Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (31 page)

Well, fuck it.  What am I supposed to do when she comes at me in a stalk?  Say “Hurt me, please?”  Not this Arm.  If she wanted to know what I was made of, I would show her.  I picked up the little knife and came up to my knees.  I kept my heart under control, as well as my other reactions.  I met her gaze, took that knife, and threw it into the air.  The knife flew up about a foot, spinning furiously, and came down and buried itself hilt deep in my forearm.

I never changed expression.  I never even blinked.  I took the knife out and handed it to her, never looking away from her eyes.

She took it.  “Crawl,” she said.

I crawled.  I let the fear come over me and I cowered at her feet.  I smelled of fear and I shivered with it.  I didn’t change the expression in my eyes, though.  I gave her the same cold gaze she gave me.

She smiled, ever so slightly.  “Do better,” she said.

Now I let the fear into my eyes.  I groveled miserably for her, the very picture of a broken wretch.  My heart raced and my breath was ragged.  I stank of fear and submission.  I shivered in terror.  I kissed her feet, begged her to let me prove my subservience.

Keaton rolled her eyes and said, “Dinner.”

I stood back up, put on my clothes and went to put dinner on the table.

Zielinski was right.  It was time for me to leave Keaton.  I wanted to be far far away the next time she exploded with one of her over-the-top psychotic episodes.  I wanted to be free, on my own, and making my own decisions.

Mastering my graduation test became my number one priority.

“Get some good sleep tonight because we have a contract we’re doing tomorrow,” Keaton said, after she led me through a light after-dinner workout.

“Ma’am?”

“It seems one of the local Focuses, Biggioni, ran into a pack of Monsters led by a Chimera.  On a farm just east of Pottstown.”  Not far west of Philly.  “Through the Network, she’s hired us to investigate and do what has to be done, if we can.”

My eyes widened in anticipation.  “Ma’am, what kind of payment could justify such a risk?”

“I’m getting two free kills and you’re getting one.”

Ah.  Recompense for what she did to me…and as much of an apology as I would ever get from my teacher.

That night, in the corner of the closet that was my home, I got down on my knees and prayed.  The hallucination of St. Peter had spooked me, and given me hope that God wasn’t done with me.  I didn’t pray for forgiveness, for I didn’t think I deserved any.  I didn’t pray for guidance.  I didn’t want that, either.  I didn’t pray for God to smite Keaton, no matter how much she deserved an eon or so of smiting.

No, I prayed to Jesus for mercy.  For the time to find my proper place, and the time to redeem the ills I did, if such was possible.  For mercy on those foolish innocents who got in my way?  I asked Jesus to stay my hand.

To my surprise, I slept quietly that night.

The proper prey of the Arm is the Transform who is out of line.  Most often, this is an unclaimed Transform, or a tagged Transform who has broken the rules laid down by their Focus.  Some Arms think normal humanity is the Arm’s prey – and they are very mistaken.  Some Arms consider the other Major Transforms as their competitors – and they are very mistaken.  A proper Arm should not give a damn about what the other Major Transforms are doing – unless they too step out of line.

“The Book of Arms”

Keaton followed the scent trail while I identified critter-prints.  Ten days had passed since Focus Biggioni’s encounter.  I was sure the Chimera and its pack had moved on, but three miles out
, into vacant scrubland too rocky to be farmed, Keaton caught a fresh whiff in the breeze and I spotted fresh tracks.

“Now, do that trick I taught you this morning,” Keaton signaled.

I followed her orders.  The trick involved meditating and visualizing, and it damped whatever emanations an Arm emitted that allowed another Major Transform to sense her.  An imperfect trick, yes, but Keaton had used it to get right on top of Focuses before.  Okay, low end Focuses.

I spotted some movement up ahead.  I held up a hand; Keaton stopped.  She sniffed air and motioned us right, and up a
boulder-strewn hill.  Half way up she went to the ground and began to slither.  I did the same.

The hill ended in a cliff.  Below the cliff, in an overhang cave, I picked up the scent of Transforms, Monsters and a new one.  Chimera.  It couldn’t be anything else.

My metasense, though, only picked up the Transforms and Monsters.

Keaton didn’t like the situation, either.  She motioned us to go back.

Keaton drew up a plan on the ground.  “We come from the north side, along the rock face.  We’ll have the wind and the surprise, unless the Chimera suddenly learns to metasense properly.  We’ll use our heavy weapons.”  That is, the Monster guns, .707s.  Powerful enough to blast a hole through a building and out the other side.  “Concentrate our fire on the Chimera.  We do a running retreat if they charge us and hand to hand if they close.  Got it?”

I nodded.

We headed back, taking a different route that would lead us around the hill
, over less rocky ground and through denser trees.  Summer beat down on us, a two and a half week heat wave.  Dry and nasty.  Traffic rumbled in the distance on US 422 into Pottstown.  I curled my nose when I caught another whiff of Monster.

I wasn’t fully recovered, and I worried I might not be able to hold up my end of the fight.  Other than my worries, the attack seemed like a cakewalk.  We would have the drop on them, we had the heavy weapons and all they had was mean.  They would be stuck defending their chained up captives.  There were two of us and only one Chimera.
I set my worries aside.

The Chimera let out a spine-melting hiss when we were fifty paces away from being able to get eyeballs on the camp.  Keaton motioned for us to sprint and we did.  When we rounded the curve in the small valley and saw the camp, a thousand feet away, a half-human Monster started firing on us with a WWII relic M-1.

Keaton and I hit the dirt and fired back at the unmistakable and charging Chimera, still
invisible to my metasense.  He stood eight feet tall, a lizard-man who outweighed Keaton and I put together, and he had an ugly prick the size of a large salami.  We put six large bullets into him before we abandoned the heavy weapons to meet his charge.

The camp emptied, led away by the half-Monster lady.  Chains held none of the seven women in the Chimera harem, and they didn’t scatter as I expected.  Three of the other harem members carried weapons, but they were more intent on fleeing than firing at us, at least while their hubby charged us.

The Chimera hissed again, making me want to flee the fight.  Keaton signaled and the two of us growled our own predator effect back at Mr. Lizard.  He stopped his charge in a cloud of dust.  Hissed.

We growled.

He hissed.

I metasensed him now, faintly, a thing unlike any other Transform I had metasensed before.  I had to concentrate to pick him out at all.

Keaton motioned and we charged him.

The Chimera turned and fled, not running any faster than
we did.  A quarter mile of chase later we heard a truck start up to our right, in the direction the Monster harem had fled.  Fuck!  Highly unfair.  One of them, likely their boss lady, could drive.

“You looozzzzzz,” the Chimera said.  It turned aside, sprayed the ground with one of the foulest stinks I had ever come near, and sprinted away until he vanished, concealed by the trees.

“Track him.  Run him down,” Keaton said.  Yes, she was disgusted at me because I still couldn’t burn juice.  She would take out her frustrations on me later.

We ran, running and jogging as the miles piled up beneath our feet.  Five miles later the Chimera’s scent trail crossed a road and stopped.  The truck.  I guessed long-bed pickup, and it had picked up Mr. Lizard.

“Shit fuck pissass motherfucking dammit!” Keaton said as we stood looking stupidly at the damned road, as upset as I had ever seen.  I nodded.  It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, not at all.  I doubted this would qualify as a success and I mentally kissed my gift Transform goodbye.

The damned Chimera had sucked down six Monster-stopper rounds and hadn’t slowed.  Its battle plan worked: it had saved its harem and gotten away.  Our plan had failed.  “Next time, knives,” I said, mostly to myself.

“Either that or howitzers,” Keaton groused.  “Did you catch the fact the Chimera had the same scent as one of the two we picked up near Monster Arms?”

I hadn’t.  “Oh, crap,” I said.  “If he’s here, then his pal is likely around here, too.”

“Or was,” Keaton said.  “They may have us on size, but we clearly have them on the aggression.  If they’re at all smart they won’t stop running until they hit Mississippi.  Just in case, though, we’re going to keep hunting for them for at least three more days.”

I worried my lip.  If they were at all smart, then why were they here?

Gilgamesh obeyed Sinclair’s frantic signaled summons to the Skinner’s warehouse, as did Wire and Tolstoy.  The area around the Skinner’s warehouse was quiet tonight, with Tiamat and the Skinner out of Philadelphia the past few days.  The two crazy Arms had patched up their relationship after the torture session the usual way, with Tiamat groveling to the Skinner.  Tiamat’s return to Philadelphia was the most insane piece of Arm behavior he had seen yet.

He would have fled the country.

“What’s up, Sinclair?” Wire asked as they gathered beside a quiet warehouse on Holstein, two blocks from the Arms.  A misty rain dripped on them from an overcast sky, which they ignored.

“Trouble.  An hour ago, I metasensed an unknown Transform at the edge of my range.  The unknown had dross and Monster juice, as well as normal juice in Arm quantities
,” Sinclair said.

“A Beast Man,” Gilgamesh said.

“I was afraid of that.” Sinclair shifted his weight from side to side in unease.  “It walked like a man, though.”

“The Beast could be Enkidu or Hoskins,” Gilgamesh said, remembering his last conversation with Midgard.  “Enkidu, the Beast Man I, um, encountered, has two ‘R’ bands in his juice structure.  He’s easy to spot.”

“There weren’t any ‘R’ bands in this one,” Sinclair said.  “He had quite a few crossed ‘W’ bands, though.”

“You picked up ‘W’ bands at full range?” Wire said.  The withdrawal bands were difficult to metasense, even up close.  “That’s new and puzzling.  These Beasts aren’t Occum’s.  He’s much more careful with his Beasts.”

Sinclair nodded.  “So, what are we going to do?  The Beast Man might be hunting us, you know, hoping to catch a Crow off guard and kill us for our juice.”

“Unlikely.  Beast Men usually avoid big cities,” Wire said.  “Especially big cities with Crows in residence.  How did this one act?”

“He came into range several times, like a Crow scouting an area with his metasense, and backed off when he picked me up,” Sinclair said, wringing his hands.

“Bad,” Wire said.  “Too intelligent for my taste.  Something strange is going on here.”

“Should we leave?” Tolstoy asked, looking around at the quiet warehouses as if Beast Men would suddenly spring forth from the doors.  “I would hate to abandon our Arms.”

“Why do Beast Men avoid cities with Crows?” Gilgamesh asked.  He couldn’t imagine leaving Philadelphia.  Or Tiamat.

“No one knows,” Wire said.  He kicked at a discarded newspaper.  “Likely instincts.  Senior Crows can tangle with Beast Men and scare them off.  Another few months and I’ll be able to do so myself.  It’s part of the Guru training.  I might be able to scare off a low end Beast already.”

“Well, if we’re not going to leave, then I think the rest of you need to break down and get telephones,” Sinclair said.  He already had one.  “That way we can stay in contact with each other.”

Tolstoy snorted.  “No way can I get the phone company to put a phone where I live, but there’s a phone booth close to me.  I’ll get the phone number for the rest of you.”

“Phones won’t be enough,” Wire said.  “I think we’re going to have to keep watch.  None of us needs to sleep much.”  They worked out a watch schedule, and Gilgamesh ended up with the one to seven afternoon shift.  The watch schedule itself proved to be enough to calm them all and quiet their instinctive urges to flee.

Gilgamesh screwed up his courage.  “One other thing,” he said.  “I think it’s time to tell you my Beast Man story.”

Gilgamesh wandered north from the rail yard, taking in the changes to Chicago since his last visit.  North of downtown, Gilgamesh picked up a Crow-in-residence.  The Crow was low on juice, if Gilgamesh hadn’t been fooled by the metasense interference caused by downtown Chicago.  The other Crow didn’t notice Gilgamesh until Gilgamesh approached to within three miles of him.  Then he ran.  Gilgamesh even backed off, but that didn’t stop the other Crow from running.

Gilgamesh wandered north, wondering if something north of the Loop had panicked the Crow.  It couldn’t have been just
his
appearance.  However, Gilgamesh found his way blocked by several hundred protesters shouting “Monsters Die.”  He listened to a street corner speaker long enough to learn the reason for the protest: a male Transform had gone psycho in an office building.  He sympathized, barely, unable to ignore the Monsters Die movement’s penchant for treating all Transforms as Monsters.

He turned east, searching for small bits of dross and other anomalies.  He found one two hours later, an anomaly strange enough to make Gilgamesh wonder how he missed it on the way into Chicago: some guy, down in the projects, filled with churning and roiling juice, as if someone mixed it with a stick.  At first, Gilgamesh wondered if the person was the psycho killer Transform, but after a proper metasense study, he realized the
man held an immense amount of juice inside.  He was a Major Transform and he was out cold.

“He must be a Crow in the middle of his transformation,” Gilgamesh said, taking off at a dead run, glad to have some purpose in life again.  “I’ve got to help him.”

Gilgamesh curled in the corner of the abandoned tenement apartment and watched his patient with worry.  His John Doe appeared to be about thirty, with brown hair and the beginnings of a scruffy beard.  He tossed fitfully on the old mattress that had already been here when Gilgamesh found the place.

John Doe was still stuck in his never-ending transformation, running a fever and shivering.  Gilgamesh tucked the thin blanket back around the now naked man.  The man’s original clothes were long gone, too encrusted with body wastes to be useful.  Gilgamesh did his best to keep the man clean, a never-ending task.  Soon, even Gilgamesh’s loaned blanket would be too soiled to clean and salvage, and would end up in the same trash as Gilgamesh’s spare clothes, days ago soiled.

Gilgamesh didn’t know what he was supposed to do.  He worried about liquids, the temperature of the unheated apartment, even whether he should have left the man in his original clothes or not.  Gilgamesh didn’t know anything at all about sick people.

The abandoned apartment building was a cold, cruel example of life in Chicago: condemned in ’64, inhabited by squatters, and nearly falling apart.  A couple of drunks lived downstairs.  A trio of footloose teenagers, who got drunk and stoned every night, lived two stories up.  A whole parade of street people appeared every night to sleep on the ground floor.  Gilgamesh expected the cops to show up at any time to clear everyone out.  The place smelled like a cesspool and John Doe didn’t help the situation one bit.

Only sheer willpower kept him from getting angry with John Doe.  Gilgamesh hadn’t counted on six days of this when he rushed in to help.  The abandoned apartment building was too damned crowded, a dump, a mess, and
not safe
.

He took a breath and made himself calm down.  He had enough juice now, courtesy of the rancid dross generated by Focus Wilhelmina Minton and the household who enslaved her.  The fact he did John Doe a good deed overcame his guilt over taking dross from a Focus in so much agony.  It didn’t stop him from wondering if he had become too calloused.