Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) (6 page)

He crept along, watching warily around him with his eyes and ears and with his new sense.  Besides the terrifying glow of the Focus and the members of her household, each one printed with an echo of their Focus, he sensed
other
things. 

A strange fog surrounded the Focus’s household.  He had found other patches of fog in Miami, around the Miami Transform Clinic and also in a cemetery on the north side of town where a Monster had been buried a few weeks ago.  Those patches of fog were gone because Bob had
fed
on them, as if he had become, ludicrously, a fog vampire. 

The fog wasn’t real, though.  He only sensed it with his extra sense. 

“I’ve got to get closer,” he whispered.  The first time he tried to feed on the fog, the patch around the Transform Clinic, he had tried from miles away.  The fog had satisfied something basic within him, but afterwards, he decided he had fooled himself.  He had no more than tasted it.  To
feed
on the fog he learned he had to get close to it, within a block.  It had left him happy and sated. 

The Clinic’s fog had been enough to satisfy him for a week.  He
had cowered in his hidden shelter, talking to himself, leaving only to scavenge food.  While hidden, he tried to figure out what happened with this ‘feeding’.  None of his many explanations satisfied him.

A week later, the craving became intense enough to force him out again.  He found the cemetery and fed, this time getting
inside
the fog.  This trick satisfied his cravings for two weeks.  The only fog remaining in Miami hovered around the Focus household.  For a proper feeding, he would have to get right up next to that household, inside the fog – but the Focus there terrified him.  He couldn’t even consider the possibility that the Focus might sense him, because when he did he found himself paralyzed with fear.

He crept along the path, which led approximately in the right direction.

Ahead of him, something rustled in the brush.  Bob hit the ground and buried himself in the weeds.  He froze, every sense alert, looking for the source of the sound. 

Something inside of him started to work backwards.  All of a sudden, his little remnant of juice spewed out in a rush of fog, vomit from the intestines of his soul.  He shivered and felt himself start to black out from the terror. 

But not quite.  He waited, sweating and shivering.  Eventually, a small calico cat slipped out from under the underbrush.

A cat.

Bob didn’t allow himself to relax.  Possibly some owner was out looking for it.  He wondered if the cat might possibly have rabies or some other disease.  He looked, but the cat didn’t have a collar. 

After a long moment, the cat disappeared back into the brush.  Bob waited several minutes.  The fog vomit swirled around him, small, but calm and peaceful, only a little different from all the other fog he consumed.

“The hell.” Hunger outweighed his fear that this different fog would poison him and he slowly drew the fog back in.  It didn’t seem to hurt him.

Several minutes later, he got up and resumed his journey. 

“I’m losing it,” he said.  “Not only am I out here at night whispering to myself, but I’m so messed up a cat can panic me enough to sick up on it!”  His mind continued to work as his senses watched.  The fog was a chemical waste product of juice, he guessed, produced by other Transforms. 

“I need more fog,” he said.  He thought about the Focus and her household again and nearly curled up in a panicked ball.

Tears leaked from his eyes.  The crippling fear left him so wretched and incapable.  Without his overwhelming terror he might even be able to cope with the rest of this Transform Sickness business, figure out how to survive, go back to his wife, and live like a human being.  Still, he needed the fog.  Ten minutes later he managed to ignore his terror and stand.

As he edged carefully through the large drain that carried the creek under Magnolia Street, Bob had a terrifying thought: what if he needed this overwhelming fear to survive?  He
had
transformed into something else.  Perhaps there was a real reason for his fear.  Many animals lived in fear, shy retiring creatures that startled at noises and attempted to stay hidden.  Rabbits, mice, deer.  Many other animals.  In every one, fear was a survival characteristic. 

Perhaps he should learn to use his fear. 

Bob wanted to kick himself.  For three weeks, he had functioned on instinct and panic.  It was far past time to use his head.  He could use this fear.  Stay quiet and hidden.  Put work into staying safe.  When he did need to do something risky, he would think about it, plan, and make it as safe as possible.  Use the fear to keep him alert when he exposed himself to danger. 

“I have to figure out what’s out there that justifies this kind of fear,” he said.  Prey animals that lived in fear had predators that hunted them.  That could explain his reactions. 

The Focus household would be a good test.  It scared the daylights out of him.  He would learn to harness his fear to serve him, to get as close as possible to the Focus’s house without risk.  If he succeeded, he might be ready to travel.  He already realized he would have to leave Miami to find more of his fog.

Yes, he thought to himself, he could learn to use his fear, instead of letting the fear use him. 

If some big predator didn’t get him first.

---

The squeak-squeak of his undersized bicycle still bothered him.  The bike had been squeaking for the last five hours, since he had pedaled into a pothole near Holopaw.  The problem, as always, was fear.  The squeaks sounded too loud to Bob.  Still, three in the morning was a perfectly safe time to be out riding a bicycle on a country road near Orlando, his destination. 

He would have done damn near anything for a shower.  The nights were warm and humid in central Florida this time of year and his progress left him drenched in sweat.  Worse, for four and a half weeks he
had worn the same clothes.  He had a significant beard by now, scruffy and filthy, like some sort of backwoods mountain man.  Any policeman who saw him would arrest him on the spot or chase him out of town.

At least the bicycle he found in that Miami dump still worked.  His night vision was good, but not perfect.  He
had
missed the pothole until he pedaled into it.

This wasn’t the sanest method of travel, but the bicycle was the safest he had been able to come up with.  Everything else he thought up involved being trapped in a small space with
other people
.  Terrifying, beyond contemplation.  Still, he didn’t have any choice.  He had gone too many days without the fog he craved.

An hour later, he smiled and allowed himself to whistle.  The wild scrubland on the left gave way to a suburb.  Orlando, finally.  He wasn’t tired.  When he had started, his legs had pained him from the pedaling.  Much to his surprise, the muscle pain had stopped on his third day of travel. 

Five minutes later, the road dead-ended at a main street lined with businesses.  He was tired of the exposure, of the danger of being out all night long, night after night.

From the shadows he carefully took in everything with his eyes, ears and the new sense.  A car rumbled by on the main road.  Small animals rustled in the brush, amid faint noises from early risers in the nearby homes.  They weren’t as scary as they
had been a week ago.  They left him wary, but not immobilized by terror.

He sensed none of the fog he desired at all.  He did notice the color of the nearest house, startling him.  He threw himself off the bicycle and down into the ditch, laying there for a moment with a tight grip on the bicycle.  “How could I have missed that before?” he said, his voice tremulous.  The siding of the house was a blue tinted off-white.  “I can see colors in the dark.”  He already knew his eyes and ears worked much better than normal. 
Six weeks ago he had worn thick glasses. 

The enhanced eyesight and the extra sense he gained hadn’t been his only changes.  He
had been living on garbage for weeks now.  He hadn’t gotten sick despite his exposure to the elements.  He choked down food he could never have eaten before.  These changes from Transform Sickness still unnerved him.

He would trade his soul for an engineering manual that described these changes.

Bob entered the city proper around four in the morning, still filthy with mud from the ditch.  He hadn’t sensed any Transform Clinics or Focus households, but he kept going anyway.  He didn’t plan to stop until he satisfied his consuming, distracting hunger for fog. 

He cycled the quiet streets past the center of Orlando, through wide boulevards lined with oleander and narrower streets surrounded by darkened businesses.  A few glass towers filled downtown, growing up like space-aged marvels among the older brick buildings.  Orlando would be wonderful if he sensed some hint of the fog.

He pedaled down Rosalind, passing Lake Eola, when he sensed something, a dim murky thing at the extreme edge of his range, strong and alive, a glow that faded into the background if he didn’t pay attention.  Only his desperate need for fog allowed him to sense it.  He stopped and studied.  The murky thing didn’t have the hard brilliance of a Focus or the smaller glow of a Transform.  He had found something new. 

Bob had a suspicion.  He had wondered how he appeared to another like himself.  One of his guesses had been something like this.

The prone figure awoke and looked straight at Bob.  From five miles away, the man made eye contact with Bob as if he was across the room.  It
was
another male Major Transform.  Bob felt like he was naked in front of a firing squad, filled with instant terror.  He turned his bike around and pedaled in the other direction, his heart booming in his chest. 

Bob lost track of the man after a couple of blocks.  He didn’t stop, because he had no reason to assume the man’s sense range wasn’t longer than his own. 

“I’m not thinking,” Bob said, minutes later, and stopped his bicycle.  He found himself still near the lake, in the shadow of an empty bandstand.  The Robert Meyer Hotel was right across the street and a big copper domed church was to the south of that.

The man didn’t follow him. 

Bob would have liked to keep running.  He wasn’t far enough away to be safe.  He wouldn’t feel safe until he was out of Orlando completely.  Truth was, he couldn’t leave.  He needed fog.  He wanted to contact another of his kind.  Panic wasn’t something he could afford.  He had to live with this.  Somehow.

This was one of those calculated risks he dreaded: to use his fear rather than let the fear use him.  The situation grabbed him excessively fast, leaving him with no time to get used to the idea.  He squeezed the handlebars of the bicycle and whimpered.  “
This is too hard,” he said to himself.  “I can’t deal with this.”

Bob put his foot on the pedal, then willed the foot back to the ground.  He had to be rational and figure things out.  Face his panic.  The stranger might be able to help.

If the stranger was like Bob, he was likely scared as well.  Bob took a deep breath, steadied his will, and turned the bike around.  Slowly, as the sweat of terror joined the sweat from the heat, he went back.  Two miles.  Two miles, and the man was still there, still prone, still gazing at Bob.  Was the man on a bed?  Perhaps in a house?  Bob stopped.  The man didn’t move.  Bob came a few feet closer.

Nothing.

A few feet closer.

Still nothing.

Bob gritted his teeth and pedaled a hundred yards.  He stopped, because he couldn’t make himself go closer.

He waited, long minutes.

Finally, the other man sat up.  Bob panicked and pedaled away, almost falling in his urgency.

However, he stopped again, fifty feet farther away.

The man still looked at him.  He didn’t move.

Bob pulled his nerve back together and came back the fifty feet.  He waited.

After long moments, the man stood.  He began to walk around a small area, and made odd motions.  After several moments of confusion, Bob realized he was getting dressed.  To come out. 

Bob’s nerve almost broke again, but he held it, clenching the handlebars of the bike so hard he was afraid he would bend them.  However, he didn’t move.

After a few moments, the man moved farther out, and down.  It seemed he was on the second floor of a building.  He came out of the building and took a few steps toward Bob.

Bob took a few steps back.

The man backed up two steps and squatted down, waiting.

Bob moved closer again.

The man moved closer again, and this time Bob did not retreat.

Bob started his approach approximately five miles from the man.  It took almost two hours for Bob and the other man to come close to each other, a cautious dance of advance and retreat.  Once, Bob’s nerve broke again and he fled for more than a mile. 

They met in the parking lot of Christ the King Missionary Baptist Church, on the north side of Orlando, at three minutes after seven in the morning.  The sun was up but hidden behind the nearby buildings.