They Invaded: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival (Zero Power Book 3) Read online

  They Invaded

  A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival - Zero Power Series Book 3

  Max Lockwood

  Illustrated by Natasha Snow

  Edited by Donna Rich

  Edited by Teresa Banschbach

  Copyright © 2017 by Max Lockwood

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Natasha Snow Designs

  Edited by Donna Rich and Teresa Banschbach

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.

  Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.

  Contents

  Mailing List

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  About Max Lockwood

  Also by Max Lockwood

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  Chapter One

  Clara boarded up the broken shed door furiously.

  Instead of just breaking the lock, the shed door had come off its hinges while the lock still remained in place, though the wood was old enough that even it had broken apart a bit. Looking at it made her grit her teeth, so she had her sister give her the key to the lock and put the door aside, leaning its broken pieces against the side of the shed.

  She had been so full of rage since they'd been attacked, with no place for her to vent, so she could at least channel it towards something useful. If she didn’t, she'd end up snapping at her family, or her friends, and she didn’t want to do that as she hadn't been the only one to live through the ordeal in the first place. She was perhaps overdoing it, striking each blow of the hammer with relish; imagining it as the face of one of their assailants that she was hammering.

  Dammit!

  Why did this have to happen? Every time things looked like they might go well, shit hit the fan and stuff like this happened. Of course, this was the first time trouble had followed her to her doorstep, but that only made it worse. She, Dante, and Cooper had faced danger before. Her sister, Tessa, had a lot of nightmares where bad and dangerous things happened. But she, and more so, their grandmother had never been exposed to something quite like that.

  Of course, what really ate at her was how responsible she felt for the whole thing. Had she been smarter, their house might have been spared. Or at least, they might have had a chance to avoid a direct confrontation. It would have made her mad that their stuff got stolen, but her friend wouldn’t have gotten hurt, and her family wouldn’t have gotten the scare of their lives if they had avoided the confrontation. Over those stupid women and their guns.

  Her hand trembled a little, and she stilled it as she tried to get ahold of herself. It was the hand carrying the hammer, so she wasn’t going to be careless and hurt herself with it. She couldn’t do that just yet, when she had to pay those women back for what they did, somehow. If she harmed herself, she couldn’t do that. Well, she might be determined anyway, but then it would be a lot harder.

  Get a grip. There was no guarantee she could do anything, either way, but even with the slimmest chance, she was willing to try. She refocused on what she was doing, pressing harder on the wooden board as her hand tightened around the hammer’s handle.

  They'd found the boards in the garage, along with the tools. Cooper had offered to do the job for her, but Clara needed to do this. Because if she didn’t, she felt like she would literally explode with anger. Now she felt like she was doing something useful, at least, after how pathetic she'd been the night before.

  Besides, Cooper was still injured. Clara had hurt him, then stood by and watched some women injure him, and she feared she would break down and cry if she spent too much time around him.

  What she really wanted to do was to give into her emotions. Her grief, her pain, her anger. She wanted to just scream until her throat went hoarse, throw a bunch of stuff and make a racket. She wanted to hurt someone that deserved it, but there was no one like that around, so she was forced to suppress the urge. Maybe, if she let it all out, her chest wouldn’t hurt as badly as it did right then.

  But she couldn’t do that. Not just then.

  She could see Cooper was worried about her, but that wasn’t right. He had a swollen bruise on his face, he hadn't even cleaned up the blood yet, and just looking at it set her blood boiling. Dante just stayed away from her, but she imagined he wasn’t any better off after what happened. Her sister and grandmother were probably still afraid and hiding in one of their rooms, but she hadn't had time to see to them. Truthfully, she didn’t think it was safe if she did.

  Clara couldn’t forget. Waking up in the night to her sister screaming was bad enough. Then realizing it was because of a nightmare, one that was about to turn very real…

  Everything was supposed to be shut down. The electricity was gone; cars and planes didn’t work. But there were cars that did work, older models. She didn’t get the explanation completely, but as long as the cars didn’t work on any form of electrical impulse, they could still run. Of course, most cars with such a feature were old and not as easy to find in the modern world.

  When she first realized it was a possibility, she'd felt some semblance of hope. When everything shut down, they'd lost everything; easy communication with each other or to neighboring towns, other states in the country. There were still bikes if one was really determined to get around, but what good was that for if you wanted to go a long distance? You couldn’t take much with you, you ended up exhausted after a whole day of cycling. And if you happened to meet some not so nice people on your way, no one would come to your aid if you couldn’t help yourself.

  If they'd still had communication, then all she'd have had to do last night was make the call and someone would have been sent over to her neighborhood to check out the problem. They wouldn’t have had to meet the enemy at all; though it was still partially her fault that they did.

  But she had felt hope when she learned that not everything was lost. Working cars were rare, but if the possibility existed, then they could get lucky at some point, couldn’t they? Surely if there were still vehicles existing, it would only make things easier for them. It would be so much easier to go out looking for supplies to bring back to their town. Life might never return to what they had known before, but surely this meant hope.

  She had felt none of that when she heard a noise out in the street and parted her sister's curtains to see a car parked in the middle of the road. What reason was there for a car to be outside, idling
in their street, this late at night?

  Why had she done it? After seeing it, after her sister warned her of danger, she should have been more cautious. Well, Tessa was talking about a nightmare she had and trying to turn it into a prediction, so she might have gotten a little annoyed about that and done something contrary without realizing.

  But the first thing she thought of when she saw the car, was to wake the two men in the house and step outside with them to see what was going on. If she'd been using her head, she would have watched a bit longer through the window and assessed the situation before moving to do anything about it. But she had been a little angry at her sister and acted impulsively, so the three of them stepped out of the house.

  As if that was the best thing to do when there were unknowns in the area, and so late at night.

  Maybe, if she hadn't tried to do anything, they wouldn’t have been noticed. They would have gone to other houses and taken their fill then left without coming across Clara's house. It was a vain hope, but it could have happened. Then again, the reason why they didn’t continue to raid the area was because they stole more than enough from her family, after terrifying and hurting them, and then laughed as they left.

  They'd promised to come back for more.

  Somehow, Clara had to prepare for that. They had done this once, but she could not allow them a second chance. It left her seething with frustration because she had no idea how to stop these people. Repairing the shed was the only little task she could do and it only added to her anger and her frustration. She pictured the women and thought of gladly killing them for what they'd done. She couldn't go back to sleep after the experience, and the sleep deprivation wasn’t helping her frame of mind.

  "Clara?"

  The sound of someone calling her name startled her. She'd thought she was alone out here. She knew, without having to turn around, it was Cooper’s voice calling to her.

  Her hand froze with the hammer over her shoulder, the other hand holding a board steady against the shed, the nail still not hammered in properly.

  "Hey, Clara? Are you okay? Because you really don’t look like you are…"

  She ignored the forced lightness in his voice, wanting to scoff at his words. Why was he asking if she was alright when it was clear that she was not? How could she ever be okay again, after what she had let happen? She knew what she’d see when she looked at him which was why she really didn’t want to just then. She'd been hit in the face with a gun before, and it hadn't been fun for her. His cheek would swell, because they didn’t have ice to put on it, and then get discolored. He would look terrible and it would last for a while. Her own wound, though probably taken care of, had still left a mark because it had taken her too long to get it looked at.

  She’d gone out with Cooper and Dante on a trip to a neighboring town doing volunteer work for their own, but the residents hadn't been welcoming. Then she'd returned, only to be seized by the police and locked up. One of the officers assaulted her and opened a wound on her already wounded cheek. The mark on her face would probably never go away, and Cooper might have the same reminder she did for a while.

  Why had he even approached her? She had the feeling everyone else in the house was ignoring her, either sensing her mood or dealing with their own problems. Whichever one, when Clara decided to come out to work on the shed, and after refusing Cooper's well-intentioned offer to help, she had been alone.

  When she didn’t answer for several minutes, Cooper spoke again. "Why are you doing that, now of all times? I'm sure the shed door can wait, at least for a little bit longer. Can't you just leave it inside and go rest already?"

  That unfroze her. She lowered the hammer but kept a hold on the board. She turned so she could see Cooper, ignoring the injury on his face as she sent a scowl his way.

  "Isn't it obvious?" It should have been. Considering he was closer to her than anyone else. How could he not see it? Or had she changed that much, that her own best friend didn’t recognize her? "I want to protect what belongs to my family. To us. You heard them, didn’t you? They're going to be back, and I refuse to be left starving because some crazy women think they can go around doing whatever they want. Of course, the shed door needs to be closed. We can't just leave it wide open, like a fucking invitation for people to rob us."

  If there had been a safer place, Clara would have moved the food to it. But there was so much, even though it had been reduced now, it still filled most of the shed. Her sister had been the one to store all that food, even if she bought it with money that Clara provided, and she had done it for their family. Besides, Clara didn’t want to risk her neighbors knowing about their stash, considering they were keeping it a secret from the rest of the town. And if those women simply went through the house as before, they would find the stuff wherever she chose to hide it.

  "We can't do anything against them," Cooper countered, stepping closer. So, he wasn’t entirely clueless on her thinking process. "Fighting back will be much more dangerous, Clara. They have numbers, they have weapons. They have a vehicle so we can't even outrun them. Frankly, I'd rather not be here when they come back, but I know you'll refuse to leave."

  Well, of course, that was entirely out of the question. Why on earth did her family have to leave their home? Those women were the intruders, the ones that should stay away. How could he even say that, when he had been the one injured this time? Clara wouldn’t stand for it. She refused to listen to him.

  She turned back and hammered the nail through the board with one final, hard hit, then turned back to Cooper. "I refuse to be bullied by women, Cooper. I refuse to subject my grandmother and my sister to them again, and I will not allow them to enter my house for a second time. I'm not just going to sit by doing nothing, so give up on convincing me otherwise."

  Clara hadn't let it hold her back before, and this was no different. There was more than one woman and they had more dangerous weapons, but she didn’t care. She turned back to finish with the last boards, not hearing Cooper leave.

  After she was done, Clara searched the house for things she could use as a weapon. She found several sharp knives, but not much else. There was a bat she got from the crazy woman that attacked her after Clara stopped her from stealing, but she'd had to turn that over to the police as well, after her court case, not that it would have been worth much, anyway. She would be up against guns, and she wasn’t so naïve to think she could find a way around the lack of weapons. Viola's gardening tools were the closest she could get to a good weapon, but it would not be enough.

  "Dammit!" she cursed, slamming her palms on the counter. She hated feeling helpless, and she had no intention of allowing this to keep her down. The only real challenge was what to do for her defense that didn’t need her to get in close range.

  A sound behind her had her turning sharply. She'd thought she was alone, but Dante had walked in without her noticing. He looked at the knives lined up on the counter, then arched his eyebrows in her direction.

  Clara sighed. "Weapons, Dante. In case those women come back. I don’t know when it will be, but we need to prepare somehow and this…" she waved her hand over the counter, "and my grandmother's gardening equipment is everything I can think of."

  He frowned. "Isn't it a little dangerous, though?"

  "Who cares about dangerous? Who wants to starve? And I definitely don’t want those women coming back here, either, so they can just do whatever they want."

  She was going to turn away from him. She'd thought at least he understood, but maybe not.

  "Wait."

  Clara stopped, turning back to Dante, her own eyebrows shooting up. She and Dante hadn't really talked much since “it” happened, the incident where she ended up hurting both him and Cooper. It had just been yesterday, she was sure, yet with the attack, it felt like it had been ages ago.

  "What?" she asked impatiently. "If you have something more to say…"

  What more could he possibly have to say? If he wanted to be negative
like Cooper, Clara wasn’t going to hear it.

  "I have an idea."

  Well, that surprised her. It wasn’t exactly what she'd expected him to say to her. Her interest was piqued. Dante's face hardened, and Clara realized that he didn’t hold the same view as her best friend. Good. She could use some support with this.

  "And that is?"

  "I have a gun in my house. I don’t use it much, but I definitely have ammo lying around. It's technically for hunting, though I haven't gone in a while, but it's licensed so we shouldn’t get in trouble with the cops. I just need to figure out a way to get into the house to get it."

  Having a gun would increase their chances greatly and Clara almost let excitement overwhelm her. Of course, then she remembered why Dante was staying with her instead of living in his house, next door. His wife thought there was something between them, and while Clara couldn’t deny it, they weren’t anything to each other. But Michelle, Dante's wife, had kicked him out, and they hadn't talked since. She wasn't even letting him see his kids, a five-year-old and a toddler, both girls.

  "You'll just have to try," she told him. It would be his decision to make, of course, but they needed to do this a lot sooner than later. It might take Dante and Michelle longer to forgive each other and move back in together. "It would be a good opportunity to find peace with Michelle and protect your family."