Now We Are Monsters (The Commander)

by Farmer, Randall

  Wake up! Gilgamesh willed at the Skinner. They’re going to kill you. Wake up!

  The Skinner remained unmoving on the floor.

  At that moment, Gilgamesh realized there were other things going on. Very strange things.

  Tonya Biggioni: September 6, 1967

  “What we’re going to do is the old Monster hunt routine,” Tonya said. “That is, we’ll be looking for non-human footprints and talking to people to see if they’ve seen anything strange in the past week, including the hearse. I’ll be using my metasense, but don’t count on it. A hundred yards isn’t much if a Monster charges.”

  Tonya’s household effectives spread out, in pairs, to cover both sides of Lindbergh. Everyone out with her was heavily armed, their primary weapons big game rifles. Monster guns, as the Transforms called them. They made one pass on Lindbergh and headed into the industrial district between Lindbergh and Essington road. They found nothing, and headed back to Lindbergh.

  Something was off. Tonya couldn’t tell what.

  She hoped her gut feeling came from the small group of mostly silent Monsters Die protesters who followed her and her household effectives. Over three hundred of them had been marching and shouting outside of her household, but when her people piled into their vehicles they left many of the protesters behind. However, over fifty of them managed to follow in cars, and more dribbled in every minute.

  If the situation deteriorated, things would get messy.

  This was the area. She had always been able to count on her Monster hunting instincts in situations like this. She had never been able to figure out whether she used some unknown juice power, whether she was a natural hunter, or whether this was just dumb luck. In any case, she had her people spread out and talk to the rough South Philly residents. They found enough eyewitnesses to trace the hearse to Lindbergh, but beyond that, nothing else out of the ordinary.

  Any second now.

  Tonya stopped dead when the protesters to the northwest of them started screaming. Tonya and her squad turned to gawk at the Monsters Die protesters scattering from something.

  “Let’s go,” Tonya said, racing toward the protesters. She wanted to get closer, within metasense range.

  A disheveled man shambled through the fleeing protesters, blood slowly running from his mouth and down his neck, his mouth open and half-toothless. The disheveled man walked slowly toward them with a drunken stagger. Cars slammed on their brakes as he ambled out into the street and one truck skidded to a stop just a few feet from the shambling man.

  “Late stage psycho,” Tonya said, stopping before she reached metasense range. Of all the idiotic stupid coincidences! The last thing she expected to find on a hunt like this was a Transform in deep withdrawal. A Transform man in late stage withdrawal might scare the pants off anyone who had never seen one before and who had watched too many zombie movies, but they weren’t dangerous, at least in comparison to Monsters, Arms and Chimeras.

  She blinked, twice, and took a step back in shock. The psycho gained strength as it shuffled toward her group!

  The protester crowd parted further, many running into the middle of Lindbergh. Traffic snarled to a screeching halt, starting up a South Philly horn chorus.

  “What the fuck?” Danny said, at her side. Tonya shook her head and almost repeated Danny’s obscenity. Over a half dozen more late stage psychos shambled into view through the remains of the crowd of protesters.

  Impossible.

  No, Tonya decided, this was an attack!

  “We’re upwind of them,” Tonya said, her body now covered in cold sweat. Psychos could smell juice; if they ate Transform flesh they got a little more juice, prolonging their mindless agony. She could almost hear Lori talking about ‘zombie legends’ in the back of her mind. “They’re going to run at any moment. Take them down as soon as they’re past the last of the civilians. Watch out for crossfire!”

  The front psycho switched from a shuffle to a run and Danny opened fire. The first shot hit the psycho. Like the zombies of legend, the shot didn’t drop him. Late stage psychos were so addled they didn’t feel pain. It made them fight like demons, but not for long. Unlike the zombies of legend, psychos didn’t have much of a fighting stamina burst and tended to fall after a few swings all on their own. If you didn’t make sure they were dead, though, they would rise from their exhaustion in about ten minutes, echoing the legendary…

  Tonya bit her lip. This was no time for Lori’s idiocy to infect her thoughts.

  Danny shot the psycho twice more before he fell down. She would have to get within metasense range to tell if it was dead or…

  “Ma’am, down!” Pete said, and wrenched Tonya to the ground. A half brick struck the pavement in front of him and splashed them with flecks of debris.

  The shouts of the Monsters Die protesters became one: “Murderers! Murderers!” More bricks and bottles followed, one smashing to glassy bits close enough that it cut Tonya’s lower thigh. All the while, the remaining psychos continued their shambling advance, speeding to a run when they got a better whiff of ‘Transform’.

  The closest psycho reached her people, still alive, lips pulled back from teeth and ready to bite. Tonya stayed pinned under Pete Vinote, as rocks, bottles and other trash rained down on them from the protesters.

  Carol Hancock: September 6, 1967

  “Ma’am, could I talk to you for a moment?”

  I had been walking slowly down the street, attempting to make sense out of the Focus and her household’s fight against the male withdrawal victims and toying with the idea of coming to their aid. The idea of helping strongly tempted me. I wanted to be the ‘good guy’, at least from the Focuses’ viewpoint, because I wanted help from their Network. Several things stopped me. First, I worried about my control. I had no idea how I would react at close range to a Focus’s household Transforms. Second, this close to Keaton’s lair my appearance might give away its location. Keaton had made it plain that none of the Focuses knew the location of her lair. Third, the Focus in the fight was Focus Biggioni, Council member and a Focus nasty enough to spook Zielinski. I suspected I might not be ready to deal with her.

  I also worried a bit about the fight itself. I doubted male withdrawal victims came in packs, and thinking about ‘packs’ made me think of the Chimeras. I didn’t believe the encounter was natural and suspected this fracas might be something dangerous to me.

  I turned to the person who had spoken to me and found a Philadelphia police officer. Hell. This I didn’t need. The officer motioned me over to near his police cruiser and I immediately got the itchy twitchies.

  The police cruiser smelled like Monsters. I stopped.

  “Interesting,” he said. He gave me a strange look and continued, his voice more nuanced. “Into the cruiser with you.”

  I obeyed him, much to my surprise. I wanted to run, but I didn’t. I wanted to fight the police officer, but I couldn’t. Instead, I got into the back seat of his police cruiser as if Keaton had me by the short hairs. He started up the vehicle and we left the area.

  This person must be a Major Transform. I focused my metasense on him and got nothing. Not a thing. I found this hard to believe.

  What the hell did I just walk into? Grabbed, not even five minutes free of Keaton? Charmed life, I guess. If this snatch had anything to do with the attack on the Focus, I might be in real danger.

  I focused my attention into my metasense and concentrated. Yes, my captor was indeed a Major Transform. No idea what type. I metasensed several layers of shielding and disguises. I wasn’t seeing the real person, here. Male, female, Focus, Arm, other. Could be anything. This person was good.

  “Stop that!” my captor said. The disguised officer pulled the police car into an alley and brought the car to a halt.

  I stopped my probing for the moment. “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t wish to fight you. I just want to talk to you.”

  I wanted to scream at the officer, curse, rip his or her lungs ou
t, anything. Nothing. The mook forced me to be polite. Humiliating. I bet this Major Transform’s trick wouldn’t work on Keaton. I was vulnerable almost certainly because of my youth as an Arm.

  I ran some ideas through my head, and my most rational guess made him out to be Mr. Scentless Shoeprint.

  I was in deep deep shit.

  “Okay,” I said, and managed predator…barely. Deep deep shit appeared to be my lot in life. “I’m listening.”

  “I… What I…” my captor stammered, affected by my predator effect. After a short pause, he pulled himself together. “Your lack of politeness is astounding, madam Arm. You may call me Officer Canon. I would like to talk to you about an employment offer.”

  Here we go again. Just out from under Keaton’s enslavement and the spooks were already out of the woodwork trolling for me. This time I had attracted some sort of Transform spook. Whom did this person work for? Agent Bates? The CDC? The Network? The Chimeras? The CIA? I studied my captor, closely, searching for clues.

  I doubt there’s such a thing as a perfect disguise. In this case, we weren’t even close, as I was able to read a great deal about my captor. My captor was a little, um, off, in a mental ward sort of fashion. I would need to get her – she was a rather effeminate creature – to fully drop her disguise to figure out what sort of mental aberrations she possessed. She had them, though. She was a killer.

  I also noticed something else familiar, something she likely wouldn’t want me to know. Officer Canon was evil. Like Dr. Manigault’s evil, not like Keaton’s evil. Keaton became evil to survive, not having any other choice. Dr. Manigault chose to be the way he was and had worked at perfecting it. Officer Canon chose evil of her own free will the same way.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I wrenched the police car door open, ready to run.

  “No!” Officer Canon said. Hell! My feet stuck to the ground and I froze. “I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way. Come with me!”

  I meekly obeyed.

  Enkidu: September 6, 1967

  “We do this together,” Enkidu chuffed a whisper after they bashed in the door. Grendel, his blood up, ignored his order and charged. Enkidu followed, slower, cautious because of the strange off-odor of fouled juice, blood and women, and because the situation felt off. Grendel ran through a wooden partition and found the old Arm on the bare concrete floor, entwined with a Transform corpse. She didn’t react when Grendel charged her, grabbed her tight on her upper arm with his teeth, and started to draw élan.

  Fool. The blocky Arm, as ugly as a Monster Gal in decline, only feigned sleep, her right arm guarding her throat.

  One second the older Arm was in Grendel’s grasp, underneath him. The next she was gone, leaving behind bits of torn flesh and clothing in Grendel’s mouth. She moved insanely fast!

  Damn. She had known they were coming, and because of her foreknowledge, this fight would end up being as difficult as he feared. As Grendel looked around for the Arm, Enkidu bounded up to the older Hunter. As the Shade predicted, the Arm escaped up, already at the ceiling in the rope and bar maze section of the older Arm’s practice arena.

  Enkidu turned to the Arm and roared his canine howl that froze normals, Transforms and most Monsters in place. Grendel added his own terror-laden hiss to Enkidu’s howl, but the Arm didn’t freeze. No matter. They would tree the bitch like the housecat she was. She couldn’t hold on forever, not with her right arm in tatters from Grendel’s initial attack.

  The old Arm snarled back. Grendel froze and stayed frozen, but Enkidu shook off the Arm’s snarl in a moment, leapt straight up and began to climb the rope. Master had ordered both Hunters to switch into half-Beast forms for just this reason, because the Arms were monkey beasts.

  Before Enkidu climbed half way to the Arm, she leapt off the rope and grabbed another rope, this one parallel to the floor and about fifteen feet off the ground. She slid down the rope and did a back flip, almost faster than Enkidu’s eyes. She landed beside Grendel, a knife magically appearing in her one functional hand, and cut deep into his side and shoulder. Grendel turned to snap and paw, and clawed her calf as she leapt away again.

  Enkidu leapt toward the ground, swung one handed along the rope the Arm had recently slid down, and pounced at the Arm. A fight, a real fight! This is what he enjoyed most about being a Hunter! By the time he hit ground, the Arm had hop-stepped a half dozen steps back and out of his way. She snarled again, a snarl worthy of a tiger. Grendel froze again, but Enkidu, prepared this time, didn’t.

  “Get back up and fight!” Enkidu said, kicking at Grendel to snap him out of it. Enkidu fought off the urges inside him to fight Grendel and chased after the Arm. This was his fight and Grendel was more hindrance than help.

  Ten seconds into the fight and dust already filled the air from the speed of combat. He remained unwounded, unlike Grendel. The Arm, although heavily built for a human, was a mere morsel from a Hunter’s perspective. Her two wounds caused her proportionally more damage than her single deeper wound did to Grendel…and Enkidu remained untouched.

  They had her. Time to finish her off. Enkidu waved his hand at Grendel to position him and stalked forward to corner the Arm. Grendel obeyed Enkidu’s hand wave – finally! – and moved a little to his right side to prevent the Arm from escaping.

  The Arm leapt, an impossible leap accompanied by a foul juice stench that surprised Enkidu. She landed on Grendel’s back and cut. Enkidu turned and leapt himself, but by the time he reached Grendel, the older Hunter was rolling and clawing at him. Grendel hissed and snapped, again nearly drawing Enkidu into a fight with the older Hunter. The Arm was long gone. She had bounced off the wall – with her feet! – her knife no longer in her hand. Somehow, she had made it vanish again. On the bounce, she scooped up a dumbbell and threw it at the two Hunters, then another and another. Enkidu avoided the dumbbells and charged the Arm. The first dumbbell hit Grendel’s shoulder, the second grazed his back and the third clocked him square in the head because of his dodge of the second. Grendel splayed out flat on the ground, a useless puddle of mush.

  Enkidu’s charge caromed him off the wall, and he turned his carom into a controlled leap. Although his leap was shorter than the Arms’, his longer reach allowed him to gash her side on the way by. Yes! Enkidu rolled, barked out “Your blood is mine!” and readied another charge.

  The tableau in front of him filled him with dismay.

  Grendel had lost it and gone Beast, his feet running underneath him in panic, unable to gain traction. The dumbbell to the head had clearly addled the older Hunter, and he gushed blood from the Arm’s latest slice. Enkidu reached down, grabbed a slowly rolling dumbbell, and charged over to protect Grendel. As Grendel regained traction, Enkidu tossed the dumbbell above Grendel, where the Arm would have to leap in order to finish him.

  The Arm didn’t leap; instead, the Arm threw a knife at Grendel’s head, barely missing because of Grendel’s alligator snapping. She backed away from Enkidu, impossibly quick, blood dripping from her own wounds, continuing to leak stinky juice. Perhaps she would run out of juice and fall at Enkidu’s feet. She looked nearly as beat up as Grendel.

  The Arm didn’t fall at Enkidu’s feet, though, and with yet another impossible burst of speed she turned, ran up a wall and kicked out, over Enkidu and back toward Grendel. Enkidu charged and leapt to protect Grendel, adjusting his leap at the last instant to avoid Grendel’s flailing claws and snapping jaws.

  The Arm landed on Grendel’s back, prone. She held on tight, ready for Grendel to flip over and try to crush her. Enkidu skidded to a stop, now three quarters of the way across the room, and turned to charge back into combat.

  It gave him a ringside seat to Grendel’s end. The fool Hunter gave up, bowing his head in defeat. Idiot! This wasn’t a challenge fight, this was war! The Arm’s knife slashed deep into Grendel’s throat and neck, nearly decapitating him as Enkidu wolf-howled terror and charged.

  Now the fight was up to him.

  To
nya Biggioni: September 6, 1967

  “Stop this now!” Tonya said as she struggled to her feet. She aimed her command at the protesters who continued to throw things. A thrown book fluttered toward her, and she caught it on the fly. A Holy Bible.

  A smile passed quickly over Tonya’s face as she watched the last of the psychos fall after a head shot by Danny. The psycho in question had been about to take a bite out of Tommy Landis’s arm.

  Tonya dodged a bottle. “This is my bible as well!” Tonya shouted to the crowd of protesters. “I regularly go to confession. There’s even a chapel in my household. I say the rosary daily. We are not your enemies!”

  Of the half dozen or so in the front rank of protesters, two heard Tonya’s words and bowed their heads sheepishly. Their comrades and the next rank of protesters pushed forward, unaffected by Tonya or her charisma.

  “The ones we killed were Transform men in withdrawal,” Tonya said, pumping charisma into her words. “We acted in self-defense. There was no way to save them.”

  A bottle flew over her head and smashed to the street. Behind her, an impatient soul blared his horn for five seconds. The unaffected members of the crowd continued forward.

  Tonya’s charisma lacked the strength. Too many protesters, too far away. Her words didn’t have enough of an effect. Logic wouldn’t be enough and Tonya knew full well how artificial and false her spiel sounded, even when backed by her charisma.

  The protesters wouldn’t be out here protesting unless they already believed that all Transforms were Monsters. They refused to believe the late stage withdrawal victims were Transforms. The Holy Bible in her hands was worthless.

  If Tonya didn’t do something fast her guards would have to start shooting. She couldn’t allow that to happen. They carried Monster guns. They couldn’t ‘shoot to wound’; at short range, her guards’ weapons would blow these protesters apart, the same way they blew the psychos apart. Tonya felt queasy just at the thought of firing. The protesters were people, and they didn’t deserve to die just because they were stupid.