by Max Lockwood
"What is it, Clara?" he asked when no one else said anything.
Clara was still trying to arrange her thoughts. While they worked, she hadn't let her mind wander too much, keeping most of her focus on helping the patients. But now that she was back home with her family, plans kept running back and forth in her mind, wondering what they could do in the face of a second attack when they still didn’t have weapons. She wasn’t sure they could call on the neighbors this time. Everyone was scared after the last fight. They wouldn’t be quick to join another.
"There's a problem," she finally said. "Well, a new problem. I went to the hospital today and it was full of injured people, just recently brought in."
She could see Cooper's jaw tighten as he took in the implications of what she was saying. "You mean…"
"I mean we need to prepare ourselves for further invasions and protect what's ours."
She could see the worry instantly take over her grandmother. Tessa growing more somber and stopping her grumbling. If she'd had a choice, Clara would have rather kept them both in the dark if only for a little bit longer. But that would be dangerous, and they could prepare for it this way. Hopefully, Tessa would take the hint and not go out again, alone.
It had hit Clara, as she thought on what Felicia had told her while she was on her way back home, that Tessa could have been caught up in the attack and Clara would have never known. As if her sister disappearing on her own wasn’t bad enough, learning she could have been harmed because she was out late had made something in her chest go cold. Hell, it could have been her and Cooper, when they went out to look for her. Clara still didn’t know which street it had been, but she planned on finding out and ignoring that area.
Either way, Tessa would be more useful at home, where she could look after their grandmother. Clara intended to let her in on everything, but it would be moot if her illness kicked in one morning and she just didn’t remember. Tessa would have to keep taking the medications whether or not she got to go outside because she would need to be alert. Hopefully, the fear from last time would get her to do the smart thing.
"These guys are going to be tricky," she continued. "I don’t know much detail, really, but they ended up hurting a lot of people, not just taking stuff. People are confirmed dead."
There was a gasp from Viola as she covered her mouth with her hand, while the other two just grew even more tense. Clara sighed. She didn’t mean to scare them, but they needed to know that these guys were infinitely more dangerous than the last group. Clara was sure if they ever ended up in her neighborhood, they wouldn't be so lucky as to escape nearly unscathed the second time.
"They are so much more dangerous than the people we met before. Thankfully, the police have already been notified and they will be doing something about it, but I still want all of you to be careful. They started far away from here, but there is no guarantee they can't make their way around to here."
She shot a meaningful look at Tessa, who huffed but didn’t look away. Clara nodded, knowing it meant she had heard and would cooperate. Not that staying indoors would be safe enough if the attackers decided to go into the houses. She could only hope that the problem could be solved, even partially, before it came too close to her home.
"What are we going to do, Clara? We're not a very strong group. Mentally or physically," Viola said, pointing out what all of them must have been thinking.
Clara had thought of it, of course. How could she not, when it was what kept holding them back? If she could go back in time, she'd smack herself in the face. They had a perfectly good gun, even if there was only the one, and she did something stupid and lost their only weapon.
But they didn’t have much choice. If they couldn’t find allies, they were on their own, and there was no way she would just lie down and let things happen on their own ever again. It had been bad enough the last time.
It wouldn’t be so simple as getting a large number to agree to do something about their circumstances though. Maybe, if they could somehow pin these guys down, they might have a chance. But how could they do that? They had shown up on some random street, so they probably wouldn’t be going back there or to any street near it. They would pick a different target and attack while all they could do was wait and think about what would happen.
Ideas on how to beat this started floating in her head.
"I'm going to train and change that," Clara vowed in answer to her grandmother. "I know it's not much, but we just have to do this because there isn’t any other way out. We can't even run... there isn’t a place for us to run to, anyway. But if we all stick together, everything will be okay."
She said the words with conviction and stopped to swallow, wondering if she really thought that way. Their best option would be to run if it had been an option at all. They couldn’t exactly just jump on the two bikes they had and go off somewhere. They wouldn’t all fit, and Clara wasn’t up to letting her family go somewhere else without her. In any case, where would they go? And what to do about the supplies… they couldn’t leave.
Not to mention if their luck was really bad, and they took their chance to flee, they could find the road blocked by the very people they were trying to avoid. They would be totally out in the open, and that was too dangerous an attempt to make.
So, they just had to come up with a different solution.
"Grandma, you need to keep on with the garden. When we get through this, we're still going to need the food. And Tessa can learn to protect herself, too, so Cooper and I aren’t doing it all alone. The reality that someone could hurt us—you—has sunk in, and I don’t want that for my family. I can't tell how any of this is going to work out, and I am of course anxious about it, but we should be fine—all of us."
Her family was the one thing Clara didn’t think she could stand to lose. She had given up on her dreams for them and though she'd had regrets about it, she had never changed her mind. She had looked on it as a duty, but it was so much more than that. They were her family and her first real friends. Even if things had changed from a long time ago, how she felt about them hadn't changed.
There was a short silence while everyone thought things through. Clara already had made her decisions and she had no intentions to change, but if that was what they wanted, she was going to have to cater to it somehow, talk them into listening to her.
"I agree with Clara," Cooper said, "we need to stick together."
Clara was mildly surprised. She hadn't talked to Cooper much since their last argument if she could even call it that. She knew how much he hated the situation they now found themselves in, but that he was willing to go along with her at all meant not much had changed between them. She'd have to give him time to think things through on his own since he gave her the same option after all.
When the impromptu meeting was over, Tessa and Viola both got up and walked off, leaving her and Cooper staring at each other.
"Do you mind if I postpone our lesson so I can focus on your sister?"
Her eyebrows arched. She didn’t think he needed privacy for that, but she went along. "I won't mind at all. Besides, I was hoping I could learn something just watching."
He pursed his lips, his eyes staring at her growing in intensity until he had her fidgeting, wondering what was going on.
"Cooper?" she called out to him tentatively.
He looked stunned for a moment like he had been pulled from a daydream. Then the moment was gone, and he gave her a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
"Nothing, Clara, just…"
He let his voice trail away instead of finishing his sentence, and it made her curious. He was finally talking to her and she wanted them to talk some more. But what was this that Cooper was having a hard time just telling her about. Usually, he could just tell her things up front.
She watched, as he opened his mouth, only no sound came. Then he snapped his mouth shut and covered it with his hand.
"No, really, it's nothing," he muttered and left the
room.
She could tell he was lying, but she wasn’t sure over what. She felt disappointed that he felt he couldn’t talk to her anymore. She just watched his back as he walked away from her, not wanting to disturb him. Besides, even if she called out to him, he would probably just ignore her. But she could focus on their growing distance later. Right then, she had to focus on the training. She heard Cooper call out for her sister, and decided to go in so she could watch.
Clara watched Cooper in the garden attempting to train Tessa. It wasn’t easy. Her sister didn’t have a healthy diet, and that was before they had to start watching what they ate. Back when her life was normal, Clara had taken a morning run and fitness classes to keep fit, something Tessa didn’t avail herself of since she always stayed inside, more specifically locked in her room.
Clara wondered if it would scare Tessa. Cooper was taking it slower and easier than he did with her, but he wasn’t holding back so much, either. But she continued with determination and force. Clara was surprised to see that Tessa could clearly take care of herself, even though she looked so thin.
It was… unexpected, to say the least. But then, a lot about her sister had been surprising her lately. Well, since the day everything changed for them, anyway. She guessed that before Tessa became sick and their parents died, there was a lot about her sister that she didn’t know.
The knowledge made her feel sad somehow, though it had been there in the back of her mind for a while. This Tessa wasn’t so open, and the few times Clara had felt they were making real progress, either she pulled back or everything went wrong again. Clara often wondered how things would have worked out, had they been different. But there was no point in dwelling on it when it would only make her mad.
Clara wondered what else she didn’t know—did Tessa ever have a friend, or a group of friends, or hobbies that Clara never knew about? Well, before of course. Tessa had been the popular sister, after all, Clara the introverted recluse, and it was only made worse by the accident.
Clara wished that her sister could live a normal life, but wondered if any of their lives would ever be normal again.
Chapter Thirteen
Clara worked at the hospital again. She didn’t think she would be reassigned to a new job, and she couldn’t just stop on her own. Not because of her punishment, but because she couldn’t sit by with so many people injured.
When she went in, she expected there to be more. And there had been, only a lesser number than what she'd feared, less than a handful, but they were all in worse condition than the guys who came in earlier because no one had seen to their injuries and they couldn’t do it themselves.
The biggest problem, currently, was the chance of infection. Not only was it high, they didn’t have enough of the right meds to keep it from truly becoming a problem. A few had already infected wounds, and they were separated from the rest in the hope it wouldn’t spread, though Clara wasn’t sure it worked like that. They were given special care, and she was one of the “nurses” that helped, leaving other more skilled volunteers to do the more difficult jobs.
Felicia caught her eye at some point, and Clara knew she wanted to talk, but they were both just too busy to stop. Her attention was captured the second she entered and she hadn't had time between patients to talk to Felicia.
It took some time, but they did eventually manage to catch a short break around lunch. It wasn’t really a good idea to have food anywhere near the patients, but Clara had brought some snack food, so she wouldn’t be met with the same situation from the day before. She'd also eaten a little more for breakfast and taken more water than usual. She shared her snack with Felicia once they were outside, the other woman looking grateful as she took it.
"Something's been bothering you."
Felicia sighed and leaned against a wall. Clara's eyebrows went up at that, surprised. Usually, she was the one that did the leaning, because she was easily exhausted. But Felicia's exhaustion wasn’t necessarily physical. She was probably stressed out because Clara had noticed this had been bothering her since yesterday.
"I woke up with a horrible feeling," Felicia muttered, "that something is going to happen. I haven't been able to shake it and it's draining on me. I don’t know what it is, but… I can't just dismiss it."
Clara took her time to think over a response. This conversation was surprisingly familiar. Except, because Felicia didn’t suffer from any delusions, she was having a hard time accepting it at all, where Tessa would go gloating about being chosen and special to have such a power.
But because Felicia was the level-headed woman that she was, Clara couldn’t entirely dismiss her either. She found it ironic. How hard she tried to get Tessa to see that she was wrong about her “abilities” and here she was unwilling to prove Felicia wrong.
There were glaring differences, though. Felicia was calling it a “feeling” that she had. It could still be attributed to the recent news and influx of patients. Coming so soon after she was called in to clean up after the last attack, it would certainly shake her. It did Clara and her family.
"I understand the superstition," she finally said. "Believe me when I say that I really do. But it's probably just because everything is going wrong. Of course, you'd be anxious about it. Everybody is."
She cut herself off before she could go too far and start marking similarities between Felicia in that moment and how her sister usually was.
Of course, Felicia still looked worried. She had her shoulders hunched, a pinched look on her face and her eyes kept moving around, jumping from one thing to another. Her body probably wanted to fidget, but she had her now empty hands wrapped tightly around her body to stop any shaking.
"I promise that the day will be like any other."
They went back to the hospital not long after that. Then a short while later, Clara was regretting her words.
There was the sound of a crash, and it confused everyone for a bit. And then several men made their way into the “hospital” with guns.
Clara was quite a distance from the entrance, but even she noticed, before the screams started, the already noisy hospital sounds were growing louder. The men didn’t hurt anyone, though they had their guns trained on people, mostly patients, but a few nurses were also under their power. Felicia wasn’t too far from her, so she was also away from the line of fire, at least for the moment. Clara felt her heart squeeze as her chest chilled.
Why would she have imagined it would be a normal day? She was being naive again, wasn’t she? Just like she hadn't expected a direct attack to their home the night after it first happened. She'd heard about the recent attack just yesterday, and she'd thought it would be some time before anything else happened, and by the time she got the news, it would have already been over.
She should have thought of this. Hell, she should have listened to Felicia. It drew more parallels with her sister, how Tessa had tried to warn her and she'd ended up doing something stupid. Not that they'd had much choice here, anyway. Felicia probably wouldn’t leave her patients, and it was unlikely that they could move everyone…
"Listen up!" one of the men shouted over the noise, waving his gun around, though the others had their weapons pointed at specific individuals. "We'll kill anyone we have to so that we can get medical supplies. If you don’t wanna die, I suggest you all shut up and not do anything stupid!"
Felicia and Clara were forced to watch as they loaded medical supplies into the back of their truck. It had all happened before, kind of different but the same context and Clara could feel the déjà vu and hated it. Again, like that time, there was nothing she could do, nothing any of them could do, unless they wanted the assailants to start killing people. Clara had learned not to mess with desperate people and that was exactly what these people were. Desperate.
Once they decided they had everything they needed, they backed out slowly, before the men rushed to their truck and drove away with everything they owned.
Clara broke down. She couldn�
�t help it, feeling her face crumble in anger, her eyes stinging with frustrated tears. She nearly rubbed her eyes, before realizing she had gloves with blood on them still on her hands. But she couldn’t let herself cry, not this time. It wasn’t even her stuff, specifically, that got stolen, but the frustration, the helplessness, was pretty much the same.
They were unable to protect their supplies, and it left them in dire straits although they had been low enough, to begin with.
"What the hell are we supposed to do now? All the drugs… Everyone will die without their help." And after the police had struggled with their volunteers to bring more from outside. If they'd already arrived and were part of the hospital's current supplies…
Dammit!
"It can’t be helped," Felicia muttered from beside her.
Clara shot her a look. How could the other woman act so calm about this? But then Clara looked at Felicia closer and noticed the tired lines deepening on her face. Felicia still noticed her look and gave her a wan smile.
"I understand the desperation of the invaders—perhaps their townspeople and family were dying too, and they were desperate for help. Remember the lengths we'd both go to help our own families. Those guys are probably in the same boat, coming here and leaving everyone alive."
But Clara couldn’t just agree to that. It wasn’t so surprising, of course. It was already happening in their town, even though it was more for food than fighting. It was why they had a curfew to begin with, why patrollers went around town at night. The woman that got Clara into trouble with the police then tried to kill her later had been trying to steal from a small boutique store.
Something like this was bound to happen. They had all been waiting for it. To think, when she'd held a gun at a woman desperate enough to shoplift, she had been so shocked when it seemed to have no effect, causing her to release a bullet accidentally.
