They Invaded: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival (Zero Power Book 3)

by Max Lockwood

  "There was…" she began, talking without thinking it through. She looked down as she pulled the gloves off her hands, moving away from the patient she'd just finished seeing to throw them in the trash. "It was a heck of a night. But there is something that bothers me, I guess. You remember Cooper, right? My best friend, who’s staying at my house? He was there when the whole thing went down, but then afterward he was… shaken up, which is understandable…"

  Felicia nodded along as Clara spoke, her face blank so Clara couldn’t tell what the other woman was thinking. She didn’t interrupt with any opinion, and Clara looked away from her eyes, before forcing herself to return the straightforward gaze.

  "So, I got him a drink, and I was watching him take too much too fast, and he said I was a little too calm after over ten people had died. I told him it was because it was necessary, and then he said he doesn’t recognize who I am anymore. What am I supposed to do with that?"

  Clara waited for Felicia's opinion, chewing on her lower lip. She took a moment of deliberation then sighed, folding her arms across her chest.

  "Remember that boys like Cooper grew up playing shooting games and rugby—games that mothers thought were too rough for their precious little girls. They can let out their aggression through them. Women tend to go a little wilder in the face of a situation like the last night."

  Clara frowned when Felicia paused, wondering where she was heading with this. She wasn’t sure if it was true, certainly not for everyone, but Clara didn’t have a lot of aggression growing up at all. Cooper probably did, he chose the path of a physical teacher, after all, and he was something of an adrenaline junkie. There wasn’t a sport she'd heard of that he hadn't tried at least once. And yet, she didn’t think he'd actually done anything last night, but he had reacted that way. She hadn't seen Dante after, but she was sure he was doing a lot better than Cooper.

  Then Felicia was patting her arm, surprising her. "It's okay if you enjoyed the adrenaline rush. You've been put in situations where you were left powerless, but last night was your first time in a battle and you took part in it. There's nothing wrong with how you felt."

  "I didn’t enjoy it necessarily," Clara claimed, the words out of her mouth before she could think them through, sounding just a little too defensive.

  Felicia just looked at her like she knew better, but she didn’t argue. "Just know if you need to talk, I'm always available."

  Clara just watched her walk away, wondering why she would need to.

  She thought about what Felicia said. She reminded herself, that they lived in a new world now, and that it was survival of the fittest. Her sister had even told her that once, and her fight was stronger because she wasn’t just fighting for herself. Her fight was for her, and her sister and grandmother, the two people that meant the world to her. Tessa, who still suffered from delusions, was too thin, and almost always lost to her nightmares and “predictions.” Her grandmother, who was slowly losing her memory and sense of self, and one day, they wouldn’t be able to snap her out of it. That and considering her age…

  They had to be protected, and Clara had taken on the role like she had for everything in else in the family once she'd graduated high school and her grandmother found it difficult to keep working when she had arthritis. This was wholly different, but the responsibility rested almost comfortably on her shoulders, just one more thing she needed to do for them.

  Clara supposed those women wouldn't be the last to invade the town. What good was remorse, when all it would do was hold her back? In her house, she was the first line of defense. Cooper had promised to look after her family, but she couldn’t depend entirely on him. If he helped, then good. If not, well. She just needed to not let her enemies get past her to the more fragile members of her family. If others came…

  Clara clenched her fists and promised herself she would be ready when they did.

  Chapter Eight

  Clara decided she needed to be more prepared for a fight when it came again.

  With how dangerous the world had become lately, she couldn’t afford to relax even when she was at home. The idea just came to her one day and wouldn’t leave her alone, until she really thought about it and decided to take it seriously. It could give her an edge if she ever found herself in a tight spot.

  There was little she could do against weapons without one herself, but some level of self-defense would be helpful in some circumstances. At least, she would have some level of confidence in a situation where she needed to fight without a weapon.

  Who to ask though? It wasn’t like she had that many avenues. There was Cooper, but he was still acting a little weird around her. She didn’t like how he was acting, but what could she do about it? She didn’t want to force him to conform to what she wanted. He claimed she had changed, and she hadn't tried very hard to deny it because it would be a lie. Still, Cooper had been with her through most of those changes, so why should he be surprised? She wasn’t going to force him to accept the way she was now if he really didn’t want to. She would give him the time to think and decide what to do about it.

  A frightening thought occurred to her when she thought about what he said to her that night, and how he'd acted around her since. Cooper had told her he loved her, right after he saw her in bed with Dante, a man he'd once been friends with. He'd thought she had known, but apparently, Clara was just too self-absorbed to realize, leaning on Cooper for help, accepting it when it was offered, and not thinking beyond that. It had flustered her when he said he loved her. Of course, then he'd threatened to leave—and she used that word only because it had felt like a threat to her, though to him it might have been self-preservation—but Clara hadn't wanted that, so he'd given her the time to think about it.

  She hadn't, not really. It hadn't been all that long ago and there was always one thing after another coming up, requiring her attention. But with what had happened recently, she wondered if it still held true. It hurt, thinking that he might have changed his mind, before pushing the thought away and not considering it too closely.

  What she really wanted was for things to be like they had been before, sort of. She didn’t want Cooper ignoring her, at least, or getting that sad look in his eyes when they landed on her. They used to be happy around each other, even while in the middle of a crisis, and Clara wanted that back. She had come to realize that she needed less support from Cooper, now that she was becoming strong on her own, but that didn’t mean she didn’t need him at all. He still made up a pretty big part of her life or at least the parts that she cared about.

  She didn’t think they were fighting exactly, but when she thought of learning self-defense and her thoughts jumped to him, she had hesitated, and that irritated her. Since when did she hesitate with her best friend, once she'd decided Cooper earned the title? This was something they could get through, given a little time.

  But considering she wanted to get on with it as soon as possible, she really didn’t have much of a choice. There were other options, but a lot of them had so many cons compared to the one good thing that would come out of the whole thing, and she didn’t think they were worth it. So, it was Cooper unless she wanted to live boldly and try asking Dante. That’s if he even knew how to fight at all, but that option carried its own can of worms and she was nowhere near ready to deal with that.

  They hadn't really talked much since that day when she and Dante had gone over to their house and Michelle had offered her help voluntarily to help prepare them for an enemy attack. They'd had a heart to heart, and Clara liked to think it meant something, but she and Michelle weren’t exactly back to being friends if they had ever been anything more than neighbors.

  The situation between her and Michelle was okay at the moment, and she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that. She had a feeling that if she contacted Michelle’s husband after she had sworn there was nothing between them, was a good way to do just that. Dante had also gone back to staying at his place full time. Which meant he woul
d have to come over to Clara’s for the lessons, and although Michelle had calmed down, Clara didn’t want to cause her paranoid side to rear its head again. She hadn't seen Dante at all since the fight, and she didn’t want to get in the way of the couple fixing their problems. She'd done enough interfering already.

  Seeing as she didn’t exactly have that many options, she approached Cooper. Tessa and Viola were in their rooms after having a quick wake-up meal for the day, which left her and Cooper in the lower rooms. He seemed relaxed, a far cry from how he'd been after the fight, and she hesitated a little, not wanting to disturb his peace. But then he caught sight of her, and she couldn’t just withdraw.

  Still, the change in him was almost instantaneous, and it actually hurt. He was suddenly more tense, barely noticeable, but she had known him enough to be able to tell. His expression went from relaxed to guarded with a tightness around his eyes that she couldn’t read. The only thing that hadn't changed much was the look in his eye. There was something dark behind it, but he still looked at her like she was a friend, and it gave her the courage to speak.

  "Hey, Cooper," she greeted him quietly. "How've you been?"

  She winced. It was probably a stupid thing to say, though she did think it was apt. Since she was sure he had been avoiding her before, she realized they had barely spoken to each other in that period, and she didn’t know what he had been doing with all that time to himself.

  He arched his eyebrows, looking unimpressed at her poor attempt. "I'm just fine, Clara. I've been sticking around the house and helping your grandmother with her garden."

  She nodded. For some reason, she hadn't thought to look for him in the backyard, not that she had seen him the few times she'd gone back there since the fight. She just didn’t want to see the ruined shed door again because she knew she would just get angry. Her anger had been lost because she'd gotten what she wanted -- their attackers out of their lives for good.

  "Was there something you needed?" Cooper asked with a sigh when she just stood there and didn’t say anything more.

  Clara bit her lip. Well, it wasn’t like she'd been able to hide things from him before, right? She took a breath and stepped closer. "I just wanted to ask you something."

  "What is it?"

  "Can you show me some basic self-defense moves?"

  He blinked at her and then frowned. "Why?"

  She rolled her eyes, wondering why he was confused. "In case I ever need to defend myself, I need to learn how to, don’t I?"

  He sighed, giving her a hesitant look. "Why would you ever need that, hmm? If you stayed at home, you wouldn’t need it. And besides, it won't be all that much help, if something happens again, you can't fight against guns with your fists. There's no point in fighting then, so you really wouldn’t need to learn how."

  He was reluctant, but she wasn’t letting up. She stated all the reasons why this was a good idea. If she was in a situation where she could defend herself, wouldn’t it be the best move to do so? If she knew how to the right way, she wouldn’t accidentally hurt herself in the fight. She could tell he was still in a strange mood after he'd snapped at her. She didn’t know what to say to get him to revert to how he was before, but now her plan was to let it run its course.

  In the meantime, she wanted to learn how to fight, and she’d keep after him until he taught her.

  "Please, Cooper?" she pleaded, hands pressed together in front of her. "Could please just do this one thing for me? Even if it won't be useful, it would make me feel a little safer."

  He was hesitating again, and she could see she was wearing him down. Finally, he gave into her.

  "Fine. I'll teach you what I know, but it doesn’t mean you should keep getting into fights. If you find yourself in a situation that could end up in a fight, the first thing you need to think to do is run. You only engage, if you don’t think you can run. Nod if you understand me, shake your head and this ends here."

  She was nodding before he even finished his words, eager to start learning.

  Clara knew the reason why he gave in at all, considering how reluctant he was to have her fighting at all. It was because he couldn’t bear to refuse her and then have her get hurt when the little knowledge he could give her would have saved her. They didn’t have weapons anymore, and there was no way Clara was going to start walking around with knives, so this was the next best thing.

  They head out to the garden and Cooper showed her some basic moves, like how to escape a headlock and which areas to aim for if you're in someone's grip.

  "Chances are pretty high you'll be going up against people stronger than you. But even if they look weaker, never underestimate someone willing to fight you. Plenty of people tend to cover up weaknesses with sharp or tricky maneuvers, so look out for that, too.”

  She listened to his words, just barely, as he followed explanations with a few demonstrations. Clara felt a little shy as he pulled her gently to his chest in a headlock. It had been some time since she had been this close to Cooper and there wasn’t some immediate danger or trouble to look forward to.

  Don’t think about that!

  This wasn’t the best time to be thinking about that sort of thing. She had to concentrate on what Cooper was trying to teach her. She feared that if she didn’t pay enough attention and he noticed, he might refuse to continue, and she needed this.

  She showed him what she'd learned, doing her best to remember all his instructions, forcing her mind to focus on the matter at hand.

  "You're a fast learner," Cooper told her, but without much conviction.

  She paid some attention to Cooper, not just what he was trying to teach her, and felt a light ache in her chest. He looked like he would rather be anywhere else but there. It hurt a little, but she was still worried about him. Hard not to, when he wasn’t acting like himself at all.

  Clara lightened the mood by pretending to box with him. She'd watched a couple of matches with him. One of those times she'd even paid attention. Still, she was just goofing off. There wasn’t much need to remain serious, not when Cooper was clearly not into this. The best move, if she really wanted him to keep teaching her, would probably be getting him to relax for it.

  Cooper took the bait, and they play-fought. Clara was exhilarated, having something close to fun for the first time in a long time, and by having Cooper's hands on her, as well, even though they were just messing around.

  He caught her eye and they both froze, sizing each other up quietly.

  Clara had found some time to think in the past few days. Most of her thoughts surrounded Cooper; really, if those women never showed up, they would have followed some direction, anyway. Clara wanted to tell him how she felt, but she didn’t want to rush into anything when she was still deciding on her feelings. It wouldn’t be fair to him, telling him one thing, only to find what she felt for him turned out to be not much at all.

  So, she glanced down, getting a hold of herself before she looked back up at him. She asked, "Can we try some more moves?"

  Cooper kept his eyes on her moment, before he was nodding, his lips pursed, though he seemed a little deflated.

  But she wouldn’t think about that just then. Cooper had asked her to think about what she felt for him, and then tell him honestly when she figured it out. He'd threatened to leave, though it seemed he'd forgotten that part, thankfully. Still, considering what was on the line, she wasn’t going to half-ass it. Until Cooper gave her an ultimatum, or unless she arrived at a solution herself, she would spend as much time thinking about it as she could spare with everything else, so she wouldn’t get too overwhelmed.

  What felt like ages later, Clara went back inside feeling sweaty and wishing she could take a shower. There was no need to waste water on that, though. She washed as best she could, using as little water as possible, feeling the strain in her muscles after the exercise.

  Dante came into her room, ducking his head in first then pushing the door open wider to lean against the door jamb. She'd ch
anged already, thankfully, so she just looked up at him miserably. He was the last person she had expected to see, especially this soon. Had Michelle kicked him out again…? But no, he didn’t look nearly as distressed as he had been when she did it last time. He looked a little like his usual self, almost happy.

  Why couldn’t Cooper be like that?

  Dante arched his eyebrows. "What's wrong with you? I've been looking for you for a while, but I didn’t see you anywhere."

  Clara just groaned. "I was out back with Cooper doing some work. My legs are aching so badly I don’t think I can stand at all for the rest of the day," she complained.

  She didn’t feel she was exaggerating one bit. Just how long had they been at it, anyway? It had to have been more than a couple of hours for her legs to ache like this.

  "Well, then… I guess what I came for can wait. I could give your legs a massage to relieve the tension," he offered.

  Clara considered it, seriously tempted. He spent most of his time working out, so he would probably know how to do it well, and her legs really did ache. She was massaging them herself, but it wasn’t like she knew what she was doing, and she might just end up making it worse for herself. She worked out, too, but all she knew was that she was supposed to stretch after such an intense workout. Having someone help would be a blessing…

  But then she realized how much it would upset Cooper if he found out. Maybe not as badly as finding them naked in bed together, even under the sheets, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate Dante's hands on her for any reason. It surprised her somewhat, how he hadn't started arguing with the other man yet. Well, she wasn’t going to encourage it.

  "Thanks, Dante, but no thanks. I think I'll just lie down for a bit then do some stretches later. Besides, the ache is proof I'm doing something right, isn’t it?"

  Dante just shrugged when she declined his offer and then nodded, giving her a wave as he went about his business.