Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (3 page)

Locked within me the beast had festered.  Now, the beast was out.

How cruel is a sane, healthy predator?  How sadistic is a hunter meant to be?  What is ‘normal’ for an Arm?  The jury is still out on that.  Psychologists have been studying us for years.  The biology of an Arm is different and how much that is responsible for an Arm’s predatory mind is an open question.  Keaton, all alone as the first Arm, hadn’t found real sanity.  How much sanity had I found?  More than I had when I tried to pretend I was a normal.  Less than some of the Arms who came later.  Someone has to be first, though, Hank!

When I faced the predator within me and took it for myself, I healed a part of my mind Transform Sickness had torn away from me.  I was whole again for the first time since I transformed.  Stronger.  But I took in poison along with the cure.

How much of what I became was healthy, natural?  How much was poison?

Some, at least.  Even back then, some part of me realized I had gone too far.  How far was too far, though?  I didn’t know, and still don’t.  Even the normals can’t figure out what is sane and what is madness when they consider themselves, and they have had thousands of years to
consider the question.  For me, I had nobody to compare myself to, except Keaton.

An hour later, in a new disguise and a new ride, I got back on the road, driving south out of San Francisco.  Thinking and weighing options.  I wasn’t stupid.  I understood that if I went back to Keaton I would be prey again.

One fact, though, had seeped in past my gut-churning terror of Keaton: the Arm basics were just the start.  I knew nothing about the other Transforms, or how to interact with them; Keaton did, extensively.  She had Arm tricks I didn’t understand in the slightest
, and several she had tried to teach me that I painfully failed to learn.  She controlled people with scary ease while all I did was confuse and terrify them.  She knew far more ways of fighting than she had taught me.  Lastly, she knew enough about how to work with money that she only had to do petty theft and robbery when the mood struck her.

I cruised past San Francisco International Airport on the 101, then the nearby side streets, on the lookout for extraordinary police activity.  I found none, despite being less than fifteen miles away from my latest tour de violence.  I found none inside the airport, either, after I had parked the car and cased the place.  My disguise was of an overweight woman; I couldn’t do men because I had failed to learn how to disguise my voice.

My plane didn’t leave for two hours.  More time to think.

I sat in an overpriced airport coffee shop, sipping hot chocolate and eating stale coffee cake while I considered. 
If I bugged out now I would leave with Keaton as an enemy.  She expected me to return.  If I didn’t leave America I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Keaton.  If she found me, she would likely kill me.

Now that I
had given up on my delusions of goodness, I found it a lot easier to understand myself, and what it meant to be an Arm, including one important thing I had figured out while on my spree: Arms don’t tolerate competition.  Period.  I learned to express this during my spree, in Arm fashion, to anyone who annoyed me.  I chased people out of my way whenever I chose.  And the intolerance for competition was a big part of why Keaton abused me, so she wouldn’t regard me as competition when she trained me.  No, to leave Keaton I had to convince her to let me go.  My dreams of disappearing into the night were just that, dreams.

But how?  The Arm inside my head said ‘When you go back Keaton’s going to beat the crap out of you, just to make sure you don’t look like competition’.  I ignored the voice. 
If I let fear make my decisions for me, I would be the mindless shell again, as I had been in those initial weeks with Keaton, reacting like a robot to whatever button she pushed.

If I wanted Keaton’s actual cooperation, I needed
to offer her something in return.  I needed something to
give
Keaton.

It took me the full two hours in the airport before my battle lust-addled head figured out what I had to do.

Gilgamesh climbed off the train in Philadelphia and waved goodbye to Midgard, who he had met up with again in Boston.  Midgard was on a mission given to him by Vizul Lightning and Occum, to search out the source of some rumors of a Beast Man on the Delmarva Peninsula.  Gilgamesh still hadn’t met the fabled Occum, who had recently tamed a second Beast Man, a tiger-oid named Shere Khan.  Before embarking on his, um, quest, Midgard spent time in New York City with the senior Crow, Shadow, and hung out with Zero, a Crow who subsisted on the dross left in subway cars.

Gilgamesh metasensed four Crows in Philadelphia, but no Arms.  Annoying, as the Crow letters and rumors placed Zaltu here, and he hoped to find his Tiamat here as well.  He had wandered the country for far too many miserable months before he finally came after Tiamat again.  He missed the Arm, or at least her dross.

He walked toward the center of town through the freight yard, passing first a mound of coal thirty feet tall, and next a mound of some white crystal that appeared to be salt but probably wasn’t.  Past the coal and faux salt sat a yard filled with cars.  Fords, Chevys, Chryslers.  Rank after rank of them, brand new and just off the trains, waiting for their new dealership homes.  After the cars he passed steel bars all lined up in neat stacks, acres of steel bars on rough asphalt pavement, all surrounded by chain link fence.

After three miles of walking, one of the four Crows
decided to walk toward him.  The other Crow appeared to be quite happy to metasense Gilgamesh, and led him to a large riverside park the signs labeled Fairmont Park.  The park was a pleasant contrast to the rail yard, silent and natural, an illusion of wilderness surrounded by a large city.  Gilgamesh found the other Crow along a sheltered section of trail, well hidden among the trees.  In the damp March cold there were few walkers out.  When Gilgamesh drew close enough, he recognized the Crow as Sinclair, which brought a smile to his face.

“Sinclair,” Gilgamesh said.  He kept his voice quiet and controlled to fight off the panic brought on by any new situation, the price of being a Crow.  Philadelphia disturbed him.  He could metasense hundreds of Transforms.

Sinclair looked the same as when Gilgamesh had met him the first time.  He was young in appearance, his clothes were clean and neat, and his voice was soft and polite.  “It’s good to see you healthy.  Do you have a name now?”

“I call myself Gilgamesh.”  He was painfully aware of his own shabbiness and the filth of his clothes.

“So you’re Gilgamesh!  I’d heard the name but I wasn’t positive it was you,” Sinclair said.  Now the older Crow grinned wide.

“I’d like to thank you for the help you gave me when I was just starting.”

Sinclair nodded and paused for over a minute.  Quiet conversations with long silences were a Crow universal.  “It’s my pleasure to see you learned to live as a Crow.  However, Philadelphia isn’t a good place for a young Crow.  There are two Arms here.”

Gilgamesh nodded.  “Good.”

Sinclair raised an eyebrow, just a bit. “You were expecting them?”

“I’ve been
hunting
them.”

Sinclair stopped and looked at Gilgamesh for a long time, his face blank.

“Why?” he asked.  “I’d think that after the events in St. Louis you would never want to be near them again.”

What happened in St. Louis had kept him away for months.  “I miss the Arm dross,” Gilgamesh said, sad.  “I don’t think I have it in me to be an itinerant Crow.”

“You understand the danger?”  Sinclair asked.  “There’s no Detention Center here to keep them safe.  They’re both free, and the older Arm, the Skinner, is vicious.”

“I understand the danger,” Gilgamesh said.

Sinclair looked at him again. “There are four other Crows in Philadelphia beside myself: Wire, Orange Sunshine, Ezekiel and Tolstoy.  Every one of them is older than I am.”  Gilgamesh had missed one, which meant one of the talented older Crows lived here.  “I’m not sure a Crow barely over six months old will be able to tolerate two free Arms.  They aren’t as mindless as people believe; we suspect they may even possess human-normal intelligence.  Very very dangerous.”

Gilgamesh’s smile returned to his face, pleased to have another Crow speak of an Arm as something more than an animal.  “Zaltu, the one you call the Skinner, has more than human-normal intellect.  Tiamat, the younger one, is flat out brilliant.  Her breakout from the St. Louis Detention Center was a masterpiece of deception and planning.”

Sinclair shivered for a moment.  “Then you have tales to tell the other Crows that they won’t be able to resist.” He paused in thought.  “It’s good you came.  I can suggest places to stay and help you settle.”

“Thank you,” Gilgamesh said, glad for the help.

“So,” Sinclair said.  “How are you holding up?”

He was asking how much control Gilgamesh had over the curse of all Crows, the constant terror.

“I can’t complain.  Experience helps.  I’ve done a lot of wandering and met many Crows.”

“I’d be interested in hearing about it.  In notes, if you have to.”

“I prefer to talk with other Crows face to face.  I find it helps.”

“Interesting, very interesting,” Sinclair said.  Studying him.

Gilgamesh walked closer to Sinclair, pleasantly surprised to find comfort in Sinclair’s familiar presence, despite the fact they had only interacted at a distance in their one previous meeting.  He sat down on a rusty iron bench a few feet away from Sinclair, who smiled at him in encouragement.  Gilgamesh studied Sinclair, who easily passed as a successful and well-dressed normal human.  “I’ve just come from up east, from New York and Boston, where I exchanged notes with Occum.”

“I’ve read about him,” Sinclair said, wide-eyed.  “He’s one of the old ones, like Shadow in New York and Chevalier, the San Francisco artist.  I’m just as happy not to have anything to do with the older Crows.”  Sinclair shook his head at Gilgamesh.  “Changing the subject…has Occum really tamed a second beast?”

Gilgamesh nodded and told what he knew about Shere Khan.  “Occum’s frustrated, because he can’t keep Shere Khan from sliding farther into beasthood.  However, at least he’s able to keep his Beast Men settled in one place and not causing a ruckus.  According to his note, whenever Occum turns his back, if the two Beast Men are anywhere close to each other, they fight.  It’s a big problem.”

“Dangerous business.  Your life could use some settling down as well,” Sinclair said, eyes still wide.

---

Sinclair pointed out a house Gilgamesh could stay in, a rundown place the neighborhood children considered haunted.  It and its termites squatted three miles north-northwest of the warehouse where the Arms lived.  Only a thin patina of nebulous dross remained in the Arms’ warehouse.  The local Crows had picked clean everything else.

At night the Crows roused, coming out of their homes and hidey-holes, moving toward Fairmont Park.  Gilgamesh joined them, walking the streets lined by small city houses, all so similar to his haunted house.  Around him, the Crows gathered.

Five minutes later, as he walked along a wider road lined with gas stations, Laundromats and corner markets, he met up with one of the unknown Crows, one with the same sort of roiling external dross around him Echo and Thomas the Dreamer possessed.  He had guessed right; an older Crow did live in Philly.  He trusted Sinclair’s comment that Gilgamesh had nothing to fear from the other Philadelphia Crows, and didn’t run.

“Gilgamesh,” he said, introducing himself as they passed by the Crown Liquor Store.

The older Crow slowed and turned back to where Gilgamesh followed.  He was blond, tall, and looked to be in his early twenties, as all Crows did.

“Wire.”

Gilgamesh nodded in greeting.  “Why are we going toward the park?” he asked.

The other smiled, just a bit. “Just to talk and compare notes.  If you’ve never seen a Crow-moot before, you’ll be surprised.”

He had never heard of the Crow-moot term, but he suspected he had been to quite a few in his wandering.  “I met Sinclair already,” Gilgamesh whispered.  “Which Crows are which?”

Wire named them as they approached.  One of the Crows, Orange Sunshine, held back, agitated.

The ‘Crow moot’ meeting started before they settled down in the park.  “Wire, did you see what the Skinner did to the Student after she knocked over a pile of boxes?”
Ezekiel asked Wire, a block and a half from the park boundary.  “How long will it be before the Skinner kills her?”  Wire didn’t answer immediately.

“This is Gilgamesh,” he said, after he leapt over the park fence without breaking stride.  “I’m sure you all know of him already.”  Wire claimed a park bench a hundred yards inside the park, in a secluded copse of trees.  He sat on the back of the bench and waved to each Crow as they came.

Gilgamesh willed his feet forward, unnerved by the other Crows’ knowledge of him.

“This ain’t no place for a fledgling,” Orange Sunshine said, the last of the flock to arrive near Wire’s park bench.  “I’m not even sure I want to stay here.”  Orange Sunshine matched Gilgamesh’s height, but thinner, with dirty blond hair and gap teeth.  He spoke in the quietest whisper Gilgamesh had ever heard.