Tommy’s eyes widened in fear, but he didn’t respond. A threat to Tonya threatened the survival of everyone in the household. From their ample Monster hunting experiences, though, he knew Tonya’s personal tricks and strengths were often necessary to bag the big game.
Tonya tapped her fingers on the hood of the Ford and thought through a plan. If the Arm was sated and full of juice, she should be tractable. Juice was, after all, juice. All Transforms had a limited amount of juice they could hold before going Monster, and Tonya doubted Arms were any different. Tonya shouldn’t have to worry about the Arm’s need for juice, just her other skills.
“I can’t bring Janet back to life,” Tonya said. “I’ve got my edge, don’t you forget.” Her charisma, which she used right then to convince her head of security to let her confront the Arm without guards. Tommy shook his head and grimaced. He was easy to read right now: ‘I know my Focus is a cold calculating inhuman bitch, but this is a bit much’.
“Ma’am? Should I get everyone behind cover?”
Tonya examined the wounds on her people. Not good. “First, let’s stabilize our wounded. Cover me while I work.” Honey had taken three bullets, someone on the other side perhaps thinking Honey was the Focus, not her. Tonya’s metasense was accurate enough to read Honey and Todd’s wounds and how best to stop the bleeding. Thankfully, their attackers had used low caliber automatics and didn’t get in any lucky shots. Still, Honey’s wounds were bad, even for a Transform. Tonya bandaged her up as best as possible and prayed her first aid would be enough. Then she checked Todd, and winced. Only one wound, but a gut shot. Internal bleeding, and the bullet hadn’t come out. Even with her added juice support, he would need professional help. On the other hand, he wouldn’t bleed to death before he got it. Tonya taped him up.
Keaton still didn’t move.
“I’ll help you get Honey and Todd behind cover,” Tonya said. She hoped Tommy held himself together awhile longer. Honey was his wife, and only Tonya’s charisma kept Tommy from falling apart or going psycho killer. Well, her charisma and his professional expertise. Tommy grabbed Honey under her shoulders, Tonya took Honey’s feet, and they slowly walked her over to the other side of the mound. Once Tommy positioned himself to cover Robert and Greg, Tonya motioned to them to carry Todd over.
“Stay here,” Tonya said to the three remaining bodyguards, after they laid Todd down next to Honey. They nodded, unhappy with her orders. Tonya took a deep breath and walked through the pines to the restroom area where the Monster, Keaton, still hadn’t moved.
Tonya entered the woman’s rest room, slowly and carefully. The rest stop bathroom was like any rest stop bathroom except for the brilliant illuminations, filthy, reeking, and dysfunctional. The faucet of the single sink dripped and mold grew around the drain. Wet toilet paper clustered in sodden heaps on the floor. One of the thin wooden stall doors canted sideways, the top hinge broken. A puddle of brown water pooled around the foot of the toilet in a different stall. The door of the third was shut. Tonya would have liked a little less light. She saw quite well even by starlight, and the harsh glow of the place only made the filth more glaring. “Keaton?” Tonya said.
No answer. The place stank, not only the normal stench of a highway rest stop, but the smell of blood and another, almost fruity odor. Juice. Just like any wounded Monster.
A slow river of blood wound its way from the middle stall, the one with the shut door, toward the drain in the floor. Blood from the Monster’s wounds, or Janet’s, or both. Janet’s feet stuck out from under the closed door, but the Monster Keaton kept herself hidden.
Tonya found Keaton with her metasense, though: propped up, sitting at the back of the stall on the filthy floor, a small figure, unmoving. Keaton’s juice glow nearly blinded Tonya’s metasense at this range. Tonya hated what came next, but her edge, her charisma, needed eye contact to work on someone she had never dealt with before. She would have to open the toilet stall door.
“Keaton?”
Again, no answer. Tonya questioned her own intelligence, but she already knew the answer. Her knees shook as she approached the stall and pushed at the door, half expecting the Monster to leap up and attack her before she made eye contact. The door, unlatched, swung open only a foot and a half before wedging itself on Janet’s knee, but…
But enough for Tonya to make eye contact, of sorts. Keaton’s eyes were open, but she stayed motionless, and, if Tonya guessed right, half-asleep. The Arm version of the Focus healing trance? Perhaps, but if Arms worked similar to Focuses, Keaton could break herself out at any point.
Even in a trance, Keaton looked dangerous. Dressed and muscled like a man, a bodybuilder, but distorted, with misshapen muscles. The Arm carried half a dozen wounds, but she no longer bled. The Arm held Janet in her lap, but of all things, Janet seemed alive, happy even. Although the Arm had stolen Janet’s juice, Janet’s death hadn’t been horrible.
“Back off, Focus,” Keaton said, in a slow whisper.
Tonya backed off, her heart rate spiking, before she found the willpower to stop herself. Tonya knew charisma, and the Arm had it. Unlike Tonya’s, the Arm’s charisma was verbally oriented, perhaps command oriented. Transform drill sergeant?
Tonya had been thinking ‘Monster’, assuming the Arm couldn’t speak, wasn’t intelligent. Nevertheless, the Arm had spoken.
“You killed one of my Transforms,” Tonya said. “For this…”
“I saved your fucking life, bitch, and your idiot thugs blew out the brains of my prey before I snagged him,” Keaton said. The Arm slowly levered herself to her feet, fighting gravity. Fighting herself. Tonya expected fresh blood, as even a Focus with her massive healing capabilities would not have closed her wounds this quickly. Nothing.
What, then, did the Arm fight? Why did she find moving so hard?
Tonya backed off on her mental non-Monstering of Keaton. That last statement of Keaton hadn’t made any sense to Tonya at all. Had the Arm gone so insane she no longer used words correctly?
“Why were you following me?” Tonya asked.
“I wanted to talk.”
“Talk?” The Arm continued to advance on her, ignoring all of Tonya’s charismatic signals to back away. A Monster stalk, save that Tonya had never run into a Monster who so blatantly ignored Tonya’s charisma at so short a range.
“I just want to be left alone, but you damned Focus bitches keep hunting me. I want you to stop. Talk to you. Get you to stop.” The Arm grabbed Tonya’s dress and pulled her close. The reek of the Arm, blood, juice, weeks or months of living in filth and garbage, assaulted her nose like a weapon. The Arm appeared to have the same goals as the Council, and yet the primitive part of Tonya’s mind still wanted to panic and run.
“So stop,” Keaton said. The gibbering animal inside Tonya demanded panic, demanded a breakaway, a fight. Experience hunting Monsters took over and Tonya forced herself calm.
“The Focuses I work with, the Network, want to help you,” Tonya said. “Not hunt you.”
The Arm stopped and cold blue eyes gazed into Tonya’s eyes.
“Cold like me, aren’t you? Well, we have the same enemy, then,” the Arm said. “The attackers out there who shot up your people are the same ones hunting me.”
“Yes,” Tonya said. “I have some phone numbers in my purse that…”
The Arm grabbed Tonya’s purse and stuck it on her shoulder. It looked incongruous on such a masculine seeming figure. “Get lost. I’ll contact you later.” She let go of Tonya, and indicated with her eyes that Tonya should leave.
“Wait,” Tonya said. “You killed one of my people. For this you owe restitution.”
The Arm batted Tonya back against the cinderblock wall, held her with the palm of her hand.
“Fuck you! I owe you nothing. Didn’t you hear…”
Focuses had the ability to move juice on any Transform they touched, regardless of which Focus held the Transform’s tag. Her own boss, Schrum, had disciplined her in such a way
several times. “Get your hands off of me! I can do this,” Tonya said, and pulled on the Arm’s juice, “and destroy you just as easily…”
The Arm’s eyes widened for a moment. Then Tonya’s world turned black.
“Tonya! Mom! Snap out of it!”
Tonya hurt. Hurt a lot. She awoke, and forced herself to ignore the pain. Her arms and legs felt funny, twisted. Tommy knelt down, shaking her. Gently.
“What’s that on my chest?” Tonya said. Part of the pain was something poking her left breast, a piece of a paper pinned to her and to her dress.
“A note from the Arm. The Arm’s gone, ran off. About ten minutes after you went in to the lavatory, another car pulled into the rest stop. The Arm ran out of the lavatory, threw the people out of their car, and took off in it. We’re keeping them quiet.”
“What’s the note say?” Tonya asked.
“The note says: ‘Next time be more polite. I don’t react well to threats.’ We need to get you out of here before the police arrive. We have one of the cars ready to go.”
“Well, let’s go, then. Owwwh!” Tonya said, when Tommy lifted her up. She almost blacked out from the pain. Her eyes flickered to the source of the pain, and she saw leg bones. Hers. Sticking through her skin. Compound fractures. “We won’t be able to make it home like this,” she said, thinking of herself and the two wounded bodyguards she would not to be able to support while wounded herself. She called out an address to a place she knew that would help, less than fifteen miles away. “Take us there.”
If she ever hoped to walk again without a limp, she only had once choice, Network’s top surgeon, Dr. Henry Zielinski. The only question was how quickly she could get the uncooperative bastard to New York.
Carol’s Transformation
Carol Hancock woke on the morning of the 9th from a fading nightmare of pain and freezing cold, as if the dead of winter had come early, in September. She sat up with difficulty, and when she did, she moaned.
“Honey? Something wrong?”
Bill, her husband, was already dressed, ready for work except for his tie and suit coat. He finished putting in his cuff links and came over to her.
She didn’t answer.
“Dear, you look terrible.”
Carol moaned and wobbled. Any movement brought pain like fireworks to her body. Bill put the back of his hand on Carol’s forehead, before yanking his hand away as if singed. “You have a fever. Why don’t you lie down?”
“Give me a moment,” she said, a whisper. A moment. A moment was all she needed. Yes.
Bill hustled off, out to where there were voices and people. Carol needed the bathroom. She stood and made it to her feet, her hands shaking. Although everybody knew what shaking hands meant, she didn’t pay it any attention, because in her mind, and in the minds of everyone she knew, and most especially the mind of her Minister, only the sinful, the impious, homosexuals and atheist Communists got the Shakes.
A glass of water did make her feel better, though she had to keep her eyes half-closed because the bathroom lights were so bright. She struggled out of her nightgown and into her robe, and finished morning things.
“Honey, Sarah’s sick, too,” Bill said, from outside the bathroom door.
Carol reached into the small medicine cabinet, got out the thermometer, fumbled with it for a moment because of her shaking hands, and shook it down. “Here, Hon. Take her temperature.”
Carol slipped into her slippers and paced across the house to the kitchen, where she drank a cup of coffee, one cream and one sugar. Two sips; she couldn’t stand any more, but the two sips brought her back to herself. Or close.
“One oh one point five,” Bill said. “Looks like the two of you need to go see Dr. Thompson today.”
“Oh, it’s probably just that flu that’s going around,” Carol said. “The Johnsons had the flu last week.” Though hadn’t Maggie Johnsons’ illness turned out to be just a cold? Carol couldn’t remember. Not with her splitting headache.
Bill Jr. and Jeffrey ran into the kitchen, causing her to wince. “Slow down,” Carol said. Barking at her own boys! Not something she did, or ought to do. “Yes, Mom,” Bill Jr. said. On comical tiptoes her boys got bowls of Cheerios, doused them with milk, and high-tailed it to the living room to watch morning television before they had to run off to school.
Sarah, in her robe, shuffled in a moment later. She sat down at the kitchen table with a wince. “No, thank you,” she said, after Carol offered her breakfast.
Bill rushed in with his briefcase in hand, kissed the tops of Carol and Sarah’s heads, said goodbye, and went off to his work. “If you need any help, don’t forget you can call Mrs. Farragut! She owes you one!”
Bill would run everyone’s life if they let him. Carol smiled at her husband’s antics.
---
“Well, now ain’t you a pair,” Susan said. Sarah and Carol had retired to the living room after the boys left for school, and sat side by side on the couch, watching The Pat Boone Show on the color television. “Let me make you some lunch.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Holtwich,” Sarah said.
All Carol managed was a grunt. She and her shaking hands and sweaty body hadn’t been doing well.
“Carol?” Susan asked. “My, you are sick.” She got on the phone without hesitation.
Susan Holtwich had two children, and a gentle laugh, and was innocent, and loving, and a sweet and gentle lady. Not the worlds brightest woman, though. She called Carol’s friend Beth Farragut to come over, and one of her friends, Alice Winslow, come join in as well.
Carol started to find the light in the living room too bright for her about the time Alice showed up. She didn’t know Alice very well, as she had moved in to the house two doors down only five weeks ago. Carol had invited her over for lunch once, but Alice hadn’t returned the invite yet. Alice and Susan talked quietly in the kitchen. Carol, almost asleep sitting up, woke up startled when Sarah started to snore, her head in Carol’s lap.
“Yoo hoo! Carol!” Beth Farragut called, from the doorway. She rang the doorbell, attracting Susan’s attention.
“Come in here, Beth,” Susan said. “We need to talk.”
“Susan, what are you up to this time!” Beth said. She bustled in, turning off the television on the way by. “I don’t have time for any of your silly shenanigans, you know that.”
Beth was the President of the Jefferson City PTA, and she was determined to give the job to Carol when her term ran out. They had been friends for years, partners in crime, part of the younger women’s mafia easing power away from the older women. Beth hated surprises, with her life organized down to the minute, and heaven help anything or anyone who disrupted her schedule. Carol had no idea how she managed this with six kids, but her household hummed like an assembly line.
“You don’t say?” Beth said, around Susan’s whispers. “The Shakes? What are you waiting for? Call a doctor. An ambulance. A hospital. Woman, get your mouth in gear and call. Hell, I’ll do it.”
Carol didn’t register Beth’s words, though. Something had climbed inside her mind, turning her vision red, a new hunger she had never experienced before. She screamed. And screamed.
Her friends came running.
Carol gathered them into her arms and together they transformed. Ten minutes later Carol slipped out of their arms and fell to the floor, in a coma.
Her three friends and her daughter had stopped breathing a few minutes before.
I’m No Sinner!
(Carol Hancock POV)
I lay on a concrete floor, sweat oozing from my body. The dark unlit room stank of sewer. I couldn’t sit up, with agony in every twitch I made. I tried to remember how I got here. Right. Armed men. Running. Transform Detention Center. Dr. Peterson. My name: Carol Hancock.
Why was I still alive?
“Help me,” I said to the air.
No answer.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Again no answer.
“
Please, I’m hungry.”
Nothing.
The light didn’t even turn on.
Time passed. I prayed. Tell me this is all a mistake, God. Dear Lord Jesus, I’m no sinner. I don’t deserve the Shakes.
No answer.
My stomach rumbled in agony. I couldn’t believe my hunger.
“I want food.”
If I turned Monster, I wanted them to shoot me. “No human should be forced to live as a Monster,” I said, quiet. But I wanted to die with a full stomach.
Bleak thoughts about my affliction filled my head as my astonishing phantom pains got worse by the minute. What would my transformation do to my children? What would my transformation do to Bill? Would I ever see any of them, again?
I couldn’t believe I killed my own daughter.
Please, God.
Not that.
I drifted back to sleep on the dirty concrete floor.
Early Days
(Carol Hancock POV)
My third and fourth days at the Detention Center mirrored the second. From Dr. Zielinski, I knew the Center staff was constructing some sort of exercise area for me. They hadn’t finished. I received a note from my mother. She said she was arranging to get away, to come visit in a few days.
I hoped that since I now had competent care, my circumstances would improve, and I would be all better. The situation did improve, but I didn’t. I couldn’t forget Susan, Beth, Alice or most of all, Sarah. My hunger never abated for more than a few minutes. I hurt, a never-ending ache, because of something Dr. Zielinski called incipient muscular hypertrophy, which worried him. I was lonely every second of every day. Every morning when I woke up the world seemed darker than the day before. I couldn’t adjust.
Another funny thing: every day I felt I had been dumb as a stump the day before. Strange. According to what I remembered from old newspaper articles, Arms were supposed to be mindless beasts. Monsters. I expected to feel less intelligent as time went on, as I became more monstrous. I decided I must be deluding myself about my intelligence.
The Good Doctor's Tales Folio One Page 3
