Free Once We Were Human (The Commander Book 1) by Randall Farmer Page A

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