Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  Front Lines

  Lights Out, Volume 3

  Sarah Cal

  Published by Sarah Cal, 2018.

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

  FRONT LINES

  First edition. August 7, 2018.

  Copyright © 2018 Sarah Cal.

  Written by Sarah Cal.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter One

  Emma boarded up the broken shed door furiously.

  Instead of just breaking the lock, the shed door had come off its hinges while the lock still remained in place, though the wood was old enough that it even broke apart a bit. Looking at it made her grit her teeth, so she'd had her sister give her the key to the lock and put the door aside, leaning it's broken pieces against the side of the shed.

  She had been so full of rage since they'd been attacked with nowhere for the rage to go, so she could at least channel it towards something useful. If she didn’t, shed end up snapping at her family, or her friends, and she didn’t want to do that, when she hadn't been the only one to live through the ordeal in the first place. She was perhaps overdoing it, making each hard hit of the hammer with relish, and imagining it was the face of one of their assailants she was hammering.

  Dammit!

  Why did this have to happen? Every time when things looked like they might go well, shit hit the fan and then stuff like this happened. Of course, this was the first time trouble had followed her to her doorstep, but that only made it worse. She, Brian and Chase had faced danger before. Her sister, Merry, had a lot of nightmares where bad and dangerous things happened. But she, and more so their grandmother, had never been exposed to something quite like that.

  Of course, what really ate at her was how responsible she felt for the whole thing. Had she been smarter, their house may have been spared. Or at least, they might have had a chance to avoid a direct confrontation. It would have made her mad that their stuff got stolen anyway, but then her friend wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and her family wouldn’t have gotten the scare of their lives. Over those stupid women and their guns.

  Her hand trembled a little, and she stilled it as she tried to get a hold of herself. It was the hand carrying the hammer, so she wasn’t going to be careless and hurt herself with it. She couldn’t do that just yet, when she had to pay those women back for what they did, somehow. If she harmed herself, she couldn’t do that. Well, she might be determined anyway, but then it would be a lot harder.

  Get a grip. There was no guarantee she could do anything, either way, but even with the slimmest chance, she was willing to try it out. She refocused on what she was doing, pressing harder on the wooden board as her hand tightened around the hammer handle.

  The boards they'd found in the garage, along with the tools. Chase had offered to do this job for her, but Emma needed to do this. It wasn’t just because, if she didn’t, she felt like she would explode with the level of her anger. But she felt like she was doing something useful, at least, after how pathetic she'd been the night before.

  Besides, Chase was still injured. Emma had hurt him, then stood by and watched some women injure him, and she was afraid of spending too much time around him fearing she would break down and cry.

  What she really wanted to do was to give into her emotions. Her grief, her pain, her anger. She wanted to just scream until her throat went hoarse, throw a bunch of stuff and make a racket. She wanted to hurt someone that deserved it, but there was no one like that around, so she was forced to suppress the urge. Maybe, if she let it all out, her chest wouldn’t hurt as badly as it did right then.

  But she couldn’t do that. Not just then.

  She could see Chase was worried about her, but that wasn’t right. He had a swollen bruise on his face, he hadn't even cleaned up the blood yet, and just looking at it set her blood on fire. Brian just stayed away from her, but she imagined he wasn’t any better off after what happened. Her sister and grandmother were probably still afraid and hiding in one of their rooms, and she hadn't had time to see to them. Truthfully, she didn’t think it was safe at all that she did.

  Emma couldn’t forget. Waking up in the night to her sister screaming was bad enough. Then realizing it was because of a nightmare, one that was about to turn very real...

  Everything was supposed to be shut down. The electricity was gone, cars and planes didn’t work. But there were cars that did work, older models. She didn’t get the explanation completely, but as long as the cars didn’t work on any form of electricity, they could still run. Of course, most cars with such a feature were old and not as easy to find in the modern world.

  When she first realized it was a possibility, she'd felt some ray of hope. When everything shut down, they'd lost everything; easy connections to each other and neighboring towns, other states in the country. There were still bikes if one was really determined to get around, but what good was that for if you wanted to go long distance? You couldn’t take much with you, you ended up exhausted after a whole day cycling. And if you happened to meet some not so nice people on your way, no one would come to your aid if you couldn’t help yourself.

  If they'd still had communication, then all she'd have had to do last night was make the call and someone would have been sent over to her neighborhood to check the problem. They wouldn’t have had to meet the enemy at all, though it was still partially her fault that they did at all.

  But she had felt hope, when she learned that not everything was lost. Working cars were rare, but if the possibility existed, then they could get lucky at some point, could they? Surely if there were still vehicles existing, it would only make things easier for them. It would be so much easier to go out looking for supplies to bring back to their town. Life may never return to what they had known before, but surely this meant hope.

  She had felt none of that, when she heard a noise out in the street, and parted her sisters curtains to see a car parked in the middle of the road. What reason was there for a car to be outside, idling in their street, this late at night?

  Why had she done it? After seeing it, after her sister warned her of danger, she should have been cautious. Well, Merry was talking about a nightmare she heard and trying to turn it into a prediction, so she might have gotten a little annoyed about that and done something contrary without realizing.

  But the first thing she thought of when she saw the car was to wake the two men in the house and step outside with them to see what was going on. If she'd been using her head, she would have watched a bit more through the window and assess the situation before moving to do anything about it. But she had been a little angry at her sister and acted impulsively, and so the three of them stepped out of the house.

  As if that was the best thing to be done when there were unk
nowns in the area, and so late at night.

  Maybe, if she hadn't tried to do anything, they wouldn’t have noticed them. They would have gone to other houses and taken their fill then left without coming across Emma's house. It was a vain hope, but it could have happened. Then again, the reason why they didn’t continue to raid the area was because they stole more than enough from her family, after terrifying and hurting them, and then left them while laughing.

  They'd promised to come back for more.

  Somehow, Emma had to prepare for that. They had done this once, but she could not allow them a second chance. It left her a bundle of frustration, because she had no idea how to stop these people. What she was doing, repairing the shed, was the little that she could do and it only added to her anger and made her even more frustrated. She pictured the women and thought of killing them and doing it gladly for what they'd done. She couldn't even go back to sleep after the experience, and the sleep deprivation wasn’t helping her attitude at all.

  "Emma?"

  The sound of someone calling her name startled her. She'd thought she was alone out here. She didn’t turn to look, already knowing who it was, because the voice was definitely Chase's.

  Her hand froze with the hammer over her shoulder, the other hand holding a board still against the shed, nail still not hammered in properly.

  "Hey, Emma? Are you okay? Because you really don’t look like you are..."

  She ignored the forced lightness in his voice, wanting to scoff at his words. Why was he asking if she was alright, when it was clear that she was not? How could she ever be okay again, after what she had left happen... she knew what she would see when she turned to look at him which was whys he really didn’t want to just then. She'd been hit in the face with a gun before, herself, and it hadn't been fun for her. His cheek would swell, because they didn’t have ice to put on it, and then get discolored. He would look terrible and it would last for a while. He own wound, though probably taken care of, still left a mark because it had taken her too long to get it looked at.

  Well, she'd gone out with Chase and Brian on a trip to a neighboring town doing volunteer work for their own town, but the residents hadn't been welcoming. Then she'd returned, only to get seized by the police and locked up, and one of the officers assaulting her and opening a wound on her already wounded cheek. The mark on her face would probably never go away, and Chase might have the same reminder she did for a while.

  Why had he even approached her? She'd had some feeling everyone else in the house was ignoring her, either sensing her mood or dealing with their own problems by themselves. Whichever one, when Emma decided to come out here to do this, after refusing Chase's well intentioned offer to help, she had been alone.

  When she didn’t answer after a while, Chase spoke again. "Why are you doing that, now of all times? I'm sure the shed door can wait, at least for a little bit longer. Can't you just leave it inside and go rest already?"

  That unfroze her. She lowered the hammer, but kept a hold on the board. She turned so she could see Chase, ignoring the injury on his face as she sent a scowl his way.

  "Isn't it obvious?" It should have been. Considering he was closer to her than anyone else, how could he not see it? Or had she changed that much, that her own best friend didn’t recognize her? "I want to protect what belongs to my family. To us. You heard them, didn’t know? They're going to be back, and I refuse to be left starving over some crazy women that think they can go around doing whatever they want. Of course the shed door needs to be closed, we can't just leave it so open, like a fucking invitation to invite people to rob us."

  If there had been a safer place, Emma would have moved the food there. But there was so much of it, though it had been reduced now, it still filled most of the shed. Her sister had been the one to store all that food, even if she bought it with money that Emma provided, and she had done it for their family. Besides, she didn’t want to risk her neighbors knowing about their stash, considering they were keeping it a secret from the rest of the town. And if those women simply went through the house as before, they would find the stuff wherever she chose to hide it.

  "We can't do anything against them," Chase countered, stepping closer. So he wasn’t entirely clueless on her thinking process. "Fighting back will be much more dangerous, Emma. They have numbers, they have weapons. They have a vehicle so we can't even outrun them. Frankly, I'd rather not be there when they come back, but I know you'll refuse to leave."

  Well of course that was entirely out of the question. Why on earth did her family have to leave their home? They were the intruders, the ones that should stay away. How could he even say that, when he had been the one injured that time? Emma wouldn’t stand for it. She refused to listen to him.

  She turned back and hammered the nail through the board with one final, hard hit, then turned back to Chase. "I refuse to be bullied by women, Chase. I refuse to subject my grandmother and my sister to that again, so I will not allow them to enter my house for a second time. I'm not just going to sit by doing nothing, so give up on convincing me."

  Emma hadn't let it hold her back before, and this was no different. There was more than one and they had more dangerous weapons, but she didn’t care. She turned back to finish with the last boards, not hearing when Chase left.

  After she was done, Emma searched the house for things she could use as a weapon. She found several sharp knives, but not much else. There was the bat she got from a crazy woman that attacked her, after Emma stopped her from stealing, but she'd had to turn that over to the police as well, after her court case, not that it would have been worth much, anyway. She would be up against guns, and she wasn’t so naïve to think she could find a way around the lack of weapons. Janice's gardening tools were the closest she could get to a good weapon, but it would not be enough.

  "Dammit!" she cursed, slamming her palms on the counter. She hated feeling helpless, and she had no intention of allowing this to keep her down. The only real challenge was what she was going to do for her defense that didn’t need her to get in close range.

  Sound behind her had her turning sharply. She'd thought she was alone, but Brian had walked in without her noticing. He looked at the knives lined up on the counter, then arched his eyebrows in her direction.

  Emma sighed. "Weapons, Brian. For in case those women come back. I don’t know when it will be, but we need to prepare somehow and this..." she waved her hand over the counter, "and my grandmother's gardening equipment is everything I can think of."

  He frowned. "Isn't it a little dangerous, though?"

  "Who cares about dangerous. Who wants to starve? And I definitely don’t want those women coming back here, either, like they can just do whatever they want."

  She was going to turn away from him. She'd thought that at least he understood, but maybe not.

  "Wait."

  Emma stopped, turning back to Brian, her own eyebrows shooting up. She and Brian hadn't really talked much since 'it' happened, the incident where she ended up hurting both him and Chase. It had just been yesterday, she was sure, yet with the attack it felt like it had been ages ago.

  "What?" she asked impatiently. "If you have something more to say..."

  What more could he possibly want to say? If he wanted to be negative like Chase, Emma wasn’t going to hear it.

  "I have an idea."

  Well, that surprised her. It wasn’t exactly what she'd expected him to say to her. Her interest piqued up. Brian's face hardened, and Emma realized that he didn’t hold the same view as her best friend. Good. She could use some support with this.

  "And that is?"

  "I have a gun in my house, I don’t use it much but I definitely have ammo lying around. It's technically for hunting, though I haven't gone in a while, but it's licensed so we shouldn’t get in trouble with the cops. I just need to figure out a way to get inside the house to get it."

  Having a gun would increase their chances greatly, and Emma almost let excit
ement overwhelm her. Of course, then she remembered why Brian was staying with her instead of living in his house, next door. His wife thought there was something between them, and while Emma couldn’t deny it, they weren’t anything to each other. But Kellen, Brian's wife, had kicked him out, and they hadn't talked since. She wasn't even letting him see his kids, a five year old and a toddler, both girls.

  "You'll just have to try," she told him. It would be his decision to make, of course, but they needed to do this a lot sooner than it might take Brian and Kellen to forgive each other and move back in together. "It would be a good opportunity to find peace with Kellen and protect your family."

  Plan made, Emma followed Brian outside. He gave her a speculative look but didn’t stop her. Kellen was mad at her, Emma knew, practically hated her. But hopefully, the other woman would see the sense in this. If those women came back, there was nothing to say they would leave the other houses alone, they hadn't last night.

  Emma watched form a few feet away as Brian knocked on the door to his house. It was a moment before Kellen answered the door, and Emma was braced for a blow up. But Kellen was calmer than the previous times they saw one another.

  Emma let Brian explain what happened, that the town was in danger, and the incident from last night, as Emma stood off to the side and listened, Kellen not having noticed her yet.

  "Why would it involve me?" she asked stonily.

  "Even if we're not together," Brian retorted, "I care about you and want to protect you, the kids, and my property. They definitely said they would be coming back, and if no one stops them, we're going to have to be living with this shit for who knows how long."

  There was a short silence as Kellen watched him, eyes narrowed in deliberation. But then her gaze shifted, and she spotted Emma. The change in her was obvious, her expression darkening to one of anger as she sneered. Emma wanted to shrink back from the look, but after last night, Kellen was less dangerous and Emma didn’t have to defer to her.