"It's probably just pregnancy paranoia," Liz muttered. She began to get an even stranger feeling when she turned onto the freeway. There were no other cars headed for Roswell. She passed one car going in the opposite direction. There hadn't been many cars at the Motel 6, but who expected a dumpy motel outside a small town to be crowded? But the freeway...if she judged correctly by the time on the car's digital clock, it was rush hour. She got off at the familiar exit and drove through town.

Liz was shocked by what she saw. The town seemed almost dead. The stores were abandoned and boarded up. The weeds grew uncontrolled and uncut in the front yards of the homes. Liz felt almost as though she had been transported to another world. Where was the Roswell she knew and loved? Judging from the size of her belly, it had been about seven months since she and Max had fled. A town couldn't die out in that short amount of time, could it?

She turned down the familiar street that led to home. When she saw the restaurant that had been her home since childhood, she let out a moan.

As she stumbled out of the little Civic, she clutched at her stomach protectively. The Crashdown Café was obviously abandoned. Roughly hewn boards crisscrossed the windows and the door had nearly fallen off its hinges. Liz moaned, leaned over, and vomited in the street. She saw stars and forced herself to remain upright.

"Don't faint, goddamn you," she muttered to herself. "Don't you dare faint."

"Liz? Liz Parker? Oh my God..."

Liz turned around, saw who had called her name, and promptly fainted.

****

Maria stared out the window pensively, watching the snow fall in the mountains a few miles away. It was only October, but there were already a few feet in the upper peaks of Colorado.

She really felt that the snow healed her. It was a rare thing in New Mexico, and she was glad to see it both last spring when she and her mother had first come here, and now it was back.

It was only recently that she began to feel human again. She and her mother had moved only a week after the fire, after Maria's second suicide attempt. Now, finally, more than seven months after losing everything in the world, she was finally being a teenager again. She had even gone on a date, a few weeks ago.

"Maria? Maria, sweetie, where are you?"

Maria turned around and called, "Here, mom."

Her mother appeared through the door. "I've been looking all over for you, young lady."

Maria shrugged. "Sorry."

"Well, this came in the mail for you." Her mother handed her a thick envelope.

"Thanks, Mom."

She watched as her mother headed back for the kitchen. She looked at the return address on the envelope and dropped it as though it had burned her. The address said simply, "Alex Whitman, Roswell, NM." There was no specific address.

Trembling, she picked it up off the floor. Why was Alex writing her? She hadn't seen him since the funerals. And why was he writing her from Roswell? From what Maria understood, that place was a ghost town now.

She opened the envelope slowly and began to cry when she saw what was inside.

****

Alex watched his former best friend as she slept, amazed at the sight of her. He had been certain that he was hallucinating when he first saw her, standing teary-eyed outside the Crashdown. But this was really her, her hair oddly cut, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, and clearly very pregnant.

When he found out that Max, Michael, Isabel and Liz were dead, he simply wasn't able to believe it. He had searched the hills surrounding Roswell for any trace of them, and hadn't found a thing. But the bodies of Liz and Max had never been found, and that hope sustained him for a long time. His parents had sent him to military school, praying that he would forget his friends.

But Alex could never forget. He kept up his search, researching the cases of the fire and the various catastrophes around Roswell from the military school. Finally, he decided to leave.

His parents still didn't know. He'd been home for the summer and then had returned to the school in September, but he left soon after. He staked out his parents' old house and started to live there again. As far as he knew, he was the only person living in the town of Roswell itself. And nothing bad had happened since he got here.

He had his run of the place. Most of the stores, including the Crashdown, had been looted in the months following the fires. Their doors were open and Alex wandered freely, finding odd trinkets of lives left behind.