“One of my many sins is going around chains of command,” Hank said, trying not to think about how many layers of lies he spoke in this one simple sentence. Although he wasn’t in charge of the training any longer, he still liked to study the results. Dr. Bob had found him in the gym, watching Tim Egins run the new crop of adult bodyguards through their warm ups. The gym was a busy place now, and even Lori had showed up this evening, sitting silently on the balance beam in her shorts and halter top. He wrapped his jacket tighter. The cavernous room seemed colder now that he was no longer involved. “I’m sorry. I only do it when it’s necessary.” Unfortunately, Connie, the head of Inferno, hadn’t been able to cough up a suitably lofty position for him. The Focus had scotched her proposal, according to Connie. Connie thought he should be on the household leadership team, but the Focus couldn’t cope with normals as house leaders. Dr. Bob had it worse; he led the most important money-making part of the household and he wasn’t on the leadership team, either.
Going around the chain of command became a necessity, not a sin.
“I’ve met quite a few arrogant SOBs in my day, but you take the cake, Zielinski.” Dr. Bob shook his head, disgusted. “I’m talking about this so-called Monster hunt you talked the Focus into.” The two of them backed away from the basketball court, to avoid disturbing the training Transforms, and huddled by the dumbbell rack.
“I understand,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is no chain of command for Major Transform political issues.”
“That’s because nobody at your level is supposed to be involved in Major Transform politics.”
Hank shrugged and gave Dr. Bob the eye. “I’ve been involved with Major Transform politics since the Eisenhower administration. Connie and the Focus pretending otherwise doesn’t change that.”
He had dropped his final report and first edition of his Transform training manual on the Focus’s desk Sunday morning. His part of the Transform training project was now officially finished; now the household, in preparation for the Monster hunt, implemented. Ever since he started to make progress, Lori had been renewing the juice patterns on him that enabled the training, every Sunday afternoon. Last Sunday she hadn’t; instead she reset the juice pattern keys so Tim and Shelly Darcie would take over as the official trainers. Shelly already controlled one of the keys. Tim now held Zielinski’s former position as official training head honcho. Lori did the switch-over in person, changing things around, to support more trainees, a large enough shake-up in the household’s juice to make everyone edgy.
Dr. Bob leaned forward, to close to his ear. “Connie’s wants you on this crazy Monster hunt. I’m not going to put up a fight, so you’re going.”
Hank chewed his lip and decided not to say his first response: if Connie hadn’t invited him he would have gone over her head to the Focus. “I understand the costs of my actions,” he said, instead.
Zielinski turned to watch Parker and Autumn sparring in hand to hand combat. Those two showed the greatest improvement of the bunch, though the youngster, Amy, came in a close third. Amy had been developing her talents in an entirely new direction, involving subjective invisibility, wall climbing, lock picking, and sleight of hand, as well as the more normal sprinting, leaping, and gymnastics improvement. When Tim challenged her for wasting her time on a potentially futile exercise, she had replied “You won’t know until someone’s tried and failed, and better a thirteen year old without any responsibilities than one of you elders.” Tim was only in his mid-thirties. Zielinski felt old.
The more amazing thing about Amy’s experiment was its success. Amy developed her tricks, slowly piecing them together on her own, and ramped them up to post-human levels.
Lori strode up while he concentrated on the training youngsters, her face a tight mask. She didn’t normally come by the gym on a Tuesday evening, but today they were preparing for the Monster hunt. “Good job, Henry. No,” she said, her voice radiating warmth. “Amazing job. You saved many lives with this. Inferno lives. I’ve been watching the sparring this evening. The improvements are more than just noticeable, they’re awesome.”
Zielinski nodded. She had an edge in her voice today he didn’t like, which started him worrying again about her relations with her boss, Focus Schrum. He needed to start some contingency planning on a fallback position if he needed to leave Inferno.
His first choice, Carol, was still off the table because of the Chimera problem, and he doubted the Monster hunt would fix the situation. He found the interference exceptionally irritating, because he had been holding information in his head so vital to the Arms that the first Focuses had a contract out on him. Worse, Eissler had used a Keaton-style Arm charisma trick on him, preventing him from telling anyone what he learned except the Arms, in person.
His next best choice was Special Agent Bates of the FBI. He feared Bates might not be willing to go out on a limb for him again, though. Unfortunately, his best FBI contact, Paul Gauthier, had been yanked from his position of Special Agent In Charge of Transform Affairs and now ran some sort of white crime investigation in New York City.
“I still haven’t gotten any response from Hancock,” Lori said.
“You should let me try again,” he said. Connie had cut off his mail privileges after Carol sent Inferno the Chimera corpse, and the Focus had concurred. They both feared his independence threatened household security.
“That’s not going to happen,” the Focus said. “I have a question for you, though, Henry: how are we going to protect you on the Monster hunt?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I know how to use firearms.”
“You do?” the Focus said, surprised. “This I’ve got to see. We’re going to our shooting range later tonight, and you’re coming along.”
“I don’t have any problems with that,” he said, hiding a smile.
His firearms skills would impress anyone but an Arm.
Tonya Biggioni: February 22, 1968
Tonya, flanked by her bodyguard entourage, exited the Philadelphia CBS network affiliate. The new producers had wanted comments on far too many sightings (and dead bodies) of what the Media called ‘Male Arms’ or ‘Male Monsters’, depending on the reporter or editor. She had carefully followed the Council’s party line while leaving open the faint possibility that those who examined the bodies hadn’t been mistaken. She didn’t like being a celebrity Focus, not these days, but her ‘expert television reports’ did bring money into the household. What she wanted to talk about was the sudden dearth of Monsters in the Northeast Region. Rizzari’s household people had actually sent in a written complaint about it to Tonya, wondering if the reporting procedures had fallen apart. However, nobody was interested in good news.
Her car rolled up to the entryway and Ralph handed her into the vehicle, which accelerated with Tonya only three quarters of the way inside. A sudden swerve to the right bounced her to the bench seat and closed the door shut. Tonya got a look at the driver…who wasn’t one of hers.
“Keaton! What’s the meaning of this?”
“Nice to see you, too, bitch,” Keaton said, her face blank, both hands on the steering wheel of the car. “Time for a talk where there aren’t any prying ears.”
Tonya didn’t respond, fuming. Kidnapped! Well, not really. She wasn’t being restrained and she could leap out of the car if she wanted to. Damned Arm.
“Who hunts Detroit?” Tonya asked.
“Who would bother hunting in Detroit?” Keaton answered. “Unless you want to bag scraggly dogs and rat-hunting cats.”
Tonya clenched her fists, heat on her face. “I’m talking Arms and Transforms.”
“So why do you want to know?”
“Council business.”
“Great. Look, I’m here to warn you and pass along some information,” Keaton said. “Not play jump through hoops with the growing-ever-more-useless Focus Council.”
Tonya tensed, annoyed, issue upon issue bubbling up inside her. “No more than I want to
play jump through hoops with a growing-ever-more-useless Arm.”
Keaton skidded the car to a stop, now at least a dozen blocks from Tonya’s likely deathly frantic bodyguards and canted sideways across a quiet street of tall narrow homes built around the turn of the century. “I’m here to help you, you motherfucking moron,” she said, leaning over the back of her seat and getting into Tonya’s face. “You don’t know…”
“What I know is that…”
“…jack shit about what’s going on, do you. We’ve got a huge…”
“…someone, likely Hancock, has been poaching tagged Transforms left and…”
“…fucking problem growing with the Chimeras. They’re all over the place…”
“…right.” Tonya’s voice was now loud enough to hurt her own ears. She continued to talk over the Arm’s rant. “Don’t you fucking swear at me, you uncommunicative paranoid…”
“…and your ass kissing Council needs to stop licking each other’s pussies and…”
“…deal breaking ballbreaker. If I was following the Council’s orders I’d take…”
“…listen to someone besides yourselves. Hancock and I killed two of the…”
“…you down right here and now, so don’t push it, dammit.”
“…cocksuckers already and encountered more of these fucking Chimeras in the past year than the total number of Arms who have ever transformed in the States.”
Tonya held Keaton’s shirt in her fist, and Keaton gripped Tonya’s blouse tight under the neck. Arm spittle covered Tonya’s face and less than an inch separated Keaton’s nose from hers. Tonya took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. Her body ached with anger, as close to taking a swing at Keaton as she had ever been.
“A Focus Gladchuck filed a formal complaint against you for assaulting one of her people,” Tonya said, as calm as she could force. Today her charisma wasn’t even touching the Arm.
“Gladchuck’s not half bad as a Focus but she has a telephone pole up her ass on her best days,” Keaton said. “I can understand her, though, unlike my so-called Network Contact, Focus Rodriguez, who I swear is a real witch who controls her juice use with religious icons and other symbols. I was raiding a Clinic and one of Gladchuck’s Transforms was there as a volunteer, about the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. I was in full stalk and still didn’t do anything to Gladchuck’s Transform more than telling her to back off. It’s not my fault she hurt herself running away.”
“Sounds like you have more control than Hancock.”
“Hancock’s got plenty of control, at least from your perspective. She’s talked civil to tagged Transforms in person and everything. Even to a Focus. Tonya, I’ve got people spying on her night and day and the only mistake she’s made was the Kensington fuck up. Which she heard about from me, in painful detail. Only the damned bitch isn’t following all of my hints, only about eighty percent of them, so I’m not talking to her ‘cause I’m as pissed at her as I am at you.”
Oh, that’s just fabulous, Tonya thought. Even with Hancock graduated the two Arms didn’t get along. “Who hunts Detroit?”
Keaton growled, loud, predatory. Tonya’s blouse tightened around her neck as the Arm’s clenched her fist tighter. “Why are you so fucking interested in Detroit, you overbearing…”
“I’m trying to save your worthless hide from the Council, dammit, and I need…”
“…witless wonder. I’ve been a Network member for too many fucking years to deserve this…”
“…cooperation, not spittle and drivel. You’ve been totally useless ever since you took…”
“…treatment and suspicion. I could have been taking tagged Transforms for years but I’ve honored…”
“…in Hancock as a student.” Tonya’s blouse ripped, strained beyond its tolerance by the Arm’s gripping hand. Keaton ignored Tonya’s instinctive charismatic ‘back off’ without even a flinch. An instant later Keaton had hold of Tonya’s chin. “Let go…”
“…every agreement I’ve made with you bitches.”
Keaton let go…and was out of the car. Keaton’s face was livid red and she shook with anger. “Here. This is what I wanted to talk to you about but you…”
“You’re the one with the fucking…”
“…refused to even listen.” Keaton tossed a thick manila envelope in through the open door, to land uncharacteristically askew, by the gas pedal.
“…attitude problem, not me. This poaching you Arms are doing has…”
“We’re not fucking poaching! And I’m the one who hunts fucking Detroit!” Keaton turned and stalked off.
“…got to stop!” Tonya said, her last a futile bellow at Keaton’s back. Had Keaton been the one who had taken Adkins’ Transform? Were the two Arms working together against the Focuses now?
The Arm, elbows flying, kicked over a trash receptacle on the way by, yelled out a loud “Motherfucking cunt!” and then assaulted a VW Beetle sitting innocently at the curb, parked and minding its own business. Keaton tipped it over, twice, kicked in its front windshield and as she passed, emptied dry a semi-auto Tonya hadn’t even seen the Arm carrying into the Beetle’s gas tank. It exploded.
Tonya climbed into the driver’s seat, trying to keep her hands from shaking. Sweat covered her back. She picked up the manila folder as if it was a bomb, clearly true, as the folder label said, in Zielinski’s handwriting: “Information on Directed Withdrawal Scarring in a Chimera.” The title itself made her sweat clammy. She set it beside her to look at later, far far later, and went to start the car, only to pound the wheel and mutter a few choice obscenities of her own.
Keaton had walked off with the car keys.
Chapter 12
No Focus ever given the task to hunt Monsters, ostensibly as a good will gesture to the general public, has escaped unscathed mentally or physically.
“Inventing Our Future”
Henry Zielinski: February 29, 1968
The Focus closed her eyes again, meditated, and stuck a pencil on the USGS topo map of the area just east of Lake Geneva. She opened her eyes to discover where her pencil pointed and stood up from her cross-legged sitting position, graceful as a dancer. Zielinski picked the map up from the ground and dusted off the dirt and dry grass before he rolled it up. They had been on the hunt all night and Lori thought they were getting close. He had been quietly observing her Monster-hunting techniques, glued to her left shoulder the entire time. None of the Inferno Monster hunters challenged his position; he suspected Tim and Ann were glad to have him in the Focus’s care instead of theirs.
They had been quite shocked at his firearms skills. People did tend to forget about his background in surgery and his well-practiced hand-to-eye coordination. Now with the rising sun he was more confident about the hunt. He didn’t much like chasing Monsters at night, but as per their agreement, he had left all the timing issues to the Focus.
“I’ve got the Monster pack just northwest of Paddock Lake, and, finally a good idea of their vector,” the Focus said. According to the map, the pack headed toward Chicago. He suspected the Madonna of Montreal had picked ‘now’ for their Monster hunt because of an attack on Carol, who he strongly suspected laired in Chicago. “Back into the vehicles. We know enough now to cut them off.”
This would be interesting and dangerous. Chimera metasense extended for miles, and they would soon be inside the Chimera’s range. Both he and the Focus were sure a Chimera led the monster pack, even if the Focus couldn’t pick him out with her juice-pattern enhanced tracking tricks.
He had never seen a Focus do anything like this before. He had long wondered how Inferno was so successful at Monster hunting. Now he knew.
As the line of Inferno vehicles rounded the corner on the rural dirt road, Tim shouted out “There they are!” The line of vehicles stopped; Zielinski looked and saw nothing. The Inferno monster hunters climbed out of the cars and trucks and took cover behind the vehicles and in the roadside ditches. They loaded and positioned their we
apons, tense with pre-combat nerves. The sun dappled through low clouds, glinting on the old snow of the fields around them.
“They’re charging,” the Focus said.
Now he spotted their targets, a line of Monsters and part-Monster women running out of the forest a quarter mile away. A red-furred gorilla led the group, and as Hank caught sight of the gorilla, it roared. Hank froze in place, as did everyone but the Focus.
“Buck up, people,” the Focus said. “That’s the Chimera, and that’s its charisma.” She muttered code words. Hank unfroze and sighted his weapon, waiting for the order to fire. Lori had used one of her juice patterns to unfreeze them. From what she told him earlier, many mature Monsters had a fear-charisma attack. Experience had taught her how to counter it.
“We’ve got four with weapons, not including the guy in front,” Shelly Darcie said, peering over the cab of one of the pickups. She was one of four Inferno fighters glued to binoculars.
“Concentrate on the gorilla,” Lori said, taking out her Monster gun. Hank settled farther into his ditch and made sure of his aim. “Fire!”
Blood sprayed from the gorilla Chimera, hit by over a dozen Monster-stopper rounds. He went down.
The Chimera’s harem hit the ground when he went down, seeking cover.
“They’re going to try and flank us to the left,” the Focus said. The Chimera and pack were out of her metasense range, but she somehow knew what they were doing. Did Focuses have unpublicized Monster hunting instincts? Hank wouldn’t be surprised. “There’s a low spot, a culvert sixty feet to the left. Into it.”
They crawled through the late winter old snow and to the culvert. Hank kept lookout where Tim and Lori pointed. After far too many moments of quiet the ground ahead of them erupted with a roar, as a tiger Monster and a horse Monster (showing non-horse-like carnivorous teeth) sprung up and charged them. He fired as they charged and hit once, twice, and spotted the Focus drop her Monster gun and charge to their right, away from the fight and in the direction of where the Chimera had fallen. The more human part-Monster ladies fired at the Inferno troops as they charged, and Hank kept his head down, firing prone.
All Beasts Together (The Commander) Page 33
