Last of Us 1. The Hand That Feeds

"Okay."

Okay...what?

She doesn't know.

Okay, I know you're lying to me. Okay, some small recess of my mind wants to believe that what you did was right. Okay, I think you're deluded for wasting everything that we've been through for the last year on some selfish...surrogate-daughter complex that you've formed in that unstable, fucked up brain of yours!

No. It's none of those.

It's just...okay.

_You're right...you're not my daughter...and I sure as hell ain't your daddy._

What happened to that Joel? That man who wasn't attached to anything except the clothes on his back, who wasn't afraid to put his foot down or put his interests first or speak his mind. He had been replaced with a crumbling shell, a fool who'd sooner crawl on his hands and knees than tread on this seemingly delicate flower standing before him. Whatever delicacy that remained had been washed away by events that still left a lump in her throat, and her fingers twitching towards her knife.

Her eyes had glazed over, as if mesmerised by a raindrop trickling down through a stampede of its brothers on some imaginary window pane in the distance. There was something moving amongst the shrubs in the background, a rabbit or a fox. Some blissfully ignorant creature spared this cruel existence.

"Ellie..."

Rabbits can't talk. This isn't Alice in Wonderland. She'd always hated that fucker with the giant watch, always rushing around, getting in people's faces.

"Ellie!," Fingers tap her cheek, and the peaceful chamber she'd been lounging in for the past 2 minutes is harshly illuminated with reality, like some energetic mother pulling the curtains on a Summer's morning.

"Let's get movin'. Alright, kiddo?" he mutters, sympathetic but not condescending.

Their eyes lock for a moment and everything is not what it once was. A wall of tension has formed between them, slowly widening, pushing each one further away from the other. Words seem irrelevant, like small talk with someone running past you on the street, so she simply moves by, wordless and brooding. It could be the wind moving the trees, but their shirts seem to crackle with electricity as she brushes off him, and the wall turns on its axis, forcing him to step aside.

The perimeters of the dam extend deep into the surrounding forests, covered in vines and nettles that crawl up and over into the community beyond. How fitting that nature should begin to reclaim the land it rightfully owns, after it had been oppressed for so long. Joel shivers as he looks down over the harsh drop into the woods below, the breeze deceitfully cool for such a sunny day. The trees were shivering too, or being shaken by some unseen entity. He hoped it was the former, but expected it to be the latter. It reminded him of that Jurassic Park movie he'd seen years before "it all went to shit", as Ellie..._God, I hope she doesn't hate me..._had so elegantly put it. But who was he to talk about elegance. The dense shrubs hugging the wall were all too reminiscent of the thick layer of hair clinging to his neck and jaw.

The thought of a warm shower almost makes him go weak at the knees, but shaving is something else. It had taken him a full year to get used to shaving with a knife, walking around like a fucking mummy, bandages hanging sporadically from his face on a near daily basis. It had earned him the blisteringly original nickname "Scarface" for a while back in Boston. Tess had started that one. His heart skips a beat. There was a distinct lack of razors, or anything sharp for that matter, in the country, most of them having been turned into weapons to use against the Infected or, unfortunately more likely, fellow humans. _That Darwin guy was right, _he reflects inwardly, _we're all fuckin' animals after all._

The silence is heavy, weighing down on his chest and his mind. "Hey!" he calls to the thin frame ahead of him...an uncomfortable, unfamiliar distance ahead of him. Her head doesn't turn around, but he sees her shoulders and neck tense from the sound. "Hey, how's about me n' you see if we can fix up that Walkman of yours later," The tears well up in her eyes. "I've seen you messin' around with that thing ever since Colorado!" _Come on Ellie, grow some balls you wimp. Stop cryin' like a little bitch. _"I bet we could find some old CDs around the place-"

_Fuck it._

"Who the fuck do you think you are?!"

Joel is immediately taken aback by the tear-streaked image of Ellie's face coming around to meet his, contorted with such rage and hatred as to give her the appearance of a girl much older and tormented than she.

"Why don't you calm do-"

"Why don't you shut the fuck up!" she screams, her voice cutting through his easily, despite her slight stature.

"We worked so hard, Joel...SO hard, and you thought you could just take that fucking choice away from me like that?" Her sobs sound like the barking of angry Rottweilers.

"Look, I know you think what I did was selfish," his hands instinctively rise upwards in an apologetic surrender as he cautiously moves towards her. The girl had made him soft. "But I swear to you-"

"Selfish?!" she lets out a sharp, rueful laugh that rings off into the distant hillsides. The birds would have shot out of the trees, if there were any birds left.

"Selfish doesn't even begin to describe it, you fucking asshole! I had a chance to take back all the shit I ever caused, all the people I-" her voice falters, Riley's face flashing through her mind's eye. _We can be all poetic and just_ _lose our minds together..."_All the people I ever lost, but YOU..." the venom in her voice is almost solid, running through his veins, polluting his very being. "You had to fuck everything up just because you can't let go of your STUPID FUCKING DAUGHTE-"

He slaps her.

The smack is thick and dull, like a butcher's cleaver slamming into the chopping board. Her head snaps to the side, eyes widening with fear more so than disbelief and she collapses back onto her behind, teeth chattering from the impact. Her hands fall back, awkwardly propping her up on the lush, warm grass.

The wind dies down. It feels like the entire forest, the entire world, is holding its breath.

"Wha-..." she only manages to utter a pathetic, breathy sound.

Joel towers over her, his six foot frame blocking out the bleak Spring sun. The mechanical churning of the Dam's turbines provide a steady beat, their song drowned out by the deafening thud of Joel's heart ringing in his ears. His hand rapidly wrings the watch on his wrist, unbeknownst to him, his arms rising and falling in accordance with his quick, shallow breathing.

"Now you fuckin' listen to me," Ellie quivers at the tone. "If you ever...if you ever disrespect my daughter like that again, so help me god I'll put you out with those fuckin' monsters so quick, you won't know whether to shit or go blind." His voice was shaking with anger. He'd forgotten what this felt like. "I saved your ass because I don't think some sassy little fuckin' 14 year old girl is capable of sacrificing herself for some goddamn vaccine that she doesn't even know will work, just because she's lost a few people along the way." Salty sweat and tears were running down onto his lips, stinging the wasteland of cuts on his cheeks. "Now I don't know if you reckon yourself to be some sorta hero or somethin', or whether you're just too much of a pussy to admit that the world...this sick, twisted fuckin' world, ain't worth savin', but I'll be damned if you're gonna go waste your life after I watched my daughter get hers taken away from her."

The last words left him in a harsh, rattling string, spit falling onto his chin, matting his facial hair together, his eyes bulging protrusively from their sockets. The breeze had picked back up, informing him of his emotional discharge by chilling the lines of saltwater on his face. His vision zooms out from Ellie's pupils, huge, shimmering pools of black sitting in the middle of irises so green they outshine the brilliance of the surrounding woodlands. He feels no pity in his heart. He feels no affection clouding his sight or that evolutionary need to protect something so fragile or that regret that hits you after harsh blows have been traded with a loved one.

He feels nothing.

Ellie cowers at him, lost for words. Her face sends him back to that bedroom in the ranch house, the last time she had gone too far and pushed him over the edge. He could swear he feels her hands pushing violently against his chest, her desperation giving her strength to move his muscular stature:

_Everyone I ever cared for has either died or left me. Everyone – fucking except for you!_

At the time it had almost wrenched his heart out of his chest, but now, in his current state, he sees it as nothing but a feeble cry for attention, fuel for the fire.

His legs begin walking before his brain has time to register what's happening. He steps over the girl's outstretched legs and sees her pulling her feet back in towards herself, as if the fire inside him was somehow radiating heat from his body.

"Joel..." she whimpers, but it falls on deaf and damaged ears.

He needs isolation, a dark room, silence and peace. _I used to nag at Sarah for doing stupid shit like that, sittin' in her room all the time, sulking_, he remembers, _I miss you so much baby girl._ He tramples a dandelion underfoot; its stalk cracking in half beneath his plodding Doc Martens, then gives the Dam's looming metal gate a swift kick. A balaclava-clad head appears beside the right-hand watch tower, rifle in hand and trained at Joel's chest. The constant attacks had left the security tightly-wound and constantly vigilant, suspicious of everything with a heartbeat, Infected or otherwise. Upon recognising the newcomer, the guard pushes an unseen button. The gate's mechanism groans and squeals into life, slowly swinging the steel frame outwards.

"Come on in, Joel," the guard calls, "we could use some help gettin' those fuckin' generators back to life!"

The guard, _Larry_, Joel thinks,_ judging by that ridiculous fuckin' Jersey accent_, never gets a reply. It seemed the work was never over with this fucking dam. _Ain't no rest for the wicked, _he concludes. Before entering, he shoots a glance back at Ellie, watching as she rises from the grass unsteadily, her face still masked in sorrow. Joel snorts, his lips curling into a sneer, teeth bared unwillingly, and continues into the camp, into the shanty town of hope, coated in damp dust brought on by the mixture of the generators usually constant activity and the spray from the Portage River. Now, an eerie silence had fallen on the small community, a calm soundlessness that permitted noises usually overpowered by the generator's din to leak in over the mountains and into the ears and minds of the inhabitants, barely audible cracks that could be the trunk of a fragile tree finally giving up its struggle, or gunfire from a group of Hunters out for blood and shelter, depending on the person.

His shack sits huddling the railings beside the river. Most nights, the river's roaring movement provides a soothing lullaby, its power dimmed slightly by the thin wooden walls of the hut. Tonight, however, the water lay placid and still, interminably waiting to once again be released from its temporary reservoir. _The one night I could fuckin' use it, too...figures._ He pulls back the tarpaulin-cum-door hanging from the front of the shack, and steps inside, his eyes adjusting quickly to the darkness. That was one thing he was thankful for after spending the last year stumbling through sewers, basements and a badly lit university with..._Ellie_. It hurt to say her name. It couldn't be guilt, but it was too strong for anger and too weak to be utter hatred. The moonlight falls upon a small, glistening rectangle on the wall, a Polaroid of him and his daughter, trophy raised high above her head, occupying one hand, the other reaching for the sky, where her dreams about a future surely would have resided. Something inside him snaps. He draws his fist back and drives it into the wooden wall close to the photo, his knuckles cracking from the blow. He strikes it again. The knuckles split. And again. The blood smears the wall. And again. The shack shuddering from the blows, his screams cracking and quavering in the murky blackness. And again...and again...and again...and-

Something's hanging out of his arm, a weight that makes it impossible for him to swing again. The scream fades, leaving his throat dry and stinging. He's light-headed and a subtle nausea builds inside the lining of his stomach, threatening to make him vomit. The weight speaks his name:

"Joel...please stop..."

He turns his head, eyes grey and empty, the life drained from them by the events of today, yesterday, and every day for as long back as he could remember. He was always taught to live in the present, in the now, and that holding onto yesterday and the past would bring nothing but pain, sadness, regret and the rest of the emotional horsemen of the apocalypse. The truth is, in this world, yesterday remains ingrained in your mind, _and the apocalypse brought about things a lot worse than fuckin'_ _horsemen._ The face that put a stop to his assault of the wooden wall seems to be floating, suspended in the dark like a ghost, its eyes highlighted by the rings of tears collecting around them, sharing the moonlight with Sarah's photo.

"You're hurting yourself..." Ellie observes, her voice heavy with sadness, an audible gasp indicating that she'd seen his damaged hand. "I have some bandages in my backp-"

"I'm not sorry for one damn second for taking you from that hospital, Ellie. You're..." he sobs loudly, clearing his throat to hide it, "you're the thing that I have to keep fighting for now." Ellie faces away towards the window of the shack and her face crumples, angry and hurt and sad and overwhelmed all at once. "And I know you can't replace Sarah, and it's not your fault that she died, but-"

Ellie latches onto him, burying her face into his shirt, her tears wetting his chest. It feels like they're permeating through into his heart. He kisses the top of her head. Her hair smells of disinfectant and anaesthetic gas.

_So don't tell me I'd be safer with someone else, because the truth is I'd just be more scared._


	2. Home

**I ASKED THE GOVERNMENT FOR CHANGE**

**NOW I HAVE NONE LEFT IN MY POCKETS**

Ellie stands and cranes her neck, staring at the scrawling observation painted in thick white letters across the underbelly of the bridge. The train tracks beneath her feet are covered in mould and moss, the worn soles of her Converse shoes constantly shifting to keep her upright on the disused sleepers. The growths remind her of a joke from her book of puns:

Her lips are invaded by a smirk, which quickly retreats, chased away by a roar of thunder and a flash of lightning that leaves dots in her eyes. Jokes about fungi probably wouldn't be welcomed by the majority of the survivors, and justifiably so given the occasion, but she doesn't care. _Their moods should be lightning up, _she thinks, _but they're thunder so much pressure. Oh god, that was awful..._She giggles anyway. _Fuck it._

"It's not my fault I'm a pun master," she mumbles, the words verbalising themselves without her permission.

"Huh?" Joel's gruff voice materialises over her right shoulder, startling her slightly. For such a big guy, he could be so quiet when he wanted to.

"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinking about how much of a genius I am."

"I've said it once and I'll say it again: You're a weird kid."

"Shut up. I prefer the term "eccentric", it sounds fancier. You're just jealous."

"Mhmm...Sure." This was Joel's default conversation ender, used only when Ellie's mouth was driving before her brain was in gear. However, she persists regardless, curious about the graffiti:

"What does change mean?" she asks, continuing hastily before Joel can give her the obvious definition. "I mean, I know what CHANGE change is...but I don't get what he means by 'Now I have none left in my pockets_..." _Her head cocks slightly to the side, giving her a distinctive puppy dog appearance, reinforced heavily by her oversized, shimmering eyes.

"Uh..." Joel momentarily struggles for an explanation. Sometimes, he finds himself forgetting that Ellie's never experienced most of the activities that were commonplace before the Outbreak. He lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort, not unlike a horse blowing air from its nose, mystified by the fact that this concept is foreign to her.

"Change is like...coins and stuff. You know what money is don'tcha?" It seems like a patronising question to him, but he needs to know what he's dealing with.

"Pfft! Of course I know what money is," her chest puffs out as if she had just won an internal mental war with her memory. "Well...I've never used it...or seen it...but we read about it in class..." both her voice and her initial confidence trail off into a tiny mumble.

"Alright. Well change is what people used to call coins. Like nickels and dimes and cents. All the small..." _What's the word... _"denominations. That's what change is." Ellie's eyes widen, giving the impression that her brain is expanding and pushing them further out of her head to make room for this new nugget of information she'd obtained.

"Ohhhhhhhh. Cool!" Her voice contains genuine interest. Joel can't help but smile. _Who'd have thought a kid would ever find something like that "cool"? _He ponders. _Things sure have changed._

"So, why was he angry? Did the government take all his money away?" Ellie asks, ears perking up with anticipation. A clap of thunder booms in the distance, like an orchestra of shotguns at the climax of a violent symphony. She winces.

"Yeah, I reckon so. Before the Outbreak happened, the government introduced a whole bunch of new taxes and economic policies tha-" He pauses, noticing a wave of confusion washing across the girl's face. "It's...it's complicated, but yeah, they took all his money away. Hell, they took everyone's money away."

"Those fuckers!" Ellie hisses, feeling outrage and a new found sympathy for her unknown artist ally. Joel senses another question hanging in the air, dangling above her head like one of those idea light bulbs in a kid's cartoon. "Why was money so important back then?"

_That's a damn good question, kiddo. _

"Uh...I'm not sure, really. It just was." He mutters. Ellie's face droops with disappointment, saddened by this new concept being snatched away from her. Knowledge is like currency to Ellie, one of the few things that take top priority, along with reading, comic books and the man stumbling over his words in front of her. Joel feels obliged to redeem himself. "You might think people are greedy now, but they were ten times worse back then. It's hard to explain, but I think money was supposed to act like some sorta deterrent so that people wouldn't kill or steal from each other." He was impressing himself and the girl even more so. "It didn't really stop people though. You still had guys robbin' banks and shooting people for no good reason."

"Robbing banks?! There were bandits before everything went to shit? Badass..." Ellie gasps, mouth wide with awe, her features lit up by a flash of lightning like some dramatic mask. Now it's Joel's turn to wince, her description of the time before the Outbreak accurate, but poorly communicated.

"I wish you'd stop sayin' that...but yeah, people used to rob banks. I don't know why," He assumes that this is his companion's next question, his assumption confirmed by her mouth closing slightly, "maybe they needed money to feed their families or maybe they were just greedy. I reckon some of them did it just for the adrenaline rush. We didn't call them Bandits though, they were around durin' the Wild West era, but that's a story for another d-" Another boom cuts him off, lonely and moping without its visual companion. It's followed by another pair of quick, sharp blasts, a sound all too familiar in these times.

"Shit! Ellie, get down!" He pushes down on her shoulder, eyes scanning the wooded area ahead, darting back and forth in the gloomy darkness. "Hunters," It amazes him how a single word can double his heart rate. They skulk forward, leaning their bodies against a nearby stack of barrels and galvanised metal sheeting, the motion practiced and smooth from experience. Ellie's hunched back rises and falls rapidly, her breath coming out in quick pants.

"You see anything?" She whispers, her head brushing the centre of Joel's marred denim shirt.

He sees plenty of things, none of them human. The swirling gale stalking through the forest seems to send every branch and leaf into sudden motion, an elemental Pied Piper inconveniently leading its victims across their path.

"No, the Moon's not strong enough." His hot breath creates puffs of smoke in the night air.

"Fuck...there's shitloads of bricks, we could throw one! Lead them away, y'know?"

"No way, these ain't Clickers, Ellie. They have brains, they can think." He looks over his shoulder. The portion of the bridge behind them consists of nothing but rubble, twisted pieces of rebar protruding randomly from it. The gap left in what was the road is reachable, but one wrong move and he'd be speared on the pipes below. He had survived it once but only because of Ellie's quick thinking. The scar on his abdomen lets off a dull throb, providing a second opinion.

"Well there's no other way out, so we can either sit here and shoot the shit or move our asses." The girl has a point. The longer they sit there, the higher the probability that their unexpected company will wander up and bag themselves two proverbial cats, killed by their curiosity. They'd kill Joel for sure. _Ellie though..._

"Come on." He prods her in the back, squatting forward and staring worriedly at the 30 or so feet of tunnel that extended before them. Thankfully, survivors had previously used this area as shelter from conditions similar to the ones outside, their predecessors' roughly made barriers of pallets and concrete shielding the pair from view to some degree. Tommy had mentioned the origin of the destruction behind them to Joel in passing, explaining that the leader of a survivor group had thought it a good idea to blow the bridge, stopping any "tourists", or outsiders, from assaulting the area with vehicles. His idea had been solid. His knowledge of plastic explosives, however, had not. He had shoved the clacker into his pocket, strolled out to confidently place one package on the bridge, bent down and consequently squeezed the detonator's trigger with his leg. Tommy's exact words had been: "That poor bastard went everywhere." _No wonder the trees around here grow so fast_, Joel reflects. _I heard human makes great fertiliser_.

"Hey, fuck you, man! I ain't lyin!" A voice floats up from the dark. The tunnel suddenly appears 100 metres longer to Joel; the exit becoming no more than a pin-prick of light. "She was all over me, man. I could see it in her eyes. She's got a face like a slapped ass but...what can I say, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. It's slim fuckin' pickings, y'know?"

A deep laugh follows: two men. _Probably bigger than me, judging by their voices_, he thinks. Ellie makes a harsh "Tsss" noise through her teeth, expressing her distaste for the Hunter's topic of conversation. "Let's see how your fuckin' face looks after I get done wit-"

"Quiet, Ellie! We gotta move. Stay right behind me." He places an obvious pause between those four words. Ellie –as clever as she is– had developed an alarming tendency to forget that she's immune to Cordyceps, not bullets. Her time in the orphanage had given her a vigilante mentality where she felt the need to deal with every problem herself. It was admirable and understandable, but nevertheless dangerous. She gives a gentle nod, a few strands of her auburn hair falling down into her eyes. Her hand instinctively sweeps them back up behind her ear, leaving a streak of white through the collection of ash and dirt on her face; her freckled, fair skin shines through. She pushes out from cover. The ground outside the tunnel slopes gently downward towards the forest; covered in a dense layer of plant life and slick with the previous night's rainfall. Ellie spots the top of someone's head bobbing up and down on the green horizon, a bleak silhouette against the nocturnal luminescence, and dodges to the right, crouching behind a small pile of bricks. Joel follows suit, huddling close to her.

"I fuckin' hate this forest, bro." Mr. Deep Voice is surprisingly thin, his lanky frame now coming into view; outstretching his partner's by at least 5 inches. The second man is stubby but not fat, his wide torso and arms cradling an equally stubby submachine gun. Automatic weapons were hard to come by these days. _Just our luck_, fleets through Joel's mind. Both are dressed in olive green ponchos and khaki pants, implying a uniformity that usually comes with Hunter groups. "Place gives me the creeps. I think I almost shit my pants back there...fuckin' foxes. I always feel like somebody's hiding in the trees, just fuckin' staring at me." He fakes a shiver. His friend smiles onwards; they've both reached the summit of the small gradient, no more than 15 feet away. Ellie's foot nudges a section of pipe and it topples from the pile. The _ding ding ding _echoes through the space, each _ding _reciprocated by a clenching in her narrow shoulders and a grinding of her teeth. She looks at Joel and the words are almost painted across her face: _I am so fucking sorry._

"What the fuck was that?!" Wide Guy's hands grip the handle and stock of the submachine gun in a panicked flurry of motion. Both Joel and Ellie hear the staccato _click _of the safety being flicked off. "Whoever's in there, you better get the fuck out here right now, hands in the fuckin' air!" _Goddamn it_, Joel thinks, and uses the racket Mr. Deep Voice is making to grab his revolver from its leather holster. He glances at Ellie and observes the already opened switchblade in her trembling hand. He knows her hands aren't shaking from fear, but rather a mixture of adrenaline and her white-knuckled grip on the knife's ivory handle. His heartbeat shakes his vision. _Here we go._

Joel pushes through his heels with a grunt, rising from his squat and levelling the .44 Magnum in front of his eyes. Wide Guy starts to bring the submachine gun up, his slow reflexes like the hangman pulling the lever. Joel can almost see the lights go out in his eyes, realising that this was it.

"OH SHI-" The ejaculation is cut short by a crack like a thousand whips, made ridiculously louder by the confined space. A puff of dust spurts out of his poncho, coupled with a final guttural grunt. Wide Guy's knees give out and he falls back into a puddle of murky rainwater, his body giving a final twitch like some overgrown fish tossed onto the deck of a ship.

"Fuck, Joel!" Ellie shrieks. The gunshot had been unexpected and, regardless of how many times she'd heard it before, it still leaves her ears ringing and her bladder weak. "Shit, get the other guy!" She points towards a shadowy figure scurrying behind one of the heavy barrels at the mouth of the underpass. Mr. Deep Voice's breathing is laboured and rapid; his head twitching in minute fractions, calculating escape routes or plans of action or some other desperate thing. _He doesn't have a gun..._Joel's gut instinct whispers. Joel scoots forward, boots scraping loose small pebbles and chips of concrete underfoot. A darting look back at Ellie lets her know to hang back until the situation has been handled. She hesitates, itching to help her companion, but decides against it and remains stationary, ass to the grass in the sidelines. Her bottom lip pushes out slightly like a sulking child, unbeknownst to her.

"Greg? Greg?! Ah FUCK!" Mr. Deep Voice's attempts to somehow vocally revive his fallen partner are lost to the blackness. He rocks his body back and forth, reminiscent of a sprinter preparing their muscles for a race, and darts out towards the lifeless body juxtaposed to him, crouching, hands fumbling manically with the submachine gun's strap. Joel strains his neck trying to see over the barrier covering them, all the while quickening his pace, almost on top of his enemy. 5 feet...3 feet...

"Shit shit shi-" Mr. Deep Voice rips the gun free from the deceased Greg and squeezes the trigger. A single round punches into Joel's right bicep and he drops the Magnum. Joel raises his leg mid-step and thrusts the sole of his shoe into the assailant's chest, taking the man by surprise and knocking him backwards. Joel's momentum carries him forwards and he stamps down on his enemy's cheek, his upper body tilting forward from the force. There's a wet _snap_, like shallow ice breaking; Mr. Deep Voice's legs jerk spastically and then fall still. The victor simply stands there, as if trying to remember the events of the last 20 seconds. His breathing bounces back off the tunnel walls, a harsh pattern of inhalation and exhalation that bears resemblance to someone sawing wood. Ellie's footsteps grow louder and louder behind him until she seems to pop out of his right armpit, face red and flushed and damp with sweat.

"Whoa..." she pants, chuckling from the relief, "that was some superhero shit! Remind me never to mess with-" her voice catches in her throat, eyes falling upon the ragged hole in Joel's arm. "Oh man...oh shit he shot you, Joel!"

"Yeah, looks like it..." he keeps his cool, but it hurts like a motherfucker. The pain is searing and constant. One of Johnny Cash's tunes he used to listen to comes randomly to mind. "Burning ring of fire..." he grunts.

"What?" Ellie questions; perplexed.

"Never mind," he mutters "Just get me some of that bandage from your backpack, will ya?"

"Yeah yeah, sure," She throws the pack around her shoulder and rips open the clasps, rummaging through items of varying importance therein: A t-shirt, some spare socks, her Sony Walkman, her joke book that Riley had given her..._Shit Ellie, now's not the fuckin' time for getting all depressed! _Her conscience barks. "Got it!" she shouts, both accepting the advice offered by the little voice inside and informing Joel of her find, pulling a small roll of white material free from the pack.

"Good girl. Now just wrap the ba-"

"I know what to do," she proclaims. "I've kinda saved your life before, remember?" There's no animosity or attitude behind the statement, just a nostalgic affection. _That makes two of us, _Joel observes inwardly. She unties the bandage and wrenches it tightly around Joel's wound. He winces, gasping at the roughness.

"Jesus, girl, take it e-"

"Oh suck it up, ya big wuss." She sighs, "It's just a little bullet-hole, no need to get all teary-eyed." Joel just laughs, forever amused by her seemingly god-given ability to lighten the mood of any situation. After 4 or 5 orbits of his thick bicep, she cuts the bandage with her switchblade and ties it tight, taking a step back to admire her work. "There, all done." She says. A chuffed smile spreads across her soft lips. Joel looks down and turns his own mouth downwards, nodding.

"Not half bad, kiddo," he tells her, "I knew you'd come in handy for somethin'."

"Shut up!" she laughs, pushing him playfully; thankfully avoiding the freshly wounded arm. "We should get out of here, just in case Fatso and buddy-boy have some friends wandering around." Joel nods his head in agreement. He's about to step over the body when he notices the matte black submachine gun propped against Mr. Deep Voice's corpse.

"Speaking of comin' in handy...it'd be a shame to leave this behind." He stoops down, picking the weapon up with his weak arm, examining the craftsmanship. It's an MP5, a German-made weapon widely used by Special Forces units and military police. It seems that Greg and Mr. Deep Voice had stumbled upon a military barracks somewhere along their journey.

"You should give that to me..." Ellie muses, almost licking her lips at the thought of such power, her eyes wide with excitement. Joel's brows furrow, considering the proposal. _She's right...she can handle herself now, _he reflects. _She's shot guns with a lot more kick than this thing..._

"Okay," he says. Her mouth falls open momentarily and her face brightens. _How much blood has this guy lost?_ She thinks, awestruck by this sudden change of policy regarding weaponry and Ellie's hands. She reaches out eagerly, fingers gripping the handle. "BUT...!" Joel barks, yanking the weapon away slightly, "This ain't a pistol, okay? Treat it with the utmost respect. If you have to fire it, which hopefully you won't, don't hold your finger on the trigger. Squeeze it lightly for as long as it takes you to say 'motherfucker'."

"Motherfucker..." she repeats quietly, a word that Joel hears all too often from such a youthful creature. He places the submachine in her hands and she stares at it, turning it over and backwards and every which way in her hands, in awe of her newly acquired toy. "Motherfucker...okay! Let's get outta here, I'm gonna starve to death if I don't get some food soon." She begins marching towards the maw of the tunnel, a skip in her step that hadn't been there before.

"Goddamn Ellie, you eat more than I do and I'm a grown man..." He almost stumbles over some rubble, his dangling right arm making balance more difficult than usual. "Wait up, girl!" he calls ahead.

She slows, hugging close to the eastern wall and poking her head out around the corner, checking thoroughly for anymore unwanted company. Satisfied with her search, she turns around to check Joel's whereabouts and makes her way out of the underpass, closely pursued by her partner. The stretch of ground between here and the Dam is completely uphill; the mud trails slippery and waterlogged from the storm. Paths had been worn out in the hills by the same people who had provided Ellie and Joel's cover against Mr. Deep Voice and Wide Guy. The whole layout reminds Joel of all those old war movies him and Tommy had loved so much in their adolescence, always depicting a troop of apparently invincible soldiers sneaking through some enemy-infested Vietnamese jungle, constantly waiting for some insane Asian warrior to explode from his underground dugout, covered head-to-toe in vines and other foliage. Tommy had experienced war of a different, more modern nature before the Outbreak, thankfully returning from his tour in Iraq to their peaceful Texan hometown with timing that was both perfect and horrible. Those years had been a rough time for Joel. Tommy still swears that he felt a rib crack when his brother hugged him on their front porch the night he returned.

"Jesus..." Ellie's breathless outburst slaps Joel across the face, putting an abrupt end to his daydream. "Out of all the places we could have picked to look for supplies," she draws in another rattling breath, "it had to be at the bottom of Shit Mountain." Her tired ranting brings Joel's own physical discomforts to the surface, his superficial injury still pulverising the nerves in his arm, his legs beginning to feel like he'd taken his boots off down in the tunnel and pulled on two slabs of concrete in their place. He grunts in reply and agreement. He can see the homely glow of the Dam's recently repaired lights in the distance, leading the pair upwards like a gargantuan will-o'-the-wisp; 100 metres lay between them and the walls of their home. _Home..._the word seems to fill his heart with hot chocolate instead of blood, a comforting warmth spreading through his chest. Joel feels the slope of Shit Mountain gradually levelling out beneath his feet, and he's relieved to hear Ellie confirm the good news.

"Thank fuck," Ellie pants, "we made it."

"Ah come on kiddo, it wasn't that bad," he jokes, attempting to laugh lightly; but the ache in his bicep draws the curtains on the amusing show.

"Screw you, Joel. Next time, I'm pickin' where we go. Somewhere nice and flat, no fuckin' jungles and fat guys with machine guns and stupid..." she continues to grumble to herself like some grumpy old man complaining about disrespectful teenagers, moving out of earshot. The wind drowns out her deadpan ranting. Dawn begins to break through the twilight, one of salmon pink shades and wisps of cotton-candy clouds. Its magnificent beauty is starkly contrasted to the dark events of the earlier morning, but Ellie's eyes are tinted a rosy shade and she can't help but stop to take it all in. The image of tall steel walls overpowers the Dam's electric glow, the cold grey partitions a perfect opposite to the sky.

"Look at that..." she says softly, "It's beautiful." Joel moves to her left side and gently puts the hand of his wounded arm on her right shoulder. She doesn't flinch or jump or even acknowledge it, hypnotised by the lulling palette overhead.

"Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning," Joel recites. _Doesn't matter what colour the sky is nowadays_, he thinks, _every colour's a warning_.

"That's nice," Ellie comments, "Did you make that up just now?" Joel smiles lovingly at her ignorance, shaking his head in the negative when her cordate face tilts upwards to his for an answer.

"No, it's just an old saying I heard once," he mutters, "Come on, let's get inside, I gotta get this thing looked at," he nods his head towards the bandaged wound, "and I don't think I've ever felt this tired." Ellie takes one last glance upwards then plods forward at his side, comfortable and happy despite her exhausted body. The gate is already cracked open as if to welcome them. A bearded man clothed in worn jeans and a mottled khaki parka stands waiting there. He raises his hand, the other half of his body obscured by the large doorway.

"What's happenin', big brother?" He calls, a Texan drawl sluggishly lolloping through the air to meet them. Joel's smile widens upon hearing his baby brother's voice. Tommy steps forward, shoulder-length mane bouncing loosely in the morning air. He stretches his arms out at his sides and embraces Joel in a familiar way, Joel's right arm drawn almost behind his back, keeping out of harm's way. "It's good to see ya. We were gettin' worried...you two've been gone a hell of a long time," the hug finishes, and both men draw back. Tommy turns grinning to Ellie and ruffles her hair affectionately, her face scrunching up in protest but relaxing a moment after. "You find anything worthwhile?"

"Nah...We got into some trouble," Joel mumbles, eyes flicking unwillingly towards the bandage, "We handled it though. Ellie fixed me up good." Ellie looks down, mulling the dirt with her right shoe, feeling strangely embarrassed by the compliment.

"Jesus boy, how many times you gonna make this girl wrap up your booboos for ya?" Tommy laughs, strolling to his brother's side and tapping the arm softly. Joel winces and retracts, gasping in pain and Tommy laughs even harder, Joel shooting him a warning look but smirking at their brotherly interaction. "You did a mighty fine job on this old fucker, Ellie," Tommy exclaims, as if Ellie were some mechanic who'd brought a long dead car back from the jaws of death. His eyes follow his brother's to Ellie's pleased grin. "Looks like we got a regular little Florence Nightingale on our hands, Joel," The reference floats over Ellie's head, and she raises an eyebrow at the pair standing before her.

"Florence...who?"

"Florence Nightingale. She was a nurse who saved a whole bunch of soldiers during the..." he trails off, struggling to remember the details.

"The Crimean War," Joel intervenes.

"Yeah, the Crimean War. She's a real famous lady, prob'ly one of the most famous nurses that ever lived."

Ellie truly wants to be interested but her eyelids start to sag from the fatigue, the sun's warm rays drawing a yawn up from the depths of her torso. It looks rude but she can't help it.

"Gee, I better let you two get some rest, you must be wrecked," Tommy head turns towards Ellie, "Say Ellie, how would you feel about gettin' a little first aid trainin' from the town nurse?" he asks. The area had been peaceful for quite some time, but luck –_among other things_– was in short supply these days and only having a single nurse for the entire encampment spelled Disaster with a capital D for Tommy. "Her name's Iggy and I'm sure she'd be happy to show you a few of her tricks," Ellie nods her head sleepily, the words _nurse_, _Iggy –Whatever the fuck that is_, she thinks– and _tricks_ floating into her ears.

"Yeah sure, sounds good. I'll go over later," she mumbles.

"Good, good. Okay guys, go get some sleep and I'll talk to you later on," Joel nods in agreement and brushes by Tommy, who takes a step back and places a hand against his uninjured arm. "Oh, by the way, we need to have a word later, big brother," he explains, "I got a coupl'a favours to ask of you." Tommy winks, turns and paces briskly off towards the camp, leaving Joel standing there with a blend of confusion, worry and curiosity splashed across his face.

_This can't be good._

* * *

The medical shack is one of the few structures in the Dam with a solid front door, attached after the community members complained about the lack of privacy brought about by the wind gusting up under the thin tarpaulin coverings, exposing the patients inside in a comically Marilyn Monroe-esque fashion. A crude cross is carved into the pine surface, the centre of which Ellie delivers three sharp knocks to.

"Come on in," a voice calls from within, a chirpy and cheerful tone to counter Ellie's groggy appearance. Her sleep had been satisfying but turbulent, plagued by alternative outcomes to the struggle in the tunnel. One particularly odd and frightening scenario resulted in Joel simply vanishing through the floor; no screams, no protest, just a whooshing suck and then isolation. She shivers and gulps. "Hello? We're open for business," _Where the fuck's that voice coming from_, she wonders_. Oh shit, the door. I knocked the door. S_he shakes her head from side to side, trying to dispel some of the fog therein, turning the handle and poking her head through the gap. Two gurneys, several small cases of items never before seen by Ellie, and a desk littered with stationary and linguistically-saturated notepads. A flash of blonde occurs somewhere to the left, forcing Ellie to stretch her neck around the doorframe.

_Holy shit..._

Ellie's stomach seems to drop down into her feet, her heart replaced by some fluttering, hyperactive woodpecker. Beside a waist high shelf of glass jars stands a woman who could well be in her early twenties, if not for the topography of graceful wrinkles spread across her oval face. Her eyes seem to be darkened by a natural shadow, reinforcing the blue in her irises. Ellie had seen make-up and eye-shadow in a magazine back in the Boston QZ, but she has a feeling that most of the pharmacies had been raided by egotistical 40-something-year-olds, desperate to maintain their beauty despite the bloodied former-humans hammering violently on the shop windows, wanting nothing more than to tear those immaculately painted faces to shreds. A conversation between her and Joel flits into her conscious:

_"I thought there was tons of food back then."_

_"There was."_

_"Then why is she so skinny?"_

_"Some people chose not to eat."_

_"Why?"_

_"For looks."_

_"Pfft...That's stupid."_

She constantly struggled to relate to customs of a world long past, but her tolerance allowed her to observe everything through an unbiased eye, understanding that now is different and that she could only dream about life before this. The blonde smiles, bright and bold and..._Sexy,_ Ellie observes, shocked by but simultaneously supporting of her own choice of words. A tingle runs down through her arms and legs, ordering the hairs there to stand to immediate attention. The blonde strolls forward, hips kicking right and left, jiggling her ample bosom.

"You must be Ellie," she says, holding her hand outstretched. Her words are clear and pronounced. "I'm Isabelle, but everyone calls me Iggy," Ellie looks down, slowly taking the offered hand and shaking gently, afraid that she'll somehow damage Iggy's dainty fingers. She rolls her head back to meet Iggy's eyes, the latter standing a few inches taller than her.

"I'm...uh...Ellie," her voice is airy and low, softened by Iggy's anaesthetic presence. "But everyone...uh...yeah," Iggy stares confused at her youthful features, then giggles heartily.

"My, aren't you just a cutie," she observes, and Ellie fears her head might pop off like an erupting volcano if she gets any redder. The blush invading her face is hot and intense. "How's about we get started with our little lesson, huh?" The inclination of her voice makes Ellie weak, and she can only smile and nod.

"Yeah. Yes please."

* * *

"So, what happened out there big brother," Tommy raises his head momentarily towards Joel's injury. The two sit hunched in antique wooden chairs about a metre apart, shadows drifting lazily around Tommy's ramshackle office. Joel picks at a loose fibre dangling from his jeans.

"Two guys found us down in the tunnel under the bridge. I shot one and then...dealt with the other. Second guy managed to get a shot off on me though, fuckin' lucky it was only in the arm." Tommy bounces his head up and down while staring at one of the legs of Joel's chair, mouth turned down towards his chin and eyebrows raised.

"You've changed, Joel. I remember a while back, a few years after all this shit started...you'd look at blood or a body or somethin' and just turn away like you were gonna puke. Now you're runnin' around killin' motherfuckers like it's nothin'." Joel looks disapprovingly at him.

"It ain't nothin', Baby Brother, I still gotta live with it. It's just easier when they're tryin' to kill you too."

"I know that, I know that. I didn't mean nothin' bad by it," Tommy raises his hands a couple of inches, fingers splayed in an apologetic manner. "In fact, I wanted to ask you about somethin' pretty big." Joel's ears perk up, curiosity heaving to discover the meaning of this meeting. "Truth be told, we're starting to run pretty short on supplies in this place. We got some medical supplies and guns to beat the band, but the food's runnin' out and some of the guys are startin' to get restless," Tommy raises his head, eyes sorrowful but still sharp as tacks. "There's 20-odd families in here, big brother. Reservoir water and stale bread just ain't gonna cut it for much longer."

"So whaddaya want me to do about it?" Joel asks. He already knows the answer.

"I need you to lead a team to look for supplies. I've already got a few guys together who think you're pretty good at what you do." Joel hesitates and looks away into the distance, eyes darting left and right.

"How many of us?"

"Five in total, you included. It'll be you, two guys from the guards, Lee and Twiggy, and another two technicians from the plant, Jack and Bruce." Joel begins to nod his head in agreement, stopping when his calculations leave one figure missing.

"What about Ellie?" His baby brother's eyes roll upwards slightly, head swaying and legs fidgeting.

"Fuck Joel, you know we can't risk havin' a goddamn kid runnin' around out there with the grown-ups..."

"She's not a kid, Tomm-"

"No Joel, she is a kid. She's 14 fuckin' years old, man. I don't care how many guys she's killed, she ain't mature enough to play in the big leagues yet." Joel barks a laugh into the cellar roof, voice rising with distaste. He stands up from his seat, turning his head away and then back towards Tommy, arms held out at his sides.

"Mature? Jesus boy, she's killed more men than half of these guys put together! You think she's just gonna sit pretty up here while I'm fuck knows where with a bunch of guys I don't even know?"

"Well she's gonna have to, because the only way she's gettin' out this place is over my cold dead fuckin' body." His lips are curled into a snarl. He joins the upright Joel, the two brothers circling like dogs in a fighting pit. "You two are gonna have to just learn to be apar-" His voice cuts off, eyes wide and planted on something of interest over Joel's left shoulder. Joel shifts to the right, turning towards the office's entrance. The door sits on the hinges, hanging open lifelessly. Ellie's petite frame stands frozen on the threshold, lips pursed bitterly and fingernails digging into her palms, her usually feminine eyes now burning with violence and pointed directly at Tommy. Her mouth opens and a threatening and guttural statement spills out:

"I'm going with him."

**AN: Hey guys! Well, it took me exactly 3 beers, 2 drafts and 1 headache to finish this, but I got there in the end. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! I plan to publish a new chapter every week (more specifically every weekend) but, should I find the plot to be poorly developed or the writing to be half-assed, I'll take more time to re-write and re-think it. One of the primary purposes of this project is enjoyment, after all, so how can I expect you to enjoy reading something that I didn't have fun writing! Finally, thank you for taking the time to read my work and I hope you continue with me on my journey with Ellie, Joel and the rest! Please favourite, follow, review, share with your friends and criticise heavily!**

**Happy reading,**

**Dale**


	3. Dark Places

"What do you mean she can't swim?"

Ellie's teeth clamp together like a car crusher, bared at the figure standing at the edge of the river. Something in his tone rubs her up the wrong way.

"Fuck you, man! I never even seen water 'til I was like 10 years old! Besides, I don't have a fat ass like yours to keep me floating." She notices the hurt in his face and inwardly smiles. A ripple of restrained laughter travels around the group, a few snorts and squirts of air escaping here and there. Twiggy –ironically the heaviest member of the squad– glares back at the girl. This kind of vocal competition feels strange to him, usually being the one with the loudest voice and the last word in every situation.

"Well, you won't run out of breath anytime soon with that big mouth of yours,"

"At least mine's not full of food you fat ba-"

"Will you two shut up already? Jesus..." the peacekeeper –a short, tanned man– steps forward, hands raised at the arguing couple. His eyebrows are like two caterpillars in a head-on collision; his mouth is opened in a way that reminds Ellie of those creepy dramatic masks she'd seen once, a happy face and a sad face intertwined. Bruce –the peacekeeper– had always thought of himself as the level-headed bystander, watching on as grown men resorted to adolescent name calling and cheap shots over some irrelevant but seemingly quintessential item or concept; usually political, always illogical. This group, however, needed someone to be the bigger man, even if that bigger man happened to be 5 foot 5. Ellie rolls her eyes upwards and pouts.

"He fucking started it."

"I don't care who started it, let's everybody just shut up for a second and think about how we're getting across this goddamn river, okay?"

The onlookers –consisting of Lee, Jack and Joel– nod in the affirmative, grateful that someone had managed to dispel the storm looming over the teacup. Twiggy scratches his crotch, kicking his left leg off to the side as if demounting a steed, then shuffles closer to the rest. He snaps a quick glance at Ellie, who gives him the finger; her hand extended before a mischievous smirk. Bruce rubs his chin, scratching his sandpaper stubble. _Tough week,_ he reflects.

"Okay, so how did you two manage to do this before you came to the dam?" He says to Ellie and Joel. "I mean, surely you had to have crossed some kind of river or body of water, right?" Joel clears his throat, a gruff pop filled with uncertainty. He had always hated talking in front of crowds, regardless of the size or knowledge of the audience members.

"Uh yeah, I'd always manage to find somethin' for Ellie to stand on, like a pallet or a plank or...something, and I'd just pull her through the water behi-...behind me," his voice falters; the group's collective expression smacks of pity. It does seem kind of comical, hearing himself explain his and Ellie's adventure like they were some sort of travelling clowns or a balancing act; but it was logical. Joel shrugs his shoulders, expressing his thoughts wordlessly. Twiggy chuckles, his head pointing to the ground and shaking side to side.

"Well fuck, let me just get some pallets from the pallet factory in my backpack and we can go on our merry way. There isn't any fucking pallets or planks out here, genius. We're like 5 miles from the dam."

Ellie snorts in disbelief. "We're in a forest, you fucking moron. We are literally surrounded by wooden things that float! You see all these things," she indicates to the plethora of trees in the area, "all these things are where pallets come from." Her tone is reminiscent to an awkward father explaining the conception of babies to his curious child; Twiggy's face turns beetroot red. A squeaky voice sounds from behind Joel. Both Jack's jet black hair and his stature are wiry, his arms no wider than Ellie's; a ratty moustache hangs off his upper lip. His eyes are a gentle gray, but deadened by the things he'd seen.

"That's a pretty good idea, there's a fallen tree about 20 metres down that way," he nods eastwards along the river to a dense thicket of weeds. A Mississippi twang rings clear in his accent, suggesting he's a local of Jackson or nearby.

"Okay, that's sorted then. Let's head down there and get Ellie here across this thing," Bruce takes point, marching briskly alongside the water. The river spans about 10 or 15 metres, its banks smothered by reeds that sway rhythmically in the strong current of the clear water. The trunk of the long dead tree pushes a gap through the overgrowth, peeking out through grass as tall if not taller than Ellie's navel. Joel steps forward and grabs one of the exposed limbs with his weak arm, heaving. It budges but only a foot or so. He looks around to the rest, eyes pleading.

"Little help here?" Lee steps. His stature implies he has an athletic background, perhaps an American football player in a life before this. Lee grips the trunk, legs straining against its weight, and pulls the 6 foot soon-to-be buoy out from its confines. He takes a step back, chest puffing out and caving in, and runs his fingers through his hair; blonde and cropped into a crew-cut. His face crunches into a pained expression and he sucks air in through his teeth. Bruce notices the ordeal.

"What's the matter, did you pull something?" Lee shakes his head and smiles at Bruce's worrisome nature.

"Nah, I cut my face shaving this morning and the sweat's running into it. Stings like a bitch..." He indicates towards an inch wide nick on his jaw-line, swollen from the bodily assault. "Let's see if this thing floats." He plants his boot against the centre of the tree and pushes his leg outwards in a fierce movement. The trunk slides to the edge, teeters for a second, and then drops into the water with a hefty splash. The displaced liquid flies up and onto the legs of Twiggy's jeans. He retracts backwards, irritated.

"Ah fuck it, thanks asshole."

The group share a momentary snicker, then turn their attention back towards the river as the trunk bobs up and down like some abandoned swimming float. The members look at each other, to Ellie and then back at the water. Bruce inches forward and sits down on the riverbank, jiggling his legs.

"No time like the present," he says, then slides feet first into the blue. His legs and torso enter the water with a graceful splash. "I'd give that a ten out of ten for technique". He throws a handful of water over his hairless head, then scoops another up and aims it at the young girl, hitting her square in the face. She ducks away and splutters, pulling her now saturated hair out of her eyes and laughing heartily, a girlish giggle that reminds Joel of her age. His heart warms and he smiles. "Oh, you absolute dick! You are so fucking...so..." Ellie's mind fills with the image of a drenched Riley, clothes sticking to her smooth skin; water-gun clenched in her hands like a parodied image of a soldier in some innocent child's daydream –_Those water guns you've been dreaming of. I nearly got shot for these. Surprise. – "_You're dead._" _

She blinks and the tears run from her eyes; rats scurrying from a sewer left long undisturbed by ghosts of the past. Her emotion is disguised by the freshwater dripping from her face. Walking over to the riverbank, she plops down onto her rear and slides down into the freezing water. Her muscles seize up, reacting to the crushing cold, causing both her mouth and her body to gasp. With a pulse of effort, she throws her arms up and over the tree's corpse, gripping weakly onto the opposite side with fingers numb and unresponsive.

"Let's go."

* * *

The box room is bathed in a hellish glow, transforming objects and toys once innocent into ghouls and casting their elongated shadows against decayed wallpaper. Filth speckles the windows and gives the interior a grainy, sand-like texture; like being buried alive in a desert. A young child sits cross-legged on something that resembles a bed; her finger hovers at the corner of the book she's reading, lightly squeezing the page. Her soft lips are pursed in concentration, feminine features sketched onto her face beneath a mousey crop of hair by the sunset. She turns the page and smiles, amused by the world she's immersed in.

"Williams!"

Her head snaps up, eyes untrusting; Heavy footsteps land somewhere outside, the floorboards moaning in protest and harmonising with the woman's calls.

"Williams, you better get your ass out here right now," a threatening tone creeps in, and the young girl's shoulders tense.

Her eyes fall back down to the book, as if wanting nothing more than to be sucked into its pages, a Kafkaesque escape from her current situation. The doorknob rattles in its rusted socket before surrendering and allowing the seeker entry; a large woman, both horizontally and vertically, steps in; face distorted with annoyance. Her crooked teeth sit into each other like the aftermath of a demolition, the rubble forming in a set of moles and pimples peppering her chin. She glares at the child.

"Did you not hear me?" The girl shakes her head quickly, eyebrows raised in mimicked consternation. The seeker's breathing is laboured, her heart beating like a piston to move such a weight up something as challenging as stairs. "I said...did you not hear me?"

"No ma'am, I...I didn't hear you," The tiny figure withdraws backwards on her bed. The sun lowers beyond the surrounding apartment blocks, a wedge of daylight narrowing and narrowing, leaving the remaining area in murky darkness. The hinges on the gate beyond her window squeal, oppressed by the ancient lettering crouched above it:

**BOSTON MILITARY PREPARATORY SCHOOL**

The seeker lumbers forward.

"You fucking liar," she growls.

The girl begins to panic, feet and hands scrabbling to move her into some unseen asylum at the head of her resting place, the gargantuan shadow looming ever closer to her thin legs. She thrusts her head between her knees in a final plea for safety, her frail arms wrapping around the back of her head; her teeth begin to chatter from the trembling of her body.

"I just wanna read my book I just wanna read my b-" a force yanks the child's hair skywards, sending a fiery pain crawling across her scalp. A yelp escapes her lips and her eyes begin to tear; watery vision filled with teeth and evil and anger. The teeth gnash, spit and words flying out:

"I'll teach you not to lie to me you pathetic little SHIT!"

The final word gives way to a thrusting of the seeker's arm, tossing the child leftwards. Her head cracks off the headboard with a sickening thud and bubbles pop in her vision, the room turning into a twisted carousel of spinning entities and sporadic lighting. She feels a warm trickle on her cheek and follows its trail, wincing as her fingers come in contact with a deep scar on her right eyebrow. The seeker witnesses the child's shock at her bloody fingers and cackles, leaning in; her weight creates a black hole around her hands and the child is drawn towards her abuser, whimpering all the while. A grin like every beast and monster and nightmare known to man spreads across the seeker's face. The little girl's lips quiver.

"That's just for starters, Ellie..."

* * *

She draws her fingers away from the scar, eyes blank and mind wandering; the soft whooshing of the river and the clicking of the moored trunk creates a relaxing soundtrack– _It almost feels like the world's at peace_– she observes, but discards the idea for a hopeful daydream. The rest of the group are idling around, soaking in the picturesque scenery as if trying to store it in their bodies for later use –_For when we go back to the Dam– _Her eyebrows raise and she lets out a quiet sigh. Her gratitude for Tommy's protected asylum is eternal, but the gray walls and the gray buildings and the gray houses..._it's depressing as fuck...but hey, it's better than getting eaten alive by Infected or...cannibals. _She gets that feeling, like when the kids in school pretended to crack an egg on your head and you felt that warm trickling feeling oozing down your body; now, the trickling fluid was icy and malicious. Her hairs stand on end.

"Alright guys, it's getting pretty dark. Maybe we should head back for the night." Bruce is met with a chorus of frustration, the entire escapade of moving Ellie across the river now seeming redundant. She looks at a frog on the opposite side of the water, feeling responsible for the expended energy and wasted time. The frog's eyes rest on hers. –_Hey Mr. Frog_– One of the antagonist's in the _Savage Starlight _comics, Cerebella, had had telepathic powers; using them to drive people insane from a remote location or making soldiers turn weapons on their comrades. –_Frog, I know you can hear me...– _her eyebrows edge closer together in concentration. The frog remains still, perched among the dribs and drabs of greenery beyond. _If you can hear me, jump five times to the left and sit beside that flower._ Ellie flicks her eyes towards a dandelion hanging over the water, relaying the image to her amphibian counterpart. Her head begins to tremble, becoming a darker shade of pink. –_Come on frog, just jump over to the flower for me– _She remembers to breath, sucking fresh cool air into her nostrils and diluting the blackcurrant hue of her face. The frog sits in imaginary consideration of the command, and then makes its decision.

"Ribbit."

It springs into the air and down into the water with a _plomp._

"Fuck you," she whispers.

"Fuck you too."

She jumps and turns, one of Twiggy's thick legs almost snapping the nose off her face. His arms rest against his sides, pushing his t-shirt covered belly outwards into an army-green teardrop. Ellie doesn't know whether to ask him what his business is standing behind her or beg for him not to eat her. He flicks his tongue out and licks his lips. _Please don't eat me, _she thinks. The trunk's previously soothing lullaby has turned into a series of darting ticks, like a drug-enhanced beaver constructing a dam to challenge the one upstream. Joel and the rest sit cross-legged beside the river, trying to skim rocks along its surface.

"Get your ass up, we're leaving."

"Okay man, take a chill pill, I'm comin'." She plants her hands into the warm dirt and heaves herself up, knees cracking like tiny gunshots in a physiological civil war. Ellie rises to her full height, eyes levelled with Twiggy's chins. His expression is bemused.

"What's your problem?" Ellie questions; miffed by his staring.

"Why the fuck were you moaning?" Something shuffles in the leaves to his left; an unseen Geiger-counter tapping codes through the air.

"I wasn't moani-"

A flurry of movement explodes from the trees and Twiggy's body is flung onto the ground. A humanoid creatures sits atop him, head engulfed by gruesome petals of infected flesh and brain matter; a rotting three-piece suit hangs onto its body. The animosity of its snaps and snarls fling drool onto Twiggy's sleeve, his arm planted into the things neck. Ellie springs to life.

"Shit, CLICKER!"

She sees Lee sprinting towards the struggle in her peripheral and rips her switchblade from her back pocket; the knife flips out with a trained flick of her wrist. Lee delivers a kick to the Clicker's chin; its head snaps back but returns to its primary objective instantly, teeth skimming Twiggy's carotid artery. Squeals emerge from a hole in the centre of its deformed crown, where a human's forehead would sit. Twiggy's face depicts "Never give up" but his body screams "I surrender", his arms inching nearer to him.

Ellie lunges at the Clicker's back, pointing the knife towards her and plunging the blade into the left hand side of the monster's throat. Her teeth bare into a violent grimace as the knife meets cartilage and arteries, resistance to the inevitable downfall of this enemy. With a primal grunt, she yanks the knife's edge through pipes and tubes and slabs of flesh, red mist spraying from its prison and into the unsuspecting face of Lee. He vaults back, arms swinging in a panicked volley, and crashes onto his haunches; he wipes the layer of gore away. Ellie allows the Clicker to fall to the side, hisses and pops escaping its ruptured windpipe, signifying the final stages of this wretch's existence. It jerks and twitches and claws, then lies still.

"Oh fuck oh fuck me oh fuck oh shit" Twiggy leaps to his feet, babbling a blue streak and cleaning blood from his untouched neck. His hands search the flesh around his chin, unconvinced that the Clicker had not been successful in its efforts; they then cover his face as he sobs. Ellie wipes the blade of her knife on her jeans, closes it and pushes it back down into her pocket, breathing a sigh of relief that all parts of her body were also left intact. Her immunity was a shield of sorts, but one bite in the wrong area and her shield quickly became a sheet of paper. A pair of arms grip her shoulders and twist her around, her heart stopping in anticipation of whatever may be connected to them; she's relieved to see Joel's face, pained with worry.

"Damn Ellie, are you ok?"

His eyes scan every inch of her save the grin on her face, his pupils swollen with adrenaline.

"Yeah Joel, I'm okay. Seriously, it didn't touch me; I'm fine"

Joel sits back into a squat. His expression and reduced size make him look like an overdeveloped schoolboy fretting over an upcoming exam. Ellie laughs at the image.

"Okay, we should definitely get out of here, before more of those things show up," Bruce speaks over his shoulder to the rest, already zipping towards the river. Joel nods and places a firm hand on the girl's back, a constant guardian despite her obvious independence. Ellie doesn't mind it though. She enjoys the warm comfort that having someone to watch your back brings. Twiggy's rotund figure stands in the trees ahead, head bowed and hands clasped as if in prayer. He looks up as Ellie and Joel near him, the fatigue in his eyes profound. –_I wonder how old he is– _she thinks, but decides to save the question for a more appropriate setting.

"Ellie, I...uh, thanks. You really saved my ass."

"It was nothing, don't mention it. Just promise me one thing..."

"Yeah, what is it?"

"That you'll explain to me how a fat fucker like you got the nickname 'Twiggy'"

A wide grin spreads across his face, followed by an eruption of laughter that makes Ellie and Joel question the stability of his mind. He holds his sides and gasps for air, face plastered with agonising joy. The outburst quietens into sporadic giggles.

"Yeah, I'll tell you, ya little shit. Let's get back across this river first though."

"Truth be told, it's kind of an embarrassing story."

Ears perk up left, right and centre. Twiggy kicks a fist-sized rock down the road ahead, his boot disturbing an adventuring beetle moving in the opposite direction. The pillars of the bridge seem to hold up the horizon further down their path.

"Before I lived in the dam I was part of a group of survivors in North Carolina. There were about 15 of us, big group. Women, kids...boys and girls about your age, Ellie. Anyway, there was a military camp near our base and we decided to go check it out one day. Now, if there's one thing you need to know about Carolina, it's that the forests are creepy as fuck. The trees are super tall and skinny...it's like somethin' out of the Blair Witch Project." Ellie frowns with curiosity, but refrains from interrupting the flow of his story. "One night, we were walking through the woods. It was real quiet, scarily quiet. One of the guys was talking about this group of guys a few towns away that'd been ripped apart by a pack of clickers, so everyone was edgy as fuck. To cut a long story short, I stepped on a twig, it snapped real loud and I...shot myself in the foot."

A silence reminiscent of the aforementioned forests falls over the rest of the group. Twiggy looks around, worried that the others had stopped walking and abandoned him, leaving him to recite the story to himself and the rocks. Instead, his eyes meet Ellie's. Her mouth hangs partially open.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me."

The group's laughter echoes through the valleys, loud enough to alert the guard on the Dam's gate; a small black bead pops up out of the tower's window, probably gripping his gun in preparation for an attack from a new insane laughing enemy. They stroll past the demolished wormhole in the bridge, Joel's thoughts flicking from Mr. Deep Voice and the fallen Wide Guy, the snapping of his neck, the searing cavity in his bicep; flashes of lightning that could have woken the dead and roars of thunder loud enough to rattle the gates of Heaven. He shakes his head and looks at Ellie. He's not surprised to see her already staring at him, a sympathetic smile on her face. He nods and smiles back, turning his head and craning his neck to the top of the wall, looking for the previously alerted Larry. Twiggy voices his frustration.

"Open the gates buddy; I'm about to die of boredom out here."

"Okay, okay hold your horses mother fucker, I'm comin' as fast as I can."

"That's what she said."

The gates crack open and the group walk through, Larry throwing Twiggy the finger and getting it straight back. The two grin at each other and share a laugh.

"Thanks old man!"

"Don't mention it fuck face."

The group say their goodbyes and part ways. Bruce, Twiggy, Jack and Lee plod off to their families and beds, feet and bodies dragging and sagging respectively with fatigue; Ellie and Joel, already family, head home side-by-side. Joel puts his arm around the girl, squeezing her shoulder gently.

"How you holdin' up, kiddo?"

"I'm good...never a dull moment in this place."

"Yeah, that's for sure. I'm proud of you for helping Twiggy out earlier."

"It was easier than all of us having to carry his fat ass home." They both chuckle in the twilight. "Besides, I suppose it was the right thing to do and all that bullshit. Anyway, I'm gonna go and see how Iggy's doing, I haven't seen her since-..." She cuts herself off, hearing the desperate conclusion of her sentence before it's verbalised. –_I haven't seen her since yesterday–. _

"You've taken a real shining to her, huh? Well okay, I'm gonna go rest up. We'll be up bright and early in the morning again no doubt." Ellie nods in agreement, eyelids heavy; she turns, waving a goodbye lazily over her shoulder.

Joel strolls to the railings overlooking the reservoir and peers into the royal blue contents. The age of the man in his reflection never ceases to shock him; eyes sunken, a murder of crow's feet trampling their edges. When had he gone gray? He couldn't remember. The reservoir's lapping sounds like marbles bouncing down a silk-covered hill, almost forcing his eyes closed and sending his mind wandering to places unknown.

He remembers when he had first taught his daughter to swim, smiling absently at the image of her paddling like a disabled Labrador, hair just as blonde and half as long. The swimming pool was filled with the joyous cries of children; an infant screeching with the intensity of a train coming to a sudden halt on rusted tracks, the guffawing of parents watching the apples of their eyes bobbing to-and-fro. Sarah was struggling against the waves created by her peers; head almost level with the water in a bid to keep her nose and mouth void of moisture.

"Come on baby girl, you gotta put your face in the water."

"Are you-" –she splutters and drowns momentarily– "Are you crazy? Do I look like I have gills?" Her Texan accent strengthened in times of physical stress, "I" turning into "ah" and "have" into "hayuv". He jumps down into the water, capsizing his daughter with the consequent splash; he picks her legs up and spreads them flat in the water, pushing her by her waist like a floatation aid.

"Just kick your feet and paddle with your hands, baby." She obeys and slowly begins to propel her tiny stature through the pool. Joel gently removes his hands from the equation, but continues to walk alongside her. Her head turns, face ecstatic and shocked by her newfound independence, her mouth broadened with happiness.

"Holy shit! I'm doing it!"

"Yeah you are, baby girl. You sure are."

"JOEL?"

"Jesus!"

"No, but thanks for the compliment," Ellie stands beside him, chin resting on the steel bars that separate the two elements: Earth and Water. Joel observes an inquisitive twinkle in her eyes, a mind-reader at work. She gives up, turning away to join him staring at the murky pool. The spirit of a question chills Joel's bones.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Sarah." The trees on the hillside rustle vigorously at the mention of her name; believers would call it a sign, he called it the wind. "I was thinkin' about when I taught Sarah to swim. She picked it up real fast..." Ellie wrings her hands, a tic that signifies her nervousness to Joel. They notice Lee in the background –pallid and heading towards the medical shack– both putting hands up and getting only a weak lifting of the chin in return. Joel returns his attention to his companion.

"What's up?"

"Nothing's up, I just don't...I don't wanna intrude. I don't feel like talking to people sometimes too y'know, so if you want me gone, I'll piss off."

"Intrude? Wh-...Ellie, you ain't intruding on anything, girl. My mind just wanders when I'm busy doing nothing. Besides, it reminded me that I gotta teach you to swim sometime, we can't have you relying on pallets and trees all the time now, can we?"

He nudges her shoulder with his fist, almost toppling her absent-minded body. He giggles and dodges a punch aimed at his injured arm.

"You might be good with a knife but you couldn't fight your way out of a wet pape-" A scream rises out of the Earth behind him, followed by the crash of wood on wood. They snap around to see Iggy sprinting– then collapsing– on the dirt outside her abode; Lee, now injected with a new lease of life, tears through the threshold, arms clawing at personal enemies. He falls upon Iggy, an operatic vision of a widowed husband throwing himself upon the lifeless body of his wife...but Iggy's shrieks continue. Ellie becomes distressed at the familiar dominating position of the man.

"Oh shit, Iggy! What're you doing you fucker, get off her!"

Joel and Ellie race to the struggle, Joel putting his hand on Lee's chest and thrusting him backwards. He falls onto his haunches then springs back up, grabbing Joel's arm and sinking his teeth into his wrist. Joel doesn't scream, he doesn't wince; he pulls out the revolver and blows the threat away. A splatter hits the ground a foot behind Lee, the attacker's forehead, or lack thereof, pointed towards the sky as if asking for forgiveness. A sick knot of flesh protrudes from beside his mouth, some foreign body hanging on for dear life. His body slumps to the side, lifeless. The gunshot floats off into the evening, telling its story for miles and miles.

Joel lowers his eyes to the scarlet flesh of his wrist, now a mess of veins and marred meat. His ears are muffled by something, giving Iggy's sobs a distant quality. His head rotates to look at Ellie, her eyes moonlike at the burgundy cascade. Her lips tremble with every drip.

_Drip..._

_Drip..._

_Drip._

**AN: Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying the story. Tune in next weekend for Chapter 4, same bat time, same bat channel. Please review, follow, favourite and share with your friends!**

**Kind regards,**

**Dale**


	4. All Dressed in White

The medical shack is a gas chamber pumped full of tension. The space is occupied by three figures: Joel Ellie and Iggy. Joel lies outstretched on a gurney that is ramshackle from experiences. His chest rises and falls weakly as if the small hands of his soul are pushing his ribcage outwards to save itself from being crushed; Iggy mops his brow with a white cloth, her own furrowed with uncertainty. Ellie bites her nails like a ticking clock with legs crossed beneath and arms drawn to her mouth. Her gaze sits upon the man's chest and relief crosses her face with each new sign of life as the eyes shift rightwards to the blond woman beside the table. Iggy gives a weak smile and a wink.

Joel's unconsciousness was the nurse's decision with her reasoning being that the relaxed state would slow his heart-rate and consequently the flow of infected blood around his body. His blood loss wasn't severe enough to put him at risk when given morphine which she had repeated to him as she stabbed the syringe into his neck, bringing his flailing protests to a crawling halt. Seeing Joel's 200 pound stature slide back onto the bed like a tired child made Iggy marvel at medical technology; wielding a vial of liquid that could silence the roar of a lion was both invigorating and worrying. _God help the people who don't have faith in medicine._ She fiddles with her hair removing a go-go from the forest of curls; she pulls her mane back and wraps the hair tie around it once more, bringing control to a personal crazy situation.

"Why's he twitching like that?"

Ellie's whimper draws her attention to the shivering mass beside her with limbs jerking and head rocking back and forth.

"Shit shit shit, he could be going into shock or..." she allows the sentence to trail saving the girl's ears from the wicked word: Infected. "His heart isn't pumping enough blood around his body. Ellie, what blood type are you?"

"Fuck, I don't know! How should I know?"

"Well, have you ever given blood before? Like at a hospital or anything?"

"What? No, you're the first nurse I've ever even talked to."

Iggy's mind races, weighing pros and cons of a direct blood transfusion. She inwardly curses Tommy and Maria for disallowing the collection of the community member's bloods, deeming it an unnecessary effort. _Not so unnecessary when it's your own brother dying._ If Ellie's blood type isn't compatible with Joel's the resulting reaction would most certainly kill him but leaving him untreated would be a death sentence. _He's going to die one way or another might as well give the poor bastard a fighting chance._

"Ellie, move the table behind you over beside Joel and lie down with your head at his feet, honey." She does so, terrified by the flopping figure close to her. "Okay now I'm going to take some of your blood and put it into Joel. I need you to be really brave for me alright?"

"Iggy, I'm not 10 years old. Just do what you gotta do."

"Okay then."

She pulls the transfusion set from a non-descript cabinet straightening out the tubing and examining the needles on either end. Ellie eyes up the contraption, distrusting of the unfamiliar object. Iggy dabs a small cotton ball with anaesthetic and rubs the girl's wrist and locates the artery there. She inserts the needle into the artery noticing Ellie's face wince and tapes the tube onto the bottom of the girl's palm. The nurse turns to Joel, holding down his convulsing arm long enough to insert the opposite needle into the median cephalic at his elbow. She releases the small clamp attached to the set, and arterial pressure begins to pump scarlet liquid out of Ellie through the tube and into the veins of her counterpart. Her youthful face ogles at the medical viaduct in amazement.

"Okay, done. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing. Now, if you feel weak or if you get cold sweats or your vision blurs let me know straight away and I'll take the needle out."

"You got it."

Their eyes meet amidst the flurry; Iggy smiles and the young girl.

"You're a brave girl Ellie."

The blood flows on.

* * *

Ten minutes pass, and Joel's seizure ceases as it has started, sudden and unexpected. Ellie's face – noticeably paler than before– is pained with worry, darting glances at Iggy, pleading for explanation. The blond rests her fingers on the man's neck, sandpaper stubble tickling her wrist. A steady thump runs through the artery, the cranks of a machine struggling with age. She removes the needle from Joel's arm, followed by the one in Ellie's wrist, placing a small plaster on each.

"His pulse is steady...-ish. That's a good sign, but it doesn't mean that he's in the clear yet. If your blood type is different to his, it could make him very sick." The elephant in the room nudges her shoulder with its trunk. She wrings her hands. "Honey, it's nearly two hours since he got bitten. He... he hasn't got long left before he tur-"

"No, shut up! Just shut up!"

The exclamation shocks Iggy to silence, her head pointing toward the ground to avoid the fury in the child's expression. _Why is it always this hard? Fuck._ The futility of anything she could say grooves a hollow abode in her chest, wrapping its black fist around her heart. She turns and sits in the wicker chair behind her, wiping the sweat away with a delicate hand. Small droplets stain the wooden floors in front of her, not falling from her forehead. Iggy raises her eyes, meeting a mask of sorrow etched onto the face of a girl too young to deserve it. Tears roll down her porcelain cheeks, speed increasing and decreasing with the movement of her sobs.

"Oh Ellie..."

The girl throws her arms around the nurse, her grip powerful as if holding onto the Earth for fear of floating away into space. She draws in hacking breaths, sniffling and coughing into Iggy's shoulder. She rubs Ellie's back.

"Sarah th- that you, b-baby girl?"

The whisper startles them both, a gasp catching in Ellie's throat. They turn to the source of the question, a semi-conscious Joel, grasping at ghosts floating above him. His brows are furrowed with an unknown emotion: confusion, fear, maybe even concentration. The girls fall to opposite sides of the bed, hands planted on the arms and legs of the injured. He reacts subtly to the contact.

"Joel? Joel, it's Ellie, can you hear me? Come on Joel, wake the fuck up, you're scaring me" Ellie shakes his arm roughly, tears bombarding the stretcher below. The man shakes his head as if in denial of the girl's words.

"Where's Sarah? I...I want Sarah! Where are you baby girl? Sarah?" His hands clench into fists, hammering the gurney in a tantrum. Ellie gulps, swallowing back another barrage of tears.

"I'm..." –she turns her face away, catching Iggy's eyes upon returning– "I'm here daddy." She takes Joel's hand in her own, squeezing it until her knuckles turn a whiter shade of pale. Iggy's lips tremble at the ordeal. The man's expression softens at her voice, a slight smile spreading across his lips; he continues to mutter, stumbling through his overgrown mind.

"I miss you so much, Sarah. I miss you every day, baby." –Ellie sobs into her shoulder– "I'm taking care of this new girl now...I think you'd really like her. She reminds me of you. She reminds me of y..." His voice lowers to a whisper and his head lulls to the side. The hand slips free from the girl's grasp and falls with a rap to the wooden table as Joel once again slips into unconsciousness. Iggy rises and puts her hands on Ellie's shoulders, massaging her collar bone and pausing to run her fingers across her cheek. Ellie trembles at the touch and her eyes wander around the nurse's face. Her gaze rests on the blonde's lips and her head darts forward with eyes closed and lips puckered and wanting for affection. Iggy pulls her head back at the sight, forehead wrinkled with confusion as she holds the girl at arm's length against the wooden spine of the chair.

"Whoa, Ellie, what...?"

The child's face is painted with embarrassment tinted a rosy shade and her head spins every which way but forward. She chokes on excuses for her actions and only noises of weakness perforate through as she finds the nurse's expression to be unkind and pitying. Tears wet Iggy's ivory dress at the force of the girl pushing up and out of the chair, arms shooting upward to wipe away the events of the past day, the past hour, the past minute.

The door slams and rattles instruments in barbicide and cleansing liquids and pushes a gale through the space that flutters the ends of the woman's skirt. Emotions brawl for dominance in her mind as pity knocks outrage to the floor and is bludgeoned over the head by surprise. She turns to the man on the table who breaths and stirs and cranes his neck for comfort and the nurse's mouth falls agape at the wound on his wrist which is not anymore a scarlet mess but a budding thicket of pink scar tissue.

"Jesus..."

* * *

The girl hitches the backpack onto her shoulder as she feels her way through the black out the front door of their wooden abode and curses to herself when a splinter invites itself unwelcomed into the calloused flesh of her palm. Boards creak and whine in the night breeze and the evergreens throw applause down at the slumbering settlement from the hilltops and communicate to their neighbours with creaks and moans of their own. Her footsteps fall heavy with each trudge through the dirt and the small explosions of dust scuff the borders and bumpers of her shoes as she moves past the scene of such anger and desperation to smack her clenched fist against her forehead and fulminate her very existence on her journey in the opposite direction. Her chin draws upward to allow her eyes view of the top of the walls which barricade them in from the evils of their world and the only world that she will ever know and she barks a question into the inkblack sky.

"Hello?"

A chair is relieved of tension somewhere along the wall and her call is reciprocated by the beam of a flashlight scalding her retinas and forcing her hand into a claw along the bridge of her nose while the light scans the rest of her and comes to a standstill on the ground at her feet.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Vocal chords as rough as broken tarmac and a question as piercing as the searchlight cause her shoulders to tighten in anticipation of a nocturnal altercation and she lowers her voice to seem more threatening.

"It's none of your business where I'm going, just open the gate."

"Oh I beg to differ, anything that involves me opening this gate is 100 percent my fucking business. Now I'll ask again where are you going, little girl?"

The final two words rub themselves against her skin and raise it into gooseflesh as her lips give way to snarled teeth and balled fists that shiver not from cold but from desire to pummel her way out of the verbal proving ground.

"You better open that fucking gate asshole or I'll come up there and show you little girl"

"Ellie!"

Memories creep up through her soul at the voice behind her as regret had all too soon before this ordeal. Iggy jogs through the murk and flails her arms and points her fingers blindly in the opposite direction and toward the medical shack as the young girl rotates her head but keeps her body pointed toward the exit. Not a confident voice or a bold voice but a voice nonetheless rolls from Ellie's mouth and the nurse halts breathless and heaving at the crown of the girl's artificial shadow.

"What do you want?"

The woman looks up and stares into the girl's soul with eyes bulging and cheeks puffed and reddened with exertion as she coughs out a fractured statement.

"It's Joel Ellie he's not infected you're the cure."

It could be the girl's imagination but the flashlight seems to shiver in the night.


End file.

Last of Us, Adventure, Angst