by Max Lockwood
He didn’t seem to like newcomers and refugees streaming into his town, but they needed him.
"I'm a little nervous," she admitted. "I was rude to him earlier. What if he refuses to help us?"
She knew the town's trading deal was reliant on her actions and her minimal negotiation skills. She didn’t want to let them down, and the mere possibility that she could made her heart race and her stomach lurch uneasily.
"Don’t sweat it, Clara. You told him what he needed to hear, so he would listen to us. If you'd gone in there begging or trying to get an exchange right off the bat, especially after we essentially broke in, he would have sent us away without thinking about it. You got him to pay attention to you."
She chewed on her lip, thinking about his words.
"You think?"
"Yeah. I have faith in your ability to win Mayor Charleston over."
She wondered what he based that belief on, but hearing the words made her calm down slightly. Getting him to pay attention might not be enough to be of help to them, though.
After a while with no word, she'd had enough. If he wasn’t going to come out to them, they were going to have to go back and talk to him.
"Come on, Dante. Let's go see if he's had enough time to reconsider."
He got up, and they walked slowly back to Mayor Charleston's office. He was still sitting at his desk, but there wasn’t anything in front of him. He was staring out the window with a thoughtful look on his face, that hardened when they walked in. He looked more serious now than he had before, but he wasn’t sending them away. Instead, he folded his arms back over the desk and gave them his full attention.
"All right. I've had time to think about it, and I'm more ready to talk business." He waved a hand at them. "Now, talk."
Clara faltered, though it only lasted for a second. His intimidating factor had gone up a notch, and she thought this was the face that managed to win this man the election. He didn’t look any less cruel, but he also looked sly and calculating. She wondered how long he had been in politics.
"When everything shut down, electricity, cars, there was heavy traffic down the highway, and a plane came down right in the middle of it. A lot of people didn’t walk out of that accident, a lot of the ones that did, and are still alive, were heavily injured. Medical supplies are dwindling, but that isn’t even the biggest problem right now.
"Food shipments that were supposed to come in didn’t make it, so right now we're worried about keeping everyone fed. Some stores were broken into, food stolen, but the police are doing something to try and reduce the damage. Our biggest problem is that we're too small. We don’t have any big food reserves, and we're looking for support from other towns. We were sent here, but I'm sure others were sent to other neighboring towns."
He nodded once she'd stopped talking. "You do realize, miss, that as much as you need help, I have put my own people first. We have food supplies, yes, but we also have more people. There weren’t any big accidents around here and that just means more people to feed. We have no idea how long this situation will last, so depleting our own resources to help yours, won't be of benefit to us in the long run."
It was cold hearted, but she could understand the logic. It didn’t make her happy that he was right.
"But we won't just be taking for free. I'm sure we can find things to trade."
He raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Like what?"
"Cars unaffected by the EMP will still run," she pointed out. She didn’t mention how she'd only overheard this conversation from some officers at the station and had yet to see it herself. "My town would be willing to open the use of our gas stations to you in exchange for food. We have a lot of it and we're not currently using it for much."
That was something she was sure of. A lot of the fuel that was still in use was going to fuel lamps, but not many people had them, and the police station only had a few of them.
Mayor Charleston stared at them for a moment as he deliberated, his fingers tapping lightly on his desk. "And how exactly would this benefit me?"
"You would have more access to easy transport, and may be able to trade further with other towns if you have the use of vehicles."
He looked away from them, staring down as fingers of both hands tapped on his desk. She assumed he was considering the proposal by the furrow growing on his brow. She counted down in her mind the seconds before he looked up with a heavy frown that seemed to age his face.
"All right," he accepted. But held up a hand before either of them could think to be happy about it. "I will give this idea a trial run. This weapon, if that is what it is, clearly took out anything that worked with electricity. A lot of modern cars depend on it, but I will have some of my people look for older models that might be able to run. But—" he cut them off again with a hand, when she opened her mouth to say something.
"Let's get something straight. This is on trial only. I won't give you anything right now. The deal may be on, but I will cut it off if there are any issues, or if our own supplies begin to run low. I am willing to exchange a truck full of food for a full tank of gas. If this is disagreeable, you can both walk yourselves out."
She held back from showing him how giddy she felt. It was a good enough deal and they were desperate enough to take it. She stood up, Dante following her lead, and she stepped forward, offering her hand to the Mayor.
"You have a deal, Mayor Charleston."
His face was closed off as they sealed the deal with a handshake.
"A vehicle will arrive tomorrow to collect the gas and drop off a supply of food."
She gave a sharp nod and left the office with Dante on her heel. She walked fast until they got outside, and she let herself drag in deep breaths.
"We actually did it," she muttered to herself. "We got a deal."
"No, Clara. We didn’t do anything, it was all you in there. I didn’t even say anything, I kinda feel bad for being useless here."
"No," she protested. "It was good having you there, I don’t think I could have done so well if I was by myself."
She was too easily intimidated. It might have lessened when her life changed, but it hadn't changed that much. He might be a greedy bastard, but Charleston had proved he'd earned his position, even though he stood for pretty much everything she disliked about politics and politicians.
Dante didn’t look like he believed her, but he didn’t argue. It was true, though. Having him there wasn’t as good as having Cooper, but she wondered how ready the Mayor would have been to listen to her if she'd just been a single woman on her own, far away from home and trying to play at being a shark.
"Fine, but you did well to handle yourself, and you saved your townspeople for a little longer."
Yeah, that would still be a problem. How long would the supply last? How long would Charleston be willing to trade? Even with this, they would need more. She couldn’t be as optimistic as Dante, because she knew it was only putting off the bigger problem.
"The deal won't last long, Dante. Not when food becomes the main priority for everyone. This is only a temporary fix."
How long was temporary was their new big problem. And besides that, she didn’t trust Charleston. When she'd mentioned exchanging for gas, he'd acted like he wasn’t aware of any running cars. But they already had a truck that would bring the food over to them? Either he was really confident one would be available, or he was manipulating them. She was more worried about the latter idea, but it was bad either way.
Vaguely, it felt like making a deal with the devil, and she wondered how long it would be before he stopped playing nice. What really worried her, though, was when his obvious greed would come in.
Dante shrugged and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We'll figure something out later. For now, we should go home. It's getting late and we have a long way to go."
Right. They didn’t want to miss curfew. Clara put her anxiety aside for the time being as they collected their bikes and headed for home.
&
nbsp; Chapter Twenty
It was late evening and growing dark when they finally made it back.
Both Clara and Dante were exhausted, since they'd had to stop by the station to report on their success and the trade, and leave the bikes to walk back home.
It had been a while since Clara had ridden a bike for prolonged periods of time. Dante looked slightly better off than her, while her legs ached from all the exercise. It took longer than it should to walk back home, and the silence didn’t bother her as it had that morning. In fact, she welcomed it, focusing on making her feet work, wincing every now and then when the muscles in her thighs protested. She kept fit herself, and it was probably the only reason her legs hadn't given out on her.
Finally, they arrive back, and Clara breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she moved to get to her own house. She was more than ready to sit down and rest her muscles, though if she didn’t want the ache to be worse the next day, she'd have to keep stretching her legs. Which meant just going home and lying down would be a bad idea.
A door opening had her head popping up. It was Dante's house, Michelle practically exploding out the door and staring hard at them.
Clara nearly flinched at the glare aimed at them, wondering what was wrong. Her face was flushed, her chest heaving with harsh breaths, as if she'd just run down a flight of stairs. Dante was startled, but he only faltered for a moment, before he was hurrying over to her, arms held out to pull her into a hug.
"Michelle? What's wrong, did something happen with the kids?" he questioned, sounding frantic.
"Don’t you dare touch me!"
The shout startled them both, Dante stopping mid-stride and rocking back on his heels. Clara had never seen the other woman mad before, had never imagined it could happen. When she got annoyed, it rarely lasted long. She was the cheerful, perky type that Clara didn’t particularly like, except she was also genuinely nice.
Seeing the woman in front of them made her wonder if she'd imagined all of that. Because the woman standing in front of her didn’t look like the same person she'd known for years, had seen not all that long ago, though they hadn't met again since the family was over for dinner.
This Michelle looked like she wanted to strangle the both of them, and would be laughing all the way.
"Michelle?" Dante repeated, voice sounding cautious as he took a step away from her. "What—"
"Where the hell have you been!"
He flinched back at her shout, taking another step back. "I left this morning, you knew I was going—"
"You didn’t say anything about being gone the whole day. You came home a lot earlier yesterday."
"That's because I got a different task today and it took longer—"
"Well, why the hell didn’t you tell me—"
"Because I didn’t get the time to—"
His own voice was climbing, Clara staying away from it as the two of them started a shouting match out in the street.
It was surreal to see, because neither acted like they were capable of it. Clara couldn’t say they'd always looked happy together, she could count on her hands the many times she'd actually seen them together and have fingers left over, but they didn’t argue. At least, Dante had never hinted that they did, and neither had Michelle the times she stopped for a chat in the morning.
And then, she said something that made Clara's heart stop for a second.
"Did you intend to run off with Clara?"
Shock was an understatement for what she felt. A cold feeling was making its way through her body, and Clara wondered if that was what true dread felt like.
Did Michelle know about the affair? But they'd been so careful! Clara had made sure they were, no matter how much Dante pushed. She was already feeling guilty with all the sneaking around, but she didn’t want to get caught. It had been going on so long it was a wonder the other woman hadn't noticed earlier, but what if they'd been fooling themselves, and she had known?
Also, if Michelle had known, how could Clara not have noticed? They didn’t talk often, but Michelle dragged her family into Clara's home just a day ago. Why would she have done that if she knew? It made Clara nervous, because if she had known and said nothing about it before just then, it made her wonder what her motives were. Did she just not care, or had she been planning to humiliate them both somehow to get back at them?
Clara shrunk in on herself, trying to remain unnoticeable.
Dante had been gaping at his wife, and tried to get ahold of himself. His expression was a little guarded, but Clara thought he was pretty good at playing clueless.
"Why would you even think I would run off with Clara?"
"I see how you look at her, Dante, I'm not stupid."
Clara breathed a silent sigh, relieved, and then felt bad for doing so. Not that she was going to inform Michelle of their sneaking around her back if she didn’t know. Clara was worried, in her current state, just what she would do.
She wasn’t laying off Dante, though. She was also standing in Clara's way to her house. She could have gone around them, excused herself from this discussion, because neither were paying attention to her and she didn’t want to get involved. One look at his face made her stay, though. She couldn’t just leave him like that. Lie to herself or no, she was part of the problem here. And he had been a big help, staying in the room with her when she negotiated with the Mayor.
Feeling a little sorry for Dante, Clara tried to offer some help, to try to get Michelle to calm down so she could cool off.
"Look, Michelle, I swear it wasn’t like that—"
She cut off when the sharp glare was aimed at her, eyes falling to the finger pointing right at her. "Don’t you dare lie to me. I see the way you look back at him—"
Clara just looked on, more confused than worried. How did Michelle imagine Clara looked at Dante? She did her best not to look at him at all these days, the past two days notwithstanding because of uncontrollable circumstance.
"I don’t look at your husband in whatever way you're thinking, so ease off. We've come a long way and we're both tired, so can we table this discussion for another time?"
"No!" was the answer she got.
She watched the other woman gear herself up for a long, meaningless, loud rant, and felt her already thin patience snap. She owed this woman a lot, for all the things she'd done to her. But after what she'd done for her, look after her daughter when her husband was away and she didn’t want to do it, or when she wanted some alone time away from the kid with Dante, she always dropped her daughter off at Clara's without asking if it was okay.
"Can I please just go home so the two of you can talk?" she asked.
The older woman wasn’t backing down, though. "No. I need an answer from both of you. Where have you both been, and why the hell were you together? Why the hell are you both getting back so late?"
Clara gaped at Michelle, surprised by the questioning. It didn’t last long when it occurred to her Michelle was trying to assert authority over her, not unlike her own mother would, only this woman didn’t have that right. Clara didn’t answer to her, or anyone, for that matter.
For a second, she was tempted to give the woman a nice smack to the face. She fantasized doing it, perking herself up a bit. She had nothing against her, but Clara couldn’t say she particularly liked her neighbor either. She was too caught up in herself and her needs and wants to care about her own family. She was good at her job and she loved it, she was a socialite, but she used it all to spread gossip like she was still a teenager.
The woman rarely acted her age, a mature adult in her early thirties. She acted like she had no responsibilities if they didn’t interest her. Back when Clara suffered with her own job, she had secretly, guiltily, hated the other woman for the joy she seemed to find by ignoring what she didn’t like. It was unfair, but she couldn’t stop herself from feeling it.
That anger came back to her then, and she decided she'd had enough.
"Michelle," she snapped, making her voi
ce loud and hard so the other woman would hear and listen. "I am exhausted, and my legs ache from cycling for hours. Whatever your problem, please don’t try to drag me into it. I would like to go home. I think you and your husband should do the same, so get out of my way."
She'd never talked to the other woman so rudely, and she seemed shocked, her mouth left gaping open as her eyes widened. Clara felt good about shocking her, even for a little bit. She felt bad almost immediately, but she refused to take the words back. She could apologize later, right then, she just needed to get off her feet.
Then she seemed to take in the state Clara was in, barely standing, sweaty, with wisps of her hair sticking to her forehead. Clara wondered just how much of a mess she looked, and then decided she didn’t want to know if it was enough to get through to the older woman.
Michelle's mouth snapped shut. She didn’t look sorry for blowing up at them, but she didn’t seem as mad as before, either. She turned away, back to her husband, and gave him a firm look.
"Dante. Get inside the house. You are going to explain to me what happened."
He followed the directive immediately, heading for the house with Michelle right at his heels, closing the door behind them and leaving Clara out on the street.
She wondered if the other woman would forgive her, then decided it didn’t matter. Had she always been that jealous and controlling? And Dante, the poor idiot, just kept going along with her. She had wondered how Michelle's recollection of their getting together differed from Dante's, getting herself involved with a man six years younger and making him marry her when he got her pregnant. But she'd never asked, because it hadn't been her business.
It wasn’t her business now, either.
She moved to her own house, but the door opened before she made it. Cooper stood at the doorstep, looking surprised for a moment to see her.
"Hey, you're back. I heard some commotion outside and came to see what it was about."
She noted his curiosity and rolled her eyes. She stepped inside as he stood aside for her, following her as she went and dropped herself into the couch.
