All Beasts Together (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  In the parking lot behind the restaurant I intercepted some guy trying to get into a car. I grabbed his keys, tossed him over the next car, started his car and left. Behind me I heard sirens. I ditched the car four blocks away in the entrance to a closed parking garage and headed off on foot.

  I found myself on the edge of a downtown area. If I read the clues right, downtown Pittsburgh, the largest town east of the Mississippi Keaton never hunted in. Sometime in the past she had been nearly captured here by some damned Focus from Hell and I had a bad feeling I had just juice sucked one of her Transforms.

  Carol Hancock, meet deep deep shit. Again.

  Keaton laughed at me. “Some monster comes in, all pissed because you stole his kill, and so you try to climb on his dick?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I turned away, eyes smarting. There are some things you don’t want to talk about, especially to your slavemaster. I met Ed’s eyes.

  “I can’t make love to you when you’re so injured, Beth,” he said. “I need to get you to a hospital.”

  “Do it anyway,” I said. I didn’t want to kill him, but I knew I had to. Keaton had made that clear. He was too much of a security risk. So, at the moment of passion, I held him tight and I broke his neck. Why did everything have to hurt so much?

  “That’s no way to treat a man,” my mother said. “You’ll find, Carol, that men are not very attentive lovers when they’re dead. You should have waited until the second or third go round. Patience, Carol, patience!”

  “Oh, Mom,” I said. “He sat on the duck at the theater, and I had to punish him. Five pickles aren’t worth even a side bet.”

  “Helen, the carpeting in the kitchen is burnt orange. Who in their right mind would put thick shag carpeting in a kitchen, anyway?” The man muttered something under his breath about an almond range and dishwasher.

  “Oh, dear, look at this,” a woman said. “They converted the under-the-stairway closet into a pantry! How ingenious!”

  I sat up. What the hell?

  I lay on a queen-sized bed, all alone. No Keaton, no Ed, no mother: just me, bleeding all over the sheets like the Arm that I was. The sounds came from below, from the first floor of the house. I vaguely remembered how I got here: injured and running from the police after taking a kill in a public place. Vacant furnished house, for sale signs, no cars in the garage. I had made myself at home.

  I was used to hallucinations and screwy dreams. The voices below weren’t hallucinations. A real estate agent was showing the home to some potential buyers.

  You ever have days like this?

  I crept out of the bed, gathered my meager possessions, and looked for an exit. None. However, I found an attic access in the small walk-in closet off the bedroom. Not even a ladder, just a hole in the ceiling covered by a piece of wood, painted white to match the walls. I hopped up and grabbed the side of the ceiling hole with my good hand, pushing the board to the side. It moved easily and I flipped myself up and into the attic. I replaced the board and lay down on the typical attic mess. Naked.

  I took stock of my situation. I hurt, to be expected. The fiberglass attic insulation made me itch all over. My muscles ached, but not as bad as I feared given how long ago I did my last full workout. I remembered Keaton’s comments about how much better she felt after a fight with the cops and decided the same processes had saved me from my normal post-hunt stiff-muscled agony. I was famished, wounded, and low on juice despite a kill last night and another before Enkidu raped me. I was in an unfamiliar town, with the local cops on my ass, with damned little cash, and I had killed a Transform tagged by a Focus mean enough to roast me on a spit. The last was a biggie. However, Keaton had survived taking a tagged Transform. Somehow. I would, too.

  On the more mundane issues, I decided to stay here until the real estate agent finished with the house. Once they left I would ransack the house, fix myself up, and rest until I had recovered enough to travel.

  Good plan. Unfortunately, Helen had a problem with blood in the bathroom and started screaming. Oops. Got the bed covered, forgot about the bathroom. She, her fussy husband and the real estate agent fled the place posthaste. At least the phones in the house had been disconnected so when they tried to call the police they didn’t have any luck.

  A few minutes after they left, I left, too.

  The clothes I borrowed didn’t fit. I walked down the street, now several blocks away from the house where I had spent the night, in a neighborhood of well-to-do upper middle class urban homes. Taller buildings of the city center rose to my southwest, less than a mile away.

  As best I could manage, I looked like a man, using the only option I had, the discarded clothes left in the house. I didn’t need to worry about hiding my breasts, though. I had no breasts to hide. I used ripped sheets to bandage myself and hoped the bandages would hold and I wouldn’t bleed through them. I kept Enkidu’s hand in my inner suit coat pocket. The damn thing still twitched occasionally.

  The neighborhood was called Stanton Heights, the sort of place where the cops picked up the street bums faster than the garbage men picked up the trash. I looked seedy and wouldn’t pass a close inspection. For one thing, besides the awful clothes, I wore rubber snow boots and no shoes, just a half dozen pairs of socks. Men’s socks. I needed food. I smelled food, to the east, down the hill that gave Stanton Heights its name, toward what looked like a park and museum district.

  I passed the ironically named Snow Way and found a diner a few blocks farther east on Stanton. I ordered a large breakfast. After my order I stopped with a few seconds of shock when I realized what I had done: I had ordered in a man’s baritone voice. Throughout my entire apprenticeship Keaton had tried to force me to imitate a man’s voice. She had used every trick in her book as well as some experimental torture techniques and I still hadn’t been able to. I had a woman’s voice, dammit. Sort of high and bird-like, actually. However, dressed in men’s clothing, I had just spoken in a man’s voice without even thinking. The adjustment came naturally. Why hadn’t I been able to do so before?

  I had been resisting Keaton. A subconscious vain attempt to preserve my identity, perhaps? I liked the thought I had managed to resist her in something. Now, out on my own, when I needed the skill for survival I found my man voice.

  Breakfast was good. I buffaloed the waiter into thinking I paid, went and found the next place open for breakfast, and got another one. Life was looking up.

  At least until I spotted the tagged Transform who tailed me.

  The situation bothered me a lot. I ducked into an alley, turned into another, crossed a side street, and turned north on Portland. The tagged Transform still followed.

  My metasense had trouble picking him up. I had first spotted him when he came within a couple hundred feet of me, but now as he approached closer, I got a better look at his metapresence. He seemed covered by something, a coat of strangely woven juice that extended out away from him several feet. I had never metasensed anything like it before, and he gave me the creeps, besides. I watched him closely as I headed north on Portland. I swore he wore multiple Focus tags. Three, if I guessed correctly.

  He definitely tailed me, even from out of sight. Transform men didn’t have a metasense. How did he follow?

  As I walked the sky darkened. Within a few minutes a cold rain started to fall, nothing more than a light mist. Portland ended and I had to turn, so I turned right. The road, Hampton, headed east for several blocks and came to a dead end. Before then, I turned back toward the park to my north, on Heberton.

  I was in no condition to fight. Some instinct deep inside me recognized the juice coat the Transform wore as a danger. I had no weaponry but knives. Running would break my cover, as would snagging a car. My thuggery would have to wait until night fell hours from now. I reached the park. Highland Park, a hilly wooded sanctuary filled with places to hide. I just needed to shake the man after me…

  I spotted the second one, off to my left. I started to jog but stopped immedia
tely; with my injuries even jogging was too difficult in my snow boots. They followed. The predator had been turned to prey, and the irony didn’t escape me. Even my risky final option had vanished. In the worst case, I thought I would try to grab the single stalker and drain him of juice, praying his juice coat wasn’t the danger it seemed. The option was moot because I held too much juice to be able to ignore my normal post-kill knockout problem. The second Transform would be able to attack me easily while I lay twitching with unconscious pleasure.

  I passed a small lake, crested a hill, and spotted my next problem. The park ended in a river somewhere ahead of me. Trees kept me from spotting any streets at the river’s edge, but my gut churned. The Transforms boxed me in, trying to capture me.

  I had been close enough to both Transforms to know that neither wore the tag of the Focus who held the Transform I killed last night. That left the question of whether Kensington belonged to the big bad Focus, or these mooks did. Logically, the latter seemed more likely, but logic and I were having a mild spat right now, so I ignored my analysis. I turned east, away from the two Transforms on my tail, cutting through a wooded area of the park. I had no idea what lay ahead of me, except it had to be better than having my trackers trap me with my back against the river. The Transforms followed, relentless, patient, hundreds of feet back.

  I was going downhill by the time I came out of the trees and found a lawn of dead grass ahead. A boulevard ran below the dead lawn, blocking the way, and on the other side, trouble. Some sort of large complex of low buildings lay across the road, blocked by tall fences. A sign about a thousand feet away read ‘VA Medical Center, Washington Blvd Entrance #3’. MPs guarded the entrance. I turned back to the north, still boxed. However, as I turned I spotted a major boulevard running along the river, a way out of the box. After some stiff walking I reached the river’s edge and started east along the street, Allegheny Boulevard.

  The Transforms followed, well back.

  Ten minutes of walking later, a third Transform came into range to the east, about six hundred feet to the east of the Nadine street intersection. At least Nadine led away from the river, though I would be in for a climb. I turned on Nadine another five minutes later and started up the hill. Once away from the river the light industrial buildings changed to an area of well-off homes. Behind me, one Transform followed my trail, while the second one cut off to my left through a country club, and the third, the first one to start trailing me many miles ago, followed me on my right, walking briskly through alleys behind some older industrial warehouses. A few minutes later I crested the hill and stopped cold. At the edge of my range to the south, in the well-off residential district, I sensed something bad. Dozens of Transforms, no, almost a hundred Transforms. They sat inside something that felt like the gut of a Monster, bad juice beyond measure.

  Waiting. Hungry.

  Ah. This was the lair of Keaton’s Focus-from-Hell. Not a place I wanted to be.

  Two more Transforms appeared to my senses, one to the east cutting across the country club and one to the southeast of my current road. They had me surrounded. I would have to fight. I weighed my options and decided the best fight lay to the east.

  “Not that way, Arm,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw nothing.

  “Through the warehouse,” the voice said. “Double back to the west. I’ll help you.”

  The voice was male, quiet, very quiet, and surprisingly calming. I turned and headed back into the light industrial area toward the voice, along a narrow driveway, and then into the warehouse. The Transforms started to converge on me.

  “Out the back, down the alley toward Lincoln,” the quiet voice said, ahead of me. I followed, worked out a path in my head. Unless others tailed me, I would only have to face one of the Transforms. Probably out on Lincoln, if the voice told the truth about the road ahead of me. Lincoln must be paralleling the road I had been on, and once on it, my way to the west and out of the trap was clear. I would face only one male Transform, who stopped in recessed entryway ahead of me, waiting for me to pass.

  “Cross the road,” the voice said. “I’ll handle the Transform.”

  A foul drenching of Monster juice arced across Lincoln as I jaywalked across the road, the Monster juice dropping on my Transform pursuer. My pursuer stopped cold.

  “Run,” the quiet voice said.

  “I’m too injured to run,” I said. Quiet. My rescuer had to be a Major Transform and I guessed Crow, based on Zielinski’s description. I had never met a Crow before. So far I liked what I saw. Or didn’t see.

  “Damn.” Pause. “Keep walking. I’ll stay with you.”

  I walked.

  Funny thing, my pursuers decided to stop pursuing when they trailed up to where the suspected Crow had flattened the one Transform.

  “You’re not going to show yourself, are you?” I said. Some predator I was. With every step, something soft and squishy shifted inside me, sending electric blasts of pain through my body. One foot in front of the other, keep the fancy banter in my voice, navigate by sense of smell since my eyes overflowed with tears of pain. I wanted to run this guy down and get some real answers. Fifteen blocks and he still paced me, not giving me a word.

  No answer.

  “I can’t even metasense you,” I said. Not that I metasensed much at the moment.

  “Look. I’m where you hear me, not more than four hundred feet away. I’m not even trying to hide.” I didn’t know how he did the voice trick. He whispered but he somehow directed the faint sound to me. My ears were good, but not that good. He heard my whispers; his ears were better than mine, assuming he used ears and not some juice trick.

  Turned out if I had kept walking through the park on the path I had been following, I would have come to a bridge over the Allegheny. We were both on the far side, and no, I had no idea how he got across the bridge without letting me see him. My nameless friend had a lot of talent.

  I wanted to get in his face and scream. My negotiating position sucked and I hated it. He didn’t press me, though. Not taking advantage of me when he could. What did that say about his personality? About the personality of Crows?

  I looked. Actually put work into my metasense. There he was, indistinct and fuzzy, but intricate as all get out. I caught the analogy immediately: he was to a Chimera what a Focus was to an Arm. He wasn’t my prey, not even slightly. I would choke on him as easily as I would choke on a Chimera.

  “Got it. Like a Chimera in substance but a Focus in style.”

  He stopped. Put his hands on his hips. “What does an Arm see when she sees a Crow?” he said. First time he admitted to being a Crow. From his voice, I realized he didn’t like being compared to a Focus.

  “What does a Crow see when he sees an Arm?” I returned.

  “Where did you see Beast Men? Chimeras?” he said, question for question.

  “Why did you save my life from the Transforms who were trying to capture me?” I said. Wind blew through my hair and he flickered out of my metasense for a moment. He appeared on the other side of me about fifteen seconds later. Did I make him nervous? Well, too bad. He made me nervous and in my current state, I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.

  “Why are you in Pittsburgh?”

  “Let’s sit down at a restaurant and have lunch,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  “You would be comfortable talking to me in person?” he asked. No, I couldn’t get a name out of him, either. “You’re as terrified of me as I am of you.”

  “Fear? Fear is a tool that keeps you awake when you have to pay attention to what you’re doing.” Arm philosophy 101. “The day you let fear rule you, you’re dead.”

  “Perhaps as an Arm,” he said. He paused, hopped up to a fire escape fifteen feet above the ground, then swift as a monkey, climbed to the roof of the building. “As a Crow, fear rules everything. Everything is feared. Some things are more fearsome than others.”

  “Like myself.”

  “Yes.”

&nbs
p; We were trading information. Sort of.

  “You go get yourself food. We can continue talking while you eat,” he said. “My name is Rumor.”

  “Carol Hancock.” Trading with Rumor might be damned stupid. I weighed my options. Not stupid, just a gamble, that he wouldn’t kill me afterwards. That Monster juice spray of his could do it. I knew the deadly nature of Monster juice. Of course, he – Rumor – always had that option.

  I found a lunch place serving Philly Cheese Steaks. I would never admit it to anyone else, but I actually missed Philadelphia a little. At least their yummy greasy food. “I’m in Pittsburgh by accident. As soon as I can get out of here, I’m gone.”

  “Good,” he said. I ordered three Cheese Steaks and four bags of chips, and for my efforts got a funny look from the guy at the counter. I paid him an IOU and forced him to take it. I wondered what the local detectives were going to make of the Jimmy Hoffa IOUs I had been scattering hither and yon. I collected my order and sat by the front window.

  “I saved you for two reasons, young Arm. The first was that I didn’t want Focus Patterson getting her hands on an Arm. That’s the last thing the world needs. She’s dangerous enough as it is.” The monster Focus was Patterson? The leader of the Focus breakout from the Transform Quarantine? The Focuses had big problems of the stomach clenching variety. I ate a Cheese Steak and thought dark thoughts.

  I spotted Rumor on the roof across the street, with a single Cheese Steak, bag of chips, pickle and a soda. He had gotten in and out without my noticing. I was impressed.

  “The second reason,” he said, in a whisper, around a mouthful of pickle, “is what you have in your pocket.”

  I tapped Enkidu’s hand. “This?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mine!” I said, grabbing it closer to my body. I did realize how silly I was being and I didn’t care. I could reign in my Arm possessiveness if I tried, but now, I had other things to reign in, such as pain, as my innards rearranged themselves.