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feverinfeveroutfic · 26 days

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flowers for alexander | chapter thirty

The mountains down below the ship gave way to the rolling hills and grasslands as well as the rocky canyon of the high Sierra, but Florence had her mind on the prize of bringing the ship back down to the ground again. As long as they were in a safe place like Reno again, that was all that mattered to her.

Her tools were downstairs but she only had to think about it for a moment as she put on her boots and tied up her dishwater blonde hair. A knock on the door caught her off guard, and she raised her head to the thin paper over the door. No way that was Eric or Francine, or Alex for that matter.

“It’s open,” she called out as she laced up her boots. The door slid open and they were met with the sight of Mark’s dreadlocks and oval-gaped face.

“Hey, you,” Chuck greeted him.

“Hey!” Mark decreed with a worried look on his face. “Rob and I just heard about the ship, what’s happening?”

“The mechanic is going to take matters into her hands,” Chuck replied with a gesture over to her.

“Yeah, there’s too much to explain,” Florence confessed as she sat up and ran her fingers through her ponytail there at the back of her head. “It’s only better to go into the heart of the ship, the engine room, and loop everything so the steam never runs out even when we get to Reno. I figure that, since steam is just superheated water, it can condense itself and then warm up again, at least until there’s nothing left.”

“Just add water,” Mark joked.

“It’s not that simple,” Florence assured him, and Chuck stood up behind her. “Especially since we have a reactor down there as well. I wish it was, though.” From behind Mark’s head, she noticed the door across the hall sliding closed. She pursed her lips, and Mark turned his attention back there.

“What?” he asked her.

“‘Scuse me one second,” Florence said; Mark stepped out of the way for her, and she padded over to Alex’s door. She heard Chuck whispering something to Mark, but that was the least of her concerns for the time being. She lightly tapped on the door frame with her knuckle.

“Alex?” she called through the paper panel. Silence. She turned her attention back to Chuck and Mark, both of whom looked concerned. Florence tried again.

“Alex? Everything okay?” More silence.

She returned to them with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“What’s with him?” Mark asked her in a hushed voice. She opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped herself. She would rather keep what Francine had told her under wraps, especially since it was really no one else’s business.

Alex needed to rest his head. He was using too much brain power, especially when his brain never melded too well with hers. If she truly still loved him, she would let him rest.

She would let him go.

“He had a long night,” was all she could muster for him. It was sort of the truth: Alex had been up until the early hours of the morning chatting with Francine, but there had to be ways to bury the truth without really unearthing anything.

“Oh, I see,” Mark raised his eyebrows at that, and then he craned his neck to the door across the hall. “If it’s any comfort to him, all five of us all did, too. In fact, the last couple of nights have been brutal.” And then he returned to her. “Really, I don’t know how you guys sleep on here. I don’t know if it’s intentional but our room is right near the hull of this thing. We’re a ways away from the reactor but everything is creaking and making noises, the pipes all whir over our heads and we worry about something bursting… we can’t wait to sleep in our own beds again.”

Florence sighed through her nose.

“I’m going to get you guys in your beds again,” she vowed to him, and she rested a hand on her belly, still small even with the passage of time. And then she remembered that Eric and Francine were down near the hull of the ship.

“You guys wanna come with me so I’m not down there all alone?” she asked them. “Hot metal, radiation gauges, and superheated water… I don’t really feel comfortable when I think about it.”

“I was just going to offer you that,” Chuck confessed, and he closed the compartment door behind him. Florence led the way down the hallway to the stairs, down towards the hull, and all the while, a nervous sensation swept over her. As far as she knew, they were stuck down there and with no means of breaking out of the hull.

At least she wasn’t heading down solo.

The stairs towards the bottom of the ship ran adjacent to the corridor towards the center and the place where she and Francine had gone before. Chuck lingered behind her, complete with one hand on her shoulder as if to guide her towards the darkest of the pipes: it was hard to believe that the boys from Death Angel had a room down there given the heat from the metal and the darkness.

“Where’s Mark?” he asked right then; Florence turned her head for a look back at the rest of the narrow corridor. Indeed, Mark had disappeared into the shadows: there was a fork in the corridor that she had missed upon their walking in there, and she wondered if he had gone back to their dorm at all. But there was not a single sound of footsteps anywhere in that corridor, however: if he had disappeared in there, they would still be able to hear him in there.

“Oh, god,” Florence groaned, and she clasped a hand onto her forehead.

“Let’s just stay right here,” Chuck suggested. “He probably couldn’t have gotten far from here. I mean, it’s not like we’re in the Winchester House back home.”

“True, true…” She swallowed and clutched at herself. The whole network of pipes was vast and elaborate as it made its way up to the ceiling overhead: she spotted a line of gauges near the top, and she could only assume that those were more radiation meters. She hoped that none of those gauges were showing anything high up, especially since they were down by the engine room and the reactor. She hoped that nothing would happen between then and when she adjusted the pipes so the ship wouldn’t run out of steam.

It was right then she knew that time was of the essence when it came to the steam. She shuddered at the thought of the reactor running out—

“Shit—shit, I got turned around,” Mark confessed right then as he stumbled out before them out from behind the pipes on the wall. He then stopped in his tracks with his hands pressed to his chest. “It’s so easy to get lost in here, no wonder why they disappeared. Where did we come in?”

“Back here?” Florence gestured to the narrow dark corridor behind them. He let out a low whistle and shook his head.

“God, we have got to find them and then get out of here,” Mark bemoaned. “I can’t bear being down here for longer than thirty minutes.”

“Where the hell are they?” Chuck demanded.

“I don’t know, but let me think, let me think…” Florence held still right in between the pipes suspended on the wall. The two of them held still in silence, especially as she lifted her head for a glimpse up to the rest of the pipes on the wall across from her. Eric and Francine were in there somewhere, and she worried that they had gone off to a channel of the airship that she didn’t want to know, a place filled with blue light.

The mere thought of it brought tears to her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Mark then asked her, slightly concerned.

“I need to think for a second,” she confessed to them, and she bowed away from there, back to the way they came. She had no idea if it was the burgeoning life inside of her that gave her the feeling, but she needed to be alone again lest she had to mourn over them.

Her footsteps echoed over the grated metal as she made her way back to her room. But she couldn’t reach the room itself as she hung outside of the door: the tears brimmed her eyes right then, and she cupped her face in her hands. She let them fall down on the inside of her palms, and she couldn’t help but whimper right then.

It was just all too overwhelming for her to even so much as think about.

“Florence?”

His voice caught her attention. With a deep sniffle, she moved her hands and looked on at the thin paper right before her. She could make out his shadow on the other side there.

“Florence?” Alex sounded so small on the other side of the paper.

“Alex?” She sniffled again, and that time she padded over to his door. “Can I come in?”

There was a soft rustling noise inside of his room there, and then a brief pause. He slid the door open, and he revealed his wide eyes and slightly parted lips. Florence wiped away a tear, and she stepped towards him and the comfort of his room. He shut the door and she sank down on the edge of his bed.

“Is everything okay?” he gently asked her, and he took his spot next to her.

“Francine and Eric are down near the hull, and neither I nor Chuck and Mark know what happened to them. We don’t know where they are.” She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. More tears welled up, and she buried her face in her hands again. He put his arm around her and brought his face close to her own.

“Hey,” he gently cooed to her. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. We’ll find them, I promise.”

“I just worry,” she tearfully confessed, and she wiped more tears off her face, “about things like… hot metal pipes… and the reactor… this whole thing losing steam and we’re going to crash when we get to Reno… I can’t fix it. I can’t do it!”

“You can!” he insisted. “You can. You can do it. They went down towards the hull, you said?”

“Yeah…” she sniffled. “It’s so easy to get turned around down there. It happened to Mark before I came back up here.”

“Well… there’s metal pipes down there,” he said. “Surely, there’s an echo.”

“And there is…” Her voice trailed off. Her chin trembled. She wasn’t thinking straight.

“What am I going to tell my mom,” she sputtered, “that I lost my husband and my best friend in the hull of an airship with a nuclear reactor onboard, and there’s a nuclear war going on outside, too?”

“I—” Alex then stopped and gaped at her, his eyes wide with horror. “Wait, wait, wait, what? What was that last thing you said?”

Florence sniffled and let a tear fall from her eye. “Chuck didn’t tell you?” she asked him with a break in her voice.

“No! I’ve been locked up in here all night long with Francine, I haven’t heard Jack shit! What the hell happened?”

“He was up all night with Exodus playing cards and they saw a mushroom cloud way the hell out. He thinks it may have been over Salt Lake City.”

Alex clasped a hand to his head and lay down on the bed. The hem of his shirt lifted up all the while, but Florence could only pay attention to the mortified look on his face.

“Jesus Christ Almighty help us all.” He put his hands on his brow and closed his eyes.

“Hear, O Israel: Yahweh is our god, Yahweh is one…” he breathed the words to the point they almost sounded as though they came in on the back of the wind. He then opened his eyes again and gazed up at the ceiling. “I forget the rest,” he confessed. “I haven’t recited the full Shema since I was a little kid. I remember saying it with my grandparents and my aunt and uncle, but I don’t remember everything about it.”

Florence frowned at that.

“Funny, you never really talked about religion much when we were together,” she recalled.

“You can be Jewish but not religious at all,” he explained. “I certainly am. My parents are, too.” He then closed his eyes again. “Oh, god, my parents. I need a hug from my mom if nothing else.”

“I am going to get you home to your parents,” she promised him. “Like how I promised Mark I was going to get those boys back home to sleep in their beds again.” She sniffled again, but this time she could think more clearly.

The growing life inside of her had done a number on her mind, and sometimes there needed to be a way out on the outside to realize it.

“Florence?”

Before she stood up, she glanced back at Alex, who still lay flat on his back on the bed with his hands pressed up on his brow. The boy whom she still could feel inside of her heart.

“I love you.” Slowly, he sat upright, and his eyes gazed deep into her, a pair of deep pools. He usually had the calmest, coolest demeanor she had ever seen, but he had let the cold dissipate to reveal the softness of water within him. Florence could feel the warmth blooming in her face at the way he moved in closer to her and more so when he held his face in closer to her own: she then flashed back on the moment back in the hills, and it was right then she realized she hadn’t seen the spice cake anywhere in his room, either. The heat of the spice, the one pocket of spice and sweetness tucked away from the rest of a world gone horribly wrong.

“I love you,” he repeated. “I believe in you.”

“I love you, too,” she breathed into his lips. “I love you forever, even when Eric and I grow old, and when Nathalie is born.”

Alex raised his eyebrows at that. “Nathalie?”

“It was either that or Alexandra,” she confessed. “We can’t really name a girl Nathan. She’s… my last bouquet for you.”

He closed his eyes and loomed closer to her.

“Kiss me,” he begged to her in a soft breathy voice.

“Alex—Alex, no—no, please, I need to find Eric. I need to find him and tell him how much I love him.”

“Kiss me—” he begged. “Please—my garden of earthly delights, the flower on my gravestone—kiss me. We stand on the edge of the earth as the powers that be try to destroy it all. Kiss me as the nukes persistently fall.”

His long fingers crept up onto her chest, onto her breasts, such that she jerked back a bit, but she never stepped away from him all the way. Alex scrambled closer to her, and with the unmistakable look of pain on his face.

“Kiss me… because I’m in love with you,” he whispered to her. “I’m still in love with you. I have never fallen out of love with you. Not even for a second.”

“Alex—” Florence cupped his face in her hands, and she never let go of her gaze on him for one second. Those eyes, always so deep and soulful, never seemed so much like water right then. She realized he was crying, and she had never actually seen him cry before.

“Alex—” She breathed his name before she moved in for a gentle kiss on those soft cherry lips. As gentle and soft as the air in springtime. She brushed his bangs off his forehead so she could see his full face: he closed his eyes, and in junction with the full look of his face, he almost resembled to a little Jewish doll.

All she could do was gaze into his round face for a moment, and before he shook his head and moved out from her hands. She could see his chin trembling as he sank back down to the bed, down onto his back. He never opened his eyes, but she could see the tears on the brims.

“Lay flowers on the romance that happened between us,” he whispered as he rolled over onto his side so his back was towards the door.

Florence then rested a hand on his hip, and she gave him a gentle pat. She then slid her fingers up onto his side to feel the shape of his body. He was so slender, perhaps more so than when they were together. She thought of laying down next to him with her arms around his slim waist, just to feel how delicate he had become in the time. But she needed to find her husband and her best friend. She needed to find Eric and Francine, and she needed to bring the ship back to the Bay Area.

All Florence could do was lean down next to him and kiss him on the neck one last time.

“I have to go,” she whispered into his ear. “If I don’t come back, know that I always love you, baby.”

He made a soft whimpering noise in his throat at the sound of her calling him “baby”, the first time she called him that since they had been together. Florence never wanted to let him go, but she lifted herself up and let go of his hip, albeit at a slow pace. She wanted him to feel her fingers still on his body even when she had already gone.

Florence stepped back out to the hallway, now silent, and she hoped that Chuck and Mark were still down there near the hull, the engine room, and ultimately, the reactor.

The echo. Look for the echo.

She once again rested a hand on her belly.

“Come on, little girl,” she muttered. “Let’s go find your daddy and Aunt Frankie.”

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