Happenstance

“...every morning I got up dreading what I would find,” Madison’s voice, her mother’s voice, breaks through the silence of the dark room. “And then one day as I walked down the halfway I heard something. Chirping. Amina was flying around the living room. She lived because my kids didn’t give up on her. Gave her a chance when no one else would.” 

There’s orange light dancing over her face, probably from a campfire out of frame. She has dark rings under her eyes and looks exhausted, and yet she seems so… strong. Alicia can feel a thick knot in her throat that feels like it has been there for days.

“There isn’t a whole lot of that left anymore.”

“No there’s not.” Al agrees.

“That’s why I need to find a place where things will be different. Because that’s still in my kids, but the light is getting fainter every day we are out here, and I can’t… I can’t imagine that part of them dying. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it alive.”

The interview ends, but the tape doesn’t. Visual static plays over the small display of the camera she’s holding onto with white knuckles and she keeps her eyes fixed on it until they start burning. No tears fall though, all already spent at this point.

After who knows how much time the door creaks open and somebody carefully makes his way inside with a tray. It’s Strand this time. Must be his turn.

Some time ago they stopped at a random house along their way, if there has been any thought put into choosing it she can’t honestly remember, all she knows is that she found the first untouched bedroom and crawled inside with no intention of leaving again. From time to time she can hear the others moving downstairs, but it’s of no real concern to her. Not anymore.

“Good morning.” He tries cheerfully, but she doesn't see the point to answer or even look up. “You have to eat something, Alicia. Please.”

Right, yesterday’s plate is still untouched on the dresser where Nick left it. It’s not her fault all she can hold down are a few bites when the stomach protests, any more and she starts to feel nauseous, but explaining that would take too many words.

“Ok. Fine” She croaks from her blanket cocoon.

He doesn’t believe her, but doesn’t want to fight either. A few more moments with eyes on her, then he finally leaves, letting her get back to rewinding the tape and watching it from the start. Her mother has her hands bound behind her back and is sitting on the back steps of the SWAT truck. She looks definitely off camera.

“Do you always put guns to people’s heads to get what you want?” Al prompts from outside the frame.

“If that is what it takes.”

- - -

The group is pretty much camped out between the kitchen and the living room area of the house, with Lucy and Nick talking in hushed tones at the dining table after having finished their own meal and Al sitting by herself in a corner studying a large road map of the county. Various bits of their usually packed up equipment have started to spread out around them as the sedentary days went on.

When they hear Strand’s heavy steps coming down the stairs again they all hold their breath, but the man just shakes his head. “Still nothing.”

Nick mirrors his head shake and takes a deep breath. It’s not like he doesn’t understand what his sister is going through, he does all too well and were the circumstances just slightly different he would probably be right beside her. It’s the role reversal that has him off his game.

Alicia’s the strong one, the dependable one. The one you don’t have to worry about.

After they fled the stadium like rats from a sinking ship it was her that found them a new purpose, sold them on the mission of hunting down the vultures one by one. It had kept them sane for a while, but turned them into exactly what their mother was afraid of.

Now she was spiraling. Shouldering all the blame.

“Maybe Al should try next.”

Three pairs of eyes turn to him, even the journalist herself looks up for a moment, but doesn’t say anything and returns to her task. She’s been generally pretty quiet, just agreeing to give them a lift for free after they towed her truck out of the ditch and then hanging around in the background without pressing them for more stories.

“Al? Why Al?” Lucy asks, a bit surprised..

He shrugs, it’s a shot in the dark, but... “She and Alicia have history.”

There is a long pause, before the other woman joins the conversation.

“She told you about that?”

“I’m her brother. Of course she told me about that.”

Lucy, still out of the loop, doesn’t let go. “What are you two talking about?”

Bristling at the prospect of explaining herself in front of an audience, Althea clears her throat, trying to find the most innocuous way to fill them in. “We met.” She settles on casually, “Before the fall.”

“They kissed.” Nick adds bluntly.

“That’s…” She stammers, quickly losing steam, “Ok fine, we kissed.”

Her embarrassment must greatly entertain Strand, who claps his hands together a few times chuckling in his deep baritone.  “No shit? Then by all means, you should try your hand next, my dear, maybe the power of love will lift her spirits.”

Love.

Not exactly the word she would choose… Not after their recent reunion.

“I’m really not sure that’s a good idea, guys.”

Now invested, but trying to play it cool, Lucy leans forward a bit. “Did it end badly?”

“It didn’t end. Or start. We just met. Once.”

“Oh.” The latina accepts, but Strand is not so gracious. “I have so many questions.”

Luckily she’s spared the third degree by the start of a rhythmic hammering from outside. A somber note descends on the momentary excitement they felt for some good old world gossip as Nick reaches out to pull one of the cutesy curtains away from the windows revealing a familiar sight: John, unshaven and unkempt, using a woodman’s axe to drive rough branches into the ground and reinforce the fence surrounding the farmhouse they are holed up in.

Since that night it’s all he does. At first light he wakes, wanders into the thick behind the property to exhaust himself swinging that axe, then returns and uses his bounty to build up their deporary shelter’s defenses. Agitated sleep, repeat from the top.

How much suffering can a simple phrase bring? 

“We have some supplies hidden nearby.” They told Al and the others after making sure that Alicia was bodily fine, “We might as well pick them up.”

Some weapons, seeds, even a small cash of dry food that they managed to salvage, all things that could be useful if they had to settle down for a few days until the young brunette felt more like herself again. Everything had been fine until John recognized that brown satchel and rummaging inside it had found a white handled revolver matching his own.

“Laura…”

“She told us her name was Naomi.”

“What happened to her?”

Their looks had been enough.

- - -

“Hey.”

Twice in one day?

Alicia’s about to bark something aggressive at the latest intruder, when she realizes it’s Al on the threshold and blanks for some reason. Al’s never come up to see her before. She’d seen the truck parked around back through the mostly closed blinds so she knew she was still around, but no other sign of life. Well, except...

“Do you need the camera?” She asks with a hint of apprehension.

“No, you’re fine.” The journalists assures her, rubbing the short hair in her nape like she does when she’s nervous. She did it back then too, the brunette realizes. At the airport.

“The battery is almost gone.” She says somewhat lamely.

“Don’t worry about that either, I can recharge it in the truck if we need to.”

They look at each other for a few moments, then Al bends down and starts to untie her boots, leaving them back as she comes in further into the dim room.

“What are you doing?”

“Your brother thinks I might be able to get you to come out.”

“I…”

“Don’t worry,” She waves trying to dissolve her apprehension  “I’m not even going to try. If you need some time you should have it, but I’m really not in the mood to fight with them, so I’ll just pretend I tried. Give me ten minutes and I’m out of your hair.”

“Ok…” She answers unsure, still keeping an eye on the other woman who’s now standing over the bed she has built her cocoon in. 

“Make space.”

Too stunned by the forwardness to formulate an answer, she finds herself scooting a bit to the right so Al can climb in and sit with her back against the headboard, legs stretched out over all the sheets. 

So much for leaving her alone.

A few minutes tick by with neither talking, and Alicia finds she’s unable to watch the tape with somebody else in the room. She pushes the camera aside and starts toying with the plastic cassette case, passing her fingers over the scrawled title and feeling Al’s eyes on her.

Amina.

God, they were so innocent back then. 

Amina.

Before their father died. Before everything turned to shit.

When the journalist finally speaks it’s almost welcome, if only to stop that droning emptiness surrounding her. That dreadful feeling that it’s never to get any better, but just keep spiraling into worse and worse nightmares until she’ll lose her mind for good.

“She never told me her name, I would have told you.”

She hums to signal she heard, but then finds herself responding: “I don’t understand why she didn’t tell us about meeting you.”

Why keep that little detail secret? It doesn’t make any sense.

“I don’t know for sure. I suspect she wasn’t particularly proud of how she was back there, how she handled it… She was trying her best to be a role model for you I think.”

Alicia nods. That kind of makes sense, but it only makes everything else worse. 

“Would it be to dumb to ask you how you are feeling?”

There’s a long silence, until it starts to feel heavy between them.

“I don’t really know how to answer to be honest.” She whispers in the end. 

“That’s fair.”

Again, a pause, and yet more words want to come out.

“I’ve watched it over and over, and the things she says… She hoped we wouldn’t turn away from the good, and that’s exactly what we did as soon as she was gone. And I almost didn’t notice until she held a mirror up to it either, it just felt natural. Killing felt… right.”

“Cut yourself some slack Alicia, you did the best you could under the circumstances.”

“Then my best isn’t very good I guess.”

Seeing her like this hurts.

Al would like to tell her that everybody feels like a failure sometimes. She would like to point out that there’s nobody left that hasn’t traversed dark moments, that hasn’t done horrible things to themselves and to others, that all survivors are guilty and flawed. She would like to say so many things, but nothing seems appropriate. Nothing seems helpful.

Still, she can’t let that be the last words.

“We’re still here, aren’t we? There’s still time to do better.”

“Where did you read that, a fortune cookie?” The other girl shoots back a bit too aggressively.

The journalist doesn’t balk at that though. To her own surprise a strange smirk starts to form on her face instead, morphing over a few seconds into a full blown chuckling grin. 

“What?”

“I was thinking, I’m really craving some Chinese food right now.” She confessed.

Alicia stares at her opening and closing her mouth a few times before taking an airy breath in that’s not quite a laugh, but it’s probably the best she can manage right now.

Chinese food, what a concept.

What is she even doing here, she ponders looking over at an empty wall for several moments. Is she waiting to die? No, death is outside, not here in her self indulgent exile.

Is she waiting for somebody to come and save her? That won’t happen either.

Life just goes on and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“I’m sorry I kicked you.”

Al gives her a warm smile. “And I would really like to hug you.”

“I’m… not really up for that.”

“I figured. I was just being honest.”

In the end they silently agree to something. It’s not a hug, but they gradually lean up against each other, barely touching at the shoulders and that’s enough for a while.

Do Alicia’s dark thoughts still? Not entirely, but at least they seem harder to make out.

For the moment.

“Goddammit. How can this world be so fucked?”

“I think it still has its moments.” Al shrugs with her eyes closed.

“Shut up.”

She doesn’t. “Do you think you are going to come out at some point?”

“Not yet.”

“Will you tell everybody it’s thanks to me when you do?”

On the verge of another small smile, the brunette shakes her head. “Stop talking please.”

“Do you want me to go?”

Pause.

“You can stay.”

- - -

Al stays for a while, but when Alicia wakes from the nap she slipped into without even realizing she’s gone. The camera is still there though, with three green bars of new battery life blinking in the dark bedroom, Madison's cassette neatly laying beside it.

A sudden panicky thought comes over the brunette, real enough to make her climb out of her bed and quietly sneak towards the windows in the back. Truck’s still there too. 

She’s about to return to her cocoon when she notices there’s a fresh plate on the dresser.

Stir fry and rice.

“Close enough.” Is scrawled on a scrap of paper under the fork.