by Max Lockwood
But then what were they supposed to do, once their things are stolen? Just do as Cooper suggested before, stay out of their way? It wasn’t something she could just scoff at now. These guys were different from how those women before had been. They were confident, moving out during the day. They also seemed more organized, not as wild as the women had been. They also had a truck, not a van, so they could carry more enemies, and more supplies to take away.
"Maybe it leaves us with no choice but to invade other towns ourselves," Clara muttered.
Chapter Fourteen
Unlike the previous situation, this wasn’t something they could do alone, or with just a few more people.
It wasn’t so clear-cut because they would need some way to keep an eye on several areas at once. Clara wanted to help if only to stop it before it came anywhere near her neighborhood.
Cooper was not amused.
"Seriously, Clara, why would you do this? Haven't we had enough trouble? Why would you go looking for more when it doesn't involve you?"
Clara sighed, ignoring his exasperation. She watched him pace, glad that she'd had her grandmother and sister sit out this discussion. Cooper was wrong that it didn't involve her because it did now. In any case, she couldn’t just sit down, could she? Otherwise, the attacks would continue, and who else would go to stop them? Clara didn’t see anyone else stepping up and she didn’t want to wait until someone else felt like they wanted to take the responsibility.
She knew it was dangerous. So had the last fight been, but this was a necessity. People had died, and they hadn't killed anyone while at the hospital, most of the patients were there because of those bastards, anyway, and now they couldn’t even be treated.
"Someone has to do something Cooper," she said, thinking rationally. "Why can't it be me, if I'm willing to do something?"
He sighed then moved closer to her, kneeling in front of her seat and taking her hands in his. He looked up at her, pleading with his expression.
"Yeah, it has to be someone, but why does it have to be you? Just wait, maybe the police might do something about this."
She squeezed his hand back. "Cooper, if the police could handle things on their own, they wouldn’t have needed to hire volunteers in the first place. There aren’t enough of them to keep the whole town under surveillance by themselves, they're going to need help at some point, and from someone."
Besides, it wasn’t like she was actually going to do the whole thing herself. She spent way too long talking Cooper into her way of thinking, but she wouldn’t be swayed when she already had a plan forming in her mind.
Just thinking of those men coming into the hospital, filled with the sick and the injured, and taking their medicine… she couldn’t keep still after that. She would have stayed cautious and kept an ear out for trouble if they hadn't encountered them in the hospital. Because the second she was there, in that situation and watching it happen with a bunch of other helpless people, it involved her.
Cooper didn’t understand her. He thought that she should just be glad they all walked away from it. But what was the problem? Anyone not a patient at that hospital was lucky, but what about the rest? And they had already violently attacked a whole street, what would happen if they did it again? People wouldn’t be walking away from an attack like that.
She just couldn’t not get involved. Not when outsiders kept messing with their town like they didn’t have enough problems of their own and were managing to fend for themselves. They had to find their own way instead of trying to ruin everyone else's chances. What would they do, once they stole everything and there wasn’t anything left? They would all end up dead that way. She had a feeling, though, that they weren’t really thinking that far ahead.
But this wasn't something that involved only her; it affected so many more people than just her. So, she couldn’t just make a decision on her own. Not that she had to because Clara had a plan. It didn’t take her long to come up with and then put the plan into action.
Clara organized a town meeting to discuss the invasions on the town—she involved as many people in town as she could, if not everyone.
It wasn’t an easy thing to organize at all. The easy part was making the decision. Then there was talking Cooper into agreeing with it, and it was easy once he realized she intended to include a whole lot of people, and she didn’t need to be central to everything. After that, she needed other helpers that agreed with the plan.
She figured, after how well it had gone getting the people in her neighborhood to unite against a common enemy, they could add even more people, since this wasn’t just tied to their neighborhood, but a threat to the whole town. The new enemy was unpredictable. They could come from anywhere, anytime and they wouldn’t have any prior warning except the sound of a running car, and by that time it would be too late. Like at the hospital, they didn’t even realize there was a danger until it was too late. People would fear, but that fear would get them, at least some of them, to fight instead of hiding away.
The ones that didn’t want to die after the weeks they'd spent struggling to survive, wouldn’t lie down and wait to get trampled on.
But getting everyone to agree to it, just getting the word around, took time and a lot of helpers to get to everyone. It helped, though, that the hospital was attacked and it was in the middle of town. Once she let Cooper know what she was planning, he got Dante and Michelle on board and they went around the neighborhood and other neighboring streets, knocking on doors. Felicia was all for it, rallying a few people herself.
They called as many people as they could, to an agreed upon location, but it still took two days. They were lucky that no attacks came in that time while they prepared themselves. At least, after the attack, the streets seemed to be a little less dangerous from petty theft when the news of a bigger predator spread around. Of course, that was only while they didn’t attack, but they couldn’t bank on the peace lasting, so they had to do something and quickly, before the next attack if possible.
A bunch of people showed up, but Clara noticed the lack of attendance from usual town meetings. Well, it was to be expected. Still, considering that everyone was worried, the number was nowhere near what she would have expected. She wondered how many of the people that once attended were dead, and how many were just not showing up because they didn’t want to.
It wasn’t ideal. The numbers may not even be enough to protect the town, considering they would need people everywhere to be alert always. The only good thing about the enemies using a truck was that they could be heard before they arrived if only there was someone listening out for them. They might not be enough, but they didn’t have much choice, either way. They would have to work something out.
But first, they had to get everyone on board with the plan, or they'd fail before they even began.
"Hello, everyone," Clara began when the room quieted down somewhat. "Thanks for coming. I know this was all sudden, but we have a problem."
There were murmurings in the room, probably people wondering who she was and why she was spearheading this meeting. Well, she wondered that, too. It had been her idea to get people to come, but she'd had no intention of leading. Only, no one else would. The police weren’t even active participants, they only had three of them present, one of them being the officers that relayed her punishment to her.
Clara explained about the attacks on the hospital.
"It was a couple days ago and it came out of nowhere when armed men with a truck attacked the hospital. They didn’t harm anyone, but they did take all the medicine we had there, which means we don’t have anything left for our own injured. We had no way to know it was going to happen, and no way to stop it. Before that, there was an attack on an entire street, I don’t know how many people died, but I do know plenty of the survivors ended up at the hospital for treatment."
The murmurings grew slightly louder. If only Clara had better details to give, but they weren’t really necessary. The bigger picture was clea
r enough, and it was all they needed to see to understand the circumstances. People just needed to know the threat existed, and it was serious. They had to realize that if they did nothing, any of them could be next.
There were probably several in the crowd that had only heard of attacks happening, but none had made it into their areas yet. With this wild card suddenly introduced, it wasn’t enough to guarantee their safety, because they would basically need to rely on luck. Clara was hoping that, with their lives on the line, they would choose to do something rather than depend on that luck to keep the problems off their doorsteps.
"There hasn’t been an attack since, but we're almost assured that there will be another attack. The only thing we don’t know is where or when, and we don’t have any working cars like they do, so they have us beat on that front."
She hadn't asked the police what they were doing about looking into cars that might work. It had been an idea they'd had ever since they encountered a mayor from a neighboring town who happened to have one. Clara was sure they'd searched, though she wasn’t sure why they hadn't actually found anything yet.
But they could worry about that later.
"I don’t know what we can do against these people," she said honestly. "We only recently took care of some other intruders, and these new guys are seriously bad news. We can't just do nothing while they take everything from us, but that isn’t for me to decide. What does everyone want to do about it?"
There was a short moment of silence, and then everyone was clamoring to get a word in. A few people in the crowd even stood and raised their hands to get attention. The noise rose quickly, and Clara sighed.
She knew this would happen. They couldn’t just make people do what they wanted, but with all these people and the situation they found themselves in, no one was going to come to a decision easily. Yet, it would have been so much worse if, after having the gall to speak to all these people, she tried to act as the designated leader. They might band together to help each other out, but it had to be their decision or they would never come up with anything useful.
The town's leaders had disappeared the day of the crash. As far as she knew, most of them were dead, considering the plane hit the building that housed their offices. The best they had were the cops, and they didn’t get too involved, running things their way. Clara hadn't realized before, somehow, but people had started moving on their own ever since the crash while she was waiting for whatever connection they had to break down.
But this wasn’t the time for them to be divided. Honestly, she would have rather been at home with her family if the world had been a little fairer. Somehow, they would have to convince the cops to help civilians with weapons, because there weren’t nearly enough men in uniform to protect the whole town. If there had been, they wouldn’t have asked for volunteers to begin with.
The noise wasn’t dimming, but there were some voices rising above the others, several people claiming that they should just keep the peace and wait out the attacks.
She'd been feeling defeated when the shouting started, but hearing that just pissed her off. If it was that simple, they wouldn’t have needed to call everyone to a town meeting. Most people would have kept their heads down anyway, and nothing would get accomplished. That wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her, not even close.
How the hell could anyone even think that? “Wait out the attacks,” that wasn't a strategy, that was just cowardice. And for how long would they have to wait it all out? For weeks? Or even months, when in their current lifestyles, no one could stand to think that far ahead? And in that time, what? They would be ruled by this enemy that could attack them anytime, while they did nothing to prevent it.
The thought didn’t appeal to Clara at all. It angered her that these people would let others die, would let others' things be taken, because of the slightest chance that they could be spared because she just knew that was what they were thinking. Stupidly so. Their attackers would simply keep coming back once their stuff died out, and they would take everything from them eventually and probably kill them when there wasn’t anything left to take.
She had learned that when her own house got attacked, and the people that did it promised to return. They had kept their promise. The next fucking day! Next time wouldn't be any different. They would keep coming back until the town got sucked dry, but Clara wouldn’t risk her family because a few people didn’t have it in them to fight for what was theirs.
"This isn’t going to get better!" she exploded, her loud voice quieting down some of the noise. "'Wait this out?' Don’t kid me! This situation will only get worse the longer we all sit back and do nothing about it."
The whole room went quiet, all the attention turning to her. She just kept her anger up and let these people see it. The world had changed. If her family was going to have to accept that fact and learn to live in it, then so was everybody else.
"My neighborhood has been attacked before, and they came back the next day. But because we did something about it, even went to the police to ask for help, we took care of the problem, and we are no longer under threat from these people."
Low murmuring started going around the room. Of course, the attack on their street had gotten around, too. It hadn't exactly been quiet when they retaliated, and plenty of people had gotten curious.
"These aren’t the same people that attacked my neighborhood; they are so much worse. Their first attack was on a whole street. I don’t know entirely what happened, but I know they killed a lot of people. They didn’t when they came to the hospital, but we may have gotten lucky. Who knows what could happen the next time, how many more will die if we do nothing!"
She panted for breath, all eyes in the crowd staring at her as silence filled their gathering.
Her whole body trembled with her anger, and even though everyone was eyeing her, she kept her back straight and refused to be intimidated. These people had to take this seriously, needed to, for all their sakes. Even if Clara was going to have to shove that necessity down their throats.
Then Cooper piped up to defend her, standing up next to her, though a little in front, taking the attention of the room onto himself. "You guys need to remember that your property and lives are both at stake if the attacks continue. We don’t have enough resources that we can stand to have what we do have taken away like this. Most of us will probably starve to death at this rate, and if we keep bringing supplies from outside, they'll probably just take that, too."
There wasn’t as much noise as before, but the people murmured. Clara 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 bringing up the argument. News of the incident had been spread through most of the town. Someone, not in the neighborhood, had heard the noise and spread it around. Besides, plenty of people would have noticed when they were cleaning 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 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 as well. "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. Clara 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. Clara didn’t have any solution, which was why she'd posed the question to ev
eryone so they could come up with a plan. If they were expecting her to have all the answers…
They could not be more wrong.
Clara 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 Felicia stood up, taking some of the attention, and Clara breathed easier. She might not know what to do, but the other woman had several years of experience on her. Felicia 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," Felicia 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.
