Chapter Text
Holy fuck it was cold.
Ellie let go of the reins for a second and cupped her hands to her mouth, puffing warm air over them. The light breeze felt like needles on the exposed skin of her face and neck, making her want to let her hair down in lieu of a scarf. And if you get attacked and can't see where you're shootin'? Strange. Her survival instinct was starting to sound like Joel. She sighed forlornly and settled for flipping up the collar of her jacket. Stupid fucking winter. Stupid fucking cold. Stupid fucking Joel. Jesus. He owed her so many songs, she'd be collecting until--
Callus abruptly planted his feet and lowered his head, sending Ellie tumbling over his ears. She landed with a hollow thump on the frozen ground, pain shooting up her spine. Ellie sat up slowly, glaring at horse, who was completely ignoring her and enthusiastically demolishing a sparse bush.
Ellie snorted a laugh and got to her feet, brushing snow off her jeans. Finding food for herself and Joel was hard; finding food for Callus was near impossible. Her half-smile faded as she took in the horse's skeletal appearance. She'd been making do with old dog food and hay she'd found, but it just wasn't enough.
Speaking of food... A sharp pain twisted in her gut. Ellie scowled and walked over to Callus, who had finished stripping the bush of its half-dead leaves and smaller branches, but was still mournfully nibbling on it. "Hunting. Right. Need to focus."
She pulled herself up onto his back easily. If there was one good thing about Joel being out of commission, it would be that it's forced her to get stronger. Ellie clicked her tongue and pressed her heels into Callus' sides to get him moving.
Another uneventful hour passed as she rode deeper into the woods, nary a bird or squirrel in sight. She was about to call it quits and start back when she spotted a dark little hole yawning in the ground a few yards away. Ellie pulled Callus to a stop, then carefully turned him parallel to the rabbit burrow. She unslung her bow and notched an arrow, waiting.
A little pink nose poked out of the hole, twitching wildly. Ellie held her breath and silently willed Callus to stay still as the rest of the rabbit followed, its fur as white as the snow. She drew the string back and took a bead on it, then let the arrow fly.
With a whistle and a dull thunk, it hit its mark, spearing the rabbit through its side. Ellie grinned and slid down from the saddle, trotting over to her prize. The grin faded when she slid arrow out of the rabbit and realized it was just as bony as Callus.
"This isn't going to last long..." she muttered with a sigh, slipping the arrow into her backpack and walking back to Callus. She lashed the rabbit to his saddle and glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a twig snapping.
Holy shit.
A stag. An actual fucking stag. He lifted his head and trotted down the hill and out of sight, oblivious. She flipped Callus’ reins over his head and tossed them onto a branch of the scraggly little tree he stood next to.
“You’ll just startle it,” Ellie offered not-quite-apologetically by way of explanation, not looking back as she jogged to where the stag disappeared. She slid down the steep hillside and landed in a crouch.
“Where’d you go?” she muttered, readying her bow. She inched forward cautiously, but still managed to step on a brittle branch. The stag erupted from behind a stand of rocks and bounded away over a ridge.
“There you are.” Ellie grinned and followed him to the ridge, where she paused to survey the land. The stag was at the far end of the gully, nosing around in the snow for something. Off to the left, a rock protruded from a bit of higher ground close enough to get a good shot, but not where the stag could see or smell her.
She continued into the gully, making her way to that perfect spot, keeping one eye on the deer the whole time. Ellie got to her perch and settled, notching and arrow and drawing back the string.
Wind’s coming straight down the gully, maybe six or ten miles per hour. Adjust to the left…
She let go and the arrow struck the stag in the shoulder instead of his neck. Dammit. She adjusted too far. He bellowed in pain and took off, circling around the bluff.
She jumped down from her perch and pursued, the trail marked clearly by splatters of blood so much like the one Joel left at the university.
Shut up.
Ellie hesitated in the shadow of the stone wall and--on a hunch--took to high ground on her left. She pulled herself onto a rock ledge at the top of the hill and spotted the stag rooting around behind some evergreens.
She squinted against the wind and notched an arrow. Not exactly ideal conditions, and the distance was stretching it, but…
The exact moment she loosed her arrow, the wind decided to pick up and fling it back against the butte with a noisy clatter. The buck took off.
"Fuck," Ellie hissed. She turned and got back to the trail, then made her way along the butte's base, scrambling over rocks to retrieve her arrow. She ended up finding it by putting her hand on the head and nearly cutting her palm open.
Jamming the arrow into her backpack with more force than strictly necessary, Ellie slogged up the hill in now knee-deep snow after the stag.
Pausing by a boulder at the top of the hill to get her breath back, she spotted him immediately. He was standing in the center of the clearing, taunting her. Well, not taunting her. He didn't know she was there. Ellie circled around behind him to keep it that way. At least, until something snapped under her foot. She froze.
The stag's head shot up. He looked around, flipped his ears, sniffed the wind, then after half a minute turned his attention back to the arrow protruding from his shoulder.
Ellie let out a sharp breath and inched forward a little more, notching an arrow. She took careful aim and let go of the string. Of course the rat-bastard stag limped forward, so the arrow took him in the side instead of in the neck. He screamed hoarsely--like Joel did when you pulled him off of that rebar--and ran again in a thunder of hooves.
"Oh, man," Ellie muttered, feeling like she'd been punched in the gut. She sucked in a shuddering breath, pretended her hands weren't shaking, and started after him again.
After losing his trail twice because he doubled back on himself and cut through dead grass, Ellie stopped at the top of a hill in front of a particularly large bloodstain. She snickered to herself.
"The amount of blood he's lost is stag-gering." She looked over her shoulder, grinning, but the mirth was quickly stamped out and replaced with a hollow, cold feeling in her chest when the joke met only open air.
Ellie sighed and pushed on, coming to a half-rotted fence. She paused before it, giving it a dubious once-over, and tested her weight on it. The old wood groaned, but held. She vaulted over it and stopped again, listening hard.
Except for her own breathing and the creak of frozen branches, the forest was silent. Fuck. There must be some infected nearby.
She kept walking, coming to a stop at the edge of the bluff overlooking a collection of decrepit cabins and what looked like either a factory or fancy-as-hell warehouse. "What is this place?"
Ellie looked down at the trail, then leaned forward to check the ground near the cabin. Please don't be down there, please don't be down there, please don't be--
Blood and hoof prints. Great. Thanks, stag. She sighed and walked in a tight circle, rubbing the back of her neck.
"Fuck," she growled, jumping from the ledge. The infected were probably all holed up here, nice and cozy and damp in the basements. Fucking stag was leading her into a deathtrap. Ellie snorted. Talk about revenge with your last breath.
She cast a wary eye over the cabin in front of her. Structurally unsound, creaky, rotting, and creepy as hell. Naturally, the trail led right through the middle of it. Follow the yellow brick road, Dorothy. What could go wrong?
"Oh, great," Ellie muttered as she stepped into the building. "Everything's cool. This place is not creepy at all."
She turned to her left and peered into the office, clearing it just like Joel would have. A can of nails sat on a shelf in a filing cabinet and a rag laid on the desk that still had a drawer in it. Ellie crept into the office, snatched the nails and rag, then turned to the drawer.
"Awesome," she said, grinning as she lifted out the fourth issue of Savage Starlight. She tucked it safely into her backpack, then went back out to the main building and continued on the trail.
Catching sight of her prize, Ellie threw all pretenses of being stealthy out the window and rushed out to the stag’s corpse. She realized with a scowl she’d have to get it back up the hill and all the way to Callus. A twig snapped behind her and she whirled around, drawing back the string.
"Who's there? Come out!" she demanded, regretting the words almost as soon as they left her mouth. The place is probably crawling with infected, dipshit.
And apparently people.
"Hello!" the middle-aged man called out, smiling, as he stepped out from behind the electrical box. He might've been Joel's age, or a few years younger. Ellie didn't miss the rifle over his shoulder, nor the way his hand tightened momentarily on its strap. The second man was younger, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, a ski cap stuffed over his blonde hair. He wasn't carrying a visible weapon, meaning he probably had a pistol or knives. Going by the pacifying way he held his hands out to the side, away from his waist, she guessed pistol. "We just want to talk."
"Any sudden moves and I put one right between your eyes. Ditto for buddy-boy over there," she said, trying to look as menacing as possible. The two men exchanged a slightly concerned look. Hah. Nailed it. "What do you want?"
"Uh. Name's David," the older man said, gesturing as he spoke. "This here's my friend, James."
Buddy-boy nodded to her and David continued. "We're from a larger group--women, children--all very, very hungry."
Buddy-boy looked over his shoulder. Squirrely motherfucker. She'd keep an eye on him.
"So am I," Ellie said coolly. "Women and children, all very hungry too."
David and his partner shared another look. Buddy-boy lowered his hands, so she switched her aim to him. David took a half-step forward.
"Well, maybe we could, ah, trade you for some of that meat, there," he offered, his hand tightening on the strap of his rifle again. Ellie turned her arrow on him. "What do you need? Ammo? Weapons, clothes--"
"Medicine!" she blurted out. Fuck. Fuck. Maybe she should just hold up a big ass sign pointing at her and reading, 'VULNERABLE. PLEASE TAKE ADVANTAGE OF.' Could she seem any more desperate? "Do you have...any antibiotics?”
David and Buddy-boy had another fucking silent exchange and looked back at her.
"We do. Back at the camp." David started forwards. "You're welcome to follow us--"
"I'm not following you anywhere!" There we go. There's some command. Remember who has a sharp projectile pointed in your direction, bitches. David retreated back to his original spot with a patient smile. "Buddy-boy can go get it. He comes back with what I need, the deer is all yours. Anyone else shows up--"
"You put one right between my eyes," David interrupted with a small chuckle, pointing at the spot.
"That's right."
David nodded, looking a little bemused. "Two bottles of penicillin. Make it fast."
Buddy-boy turned to him, opening his mouth to argue. Ellie aimed at him.
"Go on," David insisted. Buddy-boy looked between him and Ellie in disbelief, backing away until he was out of her sights.
Ellie's arm shook for a second under the strain of keeping the bow drawn and her fingers ached enough to overcome the numb of the cold. "I'll take that rifle."
David's hand tightened on the strap again, his mouth falling open. Then he nodded and smiled.
"Of course," he said, walking forward to set the rifle down near her feet.
"Back up."
Ellie slung the bow over her shoulder and slid the arrow back into her backpack as soon as David was clear, then snatched up the rifle. She cleared the chamber and slid the bolt back into place. Fuck yes. Nothing like the feel of smooth wood grain and cold metal under her hands. She took another step back for good measure.
She thought about killing him. It'd be easy; take him out, wait for Buddy-boy, kill him too, get the medicine, fix Joel.
But what if they're telling the truth? Ellie's finger twitched on the trigger, a part of her whispering, "I don't care." No. No, she did care, dammit. She's not like the hunters. She cares about what happens to people and she won't shoot someone just because they have what she wants.
"He's probably going to be a while," David said nervously, breaking in on her thoughts. He swung his arms back and forth in front of him like a child. "You, ah, mind if we take some shelter from the cold?"
If Ellie had half a mind she'd keep them both standing out in the open. But numb fingers and toes and the bone-deep weariness that came from slogging through snow won out.
"Bring him with us," she said, gesturing to the buck with the barrel of her rifle. David gave her a look, then turned to do as she asked. Ellie took her finger off the trigger to sniffle and swipe at her running nose. Stupid, Joel's voice chided. What if he'd lunged at you?
He was facing away from me.
Don't matter. Never take your finger off the trigger while you've got an enemy nearby.
Ellie followed David, this time her rifle trained square on his chest as he dragged the buck into what might've been a workshop in another life.
Twenty minutes later, David was stoking a small fire, completely at ease despite the rifle.
"There," he said, pleased with the little blaze. He held his hands over it, then sat back and looked at her kneeling across from him. "You know, you really shouldn't be out here all on your own."
The first thing that popped into her head was, 'What makes you think I'm not?' but bluffing probably wasn't a good idea in this case. The fact that it would be a bluff made her chest ache. Instead, she said in the coldest voice she could muster, "I don't like company."
"I see," David said, almost somberly, but then he was smiling again, no doubt going for a friendly air. To Ellie it felt fake and flimsy. "What's your name?"
She glared at him. "Why?"
"Look, I understand it isn't easy to trust a couple of strangers," he replied, deflecting the question with a chuckle. "Whoever's hurt, you clearly care about them."
Ouch. That was close to home. She glanced down at the fire.
"I'm sure it's gonna be just fine."
A lie if she had ears, even if it was one she desperately wanted to believe. "We'll see."
An inhuman scream from a human throat sent Ellie to her feet. It rose and fell, then trailed off in angry clicking. Fucking clickers. It wasn't the fungal plates or always-open mouth that unnerved her about them: it was the noises. Runners yelled, plain and simple. Stalkers had the decency to only shout as they died, thank fuck. Bloaters bellowed, which was a whole different breed of terrifying. It was the oh god oh god that wasn't thunder fear. The noises clickers produced made her want to curl up in a little ball and be very, very still until the thing went away.
The clicker lurched in through the open door, its mouth open wide and head misshapen head tilted back to better make that awful sound. Ellie took a step back and her foot nudged the muzzle of the buck. The infected screamed and she flinched, but it only cleared half the room before David fired twice.
The first shot went wide, but the second caught the clicker in the chest. It fell to the ground, convulsing, and he crossed the room in two strides to put another bullet between its face plates.
"You had another gun?" She totally didn't freeze up. Nope. David had another gun and she was pissed about that, not that she acted like a scared little kid.
He looked like he tried to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. "Sorry."
"Okay, I'd really like my rifle back, now," David said, holding out his free hand for the gun while he looked outside.
"No. You have your pistol." So it was a little petty, but Ellie didn't exactly like the idea of holding a room with this many windows with a bow. David glared openly at her.
"I hope you know how to use that thing," he groused.
"I've had some practice."
David slammed the heavy metal door shut, then ran along the right side of the room to the buck. “No matter what, we have to keep them out.”
No shit, Sherlock.
He dragged a blue tarp down from a tool cabinet and threw it over the deer. “Let’s hope they don’t find him. Cover the windows.”
“Okay,” she replied automatically, used to Joel telling her what to do. Not a few seconds later, the first group of infected started beating at the boards in the windows. Ellie let out a slow breath and carefully lined up her shots. Don’t rush it, Joel said. You’ll just waste bullets. Take it nice and slow. You’ve got time.
“Make every shot count, now!” David shouted over their fire.
“I’ve done this before,” Ellie snapped back, turning to face the infected climbing through the unboarded windows behind them. David got one before it could get all the way in. The second was five feet away when Ellie nailed it with a headshot. The third went down under their combined fire.
She took a moment to pat down the pockets of the infected that got in, scoring three more bullets for her rifle.
“You weren’t kiddin’. You’re a better shot with that thing than I am!” David praised, running past her to a cast-iron cabinet coated in peeling green paint. He started to drag it across the open windows, straining. “Gimme a hand with this.”
Ellie braced her shoulder on the other side of the cabinet, throwing her weight against it. Fuck. It was heavier than she thought. Infected started screaming outside again and she planted her feet and shoved harder. “Agh! C’mon, c’mon!”
The cabinet slid into place and Ellie stopped pushing, stepping away and turning to retreat back to the middle of the room. A garbled screech and angry clicks came from behind her, then cold hands grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. Hot, rotting breath wafted over her face and teeth snapped the air next to her cheek. She dropped her rifle and struggled, jamming an elbow in the clicker’s throat and trying to twist out of its grasp.
David shoved her down, out of the way, and jammed the barrel of his snub-nosed pistol into the break in the clicker’s face plates and fired. He stepped away to take care of another runner climbing in through the window and Ellie fumbled with her rifle, fear blurring her senses and making her hands not want to cooperate.
Fear is good. It makes you stronger, faster, smarter. But only if you don't let it control you. Use it.
Ellie forced herself to breathe evenly, finally getting her rifle in her hands. She stood and turned, raising the gun in the same motion. The infected running at her fell before it could clear half the room. A clicker bodily smashed through the boards on the windows, flopping into the room. Its head exploded in fungal chunks and gray matter before it could find its feet.
There was a brief lull in the fighting and Ellie turned to the locker in the corner. Fuck yeah, medkit. She shoved the kit in her jacket pocket and closed the doors of the locker out of habit.
“Here,” David said, tossing her a pack of bullets as he crossed the room. “There’s more infected on that side. It’s a big pack; they must’ve followed you.”
Ellie snorted and caught the pack with one hand. She tore it open with her teeth and reloaded. “Maybe they followed you and your friend.”
“It doesn’t matter,” David shouted over the report of her rifle as she took down two runners coming in from the left. “Now we’re stuck in this together.”
The next half-minute she spent firing, reloading, and scrambling across the blood-slicked floor for ammo. Eventually the infected stopped coming, but by the hooting and shrieking outside more were on their way. A lot more.
“Screw it,” David growled, storming over to the boarded-up door at the back of the room. “We’re gettin’ out of this room.”
He unceremoniously kicked the door open and took off down the hall with an unnecessary shout for Ellie to follow him, as she was already hard on his heels. A windowpane shattered next to her as she ran, frostbitten hands scrabbling at her jacket then falling away.
“Fucking infected,” she hissed, glancing over her shoulder at the clicker forcing its way into the hall behind them. She took the stairs two at a time and David hauled her up the last knee-high concrete step into the next room.
“Cover the stairs,” he ordered, bracing his shoulder against a metal filing cabinet. “I’ll block their path.”
Ellie only had time to drop the closest clicker wearing ridiculous purple pants, and then the barrier was in place. The other two infected in the hall slammed themselves into it, wailing. The cabinet shuddered, but held.
“Follow me, through here,” David said, pushing against a rusted set of double doors. He threw his shoulder into them when they wouldn’t budge, causing them to slam open with a protesting screech that rivaled the sound of the infected behind them. Ellie winced and followed David into what looked like a distribution center.
“Do you know where you’re going?” she asked dubiously, pausing to pick up some supplies she saw lying around. Rag, half a pair of scissors, two almost empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, and another rag.
“I’ve never set foot in this place,” he replied honestly, looking over the wreckage of machines.
“Oh, great.”
“It’s clear. This way,” David said, ignoring her and leading her into a maze of snow and the husks of machinery.
“Right behind you,” Ellie muttered, jogging after him.
“How you holdin’ up?” he asked, going up a flight of stairs to a metal catwalk.
“You don’t need to worry about me.” Maybe he wasn’t lying. He seemed nice enough...Tentatively, Ellie started to let herself trust him.
“Alright, stay close,” David said, vaulting over a fallen metal tube of some kind. Ellie followed, but the catwalk groaned under her feet and plummeted. She managed to squeak out an oh shit before she landed hard on her back.
Fuuuuuuck. Ellie made a squeaky, breathless noise instead of a groan and propped herself up on one elbow, gaping like a fish out of water. The fall had knocked the breath out of her but with the exception of a persistent ache in the middle of her back, she was uninjured. Thank you, backpack.
“Hey kid,” David called down to her. “You alright?”
No, perfectly fine. It’s not like she just fell fifteen feet and can’t breathe. Ellie finally sucked in a shuddering breath, her diaphragm remembering how to work again.
“I’m fine,” she called up, forcing herself to her knees. Ow. Ow, ow, ow. Metal clanged somewhere up ahead and David tensed. The eerie scream-click told it all, but he naturally insisted on pointing out the obvious.
“More clickers...Get outta there!” He disappeared from sight, running along the catwalk, pursued by a clicker. Ellie got to her feet and ran to a metal wall, flattening herself against it. She waited and listened, David shooting up above. She peered around the corner to see a clicker in a garish purple windbreaker advanced on her hiding spot, clawing at its head now and then and releasing sharp bursts of clicking that were almost screeches. It bashed its head on the wall, screamed, hit it a few times, then wandered off, slipping into passive clicks.
Ellie shuddered and followed it quietly, walking on the balls of her feet. She took her switchblade out of her pocket, popped it open, then jumped on the clicker’s back and stabbed it in the back of the neck, sawing her blade sideways. It went down quietly and Ellie settled into a crouch, listening. She heard two more active clickers a ways off, but also a quiet, passive clicking coming from nearby.
She started forward, then stopped dead. Not two feet from her was the passive clicker, jerking sporadically in place. Ellie held her breath and edged forward, fingers tightening on the bloodsoaked handle of her switchblade. She lunged all at once, sticking the knife into the break in the fungal plates and twisting. The clicker made a choked sound, then fell. She pulled out the blade with a sick pop and kept going, hiding behind a turbine when one of the active clickers lurched her way.
Ellie reached out and picked up a brick lying nearby. When the infected came into view, she lobbed the brick at its head. It screeched, fungal plates breaking off and oozing blood, exposing the brain. The clicker, surprisingly, took care of the rest. It ran forward, frenzied, and hit its head against the wall. Blood splattered and it crumpled to the ground.
“Brick fucking master,” she muttered to herself, then turned to look for the last clicker. She didn’t need to. It found her. It charged with that rise-and-fall scream, windmilling its arms wildly in front of it. Ellie ducked out of its way, slipping less-than-gracefully around it, and jammed her knife into its side. It screamed again and turned, freeing her blade. She shot to her feet to meet the clicker, driving the switchblade up, under its sternum. It groaned and slumped over on her, getting blood all over her jacket.
Ellie wrinkled her nose at the smell and shoved it off, then sank to the ground, panting. She felt sick and the back of her neck itched, but she didn’t go to scratch it. It was just a symptom of her adrenaline crash, anyway. She took a moment to catch her breath and calm down, leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes. Alive. Alive. She was alive. Ellie sighed and pushed herself back to her feet. If she stumbled a little, her only audience was a pair of dead clickers.
She walked toward the direction they came from and almost stepped out into open air, catching herself at the last second. She’s had enough falling for one day, thanks. Ellie searched the lower room and spotted a ladder leading up to somewhere else on the opposite side. She jumped down into the room and jogged over to the ladder, pulling her sleeves over her hands before touching the freezing metal.
She topped the ladder and swung her legs over the low concrete wall. She took two steps forward before a clicker rounded the corner, shrieking. Before she could do anything but drop into a crouch, two shots shattered its skull.
“You alright?”
“Oh, there you are.”
They spoke at the same time, but David took her response as an okay, seeing as she was walking around and still breathing.
How ‘bout you, kid? You okay?
Define okay.
You still breathin’?
Do small, panicked breaths count?
Heh. Yeah, they count.
“Come on,” David said, breaking in on her reverie. “Door’s this way.”
“We’ve got to get up there. That ladder could work.” He indicated a ledge too high for a boost and walked around the room, eyes on the ladder, trying to see a way to get to it. Ellie looked around too. That ledge was too high for a boost, but the one opposite of it…
“Here. C’mere, boost me up,” she said, turning to David and gesturing to the lower ledge. He jogged over and cupped his hands for her. Ellie put her foot in his hands and lightly held onto his shoulder for balance. It felt...wrong, somehow. Joel was taller by at least half a foot, with broader shoulders and stronger hands.
“Okay. Ready?”
“Hang on…” Ellie adjusted her foot so it felt more secure. “Okay.”
David hefted her up, just barely managing to get her close enough to hook her arms over the edge. She pulled herself painfully slowly up the rest of the way and got to her feet.
“Alright. You be quick and keep a look out for those things,” he said, sounding nervous. Psh. Like she couldn’t handle herself.
“I know,” Ellie replied, trying not to sound too annoyed. She crouched and crept forward, testing each section of the catwalk before committing to walk across it. It was slow and tedious, but she couldn’t take another fall like that. It was also forcing her to be quiet, so she got plenty of warning when three clickers suddenly went active.
Two were well below Ellie, lurching around beneath the catwalks. One was up there with her, puttering about near a little storage alcove and the walkway just before it. She unslung her bow and notched an arrow, waiting for the clicker to wander out to where she would have time enough to make two shots.
The infected unwittingly complied, shuffling into range. It took an arrow in the stomach and another in the heart, going down without even a screech.
“What’s going on up there?” David shouted, his voice echoing strangely. “Is everything alright?”
Shut up, shut up! Fucking idiot... Ellie waited, eyes on the clickers below. They screamed and battered themselves against a wall blocking them from David, but settled down soon enough. She sighed and hurried over to the clicker’s corpse to retrieve her arrows. She’d talk to him about keeping his goddamn mouth shut after she got the ladder.
Only one of the arrows was salvageable, the other snapped in half by the clicker’s fall. Ellie ducked into the alcove it had been walking around, looking for supplies. A Firefly tag resting on a crate just inside the entrance caught her eye first. She gingerly picked it up and read the name engraved on the cheap tin. Travis Kristof. Ellie looked back out on the catwalks at the clicker. So that was his name. Travis. She tucked the tag into her jacket pocket. If he had friends or family, they deserved to know. If they ever actually found the Fireflies. If she got out of here alive. If Joel doesn’t--
He’s not going to. Ellie is going to get the medicine to him and he’ll be back on his feet and kicking ass in no time.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and scrubbed at her eyes, pretending it was just the cold making them water even as her chest tightened with pain. Ellie opened the low cupboard pushed against the wall and took off her backpack, taking out her inventory list and stub of a pencil. It was a habit she’d gotten into at the prep school and she wasn’t about to squander it, even now. She added the supplies she’d found earlier in the day, including the Savage Starlight comic, then looked over the contents of the cupboard. Can of nails, half a bottle of 80 proof vodka, rag, and--perhaps the best of the lot--two bullets for her pistol.
Ellie gathered the supplies and put everything except for the vodka, rag, and bullets in her bag. She pulled out the two almost-empty bottles of rubbing alcohol and poured them into the vodka bottle, then discarded the plastic bottles. She packed one end of the rag firmly into the mouth of the bottle, then tucked her molotov into a side pocket on her backpack. Ellie crossed out the rubbing alcohol, vodka, and a rag from her list, drawing the lines so they pointed off in one arrow to the side and wrote, ‘molotov.’ She then dug out her pistol from the recesses of her bag and ejected the magazine to load the two bullets. She slapped the magazine back in, pulled the slide back to cock it, but kept the safety on and tucked the pistol into her waistband.
Ellie turned to the tall work cabinet and pulled a package of phosphate down from a shelf. She tucked it into her bag and marked it on her list, then put the list and pencil back in the small pocket on the front of her backpack. She zipped it up and continued on to the ladder.
“Alright, here you go,” she said, pushing the ladder over the edge of the catwalk. David caught it and quickly moved out of her way so she could jump down.
“Through here.” He gestured to a set of red double doors. Ellie went through first, with David closing the doors behind them. She looked around, hearing a runner somewhere.
“We need to find a way out of here,” David said, half to himself. This time she couldn’t stop a snarky response.
“Psh. Yeah, no shit.”
“You ought to watch your language,” he replied, giving her a half-exasperated look. Ellie rolled her eyes.
“Okay, old man.”
She could hear two runners now and started up the stairs to a raised section of the room they came to. Two corpses lay cold and shredded on the floor.
“Geez,” she said, nudging the closest one with her foot. It didn’t move, frozen flesh unyielding. “Looks like someone already fought those things and lost.”
“Ah, Lord,” David said mournfully, rubbing his scraggly beard. “I’ve been lookin’ for these boys. Doesn’t matter. Grab their gear. I’m gonna look for an exit.”
Ellie didn’t need to be told twice, gleefully plundering the dead men’s supplies. She gathered what she could carry, this time forgoing the list as it would simply take too damn long. She’d do it later. More grunts and screams started to surround the building, making her a bit nervous.
“See anything?” she called out to David, arranging a little stockpile of molotovs, just in case.
“It’s a dead end. How on Earth did they use this building?”
“So what do we do?”
“We hold our ground,” he replied somberly. Yeah, well, look what happened to the guys that tried that the first time around.
“Is there any other choice?”
“We die.”
David was just a big ball of fucking sunshine. She sighed. “Right.”
“Get ready!” he shouted from the front of the room. Ellie turned, drawing her rifle. Runners were starting to get in through the windows of the way they came. Of course. She trained her sights on the doorway, waiting. She took out the first one through the door, but then David was in the way, grappling with the second. The third darted off across the room, coming around from the other flight of stairs to flank her. Ellie turned and shot him as he reached her level, then turned her attention back to the door. David shoved the infected away and put it down with a bullet to the head. He retreated back up the stairs, giving her room to work.
The next two through the door were clickers, which went down easily enough. Then footsteps came from above them. Fucking motherfuck shitpails. Fuckers climbed the side of the fucking building to get on the fucking roof. Fuck.
“You hear that?” she shouted over the infected. “They’re on the roof!”
“I know!” David yelled back, shooting at a runner coming through the window. They stopped talking and fought, time measured in volleys and reloads and the ever-growing pile of bodies.
“We’re doin’ fine, kid,” he said, panting, during a brief lull. Ellie scrambled over the bodies, picking up ammo for her rifle and pistol.
“It doesn’t feel like it, she replied, reloading.
“Just stay focused. We’ll make it.”
He sounded so sure she almost believed it.
“Here come more!” David yelled, pointing to the windows on the right.
“How many of these things are there?” Ellie had only ever seen so many in the sewers, when she was stuck with Henry.
“I have no idea. Just keep at it.”
She supposed that was a good enough policy. Shoot until you run out of targets. Or bullets. Whichever came first. It was back to fighting a few seconds later, infected coming in from the left instead of the right. Ellie dropped a clicker coming up the stairs, but was blindsided by a runner coming in through the window. It dropped down on top of her and slammed a fist into her jaw, bouncing her head off the floor and making her see pretty lights for a few seconds.
Pistol fire, impossibly loud, and the infected straddling her went limp. She sputtered, spitting out its earthy-tasting blood, and struggled to roll its considerable bulk off of her. She got up just in time to fill a clicker’s chest with three shots from her pistol.
A couple more infected went down, then something big and heavy dropped down into the room.
“That doesn’t sound good,” David said, looking startled.
Fuck. Shit.
“It’s a bloater!” Ellie warned, running over to her cache of molotovs and fumbling for her matchbook.
“A what?!”
“One of those big fucking guys.” She struck a match and it broke in half. She dropped it and took another one, striking it against the box. Come on, come on. The match lit. Yes! Ellie lit three molotovs and dropped the match. She picked up the first one and lobbed it directly at the bloater. It exploded on impact with a roar of fire and the smell of burning flesh.
The bloater bellowed and thrashed, slapping itself like that would put the fire out. Ellie turned and shot a runner, latching onto the report of her rifle to keep from freezing up at the noise. The molotov was starting to burn out, leaving the bloater’s skin blackened and peeling back to show the hard layer of fungus beneath. She gagged on the stench and threw another one to keep it occupied. The bloater roared again and ran into a wall.
“Right!” David shouted, the warning giving her just enough time to drop her rifle and jam her pistol in the clicker’s mouth. Ellie lobbed the last molotov and the super-infected fell to its knees with a weaker cry than before. A few seconds later, it toppled over, dead.
“Forgive ‘em, Lord.”
Okay, that was one of the last things she expected to hear in relation to a bloater. But...Travis’ dog tag burned a hole in her pocket. Alright, it was believable.
Ellie stood still, tense and waiting, but there were no more screams or fucking clicking. She slowly started to relax, her head pounding as that punch caught up to her.
“Hey, kid?”
“Yeah?” God, she was so tired…
“You know, I think we did it.”
“Like we killed all of ‘em?”
David laughed, walking back towards the door. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”
Ellie huffed a little half-hearted laugh in response. “More like disbelief.”
“I’ll check the bridge.”
After combing over the room one last time--giving the bloater’s corpse a wide berth all the while--she walked out on shaky legs to join him. David beckoned her over to the side of the bridge.
“Listen,” he said.
“No infected.”
“No infected,” David confirmed. “What’d I tell ya?”
He turned to her with a grin and chuckled. Ellie couldn’t help but smile back a little.
“Alright. Let’s head on back, check on that buck of ours,” he said, companionably nudging her shoulder and walking back the way they’d came.
Getting back to the workshop was far faster than running from it, made all the faster by the easy silence between them. She wondered briefly if Joel would like David, but then pushed the thought from her mind. They’d be on their way as soon as Joel could walk, if he had anything to say about it.
“You handled yourself pretty nice back there,” David complimented once they got back to the workshop. He crouched beside the fire, stoking it back up to a merry little blaze. “I’d say we make a pretty good team.”
No, she and Joel made a pretty good team. This was temporary. Still, Ellie couldn’t deny that she enjoyed having someone to watch her back again. She crouched down next to the fire and set her rifle down, holding her hands out to the flames. “Pssh. We got lucky.”
“Lucky?” David huffed a laugh. “No, no...No such thing as luck. No, you see I believe that everything happens for a reason.”
Ellie rolled her eyes and blew on her hands. “Sure.”
“I do. And I can prove it to you.” Something about his voice made Ellie tense up. “Now, this winter has been especially cruel. A few weeks back, I, ah, sent a group of men out to a nearby town to look for food. Only a few came back.”
Ellie froze, weariness gone in a blink. Shit. Surely they couldn’t have been from here. She put at least a hundred miles between the university and mall to here. There’s no way that--
“They said that the others had been ah, slaughtered. By a crazy man. And get this: a crazy man, traveling with a little girl.” David pointed to her with the stick he’d been using to poke at the fire, his eyes hard despite the smile. Ellie stayed completely still, watching him the way one would watch a rabid dog.
“You see?” he asked with a chuckle. “Everything happens for a reason.”
She snatched up her rifle and shot to her feet, aiming at David’s chest. The sounds his dead men made when she shot them rang in her ears and stayed her hand.
“Now don’t get upset,” he said tiredly. “It’s not your fault. You’re just a kid.”
Just a kid that helped kill his men. She started toward the door, not taking her aim off of him.
“James, lower the gun.”
Ellie whirled with a gasp, pointing her rifle at Buddy-boy, who had a pistol leveled at her chest.
“No way, David,” he growled. “I’m not gonna let her go!”
“Lower. The gun,” David demanded evenly. Buddy-boy let his arm fall to his side, looking between the older man and Ellie. “Now give her the medicine.”
“The others won’t be happy about this,” Buddy-boy said, tossing a parcel at Ellie’s feet.
“Yeah, well that’s not your concern.”
Ellie knelt cautiously, letting go of the rifle with her supporting hand to grope for the tiny sack of medicine. She grabbed it and put her hand back on her rifle, her eyes never leaving James. She stood and inched towards the door. “Move the fuck out of the way.”
He slowly complied, stepping further into the room. Ellie backed out, trying to keep an eye on both of them at once.
“You won’t survive long out there,” David called out just before she left. “I can protect you.”
Seriously? Fuck that. Ellie shook her head slightly with a disgusted expression. “No thanks.”
She ran, then, and didn’t stop until she found her way back to Callus. She flipped his reins back over his head.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said urgently, climbing into the saddle. Ellie kicked him into a canter. “Come on!”
The sun was setting by the time they got back to the little neighborhood she’d chosen to hole up in, but she couldn’t stop looking over her shoulder. She dismounted at the edge of the woods and grabbed Callus’ reins just below his chin.
“Come on,” Ellie muttered tiredly, trudging down the street. She came to a house no more distinguished than any other and let go of the horse for a second to push open the garage door. She led him in, then turned back to the door. Ellie jumped to snag the edge with the tips of her fingers and pulled it down, not caring that it made a loud noise. She already did a sweep of the surrounding area. The first infected she’d seen in a week was the clicker that barged in on them in the workshop.
Callus whickered at her and nosed her shoulder. She smiled tiredly and walked forward to rest her forehead against his neck.
“I’m okay, buddy. Promise.”
He snorted derisively. Ellie laughed and slapped his neck.
“Oh what do you know? You’re just a horse.”
He nosed her again and shook his head, slapping her with the reins. She glared at him.
“Alright, alright. I’ll take your bridle off. Geez,” she muttered, flipping the reins over his head and sliding the top portion of the bridle over his ears. Callus chewed on the bit for a second before he spit it out and let her hang the bridle up. He walked over to his bucket of water and slurped noisily at the ice. Ellie rolled her eyes in mock exasperation and scooped up the hammer she’d left next to the trough for this express purpose.
“Move, silly beast,” she said affectionately, shoving Callus’ head out of the way. She struck the layer of ice on the water a few times, then fished out the pieces and tossed them into a separate, smaller bucket set to the side. Callus lipped her hair then moved past her to drink. Ellie patted his shoulder one last time and took the rabbit from his saddle. She brought it with her into the house, hanging it in the decrepit fridge as she passed. She’d deal with it later. Right now she needed to give Joel a generous helping of antibiotics and then go to sleep.
She slung off her backpack, carrying it as she descended the stairs to the basement. Ellie paused halfway across the room. Joel’s breath wasn’t steaming. Oh fuck Joel wasn’t breathing.
“Joel?” she called, starting to panic. A strained breath passed through his lips and crystallized in the air. She sagged with relief. “Oh.”
Ellie crossed the rest of the room, crouching beside Joel on his mattress and starting to dig through her backpack. “I only managed to get a little bit of food, but I did get this.”
She held up the penicillin, despite the fact he was quite obviously dead to the world. Her chest constricted. Shit. Bad analogy. She gently pulled down the heavy blanket she’d laid over him.
“Move your arm,” Ellie instructed softly, knowing it wouldn’t happen. She lifted the edge of his shirt and winced. It looked worse than it did that morning, purple and swollen. Terrible heat radiated off of it, but the neat row of stitches she made at the mall still held together. She grabbed the bottle of penicillin and read the dosage suggestions. It went by weight, and Joel would be...Two thirty? Maybe?
She made sure the plunger on the syringe was all the way down before sticking the needle through the rubber port and drawing out the suggested dose. Ellie drew the needle out and set the bottle aside, pushing on the plunger just enough so a drop of the medicine formed at the tip. She sighed shakily. “Here we go.”
She slid the needle into the area next to the wound and pushed down on the plunger. Joel made a noise of pain and Ellie ducked her head.
“Sorry…” she whispered, sliding the needle out. “All done. That’s it.”
She set the syringe aside, pulled Joel’s shirt back down, and lifted the blanket back up to his chin. He made a few more noises of distress as Ellie laid her hand against his forehead. She wanted to believe he felt more fevered than he was because her hands were still cold, but a miserable hollowness took up residence inside her. She hoped the medicine wasn’t too late.
“You’re gonna make it.”
As Ellie settled down on her backpack-turned-pillow and Joel’s head turned toward the sound of her voice, she wondered just who she was lying for the sake of. She decided it didn’t matter anymore, and reached over to lay a hand on Joel’s chest.