Powerless | Book 2 | Aftermath

by Roberts, S. C.

  Powerless Series

  Dark

  Aftermath

  New Order

  Last Stand

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  AFTERMATH

  First edition. September 30, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 S. C. Roberts.

  Written by S. C. Roberts.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Emma wasn’t sure how long she just stood there staring.

  She was still in the square, watching her sister interacting with the crowd. All she could do was stand there and stare at the unbelievable display in front of her. Merry, who was outside, was standing on a car in the ruined street and shouting something to those gathered around her. The people in the crowd was shouting and overall agreeing with everything she said, like it wasn’t all crazy.

  Emma couldn’t entirely blame them. It was a human thing, when something didn’t make sense, they'd cling to the closest thing that could stabilize them. Merry was that for these people, in this situation, and whatever it was she was talking about. It was hard to believe rational people, and this many at that, would even listen to her. But of course, the situation was extreme, so Emma could understand how it wasn’t hard for them to swallow Merry's message.

  She must have zoned out for a while, because the next thing she knew was she was watching Merry's band of followers dispersing.

  They moved almost quietly, and it was a surprise, compared to how rowdy they were just moments before. There were a lot of people in the area and none of them seemed to mind it was growing dark out, even though there was curfew and patrollers were likely already going around. If she'd been this late, she never would have guessed what happened. She got another surprise as she watched them walk away, there were more of them than she'd originally thought, and they were many to begin with. It made her a little anxious, this many people in one place so late. She froze when some of them passed nearby.

  Then Emma came to her senses. As... strange as the whole thing was, they couldn’t be out here. Emma was supposed to be out on patrol and the sun was already going down. Pretty soon, it would be dark, and Emma was having second thoughts about staying out all night on patrol after the stunt Merry just pulled. As much as she would love to keep the town safe, her sister came first. And besides, she had already caused more than enough damage for the one night. She firmed her jaw.

  What the hell.

  Her eyes cut to her sister, who still stood on top of the car, even without a crowd to speak to. She didn’t look like she had any intention of moving soon, instead watching her followers as they left. Emma narrowed her eyes in irritation. Just when she'd thought things were slowing down into something almost normal, and this happens.

  Just what was her sister planning?

  Emma was a little leery of the dispersing crowd, so she waited until most of them were gone or not paying attention. She moved forward cautiously to get to her sister. They had to get home, and fast. She knew how quickly and easily a gathering could go south. Everyone seemed more or less calm as they walked, but there was no way to say whether they would all go home, as they were supposed to. Not to mention the opportunists that would see the distraction and use it. If an incident happened—well, another one for her—they could not get caught in the middle of it.

  "Merry," she hissed when she was close enough, running cautious eyes around the square. Her sister didn’t seem to notice her, and she frowned, irritation growing. "Merry, get down from there," she said quietly, but firmly.

  It took a few seconds, but though her sister didn’t look down at her, she did as she was told. When Emma finally caught a good look at her face, she noticed Merry had a dreamy look, almost dazed, and it only made her frown more. When she didn’t move fast enough, Emma took her arm and marched them both back home.

  There were still quite a few people around. Emma was suddenly very grateful she'd thought to hide the gun, thinking of what would have happened if someone else saw it on her, thought she still held the bat. She cursed when she realized it was still on her and wondered where they could dump it. She didn’t think taking it home would be a good idea, but it would be worse to leave some stranger with a possible weapon.

  She never liked being the center of attention. As far as she knew, neither did her sister. But what the hell had she just seen, then? Merry had looked borderline deranged addressing the crowd, and she ate up the attention about as much as they ate up her words.

  Emma was starting to think it was never going to go away, the feeling that she didn’t know the woman she called her sister. Too much had changed, and Merry was always acting however she pleased. Emma could not read her, or her intentions. The times where she acted lucid were growing fewer, or was Emma just noticing it more because of the situation?

  And everything had been going... well, not quite well, but the closest it had been since the EMP attack and the power went out. Emma had felt so optimistic, maybe for the first time in years, but that was gone now. Still, she wondered how the evening turned into such a disaster. She hurt someone, and her sister was out of the house and inciting people to do... whatever it was she was planning on doing.

  It took some time, but they made it back to the safety of the house, and Emma breathed in relief that they weren’t caught outside.

  She let them both inside and locked the door after a last quick glance around outside. She closed her eyes, hands pressed against the door and took a few seconds to breath. Then she turned around to face her sister. Merry just stood there behind her, not even looking at her. There was only one candle in the room this time, but it was enough to see by, and Emma could see the dreamy look was still there on her sister's face.

  Emma sighed, feeling exasperated, but not knowing what to do about it. She rubbed her forehead in frustration, wondering how she let things get away from her, so out of hand, so quickly. Had she actually believed she was in any kind of control, even briefly? Because that was laughable now.

  "Merry," she tried to say calmly, her frustration bleeding into her voice, along with her exhaustion. "You mustn't do that again. You shouldn’t leave the house, especially not after dark. It's no longer safe out there and it would be bad if you got caught by any of the cops out on patrol. Neither should you do what you did today again, it could have been dangerous. And you don’t realize how your actions will affect the community."

  She opened her eyes to look at her sister, who was now looking back at her. Her face was back to looking blank, but her dark eyes were intense. The look in those eyes made Emma's heart beat a little faster, but she held her chin up and straightened her back.

  Merry was good at that, especially with how she looked, making people wary of her with just a look. Only this time Emma could tell it was by intent. Merry was a little taller than her, but she knew
, in that moment, that her sister was looking down on her in every sense of the word. She would have been angry, but she couldn’t claim it didn’t get to her.

  She refused to be intimidated by her sister, though. Merry may be older, but Emma had been the acting adult for years now, and she refused to be cowed.

  "You can't keep doing this, Merry. Your 'predictions' aside, you're feeding them lies—you never predicted the apocalypse, it was just a coincidence. What do you think is going to happen when those people realize you don’t actually know anything?"

  And really, there was no way she could. Emma felt a little annoyed with herself, how easy she was to believe in her sister so quickly in the face of tragedy. Because she was looking for some sort of answer, and Merry had plenty. They were bleak, and horrifying, but they were answers in a world that was falling apart and Emma had almost lost herself in it. The past few hours had been jarring, though, and she was ready to come back to her senses.

  There was no way her sister could see the future, no matter how much she insisted she did. It wasn’t practical. She was just good at taking advantage of situations, and she had almost constant nightmares that could easily translate to disasters like the one they were currently facing. As for most of what she said, it was the same thing she'd been saying for years, it just happened to fit the current situation. That didn’t mean anything.

  Merry was good at being realistic in their current situation. A lot of what she said about their new lives wasn’t a lie. But there was no way she could know everything like she claimed to. She wasn’t any more in control of their lives than Emma was, though she might want to be. It would explain why she acted the way she did.

  Merry's eyes were narrowed, and under her usual disarrayed hair, they looked almost dangerous. A shiver went through Emma's body before she could quell it, but she only firmed her jaw and met her sister's gaze head on.

  Then, Merry laughed. It was a low sound, not loud and exuberant, but Emma still felt her eyes go wide, because her sister didn’t laugh often. She grinned, but nothing about the look, or the laugh, had been happy. Actually, Emma felt the sudden urge to take a step backward. She didn’t, because she didn’t want her sister to think she was backing down, but a big part of it was because she knew the door was right behind her—there was nowhere for her to go.

  "You're really funny, Emma," she murmured, almost sounding amused. "You don’t have to pretend, you know. It's pretty obvious you're just jealous because for once, I'm the one being worshipped."

  Emma's jaw dropped for a moment, the surprise winning out over whatever weariness she'd felt. Suddenly, she was the one feeling amused, darkly so. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised.

  She rolled her eyes, wondering where her sister got these ideas. Emma barely had any friends, the one person she could count on was Chase. She gave up on her dreams to look after her family because someone needed to. Whatever Merry thought about Emma's life, it was far from perfect. Emma couldn’t remember the many times she'd wished to run away, change places with someone else, but the option was never open to her. If she could, she'd let her sister take her place instead. She didn’t want the responsibility thrust on to her; someone had to bear it and she just happened to conveniently be the only mentally sound person in the house.

  But then she realized how it must feel for Merry, always being put second best. Their circumstances weren’t the best, but Merry wasn’t to blame any more than Emma was. Life dealt them a bad hand and they were all affected by it. But Merry was more or less pushed to the background by pretty much everyone. If she'd had friends, Emma wouldn’t know, but she knew no one looked for her sister at the hospital, or later when she confined herself at home. Merry hardly talked to anyone, Emma didn’t think she even had hobbies, even though she wondered what her sister did at home all day. Of the two of them, Merry had been more the social flower, Emma just had to go out because of work, but she still lived a relatively normal life, something Merry could no longer have because of her condition and her nightmares.

  It was just a bad situation for everyone involved.

  Emma sighed, feeling almost bad for Merry. As much as she dealt with a lot, so did her sister. It was just hard to forget when Merry acted the way she did, so unapologetic and unashamed of herself even when she was doing and saying all the wrong things. She didn’t realize there was anything wrong with how she acted, she sure as hell didn’t want to change, and Emma was just going to have to find a way to deal with it. There was never really much of a choice to begin with.

  "Look, Merry, its late. I'm tired, and you probably are too, so why don’t you go up to bed?"

  For a moment, neither of them moved. Their gazes held, Emma no longer feeling hostile, Merry now looking cautious. She thought her sister would stay to argue some more, and Emma braced for it, even as tired as she suddenly felt with the whole situation. But the moment passed, and Merry turned around to go upstairs.

  "This isn’t over, Merry, not even close. We'll talk more about this later," she called to her sister's back, insistently, but she didn’t get a reply. Nor did she expect one. Merry didn’t even pause or hesitate, some way to acknowledge she had heard. It irritated her, but Emma didn’t want to start another argument, so she let it go.

  Emma was left alone, and feeling exhausted again from the events of the past few hours, she leaned back against the door, and tilted her head back against it. The sound of steps on the stairs made her open her eyes and look up. It was Chase coming down the stairs. She managed a small smile for him, but it slipped almost immediately.

  "Hey, Chase," she murmured.

  She remembered wanting to have him with her when she was outside, and seeing him now made her feel slightly better, but not enough. Not after the night she just had. He noticed something was wrong, his expression shifting to one of concern as he hurried closer to her.

  "Emma, are you okay?"

  She sighed and pushed off the door and met him at the bottom of the stairs. She couldn’t exactly say she was okay. The recent issue with Merry aside, there was the other problem. One that wouldn’t go away so easily, and yet she didn’t want to have to think about it just yet. She thought back to almost shooting that woman, the one trying to rob a store, and shivered. It felt like it had happened so long ago, yet she knew it couldn’t have been more than a couple hours ago, if even that.

  She considered telling Chase. He was the only person she ever talked to about her problems, he encouraged her to do it, and she'd come to find speaking to someone actually did help a little bit, at least better than bottling everything inside. She wasn’t sure how he would react, and she was worried about it, but was it something she should keep to herself, when it might come back to bite them all?

  But... she didn’t want him to worry. And really she just wanted to forget that even happened in the first place. Besides, there was nothing he could do and she didn’t want to give him one more thing to worry about. So she decided against telling him, and gave him another approximation of a smile.

  Instead, she told him about Merry.

  "Did you notice when my sister left the house? I don’t think I've seen her out the front door in the past ten years, and I found her in the town square."

  His eyebrows jumped up in surprise. "I... honestly didn’t notice. She disappeared and I assumed she was in her room like usual. What was she doing in the town square?"

  Emma rolled her eyes again. "I have no idea what she was doing, really. But she was there, and she got on top of this car, and she was talking to a crowd of people."

  "What was she saying?"

  "I didn’t hear a lot of it, but what I did hear makes no sense. The worst thing is, they were eating it all up, and she was reveling in the attention. I don’t think she even realizes she could so easily make us a target. Or herself, for that matter."

  The words themselves sounded urgent, but there was no urgency in her voice. Merry wasn’t just going to change because Emma wanted it to happen, and she was har
dly qualified to do anything about it. They would have to put up with this, as if everything else wasn’t more than enough.

  Chase put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him gratefully. She'd slept well the night before, and earlier that day, but she felt she could stand to sleep some more. She let Chase guide her up the stairs and back to her room.

  "You'll feel better once you've had some sleep," he promised.

  Emma didn’t think so, it wouldn’t be that simple. But she decided to believe him, because she was tired, and this was Chase. Whether she could still sleep or not, just having him there would have to be enough.

  Chapter 2

  Emma lay awake. She wasn’t sure how long she'd been just lying there, but even exhausted, she knew she wouldn’t go to sleep. She couldn’t. Not after everything that had just happened. She wanted to, though.

  But every time she closed her eyes, she could almost delude herself into thinking she was seeing what happened earlier in perfect clarity. It was all in her head, but when she opened her eyes, all she saw was black, and it was almost comforting, definitely more than what was going on in her head. She had a feeling that if she did decide to fall asleep, ignore what she kept seeing behind her eyelids, she would be waking up in not too long from a nightmare.

  When was the last time Emma even had a nightmare? They were rare for her, usually it was Merry waking up in the middle of the night in hysterics. Even after everything that had happened, her nightmares had been kept at bay because Chase was still there with her. It just wouldn’t be enough this time. Maybe if she had told him, but it was her decision to keep it all a secret. But now that she was staying up, all she could do was worry, her thoughts going around in dizzying circles.

  If only she could shut down her mind, her thoughts, because they weren’t doing her any favors. In fact, they only made her worry more.

  She was thinking about having shot the woman. It was an accident. Maybe, if the situation had been even more dire than it turned out to be, she might have done it deliberately. Thinking that made her heart squeeze and beat too fast, but she couldn’t push the thought away. She would like to think it was, but it wasn’t impossible.