Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (21 page)

Dr.
Zielinski’s face went white.  He had the deep breathing and artificial stillness of someone in real danger.  He slowly pushed his chair back from his desk to leave his legs clear.  Why?  Why did he move his right hand inside his suit jacket, near his left shoulder?  A gun?  Did he think I would pull out that knife of his and stab him?

I took a deep breath of my own and tried to bring myself under control.  I breathed again and counted to ten.  Across from me,
Dr. Zielinski didn’t move.  I counted to ten again, then backwards from fifty.

“I hurt,” I said, my voice tight with barely controlled anger.  “This is
not
some minor ‘ache’.  The pain in my muscles is intense, getting worse every day.  The ache today is a lot worse because of the time I spent in solitary.  I can’t hold still anymore.  You’re a
doctor
.  Do something about this.”

As I spoke
Dr. Zielinski relaxed, just a bit.  He nodded when I finished speaking.

“If a single day without exercise can cause such discomfort, you’re right and we have a problem.  If you’re up to it, we can start some tests right now to ascertain how bad your problems have gotten.”

I nodded.  This was what I wanted, that he take my complaints seriously.  The anger still smoldered under the surface, though, barely banked, ready to come out and blaze again at my next loss of control.

Dr.
Zielinski ordered a full set of X-rays.  They covered my entire body and it took hours to take them all.  Afterwards, he consulted with the center’s other doctors and placed several phone calls.  Dr. Zielinski didn’t identify the problem, but I didn’t like the frown on his face.  He even called in Larry Borton to consult with him about what he saw on the X-Rays. 

It was only after he finished the diagnostic work that he called me into Lab One and told me what changes were in store for me. 

“God
dammit
.  Isn’t there anything real you can do?  What kind of quack are you?” I said to Zielinski, after he increased the amount of time I spent with Larry each day up to three two hour sessions and cut my calorie intake to five thousand calories a day.  “Where’s the pills?  Where’s the surgery?  What’s with you about all this diet and exercise crap, anyway?” My voice had lowered into a throaty growl, though I didn’t feel half as menacing as earlier.

Borton grinned at
Dr. Zielinski, one of those ‘I told you so’ grins, I decided.  Dr. Zielinski sighed, exasperated with me.  Well, I was exasperated with him, too.

He tapped my aching shoulder with a pencil.  “I suppose I could operate and physically remove some of your extra muscles,” he said.  I nodded.  This sounded at least a little promising.  “But you’d have to sign a waiver, Carol.”

“A waiver?”

“Because of what’s happened with the other Arms, and because no one’s ever done any sort of procedure like this to any Arms or Focuses, there’s no telling whether the procedure would work.  Or if you’d even live through it,”
Dr. Zielinski said, a caricature of a mad scientist.  “Or whether you’d come out crippled.  Or if the removal of these muscles would trigger an even worse muscle growth cycle.  Of course, the most likely outcome is that something totally unexpected would happen, such as what happened to the CDC’s Dr. Wilson when he tried to fix a broken leg on a captive Monster he had somehow acquired.”

“What happened, Hank?” Larry Borton said.  He
had been standing in the doorway the entire time, laughter in his cold eyes at my discomfort.  “You haven’t told me this one.”

Dr.
Zielinski raised a single eyebrow and gave my face a sidelong glance.  “The Monster went into some previously unimagined type of juice shock.  While Dr. Wilson worked on its broken left leg, the Monster’s limbs broke off from its body at the joints and each of the Monster’s internal organs slithered away on its own,” Dr. Zielinski said, still tapping on my shoulder.

On my shoulder
joint
.

“Which is why I need you to sign a waiver,”
Dr. Zielinski said to me.

At which point I turned, wobbling unsteadily, my anger now abject horror.  No experimenting on me, thank you very much!  Borton at least covered his face when he laughed, the bastard.

“Since you now understand why I’m prescribing changes to your diet and exercise schedule, I expect you to start your expanded exercise work immediately, Carol,” Dr. Zielinski said.

Chapter 4

“All victims of the chronic phase of Transform Sickness (‘Transforms’) produce a new chemical in their bodies called para-procorticotrophin.  This chemical is commonly referred to as ‘juice’.  Unfortunately, male Transforms produce too little of it and women Transforms produce too much of it.  Luckily, a special type of Transform has been discovered, the Major Transform, who is able to move juice from women Transforms to male Transforms.  Without the Major Transform, commonly referred to as a ‘Focus’, male Transforms quickly run out of juice and go into withdrawal and women Transforms quickly accumulate too much juice and become overdosed.  Withdrawal is fatal; overdosing
transforms
a woman into a literal monster.  It is the fate of the woman Transform that is the source of the name of the disease.  It takes two women Transforms to support one male Transform.” [CDC pamphlet, 1957]

Rover (Interlude)

Rover remembered his mistake.  That’s why these creatures hunted him, he was certain of it.

He shouldn’t have made the mistake, but he needed the good loving.  He had gone so long without the good loving he had gotten stupid, careless, and heedless of danger.

In the same way he sensed Monsters, he sensed the ones who hunted him from a long way off.  Save for one, the ones who hunted him had so little of the good loving in them.  The one?  The one scared him, a
something
far more dangerous than a Monster.  The
something
held almost as much of the good loving as a Monster, but if the
something
wanted to kill him, it would, he knew.  He also knew the
something
was a woman.

Why did he make his first mistake?

He had been stupid from lack of good loving, that’s why.  The Monster hadn’t acted like a normal Monster.  It hid among a herd of sheep, for one thing.  It appeared different from the
newspaper
pictures of Monsters he remembered – not a snake, a dragon, a wolf or a tiger.  A sheep.  A sheep with ripping, tearing teeth like his. 

He had held back and watched the sheep Monster for days.  He had been stupid and he even told himself so at the time.  The sheep Monster hid in the herd of sheep, protected by a man, a teenage boy and three dogs.  The man and the boy had
guns
.  Rover remembered
guns
. 
Guns
were dangerous.  They could hurt him from far away.

The sheep Monster didn’t eat anywhere near as much food as Rover did.  When the man and the kid worked elsewhere, or especially at night when they slept, the sheep Monster hunted rabbits, squirrels, mice, snakes, frogs, anything small and edible.  At first, Rover wondered how the sheep Monster had fooled the man and the kid, but then he figured it out.  The sheep Monster had eaten one of the sheep and taken its place.  The Monster even fooled the sheep dogs. 

Rover figured the men who made
newspapers
didn’t know about such things as the sheep Monster.  If they did, it would have made a
good story
.

He should have run when he figured out the mystery.  Heedless of danger, Rover instead plotted the sheep Monster’s demise.  He gave in to temptation, attacked at night, but the sheep Monster fought back.  The other Monsters he
had loved tried to fight back, but this one succeeded.  The sheep Monster hurt him.  He hurt it back.  They made enough noise to attract the man, the kid and the rest of the family.  Out came the guns.

That’s where his memory failed him.  The next thing he remembered, he was eating.  Famished and eating.  He
had been eating the family.  The people.  His second mistake.

He still hadn’t gotten over the horror of that discovery.

Now these creatures hunted him, these Monster-like non-Monsters.  He knew they weren’t Monsters, because he sensed their shapes, their human shapes, with his extra sense.

They tracked him.  He tried all sorts of tricks to lose them.  He walked on paved roads through the piney mountains.  He doubled back on his trail.  He kept to the rocks.  He walked in streams. 

Still they followed. 

He had to leave the area.  Leave the big water behind.

That night, he got himself on one of the paved roads and ran.  He hid from cars and trucks, instead of chasing them.  Eventually, when morning came, Rover found himself far far away from his old territory.  He went up into the hills and low mountains in his new territory and cowered.  Waited.

He no longer sensed the ones who tracked him.

Now he had to avoid any more mistakes.

Dr.
Henry Zielinski: October 7, 1966

Dr.
Zielinski stopped in his tracks when he found Tommy Bates huddled up in a corner of the Detention Center’s impromptu gym, by the dumbbell rack, deep in conversation with Larry Borton.  He assessed the situation carefully.  Tommy’s hand wasn’t on either of the two sidearms he normally carried.  Larry’s weapons remained hidden as well.  Dr. Zielinski decided it was safe to join them.

The two of them glanced at him quickly as he walked over. 
Dr. Zielinski noticed a large red mark on Tommy’s pale cheek.  Tommy seemed more nervous than normal.

Dr.
Zielinski licked his lips.  “Do we have a problem?” he asked.

Larry shook his head, but Tommy nodded.  “The damn bitch Hancock slapped me,” Tommy said.  “For no good reason.  Our friend Larry here seems to think this is a positive sign.”

He promised himself to tell Tonya about this one.  She would appreciate the story.  He hadn’t realized Tommy was in on their little secret.  “Hancock is progressing much faster into the second stage of Arm post-transformation adjustment than my only,” clear throat, glare at Larry Borton, “Arm charge who survived to this point.”

“You need to get her out of the Detention Center more often,” Larry said.  “The one obstacle course test wasn’t enough.  She needs to burn off those bad chemicals her body is producing and she can’t do it penned up in this hellhole.”

“I shot my bolt with the obstacle course idea,” Dr. Zielinski said.  “If everything goes according to plan, we can repeat the test at the end of October, for another set of data on the improvement curve, but I can’t think of anything more along the ‘test the Arm to predict Stacy Keaton’s current capabilities’ line that would get her out of the Detention Center.”

Tommy Bates turned a most amazing shade of green. 

“I don’t think Focus Biggioni would be amused to hear that one from you, Hank,” Larry Borton said.

“I see you two know each other better than I realized,” Tommy said.

“Ditto,” Dr. Zielinski said.  He wished he had his camera with him.  This would make the most delicious photo.

“I’ve got an idea along those lines, but my plan might take me a couple of weeks to set up,” Tommy said.

“I’m all ears,” Larry Borton said.  Dr. Zielinski glared at Borton and Bates, and Tommy shrugged. 

“My plan’s nothing like that.  I think I can get Hancock invited to a Monster hunt.  There’s a huge ruckus going on about some overly talented Monster in the Catskills,” Tommy said.  He relaxed when his comment appeared to reduce the tension.  “I’m not sure how long my plan will take to set up, though.  I need to convince my superiors that Hancock’s not going to escape, and that’s proving to be a big problem.”

“Escape is the last thing you need to worry about,” Borton said.  “You’re supplying her with juice.  If you dropped her in the middle of nowhere, she would come back to you voluntarily.”

“Stacy Keaton escaped, and she was being supplied with juice,” Tommy Bates said.

Borton shook his head.  “You’d have to talk to her about that in private someday, if you want the real story.  Me, personally, I’d rather not be there when you pop that question to her.  She’s psychotic, remember?  On the other hand, I overheard Special Agent Patrick McIntyre say he broke her out of the FBI’s special Arm prison out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Which is why McIntyre hunts Keaton like a man obsessed?” Tommy said.  Borton shrugged.

Dr. Zielinski echoed Borton’s shrug.  He ought to be a nervous wreck from a conversation like this, but, truthfully, he enjoyed it.  He was good at it and he knew it.  “So, Larry, do you know of any additional equipment we can get for Hancock’s gym to help her with her issues?”

“I have a list,” Borton said.  “But it won’t do us any good unless she somehow acquires the motivation to use it.”  Borton walked off, leaving
Dr. Zielinski shaking his head.

Carol Hancock: October 8, 1966 – October 14, 1966

On Saturday, seven days after my last draw, Mom came by to visit after my afternoon exercise session.  She knocked at my door and stuck her head in.

“How are you doing, Carol?”

I shrugged.  Down on juice, I was depressed.  Not as bad as the last time, and I hadn’t been reduced to begging yet.  This time I had escaped into violent fantasies. 

“I have some bad news,” Mom said.  I looked up and paid attention to her.  She had been crying, and she held a manila envelope in her hand.

“What, my euthanization order?” I asked.  “How are they going to do it?  Firing squad or confinement until I go into withdrawal?”

Mom turned white.  “Carol?” She paused.  “If this is a bad time, perhaps…”

“It’s always a bad time, Mom.  What would make you think there’s ever a good time?”

“You’re not making this any easier,” she said.  Sighed.  She pulled over a chair, sat down, and handed me the manila envelope.  I tore it open, sending papers everywhere and dropping a white letter envelope on my bed.  I looked in the envelope and found Bill’s wedding band.

“Give me those,” I said to my mother, as she tried to gather up the spilled papers.  I grabbed them from her and read.  Divorce papers.  I ripped them up and dropped them on the floor.

“Fuck.  The bastard bribed my guards.  I’d wondered how that twit Artusy managed to get into my room.”

“You did what Bill
is accusing you of doing?” Mom asked.  She put her shaking hands in her lap, clenched tight together.

“Hell, yes.  That was the only sex I’ve had since I became an Arm.  The only thing wrong with fucking Artusy was the fact he ran away before I finished.  I’d like to break his neck.”  Bill, that is, but I didn’t bother explaining.

“What is wrong with you, Carol?  You never…”

“Shut up, Mom.  You have no idea what things are like in this place or what I’m going through.”

“Well,” she said.  Sniffed.

I took my engagement ring and wedding band off.  “Here, take the goddamned rings.  Bury them with me when they kill me.  If I kept them here, one of the nurses would steal them.”  I wanted to do more than rip things up.  I wanted people to hurt.  I wanted payback.  I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.  Bill would win if I got angry with him.  I couldn’t let him win.  I took another deep breath.  Better.

I looked Mom over and saw something disturbing.  I wasn’t sure how I knew.  Something in her fidgeting fingers, the slight furrowing of her brow, perhaps.

“Last visit, huh?” I said.  “Is your deceit the price for seeing Billy and Jeffery again?”

“You’re mistaken, Carol.  They…”

I had her.  I knew her secrets.  I couldn’t help but rip them open.  “You were always weak.  You act like you’re strong, put on a good show, but you always do whatever the last man you talked to asks you to do.”  Her face flushed and she backed away from me.  “Dad has you marching around with ‘Death to Monsters’ signs, doesn’t he?  It didn’t take you long to betray me, did it?  I’m surprised you were able to hold out for three weeks.”

“I’m here to comfort you, Carol.  You…”

“I’m supposed to cry?  Perhaps I don’t feel like crying today.  That’s what you trained me to do: cry whenever the going got rough.  Some man will always take care of you if you cry, right?  How can you stand to see yourself in the mirror?”  Mom took the letter envelope with the rings and stood.  Her face flushed, she walked to the door, her step a little unsteady.

“Goodbye, Carol.”

Bitch.  My own mother was just like the others.  I stared at her, imagined slapping her the same way I had slapped Nurse Givens.  Mom turned wide-eyed and pale faced, stumbled back across the hall, and ran.

I laughed.

How could everyone betray me so easily? 

I opened my Bible, took out Bill’s picture, and ripped it into tiny shreds.

A half hour later, I realized what I’d done and broke down in tears.  Only then did I want to apologize.  By then it was much too late.

I never saw my mother again.

Once I composed myself, I walked down to Dr. Zielinski’s office, trailing the usual guard, and stuck my head in to see if he was there.  He sat at his desk, talking on the phone.  I sat.  He wasn’t pleased to see me and put the phone down in its cradle.  I swore Zielinski spent every spare moment talking on the phone.

Dry eyed, I told him what I had done.