Chapter Text
“Shit…” Joel growls with the last ounce of grit he has left. His knuckles are still raw, the chill air making them burn like it was still fresh.
“What?”
Right. She hears fucking everything.
He bit back an unwanted reply. They were supposed to be quiet. Very fucking quiet. This girl didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut and it was going to cost them.
It was borderline amazing that the endless stream of chatter was easing down after a few miles or so, but after getting little more than radio silence from her for the last hour, he knows something is very wrong.
The kid was unusually sullen, a roiling, silent bundle of nerves and germs. The hurried, stumbling steps behind his solid strides were now dragging, but at least she had stopped trying to start one-way conversations.
He didn’t need the commenting and he didn’t need her noise to alert every hungry psycho on the block. She’d ceased noticing random shit. Stopped telling those god awful jokes, at least.
(Truth be told, all he’d been itchin’ for was a prolonged spell of quiet. Just not like this)
What he needed right now was compliance. That would get them as far as their designated stop off anyway.
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Something is making her move slower. Uncertain. Not to his liking. Tess always knew the right pace. She knew when to hurry, when to linger, and when to hide. He grinds down hard, his clenched jaw twitching against letting loose words of rebuke.
It’s difficult not to look when she takes her time climbing over the top of a totaled SUV. Her clothes are beyond filthy, tattered in places. She moves heavily, following silently, always ready to give him the lead. Caution is still a wise measure but he did not know how long she’d last before caving, forcing them to halt.
Her head droops on her neck, mouth set in a determined line. Sheer will is keeping both of them going, but he can feel urgency bearing down on them as they plodded on towards the city limits. The canteen he carries is dry, the last drop touching his split lower lip, leaving a burn like hot sugar.
Licking at it, he saw his ward is far worse off. Finding a leaf choked stream gurgling through the trees, he stops and brings them to kneel by the flow of cloudy water. Plunging his fists into the rushing churn, he brings up two cupped hands.
“Drink this,” it is not a request. They do not require food for at least 3 more days, but water must be hourly. “Much as you can.”
Silently she crouches by his side, ignoring his offered portion, and scoops up greedy handfuls on her own. Letting the silt trickle down her chin, without a care for the sharpness of its icy bite.
After a third sloppy gulp she chokes and the ugly retching spasm echoes through the rough rock, making his chest tighten. Her panting breath is loud and never quite goes away.
“You good?”
She panted, the back of her hand across her mouth.
“Sure! Never been-ARUGHBlecchhh-…better….”
He had stepped sideways to miss most of the puke, but the volume of it did leave some concern.
He knows it. They both know it. Whether she knows that he knows is irrelevant. Her eyes are too glassy and uninterested, his fingertips unknowingly pressed into translucent pale skin until it blots a rose-colored flush.
Dammit. Dammit.
In his experience, Infected are best avoided and better used as a secondary trail along the abandoned highway off ramp. Run-ins with wildlife are a picnic compared to Clickers. It is easy to detect after he finds the cast off belongings left behind by other travelers with less luck. Heaps of rain-rotted clothing, a torn photo album, and fired guns. But the people there had tried very hard to survive if the piles of carnage was anything to go by.
One more look at the map told him that a school library was secure enough, but it would not keep out the infected. He pauses, his hand braces on the wooden bookcase. From the smell there would be a pile of dead in the back rooms. They always seemed to be slaughtered in groups.
“Ew,” she snatches her hand up to her nose. “It smells like an old towel.”
He regards her for beat, attempting to read her incredulity. Lots of people died here on this roadway. The bodies too wrecked to re-animate littered the grass on the roadside and left a foul brownish stain wherever the blood pooled under the sun.
The sunset is deep purple and bruised yellow at its edges. The trail they had followed starts towards the sunset dropping slowly behind the tree line, black branches laced against the first burgeoning stars.
Ellie doesn’t say a word when he abruptly changes course and leads them both off trail. It would make the most sense to reach a possible shelter on the map by nightfall but said fall is approaching fast and she’s beginning to shiver.
He doesn’t much care for the state of it— and when they do reach the safe spot, it turns out it is not much to get happy about. Just a sorry looking skeleton of a charred barn house.
Tension eased slightly as the ramshackle property finally comes into view, he shoulders the bulky pack of their food and watches her thin shoulders sag with relief. Wavering along behind, the kid’s eyes are at half mast, tendrils of stubborn hair clinging to her forehead. Ellie seems ready to go no matter how low the sun gets.
But no.
They have to stop.
The girl can’t take another day out here with the temperature steadily dropping and fewer safe refuges to rest. Staying in one place for any length of time is always a gamble no matter what zone you’re in, and one he’d have to take.
He doesn’t like the sound of her breathing. He even cuts off his next question on purpose just to take a good listen. Stuttering, panting, short gasps broken now and then by what he thinks are muffled coughs. She’s congested and (he'd bet credits) running a temp.
Double shit.
The landscape doesn’t offer much in the ways of a welcome—as desolate and barren as the rest of Western Wyoming. But it’s out of the cold, out of the snow, and best of all hidden out of plain sight.
Infected can’t see much beyond what’s left of their own skull but raiders are a different story. He needs something halfway to standing–can even put some work into it depending on how long Ellie decides she’s going to be sick.
Probably a while by the looks of her.
He quietly admires her fortitude. Trekking through the snow over this terrain without even a ripple. They hadn’t replenished from the last stopover and he hadn’t seen her eat much more than a half-hearted nibble of a days old granola bar.
It was no problem for him to go without for a day or two but she can’t. And if she is, in fact, as sick as he suspects her to be he’ll have to improvise–consider a risky town raid or go hunting.
He almost changes his mind and heads for the sturdier looking hay silo adjacent but figures the barn will have more scraps to burn. There needs to be a fire for warmth, regardless of the risk - it's life or death anyway you spin it. He'll take his chances with a stray raider or two if it means not freezing to death overnight.
He knows something is wrong when she doesn’t react, only follows him silently over the clumps of dried horse shit and rusted tools, piles of decaying debris and into the shelter.
She’s definitely feeling poorly. Were she at full speed the questions would start. Why’d we stop? We can’t stop here. Aren’t ya gonna do a sweep?
“Stay put.”
She doesn’t argue and that sets off his internal alarms anew. Just plops her entire wearied weight down, and buries her head in her folded arms.
“I’ll clear the place,” he says, unsurprised when she doesn’t acknowledge him. All the same, he needs her alert.
“Ellie!”
He says too sharply and her head snaps up, vacant eyes bloodshot. Christ, she looks a sight
“Back in a minute. Don’t get comfortable.”
He’s not entirely convinced letting her keep Bill’s handgun is the wisest idea, but she knows how to aim and shoot if a threat beckons.
His search yields nothing good or bad. This isn’t Clicker territory at least but he never checks anything off his list these days. He’d been half hoping to find some supplies—canned goods or a water pump maybe. But he finds neither.
It’s dry in here and he’s ready to start that fire.