Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) Read online

  Footsteps clunked down the back steps of the house and Tonya saw the second local man from the house stalk through the mud towards her. He was a strong man, with corded muscles, a hard face, and he wore anger like a cloud around him. Tonya wondered what some fool of an official in the house had said to set him off. He glared at the doctor and the officials, but when he saw Delia unchained, in Tonya’s arms, the glare faded into a smile, an unnatural expression on that hard face.

  “Ma’am, my name’s Pete, and this here’s my wife, Delia. You clear up this nonsense about her bein’ a Transform?”

  “Pete,” Tonya said. “Delia is a Transform. I’ve had to make her a part of my household to save her life.”

  “Oh,” Pete said. “Damn.” He paused and studied Tonya for a while. “You the Focus from Philly?” Tonya nodded. Pete licked his lips. “She’s gonna have to go live with you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about me?” Pete asked. “Do I get a say in this? Can I come visit her?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but you don’t get a say in this.” This was the hardest part, especially for a normal man dealing with a newly transformed wife. “You’re more than welcome to join my household also, Mr. Vinote. We have a great many jobs for strong men.” Tonya didn’t use even a hint of her charisma as she spoke. This decision he had to make on his own. “What do you do?”

  Pete laughed bitterly. “Logging. Not much call for that in Philly.”

  Transform households needed two Transform women to support each Transform man. From the days of Anne Marie Sieurs, the European Focus who discovered how to move juice from Transform women to Transform men, households always needed more men. “Willing to learn to be a bodyguard?” Tonya said.

  “Sure, ma’am, if your people’ll teach me.”

  Tonya nodded. Delia flew from Tonya’s embrace into her husband’s arms and beamed back at Tonya. She smiled back, happy to see something work out well for once.

  Delia’s joy wasn’t enough to banish the nagging fear from the back of Tonya’s mind. “So this anomalous induced transformation was what brought you here today, Tommy?” she asked, on the way back to her car a few minutes later. He normally delegated problems of this nature to others.

  Tommy leaned over, close to Tonya’s ear. “No, ma’am,” he said. “There’s been an Arm transformation. We have the new Arm in the St. Louis Transform Detention Center and we need your help with her. Desperately.”

  Tonya’s stomach clenched. Arms were trouble…and Arms were one of Tonya’s official responsibilities.

  ---

  Sweat dripped down Focus Tonya Biggioni’s back as she concentrated on the telephone conversation with the Arm, Stacy Keaton. Tonya was the appointed (and supposedly elected) Northeast Region Representative on the Focus Council of the United Focuses of America and Stacy’s contact with the Focus Network. As an important Focus she did enough business to merit an office, but it was small, hot and sticky, even with the door and window open. She had spent the last day on the phone dealing with the problems this new Arm transformation had caused.

  Even at her best, Keaton was nearly impossible to deal with and always stressful.

  Today, Keaton was not at her best.

  “We talked about this six months ago, Stacy,” Tonya said. “You said you wanted to get hold of the next Arm who transformed and break her in, because you’d decided that there was no way for a young Arm on her own to survive.”

  “The original idea, bitch, was that both of us would be involved,” Keaton said. Something in Keaton’s voice when they were negotiating always reminded Tonya of wild animals. Dangerous wild animals.

  “The Council, in their inestimable wisdom, has forbidden me to get directly involved with this new Arm,” Tonya said. “If I were to push that limit, you’re likely to find me out of a job on the Council and you being hunted down by Focuses. They’re not going to object if you get involved, though. I can provide indirect help, but that’s about it.” If Stacy got herself killed, quite a few of the more senior Focuses would have a party – at least those who didn’t have the stomach to hire her, through Tonya, for intimidation and wet work. Over the last eighteen months Keaton had received quite a few significant payments from the wealthier Focuses for that sort of job. Many of the payments Keaton received from the less wealthy Focuses were in trade or barter, in the form of surplus Transforms extracted from nearby Transform Clinics. Tonya wondered, at times, what their tame FBI friends would think if they knew some of the Focuses they were helping and protecting had been pimping surplus Transforms to an Arm.

  Part of Tonya’s job was to make sure they didn’t find out, one of the many reasons her negotiations with Keaton were so stressful.

  Tonya heard something crash and break on the other end of the line. “Fucking first Focuses,” Keaton said, referring to the cadre of Focuses who’d arranged the breakout from Quarantine and who were still very important. At least Keaton knew the politics involved. “Is it because those shit-faced whores are afraid of exposure, because they’re afraid you’ll get to much fucking political power, or have they just lost their goddamned minds?” About the only time Keaton didn’t sprinkle her language with obscenities was when she was about to do serious physical harm to a person or needed something badly. Or when she fell into a psychotic rage, in which case she rarely said a thing as she ripped people apart.

  “They’re spooked by the new Arm’s attempted escape and the deaths of those two State Troopers,” Tonya said. “What Suzie said was that this Arm is too dangerous to take a chance on.” Focus Suzie Schrum, the eighth Focus to transform in the United States, ‘retired’ from ‘public’ Focus politics three years ago but served as Tonya’s political boss. Tonya often felt she was little more than Suzie’s mouthpiece. Only about a quarter of the time, though, as Suzie didn’t care about most issues, which made Tonya’s political post bearable. It didn’t help that Tonya’s other major backer, Shirley Patterson, was the leader of the first Focuses. Shirley’s patronage made Tonya’s dealings with the rest of the first Focuses politically tricky.

  “Suzie’s a fucking loon,” Keaton said. Tonya didn’t argue. “Hancock panicked and the idiot Troopers shot each other. The fact that some cops died and Hancock’s still walking is a plus in my book. On the other hand, the scene around the St. Louis Detention Center is hot, crawling with State Police. Some fucking turd-town Mayor’s raised hell or something.”

  “Too high profile for you?”

  “Look bitch, face facts. That’s my face on the damned wanted posters in all the goddamned Post Offices, not yours. I’ve got my own problems to deal with, and I can’t just waltz in and start training some motherfucking baby Arm without attracting the wrong sort of attention.”

  Tonya wiped her face with a handkerchief and took a deep breath to steady herself. “Be patient. You know how this will play out. The locals will quiet down once the FBI takes over security and I’ve already made sure that it’s our FBI people.”

  “You got Bates?”

  “Bates got me.”

  “You got Focus Adkins?”

  First Focus Wini Adkins indirectly ran the Midwest Region and thought of the St. Louis Detention Center as hers. She had been Tonya’s Focus mentor early on; they were still friends. Wini had hired Keaton, through Tonya, several times. “No. She doesn’t want to get involved.”

  “Figures. You got Zielinski?”

  “He got himself.” That damned doctor – Secret Agent Zielinski, her pet name for him – had already been in St. Louis when she had found out about the new Arm. He was nearly as annoying to work with as Keaton.

  “At least that’s something. I’ll just wait, then,” Keaton said. “I’ll check back next month.”

  Tonya tapped a pencil on her desk and counted to ten, backwards. Damn Keaton! “You said that if you waited too long you weren’t sure you’d be able to reach a new Arm and get control of her.” What Stacy had said was if the new Arm was anything like her, after a few months nobody would be able to tell her shit because she would be too full of herself. Tonya sure wouldn’t disagree with that.

  “You get me in then, Tonya. You’re the devious Focus bitch.”

  Tonya’s pencil snapped in her fingers. She threw it across her desk and shook her head, looking over the roster of Network people involved in the Hancock situation. Keaton may have be the most frightening human being Tonya had ever met, able to terrify her even in a telephone conversation, but the stress of dealing with her did keep Tonya on her toes. It helped her think.

  Tonya liked stress. The stress often weighed heavily on her household, but that didn’t bother Tonya. That’s what her household was for. “I think I’ve got an idea,” Tonya said, after looking over her paperwork.

  “Talk to the phone, bitch.”

  Tonya told the Arm about her idea.

  Dr. Henry Zielinski: September 18, 1966

  “Have a seat, Hank,” Special Agent in Charge Paul Gauthier said, snapping his eyes up at Dr. Zielinski as he came into the room. Gauthier went back to ladling sugar into his oversized coffee mug.

  Dr. Zielinski sat at the conference room table and passed up the doughnuts left from the last meeting he had attended six hours ago. A moment later, Dr. Bentwyler sat down beside Zielinski, a pen clenched tightly in his teeth and a sketchpad in his hands. Special Agent Tommy Bates already sat at the end of the table, the ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips. He wore dark circles under his eyes from his travels of the past few days.

  This quickly organized meeting had yanked Dr. Zielinski out of his office with a mere five-minute’s notice. Not that he had been working. The Hancock case already had the bureaucratic paperwork piled high, but he had done enough of that for one day. Instead, he had pushed the piles to the side and taken out his photos and slides. His photography hobby was even defensible as part of his work on Transforms; it helped him spot the physical changes Focuses and Arms accumulated over time. He had gotten academic papers published based on those photos. Before he had started the paperwork, he had made a phone call to one of his Network contacts to fill them in on what was going on. All normal routine.

  The fact someone had flushed Gauthier out from under the floorboards before the shit hit the fan meant the FBI was more serious about this new Arm transformation than normal. Paul Gauthier was the Special Agent in Charge for Transform Affairs. He reported directly to the Assistant Director in charge of the FBI’s Washington headquarters, who reported directly to Director Hoover. Gauthier’s younger brother was a Transform in Focus Elisabeth Holder’s household. It gave Gauthier a more compassionate perspective on Transforms than most.

  Perhaps there was some hope for the Hancock project, despite Dr. Zielinski’s worries. He hated situations where he didn’t have full responsibility over a newly transformed Arm. Not good for the Arm and not good for his career.

  “What brings you here, Paul?” Zielinski asked as Gauthier looked up, ready to speak.

  From long association with the FBI, Dr. Zielinski knew that unless he took control of the meeting he wouldn’t learn anything useful. Gauthier frowned at Dr. Zielinski but answered his question anyway. “It’s been awhile since I’ve worked with either you or Dr. Bentwyler, so I decided to touch base with the two of you before we really got going on this Hancock project.” Gauthier took a long sip of coffee. He was a tall man, just over six feet, athletic despite being in his early fifties. He wore his gray-flecked red hair in a crew cut, and had been out in the sun recently, because his freckles were prominent. Gauthier still drank coffee by the gallon, Dr. Zielinski noted, and his teeth were still coffee stained. “So far, none of my peers or superiors in the FBI has shown any interest in Mrs. Hancock’s transformation. On the other hand, my phone has been ringing off the hook with questions from various important Focuses, including the Network head.” Focus Michelle Claunch, not one of Dr. Zielinski’s favorite people. “There’s some disagreement among the Focuses as to whether we should help Mrs. Hancock or make sure she dies.”

  Nods around the table. The leading Focuses had changed their minds several times on the Arm issue, and the official position of the Focuses this year was to cultivate the Arms. ‘They are our fellow sisters! They could protect us.’ He hadn’t believed the Arms would be able to get along with the Focuses until he had spent some time with the one Arm who’d survived, Stacy Keaton. She had proven him and many others wrong, but her help didn’t keep a sizeable number of Focuses from agitating for Keaton’s death.

  “You have a plan?” Zielinski asked. Outside, the sun made the day bright, the sum total of what he could tell of the outside world through the barred windows. If this place didn’t have air conditioning it would be unbearable.

  “I have interests,” Gauthier said, as he looked Zielinski over. “I’m counting on you for the plan, Hank.” Gauthier took another swig of coffee. “Since the last time we worked together my main interest in Transforms has changed from placement of new Transforms to the Monster problem.” Zielinski nodded. After the ’64 elections, the Johnson Administration established a department within HEW to support the Transforms (at least with lip service) and to direct research on Transform Sickness (millions of dollars of pork barrel spending, often wasted due to needless duplication and unnecessary bureaucratic overhead). For the last eighteen months Dr. Zielinski had been butting heads with the HEW, who thought they possessed all the answers and didn’t respect his expertise. The FBI had once placed the new Transforms into Focus households due to a historical accident. Not anymore. Gauthier continued: “I’ve given Tommy authorization to hire Mrs. Hancock to help us with the Monster Eradication Program. We don’t like to publicize this, but some large sections of Federal land have gotten so Monster infested we’ve had to close them off to civilians.”

  “I see,” Zielinski said. He hadn’t realized the Monster problem was so bad. “How are you proposing to handle the juice issue?” Arms were juice consumers who got their juice by killing Transforms and the public was understandably squeamish on the subject.

  “The usual,” Gauthier said. All Detention Centers had surplus Transforms, many who chose suicide as opposed to withdrawal or becoming a Monster. Some of these people would go to Mrs. Hancock. It was one thing, though, to provide her with surplus Transforms while she was confined as a ward of the state, another to provide her with surplus Transforms as an employee perk. That would be unprecedented, and Dr. Zielinski couldn’t imagine the legal issues involved. The public outcry wouldn’t be pretty, either. “Unfortunately, as you well know, we can’t work out the details until we have a living Arm on board. We’re going to be counting on you, Hank, to provide us the Arm. Before we can train Mrs. Hancock to be a Monster hunter, she has to survive her initial transformation and stabilize.”

  Dr. Zielinski nodded. It sounded like he might actually get the support he needed to keep Mrs. Hancock alive, which would give him a leg up on his own goals as well. Any support, beyond the normal government ambivalence toward Arms, would be good.

  The history of government involvement with Transforms wasn’t promising; before their escape near the end of the Eisenhower administration, all Transforms had been locked up in Quarantine. The Kennedy and Johnson administration had accepted the Transforms’ escape from Quarantine and implemented plans to integrate the surviving Transforms into local communities, in households led by Focuses. This was fine for Transforms and Focuses but left a gaping policy hole concerning Arms. What came next was anybody’s guess, except in the last presidential election the Republicans pledged to put all the Transforms back in Quarantine ‘to stop this deadly scourge in its tracks’. Zielinski had always voted Republican, but hadn’t been able to force himself to vote in the ’64 elections.

  He didn’t say that if this Arm was anything like the other two who had lasted more than a month, there wasn’t a chance in hell she would agree to hunt Monsters for a living. Two Arms weren’t a large enough sample to be worth even a side comment, though.

  “Although I have my own experiences to draw on regarding Arm transformations, for the Hancock project to succeed we’re going to need the records on Stacy Keaton’s transformation and adjustment period,” Dr. Zielinski said. He had dealt with Stacy Keaton in a few terrifying episodes these past two years, but he hadn’t been able to convince the touchy Arm to reminisce. She was the one Arm he hadn’t been involved with during her initial transformation, and it irked him that she was the only one who survived her transformation and succeeded as an independent Arm. Unfortunately, as a one-woman crime wave, she had soured the public and medical community opinion on Arms, enough to prompt the local officials in Missouri to agitate for Mrs. Hancock’s immediate execution.

  “I wouldn’t mind getting hold of those records myself, but they’re just not available,” Bates said. Gauthier nodded.

  “According to Director Hoover, that episode officially didn’t happen,” Gauthier said. “As you know, we weren’t involved in the Stacy Keaton affair.” “We” being the Network-affiliated pro-Transform FBI Agents. “All I know is that the Assistant Directors involved were asked to retire afterward and that the records were sealed.” Gauthier’s explanation fit Dr. Zielinski’s knowledge on the subject. Keaton had been abused while she had been in the custody of the FBI, likely driven psychotic, and after her escape, she became a criminal to survive, a profound embarrassment to the FBI.

  Dr. Bentwyler looked up, startled. While the rest of them had been jawing, Dr. Bentwyler had been sketching a picture of Mrs. Hancock from memory, Dr. Bentwyler’s equivalent of Dr. Zielinski’s own photography hobby. “You were involved with other Arm transformations besides Rose Desmond?” he asked Dr. Zielinski. The Rose Desmond affair had made the national media. Everyone knew about Dr. Zielinski’s involvement with Rose Desmond.

  Dr. Bentwyler’s official title was Staff Psychologist of the St. Louis Detention Center, but his main purpose here was to act as the Focus Network’s spy. Dr. Zielinski suspected Bentwyler reported directly to Focus Claunch and didn’t envy him one bit. Dr. Zielinski’s Network ‘boss’, Focus Tonya Biggioni, was difficult to deal with, but even she was more reasonable than Focus Claunch.