Elyza knew it was too early to be awake when dull grey filtered through the curtains in her room. The digital clock on her bedside table read 5:37.
"Damn it," Elyza whispered and pushed her head back against the pillow. In every day life, the Aussie bragged about her ability to sleep soundly through the night, never disturbed by illness, nightmares, or even the urge to pee. The end of the world humbled her. It delivered first a month of mostly sleepless nights, followed up the next month with mostly vivid nightmares, then (she hoped) tried to cycle through with early mornings. At first, waking up before the sun transcended the mountaintops was somewhat thrilling. Elyza fell into a routine of waking up, opening the curtains, and watching whatever walkers she could find reach their arms up like idiots in an effort to capture chattering birds swooping just over them in search of a meal.
But now, it was just annoying. Waking up early wasn't exactly new to her, but before the dead roamed the earth she would wake up early to get ready for work, and spend the rest of the day challenging her body and mind. Without a job and with the impressive supply of necessities in her home, there was nothing to challenge her mind but the intellectual video games she'd completed a hundred times and nothing to challenge her body but the longest workout she could squeeze out of herself in the yard without any equipment.
Though, today felt like a better day for her. Maybe it was the company of living people, or maybe it was simply due to the fact that this was her first day back home in a week.
She heard no reason for anyone else to be awake, and so sluggishly made her way up the stairs, wearing only a tank top and sweat pants, to start the coffee maker and scramble eggs. It wasn't until she reached the top of the stairs that she realized she wasn't the only one awake. Alicia, dressed exactly as Elyza with the bedhead to match, stretched up on her tiptoes to examine the top shelf of one of the cabinets. The pale grey light of the morning barely illuminated the spacious third floor, but somehow lit up Alicia's form so perfectly. Her dark hair, although tousled from a night of sleep, appeared soft and glossy. Tan skin accentuated the gentle strain of lean muscle. She remained still for several more seconds, then sighed and closed the wooden doors.
Elyza hadn't realized she'd been staring until the brunette turned around and froze at the sight of company. Elyza smiled to cover her embarrassment and went to lean over the island table, opposite Alicia. "Didn't mean to scare ya," Elyza smiled again, this time sincerely. "Couldn't find anything?"
Alicia opened her mouth and closed it just as quickly, quirking her lips to the side. She tapped her nails on the marble surface supporting her waist and traced the patterns in the table with her eyes.
"Are you okay?" Elyza leaned closer, watching green eyes.
Alicia nodded once.
Silent again, huh? This girl was a mystery to Elyza. Every friend she'd ever made had been a chatterbox; silence among others was a rare indulgence. The brunette's body language didn't communicate anger, sadness, stress...anything, really. Her green eyes scanned the marble, but didn't appear to be lost in thought. Perhaps she just wasn't a morning person?
"I was going to make some coffee and eggs, does that sound good to you?" Elyza watched the other girl's eyes carefully, and was pleasantly surprised when they moved to gaze into hers. Another nod. "Are scrambled eggs okay?" And another.
The blonde turned on the Keurig and grabbed a skillet off a hook on the wall to cook the eggs. As she poked and prodded at the eggs with a spatula, the burning feeling of eyes on her forced her to look over her shoulder. Alicia was quick to avert her gaze, but not before Elyza could determine that those drowsy green eyes were fixed on her butt, and the blood rushing to redden Alicia's cheeks all but screamed 'I'm guilty.' She couldn't stop the smirk creeping over her lips when the brunette sucked in a breath and hurried to sit on a stool at the end of the island, all the while staring down at the floor.
"Do you know how to shoot?" Elyza turned her back on the eggs for a moment to watch Alicia for a nod or shake of the head.
"No..." Alicia said, disappointed.
Elyza had to stop her eyebrows from shooting right up to her hairline. And suddenly she speaks! "I was thinking about teaching you today. It's...very clear that Ofelia already knows how, and I imagine your mom does too," she laughed quietly, though none of the sleeping guests would be able to hear her anyway. "And I take it Nick doesn't even need to know how."
Alicia smiled and nodded, amazed that this girl could so accurately read her family in less than 24 hours.
"Oh, and I need to teach you guys how to scavenge once you and I are done with our lesson," she pointed the spatula across the island to Alicia, allowing her brows to rise.
"But we already know-"
"Oh honey, no," Elyza snickered and stirred the eggs once more before turning off the stove. "You've been doing it all wrong."
Alicia contemplated quietly. It wasn't until Elyza placed a plate of eggs and a mug of coffee in front of her that she spoke up. "What do you mean? Don't you just grab stuff and get out?"
"You need a game plan," the blonde settled in the stool beside her new friend and speared a lump of eggs with her fork. "Figure out how many dead there are in the area, know your exits and routes, prepare for the worst. It's better to make two trips than weigh yourself down so much in one trip that it gets too hard to run."
"We were doing just fine until someone on a bike resurrected the horde from hell."
Elyza swallowed and chuckled. "But if you had the right kind of plan, I wouldn't have had to rescue all of you."
"Oh bite me," Alicia mumbled and sipped at steaming coffee.
"Only if you ask nicely," Elyza rasped, voice unintentionally coarse. Although she couldn't complain, it clearly had the effect she aimed for.
Alicia gulped down her coffee and froze, despite the heat sliding down her throat. When a totally different part of her body warmed up, she figured it wasn't the coffee that sent tingles down her spine.
Layers of various powders and grit completely covered Elyza's face and neck - and would have coated the rest of her body, had she not been wearing tactical gear. Dry desert air brushed across her filthy face as she stood atop her unit's Humvee, on its way back to the barracks across the village. The majority of the village was still intact, give or take about a dozen buildings crumbling to the base.
Children raced down the dirt road alongside the vehicle, waving and giggling at the soldiers who smiled and waved back. Even after five months, Elyza couldn't understand a single word the kids hollered from the ground. Despite the language barrier, she looked forward to seeing her little buddies on a near-daily basis. The unit would stop on occasion to hand them bottles of water or little toys they picked up from a kiosk at the next town over, and the children would present stones engraved with hearts and smiley faces. Elyza always kept one of the rocks in her pocket as a reminder of how beautiful any place could be as long as it was inhabited by love. She refused to become bitter like half the men under her command.
The crackle of a radio strapped to her waist ripped her attention from the children slowly falling behind in speed. "Sergeant Lex, say again, over."
"Break bre- ...Ev- ... 10-4 i-... sandbox, over?"
Elyza managed to mentally pick out the message through the crackles and cuts after a solid couple of seconds. "Copy, no joes, over."
"Break break-" the echo of gunfire rung clear from the radio, and gave the illusion of clearing the static. The men behind her stepped forward to listen to the message. "Tango Uniforms rising, need back up, over."
Elyza furrowed her brows and glanced at the men now beside her as if they had any idea what that meant. They both shrugged. "The fuck..." she clicked the button on her radio. "Wilco, what's your position? Clear."
The voice from the speaker directed them back to the town they just left and signed off.
"Sergeant?"
"Fuck if I know," Elyza muttered, tightened the strap under her chin, and shouted directions at the driver to turn around.
The two men turned to face the back of the vehicle and readied their weapons. "Didn't we just clear a cell out there?" one of them yelled over his shoulder.
"Damn right we did," Elyza tightened her grip on the heavy machine gun mounted before her. "Can't wait to see how we're getting screwed over this time."
By the time the Humvee reached their original location, flames engulfed the heart of the village and were steadily spreading outward. They slowed to a crawl and surveyed the chaos around them. People of all ages crowded around the vehicle and begged for help in a language none of them knew. Most of them were either burned, shot, or...were those bite marks?
"Reynolds!" Sergeant Lex screamed down at the woman tensed in the passenger seat below. "What the hell happened!"
"No word from anyone over here," she yelled back up and fiddled with the nobs on a clunky radio in her lap. "All communication stopped halfway here!"
"Damn it!" The blonde gritted her teeth. They slowed to a stop, unable to move forward without further injuring any of the people crying from the ground. Elyza watched another group of people approach them, though these people looked too beat up to even be alive. They stumbled and tripped over their own feet, their arms swung in unnatural patterns. Their clothes and skin were drenched in blood, and whether it was their own or others', she had no clue. The sounds and smells of the encroaching mob invaded her senses as they neared the people around the Humvee, who screamed in terror as, one by one, the unknown beings pulled some of them to the dirt and tore into their flesh with bloodied teeth, while the rest ran screaming toward the outskirts of the village.
"What the fuck!" The two soldiers atop the vehicle backed away from the edges and shifted their widened eyes between their sergeant and the horror unfolding below them.
"Get us out of here, Anderson!" Elyza barked at the driver below. It took all of two seconds for him to slam his foot down on the gas and send the Humvee reeling down the gravelly road to their barracks, throwing Elyza back over her partners. The three of them rose only to their knees and watched dunes pass faster than before. Those...things trudged through the sand after them, some of the bodies from the village behind them and some coming out from the village to which they were headed.
Their stomping grounds for the past five months appeared relatively untouched as they entered the limits. The car hummed down the main road through the town, where the children usually greeted them with smiling faces and dirty feet.
But this time...
The kids bared their teeth and staggered after the Humvee, arms outstretched and dripping with blood. Elyza couldn't tear her eyes from the gang of children she'd grown to love, almost as her own. She didn't care that tears stung her eyes and spilled over to clean thin ribbons of skin, and she didn't care that her partners could see it.
"Elyza? Are you okay?"
She snapped back to reality, back to the lush green lawn beneath her and the beautiful green-eyed woman standing beside her, face full of worry. "Yeah, I'm good," she smiled at the concerned brunette. "Ready to try targets?"
Alicia nodded and lifted a pistol up to peer past the barrel at a bright red soda can placed atop a tree stump. She steadied herself and pulled the trigger.
The bullet skimmed the side of the can, hurtled toward the 15-foot wall of steel behind it, and bounced off, never to be seen again.
"Well shit!" Alicia yelled, eliciting a chorus of groans from the walkers gathered at the other side of the wall, drawn by the noise from the previous misfires.
Elyza couldn't contain her laugh, and reached over to take the gun from Alicia and set it down on the patio table behind her. "Don't worry, you'll get it. Just not today...or this week."
Alicia glared, pulling more giggles from the blonde. "I'm not that bad."
"Yeah, and my ass isn't white as a polar bear," smirking, Elyza locked their guns into a silver case and opened the sliding glass door to the indoor pool. "We'd better stop riling up that horde out there."
Alicia rolled her eyes and stomped past Elyza, who followed and closed the door. They walked over to a refrigerator-sized safe in the tiny locker room adjacent to the pool. Elyza punched in the code, careful to cover the movements of her fingers with the case, and opened the vault. The brunette's eyes scoured the contents of the safe, taking note of the silver cases varying in size, most likely containing more firearms. Their respective registration papers sat on the bottom shelf, stacked neatly into three piles. Two of the piles were registration papers for Abby and Jake... Lex? Her eyes darted to the third pile, registered under Elyza Lex. She's never mentioned Abby or Jake... she thought. Perhaps her suspicions were correct, that this girl's parents weren't around to fire their own guns anymore. Wait a minute...Elyza Lex...E.L...
Elyza closed the vault and stared at Alicia questioningly. The girl's green eyes were about as wide as humanly possible, and her lips parted just slightly. "Yes?"
"You're E.L.! You painted those pictures!" Alicia pointed to the door to the foyer, bounded to it, flung it open, and scurried to her favorite painting: the lightning storm. She pointed at the tiny initials in the bottom corner, blinking excitedly at the blonde who followed closely behind in all the excitement. "You painted this!"
"I did," Elyza smiled sheepishly. "I'm not one to brag."
"You? Miss 'I'm Untouchable'?"
Elyza chuckled and wrung her hands. "I'm not one to brag about some things."
"I don't see why not! These are amazing," Alicia turned back to the painting and thoroughly admired the clouds for the second time since her arrival. "I really like this one. How did you..." she trailed off, wracking her brain for the words and sentence formation that made sense. Whatever it was she was trying to say eluded her, so she settled for simplicity. "The clouds. The light. How?"
Elyza shrugged. "I just did it, I don't know. My parents and I took a trip to Australia for six months when I was eighteen, and we saw A LOT of thunderstorms. I guess it was just stuck in my memory."
"That's amazing," she turned back to the artist, gazing deep into blue eyes. "You're amazing, really."
Elyza's heart pounded in her chest as she stared into green eyes. It pounded not only in her chest, but in her throat and ears as well. She swallowed, hoping it would clear the tension in her throat and allow her to speak. "You're amazing, too," her throat squeezed right as she finished her sentence, cutting her breath short and forcing her to inhale through her nose. Before she could stop herself, her eyes flicked down to Alicia's lips, then back up. I really hope she didn't see that.
A smile stretched Alicia's lips. Elyza was so cute when she was nervous. Though the brunette was just as nervous, she long ago mastered the ability to keep a steady face. Her shaking hands and thumping heart, on the other hand, never quite learned the lesson.