Nick jolted awake at the sharp knock on his bedroom door. He could faintly hear Madison's voice, muffled by the barrier. "Nick, get up! We're going out for supplies."
He groaned and rubbed at his eyes until stars danced behind his eyelids. "Everything we could ever need is already here, why risk going anywhere?" he yelled back.
"Just get up!"
On the other side of the door, Madison rolled her eyes and strutted up the staircase to grab some breakfast before their trip. The oven's clock read 11:21 a.m. "Can't believe he's still in bed," she shook her head and opened up one of the cabinets, grabbing two protein bars.
Ofelia hopped over the final step to the top floor. "Good morning." Her voice and overall self was energetic. A towel wrapped around her head to dry the soaked hair underneath. "I can't even remember the last time I took a shower."
Madison stared ahead blankly, wanting to smack herself on the forehead. "There's running water?"
"Yeah?" Ofelia answered, her voice rising at the end to form a question. "Haven't you used the toilet or washed your hands since we've been here?" The embarrassment slapped across Madison's face caused the Salvadoran woman to burst out into laughter. "You didn't go outside, did you?"
The older woman rubbed the back of her neck and looked at her feet.
"Oh my god!" Ofelia screeched and staggered to the kitchen island to support herself. Beads of moisture rolled down from the corners of her eyes, and she wiped at them before they traveled too far.
Sluggishly, Nick trudged up the stairs. He was met by Ofelia's bubbly shrieks. "What's so funny?" he grumbled, sat down next to Ofelia, and rubbed at his forehead.
"Don't-" Madison began to warn.
"Your mom peed in the yard!" Ofelia fell into another spell of giggles and harsh inhalations.
"Okay, fine, I did. But wrap it up, Elyza told us to meet her out front at 11:30," Madison trotted down the stairs all the way to the bottom floor. Now that she thought about it... How is Elyza getting all this water? The mother of two didn't stop to think about it upon discovering she no longer had to squat in the bushes, but now that she did, it seemed almost suspicious. The solar panels, okay. Those made sense. Lots of people had switched to solar energy before the world ended, but she couldn't think of anyone with what seemed to be unlimited water access at this point. Besides Strand, that is. However, since they were living on a boat, it was only logical that they'd receive as much water as they needed with the boat's desalination system. But up on this hill, they weren't surrounded by water, salty or not. She exited the mansion to the front yard and immediately spotted Elyza and Alicia seated on the edge of a magnificent fountain. Madison wasn't sure what made her more suspicious: the whole water thing or how close the two young women were sitting. She picked her battle, opting to grill the Australian girl on the water and save her other unconfirmed hunch for later. "Hey, Elyza," she called out, quickly approaching the still-functioning fountain.
Elyza twisted to greet her. "Oh, hey! Where are Nick and Ofelia?"
Madison noted the girl made no move to scoot away from her daughter. "They're almost ready. I have a quick question," she sized up the fountain and the generous amount of water spilling over a concrete dish held up by the noses of three concrete dolphins. "Where is all this water coming from?"
"The ocean," Elyza responded plainly.
Madison had no idea why she was already getting so exasperated with the younger blonde. "What do you mean 'the ocean'? It's seven miles west, do you have private pipes and a private desalination plant?"
"Technically, yes and no. It's not just to this house, a bunch of the other houses out here get the water too."
"Of course." Madison rolled her eyes and stared up at the sky.
Agitation scratched at Alicia's insides. Her mom had no reason to be so sharp with Elyza, and as far as she knew, Elyza had been nothing but helpful. Of course, there was the incident with her motorcycle leading an enormous horde straight to them, but she'd already brushed it off as an accident. Besides that, Elyza had saved all of them and provided food, shelter, and amenities nobody imagined would still exist anymore.
Before Alicia could open her mouth to chew out her mother, Nick and Ofelia closed the front door with an unintentional bang and made their way to the fountain.
"Alright, let's get this show on the road!" Elyza jumped up and held her hand out to help Alicia get up. The brunette smiled shyly and took her hand, unhappy that she had to let go once she was up.
Madison insisted on taking the front seat once Alicia opened the door. The teenager didn't have the energy to put up a fight against her mother, and so scooted to the middle of the back seat.
She had to admit, this seat may have been better than the passenger seat anyway. She could watch the flawless driver from the mirror, and the blonde could glance up at her as often as she wanted without being caught by an overbearing mother or teasing brother. Elyza was thankful that Ofelia seemed to be the middle ground between the two, and that Alicia was terrain all her own.
Ofelia grew restless after twenty minutes in the car, crossing and uncrossing her legs, leaning her head on her own hand and then against the window. "I hate to be the four year old here, but are we there yet?"
"Almost, just a few more minutes," Elyza checked her rearview mirror to give Ofelia a look of reassurance, but the woman stared out the window and tried to focus on anything other than how bored she'd grown. Well, as long as I'm looking back there... Elyza shifted her attention from Ofelia to Alicia, and was delighted to find green eyes observing her reflection, unwavering. A smile spread across her face, and the brunette's reflection mirrored her expression.
Madison cleared her throat.
Elyza's eyes snapped back to the road ahead of her. Just in time, too, as the turn she needed to take was coming up in a few hundred feet. The car jostled side to side as it rolled over an uneven curb entrance to a parking lot just as disheveled.
"A...food bank?" Nick quirked an eyebrow. "Hasn't this place been picked clean?"
Elyza shifted the car into park and exhaled, stalling. "No. It's completely overrun."
Ofelia's eyes just about bugged out of her skull. "What do you mean completely? How many are in there?"
"A few dozen..." Elyza pressed her lips together tightly.
"Are you trying to get us killed?! Again?!" Madison chastised.
"I've already killed like twenty of them, but it got too risky! There's five of us, we can take them. And once we do, we'll have enough food to last us all for months, maybe even years."
Madison shook her head, but couldn't deny Elyza's argument. If they didn't claim the supplies, somebody else surely would in a matter of time, and it would be a huge mistake to pass off such a jackpot. She shoved her door open and stretched out, everyone else following suit. Elyza opened the trunk of the car and passed out backpacks, flashlights, and weapons: guns for Ofelia, Nick, and Madison, a gun and a bat for herself, and a gun and bat for Alicia.
Alicia shook her head at the firearm. "I could never hit the target, why are you giving me this?"
"Because you might need to save me again, princess," Elyza winked, pulling a blush up to Alicia's cheeks, and slammed the trunk down.
The group mobbed forward through the parking lot to the front doors of the food bank. The place was a concrete box with industrial metal doors that rolled up and down. Three doors spread across the front of the building, but only the middle one was intact enough to be lifted.
Elyza crouched down to the handle, and before pulling up, turned on her toes toward the group. "Stand back. Ofelia, take the left side. Nick, take the middle, and Madison, take the right. Alicia and I will take down any biters that stray. Everyone ready?"
They nodded hesitantly. Killing these creatures wasn't anything new to them, but they never dove head first into a herd for the sake of canned food. Even in their most desperate times, it wasn't something they would risk.
"3...2...1." Elyza hauled the handle upward and pushed the door the rest of the way up before backpedaling at top speed to join the family.
They heard groans before they saw anything in the pitch black opening. The noise grew louder as the lurkers shambled to the outside world, completely unfazed by the sudden barrage of light.
Nick was the first to fire, and shot four of the dead in a matter of seconds, each dropping to the ground and slowing the progress of the others behind them. Ofelia's shots plowed through every unfortunate walker that staggered over to her side, and she even managed to take out two with one bullet on a couple shots. Any time someone praised her for her skillful shooting, she brushed it off as just one of the many things her father taught her from his experiences.
Madison missed several shots, but was able to gun the walkers down before they could wander too far and fall into Elyza's responsibility.
The trio continuously pulled the triggers on their guns until Nick and Madison ran out of bullets and the horde pouring from the warehouse began to dissipate. The few remaining were directed through a clearing in the bodies aimed at Ofelia, and the unintentional corralling made her job easier and easier. One by one, she fired the bullets she'd saved from double kills at the neatly filed line of dead marching forward.
But before she could kill the final three, the gun clicked under her finger's pull on the trigger. "Shit!"
"I got you," Elyza said as she pulled her gun from the holster on her belt. One bullet razed a single reanimated corpse before her gun clicked as well. "Son of a bitch," she mumbled and bent down to pick up her bat. Just as she started to straighten up, the bat slipped from her hand and clanked back to the ground. The dead inched ever closer, getting more excited as they neared their prey. Elyza cursed herself for developing butter fingers at the worst possible time, and prepared to drop to her back and roll over to avoid those blunt claws that were somehow able to rip the flesh right off the living.
Alicia tightened her grip on her bat and swung, her power surging forth from her legs, just as a softball player would swing. With a nauseating crack, her bat connected with the walker's skull and smashed the bone to pieces. The creeper behind it tripped over the motionless body, and Alicia brought the bat down like an ax, shattering a second skull within five seconds. Her breath came heavy, the adrenaline coursing through her body made her want to run a mile and throw up all over the asphalt.
Elyza wrapped her arm around the girl's waist to steady her as Nick, Madison, and Ofelia hurried over to check on her. The blonde slowly lowered herself to sit on the ground, guiding Alicia down with her, until they both sat with crossed legs.
Alicia struggled to steady her breathing, and forced her stomach to retain its contents. She brought her knees up and rested her head between them as Elyza rubbed soothing circles into her back.
Nick squatted down beside his sister. "You did great, Leesh. I don't know what we'd do if you weren't here."
Alicia nodded and shuddered. However, she was confused. Though it wasn't necessarily a daily occurrence, she'd killed the reanimated on multiple occasions without a problem. The adrenaline was something she concluded would never go away, but the nausea subsided after her first few encounters on the way to and in Mexico and never returned until now. Although...this was the first time she witnessed and participated in the slaughter of a horde this large..
With a few more deep breaths, Alicia stood up and pushed the hair from her clammy face. "I'm okay, let's go," she tentatively picked up the bloody bat and lead the way to the open door. Madison and Ofelia's flashlights clicked on behind her, illuminating two broad circles ahead of her. Shelf after shelf lay on the floor and on top of each other, undoubtedly knocked over by the inattentive zombies that once inhabited the warehouse.
"I don't think I've seen so much peanut butter in my life," Elyza muttered, pawing through the jars and checking the expiration date on each top. She shoved every jar with a reasonable expiration date into her backpack. "We need a cart."
Alicia slid her backpack off her arms and took her flashlight from the pocket to search for a cart. She shone the light to the right corner of the warehouse, just in front of the right door, and spotted a multitude of overturned carts. They appeared to have been a makeshift barrier at some point, though it obviously wasn't as successful as the victims had probably hoped. She stepped over dented cereal boxes and bags of moldy bread as she approached the carts. With each step, she more clearly heard what sounded like a yowling cat with a chest cold.
The others lifted their heads from the pile of jars and cans to focus on the sound.
"What in the world..." Madison stood up first and pointed her light toward the overturned carts. "Alicia, what is that?"
"I don't know," Alicia's call echoed in the ceiling. She crouched down and aimed her light through the upside-down baskets of the carts. Something moved in the rear of the barricade. The criss-crossed metal of the carts before it obscured her view too much to identify what it was, so she went to work setting the carts upright and pushing them away from the mess. The wails became more urgent and throaty with each cart moved. Alicia couldn't believe what she saw once she finally got to the cart in question. "Oh my god."
A toddler with flaky grey skin and tiny rotting teeth stuck its fingers through the holes of the capsized cart and gnawed at the bars. It grew desperate, scooting the cart a little closer to Alicia in small spurts. The others walked over to the cart, none of them believed what they saw was real. The wall of the cart finally reached the toe of Alicia's boot, and the decaying child tried in vain to reach and bite through the holes. Alicia took another step back and held the cart in place by placing her foot atop the basket. "What do we do? I can't kill it..." she glanced down at the toddler. "It's just a baby..."
"Not anymore," Nick mumbled.
The group stood in silence, contemplating their morals. Alicia was right, it was just a baby. But Nick was also right, it wasn't a living baby.
"We can't let it...be this way anymore." Elyza gently touched Alicia's forearm and caught her gaze. "I'll take care of it. Grab a cart and pick up whatever you want, I'll join you guys after."
Alicia turned from Elyza to look at the baby, then back at Elyza. "Okay," she slowly lowered her leg from the cart and headed over to the other carts, followed by her mother, brother, and 'sister'.
"Look, drugs." Nick joked snidely and pushed his cart to an upright shelf of medical supplies.
"Nick," Madison spurned his dark humor. "Maybe you shouldn't be the one looking through that stuff."
"Aw, that hurts," Nick feigned woe, a hand over his heart. "I know what we need.
Madison sighed. "Fine."
Alicia found comfort in the closest thing to shopping she could have now. The variety of cans, boxes, jars, and bags around her provided a sense of hope, that so many good things could still exist in this hellhole planet. Her stomach growled as she picked up can after can of ravioli and dropped them in the cart, and it growled even more when she lifted cans of sweet corn niblets by the armfuls.
The atmosphere on the ride back to the house was heavy. Despite the joy of their bountiful haul weighing down the back of the car, the air around Elyza fell heavy upon all their shoulders. The infant's blood splattered across her jeans reeked of death, but the sorrow deepening the blue of her eyes was more disheartening. She did not take her eyes off the road. She did not eye-flirt with Alicia from the mirror. Even Madison didn't glare daggers at the woman beside her.
And still, upon arrival, the mood remained glum. It was still mid-afternoon, yet everyone remained inside once they finished bringing in the supplies. Ofelia, Nick, Madison, and Alicia stacked the cans of food atop each other in the basement, their vision aided only by a dinky lightbulb hanging from the ceiling and a grimy window. Madison and Ofelia chatted about how glad they were to find certain items at the food bank, Nick inspected the expiration dates, but all Alicia could do was worry about Elyza. The blonde had retreated to her room just minutes after parking the car and hadn't emerged since.
Madison always claimed Nick could read Alicia's mind, and every time he would say 'no mom, I just pay attention.' Even within the periods of time that heroin flowed freely through his veins, he paid attention because he knew his mother never would. Through the highs, withdrawals, and sober days, Madison catered to Nick, so Nick catered to Alicia. The stories he heard of older brothers torturing their baby sisters angered him to no end, and he vowed both to himself and to his sister that he would never be that unnecessary demon. He noticed all the little things, like her favorite foods and songs. He noticed all the big things, like crumbling friendships and the budding of her relationship with Matt. All the while, Madison preoccupied herself with Travis and Nick. He knew on some level that his mother wasn't ignoring her only daughter on purpose, but it irritated him almost as much as it vexed Alicia. He couldn't believe that even in the apocalypse, he was still the one to catch Alicia's subtle, subconscious signals. If he had to, he could write a whole list of each quirk and the feelings attached to it, but this one was new to him. Structured tasks like stacking and organizing always engaged Alicia completely, but her attention was anywhere but the can of green beans being tossed anxiously between her hands. He weighed two possible reasons: one, perhaps she was still reeling from the murder spree outside the food bank, or...maybe, just maybe, Elyza's inaudible agony dug its roots into Alicia, making her worry unlike Nick had ever noticed before. "Hey, I think someone should check on Elyza. Alicia?"
Ofelia continued stacking, fighting off a smirk. Madison stared at Nick, giving the look every child grows to fear. Except Nick.
"She seemed pretty upset. I think she's more comfortable with Alicia-" he motioned to his sister, can in hand, "- than the rest of us. Right Leesh?"
Alicia's mouth gaped almost as wide as her eyes. "Um-" she looked to the ground when Madison pointed her gaze to the brunette. "I uh...yeah, you're probably right. I'll see if she's okay."
Madison dropped her gaze to the cans once more, and Alicia took the opportunity to mouth 'thank you' to her brother. He smiled and nodded once before Alicia practically sprinted up the stairs to climb from the trap door beside the staircase, previously covered by a rug. Her legs carried her up the steps faster than her brain could process, and before she knew it, she halted right in front of Elyza's bedroom door and knocked.
No response.
"Elyza?"
Still, no response.
Slowly, as to give the other girl time to react, Alicia turned the doorknob and pushed forward, poking her head through the opening before slipping inside completely and closing the door behind herself.
Much like the foyer, Elyza's room exhibited more paintings, although these ones sparkled with fantasy, while the works downstairs depicted nature and calm settings. Smaller canvases of glittering galaxies and somehow majestic two-headed deer hung from the walls without frames. White christmas lights encompassed the canvases, drawing a slight shine from the paintings with glitter. A dresser with a long mirror on top sat beside the window, straight across from the door. Polaroid pictures clung by their corners between the mirror and its frame. Alicia recognized Elyza in several photos, all with different people, but one thing remained the same: her clothing. Elyza sported an Army combat uniform in the pictures. The fact that it wasn't a costume couldn't be denied, a patch with "LEX" in capital letters sat proudly on one side of her chest, and a patch indicating a sergeant clung to the other. For that brief second, Alicia mentally thanked her brother for being so obsessed with the military at age eleven, otherwise the symbol may have completely passed her by. One second, she was thanking Nick. The next, a flood of curiosity washed through her mind. Sergeant Lex...? She inspected the photos one by one. Most of them appeared to be taken in the same area with different people. They stood on sand in those photos, the background being either more sand, a huge truck, or a brick wall. Alicia's eyes followed the string of pictures lining down the side of the mirror, and once her eyes fell to the dresser itself, stones scattered across the wood enraptured her. Stark greys, faded yellows, and subdued reds differentiated these rocks from any Alicia had seen before. Uneven carved lines on some of the stones formed smiley faces, hearts, and short phrases in a language her history teacher touched upon for maybe ten minutes in sophomore year.
The creak of a door spooked Alicia. Her back tensed as she whirled around to identify a possible threat.
Was it a threat? No. Was it a threat to her tentative grasp on her sexuality? Damn right.
A short maroon towel wrapped around Elyza's body, leaving very little to Alicia's imagination. Embarrassed as she was, the brunette couldn't find it in herself to move, not even to turn around or avert her eyes.
"See something you like, princess?"
Alicia's conscience screamed at her to turn around and apologize, but its insistence didn't do much to help the paralysis locking her muscles in place. A familiar tension screwed tightly in her lower abdomen, and all she could do was exhale sharply. You idiot, say something! "Um...sorry."
Elyza smiled brightly, leaned against the door frame, and crossed her ankles. "Are you really, though?"
The blonde's easygoing attitude relieved Alicia and allowed her the freedom to shift her weight to one leg and stick an arm out to support herself on the dresser. "I don't think so," she admitted with a small laugh.
"I didn't think so either," Elyza shook her head, amused. She used her shoulder to push herself upright and clutched the towel on her way over to the dresser, fixing her eyes on the drawer just behind Alicia's thighs. "I need to get in there," she spoke without thinking, but panicked once she realized what came spilling out. "Uh, I mean, like...the drawers...the dresser, I need to- my clothes are in the dresser." Jesus fucking christ, Elyza. She reminded herself to promptly smack her own forehead in Alicia's absence.
"Oh! Sorry," Alicia moved to sit gingerly on the bed, her back to Elyza. "I didn't know you were in the shower, I just wanted to see if you were okay."
The Aussie picked out sweatpants and a sports bra from the two separate drawers. She decided against teasing the embarrassed girl, but just this once. "Thanks. I'm okay, just needed a shower," she fibbed, adjusting her boobs in the bra until they looked perfect. "You can turn around now."
Alicia flipped over to relax on her stomach, the tension in her gut coiling impossibly tighter at the sight of Elyza's shirtless upper body, graced by outstanding abs. "Nice."
Elyza quirked an eyebrow to pair with the devilish smirk pulling at her lips.
Oh my god why. "I mean..." Alicia sighed in defeat, once again exposed by her own candor. "Yeah. Nice. Um...Sergeant?"
Elyza's expression changed completely. It didn't fall negatively, but she definitely wasn't prepared to reveal that part of her past. "At your service," she smiled gently, reassuring the girl on the bed that she wasn't upset, and sat cross-legged beside her. "How did you know?"
"The pictures," Alicia motioned with her chin to the mirror. "Nick was obsessed with military stuff when we were kids, I recognized the patch on your uniform."
"You never fail to surprise me," Elyza chuckled.
"Where were those pictures taken?"
Elyza paused, unsure of what to say. The last thing she wanted was Alicia to see her as a monster. But then again...after the incident inside the food bank, she considered the girl lying beside her didn't jump to judgment. "Iraq. That was my last deployment. I was there when the world started to fall apart."
"How did it happen?" Alicia's eyebrows furrowed, her eyes searching for answers. The beginning of the end flew right over her head. She was too involved in school to pay attention to the seemingly mindless chatter online, and her family failed to mention anything about the walking dead or fallen cities. They went so far as to block it from her as it crept up on them from afar, inching nearer and nearer as the days passed.
"It happened way too quickly," Elyza shook her head slowly. "The day it hit the village where I was stationed...everything felt so normal that morning. I got up, put on my uniform. Nothing felt out of place. My unit didn't have much to do that day, besides driving around making sure everything was okay. We got a breakfast from this cart just outside the base, the guy barely knew English but god, did he put in the time and effort," she smiled to herself, eyes closed, remembering the man she'd befriended over the course of her deployment. "Every day, he had a little translation dictionary. He told us his goal was to use a new word in conversation every day, and he taught us the same word in Arabic. I think he tried to tell us about what was happening on the other side of the country, but he couldn't find a direct translation in the book. We thought nothing of it, we thought maybe there was just gonna be a quick scuffle and that would be the end of it. So we went over to the next village over, there was only one other unit patrolling there. Everything seemed fine there, too. I mean, there was a store robbery and some kids beating on a smaller kid, but other than that, nothing. So we drove back, we were gonna head to the base for lunch, but when we were almost there we got a call on the radio from the unit we just left in the other town. From all the noise coming from that radio, I could've sworn another war was about to start. We rushed back, but when we got there..." she took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Chaos. Absolute chaos. Buildings were on fire, people were covered in blood. They were screaming, we couldn't move through the crowd. And then the biters came. They must've been people who died in the fire, or maybe it was a horde that grew as it moved from village to village. All I know is that we got our asses out of there as fast as we could. We saw a few on the way back to the base, didn't think to shoot them. We couldn't risk it, if it was just an illness and we shot all those civilians, we'd be in deep shit. But we got back to our village, and the people there were starting to turn. The base was the only safe place, and they didn't let the civilians in." Elyza chewed on her lip, fighting back tears before continuing. "I don't think I'll ever forgive them for that."
Alicia sat up and gently cupped Elyza's cheek with her hand, swiping a rogue tear away with her thumb.
Elyza placed her hand over Alicia's and turned her head to kiss the girl's palm. She lowered their hands and played with Alicia's fingers. "They all knew it wouldn't stop. I guess the SMA sent out a general message saying soldiers were to be deployed wherever they wanted, for their final days. They expected us all to die. Most of us went back to our families, those without families went to their dream vacation spot. Everything beyond that final 'deployment' wasn't organized. If I had to guess, they probably just phrased it that way to prevent the panic they knew would surface. I don't think anybody's ready to die... you can be one cocky motherfucker like me, but as soon as you stare death in the face and have your head between its jaws, you're just as scared as everyone else."
"Was it already happening here when you came back?" Alicia whispered and watched Elyza's fingers trace over her own.
"No, I got here about a week before the dead. At that point, America already started rejecting incoming international flights, except the military. I think infected planes brought it here, I can't think of how else it would've infected the country. I kept in contact with my parents, I called and told them why I was coming home and they didn't believe me until they checked the news online. But once it got here, it was over. Nobody knows where it started because the reports came pouring in from like fifteen states at once. People arriving at hospital emergency rooms were immediately shot down, so everybody hopped in their cars and drove to the next safe state before the borders could close."
"And...your parents?" Alicia hesitated, unsure if she'd overstepped.
Elyza exhaled and steadied her breathing, squeezing her eyes shut.
"I'm sorry, you don't have to talk about it," Alicia amended, reaching up again to wipe away the beads of water falling down Elyza's cheeks.
"No, it's okay," the blonde's voice quivered. "My mom worked in the emergency room on the other side of town. When everything came here, they called her in, they needed all the help they could get. She called me after one of the patients woke up thrashing around and bit her. While she was disinfecting the bite, the National Guard stormed the place and eliminated everyone. There was a kill order on every hospital in the state. As for my dad... I don't know. He was out golfing, and he never came home. If he survived, he would've shown up by now."
"I'm so sorry..." Alicia wrapped her arms around the other woman, resting her head on Elyza's shoulder.
Elyza turned her head and kissed Alicia on the forehead, much to the brunette's surprise. "You guys are my family now."