Behold, My Stuff

Outside on the roof you have a good view of a sea of darkness. A ruffle of feathers to your right has you jumping out of your boots. You shine Joel’s light at the pigeon sitting on an electrical box. It regards you sleepily, sitting on a sorry excuse of a nest made of a few twigs barely touching each other.

Your stomach growls. Pigeon pie is common in the QZ, and you’ve perfected the art of catching them.

You snatch it in the air when it tries to take off, its wings beat against your arms til a snap to its airy neck stills it.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur to the downy corpse. You don’t feel sorry enough to leave the eggs alone in the bundle of twigs. Without a mother they won’t survive anyways.

Joel looks up in surprise at your prize, one pigeon and three eggs cradled in your arms.

You plop to the ground, “I’m sick of protein bars,” you begin plucking the iridescent, gray feathers.

Joel starts a little fire in the bathroom, keeping the glow away from any windows. He rips some pages from a book and bunches them up. Within a few seconds of striking a match he has a fire going.

Once the fire is big enough, he tears books in half and throws them in. You cringe with each book he eviscerates. Watching the edges of the pages blacken and curl in the licking flames, you wonder if in the future all the books will eventually be burnt, more valuable as warmth than knowledge.

You don’t have much of an option other than to skewer meat on your knife and hover it over the flames. Before long the smell has you mouth watering but you make yourself wait til the meat is completely cooked. Besides you Joel pulls out a broken half of fabric shears, skewers meat on the tip and holds it over the fire.

"Joel," you keep your tone casual, "where's your knife?"

He holds up the half scissor.

Uh huh.

“So what exactly did you smuggle? Evidently not knives.”

He rolls his eyes, looking back into the fire, “all kinds of things.”

At least he’s consistent with his vagueness.

“Like what things?”

He shrugs, “Mostly medicine. Amo. Clothes. Toys sometimes.”

“Mmm, adult toys?” You raise your brows.

Joel says nothing but pink dusts the tops of his cheekbones.

Your jaw drops, “Really?” You squeak. absolutely delighted at this revalation.

“Yeah really,” Joel clears his throat, with a hint of a smile at your reaction, “there’s some kinky folks in the QZ.”

The laugh escapes you loud and throaty. Its too loud. You clap your hand over your mouth and giggle into your palm. After the day you’ve had, the thought of Joel sneaking into the QZ with a backpack full of dildos is sending you into orbit.

You breathe deep to be able to speak again, “You know someone told me they confiscated a duffle bag of dildos once. Guess I believe ‘em now.”

Joel hums, the good natured look lifting his features when you look at each other. In the low light of the fire, his pupils are blown, the orange of the fire lighting the side of his face.

-

With ashes and pigeon bones swept into the back corner, you pause at the half burnt tome in the pile. Soot blackens your fingertips when you brush it from the cover. Nostalgia grips your stomach, weighing it with stones.

“You burnt ‘Alice in Wonderland’?” You join Joel by the window where he’s lying on his back.

“Uh, I guess?” He cranks his head up to look up at you. “Why?”

You shrug, “It was my favorite as a kid,” you plop down a few feet from him. With Joel’s flashlight you start reading the last half, skipping sentences here and there that have turned to ash.

“It always creeped me out,” Joel mumbles, shifting on his back to get more comfortable.

Your brow lifts, “Its a kid’s story.”

“Everyone’s so mean to her, trying to eat her and stuff.”

You huff. He’s not wrong. Maybe that’s why you always liked it. You flip through the sooty pages, staring at the drawings of a curly haired girl talking with a floating cat’s head. You’ve never related to her so much before. You wouldn’t be surprised if you ran into a rabbit with a pocket watch at some point.

You read until your eyes blur the words into squiggles. You know you need sleep. But every time your eyelids start to flutter, something inside you jolts you awake. Your body refuses to fall unconscious. Not here. Not now. Its not safe.

You sit up, rubbing your hands down your face in a frustrated groan. You hear Joel shift from his spot a few feet away.

“You ok?” He asks, his voice quiet. Almost timid if you didn’t know better, like he’s expecting you to yell at him. You wince. You thought he was asleep. You’ll admit your groan was more of a pained shudder.

“No.” You’re too exhausted to not be honest.

There’s a few seconds where your honesty hangs in the air before he accompanies it, “Is there something I can do?”

You just want to be able to sleep, even for a few minutes.

As a kid, before the Outbreak, May and Ben brought you to a shitty fair that rolled through town. Your mother was working nights that week, and you were staying with them. Ben taught you a trick to out scam the game where you hit a hammer on a bell. You won a stuffed bear almost as tall as you.

For longer than you’ll admit, when nightmares and confusing, scary memories woke you late at night, you’d sit back to back with the bear in your bed. It became the only thing that helped you fall asleep until you developed other ways to cope. Most not as healthy.

“Will you sit back to back with me?” You don’t know why you said it. It’s ridiculous. Which is why you’re surprised by the lack of pause from him. Joel gets up and sits back down close by.

“Where are you,” he searches for you in the dark. You offer him your hands, gingerly seeking for him until your fingertips brush against the soft fabric of his shirt. At the contact he orients himself, holding your shoulder to feel where to sit himself.

Vertebrae by vertebrae he seals his back against yours. It’s a little embarrassing. But he did it without questioning. And its undeniable the way your heart beat starts to even out. The way his weight presses against you has an undeniable effect. His warmth starts to warm your bubble and your muscles loosen. Even his smell, stale sweat, gunmetal, and something that just’s him is comforting. It’s knowing there’s someone here with you, that when you close your eyes you aren’t all of a sudden alone.

You and Joel are ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Your hear and feel his breaths behind you start to slow and deepen, and yours quickly follow suit.

Eventually you doze off, dodos running in circles in your head.

You push the door, unable to open it more than a crack. Something heavy is blocking it from the inside, like he barricaded it. May’s hand on your shoulder makes you jump.

There’s a note on the ground, slipped under the door. May picks it up, her hands shaking the torn sheet. You can see the minimal writing, but May takes many long moments to read it before passing it to you. One half has words from whichever book he ripped it from. The other’s letters are messy, childlike. A far cry from Ben the engineer’s handwriting.

Leave me
Find E shelter
Something wrong
l e a ve m e

“Sweetheart, I think you should go downstairs,” May’s voice is off, like she’s in a trance, never taking her eyes off the door.

You shake your head. There’s no way in hell you’re leaving her alone right now. When your hand touches the cool doorknob she stops you, “I’m doing that, you stay behind me.” May sweeps your still-growing frame behind her, shielding you as she shoves whatever’s blocking the door back far enough to slip inside.

You follow, ignoring the instincts pulling on your gut. The room is dark. The curtains are pulled, only the glow of the streetlamp peaking underneath. A dark figure lays in the bed where you last left Ben. The stories you’ve heard on the radio, on tv, from friends at school circle your head like sharks. Whole families found mangled in their homes. Sick people attacking their loves ones. Your hand finds Ben’s knife in your pocket. The last thing he did was press it into your hands, and begged you to keep it on you. Made you promise.

The smell in the air was nothing you’d ever smelt. Must, mold and the iron of blood.

“Ben?” May’s whispers into the stale air. The figure twitches. “Baby?” Her voice cracks. The pet name triggers a reaction out of him. Ben, who you last saw barely able to stand, leaps off the bed, taking May to the ground.

You see his bared teeth. You hear his horrible pained moans. May’s hands just barely keeping his head from her throat. You shove at Ben’s back, wrenching at his clothes, hitting and kicking when he barely moves.

You know he’s gone. Which is why when there’s no more spare milliseconds, you flick open his knife and use it for the first time.

It only stuns him. Distracting him so you can shove him off May. Before you can pull her up, he’s tackling you to the ground. You hit anything you can reach with the knife and eventually he falls away. Dead.

You leap upright, your mind not catching up that the threat is gone. Only when a few moments pass, and the pool of blood triples do you breathe in a horrified shudder.

“No.”

May takes your arm and leads you away.

“I-I, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to- he was- I tried-“ you start crumbling.

May shushes you.“He was already gone.” She washes the blood from you, from his knife. She leaves you on edge of the bathtub while she gathers your things.

You hear her return to her husband, hear her choked cries, the vibration of her voice from the other room as she says her last goodbyes.

The guilt descends on you when you’re alone. Like an eagle swopping up a hare, tearing into its corpse. You feel its hooked beak in your gut, in your throat, in your hands.

He was already gone. You repeat May’s words hopelessly.

But you heard his garbled moans when he was on top of you. It sounded like ‘run’. It sounded like your name.

You clap your hands over your ears, squeezing your eyes shut. Trying to force the sounds out as you come to a new paradigm.

You’re a killer.

—-

Running for your life is difficult when you have to stop and throw up blood. You tried to ignore the cramping in your stomach but eventually you knew better. Slamming on your heels you stop just in time for your stomach to turn inside out and you heave up waves of red.

Joel skids to a halt out front and runs back, gun drawn, eyes wide.

You stand, trying to run again but split over in half and spit more red onto the asphalt.

“The hell?” Joel pants, taking up your side.

“I’m fine,” you wave him off, “I think I swallowed some of that guy’s blood.” The man you skewered like bleeding a pig. Unfortunately you’d been mid desperate gasp for air as he choked you out.

His friends aren’t far behind. Strings of curses and pledges of violence prelude their footsteps.

“We gotta go,” Joel pulls on your arm. An iron fist squeezes your guts as you sprint besides him. Repeating in your head to the beat of your heart “don’t get cornered, don’t get cornered, don’t get cornered.”

The precious seconds you spent tipped the scale and the pursuers burst around the corner a street behind within eyeshot.

“You’re gonna pay for that you little bitch!”Manic laughter and shots hit the ground a few yards from your side. You dive behind a broken down car but no more shots follow.

“What the fuck you almost shot her!”

Fears confirmed. You wonder if Joel’s noticed the taunts and threats have all been thrown at you.

You’ve lost sight of Joel. He isn’t running so he must have ducked behind cover somewhere. The men split up, searching for you. One’s trotting closer. You wait til you see boots from under the car. You shoulder the stock of the shotgun and wait. Wait. Wait. Now. The gun pushes into your shoulder when you squeeze the trigger, aimed at the man’s knees. Your knife silences the screams. Then you run. More shouts and threats of sticking things where they’d don’t belong.

You’re grabbed and a hand claps over your mouth. Before you can stab whoever it is Joel’s voice is in your ear, hushing you.

He pulls you into the back of an ambulance. From inside the you watch through the cracks of the doors as five more men run by. You know you can’t stay in here. Once they realize you’ve hid somewhere, they’ll start a grid sweep.

‘Don’t get cornered. Don’t get cornered,’ Instinct whispers in your ear.

You only realize how bad you’re shaking when Joel takes his warmth with him. You follow him through the hole connecting the back to the front seats. Then climb out the driver’s door back out in the open.

A surprised gasp from an unfamiliar voice makes you snap your head to the left. There’s a straggler, bringing up the rear. He looks around your age, wiry sparse whiskers on his chin and upper lip. He has enough time to inhale for his shout before Joel has him grabbed around the throat. He puts him in a headlock with disturbing little resistance. You keep watch for the other men who have their backs to you, continuing in the direction they saw you last running. You hear the struggle of boots against the ground, Joel’s quiet grunt before the crack of vertebrae through the layers of muscle and skin and see the light snap out of the man’s eyes.

Joel drags the body behind the ambulance where you vaguely wonder if he’ll ever be found. You give his psychotic buddies the slip, keeping behind cover of the various cars rotted on the street, heading for the opposite direction. Ducking into a supermarket, hoping to sneak out of sight you immediately stop at the smell of must, mold and blood. You breathe deep through your nose trying to pinpoint it, earning a look from Joel.

“Smell that?” You whisper. Joel breathes deep, his nostrils flared, his brows low. He looks annoyed, but not at you. He silently takes up the rear, following your lead when you cross the store achingly slow. You are rewarded for you caution when you see three Clickers in one aisle. In the next aisle is two more.

Fuck that, you’re not risking it in here. You backtrack out the store, checking the street where the men were. There’s no sign of them, which is incredibly uncomforting. Slipping back out into the street, you don’t make it very far when your progress is halted again. You hear them, footsteps of normal men, in a fast pace. Coming right at you. You know have enemies on three sides.

A terrifying calm washes over you. Behind cover, you check how many bullets you have. One pistol and three shotgun. Not nearly enough for how many there are.

“What do you have left?” You whisper to Joel, hearing the men advance closer and closer.

He holds up his revolver, “Five.”

When he doesn’t add anything else, the calm strengthens. The calm of knowing you might die in the next five minutes. Once you start fighting with the men approaching from the front, the others behind you will hear. You’ve set yourself in their pincer for them. Not to mention if the fight strays close enough to the supermarket, you’ll have at least five clickers coming at you as well.

Huh. There’s an idea. Its reckless and desperate. You don’t consult with Joel first. You just act.

With one quick look through the side window of the flipped over car to track where the second group of men are, you guess you have about thirty seconds before they’re on top of you. Joel’s mumbling something to you, words you aren’t catching through the ringing in your ears. You grab a decent sized rock, your fingertips tingling against the smooth surface. The odd sensation makes you loose your nerve. You have to remind yourself you’d rather have your throat torn open by a clicker than be caught by these men.

Voices rise dangerously close, “Where the fuck did they go?”

That seals it. You throw the rock as close to the supermarket’s busted door. In response you hear the men whisper, sending out teams of two in a flank towards the sound. But you also heard from inside the alerted croaks of clickers.

With your plan in motion, panic and adrenaline shut down your pre-frontal cortex. Your muscles move detached from your mind. You pop out of cover and fire your shotgun at the closest man. He falls and you immediately duck again. Bullets hit the car, shattering glass on top of you. Shards fall in your hair. Joel yells something, and he fires his revolver. another man screams.

More screams are coming at you from behind. The screams of infected.

“Shit! Clickers!” One of the men yell.

The fight broadens with the newcomers, and in the chaos you and Joel just fucking run for it. You’re outpacing the men, but you have clickers hot on your heels. Joel turns around mid run, firing til he’s out.

“Watch it!” He yells at you. You glance over your shoulder and your stomach slams to your feet. There’s a clicker flailing its arms about five steps behind you. You empty your last shotgun shell into its torso, hitting its lower half. It stumbles to its knees, but you’ve only slowed it down. A single bullet through the head will kill it, giving you enough time to finally get away from the chaos. You pull out your pistol and raise it, but fear of something much worse than death stays your finger. Instead you take your knife out, going for the jugular but your split second pause was enough for the clicker to straighten out. Its coming at you again and all you have in your hands is your little pocket knife.

You have just enough time to think ‘whoops’ before its gnarled hands are grabbing your shoulders. Your hand catches its throat, keeping it from yours. You burry your knife in its side but it’s so overgrown by the fungus, this does little else but shred its clothing. You hit anything you can reach, but its useless. Stabbing its jugular means stabbing your own hand. Which you’re about half a second away from before its head bursts apart. The clicker falls away from you as Joel makes sure it won’t get back up by beating its head in with a brick.

Joel slowly looks up at you, a tempest mix of confused and pissed darkening his eyes. He swoops up the gun you dropped in favour of your knife before taking your arm rather roughly and bringing you back under cover.

The two groups of men are busy with the infected, whose numbers you greatly underestimated. You need to leave here now, while you’re unnoticed.

Joel checks the barrel of your pistol, the last bullet shinning in the dying sunlight, tucked neatly inside the metal hull. Waiting to be used. Just like you wanted.

Joel forces the gun back into your hands, his tone eerily similar to the nigh you met him. “Why the hell didn’t you just shoot it?” He growls. “You almost got bit.”

“I’m saving it.”

His lips drop with a comically perplexed look, “For what?”

“For myself.” You speak in that strange calm that’s still washing over you.

Joel’s frown softens. He shakes his head, “C’mon, lets get out of here.” He leads you away, the screams of infected and men echo in your ears long after you’ve left earshot.

Keeping to the shadows of alleys and broken down cars, you move steadily away. By the setting sun, you’re heading west, into the growing darkness. In the distance, the unmistakable growl of an engine gathers closer. You and Joel take one surprised and horrified look at each other, then book it across the street. There’s a university campus on the other side. A good place to lose any vehicles in the jungle of buildings and classrooms.

Halfway across the road, the voice of the engine splits into two, then three. Smaller than a car. You and Joel just make it to the first doorway of the closest building when flashlights follow your wake.

You keep under the window, tucking your head in but listening. The engine whine is too high-pitched and shallow for a motorcycle. You stay huddled out of view until the city is quiet again.

You’re having trouble unfurling. The adrenaline is cooling in your blood, leaving it thick and sticky. Its hard to move. Hard to think.

Joel says your name. Soft. Quiet. You manage to lift your head enough to look at him. He’s waiting for you, one hand outstretched.

“Let’s go, soldier.”

—-

When you find the library, you know instantly that’s where you’re spending the night. It has multiple levels with multiple exits on each one. You find a dark corner with a view to the ground below. The moment your ass hits the ground, exhaustion crashes over you in a tsunami wave of repressed emotions.

Joel seems to be experiencing the opposite. He’s pacing. After barricading the doors with a chair he’s started walking back and forth the little corner you have. Occasionally he gives you a glance, like he’s going to say something. Then he keeps pacing.

“Can you just spit it out.” You mumble, your head tipped to the ceiling. His footsteps stop. You look back at him where he’s staring at you, fingers tapping against his thigh.

“You cannot save bullets.”

Hear we go.

“Just saving one.”

“What use does it have if you got bit?” His tone is clipped, his lips are tight against his teeth. He’s fucking pissed.

“I can’t lose.”

“You almost did!”

“No, I almost died. Being caught by those men is worse than death.” You raise your voice back at him, anger fuelling your energy reserves again. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

Raw emotion crosses Joel’s face and its not anger. Its sadness. And fear. The kind you hold for someone else. Its weird seeing his stone wall of a face so vulnerable. “Yeah, I heard them.” He leans against the table across from you. At least he’s not pacing anymore.

Its uncomfortable having him finally voice the added level of threat you have to deal with just because you’re you. You shake your head, trying to clear it from the images swarming you, “I just keep thinking about the warehouse. And when you took my guns, my knife. I had nothing and that meant I was utterly fucked.” You wrap your arms around yourself, trying to stave off the cold of the memories.

“You kicked Sebastian’s greasy little butt with nothing, plus your hands were tired.” Joel adds.

“That was circumstantial,” you shiver in disgust at the feeling of holding his pecker in your hands. You won’t admit you took more satisfaction than you should feeling it tear like a glow stick.

“You have fight in you. It’s a bit intimidating to be honest.” The sincerity in his tone makes the words sting more. When the smuggler grabbed you, you did everything you could think of; running, outsmarting him, bargaining. And you still lost. Then at the warehouse, Bruce beat you around like punching bag. Without at least your knife, you’re nothing. Especially compared to the man sitting across from you. The way he can drive through enemies like a charging bull, goring anyone who’s foolish enough to get close. The way he can take a grown man’s life bare handed with a snap to their neck.

You find yourself taking a deep breath to stele the unexpected nerves bubbling in your stomach before you speak. Your voice comes out raspy, words forming on your tongue you never would have imagined.

“Will you show me how you kill?” The words hang in the air by themselves too long. You want to snatch them back, then you feel silly for feeling that way, so instead you lean in to your defiance The smuggler owes you for ruining your life. The least he could do is just say no and not make every thing so damn awk-

“Yes.”

Oh. “Ok, great,” you nod.

“C’m’here.”

Your head bobbles a bit, “Now?”

“No time like the present.”

You stand up slow, trying to steady the unexpected nerves as you wonder what you got yourself into. Its easy to avoid eye contact with Joel looking around the room like he’s waiting for someone.

“Let’s go in there,” he gestures down the hall. You follow his point, clicking on your flashlight to illuminate a bathroom sign on the wall.

“Uh, you need help with something or what?” You drawl out.

Joel scoffs amused, “I’m showing you something.” He holds the bathroom door open for you, waiting. You have to tell your feet to move. Slipping past him, you scan the stalls which are luckily empty of bodies or garbage. The level of dust indicates a good many years since the last visitor.

Joel places his flashlight on the sink, facing the mirror so you can see your reflections.

“You wanna know how to choke someone, right?” Joel asks, his voice echoing a bit in the small tiled room.

You nod, your heart quickening for too many reasons to pull apart and study. Maybe later in the dark, you’ll shame yourself for some of the reasons. You know the theory, cut off the air supply. But what you’ve seen Joel do wasn’t just suffocation, he broke them.

He clears his throat, “Alright,” he makes the mistake of looking at you directly, quickly flicking his eyes to the mirror, “it works best if you get ‘em from behind.”

You bite your lip, keeping your comment to yourself, situating yourself squarely in front of the mirror. The person staring back shocks you. Your hair is only mildly less wild than your eyes. But most shocking is the blood stained on your face and chest. You could smell it dried on your shirt, feeling it cracking along your jaw, but the sight is something else.

“I look like a psycho,” your belly digs into the sink as you lean closer to the mirror. Digging your nails through the congealed crusty blood off your cheek, you try to clean your face as best you can before Joel clears his throat.

He’s holding out a water bottle. You wet your palm and scrub it down your skin.

“See? Intimidating is putting it mildly.”

You scoff, shaking red water into the sink.

“I’m serious. Size difference be damned if you got someone coming at you with her face covered in blood.”

“Whatever,” you mumble, keeping your gaze down in the sink to hide the slight curve to corner of your lips.

Face cleared of blood, you flick water drops from your fingertips, meeting his eyes again the mirror where he waits a few steps behind and to the side.

“Alright, show me.”

He steps carefully, taking position behind you. Your breath shallows out, your chest barely rising with his so close to your back.

He clears his throat. “Its best to try and get your feet in between theirs,” you both glance down at your boots where his right is next to your left.

He clears his throat again, “You ok if I…” he trails off someone making it worse than saying ‘touch you’ out loud.

“That’s the point,” you do your best to wave off any trepidation. This is about learning to choke someone out to defend yourself. Nothing else.

“Ok,” he puts a the pad of two fingers under your chin, “your head likes turning this way,” he guides your head to the left, then the right which makes it pop in a series of loud clicks making both of you snicker. “And your head likes going up and down,” he tips your chin up before letting it come back to neutral. “But your head really don’t like going both ways at once.” With this he puts both of his big hands on either side of your jaw, the callouses on his fingers scraping the sensitive peach fuzz on your cheeks. He very slowly tilts your head up and to the right at the same time. The bones of your neck start to complain before long. You can imagine if he pushed harder what might happen. Nothing good.

“You crank that angle as hard as you can and ideally it breaks along here,” he drags a finger along the base of your skull, in between the first vertebrae. His hands drop away and he steps back, giving you your space.

“And if it doesn’t?” You steady your shaking hands on the sink.

Joel shrugs, “Probably paralyzes them, they suffocate. Either way they’re dead.”

Your nails bite into the porcelain as you stare yourself through the pupil from the other side of the mirror. You see the bruises and busted lip, you feel the vile words hurled at you earlier on your skin. May would be appalled by the gratification in your voice when you speak.

“Good.”

The thrashing, biting Stalker slammed you to the ground, all your strength spent keeping it from reaching your throat. You can hear others chase your friends down the tunnel. With a guttural scream you kick it off you, where it lands on its back with a thud. You don’t let it breathe for even a second, you dive on top of it, your forearm braced under its jaw to keep its teeth away while you shoot it through the forehead.

Its fungus riddled brains spill out on the cracked concrete, it falls still and you leap away. Checking your arms for bites in the dark, adrenaline shaking your hands. Adrenaline is so incredibly useful it will also masks the pain of a bite, people have gone hours before they’re realized they’re infected when they fever kicks in.

You see nothing. Unfortunately this includes when you check the tunnels for any sign of where your friends went. You backtrack a little, sticking close to the wall. Whisper-shouting their names, “Will? Mark?”

Nothing. Just your scared, small voice bouncing back to you.

They left you.

You aren’t surprised the jackass left you, he hasn’t exactly been subtle with his distaste at everything you do or say. But you’ve known Will since grade school. He’s your last living friend. The last connection to your home. You've risked life and limb to stay by his side, keeping him safe, keeping him alive assuming he'd do the same for you.

And he left you.

You furiously blink back tears, your throat closing up as panic closes in on you.

Then you hear him. It comes from down the tunnel in the other direction. You run towards it like a moth to a light, not registering that its definitely not Will. The voice is too deep as he yells and curses. The deranged calls of infected follow him and your pace quickens.

Luckily when you find the source of the yells, the infected are so intent on chasing the man they pay no mind to you. You kill two of them by grabbing them from behind and shooting them through the temple before others notice your presence. When they do, they turn and bare their teeth before sprinting at you.

At their distraction the man takes a precious moment to fish out more amo for his rifle. You shoot the closest Runner three times in the chest before it goes down. The second runs over the first body, and barely slows down with your round to its shoulder. The next time you pull the trigger it clicks empty. Shit.

With no time to fumble in your pocket for loose amo, you pull out the hammer you've kept on you since the hardware store yesterday. You dodge the the first wild swipe, getting a hit in return. You can hear the riffle firing behind you and the screams of the other infected, while you dance with the runner, exchanging swipe for swipe.

Your next hit glances off the Runner's knee, bringing it halfway to the ground. You pounce, bringing the hammer down and the Runner finally falls. It gurgles on the ground and then the area is finally quiet.

The hard glow of an LED flashlight shines on you, blinding you for a second. You sweep your own light on to the stranger. In echoing silence you regard each other.

He’s big.

He’s definitely not Will.

“Who the hell are you?” The stranger pants through ragged breaths.

“I thought you were my friend.” You admit, your voice shaking from adrenaline. A new kind of fear pricks at your stomach, making it flip when he takes a step closer. You generally go out of your way to avoid lone male travelers on the road.

“Lucky me,” says the man. His voice is deep, sarcasm rumbling in his chest. You watch his scared hands reload the magazine. “Know how to get out of here, friend?” His tone is dry, and his eyes are cold as he scans you up and down.

Temporary alliances are common, ones that last longer than a few moments are rare. You both know you have a better chance getting out of the tunnels together.

After a few moments you nod, “I think so, watch my six, there will be more of them.”

The man steps besides you.

He’s older. There’s grey in his temples and corner of his beard, glinting in the harsh halo of your flashlight. Definitely older than you and your sad little group, but young enough that he wouldn’t have been middle aged yet when the end of the world happened.

When you take lead, he voices no dissent about taking orders from a woman. Fucking finally.

You wind your way down the tracks. The wall of muscle and guns at your back is comforting and not.

The map of the subway station in your shaking hand keeps getting blood splattered on it no matter how many times you wipe it clean on your jeans.The third time you stop to wipe it, the map has a red film over it. You bring it up to your face to try and see better only for a thick drop of blood to splatter the paper.

The stranger’s voice rumbles from behind you, “You’re gonna ruin that.”

You face him, wiping your brow for the hundredth time, that must be where the blood is coming from. He shoulders his gun, raising wide scared hands in a sign of peace. He even ducks his chin slightly, trying to be less of a threat despite his size and being covered in blood.

“Lemme help,” he says, and after a brief pause to think of the consequences, you nod, shaking more blood to the floor so you stop. “Keep watch, I don’t doubt there’s Stalkers in these tunnels.” He tells you.

You do as he says, raising the flashlight over his shoulder to scan the tunnels behind him. Your heart thundering faster and faster as he approaches, afraid its gonna trip.

The stranger rips off a strip from his shirt hem, folding it before pressing it against your left brow. You hiss, surprised at the sudden pain you hadn’t been aware of.

“Hold.” He tells you. You keep the pressure, while he reaches in his backpack.

“It’s not a bite, is it?” You ask.

“You’d be dead if it was.”

You grunt again when he presses the duct tape across your forehead, the rip echoing against the hard concave walls.

When he’s done, the stranger steps back out of your space, giving you a glance over.

He’s gentle.

“Ready?” He asks.

You nod, no blood splatter this time. You take out your map out again, feeling your self focus. With the freedom of having someone by your side you trust to look out for you, you can zero in on where you are and plan where you need to go. You plan your route to where the nearest exit should be. You need daylight, lingering in dark tunnels with infected is a ticking bomb.

Later you’ll think back and wonder if it was foolishness or intuition that had you trusting a stranger with your life.

You set onwards, keeping your footsteps light and quiet. You’re pleased to find that the stranger does the same. You can’t count the amount of arguments you’ve had about being quiet in high risk areas.

As you walk, all you know is the shine of your flashlight ahead on you, and the presence of the stranger behind you. You come to a single tunnel with a train blocking the way through.

“Gonna have to squeeze through,” you look back at the stranger.

He nods, “Be ready, there might be infected on the other side,” his voice is just above a whisper.

You swallow your dry throat, holding your gun at the ready, you start shimmying down the wall of the tunnel. Its slow going with how careful you’re being not to slip and cause a racket.

You’re glad for your caution when you peek your head around the train onto the plateform and sure enough, Clickers.

They’re clustered on the platform. There’s about five total. They’re all standing still, curled in on themselves and twitching occasionally.

You stop, turning your head to mouth to the stranger, ‘Clickers.’ Then you hold your hand for five.

‘Exit. Right there.’ You mouth.

You wait for the stranger to nod. Your heart begins to race again. Its scary enough tiptoeing around Clickers, but doing it with a stranger is riskier still. He could be a complete idiot and get you both killed.

You take one last deep breath, and then you slide out of the protective shield of the train car. Out in the open, the stairs seem so much further away.

You hear the stranger follow you, coming to a stand still by your side.

Now is the time for slow and careful. You’re so close to the exit you could sprint for it, if that wouldn’t set them all on you and almost guarantee getting your throat ripped out. You have two bullets left, not enough, especially with your aim.

You make yourself take one tiny step, your eyes sealed on the nearest Clicker, about fifteen steps away. It garbles and twitches as soon as you move, making your heart drop, and for a moment you think you blew it, instantly.

But it just settles again, snoring? Do they snore?

Fuck you can’t do this. You watched Jeanine get ripped apart by Clickers a week ago, her screams are bouncing around your skull, paralyzing you. Your muscles have frozen and you’re not sure when you’ll be able to move again.

The stranger slowly steps into your light, eclipsing your view of the monsters. Your small panicked breaths look ridiculous compared to the deep even rise of his. His face is calm, disgruntled, like he ran into a coworker he’d rather avoid.

He very slowly touches your forearm. His knuckles are purple, his fingers thick, littered with cuts, new and old. You look back up at his face and he meets you eye to eye.

He breathes one slow, quiet breath and you find yourself following suit. Then he does a little nod, his brows furrowed. A look of ‘let’s get this done.’

You nod back.

He turns around, now in the lead, giving a last gentle tug on your arm. ‘Follow me.’ Before his hand drops away.

Then there’s more distance between you two than was two seconds before. You’ve been left behind already today. An ancient desperation to not be left behind kicks in and you’re finally moving again.

You do your best to step where he steps. Keeping pace while keeping silent. One pebble kicked could be the end.

Time seems to stretch in this awful cold tunnel. Every minute feels like one second and every second feels like a year. But you’re only a few feet away from the stairs when the stranger stops. And doesn’t keep moving.

You come to his side and he shines his flashlight higher on the stairs.

There’s another Clicker, halfway up the stairs, standing too close to the middle that sneaking by is going to be almost impossible.

Shit. Shit. Shit. You look around the dark for a solution, staying here is not an option.

Your sights land on the Clicker huddled in the shadows to the left of the stairs. If you could kill that one in stealth, then from that little pocket, you could throw a distraction down the tunnel, sending the others away from you momentarily. It might give you enough time to escape.

You touch the stranger gently to get his attention, then gesture to the Clicker you’re looking at then draw a finger across your throat. To emphasize stealth, you put a finger to your lips.

The stranger looks around, taking in your plan. He nods, pulling out a shiv made of garden shears and duct tape. When he starts to move, he gestures for you to wait.

You’re forced to watch, completely out of control while the stranger sneaks up on the Clicker. You start thinking things through in case he fucks it up. There won’t be much to do other then run like hell.

The stranger tackles the Clicker like a polar bear emerging from the water and grabbing a writhing seal. He shoves the shiv deep into its overgrown jugular, slowly letting it down to the ground. It worked.

You join him, in the corner, stepping over the overgrown body. He shelters you behind him, taking an empty bottle from his pack. You’re sandwiched between him and the wall as he throws it at the opposite train tracks. When the glass shatters and echoing shrike of alert from every Clicker echoes around the train station.

The Clicker on the stairs starts making its wobbly way down the, joining the others as they start their horrible echolocation.

You don’t need to be told to move. If one of them turns in your direction while they’re screeching they’ll all be on you. You follow the stranger up the stairs until the sun kisses your face again.

You both trot a good distance away from the subway entrance, but once you’re far enough away from danger, the other part of your brain comes back online.

You stop, and the stranger stops in turn, remaining silent as he looks you up and down in the daylight. You do the same to him.

He’s handsome. A long face with doleful green eyes that soften the scars and hard lines of his face.

That doesn’t change that he’s a strange man, and you’re completely alone.

He takes one step closer and that’s all that it takes for you to turn tail and run. You don’t know what you’ll do if he runs after you, you’ve never killed a regular person before. And that’s a generous assumption.

You don’t hear footsteps chasing after you, only a dark chuckle.

“Thanks for the help, sweetheart.” He calls to you.

You don’t look back.

—- Night has fallen, and the shadows bathe your hiding spot in completely darkness. Your small flashlight is the only thing that banishes the darkness. From your huddled spin out, you spot in the darkness down on the street below, a small glow of a fire about a mile from you. The better part of an hour is spent debating. You know the safest thing is to stay right where you are, under the safety of being unknown.

Maybe because its the first night you’ve spent outside a QZ alone. You can’t sleep. You can barely breathe. You jump at every sound, at every gust of wind. Despite the statistical danger, you feel pulled to him. You reach your limit.

You uncurl and rise, keeping silent as you make your to the street, ever so slowly towards the glow, moving mostly by feel, keeping your flashlight sheathed. You’re just going to see who it is, maybe its your friends.

Friends. Right.

And if its not, then you can just sneak away, unnoticed.

You get within a few dozen feet, and see one lone figure hunched by the tiny fire. The orange glow lights his face when he leans over the fire. Its the man from before. The smell of something roasting makes you drool.

Its definitely not your friends. Now its time to sneak away, go back to safety.

You sit down, safely in the cover of darkness, but the little fire nearby brings comfort. And strangely enough so does the presence of the stranger. He helped you fight infected, he might do it again if they strike in the night. The knot tied around your stomach loosens a bit and you breathe a bit fuller. You settle down, listening to the stranger eat whatever he’s been cooking.

You flinch when he stands and faces you directly, panicking for a moment that he saw you somehow. But instead he kicks out the fire and darkness overwhelms you again. You hear him shuffle around then let out an exaggerated groan before falling silent.

You wait with a thumping heart for a long time. The city is so quiet you can sometimes hear the man’s breaths, eventually they come deep and even. It sounds like he’s a sleep. The hunger pains feel like a spoon carving out your insides.

Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Its not worth it.

The lingering smell of fresh cooked food is too powerful. You’ve been living off rationed beans and oats for the last three weeks.

You wait another hour, just to be sure. Then you rise. Achingly slow. Your eyes have adjusted to the dark, and the half moon overhead gives just enough light to move carefully. A full moon’s light might even be too much, revealing your silhouette.

You move at a glacial pace, a little prideful at how absolutely silent you are, a skill you honed sneaking out of home as a teenager before the world went to shit.

You’re within a few feet of the man, only his dark shape telling you where not to step. The click of a button and the light blinding you happens at the same time.

Oh shit.

“Sit down.” He orders before you can react.

You obey for some reason, heart thundering like a panicked horse. He gives you a curious glance over, obviously debating what to do in this situation.

“What’s your name?”

You muster the courage to tell him, wondering if you mumbled too soft and he’ll demand you repeat yourself louder like a teacher.

He does not.

“Well,” he repeats your name back looking you up and down analytically, “you’re lucky I knew you were gonna try that or else I’d shot you.”

You look up sharply, making eye contact for the first time in surprise, “You knew?”

“Oh yeah, I’m guessing this,” he reaches for his pack and throws you a bundle wrapped in thin cloth, “is what drew you.”

You peel back the folded layers and see cooked meat. Your stomach wails and begs. The stranger smirks at the sound, nodding at you, “Go ahead. My thanks for saving me back there.”

One very small part of you hesitates at eating anything a stranger gives you, which is quickly overpowered by the starving part of you. The meat is red and stringy. You don’t ask what it is because you don’t really want to know. And all too quickly it’s gone.

“Thank you, sir,” you say because your parents taught you manners. The stranger’s cheek twitches at the name.

“What’s your name?” You ask.

“Joel,” he answers, “what are you doing out here by yourself?”

“I’m traveling with my friends, we came from the Cincinnati QZ. It’s gone.”

Joel nods, stretching out on his bedroll, “They dead?”

The bluntness takes you aback for a second, “Uh, I don’t know. We got separated in the tunnels.” You laugh bitterly, “actually they kinda left me behind.”

Joel hums, looking at you. The silence that hangs feels heavy, pointed. You swallow your dry throat.

“What are you doing out here, alone?” You ask, trying to change the charge hanging in the air.

Joel frowns, thinking of an answer, “Running errands.”

You nod. That’s kinda what you thought. His size, heavy with muscle that needs more food than most QZ civilians have access to, but he’s definitely not FEDRA. The capable way he carries himself, the relaxed look being in the outskirts.

“You going to Boston?” You ask, that being the closest QZ still operating.

Joel nods.

Your heart skips a beat. You might have just fallen head first into your ticket to the QZ. Almost none are accepting new people, already overrun. Your plan was finding a way to sneak in once you arrived. Now you’re sharing camp with someone who does that as a profession.

“Look kid, you can sleep here tonight, I’ll take the first watch.”

Again a part of you hesitates, but the part that’s desperate to not be alone wins maybe a little too quickly. You nod, a quiet ‘thank you’ whispered as you unpack your own bedroll. It takes a good while for your muscles to unclench enough that you can start to drift.

Under the first superficial layers of sleep, the man stands up. His movement jerks you awake. You lie there frozen, counting the seconds until it will be obvious he’s not going to do anything. You get to three before he interrupts you.

“Easy, kid. I’m not gonna touch you.”

You wince at him throwing the subtext right into the open. You turn your head to glance at him from the ground, “That obvious huh?”

He shrugs, “I don’t blame you, being a young lady, and I’m a strange man. I’d think you kinda stupid if you weren’t.”

His bluntness again has your brow lifting, “Well I’m glad you don’t think I’m stupid.”

A ghost of a smile haunts his lips. He nods at you, “Get some sleep, you’ll need it. I’ll wake you later.”

You settle down, feeling some, but not all, the anxiety soaked from your muscles.

Halfway through the night he wakes you, not even having to lay a hand on you, you snap your eyes open at just his voice. You trade positions, sitting up and rubbing your eyes while he settles to sleep.

He mumbles in his sleep, words you can’t make out.

While on watch you turn over how you’re going to convince him to bring you to Boston. What you could pay him, or trade? There has to be something. You know smugglers don’t do anything out of the goodness of their hearts, but he has to have a price he couldn’t refuse.

“Well, lady luck must have a thing for you,” you say, rummaging through his bag for the black case. You pluck the glass needle from its case and the vial that says doxycycline, examining the other bottles. Half seem to be more antibiotics while the other are a mix of epinephrine, and names that are gibberish to you. “No insulin, huh?” You mumble. You know the answer, you’re hoping maybe you missed something.

Joel shakes his head.

You stab the needle through the small entry point, drawing an inch worth. You hold it for Joel to see, “This look good?”

He shrugs, “You think its necessary? That’s worth a lot.”

You resist rolling your eyes again, “Would you rather I wait til you get septic and the drug isn’t enough and all I can do is say ‘I told you so’ while your heart stops?”

Joel’s eyes widen, “Alright, jeez.”

You have easy access to his the cap of his shoulder, pushing the short sleeve of his t-shirt out of the way. You aren’t exactly how deep you’re supposed to insert the needle so you figure better too deep than too shallow and plunge it as far as it will go. Joel’s face blanches and his teeth creak with how hard he’s clenches his jaw. Maybe that was too deep. You adjust and pull it out halfway to plunge the medicine into his muscle.

“Sorry,” you grimace.

Joel blinks rapidly, speaking with a strained voice “Jesus girl, I think you tickled my bone.”

You withdraw the needle, a pinprick of blood following in its wake. “Why didn’t you do it yourself then?” You deflect the guilt. The thought of a needle scraping your bone sends shivers through you.

“You came at me with a needle and that look in your eye, I knew it best to just lie still.” Joel says. Despite his slight monotone, you catch the amused undertone. He’s teasing you. Probably to make you feel less bad.

The shy grin falls from your face when you catch yourself. You need to stop treating the man like a friend. He certainly doesn’t feel that way.

“I’m gonna go disinfect this,” you say and escape to the roof.

It takes you longer than you’ll admit to light up the tinder pile Joel set up last night. Lighting burning pyres with gas and a torch is a different game than birthing a flame from a spark and kindling on a windy roof.

You keep the fire low, wary of smoke. And once the needle is cauterized, you kick out the flames. 

◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Its been about a week since you settled in the sky rise office building. You spend your days sleeping, interrupted by a daily check on Joel's wound. It’s healing shocking fast, and without further signs of infection. You take full credit for that and tell him every time you check it.

You do so to irritate him, grow the distance between you two despite the small space you’ve been squished into. But he takes it in good nature, daring to give you a soft smile when you make a particularly amusing jab. You lean harder into your anger for support.

You don’t seem to be irritating him, but he is irritating the fuck out of you. He’s restless. Rotating between pacing, obsessively cleaning his guns and gazing out the window like a widow yearning for her husband.

His restlessness is driving you crazy. Mainly because you feel at fault. He's currently cleaning his revolver for the one-hundredth time. ‘Why are you still here?’ You want to shout. 

Instead you ignore him and settle on the couch, closing your eyes. The click of metal sings in the background as you slip into an anxious sleep. Not even two hours later, you wake up, a scream in your throat that never took flight. The nightmare is seared into your eyelids as you try to blink it away, the images chasing you into consciousness. 

Men chasing you, pinning you to the ground, ripping you apart. You hands pushed against skin that felt like stone, your strength sapped from your body. Your attempts to fight back were as useful as flies bouncing off a brick wall. 

Now awake from the nightmare, you find yourself not entirely free. You look around, and realize you’re still trapped in a room with an opponent who has every advantage on you. Joel has already proved that.    You’re not thinking anymore. The handle of your knife is clench so tightly in your fist it digs grooves into your skin. With Joel’s back to you, you slip out of the room as silent as you can and then make a break for it. But run where? The roof? Its too open and he’ll look there first.

You go to the far corner of the floor and find an office you haven’t explored yet. With a thundering heart, you barricade the door with the heavy oak chair, before crawling under the desk. Muscles clenched in a tight ball, you beg the images nipping at your eyelids to go away. 

It takes a long hour until your brain comes back online. It knocks timidly, suggesting that the smuggler has been alone with you for over a week, and here you are, unharmed, for the most part. 

A deep, shuddering sigh escapes your chest as you rise slowly from your hiding spot. Your back and every joint aches as penance for your panic. The last thing you want to do is return to the smuggler. You poke through the cabinets in the dusty office, looking for anything good. 

Eventually you to the roof. The sun is blessedly covered by clouds, in the distance they roil dark grey and black with a suppressed anger that mirrors your own.

With a groan you slide your back against the raised edge and watch the clouds darken, chugging from the bottle of rum you found. 

A throaty caw from overhead makes you jump and turn to regard the raven perched on the edge. He’s silent as he tilts his head this way and that, regarding you up and down with an unsettling intelligence in his black eye. He makes you jump again when he caws twice. 

You give him your best imitation caw, which gets a head turn, now watching you with his other eye. You two watch each other until the first rumble of thunder, which he flies away with one last caw. Perhaps telling you to get off the roof. 

The rolls of thunder send vibrations through your stomach. When the first flash of lightning lights the sky, followed by a clap two heartbeats later, you know it’s time to get off the roof of the tallest building in the city.

Something keeps you rooted. Despair. Defiance. You aren’t sure. You don’t really care.

When the rain breaks, it starts slow at first, then all at once it turns torrential. Your bruised face tips to the sky, pelted with drops coming down so fast they feel like pebbles. The thunder rumbles inside your chest, like thousands of lost voices, calling to you.

You find peace in the chaos. Wouldn’t everything be so much easier if you got hit by lightning? What a way to go. Definitely not something you ever considered in all your years.

You take another chug of the rum and laugh.

The rain hides the sound of the door slamming open. It hides his footsteps until he’s right behind you.

“What the hell are you doing?” The smuggler demands, stepping into view. His arm is raised protectively, shielding his face from the pelting rain.

You close your eyes, and remain silent. Trying to summon the peace he chased away.

He says your name with urgency.

“Go away, Miller,” you echo the first time you heard his name, all those years ago. Spat out in derision

"Where'd you find that?" He demands, indicating the rum. 

"Found it in one of the offices," you take another swig.

The bottle held loosely between your fingertips is easily snatched. This gets your eyes open.

“This ain’t gonna fix your head,” he waves the bottle. When you refuse to give him any kind of response, he breaths out of his nose like an angry bull . Then he flings the bottle over the edge.

“Hey!” You stumble upright, peering over the side in dismay at the loss of your only friend. 

The sight to the ground is dizzying, the rain streaking down makes it hypnotizing. You lean further against the ledge, the bricks dining into your stomach, your head weighing heavier and heavier. You can't even see the broken bottle. You can imagine it shattered into unrecognizable pieces. Just like you, if you were to fall. What would you look like, you wonder, if you slipped on the wet bricks and took your last tumble?

A hand claps on your shoulder, wrenching you back from the edge with an anxious call of your name. The hard touch floods your system with instinctual panic, your brain too drunk to summon logic.

You dance out of his reach and then you slap him. Hard. Raindrops fly in an arch from the contact. You know by the stinging of your palm that his cheek feels it too, but he just stands there, blinking away the pain, looking unimpressed,

"You done?" He asks, tone cold.

That, was the wrong thing to say.

You don't really know how it happened, mostly surprise on Joel's end. You grabbed flesh and twisted, gaining control over his momentum and with a spit out "You motherfucker," slam his back against the ledge. You shake the rain from your face, staring into the very surprised eyes of the smuggler pinned against the wall, your hands with fistfuls of his shirt keeping him there.

"I begged you," you snarl, reduced to an animal, ”I begged you to let me go" you press him further back, not paying attention to how he's leaning over the edge at this point. He certainly is, vertigo clutching at him, his arms have grabbed yours, fingers digging in to steady himself so he doesn't slip.

"I begged you, and you ignored me." You pronounce ‘ignored’ like it is the most perverse sin a man could commit.

You stand there clutching each other, the wind and rain a deafening orchestra. Strikes of lightning illuminate your faces as you stand there pressed against each other, nearly nose to nose.You watch the surprise bleed from his face as he processes your words, replaced by something else.

A handful of heartbeats pass, an eternity passing between each rhythmic thump of your heart. He keeps entirely still, aware that any slip on the wet bricks might send him or you both over. You find you’re okay with that. 

There’s a whisper of your name, almost washed away with the rain, "You gonna kill me?"

You blink rapidly, and a lightning strike hits close enough you feel the building groan.

"I wouldn't blame you," his voice is calm despite being breathless. He's telling the truth. 

The fight drains from you. You shake your head and force your stiff fingers to loosen their grip on him, stepping back.

You don't want to kill him. You don't want to kill anyone. You've spent your life after the Outbreak going out of your way to avoid killing anyone. And each time the world forces your hand to end a life, infected or not, you lose a piece of your old self. A harder, brittle piece replaces the softer part of you. If you keep surviving, day after day, year after year, losing yourself bit by bit, replaced by a new version, molded by fear and distrust, will you even be you anymore?

You don't enjoy thinking of your soul as Theseus's ship. You look at the smuggler, stubbornly standing and waiting for you instead of fleeing like a sane man. Who better understands this, than the man standing before you. Is he the same man he was before the Outbreak?

No. The scars on his face, the scars you've seen on his body, the look in his eyes, give you your answer.

"You gonna come inside?" He asks.

The cold rain has left you freezing, your clothes and hair are soaked to your skin. And you have no intention of leaving. 

You slide your back down the brick ledge, and tip your face to the sky. You will give Mother Nature her chance to judge you; to spare you or strike you down. You'd rather her than an Infected, or worse, a man. At the very least, the rain might wash away your failures. 

Your eyes are closed, but you never feel Joel's presence leave you. You never hear the stairwell door. You convince yourself you are indifferent.

Eventually the rain wanes, and the wind dies. The next time you open your eyes, there is only the sound of water dripping from high surfaces. Your neck aches as you raise your head, sore from sleeping on the ground. The dawn is just beginning to break, a pale yellow yolk peeking over even paler blue skies.

You look down and see a jacket covering your torso, hugging your body warmth against you. It's Joel's. Made from worn, brown, waterproofed leather. You've always been a sucker for how leather smells. Pride keeps you from breathing it in.

Instead you look around the roof, and spot the smuggler sitting a few dozen feet away. Back to the wall, arms folded, chip dropped to his chest, eyes closed.

You shed his jacket, ball it up, and throw it at him. The impact wakes him up.

"I don't need your fucking jacket."

Joel shakes off the water drops beaded on the surface, "You were shivering."

That sentence makes you sad. You’re aching for any hint of care, but your stubbornness refuses to accept any that comes from the smuggler. If you did, if you softened to him, you would be betraying a part of yourself. Some principal you’re clinging to, to keep your sanity. 

“I’m not your damn date,” you lash out, “and you and I both know you aren’t a gentleman.” The feeling of him holding a gun to your head and tying your hands together hangs over your shoulder as you stare at him. 

Joel remains silent but his face speaks for him.

Rubbing your palms over the rough, wet bricks to ground yourself, you look over the damp city. Joel joins you a good couple feet away, only close enough to talk easily. 

“I don’t know what the fuck to do,” you admit, “if I go back to the QZ I’m dead.” 

“So don’t go back.” 

You shake your head slowly, knowing the words will be the death of you, “I can’t leave May.” That’s the only thing you know for certain, the only fact that remains stable in your heart. 

Joel clears his throat awkwardly. 

“I never told them my name,” you rebut his unspoken concern, “there’s a chance they don’t know about her. Besides, she’s a smart lady.” You do your best to convince Joel and yourself. 

“What do they even want with you?” 

“They don’t. I’m just a mistake,” you pick obsessively at a hangnail on your thumb, “I remember Gunner was pissed, he wanted a Sergeant. It started with Co-“ 

You think it through, closing your eyes to slowly replay the events back in the warehouse. Lieutenant General Gunner leaning over you, his broken front tooth snagging on his lip when he snarled at you. The distaste in his eyes sends shivers down your spine even now. It wasn’t hate. To hate someone you have to respect them at least somewhat. He looked at you like you were the cockroach crawling over his kitchen table. Nothing more than a disgusting bug to be squashed and never thought of again.

You hear Joel retreat behind you, and from the sounds of it, washing using the overflowing rain barrel.  After replaying your memories, the name comes back, “Does she look like Sergeant Cohen to you?” Gunner had yelled. 

“Who the hell is Sergeant Cohen?” Joel asks, voice muffled by his hands rubbing down his wet face. 

You can picture a blurry image of her. You only know her because she’s the daughter of someone important and everyone knows who's she is. Who she’s the kid of, you can’t remember, and you aren’t sure if its because you never bothered to file that away or if it was beaten out of your head when the soldier rattled your brain. But you can picture her face. 

With a sinking gut, you put two puzzle pieces together, “I…look a little like her. If you squint real hard.” 

You face Joel who looks like he dunked his whole head in the water. He shakes his head, hair sending water drops flying, hitting you. The unpleasantness of being sprayed unexpectedly distracts you for a second before he speaks. 

“Or if your face is beaten to a pulp,” he says matter of factly, wiping the water from his hair, but his eyes still look guilty taking in your black eye that’s turned blue. “When I found you, the soldier laying it on you was holding a camera.” 

Your face drops, “You didn’t think to mention that earlier?” 

Joel shrugs, “What difference did it make? I’m telling you now.”

Unfortunately you agree with him. “Guess it doesn’t make a difference to you,” you say coldly, “you still got paid.” 

Joel just stares at you, chewing on the left side of his cheek. You aren’t sure if he’s waiting for you to duck your head or look away, but you do the opposite, waiting for him to break the silence. He breaths in like he’s going to say something but then just shakes his head. 

He leaves the roof. 

Being alone brings some peace, your muscle unwinding a bit. You take the time to wash yourself as best you can, ignoring that without his presence you also feel hollow. Exposed.  

Afterwards, you feel better, even if its just a little bit. Squeezing the water from your hair, you look out over the city, planning the route back to Boston. With a flap of wings, the raven from yesterday joins you. 

“Hello again.” 

You both regard each other with a tilt of your heads. One of his black eye roves up and down before the raven flaps its wings and settles on the lip of the barrel. You leave it to its drink and head back down to the office. 

You find Joel packing the last of his stuff, shoving his bedroll down into his backpack. You aren’t sure if this is where you part ways. You keep silent, sheathing your pistol behind your back, watching Joel fold the maps and tuck them away. You realize how little you have, nothing but the clothes you’re wearing and the stolen pistol. 

“I’ve hid here long enough,” you say. Joel stops only to nod before resuming his packing. Is this where I say goodbye or something? 

You don’t have the mental whereabouts to think of something else to say, you just leave. The smuggler follows you down the fire escape wordlessly. The brisk morning air, still heavy with water feels refreshing on the bruises covering your face. When you stand on the earth for the first time in almost a week, you feel a bit of strength return. 

The motherly reunion is immediately squandered by a croaking click click click from the distance. You instinctually crouch, pressing flat against the side of the building. Joel drops to the ground behind you. 

You hush him, "Hear that?" You whisper. By the squinty look on his face while he listens, no, he does not hear that.

"Clickers, close by," you supply.

He nods, taking his revolver in hand, each footstep placed with precision, as he takes point. The plastic grip of the pistol in your hand is only mildly comforting with one magazine remaining, which can easily be dumped into one clicker to take it down. You can tell the exact moment when Joel hears them. His whole body stiffens, and his posture shifts from trepidatious to stalking.

When you round the corner of the building, you finally see them. Two Infected who's entire bodies are overgrown by the fungus, their faces split open by fleshy orange pads. You have to manually override your flight instinct. Unfortunately they’re shuffling exactly where you were planning on going. 

Two is an odd number. There must be more nearby. Could be five more, could be twenty more. Best do this quietly, and then sneak by any others, unnoticed.

Joel motions at you, putting a finger to his lips. Then he motions for you to take the Clicker closest to the building.

You nod. He puts away his gun and pulls from his pack a long piece of shrapnel fashioned into a shiv. You follow suit tucking your gun behind your back and flicking open your knife.

The Clicker closet to you lets out nasty gurgle, sending shivers down your arms. You hate getting close to any Infected, but especially Clickers. Touching any part of their fungus covered forms peels your insides. Also there's the whole risk of having your throat ripped out.

You part ways with Joel, tracking your Clicker as it shuffles this way and that. As you approach, you can see Joel tracking his from the periphery. You have to cast that from your mind, you need to focus. You clutch the knife handle harder.

You get within five steps of the thing before the sounds of Joel taking down his Clicker has the one in front of you whipping around. You get full fungal frontal as it shuffles right at you faster than it was before. You start back-peddling as quietly as possible. Shit, shit, shit.

The thing stops and is winding up to do its horrible shriek, which will set it on you. It’s incredibly risky, but you have no other choice. You lunge at the monster from head on, knife first. The blade cuts through the first layer of fungus covering its jugular, stunning it briefly. You take advantage, swinging around it and grabbing it by the back of its head so it can't bite you while you stab it through the slit you made in the toughened skin. Blood spurts from its neck and you restrain it, only letting it go when it falls limp. 

The body falls to the ground with a thump. You straighten up, chest rising in fast breaths. Joel is watching you, wiping blood from his hands, a dead Clicker by his feet. He nods at you, like a coach pleased with their athlete's performance. You stomp out the butterfly that dare flutter in your stomach. Why should you give a damn what he thinks?

Joel motions with his head, indicating you to follow him. It happens to be the way you were planning on going, so you do. You get within a few feet of him when something from the side tackles you to the ground.

You land on your shoulder hard, the impact sending jolts through your arm. You pin your other shoulder to your ear, protecting the side of your neck from the Stalker thrashing on top of you. It would prefer to rip your throat out but one stray nibble will kill you. You manage to plant one foot on its stomach, pushing against its weight, so its teeth aren’t almost grazing your skin. 

Before you can even think of how you’re going to get your knife in it or get your gun out without letting it too close, its thrown off you. You watch from your back as Joel pins the side of its head against the ground with his hand and shoves his shiv under its chin. 

The Stalker falls still, and Joel stands, wiping the blade on his jeans. You let your head fall against the pavement, forcing your breaths to come evenly. Fear dissolves into anger. How could you let yourself for being so distracted? By what? Idiotic emotional conflict? What are you, a teenager again?

“You good?” Joel asks, leaning over you to extend his hand. You interpret this as him being impatient, wanting you to get over almost getting bit.

“I’m fine,” you smack his hand out of your way. Joel sighs heavily as you walk past him. You ignore this and keep a close look out for any more infected lurking in the alleys. 

“So,” you keep your tone short, “where will you go?”

“West,” Joel says, his tone just as clipped as yours. 

You shake your head, anger rearing her head too quickly these days, “I can’t believe this bullshit. That’s not a fucking answer.” 

Joel must have had enough, because he stops and rounds on you, forcing you to take a step back to maintain distance. “If you hate me so much feel free to walk in the other direction. I. Didn’t. Know. I thought they were Fireflies. I thought they was gonna ransom you for someone named David Hobbs. I’d done shit like that for the Fireflies before and no one ever ended up tortured or dead. FEDRA lied, just like Randy lied.”

You are completely taken by surprise. That's definitely the most words he's ever said at once. The name Randy feels like a slap to your face, further stunning you. 

It takes you a good many moments to unravel everything you're feeling. Does it make it better, knowing he thought the Fireflies wouldn’t kill you? What about the fact that he came back, risking his life to get you out?

And yet, when you made the deal with Randy, a part of you knew something was off. You weren't stupid. You were desperate. You know Joel isn’t a dumb man.

“You never say sorry, do you.”

Joel lets out a huff, “I don’t believe in that shit. Saying sorry don’t mean jack, just makes excuses so its okay to do it all over again. You make amends by doing right by the people you wronged.”

You surprisingly agree with his sentiment. Ninety-nine percent of the times you’ve heard the words ‘I’m sorry’ were merely placating fluff. You cover your emotional turmoil with a joke, “Good thing you aren’t married.”

Bitter amusement takes over Joel's face, “My ex-wife would agree with that.”

You reel, the new information truly taking you by surprise you momentarily forget the argument, “You had a wife?” 

His perpetual frowns deepens, “Don’t gotta say it like that.”

“But I do. You just don’t seem the marrying type." You defend your position.

Images of Joel in a tux, scratching at the bow tie tied too tight around his neck, standing underneath an archway of flowers floats in your minds eye. 

Joel being surprisingly sassy for a middle-aged man rolls his eyes while he says, “I guess she’d agree with you,” with a lilt to his voice. 

You have to physically restrain yourself from peppering him with a thousand more questions. You clear your throat, “Well, if the whole actions speak louder than words stands, when I ask you where you’re going, I expect an answer that doesn’t sound like you’re still dragging me around with my hands tied.” 

By Joel’s face, you can tell he genuinely hadn’t been paying attention to that. But he nods, “Deal.” 

“Ok, you’re going to lead me out of this city, and then I’m going to Boston, and we never have to see each other again. Deal?” 

"Deal." If you knew better, you’d say Joel almost looks doleful.

Silently, you walk side by side down the street, dogging around broken down cars and any pits in the asphalt. The heat isn’t as bad as it was a week ago, the rain on the ground keeping things cool for now.

The caws of ravens sitting on streetlights are the only sounds in the city. You wonder if the on from the roof is among them. 

The answer is solidified when two sweep across your path at about head height, right in front of you and Joel. They do a barrel roll around each other before spreading their wings and sweeping up high again, disappearing around the corner of a building. The display feels pointed, it feels familiar. It makes even Joel stop and look after them for a moment.

“That was cool,” you grin at him, the aerial acrobat performance lowering your walls.

Joel quietly agrees, “Didn’t know they could do that.”

You wonder if that was some sort of mating ritual, do ravens mate for life? 

“I always wished I could fly,” you say before you can cringe at the silliness of it. “You’d never be trapped, you’d always have an escape route, just take to the sky.” 

Joel does his part not mentioning that nets exist, and guns. 

The ravens keep pace with you for a while, performing tricks in the air. One swoops so close by your head you feel the rush of air breeze past. And then eventually you notice that you haven’t seen any cross your path in a good while. They’re gone. 

The city is completely quiet. This should be a comfort. The lack of Infected swarming the streets, means less danger, right?

Joel is dead silent. Quiet even for Joel. But he’s very much on alert. He feels it too. Something different in the air. 

And then you see it.

An eye. Painted on a wall. It’s huge, about three body lengths tall. It’s made of three simple lines. The color is a red that's rusted to almost brown. Like oxidized blood.

Joel stills besides you when he sees it.

“Should we turn back?” You whisper.

“No,” He responds immediately. His tone confirms your suspicion. Whoever made the symbol might want exactly that. It could be a warning, or a funnel.

“Ok, so we move like escaping a rip current,” you offer. 

Joel nods. Being predictable might be the worse thing to do if someone is truly hunting you. Although so far, this is the first sign of people in the city aside from the note in the office building. One of the notes did mention hunters, but that note was years old, maybe even a decade.  

Joel keeps to the shadows of the stores, moving in an almost zigzag pattern down the streets. You keep close, checking behind at regular intervals. An hour goes by. Then two. And still no further signs of people. 

Midday you seek solace in a cafe, eating the brick of a protein bars slowly and in silence. 

“So what gives?” You speak up for the first time in hours, “I haven’t got the shivers you get when you’re being watched, but there’s something. It feels like the city is…” You grasp at straws trying to figure out what you’re exactly expressing. 

Joel doesn’t look away from the window as he names it, "Waiting."

His tone sends shivers down your back. It’s not just your imagination. It’s real. 

“Yeah,” you agree, regarding him differently, trying to put your finger on it. 

And yet the rest of the day goes by much the same. The sun hangs low in the sky, coloring the city with hues of orange and yellow. The shadows grow longer and have you jumping at ones that reach out for you from around corners. You decide to hole up in a bookstore before it gets too dark. 

“I’ll be back,” Joel says before he disappears. You assume to take a piss. 

Five minutes pass. You help yourself to the protein bars riding in his backpack. Ten minutes pass. Worry gnaws at your stomach. You comfort yourself that without a watch it might be less than your anxious mind feels its been. Your own bladder presses uncomfortably against your belly. 

You step outside, the warmth of the sun significantly leached compared to midday. 

“Joel?” 

You wait for one beat, two beats. There’s no answer. About a half mile west a group of birds take flight. They look like your ravens. 

Ok, first you’re gonna pee before you piss yourself, then go find Joel.

You step into the alley and your blood freezes. 

There’s a man. About twenty feet from you, staring right at you. 

He puts his left hand up, “Oh thank god, I thought I was a goner,” his right hand holds his stomach, putting pressure over the blood soaking the light grey of his shirt. He’s older, older than Joel by about fifteen years, maybe more. 

He keeps walking closer, slowly, “Please, have you seen my daughter? We got separated,” 

The world shifts aspect ratio as your vision narrows, the pulse in your stomach beats so hard you distantly wonder if you’re having an aneurysm. The moment balances on a knife's edge. You must make your decision. Listen to your body, or listen to your brain. If you don’t act in the next two seconds, you might not get to decide anymore. 

The man stumbles closer, his hair is completely grey, “Please, I need your help-“ he never finishes his sentence. You pull your pistol from behind your back and empty three rounds into his chest and belly. He stops, clutching at his chest, and wordlessly falls to the ground. You can hear him gasping, you know this is when you finish the job. You abandon your training and listen to instinct. She tells you to run. 

Shouting rises from nearby, mostly behind the man. You don’t stick around to meet who’s yelling, definitely not the man’s daughter. You make out one clear male voice, “She fucking shot him!” 

Instinct praises you, you were right. Next she urges what to do next. Find Joel. God please don't let them have got to him first. 

You burst through the bookstore, never stopping when he’s not there. You swoop his backpack off the ground and put it on as you run out the back. 

“Joel!” 

You slam the back door open and immediately duck the bat that swings at your head. You stumble backwards as a man the height of the door frame steps inside. You raise your gun, but you’re too close, he swings at you with a fist the size of your head and knocks you to the ground. 

Your gun clatters to the ground and is promptly kicked away. You start sliding backwards on the floor, desperately trying to blink away the stars clouding your vision. You aren’t fast enough, he’s on top of you. He grabs you by the throat and starts closing his hands together, all the while being completely silent. You grab at his hands, digging your nails into skin that feels like stone as your vision starts to fade. 

-

Joel feels the mans punch land on his cheekbone, likely doing more damage to the attacker’s fist than him. It stuns the man briefly, giving Joel the opportunity to take him to the ground and crack his skull on the asphalt. Joel springs up, looking for the second attacker that ambushed him. Sounds of a scuffle draw his eye to the backdoor of the store, left wide open. He runs in without second thought but skids to a stop at the confusing sight. 

The second attacker lying on the ground, strangely still. Joel sees your boots hidden underneath the man and rushes him. 

“No, no, no,” Joel grabs the man and throws him off you surprisingly easily. He’s limp. And you’re completely covered in blood. 

Joel drops to his knees and shakes you, trying to wake you, but your eyes spring open immediately. You cough and blood bubbles up. You roll sideways to spit more out on the floor. 

“Are you ok?” Joel demands, confused and scared. 

You nod and with one hand hold a thumbs up while the other holds your knife, the blade and handle drenched in blood. Joel looks over at the body and finally sees the hole in the man’s throat leaking fluid like a burst pipe. A bleed like that comes with a severed jugular vein. 

“Shit girl, you’ve got some aim with that thing,” Joel praises, helping you wipe your eyes clear. You lean over and spit more red onto the floor. 

“They waited til we were separated. One approached me, said he was hurt,” you tell him as fast as you can, breaths coming a mile a minute. 

Joel feels pure rage burn his throat at the thought, “They've been watching us.” 

You nod, “I killed him before he got close, I don’t know if that was the right thing to do.” Joel sees your hands shaking as you wipe your face, "I didn't think, I just reacted to my gut, everything felt so wrong."

“Look at me,” Joel asks of you. You listen. Joel feels something tug deep in his chest at the wildness of your wide, scared eyes. “You did the absolute right thing. Now we gotta go before others get here.” 

You breathe deep, your face hardening. You stand and regard the man you killed apathetically. Joel wonders what you’re doing before you crouch and remove the shotgun from the man’s shoulder. 

You check the chamber, then you nod, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” 

Joel regards you for a moment longer than he probably should. Holding the weapon you earned in battle, covered in blood, with that look in your eye, you make quite a sight. 

“Yes ma’am,” Joel agrees, taking point out the door, feeling a little better knowing you're watching his back.

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