Finding Home | #Wattys2016

Chapter Fourteen: Alicia Clark

A/N: So I just have to get this out before this story continues. Thank you so much to TaySwiftFrozenOUAT for mentioning this story in her author's note. I really appreciate it and I'm really thankful for you following this since the beginning. ~TGF

Chapter Fourteen: Alicia Clark

Elyza awoke groggily and slowly, as if her consciousness was forced to fight through the fogginess of oblivion. Her body felt heavy and her head was throbbing insistently. Fuck, what did I drink last night?

For a few blissful moments she thought everything that had happened to her up until then had been a dream. What apocalypse? She was clearly laying in her own bed at her own university after a hard night of partying.

But something was different, something felt weird. The bed was too springy and her neck ached in a way that wasn't at all familiar to her. Then it came back, everything that had happened. The undead, the death and destruction that followed her after the airport. Tears came springing to her eyes at the horrifying nightmares that were now her life.

Then she remembered the boat, the explosions and the man with the gun. Her mind ran through everything on the Freedom had led up to her jumping over the edge and falling into the freezing ocean below her with Aden tucked in her arms.

Her heart thumped in her chest but she tried to remain still, her instincts told her someone was in the room with her. The unfamiliar room that smelled like vanilla and something tart and a little spicy. Elyza allowed her senses to expand, trying to calm her erratic breathing as to not alert whoever was in the room.

Elyza heard the shifting of pages and the insistent purr of an engine. Still on a boat, she realized and her head pounded harder as she focused on the continuous motion underneath her. It would have been easy to forget she was moving, the area around her felt large, but in that moment she was too focused on it.

Grime and crust making it difficult to peel her eyelids open when she decided it was safe enough to do so. Her head was angled to the side and the first thing her bleary eyes fell on was a gun. A gun. She felt a deep in the bed near her feet shift before disappearing completely as the person sitting there shifted.

Someone was watching her or supposed to be. It took Elyza a couple of seconds to process what she was going to be doing. She thought it through, keeping her body calm against every nerve in her body that told her she needed to move and defend herself. She didn't know these people, she didn't know what their motives were or why the hell she wasn't drifting in the middle of the ocean.

Elyza closed her eyes again, imagining what she was going to do made it a lot easier for her body to do effortlessly. Pull your feet up, roll off the bed, and grab the gun, crouch and aim. The person was at the foot of her bed and not paying any attention, it would be easy enough.

Allowing herself a deep breath that made her ribs ache as her chest expanded, she jumped into action. Her feet thudded onto the ground, her hand wrapped around the light weight of the gun and pulled back the hammer spur.

Eyes searching the room quickly, they fell upon dark hair and a furrowed brow, beautiful pouty lips and smooth, tanned skin. A girl, a part of her realized, a pretty girl. The shock of the unexpected realization in such problematic circumstances caused Elyza to hesitate. Focus.

After a moment, she raised the gun, aiming it directly at the girl's chest. Eyes popped up at her sudden movement and Elyza's heart fluttered in the most peculiar way. Such pretty eyes. The girl scrambled to her feet, dropping an open book onto the floor and holding her hands up in surrender.