Schmelting Around

January 2nd, 2029, one day since the attack.

Throughout the night, you’re plagued with dreamless sleep from the mere exhaustion coating over your body. Your back aches, your knees ache, your soul aches. All you know is darkness. At some point within your suspended state, you feel a hand gently shake your shoulder.

“Hey, sweetheart,” the voice whispers from above you. The figure standing overhead is blurry as your eyes flutter open, but the more you enter consciousness, the more your vision focuses to see Maria. She’s in a turtleneck with some wear at the hem, her locs tucked over one shoulder, and her hand has a container in it. Her dark brown eyes carry the weight of the day past, and you can tell she’s not been resting. Even if you have been, you don’t feel refreshed.

You also look down and realize you’re still wearing your old clothes. Dried patches of dark red spatter your sweater and jeans.

“I brought you some soup. I’m sure you haven’t been eating.” She pulls a chair from the row across from you in order to face you and hold your hand. While you sit up, you rub your eyes and run your hands up your forehead through your hair. The tangles catch in between your fingers, and you stretch your lower back. Falling asleep across three waiting room chairs was not part of your plan, but you must have tried to fight slumber for so long that you finally lost the battle.

“What day is it?” you ask. Maria smiles softly as she sets the container of soup on the chair beside you. “It’s only been a few hours,” she muses, rubbing your hand between hers. You scoff at the news that you’ve been out for such a short time, and you crane your head back to stretch your neck. “Feels like it’s been days… Not even. Weeks.”

Maria smiles softly again and lets the silence fill between you two. You look around the waiting room and realize you’re alone, no other guests, no family. “What’s going on out there? Where’s Benji?”

“He’s okay,” Maria says. “He’s safe. They’re already working to rebuild the wall where it was broken into.”

You heave a sigh of relief, thinking of Benji. God forbid something were to happen to your precious nephew, Maria and Tommy’s son. He’s too young for all of this. The world he’s growing up into is dangerous. He doesn’t need to witness so much death, but if it’s this versus losing him, so be it.

“What about Jesse? Dina?”

“Jesse is patched up. No real damage. He’ll be laid up for a while, but God knows he’ll try to force his way into any activity he can, I’m sure. He’s already been released. Dina too. She woke up pretty soon after they took Joel back for surgery. They ran a test, and it turns out it was just a sedative of some kind, probably just to get her out of the way to get to Joel.”

Joel.

“Is he…”

“No news yet.” Maria looks at you and rubs the back of your hand. The silence fills the room again.

You look down at her fingers as they run circles on your palm, her gorgeous dark skin and glimmering wedding ring giving you comfort. You always loved your sister-in-law, even before you married into the Miller family. She has always been a calming and authoritative presence, a former district attorney and a natural leader. Even if she has had hesitation toward Joel, she has accepted him with grace.

You think of Joel, your Joel with the big brown eyes. It feels like you haven’t seen those eyes in years. Even witnessing his face as they took him from you at your last moments together, his eyes were swollen shut from trauma. Now, you may never see them again.

“That has to be good news… right? Wouldn’t he have just… right away? If it’s been hours, they’re making progress. Right?” You speak so lowly, it’s almost a whisper.

“Sure.” Maria nods.

More silence.

Just as you’re about to speak again, Tommy walks in. He brushes some snow off the shoulder of his coat, the same plaid coat with the fur collar that you see him in wherever he goes.

“Anything?” He asks. You and Maria both shake your heads. He pulls up a chair silently beside Maria to sit across from you as well, huffing as he plops into it. He kisses his wife on the cheek and just looks at you in silence. The bandage on his forehead is already growing a red stain from the amount of blood seeping into it.

Maria gazes at your weary face and studies it for a moment. You wonder what she’s looking for. Maybe it’s the right thing to say, maybe it’s how to break the news to you that he may not make it. Either way, she chooses neither and calls an audible. “What happened out there?”

You mull over this question, unsure of where to start. While you pick at the hangnail on your pinky for a moment, you search through your memories of the last day for the key points, but you realize it all pretty much matters for them to hear. They may need information on who these people were that attacked Joel in order to protect him further. You have no idea if they had friends, if they were part of something bigger that could be coming for him.

“I went out on my patrol and my partner abandoned me.”

“Nicholas abandoned you? Why?” Maria sits back in her chair, mulling your words over as you go.

“My guess is that it finally got to him. The fear, I dunno,” you explain. “We heard some infected, I gathered that they were pretty far out, but he went off the trail all nervous, and he fell down a small ditch. That’s when infected started to come up out of the ice-“

“Like they were lying underneath it?” Tommy interjects. “We had seen patches of infected doin’ this. They’re insulatin’ themselves with their own dead.”

You nod. “Like they were damn dormant. All together, huddled, like a hoard just waiting to appear. Nicholas got back on his horse and just left me behind on the path. I tried to catch up, but couldn’t. So I decided to head back around a different bend and find shelter. Because of all of that nonsense, I had lost time and the storm came upon me. I knew I’d be screwed if I didn’t call for somebody, so I called for Joel on the radio. He didn’t come in.”

Maria and Tommy stay silent as you reiterate the hell of a morning you had. There are no windows in the waiting room, but you look through the open doorway and see a window down the hall. No light shows through. “What time is it?” you ask. “Past midnight,” Tommy replies. “You’ve been here for a good 6 hours or so.”

Maria nods. “We found Nicholas’s horse… and parts of Nicholas. If you had followed him, you may have had the same fate. What else happened?” She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

“I could tell from the reception that Joel’s radio was on, but he wasn’t answering.”

Tommy purses his lips. “Antenna was blowing in the wind. Couldn’t reach any of y’all for a while. Scared the bejesus outta me, told Amy to try for contact every 10 seconds.”

You nod. “All day I had this terrible feeling… I couldn’t shake it. Something was wrong.”

Maria nods with you. She understands implicitly, without another word. Your sons were the same age when they died, around the same day too. It was one of the first things you discussed together when you met, and one of the first things you got to relate to each other about. Having been a mother before Benji, Maria had also learned how to trust her gut when something felt amiss. She had lost Kevin, just as you had lost Jack, but that feeling never went away, that intuition. You both learned to trust it. You credit it for how Maria has been able to lead the community so well, and you credit it for your own survival. You can thank it for saving your husband’s life.

“‘Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.’ Lily Tomlin.”

“I decided to radio Jesse and Ellie instead. I knew they must’ve been close by... where’s Ellie?” You look between Maria and Tommy. You realize you’ve lost track of your kiddo in all of the chaos. Her lack of need for medical attention put her behind on the list of priorities, but now you’re more worried than ever about her.

“She’s alright. She was actually here in the waiting room and we made her go home and sleep. She fought us pretty heavily, but we finally convinced her once we told her she needed a shower,” Tommy grins. You mirror his smile, and you nod to yourself to settle your concerns. You drop your grin once you remember she had a bloody nose when you left her. “Was her nose broken?”

“No. Just bruised. She’s okay. I promise.”

You nod again. “I shouldn’t have called Ellie and Jesse,” you explain. “The storm was getting bad… they should’ve stayed put. I made them leave their post earlier than they would’ve if I hadn’t inserted myself into their spot.”

“If you hadn’t, and you had gone to Joel alone, you’d be dead. And so would he,” Maria says, very matter of factly. You look at her, realizing she’s right. You can’t kick yourself for Jesse and Ellie going out into the elements for you. They could have stayed put and they chose to come. And if they hadn’t, there could’ve been multiple losses.

You continue to explain how you made your way through the mountains to Joel, Ellie and Jesse trailing you, and how you had reached the lodge, subdued the assailants, and gotten everybody home. Maria and Tommy stay silent as they absorb it all. They exchange glances, and as the quiet overtakes the room, you turn to the soup by your side. You open the lid and grab the spoon resting beside the container.

You have always loved chicken soup. It’s such a simple thing, but it reminds you of the life before all of this. Joel makes a damn good chicken soup, more of a caldo de pollo from his childhood. Your mother made you chicken soup all the time too, sometimes creamy, sometimes with rice, sometimes a chicken pot pie style. No matter the way she threw together poultry, vegetables, and broth, you were a fan. She also used to make it with mushrooms.

Now, you hate mushrooms.

“We’ll send some people up to that cabin,” Tommy says, breaking into your thought bubble. “See if we can get anything off the bodies y’all left behind up there. Maybe there’s some info we can gain.”

“Dina said something about a patch on their backpacks that said WLF,” Maria says, looking at Tommy. “It must be some fringe group.”

Tommy scratches at his beard. “I’ll have to look into it.” He gets up slowly, groaning as he stands. These Miller boys and their bad knees.

“I’ll be back to see if there’s news,” he says, lifting his coat collar to cover his neck from the cold outside. He heads to the doorway, and just as he reaches it, he turns around and calls to you. You look up. He hesitates, then simply says, “Thank you for saving my brother.”

You smile slightly, then nod.

— —

Maria didn’t stay long after Tommy and once they left, you decided to lie back down to keep yourself calm. You must have drifted back off for a moment, because you’re startled by a pair of familiar sneakers squeaking down the hall and into the room.

“Anything yet?” you hear in that familiar high pitched voice, laden with out of breath panting. You blink and rub your eyes, looking over sideways from your place lying down to see Ellie standing in the doorway. Her nose is swollen and red from the hit to the face that she endured.

“Not that I know of. I guess I fell asleep again,” you’re able to get out while a yawn overtakes you, and you look down at her shoes, the same sneakers she always wears. “We need to get you some actual winter boots, kid.” You begin to sit up and while you stretch, you hear at least ten cracks in your back and neck.

“Sold ‘em for my new gun holster, remember?” Ellie slumps down in the chair beside you. She crosses her arms and puzzles silently, staring at a crack in the wall across from her. “Ah, right,” you reply. “Well, we’ll get you new boots again.”

You can feel the tension coming off of her body, but you can tell it doesn’t come from the current predicament that Joel is in. You think back over the last 24 hours, and it feels like a whirlwind. Through all of it, you get glimpses of Ellie being called a ‘dyke’ and Joel intervening at the party. You also revisit the image of your poor heartbroken husband sitting on the porch as Ellie approaches.

Breaking the silence, you think of ways to get both your minds off of the hell you’ve been in. “So is Dina your girlfriend now?” you ask, genuinely curious. You don’t mean to make the kid feel uncomfortable, but you want the subject matter to stay lighter. Anything is lighter than your current situation.

Ellie looks at you, then to the floor. “No. She was just drunk. Or high. I dunno, I… God, you sound just like Joel.” She rubs the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry.” The corner of your mouth upturns, nudging her. “I guess us old people all ask the same damn questions.”

Ellie doesn’t look at you, focus remaining on the floor.

“You’re allowed to like her, you know. Just because Seth decided to be a drunken asshole doesn’t mean you can’t be with her if you want.”

“He apologized today,” Ellie pulls at a string on the hem of her sweatshirt sleeve. “I didn’t accept, but still.”

“I wouldn’t accept either, personally. I don’t think it’s a big deal not to accept an apology. If it’s not okay, it’s not okay.” Ellie nods and you let the silence linger. Maybe you shouldn’t prod the kid so much if she doesn’t wanna talk about things that are so personal to her. She’s just like Joel in that way. It can be like pulling teeth for him to be vulnerable on the occasion he allows himself to be. Ellie is a tough girl, but she’s still sensitive. She can handle her own, but by nature, being 19 means that she’s impressionable, immature, and hot headed. With all of that, you love her like a daughter, and you’ll always wanna protect her.

You pull your legs up on your seat and tuck your feet under your rear. As you face Ellie, you prop your cheek up on your hand, resting your elbow on the back of the chair.

“You helped save him,” you murmur to her, and she keeps her eyes on the crack in the wall.

“I don’t feel like I helped,” she whispers, her voice shaky from guilt.

“Ellie, you took them off guard for us.”

“I dropped my gun.”

“Yeah, but you sliced that guy pretty damn good. And it gave me time to take him out. If we hadn’t braced that snowstorm, Joel would be gone.”

Ellie is silent for a long moment, so you persist. “Do you know how proud he’ll be of you?”

Ellie heaves a shaky sigh, trying to push away the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She wipes any moisture away with the back of her sweatshirt sleeve, trying to make sure you didn’t see it.

You rest your palm on her hand placed on her knee, and you stroke the back of it with your thumb.

“Did you know about what happened to the Fireflies?”

Your thumb stops moving.

She doesn’t look at you when she asks. She keeps her head faced forward and her eyes remain on the string attached to her sleeve. You’re taken aback by the question, unsure of how to respond. Does she know? Is she aware of what Joel did to stop her from becoming a sacrifice for humanity? How much does she know? How long has she known? Did he tell her? Is that what they talked about last night?

“What do you mean?” It’s the best you can muster.

“Did you know about what Joel did at that hospital or not?” She sits up and looks you in the face, her eyes full of contempt and grief, mixing together within her in complex waves of emotion.

You try to keep your expression level, but the silence as you debate on how to answer leaves Ellie certain.

“Did he tell you?” Her voice is almost a whisper, yet full of anger.

You hesitate, then you nod. “A long time ago.”

She stares at you, then slumps forward, elbows resting on her knees, head in her hands.

“Ellie, I didn’t tell you what he did because it wasn’t my conversation to have with you. It was his burden and his responsibility to bear.”

She rests her chin on her fists. You hear that the tears have started to flow, no longer being held back by her will. “You’re both such fucking assholes.”

You bite your lip. You know an apology wouldn’t bring her comfort, but it’s all you can think to do at the moment. Because of that, you say nothing.

“I was supposed to die in that hospital… it was my purpose. I was supposed to help humanity. And now that’s taken from me… it’s taken from us all. He killed 19 people and possibly took our chance at a cure. And I just… I dunno if I’ll ever forgive him.”

“I think he paid the price for that act today.”

Ellie looks at you, tears in her eyes. “I was going to offer myself up to Abby to let him go… I’m why this happened. I-“ Just as she chokes on her words, she bursts into sobs. Without another word, you wrap your arms around her and pull her head to your chest, just as Tommy had done to you hours ago. You stroke her hair and let the emotions flow as the two of you wait in that little room for the man you both love to come back to you.

The silence between the two of you drags on for what feels like an eternity. It could even be another hour and you wouldn’t be surprised. You sit there, Ellie having transferred herself to lying across a couple chairs to rest her head in your lap as you stroke the hair out of her face.

You think of the things she’s been through, things she’s told you and things she hasn’t. From day one, she had nobody to call family. She was stuck in some FEDRA school, picked on, bullied, and stuck in a QZ. Suddenly one day, she’s bitten, having to take her best friend’s life, and she’s on the run before she’s found by Fireflies and told she’s the savior of humanity. Whether or not it could be true, that’s a large weight to carry at 14 years old.

When she met Joel, she had a lot more to endure. She had to witness death all around her, in Tess, in Bill and Frank, in Sam and Henry… she never discussed what happened with the preacher in Silver Lake, but you know that it wasn’t anything but trauma for her.

Joel protected her from a lot of evil. Ellie protected him from a lot of danger. The two of them are bonded, no matter what happens. Even if she holds what he did to the Fireflies against Joel forever, you know she will always love him, like her father.

“Is that what you guys talked about on the porch last night? The Fireflies?”

You feel Ellie nod in your lap.

“How did you find out?”

“I could tell since he swore to me on our way back to Jackson after… I never truly believed him. It ate at me.” Her voice is raspy from all the tears she’s sobbed. She clears her throat. “I saw it in his eyes. The same fucking eyes… he lies the same way every time. He lied to me then, he lied to Gail about Eugene…”

You close your eyes as you cringe over that memory. It wasn’t very long ago, last March on Ellie’s 19th birthday. While on patrol, Joel and Ellie came across local townie Eugene on patrol, bitten and begging to be brought back to Jackson to say goodbye to his wife Gail in person. As Ellie left for the horses back at the trail, Joel executed him, telling Gail that it was what Eugene had wished for. Ellie revealed to Gail that it wasn’t Eugene’s wish, that he was desperate to see her before his life was taken. You still remember the red mark across Joel’s cheek from Gail’s slap in the face.

Even in the midst of her grief, you are indebted to Gail for taking Joel in for therapy sessions. Her practice before the outbreak was in counseling, and you knew you were able to sweeten the deal by offering her some fresh black tea leaves, some lavender, a bottle of whiskey, and some pretty damn good weed that you were able to find. Somehow, she found it within herself to help Joel with some sessions, to your and his discretion.

“I’m sorry about Eugene, Ellie.”

“It’s not even about Eugene,” she replies, turning off her side to look up at you on her back. “It’s about the lying. I’m so fucking sick of Joel’s lying. He does it to protect me. Fine. I get it, fucking whatever. But he can’t keep doing it.”

“You know why else he does so, right?”

“Yeah, I fucking know, alright?” Ellie gets up, sitting on her knees facing you. “He can’t fucking handle that he lost Sarah. But I’m not officially his daughter, okay? I’m here. He lost her 25 years ago, and he should get over-“ Ellie pauses and looks at you.

You say nothing. Not out of pain, out of understanding. Even if it hurts; to a point, Ellie is right.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking down.

“It’s okay.” You mean it too. “I understand, Ellie. You’re right in some ways. You’re not Sarah. But when Joel lost her, he felt like he had lost it all. You already know that. We can’t live in the past, I can’t ever bring Jack back, and he can’t ever bring Sarah back. But maybe someday, if you ever have one of your own, you’ll understand. That pain, it’ll never go away. I miss Jack every day. He misses Sarah every day. That empty spot, it makes you feel like you have nothing left. When you came into Joel’s life, and when you came into mine…”

You sigh, pushing back the lump in your throat. Ellie peers at you with sad eyes.

“You made us feel like we had something again.”

Ellie mulls this over in her head. She must be satisfied with the answer because she remains silent as she slowly lies back down on her side with her head in your lap. You’re a little surprised, comforted by the idea that she wants to remain in this space with you. As you run your hand through her hair again, you hum.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.

“Don’t be,” you murmur back. “You’ll always be my kiddo.”

Silence fills the room for another couple of minutes. You decide to break the discomfort with one of Ellie’s favorite things: bad puns.

“Hey, kid. When does bread go bad?”

She looks up at you.

“When you yeast expect it.”

Ellie laughs in your lap. “Oh wow, that’s like a 10 out of 10.”

“You’re too kind,” you grin at her and go back to stroking her hair and humming one of your favorite songs. This time, Ellie breaks the ice.

“Is that ‘Purple Rain’?”

You nod.

“Joel loves that song… I heard you launched yourself onto him and gave him CPR.”

“Oh,” you chuckle. “Yeah. I did.”

“How’d you know to do that?” She looks up at you from her place in your lap.

“I went to medical school before the outbreak.”

“Really??” Ellie sits up to look at you again. “Were you, like, a doctor?”

“I was trying to be.” You tuck your hair behind your ear and rest your cheek in your hand again, elbow propped. “I wanted to go into nursing to give me and Jack a better life. I had him at 16, I was 19 when it all fell apart. I had very little fieldwork, but I learned the basics. Drawing blood, vitals, some emergency room care, things of that nature.”

“So that’s where you learned how to dress wounds and set Joel’s leg?”

“As best as I could, yeah.”

“Why did you pick nursing?”

You mull this question over and finally shrug. “Gave me a purpose. To help people.”

Ellie’s shoulders sag and you see her eyes glaze over as she enters deep thought. You see the wheels turning in her head and you wonder where her mind is taking her. Just as you open your mouth to ask, Annie walks in.

The air leaves your lungs as you and Ellie see her. All you wish to do is get up and pummel Annie with questions, but your legs have gone soft and your mouth is immediately dry. She knows what you’re wondering, though, and she wipes the sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her white coat. Annie looks exhausted, like she’s been doing hard labor for hours. In a way, she probably has been.

“He’s stable.”

—

“Well let’s go fucking see him!” Ellie jumps up from her seat next to you and before you can begin your own ascent, Annie holds up her hands. “He’s been put into an induced coma, he’s not awake. And he won’t be for a while. He’s in intensive care.”

“So is he gonna make it??” Ellie sinks back down into her seat.

“As far as we see, yes.” Annie goes to sit in a chair opposite you and Ellie, and she crosses her legs as she sits back in her seat. She groans as she relaxes, her back pressing into the cushion. “I haven’t sat in at least 24 hours… I was supposed to go home before you guys showed up.” Annie raises an eyebrow at you both, jokingly.

“Well fuckin sorry for making you do your job,” Ellie says, arms folded.

“Ellie,” you look at her. “Annie’s just teasing. Of course she wanted to help.”

“No, no, I’m sorry, it’s not a laughing matter,” Annie reassures Ellie, wiping her red curls from her forehead, the smile lines around her mouth showing. “He was in trouble. You did an amazing thing doing the chest compressions. You saved his life.”

You feel a tightness in your throat as you think back on how you leapt on top of your husband to pump air into his lungs. The exhale is shaky as you say, “I just want him back.”

Annie nods. “His leg was absolutely shattered… we did our best to reassemble everything and set it properly. But… we’re going to have to see when he wakes up if he needs more surgeries… he might be permanently off patrols.” The weight of her words lingers in the air for a moment and you start to absorb what her tone is implying. He may never walk correctly, if at all, again.

“I’m sorry to say, he’s lucky that he’s keeping his leg. You know we have limits here, this isn’t the same hospital it would’ve been pre-outbreak. We will have to see how things go for him as he heals. He may not need it amputated, but even so, he may need a cane, or some sort of help with mobility. On top of that, he had several cracked ribs, two broken fingers, a broken nose, several lacerations that needed stitches, and a concussion. Whomever this attack was instigated by, they were trying to make his death long and painful.”

Your head is spinning as you try to process every bit of information you just received. It starts to sink in that you were almost widowed, and you heave a heavy sigh, trying to steady your train of thought. You look over at Ellie, who looks like she’s staring in the distance 1000 yards away. She clearly can’t comprehend what she heard either. You shake your head to clear your thoughts.

“You’re telling me that he’s gonna wake up though,” you look at Annie. “Right?”

Annie crosses her arms and nods. “Right. Battered and broken. But alive.”

Alive. That’s all that matters, you think. He could’ve lost his leg. He could’ve been wheelchair bound, needing your assistance. It doesn’t matter to you. He could be broken into a million pieces like a fragile vase. As long as he’s here to be put back together you don’t care how many cracks and scrapes he has.

“We’re monitoring him overnight. You can be with him in the morning.”

“Will he be awake?”

“No, and he won’t be for a while. We have to see how long that while should be based on how his leg heals, how his concussion is monitored, and so on.”

Annie pauses and looks between the two of you. “Look, I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you both, it’s going to take a lot to get him to a good place. He will never be fully back to normal. He was battered pretty bad, and even if he weren’t 61 years old, it would still be an uphill battle. But let’s be honest, his age doesn’t make this easier.”

It never bothered you that your husband was almost 20 years your senior, but now is the moment you wished the most that it didn’t matter.

“Serves me right for being into older men,” you mutter, trying to infuse humor into the situation, lest you sob.

Annie quirks a half smile. “What a cradle robber he was, huh.” You laugh once.

“Both of you go home, get some rest, eat something. Get right with yourselves. He’ll be here when you return.” Annie stands. As you get up, you throw her into a hug. While she returns it with a warm and tight embrace, you whisper, “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Annie says. When she lets you go, she grips your arms with both hands and holds you steady. “He’s gonna be okay.”

You nod, your eyes misting with tears. You wipe them with your sleeves, and you turn to Ellie. As she stands, Annie walks you both out. “I’ll see you two in the morning,” she says. You and Ellie both nod, head to the main doors of the hospital, and you both start your journey together back to Rancher street.

— —

The crunch of snow under your boots is the only noise between you and Ellie for most of the trip back home. The pitch blackness of the sky makes the air colder, and you both huff out condensation laden breath as you traverse the winter night. The yellow light of the street lamps are the only warmth you feel inside and out as you ponder over your hospital stay.

Your head is swimming with the amount of information you’ve received regarding Joel’s recovery and how treacherous it may end up for him. At best, he will never walk right again, possibly with a limp, possibly needing a cane or some sort of support.

At worst, he may lose his leg.

Your stomach churns at the idea of your Joel losing a limb. You try to think on the bright side, that at least he’s alive. But you know, it’ll be a painful process, and you know Joel. He’ll have to readjust, and he’ll have a hard time doing so. If he can’t help out around the house, if he can’t renovate or fix things up, if he can’t be of use, he won’t be happy. He could do some things, but most others will be difficult. And that will kill him inside. And that fills you with dread.

The quiet walk through the neighborhood starts to contain a weight as you look across the houses on either side of the street. You and Ellie scan the yards, porches, and fences, and you both notice cards, ribbons, flowers, and stuffed animals at every other home. As you pass by, you realize that the cards have scribbles of condolences.

People have been lost from the infected breach. Your neighbors, your local townsfolk, acquaintances, friends. It isn’t a lot of houses that display the grief and solace of the community around them. But it’s enough.

You watch Ellie scratch at her stomach from the corner of your eye and you’re reminded of the prior day’s patrol, the one on New Year’s Eve, a day before the attack. “How’s your bite looking?” you ask. Ellie looks at you and lifts her jacket and sweater to reveal a crescent shaped wound on her stomach.

You sigh as you look at the bite. Ellie carved into the teeth marks with a knife for it to look like an accidental cut, then stitched it back up. She did a mess of a job too. You grimace at the mental image of your kid cutting at herself in order to cover up a bite from an infected.

“You gotta be more careful, kid,” you chide as you walk.

“Yeah, I fucking know that.”

People don’t know she’s immune, and they may not understand if they had. It’s unsafe for the world to know she’s been bitten before, and some may not ask questions before acting against her. The bite that caused her to realize she was immune in the first place fed up her arm and left grotesque and noticeable scarring. Her solution, in order for people not to notice, was to burn her arm on a stovetop during kitchen duty.

“I just really wanted to wear short sleeves again.”

For a few years, the scarred up tissue on her arm got to be explained away to people. Then, she got the burn marks covered up with a tattoo, much to Joel’s chagrin. Ellie’s obsession with moths got to be transferred to her skin forever, and now it’s all anybody notices at first glance. Not burns, not scars, not a bite from an infected.

She’s been bitten since, but each remained a small scar, no cordyceps fungus branching up underneath the flesh. In those cases, even if rare, Ellie edits the bites by carving at them to hide the serrated teeth marks. You beg her not to, that it isn’t worth it. And in Ellie fashion, she doesn’t listen.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that, kid.”

Ellie shrugs and lowers her coat, and looks across the street at the houses that litter the small refurbished neighborhood that you occupy. “There’s so many,” she says, forlorn. You scan the mailboxes decorated with sympathy notes and nod.

You don’t know what you’d prefer, for Joel to have been out there in the mountains with what happened to him, or to have been in here fighting against hundreds of infected.

Knowing Joel, he and Tommy probably would have tag teamed a bloater with two flame throwers.

As you and Ellie reach the house, you see ribbons and cards at your home as well. The little mailbox in front marked MILLER is open, containing small gifts and acts of kindness from the local Jackson community. Thankfully, it’s not out of consolation. The cards revolve around the ‘Get Well Soon’ theme.

The town is rooting for Joel to get better.

Something in this touches your heart, knowing that you’ve got the town backing your family, there for you all if you need them. It gives you some comfort to know that you’re in loving and supporting hands.

You leave the cards. As you and Ellie walk to the porch, she continues her trek to the back garage with her makeshift bedroom.

Ellie has been living in the garage away from the house for two years, ever since Joel barged in on her and Kat, another girl from town, and caught them fooling around in Ellie’s room. On top of that, the room smelled of weed, and Kat had started to pack up tattoo equipment as she left. Ellie’s tattoo became a subject of Joel’s grumblings around the house for a week. That night, however, Ellie had gone to the back garage to move into so she could gain some space and some independence. With some begrudging help from Joel, the place was renovated into a proper bedroom over the following month. The space had been insulated, heated, and he fixed up the bathroom for her. You were actually quite annoyed by Joel removing the mirror from your bathroom to take to her, and you told him on his next patrol he was required to bring you back a new one.

You hated having Ellie out back. You always wanted her in the house, but she always preferred her alone time. Now knowing that she was seeing cracks in Joel’s character this whole time, you can see where this rift came from. Still, you wished she’d move back in.

“I’m gonna shower,” you say to Ellie as you walk up your porch. She stops before heading around to the back of the house. “I’m gonna too,” she says.

“Come back in the house when you’re done.” You give her a beseeching look and she hesitates. “Please?” you inquire.

She sighs and nods, and swivels on her shoe’s heel to walk back to the garage. Simultaneously, you turn to traverse the porch steps.

The shower feels like it’s washing away all your sins. The warmth, the steam, the water itself feels like a religious experience. God bless Joel for finding a wider shower head at an abandoned house on patrol and bringing it back, knowing you love your showers.

You never took them for granted again once you moved to Jackson. QZ’s weren’t the easiest places to be able to maintain hygiene, and the open world outside of them was worse. Traveling on foot or on horseback between cities was dirty work. Before you lived with Joel in his Rancher street home, your showers were lukewarm at best, never able to fully get a good hot water system when you lived alone. When you married into the Miller family, Joel made it a mission to give you the comfort you wanted. These were always the ways you knew he loved you. He wanted to show his acts of kindness to you, to dote upon you the best that he could.

This shower was proof of his labor of love. The blisteringly hot water feels like heaven and you stand with your face under the spout. You finished cleaning yourself several minutes ago. Now you just need the feeling of the shower on your skin for comfort. You wish you could share it with your husband again. The first time the two of you made love was in this shower, before the act was moved to the bathroom counter, then the bed…

The cold air and the cold reality sets back in once you move the curtain, and you step out onto the bath mat. All the grime, the sweat, the dirt, the blood, everything went down the drain. You feel reborn anew. While you inhale the muggy air, you look at your flushed skin in the fogged up mirror, at the scars you’ve accumulated through time in an apocalypse. You reminisce over each one, the times that Joel had laid gentle kisses on them, and you think back to the times you did the same to his scars.

You cannot wait to have him home again to kiss his new ones.

You sit at the edge of your bed with your robe wrapped around your waist, drawstring pulled, and you wring out any leftover water from your hair. You look around your bedroom, and it’s almost painful how much of it is Joel’s handiwork. You have a penchant for romanticizing the man’s habits, even if they’re trivial. He left his socks next to the basket that you designated as a hamper again, like always.

The dresser top carries a wood carving of a horse he whittled, apparently unfinished, yet to you it looks perfect. According to him, it still needs some detail and to be treated with oil to lacquer it. The horse paintings he takes from every house he scavenges don’t match in art style, but that’s the charm. He loves horses. You couldn’t help but touch one of the many guitars on the wall by the bed, every single one crafted by his hand like a professional artisan.

As you look over at his desk, you see his newest project he had started in the late hours of the previous night: a pride flag, only probably about 6 inches long, cut from old cloth he found and tried to paint with the matching stripes of color. Everything must’ve clicked for Joel that Ellie was different, even if he had walked in on her and another girl years ago. This must’ve been his gesture of peace to Ellie in the wake of everything.

Just as you settle there on the side of your bed, you hear a slight knock at the bedroom door.

“Come in,” you call, and Ellie opens the door, in fresh new clothes. Her blue flannel lays open with a grey tank top underneath and her wet hair is combed back, for once, behind her ears.

She settles on the edge of the bed next to you. The two of you sit in silence for a few moments, going over the past near 24 hours in your heads. The daylight almost cracks over the horizon, the sun barely visible. It’s very early morning. Normally at this time, you’d be a few hours from waking up for patrols. You know that you’ve probably been given the day off. Excuses like ‘husband almost killed’ were probably enough to be absent.

“What did you mean when you said that you aren’t better than him?” Ellie breaks your silence and your train of thought.

You look at her, confused.

“You had said to that Abby girl, she should be better than Joel and not take his life in order to save her friend. You said, she’s better than him. Then you said, you’re not. And you shot.”

You’re silent next to Ellie as you move your stare to the wood grain in the floor, considering what she’s asking. You barely remember the confrontation with the group that almost took Joel’s life from all the adrenaline you received during. You think it over, and you look at Ellie again.

“I told her that she was better than Joel so she’d drop the gun, or at least hesitate and get distracted. She’s not better than Joel. It sounded like she was pretty much the same as him, doing anything possible, even deadly, to achieve a goal.”

“But then you said, you’re not better than them before you shot.”

“Because I’m not.”

“Why?”

“Ellie, I took her life. It was starting to seem like it was turning our way, that we could maybe just get her to walk away. And I didn’t bother to find out. I preferred her to be dead. And I knew that meant her friend would fight for her honor next and we’d have to kill him too. I knew that through our standoff. And I still did it.”

Ellie is silent next to you.

“Do you feel like it was justified of me to do so?” You look at Ellie. “You’re allowed not to think so. I’m genuinely asking.”

Ellie pauses. “I think,” she speaks slowly, hoping to phrase her answer correctly. “If it saved Joel, it was worth it to me. It’s probably not fair to Abby, because she had a life too. But… she was in the way of my friend’s. My family.”

You’re quiet as you look at her, scanning over the gentle rose of her cheeks and the scar through her eyebrow.

“Don’t you think that’s how Joel felt about you?”