Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) (48 page)

“Ah.  I would have paid you for the information,” Tonya said.

Keaton shook her head.  “It didn’t meet my standard for success.”

Arms.

“How devious is Hancock?” Tonya asked.  A schemer lay behind today’s mess, Tonya decided.  Their new enemy was a conniving mastermind.

“Deviousness is her specialty,” Keaton said.  She unwrapped a bandage Tonya had put on the Arm’s shoulder, over a gaping bite wound, glanced at it – still not closed – and put the bandage back on.  “Don’t get any of your twisty Focus crap ideas.  I understand Hancock’s mind inside and out; she respects me and wants to deal with me amicably in the future.  What I fucked up was her trust of me.”

“I’ll reserve my judgment on Hancock,” Tonya said.  “I don’t like the idea of an Arm running around free.”

“Hold your goddamned horses.  Arms aren’t Focuses.  Let her get her legs as an independent until she gets it out of her system, then reel her in.  Let her come into her own power.  Hell, you remember what I was like in my second year.  The best thing we can do is let her find her own way until she matures.  She’s going to be impossible to deal with for quite a while.”

“If she ends up like you were when we first met, then the term ‘maturity’ is a vast overstatement.”

“Bitch.”

Tonya still thought Hancock the most likely mastermind behind the recent mess, but
she didn’t want to push the argument any further at the moment.  So she changed the subject.  “What’re you going to do now?” Tonya asked.

Keaton tried to shrug and stopped with a grimace.  “Damn if I know.  I liked the world a lot better when it didn’t contain these damned Chimeras.  I’m going to investigate them.”

“That’s going to make it hard on me,” Tonya said.  “The Council’s going to…”

“Fuck the Council.  Dammit, Tonya, ignoring reality is just plain stupid.”

“Not yet,” Tonya said.  Tired, fatigued, low on juice and with a frazzled household, she didn’t want to compromise on anything.  Especially on the issue of male Major Transforms and the Council.  She swore everyone she
knew
hounded her on the subject.  Couldn’t they see she was right?

“You’re as arrogant as Hank,” Keaton said.

“Thank you very much,” Tonya said, and nibbled on a cream Danish Betty had brought in with her latest load of food.

“You’re making the same mistakes as well.”  Keaton shook her head.  “You’re putting your career ahead of our long term survival.  Your own long term survival as well.”

“I realize that just fine,” Tonya said.  “You don’t need to explain my own business to me.  I understand the risks.  I’ll move when the moment is right.  Not a moment before.”

Keaton shrugged.  “Your choice, but if you won’t move now, I’m going to have to cut off contact with you.”

Tonya’s eyes opened wide and her stomach churned.  “You wouldn’t.  Not after all we’ve done for each other.”  After all the work Tonya had done to build up and support this relationship, after all the political capital she had invested.

“Really?  Interesting viewpoint you have there.”  Pause, then with tighter voice: “You
’re not leaving me any choice, Tonya.  Those Chimeras and their Monster packs are a real enemy, very dangerous.  I can’t ignore them if I want to live and I don’t know squat about them.  I’ve got a thousand questions that need answering.  But if you won’t come around on the subject of the male Major Transforms, I can’t talk to you or get help from you,” Keaton said.  The Arm spread a thick layer of marmalade on her toast and ate it in four bites.

Tonya met Keaton’s eyes.  “You must keep in contact.”

“I will,” Keaton said, responding to Tonya’s charisma.  “Just not directly.”

They stared at each other, Keaton’s blank face firmer and more forceful as each moment passed.

Finally, Keaton laughed.  “Your charisma can’t roll me if you don’t believe your own assertions, Tonya.  That’s nice to know.”

Tonya ignored Keaton’s gauche comment and gave up on the direct approach.  “Even with the juice I fed you, you’re in bad shape.  How many teeth do you have left, anyway?  What’s wrong with your left side?”

Keaton raised an eyebrow, ripped her shirt open, and revealed her right breast.  Her breast had burst open and dripped tumors down to her waist.  “You’d think something like this would hurt.  My legs are what’s really bothering me.”  Tonya realized her headache was returning.  Keaton’s presence had fouled the dining room, and Tonya couldn’t move juice in the room anymore.  Her household would need to move sooner than they had budgeted for.  “From an experience Hancock had, I know how to fix this problem.  Lots of juice.  Flush the system.”

Tonya watched the Arm fight for physical control over her body, then give in to a long series of lusty scratches.  “I’m sorry about everything,” Tonya said.

Keaton nodded.  “None of us have been our best these last many months.  The world’s just going to have to make do.”

When Keaton eventually left on her clinic-raiding trip, she left an extra hundred grand as payment for Phil’s life.  Tonya couldn’t complain.  Keaton’s Crow-attack remains had polluted a full quarter of Tonya’s house.

Despite the fact I
had told Bobby my entire story, save the technical details I wanted to stay secret, he didn’t get really weirded out (his words) until I stopped us for a moment and prayed, after I finished my business at a west Maryland rest stop.  Perhaps it was when I thanked Jesus for the time to save myself from Keaton instead of thanking Jesus for delivering me from Keaton, but probably not.  More likely, what hit him was when I ended the prayer asking God to give me the strength to preserve Bobby from my wrath when my juice got too low.

He didn’t know what to do with the concept of an ice cold killer who prayed.

Back in the car, Bobby turned to me and asked “Now what, Carol?  What are you going to do in Chicago?”

“I’m free,” I said.  “After nearly a year of captivity, I’m free.  I just want to enjoy that for
a while.”  My St. Peter dream still rattled around in my mind, and left me with something resembling a conscience.  No more massacres of innocents.  I wasn’t pure good and I wasn’t pure evil.  I needed to find out what I was.

He nodded.  “Carol, if you need me to drive, then…”

“No,” I said, perhaps a bit harsher than I needed to be.  “I’m driving.”

He held up his hands in surrender, then backed away and closed his eyes.  He wanted to grouse about losing his job, having to quit night school and having to change his name.  I didn’t want to hear it and so he kept his annoyances bottled up inside.  Smart man.

Our rough relationship would soon get worse.  He was a strong man and used to being in control.  Not anymore.  As the miles rolled by and I relived my moments of triumph, my thoughts occasionally turned back to Bobby and his predicament.

Bobby was beautiful, snoozing as he leaned against the car door, his shaggy brown hair fallen across his face.  He was beautiful because he was mine…and because he was a hunk.  What would being owned do to a man?  American men, trained from birth to be strong, protective and providers, weren’t trained to be owned.  Bobby might aspire to be a poet, but the patriarchal provider lurked within, only shallowly buried.

Not only did I hold all the reins in our relationship, but also a dispassionate observer might say Bobby and his opinions weren’t even relevant to me, unless I allowed them to be.  He served as an object of affection, a toy.  My toy.  Unfair?  Well, how many women over the ages had found themselves in a similar relationship?  Lots.  They learned to cope.

Or not and went mad.  I swore that a quarter of the novels I studied in college dealt with this question.

“I need a home base and a group of people working for me,” I said, sometime later, somewhere in Pennsylvania.  Bobby woke up and gave me a ‘what the fuck?’ look.  “I’m planning out Chicago.”

He sat up and paid attention.

“What sort of organization?” he asked.  He wanted to know whether he would be involved or not.

“Basically, thugs to start with,” I said.  “Once I have some money to work with, higher quality people.”  Keaton
had made me into a sadistic killer, but I didn’t think I needed to remain one to be a successful Arm.  Keaton was a small-time thug, but I wanted to be big time.  I toyed with Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler or Stalin as my role models (no, not Jack the Ripper, despite what the tabloids said).  They wouldn’t suffice, as they were normal, not Arms.  I would take a new path when I went big time, something humanity had never seen before.

“Why?  What for?” Bobby asked.

His concern came because he was human and curious.  “Transform Sickness,” I said.  He gave me a puzzled look.  “No one cares.  The one doctor-researcher I know of who gave a damn got drummed out of the profession because he cared.  I’ve read some of the academic papers on Transform Sickness.”  Courtesy of Keaton, who said ‘read these or die’.  Once I mastered the vocabulary, I couldn’t stop.  “The damned researchers have no sense of urgency, just the usual minor altruism of ‘doing good in the world’.  No sense that Transform Sickness is any different, deep down, than polio or cancer.”  My explanation didn’t cure his puzzlement.  Unfortunately, he understood less about molecules than about mobsters.  “It is.  I’m not sure what’s different, but it is.  Many Transforms understand this at a gut level, I’m told.  To survive, I need to understand what’s going on with it.  We need Transform input into the research process, or we’ll be turned into lab rats.”

He understood my fears.

“We have enemies out there,” I said.  “Enemies of Arms and enemies of humanity.  The FBI.  Chimeras and their packs of Monsters.  Twisted Major Transforms like Officer Canon.  Even the Monsters Die protest organization.  I need an organization to help me protect myself from them.”  I had counted on the Focus Network organization for help, but Officer Canon’s attack woke me up to the dangers of Focuses.  I needed to be strong before I started to play with the big girls and boys.  I didn’t expect I would take long to grow strong.

“I can’t imagine how anyone could threaten you,” Bobby said.

I could, but the challenge excited me.  I gave Bobby a hot smile, and he smiled back, captivated by me.  “I transformed only a year or so ago.  The oldest Focuses transformed ten to fifteen years ago.  They’re a threat simply because of their experience.”

I survived the sadistic FBI and the psychotic Keaton.  I was ready for any challenge.  I was tough, and hard, and dangerous.  The world needed to watch out, because I planned to take the world by the neck and shake it.  I would find out what it meant to be an Arm and find my place in the world.

I would redeem myself.

The miles continued to drone past under the wheels of Bobby’s ’59 Chevy, loaded to the last spare inch with Bobby’s belongings.  Nothing of mine.  I didn’t own anything except what I carried on me.

I laughed to myself.  I was free!

Arms are no more powerful than the other Major Transforms.  Asking which of them is the most dangerous is a moot question.  They are all dangerous if you lie between them and their goals.

“The Book of Arms”

(Dr. Henry Zielinski, Pub. 1974, Viking Press)

“All is enemy.

Thumbs together pressed to mouth

Eyes averted, unfocused

Legs to twitch and bunch with passion

Mind flows with nature abounding.

Explodes.

All is enemy…

…becomes there-are-no-enemies.”

From “Hidden Watchers” (Annette Sadie Tucker, 1972)

Books by this Author

The Commander series:

Once We Were Human

Now We Are Monsters

All Beasts Together

A Method Truly Sublime

No Sorrow Like Separation

In This Night We Own

All That We Are

The supplementary Commander Series books:

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio One

All Conscience Fled (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Two)

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Three

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Four

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Five

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Six

No Chains Shall Bind Me (The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Seven)

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Eight

The Good Doctor’s Tales Folio Nine

Focus

Other

99 Gods: War

99 Gods: Betrayer [to be epublished in 2014]

99 Gods: Odysseia [to be epublished in 2014]

Author’s Afterword

Thanks to Randy and Margaret Scheers, Michelle and Karl Stembol, Gary and Judy Williams, Maurice Gehin, and as always my wife, Marjorie Farmer.  Without their help this novel would have never been made.