Keaton and I hit the dirt and fired back at the unmistakable and charging Chimera, still invisible to my metasense. He stood eight feet tall, a lizard-man who outweighed Keaton and I put together, and he had an ugly prick the size of a large salami. We put six large bullets into him before we abandoned the heavy weapons to meet his charge.
The camp emptied, led away by the half-Monster lady. Chains held none of the seven women in the Chimera harem, and they didn’t scatter as I expected. Three of the other harem members carried weapons, but they were more intent on fleeing than firing at us, at least while their hubby charged us.
The Chimera hissed again, making me want to flee the fight. Keaton signaled and the two of us growled our own predator effect back at Mr. Lizard. He stopped his charge in a cloud of dust. Hissed.
We growled.
He hissed.
I metasensed him now, faintly, a thing unlike any other Transform I had metasensed before. I had to concentrate to pick him out at all.
Keaton motioned and we charged him.
The Chimera turned and fled, not running any faster than we did. A quarter mile of chase later we heard a truck start up to our right, in the direction the Monster harem had fled. Fuck! Highly unfair. One of them, likely their boss lady, could drive.
“You looozzzzzz,” the Chimera said. It turned aside, sprayed the ground with one of the foulest stinks I had ever come near, and sprinted away until he vanished, concealed by the trees.
“Track him. Run him down,” Keaton said. Yes, she was disgusted at me because I still couldn’t burn juice. She would take out her frustrations on me later.
We ran, running and jogging as the miles piled up beneath our feet. Five miles later the Chimera’s scent trail crossed a road and stopped. The truck. I guessed long-bed pickup, and it had picked up Mr. Lizard.
“Shit fuck pissass motherfucking dammit!” Keaton said as we stood looking stupidly at the damned road, as upset as I had ever seen. I nodded. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, not at all. I doubted this would qualify as a success and I mentally kissed my gift Transform goodbye.
The damned Chimera had sucked down six Monster-stopper rounds and hadn’t slowed. Its battle plan worked: it had saved its harem and gotten away. Our plan had failed. “Next time, knives,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Either that or howitzers,” Keaton groused. “Did you catch the fact the Chimera had the same scent as one of the two we picked up near Monster Arms?”
I hadn’t. “Oh, crap,” I said. “If he’s here, then his pal is likely around here, too.”
“Or was,” Keaton said. “They may have us on size, but we clearly have them on the aggression. If they’re at all smart they won’t stop running until they hit Mississippi. Just in case, though, we’re going to keep hunting for them for at least three more days.”
I worried my lip. If they were at all smart, then why were they here?
Gilgamesh: July 29, 1967
Gilgamesh obeyed Sinclair’s frantic signaled summons to the Skinner’s warehouse, as did Wire and Tolstoy. The area around the Skinner’s warehouse was quiet tonight, with Tiamat and the Skinner out of Philadelphia the past few days. The two crazy Arms had patched up their relationship after the torture session the usual way, with Tiamat groveling to the Skinner. Tiamat’s return to Philadelphia was the most insane piece of Arm behavior he had seen yet.
He would have fled the country.
“What’s up, Sinclair?” Wire asked as they gathered beside a quiet warehouse on Holstein, two blocks from the Arms. A misty rain dripped on them from an overcast sky, which they ignored.
“Trouble. An hour ago, I metasensed an unknown Transform at the edge of my range. The unknown had dross and Monster juice, as well as normal juice in Arm quantities,” Sinclair said.
“A Beast Man,” Gilgamesh said.
“I was afraid of that.” Sinclair shifted his weight from side to side in unease. “It walked like a man, though.”
“The Beast could be Enkidu or Hoskins,” Gilgamesh said, remembering his last conversation with Midgard. “Enkidu, the Beast Man I, um, encountered, has two ‘R’ bands in his juice structure. He’s easy to spot.”
“There weren’t any ‘R’ bands in this one,” Sinclair said. “He had quite a few crossed ‘W’ bands, though.”
“You picked up ‘W’ bands at full range?” Wire said. The withdrawal bands were difficult to metasense, even up close. “That’s new and puzzling. These Beasts aren’t Occum’s. He’s much more careful with his Beasts.”
Sinclair nodded. “So, what are we going to do? The Beast Man might be hunting us, you know, hoping to catch a Crow off guard and kill us for our juice.”
“Unlikely. Beast Men usually avoid big cities,” Wire said. “Especially big cities with Crows in residence. How did this one act?”
“He came into range several times, like a Crow scouting an area with his metasense, and backed off when he picked me up,” Sinclair said, wringing his hands.
“Bad,” Wire said. “Too intelligent for my taste. Something strange is going on here.”
“Should we leave?” Tolstoy asked, looking around at the quiet warehouses as if Beast Men would suddenly spring forth from the doors. “I would hate to abandon our Arms.”
“Why do Beast Men avoid cities with Crows?” Gilgamesh asked. He couldn’t imagine leaving Philadelphia. Or Tiamat.
“No one knows,” Wire said. He kicked at a discarded newspaper. “Likely instincts. Senior Crows can tangle with Beast Men and scare them off. Another few months and I’ll be able to do so myself. It’s part of the Guru training. I might be able to scare off a low end Beast already.”
“Well, if we’re not going to leave, then I think the rest of you need to break down and get telephones,” Sinclair said. He already had one. “That way we can stay in contact with each other.”
Tolstoy snorted. “No way can I get the phone company to put a phone where I live, but there’s a phone booth close to me. I’ll get the phone number for the rest of you.”
“Phones won’t be enough,” Wire said. “I think we’re going to have to keep watch. None of us needs to sleep much.” They worked out a watch schedule, and Gilgamesh ended up with the one to seven afternoon shift. The watch schedule itself proved to be enough to calm them all and quiet their instinctive urges to flee.
Gilgamesh screwed up his courage. “One other thing,” he said. “I think it’s time to tell you my Beast Man story.”
Gilgamesh’s Story (2): December 5, 1966 – December 12, 1966
Gilgamesh wandered north from the rail yard, taking in the changes to Chicago since his last visit. North of downtown, Gilgamesh picked up a Crow-in-residence. The Crow was low on juice, if Gilgamesh hadn’t been fooled by the metasense interference caused by downtown Chicago. The other Crow didn’t notice Gilgamesh until Gilgamesh approached to within three miles of him. Then he ran. Gilgamesh even backed off, but that didn’t stop the other Crow from running.
Gilgamesh wandered north, wondering if something north of the Loop had panicked the Crow. It couldn’t have been just his appearance. However, Gilgamesh found his way blocked by several hundred protesters shouting “Monsters Die.” He listened to a street corner speaker long enough to learn the reason for the protest: a male Transform had gone psycho in an office building. He sympathized, barely, unable to ignore the Monsters Die movement’s penchant for treating all Transforms as Monsters.
He turned east, searching for small bits of dross and other anomalies. He found one two hours later, an anomaly strange enough to make Gilgamesh wonder how he missed it on the way into Chicago: some guy, down in the projects, filled with churning and roiling juice, as if someone mixed it with a stick. At first, Gilgamesh wondered if the person was the psycho killer Transform, but after a proper metasense study, he realized the man held an immense amount of juice inside. He was a Major Transform and he was out cold.
“He must be a Crow in the middle of his transformation,” Gilgamesh
said, taking off at a dead run, glad to have some purpose in life again. “I’ve got to help him.”
Gilgamesh curled in the corner of the abandoned tenement apartment and watched his patient with worry. His John Doe appeared to be about thirty, with brown hair and the beginnings of a scruffy beard. He tossed fitfully on the old mattress that had already been here when Gilgamesh found the place.
John Doe was still stuck in his never-ending transformation, running a fever and shivering. Gilgamesh tucked the thin blanket back around the now naked man. The man’s original clothes were long gone, too encrusted with body wastes to be useful. Gilgamesh did his best to keep the man clean, a never-ending task. Soon, even Gilgamesh’s loaned blanket would be too soiled to clean and salvage, and would end up in the same trash as Gilgamesh’s spare clothes, days ago soiled.
Gilgamesh didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He worried about liquids, the temperature of the unheated apartment, even whether he should have left the man in his original clothes or not. Gilgamesh didn’t know anything at all about sick people.
The abandoned apartment building was a cold, cruel example of life in Chicago: condemned in ’64, inhabited by squatters, and nearly falling apart. A couple of drunks lived downstairs. A trio of footloose teenagers, who got drunk and stoned every night, lived two stories up. A whole parade of street people appeared every night to sleep on the ground floor. Gilgamesh expected the cops to show up at any time to clear everyone out. The place smelled like a cesspool and John Doe didn’t help the situation one bit.
Only sheer willpower kept him from getting angry with John Doe. Gilgamesh hadn’t counted on six days of this when he rushed in to help. The abandoned apartment building was too damned crowded, a dump, a mess, and not safe.
He took a breath and made himself calm down. He had enough juice now, courtesy of the rancid dross generated by Focus Wilhelmina Minton and the household who enslaved her. The fact he did John Doe a good deed overcame his guilt over taking dross from a Focus in so much agony. It didn’t stop him from wondering if he had become too calloused.
John Doe lay still for a long time. Upstairs, Gilgamesh heard the kids playing some awful modern music on a battery-powered radio. Some singer went on and on about ‘satisfaction’, and how he couldn’t get any. Gilgamesh grimaced at the throbbing beat and looked back automatically from the filthy window, to check on John Doe. This had to be over soon. If not, Gilgamesh would abandon the man and go. Of course, he had vowed to leave the day before, and the day before that…
John Doe looked back at him with wide brown eyes. His juice still roiled, unsettled, but he was awake. Gilgamesh’s heart leapt into his throat and he tensed. His own juice churned, threatening to come up.
“Where am I?” John asked, his voice hoarse. He didn’t move from where he lay under the tattered blue blanket. He appeared forlorn lying on the bare mattress, gaunt from his sickness. Gilgamesh waited for him to show the terrible panic, but it didn’t come.
“You’re in hiding,” Gilgamesh told him, gently, careful not to startle the man. “You have the Shakes.” The man didn’t panic. Gilgamesh wished he remembered his own transformation, remembered when the panic started. John’s transformation wasn’t through with him, though. Perhaps this was a part of the transformation Gilgamesh no longer remembered.
The man tried to sit up in bed and failed. He fell back with a moan, rolled over on his stomach and dry heaved over the edge of the mattress. The blanket fell away and exposed a long narrow back, shivering with the man’s retching.
Bah. So much for airing out the place.
“Damn. I hurt like hell and my head feels like someone ran a buzz saw through it,” the man said, still face down over the edge of the mattress. He rested for a couple minutes before turning back to Gilgamesh, spots of saliva still caught in John’s scruffy brown beard. Gilgamesh huddled in the corner, motionless since the man awoke.
“Who are you?” the man asked. “What is this place? This isn’t a hospital.”
Gilgamesh waited a moment, until he was sure the man had finished talking. This man made him nervous. “You can call me Gilgamesh.”
“Gilgamesh, huh? Like in that old story? My name’s…”
Gilgamesh cut him off, shocked that some random Transform knew the reference. “Don’t tell me your name.”
“What?”
“Pick a new name for yourself. Don’t tell anyone your old name. Names tell them too much about you.”
The man glared at Gilgamesh in disbelief. His face paled behind the scruffy brown of a week’s worth of beard. “What’s going on here?” the man asked.
“Do you have an extra sense, John Doe? Can you close your eyes and sense me? Can you sense the Focus to the northeast? Can you sense the little collections of juice and fog all around you?”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” the man mumbled. Still, he closed his eyes and concentrated.
A moment later, he opened his eyes with a start. “What the hell am I sensing? There’s stuff all around! I can see it! Only I don’t see it. It’s like I know it in my head, but it’s not going through my eyes.” This time the man tried to sit up in bed and succeeded.
Gilgamesh nodded. “You have Transform Sickness and you’re a Major Transform. Your new sense is called…”
The man interrupted him. “Only women get the metacampus and the metasense. Are you trying to say I’m a Focus?”
Gilgamesh waited a moment before answering. He wasn’t sure what was more annoying, the fact John knew the ‘metasense’ term or John’s pushiness. “If you’ll listen for a moment, I’ll tell you.”
The man had the grace to be embarrassed. He leaned back against the wall, pulled the thin blanket around him, and did the zipper-mouth pantomime.
Gilgamesh relaxed, sat down near the door, and gave him the full story.
The man listened quietly, shivering in his blanket. “I’m hungry,” he said, when Gilgamesh finished, and so Gilgamesh fed him the remains of his last stale loaf of bread. The man ate it and glanced around for more, still hungry.
“What about my former life? My family, friends and colleagues?” John Doe said. When the new Transform paid attention, he talked like an educated man, which he likely had been.
“You’ve been transformed and reborn,” Gilgamesh said. “It’s going to hurt, hurt a lot, but you can’t go back and contact them. Doing so would endanger them and endanger you. Your old life is over.”
His John Doe wiped moldy breadcrumbs from his hands and shredded the bread bag as he frowned. “This craving. Ah. The dross stuff. Can I get some?” The man studied the pieces of shredded plastic in his hands. “It’s like I’ve got this hunger inside of me. I’m hungry for food. But I’ve got this other hunger for this stuff I’m, uh, metasensing.”
Gilgamesh nodded, sadly. “The craving. We’ll go out this evening.”
John Doe could barely move, making the early part of their evening trip out an ordeal. He whimpered at the pain of his steps, but once he realized what he was doing he stopped, his face lined by deep creases. John Doe wrapped the blanket around him, trying to keep warm. They walked north and a little west, to avoid downtown Chicago.
At the far edge of his range, Gilgamesh metasensed the other Crow pacing them, ducking closer before skittering away. Ignoring the other Crow, Gilgamesh took John to the Chicago Transform Clinic, fifteen blocks west of the Loop. Nominally, the Clinic was located in the other Crow’s territory, but he hadn’t taken the dross. John shuffled along, slowly, and he startled with every nearby noise or car brake. He wasn’t good with the panic either: Gilgamesh swore John Doe’s first instinct was to flee toward the noise. The trip took far longer than Gilgamesh expected, but he finally led John to a spot in an alley on the other side of the street from the Clinic, behind The Sportsmen’s Park Race Track. Brick walls lined the wide alley, the monotony broken by two doors and no windows. Dodging potholes and garbage cans, Gilgamesh wondered if the Sportsman’s Park raced horses or dogs
. Not cars, not with the overwhelming animal stench of the place.
“Take the dross,” he said, nodding toward the Transform Clinic. At a hundred yards, Gilgamesh would only waste about half of the dross when he drew.
John frowned in incomprehension as he shivered in his blanket. After a moment of thought, he reached out and drew in the dross.
Or tried. John pulled, but he only got small sips and the rest slipped out of his grasp, like water dripping through his fingers. So much mess for so little reward. He continued, flailing away, the craving eating at him, but he got almost nothing.
“Stop,” Gilgamesh told him, his childlike clumsiness too painful for Gilgamesh to watch. “Your metacampus isn’t fully developed yet. This will get easier later.”
“I need this stuff now, damn it!” He slammed his fist against the brick behind them. John’s face twisted with frustration and he slammed his fist against the brick wall again. This time his hand started to bleed. He grabbed one of the garbage cans, threw the can against the wall and kicked the garbage can again when it came bouncing back. He kicked the garbage can again, after it stopped, and started swearing. Rocks and cobbles went flying next.
A minute or two into John’s rage, a security guard showed up. Gilgamesh faded around the corner, out of the security guard’s sight, and watched from a safe distance. He metasensed the other Crow, fearful, at the edge of his range. Gilgamesh wished he could join the other Crow.
“What’s going on here?” the guard said, all professional competence.
John Doe turned to the guard, the dented garbage can in both of his hands. Of all things, he charged right at that guard, yelling at the top of his lungs and waving the trashcan around like a weapon.
The guard ran and Gilgamesh moved farther back, ready to run. For all he knew, John would come after him next. This wasn’t normal Crow behavior, no, not at all.
Now We Are Monsters (The Commander) Page 24
