Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (19 page)

“What do you think of her, Hank?” Larry asked.  “Beyond her stubborn preconceived notions.”

Dr. Zielinski took a deep breath and decided to take a calculated risk, portraying Hancock’s weakness as a positive.  Tonya had ordered him to work on Larry’s ‘lack of interest’ problem.  “Actually, she’s much worse than your experience training with her might suggest.  She’s a social circuit butterfly.  I’m not sure she even went through a tomboy phase when she was a kid.  She doesn’t garden, didn’t do any outdoor activities at all.  The least pain and she’s practically weeping on the floor.”  He paused and examined his companion’s reaction.  Blank, utterly blank.  Damn.  “Each of your peers is different, and our new charge continues the pattern.  The biggest difference is her, um, post event lusts, um, which are far beyond what my experiences, and…”

“All your experiences?”

Larry’s question referred to an incident when Dr. Zielinski had seen too much.  Experienced too much.  The events of that day still bothered him.  He had stared death in the eyes and gotten death to blink first.  Someday, he feared, he would lose one of those gambles.  The incident was one of the reasons why he had grown careful in his dealings with all Transforms, and…

“Skag,” Larry said, cutting through
Dr. Zielinski’s thoughts.  At his frown, Larry smiled a nasty smile.  “Was.  Mine. 
Worse
?” The tone of that quiet demand emptied the two tables next to theirs.  One of the men, in an oil-stained red-plaid shirt, turned toward Larry with the itch to fight in his eyes.  Larry flickered a quick look at him.  He backed away and fled at a controlled walk. 

Damn.  He
had gotten distracted.  Again.  “Yes,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “Hancock’s is the worst.”  So much for avoiding anything ‘beyond normal’.

“Hmmm.  Anything else?” Larry asked, calmer now and shoveling in the fries.

“You’ve seen her temper and her muscle development,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “Both are outside of the range of my experience.”

“About fifteen times faster than what I’ve seen,” Larry said, referring to the muscle development. 
Dr. Zielinski took mental notes, especially concerning this quite informative tidbit.  “Any idea why?”

“My best guess is compensation, because she didn’t have much in the way of muscles to start with, but I’m not sure the explanation is sufficient.  We’re giving her a standard diet, nothing out of the ordinary.  Normal bowel movements, water consumption, hemoglobin levels, and juice levels.  She even grouses to me about the mild physical training you’re putting her through.”

Larry shook his head.  “What’s your opinion about her sanity?”

“Aside from her reluctance to turn away from religious explanations, her sanity is quite good.  Only Desmond was better at this stage of her development.”

“You think so, eh?  Perhaps I
will
make your new charge an offer.  You also need to give her more help.  Show some commitment,” Larry said.  “Stop being an information hog and tell her about the Transform community.  Give her some proper incentive to get off her ass and exercise.  She needs to know about the pitfalls involved.”

“No problem.”

“She also needs a weapon to defend herself.  I think a weapon will calm her.  You should get her one.”

“Me?”
Dr. Zielinski asked.  Calm her?  Larry’s strange statement was again quite informative.  “Getting her one sounds like your specialty, not mine.  Why don’t you do it?”

“Look, cocksucker, I’m assigning the risk to you.  Here, give her this,” Larry said.  He reached down and came up with a knife in an ankle sheath. 

That was quick, Dr. Zielinski thought.

Larry dropped the knife in
Dr. Zielinski’s lap and paused, as if he was sensing something nearby. 

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Larry said. 
Dr. Zielinski blinked and Larry was gone.  Dr. Zielinski tapped his fingers on the knife and wondered how he was supposed to deliver it.

The waitress came by and gave him the bill. 
Dr. Zielinski glanced at the tab and grimaced.  That had been Larry’s second meal!

Not only had Larry ordered for
Dr. Zielinski, the putative exercise instructor had stiffed him with the check.

Bob Scalini: October 5, 1966 – October 9, 1966

Bob hid himself in the alley behind Bellmore’s Steak House, a couple of miles south of downtown St. Louis.  The Steak House closed at eleven on Wednesday night, and the staff started cleaning.  At about midnight the kitchen garbage usually came out.  That’s what Bob wanted.

The regular garbage came out all evening, the usual selection of half eaten steaks, ground into skins of baked potatoes, shreds of salad, cigarette butts and hunks of bread, all glued together with butter, cheese, grease and various kinds of salad dressing.  Bob would eat the regular garbage if he got desperate.

The kitchen garbage was a different thing entirely, food that had been left uneaten in the kitchen at the end of the evening.  The cook at Bellmore’s prided himself on his fresh ingredients.  He didn’t keep anything that might not be perfect the next day: whole heads of lettuce, fresh bread, baked potatoes, even salads.

Best of all was the prime rib.  Every Wednesday evening was prime rib night at the Bellmore, and every Wednesday evening they went through racks of prime rib.  Each rack had two ends, rich and dark and juicy.  They didn’t serve the ends to the customers.  They accumulated them to the side.  Every Wednesday night at about midnight they threw them out.

The thought of prime rib made Bob’s mouth water.  He waited among the garbage cans across the alley, next to the back door of the Handy Dry Cleaner.  It was an overcast October night with a cold north wind, the best time to scavenge.  It was too dark to be seen and cold enough to drive most people indoors. 

Not Bob.  He wore a heavy flannel shirt, warm enough for a Crow in this weather.  A dim light, by the back door of the restaurant, illuminated the path to the garbage cans.  The other side of the alley, where Bob hid, was almost black. 

Although Bob focused his sight and hearing on the Bellmore and its staff, he focused his metasense elsewhere.  Tiamat’s ‘older sister’ Zaltu had wandered around nearby St. Louis last evening, which had unnerved him.  Not hunting him, though.  Shopping and bar-hopping.  He no longer froze in terror when he metasensed her, but he always moved with more care, always worried, when she appeared.

The more he studied Tiamat and Zaltu, the less human they seemed.  They dispensed life and death as passionate goddesses, primordial, demanding and accepting sacrifices.  Bob stopped himself when he began recognizing those kinds of thoughts in his head.  Goddesses?  Tiamat and Zaltu were only normal humans with Transform Sickness, human and dangerous.  He couldn’t afford to think otherwise.

Every week or so Tiamat’s captors brought her another male Transform nearing withdrawal.  He understood.  Tiamat’s captors kept her alive on purpose, a lioness in their zoo, fed raw meat to sustain her.

Bob couldn’t decide if they were crazy or evil.  Tiamat could be the predator he feared.  On the other hand, Tiamat might
hunt
the predators that threatened
him
.  Still, her captors’ actions were perverse; keeping her a prisoner and still feeding her Transforms.

While he pondered Tiamat’s fate, cans rattled at the entrance to the alley.  Bob’s heart leapt into his throat as he pulled his attention back to the here and now.  Human beings, not twenty feet from him.  He smelled them and recognized the acrid stench of filth and alcohol.  He remembered the scents – two bad apples, bullies who preyed upon the other street people.  How did he let them get so close? 

Bob froze into rigid immobility, heart pounding, sweat pooling in his armpits.  He rode his fear, wondering whether it was safer to flee or continue hiding.  The taller one, unwashed, grizzled and missing most of his teeth, led the way down the alley.  The shorter one, broader, with a mashed nose and one torn ear showing under the flap of his hat, followed. 

Nowhere to run!  Lightheaded, Bob attempted to quiet his growing panic.  He failed.

“Yeah, Jimmy.  ‘s a good idea.  Be a lot a food.  I’d like a taste a good meat, all hot ‘n drippin’.  It’d be a good…”

“Shut yer face,” the first one said, not two feet from where Bob crouched, frozen, not breathing.  Bob wished he believed in God, because he damned well wanted to pray.

The first one looked away from his flat-nosed companion, dismissing him with contempt.  He turned and his gaze chanced to land where Bob crouched.

“Hey, whadda we got here?” the man asked.  His hand came out toward Bob and his expression got mean.  Flat Nose turned to look.  Bob stood up, back against the wall behind him.  “I think we got somebody what gets to do some sharing.  You gonna share with us nice-like, right?”

Bob stopped breathing.  The man had a broken piece of glass in his hand, razor sharp and wrapped at the bottom with duct tape.  He poked his weapon toward Bob like lightning.  So fast.  Homeless street bums, and they were going to kill him for his worthless possessions.  All the stark terror came out of him, his uncertain fear of Tiamat and Zaltu as well as the consuming panic at the surprise appearance of these two men.  The juice within him roiled and spewed out of him as a violent vomiting of half-digested dross.  His dross vomit spread out over most of the length of the alleyway.

Bob sprinted to the other end of the alley, and out.  Behind him, the two bums shrieked.  He didn’t know what all that half-digested dross had done to them, but he sensed them now with his extra sense.  The dross clung to them, dim outlined silhouettes rolling on the ground.  They writhed and clawed at themselves.

Bob ran two hundred yards through the quiet darkness before he convinced himself they would not follow.  He stopped in front of the dark windows of the Bookworm Book Store four blocks away.  His attackers no longer moved.

‘Skunk,’ Sinclair had said.  Bob had sicked-up dross like a skunk lifting his tail and spraying.  He wasn’t defenseless!  Although he still shook in fear, he wanted to laugh giddily.  Worried and exposed, he ducked into the nearest alley to hide again.  Blocks away, his attackers still writhed on the ground.  The sicked-up dross spread out away from them and began to seep through the walls of the buildings.

The sick-up didn’t metasense like normal dross.  He had done something to the sick-up while he had it within him.  Dross was everywhere and people didn’t react to it this way.  Hell!  Crows were goddamned two legged chemical factories.

Bob slunk back to where his two attackers had fallen.  The sick-up seeping toward the Bellmore was enough to poison the place.  He couldn’t allow that…he
would lose his free meals.  Besides, the restaurant staff didn’t deserve to be poisoned.  Hidden in the shadows by the entrance to the alley, he gathered the dross back in, as much as possible.  He didn’t touch the two men.

He should, he thought.  Rationally, he doubted now they would have killed him.  Roughed him up, yes, but not killed him.  Probably.

Maybe. 

The dross hurt them, poisoned them.  He wondered if he should draw it off them.  He decided not to.  Yes, theoretically, they deserved a trial, but he was a street bum, like all their victims.  Who cared what happened to street bums?  Or Crows?  His jaw clenched as his two attackers writhed helplessly on the ground, a vicious anger twisting inside of him. 

A door slammed open, and people called out.  The Bellmore kitchen staff must have finally come out with their garbage.  They would probably call an ambulance.  Bob eased farther away. 

No prime rib tonight.

His stomach rumbled as he slunk his way through the network of alleys and small streets.  He didn’t look forward to a dinner of stale bread.

Then, to cap his day off, far to the north, at the edge of his range, he sensed a flicker.

The dim but powerful sign of a Crow.

Bob laughed.  He couldn’t help himself.  The only other thing he could have done was cry.

What a day.  Bums had attacked him.  He had discovered a way to defend himself with his sick-up.  Hell, he had overcome his frozen terror of the Zaltu predator not so many days ago. 

Now another Crow had arrived.  This he didn’t need.

He slid his back down the alley wall until he sat on the ground and shivered.

---

Bob stood by the drinking fountain in Willmore Park, where he came every night to fill his jugs with water.  The jungle gym and swing sets loomed like giants in the shadowed darkness.  The slide, merry-go-round and the little horses on springs hid farther back.  There were benches around him, but his nerves wouldn’t let him sit.  The sun wouldn’t rise for several more hours.

A half-mile north of him, the other Crow still approached. 

He had approached steadily since Bob first metasensed him.  This wasn’t one of the shy ones, terrified to come near.  Bob felt an urge to run himself in the face of that confidence.  Still, the only Crow he had ever talked to had been Sinclair.  That had been a long time ago.  Bob was lonely and curious. 

He missed the human contact.  He missed Gina, his wife. 

He talked to normals these days, but he couldn’t reveal himself to them as a Crow.  Not too long ago, he couldn’t even talk to normals.  He even had manly urges again, but not toward normal women.  Instead, against his will, he found himself attracted to Tiamat.  The very thought made him want to retch.  Although he missed Gina, her wavy brown hair and little upturned nose, Bob suspected he would no longer find her attractive.