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“I am the judge of dreams and you are the judge of love. Well, I find you guilty of dreaming good dreams, and sentence you to a lifetime of working and suffering for the sake of your dreams. I only hope that someday, you won’t declare me innocent of the crime of loving you” - Speaker for the Dead
Has anybody else noticed how the cast of the Magicians seems to have their very own (slightly nerdier versions of) Clarke Griffin, Lincoln, Octavia Blake and Raven Reyes?
When We’re All That We Have Left, Yet We Aim To Kill
Chapter 3
Start from the beginning here
Rain pattered down on the sidewalks outside of the old movie theater on Chapel Street. Heavy droplets fell from the metal awning overhead and rippled as they collided with the small pools of water below. People began spilling out of the theater doors and disappearing into the night, just as the overflowing puddles on the sidewalk spilled out onto the streets to be swept off by the current of the river making its way to the nearest storm drain.
Elyza reached out a hand from under the protection of her umbrella and smiled as droplets splashed against her open palm.
“You’ve always loved the rain,” Jake said, standing close by and watching his daughter catch the droplets. “You use to run around in it for hours when you were a toddler, laughing like a maniac.”
She turned and smiled at her dad who was holding a small umbrella of his own and laughing at the memory.
“Yeah,” she said softly, still smiling as she looked back at her outstretched hand. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “It makes the city smell fresh and clean and alive. I love it.”
Jake hummed in agreement as they began to walk out into the night in the direction of their favorite, late-night diner. “Thanks for coming out with me tonight. I’ve missed this.”
Elyza was in her junior year of high school, and it was starting to feel like homework was taking over her life. She had always spent Wednesday nights with her dad for as long as she could remember, but recently, she’d had to ask him for a lot of rain checks.
“Me too,” she told him. “I’m glad it worked out. I love that movie,”
With a deep breath, her mind shifted to thoughts of loves lost and forgotten, only to be found once more. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was one of her favorites. She had seen it so many times that she could recite nearly every line by heart. It spoke to her on a level so deep that she could barely comprehend it - a level within the foundation of her soul, at the core of her being. She had never truly loved or lost, but there had always been a part of her that felt empty, as if something had been ripped away from her, erased from her mind and heart. There was a part of her that ached for something without ever knowing what that something was.
“What’s on your mind, Kid?” Jake asked her, knowingly. He’d always been able to read her face like an open book.
“Do you think that some people are meant to find each other?” She asked him, still half-lost in thought.
“What do you mean?” He questioned. “Like soulmates?”
“Ehh,” she said, shaking her head. She didn’t like that word. “Soulmates sounds so cliche, but yeah, I guess, kind of.”
She paused, losing herself in abstract thoughts that she couldn’t put words to.
“In the movie,” she tried again, “the first time Joel and Clementine met and started a relationship, things didn’t work out, but something brought them back together. They erased every memory they had of each other, but they met again and they were drawn together, and it was almost like their subconscious minds recognized each other. Do you think that kind of thing exists outside of the movies?”
Elyza waited patiently as her dad thought about how to respond. She loved the way he did that. He always took her questions seriously, no matter how absurd they seemed to be on the surface. The streets that they walked through were deserted. Water seeped through the toes of her boots, soaking into her socks and making her feet feel heavy and waterlogged, but it didn’t bother her much.
“I think…” he said finally, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words with great care. “… that there are only a few things in this world that make sense. As a physicist, I know that there are four perceivable dimensions in which we make decisions and take action - the four dimensions in which we exist as human beings. Every action generates utility, or usefulness. Love, on the surface, is no different, providing social utility and fueling our natural instinct to reproduce, which, in turn, ensures the survival of our species. But love is much more involved than that - it goes much deeper. We don’t cease to love someone when its utility diminishes or disappears. Love is the one thing I can think of that surpasses its usefulness. We continue to love people despite being separated from them through distance or decades or death. It transcends time and space, and in doing so, it also transcends our ability to comprehend it. But if there’s one thing that I know is true, it’s that love is bigger than all of us.”
“So… that’s a yes, then?” She asked him, teasingly.
Jake laughed, his eyes crinkling at the sides with the strength of his smile.
“Yeah, Kid, I guess that’s a yes.”
Elyza hummed in response, trying to let his words sink in. He tended to lose her a bit when he got philosophical on her, but she thought she understood what he was saying. If love could exist beyond the constructs of space and time, then anything was possible. Maybe it could even surpass the bounds of a single lifetime. As she thought it through, the concept of soulmates began to seem less and less ridiculous to her.
Maybe the empty space she felt inside of her was the point by which she was tethered to another soul by the strength of a love that never died.
“Meet me in Montauk,” she whispered, not realizing she’d actually spoken the line from the movie aloud until her father turned his head to look at her.
“I like the idea of that,” she said, speaking up. “I really want to believe that if we love someone enough, no matter what happens, we’ll always find them again.”
Elyza suddenly felt the urge to hug her father, so she reached out and put her arm around his mid-section and squeezed him tightly, causing their umbrellas to bump together at their close proximity.
“Thanks, Dad. You’re the best.”
“Love you too, Kid.”
They fell into a comfortable silence again as they splashed along the sidewalks. Elyza was pulled out of her reverie fairly quickly though, when she spotted the diner just up ahead.
“God, I’m starving,” she said, laying a hand over her grumbling stomach.
At the mention of food, Jake reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet.
“Shoot,” he said, rifling through it’s leather folds. “I have to run over to the ATM quickly to pick up some cash.”
He gestured back towards the neon green ATM sign hanging over a building about a block back.
“Why don’t you go in and get us a table while I do that? Order a coffee for me?” He suggested. “I wont be long.”
Nodding, Elyza agreed and made her way to the diner.
Only a few minutes after seating herself in a corner booth, a waitress came over and asked her how her night was going. Just as she was placing her order for two coffees, her cell phone began to ring in her jacket pocket.
She apologized to the waitress, reaching for it quickly to silence it, but when she saw her mother’s picture flashing on the screen, she excused herself, telling the waitress that she would take the call outside quickly and be back in just a minute or two.
She swiped quickly to answer her phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi Honey, how’s your night going? I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” Her mothers voice rang out through the other end of the line, sounding cheerful.
“No worries, Mum,” Elyza said as she pushed through the door and back out onto the street. “I just got to the diner and I’m waiting on dad to get here. He had to stop at an ATM quickly. What’s up?”
Elyza heard shouting in this distance, but she tried to ignore it as her mother spoke.
“Oh, nothing really. I was just hoping I could convince you two to stop by a store on your way back to pick up some eggs. We’re all out,” she explained.
“Oh yeah, no problem,” Elyza told her. “Is there anything else you need while we’re there?”
“No, just eggs,” her mother said. “How was the movie?”
The amount of commotion in the distance was getting louder, distracting her as it grew in volume.
“It was good, as always. It’s nice to finally have a night with dad again. It’s been a long-” Elyza’s words were cut off and her heart froze in her chest as the deafening sound of a gunshot pierced through the damp night.
“What was that noise?” Her mother asked. “Are you okay?”
The question echoed somewhere in the corners of Elyza’s mind, but she couldn’t find the strength to answer. She felt paralyzed, fear and dread consuming her body.
“Elyza.”
Her mother’s voice shook her out of her frozen state, like a shock to her heart, bringing her back to life.
Without answering her mother or ending the call, Elyza took off in the direction of the sound.
Water splashed around her as her feet pounded against the pavement. She was sure she was running faster than she had ever run in her life. Her lungs burned with her father’s name, wanting so desperately to call out to him, but the logical side of her knew that if she did, it could pull the gunman’s attention toward her, and she could easily put herself in unnecessary danger.
She willed herself forward, faster, and her legs began to feel as if they had disappeared beneath her, like she was flying in the direction of the ATM that she knew her father had gone to.
She screeched to a halt when she reached the neon green sign and quickly moved around the corner of the building.
The ATM came into view and Elyza’s stomach bottomed out, her world shattering around her. Her father was sprawled out on the asphalt below the machine with a crimson river flowing ferociously from a gunshot wound in his abdomen just below his ribcage.
“Dad!” Elyza called out, lunging forward and immediately applying pressure to the wound in an effort to staunch the bleeding.
“No, no, no, no, Dad,” Elyza said, her voice pleading and desperate. “Hey, Dad, come on, open your eyes. Please.”
She could hear the sound of her mothers voice, muffled through the speaker of the phone, clearly calling out, desperate to know what was wrong.
“Dad’s been shot!” She yelled, knowing her mother was listening. “I need you to hang up and call the police right now! We’re on the corner of McIlwrick and White! Hurry, Mum!”
Glassy blue eyes identical to her own gazed up at her from behind fluttering eyelids.
“Hey, Kiddo,” he said with a cough.
“Dad,” she said, eyes filling with tears, “hey, you're okay. Just stay with me, okay? Please, just stay with me, Dad.”
“Always,” he promised, voice coming out as little more than a whisper. “I will always stay with you, Elyza. I love you.”
The knot in her throat strained and broke at his words, and she released a strangled sob.
“I love you, Dad,” she managed to choke out.
“Love-” he stammered through his words, chest shaking in an effort to get them out. “Love is bigger… Don’t forget… that. I love you…Elyza… Always.”
“No Dad, please, no. Don’t do this. Please just stay awake. Stay with me.” She pleaded with him, feeling overwhelmed by her helplessness.
Blood bubbled in the back of his throat, but Elyza refused to let go of her hope, determined to keep him conscious and alive.
He choked and coughed, blood staining his lips, but somehow managed to speak once more. He looked into sparkling blue eyes that mirrored his own and held Elyza’s gaze through sheer power of will.
“May we meet again.”
The words tore at a place deep inside of Elyza’s chest, filling her with a sense of loss greater than she had ever experienced - entire lifetimes worth of pain and longing.
Jake’s chest stuttered lightly once more and then he went still beneath her outstretched arms.
“No, no, Dad, wake up,” Elyza pleaded as tears streamed down her cheeks. She pressed her ear flat against his chest and tried to make out a heart beat. Hearing nothing, she reached up to feel for a pulse on the side of his neck, and then on his wrist.
Nothing.
She looked into the faded blue eyes that had always been so bright and full of life, but now only stared out into the space between them, unfocused and unseeing, vacant and dead.
“No,” Elyza cried, chest heaving as sobs began to rack her body. “No, Dad. Please, no.”
In the distance, sirens wailed as if to add to the laments of her own cries. She clung to the body beneath her with every ounce of strength she had left beneath her weather-drenched skin. Rain fell down around her, pulling crimson out from beneath them and dying the river red, seeping into the ground and leaving it forever stained, as if to mark the place where a love was lost.
Elyza didn’t have to wait long before the door to the bedroom opened once more and Alicia walked in carrying a large bag of frozen peas. She smiled widely at the brunette, but it quickly faltered and fell as she watched a precession of people trail into the room behind her.
Elyza scanned the new faces in front of her. She felt the bed move next to her and knew that Alicia had taken up residence in her previous position on the edge of the mattress beside her. She studied the people standing in line like a firing squad at the foot of the bed. Their eyes raked over her, taking her in, making judgements and assumptions about her, just as she did the same to them.
“Here,” Alicia’s soft voice spoke off to her right. Elyza peeled her eyes away from the waiting interrogators and looked over to find the brunette holding out the bad of peas with a small, apologetic smile on her face.
“Thanks.”
Elyza took the bag from her gratefully, throwing her a smile before reaching down and molding the bag around her swollen ankle. She breathed deeply as the ice seeped through her skin and cooled the muscles and tendons beneath.
“I apologize for not having any bandages to offer you,” a deep, charismatic voice told her. Elyza glanced up to find that it had come from the tall, thin looking black man. He was dressed in an expensive-looking suit and everything from his posture to his tone gave Elyza the impression that he had just come down from some kind of fancy, end-of-the-world cocktail party. “I never thought I’d have much need for first aid supplies beyond the bare essentials out here, and the few bandages I did have are all being used by my other injured guest.”
He reached up and placed a hand over his right collar bone.
“Gun shot wound to the shoulder, you see,” he told her, almost conspiratorially.
Elyza grimaced in response, playing along with the friendly performance he seemed to be putting on for her. He made her slightly unease and very suspicious.
“No worries, I understand,” she told him. “Gun shot wounds trump sprained ankles. I appreciate the bag of peas all the same.”
She smiled and paused briefly before saying, “You must be Victor then. Alicia told me this is your yacht?”
Elyza noticed the way the eyes of the woman standing next to him widened and whipped toward Alicia at the mention of their recent conversation. She assumed that meant the brunette had been told not to speak to her before this interrogation took place. A smirk played at the corner of Elyza’s lips at the thought of the rule-breaking brunette sitting next to her.
“Yes, Victor Strand,” the man introduced himself, reaching out an arm for Elyza to shake.”And you are?”
“Elyza,” she informed the room. “Thank you for going out of your way to save me. I owe you for that.”
She turned her head to meet Alicia’s eyes and watched as a smile spread across her full, beautiful lips. She gestured at the group of people then, and asked, “And who’s everyone else?”
Alicia’s eyes widened, realizing that nobody else had been introduced yet, and she quickly moved to correct that, pointing at each of them individually.
“This is my brother, Nick, and my mom, Madison. And this is her boyfriend, Travis, and his son, Chris,” she explained. “Ofelia’s in the other room resting. She’s the one with the gun shot wound. Daniel, her dad, stayed behind to find antibiotics and medical supplies, but he’ll most likely be back soon.”
Nodding, Elyza met the eyes of each one of them in turn.
“We should be able to splint up that ankle for you as soon as he get’s back,” Madison spoke up, meeting her eyes and offering Elyza a smile. “You were in pretty rough shape when we found you.”
“Would you mind telling us how you ended up so far out from shore with injuries like those?” Travis jumped in, obviously wanting to get down to business.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Elyza started. “A few days ago, soldiers raided the house that I’d been staying in. They killed one of my friends and wounded another before we managed to escape. As we ran away, I got separated from them. I spent two days on my own trying to find them, but I was out of luck. On the third day, I was down by the waterfront looking for signs of life when I heard someone crying inside the entrance of a building. When I walked in, I found a boy. His name was Adam. He was crouching over a woman who turned out to be his mum. She was sick - really sick - and she had a nasty bite mark just beneath the curve of her neck. I knew what that meant, and I knew what had to be done. I tried to convince the kid to go outside, but he wouldn’t listen.”
Elyza paused, trying hard to swallow down the aching knot that had built up in her throat. She closed her eyes, and the memory flashed behind her eyelids - the boy’s pleading sobs, Elyza’s whispered words, her fingers shaking over the trigger of a gun, the shattered scream, her tear-stained cheeks-
She cut off her thoughts sharply and inhaled through her teeth, trying to muster as much strength as she could to push it all down and out and away. She couldn’t afford to let herself dwell on the past too much - not when it had the power to ruin her.
“I did what I had to do, and I pulled the boy out of the building with me when it was over. I knew the sound of the gun going off would attract the walkers, but I didn’t expect there to be so many. The boy wouldn’t stop screaming and trying to run back, and that just made more of them come. Pretty soon, a horde of thirty or so were on us. I did everything I could to fight them off. I emptied my gun into as many of them as I could and then went at them with a retractable baton I’d found on the body of a police officer the day before. If it had just been me, I could’ve handled it, but in the chaos that broke out, Adam tried to run back to the building and one of them got to him. There was nothing I could do, and by that point, we had attracted so many of them that I had to run. It was the only way I was going to survive. So I made a break for the shoreline. Some of them followed me, but most of them stayed behind, drawn towards the boy’s screams. It wasn’t long before the screaming stopped, though. I jumped over a rock bank and down onto the sand - that’s how I twisted my ankle - and then I scrambled into the ocean, hoping that the breaking waves would keep them trapped on the beach. When that seemed to work, I spotted a black dot in the distance just off of the shore - I think it was this boat. The last thing I remember is trying to make my way over to it.”
Elyza ended with a shrug. The eyes of the people in front of her were wide with disbelief.
“You survived for three days in the city on your own?” Travis asked, incredulous.
“No way,” Nick spoke up in obvious disbelief. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m more than capable of taking care of myself,” Elyza told him, shooting him a glare. She had made sure of that after what had happened to her father.
“You said that you’d been staying in a house, and that soldiers raided it?” Travis asked, curiously, and Elyza nodded.
“Yup,” she said, popping the ‘p’ between her lip. “Turns out that when you need people the most, that’s when they’re most likely to turn on you.”
Travis glanced around, looking over at his son uneasily before meeting Elyza’s eyes again.
“Where was it?” He asked.
“The house?”
Travis nodded.
“It was on the side of a hill between Cal-State and some high school.”
Chris’ eyes doubled in size as he turned to look at his father and said, “that’s were I saw the flashing light! Remember? You saw it, I showed you.”
“Flashing light?” Elyza said, confused, but then it hit her, and her eyes grew to match the size of the kid’s. “Wait, are you saying that…? Were you guys the ones playing flashlight tag with Lindsey?”
“Lindsey?” Travis asked.
“Yeah, one of my friends from the safe house. She kept stealing my flashlight to send morse code messages to some house in the distance. Are you saying that was you?”
“That was me,” Chris nearly shouted in disbelief and excitement. “Wait, that was morse code?”
“Yeah,” Elyza answered. “I kept telling her that no one knew how to bloody read morse code, but she was hell-bent on trying anyway.”
“Holy shit,” Chris said, wearing such a perfect expression of someone who had just had their mind blown that Elyza couldn’t help but laugh. She heard a chuckle next to her and glanced over to meet Alicia’s bright green eyes, dancing with amusement. The sight caused Elyza’s heart stuttered in her chest, and she reveled at the feeling, amazed at the way her body seemed to respond the girl.
“Holy shit is right,” she agreed.
Floorboards creaked beneath her feet as Elyza tiptoed through the unfamiliar apartment. A body stirred in the bed behind her and she glanced back, relieved to find that the girl had only rolled over in her sleep. Her blonde hair cascaded over the pillow beside her and the bare skin of her back was illuminated in the soft glow of the street lights that streamed in through the adjacent window.
Elyza couldn’t remember her name, but she was pretty sure it was something that started with a D… or maybe a J. Jennifer? Or maybe it was Jessica.
Either way, the girl was beautiful - stunning really - with legs that just kept going and a smile that brought butterflies to life inside her stomach. Had she met the girl a few years ago, Elyza may have pursued something with her beyond the classic one night stand, but she had given up on relationships years ago. She could never find a feeling that she was capable of holding onto for longer than a few weeks at a time - a month or two at most - and she was now convinced that something inside of her was broken.
Satisfied that she hadn’t woken the sleeping girl, Elyza scanned the floor for her shirt that had been thrown somewhere in their heated trip to the bedroom. She found it on the kitchen floor and smirked to herself as she remembered the way she had snuck up on the girl as she was pouring them both another glass of wine. She had pressed her body softly into the girl’s back and trapped her between her arms as she reached for her own glass, turning to brush her lips against the exposed skin of the girl’s neck after taking a sip. Things had escalated quickly after that, both wine glasses left forgotten on the countertop as they pulled at each others’ clothes and stumbled toward the bedroom.
It was technically early morning now, just after three AM, but she considered any time between midnight and six to be the middle of the night. Her body ached in a pleasantly satisfying way, making her smile. She reached for a pen on the table by the door and scribbled out one of her classically charming notes to tell the girl how much fun she’d had and apologize for leaving so early.
Elyza hurried out the front door a moment later and down a flight of stairs leading to the exit of the apartment building. When she walked out into the crisp night air, she stopped for a moment and breathed deeply. It smelled like morning due and autumn leaves and winter on its way.
Her small, studio apartment was a little over three miles back towards campus and she walked the entire way, doing her best to enjoy every second of it. This was her favorite time to walk, with empty streets and starry skies and a town full of sleeping people tucked up under blankets behind closed doors.
When she was a kid, she had loved walking through busy streets with her father. They would walk hand in hand and she would stare up at the faces of strangers who would look back at her, and sometimes offer up a smile. She could always find the unmistakable vestiges of pride and confidence in those smiles.
Elyza remembered those days like a long-forgotten feeling of what could have been. Something had changed in the way people held themselves. There was something distinctly self-conscious and nervous about the way people acted towards each other, as if they were fueled by fear instead of compassion or ambition. She would sit on a train and look from face to face, watching as people would catch her staring and quickly avert their eyes, shuffling their feet in discomfort. All she wanted was for someone to hold her gaze, to meet her eyes with a look of their own, to acknowledge her existence, to prove to her that she wasn’t alone. She always felt so fucking alone.
Her mood fell significantly as she lost herself in thought, barely noticing what she was doing as she climbed the stairs to her apartment and unlocked the door to let herself inside. Closing the door behind her, she allowed herself to lean back against it heavily, her head falling back to rest against the solid wood.
Books on criminology were scattered across her desk in the corner of the room across from her unmade bed. Slowly, she moved toward it, feet dragging as exhaustion consumed her. It wasn’t so much exhaustion, really. It was more like the physical response of her body to the resignation of all the expectations she’d had growing up about what it meant to be alive and human and good. The world wasn’t what she thought it would be. She slumped down in the chair by her desk and stared out the window in front of her.
It hit her like that sometimes - the empty feeling paired with a devastating kind of longing that she could never put words to. She usually felt it after waking up from dreams that filled her heart to capacity, only to rip it all away upon awakening. The dreams always faded quickly from her mind, leaving her only with an overwhelming sense of loss that tore through her chest and stung at her eyes. Other times, however, it took her by surprise, seemingly out of nowhere, and those were the times when it hit her the hardest.
She stared at the street light outside the window and tried to push down the feeling that stirred in her bones, just as she had so many times before. Silence filled the air around her and she knew she was the only one in her apartment, but it felt like she was only one left in this town, in this world. She couldn’t help but succumb to the loneliness that engulfed her - a loneliness that stretched far beyond this moment, beyond the silence of the room and the streets below her and into other worlds and other lives.
She knew that there was something she was missing - someone she was missing - a person she had never met, but who existed only in her knowledge of her capacity for an emotion that she had never felt, but spent her life dreaming about. It ached in every cavity of her heart - in every corner of her mind and every blood cell in her veins.
She leaned down, resting her forehead in the palms of her hands as her elbows pressed into the desktop. She rubbed at her eyes and tried to physically wipe away the feeling. It was no use though. It lingered inside of every moment, no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. It was always there.
Always.
It seemed like hours had passed while Alicia sat on the side of the bed and listened to Elyza answer question after question that was thrown her way. The girl absolutely intrigued her, to say the least. She was so captivated by the blonde’s stories that she hardly notice the way the sky was fading into a deeper blue as the dawn reached out to greet the day.
Elyza explained the events that led up to the plane crash, and how a man named Henry had helped her pull Tom out of the wreckage. Together, they had gone around trying to save as many people as they could. Apparently, they had managed to get nine more people out to safety before Erica, a stubborn scientist with a ‘massive god-complex’ (Elyza’s words), refused to leave without her metal carry-on briefcase. She climbed back into the wreckage and wasted far too many precious seconds retrieving the stupid thing, and by the time she had finally pulled it free, one of the turbines exploded. There was no one left to save after that.
According to Elyza, the house on the hill belonged to the scientist. The woman had invited them all to stay in her home until things quieted down in the world outside - an offer that redeemed the scientist quite a bit in Alicia’s eyes. They had spent days fortifying the house, making it the safest place in the city to hide out from the walkers. Unfortunately, though, the reinforced doors didn’t stand a chance against the military tank that came to tear it down. No one could have prepared for that.
Alicia was amazed at the amount of detail the blonde offered up. She wondered if it could be a play on Elyza’s part - if the girl was divulging so much of what she’d been through in an effort to gain their trust more quickly. If that was the case, Alicia couldn’t help but to be impressed. It was a smart move, especially if Elyza was planning on going back into the city to look for her friends. She would most certainly need their help, even if only just to get her back to the shore.
By the time Elyza had finished telling them everything, Alicia’s back was starting to ache from sitting in the same position for so long. She barely noticed though, as she had been entirely wrapped up in every word the blonde spoke. She’d completely lost herself in the sound of that beautifully accented voice. She could hardly believe the events that Elyza described. It sounded more like a story she’d pulled out of an old comic book than real-life events, but she did believe her, of course. It was the apocalypse, after all. All kinds of crazy shit was happening.
It was obvious that the blonde was wiped out from the days events, so when she saw Travis open his mouth to ask her yet another question, Alicia quickly jumped in an cut him off.
“We should take a break,” she addressed the entire room while giving Travis a pointed look. “We can talk more tomorrow if you still have questions.”
Elyza looked over at her gratefully.
“That’s probably a good idea,” her mother agreed. “Why don't you guys go back upstairs and get something to eat?”
“I’ll go check to see if Daniel’s sent us a signal yet,” Victor offered before locking eyes with the girl next to her and flashing her a smile. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Victor moved towards the door then, filtering out of the room with Travis and the two boys.
“I’m gonna go check on Ofelia. Bring down some food for Elyza, okay?” Her mother said, and Alicia knew that it was less of a question and more of an instruction, so she just nodded curtly before the woman exited the room as well.
Alicia stood up and faced the injured girl that was taking up residence in her bed.
“Well that took forever,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “How are you holding up?”
“Throat's a little dry, but I think I’ll survive,” Elyza quipped, and Alicia smiled at her.
“Hungry?”
“Starving, actually,” she admitted, rubbing a hand over her stomach.
“Alright, I’ll go grab us some food and bring it right back,” Alicia told her, moving toward the door. She paused quickly before she stepped out though.
“Is there anything else you need? A new bag of frozen peas, maybe?”
“Nah, I’m good, thanks though,” Elyza said. “but if you wouldn’t mind putting this one back in the freezer, that’d be great. It’s thawed out quite a bit.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” the brunette said, catching the bag a second later when it was tossed to her.
“Be right back,” she called out as she left the room.
She made her way upstairs and grabbed a few plates of leftover pasta. While the food was heating up in the microwave, she moved to the freezer to throw the peas back in and her eyes landed on something that made her smile deviously - a frosty glass bottle with a label that read Belvedere Vodka.
She quickly grabbed it and shut the freezer door with a smack as she tried to hide the bottle along the inside of her arm. She glanced around nervously, turning her head from side to side to make sure no one was watching and then made a break for the microwave, quickly grabbing the food and disappearing down the stairs. She was beyond grateful no one had been paying any attention to her, because she was sure her movements and general body language had been far less stealthy than she had hoped.
When she was out of sight, she held the bottle up in front of her and inspected it. Vodka definitely wasn’t her alcohol of choice, but it was bound to be fancy, so she could only hope that it tasted a bit better than most. The bottle had a fricken bow-tie around the handle for god’s sake, because of course it did. This was Victor’s yacht, after all. The world was ending and the man still went through the effort putting on a suit and tie. Obviously he would want his liquor to be dressed up as well.
She bumped through the bedroom door with her shoulder and closed it behind her with her foot. Looking over to Elyza, she held the bottle up in front of her for the blonde to see, a smirk playing at her lips.
When We’re All That We Have Left, Yet We Aim To Kill
Chapter 2
Read Chapter 1 Here
The white noise of jet turbines filled Elyza’s ears as she leaned her head against the window of the plane and stared down at the clouds below her. She’d only ever flown a handful of times in her life, and she wasn’t particularly fond of it - being stuck in enclosed spaces for long periods of time wasn’t really her favorite thing - but she had always felt oddly at home in the sky. She couldn’t say why - maybe it was the moments of weightlessness that made her feel like all of her burdens were being lifted off her shoulders for a few seconds at a time; or maybe it was the way she could literally place forty-thousand feet of distance between herself and her life and her problems.
This flight was different, though. This day was different. Things were changing. She could practically feel the natural disposition of civilization shifting beneath her as news about the epidemic swept through the streets and panic ensued.
The man across the isle from her coughed again and she could see the people in front of her practically jumping out of their seats. Nervous heads turned his way, and Elyza couldn’t help but glance at the man herself. The sight of him did nothing to ease her own discomfort. His skin was pasty-white and gleamed with a sheen of sweat.
He could be infected, she thought to herself, and she knew that those were the same words that occupied the minds of everyone else on the plane who was within hearing distance of the sick man.
“Relax, Princess.”
The voice came from the young man sitting next to her. Tom Finn, he said his name was. He looked more like a boy than a man. If she were to guess, she’d say he was probably in his early twenties - most likely around the same age as Elyza herself. He had been insufferable for the duration of the flight, forcing her to endure some of the worst jokes she’d ever heard as well as his pitiful attempts at flirting. And then, to top it all off, he gave her that stupid nickname that she bloody loathed after laughing at her drink order - some cranberry juice watered down just a splash with no ice.
She hadn’t actually realized how tense her muscles really were until he told her to relax though, so she tried her best to loosen up her posture, rolling her eyes at him before turning to stare back out the window.
“Don’t worry, it’s only going to be another few minutes before we start to land, and you’ll be on the ground and back in the arms of your boyfriend before you know it.”
She let out a huff of a laugh in response.
“What, no boyfriend?” He asked, trying to sound playful.
“That’s not really my thing,” she told him, keeping her eyes focused on the world outside the window.
Amusement pulled at the corner of her lips as a long pause stretched out between them, and she knew that Tom was trying to process what she had just said.
“So…. what? You don’t like guys?” He asked hesitantly.
“I have a weakness for soft skin and long legs and beautiful smiles.”
She let her words linger in the air for a second before she turned to look at him, brows raised. He looked back at her with a big, toothy smile.
“Well me too,” he said and then laughed. Part of her wanted to stare him down and make him sweat, but she couldn’t hold back the chuckle that built up in the back of her throat.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, his goofy grin never faltering as he shook his head. “If I had known… well, I definitely would’ve lightened up on the flirting.”
Elyza watched him duck his head slightly, lowering his gaze as his smile turned sheepish. As insufferable as he had been, the boy looked surprisingly genuine, and she couldn’t help but find it somewhat endearing, though she would never admit it.
“No worries, mate,” she told him with a laugh. “You could really do with some work on your flirting game, though.”
“You got some pointers for me, Princess?” He said laughing, earning himself a scowl from the blonde.
Just as she was about to snap back a witty retort, she felt the plane drop into it’s final descent. The man across the isle broke out in a fit of coughs a second later and it lasted nearly half a minute before the noise subsided into a loud wheeze.
“He does not look good,” Tom said, eyeing the man cautiously.
Elyza made a sound of agreement in the back of her throat as she eyed the man with suspicion and concern.
“Good thing we’ll be landing soon,” he said, turning back to face her, and they both silently wished that soon would come sooner.
“Are you staying in LA or heading downunder?” He asked, smiling again and trying to ease the tension.
“Back to Melbourne for me. If they can get the plane off the ground, that is. With everything going to shit, I’m starting to worry they might shut down the airports.”
“Oh yeah, I didn’t even think about that,” Tom said. “I’m glad I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
“Lucky you,” Elyza quipped.
“So what, were you just visiting the states?”
“No,” she told him, “I’m in uni outside of D.C.”
“Oh cool, are you on spring break or something?”
“No, our break isn’t until mid-March, but I got a call from my mum a few days ago saying that she was worried about how the U.S. was going to handle the epidemic - something about quarantines and containment procedures. Whatever they end up doing, she didn’t want me sticking around long enough to find out, so she booked me a last-minute flight home.”
“Well that’s sweet,” he said, smiling at her. “At least you’ve got someone looking out for you.”
He said it in a way that made it obvious to Elyza that he didn’t have the same thing, which made her eyes drop slightly in sympathy. She couldn’t think of what to say to him, but was saved the effort when the man across the isle started convulsing in his seat.
The woman sitting beside him shrieked and pressed her back against the window in an effort to stay as far away from him as possible. The man slumped forward, his convulsions so strong that he slid out of his seat and collapsed on the floor. Gasps and exclamations echoed around her, but Elyza barely noticed as she sprang into action. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she practically jumped over Tom to reach the seat beside him.
“He’s seizing!” She called out to no one in particular. Pushing against one of the man’s shoulders, she quickly rolled him onto his side and held him there. He was foaming at the mouth, head smacking against the ground with every jolting movement.
It must’ve lasted over a minute, and when the convulsions finally ceased, the man didn’t move or open his eyes. Elyza’s stomach flew into her throat as the nose of the plane bowed down into a steeper descent and the cabin went weightless for another moment. Although she normally enjoyed the sensation, this time it only added sickeningly to the anxiety that had knotted in the pit of her stomach.
She looked down at the unmoving man and quickly pressed two fingers to his pulse point. Feeling nothing, she moved her fingers slightly and pressed more firmly. When she still couldn’t find any signs of a pulse, she reached down to grab at his wrist and tried one more time. Failing, she looked up at Tom and held his gaze for a moment, his eyes wide with shock and fear, before shaking her head nearly imperceptibly.
She let go of the shoulder she was bracing and the dead man rolled onto his back, laying flat against the airplane floor in front of her. She had no idea what to do. She didn’t even know if she could move. She felt as if she had been frozen, kneeling in the isle, staring at the closed, dead eyelids of another person that she couldn’t save. Her eyes began to sting and her thundering heart clenched in her chest.
She could feel the eyes of everyone on the plane staring at her, but she didn’t look up. She stayed as still as if she were carved out of marble, unable to tear her eyes away from her failure, but then she jumped in surprise, gasping loudly enough for the sound to ring in her ears. Pasty white eyelids snapped open and glowing blue eyes pierced blindingly up into her own. Fear shot straight through Elyza like a bolt of lightning to her chest. A groan came from the body and the man shifted as if he were about to sit up.
“Oh shit,” Elyza said, jumping to her feet as the undead man braced his legs beneath him and rose up, reaching out for her.
At the sound of her voice, he hissed and lunged forward. Elyza barely managed to get her hands up in time to keep the man at arms length as he bared his teeth and snarled. Screams filled the cabin on the plane as she fought him off. Somehow, she managed to get in a good shove, and when the growling man stumbled backward, Elyza stepped forward and punched him squarely in the jaw with so much force that she felt it crack beneath her fist. The dead man spun around but caught himself on a seat a few rows back.
A middle-aged woman sat alone in the row next to where the dead man fell, and when he turned his face toward her, the woman’s eyes doubled in size at the sight of his crooked, broken jaw and unnaturally glowing eyes. She let out an ear-splitting scream, fully catching the attention of the dead guy who lunged toward her and this time managed to sink his teeth into the throat of his victim.
Blood spewed out onto the seats in front of them as the flesh was literally ripped from the woman’s neck.
Elyza didn’t have time to think - she only acted. She threw herself back into her seat, reaching for her backpack below it. She rifled through it until her fingers came into contact with a heavy metal object and she let out a sigh of relief, silently thanking herself for nearly forgetting her maglite and throwing it into her pack at the last minute. The flashlight was heavy in her hands, the grip about the same size as the handle of a tennis racket, and it was more than capable of doing some real damage.
“Bloody hell,” she cursed under her breath, bruised knuckles throbbing as she gripped it tightly.
She rushed back out into the isle and ran toward the row where she knew the dead man still was. The woman lay limply beneath him on the seat with blood pooling around her body as the man gnawed at her cheek, tearing off slabs of skin and grunting loudly. The sight made Elyza’s stomach roll.
In one strong, fluid movement, Elyza whipped the maglite down across dead man’s shoulder, effectively shattering his collarbone. His head snapped around and he snarled at her through his fractured jaw, and it was almost as if he didn’t feel his injuries. The dead man didn’t hesitate for a second. He reached out with the arm attached to the destroyed collarbone, and Elyza gaped at the sight, absolutely stunned, but shook it off quickly when he stood up and moved towards her.
She ducked beneath his arms as he lunged at her and smashed the metal flashlight into the side of his body. She took a few steps back as he crashed against the seats beside him, but caught his balance and relentlessly moved forward in her direction once again. Splintered ribs speared through the side of dead man’s chest, dripping crimson and staining his beige shirt with blood.
He lunged for her again, but she was ready for it this time. She ducked once more, cracking the metal instrument across his shin, snapping both of the bones in his leg.
The dead man crumpled beneath his own weight as his limb failed to hold him up. Elyza stepped back and watched, trying to gauge what the dead guy was going to do next.
“What the bloody hell?” She exclaimed as the dead man rose once more, hobbling forward on his mangled leg. She was exasperated and pissed off and scared out of her skin, though she was doing her best not to let it show.
She didn’t wait for the guy to attack this time, choosing to take the offensive. Eliza smashed her maglite into the side of his face, sending him flying to the ground. When he hit the floor, she lunged forward and pinned him down before crushing the flashlight down into his skull. She felt the bone crunch beneath the force of it, knowing that it was a death blow, but she didn’t stop. She hit him just as hard, three more times in quick succession before pausing to make sure he wasn’t moving or making any sound.
Satisfied it was over, she looked up and for the first time, she seemed to notice the chaos that was breaking out around her. The plane lurched beneath her and a hand reached out and grasped her upper arm. She whipped her head around, readying herself in case it was another attack, but she only found Tom with big eyes and panic written all over his face.
“Come on, Princess!” He called out to her, yanking at her arm until she stood up. The plane rocked formidably, causing them both to stumble as he dragged Elyza back multiple rows and into two empty seats near an emergency exit.
“Something’s wrong with the plane!” He shouted to her over the noise. “I don’t think we’re gonna have the smoothest landing!”
Glancing out the window, she saw the ground no more than a mile below them. Quickly, she reached for her seatbelt and buckled herself in.
“Tom!” She yelled to him, noticing his seatbelt wasn’t fastened. “You need to buckle up!”
“Where’s the fun in that?” He called back sarcastically, holding up one end of the seatbelt with a buckle that had somehow been shattered.
Elyza’s eyes widened in fear as she focused in on the window behind Tom. She could see the tops of trees only feet below them. The ear-splitting noise of metal tearing apart splintered her eardrums, and then everything went black.
With a sharp gasp, Elyza sat up and blinked rapidly. Her heart pounded like Thor’s massive hammer inside her chest as it tried to break its way out of her ribcage.
“Hey, it’s okay,” a gentle voice spoke somewhere off to her right, and then a hand brushed her arm. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re safe. Just breathe.”
Elyza brought her hands up to her stinging eyes, rubbing her palms over them and trying wipe the blurriness away. She took a deep breath to steady herself but winced when a sharp pain pierced the side of her chest. She moved her hand to touch it and groaned when a dull throbbing pain began to pulse beneath her fingertips.
“You’re hurt,” the voice said. “Try not to move too much. You may have fractured a rib or two.”
Elyza groaned again, keeping her breathing more shallow. Absent-mindedly, she noticed that she was sitting on top of a very comfortable bed with impossibly soft blankets piled around her. She tried to take in the room, but as soon as her dry eyes landed on the girl sitting beside the bed, she couldn’t look anywhere else.
Elyza’s lips parted as she took in every detail of the girl beside her, from her light-brown hair that cascaded in waves over her shoulder to her royally delicate fingers that rested reassuringly on Elyza’s forearm. She looked like the wildflowers that bloomed on the banks behind her childhood home during the first days of summer, with eyes like the forest and lips like sunshine, and the sight of her made Elyza feel as if her heart was exploding. It was a feeling that she only ever dreamt about, but never truly felt. She recognized it now, though, in an oddly familiar way.
“How are you feeling?”
Elyza watched every movement of those full lips as the girl spoke. She swallowed roughly and tried to shake herself out of her daze. There was something about this girl that rattled her - that caught her off-guard and tore down her defenses.
She wanted to answer the girl, to tell her that her entire body hurt like hell, but that, when she looked into those familiar green eyes, the only thing that she felt was the overwhelming sensation of finally coming home after entire lifetimes spent lost and in the dark. She felt her heart expanding in her chest and the bones in her body turning into clouds beneath her skin. She was pretty sure she was floating. She forgot how to speak, but she thought that maybe that was for the best. She wasn’t entirely sure that she could control the words that would fall out of her mouth if she answered the girl’s question.
“Who?” She tried. Her voice was so hoarse, she barely recognized it. She coughed once and cleared her throat to try again, but the brunette beat her to it.
“I’m Alicia - Alicia Clark. I spotted you out in the ocean more than a mile off shore and my mom and her boyfriend, Travis, went out in the boat to get you. You almost drowned,” the girl explained with concern etched between her brows.
The memories spilled back into Elyza and filled her mind like the ocean water that had flooded her lungs and nearly killed her.
“Where-”
“You’re on our yacht,” Alicia told her, cutting off her question so she didn’t need to speak. “It’s safe here, don’t worry.”
She was still leaning over the edge of the bed with one arm extended out in front of her, fingertips brushing Elyza’s arm. She seemed to notice it a moment later though, and withdrew her hand as she moved to sit down on the bed next to the blonde. Elyza missed the feeling of the girl’s touch as soon as her fingers left her skin.
“What’s your name?” Alicia asked.
“Elyza,” she rasped, voice still gravelly, but quickly recovering. “Thanks for saving me.”
Elyza glanced down sheepishly before looking back up at the girl from under her lashes, forehead creasing with lines as she arched her brows and smirked.
“I’m definitely not use to playing the part of the damsel in distress,” she told her, and then paused for a moment before adding, “though, it almost makes the whole nearly drowning thing worth it when the knight in shining armor turns out to be a beautiful girl with a shining smile.”
She was rewarded with a shining smile of her own as Alicia looked down shyly at her hands tangled in her lap.
“We couldn’t leave you out there to drown,” the brunette said with a shrug of nonchalance, but her cheeks were brushed lightly with the hint of a blush. She reached behind her then for the glass of water that was sitting on the bedside table and handed it to Elyza. “You should drink something.”
“Thanks,” Elyza said, accepting the water and immediately taking a sip. She drank the entire glass down in one go and came up gasping for air.
Alicia smirked at the sight of her and lifted her chin. The expression was so familiar to Elyza that it practically knocked her out again, taking her completely by surprise. Some part of her recognized this girl. She nearly said something, but thought better of it. She had already gone against her better judgement with that god-awful fairy-tale reference, and she knew that saying something like ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you in my dreams’ sounded far too much like a ridiculous line Tom would’ve tried to use on her. So instead, she chose to simply smile back as she chuckled under her breath.
“I guess you were thirsty,” Alicia teased. “Do you want some more? I can go get you another glass.”
“No worries,” Elyza said. “Just tell me where to go an I can get some myself.”
Alicia grimaced lightly and said, “I don’t think you’re gonna be walking on that ankle any time soon.”
“Oh shit, right,” Elyza said, glancing down to where her ankle lay hidden beneath the blankets. “I forgot about that.”
“I’ll just run out to pour you another glass quickly, it’s no problem. Be right back.”
The brown-haired beauty was out the door before Elyza had the chance to say anything. Taking advantage of the moment to herself, though, she threw the covers back and inspected her ankle. It was swollen and painted with an angry purple and burgundy bruise with hints of blue around the edges. It looked awful.
In an effort to find out how bad it really was, Elyza attempted to move her foot in a circle. She clenched her jaw and grimaced as sharp, stabbing pains shot through her lower limb and a deep, relentless throb began to pound inside of it.
Tenderly, she reached down and probed at the sides of her lower leg, pressing down against both her tibia and fibula just a few centimeters above the point where the swelling stopped. It caused her small amounts of discomfort, but it was nothing compared to the pain she would have felt if either of the bones had been fractured.
The door swung open, pulling Elyza’s focus away from her task as Alicia walked back into the room carrying two glasses of water, one in each hand. She closed the door behind her with her foot and smiled at the blonde.
“I got you an extra glass in case you’re extra thirsty,” she said, smiling at her. She looked down at the ankle that Elyza was inspecting and grimaced. “That looks even worse than it did a few hours ago when we brought you in here. How does it feel?”
“Not great,” she responded. “I’m just checking now to see if it’s broken.”
She watched as Alicia walked over to the bedside table and placed the glasses down on its surface for her. She smiled at the brunette and thanked her before reaching down to further inspect her injury. She pressed her fingers into her fifth metatarsal and navicular bone respectively, gauging the levels of pain she felt at the pressure.
“Are you a doctor? Or a med student or something?” Alicia asked curiously.
“Not me, no. My mum is a trauma surgeon back in Melbourne though. I practically grew up in the hospital there, so I’ve managed to pick up a few things.”
After a few more presses, she was convinced her ankle was sprained, not broken, and she silently thanked her mother for having so many medical books strewn around the house for Elyza to riffle through as a kid. She had always enjoyed looking at the detailed drawings that lined the pages of the texts, often sketching near-perfect copies of them on blank pieces of paper whenever boredom took over and she couldn’t think of anything specific that she wanted to draw. As a result, she had every aspect of the human anatomy committed to memory and could map it out without blinking an eye.
“Well it’s not broken,” she said, looking over at Alicia and smiling. “Just a sprain. Though I’m not sure how bad it is yet. Do you have any bandages or cloth that I can wrap this up in? And maybe some ice or frozen veggies I can put on it to help with the swelling?”
Alicia stood back up from the chair she had sat down in and turned her head around the room as if she might find something laying out in the open for the blonde to use.
“I’m actually not sure. I can go ask Victor though, it’s his yacht. But you should know that as soon as I go find the adults, they’re gonna know that you’re awake and they’ll want to come talk to you.”
Elyza’s stomach clenched at the unpleasant idea of facing judgment from the parental authorities so soon after waking up, and in a place that she was entirely unfamiliar with nonetheless. The nervous look that Alicia was giving her only added to her unease, but she knew that she didn’t have much of a choice.
“Bring on the Spanish Inquisition,” she said in mock-excitement, earning another smile from the girl. Elyza rolled her eyes playfully before straightening her spine and preparing herself for the unavoidable interrogation to come.
When We’re All That We Have Left, Yet We Aim To Kill
Chapter 1
Bare feet hit the ground at a sprint as Elyza tore through the deserted city streets in the early morning light. There were a few walkers scattered throughout the alleyways that she passed, and she knew that they would soon join the group that was already following her, drawn to the loud noises they were making in her pursuit. Her breathing came out in hard but steady breaths as she ran. She could see the expanse of the ocean ahead of her and the rocky cliff face that separated her from the safety that it harbored. She quickly considered her options. She knew it would be dangerous, but she also knew that risks were necessary in order to survive - her instincts demanded bravery.
With a burst of strength, she launched herself over the edge of the rocky bank. Her stomach flew up into her throat as the ground dropped out from under her and gravity pulled her down. The sand felt more like cement when she landed, her feet smashing into the granular surface. Her left ankle rolled sickeningly, causing her to audibly wince, but she pushed forward, hell-bent on reaching the water.
She limped heavily as she fought her way through the icy ocean waves that crashed around her. She barely noticed the way the salty water splashed up to sting at her eyes and sear the scrapes that decorated her skin. Her heart pounded in her chest as it pumped adrenaline through her entire system, igniting every cell in her body. The only thought in her mind was to survive. If she could just get out past the surf break, the horde of walkers following her wouldn’t be able reach her.
She heard groans and hissing and splashing behind her and knew that they were too close. Forcefully, she threw herself headfirst into the crest of a breaking wave. She fought helplessly against the current as the force of it pushed her back toward the shore, and her right foot came into contact with something solid. She knew what it was. Fear spiked in her core and she kicked frantically, ignoring the sharp pain that shot through her left foot. With one, desperate push, she launched herself off of the walker’s body just as the undertow began to pull her back out. She felt it’s dead fingers scrape across her foot, and then she was free.
She kept up her frantic kicking under the water until her lungs felt like they were about to burst. She came up for air, spluttering and gasping for breath. Looking back at the shore, she saw what looked like a group of nearly fifteen walkers wading through the rough water. Relief washed through her like the ocean itself as she watched them get thrown by the crashing swells, unable to break through the waves.
With one hand, she reached up and pushed her wet, blonde hair out of her face and tried to take a deep breath to steady herself. She began to swim further out from the shore, but stopped almost immediately as the excruciating pain in her ankle flared up, causing her to clench her jaw and grimace. It was impossible to ignore now that the adrenaline was wearing off.
She looked up and down the shoreline, scanning it for any signs of obvious life. A few walkers were scattered along the beach, slowly making their way toward the horde that had been chasing her. She didn’t see any people. There was no one running, no one carrying weapons or tools, no one walking with purpose and cautiously glancing over their shoulder - there were no signs of the living.
She sighed and let her head fall back slightly as her stomach dropped in disappointment. It was quickly followed by anger, though, as she thought about the way that her safe house had been raided during the night. She had been living in a large house on a hill that she and a group of eleven other people had transformed into their very own, fortified camp. They had been residing there for months, sheltered from the chaos of the streets outside, surviving together, before they were attacked, not by walkers, but by the god-damned military.
She allowed herself only a moment to worry about her friends before she pushed it all down and forced herself to focus. She needed to make a plan. She needed to survive.
She scanned the shore again, looking for a safe place to swim back to land. Finding nothing promising, she turned in a full circle, taking in the endless expanse of the ocean on the western horizon. She did a double take, noticing a black dot about twenty degrees off the shoreline to the North, and felt a spark of hope flicker in her chest. If it were a boat, she could rest there and take some time to come up with a real plan to get back to shore and find her people. Determined, she knit her brows together and began to swim, using only her arms and her uninjured leg to propel herself forward.
“I could get use to this,” Alycia said with a sigh as she smiled up at the clear blue sky, letting the warmth of the sun seep through her skin and warm her to her core. She was sprawled out on the deck of Victor’s enormous luxury yacht with sunglasses on and the steady rhythm of music streaming though a single earbud in her right ear. The sun was warm on her skin, and for the first time in what felt like years, she was almost able to pretend that the world hadn’t broken to pieces and collapsed into rubble around her.
“I’d rather not.” Chris’s voice shattered her reverie. She hadn’t realized she wasn’t alone. It irked her enough for a scowl to cross her lips.
“Buzz kill,” she grumbled.
She sat up and looked at him, pushing her sunglasses up to rest on top of her head. He was facing away from her, leaning against the railing of the deck with one of his elbows propped up on it as he held his video camera out in front of him. He never went anywhere without that thing.
“What are you doing?” She asked, not caring enough to hide her annoyance.
“Documenting,” he told her.
Alicia stood up with an exasperated sigh and walked over to him. Reaching for the camera, Chris tentatively let her take it out of his hands. She slid her fingers through the strap and hit the record button.
“What’s the point?” She asked him, genuinely curious. She honestly did not see the point of it. “Technology is failing. Even if someone were to find your camera in the bound-to-be-shitty, post-apocalyptic future, they wouldn't have anything to play your videos on. So what’s the point?”
“What makes you think I do it for anyone else?” He countered, and his response took Alicia by surprise. She turned to look at him with confusion clearly written on her face. Brows knit together, she lifted her chin slightly and waited for him to elaborate; she knew it was a rhetorical question.
“Look,” he went on, “if someone does find this in the future and there’s even a sliver of a chance that they’ll find some way to play my videos, then it’s all worth it. A first hand account of how the apocalypse went down could be invaluable. I don’t need to explain that to you - I know you know that - but even if I knew for a fact that there was no chance that anyone else would ever watch these, I would still do it. I’d do it for myself. Talking things out in front of the camera, documenting my experiences and describing all of this crazy, senseless shit- it’s the only way that I can know that it’s real - that this world isn’t just some never-ending nightmare that I could eventually wake up from. It’s the only way that I can process any of it.”
He released a long breath and let his shoulders slump forward, becoming the perfect picture of exhaustion. She could see it in his countenance and in his posture and she could hear it in his words, and she understood. She was exhausted too; they all were - physically and mentally.
“Hell,” he went on after a moment, voice tight as if he had to force the words out of his throat. “I still can’t process it. I mean… my mom… I just- fuck.”
He choked on his words and reached a hand up to pinch at the bridge of his nose before turning away from Alicia and the camera. Both of his elbows rested on the balcony and his face was pressed into his open palms, hiding his eyes.
Alicia reached up and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything because there was nothing to say. Shit happened and life sucked, and there was nothing fair about it.
They stayed that way for a long time, with no sounds but those of the ocean beneath them. It must’ve been at least fifteen minutes before Alicia realized that the camera was still in her hands and it was still recording. She pulled it up in front of her face and zoomed in to the shore, taking in the crumbling landscape of the city that she use to call home. It broke her heart to see it like this - torn apart and dead.
Suddenly, something off of the shore caught her eye and she inhaled sharply.
“Chris, look at this,” she said, hitting him on the shoulder and making him scowl at her.
“What?” He leaned over to look at the camera. Alicia zoomed in closer and glanced at him. She watched as his eyes practically doubled in size.
“Is that one of them?” He asked, and she could hear the fear beneath his words.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m pretty sure the dead can’t swim.”
He nodded silently and visibly swallowed.
“We need to tell the others. Go get my dad,” he told her, throwing her a quick glance.
Despite her displeasure at being told what to do, she hurried towards the cabin doors.
“Mom!” She called out loudly as soon as she entered the room. “Travis!”
“Woah, why are you yelling?”
Nick squinted up at her from where he was laying, sprawled out on a sofa. He looked as miserable as a junkie in withdrawal, which wasn’t surprising since that’s exactly what he was.
“Where’s mom?” She snapped, ignoring his question and moving past him.
“Lower deck,” came a nonchalant voice to her left. Alicia glanced over and saw Victor standing by the bar, casually sipping a drink that he had poured for himself.
“Seriously, what’s going on?” Nick asked, sitting up and rubbing a hand over one of his eyes.
“We found someone,” she shot at him over her shoulder before running down a flight of stairs.
“Interesting,” she heard Victor say curiously as she reached the bottom of the stairs, quickly followed by Nick’s loud exclamation of, “What?”
She chose to ignore them both, but heard their footsteps above her, most likely heading out to the deck to see for themselves.
“Mom!” She called out again, as loudly as she could.
“Alicia?” A muffled voice came from behind a closed door. It swung open a moment later and Travis stepped out, shirt unbuttoned and hair ruffled, closely followed by her mother. Both looked concerned.
“Oh god, seriously?” Alicia cringed both inwardly and outwardly as she realized what they must’ve been doing in the privacy of their bedroom.
“What’s wrong?” Travis asked.
“There’s someone in the water,” she told them, wasting no time. “I saw them through Chris’s camera up on the top deck.”
The look on both of their faces shifted quickly from concern to surprise.
“Show me,” Travis said, moving past her quickly and hurrying up the stairs.
“It’s not a…” Madison let her question trail off, “is it?”
“No, Mom. We’re safe here,” Alicia reassured her. “Whoever it is, they’re definitely alive, and we need to help them.”
Exhaustion weighed down on every bone in Elyza’s body, like lead weights dragging her down beneath the surface of the water. Her injuries were hitting her full force, and the pain of them had her teetering on the edge of consciousness. She fought with every ounce of her strength to stay awake, to stay above water, to stay alive, but she was failing. Her vision was narrowing, black seeping in around the edges and threatening to eclipse her. Salt water burned in her lungs, making her cough violently, which only caused more of the searing liquid to force its way in.
She wasn’t naive - she knew that the thing she felt slowly creeping up on her death - but she kept up her futile fight with unwavering determination.
Something firm suddenly tightened around her upper arm and tugged at her. She barely registered what was happening as her head broke the surface of the water and she fought to breathe.
“Grab her other arm!” A voice shouted out.
Her vision was blurry and fading fast, and just as she felt something grasp her other arm, a rolling wave came up around her face. She coughed in an impossibly large breath of ocean water that flooded her lungs, and everything went black.
Alicia, Nick and Chris stood side-by-side, each one pressed up against the railing on the upper deck of the yacht. All three of them were staring anxiously at the small screen of the camera, watching the adults pull a body into the small, inflatable boat. They strained their eyes, trying their best to make out more of what was happening, but it was too far away for the little camera to show anything in detail.
Alicia let out an irritated sigh. She was still sufficiently annoyed about not being allowed to go out in the boat with her mother, Travis and Victor, especially since she was the first one to spot the person out there in the water.
“We can barely see anything through this damned thing,” she huffed at the boys like it was their fault, pushing off the railing and turning away from the camera in Chris’s hand. “I’m going back down to wait for them on the lower deck.”
She didn’t have to wait long before the boat was within hearing distance. She heard her the boys’ heavy footsteps thumping down the stairs behind her, but didn’t turn to look at them.
“Tie us up,” Victor called out to them as they came in to dock. He threw a rope out to Nick just as the boat bumped up against the stern of the yacht. Chris reached out and grabbed the other rope at the boat’s bow, steadying it enough for the three adults to step out onto the deck.
Travis crouched down, and when he stood back up, he had a girl in his arms. Her blond hair stuck to the sides of her face, soaking wet and dripping icy sea water onto the floor beneath her. Her clothes were waterlogged, and clung to her tightly. She looked like she’d been through hell. She had deep scrapes on her cheeks and chin and cuts scattered across all the visible parts of her skin. What was by far the worst of her injuries, though, was her left ankle. It was swollen to the size of a softball and covered in an angry-looking, multi-colored bruise. The sight of it made Alicia clench her jaw and grimace in sympathy.
Travis stepped off the boat and moved towards the stairs that led to the cabin. Nick ran up ahead of him and held the door open.
“Is she-?”
“She’s alive,” Madison cut off his question, “just unconscious. We need to warm her up. Alicia, will you go find something dry for her to wear? She looks about the same size as you.”
“Yeah, sure.” Alicia hurried off towards her room and grabbed a pair of purple sweatpants, a simple white t-shirt, and a fuzzy gray sweater, along with some underwear and fleece socks. They were the warmest clothes she had with her.
She walked out into the cabin and found everyone crowded around the unconscious girl who was laying on top of a light gray sectional. She could hear them whispering under their breath.
“Are you sure she isn’t infected?” One of them asked.
“No, we’ll have to check her out for bite marks,” her mother’s voice answered.
“And what if she is?”
“Then we can’t let her stay here,” Travis whispered back.
“We can’t just throw her back out into the ocean.”
“We can’t risk any of us getting sick. You know that.”
“So what, you would be okay with just leaving her to die?”
“Well wh-”
“How about we give her some air,” Alicia suggested hotly, not bothering to lower her voice and effectively cutting off the discussion. She walked up to her mother and handed Madison the pile of clothes.
“You’re right,” her mom agreed, turning to Travis. “Why don’t you go up and wait for us on the upper deck while we get her changed.”
Travis nodded.
“Don’t forget to check for bite marks,” he reminded her before turning to leave. “Everybody out, let’s go.”
He ushered everyone out of the lower cabin with him, but when Alicia moved to follow, her mom stopped her quickly with a hand on her arm.
“I’m going to need your help,” Madison said as Alicia turned back towards her. She put the pile of clothes down on the side table and bent over the unconscious girl. “Help me get her out of these wet clothes?”
“Oh,” Alicia said, hesitantly. “Okay.”
She walked back and bent over the girl beside her mother. It took both of them working together to peel off her skin-tight black jeans, and Alicia was grateful that the girl was unconscious as she squeezed her swollen ankle through the fabric.
She let her mom take off the blonde’s underwear, feeling uneasy about seeing the girl naked without her permission. She reached for her shoulders and pulled her up into a sitting position in an effort to get her out of her leather jacket. The material was stiff and inflexible, which made things difficult, but she eventually managed to free her of it.
After tossing the jacket aside, she reached for the hem of her shirt and hiked it up her stomach, revealing another deep purple bruise painted across her ribs. She ran her fingers over it delicately before taking one arm at a time and pushing them through the shirt sleeves. Alicia breath caught in her throat and she blushed a deep shade of red when the girl’s second arm was freed and she realized that the blonde wasn’t wearing a bra. She blinked rapidly and tried to look anywhere but at the girl’s chest. Her eyes flashed over soft looking skin marred with wounds in various stages of the healing process. She had to fight back the urge to reach out and touch her injuries - to soothe them. It surprised her to no end. She wasn’t one to care about strangers she’d never met, but for whatever reason, Alicia really didn’t like seeing this particular girl hurt.
Clearing her throat, she pulled at the girls shoulders and sat her up again in order to slip the wet shirt up over her head. The close proximity to the half-naked girl made her heart race. As she reached around her body, she noticed the curving lines of a looping tattoo on the back of her neck. Alicia’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the infinity sign - the same symbol that she always found herself sketching in the margins of her notebooks during class. She wanted nothing more than to take the time to look at it, to trace it, but she knew that she couldn’t - that she shouldn’t. So instead, she grabbed the dry shirt beside her and quickly fit the girl into it.
Foregoing the sweater, she lay the girl back down and reached up to brush a few stray strands of hair out of her eyes. She ran her fingers down to the very ends of her damp, blonde hair and rolled it between her fingers. Even wet, she could tell that her hair was a beautiful shade of champagne gold.
When she looked back up at the girl’s face, Alicia gasped, her jaw dropping slightly in shock. Blurry eyes blinked up at her, as blue as the sky above them and as bright as the summer sun. They held her for a moment and then a smirk spread across the blonde’s lips. All Alicia could do was stare at her, stunned. She was completely at the mercy of those eyes and that smirk, trapped like a prisoner in her gaze. Then the girl spoke with a voice as coarse as gravel after nearly drowning.
“You were right,” she coughed.
That was all she said before she blinked her glassy eyes a few more times and seemingly fell back into unconsciousness.
“Did she just say something?” Madison asked loudly, obviously surprised as well. “Is she awake?”
Alicia mouth went dry, but she forced herself to swallow down the knot that had built up in her throat.
“She’s Australian,” was all she could think to say.
“What?” Her mother asked, confused. “Alicia, what did she say?”
It took a moment for Alicia to collect herself enough to respond.
“It was nothing, Mom. She wasn’t making any sense,” she told her, finally tearing her eyes off of the blonde to turn toward her mother and throw her an exasperated look. “She just mumbled something and then passed out again. She was probably just sleep-talking or hallucinating or something.”
“Hmm,” was all that Madison said in response. The woman stood up and walked around to the other side of Alicia, near the blonde’s head, inspecting her.
“Did you see any bite marks?” Her mom asked.
“No, just a lot of cuts and bruises. You?”
“Same.”
There was silence for a moment as mother and daughter stared down at the girl with identical looks of curiosity and confusion.
“What do you think happened to her, Mom?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out as soon as she wakes up. Help me get her into a bed?”
Alicia nodded. “She can take mine. I’ll wait in there with her until she’s conscious again.”
“Okay,” Madison agreed. “I’ll get her arms and you get her legs.”
Alicia moved down to the girls thighs and slid her hands under her legs. Together, the women lifted her and carried her down the hall and through the door to Alicia’s room. They gently laid her down on the bed and shifted her into the center of it before covering her with a soft blanket.
“Alright hun, come get us when she wakes up. Understand?”
Alicia nodded, walking over to the shelf by the bed and scanning the few books that were stacked there. She smiled with satisfaction as she found The Giver and quickly pulled it out and ruffled through its pages.
“I mean it, Alicia. As soon as she’s awake, you need to tell us.”
“Okay, Mom, I get it,” she said, waving her mother out of the room with irritation.
As soon as the door closed, Alicia collapsed into the chair by the bed and stared at the blonde-haired girl who was asleep in her bed. She completely forgot about the book in her hand as her mind filled with the image of those beautiful, blue eyes and that devilish smirk.
“Australian…” she said absent-mindedly, completely oblivious to the way she was smiling to herself at the memory of the girl’s words. “How the hell did you end up here?”
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