To say Alicia was bored would have been an understatement.
She wasn’t even bored, necessarily, her mother made sure she was kept busy babysitting Ofelia and Nick in one of the abandoned houses closest to the only supermarket in the ghost town they had stranded in just two weeks before. It felt like two months already.
It was one of those houses with a little windmill on the roof for electricity, and if they were lucky they could get the old beaten television in the living room to work for a couple of hours on a windy day. Only when Travis was out though, because he insisted they needed to save the power to watch the news at night, to watch for updates. But Alicia was fairly certain there was nothing left to be updated on, no one left to update them, anyway.
She wasn’t bored so much. Despite the muffled feelings of anger that stirred up from someplace inside of her every time she looked at her brother, feelings that she couldn’t quite put into words if she would try, he didn’t make for lousy company. His sense of humor was still pretty much intact and he was pretty worthy competition in their daily game of monopoly.
And the better she got to know Ofelia, the happier she was that she and her father had decided to stick with Travis and the rest of Alicia’s family. She was recovering well from the gunshot wound, but her father still made sure she stayed inside as much as possible. They got along pretty quickly, which had surprised Alicia when she looked back at it. She considered it was probably the fact that they were both stuck into this chaotic situation together, or maybe it was just that when she caught Ofelia quietly grieving her mother’s death one night, Alicia realized she understood exactly how she was feeling. They talked until the sun came up and the conversation had long switched from losing a parent to every other topic they had felt comfortable discussing.
She wasn’t bored, exactly, she was disappointed.
When her family returned to the parking garage with Nick and a complete stranger, she got excited. She couldn’t tell why exactly, but after they made it out of the facility, after Liza had made sure Ofelia would be fine, when they got to the beach house, there was something about Mr Strand that sparked something inside her. He seemed to know what was going on, and what had to be done about it. He also seemed crazy, completely insane, but Alicia quickly decided that it was people like him they needed to rely on in times like these.
Not only that, he also had a boat. The idea of floating around in the Pacific on a luxurious yacht while the rest of the world went to hell seemed divine in her eyes. It would have been perfect, even if it was just a temporary solution.
Mr Strand would have taken Nick with him, but not the rest of his family. He didn’t say why. It might have been about a shortage of food, or lack of space on the ship, but he probably just didn’t want so many people around. It didn’t matter anyway.
Travis wouldn’t have agreed to come. Alicia and Chris even suggested they could find another boat, they still had time to load it up with supplies, and they were both pretty sure Daniel would know his way around the controls of a ship for some reason. But neither Travis nor Daniel was very fond of this idea. Travis and Madison had wanted to head for the desert since the virus first broke out, and when they were outside of the gates that were supposed to keep them safe in their own home, nothing was going to change their mind about that plan.
Alicia got some new hope when Daniel insisted they had to get more guns than just the old shotgun from Susan and Patrick’s house. They were gonna need to be able to protect themselves, and as they had no idea what they could be running towards now, Travis finally agreed with him. She didn’t get to come with them when they left the beach house to find guns, so she didn’t really know where the three pistols and another shotgun came from. She knew Travis wouldn’t tell because he didn’t want Chris to find out. They also returned with a couple of baseball bats and a golfing bag with four shiny clubs in it.
This bag was the only thing Alicia ever got access to. It rested at the house, by the side of the couch in the living room, the four clubs still inside. One for Alicia, one for Chris, one for Ofelia and one for Nick, just in case things ever got too far, walkers got too close to the house and the grown-ups couldn’t be there in time with the guns to protect them.
Alicia hated it. The area was pronounced clear by Daniel and Travis a day after they arrived here, and yet the “kids” were locked inside a hot and dusty house instead of taken outside to learn something from all of this. None of them were kids anymore. None of them were too weak or too naive to handle what was going on outside, not even Nick or Ofelia in their current states. This wasn’t something that was gonna be fixed in a couple of weeks, Alicia knew. This was likely not a temporary situation. This might very well have just been their new lives. Alicia wasn’t going to sit around here in this crummy old house forever while the world was ending all around her.
Luckily, she wasn’t alone in this. Chris was also pissed about his dad treating him like a child. Three days after settling camp, they had sneaked out of the house together and, while staying out of their parents’ watchful eyes, broken into some of the neighboring houses. The elders had already raided them for stuff like food and more weapons and to check for walkers, but they had left a lot of fun stuff behind. Like the bike leaning against the wall of the garage of the house three lots down the street. A bike just like the one she used to have back home. But Chris had finally convinced his father to teach him how to shoot a gun and Madison still wouldn’t let Alicia near one.
So it wasn’t that she was bored, when she left a note at Ofelia’s night stand during her and Nick’s overlapping afternoon naps, while Chris was away shooting guns in the parking lot of the supermarket, slipped a golf club out of the bag by the couch and quietly sneaked out of the house. It was more of an act of rebellion, a protest against her mother’s strict rules. She needed to get out of that house just to breathe and show that she couldn’t be pinned down, that she was perfectly able to handle herself outside.
It was a risk. Someone could see her, her mother could come back early and find her missing. Ofelia or Nick could tell on her. But all of that was worth it. The real risk was taking the unknown neighbor’s bike in the opposite direction of the supermarket, to a part of the town that hadn’t been checked for walkers yet.
She gripped the handle of the golf club across the steer of the bike as she got on the saddle. She rolled out of the garage and looked both ways down the street out of habit before settling her feet on the pedals. Despite its apparent abandonment, the bike still worked just fine and though she was aware she had to keep her eye out for danger, she couldn’t help but smile at her sudden sense of freedom.
She took in a deep breath and looked up at the perfectly blue sky. The sun felt warm at her skin and a light breeze softened the heat on her cheeks. She thought of what a waste it was, that the world was basically an open playground now, but all the people left to enjoy it were stuck to their safe hideouts, afraid to come out and discover what was at their feet.
She hadn’t felt this way in such a long time, even before the virus broke out and a fence was built around her neighborhood. She felt free, warm and almost happy. She found herself wishing she had her music with her, so no sounds from outside could come inside her bubble of thoughts while she breathed the warm fresh air deep into her lungs, but she knew that would have only made this little adventure of hers more dangerous.
She didn’t know exactly where she was going. She figured she would stop a few blocks away from the camp and have a look inside some houses, maybe she could find some more guns and keep them hidden from her elders. She had brought an empty backpack for this reason. But as she was going, she realized she didn’t want to stop biking just yet. The farther away she got from the camp, from her mother, from everything, the greater she felt.
Until she heard a soft groaning sound coming from somewhere behind her. She stopped pedaling, but didn’t break as she looked over her shoulder. There was someone coming out of a house on the left side of the road. Alicia knew it wasn’t a living person before she had even spotted the walker’s position. She gasped, but noted the walker was still far enough away from her to form a direct danger to her. One thing downed on her quickly though, this town was not as much of a ghost town as she, and probably the rest of her group, thought it was. It seemed unlikely that this one was alone, and Alicia knew she had probably pedaled herself straight into a walker nest.
She tried not to panic as she sorted the options in her head. This was a risk she could have counted on after all, and if she got herself into a mess, she was going to prove she could also get herself out of it. That had subconsciously been the point, hadn’t it?
If she turned back now, sticking to the same road, she had to pass that one walker, but at least she would know the way back to the camp. She had no doubt she would be able to get past the walker on her bike, she was fast and she had the golf club ready for a strike. But she didn’t know what exactly the walker might do, or whether there were more where this one came from.
The best option at hand seemed to take the next turn to the right and follow the aligning road back to the supermarket. She was sure that was the structure of the roads in this town, but once she had taken a hasty right turn, the opportunity to take another one didn’t show. She kept paddling, looking out by the houses to see another turn show up.
She thought she was just imagining the increasing groaning sounds, but when she took another look over her shoulder, at least six walkers were stumbling from the sidewalk. They were slow, but they were emerging from all over the place, and their groans were getting louder, attracting more of them to the sound and eventually to her. A walker stumbled out of the doorway of the house directly to her side, letting out an obnoxiously loud groan or belch, it was hard to tell. A shiver went down Alicia’s spine as she stood up on the pedals, pushing all of her body weight into them to go faster.
Fear crept up her spine as she resisted the urge to look around her shoulder again. She knew the number of walkers behind her was increasing, but knowing for sure wouldn’t make any difference in her chance of survival. She just needed to keep going, faster, faster, she needed a way back to the camp, and she would find it, but not if she let her fear get to her. Not if she gave into it.
She found a way to turn right and even though she couldn’t be sure it would lead back to where she wanted to go, she didn’t hesitate as she jerked her steer into that direction. She cursed at herself, at her own stupidity. At her thorough belief that she would be fine on her own. She was just a kid. She had never killed a walker before. It didn’t seem like that big of a deal, given as they were already dead, but now that it came down to it, Alicia wasn’t sure she could do it. Especially not this many of them.
She thought maybe she could lead them back to the supermarket, around the farm houses she had seen on their way into town. She could warn Travis and Daniel and they could shoot all the walkers that were now starting to block the road behind her. But she wasn’t sure if she could even find the way, and if she could, then she might still have brought everyone in danger, if they would run out of ammunition, or if she had overestimated their abilities. It wasn’t like she had seen much of the way they got rid of the walkers.
She had been biking back for five minutes, way faster than she had before and she was sure that this was not the right way back to the camp. Her heart was beating fast in her chest filled with fear and exhaustion and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up. She swallowed hard and looked around the sides of the road. She couldn’t take shelter inside, as walkers kept emerging from doorsteps, but she needed to rest, and she needed to figure out the way back home. The groans behind her were getting louder and she couldn’t stop the sounds of desperation coming from her own throat.
Suddenly she saw a small, flat roofed single garage with a big dumpster parked against the wall, about five houses away from where she was now. She honestly didn’t know exactly how much these walkers were capable of, but she was almost completely positive that climbing was not one of their special skills. She pulled the bike onto the sand in the front yard by the garage and yanked the steer while stepping back on the pedals as not to crash into the wall with the speed she had built up. The club in her hand swung dangerously fast towards her shin and missed it by an inch. The wheels slipped hard and the bike started dropping sideways. Alicia’s feet were already on the ground, but the frame of the bike slammed against her knees and the steer stabbed a painful bruise into her ribs. She almost fell over with the weight, but managed to keep herself up while stumbling toward the dumpster.
She hoisted herself on top of it without much of a problem, but the rest of the climb to the roof was higher than she had anticipated. She didn’t have enough strength in her arms to pull herself over the edge. She stood helplessly for a moment, groaning in frustration as she smacked the end of the golf club to the lid of the dumpster, making more noise than she should have. She took a deep shaky breath as she looked around, the walkers still approaching, suddenly seeming much closer now that she was no longer in motion.
She threw the golf club onto the roof. Not the smartest move, she immediately thought to herself, but she was getting onto that goddamn roof now. The jumped, catching her hands on the ledge, trying a wall run, but it didn’t work.
“Need a hand?”
Alicia froze. She looked around carefully. Her first thought was someone must have followed her from the camp, but she didn’t recognize the voice. No one had made sure there were other survivors in this town, but they had agreed that if anyone was still alive around here, they would be coming for food at some point, and the supermarket they were camping around was the biggest resource of that in the area. But the person she saw when she turned around didn’t look familiar at all.
It was a girl wearing a leather jacket who jumped onto the dumpster beside Alicia in one quick move. She carried a big, strange looking gun in one hand, the barrel leaning on her shoulder. A black hood covered her head, but long strands of blonde hair flowed out in the front. A couple of smaller guns were clipped to the belt around her waist. Alicia didn’t get a chance to look at the stranger’s face until she crouched down by her feet and dropped her gun to the lid of the dumpster. She made a flat cup of her hands, holding them out in front of her. Then she looked up.
Alicia reacted slowly, still dumbfounded by the presence of the girl dressed in black. Her face looked young, kind of cute, if it hadn’t been for the tough look about it. Her eyebrows were light and thin, but fierce. A scar ran from the left side of her forehead to her cheek, missing her eye by just a couple of millimeters. She looked dangerous, Alicia decided. Eyes blue as the sky pierced right through Alicia’s green ones as the stranger spoke her next words.
“Well, go on.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded to her hands, lifting them up a bit more to clear up her intentions. Alicia swallowed and tore her eyes away from the other girl. She threw a quick look down the road, where the walkers still groaned their way towards her. She breathed out and stepped into the stranger’s hands.
If she hadn’t been holding on the edge of the roof, she surely would have fallen over with the unexpected force the hands under her foot offered her. She pulled herself further onto the roof. She turned around and offered her hand to the girl, but it stayed there without getting touched. The big grey gun landed on the warm tar by Alicia’s feet, and the girl followed quickly with one of those wall runs Alicia had attempted before.
She kneeled in front of Alicia to grab her gun. “Stay down,” she said. She gave Alicia a small wink and half of a smile before standing up and turning to the walkers approaching from the road. The first shot startled Alicia. She had grown familiar with the sound of guns over the past couple of weeks, even one this big wasn’t new to her anymore, but looking up at the silhouette against the sun beside her, she found herself in shock.
Her brave Samaritan’s figure was small, but her stance strong. Her legs parted backwards to catch the recoil of the gun, her knees bent just slightly. Alicia could barely see her face, but just enough to see her eyes squinting as she aimed for her next target, her jaw clenched and nose scrunched up just slightly. She looked invincible.
Alicia took her eyes off her to look at the walkers in the distance. One by one, they fell, with a tastelessly visible burst of their skull where the bullet hit. They piled up on the road, creating a low dam of – now truly – dead bodies. Not a single one managed to escape the rain of bullets erupting from the girl’s gun.
Alicia tore her eyes off the horrific sight, swallowing hard to keep the nauseous feeling in her stomach at bay. When she looked the other way, her breath stocked again. From the other end of the road, even more walkers were approaching. The noise of the gun had only attracted more of them. They were closer than the others.
“Over there!” Alicia yelped over the shots, which then suddenly stopped. The quiet was welcome in Alicia’s ears, but not in her gut. She felt fragile again, unprotected by Elyza and her big gun, even just for the two seconds it took Elyza to look down at her and let her eyes follow the direction of Alicia’s pointed finger.
In two big steps, Elyza reached the other end of the roof and continued her fast fire on the walkers. Alicia’s eyes shifted between the walkers on the left and the ones on the right, trying to estimate how many there could possibly be left in this godforsaken town, even if it was just to keep her mind distracted. She didn’t want to consider Elyza’s abilities to handle all these walkers on her own. She didn’t want to think of what would happen when she ran out of ammunition. Flashes of her family’s faces started crossing her mind, as they would find out that she was gone. Alicia tried her hardest not to think of how they would come looking for her and run straight into this walker trap.
She bit her lip and looked up at the girl again. Invincible. Dangerous, but in Alicia’s favor. Who she was and where she came from didn’t seem important. She had come this far in the apocalypse. Alicia convinced herself that she could trust her.
The sound of the gunfire abruptly stopped. A few more empty clicks followed before the girl’s voice cut between the silence up on the roof and the groaning undead below.
“For fuck’s sake!”
The gun landed on the tar with a metallic thud. Alicia couldn’t help but notice what a strange looking gun it was. Before two months ago she had hardly seen a gun in real life and she wasn’t the least bit of an expert by now, but she knew a gun like that wasn’t one you just found lying around in somebody’s house. She didn’t want to think about this, where the girl got this smooth, massive looking silvery gray gun, but she didn’t want to think about anything else either.
The girl pulled two handguns from her belt and shot down the edge of the roof, double wielding the walkers back into the street, away from the garage. They were getting close from both sides now. Alicia grabbed her golf club and crawled to the side of the roof where the dumpster was parked against. A walker was stepping over her bike that was lying in the sand just a couple of feet away. Its foot hooked under one of the pedals and it tripped over. Alicia’s breath shuddered as the walker crawled back up, his rotting eyes looking into hers. She got her golf club in a position to strike.
She cursed at herself. How could she be this stupid? Going to a strange part of town on her own, not having a clue of what might have been hiding there and still thinking she would be able to handle herself. This was exactly why her mother hardly let her leave the front porch of the dusty old house at their camp.
And now she had not only gotten herself in trouble, but also this complete stranger, who went completely out of her way to save her. It would be all Alicia’s fault if anything happened to her.
The walker was close enough now and she swung the gold club into its face hard. It was more effective than she had expected, the sole of the club smashing through a rotten skull with a sickening sound. The walker dropped down and stopped moving.
More were approaching. Three of them started clawing at the wall below her. Alicia moved over to get in position and swung down into two of their heads. The third one got shot down from above and fell down as well. Alicia looked up at the blonde girl. Then she worriedly glanced over to the other end of the roof.
“Look,” the girl said. She pointed with the barrel of a gun to a walker clawing at the other side of the dumpster. “They can’t climb.” Alicia waited for the gun to shoot again, but it didn’t. Instead, the girl stuck it back in her belt with the other one.
“Of course they can’t,” Alicia said, hoping she didn’t sound too snobby. But it was why she came up here in the first place. “Don’t we want to get rid of them?” She looked down at the guns on the blonde’s belt questioningly.
“The noise only attracts them.” Alicia stood up, the golf club still dangling from her hand. The girl looked at her as if she was going to say something else, but then swallowed and looked away from her.
“So now what?” Alicia asked.
“Now we wait,” she said. She sat down in the middle of the roof, beside her big empty gun. “They’ll retreat at some point.” She picked up the gun and snapped it open in the middle. She fiddled at a small pouch hanging from her belt.
“What if they don’t?” A new round of ammunition appeared from the pouch. Alicia had never seen bullets that small. She clicked them into place in the open gun and snapped it back in one straight piece.
“Your family will come looking for you. Sit down, they can see you.”
Alicia’s brow furrowed shortly, before she looked back over her shoulder and stepped forward to sit down in front of her. “How do you know about my family?”
The stranger held the gun sideways and looked over the barrel, checking if it would still work right. She ignored Alicia’s question as if she hadn’t heard it at all.
“Have you been spying on us? Who are you? Where did you come from?” Alicia couldn’t help the questions that had been on her mind since the hooded girl showed up from spilling out all at once.
“One question at a time,” she said. She dropped the gun on the tar between them. “You can call me Elyza.”
“I’m Alicia.”
“Yeah,” Elyza said, like she already knew this. She looked at Alicia again, longer than before. A smile formed on her lips. It was too small to hint at happiness, or for Alicia to tell what it meant at all, but big enough to break the toughness in her face.
“What were you doing out here?” Alicia asked, ignoring the way the stranger was staring at her.
“Saving your ass, sunshine,” Elyza said. Alicia sighed. Getting answers from this girl already proved to be much harder than Alicia was hoping for.
“How did you know where I was? Did you follow me?”
“Guess I was at the right place at the right time.”
“Right,” Alicia said skeptically. Elyza didn’t say anything more to defend herself. Alicia looked away. Elyza kept staring. She wasn’t being obvious about it, but Alicia knew she was doing it. In any usual circumstance, it would have pissed her off. She would have called her out on it, told her to stare at something else, but there was too much going on around them to get cranky over something so insignificant. If she was looking at her for her own enjoyment, who was Alicia to take that small pleasure away from her when the world was ending? Also, the girl just saved her life and risked her own for Alicia’s stupidity. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful. So instead, she changed the subject.
“So where are you from, originally?”
Unexpectedly, Elyza broke out in laughter. Real laughter, and Alicia was not in on the joke.
“Was that funny?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Elyza said eventually, her laughter turning back into a smile.
“Try me.”
“You haven’t heard of it.” Alicia sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Is it around here?” she tried.
“No.” Alicia looked away again. Sitting alone on a rooftop with a stranger, surrounded by walkers, wouldn’t be so bad, if only that stranger would stop making it so damn hard to talk to her. Alicia thought she was quite the evasive-answer type herself, but this girl topped anyone she had ever met.
Suddenly Elyza scoffed and lied back on the tar. It must have been hot on her hands under her head, but she didn’t complain.
“At least tell me why you didn’t show up to us before,” Alicia suggested, trying not to beg for it. “If you’re all alone out here we can help you. And you could help us.” Elyza says nothing. “Unless you’re not alone.”
“You’re a lot more talkative in this era. Bit less cryptic, I appreciate that.”
“What are you talking about?” Alicia asked. She was annoyed with Elyza’s tone, but it made her curious at the same time. “Have we met before?”
“Kinda.”
Alicia waits, but nothing more is coming. “That’s it? No follow up?”
“Listen, Alicia, I didn’t mean to get stuck up here with you.” She propped herself up on one elbow to look at Alicia. Her low voice sounded rough and for some reason, that made Alicia’s heart drop. “Every minute I waste back here makes a hundred years away seem longer and farther. I’m almost there! I can hardly wait much longer.”
Alicia swallowed hard. She looked at the tar by her feet while she folded her arms around her knees. She didn’t understand any of what Elyza just said, but it didn’t sound too nice. Normally she would just walk away now and try not to let it get to her, but there was nowhere to go on top of this small garage roof, surrounded by groaning dead people who were hungry for her brain.
“Now who’s being cryptic,” she mumbled.
Elyza smiled at her. It was a kind smile that Alicia wasn’t expecting after the words she had just spit at her. “You’ll figure it out someday,” she said. Alicia sighed. She knew she wasn’t going to get more than that and she didn’t want to annoy Elyza.
“Where’s your group?” she asked, hoping a simple question like this was not too much for the other girl.
“Don’t have one.”
“Where’d you get those guns?”
“None of your concern.” Alicia understood if she wasn’t looking for friends in the middle of the apocalypse, but Elyza could at least be nice to her while they were stuck up here together.
“Why did you save me?” Alicia asked.
Elyza scoffed. “Life mission, and all.” She looked as nonchalant as she sounded, but nothing about her attitude seemed to be joking.
“Is that supposed to charm me?”
“Maybe someday.”
“If we never get off this roof there isn’t gonna be much of a someday,” Alicia rightfully comments.
“Oh there is plenty. Believe me.” She let that hover in the air between them while she leaned back on the tar. They sat like that for what felt like a long time, Elyza lying on her back and Alicia staring at her. She looked at her clothes and her shoes. She looked at the way her jaw was clenched shut and her eyelids fluttered to deflect the sunlight. She inspected the hard but relaxed look on her face.
“What’s your favorite color?” Elyza’s voice broke through the silence without a warning. It startled Alicia and she was glad Elyza still had her eyes closed so she couldn’t see her staring and swallowing at the surprise of the question.
“Green…” she said. “Why?” Elyza scoffed, a big smile appearing on her face again. Alicia felt a sense of relief at her genuine look. She had seemed so hostile before and it made Alicia feel bad, but she realized that Elyza wasn’t all that fed up with her as she thought.
“Every time.”
Alicia furrowed her eyebrows again, wishing the other girl could at least try to make a bit more sense. “Every time what?”
“It’s mine too,” Elyza said. She opened her eyes and pushed herself up again, looking at Alicia. She looked into her eyes. “It’s a good color.”
Alicia glanced away awkwardly, being fully aware of her own eye color and the way Elyza was taking them in. It was strange, the way she looked at her as if she knew her so well. The soft smile that appeared every time she looked too long, as if she had memories written all over her, making Elyza feel nostalgic for some reason.
Elyza jumped up suddenly. She shuffled over to the edge of the roof and peered over. Alicia was suddenly a lot more aware of the groaning sounds below them.
“They’re retreating,” Elyza announced. “How’s that bike of yours?”
“What do you mean?” Alicia asked.
“How fast can you go with a backseat passenger?”
“I don’t know. I never had any volunteers.”
“Let’s find out.”
“What?” She had registered Elyza’s intentions by now, but Alicia still couldn’t believe she wanted to escape a herd of walkers on the back of her bike. Elyza took two metal barrels from her belt and clicked them to the end of her handguns. She put one of them back in her belt but held on to the other one. She walked to the edge where the dumpster stood to help them back to the ground.
“Come on then,” she said, looking at Alicia expectantly. She shot down the roof twice with barely any sound coming from her gun. Two dull thuds to the ground proved that the bullets reached their targets nonetheless. Elyza jumped down on top of the dumpster with less sound than Alicia had expected. She shot another walker that slowly made their way towards them from the side of the house.
Alicia sat down on the edge of the roof and scurried over to get her feet closer to the lid, but it was still too far. “Take my hand,” Elyza said, holding her hand out to her. Alicia complied. Elyza’s hand felt warm and soft under the roughness of her skin. She pulled her forward gently, but with enough strength to make Alicia stumble forward as she slipped off the ledge and landed on the dumpster. Elyza stepped in front of her and caught her with an arm around her waist.
When she looked up, her face was barely an inch away from the stranger’s, those blue eyes staring deep into hers. Her breath hitched and Elyza’s jaw dropped. Something rushed through her eyes, a wave of sadness, annoyance or anticipation, Alicia couldn’t tell.
“God,” Elyza exclaimed in a sigh. Alicia gave her a questioning look. She swallowed hard at the way the girl was looking at her and the feeling of her strong arm still around her waist. She let her gaze drop and awkwardly looked away from the tough eyes that were still plastered to her. Suddenly Alicia’s eyes grew wide.
Elyza caught up quickly and spun around before Alicia could blink. She shot the walker’s face off with a sickening splash without even having to question its position right in front of the dumpster. Its hand was still locked around Alicia’s ankle as the body started to slip to the ground. Elyza kicked it off. Bones cracked audibly under her foot.
“Oops,” Elyza said, while she let go off Alicia’s waist finally. “Can’t lose our heads right now.” She pointed down at the walker’s body below them, a cocky smile creeping onto her face. Alicia just shook her head in response, sighing, but as soon as Elyza’s eyes were off her face again, it broke into a smile too. She didn’t think she would be enjoying any dead or undead-related humor so soon, but hearing it out of Elyza’s mouth made her appreciate the irony. It lifted some of the tension that had been in Alicia’s chest for weeks.
She quickly wiped the smile off her face again and looked around for more walkers. The bike was lying in the sand only a couple of feet away from them and the path to it was clear for now. “Stay here,” Elyza said, while she jumped off the dumpster. She checked around the corners of the garage, shot down three or four more walkers Alicia couldn’t see and then motioned at her that it was safe to come down.
“You gotta admit,” Elyza said, reaching her hand up for Alicia’s. She took it, but hardly needed the support as she jumped off the lid of the dumpster a lot more gracefully than she had off the roof. “That’s a lousy form of transportation during a zombie apocalypse.” She nodded at the bike.
Alicia rushed over to pick it up from the sand. “You could have brought your own,” she noted.
“Fair enough,” Elyza replied, cocking her head with a slight smile. “It’ll do.”
“You wanna ride it?” Alicia asked, offering the other girl the steer.
“No way. That’s all yours.” Alicia shrugged and swung her leg over the frame, settling down on the saddle. Another walker approached them, but with Elyza and her guns close, Alicia felt about a hundred times as safe as she had in weeks. The walker fell before the thought even occurred to Alicia to warn Elyza about it. She had the quickest reflexes of anyone she had ever met.
“I can sit on this, right?” Elyza asked, pointing at the rack above the back wheel as she approached the bike.
“Have you never been on a bike before?” Alicia asked. Elyza shrugged, like she didn’t see why the fact shocked Alicia so much.
“Didn’t have them where I come from.”
“Yeah, you can sit on that.” Now was not the best time to question her new friend’s origins.
She looked over her shoulder as Elyza tested the rack with her hands, seeing if the unstable looking metal would be able to hold her body weight without collapsing. Alicia couldn’t help but smile at the tough look on her face as she inspected the simple structure of the bike and eventually tip-toed on it from behind with her legs spread. She laughed quietly at how clumsy her tough savior looked now.
Elyza tested her mobility by shooting a walker far behind them, and then one to the left, after clipping her other gun off her belt. “Alright,” she said. “Show me how it rolls.”
Alicia started pedaling. It was heavy, but she knew she could easily keep the speed up once she had accelerated enough. She just turned back the way she came, hoping that she would know the way back to the supermarket like this. Even if they brought walkers back with them, Travis and Daniel could hold them off. Elyza had killed so many of them already, there were less and less of them to worry about.
They rode down the middle of the road, Alicia hunched over the steer and Elyza’s arms stretched both ways, shooting walker heads off on both sides of the road with quiet thuds.
“Shit,” Alicia suddenly yelled. “Straight ahead!” In the middle of the road ahead of them, a group of seven or eight walkers sat hurdled over something between them. They looked up at the sound of Alicia’s voice and stood up one by one. Elyza shifted herself on the rack to see past Alicia’s shoulder, causing the bike to shudder and Alicia almost lost control of the handle bars. She fastened her grip and cursed Elyza in head for not understanding the balance logistics of a bicycle.
“Should I turn around?” Alicia asked, fearing the answer. It was almost impossible to turn the bike around at this speed, with this much weight on it and the walkers already so close, starting to approach them.
“No,” Elyza replied calmly. Alicia felt the girl’s arms sliding by her waist. She realized this was the inevitable alternative, but still her breath stocked at the touch. The guns appeared in her vision below her. Elyza shifted again, but Alicia knew there was no other way for her to see what she was shooting at, and at this point she couldn’t figure out which one of those scenarios would be more dangerous. She feared for the safety of her own hands, as Elyza had absolutely no view on anything but the group of walkers and Alicia’s back.
The first shot missed all eight of its targets. The recoil of the gun brushed from Elyza’s arm to Alicia’s side, which almost made her lose her balance again. The next one hit a walker in the shoulder. “Did I get one?”
“No!” Elyza murmured some fast curse words before taking another shot with the other hand. This one hit one in the head. But they were getting close and there were still seven to go. Alicia contemplated between raising the golf club and letting go of the steer with one hand and if that was worth the risk of falling over for.
“Duck,” Elyza instructed, while sliding her right hand out from under Alicia’s arm. Alicia bent forward as much as she could without losing grip or speed. It suddenly struck to her that even if Elyza still managed to get them all, she would hardly be able to make her way past the bodies on the road. But Elyza found her position now, with her elbow gently resting on Alicia’s back. She shot them all with very few misses, the last one only about three feet away as a bullet finally reached its brain. Alicia suppressed a soft squealing noise while they rode past it, and kept herself from squeezing her eyes shut in fear and disgust to guide the bike through the bodies in a way that kept the bike upright and Elyza on the back of it.
Elyza sighed and pulled back her arm, stroking down Alicia’s back with the gun, which was not as comforting as Elyza had intended it. “Phew,” she blew out. “See any more?”
Alicia looked further down the road while she pushed herself back up. “No.”
They rode past the thing that the walkers were hurdled over before they noticed the girls on the bike. Alicia’s fast breathing turned into a high pitched moan as she realized it was a dog – or at least had been once – that was lying in the middle of the road. She recognized it only by the grey fur that she couldn’t link to any other animal. It was impossible to tell from anything else. It looked so gruesome she couldn’t look at it any longer. A shiver went down her spine after Elyza let go of her back.
“We make a good team,” Elyza said, not seeming at all bothered with the sight of the poor dog, if she had even seen it at all. Alicia scoffs at the light-heartedness of the comment in contrast with the horrific scene it followed.
Alicia started recognizing houses and bewildered front yards as they got closer to the main road of the town. A sigh of relief made her way up her throat. She didn’t think she had lost all hope of finding her way back to her family, but her insides seemed to unclench at the realization that she was actually going to make it back alive. She knew the thought of what if the hooded stranger had never showed up would start creeping its way to the front her mind soon, but for now she was thankful enough to let it linger in the back.
“Do you have anywhere you need to be?” Alicia asked, suddenly realizing she hadn’t considered Elyza might have had anywhere else to go besides coming back with her. She didn’t even know what she would say to her family when she returned from a private forbidden mission with another mouth to feed, but also a new asset to their defense team. She didn’t know if Elyza even wanted to come, she didn’t seem like the type of girl who enjoyed spending her time with a group of strangers who would certainly start demanding answers as to how she ended up here on her own. But her mind was so set on getting herself home, that for all that time Elyza had been sitting on the back of her bike, she had had no intention of taking her anywhere but home.
“I’ll tell you when to let me off,” Elyza answered.
“Where will you go?” Alicia asked, trying to disguise the disappointment in her voice. She hardly succeeded. Maybe she was wrong to expect their shared adventure had turned them into friends, anything less than strangers at least. But her chest ached in an unfamiliar way at the thought of seeing Elyza leave again, after everything that just happened.
“Back to where I came from.”
“Right,” Alicia replied to the non-answer. She wanted to add a joke, but something in her throat stopped her from saying anything else. There were hardly any walkers left on this road, courtesy of Daniel and Travis having cleared the streets surrounding the supermarket, and Alicia slowed down her feet. She was exhausted from pushing the weight of the bike and its passengers with her thighs, and though all she had wanted before was to get home as fast as possible, she didn’t mind stalling a little bit now.
“You can stop here,” Elyza said, once they were so close to the supermarket that Alicia feared someone might see them if they rounded a corner. So she pulled the bike into a driveway and crossed it, stopping right behind the wall of a house.
Elyza shifted up and got off the rack clumsily. She groaned and stretched her back to recover from the uncomfortable sitting position before putting her guns back in her waist belt. Alicia got off the saddle and leaned the bike and her golf club against the house. She turned to Elyza. Her eyes shifted from her face to the collar of her jacket as she put her hand on her own elbow.
“Uh, thank you,” she said.
“My pleasure,” Elyza said. She was staring at Alicia again in that way that would have made her skin crawl if it wasn’t the end of the world. Or if it was anyone else than the girl who had just saved her life. But it was, and she had, and Alicia allowed herself to see the beauty under the toughness of Elyza’s scarred face. She was too busy staring back to notice Elyza’s arm stretching out to her. She flinched in surprise when she felt the warm hand on her own. Elyza’s strong fingers wrapped around her palm.
“Please be safe, Alicia.” She looked up into the blue eyes again, and could have sworn she saw a tear welling up in the corner. But Elyza’s face stayed tough and focused.
“Will I see you again?” Alicia asked. Elyza gave her a faint smile, but didn’t say anything. “You can just come by any time. You know where to find us. We could use an extra pair of hands.” She didn’t want to beg Elyza to stay. But she didn’t want to watch her leave and walk into the next danger with no way to know if she was going to be okay.
“If you need me, I’ll be there,” Elyza said. “But for now I have to go.” Alicia swallowed hard. Elyza took a step closer to her. She reached for Alicia’s other hand. Their eyes stayed locked on each other for a while, before Elyza leaned in. Alicia stood still and her eyes grew wide when Elyza’s lips touched her cheek. Just a soft peck, and then a quivering breath against her skin. She felt the grip on her hands loosening as Elyza leaned back.
Her fingers quickly grasped Elyza’s. She refused to let her go like this.
“Maybe I can come with you!” she yelped. She had said it before she had even thought over the words. It wasn’t a conscious decision she made. It was a desperate attempt to hold on to Elyza just a little longer. To hold on to this new feeling a little longer.
When she had left the house just over an hour ago, she had been yearning for excitement, freedom, something that made her heart beat with a rush again. She was aching to get rid of her boring new life in the dusty old house with her family who never let her go outside for anything other than hauling food and supplies from one place to another. She swore she would suffocate if she didn’t make a break for it. She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly, she just needed something to change.
Elyza tore her eyes off Alicia’s trembling lips. She shook her head. “No.” Her thumb grazed over the back of Alicia’s hand. “I’m sorry. But you’re gonna be okay.”
“How do you know that?” Alicia’s heart felt heavy in her chest. She didn’t even stand still to think about how it would seem strange that a girl she had just met kissed her to say goodbye, or that all of this was feeling too sentimental to begin with. She wasn’t sure why she was bothered so much with the thought of Elyza leaving, but she was. She bit back the other question that was burning in the back of her throat. Whether Elyza was going to be okay, too. But she wasn’t prepared for another unsatisfying evasive answer, so she let it burn there before she tried to swallow it away.
“Don’t be afraid.” Elyza’s voice hooked on something and she didn’t sound as strong and careless as she had before. Her voice was shivering. “You should get back now. Tell them what you will, but please don’t come looking for me. I won’t be around here.”
Alicia nodded to show she understood, but she couldn’t look her in the eyes anymore. She felt Elyza’s fingers slide away from her own again and she didn’t hold her back this time.
“May we meet again,” Elyza said. Alicia’s eyes fluttered up at the strange phrase, though it somehow felt familiar in her chest.
“May we meet again,” she uttered in response.
Their fingers slipped and Alicia’s hands fell back against her own hips. Elyza turned and Alicia watched as she walked away, towards the sun, so all she could see was the outlining of her backside. Both of her arms raised up as she removed her hood from her head, freeing her wild blonde hair. She looked around once more before she rounded the corner of the house. Her sky blue eyes shimmered in a smile and Alicia thought she saw a tear running down the scar on her cheek. But she was gone before she could be sure.
When she had left the house just over an hour ago, she never imagined this would happen. The walkers circling in on her was a likely occurrence, getting lost, hating herself for the decisions she had made was everything she had expected, but she had agreed with herself before she left that it would all be worth the thrill. She just wanted to feel something. The yearning for excitement and freedom had been at least partly fulfilled.
Alicia stayed there, staring at the spot where Elyza had left her field of sight. Of all the scenarios she had imagined for her little getaway mission, a strange but beautiful girl showing up to save her life was never one of them. She hadn’t known what she was looking for, but she felt the rush in her heart, the one she was aching to feel.
She sprinted to the corner of the house to look around it. Even though she had only just left, Elyza was nowhere in sight anymore. Alicia let out a sigh. There was no way she was gone already. She had popped up out of nowhere and vanished right back into it.
Alicia leaned against the wall before she turned around and walked back to the bike. She quietly hoped Ofelia hadn’t woken up, or no one else had noticed she was gone, but the odds were not in her favor. She had been gone too long. She hoisted herself back on the saddle, her mind still full of Elyza, but her heart empty with the knowledge that as soon as she got back, everything would just be the same as it was before she met her.
'If you need me, I’ll be there.' The words repeated in Alicia’s brain as she made her way back home. She couldn’t help but wonder how the stranger could promise such a thing before walking off and disappearing without a trace. But Alicia had faith in her words, for reasons she could hardly understand herself.
Alicia hadn’t known what she was looking for, but she knew she had found it.
And she knew she would give a lot to find her again.