Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  "I don’t know when the attack started, but it's different from what happened before. The police sent someone here, but there hasn’t been word from them. There are uncontrollable fired and the damage is only going to get worse, a few more people might be brought in later, or they'll die before they can be helped. But..."

  It struck Emma that Carol seemed worried. Well, she did, too. How could they not, having been put in another dead end situation this soon? Carol hadn't even been there for the last one, just the after math. But, as Emma watched, Carol's face hardened. Even afraid, she was strong.

  "My sister and I have moved in together so that one of us can always be on the watch while the other is out. I'll do anything to protect what's mine. You should consider doing the same, Emma."

  Like there was ever another option?

  Of course Emma would protect her family. It had been her goal from the beginning, even before she had Chase join them. This was simply a change in duties, she had been looking after her family for years, maybe not well, but she'd done the job without complaint. It wasn’t going to change with this new information.

  It would be a challenge, though. She wasn’t the same woman she had been even a week ago. It may not be enough, but Emma had no intention of burying her face in the sand and waiting for the problem to blow over. If she had to, she'd take an active role either way. If something stood in her way, she simply had to remove it. And if she died along the way, well. It was better than taking the coward's way out, and she intended to accomplish something before that happened.

  "I will," Emma told her, because what else could she say? "I'm determined to keep what's mine."

  Chapter Twelve

  They had new enemies now, these ones seemingly more violent than the other ones. She wondered how they could have attacked too many people on an entire street. People didn’t stay outside much these days, but considering how many had been caught outside bothered Emma a lot.

  Carol had refused to ask any of the patience because she didn’t want them to get too distressed while she focused on fixing them up. The fight must have been brutal, and Emma wondered if they knew how many had died in it. Though considering how it was carried out, she couldn’t just call it a mere fight this time—this could be easily be an ambush. Eventually, they would have the answers, but Emma wasn’t in a hurry to learn them yet.

  Her mind was preoccupied all the way home. They had just cleared some enemies, yet new ones had come so quickly. They really couldn’t catch any breaks could they? Emma almost laughed at the unfairness, but it really wasn’t something to laugh about, was it?

  For the moment, it wasn’t anywhere near her home, so it wasn’t her immediate problem. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to get involved somehow. She was going to focus on her work at the hospital first, though, since it was the job she had been given.

  She sighed to herself. Things were getting complicated again way too soon and Emma didn’t think she had rested enough for this.

  Emma arrived home pretty late, and gathered the family together. If this was going to happen again, she was going to have to warn everyone. Chase, in particular she knew, wouldn’t like it if only because he might assume she would try to get involved. There was light curiosity from Janice, some grumbling form Merry, and caution from Chase.

  Of course he would guess something was wrong. She'd been calmer after the last attack, and she wasn’t even trying to hide that she was high strung right then. She'd walked all the way home hoping to get the smell from the hospital off her clothes, and she hadn't gotten any blood on her clothes so he wouldn’t notice, but just by her face, how she was acting, he could guess something was seriously wrong.

  "What is it, Emma?" he asked when no one else said anything.

  Emma was still trying to arrange her thoughts. While they worked, she hadn't let her mind work too much, keeping most of her focus on helping the patients. But now that she was back home with her family, plans kept running back and forth in her mind, wondering what they could do in the face of a second attack when they still didn’t have the weapons. She wasn’t sure they could call on the neighbors this time. Everyone was scared after the last fight, they wouldn’t be fast to join another.

  "There's a problem," she finally said. "Well, a new problem. I went in to the hospital today and it was full of injured people, just recently brought in."

  She could see Chase's jaw tighten as he took in the implications of what she was saying. "You mean..."

  "I mean we need to prepare ourselves for further invasions and protect what's ours."

  She could see the worry instantly take over her grandmother, Merry growing more somber and stopping her grumbling. If she'd had a choice, Emma would have rather kept them both in the dark if only for a little bit longer. But that would be dangerous, and they could prepare for it this way. Hopefully, Merry would take the hint and not go out again, alone.

  It had hit Emma, as she thought on what Carol had told her, while she was on her way back home that Merry could have been caught up in the attack and Emma would have never known. As if her sister disappearing on her own wasn’t bad enough, learning she could have been harmed because she was out late had made something in her chest go cold. Hell, it could have been her and Chase, when they went out too look for her. Emma still didn’t know which street it had been, but she planned on finding out and ignoring that area.

  Either way, Merry would be more useful at home, where she could look after their grandmother. Emma intended to let her in on everything, but it would be moot if her illness kicked in one morning and she just didn’t remember. Merry would have to keep taking the medications whether or not she got to go outside, because she would need to be alert. Hopefully, the fear from last time would get her to do the smart thing.

  "These guys are going to be tricky," she continued. "I don’t know much detail, really, but they ended up hurting a lot of people, not just taking stuff. People are confirmed dead."

  There was a gasp from Janice as she covered her mouth with her hand, while the other two just grew even more tensed. Emma sighed. She didn’t mean to scare them, but they needed to know that these guys were infinitely more dangerous than the last group. Emma was pretty sure if they ever ended up in her neighborhood, they wouldn't be so lucky to escape nearly unscathed the second time.

  "They are so much more dangerous than the people we met before. Thankfully, the police have already been notified and they will be doing something about it, but I still want all of you to be careful. They started far away from here, but there is no guarantee they can't make their way around here."

  She shot a meaningful look at Merry, who huffed but didn’t look away. Emma nodded, knowing it meant she had heard and would cooperate. Not that staying indoors would be safe enough, if the attackers decided to go into the houses. She could only hope that the problem could be solved, even partially, before it came too close to her home.

  "What are we going to do, Emma? We're not a very strong group, mentally or physically," Janice said, pointing out what all of them must have been thinking.

  Emma had thought of it, of course. How could she not, when it was what kept holding them back? If she could go back in time, she'd smack herself in the face. They had a perfectly good gun, even if there was only the one, and she done something stupid and lost their only weapon.

  But they didn’t have much of a choice. If they couldn’t find allies, they were on their own, and there was no way she would just lay down and let things happen on their own ever again. It had been bad enough the last time.

  It wouldn’t be so simple as getting a large number to agree to do something about their circumstances, though. Maybe, if they could somehow pin these guys down, they might have had a chance. But how could they do that? They had showed up on some random street, they probably wouldn’t be going back there or to any street near it. They would pick a different target and attack while all they could do was wait and think about what would happen.

  Id
eas on how to beat this started floating in her head.

  "I'm going to train and change that," Emma vowed in answer to her grandmother. "I know it's not much, but we just have to do this because there isn’t any other way out. We can't even run, and there isn’t a place for us to run to, anyway. But as long as we all stick together, everything well be okay."

  She said the words with conviction and stopped to swallow, wondering if she really thought that way. Their best option would be to run, if it had been an option at all. They couldn’t exactly just jump on the two bikes they had and go off somewhere. They wouldn’t all fit, and Emma wasn’t up to letting her family go somewhere else without her. In any case, where would they go? And what to do about the supplies... they couldn’t leave.

  Not to mention if their luck was really bad, and they were taking their chance to flee, only to have the road blocked from the very people they were trying to run away from. They would be totally out in the open, and that was too dangerous attempt to make.

  So they just had to come up with a different solution.

  "Grandma, you need to keep on with the garden. When we get through this, we're still going to need the food. And Merry can learn to protect herself, too, so Chase and I aren’t doing it all alone. The reality that someone could hurt us—you—has sunk in, and I don’t want that for my family. I can't tell how any of this is going to work out, and I am of course anxious about it, but we should be fine, if it all of us."

  Her family was the one thing Emma didn’t think she could stand to lose. She had given up on her dreams for them, and thought she'd had regrets about it, she had never changed her mind. She had looked on it as a duty, but it was so much more than that. They were her family, and her first real friends. Even if things had changed from a long time ago, to her, how she felt about them hadn't changed.

  There was a short silence while everyone thought things through. Emma already had her decisions made and she had no intentions to change, but if that was what they wanted, she was going to have to cater to it somehow, talk them into listening to her.

  "I agree with Emma," Chase said, "we need to stick together."

  Emma was mildly surprised. She hadn't talked to Chase much since their last argument, if she could even call it that. She knew how much he hated the situation they now found themselves in, but that he was willing to go along with her at all meant not much had changed between them. She'd have to give him time to think things through on his own, since he gave her the same option after all.

  When the impromptu meeting was over, Merry and Janice both got up and walked off, leaving bot her and Chase staring at each other.

  "Do you mind if I postpone our lesson so I can focus on your sister?"

  Her eyebrows arched. She didn’t think he needed privacy for that, but she went along. "I won't mind at all. Besides, I was hoping I could learn something just watching."

  He pursed his lips, his eyes staring at her growing in intensity until he had her fidgeting, wondering what was going on.

  "Chase?" she called out to him tentatively.

  He looked stunned for a moment, like he had been pulled from a day dream. Then the moment was gone, and he gave her a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  "Nothing, Emma, just..."

  He let his voice trail away instead of finishing his sentence, and it made her curious. He was finally talking to her, she wanted them to talk some more. But what was this that Chase was having a hard time just telling her about. Usually, he could just tell her things up front.

  She watched, as he opened his mouth, only no sound came. Then he snapped his mouth shut and covering it with his hand.

  "No, really, it's nothing," he muttered and left the room.

  She could tell he was lying, but she wasn’t sure over what. She felt disappointed that he felt he couldn’t talk to her anymore. She just watched his back as he walked away from her, not wanting to disturb him. Besides, even if she called out to him, he would probably just ignore her. But she could focus on their growing distance later. Right then, she had to focus on the training. She heard Chase call out for her sister, and decided to go in o she could watch.

  Emma watched Chase in the garden attempting to train Merry. It wasn’t easy. Her sister didn’t have a healthy diet, and that was before they had to start watching what they ate. Back when her life was normal, Emma had taken a morning run and fitness classes to keep fit, something Merry didn’t give herself the option to since she always stayed inside, more specifically locked in her room.

  Emma wondered if it would scare Merry. Chase was taking it slower and easier than he did with her, but he wasn’t holding back so much, either. But she continued with determination and force. Emma was surprised to see that Merry could clearly take care of herself, even though she looked so thin.

  It was... unexpected, to say the least. But then, a lot about her sister had been surprising her lately. Well, since the day everything changed for them, anyway. She guessed that before Merry became sick and their parents died, there was a lot about her sister that she didn’t know.

  The knowledge made her feel sad somehow, though it had been there in the back of her mind for a while. This Merry wasn’t so open, and the few times Emma had felt they were making real progress, either she pulled back or everything went wrong again. Emma often wondered how things would have worked out, had they been different. But there was no point in dwelling on it when it would only make her mad.

  Emma wondered what else she didn’t know—did Merry ever have a friend, or a group of friends, or hobbies that Emma never knew about? Well, before of course. Merry had been the popular sister after all, Emma the introverted recluse, and it was only made worse by the accident.

  Emma wished that her sister could live a normal life, but wondered if any of their lives would ever be normal again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Emma worked at the hospital again. She didn’t think she would be reassigned to a new job, and she couldn’t just stop on her own. Not because of her punishment, but because she couldn’t sit by with so many people injured.

  When she went in, she expected there to be more. And there had been, only a lesser number than what she'd feared, less than a handful, but they were all in worse conditions than the guys who came in early because no one saw t their injuries and they couldn’t do it themselves.

  The biggest problem, currently, was the chance of infection. Not only was it high, they didn’t have enough of the right meds if it truly became a problem. A few already had infected wounds, and they were separated from the rest in the hope it wouldn’t spread, though Emma wasn’t sure it worked like that. They were given special care, and she was one of the 'nurses' that helped, leaving other more skilled volunteers to do the more difficult jobs.

  Carol caught her eye at some point, and Emma knew she wanted to talk, but they were both just too busy to stop. Her attention was grabbed the second she entered and she hadn't had time in between patients to talk to Carol.

  It took some time, but they did eventually manage to catch a short break around lunch. It wasn’t really a good idea to have food anywhere near the patients, but Emma had brought some snack, so she wouldn’t be met with the same situation from the day before. She'd al seated a little more for breakfast and taken more water than usual. She shared her snack with Carol once they were outside, the other woman looking grateful as she took it.

  "Something's been bothering you."

  Carol sighed and leaned against a wall. Emma's eyebrows went up at that, surprised. Usually, she was the one that did the leaning, because she got easily exhausted. But Carol's exhaustion wasn’t necessarily physical. She was probably stressed out, because Emma had noticed this had been bothering her since yesterday.

  "I woke up with a horrible feeling," Carol muttered, "that something is going to happen. I haven't been able to shake it and it's been draining on me. I don’t know what it is, but... I can't just dismiss it."

  Emma took her time to think ov
er a response. This conversation was surprisingly familiar. Except, because Carol didn’t suffer from any delusions, she was having a hard time accepting it at all where Merry would go gloating about being chosen and special to have such a power.

  But because Carol was the level headed woman that she was, Emma couldn’t entirely dismiss her either. She found it ironic, how hard she tried to get Merry to see that she was wrong about her 'abilities' and here she was unwilling to prove Carol wrong.

  There were glaring differences, though. Carol was calling it a 'feeling' she had. It could still be attributed to the recent news and influx of patients. Coming so soon after she was called in to clean up after the last attack, it would certainly shake her. It did to Emma and her family.

  "I understand the superstition," she finally said. "Believe me when I say that I really do. But it's probably just because everything is going wrong. Of course you'd be anxious about it. Everybody is."

  She cut herself off before she could go too far and start cutting similarities between Carol in that moment and how her sister usually was.

  Of course, Carol still looked worried. She had her shoulders hunched, a pinched look on her face, and her eyes kept moving around, jumping from one thing to another. Her body probably wanted to fidget, but she had her now empty hands wrapped tightly around her body to stop any shaking.

  "I promise that the day will be like any other."

  They went back to the hospital not long after that. Then a short while later, Emma was regretting her words.

  There was the sound of a crash, and it confused everyone for a bit. And then several men made their way into the 'hospital' with guns.

  Emma was a bit far from the entrance, but even she noticed, before the screams started, the already noisy hospital growing louder. The men didn’t hurt anyone, though they had their guns trained on people, mostly patients but a few nurses were also under their power. Carol wasn’t too far from her so she was also away from the line of fire, at least for the moment. Emma felt her heart squeeze as her chest chilled.