Been a little bit since I have shared a chapter update for "Let Me Be Your Shelter' on here, but we're in the last few chapters so for any of y'all that like to binge read, here is chapter 12/13
GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE
Fury's and Bronte's hooves strike against the ground, furiously chasing after the mockery of a cowboy that's bobbing and weaving his way back east.
Toward the ranch he'd come from, Joel knows in his bones.
The greasy fuck fires twice blindly back at him and Tommy, throwing his gun in frustration when it comes up empty.
He's out of bullets and they're closing in, it makes him erratic and desperate, him and his horse unpredictable. Tommy shoots at the muscle of the horse's legs, trying to hobble it and make it throw its rider.
None of his shots hit, but it does make the horse skittish. It's frantically carving an irregular path making the man atop it cling to its mane to stay astride.
He fails when the horse starts to kick its hind legs, bucking him over the horse's head and throwing him down with a stomach-twisting crunch.
They don't bother with the horse once he's down, letting it continue its way to freedom.
He hits the ground running, flipping over their first real tie to Ellie since they had found Jesse, only to find the bastards eyes open and fixed.
The entire left side of his skull is fractured mush.
"God fucking damnit!" He can't keep coming up short, it's been two days, two fucking days.
He knows he has gone manic, he don't need a mirror to see his blown pupils and the crazed flit of his eyes to show him the proof.
He hasn't slept in forty-eight hours and hasn't eaten in longer, it feeds his mania and his anger.
The only cure for it is his kid, alive and breathing, in his arms. He doesn't mind losing himself to the hysteria, not as long as it keeps him upright long enough to find her and bring her home.
"We gotta keep going Joel, he's useless dead. If he's out here, she's out here. We just gotta keep lookin' big brother." Even his little brother has slipped into some sort of fucked up head space.
There's a simmering rage in Tommy's eyes he don't recognize, a turbulent storm that only seems to reinvigorate him and keep his head focused.
This is the Tommy who had served two tours in the Middle East for the United States Army.
Both of their humanities are slipping.
He brings his booted foot down onto the dead man's head in three vicious stomps, the fragile bones of his nose concaving and crunching with the first.
The reinforced structure of his cheeks collapses inward with the two others, leaving his jaw unhinged and attached only by a thin frayed piece of muscle.
Wiping the heel of his shoe on the front of the unrecognizable fuckers shirt, he gathers a pool of mucus in his mouth and spits into the ruined cavern of his face.
May Joel find him in hell one day to give him everything he deserves.
"I want to personally deliver that gift to Anderson, he goes into the cooler until I get the opportunity." They've already had Bill collect the body they'd left in the river and keep him on ice for the time being, what's one more?
Stoic and terrifyingly quiet, they gallop away from the mangled remains.
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