Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  Why would she have imagined it would be a normal day? She was being naive again, wasn’t she? Just like she hadn't expected a direct attack to their home the night after it first happened. She'd heard of the recent attack just yesterday, and she'd thought it would be some time before anything else happened, and by the time she got the news, it would have already been over.

  She should have thought of this. Hell, she should have listened to Carol. It drew more parallels with her sister, how Merry had tried to warn her and she'd ended up doing something stupid. Not that they'd had much choice here, anyway. Carol probably wouldn’t leave her patients, and it was unlikely that they could move everyone...

  "Listen up!" one of the men shouted over the noise, waving his gun around, though the others had their weapons pointed on one specific person. "We'll kiss anyone we have to so that we can get medical supplies. If you don’t wanna die, I suggest you all shut up and not do anything stupid!"

  Carol and Emma were forced to watch as they loaded medical supplies into the back of their truck. It had all happened before, kind of different but the same context, and Emma could feel the déjà vu and hated it. Again, like that time, there was nothing she could do, nothing any of them could do, unless they wanted the assailants to start killing people. Emma had learned not to mess with desperate people and that was exactly what these people were. Desperate.

  Once they decided they had everything they needed, they backed out slowly, before the men rushed into their truck and driving away with everything they owned.

  Emma broke down. She couldn’t help it, feeling her face crunch in anger, her eyes stinging with frustrated tears. She nearly rubbed her eyes, before realizing she had gloves with blood on them still on her hands. But she couldn’t let herself cry, not this time. It wasn’t even her stuff, specifically, that got stolen, but the frustration, the helplessness, was pretty much the same.

  They were unable to protect their supplies, and it left them in dire straits since they were low enough to begin with.

  "What the hell are we supposed to do now? All the drugs... Everyone will die without their help." And after the police had struggled with their volunteers to ring more from outside. if they'd already arrived and were part of the hospital's current supplies...

  Dammit!

  "It can’t be helped," Carol muttered from beside her.

  Emma shot her a look. How could the other woman act so calm about this? But then Emma looked closer, and noticed the tired lines deepening on her face. Carol still noticed her look and gave her a wan smile.

  "I understand the desperation of the invaders—perhaps their townspeople and family were dying too, and they were desperate to help. Remember the lengths we'd both go to help out own families. Those guys are probably in the same boat, for coming here and leaving everyone alive."

  But Emma couldn’t just agree to that. It wasn’t so surprising, of course. It was already happening in their town, even though it was more for food than fighting. It was why they had curfew to begin with, why patrollers went around town at night. The woman that got Emma into trouble with the police then tried to kill her later had been trying to steal from a small boutique store.

  Something like this was bound to happen. They had all been waiting for it. To think, when she'd held a gun at a woman desperate enough to shop lift she had been so shocked when it seemed to have no effect, causing her to release a bullet accidentally.

  But then what were they supposed to do, once their things are stolen? Just do as Chase suggested before, stay out of their way? It wasn’t something she could just scoff at this time. These guys were different from how those women before had been. They were confident, moving out during the day. They also seemed more organized, not as wild as the women had been. They also had a truck, not a van, so they could carry more enemies, and more supplies to take away.

  "Maybe it leaves us with no choice but to invade other towns ourselves," Emma muttered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Unlike the previous situation, this wasn’t something they could do alone, or with just a few more people.

  It wasn’t so clean cut, because they would need some way to keep an eye on several areas at once. Emma wanted to help, if only to stop it before it came anywhere near her neighborhood.

  Chase was not amused.

  "Seriously, Emma, why would you do this? Haven't we had enough trouble? Why would you go looking for more when it doesn't involve you?"

  Emma sighed, ignoring his exasperation. She watched him pace, glad that she'd had her grandmother and sister sit out this discussion. Chase was wrong that it dint involve her, because it did now. In any case, she couldn’t just sit down, could she? Otherwise, the attacks would continue, and who else would go to stop them? Emma didn’t see anyone else stepping up and she didn’t want to wait until someone else felt like they wanted to take the responsibility.

  She knew it was dangerous. So had the last fight been, but this was a necessity. People had died, and they hadn't killed anyone in the hospital, but most of them were because of those bustards, anyway, and now they couldn’t even be treated.

  "Someone has to do something Chase," she said, thinking rationally. "Why can't it be me, if I'm willing to do something?"

  He sighed then moved closer to her, kneeling in front of her seat and taking her hands in his. He looked up at her, pleading with his expression.

  "Yeah, it has to be someone, but why does it have to be you? Just wait, maybe the police might do something about this."

  She squeezed his hand back. "Chase, if the police could handle things on their own, they wouldn’t have needed to hirer volunteers in the first place. There aren’t enough of them to keep the whole town under surveillance by themselves, they're going to need help at some point, and from someone."

  Besides, it was like she was actually going to do the whole thing herself. She spent way too long talking Chase into her way of thinking, but she wouldn’t be swayed when she already had something like a plan forming in her mind.

  Just thinking of those men coming to the hospital, filled with the sick and the injured, and taking their medicine... she couldn’t keep still after that. She would have stayed cautious and kept an ear out for trouble if they hadn't encountered the hospital. Because the second she was there, in that situation and watching it happen with a bunch of other helpless people, it involved her.

  Chase didn’t understand her. He thought that she should just be glad they all walked away from it, but what was the problem. Anyone not a patient at that hospital was lucky, but what about the rest? And they had already violently attacked a whole street, what would happen if they did it again? People wouldn’t be walking away from an attack like that.

  She just couldn’t not get involved. Not when outsiders kept messing with their town, like they didn’t have enough problems of their own and were managing to fend for themselves. They had to find their own way instead of trying to ruing everyone else's chances. What would they do, once they stole everything and there wasn’t anything left? They would all end up dead that way. She had a feeling, though, that they weren’t really thinking that far ahead.

  But this wasn't something that involved only her; it affected so many more people than just her. So she couldn’t just make a decision on her own. Not that she had to, because Emma had a plan. It didn’t take her long to decide and put the plan into action.

  Emma organized a town meeting to discuss the invasions on the town—she involved as many people in town as she could, if not everyone.

  It wasn’t an easy thing to organize at all. The easy part, was making the decision. Then there was talking Chase into agreeing with it, and it was easy once he realized she intended to include a whole lot of people, and she didn’t need to be central to everything. after that, she needed other helpers that agreed with the plan.

  She figured, after how well it had gone getting the people in her neighborhood to unite against a common enemy, they could add even more people, since this wa
sn’t just tied to their neighborhood, but a threat to the whole town. The new enemy was unpredictable, they could come from anywhere and they wouldn’t have any prior warning besides the sound of a running car, and by that time it would be too late. Like at the hospital, they didn’t even realize there was danger until it was too late. People would fear, but that fear would get them, at least some of them, to fight instead of hide away.

  The ones that didn’t want to die after the weeks they'd spent struggling to survive, wouldn’t lie down and wait to get trampled on.

  But getting everyone to agree to it, actually just getting the word around, took time and a lot of helpers to get to everyone. It helped, though, that the hospital was attacked and it was in the middle of town. Once she let Chase know what she was planning, he got Brian and Kellen on board and they went around the neighborhood and other neighboring streets, knocking on doors. Carol was all for it, rallying a few people herself.

  They called as many people as they could, to an agreed location, but it still all took two days. They were lucky that no attacks came in that time while they prepared themselves. At least, after the attack, the streets seemed to be a little less dangerous from petty theft when the news of a bigger predator spread around. Of course, that was only while they didn’t attack, but they couldn’t bank on the peace lasting, so they had to do something and quickly, before the next attack if possible.

  A bunch of people showed up, but Emma noticed the lack of attendance from usual town meetings. Well, it was to be expected. Still, considering everyone was worried, the number was nowhere near what she would have expected. She wonders how many of the people that once attended were dead, and how many were just not showing up because they didn’t want to.

  It wasn’t ideal. The numbers may not even be enough to protect the town, considering they would need people everywhere to be alert at all times. The only good thing about the enemies using a truck was that they could be heard before they arrived, if only there was someone listening out for them. They might not be enough, but they didn’t have much choice, either way. They would have to work something out.

  But first, they had to get everyone on board with the plan, or they'd fail before they even began.

  "Hello, everyone," Emma began when the room quieted down somewhat. "Thanks for coming. I know this was all sudden, but we have a problem."

  There were murmurings in the room, probably people wondering who she was and why she was spearheading this meeting. Well, she wondered that, too. It had been her idea to get people to come but she'd had no intention of leading. Only, no one else would. The police weren’t even active participants, they only had three of them present, one of them being the officers that relayed her punishment to her.

  Emma explained about the attacks on the hospital.

  "It was a couple days ago and it came out of nowhere, when men with a truck and armed attacked the hospital. They didn’t harm anyone, but they did take all the medicine we had there, which means we don’t have anything left for our own injured. We had no way to know it was going to happen, and no way to stop it. Before that, there was an attack on an entire street, I don’t know how many people died but I do know plenty of the survivors ended up at the hospital for treatment."

  The murmurings grew slightly louder. If only Emma had better details to give, but they weren’t really necessary. The bigger picture was clear enough, and it was all they needed to see to get the circumstances. People just needed to know the threat existed, and it was serious. They had to realize that if they did nothing, any of them could be next.

  There were probably several in the crowd that had only heard of attacks happening but none had made it into their areas yet. With this wild card suddenly introduced, it wasn’t enough to guarantee their safety, because they would basically need to rely on luck. Emma was hoping that, with their lives on the line, they would choose to do something rather than depend on that luck to keep the problems off their doorsteps.

  "There hasn’t been an attack since, but we're almost assured that there will be another attack. The only thing we don’t know is where or when, and we don’t have any working cars like they do, so they have us beat on that front."

  She hadn't asked the police what they were doing about looking into cars that might work. It had been an idea they'd had ever since they encountered a mayor from a neighboring town who happened to have one. Emma was sure they'd searched, though she wasn’t sure why they hadn't actually found anything yet.

  But they could worry about that later.

  "I don’t know what we can do against these people," she said honestly. "We only recently took care of some other intruders, and these new guys are seriously bad news. We can't just do nothing while they take everything from us, but that isn’t for me to decide. What does everyone want to do about it?"

  There was a short moment of silence, and then everyone was clamoring to get a word in. A few people in the crowd even stood and raised their hands to get attention. The noise rose quickly, and Emma sighed.

  She knew this would happen. They couldn’t just make people do what they wanted, but with all these people and the situation they found themselves in, no one was going to come to a decision easily. Yet, it would have been so much worse if, after having the gall to speak to all these people, she tried to act as the designated leader. They might band together to help each other out, but it had to be their decision or they would never come up with anything useful.

  The town's leaders had disappeared the day of the crash. As far as she knew, most of them were dead, considering the plane hit the building that housed their offices. The best they had were the cops, and they didn’t get too involved, running things their way. Emma hadn't realized before, somehow, but people had started moving on their own ever since the crash while she was waiting for whatever connection they had to break down.

  But this wasn’t the time for them to be divided. Honestly, she would have rather been at home with her family if the world had been a little farer. Somehow, they would have to convince the cops to help civilians with weapons, because there weren’t nearly enough men in uniform to protect the whole town. If there had been, they wouldn’t have asked for volunteers to begging with.

  The noise wasn’t dimming, but there were some voices rising above the others, several people claiming that they should just keep the peace and wait out the attacks.

  She'd been feeling defeated when the shouting started, but hearing that just pissed her off. If it was that simple, they wouldn’t have needed to call everyone to a town meeting. Most people would have kept their heads down anyway, and nothing would get accomplished. That wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her, not even close.

  How the hell could anyone even think that? 'Wait out the attacks,' that wasn't a strategy, that was just cowardice. And for how long would they have to wait it all out? For weeks? Or even months, when in their current lifestyles, no one could stand to think that far ahead? And in that time, what? They would be ruled by this enemy that could attack them any time, while they did nothing to prevent it.

  The thought didn’t appeal to Emma at all. It angered her that these people would let other's die, would let others' things be taken, because of the slightest chance that they could be spared, because she just knew that was what they were thinking. Stupidly so. Their attackers would simply keep coming back once their stuff died out, and they would take everything from them eventually and probably kill them when there wasn’t anything left to take.

  She had learned that, when her own house got attacked, and the people that did it promised to return. They had kept their promise, the next fucking day, and this wouldn't be any different. They would keep coming back until the town got sucked dry, and Emma wouldn’t risk her family because a few people didn’t have it in them to fight for what was theirs.

  "This isn’t going to get better!" she exploded, her loud voice quieting down some of the noise. "'Wait this out?' Don’t kid me! This situation will only get worse the longer w
e all sit back and do nothing about it."

  The whole room went quiet, all the attention turning to her. She just kept her anger up and let these people see it. The world had changed. If her family was going to have to accept that fact and learn to live in it, then so was everybody else.

  "My neighborhood has been attacked before, and they came back the next day. But because we did something about it, even went to the police to ask for help, we took care of the problem, and we are no longer under threat from these people."

  Low murmuring started going around the room. Of course, the attack n their street had gotten around, too. It hadn't exactly been quiet when they retaliated, and plenty of people had gotten curios.

  "These aren’t the same people that attacked my neighborhood; they are so much worse. Their first attack was on a whole street. I don’t know entirely what happened, but I know they killed a lot of people. They didn’t when they came to the hospital, but we would have gotten lucky. Who knows what could happen the next time, how many more would die if we do nothing!"

  She panted for breath, all eyes in the crowd staring at her as silence filled their gathering.

  Her whole body trembled with her anger, and even though everyone was eyeing her, she kept her back straight and refused to be intimidated. These people had to take this seriously, needed to, for all their sakes, if Emma was going to have to shove that necessity down their throats.

  Then Chase piped up to defend her, standing up next to her, though a little in front, taking the attention of the room onto himself. "You guys need to remember that your proper and lives are both at stake if the attacks continue. We don’t have enough resources that we can stand to have what we do have be taken away like this. Most of us will probably starve to death at this rate, and if we keep bringing supplies from outside, they'll probably just take that, too."