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

by Max Lockwood

  Clara found Tessa sitting on her bed, with her back against the headboard and supported by a bunch of pillows, crying. She'd hoped to find her still asleep. She would have waited for Tessa to get up, but even though this was convenient, she liked it less.

  Of course, she was crying. Clara hadn't done any crying after she got Tessa and Viola's body in the house, but she was just tamping the urge down, instead of using it to feed her anger and need for revenge. But Tessa still needed to let the grief out somehow, and people usually used tears for that. Clara just didn’t like crying a lot.

  "Are you all right?" Clara asked, feeling stupid for it the second the words were out of her mouth.

  She'd just been outside and gotten mad at her neighbors for asking her the same thing. Why would she ask this of her already unstable sister? Tessa sent a glare her way, and she couldn’t even complain because she totally deserved it.

  "Of course, I'm not!" she snapped, her voice breaking on the words.

  If anything, Clara’s intrusion and stupid questions seemed to only make it worse. Tears slid down faster, and she raised her hands to her hair, tugging it as she grimaced and made light whimpering sounds.

  Clara's heart was breaking just seeing Tessa like this. In times past, once they got home, she'd only cried silent tears. But this looked like it was getting close to her initial reaction. She went closer to her sister to offer what comfort she could, pulling her hands away from her hair. She combed her fingers gently through the dark strands, and her fingers passed through almost smoothly because Tessa had actually paid attention to it just recently.

  She wondered about what to say as she soothed Tessa's scalp. There were a lot of things she could say, plenty she probably thought but was pretty sure she couldn’t say. It was a little difficult, being the one in this position.

  Because she had been a child when her parents died—because fifteen was a little older but still considered way too young—the people around her treated her as a child when they talked about anything to do with the accident. The nurses at the hospital, and later her grandmother, once she was called in. Then the well-wishers came, but she hadn't appreciated any of it. They kept telling her things she didn’t want to hear because that didn’t really help anything.

  She understood now, that there wasn’t much that could be said for such situations. People apologized because they didn’t know what else to say. Clara would have preferred they just didn’t say anything at all, but her sister wasn’t like that. Clara locked herself up in her mind and made people think she didn’t need comfort, but Tessa had never been one to do that kind of thing.

  "Look," she started, her voice low. Then she stopped, wondering how to continue, before clearing her throat and continuing. "Tess… I know that it’s a hard situation, but there's a way we can make things better."

  If Tessa was anything like her, she would appreciate Clara's plan.

  "Nothing will ever be okay again," Tessa claimed in a broken voice. "Our grandmother is dead, Clara. How could anything ever be okay when she's not here? It's just not fair. Why did she have to—”

  Her voice cut off as she grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed. She snapped them open a moment later. She probably saw what Clara did when she closed her eyes and wanted to escape from it. But for her, it would be a different angle—seeing someone running at her with a gun pointed at her, Viola jumping in front of her, then crumpling to the ground.

  Of course, they'd both seen all the red, but Tessa had been the one to feel all that warm blood soak her hands. Clara had gotten her hands dirty with blood in the previous attack on her street, but because she was running on anger and adrenaline, she'd only felt satisfaction. She could only imagine what Tessa had felt, that the blood on her hands wasn’t that of an enemy, but of their beloved grandmother.

  "You're wrong, though," Clara murmured. "It just feels that way. And yeah, Tess, I do think I know how you feel because I'm right there with you. You're not alone, okay? It's bad right now because it's too fresh. The pain might never fade, but you'll learn to live with it, as will I like we both did last time."

  Tessa looked at her with such devastation in her eyes that it felt like a punch to the chest. "But this isn’t like how Mom and Dad died, Clara, not even close. She was right in front of me. If it hadn't been for me, she would still be alive."

  Clara opened her mouth to protest, only to be cut off by a slash of Tessa's hand in the air.

  "No, Clara, it's true. It may not be entirely my fault, but I played a big part." Clara couldn’t say anything, so she kept her mouth shut. "I always blamed myself for their death too, you know?"

  Clara nodded. Tessa had a bad feeling before the trip but failed to convince their parents to cancel the trip. After they died, she believed herself capable of seeing the future and making predictions, and that the feeling she had was what that had been. In her mind, they died because she knew something would happen but failed to stop it.

  Life was so cruel, to have something like this thrown in her face twice in a lifetime.

  "I know now I probably… was wrong about a lot of what I said. I did get a bad feeling about the trip, but it could have been anything, so it wasn’t as concrete. Then. This, though… she was right there, Clara. If she hadn't thrown herself in the way of that bullet, I would be the one dead right now."

  Clara didn’t like either option, really. She would have preferred they all survived, even if they had to do it injured.

  "But it was still her decision to make, Tess. She gave up her life for yours because that was how much she cared. Just imagine how she would have felt if she was the one in your place? After how she lost Mom she wouldn’t have survived this if you were the one to die, not for long."

  Tessa didn’t look convinced, and Clara sighed. She couldn't leave Tessa like this. Her condition was delicate enough as it was if it degenerated because of this…

  Clara hadn't been there for her sister last time. She had been the younger sister, of course, but she got comfort from other people and never thought to give any to her sister. Tessa's mental health had gone downhill while Clara isolated herself from the first few months. Maybe, if she had done something then, she wouldn’t have lost her sister for a decade, and she wasn’t going to lose the chance a second time.

  "If you want to think like that, Tess, then shouldn’t this be my fault?"

  Tessa stopped crying and looked up at her, tears still coming from her eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked, her voice watery. "She jumped in front of me because—"

  Clara thumped her lightly on the forehead with a loose fist to catch her attention. Her sister looked up at her with widened eyes, looking shocked.

  "Think of it this way. The only reason Viola was even outside, is because of me."

  Her sister looked confused. "But I asked—" she complained.

  "And I shouldn’t have allowed it just for that reason," she countered. "I told you it was dangerous, that it wasn’t a game. And yet, I took you out anyway, knowing the risks. If it had just been you, things might have ended differently, but then Viola followed me outside—"

  "Because of our argument," Tessa cut in. "Because I was stubborn and selfish. I refused to listen when she tried to talk to me, that was why she followed me outside. If I hadn't taken out my anger on her, she would never have followed me outside."

  Clara watched as Tessa started crying in earnest, now. She kept wiping at the tears that fell, but they were quickly replaced with more.

  "Listen, Tessa. Even if the two of you argued, I made it my job to protect the two of you. That means from your own stupidity as well." She took a deep, watery breath before taking one of Tessa's hands and squeezing it between both of hers. "I could have done something about your argument, but I was selfish too, and I'm sorry. I was also angry at you, because of how you talked to me and Grandma. I could have chosen to interfere, but I told Grandma to let you cool down, and I didn’t try to talk you into reconciling like I should have because I was focu
sing on other things. Viola was unhappy, I knew that, but I thought it would be enough for her if I spent more time with her."

  Clara stopped to swallow the lump in her throat. It was hard, admitting she was wrong, but this had to be done. She couldn’t let Tessa take all the blame for this. It would be too cruel.

  "Look, I should have done something, but I chose not to because it was easier. I was focusing too much on our family's safety, and not thinking enough about your happiness, and I am sorry for that, Tess. I'm sorry that I failed you."

  She didn’t mention how their mom and grandmother were having problems, too. She knew unless she'd forgotten. Their grandmother had taken to caring for them because she felt the need to apologize for being a poor parent to their mom. Clara still wasn’t sure what went on between them, but they had definitely been fighting a lot, the times Clara heard them together when they didn’t know that she could.

  It was almost ironic, how something so similar occurred a decade later. It probably had, in part, to do with why she had been so stressed about their argument, too. She felt her daughter died with them angry at each other and didn’t want the same thing with her granddaughter, not with things being so unsure recently.

  As Tessa fell apart crying again, Clara reached out her arms. Tessa moved into them gratefully, ducking her head into Clara's shoulder and quickly soaking her shirt with tears. She rubbed Tessa's back, combing her fingers through her hair. After some moments, she was calm enough for Clara to push her back a bit to look at her face.

  "Tess, did you take your tablets?"

  Tessa remained quiet, and Clara sighed in exasperation. No wonder her sister was awake right then when Clara had left her sleeping maybe an hour before. She must have been woken up by a nightmare and just sat there. Clara would have preferred she get some proper sleep.

  "Could you please just take them?" she asked persuasively. "You'll need to sleep sometime, and you're going to need those tablets. Frankly, I would want something like that just to escape from this nightmare. You should use them properly, don’t you think?"

  Tessa didn’t say anything, but Clara took the lack of complaint as a good thing. She and her sister could talk things over properly, but only after she had a good amount of sleep.

  "She meant a lot to me, you know," Tessa murmured. "Viola, I mean. I probably didn’t act like it much, but she really did mean a lot to me, Clara. I can't believe I never told her how much, and I'm only remembering it now."

  Clara was surprised Tessa was opening up at all, but she stayed silent and listened. It was a rare thing for Tessa to speak about how she felt. And if Clara had some idea, she could think of a better way to help her sister through her grief.

  "Viola was my rock after Mom and Dad died," she went on. "I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone else for a long time—especially you, because you were so young when it happened."

  Well, technically, Tessa had been young herself, too. She was only nineteen when it happened, being four years older, yet some people thought she should have taken it better, being the older child. Felicia's sister, the person she'd gotten Tessa's medicine from, had even said she would expect Clara to be the more messed up in a situation like that.

  How could so many people have thought she was an adult and expected her to take the news like one, just because she was nineteen and not fifteen? Clara ended up having it easier, but her way hadn't been healthier psychologically either. She isolated herself from people even more than she already did, and the slightest thing could make her crack. She hung on the edge of depression every time things got too bad, and she dealt with it by locking it all away. If she'd ever snapped, she probably would have come out a lot worse than Tessa did.

  "And now, with Viola gone, I feel alone again, Clara. Why did she have to die?"

  Her voice, full of tears, made Clara's heart clench. She didn’t have an answer for her sister about that, but she really wanted to have it all. Because Tessa didn’t sound like she was the older sister, even though she was nearing thirty. Clara felt like Tessa hadn't matured a lot, while she was forced to grow up way too early after what happened. The line between older and younger had been way too blurry since then.

  "You don’t have to worry so much, Tess," she said instead. "I promise that I'll always be here for you—even when things are at their worst. You're the only sister I have, you know? I lost Viola, too, but I don’t intend to lose you as well, so just try to hang on. We need to stick together and destroy the people that killed Viola."

  Clara watched as Viola smiled for the first time in a long time. "That sounds perfect."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Before they could deal with anything else, Viola's burial came first. It had to be dealt with, and soon before they both got sidetracked by other things.

  They both knew what to do, the only thing they could do, really. Neither of them wanted to think of it, but they had to, so they did. Clara took most of the responsibility to get some weight off Tessa's shoulders, and of course, Cooper was there to lend them a hand.

  It was another whole day before either of them could walk into her bedroom. They didn’t want to leave it to Cooper to deal with. Clara had covered her body when they brought her—it—inside, at least, so they didn’t have to look at it. They each said their goodbyes, before wrapping her body properly in her sheets.

  Clara would have preferred to give her better treatment. At least to change her out of her bloody clothes and clean her body, wrap her in clean sheets and not what her body had been lying in for nearly two days.

  But they didn’t have options, and Clara wasn’t willing to ask others for help to open any other possibilities. Viola knew a lot of people that would probably want a proper funeral, but this was just for Clara and Tessa. She might have been friendly with a lot of people, but they were her family. Besides, they really should have done this a lot sooner than they did.

  Clara and Tessa gathered together some of Viola’s belongings to have a funeral in the garden. It had taken a while before they even got to that point, so they intended to do it right. Tessa had broken down crying again when she realized they'd have to bury their grandmother in a hole in their backyard, and Clara had even joined her.

  Cooper was outside, digging a hole where they could bury Viola. Clara would have done it herself, or at least helped, but when she'd gone to do it, Cooper stopped her and insisted on doing it all by himself. He told her to just focus on her sister and leave the heavy work to him.

  Well, she hadn't exactly been taking proper care of herself since her grandmother's death. She wasn’t sure she could have handled it for much longer, but she would have tried if it killed her, because Viola deserved at least that much after everything she’d done for them. She only gave in, because he'd given her the idea to do this with Tessa.

  The body had already been moved, and Clara had definitely helped with that, no matter how much Cooper 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. Tessa had been out of her room during that, Clara wanting to spare her that much. They left the body beside where Cooper was digging.

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

  Clara looked up, surprised that Tessa was 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. Especially after he found her in bed with Dante. Once after she'd told Cooper she ended the affair, he then confessed his feelings for her.

  Tessa spoke again when Clara 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. All my friends pretty much stopped talking to me after… well, you know."

  Clara cautiously loo
ked 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 Tessa started acting crazy. At least they came after the accident, once they were back home. Clara didn’t even have that, and she'd envied Tessa having friends that cared for her to that extent and felt resentment for her sister when she’d driven them away.

  "I know I can be hard to deal with, and Cooper'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?"

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

  Only, Clara 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 Tessa outside for the first time in a long time had overshadowed her thoughts about Cooper. Then one thing after another happened, and by the time he told her how he 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 Cooper was waiting for one. At that moment, Tessa looked to be waiting for one herself, and Clara sighed.

  "Seriously, Tessa, 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 people 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, Cooper technically already did that without them dating. They had been getting along well without more, but… was that really fair to Cooper?