Chapter 1

Liz shouted loudly enough for her voice to be heard throughout the house, "THE TEST IS POSITIVE! I'M PREGNANT AT LAST! I'M SO HAPPY THAT I COULD BUST WIDE OPEN!"

She was standing at the doorway to our bedroom and dancing up and down in her joy when the rest of us found her. I grabbed her in my arms for a celebratory hug and kiss, while Billy and Mary hugged us both. "That's wonderful, Honey!" was all I could think of to say at that moment, but it was an accurate expression of the way I felt. The two kids agreed with me, and we all kind of danced together as we digested the long-awaited news.

Liz and I had been married for a few years and we all wondered why she had never been "knocked up." It certainly was not from lack of trying! We finally figured out the reason, but that took a while to dawn on us.

That was eight months ago, and our lives had preceded along their normal paths up until this time. The ultra-sound had shown that the fetus was male, and we had all been spending a lot of time trying to come up with the perfect name. So far, we were still working on it, but the best that we had come up with so far was a compromise: John Abraham Brinkley. Well, we already knew that he was to be called Johnny, and we all liked that. In fact, that was how we referred to the fetus, and there was never any confusion.

The problem was that, on this particular day, Liz had just come into the house from a routine visit to her gynecologist, and Liz was in tears. It was in the summer, and the kids both happened to be home. We couldn't figure out what was bothering Liz until she told us that they were happy tears, not sadness or pain tears.

The explanation was that the gynecologist had wanted some blood for a routine test of some sort, and there had been a problem when the phlebotomist tried to draw the blood. First of all, she had to use three needles before she could find one sharp enough to penetrate Liz's skin, and there was considerable difficulty in piercing Liz's vein. During all of this, Liz had felt no pain at all. Furthermore, as soon as the blood sample was finally drawn, the wound closed and healed before the covering bandage could be applied.

The phlebotomist had not noticed the healing of the wound except to comment that the blood had clotted remarkably fast. Liz had not commented, but she planned to make a test as soon as she returned to her parked car. Liz always carried a small folding knife in her purse, so she used that to try to make a small cut on her arm. To her surprise, though the knife was very sharp, she had not been able to penetrate her skin. That was when she realized that she was becoming like me and my children.

In other words, Liz was becoming superhuman like the rest of her family. Of course, this was another reason for celebration, and we all went out that night for a classy Italian dinner at our favorite restaurant. During the afternoon, there was no other topic of conversation among us but the wonder and joy of Liz's transformation. That was when it dawned on us that her failure to conceive before now was because her body was busy making all of the necessary changes and did not have time for a baby.

This sort of thing had not happened with Janice, my first wife, probably because my body was not advanced far enough to have my semen capable of forcing the change. However, now that my body had changed as far as we expected it to, we guessed that it was ready to change Liz, and had finally done so. Well, for whatever reason, we were all deliriously happy for her and for the whole family. Now, our question was just how long was it going to take for Liz to become just like me with all of her physical protections in place?

We also wondered how much Johnny would be born with and how much he would have to wait to develop the characteristics that his siblings already had. Note that we did not think of them as half-siblings. We had discarded that distinction long ago!

Anyway, as we walked from the front door of the restaurant toward our parked car, we got a reminder of real life! Over the past few weeks, ISIL had opened direct warfare on the American people. We didn't know where they had come from, but we assumed that it was a mixture of imported and local terrorists. In this case, it was a drive-by shooting.

The car was a nondescript sedan in a dark color that drove past us. Suddenly, the barrel of an assault rifle was poked from a rear window on the passenger side and bullets were sprayed in our direction. Dammit, everyone on the sidewalk was hit by one or more bullets, and the screams of the wounded and dying rang through the evening.

In our party, only Liz was actually wounded by the bullets; the rest of us had the bullets bounce off our skin, though our clothes were ruined from bullet holes. As it turned out, Liz's wounds lasted only a few seconds to a minute. The bullets were pushed from her body and the wounds healed of their own accord that quickly. Thank God that she already had developed that much protection.

Meanwhile, the car was still moving relatively slowly down the street with bullets still being fired. Mary rushed to take care of Liz while Billy and I dashed after the shooter's car. It was amazing how fast we could run when we really tried, and we caught up to the car in less than half a block. I went for the driver and Billy went for the shooter.

Just as we caught up to the car, I yelled to Billy, "DON'T KILL HIM! WE WANT INFORMATION!" Fortunately, Billy heard me and acted upon my words. This was a four-door sedan which made things a little easier for us. The car's air conditioning was on so that all of the windows were closed except for the one beside the shooter. Billy reached in and grabbed the AK-47 rip-off from the shooter and tossed it to the ground. The shooter lost a trigger finger in the process because he tried to shoot Billy while Billy was pulling the gun from the shooter's hands.

Billy grabbed the door frame at the open window and jerked it from the car as if the lock and mounting hardware had been made of paper-mâché. He grabbed the man from the car and tossed him to the pavement. The result was an unconscious man who was finished with his evil deeds.

There was another man in the back seat who was holding a pistol, but he never got a chance to shoot. Billy grabbed him from the car and threw him down beside his compatriot.

Meanwhile, I thrust my bare fist through the driver's window glass and shattered it. That was the first time the driver knew that I was there. I grabbed him by the arm and also threw him to the street. He was stunned, but still conscious; nevertheless, he was also done. There was no one else in the car, and it moved forward for a few more feet before the motor died for lack of fuel.

We now had three prisoners, but what were we going to do with them? Police sirens could be heard in the distance, so we had to decide quickly. I realized that the cops would be happy with the driver and the shooter, so we could "kidnap" the third man for not-so-gentle questioning if we acted fast. I told Billy, "Grab that third guy and take him up that fire escape. Wait for me on the roof. I'll join you in a minute."

Billy nodded and did as I requested. I ran back to Liz and Mary. Liz was already sitting up and recovering from her wounds. I said, "Mary, help Liz to the car. You two wait on Billy and me. We will be along shortly after we get some answers from one of the shooters." Mary nodded agreement, and I ran back to the fire escape. It took me only a few seconds to join Billy and the prisoner on the roof.

The captive was still unconscious, so Billy woke him by pissing in his face. When the man came to, he refused to answer questions, as was expected. Well, I won't bore you with the details of what we did to him, but both of us were thoroughly annoyed by his actions, so we were not gentle with him. We did manage to get a good bit of information before we acceded to his request to be martyred. We dropped him five floors from the roof to the alley. That went a long way toward relieving our annoyance at him.