10
Home
Alicia made her way across the hot parking lot heading for the Civic, but paused at the sound of Elyza hollering from behind her.
"We're not taking that tatty shit house." Elyza called. She was walking around to the other side of the lot, making a bee line for a red Subaru Outback that, even from a distance, Alicia could see had been more than just a little modified. Spiked metal poles protruded from various parts of the vehicle. Long pieces of scrap metal sharpened into blades were fixed to the side fenders. Two spiked, angled metal sheets were welded to its front bumper to create a sort of plow. Someone had painted eyes and fangs on the plow so that the vehicle looked more like some dangerous, wild creature than a car.
Elyza smiled at the look of awe on Alicia's face as she approached. "Ricki's good at working with metal." She explained. "He made a few improvements on this beaut for us. Offered to customize my Harley too, but I'm a purist. I wouldn't let him touch her. Speaking of Ricki... Give me one second." She said, moving past Alicia with an excited smile.
Alicia turned to see her jogging towards the church door where Ricki, Rob, and Mary waited, along with a pretty Hispanic girl with a ponytail. The girl was showing Rob how to use a small radio. Alicia watched as Elyza exchanged words with the group, then hugs. Was it just her imagination, or did Rob's hug linger? Finally Elyza accepted a long bundle from Ricki, standing on her tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on the cheek in exchange, and started jogging back to Alicia, practically grinning.
"Hey, Little Coon..." Elyza panted, slightly out of breath. "Can I borrow your bat?"
Thoroughly confused, Alicia obliged. Elyza awkwardly cradled her bundle in one arm and reached for the bat with the other. Then she swung the bat as hard as she could, sending it flying across the parking lot.
"Hey!" Alicia protested as she watched her bat ricochet off the pavement and into an oleander bush. "What the..."
"Here." Elyza interrupted. "This is for you."
She held out the bundle, unwrapping a fuzzy beach towel to reveal leather beneath. Alicia quickly realized the hard leather housed a long metal sword. Elyza unsheathed the sword from the leather and held it out to Alicia. It was nothing beautiful. It's shape was rough. The metal was dark and a little rusted in some places. The sword was clearly handmade, but it looked sharp and deadly.
"I told you, I've never used a sword in my life." Alicia warned Elyza. Still, she could almost feel her fingertips tingling in anticipation as she reached for the blade. She tentatively wrapped her fingers around the rounded end of the blade and held it out before her. Then she swung the sword through the air and it was if the blade was nothing more than an extension of her own arm. Immediately, she felt it... The same feeling she got with a paintbrush in her hand; the same feeling she got when she stared at the stars; the same feeling she got when she heard Elyza say "Lexa." It was just... It just felt... right.
It felt good, unbelievably good. And before she knew what she was doing, Alicia was cutting and slicing and dicing the air around her, moving her arm in tight figure eights and wide deadly circles.
"Well..." Elyza laughed. "Either you're bullshitting me or you're a goddamn prodigy. You look like the freak offspring of a ninja and a bloody ballerina."
Alicia stopped herself in the middle of a pivot, pulling out of her spinning lunge. She had forgotten that Elyza was watching her. She had forgotten everything except the blade in her hand. She lowered her arm, her face burning partly in embarrassment, partly from the exertion. Blood was pounding in her ears. Adrenaline was coursing in her veins. She was embarrassed. But it still felt good, unbelievably good.
"So..." Elyza smirked. "You like it?"
"I..." Alicia could not explain how she felt. She did not even understand it, herself. "I love it. Thank you."
"Well... I figured if I couldn't get you to carry a gun, at least this is better than that stupid bat." Elyza said with a casual shrug, as if the gift meant nothing. But the smile in her eyes and the blush in her cheeks betrayed her. She was pleased.
"Now sheathe that thing before you give one of us tetanus, and lets get going." She said, climbing into the Subaru. "By the way, careful getting in, Little Coon." Elyza laughed. "Sometimes Anya bites."
Alicia carefully opened the passenger door and climbed in, making sure not to impale herself in the process. "Anya?" She asked.
"Ricki named her." Elyza answered with a shrug. "He said I wasn't allowed to call her Clarke." She turned the key in the ignition and Alicia jumped as the engine roared to life. Elyza laughed. "Anya's a spitfire." She said with a wicked smile. "You think Ricki did a nice job on the outside? Well... Crow made a few of her own modifications on the inside. I'm not the only adrenaline junky in the Ark."
...
Alicia flinched as blood splattered the windshield. With a lazy flick of her finger Elyza turned on the windshield wipers, still humming along with the CD blasting from the speakers, "I like the way you work it. No diggity." The wipers left red streaks on the glass and thudded against the infected's dismembered arm a few times until Elyza gave the steering wheel a sharp jerk and the arm was finally dislodged and flopped off the side of the hood. Elyza gave the steering wheel another jerk and Alicia shut her eyes against the carnage, the Subaru bucking her in her seat as the back tires rolled over the fallen infected.
"Do you have to hit every single one?" Alicia asked over the music. "I think I'm gonna be sick."
"Just don't chunder on the upholstery. I don't have any barf bags." Elyza paused from her singing to laugh. Then lifting her voice perfectly with the music, "I got to bag it, bag it up."
At Alicia's glare, she finally tore her eyes from the road and met Alicia's. "I'm sorry." She apologized sheepishly. Alicia could tell she was still trying not to laugh. "It's Anya's fault, really. When I get behind this wheel, I can't help it. I mean... She's designed to slaughter. But I guess I can try to go around them," she finished, simultaneously swerving around a teenage boy in a backwards baseball cap. Alicia watched the infected as they passed within an arm's length of him. But before they had cleared him, the spike protruding from the back fender caught him in the leg, piercing right through his skinny jeans and skewering his thigh. Anya dragged the infected a good 100 yards before his leg finally ripped free of the spike.
"Oops." Elyza cringed, sucking air through her teeth as she watched the boy in the rearview, now crawling across the pavement, his half-severed leg dragging behind him. "My bad... I thought I cleared him. I'll go around the next one, I swear."
"So..." Elyza continued, slowing the car at an intersection. "We're running out of road. Gonna hit water real soon. I think we should probably follow this one. It looks like a main road. Question is... North or South?"
Alicia looked out her window, still not recognizing a thing. Elyza waited patiently, softly singing, "I'm radioactive, radioactive," her fingers drumming the steering wheel to the beat of the music.
"North?" Alicia answered, half asking, half telling.
"North it is." Elyza said, making a right turn and stepping onto the accelerator again, following the road through shopping strips and fast food joints as she sang on. "Welcome to the new age, to the new age. Welcome to the new age... Boy did these drongos get it wrong."
"What?" Alicia glanced at Elyza, confused.
Elyza pointed at the CD player. "Imagine Dragons." She explained. "They totally got the whole apocalypse thing wrong. I mean, a nuclear apocalypse? If only..." She said, dreamily.
"I don't know..." Alicia responded. "A nuclear apocalypse might be worse."
"Worse than this shit?" Elyza replied. "How could anything possibly be worse than this shit? Fuckin' dead people trying to eat your face off everywhere you go..."
"Yeah, but at least you can shoot dead people." Alicia argued. "You can't shoot radiation. In a full nuclear apocalypse, the whole world would be ruined. The very air would be toxic."
"Yeah, but radiation doesn't last forever." Elyza argued. "You'd just have to wait it out. Hunker down somewhere."
"Hunker down somewhere?" Alicia asked, skeptically. "Like where? In a bunker under a mountain or something? You'd be trapped under there for who knows how long. And if you were never exposed to any of the radiation, you'd probably never be able to go back outside. Your body would never adjust."
"Naw," Elyza shook her head. "I wouldn't wait it out in some lame-ass, shit house underground bunker. I'm talking about leaving Earth entirely."
"What?" Laughed Alicia.
"You could totally wait it out in style in space." Elyza answered.
"What?" Alicia laughed again. "On what planet?"
"On a space station, you duffer." Elyza replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Alicia just shook her head, smiling. Of course Elyza, with her strange affection for all things space related would come up with such a ridiculous idea.
"Don't shake your head at me like it's some ridiculous idea." Elyza scolded her, as if able to read her thoughts."With the right supplies you could totally survive up in space and wait until Earth was inhabitable again."
"This whole conversation is ridiculous." Alicia laughed. But she decided to humor her. "But, OK... Say you somehow managed to make it to a space station before getting blown up. And you had enough food and water and oxygen and all that crap you would need to survive up in space. And there were enough survivors to have kids and stuff and build a little population up... How would you even know just when Earth was 'inhabitable' again?"
Elyza scrunched her face, thinking. "I guess you'd have to send down some poor suckers to test it and find out." She shrugged.
"Yeah." Alicia laughed. "And I bet those poor suckers would come all the way back down to Earth, thinking they were the saviors of mankind, only to find there's a bunch of people already managing just fine down on the ground. Because... Really? Space? Don't you think that's a bit dramatic? Overkill? Extra?"
"What?" Elyza replied. "Extra? Hello... The air on Earth is toxic. How would people be surviving?"
"Because," Alicia argued. "There are always survivors. Most people would die off, but you know there would be some people with like, good genes or something, that ended up being able to survive radiation."
"Good genes?" Elyza interrupted, laughing critically.
"Yeah, good genes." Alicia continued. "Mother nature always finds a way. It's science. Anyway, I bet these people who survived would probably already have rebuilt society when your weirdos come down from outer space and probably start screwing everything up for them."
Elyza laughed. "Sounds like a cheesy sci-fi show."
"Yeah, it does." Alicia agreed. "And I bet the space people and the earth people would end up in some stupid war against each other, because the show would be way too boring if the earth people just gave the space people a nice plot of land and showed them how to grow corn."
"Too right.." Elyza answered. "You'd definitely need some bad-ass battles with guns and swords and warpaint and shit. And you'd hafta throw in some romance. I bet the king dick of the space people and the king dick of the earth people, even though they're sworn enemies, would end up falling hopelessly in love... or at least having a naughty." Elyza laughed. "'Cause who doesn't love the whole, sappy star-crossed-lovers story line?"
"Sounds like a super-de-duper cheesy sci-fi show," Alicia laughed.
"I'd totally watch it." Elyza said.
"Me too." Alicia admitted, straightening in her seat as the road cut left and they finally got a glimpse of blue ocean peeking out from behind the businesses. Cheap motels and Bed and Breakfasts with cheesy names were popping up left and right.
"Still..." Elyza said. "Radiation or not, it would be ripper not to have to worry about being bloody eaten every time you go outside."
"I don't know." Alicia argued. "What about mutant animals trying to eat you?"
"Mutant animals?" Elyza replied. "What animals? This is L.A.. What's going to attack you, a two-headed chihuahua? I mean... Its not like we have giant gorillas or..."
"Wait!" Alicia shouted, cutting off Elyza's rambling. "I know where we are!"
"Really?" Elyza replied, looking out the windshield excitedly as if expecting to see a signpost with "The Clarks, Next Right" plastered on it.
"Yes!" Alicia answered, "I recognize that narwhal!"
She pointed at a ridiculous gigantic stone statue of a narwhal holding a bright blue sign with the words "Sofia's Seashells by the Seashore B&B" painted across it.
"That hideous thing?" Elyza asked, frowning at the statue.
"Yes," Alicia giggled. "We definitely passed that on the way to Strand's place. Go slow."
Alicia craned her neck, searching for more familiar sights as they cruised slowly down the road.
Soon the fast food joints gave way to classy seafood restaurants and the shabby motels were replaced by ritzy hotels.
"Here," She called. "Turn here."
They were now climbing a hill lined with decorated iron gates and massive, gleaming driveways leading to massive, gleaming houses.
"Well," Elyza said, eyeing the houses with a strange mixture of awe and disgust. "I've definitely never been through this part of town before." She gave Alicia a quick glance. "You excited to be going home?"
"This isn't my home." Alicia replied flatly, her stomach knotting as she thought of her home, her old room with Matt's drawings above her bed. "I don't have a home anymore."
"Sure you do." Elyza spoke. "Your family's here, right? In my book, that makes it 'home.'"
When Alicia didn't reply, Elyza reached out and turned the volume down a notch. "You know... When I was a little rug rat," she began, apparently suddenly deciding it was story time. "Back in Australia... we lived in a tatty little trailer. My sister and I didn't mind. We used to make pretend we lived in a spaceship. But once I got old enough to realize our space shuttle was really just a shit house trailer, I asked my Dad 'how come we didn't have a nice fancy home like the other kids?' And you know what he told me?" She paused dramatically.
"He said," She cleared her throat and then put on a deep, heavy Australian accent. "'Lyzie Loo, a fancy house is not a home. A home is not a place. Home is not where you are. It's who you're with. Home is the people who make you feel safe. Home is the people who you can always be yourself with because they know the dinki-di, ridgy didge you and they love her."'
She paused to look at Alicia. "He said, 'surround yourself with those kinds of people and you will always have a home.'"
"My dad was always saying stuff like that." She continued, turning her eyes back on the road with a faraway look. "I guess you could say he was a dreamer. I never understood most of it. But anyway, I remember that day he told me a lot of 'them big-smoke, tall poppies,' as he called them, in 'them fancy, exy houses' don't have a home. And he swore he'd never trade places with them, even if he could."
"And I said, 'But daddy... Rin lives in a fancy house and she has a swimming pool. Why can't our home have a swimming pool?'" Elyza finished with a laugh.
Alicia didn't laugh. She was lost in what Elyza had said, the depth behind her father's words. Where was her home now? Alicia wondered to herself. Did she even have a home? Was it with her mom? Or Nick? Somehow neither answer felt right. Who made her feel comfortable, safe? She knew the answer. It was clear, and obvious, and absolutely crazy. And she couldn't bring herself to admit that the person who felt the most like 'home' to her was the one sitting beside her... The one she had only just met... The one she felt like she had somehow always known.
"So, do you call the Ark 'home,' then?" Alicia asked, swallowing hard. She was inexplicably nervous again as she waited for Elyza's answer. She thought of how comfortable Elyza had seemed at the Ark, how freely she had hugged her friends. How freely she had hugged Rob. What did she expect?Alicia thought to herself. That Elyza would say 'no... You're my home now, Lil' Coon?' The idea was ridiculous. Of course Elyza would think of the Ark as home. And yet Alicia couldn't help but think, if she felt at home at the Ark, what was Elyza doing running around on her own, camping out in a random elementary school?
Elyza still did not answer. She was staring at the road, her eyebrows furrowed, her chin wriggling back and forth in thought. And Alicia could not help but wonder if maybe Elyza was still searching for a home too. Finally Elyza spoke, her voice serious, pensive.
"The Ark doesn't have a swimming pool either." Was all she said. And Alicia could not help but smile.