Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (7 page)

They didn’t come close to each other.  The man stopped at one end of the parking lot, and Bob stopped at the other, a hundred feet away.  The man sat down on the curb.

“You can call me Sinclair,” the man said.  His voice was soft and non-threatening.  Sinclair wore a hat and a suit, decent and clean.  Clean-shaven and washed as well.  His dark blonde hair was wavy and neatly trimmed.  He looked like a normal young man, no more than twenty-five years old.  He spoke so quietly no one should have been able to hear him from as far away as Bob was. 

Bob heard him.

He was the first human being Bob hadn’t run away from in four and a half weeks.

Bob didn’t sit.  He stood by his bike and shivered, ready to bolt at the first sign of threat.

Sinclair sat quietly.  He didn’t move or fidget.  After a few minutes, Bob relaxed his grip on the bike.

Sinclair spoke again, still softly.  “I’ve been a Transform for two years.” He paused, but when Bob did not panic again, he continued.  “Looking at you, I’d guess that you’re new at it.”

Bob nearly did panic at the man’s observation.  He wanted to flee far far away from here. 

Bob stayed where he was.  A shivering started, deep within him.

“It gets better from here,” Sinclair said.  Bob looked at Sinclair with the first hope he had felt since his transformation.  “The panic will diminish as you learn to know what’s more dangerous and what’s less.  As time goes on, you’ll learn how to live with it, how to control it, how to deal with other people.  You’ve learned some control already, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m not insane?  It isn’t just me?”  Bob asked as quietly, his voice hoarse.

“You’re not insane,” Sinclair said.  His voice was a soothing whisper.  “You’re a Major Transform, if you haven’t guessed that already.”

Bob nodded.  “What’re the real dangers?” This was the most important question.  He had to know the threats.  His terror wasn’t gone, but he forced it away from him.

“Stay away from the authorities.  Police, other people who might make you their business.  Don’t talk to Focuses or their household Transforms.  They know too much.  Stay away from doctors and medical people.  They could discover too much about you.”

Bob nodded again.  Sinclair’s explanation made sense.

“Normal people are less risky,” Sinclair said, in his hushed tone.  “You can find safe ones, who won’t even know you’re there.  Use the fact you can see in the dark to move.”

A part of Bob wanted him to collapse.  Someone, finally, understood what had happened to him!  Another part of him remained wary.  Never assume, always be on guard.

The wary part won out.  He stayed standing, on the other side of the parking lot.

“What are we?”  Bob asked, desperate.

“We’re Crows.”  Across the parking lot, Sinclair looked sad and sympathetic.  “The doctors don’t know about us.  The Focuses do, at least some of them, and don’t trust us.”

“Us?” Bob asked.

“I don’t know how many of us there are.  My guess is a couple of dozen in the entire U.S.  Some of the senior Crows, the ones who transformed years ago, think there are nearly as many of us as there are Focuses.”  Bob knew there were between a hundred and fifty and two hundred Focuses in the United States.  He shivered.

Sinclair fell silent.  A mockingbird trilled in the dawn shadows.  “You’re one of us now.  The bright thing you can sense is juice.  The muted thing you sense is a different kind of juice, something that no one besides Crows knows about.  We call it dross, because it’s the waste left behind from juice use.  Our bodies turn dross into juice.  Always heed your metasense.”

“Metasense?”

“That’s the name of a Major Transform’s extra sense.  Our metasense can sense farther than a Focus’s.  The metasense helps us identify dangers and spot usable dross at a safe distance.”

Bob didn’t move, but stayed where he was and listened. 

“Learn to control the panic,” Sinclair said.  “Learn to deal with people and blend in.  Find a way to earn money and to blend in among the normals.”

“How?” Bob asked.  He couldn’t spend money if he had any.

“I write,” Sinclair said.  “Under a pseudonym.  I never use my real name anymore.  Come up with a name of your own to use.  Pseudonyms are safer.  Find another way to earn money.  I know one Crow who’s an artist.  He calls himself Merlin.  I know another named Waveguide who collects junk and sells it.  His extra watchfulness makes him good at it.  Be aware of your surroundings and be on-guard.  Your senses are getting better.  Be alert to everything around you.  Never let yourself get low on juice.  Low juice affects your judgment.”

Bob had figured that out.  “How do I find dross? 

“With great care.  Avoid the big Transform Detention Centers.  The senior Crows claim them and they’ll chase you away.  Small town Transform Clinics are good because they’re too small to support even one Crow.  The small Clinics are left for the itinerants.  Find a stable unclaimed Focus household and force yourself to come close enough to take dross.  The closer you get, the better the dross.  You can take dross from as far away as you can sense it, but if you’re too far away, it’s just a cheat.  Like trying to subsist on the smell of food.”

Bob shivered.  “How do I travel?”

Sinclair nodded, slowly.  “Travel is always hard.  Driving will work, but you aren’t ready to drive yet.  Trains are safer than most ways, in with people if you can stand it, in a boxcar if you can’t.  There are dangerous people you might meet riding boxcars, but you aren’t defenseless.”

“What?” Bob understood running away.  Defense didn’t make sense.

Sinclair smiled.  “Think of a skunk,” he said.  “But there’s another danger you should know.”  The smile was gone as quickly as it appeared.  “I’ve heard rumors about another kind of male Major Transform, something like us, but
dangerous
.  Something else the doctors don’t know about, something halfway between a Monster and a human being.  We call them Beast Men.  If you ever run into one, stay away from it.  They’re powerful and crazy, and can sense you if you get too close.  Other dangers exist, as well; Crows occasionally vanish for no known reason.  There’s more going on than anyone knows.

“You’re going to have to go,” Sinclair said.  “There’s not enough dross for you to stay in Orlando.  But you can spend the day.  I have an apartment you can use until tomorrow, with food, a shower and a few spare clothes.  I’ll write the address for you.  I know of a Focus west of town.  I’ve taken most of the dross there, but there should be a bit for you.  There’s a freight yard northwest of that.”

Sinclair stood up and instinctively Bob backed up a few steps.  Sinclair began to back away. 

“Wait!” Bob said.  He still had questions.  He didn’t know what he was doing.  He needed help.

Sinclair turned toward Bob, and the morning sun shone on his face.  Sweat beaded on Sinclair’s temples and his eyes had narrowed.  It hadn’t occurred to him that Sinclair might also find this hard.

“What?” Sinclair asked, tense.

“I…I just wanted to thank you.  You didn’t have to do this for me, especially waking up in the middle of the night to help some stranger.  This is a tremendous amount of help you’re giving me.”

Sinclair inclined his head.  “Thank you.  We’re all we have.  You’re doing extremely well for a young Crow.  Help some other young Crow sometime.”

Bob nodded as Sinclair turned and walked away, in his clean suit and businessman’s hat, the illusion of a normal young man going to work.  Bob watched him a long time as he went.

Then he went over to where Sinclair had sat, and found a paper with an address written on it, a key and a ten dollar bill.  By that evening, Bob was shaved and showered and looked like a human being again.  He suspected he still had a long way to go.  Someday, he would re-pay Sinclair.

---

The steady clack, clack of the boxcar thrummed in Bob’s ear.  At sixty miles an hour, he relaxed enough to try to get some sleep.  Sinclair had been right.  Once he got past the terror of boarding, this wasn’t a bad way to travel.

He had boarded this particular train in a freight yard outside Nashville, around midnight.  Nashville hadn’t been bad, but he had only stayed a couple of days.  Another Crow already lived in Nashville and he had picked the place clean of dross.

Bob’s lack of dross left him with an edgy, unsatisfied craving.  He had to find a decent source sometime soon, because this constant emptiness was hell.  He hoped St. Louis would have something real for him.

The noise of the countryside around him began to change just before dawn.  The train slowed as light began to creep through the cracks in the boxcar door.  If his guesses were correct, this should be a rail yard in St. Louis.  Bob braced himself; he needed to get out before the train stopped.  He didn’t want to show himself to the rail yard workers.

As he readied himself to leap off the train his metasense picked something up to the west, at extreme range, something he
had never seen before.

It was
brilliant.

He thought Focus
es were bright.  This was far brighter than a Focus, so bright he couldn’t even sense what it was.  The sheer strength of the glow numbed his metasense with terrifying intensity.

His first instinct was to flee.  He looked down at the ground as it sped by and waited for the train to slow further.

At two miles, he spotted the dross underneath the brightness, more dross than he had ever seen in his admittedly short experience as a Crow.  He no longer wanted to flee.  He needed it. 

He did worry about the dross source and whether the brilliant Transform could sense him or not.   He had no sense of contact such as he shared with Sinclair, though.  No sign the Transform had noticed him at all.

Bob squatted as the train took him past that terrible brightness and out of range again.  With a start, he realized the train had almost pulled to a stop.  He had to get out
now. 
He opened the boxcar door, jumped from the train, tumbling as he hit the ground, and ran.

“Hey!” a man shouted behind him, but he continued running.

Bob never looked back, but ran for the next two miles, along roads lined with factories, mills and warehouses.  Then he walked toward where he had sensed the brightness, unable to resist the temptation.  Fifteen minutes later, past more mills and factories, he sensed the glow again, an immense sea of dross.

He sensed carefully all around him.  No other Crows.  “Maybe they panicked,” Bob said.  “Or perhaps this is just too dangerous.”

Maybe he, too, would be wiser to leave this mystery alone.  The sea of dross, larger and deeper than he had ever seen before, could easily be the bait in a trap.

The temptation was too great.  Bob needed that dross.  His hands shook at the mere thought of leaving it behind.

His tongue went dry and an almost sexual anticipatory pleasure coursed through him when he metasensed it.  He hadn’t known how bad his craving was for dross until he found
this
.

He would stay until some more immediate threat drove him off. 

It would have to be a very large threat.

Bob suspected he would be here for a long time.

Chapter 2

“The Focus Transform is unique.  In the major transformation the bacteria crosses the blood-brain barrier of a woman and grows an extra organ in her brain called the metacampus.  The metacampus gives a Focus the ability to sense and manipulate juice, and thus keep other Transforms alive.  Only women experience major transformations.” [“Don’t Panic – It’s Just a Disease”, by Dr. Lewis Jeffers, as printed in many magazines and newspaper supplements in 1955]

Tonya Biggioni: September 17, 1966 – September 18, 1966

At the checkpoint, Tonya’s driver Danny rolled his window down.  Crisp Appalachian air wafted in as the grizzled police officer leaned down to inspect the four in the car.  “No entrance to the public,” the policeman said with a wave of halitosis-scented warmth.  “There’s been a Monster transformation.  Authorized personnel only.”

Tonya sighed.  She had a hundred things she needed to be doing, most of them far more important than driving out to the Appalachian hills to goggle over a Monster transformation.  Nothing to be done about it, though.  She turned away and let her people deal with the cop.

From the front passenger seat, Ralph watched the man with wary hostility.   He and Danny were Tonya’s bodyguards, and Ralph was good at wary hostility.  He thought Tonya ought to have four bodyguards.  Always.  Tonya’s household could not afford it.

Danny gave the officer a small leather folio containing Tonya Biggioni’s FBI-issued identification.  The man inspected it and backed away after he read the contents.  He handed the folio back through the window with the tips of his index and middle finger, as if he feared contamination, and waved his hand in the general direction of the small road behind him.  “Agent Bates is waiting for you up at the scene, ma’am.  You folks are cleared to go on through.”

Tonya rolled her shoulders to ease their ache.  Her secretary, Rhonda, noticed and gave an encouraging smile.  Tonya took a deep breath of the chilly, pine-scented air, now clear of the odor of tooth decay, and exhaled with a sigh.  Her muscles often ached on long car trips and they were hours from Philadelphia.  She needed a full body, muscle-straining stretch, but she did not intend to do anything so undignified at a police checkpoint.

‘On through’ took them a hundred yards before the narrow drive became too packed with parked vehicles for Tonya’s car to pass.  Danny shrugged, found a tiny patch of dirt and parked their car.  They exited and walked up the drive.  Tonya scrutinized the long line of official vehicles as they passed – police cars, county vehicles, vehicles emblazoned with the insignia of obscure state agencies, unmarked vehicles, even an empty ambulance.  Clusters of police and FBI gathered beside their vehicles, smoking their cigarettes and waiting.

The air was fresh and crisp, the sky a brilliant blue and frost sparkled on the tree branches.  Tonya enjoyed the exercise until she overheard one of the local police mutter something about ‘fucking monsters’, and ‘never should have let them out of Quarantine’ in a voice meant to be overheard.

She didn’t give them the pleasure of a response but Danny bristled with outrage beside her.

Tonya smelled the crime scene long before she reached it, the ripe stench of violence.  About a quarter mile up, the winding drive ended in a small clearing occupied by a clapboard shack of uncertain color and shabby appearance.  Decades had passed since the shack’s last painting.  Beside her, Rhonda grimaced.  She had come from a place much like this and her old memories weren’t good.

Several men gathered near the front door of the shack as she approached.  Tonya picked out Agent Tommy Bates by his height, pale hair, and the ever-present cigarette.  Neither he nor the other men seemed bothered by the stench of death surrounding them, but then, their noses were merely normal.  Tommy was an old, well, ‘friend’ wasn’t quite the right word, but they had worked together before, and most of the time they had been allies.  Many years ago, Tommy’s wife had come down with Transform Sickness.  She survived and now lived in a household out on the west coast.  Since then, Tommy had gone out of his way to help the victims of the disease.  Prejudice against Transforms was rampant and his support and that of others like him was like a bulkhead against a sea of hate.

“Focus Biggioni,” Tommy said and put out his hand.  Tonya took it graciously.  Around them, the other men stepped away when Tommy named her a Focus.  Tonya flicked her gaze at them and smiled, a little too sardonic to be the purely social smile she owed Tommy.

Men and women Transforms looked like average human beings, but that wasn’t true for a Focus.  Tonya’s major transformation had given her excellent health, the body of an athlete, the charismatic presence of a politician or a movie star and the appearance of a nineteen-year-old, despite her fifty-odd years.

She used every bit of her Focus transformation benefits to keep her household financially afloat.  Money was always a problem. 

“What’s the emergency, Tommy?”  Monster transformations happened all the time. 

The other men jumped again at the sound of her voice.  It was rich and musical, with undertones that shivered along the spine. 

Tommy was used to her, though, and merely ground his cigarette out under his shoe.  “Looks straightforward on the surface.  Alice Colson, wife of Clem Colson, caught the Shakes and didn’t realize it.  Made a normal transformation.  No Focus to stabilize her, of course, so in time she went Monster and attacked one of the men here.  Killed him.  Clem and the Vinote brothers, Pete and Zach, managed to shoot and kill the former Mrs. Colson before she killed anyone else.  However, we’ve got a problem.”

“A problem?” The heavy air still carried the scent of conflict.  Tonya recognized the ozone smell of Monster transformations and dead Monster mixed in with the reek of death.  The scents brought back unpleasant memories from when she
had been a young Focus.

Tommy tilted his head toward the house.  “Look for it,” he said.  “You’ll see it better than I can.”

Tonya frowned.  Tommy didn’t refer to her vision, but to her metasense.  She spotted Rhonda and Danny first.  They wore the tags Tonya used to mark her household and they shone with the bright glow of Transform health.  No problem there.  Her metasense found no sign of Ralph.  Again, no problem.  He was a normal, not a Transform, part of her household because his wife had transformed. 

Farther afield, though, behind the decrepit shack, Tonya spotted another Transform.  A woman.  She was untagged, not a part of any Focus’s household.  She was certainly not a part of Tonya’s household, and so her presence was ill defined.  Tonya sensed little else about her.

There shouldn’t be a Transform here.  Transformations didn’t happen in clusters, and the appearance of a second Transform so soon after the death of Alice Colson, especially out here in this sparsely populated country, stretched the bounds of credibility. 

“That is
not
…” Tonya said, but voices from inside the shack interrupted.

“Y
a cain’t take her,” one rural-voiced male said.

A second male voice replied firmly and authoritatively.  “Sir, it’s state law.  Her remains have to be taken to the State Transform Detention Center for autopsy and burial.”

Trouble.  Tonya entered the shack through the broken door and nearly gagged.  The air reeked of blood and death, raw on her sensitive nose.  She stepped carefully through a wasteland of broken furniture, blood and bullet holes, depressed by the familiar poverty of the tiny hovel.  The Monster transformation had taken place inside. The resulting fight had started here, traveled out the back door, and finished outside.

A flannel shirted man brandished a hunting rifle in his arms at two gray-coated officials.  Next to him, a second local watched the confrontation with tight lips and hard eyes.

Sometimes normals amazed Tonya.  She couldn’t fathom how they ignored the fetid odor, but they seemed oblivious.

“I refuse!  Y
a cain’t, I won’t let ya,” the first man bellowed with a wave of his rifle.  The official who had spoken carefully laid his hand on the other man’s rifle and gently lowered it. 

“We got a family burial ground,” the second local said, his voice softer than his eyes.  “Got
’a honor the dead, even if Satan cursed ‘em.”

What a mess!  Tonya shook her head and lassoed the eyes of the local with the gun.  “It’s the right thing to do, Clem Colson,” she said.  “The officials know their job.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clem said.  He lowered the rifle and turned away to hide his tear-stained face. 

The two officials backed away from Tonya, knowledgeable enough to recognize Focus charisma in use.  One of them muttered the Lord’s Prayer.

Tonya pretended not to notice their prejudice.  These officials weren’t too far removed from the backwoods themselves and hadn’t lost their suspicion of all things unexplained.  The early years of Transform Sickness had generated many superstitions – the mark of the devil and all – and many of those lingered.  Science had made great progress in the years since, but rational explanations always traveled slower than fear. 

These officials hadn’t even been the ones who’d survived Alice Colson and her Monster transformation.

Tonya turned to Tommy Bates, who, along with Rhonda, Danny and Ralph had followed Tonya into the now crowded shack.  “Would you be so kind as to introduce me to the woman in question?”

Tommy nodded and led them out the back door and into a small clearing behind the shack.  The gory remains of Alice Colson and her victim were scattered together, making red mud of the packed-dirt yard.  More officials and police officers milled about in the sullied red yard, taking notes and pictures, ready to pack up the deceased.

Tonya noticed a human arm in the morass, still attached to an unrecognizable lump of a body.  Not quite human, though – the fingernails had curled to form sharp claws, the first major change for many Monster conversions.  Tonya grimaced in aversion, reflexes of long years hunting down Monsters with her household.  If Clem and his friends hadn’t shot Alice, the changes to her body and damage to her mind would have accumulated until she had transformed into a true Monster: mad, dangerous and inhuman.  Clem and his friend had done a service to the world when they shot the woman.

While Tonya examined the mangled remains with cold disdain, Rhonda took one look and ran for the edge of the clearing, where she vomited miserably at the foot of a towering ash.  “Sorry, ma’am.”  She wiped her mouth and avoided looking at the gruesome remains again.

Danny and Ralph were tougher.  They had been with Tonya back when Tonya’s household used to hunt Monsters and they had a lot of experience with scenes like this.

Tonya
turned her attention from the bloody remains and picked her way to the shed on the far side of the clearing.  In front of the shed, a woman in chains and shackles sat on a large log and cried.  The Transform.  Several men, including two policemen, huddled nearby, talking in low voices.

“What is the meaning of
this
?” Tonya asked.

Startled, the men jumped but one of them stepped forward.  “Ma’am, please.  I’m
Dr. Dossett.  This woman is about to turn Monster.”

Not hardly.  The sobbing woman’s hands still shook, a sign of the initial transformation and the source of the colloquial name of the disease, ‘the Shakes’.  It took two weeks on the average after a woman transformed before she went Monster. 

“Am not,” the sobbing woman said, pain in her voice.  She looked up at the new arrivals and lifted her hands to shield her eyes from the sun.  She fidgeted, unable to sit still.

Tonya inhaled in surprise and examined woman again.  Light sensitivity, pain and fidgeting were classic signs of a woman Transform about to go Monster.

“Tommy, can you explain this?”

Tommy shrugged.  “I was hoping you could.”

Wonderful.  Now she knew why Tommy had thought this scene odd enough to justify her attention.  Tonya crossed her arms on her chest and considered the woman.  If she was about to convert into a Monster now, the smart thing to do was to kill her before she could kill anyone else. 

A Transform, male or female, needed a Focus to stay alive and human.  Tonya was a Focus and maintained a household with over three dozen Transform and non-Transform adults and children, but a Focus could only support a few dozen Transforms.  Tonya, like any sane Focus, was full up.  It was too bad for the woman, but it was too bad for many Transforms.

However, Focuses did grow in capacity slowly over time and it had been years since Tonya had expanded her household size.  She might be able to take on this suffering woman. 

If Tonya failed she could destabilize her entire household, risking the lives of innocents.

Hard choices.  The world was full of them.  Tonya decided to take the risk.  She knelt, took the woman’s chained hand and made the woman part of her household, using her metacampus to make a small chemical change in the woman.

“Oh,” the woman said.  Despite the shackles on her feet, she dove into Tonya’s arms.  Tonya sat on the log and held the woman, rocking her gently.  She took careful inventory of herself as she did.  No headache, no queasy stomach, no light sensitivity of her own.  She did have enough capacity to support this woman.