trees and scrub covered the lot, a lot surrounded by a chain link fence liberally hung with ‘No Trespassing’ signs.

Five minutes later, Sinclair showed up in his truck, the other two Crows in tow.  Together, they all slipped silently over the fence and into the lot.  Deep in the center of the
scrub acreage they found the graves.

Eleven graves, scattered among the trees, with no headstones, nothing but turned earth.  Gilgamesh metasensed the graves anyway.  Ten of the eleven held only useless waste dross, but one was rich with fresh dross, less than three days old, just starting to mellow.

The Crows gathered around the patch of fresh dirt covered in dead leaves, among the turned earth and scrub and few taller beech trees in the cool spring darkness.  They drew.

“Remember your lessons, Gilgamesh,” Wire said.  Wire, the oldest of the Crows in Philadelphia, took it upon himself to teach Gilgamesh how to draw more effectively.  In Wire’s analysis, Gilgamesh suffered from low juice because he flailed at the dross, scattered it and in the process, turned what he scattered into waste.

Gilgamesh visualized his hands like scoops and stuck them deep into the soil, into the dross.  He closed his eyes and probed with imaginary fingers.

“Dross capture is tactile.  Don’t think of sipping through a straw.  Draw the dross through your fingers,” Wire said.

Gilgamesh nodded, and concentrated on his fingers.  It did seem to work better.  The creature buried underneath, Keaton’s latest kill, was rich in dross.  Gilgamesh wasted much less of it this time.

“Do any of you know why Tiamat doesn’t hunt Philadelphia?”  Gilgamesh asked.  This was Keaton’s kill disposal area.

“We don’t know,” Ezekiel said.  “Our best guess is the Arms, as predators, have their own exclusive hunting territories.”

“Either that or the Skinner’s forbidden her to hunt here just to keep Tiamat down,” Tolstoy said.  Much to Gilgamesh’s amazement, the others
had adopted his name for Hancock as theirs.  “That would fit her style.”

Gilgamesh laughed, not paying attention to his dross drawing.

Wire attracted his attention, subtly, by wiggling the dross Gilgamesh fed on.  “Gilgamesh, think of the dross coming through your arms, to your shoulders, to your head.  It’s not food.  It won’t do you any good in your belly.”

Gilgamesh blushed.  He once equated taking dross with eating.  Now he knew better, but his old habits were hard to break.

“Gilgamesh, tell us a story from your adventures,” Wire said.  Then, whispering even quieter, said: “Good practice, learning to talk and draw dross at the same time.”

Save for Sinclair, the other Crows managed to repress their snickers.

“I could do that,” Gilgamesh said.  He told them a story from his days on the road, after Echo chased him out of St. Louis, and his encounter with Rumor.  “Looking back on it from a slightly older perspective, I’m sure Rumor saved my life by chasing me out of Pittsburgh.”

The story agitated only Sinclair.  “I’ve heard of Rumor, but I’ve never met him.  Merlin told me to stay out of Pittsburgh but wouldn’t say why.”

The rest of the Crows had met Rumor by blundering into Pittsburgh themselves.  In turn Ezekiel, Tolstoy and Wire told their version of the tale.  Wire got more out of Rumor, after learning the older Crow’s weakness for fast food.  Rumor had fought with the dark Focus’s minions several times.

Gilgamesh let them talk as he practiced drawing dross more efficiently.

The conversation continued after they exhausted the dross, the subject turning to Focus households, in specific, that of the Philadelphia Focus they named Hera.  She was a dark, dark Focus, not only the Focus equivalent of Keaton, but a Focus who actually dealt with Keaton.  Her household reeked with dross and her household’s ratio of usable to waste dross was the best they had ever seen.  Her darkness, though, made her usable dross
slippery
, a term unfamiliar to Gilgamesh.  Of the Philadelphia Crows, only Wire possessed the skill to draw her dross.

“I’ll take you back,” Sinclair said to him, breaking away from a conversation on Focuses.  Gilgamesh nodded and climbed into Sinclair’s truck.  This time, he found he didn’t have any problems at all.  He even looked out the truck windows as Sinclair slowly drove back into Philadelphia.

“Where did this kill come from?” Gilgamesh asked.  “I didn’t even know the Skinner was hunting.”

“I think Hera provides her with Transforms at times,” Sinclair said.  Gilgamesh shivered, terrified that any Focuses might be able to do such things.

“What’s up with Wire?” Gilgamesh asked.  “He seems different than the rest of us.  Different in a good way, mind you.”

Sinclair laughed, quietly.  “Wire’s trying to become a Guru, a teacher of Crows.  He used to be one of Guru Shadow’s followers, but he also followed Guru Merlin, and he’s getting his Guru training from Thomas the Dreamer.  Wire’s followed the Skinner off and on for several years and he’s working on teaching other Crows how to deal with Arms.”

“I’m honored to be here, then, and have Wire accept me,” Gilgamesh said, suddenly happy.  He felt like Wire was almost an older brother.

“Did you know Occum’s got himself a new Beast Man?” Sinclair said.

“No.  Midgard found the one in Delaware?”  The dark ride through empty country roads was peaceful in a way, at least a little.  The truck seemed to offer a solitary island in the vast expanse of night.

Sinclair nodded.  “They’re calling him Crab Guy.  This new beast’s shape is utterly unlike that of any Beast Man us Crows have run away from before: think ‘giant crab’ from the waist up, gorilla from the waist down.  Crab Guy can still talk almost as well as a normal human.”

“As long as Occum can tame them, that means they’re not a danger to us,” Gilgamesh said.

“Amen to that.  How goes the junk business?” Sinclair asked.

Several weeks ago, Gilgamesh found a collection of broken vacuum cleaners in a dump, and they had called to him.  He had been an engineer before he transformed and he possessed the knack for making things work.  He bought some basic tools and supplies, and repaired four of the vacuum cleaners.

“Much better, now that I’ve moved into my new apartment.”  Those four vacuum cleaners were the first of many junked appliances he now repaired and sold.  At first, he worked in Sinclair’s apartment, because it had electricity, but Sinclair’s patience with him hadn’t been infinite.  Sinclair had been willing to loan him enough money to rent an apartment, though.  Showers!  Real food!  Heaven.  He had managed to repay most of what he owed Sinclair, but not all.  Not yet.

“I told Wire what you did with my truck,” Sinclair said.  Ah.

“I noticed his car wasn’t running well.”

“You think you might be willing to come by and fix it?”

“Of course,” Gilgamesh said.

Sinclair stopped a block away from Gilgamesh’s apartment.  “You’re going to need to get a truck yourself, someday,” he said to Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh shuddered, and nodded.  If he owned a truck, he would be able to haul his wares around much easier.  But that would take driving!  He hadn’t mastered
riding
yet.  He thanked Sinclair and walked the rest of the way to his apartment.

I couldn’t believe what I found
when I returned to Keaton’s warehouse.  She had been going after Mary for five days and Mary still wouldn’t cooperate.  The clash of the world-class battle-axes.  I was surprised the world still stood.  I found Keaton going after Mary with the belt, using the buckle end, when I walked into the warehouse’s gym.

“Hancock?” she said, growling.  I knelt.  “What kind of fucked up mess…crap.”

“Monster, ma’am.  Accidental draw.”

“I’ll deal with you and your fucking disaster later, cunt,” Keaton said.  “I need food.  Now.”

Keaton told me the story from the gym while I cooked in the kitchen.  Normally she wouldn’t, and she still didn’t want me anywhere near her, but the Arm in me figured out the reason.  Humiliation, of Mary.

Keaton
had hit Fouke with everything imaginable during my hunt: starvation, degradation, beatings, torture, the works.  Hell, Keaton fed Fouke less food than a normal would need, which as an Arm I knew would have driven me mad.  Keaton kept Fouke bound tight for the last two days, and Fouke’s juice count was below one hundred.  She must have been in hell.  Bad as my first weeks as an Arm had been, this was worse.

“All this dipshit needs to do is cooperate and she’ll get untied and properly fed,” Keaton said.  “I don’t think she’s smart enough to.”

Keaton handled Mary the wrong way.  If Keaton eased off the pressure a little bit, Mary’s fear and misery would overwhelm her and make her manageable, but as long as she had something to fight against she would fight.

She was an Arm.  She
had
to fight.  She didn’t have any choice in the matter.

Mary was bruised, cut, and swollen, barely recognizable.  When Keaton stood over her, she glared, unspeaking.  She had learned to be silent.

“You ready to exercise, dipshit?” Keaton asked.  She stood there with her arms crossed and seemed so casual.

“No,” Mary said, her one word a barely audible whisper.

“Well, cunt, I’ll give you one last chance.  You agree to exercise and I’ll get you food and juice. Otherwise,” and here Keaton grinned her threatening grin, “otherwise, I’ll untie you.”  Ah, finally, something tricky from my lord and master.  Keaton had my attention.

Mary frowned and shook her head.

Keaton untied her.  Mary watched her warily, through swollen, bruised eyes.  “Run,” Keaton said, a whisper in Fouke’s ear.  “Run.”

Mary slowly began to work the aches out of her muscles.  I wondered if she would go into convulsions from the inactivity, but she hadn’t built up much muscle yet.  A minute later she stood up and teetered like a drunken two-year-old toward the front of the warehouse.  Keaton may have left Mary looking like a battered wife but Mary could still function a little.

Keaton slammed her against the wall.  “Come on, now.  You can do better.”

Mary picked herself up from the floor and gave me an expression of contempt.  Slowly again, she headed toward the door.  Keaton zipped in front of her, cutting her off.

I never learned what Keaton intended with her latest trick.  Maybe she expected Mary to go into convulsions from the inactivity.  Maybe she wanted to give Mary the experience of being prey, to motivate her to choose the other side of the fence.  Maybe she wanted to force Mary to use her muscles, to know how good it felt.  Give her exercise in spite of herself.

In any case, I know the one thing Keaton didn’t expect was what Mary did.  In the split second Keaton moved, Mary moved also.  Fast.  She burned juice and moved as if the demons of hell carried her.  Keaton hesitated a moment, surprised.  Before Keaton took off after her, Fouke burned her way to the loading dock door, opened the door and streaked away.