Disclaimer: This is a fan work and in no way claims ownership of or identity as Naughty Dog's intellectual property: The Last of Us and its supplementary materials, Left Behind and Dark Horse's American Dreams.
There's that smell again. Coppery, fresh. Ellie can't think of a time when everything, including her morning gruel, didn't stink of it.
"How many?" someone asks.
"Seven in all," she answers, as a fellow soldier drags another body to the line-up.
They are all laid on their backs, dead. Some of their faces are barely visible, bullet wounds and blood disguising what might've been the semblance of a face. Some are women. Some have the bodies of teenagers. Ellie lets out a breath. She recognises one of them. It's a boy from the orphanage. He's turned out to be a Firefly.
"Okay, get their tags. Dead Firefly inventory is the best part of my day," Corporal Smith mutters, pulling out a notepad. "Private, will you do the honours?"
Ellie nods. She remembers the first time she was made to do this, years ago, freshly sixteen and fit for active duty. A pile of bodies to be identified with Private Williams tasked with turning them over and retrieving tags. She threw up afterwards, but nobody knows that and she'd rather it stay that way, secret and embarrassing. It's not like it was her first time seeing corpses. She'd seen and done worse before.
To infected.
Looking around to make sure she's being covered (she gets nods of approval from Sanchez, Don and Will who all station themselves at key points around the perimeter, their guns ready to fire at anything that may come their way), Ellie kneels down and begins to work. She lowers her visor – can't run the risk of blood getting into her eyes. She starts with the first in line.
"Male. African-American. Looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties," she describes. She reaches down and pulls away his shirt collar to get to the tag. She yanks it free and has to rub the blood off of it to read it. "Name: Robert Claiborne. Number: 000345."
"Next."
"Female. Caucasian. Late thirties, early forties. Name: Beth Goldman. Number: 000360."
She runs down the lot of them, until she gets to the boy. All she needs to know is his number.
"Male. Caucasian. Early teens. Name: Dexter Flannigan," Ellie recites. The engraving on the dog tag is clean and precise. "Number: 000357."
"Three-five-seven?" Smith says, and suddenly he's smirking. "You realise something? The numbers are getting closer and closer."
"Is that supposed to mean something?" Will asks, not taking his eyes away from the entrance he's guarding.
"It means," Smith explains, "That they're getting less and less recruits. We're making a dent here."
"It could just mean we wiped out a single wave. That doesn't give us precise figures," Ellie grumbles, moving on to another body. "For all you know, there's some fucking 'fly out there with two thousand etched on his tag."
"Just as long as he isn't in fuckin' Boston!" Don shouts from across the room, and the rest of them burst into laughter.
Ellie finishes the last one and stands up, tossing the tag in her hand away. They don't keep these things.
"We're done here," Smith shouts, and everyone begins to re-group.
He tears the paper out of his notebook and hands it to Sanchez, "All right. Have them run this list through Census, see if any of these yahoos are registered citizens of the QZ. If they are, give word to Jensen's unit to visit and interrogate any remaining family they might have. Dawson!"
Will answers.
"Gas these bodies, light 'em up. Good work, folks."
It's the closest thing to a burial they'll get. Ellie read in a book before that there are cultures across the sea where burning the dead purifies them before they move on to the afterlife. She's seen enough charred piles to know there's nothing pure about this. But it has to be done. Rotting bodies so close to the QZ are a bad omen and a potential hazard.
Although they've cleared the area and done their checks, Ellie is still always cautious. There was that one time where they didn't realise a sniper had been hiding in some rafters in an opposite building. Four soldiers died. She adjusts her visor, raising it for better visibility. The unit moves out and heads back to the entrance of the QZ.
At the gates, as always, they are scanned and then dusted for spores. Next is the hosing down of their boots, waterproof fatigues, anything that has blood on it. Any items brought from the outside has to be checked, recorded and isolated until approved if necessary. They store their machine guns at weapons check, inform those at the base stores how many cartridges, magazines and rounds had been expended and what they still have. The entire winding down process takes more than an hour, and everyone is eventually relieved to the soldiers' quarters. They all have to write a report in their logs about the day's events. The unit leader does all the official paperwork but he advises his team to write journal entries, because according to him, "Pulling triggers and jerking off shouldn't be the only way you keep your hands busy."
Ellie winds up in her room and falls onto her cot, the thin mattress providing a kind of relief she'd been aching for all day. She doesn't mind recon, patrol is shitty but manageable, she can deal with going after infected, but her stomach always roils for 'fly swatting. None of the tags today read the name or number she dreads the most and for that, she's grateful. Every couple of months, registers get updated as best they can. Word exchanges between QZs with lists of known, missing or deceased Fireflies. She bribes the record-keeper with a couple food ration cards to be allowed to peruse them. It's risky business to express any kind of interest, but people understand, somewhat. And in this place, people would do anything for a bit more food. She searches for 000129 and when she can't find it, breathes… relief? Disappointment? She's not sure what it is. But she has to be careful to keep the digging only between her and the record-keeper. Nobody wants to be suspected as an ally or even a sympathiser.
After all, there's that one guy from another unit whose twin brother had been caught months earlier spraying "Look for the light" in an alleyway. The cadet, as a result, had been put through rigours to prove his loyalties. There are more people like that, in the QZ and the military, people who have someone they care about absconding to the resistance. They have to be very careful. This is a glass castle. QZ propaganda paints the place to be a haven, a fortress. Ever since she was a girl, Ellie's known it as a complete cage. But it's better in here than out there. Out there, if you're not getting shot because you're infected, then you're going to get shot for fear of becoming infected. She's heard stories of rapes and robberies and cannibalism and slavery. Inside is better. This is humanity's last hope and she is part of that. Even though it doesn't always feel like she's making a difference so much as maintaining a status quo. Before they're sent on missions, she sometimes hears Sanchez reciting Padre Neustro while holding on to a cross-shaped pendant around her neck. The first time it happened, Ellie asked what she was praying for. Sanchez told her for safety and not to go to hell in case she dies out there. Ellie still finds it funny that anyone should worry about "going to hell" because hell is here and now.
She turns and faces the wall, watching the peeling paper, the grime stained in a pattern she's memorised well. What will she tell the kids at the home about Dex? She knows what will happen – after all, it happened before. There will be whispers, because come on, someone would've known. Or if they didn't, everyone will speculate. Children only leave the home for two reasons: they get kicked out or they become Fireflies. Dex had been good. Model, actually. An excellent future soldier.
Tomorrow someone will go, round up everyone in his age group, ask them questions.
"What's your relationship to him?"
"Did he ever say anything to you that you think we should know about?"
"What happened the last time you saw this person?"
"Have they left anything behind?"
"Did you see her with anybody strange?"
"Did you know Riley Abel's a Firefly?"
Ellie presses her eyes shut. Her own interrogation happened years ago, but she recalls vividly the stern voices, the nervousness, and how she had to swallow complete fear. She couldn't let them know and she still can't. Her mouth tastes a bit like copper.