Zero Power (Book 2): Trying To Survive

by Lockwood, Max

  "Well, Clara," she said with self-satisfaction evident in her voice, mouth curling up in a tiny grin. "My prediction was right again—someone wanted you dead."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Clara was back at the hospital the next day.

  She woke up reluctantly in the morning, after the excitement of yesterday, she wanted to stay in bed. After the woman had gotten arrested, Clara and Tessa had stayed behind long enough to give an explanation to the police. They were both released to go home maybe half an hour later, but she had been reminded she still needed to do community service.

  Tessa had snickered at her silent groan like they were little kids. They had walked home in the dark, Tessa disappearing to her room as soon as they got back. Cooper, who had been waiting up for them, had tried to talk to her, but she had been so exhausted, she just followed Cooper to her room and they went to sleep.

  She had a quick breakfast then left the house, making sure Viola and Tessa were okay first. Tessa had, for once, slept through the night. She was still sleeping when Clara went into her room, and it made her hopeful that her sister would regain some normalcy when she wasn’t plagued by nightmares every night. It was too much, too soon, to ask for but she could hope.

  Alice wasn’t there to meet her as she left. She hadn't talked to the nurse, but she didn’t think there was much need to. Tessa must have been out for a while before Clara even found her. She would have had to look for her followers and gather them. The group Clara found her with was much smaller than the first time she had gone to the middle of the town square, but there were still quite a few people, maybe a dozen. Clara hadn't asked, but she was pretty sure Tessa had acted up and Alice wouldn’t be coming back.

  Well, as long as Cooper had paid her, it really was no longer Clara's problem. She had bigger things to worry about, like looking for someone to replace Alice. Now, more than ever, she couldn’t leave Tessa alone. Yesterday could have gone a lot worse than it did, and Tessa needed to understand that it was too dangerous to just do whatever she pleased whenever she wanted.

  Her sister just got on her nerves. She hadn't talked to her after what Tessa had said at the station when she'd nearly gotten stabbed to death. And there Tessa was, being smug. It reminded her too much of the day of the plane crash. Tessa had acted the same way. Clara wasn’t sure how she could just ignore all the dangers and place her focus on being right and still have the courage to call Clara self-centered to her face.

  She made it to the hospital and met Felicia already there. She got to work, but it wasn’t as hurried as it had been the first time she worked there. Most of the people had already been seen to, and she really just had to clean and re-bandage wounds and check on her patients occasionally. She had to talk to a few of them, but that was pretty much it.

  None of it required her full concentration, and she took advantage of it. She wasn’t paying too much attention as she worked, and Felicia seemed to notice something was wrong with her.

  "Hey, are you okay?"

  She hummed and looked up, surprised to see Felicia scrutinizing her. "What is it?"

  Felicia narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "You've been out of sorts since you came in here. Did something happen when you went home last night?"

  Clara snorted. "Yeah, something happened," she muttered darkly.

  Felicia just arched an eyebrow. "Well, then tell me. What happened last night?"

  Clara sighed. It wasn’t exactly a secret. The police hadn't told her she had to keep quiet about it, and she really would have liked to talk to Cooper about it first, but she hadn't been up to it the night before nor this morning. Maybe it would be easier to just tell Felicia. Cooper would just fret and that wouldn’t help her.

  "You remember the woman that I shot at?"

  Felicia nodded. "Of course, I do. When they brought her in, I was the one assigned to her. And I did just see her a few days ago at the trial."

  "Well, I met her again last night."

  She wavered, wondering how to even broach the subject. Just thinking about it brought the memory back sharply in her mind, and her heart beat faster in remembered panic. She had almost died, again, only that time, Tessa had been with her. The previous times, she had been with Cooper. Cooper would have protected her, but Tess she had to protect. Being put into that position had perhaps been worse than the situation itself.

  Clara wasn’t used to protecting people, not like that. She didn’t think herself strong enough. And she hadn't been; they had been forced to run. Providing for her family was one thing, but she knew she might be put in the same position again in the future. It worried her because she didn’t know what she could do if they were ever in a situation where their lives were in danger. With the gun, the only weapon she'd had, now out of her hands, they would be doomed.

  Felicia finished whatever she had been doing and approached Clara, who had been standing in place for a while, lost in thought.

  "Come on. I think we can take a break for a few minutes."

  Clara just nodded and followed, taking off the gloves she had put on. They stepped outside and walked leisurely. Clara gratefully took in large gulps of air, washing away the smell from the hospital. That was one thing that hadn't changed much. It didn’t seem like Felicia was bothered by it, but then she'd had more time to get used to it. Clara couldn’t imagine ever getting used to it. Not the job nor everything that went with it, but Felicia looked almost comfortable.

  They weren’t going far, anyway, but at least the air was clear out here.

  "Okay, we're alone now, so spill. What happened yesterday?"

  She sighed. "That woman from the shooting, I met her yesterday. Or I suppose I should say, she ambushed me. I was heading home and ran into my sister in the streets. That woman came out of nowhere, and she had a knife. I tried to talk her down, only it just made her angrier, and so I grabbed my sister and we ran. She chased us all the way to the police station where she got arrested."

  "Sounds like you had a lot of excitement last night."

  Clara snorted. "Yeah. I could have done without it."

  "I didn’t realize you had a sister, though. Younger or older?"

  Clara chewed on her lip, seriously thinking about it. Sometimes she forgot, and there were times that Tessa reminded her. Most of the time she acted like she needed to be taken care of. Then there were times like last night when she acted so much older. She didn’t even look her age, though Tessa was a year away from thirty, but that could just have been because she wasn’t satisfying most of her body's needs. She hardly ate, she hardly slept. When she managed to, she was woken up by nightmares.

  It wasn’t something easy to explain, as easy as the question sounded. Because she could just give the straight answer, but the reality was so much more complicated than that. Felicia was someone she'd come to sort of trust in, and she wanted to tell her the whole truth.

  She wondered for a moment if telling Felicia was a good idea and decided she didn’t have anything to lose.

  "Tessa is older than me, but it's hard to believe sometimes. My parents died ten years ago. I was fifteen, she was nineteen. Tess… didn’t take it well."

  Felicia nodded, sympathetic. "I can imagine it wasn’t easy for any of you."

  "Yeah, but it was hardest on her. She claimed that she had this… bad feeling right before the trip, and tried to tell my parents not to go, but no one listened to her. So, it happened anyway, our parents died, and Tess suddenly thought she could tell the future. She was so bad in those first few months, the psychiatrist assigned to her when we first woke up at the hospital recommended she be put in a facility where they could help her recover."

  "And your guardian didn’t want to?" Felicia guessed.

  "Our grandmother," she clarified. "She's the only other family we have left. Tess didn’t want to go anywhere, so my grandmother wouldn’t let them lock her up. I had my own issues that put me at odds with a shrink recommended by my high school, so I was glad that they didn’t take her away."
She chewed on her lip and frowned at the ground. "Lately, I've been wondering if that was the best decision. Maybe, if we had let her go then, she might not be so bad right now. She’s functioned just fine for the past few years, but something about what's happening is making her worse than she's ever been before."

  She hadn't let herself think it consciously, but how could she not? Tessa wasn’t okay. They had assumed before when they wouldn’t let her be put in a facility, that she would be okay over time. She had nightmares every time she closed her eyes back then, and she and Viola had both thought that was the reason for the change. They had assumed, if they gave her time and attention, she would be back to how she was.

  Only, it never happened. If anything, Tessa had gotten worse as the years went on, and they grew used to the change so, that they rarely noticed it anymore. It was no longer strange; it became the norm and they had learned to live with it.

  But if Tessa had received the treatment back then, maybe they wouldn’t be facing the problems they were now. Not as far as Tessa was concerned, anyway.

  "Just how bad is your sister's condition?"

  "It was so bad that she didn't leave the house, that I ever saw, for ten years. She keeps having nightmares, she barely eats. I don’t know how much weight she lost, but she's taller than me and I weigh a lot more. She doesn’t like going to medical checkups so I don’t know just how bad her condition has gotten. Then there were the visions and her predictions of the future. She even claimed on the day of the crash, that she had seen it happen in one of her visions."

  "And she's been like this for years? Isolating herself in your house?"

  "Pretty much, yes. But something about the current situation is messing with her. Or it could just be her deteriorating mental health. Twice now I've found her outside, and both times she was gathering a crowd and trying to give them some deep message about what is going on. The first time I found her in the town square, she was on a car and saying something about the apocalypse being a test from God, and these people were listening to her, it was just the weirdest thing. I had a neighbor of mine who was a nurse come in to look after her while I was away, but she's been acting worse than usual. Alice, my neighbor, has children and she no longer wanted them around my sister, so I think she stopped coming as of yesterday.

  Felicia nodded along as she spoke, concentrating on every word. It made something in Clara's chest relax that someone was taking her seriously regarding her sister's health. Even more, Felicia seemed like she understood. Most people didn’t realize how hard it was. The few people at her school that had somehow found out, just thought she left her sister to take care of herself, but that wasn’t the case. There were times when Tessa needed special attention, and Clara was the only one available to provide it when their grandmother was having one of her bad days.

  "I really don’t know what to do about her. Yesterday was the second time I found her outside. The first time was the night I shot that woman. My neighbor didn’t show up at my house when I left this morning, and I don’t think she'll be coming back. I need to find someone that can handle my sister, and I don’t know where to begin looking."

  "What you need," Felicia said, "isn't someone to just look after her. You need a psychiatrist to talk to your sister—I might be able to help you out."

  Clara pushed off the wall, taking a step closer to Felicia in sudden excitement. "You can? Do you think you're qualified?"

  She shook her head, and Clara was ready to be disappointed when she spoke again.

  "I don’t deal a lot with psychiatric cases, but my sister majored in that field and she's had plenty of experience. I'll send her over tomorrow to give you a diagnosis, and then we'll see if she has any way to help you."

  Clara could feel hope growing in her chest. Finally, a possible solution had presented itself. Beyond the hope and excitement was gratitude toward Felicia. She didn’t meet that many people willing to help someone they barely knew, and she felt Felicia was someone she could consider a friend now. Before, she'd only ever had Cooper, and as much as she appreciated him, this was something he couldn’t have helped her with.

  Their short break over, they went back into the hospital to continue their shift, and Clara put a little more effort in her work, now that her bad mood was gone. She ended up doing more talking with a couple of the women there instead of any real work, but there really wasn’t a lot left to do where her minimal skills could actually be of use.

  At the end of the day, Clara went home. She hurried, her fear from the day before almost forgotten as she nearly sprinted all the way home. It was late evening, but the sun hadn't gone beyond the horizon yet when she got home. She found Tessa curled up on the sofa reading a book. She glanced up when Clara walked it.

  "Hey. How has your day been?"

  Clara planned on being civil. She wasn’t sure Tessa would answer for a moment, but then her sister sighed and put the book down, still open to the page she'd been reading. She curled up even further on the couch, laying her head down on her folded arms.

  "I haven't slept well in days because of my nightmares, actually. Today was a good day… but how long can it last? And it's not just the nightmares. I'm scared and hungry and sick of the world around me. It's almost as bad, if not worse, as the nightmares that haunt my sleep."

  Clara froze in her surprise at the words coming out of her sister's mouth. It was just so different from how Tessa had acted and talked the day before, she might as well have been a different person. She had to take a moment to adjust to the sudden personality shift. Her words didn’t have anything to do with her predictions; for the first time in a long time, she had actually been honest with how she felt, and Clara wasn’t sure how to react.

  But she spent time with her sister, comforting her because she looked like she needed it. She took a seat beside her and engaged her in conversation, just light small talk that had her relaxing a little. Clara even read some of the book to Tessa until she fell asleep on the sofa.

  It was the quietest time she had spent with her sister that she could remember. One that didn’t end in an argument, or one of them feeling bitter or angry, and she counted it as a sort of win. Clara watched Tessa fondly and leaned down to kiss her head. She went around, making sure the house was locked up, and blowing out the single candle in the living room. She debated attempting to carry Tessa upstairs or waking her up to get her to her room, but it was so rare that she slept so peacefully, that Clara didn’t want to disturb her.

  So, she got something to cover Tessa with and went up to bed herself. Cooper was already there, asleep, and she slid into her side of the bed and closed her eyes.

  She hoped, fervently, that Felicia's sister might be able to make Tessa better.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Clara met Felicia and the woman she supposed must be her sister, Barbara, at the door of her house when she answered a knock the next morning.

  She was surprised for a moment before she remembered giving Felicia details on how to get to her house before leaving work the evening before. Still, it was so early and Clara herself was only awake because she'd gone to sleep a little early the previous night. But then she realized how rude she was being, just standing there and blinking at them stupidly, shaking her head to make her mind wake up faster.

  "Hi. Please, come in. I'm sorry, but I didn’t expect you to be here so early," she said as she invited them inside.

  The two women walked in and Clara led them to the living room where they all sat down. No one else was downstairs, though she was sure at least Cooper was up. She hadn't found Tessa on the sofa where she left her sleeping last night, so her sister must have gotten up early and headed back to her room.

  "There is still some work to do at the hospital, so I wanted to get this out of the way early. I spoke to someone yesterday so they would cover for us, you won't even have to go in. You might want to stay behind with your sister for the day, anyway, after she and my sister have their talk."

  She nodd
ed at her sister, who smiled warmly at Clara. They looked a lot alike, both brown skinned and brown-eyed, with almost similar facial features. The only difference was that Barbara kept her hair longer. It was brushed back from her face and held at the back of her head with hair clips and pins. Also, Barbara looked a few years younger than Felicia.

  "Hello, Clara, I've heard about you from Felicia and she told me a bit of what you told her concerning your sister. Do you mind filling me in on some details about Tessa's past?"

  Clara nodded, nibbling on her lip as she wondered where to begin explaining, and how much detail she needed to include without turning it into a long story.

  "Well, we've been living with our grandmother, Viola, ever since our parents were killed in a horrific accident about a decade ago. Before then, my sister was… outgoing. She had a lot of friends, and though she didn’t like school all that much, she was above average in just about everything. She was happy, she acted like any other girl her age, had the same interests and problems. But she hasn’t been the same since the accident. She sees things, dreams things, and thinks they are real. Or, that they are predictions of the future, and she won't take me seriously when I say they can't be. She gets defensive, or hostile. Not physically, just with her words. Worst of all are the nightmares that came on because of the accident."

  Barbara arched her eyebrows. "Really? And how old was she at the age of the accident?"

  "Tessa was nineteen."

  Her eyebrows went up impossibly higher. "I'm surprised she handled it so badly at such an age. If anything, I would have been more worried about you, being the younger sister."

  That was where everybody had been wrong. At the hospital, people had given her more priority because she was the minor, at least until Tessa started displaying what they termed as abnormal behavior. Of course, it was the same in Clara's case, only her behavior was abnormal because it was too normal. People who went through trauma were supposed to have some reaction, so when she didn’t, they thought something was fundamentally wrong with her.