The Broken Ones (Book 2): The Broken Families

by David Jobe

  “Will there be a registry of the Altered?” A blonde female reporter in a sweater and blue jeans yelled.

  Lanton shook his head. “That is something I believe falls outside of my jurisdiction. The politicians in Washington will have to decide on that type of thing. My hope is that they will work together with reason and not fall prey to fear and panic. Here, in Indianapolis, I will work to make sure every citizen of Indianapolis and its surrounding areas is treated fairly and within the confines of the law.”

  “How do you feel about the rise in vigilantism in the city recently?” A dark haired man with an almost surfer like cut asked. He wore a black business suit that made the hair style seem that much more out of place.

  Detective Lanton motioned Brian forward then turned back to the crowd. “I believe that we stand at a turning point in the history of the world. I cannot in good faith condone vigilante justice.” Claps resounded through the large sea of an audience. “And that goes for lynch mob justice as well. I have heard startling reports of people roaming the streets in search of Altered. The unfortunate incident with Mr. Montgomery cannot be repeated, and I will find those responsible for his attack. That being said, I think we must recognize that there is a distinction between defending oneself with the available means, and with seeking out crime to thwart. If you go looking for trouble, you will find it in me. Mr. Lockhart here-“ Some from the audience shouted ‘Bulletproof’, but Detective Lanton continued to speak, “has acted both times in the interest of resolving a scene he was placed at. Though his actions were ill-advised, he did not seek out confrontation. My hope is that in any future encounters those who possess extra abilities will be more mindful of the repercussions of their actions, and to allow the police to do the work you have asked us to do. I realize that there will be times when waiting is not an option, but if it is, please give the police a chance.”

  The crowd had begun to boo and hiss at the part where he had mentioned Brian and had seemed to give him a free pass. After that, Brian wasn’t sure they heard anything Detective Lanton had been saying. Brian took a step back, but Detective Lanton ushered him forward.

  “It is with this very mindset that the governor has decided to pardon Brian of any wrongdoing in the death of Mrs. Swandon.”

  The boos intensified, washing over Brian like a swarm of bees. People threw beverages that landed around their feet, exploding in sprays of liquid. It wasn’t the reporters at the front that were doing this, though they were quick to record it. No, it was the large assembly of people at the back of the reporters that were making the most noise and throwing things.

  Detective Lanton raised his hand to silence the crowd. “It is my hope instead that if any of you find yourself blessed or burdened with new abilities, and you want to make a difference. Join the police force.” His tone became somber. “And as my patrols have shown me, there are those of you out there that are hurting in private for whatever has happened to you. I urge you to seek out help. I know that sudden changes like these can feel like the end of the world, but give us time, and I am sure we will be able to help each and every one of you. There are support lines for people who think their world is at an end. It isn’t. It doesn’t matter what afflicts you, better days are out there.”

  From the front of the throng of reporters an older man, maybe late thirties, raised his hand waving his microphone at Lanton. When Lanton waved at him and nodded for the man to continue, he spoke up in a clear and decisive voice, “Can we speak to Bulletproof?”

  Lanton turned to regard Brian, his look seeming to ask if he was okay with it. When Brian gave the slightest of shrugs, the detective stood aside to give Brian some room.

  Brian stepped over, his eyes on the reporter that had asked for him. The reporter was a familiar face. He had seen the man on quite a few news reports throughout his youth. The man was notorious for being able to get to a story first and to uncover the truth no one wanted to give him. Though the name escaped him, he knew the station he worked for was WAIR. “Sir?” Brian fiddled with the microphone in front of him, his chains rattling as he did. The man was sharp dressed in a business suit of black with a red tie. Blonde hair cut in a wave to give him the look of a teen movie star, with the roughed jawline to match.

  “Stephen Holger, Channel 14 news, WAIR. How do you feel about your pardon, Bulletproof?” Mr. Holger thrust the microphone up toward Brian, though Brian himself was standing behind four different ones arranged on the podium.

  Brian swallowed, looking out at the sea of upturned faces. “First, I would ask that you all stop calling me Bulletproof. I was not asking the public to call me that last time. That was all a mistake. I would like to apologize to-“

  Mr. Holger cut him off, “How do you feel about the pardon, Bulletproof? Don’t you feel this is a slap in the face of the Swandon family? Your action left two kids without a mother. A husband without a wife. Parents without a child. Do you think you deserve a pardon?”

  Brian blinked. “I never meant to hurt anyone,” he pleaded.

  “But that is exactly what you did.” A voice cried out from the back of the crowd. The crowd split down the center as people turned to focus on the speaker. “Killed a wonderful woman in cold blood, whose only crime was driving down that godforsaken street.” The parting crowd revealed an older man, maybe early forties. The man’s hair shone red in the setting sun, the light of it shining through tall buildings to give the man a sort of reddish halo. He wore a red and gray flannel shirt buttoned up to his thick neck. He wore dirty black jeans over what looked like scuffed up work boots. “I buried my Suzie not even a month ago, and now they trot you out like some prized horse.” Isaac Swandon moved top march down the aisle the crowd had given him, but each step was a bit wobbly. In one hand he held a beer bottle that appeared to be empty.

  “Mr. Swandon,” Brian started, his tone pleading.

  “Don’t you say my name.” Mr. Swandon spat. “You got no right talking to me at all.” The man staggered forward, swaying into a young man who nodded at him and helped him keep his balance. “You keep your foul mouth shut.” He stumbled so more, working his way to the metal divider that the reporters had been standing behind.

  Brian noticed that all of the camera crew was watching Mr. Swandon, except for the one behind Mr. Holger. Both Mr. Holger and the camera man were focused on him as if zooming in on the pain and anguish that crossed his face. The look on Holger’s face was unsettling. It was as if the man fed off Brian’s misery He was drinking deep today.

  Brian could feel his face grow flush. He turned back to look at Mr. Swandon, who now stood a foot away from the metal barrier. Brian opened his mouth to say something, but he was stopped by the mayor speaking.

  “I think we best-“

  Mr. Swandon growled and launched the bottle he was holding at the mayor. Several officers moved to protect the mayor, batting away the bottle. That was when Mr. Swandon made his move. In a fluid motion that revealed the man’s drunkenness as a lie, he drew a handgun from under his button up.

  To Brian, the barrel looked like a huge crater looking to swallow him up. He stood frozen, unable to move. His mind raced with the words of Officer Wolfe. Suppose he wasn’t bulletproof, only bullet resistant. The muzzle flashed brightly. The searing white hot pain in his head only lasted for a second before everything went dark. The last thing Brian heard was screaming and a second shot. He didn’t hear the third and fourth.

  Chapter Two

  First Things First

  Robert DeMarc took a slow sip of his energy drink and bobbed his head to the music on the radio. Some female singer he suspected was an American Idol winner or runner-up belted out a sad melody through the failing speakers of his beat up old Dodge Charger. Not a fan of whatever brand of music this was, he still found himself having to pull back his hand as it instinctively went to turn the volume up. He wanted to roll down the windows, blare the music and just sing along as if the world wasn’t watching. Problem was that while the world wasn’t wat
ching right now, he was sure that making an ass of himself because he was amped up on energy drinks and the impending event would draw eyes to him. That was something opposed to both his plan and his hope of pulling it off.

  Running a hand through his long blonde hair he wished that he had thought to fill it with some gel or to slick it down. His usual hair tie would not work for him today, so he found his hand dancing a jittery dance between hair and stereo knob, never really satisfying either impulse. Sighing to himself, he took a long draw of his drink and found himself sucking down only air in the can. Shrugging he tossed the drink into his backseat and was rewarded as it rattled off another can. He knew he should clean his car out again, but ever since that night when he had discovered his superpower, he found he didn’t have the time or the patience for mundane tasks like cleaning out his car or even doing his college homework. Now, the world was his oyster and all he had to do was figure out how best to use his new superpower to pluck out the pearl from the yawning maw of opportunity.

  “But first,” he reminded himself with a throaty chuckle. “Before fortune and fame, we shall indulge a more mundane goal.” He laughed as if he was sharing a joke with an absent co-conspirer. All he had to do was wait. He had planned well enough and he knew that today would bring his precise planning to fruition. Today he would finalize his plan and make good on one of the baser opportunities that his power provided.

  Looking out his windshield he stared at the apartment complex across the street. The building itself was nothing spectacular, though it did seem to sing of a higher clientele than his own meager one bedroom apartment in the basement level he called his home. This one rose six stories, double the amount of floors of his own. The red brick and gray concrete on the outside were well kept and looked both pretty and formidable. It resembled a modern day keep, locked tight with keypad entry and barred lower windows. It wasn’t that the neighborhood was dangerous, or even slightly scandalous. No, the added security was for the higher socially conscious clientele.

  As he pondered the irony that the building was meant to keep out hoodlums and deviants, the main door opened to release a hunched old lady from the bowels of the building. With hair gone to gray many years past and glasses thick enough to fry her eyes if she stared at the sun, Mrs. Kravitz waddled across the front stoop in a slow meander, lead by one of the ugliest excuses for a dog that Robert had ever seen. In his previous “stake-outs” he had discovered that the small near rat-like creature was, in fact, some form of bastardized poodle that had probably fought in the world war itself, gnawing viciously at Nazi ankles. “Mr. Dean” the Dog That Refused to Die, moved almost as slowly as his mistress, but with more intent than the little old woman. Even through the car window, Robert could hear good old Mrs. Kravitz instruct the undead dog that he could hold his horses and that she was moving as fast as her old bones could carry her.

  As Robert slipped from his car; making extra effort to not let the damn door squeak, he strolled across the lawn toward the front door. He had read somewhere that the trick to blending in was to move like you belonged and you had a purpose. It was the lingering uncertain types that stuck in the mind of witnesses. He nodded to Mrs. Kravitz, flashing a thin smile that he hoped hinted at kinship but pressing matters elsewhere. She failed to acknowledge him in the slightest, which was just fine with him. Without pausing to look uncertain, he punched in a code he had seen her punch in repeatedly when he had previously watched the place and slipped inside without anyone yelling out that he was an intruder and did not belong. No one raised the alarm and the police remained unaware.

  His heart, on the other hand, was racing like he had just run a full mile in the hot sun. The loudness of it made him feel like he was living a demented version of the Tell-Tale Heart. “Calm yourself,” he said.

  He was standing in a hallway he had become familiar with. He had made it to this hallway several times in his gangster-esque “casing the joint”. One long hallway ran the length of the building, leading straight to the back door that required not only a key code but an actual key. On the right side of the hallway, a set of stairs leading up to the second floor and on the right a small bank of mailboxes recessed into the wall. He ran a finger over the name stenciled above 3B, Quizmoore.

  “Soon.”

  He moved past the stairway that would lead him to the third floor and his intended destination. He could not ascend right away. Like a mission in a video game, he had to go past where he needed to be and find the one item he would need to continue on his quest. In the several times when he had been here before and Mrs. Kravitz had walked Satan’s Puppy, he had noticed that she did not lock her door, and sometimes did not close it all. A slender line of light would peek through, letting him know the door remained ajar. While that, in and of itself, was not too bad, Mrs. Kravtiz was the landlord, and just within her own apartment was a pegboard with the master key to all the apartments in the building.

  Robert slid up to her door and pressed it open. He didn’t have to turn the knob. The odor of lemon polish and dog piss attacked his senses, but he was too set on the final prize to let it even dampen his spirits. Sweeping in with an almost flamboyant flair he scanned the pegboard and snatched up the key under the label of 3B.

  “Soon.”

  He was surprised to find himself muttering under his breath. It was almost as if the word had spilled beyond a promise and was becoming a chant. Perhaps a chant to sway his pounding heart that beat like a caged lion against the bars of his ribcage. “I was never kinder to the old man..” He chuckled, repeating the one of maybe six lines from the poem that he could remember. “Hark the raven nevermore.” Slipping back into the hallway and easing the door back to its almost closed position. “That’s not even the same poem, dumbshit,” he said. He stifled the impulse to skip to the stairway.

  As he drifted up the stairway, the dominating aroma of dog piss slipped away and became replaced by the smell of clean carpets and open air. At each end of the floor, a large window stood open, so the evening air flowed through like a small wind tunnel. As he crested the third floor his hair was tugged by a breeze, making him tucked his wayward strands behind his ear and once again berate himself for not planning ahead on the whole messy hair issue.

  For a moment, he stood at the door of 3B, looking like a worshipper staring at the face of a well-carved idol. Beyond this door lay his Nirvana, his Eden, and soon, his Eve. He chuckled at the thought, finding himself amused that he would use religious terms to express his wants and desires. It wasn’t that he was anti-religion, just that he found himself relieved of all religious indecision in the face of his newfound power. Something supernatural was in play, and by the thundering gods of Valhalla, he was going to use them for play indeed.

  Unlocking the door, he slipped inside, easing the door closed again and locking it. His prey was not home. She was due in on the 6 PM flight, which gave him about thirty minutes before she landed, and twice that before she walked across the threshold.

  The apartment was not very spacious. The whole place had the same square feet as his own, though hers was of a higher caliber and quality. Above a top of the line television hung a painting he was sure one of his paychecks at the Chicken Shack would not pay for. The television dominated the main wall of the living room. Along the left wall ran a wide sliding door that led out to a patio balcony with two wicker chairs and a steel table with an umbrella closed over it. The right wall held a barrage of framed pictures, each of them having the beautiful woman that called this place home, and someone of importance with her. Some were covers she had graced, one where her arms covered the better bits of her, while the rest of her body was stamped with some form of graffiti. How he would love to have been the artist that had gotten to paint her lovely form. Then again, it very well could have been done with Photoshop at this point. Could be the artist would never get to see what he came to see here tonight.

  One photo that drew his attention was her gracing the cover of a Sports Illustrated Swim
suit Edition. Laced up in white satin that he imagined would have washed away if she had gone anywhere near water, she looked a goddess on that beach in some far off tropical paradise. He found himself wondering if she had even been to that location, or if in fact she was Photoshopped into it. It was funny how Photoshop made him doubt everything he saw in pictures these days. He still remembered that mass e-mail he had received that showed some dude at all the major events in history, with his last one being him standing on the observation deck of one of the Trade Towers with a plane in the background. The story had said something about how he had died that day, but they had found the camera in the rubble. It was all pure bullshit and had been a picture someone had edited for a lark. Kind of a dark joke, but still one that made you question what you did not see with your own eyes.

  Of course, that was what today was about. He was going to see what he long dreamed of with his own eyes. Tonight, he would behold a goddess in her natural habitat. His heart continued to thunder.

  “Soon.”

  He turned to face the rest of the room. He gasped as he discovered two glowing eyes regarding him. Emerald glowing eyes, that seemed to hover in the air before him, regarded him with Cheshire-like disdain. That is until his eyes adjusted and he could see that it was a long-haired gray and white cat that stared at him with the obvious realization that he did not belong here and was most certainly not welcome. “What is it with people and having animals live in their home?” He asked the glaring cat. “Filthy stupid things that eat and shit and serve no real purpose.” He added as the cat remained mute on his own thoughts on the subject.