Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (28 page)

Midgard said Crows could earn money doing day labor, and although it had taken Gilgamesh several attempts, he
had managed to earn a few dollars pushing brooms and mopping floors.  Now, if he found a way to quell his panic, he would be able to buy himself a Coleman stove.  He could live on garbage, but he
liked
warm food.

He forced his muscles to relax.  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said with a smile, as he barely quelled his panic and backed away.  The woman turned away and dismissed him from her mind.

Gilgamesh caught a flash with his metasense, and he high-tailed it into an alley.  For a moment, he wondered if Zaltu had returned from wherever she had gone.  After a moment, he realized what he sensed was another Crow.  Not like any Crow he had ever metasensed before.  First, he had appeared out of nowhere a mile away from Gilgamesh.  Second, he glowed nearly as brightly as Tiamat did.

Third, he vanished from Gilgamesh’s metasense as quickly as he appeared.  In the instant he had been visible, he had waved and pointed to Gilgamesh with obvious meaning.  ‘Come here’.

There was no mistaking the strange Crow’s location: smack dab in the middle of Forest Park.  Gilgamesh’s first instinct was to run. 

Ph
ooey.  If he ran from everything new, he would never learn anything.  Gilgamesh began the walk to Forest Park.

---

Midgard joined Gilgamesh as he walked.  They walked silently, and Gilgamesh found his thoughts drifting back to Tiamat, as they had ever since that new crew of tormenters had arrived at the Detention Center.  What they were doing to her was little more than torture.  Horrible, horrible things.  He feared for Tiamat’s life.

Gilgames
h and Midgard didn’t arrive in the deserted park until just after dark.  No children claiming a last few minutes on the slide, no strolling lovers enjoying the evening, no exercise enthusiasts running for their health.  It was as if this Crow had driven the normals away.  Gilgamesh hadn’t imagined any Crows possessed such power, and guessed the visiting Crow was what Midgard termed a ‘senior Crow’.  When Gilgamesh got about a quarter mile from this Crow, he metasensed the Crow again and found him stuffed with dross, an immense amount.  The dross roiled around the visiting Crow, ever changing, as if it was under his control, doing something.

Gilgamesh wound his way past the yellow duck on the giant spring.  Midgard stepped away from him, and lingered in the shadow of the slide.  “I’m Echo,” the Crow said from the picnic tables, a thousand feet away, with what Gilgamesh thought of as a loud whisper.  The term ‘loud whisper’, borrowed from Midgard, brought a smile to Gilgamesh’s face as he thought it, remembering Midgard’s comment about Crow terminology.  “Who might you two be?”

“Midgard.” Midgard spoke in his own loud whisper, and stopped coming closer.

“Gilgamesh,” Gilgamesh said, his voice eerily similar to Midgard’s.  He kept walking, through the baseball fields and the belt of trees, and stopped about two hundred feet from Echo.  Echo was on the short side, a young man like any other, but well dressed.  He had light brown hair he wore long, in the style of the modern youth.

So close, Gilgamesh recognized some of the dross on Echo as taken from the Detention Center.

Echo must have cleaned the place out to get so much.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Echo whispered.  His expression was smug and his tone was patronizing.  “The St. Louis Detention Center is reserved for the followers of the Crow Guru Chevalier, and for no others.  If you take dross here, you’ll be interfering in the business of other Crows.”

Damn.  A cold fear crept through Gilgamesh, and his thoughts turned black.  He had discovered Tiamat.  That was his dross!

“Isn’t there enough for all of us?” Gilgamesh asked.

“That’s not your business, but the answer is ‘no’,” Echo said.  “I have uses for dross in that quantity, for as long as it lasts.  Arms always die, and the usable dross will run out.” He smirked.  “Your infinite dross supply was due to dry up in a few weeks anyway, so don’t get so offended that I’m pulling rank.”

Gilgamesh tried to think of something to say.  This was horrible.  Arm dross was so much better than any other he had found, and no interloper had the right to steal it from him.  Worse, he had come to feel some affection for the terrifying Arm, and he didn’t want her to die.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, though.

“Interesting,” Echo said, after a long pause.  “I’d assumed the two of you baby Crows would run after I named the source of the dross.  You know about this monster of an Arm?”

“Her name is Carol Hancock,” Gilgamesh said.  Midgard backed away, and made a throat cutting motion at Gilgamesh.  Gilgamesh wasn’t ready to give up so easily.  He had never liked being bullied, and that huge sea of dross was too much of a treasure to abandon without a fight.  “She’s not a Monster.  The other Arm, Stacy Keaton, has been through here as well, I believe to help the new Arm cope with her transformation.  Neither of them can sense Crows.  Both can pass as normal women.”

Echo flinched when he heard Zaltu’s name.

“I expect her back any day now,” Gilgamesh said.  Echo flinched again, then crossed his arms across his chest and stared at Gilgamesh.

“Good try, kid.  Ain’t gonna work.”

Crap.

“Don’t convince yourself the Arm is human.  She’s a Monster,” Echo said.  “They’re all Monsters, all the other Major Transforms.  Horrible disgusting Monsters.  Even Focuses.”

“But it’s Beast Men who we need to fear,” Midgard said.  His voice was faint with distance, but he stopped edging back.  “They’re the predators who prey on unwary Crows.  Not Arms.”

“You think that just because Arms can’t metasense you that proves they’re friendly?” Echo said and laughed an ugly laugh, loud enough to cause Gilgamesh and Midgard to take several steps back.  “Fool.  We Crows are the universal prey.  Everyone preys on us if they get a chance.  Even the goddamned normals.  All we’re made to do is run in fear.  Run run run.” He paused, and his dross presence turned
nasty
.  Echo seemed bigger and dangerous, full of unpleasant surprises for any obstinate Crow.  “Don’t worry.  I’ll make sure the Monster dies, like all those other ones.  She’s too dangerous to live.  I’ll keep watch.  If she tries to escape, I’ll make sure the authorities know.  I’ll help the police track her down if I have to.”

Midgard ran.

“That’s horrible,” Gilgamesh said, edging uneasily away.  He had liked the previous Crows he had run into, but this one pissed him off.  Crows had enough trouble in life without other Crows purposefully making their lives miserable. 

“Tough.  You annoy me, Gilgamesh,” Echo said, still
nasty
.  “I hereby ban you from St. Louis due to your interference in the affairs of senior Crows.  Get out of here.”

Gilgamesh still did not flee, though his feet were definitely thinking about it.  “I’d heard that the senior Crows were kindly, sir,” he said.  “Why are you acting like this?  What harm…”

Echo laughed again.  “I’m no senior Crow.  I only transformed back in ’62.  I work for the senior Crows, though, and they’ve taught me a few tricks.  Now, get a move on!  Or I’ll show you a few of those tricks.”

Echo did something terrible with his writhing mass of stolen dross and a wave of overwhelming panic washed over Gilgamesh.  His feet took off on their own initiative.  He didn’t stop fleeing until he jumped on a freight train.  He didn’t care where it took him, as long as it was elsewhere.

In a graffiti-covered boxcar, he curled himself in a tight ball and cried.

Carol Hancock: October 21, 1966 – October 31, 1966

The messages vanished from under my plate the next morning, and found me my first real friend in Doris Trotter.  She was the staff cook and nutritionist, and to my surprise she checked up on me personally at lunch.  Strode right up to the FBI boys who made my life miserable.

“You think she’s an animal, but I haven’t noticed she can’t talk,” Doris said, to McIntyre.  “Besides, do your boys enjoy feeding her?”

“We can’t allow her to have silverware,” an FBI agent said.  “Too dangerous.”

Doris held up a cheap wooden spoon, nothing more than a stamped spoon-shaped thin piece of wood, the kind you might find as a kid with your half-pint cup of ice cream.  “This too dangerous for you?”

McIntyre snorted.  “A real Arm, which she isn’t, could kill you with that.  Still, she’s chained to the floor, so you’ll be the only idiot at risk if she does anything violent.  Your neck.  Feed her.  Be my guest.” To my great pleasure, the FBI men strode off.

Doris and I chatted as I ate my food.  Despite my juice cravings, I held my temper and stayed pleasant.  At one time, before I transformed, I held the opinion I could befriend anyone.  During my first month as an Arm, I became one of those people who could antagonize everyone.  I had to change that, now.

In the midst of a conversation on rude men, Doris slipped in a neat double entendre to let me know she had found my letters and passed them along.

The first step of my gamble, it seemed, had worked.  Now I had to wait.

McIntyre’s sadism of the afternoon tested my reactions to having the blood drained from my body.  Exsanguination, he called it.  I play-fainted at the end.  If I messed up their tests, all the better.  While they drained my blood, I talked to them about intimate woman’s issues and the resemblance to their test.  McIntyre had to pull his gun on me again to get me to shut up. 

Charming as I was to the rest of the staff, I wanted McIntyre and his crew to be as uncomfortable as possible.  Intimate woman’s issues were the best weapon I knew.

Next time?  Penis length comparisons…

---

The next several days I suffered through low juice, until they got me a new draw.  Their only tests were repeats, to show what differences low juice made.  The tests were so dull McIntyre didn’t bother to show.  After I recovered from the draw, they returned to the real tests.  However, when I became myself again, I had a surprise waiting for me: a return letter, unsigned.

“You know, if you’d written while I had any of my people there, I’d be able to help you.  As it is, you’ve stuck your neck in your own noose.  If you get free, use the telephone.  Ask for the name.”

Cryptic, but Doris whispered the name, “Focus Michelle Claunch, Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” to me later.  I recognized her as the important Focus Dr. Zielinski worked with who had transformed at age fifteen a decade or so ago.  I wondered
why
she was important, but didn’t have anyone to ask.

I also made several more friends among the staff after I recovered from the juice draw.  Two were techs, Mike Artusy and Fred Parrish; another was Nurse Wilson.  Artusy had papered over the memories of our night of never-ending sex and now looked at me as if I was some sort of nympho sex machine that he wanted to try for a second time.  A few glances at him and a kind word was all it took for his interest in me to stiffen again.  I doubted he would have a chance, but hope proved to be a good lure. 

I attracted Fred into my orbit with a more grown up emotion: compassion.  To lure him to my side I simply told him exactly what the FBI had done to me.  He was less willing to bend or break rules than the others, but he talked and didn’t care what secrets he told.

I got to Nurse Wilson in an entirely different fashion: she feared several of the dark-spirited men who worked at the Detention Center, including all the current FBI team, and especially the chief FBI doc, Fredericks.  All I had to do was to stand up to them when she attended me, back her up when they hassled her, and make things easier for her when she worked with them. 

I did all this instinctively, quite strange, and it worked out better than I anticipated.  All I had to do was approach the situation with the desire to befriend the staff and I found I could.  I didn’t know whether I’d discovered a new Arm trick, or whether, in my desperation, I’d recovered my old social skills.  Maybe some combination of both.  I doubted I could have claimed Nurse Wilson before, though, a woman who had once hated my very existence.  Something supernatural?  I had no idea.  Right now, I would settle for results and skip the understanding.

I also learned as much as possible about the Detention Center, to pull off an escape.  I kept track of routines, I made mental maps of the place, and I paid attention to everything going on around me.  I kept track of my observations easily, which surprised me and made me wonder again what I was becoming.  This time, though, I didn’t doubt I’d learned an Arm trick.

What was an Arm?  That question occupied me through the empty hours.  A Focus helped a few Transforms live.  Stacy Keaton was the mirror image of that, but she didn’t restrict her killing to Transforms, she killed anyone who got in her way, in job lots.  Or had.  I couldn’t remember reading about any new depredations in the past eighteen months or so.  My instincts thought this important, but I didn’t have any idea why.  Keaton had suffered an ‘accident’ before her escape that had turned her ‘psychotic’, supposedly.  I had no faith in the small bits of information I had collected, and no way to judge whether Keaton’s path of murderous mayhem was the destiny of all Arms.