by Max Lockwood
She jutted her chin out at the two men, now that they had company. “Everyone’s here now, so speak up. What do you two want?”
They turned to look at the newcomers, and Clara bit her tongue not to shout at them to keep their eyes on her. They were acting like she wasn’t a threat, even though she was holding a loaded gun to their faces and wouldn’t mind using it. Her finger trembled on the trigger again. It would just be a warning shot, she’d even aim it at the ground, or behind them. She was confident enough in her aim now to know she wouldn’t hit them directly unless they were her target. But they talked before she could, and she held back the urge.
Besides, there was no reason to alert everyone when nothing had happened yet.
“We’re from the town of Mawdsley,” one of them announced, “and we’re scouting for trade opportunities.”
Clara gave them both a disbelieving look. “Trade opportunities?”
She didn’t believe them one bit. If they were interested in trade opportunities, they would have listened to her when she was first sent to their town as part of the volunteer work for her own. Instead, they got threatened, their things taken so they were forced to walk all the way back, and Clara got hit in the face with the butt of a gun for speaking up about them taking their supplies and their bikes.
It had been her, Cooper, and Dante. She was out for most of the day because of that hit, and when they finally got to trudge back, Dante nearly collapsed when they nearly reached home. Clara hadn't known at the time, but Michelle had kicked him out of the house, so he hadn't been eating well for days to begin with before they went on the disastrous trip.
She looked around, and let her guard down just a little because she noticed both Dante had Cooper were here with their own guns. Cooper’s was aimed at the ground, and Clara could imagine how uncomfortable he was just holding onto it, but Dante’s was pointed right at them, at least. Because he knew what needed to be done in such a situation. She’d have to talk to Cooper about his squeamishness to handle guns.
The men continued.
“We’ve been careless with our supplies and are running out. We’ve searched pretty wide for a new source to get our supplies, and we ended up in this area. We’re pretty far from home, actually. We saw the farm and were immediately interested. We come here with absolute peaceful intentions.”
Clara scoffed loudly at that, and noticed the curious look Cooper and Dante both shot her. Even Audrey.
Not Jack, though. Actually, Jack seemed interested in doing a deal.
No way in hell.
She couldn’t let this go on when he didn’t have any information. These guys were widening where to get their supplies, probably because they pillaged several other places. There had been a town Clara visited in the beginning, when she was sent out as a volunteer to search out a food deal with the mayor.
She still got a bad taste in her mouth, remembering Mayor Charleston. It had been her first time out of town, and Dante even went with her. What they found were people loitering in the streets, looking for food, while the mayor had holed up in his building. There were blockades set up, and even people turning people away at those blockades. They burst through it, being faster on their bikes, and they found the man in his office, stuffing his face with doughnuts.
She wondered if they had gone through that town, or if the mayor had enough fire power to keep them at bay. She found herself thinking she wouldn’t have minded if they had ravaged that town and taken the corrupt mayor’s stores. He had actually tried to give them bad food in trade, and Clara couldn’t deny a part of her resented him when he broke the deal because she tried to protest.
These bastards could go there and she would be content. But like hell she was going to let them swindle a man as kind as Jack.
“Jack, do you mind?” she called out, satisfied when their eyes turned to her, before she looked at Jack to see his answer. “There are some things you need to know. I want to speak with you in private, it that’s all right,” she said respectfully .
He looked curious, and he hesitated with a glance at their “guests,” but then he nodded. They retreated a few steps back, leaving Cooper and Dante to keep an eye on the men.
“Jack, you can’t trust these guys,” she said bluntly, keeping her voice low.
“But if what they’re saying is true, then they’re not in a situation all that different from—”
“No, Jack, you don’t understand. You can’t compare us with them at all. They’re from Mawdsley. Do you remember when I told you I lost my grandmother in a shooting? These men were responsible.”
His eyes widened, obviously shocked by the news. “Are you sure?”
“Even if they hadn’t said where they were from, I recognized one of them. They attacked our hospital and stole all the medicine we had. Before that, they attacked a street, killed a lot of people, and the survivors dragged themselves to the hospital. Those men were responsible for the death and destruction in my home town, including Viola’s death.”
Clara silently implored him to understand. These men couldn’t be trusted, and Clara didn’t want any sort of relationship with the likes of them. Even if they weren’t lying, even if they wouldn’t try to screw them over, they could attack them later on when they least expected it. Surprise attacks were their specialty, after all.
“I’m so sorry, Clara, I had no idea. You have the right to turn them away.”
She felt a curl of satisfaction in her chest, and she almost smiled. Jack was a good guy, and she wondered at just how happy he’d made her by letting her have this chance. Of course, she didn’t think they’d take it well, but whatever. She just wanted them gone, at least for the time being, and then she’d call everyone and they could talk.
Clara went back to the two men, and said, “Your deal has been declined.”
She couldn’t keep the satisfaction from her voice entirely.
One of the men grinned. “I’d hoped you would say that.”
Clara just looked on in confusion, but she was suddenly on alert. The look on the man’s face wasn’t nice, even though the other only looked slightly exasperated. He looked like he was having fun, or picturing something funny, and she didn’t trust the look.
“Since you’re all so unwilling to cooperate, we have no choice but to attack. We’ll kill everyone on this farm and just take it for ourselves.” Then he leered at Clara, looking her up and down in a way that made her shudder. “I might spare you, since you have a pretty face.”
Disgusted, and very bothered, Clara aimed and shot the man in the arm, but it didn’t satisfy her like she’d thought it would, even as he screamed and clutched at his arm, hunching over until he almost fell forward. What she wanted was to kill the man, but again, just words alone weren’t enough provocation to take it that far.
The more practical, ruthless side of her was telling her to kill them both, so they wouldn’t come back to haunt them. It was a little coldblooded, and the only reason she didn’t carry it out was because Cooper was there. She remembered how he acted around her the last time she hadn’t felt wrong about killing, and decided to let it go, for now. If their promise held, they’d be back, and Clara would have the chance to take them both out.
“Get your friend and take him back to your town as a warning,” she told the other guy, who just stood there, staring at his friend in shock. “Tell the rest of them not to come back here or else. We’re not going to lie down for you.”
The man scurried to wrap a handkerchief around the other man’s arm, and he dragged him to the car. After closing the door, he ran over to his own side, jumped in, and drove away.
“I don’t appreciate blood being spilled at my house, Clara.”
Clara turned to Jack at that, having forgotten the rest of her audience. Cooper looked disturbed, but Dante had a hard look on his face, and she knew he was okay with her actions.
“Jack, just trust me when I say I did you a favor—there will be one less of them to worry about or kill
when the people of Mawdsley arrive. Because I can assure you they will be coming back.”
She looked to Cooper and saw the reluctant expression on his face. He remembered something similar happening to them, a bunch of women coming to their home to steal their food. Only, they had a shed full, and it wouldn’t fit in their vehicles, so the women promised to come back. The whole neighborhood and a few police officers were ready when they came.
But Jack still looked disapprovingly. Clara told herself he didn’t understand. He hadn’t been there all the other times before, so he couldn’t know. But then she frowned, thinking she’d seen movement out of the corner of her eye, or had been alerted by something that made her turn.
Clara looked up and saw Jackson standing in the window, crying. Clara was shocked to realize that he saw everything.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She was frozen for a while, not sure what to do, still staring at the window, even though Jackson had already moved, still lost in disbelief.
Of all the things that could happen when she was just getting him to trust her… this was the worst thing she could think of. After all the work she had put in to get him to trust her completely, she might have just ruined it with one thoughtless action.
Please, no, she pleaded internally. This just couldn’t be happening.
People form Mawdsley hadn't just shown up and declared they would be attacking them. Jackson didn’t just see her coldly shoot someone in the arm, and see the man cry out because he was hurt.
I can't even explain it to him so he would understand, she thought frantically. He’s too young!
Would he even believe her if she went up there and tried to tell him? Would he let her? Because, thinking back, the men really hadn't done much but be a total nuisance in her mind. She would have preferred if the bastard she shot had kept his mouth shut, but he’d had his hands held up the entire time.
Clara had been the villain in that scenario, and she hated just thinking of it.
The others didn’t seem to realize the dilemma she was in, though she was grateful when they left her alone, even Cooper. When she finally looked down, she noticed the worried look on his face, but she could only look away. What could she tell him? The effort hadn't been hers alone. Cooper had been spending a lot of time with Jackson trying to pull him out of his shell, and Clara had just undone all of it. What if he got mad at her for it?
A part of her knew he wouldn’t, because he was Cooper. But he would be disappointed, and that was almost worse in her eyes. The last thing she wanted was to cause him to be disappointed in her, but this was something unavoidable. If he went near the boy, he would know.
So, what she needed to do was try and talk to Jackson. She wasn’t sure what she would say, how she would defend herself, but she had to at least try.
What the hell could she even say to him? She wanted to curse herself for being so impulsive, but simply hitting the guy wouldn’t have done much to appease her anger. She knew her physical strength meant little, and she’d wanted him to hurt. Having him out of the equation for when they attacked was only an added bonus.
It had been a completely selfish act, and she was going to pay for it. She knew she couldn’t hide away from Jackson forever, so she took a fortifying breath and went inside the house. It would be better to get it out of the way, because she’d come to realize waiting things out usually made more problems than it solved.
It didn’t stop her heart from pounding like it wanted to jump out of her chest and run away, though.
When Clara went upstairs, Tessa was busy comforting Jackson in her bedroom. It still surprised her, how well the two had taken to each other after their disastrous, and short, first meeting. But this time, she couldn’t feel any joy from it.
She took a step closer to them, tentative, feeling like her heart might break into pieces at seeing him so broken down. He’d been looking so happy after they brought him back.
“I’m sorry for what you saw,” she told him.
But he flinched away from her. And the move hurt. Then, Tessa got angry, turning on Clara with a glare that had her flinching back. It was a look she’d seen from Tessa plenty of times before, and she’d almost forgotten how frightening her sister could look.
“Please, would you listen to me?” she asked, almost desperately. “I swear to you I didn’t mean to hurt that man, it just—”
“Would you stop!” Tessa shouted, cutting her off and surprising her.
Clara just stared at her sister, wondering when the last time Tessa had even shouted at her was. They hadn't had one of their infamous screaming matches in a while. She was pretty sure she had shouted more at her sister than Tessa had at her more recently. The shock of it had the wind blowing out of her.
“Would you just stop it with the excuses,” she continued, her voice more controlled. “You being here isn’t helping, Clara, so just go away.”
But there was no way she could, just like that. Her eyes moved back to Jackson, the desperation coming back.
Once again, she was lost for words. She didn’t think she would ever resent her sister for something so petty, but suddenly, she wished she hadn't pushed Tessa to accept Jackson. Because seeing him cowering away from her and into Tessa just felt so wrong.
Her sister barely ever put that much effort into things. Even before she went semi-crazy. She was better at school, better at making friends. If anyone had felt inferior in their relationship, it had been Clara. She had dropped those thoughts after the accident, but the part of her that kind of hated her sister reared up.
She wanted to reach out and pull Jackson away from Tessa. After everything her sister did, Clara didn’t find it fair that she was the one that got the boy’s angst, now, just because she did something stupid. She was also a little angry at her sister for the way she was acting, holding Jackson to her like she would protect him from Clara as he cried into her chest. The glare that she sent Clara, that said plainly she blamed her for everything.
Clara very nearly did, but she stopped short. Because she knew in that moment, in both their minds, she was still the villain. Taking Jackson away from Tessa would only scare him more, make him hate her more, and she didn’t want that. But she didn’t want this situation to keep up, either.
Still, it would have been nice to have her own sister on her side, for once, after everything Clara had done for her.
“Come on, Tessa,” she muttered, glaring and dropping the nickname she usually called her sister by. “You’re supposed to know me better than that. Do you really think I did this for no reason? Think a little.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Tessa said stubbornly. “You did something stupid, did you really think it would be without its consequences? I get that we’re in danger, that those people could have been bad people, but they didn’t have weapons on them, Clara. You didn’t have to shoot.”
Clara gritted her teeth at her sister’s insistence on this. She hadn't even been there! Clara knew she wouldn’t have even put herself out there to begin with had Tessa been in her position. She could talk a big game, but her first instinct when something bad was coming was always to run and hide. Clara didn’t blame her for it, there were times when she felt she wanted to do the same thing. But the difference between them was that Clara wouldn’t run if it meant people she cared about would get hurt. Tessa didn’t always think that far.
“Just because they weren’t armed doesn’t make them good people,” Clara said back. “You don’t know who they are or where they’re even from, Tessa. Don’t judge me when you don’t have the facts.”
But her sister wasn’t in a mood to be understanding, it seemed.
“So what if I don’t know everything?” she retorted. “I don’t need to, because I know you. You’ve been way too violent since things started going wrong. There was that time you got locked up, or have you forgotten?”
Clara felt her jaw drop that her sister would even bring that up.
Clara couldn’t forget it. It
had been the night she, Cooper, and Dante got back from the Mawdsley trip. Her first day there, one of the guards came to insult her and hit her on the same cheek she’d gotten injured, all because she’d asked for a glass of water. Then she’d spent some more nights sleeping in a dark, cold cell, on a cold, hard bench. And the reason she was there in the first place was because of an accident.
After the plane crash when the EMP attack happened, Clara was handed a gun by some woman that was there as she and Cooper tried to help out survivors, talking about the apocalypse. Then when she was finally given the task of patrolling the streets for thieves, she met a woman about to steal from a store. Clara only meant to scare her a little, but back then she wasn’t used to guns, and the woman lied about what she’d been doing, to get Clara in trouble.
When Clara thought everything was cleared up, the woman came after her with a knife. Tessa, who had left the house for the second time in roughly a decade, had been there for that.
The irony didn’t escape Clara that the police had refused her a firearm after that, but it suddenly became okay when their town came under attack, and not even for the first fight in their neighborhood. She’d made use of a knife then. Like she ever would have hurt someone on purpose that didn’t deserve it.
“That was a low blow, Tess,” she whispered, her voice soft. “I explained what happened to Viola, and you were there, you heard it. You know I didn’t mean to do that.”
Her sister heard her.
“So what?” she said ruthlessly, not giving an inch. “That didn’t make it right, and this time you can't claim it was an accident. Why did you have to shoot that man, knowing Jackson’s parents were shot, too!”
All Clara could do was stand there, stupefied, wondering why her sister was shouting at her.
“Tessa, you didn’t even hear what he said—” she weakly as she tried to defend herself, but Tessa cut her off.
