Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (39 page)

I bet myself I would be able to string Artusy along indefinitely. 

In my mental plan of my escape, those photos of me would fit in perfectly.

Gilgamesh: November 14, 1966

Gilgamesh scrounged for his dinner in the back of a Big Boy in Mehlville, a suburban town about six miles south of the Detention Center, and thought his dark thoughts.  Midnight had passed.  He had been back in the St. Louis area for six days and he still hadn’t been able to force himself to confront Echo.

Tonight, it rained.  Yesterday as well.  He had picked through a dump near Mehlville to find new clothing; his old set of pants had grown so mud-caked he couldn’t bear to wear them anymore, and his last shirt had split up the back.  His ‘new’ clothes had already soaked through, his pants muddy up to the knees.

He no longer panicked when he thought about confronting Echo.  He had even tried, once, to come near the other Crow.  He had gotten as far as the Detention Center, but after picking up a metasense twinge of Echo far to the north, he had backed off.

For the first few days, the huge amount of dross he carried left him logy and half-sedated, as if he had too many beers.  When that passed, he swore he was more intelligent than normal.

“So low juice makes you dumb,” Gilgamesh said, wiping the rain from his face.  He had been talking to himself a lot in the past few days.  “Still, even a moderate amount of Arm-produced dross is better than…”

He stopped talking, as he picked up something with his metasense, a Major Transform in a car at the far end of his range, about six miles south of him on the interstate.  The car interfered with his ability to tell what kind of Major Transform and so he started to run, the soggy remains of a couple of hamburgers in his hand to eat later.  The damned Big Boy was right off the interstate.

He didn’t stop running for a half mile.  By then, the car with the Major Transform had reached Mehlville.

To Gilgamesh’s terror, the car took the Mehlville exit.  He froze in his hiding place, a small patch of uncleared scrubland between a cluster of recently built homes and a fallow hayfield.  The car turned west – away from Gilgamesh, much to Gilgamesh’s relief – but didn’t go far.  A half mile from the interstate, the unknown Transform drove into the driveway of a house with a ‘For Sale’ sign out front that Gilgamesh recognized.  He had checked it out himself a few days ago when he scouted for a lair, and rejected the place as too risky.

When the car door opened and Gilgamesh finally sensed the Transform clearly, his heart jumped.  Zaltu.  She yanked the ‘for sale’ sign from the front of the house, tossed it in the back yard, broke into the house, opened the garage and drove the car inside.  She dragged what looked like a large set of weights from the back of the car and started a workout routine in the garage.

Gilgamesh burrowed deeper under a bush.  He was less than a mile from Zaltu and she still hadn’t reacted to his presence.  He really was invisible to Arms.  Either that, or as with the Focuses, the Arms’ metasense range was quite short.

It wasn’t anything he wanted to test.

After two hours of exercise, Zaltu took a shower and ate some food she retrieved from the car.

Gilgamesh waited and tried to ignore the cold wet as the leaves of the bush dribbled rainwater on his head.  He swore Zaltu put on makeup.  No, the last was a wig, he decided.  She had put on a disguise.

Three hours after she arrived at the house, Zaltu tossed her weights back in her car, got in and sped north, toward the Detention Center.  She was about to spring Tiamat and walk into Echo’s trap, Gilgamesh realized. 

He was too far away to help and had no way to get closer in enough time to be useful.  Damn!

He had to get creative. 

Inspiration came in the form of a grocery supply truck.  The teamsters had finished unloading its last load and the truck headed up Lemay Ferry Road, back toward St. Louis and the Detention Center.  While the truck idled at a light, Gilgamesh took a deep breath, told himself the truck was almost the same thing as a boxcar, and ran.  His legs wobbled and his eyes dripped tears, but he had no time for panic if he wanted to save his goddess of destruction.  He quickly opened the back doors barely wide enough to let him through, and slipped in.  He slammed the door shut behind him as the truck began moving again. 

The empty truck smelled like old spilled milk.  Gilgamesh huddled in the front corner with his arms around his knees and took deep breaths, trying to calm his panicked nerves.  He had a lot more work to do to stop Echo and he couldn’t afford to fall apart before any confrontations happened.

The grocery truck passed within a mile of the Detention Center.  Gilgamesh slipped out into an industrial wasteland of gravel pits, grain silos, and giant mounds of bulk freight.  He walked north, nothing more than another street bum, as Zaltu circled the Detention Center twice.  She came within a mile of him once (he froze, but she still didn’t metasense him) before driving to the warehouse district south of the Detention Center. 

She stopped and got out of her car.  Gilgamesh froze again.  To his north, he metasensed Echo coming south on a bicycle, at the edge of his range.  Last time, he hadn’t been able to metasense Echo until he got within a quarter mile of the other Crow.  He wondered if his new ability to sense was a feature of his gift from Thomas the Dreamer. 

Sweat beaded on his forehead and his legs turned wobbly.

Zaltu checked out the various warehouses, made her decision and broke into one.  She wandered around inside it for five minutes, while Echo continued to pedal south.

Abruptly, four miles from the Detention Center, Echo turned and pedaled back to the north, much faster this time.  For a moment, Gilgamesh couldn’t understand.  He thought through what had happened and decided Echo had only now picked up Zaltu on his metasense.  Gilgamesh smiled.

The smile lasted perhaps a minute.  Zaltu exited the warehouse, ran back to her car so swiftly she left a faint dross trail, drove the car back to the warehouse and stopped.  She opened one of the large warehouse doors and drove the car inside.

Then nothing.  She rested.

Gilgamesh thought through the sequence and decided Zaltu wasn’t going to break Tiamat out from the Detention Center.  Instead, she was waiting for someone else to break Tiamat out.  Or, more improbably, for Tiamat to break herself out.  Given Zaltu waited less than four hundred feet from the south border of the Detention Center, it led him to believe her metasense range was indeed tiny. 

After Zaltu rested she hauled out her weights and exercised again.  Then she climbed up to the warehouse roof and built herself a small outpost.  From her hidden vantage point, she could
watch
the entire Detention Center.  Once she finished her nest, she froze in place and didn’t move a muscle for the next hour.

“Now what?” Gilgamesh whispered to himself.  Perhaps he didn’t have to do anything.  Perhaps Zaltu’s presence would be enough to keep Echo away from the Detention Center, far enough away so Echo couldn’t betray Tiamat if she escaped.

Gilgamesh worked out times in his head.  If he could pick up Echo six miles away, and Echo pedaled his bicycle twice as fast as Gilgamesh ran, Gilgamesh would be able to get close to Zaltu before Echo got to him if Gilgamesh was three miles away from Zaltu.

However, if Echo used a car…

Gilgamesh decided to hole up on the far side of the Detention Center, two miles from Zaltu.  Save for her exercises every couple of hours, Zaltu waited, motionless, for the rest of the night.

Carol Hancock: November 14, 1966

Doris’s face was stern the morning of the fourteenth, and the plates on the tray jiggled as she lowered it to the table.  She wouldn’t meet my eyes as I carefully took the bowl of oatmeal, plate of eggs, bacon and toast, fruit bowl and glasses of orange juice and milk from it and sat them in front of me.

I found the note under the big plate, and was a long one, at least in comparison.  As usual, I didn’t read it until I reached the exercise room.

Carol

I’ve been thinking about your ongoing muscle problems, and I have the solution you’ve been asking for.  Do all these with low reps and heavy weights: first, 5 sets each of medium-grip barbell bench presses, medium-grip incline barbell bench presses, close-grip barbell bench presses, wide-grip front lat pull downs, bent-over dumbbell rowing, standing medium-grip easy-curl-bar biceps curls, heel-high sit ups, and flat bench leg pull-ins.  On each set, use a 10-3-3-3-3 rep pattern, save for the last two, where you do 50 per set.  Start this within three days and you can escape your problems.  I’ll be awaiting your results.  If you tire while doing these exercises, imagine the alternatives.

Larry Borton

Keaton!  She had decided to help me!  I wanted to cheer, but instead I puzzled out the hidden message.  It took me a while, because five days past my last draw my mind had turned to mush.  Rephrased, it said ‘I have the solution you’ve been asking for.  Escape within three days.  I’m waiting.  Do
not
disappoint me this time.’  The suggested exercises were a devious joke and a surprise; I hadn’t expected Keaton to have a sense of humor.  If I did exercises as she suggested, I would turn into a muscle-bound freak like her.

At lunch, I gave Doris a short note: ‘Party tomorrow afternoon’.  I gave some special instructions to Mike Artusy for that night, as well.

Dr. Henry Zielinski: November 14, 1966

“Zielinski.” 
He picked up the phone as if it was about to bite him.  After Keaton’s orders, even incoming phone calls had become unnerving.  He knew he shouldn’t complain.  All those years spent skating disaster thrown away, because he had chosen to dive into this disaster headfirst.

“Hi, this is Lori.  We’re on for tomorrow night.  Everything ready?”

Dr. Zielinski winced.  “Yes.”  With Tommy Bates’ help, he had managed to recruit forty men with Monster hunting experience.  In the process, Dr. Zielinski had called in every favor owed to him and now owed favors to quite a few people he would rather not owe anything.

“Good enough.  See you tomorrow evening.”

Hank hung up the phone and looked at his calendar.  He and Glory were supposed go to a cocktail party at the Stephens’ tomorrow night.  He had an afternoon class to cancel, as well as a meeting with Dr. Conyers.  He suspected he would miss most of what he had scheduled for the next day as well.

On his desk was the official probation notice.  He had once dreamed of regaining his old position as department head.  Now, in a few short weeks, he found himself on probation at Harvard Medical. 

His Harvard Medical superiors wouldn’t appreciate tomorrow night’s jaunt, either.

He called Glory.  At least phone calls to his wife didn’t cause him mental conniptions, an observation he dutifully noted down in his special notebook of information to trade to Keaton.  He doubted the Arm knew she could be so selective.  “Dear, I’m afraid something’s come up and I’m going to have to go out of town tomorrow.  I don’t know when I’m going to be coming home, either.  I might be away for a couple of days.”

“It’s that Focus again, isn’t it?” Glory asked.  He hadn’t been able to avoid explaining his new work with Focus Rizzari. 

“It’s not what you think,”
Dr. Zielinski said.  “I’m on Transform business, and…”

“It’s always Transform business, Hank,” Glory said.  “Your work is too dangerous for you.  Too dangerous for your family, but you won’t listen.”  Click.  Dial tone.

He winced, rubbed his temples and told the department secretary to call Tommy Bates and tell him to be ready tomorrow.  He couldn’t call anyone about Transform business, even Bates.

He had already made his decision during his conversation with Keaton.  Transforms first.

No matter he knew he couldn’t handle everything life tossed at him, because of his decision.

No matter the cost.

Chapter 10

“Transform Sickness is a very rare disease.  In 1965, there were fewer than 10,000 cases in the whole country.  That means that your chance of contracting it is just over one in 20,000.  You’re much more likely to die in an auto accident.  There’s no need to panic over Transform Sickness.  Many factors determine if someone catches it, including heredity, environment, perhaps even psychology.  The Centers for Disease Control hopes to be able to identify the specifics within the next few years, and have a cure within the next five.” [CDC pamphlet, 1966]

Carol Hancock: November 15, 1966

The test that afternoon involved FBI agents with bows and blunted arrows.  I wore a blindfold translucent enough for me to keep track of the FBI agents, but not translucent enough to keep track of where they aimed.  They chained me to the concrete I-beam in the courtyard, with a fifty-foot long chain.  They didn’t remove the engine blocks, concrete rubble and partly splintered picnic tables from the last two days’ tests.  They expected me to use them as cover, and this time, the shooters didn’t stay put but circled me as a pack.  I performed as they expected and carefully didn’t exceed their expectations.  Blunted arrows were better than the real things, but – tables aside – this was no picnic.

As the staff set up for the party in the dining area, McIntyre came up to me with a shit-eating grin on his face.  “Pathetic, Hancock, real pathetic.”

“Sir?” I asked, hungrily spooning up my beef stew, cranky with not-quite low juice.  At least after one of those ‘dodge the murderous instrument’ tests, I had enough exercise to keep my muscles from aching. 

Standard procedure after a test was for the guards to drag me over to Dr. Peterson’s lab for a complete examination.  After that, they let me eat.  The FBI techs would leave and I would have the rest of the evening to myself.  If the day’s tests hadn’t left me too injured or too low on juice, I’d spend more time in the exercise room.

“Stick her in her cell,” McIntyre said to the guards.  “Full security.”

Four chains held by four guards.  “Hey!  What about the party?”  I didn’t have to feign anything here.  The baking and other cooking had filled the Detention Center with unfamiliar homey smells, and I suspected McIntyre heard my tummy grumbling from where he stood.

McIntyre just snorted.  He and his team dragged me by my chains to my cell.  I kept a hurt expression on my face, and as best as possible covered up the natural anger McIntyre and his gang of thugs roused in me when they interfered with my life. 

“You’re pathetic if you think something this stupid would have worked,” McIntyre said, after they released me into the cell.  I turned away, sorrow warring with anger, and winning.  “I expected better of you,” he said, and slammed the door.

Oh, did I sob after that.

Not because McIntyre had wrecked my escape plan, though.  Mostly, I sobbed because of nerves, the constant ache in my muscles, the need for more juice, and out of annoyance that I had been right and I wouldn’t be allowed to attend the party.  Despite the changes I had gone through as an Arm, I still had trouble with that kind of male dominance game. 

Oh, and the food did smell delicious. 

My plan, though, had layers.  I had done my thinking, fortunately, back when I had been high on juice.  Best case, the FBI wouldn’t even notice the party.  Second best case, they would think the party was strange, but wouldn’t connect me to it.  Third best case, the FBI would see the party as something I had arranged.  Truthfully, I wasn’t shocked that McIntyre had put two and two together and decided a bunch of dumb women had fallen into a really dumb plan of mine to escape during the confusion of the party.

In the worst case, the FBI would have stopped the party cold, one of my layers of distractions would have vanished, and I would have to ask my night shift friends to risk themselves in a more risky distraction.  From the smells, the FBI hadn’t stopped the party.  They had simply locked me up in the escape-proof suicide cell, sneered at me and called me pathetic.

The bastards also hadn’t let me finish my dinner.  Real low, even for them.

Still, I started the evening off right by repainting my fingernails and toenails.

The knock at my cell door came at ten, as arranged.

“Carol, you indecent yet?”

Artusy. 

“Not quite.  Get me a damp washcloth and about ten minutes.”  He did so, I washed myself as best as possible given the situation, and got dolled up.  I imagined the FBI memo for next time they had an Arm in their custody:  ‘Under no circumstances are you to allow an Arm access to face cream, blush, eye liner, lipstick…’  I took a minute to scratch furiously at the wound on my leg after I pulled the tape off.  I had a nasty gash from a broken piece of picnic table, from earlier today, and it itched like a bitch while it healed. 

I put on the easy-to-strip clothing Artusy had provided, and put on the show.  Well, put on the show after I ate some of the food Artusy had trucked up on a cart.

“You were right that the Feds would lock you up and keep you from the party,” Artusy said.  I nodded and stuffed face.  Oh, I loved cream-filled chocolate éclairs.  Fudge with walnuts, too.  Don’t even get me started about baklava…

I had to restrain my appetite, else I’d end up like the guards.  It proved difficult to stop eating.

“Wheel the cart in and…”

“Sorry, I can’t,” Artusy said.  “Food on paper plates only.  For some stupid reason the Feds decided that this party was some sort of escape attempt.  They didn’t even leave until the party ended.”  This should have been about an hour ago, if Doris and I had this set up properly.  “Sampled all the food, too.”  Heh.  “Can’t image what got into their heads, but they’re going to be going over our security with a fine-toothed comb tomorrow.  So the cart stays with me.”

“No problem,” I said, and grabbed food-laden paper plates.  Lots of them.

I visualized all those FBI agents and techs getting logy from the party food, forced to stay late to make sure I didn’t have anything strange planned.  I imagined them annoyed at the overtime, and after nothing happened, stalking off to some cop bar to get plastered.  At least I hoped so.

I grabbed the last double-fudge brownie, stuck the confection on my cell floor, and smiled.  I posed.  Artusy took pictures.

“I’ve got to run off and get these developed,” Artusy said, after he finished.  If I planned this right, every low-life on the night shift would be ogling my pictures in an hour or less.  “You mind if Kelsey here does the dirty work with your late-night shower?”

“No problem,” I said, a paper plate in my hand and a cream filled doughnut in my mouth.  I had already given back the easy-to-strip clothes.  “I think my deadly sin of the evening is going to involve food.”

Once the suicide cell door closed, I leapt up and retrieved the hidden dagger.  I pushed the food to the far corner of the room and tried not to think about how good it smelled.

Of all the temptations I feared would damn my soul in this horrific place, twenty thousand calories of desserts was not what I expected to be the worst.

But there they were, and there I was.

I used the knife to clean the underside of my fingernails as I stewed over my plan and listened to my tummy grumble. 

At eleven-thirty, I knocked on my door.  By now, Mike Artusy should have had the pictures developed and distributed.  Kelsey opened the suicide cell door for me.  Chocolate and alcohol flavored his breath. 

As usual, I wore my bathrobe and carried my shower supplies in my arms.  The knife rested in its holster below my knee, invisible beneath the long robe.  I had the pictures of my children hidden in my clothing.  Kelsey led me down the hall to the bathroom.  After I went in Kelsey took up his post outside the door.

As soon as the door shut, I went into action.  I took off my bathrobe, uncovering the short-sleeved blouse and loose skirt I wore underneath.  I was barefoot.  I hadn’t been able to come up with any way around that.  Nor anything to do about the shackles welded to my ankles.

I started the shower running and checked out the small bathroom window.  Painted shut, but still without bars. 

I climbed on the toilet and set to work with Dr. Zielinski’s knife.  As quickly as possible, I cut into the paint between the window and the sash.  The standard procedure allowed me only fifteen minutes for a shower, so I had to hurry.

I finished digging out the paint in a few minutes, glad of my many physical enhancements.  The hinges were on the top, and the window would open out at the bottom.  It didn’t move when I pushed.  Or the next several times I pushed.

I hadn’t expected that.  I searched the bathroom for anything that might serve as a pry bar, and found nothing.  I went and grabbed soap, thinking I would do something I’d heard of once upon a time and soap the hinges to make them give.  I climbed up and discovered the hinges were on the outside.  I grimaced in disgust.  Here I was, the big bad Arm with all these physical changes, and I still had problems with things mechanical.

I tried
Dr. Zielinski’s knife and decided I was only making a mess.  I didn’t have time for that approach.

Now I began to get panicky.  I took a deep breath and examined my options.  After I carefully scanned my surroundings, I took another deep breath to steady myself, stuck
Dr. Zielinski’s knife in my holster, and got to work.

I wrapped my bathrobe around my hands for protection, put one foot on top of the toilet tank and the other a little ways up the wall, spread as far apart as the shackles would allow, and pounded on the window.  No one noticed. 

The window moved a hair.  I pounded on it some more.  Still no one noticed.  After a long push, the window opened all the way, making a horrible creaking sound.  Every guard within miles should have heard it.  The cold from outside came rushing in.

I paused.  Kelsey didn’t knock at my door.  The escape alarms didn’t go off.

“Well, here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself, annoyed at the tiny window.  I didn’t miss the birth canal symbology: Carol Hancock, housewife and leading neighborhood volunteer, was about to be reborn as Carol Hancock, Arm and outlaw.

Now, if I only could figure out what an Arm was supposed to be, I would be set.

Step one: look out the third floor bathroom window. 

I saw as clearly as if it was noon, despite the overcast night.  I’d counted on that.  No guards walked the grounds.  If I craned my neck I could see the gate by the inner wall.  In the gatehouse, two of the guards were engrossed over something.  My pictures.  They hadn’t noticed my racket.

Why?  I hadn’t been loud.  It seemed loud to me because of my enhanced hearing.

Step two: climb up and through the window.

It was a tight fit.  The window really was too small and I was no longer my former petite self.  I forced myself through the window, but collected several nasty scrapes along my arms and legs.  I tore holes in my clothes, too. 

Step three: get stuck.

I hadn’t planned on this one.  I should have gone through the window feet first, but I had come through head first, my hands still wrapped in the bathrobe.  I couldn’t turn myself around, and when I tried to back out, I found myself stuck. 

Dammit.

Even if I backed up, I didn’t know how to get out the window feet first.  The window was too high up, and I didn’t know of anywhere for me to put the rest of my weight while I levered my feet through.

Step four: deal with the problem. 

Dammit, I would go through this window headfirst whether it made sense or not.  I slowly moved forward, and after I almost lost my balance, I braced myself on the brick on the outside of the building.  In the end, I hung from the window by my feet, upside down, with my head over twenty feet above the ground.  I couldn’t afford to fall.  The noise would be too loud and I might hurt myself.

I dropped the bathrobe and slowly inched my hands back up the wall, holding on to the sill with my now panic-sweat covered feet.  It took forever.  Finally, I crawled far enough up the wall to reach one hand back and grab the window.  I let my feet come free and brought up the other hand up to grab the sill as I twisted.

Right side up, I dropped.

I fell between two bushes, not making much noise at all save for the muffled clank of my shackles.  Quickly, I crouched down behind the bushes, my toes gripping the cold dirt.  The guards at the Detention Center gate didn’t turn toward me. 

Above me, the gray sky loomed, threatening.  Out of the Detention Center for the first time in weeks, I felt a chill that wasn’t from the wind, but from freedom.  I looked at my wristwatch.  Eleven-forty.  I still had time before I went over my shower time allowance. 

I took a step and stopped; my shackled feet clanked as I walked.  In the noisy Detention Center they had faded into the background, but out here they sounded as loud as a freight train.  I stopped, unsure, and thought.

The bathrobe.  I’d discarded it as useless, but perhaps I might make use of it.  I reached down, wrapped my bathrobe around the chain between my legs, and took a step.  No clank.  Perfect.  I headed toward the Detention Center wall as quickly as possible with a bathrobe around the shackles between my legs.