Alicia couldn't remember a time when she felt as free as she did on Elyza's motorcycle. The rescuer insisted on taking the long way to the hidden car, crawling up side streets just slowly enough for the horde behind them to keep up. She'd said it would "prevent the fuckers from coming back."
The roar of the engine piercing Alicia's ear muffs didn't even bother her, it couldn't ruin such a perfect moment. Somehow, it all came together to form one sensory heaven in this new world: the steadily purifying air streaming over her closed eyes and pushing her wavy brunette hair behind her, the trembling bike beneath her awakening every numb, sleeping cell in her body, but perhaps the best part of it all was the warmth of Elyza's midsection encircled by her arms. Alicia forced herself to be patient as she progressively wriggled her arms under Elyza's leather jacket over the span of ten minutes, and her stealth proved to be truly magnificent. Elyza failed to notice the placement of the younger girl's arms until they arrived at their desired destination, ditching the walkers about a mile back.
Elyza was no fool. It wasn't enough to just leave the walkers behind at a park and hope they didn't continue to follow the bike as it zipped down the street at 80 miles per hour. She couldn't depend on "hoping" in this world. Her only "hope" in that moment was the grenade she chucked clear across the park, timed so perfectly that it detonated when the girls were already several blocks down. Her plan was a success: not a single walker could focus on the thundering chopper when a sizable chunk of the once blooming park burst into nothing but a pit. Alicia could have sworn she heard the other girl mumble "idiots," but couldn't be sure through the thick foam of her ear protectors.
Alicia's back stiffened at the sight of roamers filing out of the stock room of the Nike outlet when Elyza tapped her bat against a bench. The ping of metal on metal matched the distressing bellows of the deceased. 1... 2... 3... 4 of them approached rapidly, but not before Elyza could swing the bat to send three heads rolling. Shock paralyzed her when the hands of the fourth wrapped around her right arm from behind. She couldn't whip her arm around to her front without pulling the beast closer, and turning around would allow it the time to lean down and sink its teeth into the skin of her upper arm. Before she could bid the world goodbye, the peeling hands dropped from her arm and the creature fell to the floor with a thump. Elyza pivoted just in time to catch Alicia sliding her knife out of the walker's temple.
"Now it's you who's saved me, princess," Elyza smiled weakly at the brunette rising from a crouch. "Thank you."
Alicia abandoned "you're welcome," opting to lurch forward and pull the blonde into the tightest hug she could muster. She decided she'd never let anything take this girl away from her. If she had to run through a crowd of walkers, fine. If she had to drive her knife into hundreds more skulls and have to process the sickening crack of the brittle bone each time, fine. Even if she had to stand up to her own mother, who absolutely forbade newcomers. Fine. "Don't die."
"I might if you keep squeezing me like that," Elyza strangled out a laugh, and Alicia took a step back, blushing. "Let's check the stock room."
They edged through the storage area, wary of whatever else might be back there. Stray flies alerted them to death. Gripping her bat, Elyza whirled around the corner of a row of shelves to inspect the source. She was relieved to find motionless corpses. A path made from blood and entrails led them to a metal door. Dim white light filtered through the minute crack between the door and its threshold. Elyza raised the bat again.
"Wait," Alycia put a hand on Elyza's fists, gently lowering them. "If...they're alive, I doubt the first thing they'll want to see is your weapon. Especially with me next to you."
Elyza quirked her lips for a moment, then nodded. She opened the door.
The squeak of the hinges failed to cover the sound of a gun clicking. Elyza dropped the bat and lifted her hands, the weapon clamoring against the laminate.
Madison recognized her daughter and rushed over to hug her. "Oh my god, I thought you were dead," she squeezed tighter and tears escaped her eyes. Alicia was glad to see her mother, but not glad enough to enjoy this hug.
Ofelia kept her gun aimed at the stranger standing beside her "sister from another mister," as she called her. Elyza gulped.
"Ofelia, it's okay, she's with me," Alicia informed her and wormed her way out of the arms constricting her. "She's the reason I'm alive."
Madison turned to evaluate the new girl. "What were you doing over here when that shitstorm came through?"
"I..." Elyza debated in her head. She could tell the truth and most likely be hated, or lie and risk being caught, which would most likely make them hate her more. She glanced to Alicia for guidance, but the girl was too focused on the assortment of unopened cans scattered across the table in the middle of the room. "I brought them here. It was an accident though, I swear. I would never hurt anyone unless they threaten me first, and you guys were minding your own business. I'm really, really sorry. As soon as Alicia told me you were in here, we got on my bike and led them all away. I'm not a threat, really." Her eyes darted nervously between Ofelia and Madison, the business end of the gun still pointed at her.
"Ofelia," Madison raised a hand to her without breaking eye contact with Elyza. Ofelia lowered her firearm and stuck it back in its holster. "You almost killed us."
"That's what Alicia said earlier...I truly am sorry."
"You should be, if I lost my baby to those things to you I swear I would've-"
"Mom, chill," Nick hopped down from the counter and strolled casually to his mother, throwing an arm around her shoulders. "She saved Alicia and went through all this trouble to save us. She's good news, we should keep her around."
"I don't know, Nick. I told you guys, no new people."
"Please," Alicia spoke up, eyes shifting to her mother. "She knows life should be about more than just surviving, and she has the wit to fulfill that. She's a valuable asset, mom, we'll die out there without her."
"Alicia, we've already made it this far, I think we can handle going back to how we were." Madison crossed her arms.
"No." Alicia lifted her chin.
"Excuse me?" Madison asked in disbelief.
"No," Alicia repeated. "She's staying. I won't let you make her leave."
Elyza felt awkward being caught in the middle of a family decision, but she agreed with Alicia, even if only to stay with the girl a bit longer. "I won't get in the way, I'd be more than willing to prove that I'm trustworthy. And I know a place we can stay."
"You mean you know a place you can lure us to be killed?" Ofelia snapped.
Madison sighed, agitated. She locked her jaw and stared Elyza in the eye, unblinking, for half a minute. "Fine. But don't doubt that I will kill you if I find out you're faking."
Elyza nodded once and followed the group as they headed out to the parking lot.
"How exactly do you plan on getting us to this place?" Madison questioned, eyes squinting against the sun hovering low in the sky.
The honk of a Kia Forte answered the query, and Elyza held up the keys. "I'm not quite as unorganized as I look."
Alicia couldn't help but watch Elyza for the entirety of the ten minute drive to the outskirts of the area. She didn't care that the three passengers in the back seat could see her not-so-discreet ogling. Madison had cleared her throat at least twice, and rolled her eyes when her grunts had no effect. Though the blatant display of admiration annoyed Madison to no end, Nick was more than happy to witness it. As her big brother, he was prepared since he was five years old to protect his little sister from the emotionally unavailable boys he knew would be on the prowl. He'd be ashamed to admit it, but he decided to experiment a bit when Alicia turned fourteen. He remembered all the girls his age starting to talk about nothing but boys around twelve or thirteen years old, but not once did he ever hear Alicia babbling on about some boy, nor did he ever catch her eyeing one. His experiments consisted of taking his sister to the mall, under the guise of "just wanting to spoil my baby sister!" He knew his sibling would want to head over to the food court for pretzel nuggets and cheese dip exactly one hour into their shopping trip, and took the opportunity to observe her reactions. Countless times, he noticed very attractive boys her age pass by, nothing but smiles and 'hello's, whom she didn't care to acknowledge. At first he imagined it was just how she was at those exact moments in time, that she didn't want to be disturbed by anyone during her snack, but the girl later revealed to a shocked Nick that she just did not find them attractive and wanted nothing to do with them. Even Matt didn't quite spark her interest to this degree. He didn't receive several minutes of unconcealed gazing. Hell, she wouldn't even look him in the eye unless he asked. But within just the first two minutes of the drive, Nick saw firsthand the amount of eye contact Alicia could hold with someone if she really enjoyed it. And that was the thing he noticed: Alicia really seemed to enjoy Elyza as a whole. The first thoughts to ricochet across the walls of his mind were that Alicia was possibly gay. That would explain the cold shoulder she turned to all those boys. However, there were quite a few times an attractive woman would pass their table and he would most definitely notice, but Alicia still would not lift her eyes for more than a second, even as sweet perfume swept past the two. So maybe she wasn't exactly gay, either. Nick settled on the expression their neighbor coined back when his sister was just a little kid: "Alicia is just Alicia." And, if it was even possible, Alicia seemed more like herself than she had ever been. The smile that stretched her lips whenever Elyza connected their gazes was enough to convince him, as he never noticed his sister expressing anything other than her default stoic expression when someone ever did hold eye contact with her.
The ride came to an end when they reached the very top of a steep hill. Houses, or perhaps mansions, speckled the hillside, but this one was the icing on the cake. The towering abode rose three floors. The driveway itself was the size of the house. Solar panels tilted up from the walls surrounding the house, they tilted up from the entire roof, and panels held up by thick poles doubled as an open garage, already sheltering two other cars.
The steel mechanical gate to the driveway closed behind them and Elyza parked under the panel cover. "Welcome to my humble abode."
Ofelia's jaw dropped open. "Is this really yours? Like, you didn't claim it when the shit hit the fan?"
"It was my parents', technically. I never moved out. They always wanted me close and hey, you can't argue with living in a place like this, yeah?"
"Well, shit," Nick muttered.
Alicia unbuckled herself and shifted in her seat for a clearer view of Elyza. "If you can live here, why do you camp out in that RV on the other side of town?"
"Easy," Elyza prepared to launch herself into a full explanation. "Los Angeles, including its suburbs which we're in right now, was overpopulated. When, um... 'shit hit the fan,' thank you Ofelia," she smiled at the reeling woman in the back seat. "There were a lot of people who turned into roamers. I don't like to be cooped up, there's no way I could stay in a house for more than a couple days, even if it's this big, so I gave myself options. If I want to go explore or look for food, I can't guarantee I'll be able to come all the way back up here. You never know, a huge group of the fuckers could be blocking that gate, and I can't risk opening it and letting them in. So I have my options spread all over this suburban area," she turned to Alicia. "Like I said, I'm untouchable."
"That's cool and all, but what if living people steal your cars or raid your houses?" Nick leaned over Madison to get a better look at the woman in the driver's seat.
"The cars are expensive, so they're hard to hotwire. And they're rigged to set off the alarm if someone pulls the handles too many times, or if the glass breaks. I guarantee anyone trying to steal those cars will abandon them as soon as that alarm goes off, I don't think anyone's stupid enough to stick around something so loud nowadays. As for the houses, they're fortified and require keys. Or they're like this place and have high walls. But I'm not really worried either way, this city's so overrun by the dead that nobody wants to come near it, and they're not familiar enough with the suburbs to chance it."
Nick paused. "Sounds good to me," he shrugged.
"How could your parents afford all this?" Madison furrowed her brows.
"My mother was the best ER doctor in southern California, and my dad was best friends with President Jaha back when he was in office, but they kept in touch over the years. His birthday gifts to each of us were always over the top extravagant. He gave us these solar panels because he was tired of my mother complaining about the poor state of the environment," Elyza chuckled.
Alicia picked up on Elyza's use of past tense when talking about her parents, but couldn't figure out exactly what that entailed. Maybe Elyza figured that career labels didn't matter anymore and so abandoned them, or maybe... she hoped it wasn't the alternative.
The group couldn't believe their eyes when Elyza gave them the full tour.
The foyer had an oak door on either side, and a long royal blue carpet leading to the marble staircase straight ahead from the front door. Paintings of thunderstorms and ancient landscapes adorned the walls leading to the staircase, all framed with gold. Elyza allowed them some time to gape at the art before moving on to the left door of the foyer. The others shuffled from one painting to the next after half a minute, but Alicia inspected more closely. The thunderstorm pieces could have very easily been photographs with the way the "light" was so accurately distributed among the underbellies of the inky clouds. As for the landscapes, the grasslands rose from the canvas in thousands of short, pencil-thin strokes. Hidden among the shrubbery in one of the paintings were the initials E.L.
Alicia couldn't remember seeing the initials marked on any of the other pieces. Elyza watched the brunette with crossed arms, amused by her darting movements to each of the canvases, squinting to inspect the same corner of each one to find a tiny black E.L.
"Moving on," Elyza called as she turned the doorknob to their next room.
Ofelia all but shoved Alicia away from the paintings to the open door, through which everyone had already passed a minute ago.
Through the left door was a dining room with a table to seat twenty-four, and through the left door, an indoor swimming pool and hot tub.
The second floor was just one long hallway intersecting the staircase, its appearance identical to a hotel, the numbers on the doors the only missing factor. Elyza told them they could pick any room they wanted, as long as it wasn't the rooms at the ends of both sides of the corridor. "The right one is mine, the left is off limits."
At last, they arrived at the third - and probably most impressive - floor. The third floor was one enormous room, and the lime green walls stretched up forty feet to the ceiling. On the left side stood air hockey, foosball, billiard, and arcade game tables, an ornate chandelier hovering over the area. A wooden ladder leaned up against the far wall and towered up to a little log cabin attached to the walls and ceilings, almost like an indoor tree house. A flat screen TV almost as large as a theater screen covered the middle of the expansive far wall. Beneath it was an array of cassettes, DVD's, and video games separated into three different bookshelves, the corresponding devices resting atop their respective shelves. Above the screen, near the ceiling, was a half-circular window, another to the far right of the room, and a possible third to the right, perhaps only visible to the interior of the ceiling cabin. Sunlight flooded in from the visible windows to illuminate the room. A fine idea, considering it cut down on the solar power gathered from the panels to provide more power to the bedrooms and electronics around the dwelling. The entire third portion of the room was a deluxe kitchen, with two of every appliance as if this was Noah's Ark for kitchen necessities.
"I can't remember the last time I watched TV, but I think it's also been too long since I ate, so if you don't mind..." Nick sauntered over to one of the humming refrigerators, and opened it to reveal...almost nothing to actually eat. Condiments, grape jelly, a bowl of eggs, and row upon row of soda cans and water bottles, nothing more. He shut the door.
"Aww, don't look so disappointed," Elyza taunted. "Check the freezer."
He opened the door to find all the shelves stuffed with stacks and stacks of microwave meals. "This is heaven on Earth, I've found it."
After dinner, the group of survivors picked their rooms to settle for the night. Nick watched gleefully as Alicia chose the room closest to Elyza's, basically confirming his suspicions. He left her with his backpack full of snacks and drinks, reminding her that her uncharged iPhone and its cable remained unmoved in the front pocket. Alicia hurriedly plugged it in beside the bed once her brother retreated to his own room and hopped onto the mattress to sit cross-legged, ecstatic that she finally had access to everything she'd missed so much for three months. All her photos, music, games, and digital books would finally entertain her once again. She scrolled through her music, selected Everyday by Carly Comando, and paused the song before it could play so she could mute the volume of her phone. She pressed play, placed the phone on her pillow, and watched the pink bar inch slowly across the song's time indicator. She rocked her up and body slowly back and forth, content. That is, until she realized she was missing something.
"My bear..."
Panic crept up her neck and scratched at her brain.
"No...no..." she dug through Nick's backpack despite her clear memory of leaving the animal on the floor of Elyza's RV. "No!"
A knock at the door shortly after her outburst made her cringe, but she called out a shaky "come in," anyway. Elyza poked her head through the door and pushed it open with her body, both arms behind her back. "Everything okay?"
Alicia restrained a yell and, with a slow, even tone, said, "No. I left the bear in your RV."
"You mean...this bear?" Elyza revealed her hands and the weighted bear they held, then rushed it over to Alicia.
Alicia sat the bear in the gap between her legs and pelvis. She looked up at Elyza, dumbfounded, unable to form words.
Elyza chuckled. "You went dashing out the door so fast there was no way you could've been holding this ten pound nuisance," the blonde teased.
"It's only three pounds," Alicia corrected.
"Awfully heavy for a plushie, is what I'm saying." She paused, glanced awkwardly at her shoes, and lifted her blue eyes to meet forest green. She stalled for a moment to ensure she infused her voice with as much pure curiosity as possible. "Why do you have it, anyway?"
Alicia sighed and looked back to watch the pink bar on her phone's screen, already at the start of another song. "I need it."
"Why?" Elyza monitored her tone.
"Because," Alicia huffed. "Don't worry about it."
"Okay, um...another question, if I may?"
Alicia nodded, eyes still on the phone.
"I see you're playing music, but...there's no sound."
"I can't listen to it right now, it wouldn't feel right."
Elyza contemplated possible reasons for that answer, but couldn't reach a conclusion. "What do you mean?"
"I can only listen to music in a moving vehicle, or else it doesn't feel right," Alicia replied pragmatically.
Elyza was stumped again. "But like...other than emotionally and maybe physically if it's loud enough, people don't feel music..?"
A pause.
"I do."