INCAPABLE - BOOK I: THE FALLEN

C H A P T E R 4

I WAS walking back from my lunch break with my high school friends. We wore white uniform shirts, white blazers, silver ties and white skirts if we were girls, and slacks for boys. They wanted us to dress like Officials, to get us in the habit of thinking about being one, I think.

We past the elementary school's playground smiling and laughing. It seemed normal at first, children playing on the swings, slide, carousel, and then everything seemed to freeze. A heavily armed police car rolled up onto the playground and a man stepped out. He was headed for the school building. Seconds later I saw him dragging a little girl from the building by her bright red pigtails and hauled her to the ground. She was wildly sobbing, pleading to the man to show her mercy. Her hands were clasped like she was praying. She was praying for her life. A teacher stormed out of the building, pleading just as hard, if not harder, followed by a steady river of children, forming a sea around them. The teacher threw herself at the man, begging with all she had. The man slapped her hard across her face with his free hand and she fell to the ground alongside the girl, and with one brisk clench of his finger, the gun's trigger cued and the bullet fired intentionally through the girl's forehead. She collapsed lifelessly in the grass. I was close enough to see the pleading, teary-eyed face frozen in death.

I wake up, gasping, my pillow covered in sweat. My clothes are clung to me and I'm burning up. It hits me then that that little girl was a Special, and that that dream was real. So real.

I reach for my bedside table to grab my glass of water. As I gulp it down, I peer at my alarm clock. 5:12 AM. Dad should be home by now. His shift ends at five. I slip on my house-shoes and pad around the house, until I reach his room. I try the keypad. "Access denied" the automated woman tells me. Locked. I walk around the rest of the house and concluded that he's not here. He must be working late again.

I reach the living room, water still in hand, and find myself staring at the camera that juts out from the corner of where the ceiling meets the wall.

From the time when the discovery of the beings who possess the inhuman powers, the Specials, the government has been installing cameras in houses, office buildings, restaurants, hotels, schools, libraries and on the streets to ensure that no one is hiding the Special's, like few hid Jews during to German Holocaust, or to ensure that no one is one of them— one of us I mean.

During the Holocaust, Nazis' ordered Gestapos to kill and torture Jews they found hiding and would murder the Germans who dared to show their hearts to them.

It's the same that way. History is repeating itself. I'm not sure how many see it though. The only thing we are missing from our long list of congruities is a Hitler. Though we have not compromised into a dictatorship either. I know, however, that the government is stronger than our president, Damian Ross. He wouldn't seem like a Hitler. He has a kind smile and graying hair. He would remind you of a grandfather. I thought this before he ran for a second term. He held a gun to a chained Special's head, on a stage, and shot. He, the Special, fell to the ground and in that instant the crowd cheered. They applauded his death, and at the time, I did too.

I pulled my gaze away from the staring cameras and instead glanced out the spacious windows overlooking our front yard. I stared in disbelief at the crumbled buildings, abandoned shops and boarded up apartment windows. So many people of my city, Chicago, are gone. Soon I will be among them, hopefully still alive. However, I won't really be living, just still breathing.

I attempted to mentally ready myself for the voyage as I scanned the streets beyond the window. I had decided, after my horrific dream only minutes ago, that today was the day I would leave. Immediately any hope that I had we shattered and all ideas of escaping banished. I watched, not able to make a single move, not even blink, as two officers, dressed from head to toe in delicate white suits, carelessly splattered in dark blood, as they dragged an older, seemingly weak man from his home and repeatedly shot at him with their shining, silver rifles. Everyone associated with the government wears a white suit. It signifies purity, something Specials ruined, sense we are dubbed as odd and impure in the human race.

After they flung him to the ground, they failed to kill him, but still they easily forced howls of pain from his mouth with every attempt. The howls seemed to ring, ricocheting into the glass windowpanes of my house so loudly I could hear them as if the man was receiving his abusing right beside me.

Unable to resist the pain any longer, he motioned his hand at his house and readily awaited it's collapsing upon him as it slowly moved towards them. The officers ran in a desperate attempt to save themselves, not waiting to watch as or if their victim was crushed under the weight of his own house. One of the two perpetrators tripped over a shard of the ruins and fell into the pool of sharp gravel. Obviously wounded, he failed to gather the strength to move and was crushed under the house with my neighbor. Or rather what used to be my neighbor. The other officer merely glanced back in harsh pity that seemed to only last for seconds before he continued jogging in my direction, to my home. That's when I recognized the man. I recognized him as my father.

Memories of him hoisting me up on his shoulders, tucking me in at night, tickling my stomach as I uncontrollably giggled, knowing I was too old for that, and comforting me in empathy when mom died, were all replaced with images of him murdering and beating Specials to death, as well as allowing his colleagues to share the same fate. Immediately, I recognized the man in my memory of the playground killing as my father. My father killed that little girl and I'm next.

I ran. I forced my most needed of my belongings into a duffle bag with quick motions of my hands and ran.

To say that I hadn't used my powers since I found out about them would be a lie. I've been practicing, when dad's not home, in my bedroom or the bathrooms: the only places the government is prohibited to install cameras.

Slinging the black bag over my small bony shoulder, I urged the bookshelf that resided in the foyer to smash into the door, veering entry near impossible. I forced open the refrigerator door and entered food and water into another duffle bag and urged it to follow me as I sprinted towards the back door leading to our backyard, only halting to levitate the deck and push it into the door, crashing it. I turned to run, but stopped. In the corner of my eye I saw my mom's grave, which was hidden behind the safety of the deck. It was revealed in a flurry of brittle autumn leaves as the deck flew. I walked closer to it and knelled before the tombstone. I let my fingers glide over the engraved words, unable to keep from crying as I read them:

Valerie Maria Lockrage

April 1, 7086 – December 21, 7126

Loving and nurturing mother and wife died too young.

May she rest in peace and live in God's house in peace and serenity.

The tears fell harder, gushing like a waterfall from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks, and dripping into the ceases of my jeans. I fingered through the damp yellowing grass that covered my mother's burial site. I forced myself to remember her funeral three years ago. It was somewhat of a blur because I was crying though most of it. Mom wouldn't have wanted me to. This only made me cry harder.

I put two fingers to my lips and kissed them. I touched them to her engraved name on the stone. "Valerie!" I heard our name called, bashing into my thoughts. "Valerie!" It was my dad. With a nod to the stone, I rose and ran. I will forever love you mom, but I have to do this, I thought, for you. I was leaving her.

I ran faster than I should be able to, almost flying. I either chose to forget or simply dismiss anything remotely close to a plan I had concocted the night before and ran. All I could remember were the visions of my father killing those with such amazing abilities, not even imaginable, yet so spectacular. Those people he kills. And I refuse to share the same fate. My hatred for him fueled my energy as I ran. I will not become his next victim, or anyone's next victim. I know that I will die eventually, and that I will most likely die doing what I am about to do. But I'd rather be killed for that than for being different. Than for being a Special. But at that moment, as I ran farther and farther from the only thing I ever knew, I couldn't wish for anything more that to be normal. If I were normal, I wouldn't be as good as dead.