Lucky Me

Chapter 042

I didn't remember much besides screaming.

I didn't even care about the two people who I had with me. In fact, I dropped them. I was high up, too but I didn't care. I had let go, and I heard them scream for me not to, but it hurt too much to keep holding them.

I probably killed them.

Stacey and Hank, and I killed them. I let them go, just when they thought they were safe for another night.

At that precise moment I didn't care, and my own descent wasn't very graceful either. I glided for another few hundred feet, but then the pain in the base of my wing was too much, and I blacked out. It wasn't even for long, but when I woke up, I felt like I was in a dream.

I hit the tree line, and kept hitting trees. Breaking the branches on my arms and legs, even my tough black skin began to be cut. My face… I didn't even try to protect it, I was pretty sure it looked like it had gone into a blender, spit back out, smeared on my skull, and used to look like me.

When I hit the ground, I hit hard. My top flight speed was over a hundred, but I think the fall sped me up enough to where I hit the ground, rolled, tumbled, and skidded until I slammed into water and rocks.

I hit the rocks with my bad wing, and nearly screamed out—if I hadn't passed out a second later. I could feel things, like the water, and hear it as well. But movement was beyond me. I couldn't feel myself. Which after all I described was a blessing.

It was a blessing...


"Dad!" I complained for the thousandth time in a row. "I thought you were going to help me!"

"I can't, kitten." I grumbled. He promised he was going to help me with my math, my worst subject. "When I get back, I promise we will spend the rest of the night on Algebra, okay?"

"No," I shouted, following him to the door as he pulled on his jacket. "I need it done now, because later my life will be happening, and I can't put it on hold for math!" He gave me that look that only a parent could give, "or for you." And I smiled when he got a hurt expression.

"Aren't you ever quiet?" Darcy whined, turning up the TV in the next room.

"Bite me," I told her, focusing still on my dad. I didn't want him to go, my problems were bigger than whatever he was doing.

"Don't talk that way to your sister," Dad's voice got deep and serious. Mom wasn't home, and I didn't want to babysit the brat while dad went horsing around with his buddies. He did this every Tuesday night. Mom always worked late on Tuesdays so it was always me and the brat together.

I was so sick of this, maybe I should run away?

Yeah, that would show them. Doubt if I ran away on a Tuesday they'd even notice I was gone.

No one would come looking for me, not where I would hide. That would show them.

No one would come...


"...Blyt!" I woke up from my memory to my name being screamed over the shattered comm-link which lay a few feet from me. The red part that lights up when receiving a call came to life, and it soon couldn't take its own brokenness, the last thing it was able to give was a broken, "Ke-rr-eeee..."

Then silence. I could hear my ragged breathing, I was able to move a bit, and was dumb enough to attempt to get closer to the broken little 'X' badge. All I managed to do was snag my wing that caused me to yell, but there was blood in my throat.

I lay on my side, breathing, coughing, and crying. Bleeding as well, naturally I was bleeding. My uniform felt as if it was covered with blood, when it might have only been the water. The stream I fell into had a steady current that caused the blood seeping from my wound to cover me, and cover my hands.

The pain shot through me again as I moved a bit and a rock scrapped along the raw wound.

Blood on my hands...


I couldn't breathe.

I couldn't think, couldn't react. I was just so useless!

I thought about my revenge, thought it would be great if I snuck out of the house and hid in the old tree house at Burtcove's lot. It was about five miles from town (which meant Mom) and about two miles away from my house (which meant Dad).

I didn't realize it then.

I didn't even think about it. I just smiled and hummed to myself about how I enacted the perfect type of revenge which would consist of tormenting my parents, who would wail and worry about my whereabouts. I wouldn't go to school for the rest of the week, really have them freaked out and everything. Yeah, it was going to go so well that Dad would never leave me alone again. That would teach them!

It didn't go as planned.

I made it to Burtcove's before sundown. I didn't tell anyone anything about my leaving, just threw my junk I needed out a window, and then climbed down the tree which was right next to the window. It was perfect. Darcy was engrossed in some after school special junk, mom wasn't home, and dad wasn't going to be back from the wherever for another thirty minutes. If I stuck to the wooded path, there was no way they could drive by and see me.

I was such a stupid little kid who thought she was a genius.

I was so smart.

I was too smart for everyone and everything.

By the time I made it to the lot, the people who usually played football and all that other junk were gone. The tree house was near the back of the lot, and perfect for hiding in. A lot of people knew about it, but because it was so old and, well, green hardly anyone risked climbing up there. It had two evacuation routes built into it, so I could make my way out the back while they (anyone looking for me) tried the front.

If they even thought to check this place.

No one would ever come...not here...not for...


"Could you cut out the freakin' rain, darlin'? It screws with the scent," I heard Mr. Logan, he must be yelling at Storm.

I heard him through the comm.-link, it must be mine. It's too stubborn to stay down. It's confusing. I thought it was dead. I thought I was dead. But the pain was too intense for me to be dead.

I could be when they found me.

I remembered...Scott ...coming when I was ready to jump...off the building...with out...my wings...

They're broken.

I was broken, because of my stupidity.

Again...


I was up in that stupid termite infested place for a good two hours, the sun had gone down, and I was bored out of my mind. I had a weak lantern type flashlight, you know the kind that when you lift the side it was like a flashlight? But anyway, I had read half of the magazine I brought, when I heard the noise.

It sounded like a whole freakin' convoy pulling up. I turned off my light, and crawled to a hole in the wall (one of the many, many holes in the wall). Peeking out, I saw my dad as he pulled up in the circle of trucks.

So this was where he went on Tuesday nights, to do the high school thing of getting drunk in a field. Oh gee, no wonder he would never tell me where he was going.

They were very close to the tree house; it was the main reason killed the light. Dad got out of his truck, shook the other guys' hands, and began to chit-chat. Mostly about sports and boring stuff, but there was something on his arm.

An armband of some sort, I had to squint to make out the letters, F.o.H.?

"Didja see what we did to the Danziger guy?" Some guy I didn't recognize stated, slapping his knee, and smiling like a mad man. "He was all beggin' and crap. It was hilarious! He thought he got us good. Too bad that fat idiot couldn't run faster than a bullet, eh, Zac?" No wonder he was smiling like a mad man, he was! My Dad knew a trigger happy psycho?!

"Yeah, well, the girls needed help on their homework, or you know I would have been there." I was surprised my jaw didn't break through the rickety bottom of the old tree house. My Dad was going to be part of a—a well, whatever that involved a guy begging, a bullet, and some gun totting maniac?

No! My dad would –never do something like that! Sure he irritated me a lot, but he was my Dad. He wouldn't do that! He wouldn't!

"So who's the target this time?" Dad, my Dad asked about a target? As in a person? As in he was actually going to do this?

"Well, George thinks someone's been warnin' these people about what we are going to do," came another guy, actually it was my English teacher from seventh grade. Make him the next target, the man almost flunked me!

"Why'd he think that?"

"Because," this other guy from the shadows hissed, I about wet myself because he just seemed to pop out of nowhere. "A lot of our targets seem to be moving away within the week's time we plan to track them. They get out of our district."

There were about twenty men now, twenty men and more coming.

More was going to come...


I woke up again, it felt like hours when it probably had only been a few minutes between consciousnesses and my memory. I didn't want to sleep again. The memories had never been so vivid.

It was the last time that I had been shot at.

The first time I had blood on my hands. The first time I was seeing the world for what it was. It was something that didn't revolve around me, but something that revolved around who was strongest and fear and hate.

I let that sink into my heart and since my dad's death; I was the dark and creepy girl who studied mutants. I was the freak. I was the thing my dad hunted. Did he hate it? Would he hate me?

Dad saved me last time, but was it because he thought they were wrong? Maybe he was in denial that I was going to be mutant, heck, maybe he knew it and just didn't want to see me die. He was selfish and hateful and stupid to let me see him die.

I felt a sob come up, and choke me. The blood must have been too much for my throat, to imagine my dad, who sacrificed his life for me, to know I would die being part of the thing he hated.

Talk about irony.

I wondered who would know that I killed my own dad...


"Do you know who it is?" Some other guy asked.

"We have a good guess, but nothing for sure." George, I think was who he was at least, eyed my dad. "And according to our resources, we are about to prove his true allegiance to our little group."

Half the men went rigid, some guy started to cuss a blue streak about how stupid it was, and a lot of them agreed.

"Do you have anything to hide, Nick?" The head guy asked, walked up to the cussing guy, and pushed him a bit.

"Oh, come on; let's be civilized about this whole matter, guys." A smaller man insisted. My dad backed him up.

"You're right," George said, and started to walk away from Nick. "So does anyone here have anything to hide? Perhaps about their spouse? Their children?"

"I ain't into killin' kids," a taller, stronger looking guy insisted.

"But they grow into powerful abominations!" George went on to rave about how they needed to pluck out the bad weeds before they took over the garden.

That's when the floor started to give.


"Blyt!" My vision was bad; almost all I could see was black. I could only make out the brightest sections of the stream and the moon. I heard them call my codename, but it sounded like it was a million miles away and underwater. It was getting harder to hear, to see, and breathing was the hardest of all. I didn't think one little bullet would do so much.

But I did fall hundreds of hundreds of feet, crashed through trees, skidded on a rocky terrain, and then slammed into a stream with sharp rocks, where I remained while slowly watched as everything of my past came flooding back.

Everything that was going to happen to me had already happened to someone else.

Dad, I didn't mean to!


I didn't have time to do anything, not even to curse or cry. I went with the floor as its ancient wood gave away under my weight and all went crashing to the earth.

"What the hel-?" I heard one of the guys say as I picked myself up from the ground and rubbed my sore left arm.

"Kerry?" I heard my Dad say in surprise. He was at my side, trying to help me to my feet, and asking over and over if I was okay. "What are you doing here?"

I was wondering when he was going to start asking that. "I—I was just-" wishing I could lie faster, "playing around in the old tree house."

Oh yeah, that wasn't transparent or anything. Sheesh.

"This your kid, Zac?"

Dad looked at him with annoyance, "Yeah, I thought she was at home."

"I think we found our leak," George stated, pulling something out from his jacket pocket that sent me into a fit of tears.

A gun.

He was going to freaking shoot me!


"Kerry! Answer us!" I heard, for the first time, the sounds of guns and shouts and explosions coming from the forest in front of me.

I couldn't answer them, I could barely hear them.

But there was something breaking off in the edge of my mind, slowly making my memories and the present clash together. I heard someone close by, I wanted to call out to them, wanted to wave my hands around, and let them know where I was.

But I couldn't, I was able, by some odd miracle, to whisper something I couldn't even hear, "...here..."

That was it. My voice quit on me afterward. I wasn't able to talk. I saw something again. I saw a gun. Another gun. In the hands of someone who the X-Men were fighting against.

I called him to me. He said something, just like George with that hateful weapon and smile which illuminated the darkness around my eyes. I heard the loading of the gun, if it was from the memory or from the present, I couldn't say.

I expected the bullet to come ripping through me, or past me, just like before. I expected to hear Dad cry out and the other men curse and fight the other guy to the ground, the sound of the gun ringing through the dark night, and through my ears for the rest of my life.

But it never came.

A bright pinkish red light hit the gun which was fired half a tick later, but it didn't even hit anywhere near where I was. Dad had saved me?

As I saw my hero come over the side of the stream, and splash his way to me, I never remember Dad wearing a pink visor. Or being strong enough to pick me up.

Dad, how could you find me?

You saved me again...

...I love you, Dad...