Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  There wasn’t as much noise as before, but the people murmured. Emma didn’t let her mind wonder this time, paying close attention to the chatter around.

  Some people still shied away from the idea of killing more people. The last attack had been brutal, though it was people that hadn't been there that were even bringing up the argument. The incident had been spread through most of the town, someone not in the neighborhood would have heard the noise and spread it around. Besides, plenty of people would have noticed when they were clearing up the mess, when they came out a day later to check out what had caused all the noise.

  Still, they hadn't been there, so they couldn’t know how bad it was. Several people died, yes, but everyone in her neighborhood survived, and most of them got away with their things. The police had even been nice enough to donate some of the food brought in to the houses that had been affected initially.

  "It might not be a case of killing anyone—just scaring the attackers off." It might not be good enough. They'd probably just come back with a better plan, but it would give the town time to make up their own plan, too. "We just need to do something, because leaving them to do as they please will make them confident and infinitely more dangerous."

  "Then what do you suggest?" someone asked. Emma was surprised that the question was directed at her.

  Put on the spot, she didn’t know how to respond. This was why she hadn't wanted to lead the discussions, or speak up much at all. Emma didn’t have any solution, which was why she'd posed the question to everyone so they could come up with a plan. If they were expecting her to have all the answers...

  They could not be more wrong.

  Emma had taken the initiative to get everyone together so they could talk it all out, not that she could tell them what to do. She couldn’t lead a classroom of high school freshmen, what did she know of ordering grownups around and building plans of this scale? It was way outside her abilities, but with so many people looking at her with such high expectations, she didn’t want to just come out and say it and disappoint them. They were all dealing with enough already, they didn’t need to get discouraged above it all.

  Then Carol stood up, taking some of the attention, and Emma breathed easier. She might not know what to do, but the other woman had several years of experience on her. Carol would have some idea if no one else did, and it would be a good one.

  "The way I see it, our biggest problem is defense. And not just one area at one time, because we don’t have any way of knowing where they'll attack before they're there. The protection needs to be spread out evenly, if possible. We all need to pull together to make the town into a fortress. Gather up your weapons and prepare for them to come back, but this time as an entire town."

  Murmurings followed her words, but no one spoke loud enough to be heard this time, everyone filled with caution, but a few faces showing curiosity and determination.

  "Strength in numbers will beat back the invaders," Carol claimed. "Just like what happened with the first big attack we had. They went after a whole neighborhood, and everyone showed up to help. They resolved the issue okay. But this is so much bigger, and they aren’t targeting just any one place. They won't be as easy to pin down, so a lot more people will have to be involved if we want this to work."

  "And how long will we have to hold out!" someone asked, the question followed by shouts of agreement.

  "We do it for as long as it takes to be free," Carol said insistently. "Why start this at all if we intend to give up on it half way? We don’t know how long it could take before they stop coming after us, but I do know that they won't stop if we continue to do nothing, as Emma says, because we would be labeled easy targets. If we don’t fight back, we'll end up with nothing to live for anyway."

  Emma let out a sigh of relief. The looks being aimed at Carol were different than the ones that had been aimed at her. The plan was a shaky one at best, but it was still a plan and said by someone who looked like they had a good head on their shoulders. People would at least listen to Carol.

  Either way, no one had anything to say against what she said, since it was too true. Not to mention, if they lost all their food, they would all be subjected to slow starvation, for those who weren’t outright killed in the next attacks. It would be nothing but torture for them going forward if they didn’t decide to take the risks right there.

  They were stuck between a rock and a hard place. Doing something was dangerous, but doing nothing would lead to them dying anyway.

  So they just had to come up with something to defeat the intruders.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The meeting dragged on for what Emma felt was longer than it really needed to.

  Even with how much the world had changed, bureaucracy never died. Instead of picking out the finer points of the plan, people ended up arguing on a bunch of useless points, and it had made Emma so mad she'd almost shouted at them another time.

  But, she had held back. The last thing she wanted was to offend anyone and let the process get dragged along any further. It took a few voices of reason every time someone broke off on a different tangent, or else the effort would have taken even longer than it did in the end.

  They did get to a resolution, though, at least. Not everyone was happy, but no one else had a better idea. At least, at the end, she managed to convince everyone that not doing anything at all would simply kill them faster. They might have a chance by resisting. Slim, but they couldn’t just ignore it when the opportunity was there.

  Emma arrived home and gathered her family again in the living room. Chase sat beside her instead of picking a different seat, and she had to admit it made something in her chest ease up a bit. Whatever he'd thought of her before, he didn’t hate her now because she was changing. He would just have to get used to it, because she didn’t plan on going back to how she was before, not with what was at stake.

  A lot was going to change again, drastically, she could feel it. Emma wondered how she could prepare her family for this, but she didn’t think there was a way. There wasn’t even much of a choice in this; change would come to them if they didn’t move first, and that was the one thing she wasn’t willing to let happen.

  "What happened?" Janice asked once they were all settled and no one else was saying anything.

  Merry for once sat silently and was paying attention. Chase moved a little closer, and Emma gave into temptation, leaning back into the touch.

  "We had a meeting, a lot of people showed up. Well, there were a lot of arguments but I think everyone is on board with the plan."

  "And that is?" Merry snapped impatiently.

  Emma sighed. She had already worried her family enough, but she was going to have to continue doing it.

  "I want to take a stand to protect the community," she told them seriously. "The whole town is going to chip in, and this will hopefully give us an edge. We're still waiting to hear back from the police about what they think of all of this, but it is their job to help us."

  It was their duty to help, but considering the weight of the problem, they would be stretched thin. They hadn't hesitated before, even if they'd only sent a handful of police officers and some guns, so that it was mostly members of the neighborhood fighting for their homes.

  They would have to step up their game. With this new threat, people would be looking to the police, and if they didn’t do their jobs like they were supposed to do, everything was going to fall apart. There would be more rebellion in the town, and that was the last thing they needed when they were already getting attacks from outside.

  "But is this okay, Emma?" Janice fretted, hands twisting and untwisting in her lap. "This isn’t going to be easy. You said these people had guns, didn’t you? So..."

  Emma felt her heart break, and that was another thing that was happening too much already. She wanted to get up and go to their grandmother, give her some reassurances, but she didn’t really have any. Before she could make the decision either way, Merry moved to sit be
side her, taking her hands and holding them tightly between hers.

  It surprised her that Merry would move to help Janice. Well, she didn’t hate their grandmother, but Merry had been the one to tell her to give up on Janice, that she couldn’t survive in the new world. Emma had gotten angry, thinking her sister didn’t care for Janice anymore. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. Or maybe the medication was doing just what she'd hoped and clearing Merry's head, finally.

  "We don’t have much of a choice but to go on with this, grandma. I'm sorry, I know it's going to be hard on you. But there's nothing more important to me than my family’s safety and I wants you to be able to live a normal life."

  She said 'you' and not 'us' because Emma didn’t think she could ever go back to living a normal life, not after everything that had happened. Besides, could she really call the life she'd been living normal, when it was all for her family? This was just more dangerous and life threatening, but she'd been making sacrifices for her family from the beginning.

  Janice ducked her head down, and a fine tremble ran through her body. Emma was about to jump out of her seat and over to theirs when Janice suddenly looked up. Her eyes were glossy with tears, though none of them fell, and her hands practically strangled Merry's.

  "I'm so proud of you Emma," she whispered, her voice hoarse like she was trying not to cry. "I've watched you grow so much these past few weeks, into an amazing young woman, and I couldn’t be more proud. You always try to do the right thing by everyone involved, don’t you?"

  The words were almost scolding, and Emma could imagine what she wasn’t saying. That she did all that without giving a second thought to herself. Except she had. She'd dreamed of escaping plenty of times, the position life had left her in as caretaker of her family. But she could never do that. Losing her parents had been bad enough, losing the little family she had left would break her faster than anything else.

  That wasn’t the kind of thinking that merited this kind of praise. She'd always thought, that if they knew her darkest thoughts that came out of nowhere from time to time, things would have been different. Janice wouldn’t be this nice to her, Merry would be even worse than usual. Jus thinking what they would have thought of her used to scare her so badly that she pushed her family away some times and chose to always been out in order to escape from them, and that had in turn made her feel guilty.

  Still, it didn’t lessen her grandmother's praise, and she felt a smile grow on her face, mirroring Janice's. If Janice was proud, she imagined their own parents would have been, too, had they been there with them. She just loved knowing she was doing her job of looking after her family.

  Everything she had gone through, all the dreams she'd given up and the shitty days when she couldn’t deal with her students, made this moment worth it. To have her family with her, safe and sound, or as much as they could be, and happy even. It took away all the doubts she used to have about why she didn’t just give up when things got too tough. Besides having Chase there to help her, knowing what she did was all for her family, had made it all worth it.

  Some things hadn't changed much, though. Her sister, for example, had only started opening up. She was acting a little different, but somehow, Emma had missed a lot in her sister. Well, it was easy to do. She didn’t take that much time to hang around with the family, and neither did Merry, preferring to be kept locked up in her room most of the time. She hadn't noticed before, but Merry just got more open and honest with how she felt.

  Emma didn’t see the jealousy in Merry's face before she snapped. One second, she was just seated next to Janice, holding her hand, then in the next she was standing, fists clenched at her sides, her body shaking. But when she did look at her sister, her emotions were easy enough to read on her face. Emma felt something uncomfortable tighten her chest before she even opened her mouth.

  "What the hell is all this!" she breathed, her whole body starting to tremble as she leveled a glare on Emma. "No, seriously, what the hell! You're putting all of us in danger, going out to fight mad people with weapons for the second time and Grandmother just... why am I always second best?"

  Her voice had been growing steadily, but as she asked her question, her voice was back to being quiet again. Janice was looking up at her in shock, her hands still held midair. Emma wanted to curse Merry for not just taking this up with her, for including Janice in this.

  "Merry, don’t say that."

  "No!" her shout startled everyone, even herself, as she jumped back a step, fists unclenching and her body stopped trembling. "It's always like this. Just... why..."

  Merry looked lost, and like she wanted to cry. Emma had her hand held out, like she was going to reach for her over the coffee table that separated them, and she hadn't realized she'd brought her hand up at all. She dropped it to her lap, wondering how she could help her sister this time. She felt as if, if she spoke up, she would only make things worse in that moment, because the one Merry was angry at was her. But she shouldn't have been taking it out on Janice, anyway.

  Emma glanced at the two of them, knowing how quickly this could escalate, and it already had, but it could get so much worse. Her mind was working fast, trying to think up the safest way to diffuse the situation as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  "That's not the case," Janice insisted before Emma could come up with something to do. Merry scoffed, and Janice became a little more frantic. "Honey, please listen to me! I can see that you're trying as hard as your sister is. I don’t get to tell you as I do your sister but I don’t always see the opportunity, and you're already so private as it is. If I've ever made you feel unappreciated, forgive me Merry, but I just wanted to congratulate my granddaughter. I really do care for you both, equally."

  Merry didn’t take Janice defending Emma very well. Emma could have told her grandmother that it was a bad idea with Merry the way she was, but Janice only had the best of intentions.

  Her sister should have been a little more understanding. They had been thrust on their grandmother because they didn’t have anyone else that could take them in. Janice had only had their mom, and she'd lost her husband along the way, while growing distant with her own daughter to the point where all they did was fight. Then that daughter had died, and there were the two of them.

  Merry was unstable before they got her out of the hospital, and Emma had more or less closed in on herself. Yet their aging grandmother had moved in with them to look after them. Because of Janice, Merry was saved the humiliation of being sent off to a facility for the mentally challenged. Emma had been saved from ending up in the foster system, since she had been underage at the time, and she would have been moved from her home. It wouldn’t have helped her with her grief at all if she'd even had to move away from home and her remaining family.

  They both appreciated what Janice had done for them. Even though she wouldn’t come out and say it, she was confident that Merry felt the same gratitude that she did, because it was owed to Janice. And yet, here she was, acting completely unreasonable over something Emma thought so ridiculous. If Emma was worried about being second best, then all she had to do was work better. But she never did. Yet somehow, this was Emma's fault, when she and Janice didn’t even care all that much about it.

  But it was too late to get Merry to stop. The lost look was suddenly gone from her face as her eyes narrowed on their grandmother. Janice flinched, and Emma felt mad on her grandmother's behalf.

  "Don’t lie to me, Janice. Don’t lie!"

  Their grandmother gasped, as did Emma. They never called her that, at least not to her face. It didn’t all have to do with respect for the older woman, more like affection, that they always called her grandmother, even though they had taken to referring to her by name at some point Emma couldn’t remember. But for Merry to just come out and say her name like that...

  It wasn’t like she was disrespecting their grandmother, more like she was admitting she no longer felt any affection for the older woman. Merry must have been re
ally mad because Emma didn’t think she would have gone that far otherwise.

  Emma could see the stricken look on Janice's face, and she knew this was taking a heavy toll on her. She wanted to open her mouth and tell Merry off, but no words came. Instead, she just sat and watched it all happen, feeling helpless to do anything about the situation unfolding. She could guess where it would all end. While Emma didn’t go starting fights with Janice, she and Merry had been I enough spats for her to recognize that Merry was distancing herself from them because of her envy and misplaced jealously.

  "You... you always say that but it's a lie! Exactly how do you care about us equally, huh? It's obvious how you always favor Emma, even back when Mom and Dad were still alive!"

  Janice made a distressed sound, muffled by the hand she pressed to her mouth. Emma clenched her hands at her sides and glared at Merry for even bringing that up. Emma couldn’t remember it, and she couldn’t help thinking this was just another one of her sister's delusions running rampant.

  Bringing up their parents' deaths affected Janice in a different way than it did the two of them, and Merry shouldn’t have spoken about it. Emma knew Janice was still guilty about a lot of things regarding the incident, and the fact that she'd had a major argument with their mother prior to the planning of the trip. No one could have predicted what happened, but Janice blamed herself for letting her daughter die. Taking care of her granddaughters were her way of trying to atone for not being a good enough mother. Merry doing this would just make her think she'd failed in even that, and it would only make her feel worse.

  She couldn’t just sit quiet anymore, seeing tears glistening in Janice's eyes. She shot up and leveled a glare on her sister.

  "Merry, that's enough. How can you talk to—"

  "I don’t need you interfering here, Emma! This is between me and Janice."

  Grandmother made a wounded sound as Merry used her name again, and Emma growled.