Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  He caught her eye and they both froze, sizing each other up quietly.

  Emma had found some time to think in the past few days. Most of her thoughts surrounded Chase; really, if those women never showed up, they would have followed the some direction, anyway. Emma wanted to tell him how she felt, but she didn’t want to rush into anything when she was still deciding on her feelings. It wouldn’t be fair to him, telling him one thing, only for the situation to change, and then she felt for him what she felt for Brian for the majority of their affair; not much at all.

  So she glanced down, getting a hold of herself, before she looked back up at him. She asked, "Can we try some more moves?"

  Chase kept his eyes on her moment, before he was nodding, his lips pursed, though he seemed a little deflated.

  But she wouldn’t think about that just then. Chase had asked her to think about what she felt for him, and then tell him honestly when she figured it out. He'd threatened to leave, though it seemed he'd forgotten that part, thankfully. Still, considering what was on the line, she wasn’t going to half ass it. Until Chase gave her an ultimatum, or unless she arrived at a solution herself, she would spend as much time thinking on it as she could spare with everything else, so she wouldn’t get too overwhelmed.

  What felt like ages later, Emma went back inside feeling sweaty and wishing she could take a shower. There was no need to waste water on that, though. She washed as best she could, using as little water as possible, feeling the strain on her muscles after the exercise.

  Brian came into her room, ducking his head in first then pushing the door open wider to lean against the door jamb. She'd changed already, thankfully, so she just looked up at him miserably. He was the last person she had expected to see, especially this son. Had Kellen kicked him out again...? But no, he didn’t look nearly as distressed as he had been when she did it last time actually, he looked a little like his usual self, almost happy.

  Why couldn’t Chase be like that?

  Brian arched his eyebrows. "What's wrong with you? And I've been looking for you for a while, but I didn’t see you anywhere."

  Emma just groaned. "I was out back with Chase doing some work. My legs are aching so bad I don’t think I can stand at all for the rest of the day," she complained.

  She didn’t feel she was exaggerating at all. Just how long had they been at it, anyway? It had to have been more than a couple of hours for her legs to ache like this.

  "Well, then... I guess what I came for could wait. I could give your legs a massage to relive the tension," he offered.

  Emma considered it, seriously tempted. He spent most of his time working out, so he would probably know how to do it well, and her legs really did ache. She was massaging them herself, but it wasn’t like she knew what she was doing, and she might just end up making it worse for herself. She worked out, too, but all she knew was that she was supposed to stretch after such an intense work out. Having someone help would be a blessing...

  But then she realized how much it would upset Chase if he found out. Maybe not as badly as finding them in bed naked together, even under the sheets, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate Brian's hands on her for any reason. It actually surprised her a bit, how he hadn't started arguing with the other man yet. Well, she wasn’t going to encourage it.

  "Thanks Brian, but no thanks. I think I'll just lie down for a bit then do some stretches later. Besides, the ache is proof I'm doing something right, isn’t it?"

  Brian just shrugged when she declined his offer and then nodded, giving her a wave as he went about his business.

  Emma wondered if her rejection of Brian was about not wanting to hurt Chase, or because of her feelings for Chase.

  Chapter Nine

  When Emma returned from her community service, she found Janice sitting alone in the living room.

  She was in a sound state of mind, and Emma felt some relief that she hadn't had any further episodes. There had been one time when her grandmother forgot her completely, and wouldn’t even let Emma near her so she could remind her grandmother who she was. That that would eventually happen and became her grandmother's life in future left her anxious.

  In truth, it had frightened her, too much, when her grandmother not only forgot her but actually reacted violently when Emma tried to get close to her. Nothing had happened since, but part of Emma was still preparing for it. She had become used to it, going to see her grandmother only to see the old woman with a confused expression before Emma got to talk to her.

  Right then, she just returned her grandmother's smile when she saw Emma walk through the door. She was home a little early, there wasn’t really much to do at the hospital anyway. It would be a while till dark, and Janice had a book open in her lap, that she put aside on the chair as she turned her attention to Emma.

  "Hello, Emma," she called pleasantly. "How was work?"

  Emma hummed. "It was fine."

  Truthfully, it was boring, and she was glad for that. Because the opposite of boring in a hospital usually meant a lot of blood and other fluids that Emma was glad she didn’t have to deal with. There were still people getting sick, not having proper facilities didn’t stop them, but not much could be done for them besides giving them what little medicine was available.

  Janice sighed, patting the space on the seat beside her for Emma to sit, which she did. "You know, I wish you wouldn’t work so much. I miss spending time with just you girls, as a family."

  Come to think of it, it had been a while. Like, back when she still had to go to school to teach. Actually, Emma couldn’t even remember the last time they did that.

  ... It really had been too long, hadn't it?

  "I'm sorry, grandma. We can have games this evening," she suggested. "It won't be dark any time soon and it's not a bad way to pass the time."

  She had to remember to spend more time with her family, not just going all over the place doing work. Well, what she was doing was technically, mandatory. It was punishment, after all. But she had to make time for Janice especially, not just focusing all her time on Merry.

  Janice took to the idea, her face lighting up in excitement. "Let me just go get your sister!"

  She got up and went off to fetch a reluctant Merry. She was the one in the family that didn’t like socializing much, though she often did it just to make their grandmother happy. She was pouting, but she still came because it was Janice asking. Emma knew if it had been her, they'd have had an argument before anything happened.

  The three of them sat around the table, playing a board game Emma had been able to dig out of somewhere. She couldn’t see Chase around, and assumed he was either out or upstairs. If anything, he didn’t bother them, so it was exactly as grandmother wanted, just the three of them.

  Merry acted moody and wouldn’t take to it. They had to coax her every time it was her turn to make a move. Emma would have gotten impatient with her if this wasn’t as per usual for her sister. She was still on the meds, and Emma wasn’t taking chances like before. When she took the pills, Emma was there to see her swallow, staying with her for some minutes to be sure she wasn’t just hiding them in her mouth, before leaving her alone. But she was being good about her meds, and Emma was learning to be more patient when it came to everything else.

  Janice was worried, though. "What's wrong, honey?" she asked, voice full of grandmotherly concern. "Are you not enjoying the game? I could find something else if you'd like..."

  Merry held her silence for about a second, before sighing and crossing her arms across her chest.

  "The game isn’t my problem, it's this whole thing. I don’t like pretending everything is normal, when there's blood still staining the streets from the attack."

  Right. While Merry had been throwing gruesome predictions left and right and acting downright smug of them at times, she hadn't actually been anywhere near the action. Well, besides the time Emma had that woman, the one she'd accidentally shot out on patrol, chased her with a knife. But Emma had
been her target, then. She'd just run off with her sister. If Emma had left her sister alone, she probably would have just followed behind her. But she didn’t want to leave Merry alone, so close to curfew.

  Still, the recent attack was leagues away from what went down before. Emma understood how her sister felt. She had been the one out there, seeing what the world was like, while Merry only dreamt it. That attack had come too close to home, closer than Emma liked. She just didn’t know what she could do about it.

  "It's best to try and maintain a sense of normalcy so that everything doesn’t fall apart completely," Emma told her. It was the best piece of advice she had, what she'd always used. "You might not like pretending, but at least try for your own peace of mind."

  But Merry was shaking her head. "I don't want things to be normal—life now is much more interesting. I'm just sick of my mundane life, stuck inside the house all day hidden away."

  Emma blinked. Well, she hadn't quite been expecting this from her sister, though if she was being honest with herself, she should have.

  Merry pretty much stuck inside their house. After the death of their parents in an accident about a decade ago, Emma couldn’t remember a time when Merry willingly left the house for anything. That is, until recently. Already, Emma had come across her outside, twice, and on her own both times. She was also talking to random people, trying to incite them for something though Emma wasn’t sure yet what.

  Maybe, it wasn’t just her sister losing more grasp on reality. Maybe it really was just like she was saying, she wanted to go out more. Though Emma didn’t understand why she wanted to go out now, when it was so much more dangerous than it had ever been before. Even in the day time, there was no guarantee you'd be safe. And this was the kind of world Merry suddenly found herself interested in?

  But... her sister had always been weird. Emma would have rather the world not change at all, but wishes couldn’t turn back time, so she didn’t bother.

  "Besides, I'm old enough to make my own decisions and I want to make a deal."

  Emma felt her eyebrows shoot up. Janice wasn’t the only one acting lucid. Merry was always smart, but the kind of things she liked to talk about were of the weird and disturbing variety. Her having a serious conversation wasn’t so strange, but Emma still found herself surprised that Merry was acting like the adult she actually was.

  "What kind of deal," Emma said cautiously."

  "Can I start going out on my own if I take my drugs?"

  Her eyebrows shot up higher. Merry... taking her medicines without prompting? Well, she had been the one to ask for them herself, but then she got frightened away by the side effects, claiming it made her feel empty. She hadn't been acting too strange, though Emma couldn’t entirely discount it either. But the pills were supposed to help her.

  And if Emma didn’t always have to be after her to take them... it would give her some peace of mind.

  "I think it’s a good idea," she admitted.

  It would be so much more helpful if Merry could be a little more cooperative. There was some risk with letting Merry wander out on her own, but she was a grown up and the elder sister. But Emma would take it, because she'd wanted something like this for a long time. She viewed it as a stepping stone to recovery for her sister.

  Merry seemed pleased with the response, standing up. "Well, I'm going out."

  Emma was surprised again. She didn’t know Merry meant going out just then. Btu she'd already agreed, and Merry was already moving to leave the house, so she couldn’t take it back. She didn’t want to deal with her sister's backlash if she went back on her word.

  "Don’t stay out long while it's dark," Emma called after her, unable to curb her worry.

  Merry simply laughed at her ad left the house.

  Emma sighed. Well, only time would tell if this was the best solution they could have taken. She wasn’t too worried, though, not yet anyway. She'd probably go look for her once the sky started to darken, if she wasn’t back yet.

  "I'm not sure you should have allowed her out, Emma," Janice said disapprovingly.

  Maybe not, but Emma was going to need Merry to trust her if she was going to find a way to get her to her past self. If that wasn’t possible, then at least to change something so deep rooted Emma had thought would be with her for years to come. Only, Merry was already acting rational, so Emma thought this would be the perfect moment to help her sister out.

  Emma just shrugged, and didn’t bother to mention any of what she was thinking. "I can't really stop her—like she said, she'd an adult. I wasn’t keeping her inside before, she just didn’t want to go out at all. Maybe giving her more freedom will make her more manageable at home."

  Chapter Ten

  Emma waited up for Merry to come home. There was no real way to gauge time, once the sky started to darken, she just knew it was getting late. But there was no sign of her.

  Don’t panic. She'll come back.

  She tried to reassure herself, thinking the words over and over, but her heart wouldn’t calm down. It felt like it wanted to beat right out of her chest.

  With how well the day had been going, how calm things had been when she got home, she'd let her guard down. Catering to her sisters needs was one thing. It was only smart, after all. She hadn't been wrong in the reasons she gave to their grandmother. Merry was old enough to be able to do things on her own. She'd walked out without the pills, even though I'd been the one to bring her back both times. But letting Merry have her way when she was still unstable wasn’t very smart.

  It had been a gamble. If they planned to survive, they needed to get their act together. Emma wouldn’t always be able to protect her family, and she needed someone besides Chase to back her up. Janice was too old, so Merry had to take her position as the oldest daughter in the family. She had to realize the things she kept seeing had never helped her and wouldn’t start now just because she thought they needed it, or because she was trying to one up Emma in some game she hadn't been aware they were even playing.

  But Merry hadn't been taking her meds for who knew how long. She'd had the one pill the night before, but Emma didn’t know if she'd taken any during the day while she was out. She didn’t remember the prescription, it was written on the bottle, but it was definitely more than one pill per day. And Emma had just let her go after she'd taken one in who knew how long?

  It must have been a mistake, but she was only realizing it, too late.

  She began to get worried when it reached around eleven o'clock and she was not back. The moon was almost in the exact center point of the sky, and though she could have been off in the timing, the darkness was enough of a tell that it was too late. Curfew was at dark and it was long past that. Maybe Merry got caught by patrollers outside...?

  The anxiety wouldn’t leave her. She paced in the living room, a tiny candle lit and placed somewhere high so she wouldn’t accidentally blow it off with the draft she was building up. They didn’t have that many left to keep wasting, they tried not to use them at all anymore in case there came a time when they would really need it. But with Merry out so late, there was no way Emma was going to leave it off.

  She went to the window and glanced outside, squinting her eyes through the darkness, forcing her eyes to see with the moonlight alone. But there was no sign of anything on the street. Merry had been right, there was still blood on the street. No one was going to use up precious water to wash it, so they were waiting for the rains to do the job for them. But the remains of the car and the dead bodies of the women that came to attack them had been long taken care of. No one walked out at night, and if patrollers ever went through the neighborhood, Emma had never thought to look for them before and she didn’t see any of them now.

  What the hell was she going to do?

  She needed to get some news on her sister, but the only way to do that was to go outside. Only Merry had left ages ago, and Emma didn’t even know where she could probably have gone. She had seen Merry out twice recently
but both had been in the street and surrounded by people. Emma doubted there would be that many people outside, and definitely none like the ones that had been listening to whatever her sister had to say about the future of mankind.

  Where could Merry be? What could she be thinking? For that matter, what had Emma been thinking, allowing her to just go alone like that. Well, she'd been taken by surprise, her sister wanting to leave so sudden after making their deal. Emma had assumed it would be on a different day, at least earlier in the day so a situation like the one they were in would not have happened. But when her grandmother questioned her, she'd thought it would be fine, because Merry was an adult. Emma hadn't seen her get around, but she should be able to do it on her own without an escort.

  Only, she wasn’t so sure now.

  "Dammit!" she cursed, smacking her forehead hard in her frustration. It just needed an outlet, and hitting herself was easier and less messy than throwing stuff. Also, a lot more quiet for her grandmother. Janice had tried staying up with them to wait, until she got too sleepy and Emma took the initiative, taking her back to her room.

  She couldn’t go to sleep like this, though. She had warned Merry to be back before curfew, and it was way past that. Emma had given up pacing a long time ago, because it just tired her legs out and it didn’t really help, but she couldn’t help fidgeting and twitching at the lightest sound. She couldn’t be sure if they were coming from inside, or if she wanted her sister to get back so desperately that she thought she heard something, because the lightest noise could mean Merry was back.

  But she didn’t show up, and Emma's anxiety only grew as the time passed. It would be bad, after everything she'd done so they would survive that she would lose her sister now so carelessly. She should have insisted on going with Merry, or sending Chase with her, but it hadn't occurred to her that her sister would do a thing like this, when they'd just made their agreement.