The Good Doctor's Tales Folio Three Read online

  Hank smiled at the like minds think alike moment, but decided not to comment. Instead, he immediately got to work, for he foresaw this would be a rather long set of operations.

  Last up was Tonya herself, and when they finally worked the sheet off her, and cut off her dress, Dr. Kepke ran for the door and vomited. Someone in this shape should have the sheet going the other way, over her head, toe tagged and ready for autopsy.

  “Focuses can survive a hell of a lot worse than this,” Hank said, over his shoulder to Frank, tsk tsking at the damage the Arm did to Tonya.

  “A little worried, Hank?” Tonya said, still conversational, despite the pain of her condition. “If Keaton had done this to you, where would you be?”

  “Comatose, in shock, and fighting for my life,” Hank said, looking at Tonya’s legs, twisted into pretzels by the Arm. Her skin had already healed around the bones sticking out of her body. “Ten hours untreated, with four compound fractures, and with all the dirt and crap ground into the wounds like this, I’d be facing four amputations due to incipient gangrene. If I hadn’t bled to death already.” Hank paused and examined Tonya’s wounds again. No, he wouldn’t survive an attack of this nature, and Keaton’s extravagance was worth worrying about. Glory would be chiding him about bad dreams for months due to this. “To fix your arms and legs, Tonya, I’m going to have to rebreak the bones and rupture the new skin your Focus healing created.” Another pause, after realizing what he hadn’t been seeing. “You must be starving, Tonya.” Healing of this magnitude took a lot of food to sustain.

  “I’ve been wounded like this before, Hank, and I believe you were the one who told me to lay off the eating to avoid setting in the damage.”

  “You overdid it this time, Tonya,” Hank said. The hunger control evidenced here was more than impressive. He hadn’t realized any of the Focuses possessed such an insane level of self-control. “Your body’s been cannibalizing your major organs and muscles.”

  “You mean I can eat?”

  “Yes, starting now. Fluids, too.” Hank turned to Focus Abernathy, who had crept back in during the first of the surgeries, unable to resist the instinctive call to help a Focus in need. She had helped Hank immeasurably, holding down Tonya’s Transforms when they started to thrash in their comas during the surgery. Because of the manual labor involved in her farm work, Abernathy was as strong as an Arm of similar mass, or so he suspected. Warned by previous bad experiences, Hank hadn’t given Tonya’s Transforms anything more than topical pain killers – total anesthesia shut down a Transform’s juice-based metabolic maintenance system, an often fatal occurrence. The woman Transform patient might have lived through anesthesia, but the gutshot bodyguard would have died. Nor could he anesthetize Tonya – both Focuses and Arms had such vigorous juice-based metabolisms they resisted any painkillers, even the topicals, with relative ease.

  “Marcia, could you rustle up some high calorie food for Tonya. Milk, too.”

  She nodded and rushed off.

  “You’re going to have a patient eating during surgery?” Dr. Kepke asked.

  Hank nodded. “You’re in for a show, Frank. Surgery on a Focus is nothing like you’ve ever seen or imagined. Pain killers don’t work, for one.”

  “God.”

  “Luckily, Tonya here is a master at pain control.”

  “Not exactly true,” Tonya said, grabbing at the first plate of food that Focus Abernathy brought in, and stuffing cold leftover tuna casserole into her mouth without bothering with the silverware. “I feel the pain,” she said, around a mouthful of food, “but I’ve taught myself not to let it affect me. It’s the pain responses which will cause all the big problems.”

  “Inhuman,” Dr. Kepke said, his voice low.

  “How are you going to deal with my legs, anyway?” Tonya asked, repeating an earlier question and ignoring Dr. Kepke. Her question gave Dr. Zielinski a good reading on the Focus’s juice level. All Focuses exhibited significant short-term memory issues when their juice levels got too low. Tonya would be aghast at her slip; he larded it away for their next verbal sparring session. “It doesn’t appear you’re going to amputate, which is what I feared needed to happen. I wasn’t looking forward to a year and a half of leg regeneration.”

  Frank turned green, as Hank got a bone saw and a hammer out of the trunk. “I’m going to rebreak them, then I’ll use metal plates and screws to put them back in place. You might want to tell Frank and Marcia here some of your Monster hunting stories.” Hank paused, at Tonya’s frown. “Consider that an order, Mrs. Biggioni,” he said, in his commanding voice. “You’re going to need all the distractions we can arrange.”

  Tonya nodded and started to talk.

  Hank swung the hammer.

  “So, why do you have me walking around like this?” Tonya said. Monday evening fast approached, though the grey cloud deck muted the effect. Hank held Tonya’s elbow, quite gentlemanly, and tried to ignore the hostile and awestruck ring of bodyguards around him as he led Tonya around Focus Abernathy’s farm.

  “Focuses heal too fast for any sort of bed rest to help. Don’t forget that in addition to the bone damage and soft tissue damage, there was quite a bit of muscle damage. You also cannibalized enough of your normal muscle tissues to make a difference. In any event, I want you more active than normal, doing everyday activities, for the next week or two. Walking, stooping, lifting light objects. Normal muscle use.”

  Tonya nodded.

  “I also wanted to talk to you about Keaton, away from prying ears.”

  Another nod. “You don’t think we’ve seen the last of her, do you?” Tonya asked.

  Hank nodded. “Despite our personal differences, Tonya, I think we’re going to have to cooperate on this issue.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Tonya said. “I’d rather say ‘over my dead body’, but this brings up another question – with the Arm’s murderous reputation, do you have any idea why she left us alive?”

  “I think she’s begging for help. At least from her predatory viewpoint.” Two points made a line and all that. “I’m guessing she decided she can’t survive alone.”

  “Well, I’m not going to go out of my way to help her, not after this episode,” Tonya said. “I’d truthfully rather never run into her again.”

  “I can understand that,” Hank said. “I don’t believe it’s going to be up to us, though.”

  ---

  “Zielinski?”

  Hank glanced across his office, and waved away Dr. Sellstrom. They had been going through a batch of CVs – curriculum vitae, what passed for resumes among the PhD set – to replace Dr. Kepke, who quit the Transform program two weeks ago.

  “This is my friend from Phoenix, isn’t it?” Hank asked as Dr. Sellstrom closed the door, though he didn’t recognize the voice. He suspected someone had tapped his phone again. His FBI contact and Focus Network colleague, Special Agent Tommy Bates, had grilled him for hours just after his return from his surgical trip to the New York City area to stitch up Tonya and her people, and Tommy hadn’t been happy to learn about his contact with Stacy Keaton.

  “Oh, you’re good, aren’t you, Dr. Zielinski. Yes. It’s me, hun. Did the bitch live?”

  Tonya. “Yes. She wasn’t impressed with your skills in Celtic knotwork.”

  “Huh. Good. I’ve tried to get in contact with her, but her damned phone screeners keep hanging up on me.”

  “Try the third number.” Tonya’s private line.

  Pause. “I’ll do that. The idiots behind the last episode made another attempt. They had some tomato stacked out ready to be squeezed, and I walked into it like a fucking idiot.”

  Whatever Focus caused these troubles – a name he hadn’t been able to squeeze out of Tonya, no big shock – had set up a prey Transform as bait for Keaton as a trap, to try to kill her.

  “You walked out again, too, I take it,” Hank said, not quite a question.

  “Not without damage, though nothing too serious. I stole their pr
ofessional.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hank said. Professional?

  “Another in the same line as tall, dark and snotty.”

  Oh, another Monster hunter, as was Tonya. “One like me, or one like tall dark and snotty?” That is, a normal or a Transform.

  “Just a guy.”

  A normal. Hank took a deep breath. “May I ask why you’re telling me this?”

  “Just so that if you see some reports in the newspaper about someone helping me, you won’t get jealous. He’s teaching me all the professional tricks, you see.”

  Crap. Just what the world needed, someone teaching Keaton about the proper use of modern weaponry. Keaton was starting to get serious about long-term survival. No more fumbling around with pawnshop pistols.

  “So, how reliable are the other phone numbers on this list?” Keaton asked. “Some of them were a real surprise.” Ah, the real meat of the conversation. She wanted to know which Network people would be safe to deal with.

  “For the moment, avoid the suits,” Hank said. The Focus Network had more than a few FBI and police officers helping them – several who had Transform spouses. Their opinion of Keaton wasn’t printable. “The guys in the white lab coats should be safe.” Doctors, like him. “The beautiful ladies are the big problem, and to make your determinations about them, you’ll need to talk to tall, dark and snotty.” Hank didn’t have any idea which Focuses would be helpful, and which would not, and only Tonya had a chance of answering Keaton’s question. “However, most of the white lab coats on your list are going to be spooked much more easily than I am.”

  “Figured that out, Zielinski. Later.” Dial tone.

  Grendel and Wandering Shade

  Élan.

  Once dinner possessed élan. No longer. Sometimes dinner lived through losing élan. Sometimes not.

  Willie chomped again, swallowed and licked his lips. Tasty. Downstairs, his Gal, Marcie, gave up on her screaming for the evening. Unlike this one, Marcie had lived through his taking her élan.

  The television flicked on, all on its own, a blue light in black darkness.

  “Massster?” Willie said, all pins and needles, restless energy coursing through his lizard body. He didn’t like being startled.

  “Grendel.”

  Willie relaxed to the sound of his Master’s voice. Wandering Shade had returned and he sounded peeved. Many things about Willie made his Master peeved, enough to lead him to name Willie ‘Grendel’. Willie, not at all unlearned in his former life, recognized his new name as an insult.

  “The hunt wasss a sssuccesss,” Willie said, looking at his Master, lit by the glow of the television. As normal, his Master dressed as a policeman. He was a policeman in many different police forces. Willie had even ridden in his Master’s police car several times, though always in the back.

  Wandering Shade grunted. “Watch the news.” Wandering Shade had been Willie’s Master for the last three months, ever since Willie transformed. His Master kept him alive.

  Willie looked up from the tasty remains to gaze at the television and the clock above it. Twenty-five after. Time for the California story. Sure enough, on the television some fidgety beat reporter talked into a microphone, next to a doctor, somewhere sunny with mountains behind them.

  “Today we have Dr. Lewis Jeffers, Transform Specialist at the Communicable Disease Center, speaking to us today from Sunnyvale, California. Dr. Jeffers, can you tell us the significance of the Hancock escape from the St. Louis Detention Center? It’s been fourteen years and we still have no cure for Transform Sickness. Why?”

  “She essscaped, Massster?” Willie said. He knew about Hancock, a fellow Major Transform, one unjustly incarcerated. Seemed she hurt a few people by accident on her way out. Willie sympathized.

  “Listen.”

  “Transform Sickness has been around for longer than fourteen years, Dan,” Dr. Jeffers said. “The media dates the start of Transform Sickness to the appearance of Anne-Marie Sieurs of Nancy, France, who transformed in 1952 and became the first Focus, the first able to keep any Transforms alive. In reality, Transform Sickness existed before the advent of Miss Sieurs. As far as Mrs. Hancock? Although the FBI calls her an ‘Arm’, to us doctors she’s nothing more than a Failed Focus, a victim of the mind and body warping Armenigar’s Syndrome that turns a Focus into a Monster.”

  “Undisclosed sources say her escape was an inside job, Dr. Jeffers, that some of the doctors and nurses caring for her aided in her flight,” the reporter said. “Why would anyone help a Monster?”

  “I don’t believe she had any inside help,” Dr. Jeffers said. “The strength of a transformed victim of Armenigar’s Syndrome cannot be underest…”

  The television flicked off, returning the room to a darkness broken only by the distant city lights of Missoula. Willie saw nearly as well in darkness as he did in daylight. As did his Master.

  “Aww, Massster, it wasss just getting interesssting. Thisss Hancock soundsss cute.” A woman Major Transform who understood his urges. Wouldn’t that be something?

  “Cute? Think, Willie, what do you know about Arms?” Wandering Shade said. Quick as lighting and without a sound he sat on a couch on the far side of the room.

  “Well, jussst what you’ve taught me, Massster. They’re juice consumersss and hunt down men and women Transformsss.”

  “And you?”

  “Well, I hunt men and women Transformsss as well, but I consume their élan, not their juice.” He paused to think, difficult for him now. He had lost so much when he transformed. With work, he figured out his Master’s puzzle. “The Arm bitchesss are our compet… pet… petitorsss?” Even if they consumed different substances, they still pursued the same prey.

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.” Willie hissed, and went back to his chomping. Hunting was hard enough without competition. Although Transform Sickness had existed for quite a while, as Dr. Jeffers said, it generated few victims. “Massster, I need more Gals. Thisss one,” he nosed the prone body which bled all over the Master’s polished oak floor, “didn’t make it.”

  “She didn’t survive your initial élan draw because you didn’t follow my suggestions,” Wandering Shade said. “Which, alas, I’m going to have to do something about, my dear Grendel.”

  Willie shivered. He hated the punishment. “At leassst let me finisssh.” The punishment, the altering of his Master’s Law inside him, was extremely painful and always knocked him out.

  The punishment had benefits, though. The Law kept Willie from becoming a mindless beast.

  Wandering Shade nodded and Willie tried to nod back, difficult because he was far too much the lizard these days. He stood slightly under seven feet tall, had smooth hairless gray-green scaly skin and a short stubby tail. His hands and feet were now almost two feet long, and his original-sized fingers ended in razor sharp claws. His face had elongated a little, though he didn’t have a muzzle. Although his nose had shrunk to mere nostril openings, he still retained his human ears, which he thought odd. His penis? That hadn’t gone lizard. That had grown larger. Willie was proud of his penis. “Isss sssomething elssse wrong, massster?” Wandering Shade wasn’t normally so harsh.

  “There’s another like you now, Grendel,” his Master said. No, not harsh. Bothered.

  “Like me? You’ve massstered another beassst?”

  “No. Another Master has mastered another Beast. I didn’t think he had it in him.”

  “An enemy?” The thought excited Willie. “Someone to fight?” Willie liked to fight. A lot.

  “We’ll see. Not yet.” Wandering Shade chuckled. “As long as this new Master and his beastly charge don’t interfere with my plans…well, then he’s my friend, isn’t he, Grendel?” His Master let loose a low and scary laugh.

  “Yesss.” Too bad. Willie’s fighting fantasies fled his mind. He calmed himself, which took work, as well as several more chomps of his dinner.

  “Once I fix you up with some new Laws, we’re going to go e
ast, where the hunting is more advantageous,” Wandering Shade said. “I think I can better preserve your intellect if I can keep you in more élan, which means more Gals. I think more Gals will survive if I can keep you smarter.”

  “Not the cccity landsss again?” The city lands stank!

  “The cities are where the Transforms are.” Wandering Shade stood and paced. “For some unknown reason, the middle Mississippi Valley area is crawling with Transforms. We oppressed male Transforms have to learn to stick together. If we can unify we might be able to change the moronic domineering system the back-stabbing Focus bitches put together and get ourselves some justice. Get ourselves some proper notice, something outside of the check-out counter tabloids. Hell, I just read a poll that rated interest in Transform Sickness down between Dutch Elm disease and Alewives in the Great Lakes.” He got to the far edge of the room and paced back. “If no one else will take this stand, I might have to. How very revolutionary! I’ll…”

  Willie tuned out his Master’s oft-repeated rant and went back to his meal. He hammered his bony hand down upon the side of the barely post-pubescent girl Transform’s hours-dead head, shattering it. He began to scoop out and eat what sat inside the skull, a delicacy he greatly enjoyed.

  Willie always appreciated brains.

  ---

  The woman on Grendel’s shoulder had given up on her yelling, pawing and crying miles ago. Because of her he ran on threes, not fours. Up ahead, his abandoned farmhouse stood in the brushy bottomland south of Memphis. He climbed the two steps of the porch, brushed aside the wooden door attached to the doorjamb by only one hinge, and turned sideways to enter. Home. It stank just the way it should. His Gals howled in the basement below, just as they should when they heard him enter. He got the keys.

  However, he had run for too long and even a beast like him needed to rest occasionally. He dropped the woman on the floor of the living room and spread out on the couch. The springs wept under his weight.