The Broken Ones (Book 2): The Broken Families

by David Jobe

  “They just announced that the Executioner has been granted bail. Seems her lawyer knows his business.” He talked as he made her order, dosing the food with every condiment known to man. “News think her rich boyfriend will have her out by tonight, even with her high bail.”

  “That so?” Delta felt her heart start to dance a confused dance. For a few moments, she remained unsure how she felt about that. Then she decided it would be easier to kill the bitch if she was outside the prison system. “I am sure her freedom will be short lived.” She didn’t have to ask how the vendor had felt about the girl. Anyone who called her Executioner had decided she deserved the electric chair or lethal injection.

  The vendor shrugged and handed over the tinfoil-wrapped goodness. She handed over the cash, giving him a tip that equaled another dog altogether. She could afford to be generous with Jeremy’s money. Neither of them would be using it after this afternoon.

  She marched on, enjoying the odor of the dogs as much as the rich greasy flavor. Before she had gotten half a block one of the dogs had vanished and she had managed to keep her dress clean. Not that it wouldn’t get dirty here soon enough.

  By the time she reached the courthouse block, the hot dogs were a few blocks gone. She had gotten a single grease stain on her dress, but this close to the final act, she found she just didn’t care. Her steps were light, near skipping by the time she reached the steps leading up. All around her reporters clamored in tight circles, trying to find warmth by inhaling each other’s hot air. They muttered about how it was taking too long for the girl’s lawyer to come out, while others explained that he had to finalize some of the papers before he could leave. They took bets on if the girl would get out, and if so how quickly it would be. Most settled in on the end of the day. Delta smiled to herself thinking that it had better be by the end of the day. Flying Fatboy had a dance with fate tonight, and after that, he wasn’t going to be bailing anyone out. Delta had wanted that job too, but the respawn process took over 48 hours on a good day, and the rest of the girls were eager to strike all at once. Even now she could feel Charlie enjoying her own feast of plenty back at the main home. They were all gathered around a big screen television in the basement watching the news. All except Alpha. She was in hiding and cut off from the rest. It was a hard choice, but she was the original, and they needed to make sure that one of them survived. Plus, they weren’t sure if they wouldn’t all just turn to that disgusting goo if they lost Alpha.

  A clamor from the doors at the top of the stairs drew Delta out of her thoughts. “Showtime.” Her words seeming innocent in the crowd she stood in the middle of. She surged forward with them, her movements meant to mimic the reporters. Her pink plaid jacket that had cost a whopping five dollars at Goodwill covered the full length of her hand, so the barrel of the gun pointing out could just as well been one of those thin microphones they used today.

  He stood at the top of the stairs, smiling down at the throng of eager reporters. He held up his hands to still them, the white of his dress shirt peeking out from the sleeves of his expensive suit. His blue tie seemed to wink and sparkle in the early afternoon sun. “Please please,” he asked of the crowd. “Let me first start by saying that I am happy with the judge’s decisions. I think that we are coming closer to seeing justice served.”

  Delta surged forward at the mention of justice. This Jewish son of a whore lawyer thought he was helping justice happen? She would show him just how justice felt about that. She parted the two reporters at the forefront, each being pushed aside with glares of open hostility. “The dead seek their own justice,” she said through clenched teeth. The gun fired five times, each one barking out a loud report that echoed off the surrounding buildings. The first three shots found their mark, the fourth and fifth going wide as the recoil took her aim away from the man’s thin body.

  Screams erupted and everyone around her fled. Like roaches they scurried away, leaving her standing over the now falling lawyer. Amazement showed on his face as he toppled back onto the top three steps.

  From the left, a boy screamed out, “Daddy!” The curly headed cur rushed headlong, beelining straight for what Delta assumed was his father. She pointed her gun at him and he slid to a stop, eyes going wide at the sight of her.

  Had she known the lawyer’s son was going to be there, she would have saved a bullet for him. As it was, she had only one left, and that one was reserved. She pointed the gun at the boy’s head and shouted “Kapow!”

  The kid stumbled back, eyes wide and wet with tears. When he saw that he hadn’t been shot he just stared at her. For a few moments, they stared at each other in sullen silence. Then the lawyer gagged up some blood and the kid lost his fear and ran to his father.

  Delta could hear the man whispering something to his son. Probably something as moving as “Did I leave the stove on?”

  That had been her own mother’s last words. For years Natasha had thought it had been a metaphor for her going to hell. She had read years later that most people, when greeted with their own impending demise usually just spouted off nonsense. Not that she doubted her mother was in Hell. It had likely just been a surprise to her when she got there.

  Let the kid have his gibberish.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. She turned to face the crowd, giving them what she believed was a dazzling smile. “On the third day, I rise.” To herself, she whispered, “Hot dogs and gunpowder. My favorite.” She placed the burning barrel to her petite chin and pulled the trigger.

  Delta returned to the void.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Two Bears

  Mac had been dreaming about walking on a beach with Allison, his hand in hers as they recounted particularly funny times they had shared together. Even in the lovely dream, something had felt off. It was as if a looming beast stood just behind them, shadowing their every step, ready to pounce if they faltered. The feeling became so overwhelming that Mac began to turn to look behind himself, expecting some slobbering horror from the deep to be standing there with a lopsided toothy smile.

  “Mr. Patton. Mr. Patton, I need to take your vitals.” A soft voice shattered the dream and pulled Mac from the void of darkness that existed between dreams and the real world.

  Mac blinked open his eyes, finding Nurse Henshaw standing there with her warm smile and a thermometer at the ready. Mac had begun to understand that if it weren’t for the pain meds, he might never get sleep. The thing was that when he took them, they put him to sleep at such an alarming speed that each time he awoke he felt disjointed and confused. “What?”

  “I need to take your vitals. How are you feeling?” She tilted her head at him, much like a puppy might when you change your tone with them.

  “Like I didn’t pay a loan shark and his bruisers found me.” He tried to sit up and was once again reminded that his legs would offer no assistance in this area. He wondered if he had dreamed his father coming to visit him. After all, it wasn’t like his father to visit him, and with these pain meds, he was never sure where the line was between reality, dream, and nightmare. He stared down at his legs, almost glaring at them, before resolving himself to lift with his arms and move his body.

  Nurse Henshaw watched this all with polite quietness. She stood beside his bed and held an air of stillness about her. Perhaps she had seen this before. He wondered how others had learned to cope with being paralyzed.

  He opened his mouth to her, trying for a smile he didn’t feel. “What time is it?” There was a clock across the room, but right now his eyes were too blurry to see well beyond the end of the bed.

  “A little past noon.” She read the thermometer and frowned. “How is your stomach? Do you mind if I take your temperature again?”

  “I’m not hungry,” he admitted. “Sure,” he added. “Is something wrong?”

  “It’s a little high is all. I want to make sure before I document it.”

  Mac shrugged and opened his mouth again. While he waited for the thing to do its
song and dance he looked around for the remote. The thing reminded him of when he would go to a gas station and ask them to use the bathroom. They would give you a key with something huge attached to it, like a stupid cinderblock. The controller was just as unwieldy and oddly enough, still difficult to find. After taking a moment to reason it out, he followed the cord from the wall and found it dangling next to his bed like caught trout on a fishing boat. He clicked on the television just as the thermometer beeped. “We good?”

  Nurse Henshaw took a look at it and shook her head. “It’s not bad, but it does deserve keeping an eye on. You’ve been through a lot and it might just be that your body is ramping up its repairs and causing your body to heat up.”

  “It could be little tiny robots too,” he added will flipping through the channels.

  “What?” He could see from the corner of his eye the perplexed look on his face.

  Mac chuckled but decided that he might want to keep that piece a secret. If it was even true. “Sorry. Nerd humor. I watch too many sci-fi movies.”

  She smiled and nodded, but then added, “seems to me that the line between reality and sci-fi has been blurred as of late. Did you hear? There was this one kid who could fly and had a force field.” She gave him a wink.

  “He sounds like one cool dude.” He smiled back.

  “As long as he takes his medicine and doesn’t give the nurses a hard time, I would agree with you.” She leaned over to the rolling table that was in every room and handed him a pamphlet. “I know the pickings will be small, but you do need to order something for lunch.”

  “Will do.” He set the pamphlet down beside him, suspecting he would get the same as always and get the chicken noodle soup without the noodles. Maybe he will live it up and get the beef stew, without the beef or the stew.

  “Oh what a cute little bear.”

  Mac turned from the television to see what she was referring to. In the seat next to the bed, was a large blue stuffed bear. Sitting in its lap was another smaller bear that was the exact replica of the first, only looking to have endured more wear and tear than the larger one. It was an odd pairing, to say the least. “Where did that come from?”

  Nurse Henshaw shrugged. She moved over to look at the two. “No tags on the big one, but the smaller one has a necklace that reads ‘Mary’. What an odd looking couple. Why do you suppose the big one looks brand new but the smaller one doesn’t?”

  “I have no idea,” Mac admitted. “Do you know who brought them in?”

  Nurse Henshaw shook her head. “I know they weren’t there when I checked up on you about an hour ago. I’ll ask the nurses’ station if they had someone drop them off. You’ll let me know if you figure out this cute riddle?” She gave the bigger bears head a gentle tap. “I bet it’s a girlfriend giving you a bear that resembles one when she was a kiddo.” She gave him a wink.

  “Maybe,” Mac lied. “I’ll let you know.” He imagined that was another lie. “Can you bring me some cake?” He tried to change the subject and turned away from the two bears. Something about them made him feel ill at ease. Like he was being watched. Perhaps they were from his dad and were his version of nanny cams. He had found a few of those in his house from time to time, though in years past they had evolved from weird eyed stuffed animals to picture frames and clocks that would just show up one day. If it was his dad, he had no doubt the return to stuffed animals was as much a message as the fact that they were set there to watch him. He resisted the urge to throw them the finger. That would only make him seem childish.

  “No cake for you.” Nurse Henshaw said in a weird accent. After Mac stared at her for a few moments she just shook her head and laughed, “Before your time, kiddo. I’ll be seeing you-“ She cut off, staring at the foot of his bed.

  “Everything okay?” Mac looked where she was looking but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just his useless legs attached to useless feet poking up out of the white sheets.

  Nurse Henshaw blinked and smiled. “It’s nothing. Order lunch. I’ll check with the doc about your temperature. See if he wants to get you anything.”

  “You can’t stop Skynet once it’s been initiated.” He said it low enough that Nurse Henshaw didn’t hear it. She smiled at him, took one more look at the foot of his bed and then left.

  Mac waited a few minutes after she had left before he set about what he thought of as his training. His father had said that his power wasn’t flight, but something else. He couldn’t explain why, but he was sure that his father was right. His father was an asshole, but rarely wrong about such things. So, it left Mac with a mystery to solve. What was his power actually? He went through the gambit of powers he had read about in comics and could settle on only two, neither seeming likely in his case. The first, and to him, the least plausible was that he controlled metal. Magneto of Marvel fame had that ability and used it to make himself float, hover and fly. He had never been into the character that much, so he couldn’t remember the finer details, but he always assumed it was something to do with how the same ends of magnets pushed away from each other. He had tried a few times to move the bin across the room closer to him with no change, even though it was basically a metal wire on wheels with a bag mounted in the center. The second one was that he had telekinesis. He could move things with his mind. Some of the greats had this power, but the fact that he couldn’t move the bin threw a monkey wrench into that as well. Plus there was the fact that he could lift himself and Allison to fly around. That amount of telekinesis power was impressive even in comic level type stuff. With their combined weight, if he could move things with his mind, he could probably pick up a small car and toss it. A thought that made him giddy to think about. The problem was that nothing seemed to work.

  He took a deep breath and worked on centering himself. This was like a match problem. He just had to reason it out. He needed to plot out the problem piece by piece and start peeling back the parts that no longer made sense. “If I have the ability to move things, other than myself, why can’t I move the bin?” He leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Several large lights glared down at him. In the corner of his eye, he could see the IV bags hanging from their metal stands. “Maybe I have to be closer.” He eyed the metal stand his IV bags were on. Maybe he should try on something closer. He reached out with his hand, palm out to will the stand closer to him. He tried to limit his attempt, not wanting to have the tubes that were connected to it and him yanked suddenly.

  The stand did not move.

  “Shit.” He glared at the stand and the bags that hung unmoved from it. “Why can’t I-“ He stopped. One of the bags hooked up was the pain medicine. They had set it up so all he had to do was click the button and the pain meds would pump into his IV. It had a timer on it that let him know when he could self-administer another dose. He peered closer and saw that it said he still had thirty minutes. “I am so dumb.”

  He situated himself in his bed a little better and then concentrated on flight. He knew he could lift himself, and he knew how that worked in his mind. He pushed down on the earth with his mind, willing himself to rise.

  He did not move.

  “Gotcha.” Mac pumped his hand in triumph. The pain meds were messing with his mind. He couldn’t move the bin because he couldn’t use his power right now. A scary thought occurred to him. What if his father had injected him with something that would cancel out his power? The ultimate grounding. His heart started to pound in his chest and his eyes started to blur. “Calm down, Mac. One experiment at a time. No more pain meds, no matter how bad you want them.”

  He nodded, deciding the matter resolved and started flipping through the channels again, looking for something with superheroes or space monsters to pass the time.

  “Shooting at the courthouse downtown-“ Mac flipped past it, but as the sentence registered he flipped back. An older female reporter in a blue blazer rehashed the day’s events so far. The lawyer in charge of Allison’s defense had been shot down
in cold blood on the courthouse stairs. His attacker had then turned the gun on herself and ended her life. The police had no idea on the motive and sources within the police state that the woman’s body had turned to goo on the scene.

  “Henchwomen.” Mac remembered the sniper on the overpass had turned out the same way. “So you aren’t dead.” His eyes turned to the door to his room. If Henchwomen was out there killing people, he had no doubt he would be on her list soon enough.

  The report went on to say that Allison had been granted bail, though the amount was quite large. As Mac dialed up the man who his father had left in charge of Mac’s monetary means the news went onto another story where they reported that the man responsible for killing Brian “Bulletproof” Lockhart had been found dead in his room from an apparent suicide. That crashed through Mac’s mind hard enough that it took him a few moments to realize that Mr. Canner had answered and was asking who he was speaking to several times. “Mr. Canner, it’s me, Mac.” Mac still fought to process that Brian was dead. The guy had been one of the people responsible for saving Mac’s life. And he hadn’t even gotten to tell the man thank you.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Patton?” Mr. Canner remained steadfast and professional with Mac, no matter how many times Mac insisted that he call him Mac.

  “I need you to post bail on someone for me.”

  There was a moment of silence. “I am not sure that is permissible.”

  Mac frowned. He had no leverage over Mr. Canner at all. His father paid the man’s bills and the money was all his father’s. He had his own trust fund set up that he could access in a few months, but until then he was at the whims of these two men. Mac sighed. “I know you will have to get authorization. Please let him know that I am willing to use my own money to post with. I will accept responsibility for making sure my friend shows up to everything so we get the money back. Will you check for me?”