Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone by Christopher Andrews

crack!
    Cooper allowed the dead man to slump to the floor. Some of his blood stayed on Cooper’s shield, rolling up as he reversed, then oozing back down. It remained very beaded, reminding him of rain on a window pane.
    Cooper’s anger held together this time — the guy had fired a shotgun at him! — but he honestly had not meant to kill the guy. Hovering safely within his protective shield, he gazed down at the messy body and pondered his next move.
    “Perry? Jesus Christ, Perry! What have you done?”
    Cooper turned to see his security friend, Dwayne. The paunchy guard was standing a few feet down the hallway, framed on either side by a number of heads poking out of apartment doors. Dwayne was gaping at the punk’s body, and his right hand was gripping the handle of the low-powered pistol in its holster.
    “I, uh ... uh ...” Cooper stammered. How the hell was he supposed to explain a tableau like this ?
    “Jesus, Perry ...” Dwayne was now staring at Cooper’s feet — specifically, the fact that they were hovering above the hallway floor. He drew his pistol.
    In spite of being aware of how all of this must look, Cooper felt indignant. They, the apartment tenants, were all gawking at him, judging him. As if they hadn’t all complained about Arturo and his hoodlum friends? Hypocrites! Still, he tried to keep his voice level. “Dwayne,” he began, “this, this isn’t ... I didn’t—”
    And of course, of course , Arturo’s mother chose that exact moment to peek out of her apartment, see their little friend lying in a spreading pool of blood across the hall, and scream her damned head off.
    Others joined in, followed a second later by several slamming doors; one woman ran out of her apartment and down the hall, away from him. Someone cried, “Rogue! Cooper’s a rogue!”
    Then Dwayne — his “friend,” Dwayne — raised his pistol and fired. Cooper barely flinched this time, but that wasn’t the point.
    “You son-of-a-bitch!” Cooper roared, leaning forward and rolling toward Dwayne.
    Dwayne fired one more round before running away as fast as his old legs could carry him. To add further insult to any macho image he might’ve held of himself, he wailed “Roooogue!” in a high-pitched voice far more feminine-sounding than Arturo’s mom.
    As Cooper passed another apartment door, he saw it open and glanced over. A middle-aged woman he’d talked to once or twice (Mary?) stepped out just far enough to point a stun gun at him, one of those cheap knockoffs that claimed to be “almost as powerful as PCA sidearms!” in the commercials (emphasis on “almost”).
    Mary fired, and the paddles bounced off his shield without incident. That wasn’t the point, though — the point was that she tried to hurt him.
    Refusing him loans, laying him off, stealing his money, ruining his car, cheating on him, divorcing him, ignoring him, now they were trying to shoot him ...
    That was it. Perry Cooper was done. He’d had enough. Enough! Nothing could hurt him, nothing could stop him. Ungrateful, backstabbing, two-faced, punk sonsabitches — every one! He would kill them all !
    And so Perry Cooper snapped.
    The words “anger” or “fury” did little justice to the crazed fugue in which Cooper found himself; he did not make distinctions or slow down for justifications. He lashed out without any real thought or reason, slamming against, smashing into, and rolling over anything or any one unfortunate enough to draw his attention. The smartest, luckiest tenants were the ones who kept their doors closed — during his one-man riot, his sphere shattered glass, cracked wood, bent steel, broke bones, crushed joints, hyper-extended limbs, and, in one instance, ruptured organs.
    The police arrived. Just regular, uniformed officers, because the first 911 calls had reported gunshots rather than rogue activity, so the police were dispatched ahead of the PCA. It was a disaster: Wasted pepper spray, impotent TASER devices,