by Max Lockwood
"Clara, what is it? What's wrong? Did something happen to you?" he fired rapid, frenzied questions at her, asking them too fast for her to answer even if she could have.
But the itch in the back of her throat wouldn’t let anything out. So she just shook her head, but for his sake, she tried not to lose herself again. As long as she wasn’t alone, she would have to be okay.
He stopped the questions, seeming to realize she couldn't answer and he wasn’t making anything easier acting so panicked. He led her farther inside the house and she followed to the living room where he sat her down on a seat. The candle in the room was somewhere out of her vantage point, and she remembered the night he walked into her room with a candle and noticed it was irritating her eyes.
Cooper was always making her feel better, looking out for her needs, and Clara didn’t know why. She didn’t know what she'd done to deserve it, but she was so lucky, and so glad she had him around to look after her.
When he tried to leave, she felt the panic again, hands shooting out, one clutching at his shirt, the other his arm.
"Don’t!" The word was so low, just above a whisper, but the urgency in it must have carried.
He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her for a quick squeeze, and then he was pulling away again.
"It's all right, Clara. I'm not going anywhere. Just let me see to your grandmother and I'll bring you a glass of water, okay? Then we'll talk."
But she didn’t want to talk—she didn’t even want to think. She let him go as he moved away, wanting him back almost immediately. But she couldn’t see to Viola herself, and the poor woman was probably still standing out in the hall, confused and panicking.
He was back in not so long with the promised glass of water. Her hands shook when he transferred it to her, and he had to help her hold up the glass. It actually helped, the cool, soothing water washing down her throat and over the itch in the back of it. She was left sniffling, her tears not completely gone, but she wasn’t the mess she had been mere moments before.
Cooper knew they would need to figure out a way to save the clean water they had since it wouldn’t all stay clean forever. But he didn’t want to worry Clara about it right now.
Cooper set the glass on the table, and put a hand on her knee, but didn’t touch her anywhere else.
"Now, why don’t you tell me what happened?"
Her breath hitched, and for a second, she thought she would go back to wailing again. But she didn’t. Instead, she told him, all of it.
She told him all about her day, from when she left the house, then her day in the hospital, and seeing people die. Cooper didn’t interrupt or move his hand from her knee, not until she finished. She was just crying silently, too exhausted to give into the heavy, body shuddering sobs from before.
"So I came home, and… Cooper, I'm not sure if I can go back there," she admitted in a whisper, sounding ashamed of herself for doing so.
Cooper pulled her into a hug, then, rocking her body lightly from side to side as he murmured soothing words into her hair and rubbed at her back. She let him calm her down, knowing it brought them both relief, until she was lying limp in his arms.
"You have no reason to feel ashamed. A lot of people wouldn't want to be in that situation."
"But there are plenty of people already in it," she complained weakly.
Out of choice or not, Felicia was there, and she hadn't hesitated. When Clara met her eyes after, they were full of remorse and sorrow, but Clara was pretty sure it was more directed at her. It seemed too easy, but it made her wonder what the other nurse had seen that made her harden her heart and mind so well.
Because Clara didn’t think she could live through it, and she knew that after surviving the past three days. She would move on because there was no other choice, the rest of the planet wasn’t going to wait for one person to try and play catch up.
How could the world have gone to hell in three days? They hadn't even survived the first week yet, what was the first month going to be like?
Her body gave a hard shudder at the thought, her hands gripping tighter to Cooper.
"Look, think of it this way. At the very least, you went, and you gave it a try. At least you helped out and didn’t back down. And in the morning, you should find a job more suited to you. Because this one isn’t."
She felt pain in her chest when she thought of quitting, not going back there the next day. She felt bad, but more than that, she felt bad for being so relieved. She'd psyched herself up the entire way there, but there was no way she could survive going back, not after seeing that.
"Don’t feel bad about it. I know you can't help it, but you can't help your reaction either. I would hate to do it, but I wouldn’t mind picking up the pieces every time you come back here with your heart broken. But try and think about your sister, your grandmother. If you're going to be here for them, you'll need to do something that doesn’t leave you broken at the end of every day. This isn’t anything like your teaching job where you had to. Just find something else you can do, a different way to help."
She nodded along with his words, knowing she could count on Cooper to tell her the truth, whether she liked it or not. She held him close, breathing in his clean scent and letting it fill her. Clara calmed herself down, made herself pull away so she was sitting beside Cooper instead of lying on him. Her mind reached for a distraction, and she grabbed onto Cooper's hand.
"Sorry about losing myself like that. What about you, how was your day at the house?"
It was the first time she'd left him completely alone in her house and she was a little curious. She felt like it was too much to hope for that her sister had behaved herself.
He looked like he was going to argue her first statement, but then he just sighed, relaxing into the seat and pulling her hand into his lap, playing with her fingers as he looked down. She chewed on her lip, wondering how bad it had been.
"It wasn’t bad, exactly," he started, hesitantly. "Nothing really happened, after you left we all stuck inside the house. I was… a little disturbed by the things Tessa was saying about the apocalypse," he admitted.
Clara felt her body freeze, but he ignored the flex of her hand, continued playing with her fingers, and she calmed down by degrees. Far from angry with her sister, she was just tired. Of everything. It wasn’t quite the apathy from before, but something pretty close to it.
"What did she say?"
He hesitated again, and she wanted to lean down so she could see the look on his face. But then he just sighed, interlocking their fingers as he looked up.
"I… can't repeat a lot of the things she said. They freaked me out, Clara, and I'm a guy who used to watch horror and suspense shows for fun." He winced. "I don’t want to worry you, you have enough on your plate, especially after the day you've had, but your sister seems to be getting worse."
Unknowingly, he'd handed her the one thing she'd needed. When she was having trouble, or getting too lost in her own head, dealing with Tessa usually took up all her concentration. She would have loved an older sister that acted the part, but taking care of her was one other thing that could help Clara achieve some peace of mind. Because she'd done it for so long it was now becoming second nature.
So she sighed and gave Cooper's hand a squeeze. "I know. I just don’t know how to handle it. But I will talk to her."
The sooner the better. She was out there seeing true horrors, she didn’t want her sister throwing around fantasies about what she was 'seeing.'
She gave Cooper's hand a last squeeze then got up. It was dark going up the stairs, but she'd used them enough to not have to see to know where she was going.
Her door was left slightly ajar, and there were several candles lit in the room, only these ones were scented and made Clara's nose wrinkle. She knocked lightly, waited a couple of seconds, then pushed the door open wider and let herself in.
If she cared her privacy was being invaded without her express permission, she didn’t s
how it. She was busy sorting through her assortment of crystals. When Clara closed the door behind her and took a step further into the room, Tessa looked up with a tiny, barely there smile.
"Hey, Clara," she murmured, her voice sounding calm, as it only could when she was in her own personal space. "Why don’t you sit down and I'll read your tarot?"
Clara sighed, crossing her arms over her chest, taking a couple of steps closer but making no move to sit.
"I'm not in the mood, Merry. We need to talk about whatever it was you said to Cooper today. I invited him to stay with us, so you're not allowed to chase him off."
Tessa just snorted, and then reached for her cards. When Clara didn’t move, she patted the space in front of her.
"Sit," she insisted. "Let me read your tarot cards. It's been a while since I've done it."
Clara didn’t want to, though. A lot of what Tessa said was nonsense, but sometimes she hit cords within Clara with her words, and Clara felt unhinged already, she didn’t need to hear anything her sister had to say.
But her sister was getting that slight frown that meant she was going to be difficult to outright stubborn. Arguing wouldn’t change her mind, and they could be there for hours, before her sister either lost interest or diverted her attention and pretended Clara didn’t exist.
Tessa crossed her arms and gave Clara a firm look. "I won't speak to you until you allow me to read the cards."
Clara narrowed her eyes. She didn’t want to give in to Tessa's manipulations. But knowing she needed to speak with her, she gave in and allowed her to read her cards.
Tessa didn’t seem to require verbal acknowledgement, turning to her cards and waiting for Clara to sit down. She moved, feeling weary, but at least her sister was on the bed this time and she wouldn’t have to sit on the uncomfortable floor.
She watched silently as Tessa held the cards in her hands with her eyes closed and her face slightly lowered. Then she shuffled the cards a little, before taking the top one in the deck, and laying it down. She put down several other cards that Clara didn’t bother looking at, in a pattern that never seemed to stay the same and one that only her sister seemed able to understand. Once the last card was down, Tessa held the remaining deck between her palms, touching her fingertips to her chin.
Clara held back a sigh as she waited for Tessa to explain what she saw.
"So much has changed since the last time. I wish I could have done this sooner." She bit her lip, and Clara had to refrain from telling her she wouldn’t have allowed this before. "I predict love, danger and death coming your way. I saw the other two before, the last one is kind of a given as the world is now, but danger… there'll be a new danger, separate from what's already happened so far."
Clara pursed her lips, and then gave into her need to sigh. The love bit, she just outright didn’t believe. The other two were both a given as the world currently was; she didn’t need her sister telling her that when she was the one out there experiencing it all first hand.
"Tessa. You can't keep doing that. Keeping all this stuff to yourself is one thing, but please try not to drag other people into it, especially Cooper. He isn't used to dealing with you, and I don’t want him worrying."
Her sister raised her head, looking unconcerned. "He engaged me in conversation, Clara, what was I supposed to do, talk about the weather?" she scoffed. "I know he was just trying to be nice, no one ever wants to talk to the 'crazy' girl, right? So I repaid him by telling him information that would be useful to him in the near future. Can you fault me for that?"
That… was a surprise coming from her sister. Tessa wasn’t the most considerate person, too lost in her own head sometimes to care much about those around her, and rarely when it was people outside of the family. But she shook her head, she wouldn’t let the words distract her. She'd come here for a reason. They may not be able to talk properly, but Tessa needed to realize and accept the boundaries.
"Merry, your fantasizing needs to stop. You're a grown woman now, and you need to accept that though you've had a difficult life, you don’t need to project your fantasies to explain everything. Sometimes life sucks, and now, it really sucks. Doing this isn’t helping anyone, least of all yourself.”
Instead of looking affronted, even annoyed, Tessa just smiled. It wasn’t one of humor, Clara couldn't exactly decipher the emotion behind it, but it made foreboding shivers run up and down her spine.
"You may not believe me yet, but you eventually will. And you will beg for my forgiveness."
Chapter Seventeen
Clara went back to the police station in the morning to be reassigned to a new job.
She was tempted, for a moment, to get Cooper to go with her, but she made herself leave the house before she gave into it. Cooper was worried about her, but that didn’t mean he was suddenly okay with what she was doing. He might try to talk her out of going, and she feared he might actually succeed, so she was leaving before he even woke up.
The walk to the station was decidedly more grim than it was before. For one, no one bothered her on the way, and she kept thinking about what she would do if they gave her the same list again. She didn’t want to admit to one failure already.
It was less crowded than it had been the day before, and she found an officer to help her much quicker. She gave her name and intent and mentioned she'd been by the day before, but that was as much detail as she would give.
She breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she wasn’t asked for more detail.
"Would you be able to go to a neighboring town and see how they're doing?"
She nodded. "What exactly would I be looking for?"
"The other towns must be in better shape, since half of our own town was destroyed in the plane crash. We need a lot of resources coming in, so try to offer services for food in the other town—they have the largest supermarket in the surrounding area and are better set up for the incoming food crisis."
Negotiation.
She'd never attempted anything like that. If this bigger town had more food, they'd be hard pressed to offer it up. But they'd need a lot more than just food, wouldn’t they? Still, getting them to part with any of it wasn’t going to be easy.
But it was another way to help the town, and it should be easier than anything she's already dealt with. She'd have to think up a plan and hope it worked.
"I can go and try to talk to the mayor if I can. I'll think of some ideas of how the people in town can make themselves useful to the neighbors."
The most important thing she needed to worry about was transportation. She knew the town the officer was talking about, there was only one area with a big supermarket, but it was a fair bit of distance away. She had her parents' bikes… but she didn’t want to use them. She wasn’t sure they'd even be safe after constant use that cut off for ten years. Maybe she was just making excuses, but anyway, she didn’t want to have to go back home to get it, because then she'd come across Cooper and he might insist on following her.
Going with someone might be a good idea, but she needed to learn to stop using Cooper as a crutch. He wasn’t always going to be there to help her out forever.
"Um, could I borrow a bike from somewhere?" she asked tentatively when it looked like the officer was about to turn to other business. "I had one before, two actually, but I went out with them and they got stolen."
He glanced at her before looking away and called someone else over. The other officer hurried over and they spoke for a moment. Then the other officer turned to her with a nod.
"We'll get two bikes ready." And he was off again.
She frowned after him, before turning back to the man in front of her. Two? "Am I going to be accompanied by someone?"
Before he could reply, someone appeared from another room, looking ready to go. Clara looked up, and wanted to curse when she realized that someone was Dante.
Of all the people… Cooper would have been better.
She was tempted to decline, say she could do it he
rself, or say she already had a partner, if they could just let her go get him. Bothering Cooper was so much better than having to deal with Dante again. After the last conversation they'd had, the last thing she wanted was to be stuck with him for hours.
There was no way she could back out, though. The officer she'd been speaking to had already turned to someone else. Dante himself looked uncomfortable, before steeling himself and moving to stand beside her, but not too close.
"We need to get going soon," was all he said.
His eyes were cautious, like he knew she wanted to refuse. She realized he probably felt the same, but he was prepared to go ahead anyway.
She sighed and clenched her fists. You're not going out for a joyride. Maybe it won't be so bad. She didn’t exactly agree with her thoughts, but she agreed with Dante, reluctantly.
"Yeah."
Despite the awkwardness, when the other officer came back to show them off to their bikes, they went off together by silent agreement.
They set off in silence. Clara didn’t think it would last, the town was a bit of a distance away, and if they were quiet the whole way it was going to drive her insane. She hadn't thought much about Dante after he'd walked off on her before, but now he was all she could think about because of the close proximity.
She kept thinking back to the time since they met, to when the affair started and the time in between that and the current state. She hadn't seen any emotions in the relationship, and somehow she didn’t think she was wrong. Dante had insisted on having feelings for her, but he hadn't explained what kind of feelings. She didn’t want to ask about it, though.
It was hard to tell without a watch, but she knew she didn’t last long before she broke and talked first.
"So…" she murmured, shooting him a look in the corner of her eye.
He just faced forward and continued pedaling. She was surprised he was even keeping pace with her, she knew he worked out so he could go a lot faster if he wanted.
