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*Alia Zephyr is the first Alia to take the name as her own. Her mother’s name was Rebecca, and she too, had been the Alia of her generation. Rebecca’s mother was not the Alia of her generation, but it was her sister, Constance, who could literally walk on water and had the ability to control it. Constance’s mother, Bess, had been born into slavery, but escaped her captors after she was separated from her family as a teenager. Bess knew that her new owner meant to lock her in his attic and rape her mercilessly. She could sense anyone’s intentions, their unspoken desires, when she came into close proximity to them. It was how she navigated her escape; she could sense the capacity for humanity in enough people that she was able to flee to the woods where she was taken in by a family of natives. Her mother was killed shortly after Bess was sold. She had cried for two full days and refused to work, so her master killed her and burned her body. Bess’s mother had heard a prophecy from her mother in her youth that she would give birth to a real angel who would be taken from her. Bess’s grandmother, whose name is lost to history, had been dragged from her homeland in Nigeria where she was betrayed by her young husband who sold her into slavery when it became apparent that she knew all of his secrets and that he was undermining the rule of his father in their village. She was the daughter of a prominent man who claimed his ancestry traced back to Ethiopian Kings who rubbed shoulders with Romans. This is probably true given the Latin origin of the Alia moniker. The man claimed that the women of his family were goddesses and they gained a level of fame throughout the Roman Empire for their various abilities. Most were said to be able to divine the future, but some could control the elements, like the wind and fire. The most special were the ones with the biggest brown eyes that were sweet, but probing and made the object of their gaze feel exposed and vulnerable. It is said that the Emperor Charlemagne first used the word alia to describe a tall and lithe Ethiopian woman, with big, brown and woeful eyes who told him his future just by looking into his eyes. And this woman, who also had the ability to control metals, was the first to spot the Alia among her offspring, and then taught all of her daughters to identify the Alia, to cultivate her powers, and to keep her safe from those who would exploit them. How the first Alia realized her powers is a nebulous matter that will be revealed when more information becomes available. It is possible that we are in the midst of the last Alia that our universe will ever know. But there are other special women on Earth, there are two in the basement laboratory of Dr. Thomas Eakran and he calls them Aliarum. That is a story for another day.
Today, the Alia is happy to be in the presence of a new friend, the man named Ivan Santana. He is an old friend of Kevin, and he is in town to help Kevin find and put an end to the apparent zombie threat in the community. The three have lunch while Brittany, the sister of Ivan’s partner Clay, takes a nap.
“You sure you don’t think I can’t help Clay?” Kevin asks.
“If he does need help, he’ll let me know. I don’t really understand what’s going on. Some guy kissed me…”
“The pimp hired him to kill Clay…” Alia says absently, and then she purses her lips and closes her eyes when she realizes what she is doing. “I didn’t even mean to do that.” She looks at Kevin, slightly embarrassed.
“Don’t apologize.” Kevin says and he grabs her hand and kisses the back of it.
“I’m trying to lay off that stuff,”Alia says to Ivan.
“Is that why you called me?”
“I can’t read dead minds.” Alia says. “But you can feel everything right?”
Ivan nods. With focus and concentration he can feel the distinct energies of people, most living things, and some inanimate things. It is a gift that he inherited from his grandfather, the Huichol shaman, and though his grandfather didn’t have the same capabilities that he had, Ivan seems to have used those Huichol beliefs as the foundation for his ascension.
“So, I guess see if you can detected moving dead bodies, that would be good.” Kevin says.
Ivan closes his eyes and he inhabits the mental space that Alia had introduced him to. It is the same desert with big cracks in the dry, orange landscape. Ivan disappears it all and he is standing in a black void. He concentrates, and then the things in the room he inhabits in Kevin’s house begin to appear as fuzzy, gray shapes, and then the outlines of everything in the room sharpens and glows pastel green and it is like he is in a black and green version of the real world. Alia’s head is bright yellow like the sun, and Kevin’s has a strange shape inside of it, like a small octopus is hugging his brain all around, and Ivan knows that the shape does not have an origin on Earth (the energies of it are not reminiscent of the energies that objects of Earth have and it glows almost orange). Ivan’s form is bright green and surrounded by a roaring green flame and he levitates in this black and green space until he passes through the roof of the house. He depends his concentration and the layout of the neighborhood begins to form, line by pastel green line, and then people come into view as pale green forms. And then he feels them, the seemingly undead who don’t look pastel green as other human forms do. They are like smokey ghosts, strings of grays and whites held together in the shape of a human.
Ivan opens his eyes and he nods at Kevin.
“I got them. What now?”
Kevin looks to Alia, who grabs Ivan’s hand and then goes into the other room to see if Brittany is still sleeping.
“Now we burn them.” Kevin says.
“We can’t save them?”
“We don’t have time for that. We’re supposed to round them all up and drop them off at a hospital? We don’t know who’s working for Worthington. Maybe that’s exactly what he wants. We have to eliminate them Ivan, you know that as well as I do.”
Ivan nods reluctantly. He never imagined that he would have to be complicit in death, but it is the only way to avoid a bigger calamity.
Their first stop is the local college campus. Ivan sensed a dorm room with five of the zombies and he can tell by their ghostly forms that they are busy having sex with each other. He and Kevin stand looking up at the dormitory.
“It’s that one there,” Ivan says pointing. “It’s gross up there. I don’t know how someone hasn’t found them yet.”
Kevin uses boosters he imagines on his feet and he floats up to the window. Ivan smiles at the students who pass by and look on in wonder. “New window cleaning technology,” he says.
Through the window, Kevin sees a violent, bloody orgy and he nearly pukes. Then he encloses the group in a clear ball that he forces through the window. The men and women inside jumble around. They are a bloody mess and Kevin takes off away from the campus with the ball floating nearby. Ivan takes off after him and they land in a clearing of grass.
Kevin fits Ivan with a flamethrower and says, “Light them up when the ball disappears.”
Ivan nods and when the ball disappears, the people stumble out, some are having sex, and Ivan closes his eyes, then sets the bunch of them on fire.
Kevin forces Ivan on to the next zombies and it is a similar scene, over and over, for most of the day, until Ivan says he has had enough.
At Kevin’s house they sit outside relaxing. Alia brings them beers in the backyard and Clay’s sister Brittany has one too.
“How long have you had that tree?” Ivan asks, pointing at a tree at the edge of the yard that is taller than the house. “I was just here a couple months ago.”
Alia eyes it, then looks at Kevin. “Where did that come from?”
Kevin shrugs. “I guess it just grew. There’s apples on it.” When he sees the apples he remembers that he made the seed and planted it shortly before they dealt with Worthington’s experiments the first time around. He smiles at the tree. “That was me. I made that seed and I guess it grew.”
“So, all of y’all are like superheroes?” Brittany asks. Ivan had done his best to explain the situation that they found themselves in and even though she had witnessed Clay grow before her eyes, she is still reluctant to believe it.
“No,” Alia says. “We’re all just people.”
Brittany shakes her head. “I can’t read the future like you.”
“I can’t read the future either,” Alia says and she grabs the beer from Kevin’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Ivan asks with a look of alarm on his face.
“I’m drinking this beer,” Alia says and she lifts it to her mouth
“You don’t know that you’re pregnant?” Ivan asks.
Kevin shoots a look at Alia and she stares at him with wide eyes.
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