Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Once my flesh had burned like this.

  I touched my fingertip to the tip of the soldering iron. It burned and I snatched my hand away again.

  I laid the iron back on the table.

  Her other instruments of torture lay all over the room. Her nightstick hung from a hook in the wall. The dental instruments marched in order neatly on a shelf. Surgical clamps lay next to them. The small knives were stored on the next shelf down. Next to them were the nameless things Keaton used to prop my eyes and mouth open when she wanted to work on them. Shackles lay scattered in a bin, a container of small wires above them. Drugs and chemicals lined the shelves in the back of the room, but those, thank God, weren’t meant for me. Weapons lay all over the room, as well as lock picks and other tools that really were tools rather than torture instruments.

  I went over to the tiny little flensing knives responsible for so much of my pain. Seven knives sat on the shelf. They all looked the same. I wondered which one Keaton used last on me.

  I picked one up. The blade was only about three inches long and razor sharp. I didn’t see any signs of use.

  I shivered when I held the blade in my hand. I remembered pain as she drove it into the base of my fingernails. I re-experienced the gut-twisting horror as she sliced those long strips of flesh and then slowly pulled them off me.

  I drew the blade across the back of my hand. The blood welled up briefly before the cut closed again and the bleeding stopped. Not even a ‘one’ on the pain scale. I cut my hand again.

  No pain. The cutting didn’t hurt. What she did after…hurt.

  I laid the knife against the base of a fingernail, not yet fully healed from her last punishments. The nails came only halfway to the ends of my fingers, soft and delicate.

  I quailed as I pushed on the knife. This hurt. Dammit! I pushed until the blood seeped out from under my nail.

  There was strength in overcoming pain.

  Enough to overcome a psychological addiction? Perhaps.

  I kept the flensing knife. I needed something to remind me.

  Henry Zielinski: August 14, 1967

  “I need one of your bank account numbers, Hank,” Carol said.

  Zielinski blinked and shook his head. He slipped his glasses on and looked at his alarm clock. 1:56 in the morning. He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes and managed not to drop the phone.

  “Bank account numbers?” he said.

  “Yes, dammit, a bank account number! Pay attention! This is important, and I don’t want to spend my time listening to you repeat back to me what I’ve already said!”

  Damned Arms. “May I ask what this is about, ma’am?”

  “What it’s about is your trip to West Germany,” Carol said.

  “What…” trip to West Germany, he almost echoed. “I don’t have any trips scheduled to West Germany.” Hell. Lori’s Dream-based insight, now slapped in his face, Arm style.

  The Arm didn’t reply. “I’m…”

  “You’re talking to two Arms here who need everything they can get about Eissler,” Carol said. Keaton. She wouldn’t even need to be on another phone to listen in, just be present in the same room.

  “In addition, this will take you out of the country and keep you from becoming Chimera food or any other ‘too helpful’ mistakes in any other areas.” Such as helping her with her graduation test. Ahh. “I’m wiring you some money because you’re otherwise broke.”

  He closed his eyes, worked through his med school-honed memory tricks, and rattled off an eleven-digit number. “That’s it,” he said, and gave the name of the bank.

  “When you come back, the information in question goes to both Arms,” Carol said. “Don’t try and contact us. We’ll contact you when it’s safe.”

  Ah. Now more of this made sense. Carol had sold Keaton on the deal. “In that case, you should thank Stacy for me for the funding.”

  “I will, Hank. Don’t dilly-dally. You have two weeks to get yourself on a plane,” Carol said, and hung up the phone.

  He mopped his eyebrows and took a deep breath. At least this had been a short conversation.

  Carol was making progress on her graduation test. Finally. She expected to succeed after about two weeks.

  Carol Hancock: August 16, 1967

  Had I set my plans in motion too soon? Four in the morning, parked in the driveway of an empty house with a For Sale sign, out in the Oranges, high on juice…dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit!

  I suspected I had broken my right pinkie finger when I smashed the damned thing, as well.

  I had grabbed the man in Newark a few minutes before midnight, a nineteen-year-old street guy, amenable to being ordered into the trunk of my ride at gunpoint. I couldn’t help metasensing him and smelling him as I drove, and in less than two minutes the scent of his juice worked its cheating way into my mind.

  Once I drove us out of Newark proper I pulled off the main highway, turned onto a quiet side road, and stopped the car to shake. What I was doing was unnatural. As I suffered my shakes, my kill shouted for help through the gag. His juice was so beautiful. I needed his juice. I could practically taste the rush, the wonderful exalted high.

  I wanted my kill. I needed my kill. Now. Such a beautiful kill. I turned away and found I couldn’t walk farther than about a hundred feet away before I got the shakes again.

  My kill decided to scream in terror, reigniting my lust. The distance made no difference.

  I walked back to my ride, got back in, put my head on the steering wheel and listened to the distant highway noises. I hurt. I wanted the juice. I had earned it. I had been able to avoid thinking about the juice lust while I captured him. The thrill of the hunt and capture distracted me, and I was high enough on juice for another kill to put me close to oversupply and going over into Monster.

  I had him now. I had finished the hunt. It was time for the kill.

  I gripped the steering wheel tight, until I heard a creaking sound. Rage swept through me and I bashed my fingers with one of my many pain tools I carried with me, a hammer.

  The juice monkey backed off from the pain. Good.

  I started up the car again and drove.

  I focused on the pain.

  I drove.

  Unfortunately, my Arm capabilities didn’t to me any favors this time. After five minutes, the pain from my bashed finger receded and the juice monkey resumed its grip.

  I stopped the car again. Dammit!

  I put my hand into my pocket and found Keaton’s little flensing knife, in the small sheath I had made for it. I took the knife out of my pocket, took the knife out of the little sheath and looked at it. The tiny blade glistened menacingly. Once the knife had owned my life, the same way the juice did. Once this knife had cut me, tortured me, and tore me open.

  I took that knife and I plunged it into my arm. Pain! It hurt. The knife tortured me.

  Don’t think. Drive.

  My world contracted to nothing but the pain and the driving of the car. When the pain faded, I jiggled the knife again until the pain shot through me. Three times the knife fell out, forcing me to stab myself again. I controlled my mind and thought of nothing but the pain.

  I lasted through twenty minutes of this self-torture before the prey became mine. I learned one thing: I could have driven around forever, using the pain to drive away my need to draw his juice. I hadn’t been able to do so before and this trick would likely save my life someday.

  Unfortunately, once he became mine I wouldn’t be able to give him up to Keaton. The test was over. I found a nice safe place and drew his juice in this nice vacant house in the Oranges.

  I growled and hissed as bad as Mr. Lizard. My plan had failed. I sat in the vacant house, annoyed, with a broken pinkie, and perilously close to whiny angst.

  No. Bad thoughts, exactly what my addiction literature warned me against. The proper way to state my progress was: ‘my plan hadn’t worked perfectly’. Big difference.

  I needed to give this some thought. My gut s
aid I should be able to make this work. Somehow. I was devious enough – dammit, Zielinski – smart enough to be able to find a way to make this work.

  First, though, I had a body to dispose of and some men of loose morals to screw.

  Gilgamesh: August 21, 1967

  At three-fifteen in the morning, Gilgamesh walked home from his place of nominal employment, a used appliance shop. He had spent the evening cannibalizing three dishwashers for parts to make one working used dishwasher, a typical evening these days. His employer allowed him to work at night and paid him by the piece. The night was clear and cool, and this late even the bars were closed. Few cars traveled the roads, the only thing punctuating the silence.

  Gilgamesh’s truck was broken again, a week’s worth of broken. The truck needed carburetor work. He didn’t mind the walk through the quiet calming darkness. In the distance, he metasensed Sinclair sleeping, Wire and Hancock reading, and the Skinner meditating. Tolstoy was out of range.

  His metasense never ceased to amaze him. He was as aware of the Crows and Arms as he was aware of the Focuses, their households, and all the various Transforms who scattered all over the city during the day. He metasensed them all without thinking about it, the web of Transforms always in the back of his mind. In the distance, the Focus Hera and her larger-than-normal set of bodyguards patrolled, the only ones out now. They patrolled in response to that Focus’s Beast Man sighting. Gilgamesh found the Focus’s patrols amusing. They weren’t very good at it and all they had managed to accomplish was to scare up a large crop of protesters from the Monsters Die group. Not that Monsters Die protested at night, of course.

  As he walked home, he noticed Wire, who stood watch, put down his book and frantically dial his phone. A few moments later, Sinclair startled awake. Sinclair looked around and then, in a pure panic, vomited up dross. Then he raced around his apartment, collected some small belongings, and ran for the door.

  Panic hit and Gilgamesh’s own dross threatened to sick up. Only one thing would generate a reaction like that: Wire had metasensed a hostile Beast Man on its way into town. The hostility reading wouldn’t be a guess, as Wire was much better than Gilgamesh at reading emotions. Gilgamesh began to run. He cursed his broken truck; he would never be able to escape an attack by a Beast Man on foot. He cursed his stubborn refusal to dip into his meager savings to repair his truck; he was most likely going to die in the next few minutes. Hell, he thought, if he had any brains he should have left Philadelphia when Sinclair first glimpsed the Beast Man.

  In his panic, Gilgamesh ran northeast towards Sinclair and Sinclair’s truck, crossing over Cobbs Creek and up north of Walnut Street. He cut through parking lots and hopped fences, ignoring roads for the direct path. He would rather have run to Wire, but if Wire sensed a Beast Man and he didn’t, the Beast Man had to be on the other side of Wire, which made running to Wire the wrong way to run. Gilgamesh felt his dross gurgling inside him again.

  Gilgamesh cut through an alley leading to a loading dock behind a small factory…and metasensed a Beast Man ahead of him. The Beast came directly toward him from the northwest, coming in fast. Gilgamesh had never metasensed a living creature moving so fast. The Beast came in on all fours, like an animal, moving over forty miles an hour. Gilgamesh worked the angles and realized this Beast Man was out of Wire’s range, which meant – total horrific panic – more than one Beast Man was in on the attack.

  Worse, the one after Gilgamesh was Enkidu.

  Which meant this was personal. Suddenly, Gilgamesh found within himself an extra burst of speed.

  Enkidu’s juice structure showed the crossed W bands Sinclair had described, but Gilgamesh also metasensed Enkidu’s old R bands in his glow. Despite those changes, Enkidu’s body had changed even more: four legs, big claws, big teeth, and overall much larger. He would intercept Gilgamesh long before Gilgamesh made it to Sinclair. Gilgamesh changed directions in panic, now headed toward Wire instead of Sinclair, running as fast as he could make his body go.

  As Gilgamesh turned, Enkidu turned to follow. From what Gilgamesh had learned, a Beast Man had to pay attention in order to sense a Crow, but Enkidu so obviously was. Gilgamesh had guessed right: Enkidu was after him in specific.

  Enkidu approached close enough for Gilgamesh to read a violent hunting ardor permeating the Beast Man’s emotions. The juice churned in Gilgamesh and he sicked it up. He gasped for breath, sweat dripping in his eyes as he tried to drive himself faster, legs pumping and feet pounding. He cleared the last fence behind the alley and turned onto the street again, the quiet streets not nearly so peaceful any more. Enkidu would catch up to Gilgamesh in less than a mile, long before Gilgamesh reached Wire and his car. Gilgamesh tried to run faster, but he couldn’t.

  Sweat dripped and Gilgamesh’s breath came in gasps. He considered his possible options, all bleak. The Arms’ warehouse sat across the Schuylkill River, four miles away to the southwest. Focus Hera patrolled about three miles to the west. Tolstoy lived two miles south of the Arms, out of his range. The Delaware River bounded him on the east.

  Up ahead, just on this side of the Schuylkill, he metasensed Wire running. He had made the last of his calls and ran to his car. To the north, Sinclair made for his own car. There was still no sign of Tolstoy. Then Gilgamesh sensed the other Beast Man chasing after Wire with an inhuman speed only a little slower than Enkidu’s charge. The dross came up again in further panic.

  Damn. He realized what he should have done to start with: run toward Focus Hera. The directions the Beast Men chose for their approach took them nowhere near the Focus. In desperation, Gilgamesh turned toward Focus Hera, which did nothing to ease his panic.

  A late night car drove by him as he ran through a silent intersection. The driver, a teenager boy, stared at him open-mouthed as they drove by, as did his passengers, two other teen boys. They didn’t stop.

  Behind him, Enkidu turned the corner three blocks back, visible for the first time. Gilgamesh tried to put on a burst of speed but he didn’t have any bursts left in him. To the south, Wire reached his car and got in, the Beast Man charging at him still hundreds of yards away. Wire would make it. Sinclair was already driving his car away. Gilgamesh was glad that some of them would survive. There was still no sign of Tolstoy.

  Enkidu closed with each stride, the clicks on the pavement from the beast’s claws eating into Gilgamesh’s sanity. Enkidu’s massive form consumed the blocks with a terrible efficiency. Gilgamesh ran, past the dark windows of Uncle Eddie’s Bail Bond Service, past the silence of the Walnut Street Pub, past the tawdry shabbiness of the Nero Gentlemen’s Club, featuring Girls! Girls! Girls! His legs pumped with a hopeless desperation, two and a half miles from Focus Hera and her patrol.

  He wasn’t going to make it.

  Enkidu began to rumble a low growl, almost too deep to hear, as he caught up with Gilgamesh. Incredibly, with a deep laugh of triumph, Enkidu put on a burst of inhuman, impossible speed. Enkidu’s hot breath gusted on Gilgamesh’s back, and the steady engine sound of Enkidu’s heartbeat and breathing joined the ominous clicking of his claws against the pavement. Even on all fours, Enkidu’s head was level with Gilgamesh’s shoulders.

  Gilgamesh turned, desperate, into the empty parking lot of the Nero Club, scattered with trash and broken glass, hoping he might find a refuge in that closed and silent building.

  Enkidu, so close behind him, reached out with a swiping motion as he turned. Gilgamesh felt a tearing, stabbing pain in the back of his right leg, and he fell. As he fell, Enkidu reached out again, and that same stabbing pain went through his left leg.

  Gilgamesh hit the pavement hard, shredding his hands and left cheek and chest as his momentum slid him forward.

  He hadn’t even stopped sliding when a foot came down on his back, hundreds of pounds of weight crushing him into the asphalt of the Nero Club parking lot. Gilgamesh couldn’t breathe. He sicked up dross again, the tiny amount he had left. Enkidu caught it easily and absorbed it into himself.
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  Above him, Enkidu roared. Triumph, victory, dominance. A noise that a lion would have been proud of. Not even remotely human, and loud enough to wake up every normal within miles. The Focus patrol certainly heard it; they stopped and took up a defensive position. Panicked by the terror of Enkidu’s roar, Gilgamesh pushed against the weight of the foot on his back. Enkidu didn’t even react. Gilgamesh couldn’t breathe and his legs didn’t obey him.

  Enkidu bent his huge fur covered form down and, without lifting his foot from Gilgamesh’s back, pulled the Crow’s arms behind him and tied them at the wrist with a thick rope. Enkidu’s claws cut deep gouges in Gilgamesh’s forearms as he did so. Then he flipped Gilgamesh over, and for the first time, Gilgamesh looked into the transformed eyes of Enkidu, the John Doe he had rescued so many months ago in Chicago.

  Fur covered Enkidu now, turning him into a brown and white Beast Man, a foot and a half taller than Gilgamesh, and at least twice his weight. He wore nothing but a wide pouch, belted around his waist. A muzzle ornamented his face, and his lips covered fangs. His wide-set animal eyes, large and brown, were merciless.

  Focus Hera and her patrol inched forward, at a walk so slow they would take two hours to reach his position. By then, Gilgamesh knew he would be dead.

  Ahead of him, Gilgamesh metasensed the other Beast Man, still chasing Wire. The Guru-in-training drove his car erratically and flung strange dross things at the Beast Man, to no noticeable effect. Gilgamesh had thought Wire would be safe once he made it to his car, but the Beast Man hadn’t given up the chase. In fact, with the Schuylkill at his back, the Beast Man had an angle on him. To Gilgamesh’s horror, the Beast Man, a low lizard-thing, put on a sudden burst of speed, reached out and slashed at Wire’s car. His car spun out and slowed. The Beast had taken out one of Wire’s tires. In a moment, the Beast got a second tire.

  A moment after that, the Beast jumped through the windshield of Wire’s car and grabbed Wire.