Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  The body had already been moved, and Emma had definitely helped with that, no matter how much Chase told her he could do it himself. It left her feeling a little sick, because she knew it was her grandmother's body under dirty sheets that they were carrying around. Merry had been out of her room during that, Emma wanting to spare her that much. They left the body beside where Chase was digging.

  "Chase's really good to you and our family, isn’t he?"

  Emma looked up, surprised at Merry suddenly speaking. Then she took the words in. well, yes, he really was. he would never know how much she appreciated him, or how she'd fretted when she really thought he would leave and go back to his old place after he found her in bed with Brian after she'd told him she ended their affair, then confessed his feelings for her.

  Merry spoke again when Emma didn’t say anything, avoiding her sister's suddenly curious eyes.

  "I know he's been there for you since you've known each other, and he was always kind to me. I've never had a friend like that, and I was kind of envious of you for that too, actually. All my friends pretty much stopped talking to me after... well you know."

  Emma cautiously looked back at her sister. Of course she'd known her sister had friends before their parents died, and she also knew they'd stopped coming around because Merry started acting crazy. At least they came after the accident, once they were back home. Emma didn’t even have that, and she'd envied Merry having friends that cared for her to that extent, and felt resentment for her sister when she just drove them away.

  "I know I can be hard to deal with, and Chase's always kind to me. Honestly, I haven't made things any easier for him since he came here, and I should probably apologize for that." their gazes met. "So when are you going to get with him?"

  Emma startled, her eyes widening. She'd had a somewhat similar conversation with Janice to do with Chase. Well, it wasn’t quite the same. Janice had mentioned about them being closer than friends, but she hadn't been quite this direct, just asking Emma when they were going together. Janice had tried to guide her into making the decision herself instead.

  Only, Emma couldn’t. She'd started to think about it, but it was around when she went out on patrol, met a woman about to rob a store, and ended up shooting at her, even if it had been an accident. The panic from that, then meeting Merry outside for the first time in a long time had overshadowed her thoughts on Chase. Then one thing after another happened, and by the time he told her how she felt, she hadn't thought through it at all, so she didn’t have a ready answer for him.

  She still didn’t have an answer, even though Chase was waiting for one. At that moment, Merry looked to be waiting for one herself, and Emma sighed.

  "Seriously, Merry, the last thing on my mind is romance, so please don’t ask me that. I'm not sure I could even think about it at this point."

  Way too many were asking about her love life and she'd said basically the same thing every time. As nice as it would have been to have someone there to warm her nights, Chase technically already did that without them dating. They had been going on well without more, but... was that really fair to Chase?

  "Has he talked to you about it?"

  "Well, sort of...?" he'd basically just told her she had a good answer or he would leave. But he'd just found her in bed with Brian, so she'd felt too guilty to even be mad at him, realizing she'd been hurting him unknowingly and he'd stuck by her anyway. "Even Janice asked me about it, but... I don’t know. It's just not a priority at the moment, with how crazy everything is."

  There was a short, somber silence before Merry tried something like a smile.

  "Once you've found your peace, you should let Chase know how you feel before he slips away. He really is a good man, Emma. Just stop running away and face him like you do everything else."

  Emma almost smiled. She would never have pictured herself having this conversation with Merry of all people.

  "I'll think about it."

  Merry gave her an unbelieving look, and she did crack a smile then.

  "I promise to think about it."

  The real question, though, was whether she could know true peace ever again. She really didn’t think so, not with everything that had happened, but her sister was talking to her, so Emma wasn’t going to refuse her.

  Emma and Merry joined Chase in the garden to bury Janice not long after their talk. He'd finished the digging, and by the time they made it out, it was to find him climbing out of the hole he'd dug. It was a good sized hole, and his shirt was heavily soaked with sweat. He panted for breath, planting the end of the shovel against the earth and leaning against it in exhaustion, but he didn’t move to sit down as they came up.

  She felt her throat clog up when she saw the dirtied sheets lying down in the hole. It really didn’t look like it could be her grandmother's body, but she took a deep breath and still the denial. It would be a pain to go through at this late stage, and she didn’t plan on crying here, when they finally buried their grandmother. She'd thought of it, but hadn't thought it would come this soon, she'd imagined they'd have to worry about her disease eating her mind before she died.

  At least Janice died knowing who she was, who they were. It was a weak consolation, but one nonetheless.

  They'd already decided to say a few things, with just the three of them, and she decided to go first.

  "Janice was... the glue of the family. It was thanks to her that we were able to stay together at all. I probably would have ended up in foster care, Merry would have been shipped to an institution. But she stayed with us, and looked after us with everything she had. She meant a lot to everyone she ever met."

  Her voice lowered down to a whisper, and she knew that was her point to stop before she ruined it by crying. The others still had their own words to say, and she would let them before allowing herself to break down.

  Chase went next, adding in about his own love for Janice.

  "She welcomed me into her home and was just completely amazing from the first time I met her. My own mother couldn’t possibly compare to the love I got from this woman even when she didn’t know me, all because I was friends with her granddaughter. She laughed at my worst jokes," he added with a light chuckle, "and supported me in his times of need."

  Emma got emotional as the speech continued. Hearing Chase speak so highly of her grandmother filled her chest with warmth, because she could tell by his words that he loved her, too. She felt a little guilty for trying to alienate him like he wasn’t family, when to Janice he clearly must have been.

  Merry didn’t say anything. Emma didn’t think she could handle it without crying, really, and she was probably trying to avoid that, too.

  Emma glanced at both of them, her sister, and her best friend, and felt the conviction in the words she'd given to Merry before. They really were going to be all right, even with Janice gone like this, because they weren’t truly alone, not just yet. Somehow, they would get through this trial.

  After they had all said their peace, they stood for another moment of silence. Merry moved closer to Emma. She was taller, so she couldn’t duck her head into Emma's shoulder standing up without hurting her back and neck, but she did take Emma's hand as she pushed their arms together. Emma could feel the light trembling in her body, and she gave the too thin hand in hers a light squeeze. Then Chase was there, encircling an arm around both their shoulders and squeezing them together a little.

  Once the moment was over, he let go. They each buried an item with Janice that meant something to them—a jumper Janice knitted for Chase one Christmas, a pack of her favorite cigarettes that Merry found and a dress of Janice’s that Emma loved.

  They said goodbyes, and Emma took Merry inside while Chase covered the grave.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  They took a few days, but not all that long, to give themselves time to rest and regroup. Merry was a lot calmer than Emma had expected her to be after they buried Janice, and most of her anger dissolved. Bit that it was entirel
y gone, just less painful and more manageable.

  It was only a couple of days, though. They didn’t want to wait too long and let the connection die out. While things were still fresh in people's minds, they planned to go ahead with their plan.

  Emma and Merry called a town meeting.

  Most people from their street showed up, and Emma knew it was because they pitied the girls.

  How many of them had been there to see them in their worst moment? Emma was pretty sure most of their neighbors didn’t even know them, Merry especially, but what happened had definitely put them on center stage. She could see people all around the room giving her looks of sympathy and pity, and she had to clench her fists not to react to it.

  It wasn’t their fault that it had happened. She probably owed a lot of the people there her and her sister's life, because she'd only taken down the one enemy then stood dazed, watching Janice crumple and Merry fall apart. If the people fighting on their side hadn't been competent, she and her sister would have made easy targets.

  Well, she'd heard from Chase that no one else on their street died, because they were all so well prepared, though a couple people got injured and it was a little more serious than the last time. It was still a better outcome than she could have imagined. It probably helped that the invaders hadn't had an idea that they had a plan to deal with their intrusion. If they'd made any preparations of their own, they could have done a lot more damage.

  That was part of why she was so adamant in doing this, though Chase had showed his disapproval enough times, and she'd ignored it. Once they realized their friends weren’t coming back, they'd assume something went wrong. The next time they sent people, they would have more caution, a plan, and it could mean disastrous for them. If they could catch them by surprise, it would give them a whole lot of advantage.

  Well, that was if she could get people to agree to their plan at all. But she was hoping with the pity they felt, even though she hated it, they might actually think about this, because there was no way she could do this without a lot of people on board. And she'd got to thinking, with Chase's continued disapproval, that a lot of people might end up not liking the plan, and she couldn’t have that.

  They waited a few hours for more people to come in, and as Emma watched, she could see them mingling and talking, and more eyes kept flicking over to her and Merry, who sat calmly beside Emma, head ducked down and hair hiding most of her face.

  Good. If more people knew, more of them would be willing to listen.

  Finally, they called the room to attention, and Merry stood, bringing most of the eyes in the room to her.

  "I'd like to speak," she called out loudly, lowering the murmurs in the room, and capturing everyone's attention.

  Emma had some reservation about her being the one to speak. But then, she'd done it before and held the public attention with nothing more than her words. Though her looks back then, when she first left the house and started a crowd in the town square, could have done a lot of the attention attraction.

  Though she wasn’t very stable, Emma allowed her to address the room, remaining seated.

  "As some of you know, there was an attack on our street some days back. My sister and I hadn't gone far from our house when their car came, and our grandmother was out with us. When they opened fire on us... my grandmother jumped in front of me, and got shot. We buried her two days ago, in a small hole we dug in our back yard."

  Emma listened, feeling her heart clench at her sister's words. She really was good at this, displaying a solemn air without letting out her true emotions to everyone in the room, though Emma would guess her emotions were as erratic as her own. The sympathetic glances intensified with every word she said.

  "My grandmother gave up her life to save mine," she continued. "But I don’t think she had to do that. None of that, had to happen, and it wouldn’t have if those invaders hadn't come into our town, our street, and attacked us. My grandmother was sick with Alzheimer's, she was forgetting herself little by little every day, but she still deserved to live a little longer, and she would have if not for them."

  Anger slowly bled into her voice, mingled with grief. The emotions were real, but Emma had the feeling revealing them was partly calculating. Clearly, Merry had the same idea she did, and it made her happy that they were on the same page at least.

  "I can't just let it end like this. They've already sent people to our town several times, twice my street was attacked, and I no longer feel like locking myself up in my room, and waiting for these people to come again and destroy our lives some more. I know this is a lot to ask of all of you, most of you don’t even know who I am, but if you haven't already lost something to these people, if we sit back and do nothing, chances are high that you will at some point."

  Emma stood up beside Merry, wrapping an arm around her as her body shook, the emotions getting the better of her, but she couldn’t blame her sister. It would work to their advantage either way, but the grief was still too new to both of them.

  "I am asking you," she pled, her voice wobbly. "I am asking all of you to help us in our revenge. If we do nothing these people will keep walking all over us. We're doing something about it, both times the people that came to our street were taken down, but what happens when they come back with more firepower because we let ourselves grow lax? We can't allow that to happen. We need to stop them before they decide to come into our town again, doing as they please like we're all somehow beneath them. I will not let the life my grandmother left to me go in vain, but we can't do this on our own, so we are asking you for your help."

  At the end of her speech, she ducked her head to hide her face behind her hair again, obviously fighting the urge to break down crying. Emma held her sister closer, but when she looked around the room, she thought this might actually work out for them. Once she'd soothed her sister into sitting down, she faced the rest of the room.

  "I've managed to source the attack back to Brassville," she explained. "Me and Merry plan to go there and get our revenge, but it's not something we can do on our own. We still have the car that our attacker left, and we have the weapons they brought with them. The vehicle is a big truck, so we can take quite a few people if they're willing to join us. Whether or not we get anyone, we're set on going as soon as possible, before they bring another attack here."

  Low murmurs traveled through the room, before someone in the crowd spoke up.

  "It's unethical to go into someone's town and kill them all, isn’t it? Can we really just do something like this?"

  "I used to agree," Emma said. "But then they all killed my family and neighbors. They attacked a hospital with sick and wounded, and though they didn’t kill anyone there, a lot of people in that hospital were there because of a previous attack from these people. They took whatever medicine and supplies we had at the hospital, when the situation there was bad enough."

  The murmurs rose as she mentioned the hospital. The news of the street that got attacked had spread, of course, even without her mentioning it when they decided on the street patrols. She could see a few people in the crowd get excited, and she felt a curl of satisfaction in her chest.

  "I want justice for those in my town that died at the hands of the people of Brassville. I know that other people have suffered the same, and we shouldn’t allow it to continue, or it might never stop until they rob us of all we have, and kill and harm plenty more of us than they already have. I want at least ten volunteers who are handy with a weapon to go along with us."

  Emma got the support of sixteen people, including Carol, her sister, and Brian. They all stood up and moved closer to the front, murmuring growing in the crowd as they did. Emma glanced at Carol and her sister with a look of gratitude that they were willing to do even more for her and her family than they had already.

  She waited for the noise to die down a little, everyone else in the room mingling as the volunteers converged around her and her sister, with Carol's sister moving to sit beside Merry
and murmur some words to her. She had been the one to give her an evaluation and hand her the medication, so if there was something wrong with Merry, she would be the one to know.

  "We’ll leave the next day by car and be there for nightfall. Hopefully, we can head in and out quickly and get back home as soon as possible."

  She got nods of agreement from the people around her, and she sighed, allowing the tension in her shoulders to relax.

  The meeting ended and everyone went home. Emma said good bye to the volunteers, and Brian walked back home with them. She was thankful that he was willing to support her when he'd just gotten his family back, considering how dangerous it was.

  "Don’t sweat it Emma," he'd said when she told him this. "We were something to each other for years, but I'd like to think we're friends now. Of course I would help you with something like this. You let me in your house when I had nowhere else to go."

  When they stopped in front of her house, Kellen had been coming out of theirs. Caron gave her a hug with Kellen in full view, and she didn’t get mad. She actually hugged Emma too and gave her condolences before they each returned to their respective homes.

  Emma noticed when she and Chase were about to go to sleep that he was lying awake on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She wanted to stay up as long as possible and had ended up using one of their smaller candles. She hadn't sleeping all that well lately, but if they were going to go ahead with this plan, she'd have to get some real rest, but she couldn’t if he didn’t do the same.

  "Come on, Chase, you can go to sleep—we’ll have a long day ahead of us tomorrow."

  He was silent and unmoving for a moment, before suddenly sitting up, leveling her with an intense look that surprised her.

  "Chase...?"

  "I'm sorry, Emma. I have something I need to get off my chest."

  She waited for what he wanted to say, getting the idea that this was something serious. He got off the bed and stepped closer to her, and Emma had to stop herself from taking a step away, his suddenly strange behavior making her wary.