by Max Lockwood
"So it falls to us to look after her," she argued.
Tessa snorted. "Sure. But for how long can we keep it up? And as I said, she's old. Even if everything keeps going smoothly, you know it's only a matter of time. Don’t worry about her mental health. Her heart might just give out before her mind does."
That wasn’t exactly impossible, though Clara wanted to refute it. It sounded so surreal, how Viola dying was being treated like a sure eventuality. Tessa wasn’t exactly young, but she could live longer. Instead of saying anything, Clara kept silent while thinking up what she should say to her sister's attitude.
Tessa looked at her out the corner of her eye. "You don’t have to believe me right now. I know it's not an easy thing to accept, but I've had years to prepare. Like it or not Clara, I'm thinking realistically."
More like cold, was what Clara thought, but didn’t voice. She was more than a little disgusted at Tessa's behavior. She didn’t want them fighting, though, so she calmed herself down, looking at the floor and taking a few even breaths. She didn’t say more, just left the room before she got angry.
She thought, as she holed herself in her own room, how she could keep Tessa under control when the world around her had gone so crazy.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
For her next volunteer task, the police officers called on Clara for help in doing night patrols.
It was definitely something she didn’t have much skill in, but then they weren’t just looking for skill. All she had to do was walk around and stay awake for the duration of the night. After the time of relaxation she'd had, she was considered a good candidate.
"You are, of course, allowed to refuse. But the crime in the area has skyrocketed, and we need all hands on deck to keep shops from being robbed."
Clara rubbed her hands on her pants to wipe away the nervous sweat. "I'm really not sure that I'm qualified for this…"
He didn’t look concerned, though. "You don’t need any. It's our second biggest problem next to the food shortage, whoever we can spare for it can go on to help. As I have stated, you are allowed to refuse, but we're basically relying on civilians for this, with how few of us there are. We can't cover the whole area, and if we stretch out too thin, then there will be cracks for some clever bastards to sneak through."
She frowned as she considered it. She did feel well enough to stay up all night. And if they allowed her, she could go back to sleep some more, and have Cooper wake her up late in the evening, just in case. She wouldn’t tell him why, of course, not immediately. He would worry and might try to stop her from going at all.
It didn’t take long to make up her mind. "Of course, I'll do it."
"Oh," one of the other officers turned to her. "If you'll be joining the night patrol, carry a weapon of some sort to defend yourself."
Clara was shocked at the advice, but then she remembered her run in with the teenagers outside a shop when she'd gone with Cooper to his place to move his things to her house. They were on their way back when they came across a group of boys trying to break into a store. Cooper wanted to leave it, but she insisted on interfering, and it nearly got them hurt.
Carrying a weapon was probably a good idea. She'd have to take it without Cooper noticing on her way out later.
She listened to whatever instructions were left before she made her way back home. Cooper did as she wanted, of course, probably assuming she just needed the rest. He was a little suspicious when Clara was on her way out of the house not long after he woke her up, dressed in all black. He didn’t stop her, though. She said goodbye to her family, made sure they locked up, and left.
Clara liked to stay fit and healthy. Her dwindling appetite notwithstanding, she took a jog most mornings, as well as a bunch of fitness classes that kept her in shape. Walking around for hours was going to be tiring, but she was sure she could handle it better than biking around, though she might just have to take another day off.
While on patrol, she came across some young people trying to break into a store. She had just started, so it was a bit of a surprise to run into trouble so early. They were a small group, a lot younger looking than the last one she'd gone up against. Still, she stayed cautious, keeping her distance and whistling to catch their attention. Like before, one of them noticed her first, and then got the others' attention.
"You kids better run along now," she said sternly, trying to sound authoritative. "You don’t want to miss curfew. The police will be walking by here pretty soon."
It was a slight fib, but they didn’t need to know that. They were easy enough to chase off, though, a bunch of kids facing off against an adult. She watched them until they disappeared from sight, and walked on.
Just how long would it be, though, before she couldn’t chase them off? She was waiting for it, but not necessarily expecting it, and she knew she would have to. She wondered just how long it would be before people started breaking into houses, too. Especially where food was guaranteed. The thought just made her shudder.
She hadn't turned it into a firm decision, but Clara had given up the idea of mentioning their supplies to the police and the rest of the town. She was kidding herself, though. No way would she tell, and have people focusing on her home. Especially not after her last talk with Tessa, to do with their grandmother. If Clara did her job, and did it well, then Viola wouldn’t have to leave the house, and they could just care for her there. It was the only solution they had.
As she walked along the streets, she found herself thinking about what she could be looking forward to. She hadn't thought to ask if any of the people out on patrol had gotten hurt, just been told about the increasing crime. Which, she'd already guessed as the natural progression of things. Human beings weren’t nice, after all, not when it came to protection of oneself. She felt like she was growing into a prime example of that herself sometimes.
Clara realized, as she walked, that she was frightened. Of being out on the streets on her own, trying to imagine what she could possibly face before it was morning and she could go home. Even though it was only late evening and still light out.
There was a good chance of injury, even death. She was nowhere near her relatively quiet neighborhood, someone else got to go through that area, while she was sent into the town, given the streets she was to walk through. She had signals that would help her recognize other patrol men and women from possible threats. That was it. No light besides the moon and stars to lead the way once it was fully dark. She felt gratified that the moon would still be out, at least, and bigger than a crescent if she still remembered the moon cycles she'd learned in school.
She glanced around behind her before going down a different street. She snuggled into her thick jacket, shivering at the cold. She'd eaten before she left home, at least, so she wouldn’t have to worry about hunger for some hours yet.
A sound down an alley startled her, and Clara jumped, whirling around to face the source. After a few moments of her heart beating frantically in her chest, and nothing appeared, she let herself relax. Placing a hand on her heart, she took a few deep breaths.
You can't panic. You cannot panic.
Not when she had just started for the evening. Not when she would meet someone sometime in the night, in case she ended up doing something stupid because of giving into fear and making bad, impulsive judgments. She used to be level-headed, the kind of person that planned far in advance. But lately she'd been leaning a little too much on impulse.
It was a concept so far removed from her mind it would never have occurred to her before. Doing things without thinking would have been detrimental when she found herself, day to day, fighting for control. Now, though, what she really fought for was life.
And suddenly, Clara very much wished she had told Cooper what she was up to. She hadn't asked either if patrols went out as more than one, or strictly individuals. She was sure she could have convinced him to go with her, if only to watch her back—or simply have him with her to keep her company. He was e
ven referring to himself as part of her family now, and she wanted to lean on him for help, and wanted him to do the same.
It was too late to turn back, though. She kept glancing up at the sky as the last rays of the sun dyed the sky and the clouds in burning colors, waiting for when even that would drain away and everything would start to go dark. If she thought to go back to get him, they'd be walking around in the dark. It was the idea, with night patrols, but the thought of getting Cooper into trouble after the last time didn’t sit well with her.
She thought back on Viola's comment, about them being a couple. Clara thought back, and tried to imagine what her grandmother would have seen. But to her, her interactions with Cooper had been all the same. If anything, he'd remained constant, and she'd had one different, failed relationship, that he knew about, before she started sleeping with Dante. He never changed how he acted around her, beside the occasional comment, they didn’t talk about her love life at all.
Or his, for that matter. Clara wasn’t sure if Cooper dated, or had ever dated before. She knew, though, he was the kind of guy women easily fell for. Genuinely good, protective to those he cared for. She wasn’t sure if Cooper was interested in a family, but they'd talked about the topic before, and he'd dropped lines that made her think that he just might.
Clara thought about what having him in her life, as part of her family, felt to her. Then she tried to imagine him gone, leaving, or having met someone else he cared for more. She was surprised how much she disliked the idea, this fabled person that could take away someone she cared for.
She also realized, with great shock, how they would be a good match.
Oh, there was still Cooper's opinion on the matter, and he might think differently from what she did. But when Clara tried to think of their interactions from an outsider's point of view, she realized it already looked like they were dating.
When they were around the same room, or area, they just gravitated toward each other. There was all the touching, sometimes to comfort, or when they were tired, but it came natural to both of them. It was like a rule, when they were in close proximity, they would touch. No matter how innocent it looked to her, other people wouldn’t—didn’t—see it that way. She remembered plenty of people remarking on whether they were together, particularly at the school. A lot of it was just the kids playing games, but the staff had questioned them at times.
It was practically a relationship, just brushing the edge of platonic, but it stayed chaste. The touches were never inappropriate. Cooper had kissed her cheek, or forehead, or the back of her hand a few times, but he'd never tried to really kiss her mouth. And when she invited him to stay with them, though there was the couch, and a room free, he'd been staying in her bed at night, and she'd grown accustomed to falling asleep in his arms.
Did she really want to go that route, though? Cooper had been there for her a lot of times, and she was grateful for that. But was it just gratitude? She wasn’t sure she could say she loved him, as she wasn’t entirely sure how that would feel. And even if she did, they had something good going. She didn’t want to ruin their friendship by adding dimensions to their relationship that didn’t exist.
But, she wondered if she truly had feelings for him that went beyond friendship. Was it just Viola's comment driving her mind in that direction? Or her growing over-dependence on him in this new, more dangerous world?
She couldn’t tell with any certainty and it frustrated her.
Before she could decide, though, Clara noticed a woman trying to break into a boutique. It took her mind a moment to recognize the other presence, even though her eyes were trained that way, and a few more seconds for her to realize what the woman was doing. It was enough indication that she had been daydreaming a little too much when she was supposed to be doing something more important than contemplating her love life, as it slowly grew dark.
"Hey!" She frowned when that got no reaction. "I know you can hear me. Stop, right now."
The woman just continued to ignore her.
Clara took a second to assess the situation. The woman's age range didn’t seem so far from her own, but without seeing her face, Clara had no way to know. Somehow, she had gotten hold of a bat, and was hitting the boutique window repeatedly, even when it only bounced back. Clara wondered if it would even be sufficient to smash the window of the store, like the woman clearly intended. She was likely weak, going by her swings, and might have been there a while, by how she seemed to be heaving for every breath, her arm growing slow with each swing.
Clara made to move closer. "Ma'am, you don’t look so well. So why don’t you stop what you're doing before you hurt yourself and go home? It'll be curfew soon."
"So the hell what?"
Clara came to a dead stop when the woman turned sharply and shouted back at her. Clara was more worried than frightened, though, seeing the woman sway lightly. She didn’t fall, which was a small miracle.
"So, you don’t want to go up against someone in the dark, especially when they could be armed."
She didn’t mention she was armed, of course. Or that this woman would likely meet other people with the same purpose she did, only they could be bigger, meaner, and more importantly, not by themselves.
"Ask me if I care," was the reply she got, the woman already turning back around, bat raised up for another swing.
Clara pulled her gun and took aim, hoping she was holding the thing right. "I'll tell you one last time, stop what you're doing and walk away."
The woman turned around, seemed to do a double take at the gun, and it made her sway again. She didn’t react how Clara hoped, though, how she had expected. She was stunned for maybe a handful of seconds, and then the woman laughed in her face. Clara could feel the shock clouding her expression, and it only made the woman laugh harder until it sounded more like a mad cackle.
"You wouldn’t dare."
The words were said with certainty as the woman lurched forward with the bat, wanting to walk towards Clara, but her own instability hindering her.
It reminded her of the last situation she had been in. There were plenty of differences, she'd been facing a group then, but this woman didn’t appear cowed at all. Clara was pretty sure she would walk up with the bat, and Clara would get herself beat up.
She remembered something Cooper had told her, basically that when desperation came into play, getting someone to stop without proving she could back her threat would be difficult. She wished, even more, that he was with her. Her thoughts were moving a mile a minute, wondering what the best course of action was. He would have been good in a situation like this, might not have even needed to pull the gun.
Clara wasn’t Cooper, though. And trying to think of what he would do in her place wasn’t helping, either. She hesitated a moment, and it happened. What she'd been afraid of when she first took the gun from the hand holding it out to her. She pulled the trigger by accident.
In that moment, when she realized her hand had flexed with her finger still on the trigger, then heard the crash, she felt like her heart was lodged into her throat. She almost dropped it, the recoil taking her by surprise. She couldn’t, though. It would be bad if she left it out to be picked up by someone who knew how to use it and would have no problem doing so, and was not a good cop.
She regretted it right away, but that didn't change anything. What did, though, was that she'd seemed to throw off her aim. Instead of hitting the woman, the bullet hit the glass window next to her. There was a loud crash, and shards of glass hit the woman. There was a silence that sounded deafening after the loud noise, and then Clara noted the woman had small bleeding wounds on her arm.
Clara panicked. She looked down at the gun, Cooper had looked it over before and showed her where the safety was. She clicked it on, or so she thought, so she wouldn’t be making any more accidental shots. Then she shoved it back in the inner pocket of her jacket and ran forward.
She knew she had attacked a woman, and the woman could go tell someo
ne she tried to shoot her. Even worse, with the window's glass broken, more people would be heading for it soon, a somewhat easy target. No one came rushing out into the open, so the area was either otherwise unoccupied, or the few people around heard and wanted to get away, but that wouldn’t last.
She dropped by the woman, who had finally given into her exhaustion, the bat fallen from her fingers as she stared down at her own arm, looking dazed. Not waiting for her to feel any pain, Clara ripped off a piece of the woman's legging, checked to make sure there was no glass in the wound then pressed the piece of cloth down. She brought the other woman's hand up and pressed down, holding tight to her shaking fingers.
"Keep pressure on this, it should stop the bleeding. And trust me when I say the streets aren’t safe at night, so unless you want it to end badly for you, and I don’t necessarily mean death, you need to go home."
The woman's gaze had shifted to hers, but Clara wasn’t sure if she'd even heard. They didn’t have time for this, though. Clara kept their hands pressing down on the wounds, until she felt the woman putting some strength into the action.
"I am so sorry for this." She scrambled into her pockets as the woman looked at her warily, but she was only pulling out the snacks she'd brought for herself. "If you're hungry, take this and go. It will be dark soon."
The woman's face had been drawn in confusion, but she took the food offered to her, clutching it in her free hand. Clara just watched her for a second, and then fell back so she was sitting on the ground.
Dammit!
At some point, she was going to have to stop screwing up. She reflected on what could have happened if the bullet had hit the woman instead. A woman who hadn't seemed to care about her own welfare, as long as she got food to eat.
