The whole gang sat at the dining table downstairs. Really, it was more of a meeting table, since nobody ever ate on it.
"I thought we could talk about what to do next. I know Madison mentioned needing clothes," Elyza gestured to the other blonde, "I need to find laundry detergent and dryer sheets. Does anybody need anything specific?"
"Binoculars and rechargeable walkie-talkies." Alicia stated matter-of-factly.
"How are you always coming up with good ideas?" Ofelia elbowed the girl next to her.
"Can you make a list of everything in your phone?" Elyza asked Alicia.
The brunette pulled the device from her sweatpants' pocket and typed the items into the notes app.
"What are you even able to do on that phone anymore, besides music and notes?" Nick leaned over to watch Alicia type.
"I can still take pictures and videos. Some of the games still work, they don't need an internet connection. And I have movies downloaded."
"Maybe I should've kept mine." Nick slumped back into his seat.
Madison rested her arms on the table. "When are we making this trip?"
Elyza shrugged. "We could go today, if you want. There's a thrift store at the bottom of this hill, down that main road a couple blocks, and a market right next door. There's a wagon in storage I can pull out so we don't have to carry everything on our backs."
"We're walking?" Nick asked.
Elyza nodded simply. "Only one of the cars is a hybrid, I need to save gas until we can all go out and suck on fumes all day."
"I'm going to change, then. It's warm out there." Madison scooted her chair back, stood, and pushed it back in before leaving the dining room and ascending the stairs.
Nick looked down at his half-dirtied basketball shorts and tank top. "Eh, no sense changing if I'll be sweating."
"So gross," Ofelia rolled her eyes playfully. "You've been wearing that for two days."
"I'm not used to clean clothes!" Nick shrugged.
Alicia tugged at the legs of her sweatpants, but the cuffs at the bottom clung to her ankles. "I need to borrow shorts."
"Oh sure, come pick out a pair." Elyza hopped up and motioned for Alicia to follow her upstairs. They entered the blonde's room, and Alicia detected a hint of a sweet perfume. "Do you want boy shorts, gym shorts, bermudas?"
"Gym shorts."
Elyza dug through the drawers of her taller dresser and pulled out basic black gym shorts. "Here you go. And just let me know if you need to laundry, I'll give you the rundown on the machines."
"Thanks," Alicia smiled bashfully. "I actually need to do that when we get back."
"No problem, I have some things to throw in too."
Alicia nodded once and headed to her room.
Everybody knew their walk back up the hill would be hell. Alicia, Nick, and Ofelia could have easily fit into the high-walled wagon together and rode down the sidewalk without the need for being pushed or pulled, but a broken arm in the apocalypse carried more risk of complications than any of them were willing to wager against. Of course, that didn't stop them from taking turns sitting in it while someone else guided.
With the assistance of the decline, the group reached their destination in ten minutes. The glass doors were locked, but couldn't hold up against a bobby pin straight from Elyza's hair.
The entirety of the thrift store appeared untouched. Everything was as orderly as it possibly could have been in the first place, with a thin layer of dust to prove it.
"Isn't it kind of odd nobody's gone through all this?" Ofelia asked by a large shelf as she ran her fingers along books' spines.
Nick mumbled, "I don't think this part of town was big on thrift shops anyway."
Elyza chuckled and swung her metal bat like a pendulum. "My guess would be that anyone who came this way made a break for the mansions. Haven't seen anyone up there though, so I can't be sure."
"The market next store is probably a different story." Madison slid clothes on hangers across the metal bars holding them.
"Oh yeah, without a doubt," Elyza projected her voice, "But all we need from there is laundry detergent."
"And dryer sheets," Alicia added. "Binoculars and walkie-talkies if possible."
Nick popped his head over the aisles of the electronics section. "There are some walkie-talkies over here! Rechargeable!"
"What luck!" Elyza jogged to Nick from across the store to read the back of the box. "Only two, but we can work with that." She turned the box over to inspect the items. One was painted to look like Spongebob, the other to look like Patrick. She laughed. "You gotta do what you gotta do, I guess."
Nick joined in on the laughter and tossed the box into the wagon beside him. "Maybe we'll get lucky and find Mr. Krabs binoculars."
"Well, they certainly couldn't be Plankton." Elyza winked and moseyed over to the toy section, where Alicia dug through piles of ratty stuffed animals, rejecting everything her hands touched. "Looking for anything in particular?"
"Not really." Alicia's focus remained on the task at hand. Her skin crawled at the fact she was touching toys that once belonged to children (whom she did not like whatsoever). Obviously, whatever germs or viruses that once lurked on them were long gone, but something about the toys felt dirty to her. The plastic toys didn't bother her so much, but she may as well have been shoving her hands in a vat of germs instead of the mounds of stuffed animals. "Nick found walkie-talkies?"
"Spongebob ones, but yes." Elyza glanced over the top shelf of toys, an occasional childhood memory surfacing at the sight of older playthings. "I don't think we'll have the same luck finding binoculars."
"Were there any people in your neighborhood who liked hunting?"
Elyza placed her hands on her hips and stared down at the floor, contemplating. "Not that I can remember."
"Hm." Alicia huffed. Still sorting, she'd worked her way a few feet over since Elyza joined her.
"Are you sure I can't help you find anything?"
"I'm sure." The brunette's eyes never moved from her busy hands.
"Do you need to look for clothes?"
"Everything in my room fits me." Her hands paused and she remained crouched, silent, for another moment. "Maybe I'll find something I like." Alicia straightened up and weaved through standing shelves to the racks of clothes her mother and Ofelia picked through.
Elyza followed Alicia down the rows of hangers, scoping through shirt after shirt that Alicia passed. The blonde wished she could shop as efficiently as the other girl; Alicia scanned what she could see of the shirts as she walked, only stopping at a color, pattern, or fit that intrigued her... so, rarely. She'd only been searching for two minutes by the time she passed Madison and Ofelia, covering the same ground in a quarter of the time. She breezed through the pants, pajamas, and miscellaneous items before the others could make it even halfway through the pants. Alicia tossed her picks into the wagon and used her spare time to comb through the chaotic toy section once more.
From the racks of clothes, Elyza peered over the standing shelves to watch Alicia's search. Surely the brunette must have been looking for something specific, she tossed each toy aside without spending any more than a couple seconds inspecting it.
"I can't figure it out, either."
Elyza jumped at the sudden voice behind her and whirled around to Ofelia.
"Sorry."
"It's fine," Elyza held a hand against her chest as if it would slow her pounding heart. "But what do you mean?"
"She's looking for something, I just don't know what."
"I tried asking if she needed help finding anything, but she said no." Elyza shrugged.
However, neither of them missed the way Alicia stealthily stuffed something into one of her pockets, patting it down to flatten it. The item still formed a bulge beneath the fabric, and the brunette readjusted it to no avail. Finally, she stuck her hands in her pockets and turned to walk back to the group, barely missing Elyza and Ofelia turning their heads the opposite direction.
"Everyone ready?" Madison asked, and the group nodded, headed for the door.
A single walker shambled through the parking lot. The group's movement out the door caught its attention and it reached forward as it ambled.
"I got it." Elyza lifted her bat to her shoulder, casually walked over to the zombie, and slammed the barrel against the side of its head. The decaying body dropped to the asphalt. The blonde shook the blood off the bat and held it against her shoulder before joining everyone in the market.
Just as they expected, the majority of the market had already been ravaged. Entire shelves laid on the floor and each other, covered in empty boxes and wrappers. Light beaming in from the windows illuminated the dreary mart. Without hope for leftover food, they made a beeline for the household products.
Dried detergent and fabric softener blanketed the sticky aisle floor. "Damn, those heathens made a mess just for the hell of it." Elyza hopped over blue and green puddles, all the while inspecting the shelves, grabbing whatever bottles remained unopened and tossing them to Nick to set it in the wagon. "I was hoping for more than six bottles, but that'll do for a while."
"Alicia!" Ofelia yelled in a panic.
The others turned to the youngest girl and the undead body coming up behind her.
It took her a moment, but she recognized the expressions on their faces as fear and whirled around just as the walker leaned forward to grab her. She ripped her hands from her pockets, ignoring the faint clatter by her feet as she pushed the rotting not-person away to give herself time to grab a knife from its sheath on her waistband and drive it through one of the zombie's eye sockets. It crumpled at her feet, and as she watched it, she caught sight of the item from her pocket beside her right foot.
"I thought we were done with this!" Madison exclaimed as her eyes fell on the object: a set of large, colorful, plastic keys on a ring. "The baby toys, the childish interests!"
Alicia quickly wiped the blade on the walker's shirt and returned it to its sheath. "Mom, I-"
"Don't you remember all the teasing at school? All the strangers staring in public? Have you forgotten-"
"Mom!" Alicia's voiced echoed through the store, and the power of it shocked the group, including Madison. "I don't care! I like it, it feels good in my hands, and it's nice to look at! Fuck what everyone else thinks! Fuck everybody's expectations of me!"
Madison sighed. "I didn't put you through ABA therapy for you to-"
"And fuck ABA therapy!" Alicia yelled. "I just want to live the way that makes me happy, especially now in this hellhole of a planet!" She snatched the keys from the floor and stuffed them back in her pocket. "Nobody owns me, nobody controls me. Not anymore."
"Alicia-"
"Mom." Nick held out a hand, palm facing down, to signal an end to the discussion. He turned his gaze to his sister. "Do you want to head back with Elyza while we try to find anything else here?"
Alicia nodded once, stiffly, and turned to walk out the door, followed by the Australian girl.
Nick sighed. "Mom, do you really think grilling her on what she likes is a good idea?"
"I just don't want her to be judged, she's always had so much trouble with other people."
"Who's here to judge her now?" Nick questioned. "I'm not, Ofelia's not, Elyza's not - all that's left is you."
"I'm not judging my own daughter." Madison rebutted.
"Really? Because you're the only one who gets upset about every autistic thing she does." Nick spoke with finality. He pulled the wagon further into the store.
Alicia silently fumed on the uphill trek. She didn't speak. Elyza prepared to appease the vexed woman, but thought better of it when the brunette flinched at her short coughing fit.
Thereafter, the only sound coming from either of them was heavy breathing.
Elyza sat on the sidewalk when they reached the front gate of the house. She patted the spot next to her when Alicia remained on her feet and stared down the hill. "We should wait out here, I need to open the gate for them."
After a moment of hesitation, Alicia lowered herself to the pavement beside the blonde. She pulled the keys from her pocket and slid them around the ring, still watching the hill.
Elyza floundered. The girl alongside her seemed to be winding down, so she didn't want to say anything to irk her. Yet, she still wanted to make it known she was there to listen. She generated and discarded multiple icebreakers before settling on something simple. "I'll listen if you want to talk about it."
Alicia tapped her middle fingers against the red key. A minute passed before she could form the words she wanted to use, but Elyza sat patiently, unmoving. "Stimming with baby toys doesn't make me a baby. They just happen to be better than those stupid fidgets that were targeted at 'stressed adults' -" she paused, then tacked on, "in my opinion."
Elyza remained silent, waiting for more, but Alicia didn't continue. "I don't think you're a baby," Elyza smiled cautiously at the brunette, even though her eyes fixated on the downhill road.
"Thanks," Alicia mumbled, "I'm an adult, I want to be treated like one." She slid the keys around the ring for a moment, then laughed indignantly under her breath. "I say that as I sit here with a fucking baby toy."
"I think I've heard you say 'fuck' more in the past twenty minutes than in the entire time I've known you," Elyza chuckled.
Alicia cracked a smile. "Well fuck, my bad."
Elyza laughed. "Is this you getting comfortable with me? Because if it's not, I can't begin to imagine what you might say when you are."
"You're good company, it's been a while since I could sit and laugh like this with someone." Alicia finally tore her gaze away from the road and looked at the blonde. Actually, she couldn't think of a time when she ever felt this light, even after a confrontation with her mom.
Elyza studied Alicia's green eyes and detected a hint of something other than the immense sincerity. It drew her in like a magnet, and she didn't realize she was leaning closer to the brunette until their noses brushed. Shit, she thought, I just crossed the line. She began to retreat at a glacial pace, but to her amazement, Alicia closed the gap and kissed her.
Alicia had allowed her gut to take control of the situation - not that her brain protested. The feeling of Elyza's soft lips moving against hers sent the neurons in her brain into overdrive, and her senses shouted soundlessly. She could almost feel the cells in her body tensing up in a pleasant way, for once.
The kiss was short-lived and delicate, but the thrill of it left both women speechless as they locked eyes, both grinning.