Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  But that wasn’t the priority right then. They needed to get enough people, get a hold of enough weapons to stand a fighting chance. There was a high probability of someone on their side getting injured, but if that was the worst that could happen, she would take those odds. It would be so much better than someone dying.

  Of course, the probability was also high that they would have to kill the women if they came back. Maybe shooting at them might be enough to get them to show some caution, and they would turn back and leave. It was worth a shot, either way, but Emma had a feeling that they would have to kill someone.

  It didn’t bother her as much as it probably would have. Why should she be bothered anyway? These were people that had invaded her town and her neighborhood. They'd snuck into people's houses and stolen their stuff while they slept. There hadn't been noise in the neighborhood after they left, which led her to think they hadn't killed anyone, but she was sure they could have.

  They had forced their way into her home, scared them, hurt Chase and taken their food while threatening them. Even after all that, even though they took enough to fill their van, they still waited out while they took from other houses. Emma had watched their car idle on their street for hours before they drove off, making so much noise because they were confident that no one would stand up against them. They didn’t care that they had taken from people that didn’t have much else to support themselves and their families and probably scared them, too.

  Emma hated that. she knew there were people like that in the world, she wasn’t so naïve, but actually coming across them in her town, in her house, something about how close they'd come and invaded her life made her angry.

  I should have done something, she berated herself.

  Only, what could she have done? Risked attacking them when they had guns and could shoot her down and her friends and family if they wanted to, before she could do any real damage to them. it would have been pointless, but that couldn’t change how she felt.

  Just don’t think about it.

  They had a plan, and she just had to follow it. She glanced over at Kellen, almost surprised that she appeared to be the more level headed of the two of them. She really needed to get a hold of herself, and get back the confidence she'd just recently started to build before those women tore it down like scrap paper.

  "How many do you think would be enough?" Emma found herself asking.

  It was a bit amazing that she was asking this of Kellen of all people. But in a way, she did seem to have something in mind that was a lot better than Emma's initial plan. She was helping anyway, in spite of how things had ended between them the last time. Even if it was to protect her own family, Emma could appreciate her help. She would trust the older woman just this once. Kellen didn’t even glance at her as they moved to another door.

  "Don’t think about how many we need. There has to be an advantage, so we need as many as possible, which means we need to inform everyone in the neighborhood. You can always use more help."

  Maybe, but Emma didn’t usually like to ask for help. It wasn’t even entirely a pride thing, either. She was just used to handling everything on her own. She'd taken up looking after the family, because their grandmother was aging, and had arthritis and Alzheimer's, and her older sister had been declared unfit for work. Part of the unwillingness to ask for help was because she just didn’t usually talk with strangers. She was introverted and had been so used to being alone. Besides her family, Chase was her only real friend. Of course, she'd been opening up recently because the situation required it, but her first thought was rarely ever to ask for help.

  After some time, Emma and Kellen headed for the police station in silence, hoping to get the backing of some police officers on their mission.

  They'd knocked on a few houses in the street. Quite a few of them had been robbed the night before, though they were most of them were lucky to be sleeping at the time. Those that weren’t as lucky merely kept out of the robbers' way and got the scare of their lives in exchange, but no one else had been hurt, at least. They just got up in the morning to find their things gone. Emma had explained the situation, what her family had faced.

  She got expressions of sympathy from whoever she told, and though she did appreciate it, she didn’t tell them that it really didn’t help anything. She thanked them either way, giving assurances that she and her family were all right, they would get over the experience if only they could receive some help to make things safer for them. They left every house they stopped at with a warning for what was probably to come in the near future.

  Emma felt some guilt. The women would be coming back because of her. Her stupidity meant her family would be attacked again, but like Emma had said, they weren’t the only ones that could be targeted. It involved the whole neighborhood, and Emma, instead of letting it blow over, had given them a reason to return, soon.

  But, what if they had come into her house anyway, even without her unlocking the door for them and going outside? Chase and Brian had both been sleeping in the sitting room, and what if the women breaking I woke them up? They might have gotten hurt anyway, their stuff might still have gotten stolen.

  Emma sighed. She put it out of her mind, because she couldn’t tell now if what she'd done had been a good or bad thing. Thinking of all the possibilities meant nothing, considering what they were going to face in the near future.

  Those they'd told would either spread the word or lock themselves up in their homes and prepare for the worst. It wouldn’t protect them, though. If the women had a way to get into the houses, locks wouldn't stop them a second time. Going to the police was actually a good idea, even though part of Emma would rather not have them involved in the case at all.

  It was Kellen's idea to go to the police. It was faster than knocking on all the doors in the neighborhood themselves and hoping more of them would have guns in their homes, but Emma hadn't thought of it before because of the complications. If they asked the police to help, and all the food they had in the shed was found out, her family would be in big trouble.

  The town was having a food crisis—who wasn’t, in their situation? Unless they lived on or near a farm—to the point where they kept sending people out to barter their resources with other towns. She had gone herself, only her deal had gone south because she was dealing with a corrupt mayor who wanted to give them food that was already going bad, and she'd dared to ask for more. He refused the deal in the end, and some people had held Emma responsible.

  Yet, they had enough food stored to feed everyone in town. Although, if they did that, it would only feed them once, and it wouldn’t be a fulfilling meal, and they'd be back to starving. But how the town saw it—and more importantly, the police officers who had become the head of the town in the absence of other higher officials—it was her duty to hand the food over the second she realized it was there. But it was her sister's store, not hers, and Merry had trusted her enough with the secret and told her not to tell anyone else. She had already told Chase, but he lived with them.

  Besides, she wasn’t willing to compromise her family for the town. She felt so guilty when she realized that, but not enough to stop.

  Still, she couldn’t deny going to the police was the best way to go if they wanted more guns. They had plenty, after all, not to mention they had the skills she didn’t even if she could get her hands on another gun. If she and Kellen could get them on their side, then this was a fight they would definitely win, with as few casualties as possible.

  "I don’t blame you."

  Her head swung around to stare at Kellen, wide-eyed. They hadn't talked to each other much since leaving the other woman's doorstep and only about the plan, so it was a surprise that Kellen was talking to her at all. And what she'd said... there was no way it could be true.

  In Kellen's eyes, Emma had ruined her family. Emma didn’t think that was a fair assessment. It wasn’t like, just because she was the outsider, it left the spouses blameless in what happened. Why
did she have to take all the blame? She didn’t seduce Brian; it was the other way around. She just fell for it, and kept going back, because she wasn’t emotionally stable.

  But she couldn’t absolve herself either. Because she had known what she was doing was wrong, she was just too weak emotionally and mentally to stop before it went anywhere. To give in at all had been admitting she was weak, no matter how charming Brian had been, how starved she had been for the attention of someone like him at the time he first approached her. It ended up being the worst mistake of her life, but in the beginning, she'd let herself act gullible.

  It was only fair that she got punished for it now. But it hadn't been that long, yet here was Kellen, telling her that she didn’t blame her?

  "Excuse me?" she mum bled when she could use her voice again. "You said something, but I think I must have misheard..."

  Kellen shot a glance at her before deliberately looking away. "You heard me fine, Emma, just... please listen. This isn’t exactly easy for me to say." She stopped to take a breath, and Emma kept her mouth shut, willing to cooperate. It was more than she could have asked for so soon, but she would take it. "I'm not going to lie and say that I'm over it, because I'm far from. Honestly, I don’t think I ever could. But... I don’t blame you for going after Brian—he's handsome, sporty and fun..."

  Emma winced. That was what Kellen meant. What else had she expected? Though Kellen was only partly right in whatever she was imagining. Yes, Emma had been drawn in because of all those things, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough to go as far as she did. Brian just offered her something she needed, something that, at the time, she could not refuse, and that was the end of it. Even after the guilt she'd felt for giving in once, she couldn’t not go back to see him, and soon it became a regular thing, almost routine.

  Before Emma could respond, Kellen spoke again.

  "I should have expected something like this to happen. To be honest, it's been on my mind for a long time. I could never keep him, I always knew that. He's too young for me, I knew that when I met him. But I saw what I wanted and I reached for it without thinking twice. It's a wonder we lasted this long at all." She sighed.

  Emma knew it was because of their kids, but she didn’t bring it up. She knew Brian and Kellen had been together until Kellen got pregnant, then they had a shot gun wedding. Emma was pretty sure, if it hadn't been for their child, their relationship would have run its course. She'd had revelations about Brian that had her thinking of him differently, and though she hadn't liked him at all even as they carried on their affair, she was sure his children mattered a lot to Brian, even if Kellen didn’t mean anywhere near as much.

  "I really want to keep fighting this, you know? I was hurt, very badly, by the whole thing, but I'm not entirely unreasonable. Making him hurt even a little bit of what I did was fun at the time, but the children miss him, and hurting him doesn’t really serve me any long term purpose, especially considering how things are..."

  Her expression looked almost lost, and Emma felt sympathy for her. It was partly her fault to begin with, so she couldn’t even reach out to her, and risk getting her mad again. Kellen opening up like this could only mean good things, and Emma didn’t want to ruin it.

  "I'll allow Brian back in the house to care for my kids," Kellen continued. "He was always better at taking care of them than I was. But you're welcome to have Brian, if you want him. I'm not going to keep holding him back being selfish, or we'll just both end up miserable, and make our kids miserable as well in the end."

  She said the words so easily, almost blankly, but Emma could detect the slight trembling in her voice. She was trying to act mature, and Emma had a feeling it was costing her a lot. This wasn’t something Kellen wanted. Emma still didn’t know if she loved her husband or not, but she felt something if she was willing to do something like this in spite of how she felt about the whole situation.

  But Emma had to clear up the misunderstanding before it went any further. She'd done so with Brian, and now it was Kellen's turn.

  "Brian and I aren’t an item. I am sorry, for what went on between us, but I don’t feel for him that way, and neither does he for me. If you had listened to me before, I would have told you all of this. I am... ashamed to say this, but Brian was convenient, at a time when I needed something, and I didn’t care if it was something destructive. Nothing more."

  "Are you interested in Chase?" Kellen asked.

  Emma was surprised. She hadn't expected that come back. But maybe she should have. The times Kellen caught sight of her in the morning on her way to work, Emma was getting picked up by Chase. And now, he was living in her house, with her family. It was an obvious conclusion to make. It was also probably why she hadn't brought up her suspicions about her and Brian's affair before.

  "I'm not sure what's going on with us," she found herself answering honestly, "and I'm more focused on keeping me and my family alive for now so I don’t really like to think too much about it. He is my closest friend, and I care a lot about him, but anything other than that is a distraction right now."

  She would have to think about it eventually or risk losing him, something she wasn’t quite ready for. As long as he stayed, she could lean on his strength when she felt she needed it. He always offered it so freely, and Emma had gladly taken advantage of his kindness before. She had a feeling she would continue to do so in the near future, with how things were going.

  "I admire you, you know. That you have your head and heart in the right place. I used to envy you sometimes, before, until I realized I was just being stupid."

  It wasn’t the first time Emma was hearing about envy. Her own sister had felt the same way for some reason, but Emma didn’t agree with their reasoning. At least Kellen came to her senses, Emma was pretty sure her sister still held some hate towards her.

  But Emma could sense that she and Kellen were beginning to mend their broken relationship, so she didn’t say anything about it. This woman was her neighbor. She had known her since before she got married and had a child. Emma's feelings toward her may not have always been positive, but anything was better than the open hostility of before.

  They finally got to the station, and Emma led the way inside. She looked around for someone she knew, and the first person she recognized was a female officer, one of the officers to see her on release from prison.

  "Excuse me, ma'am?" she said tentatively, Kellen coming up behind her.

  She looked up from whatever she'd been doing and blinked at Emma. She was, technically, supposed to be doing community work, and hadn't come back since it started. She hadn't been going into to work, either, and for a moment she worried the officer knew about it. Her friend, Carol, a nurse at the hospital where she was supposed to work had promised to cover for her, because there wasn’t much left to do, and she'd been at home looking after her sister as she took on some medications.

  The officer only looked surprised, though.

  "What can I do for you ma'am?"

  She moved to where the three of them could sit down for their chat, though with how anxious she felt, Emma would have rather remained standing.

  "We actually came to report something that happened in our neighborhood last night," Kellen said, giving Emma a meaningful look.

  She nodded and spoke up. "Late last night, I can be sure when, I woke up and heard a car outside on the street. My sister woke me up when she had a nightmare, and when I saw the car, I thought I might go investigate why it was there."

  The officer nodded along with her story, taking a note pad and pen and jotting things down.

  "Then what happened?"

  "Well, I'm staying with two friends of mine, my sister and my grandmother. My friends were sleeping in the living room, so I went to wake them up so we could check out what was going on. We... there were women there, with guns, and they threatened us. I'm sure there were others going through other houses, but we had come outside and they forced their way inside and went through our th
ings, stole our food and some other supplies."

  There was more nodding from the officer. "Were any of you harmed?"

  "Um," she murmured, her throat tight, before forcing the words past her lips. "My friend tried to tell them we didn’t have anything to give them, and they hit him. There were a lot for them, too, at least ten that went through my house, though I think there were others that had gone out to other houses in the street. Every single one that I saw was armed. They also... said they'd be back soon to take more stuff."

  "I'm sorry for what happened, ma'am. We can send a few officers with you to check the situation with your neighbors, see if any of them can be offered food to replace what they lost."

  Emma and Kellen exchanged another look.

  "Actually, we did talk to a few of our neighbors before we came here," Kellen said, taking the reins again. "We didn’t feel it would be right to just wait for this to happen again, so we were hoping for some support to fight them back."

  The officer arched her eyebrows in surprise, taking a closer look at the both of them and their determined faces. She sighed. "Ma'am, you realize how dangerous something like this would be?"

  "We've talked to some of the neighbors and they were willing to join in," Emma said quickly, pleading for help in their cause. "We do lack the weapons, but that was why we thought of asking for police support, since we can't entirely do it all on our own. But we can't let them come back and steal from us some more, and scare us for their amusement. I can't be sure when, but they will be returning, exactly to our neighborhood because they didn’t get all of the houses yet."

  She of course had to keep her family's involvement as low as possible. The officer didn’t need to know they would be aiming for her house specifically.

  The officer looked like she was considering their words, tapping the end of her pen on the notebook. Then she set both down and gave them a tight smile.