Clara could have told her it wasn’t her fault, even though it sort of was. Clara herself wouldn’t have blamed her, but plenty others would have since she was their guardian. A few people had insinuated Tessa didn’t have an opinion on whether she needed psychiatric help or not because of her poor mental health. Quite a few people, most of them former friends of their parents, had insisted that Viola, as Tessa's new guardian—even though she was an adult by then—should have made the decision to get her therapy.
They would blame Viola for allowing Tessa to have her own choices. But Viola would never have sent her away, either, knowing Tessa would have been miserable after just losing her parents.
"I'm aware of my own mental deterioration," she admitted, fiddling with her fingers as she looked down at her lap. "I'm not always aware of it, but sometimes I realize, and it scares me. There are times when I don’t remember things, and sometimes I remember them later, and it's horrible because I can remember what it does to you that I forget things. I'm so sorry Clara, you have no idea how sorry, that everything has been pushed onto your shoulders because of the both of us, but I can't control Tessa on my own."
Clara sighed, leaning over to drag her grandmother in for a hug, not caring about the dirt. "I didn’t mean that you had to. I don’t think even the both of us could handle it. We don’t know how." She bit her lip, thinking. "I'll ask around and see if anyone in the area might be able to help. We don’t have to do it on our own."
Viola pulled back, holding her by the arms. "Why would anyone help when they have their own problems to deal with? It would be too selfish of us to ask, even if you did find someone qualified."
Clara smiled sadly. "We can use our food supply as an incentive and pay them in food. The biggest problem anyone has right now is food, it might as well be the official currency around here. They will definitely help."
"Such a smart girl," Viola said softly, leaning forward to kiss Clara's cheek.
She watched as her grandmother got back to the work at hand. Before doing the same, she looked up and saw Tessa in the window. She must have been watching them from upstairs. There was no way she could have heard what they were talking about, but Clara had a feeling that she knew. Then she walked away from the window, and Clara looked down to continue with the gardening.
A while later, Clara was in the house trying to think of what she could do. There was no way she would just go around the neighborhood, knocking on every door and asking who could help. She didn’t even know most of her neighbors, and the current situation was making a lot of people hostile, so it wasn’t even safe.
But then she remembered something. One of her neighbors was trained as a nurse. She didn’t get around the neighborhood a lot, but Michelle knew just about everything about everybody. Even more, she was always ever so happy to talk about it. She must have heard it from the other woman at some point, even though she couldn’t remember exactly when. Clara decided she would be perfect to help out with Tessa.
Seeing no reason to put it off, she left the house after checking up on everyone, without bothering them. Then she stepped outside and went around to her neighbor's house. It was only a few doors down from her own, and she hesitated for about a second before she knocked on the door. Her heart beat anxiously, and Clara wasn’t sure whether or not to be happy to realize that her introverted tendencies hadn't gone away completely with the situation. But they needed the woman's help, so there wasn’t much of a choice.
The woman, Alice, answered the door, looking surprised. It was understandable. Clara wasn’t her mother, who had actually made a point of associating with the neighbors. She tried to smile normally.
"Clara! I can't really say I expected you to be at my doorstep."
She held back a wince. "Life's been busy. I've been working so hard to take care of things at home I don’t really have time for anything else."
Alice hummed, her expression becoming understanding. "I see you around sometimes, I know how harried you are. How's your grandmother? I haven't seen her out since the blackout."
Viola hadn't gotten out all that much, but Clara knew she had gotten around the neighborhood more than the sisters had in years. She hadn't been aware that Viola wasn’t leaving the house recently, but it was understandable. Even before she started spending most of her time in the garden, even in the times when she forgot things, Viola seemed to have grasped that something was wrong. Clara hadn't clearly explained to her what was wrong, other than that the electricity had gone off everywhere and cars were no longer in service, and that the situation wouldn’t be resolved too quickly.
"She's doing okay," she replied mildly.
She didn’t know what the neighbors knew about what went on at their home, and she didn’t want to know. She pretended no one gossiped about her family, even though there was no way that would be true with Michelle being their next-door neighbor. She wasn’t the kind of woman that knew how to keep quiet, after all. Her grandmother's mental condition and Tessa's were probably known by all. Clara kept her own life private, but she didn’t live in a bubble.
They made a little more small talk, staying at the doorstep. Alice didn’t invite her inside, and Clara didn’t ask to be invited in. She knew the other woman in passing, but Clara rarely talked to her, save for the few times she was returning from her run and she saw Alice outside, and she would greet her out of courtesy. They'd barely talked more than a handful of words at any one time in years. Alice must have been wondering why she was here, or might not be surprised at all. Clara couldn’t tell.
"So, what can I do for you today?" Alice asked, her eyebrows raised inquisitively.
Clara took a deep breath. Asking people for help was the one thing she rarely did. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she could handle everything on her own, but there was something about asking for assistance that made her stomach turn. After all, she'd managed to accomplish without help, it just seemed like a failure to ask someone for something, but the situation didn’t call for her clinging onto her useless pride, or what was left of it, in any case.
Just say it.
"I came with a proposition for you, actually. I'm starting to feel like I'm way in over my head, and I remembered you were a nurse, so I need your help. I'm willing to trade something for it."
The look Alice aimed at her was shrewd, pursing her lips as she regarded Clara. She practically held her breath as she waited for the other woman to pass judgment. Finally, Alice nodded and opened the door, stepping aside in a wordless invitation. Clara went in gladly.
"How have you and your family been holding up?"
Clara took a seat, and Alice sat across the small coffee table from her.
"About as well as anyone, I assume, with the current situation. I've been doing a little volunteering at the 'hospital' but I've had to spend most of my time at home to look after my kids. My two children are about all the family I have."
Clara vaguely knew them, though she could hardly remember the last time she had seen either. She leaned forward in her seat, going for a persuasive approach.
"I have a way you can help out and stick around your kids." Though she felt a little guilty for drawing one more needed personnel member from the hospital. From what she had seen, they still needed the extra hands. But she needed this. It was the best thing, the only thing, she knew to do for her sister. "I could do with someone to keep an eye on Tessa and Viola. I've been going around with some volunteer work myself, and something's come up recently that makes me think just leaving them to their own devices is no longer something I can keep doing."
Alice looked confused. "Were they harmed somehow, or are they sick? Is that why they always stay inside?"
Clara shook her head. At least she hadn't noticed Tessa had been out the previous night. They didn’t need to stick out in this neighborhood, even if it had been theirs for years. It would be so much easier if everyone kept to themselves, though Clara knew that was a vain hope. But Clara needed Alice's help, so she told h
er about Viola's dementia and Tessa's mental state.
"My sister left the house yesterday, for the first time in as long as I can remember. My grandmother is herself half the time, the other half she doesn’t remember, she must be reminded. I've been leaving them at home alone because I didn’t have another choice. Since the blackout, I've had a friend staying over, but he doesn’t know how to handle it any more than I do, and he can't keep watch on them both. Tessa, especially, doesn’t like being told what to do. I need someone to keep an eye on them while I'm out at work, particularly Tessa."
Alice frowned as Clara bit her lip, hoping she'd made a clear enough case. But Alice was hesitating. Clara waited a moment, anxious, but it didn’t look like Alice was going to answer right away.
"You could bring your kids to the house with you. You never have to be parted from them," she added as an extra incentive.
"The real problem with that is having my children around Tessa," she said, sounding uncertain.
"She's harmless," Clara insisted. "I used to babysit for my neighbor, her daughter is five years old now. She has been to our house a lot of times with no trouble. My sister actually likes to stay by herself, so besides meals, I believe she'll just stay in her room, and you would only need to check on her occasionally."
Clara could see she was tempted but still held back. She knew what the other woman would say even before the words were out of her mouth. It was, after all, the only bargain anyone was currently interested in.
Alice's eyes narrowed. "I need to find a way to feed my kids."
Because she'd expected it, Clara was nodding before she was done speaking. "I understand that. My family has a wealthy food supply that I can pay you with. Food won't be a problem for a while."
It was the offer of food that swayed her. She slumped in her seat, and Clara was surprised she hadn't noticed the level of tension that kept the other woman so rigid in her seat. Her situation must have been growing dire.
Alice leaned over the table, hand outstretched, and Clara took it readily in a handshake. Tessa wouldn’t like the deal, Clara knew her sister would be mad at her for sharing their food, but she would have to deal with it. This had to be done.
"I'll be there tomorrow," Alice promised.
Chapter Four
Clara was a little more confident about going into town the next day, knowing the woman she shot would be okay.
As much as she would have preferred to stay home and sleep all her troubles away, she needed to have something to do before overthinking things drove her mad. She was making headway into finding solutions to her problems and that would have to be enough for the moment. She didn’t plan on going to check on the woman again, but Clara trusted Felicia's opinion.
Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to meet, and Clara would never get in trouble for it. A part of her told her not to be so lax, but she pushed it away. The past day had been bad enough, she was ready to put it behind her with a well-needed distraction.
Alice had come in that morning, as promised, so Cooper wouldn’t be alone with her family. She had someone at home looking after Tessa and Viola, so she wouldn’t have to worry about them for the day. Hopefully, Alice could be helpful and they could use her services soon.
Clara had decided it was time to find some purpose in their new world. Instead of just looking for something to distract her so she would not have to go home. Before, that had been going to school and acting as a teacher. There might not be anything specific for her to do, but she didn’t mind. She would help as much as she could from then on.
She headed to the police station and looked around for an officer, and found the one she'd met a couple of times before. He didn’t seem as busy as everyone else, so she approached him, standing in front of his desk for a moment and waiting for him to notice she was there. When he did, he looked up and gave her a small, professional smile.
"Do you have any news?" she asked eagerly, stepping closer to the desk.
He knew what she was talking about. He gave a sharp nod as he gestured with a hand for her to sit down on the chair across the desk from him. She took the seat, perching on the edge, with her hands folded in her lap.
"We've heard back from some neighboring towns. They were, thankfully, easier to deal with than Charleston, and we are now engaged in trading deals. We're hoping to get a few vehicles of our own working to give us more reach, but the shortage crisis is, for the moment, averted with supplies ready to come in soon."
Clara was impressed. Also, a little relieved. She would have hated herself if her rotten deal with that bastard Charleston had irrevocably harmed the people of her town. Not to mention all the food she had at her place that she was hiding because Tessa made her promise not to tell anyone about it. At least food was coming in for everyone else, they wouldn’t starve any time soon, so that was one of her problems—though she had forgotten about it, in the face of everything else—averted for the time being. Not that the guilt of hiding it would go away, but it was lessened somewhat.
"And do you have any information on what caused the EMP?"
It had been a while, surely there would be some news by now. Clara wasn’t sure how far they were investigating the incident, she had asked before, but hadn't gotten any specific answers other than that they definitely were looking into it. If they could find the cause of it, there would be a possibility of everything getting back to normal.
The police officer sighed. His hand picked up a pen and tapped the end on the desk top, eyes looking around before he leaned a little closer to her. Clara mirrored the movement without thinking.
"We still have no clues," he admitted. "But we're working on sending someone further out to see how far the effects have spread. It's likely to be an expedition that would take several days on the road."
"Is there anyone that had volunteered to go?"
"Well, not quite. It has a lot of dangers, and we're hoping, by that time, we can have a running car. The car would need some gas, and the people going out would have to carry some food for the road. Honestly, we haven't even asked for volunteers for this trip, yet. We're hoping to find someone reliable and pitch the idea to them instead. If that doesn’t happen, then we'll ask for volunteers."
So, they were already searching for a car. The idea that they could have a running car was comforting to a lot of people. Clara had heard it before, but she hadn't been sure until she saw the truck sent to them by Mayor Charleston. She wondered where they were looking for one.
She had a car in their garage at home. It had belonged to her parents, and after they passed away, no one had really used it. She had her bike before it was stolen when she and Cooper went out to his flat to pick up his things so he could move in with them. Even Tessa's bike was gone. Neither her sister nor grandmother really needed to get anywhere, and Clara had started carpooling with Cooper to get to school. Everywhere else she needed to get to, she could walk.
Clara just hadn't wanted to use the car. They rarely used anything that had belonged to their parents before, once they passed away.
The car was an antique. Clara wasn’t sure how old it was, but her father had been proud of himself for keeping it and maintaining it for years. It could easily be two decades old and she wondered if she might get it to work. Of course, no one had touched it in the past ten years so the chances were slim. She thought about mentioning it, but the ache in her chaste made her decide not to.
She didn’t want to tell anyone about it, even if it could work, it was her late parents' property. Besides, the chances that it could work were so small as to be negligible.
The officer went on, "The real problem is that we can't send just anyone on this trip. There's always the risk that something could happen out there and we don’t know how to help with that. We were thinking an officer could go along with them, but there aren’t enough of us as it is, and we need all the manpower staying close to home, just in case there's an emergency. Or there's the possibility that they just never come back. They'll
have access to a vehicle, and it may be the only one we have, so we have to be cautious about this."
He shrugged, looking unconcerned, but Clara noticed how tense he really was. They weren’t just imagining something happening to whoever went on the expedition; they were worried that whoever they sent would just disappear. Take the car, the gas, the food, and drive away and not return.
Clara could understand the pull of it, of course. If you could go off on your own, or with someone you wanted to run away with, and find safety elsewhere, why worry about other people? A town full of them? While she was willing to help out the town, she wasn’t so naïve that she didn’t know so many people would be glad to be gone, away from the crisis, and pretend it wasn’t their problem.
But where would they even go? The situation at home was bad, why would anyone ever risk going out to find out how bad it could be in other places? The thought of running away didn’t appeal to her. Because unlike most people, she had seen a little of what it was like our there, and it wasn’t pretty. They were too close to big towns that held a lot of people, which meant too many people looking for food that may not be there. She didn’t fancy getting attacked by a bunch of crazies that were about as desperate as they were.
"I can volunteer," she offered.
But the officer tensed again, more visibly this time, and she could tell he was unsure of her ability to carry it out. Especially after her disastrous deal with the Mayor.
It stung, even though she told herself she deserved it. She was lucky no one had come to her doorstep to try and flay her over it. Even a bad deal was still a deal, and some people were more desperate than others.
For a moment, she broke down and wondered if, somehow, if it had been someone else there if they would have made a better deal than she had. Could they have gotten what they needed a lot earlier so that whatever crisis they were facing would have been averted before it became so bad they needed nightly patrols and curfews?
Zero Power (Book 2): Trying To Survive Page 3