by Max Lockwood
"How about everyone moving into the school with all their belongings," someone suggested, speaking above the noise. "Logically, if we're talking defense, wouldn’t it be easier if we were all in one closed off location? It would be easier to defend than trusting a few people on every street when we don’t know where or when they'll appear next."
The murmurings were low, before picking up as everyone voiced their considerations with the idea. It was the first thing anyone had said clearly, and Clara had hope that at least there were people that knew their position and were taking it seriously. Of course, they should be having a discussion, not everyone going off on their own tangent, but maybe this was a step in the right direction. No one was willing to speak in its favor, though.
Clara thought about it. While it did have merit, she didn’t like it. Being closed off even if it would be easier to defend everyone that way and save even more lives. If they got themselves surrounded, it could be trouble. But then, they couldn’t exactly rely on their current strategy, everyone fighting in their different areas and getting help when problems came. They didn’t have speedy transport or a way to communicate over distances, so there were many holes in that plan.
But then Felicia stood up with her own objections, pointing out, "We can't lead anywhere near a normal life when living all cooped up together. Also, it would be a lot of hassle getting everyone there."
Well, that was true. Clara herself wasn’t really willing to leave her home. Getting her supplies mixed in with everyone would be… a bad idea. Really, it would probably just have people start fighting a lot sooner, because too many people all highly strung from living together were all too likely to explode, and she didn’t want to be a part of it.
Several more suggestions were thrown around, which no one really took to. She listened idly as her mind worked, thoughts circling and overlapping each other.
"I have an idea," Clara piped up. The noise went down as everyone focused on her. She'd been trying to avoid it, but she straightened her spine instead. "How about we each have a patrol, night and day, per street?" she suggested. "There should be a minimum of ten people per street helping out at any one time and they should all be armed just in case.
It would take care of a lot of the holes present in most of the other ideas. It would be hard to conform to. At that point, everyone was expecting an attack at any moment. If the invaders took too long and people grew lax, it could be disastrous. But having people, several of them moving separately, on all the streets would be the best way to go. That way, there could be some to go and call for help while the others stalled for time with their weapons.
Of course, it was also risky. But everything involved some level of risk anyway. The problem was whether people would truly go along with it even knowing that. She would, without a doubt, and probably plenty of people would. But that many people per street, going on rotation day and night? Getting people to work in the night time would be especially difficult. And they would still have to negotiate getting weapons to civilians from the cops, or finding more people with guns.
But well, they could always think about that after the others determined whether the idea was worth considering.
"Breaking down the help per street," she continued, "it would be easier to defend, and easy to call for backup from nearby streets."
There was some more murmuring, more excitement this time when one of the police officers present spoke up.
"We think it's a good idea, and doable if everyone is willing to help out. We will, of course, be doing our part."
"We also need to send a search party to every house to check that everyone is okay," she continued to suggest, "and to take supplies from empty houses. There should be someone to lead the team on each street. I volunteer to lead the team on mine."
From there, everything dissolved into excited chatter, but Clara felt somewhat confident now that this could work out, even just a little.
Chapter Seventeen
Things progressed quickly once everyone was decided. The few voices that still protested were overruled, for the sake of the whole town. Her self-defense lessons with Cooper went on since she had, even more, determination now than before.
The police had offered their support, sending in more officers to help while they were finalizing their plans. There were only a few more meetings before they decided to stop having them so frequently. A decision had been made, instead of trying to set up meetings at certain intervals, all reports would go to the police station and would be disseminated from there. They would only have the meetings again when it was deemed necessary. It was probably a way for the police to take control of the whole thing, but Clara didn’t mind, if what they were doing was useful in the end.
Several days later, Clara walked down the street, a gun slung over her shoulder. Her neighbors were stationed up and down the road on patrol, also armed.
Once the plan was agreed upon and spread out to everyone, it had been a lot easier to establish than she'd first thought. People were almost eager to join in, and the police had agreed to hand over weapons to use on patrol to whomever didn't have one. She'd been worried they'd refused, but in their eyes, it was only logical that the patrollers be armed. The cops even sent one or two of their own people out occasionally to help on the patrols.
Nothing had happened, yet. Everyone was still high strung, but it had calmed down. At least no one was too eager to start firing at shadows, or so relaxed that they would hesitate. She would have to see just how long they could all last in this state before things changed. Either way, she was happy with how things currently were.
Well, not really. She wondered why they hadn't made a move yet, those bastards, after how confident they'd been before. It gave her a bad feeling that just wouldn’t go away. After their first two near consecutive attacks, it was like they'd fallen off the face of the earth. Only, instead of making her relax like some people, it only stretched her nerves tighter.
She didn’t think they had given up. She'd heard some of her neighbors talk about it, the ones she was on patrol with. They thought that because it had already been this long, maybe there wouldn’t be any attacks soon. Clara thought differently. For her, the longer they didn’t come, simply meant it was getting closer to a day when they would launch an attack.
They would come back, eventually. They would find they needed something, and since they had conveniently already swiped things from their town without much effort, they would come back to them for more stuff. They would probably expect them to have done something, come up with some defense or decide to play weak when they returned, but there was no doubt in her mind that they would find it useful to return to their town.
They would definitely return. And the invaders would find them prepared.
Clara came across one of her neighbors as she strolled down the street, and she waved at them in greeting. She didn’t personally know them, but she didn’t remember them from the last time she'd rallied the neighborhood.
"Hey, there," she said amiably, "how is your day looking?"
She glanced around before meeting their eyes. She found it a lot easier to talk to people now, or at least these people because she'd fought with them before.
"There's nothing to report. Everything's been way too calm, actually."
Of course, it was calm. The people not out on patrol were being cautious. It was unusual to see people outside when they weren’t armed and therefore part of the patrol team, most of them preferred to stay inside. Not that there had been a lot of people walking around outside, to begin with, but this was different. Some still left their homes, but they didn’t stay out long.
Clara said goodbye to the other patrollers and continued walking home. It was growing late in the evening, meaning it would shift to night duty soon. There were enough people still out waiting for their replacements that she felt she could go back home a bit early.
Cooper was at home to greet her, she almost bumped into him as she walked through the d
oor. He eyed the gun slung over her shoulder, and she winced. She usually took it off and put it aside in a safe place where he couldn’t see it. Because she was the team leader in her street, she could keep the gun with her at all times, as long as she kept up her responsibilities. She'd made sure not to make any mistakes, so she was okay.
He didn’t agree, though. He never mentioned anything, but when he looked at the gun and she saw the emotions in his eyes, she imagined he hadn't forgotten either, how a gun had gotten her into so much trouble last time.
"Do you really need that?" he finally asked.
She rolled her eyes. She'd known he wouldn’t be able to help himself. Cooper was leery of guns, anyone would be. In the beginning, Clara had been, too, but you couldn’t fight armed enemies with your bare hands if you wanted to survive.
She couldn’t say she had gotten used to guns, either, because the one she was handed was one she didn’t know how to use. The last one she had, she only shot once by accident. When she got the gun—her punishment having been lifted because of the crisis—she was only told how it worked and it was up to her to figure it out. Well, it wasn’t exactly difficult. She just needed to aim, put a finger on the trigger, and take a shot. This gun wasn’t as sensitive as the last one, so it wasn’t going to go off by accident, making it safer in her hands.
"I got it from the police, so I'm not breaking the parameters of my punishment. If they lifted that and gave me a weapon after my trial, of course, it's necessary."
He shot her a frown, telling her silently to get serious, and she sighed. She knew his hang-up about her having a gun, but he didn’t have to ask something so obvious.
"Come on, Cooper. You know I need it if I'm going to be out on patrol. It's for my own safety, after all. We're not just walking around outside for exercise, if something actually happens one day, I do need to be prepared."
Emotions crossed over his face so fast she didn’t have time to read them. But they settled on guarded, his eyes still on the gun. "But do you have to keep it on you at all times, even when you have to come home?
Another stupid question. He was eyeing it as his face darkened into a scowl, and she pulled it off her shoulder and went to store it away where she always left it.
"I was given it to protect the street," she reminded him. "I mean, I could always go out without it, but do you think I would be just fine if something did happen and I was out there, unarmed? And of course, I bring it home, where else do you think I could leave it?"
Besides, she felt a lot safer with it around. She had regretted losing the other one, but this was one she intended to keep. If anything happened, she knew where it was, and all she'd have to do was run for it and move to a strategic position.
His look shifted to something lost and frustrated. Whatever he was trying to accomplish, it would get nowhere, because she wasn’t giving up the gun, no matter how he feared it.
"It's just, are you sure it's a good idea for you to have a gun after your… incident?"
She froze at the question. She really hadn't thought that he would ask that, or rather, she'd hoped. She'd thought he was worried about her, but he just really didn’t trust her, did he? She turned to him with a hurt look, and she could have sworn he flinched.
"You don’t think I can be trusted with a gun?" she asked, upset, and she winced. She frowned, feeling a little angry. "I made a mistake, remember? That time, I didn’t even mean to fire the gun, and it was problematic, but I got through it. I've moved on from it now."
Why haven’t you?
She wanted to ask, but she seriously didn’t think she even wanted an answer. Cooper was her best friend, he was supposed to trust her.
"It's not that," Cooper said before she could turn away. "I'm not fond of you going out every day with a gun, that's all."
She narrowed her eyes at him, having a hard time believing him. "I can care for myself."
She didn’t care how hard she was being on her best friend. But then again, he wasn’t the one going out and doing the damned job. She turned away from him and went to check on Tessa. She would have to talk to him at some point and convince him that it was for the best. It wasn’t going to be right then, though.
Her sister meanwhile had been acting better recently. It was such a surprising turnaround, that she thought she would revert to her old self, back to normal. Of course, she took her medication, and she had been checking this time to make sure, and it helped her act somewhat more normal than she did before. She hadn't had a single nightmare and hadn't mentioned predictions once.
Clara was hopeful.
She knocked before entering her sister's room. She didn’t seem to mind, so Clara moved further inside. Tessa was sitting in her room like she usually was these days. Well, it was simply her reverting to her old habits, only there were no tarot cards or any other superstitious stuff.
"Hey, sis. Can I join you?"
Tessa just glanced at her before looking away. Clara hesitated for a moment, before deciding her sister probably didn’t mind her sticking around a little. After sitting in silence for a while, Clara tried to coax conversation out of her.
"Did you have a good day today?" she asked feeling awkward. She glanced around the room, trying to think of something better to say, and lit up on the books arranged on Tessa's table. "Read anything good recently, maybe?"
She was too awkward, but she couldn’t help it. Did she ever just do small talk with her sister? Clara didn’t think so, or at least she didn’t remember. It was the most uncomfortable she had felt in a while, and it struck her as ironic, just a little. They could talk about the deep stuff just fine—well, not fine because it usually ended in an argument or one of them walking away. Still, she wondered how they'd ever had previous conversations and she kept coming up with question after question.
Tessa wouldn’t bite.
Clara was a little frustrated. She didn’t even move, and Clara would have felt invisible, except she knew Tessa knew that she was there.
Her sister had calmed down her attitude, especially towards her. She didn’t think Tessa and Viola had run into each other at all since their fight. Her sister should have realized how stupid she had been acting by now, but she didn’t show any signs of trying to do something about it.
It frustrated her. She was doing her best not to interfere, spending as much time with Viola herself as she could while visiting her sister at least once every day to keep them both company. But she was going to exhaust herself that way, considering all the other responsibilities she had, and still spending time with Cooper because she didn’t want to leave him out either. Bringing it up before her sister did would only earn Tessa's ire, but her patience with her sister was wearing thin.
She sighed, exasperated. Nothing she was saying was getting through to Tessa at all. "Come on. I haven't done anything wrong," she complained.
Tessa finally spoke. "You're the favorite and you don’t want me to be a part of our family." She scoffed and folded her arms across her chest, looking away. "Of course, Princess Clara hasn’t done anything wrong."
Clara sighed again. Well, at least she had opened up, even if Clara didn’t like being called a princess. It was so far from what she was that it wasn’t even funny.
"You need to get rid of whatever misconceptions you seem to have about my life, Tessa. They are honestly getting old. You're not a kid and you need to start acting your age."
It was only a light reprimand, but Tessa turned her head just enough to glare at Clara from the corner of her eye. Clara just gave her an unimpressed look back. She could be intimidating when she wanted to, but even Clara knew she was just pretending to be indignant. It was basically a warning, that if Clara went down that road, they would be delving into a real argument.
Clara wasn’t in the mood for an argument with her sister. She'd left the house early, and had returned from patrolling the neighborhood for hours. Clara was exhausted, and she wanted to get to sleep sometime soon because her next patrol was goi
ng to be early.
"Fine then, Tessa. Tell me what it is that you want? I can't convince you of anything right now, and honestly, I'm too tired and plainly just don’t want to. So, tell me what it is that you want from me."
They had to resolve whatever was between them some time, and maybe if they could finally clear it up, Tessa could finally talk to their grandmother. Besides, she was more than ready to have this taken off her shoulders. She had blamed a lot of how she lived her life on her family, but she'd dropped the thought every time because she knew they were unfair. So was the corner Tessa was trying to push her into, blaming her for being too “perfect,” and wrongly so at that.
Tessa glared at her for a moment longer, before the look eased off her face and she looked down. Her fingers twisted together on her lap before she clenched her hands together tightly. What she said next, was something Clara would never have expected.
"I want a chance to prove my worth, and I want to be on the neighborhood watch with you."
Her eyes widened at the sudden declaration from her sister, even though Tessa didn’t turn to look at her even once. But Clara knew because she had said the words at all, that she meant them wholeheartedly.
Her mind instantly jumped to the argument, and she wanted to smack herself in the forehead. She'd had no idea Tessa had been thinking about this so much. Well, she didn’t like the reason and her sister's motivation, but that she was willing to help the town in any way did make Clara feel a little bit better. Then this would mean that she hadn't just been playing a brat, but it didn’t change she was acting on a whim.
"It isn’t just fun and games out there, Tess. You know how much the world has changed. It would be dangerous for you to go out there. We're still in the neighborhood, but we could get attacked at any time, you know. We're supposed to stay on alert."
