Joel awoke to droplets of rain leaking through the already half-rotted ceiling and onto his forehead. He sat up slowly, glancing around at the other men-all sound asleep on their mattresses.
One hand dragging itself along his forehead, Joel pulled the itchy wool blanket off and let it pile up on the dingy carpet. The springs in his mattress squeaked mercilessly as he forced himself up, and he slid his feet into his boots. He reached into his backpack and pulled a makeshift blade from it-he still didn't trust these assholes, even after working with them for half a year. It was the fact that they had become so hostile and reclusive that they resorted to setting up ambushes at every entrance to the city, all for the purpose of brutally murdering unsuspecting travelers and stripping them of everything remotely useful-even if it meant butchering the corpses. Joel himself had become pretty horrible over these past 10 years, but it still bugged him whenever he was asked to help move a pile of bodies to the bonfire in what was left of the city hall.
This group had even taken to using the city hall as a sort of base of operations, and none of them seemed to think that the huge pile of human bodies constantly burning right before their eyes was in the least bit disturbing.
Joel was only here because he had been tortured into doing so. The Hunters here saw the potential in him to be completely merciless, and they had persuaded him to stay for awhile.
Yet he still couldn't move himself to stop caring completely. He knew that he had lost a lot of his humanity, "almost fucking all of it" to quote Tommy, but...purposely slaughtering any other human you find, despite the fact that sixty percent of the entire population of the planet has been wiped out? It was insane. So insane that Joel would never even think of doing it outside of this situation-unless of course they were trying to kill him; then it was fair game.
Joel sat at one of the windows in the next room, staring at the beginnings of a sunrise-bright yellow hues finding their way through the dense cloud cover and landing on heaps of metal that had been huge business parks that appeared to be encased in panes of glass. He reached into his pocket and pulled a scrap of paper from it. Joel unfolded it and gave it another look.
The leader-Aaron or something-had at least organized this group well enough to give them schedules of what shifts they were doing every Sunday on scraps of paper found lying around. Joel read his for the sixth time-it was really all he could do since he could only get maybe two or three hours of sleep a night. Later that morning he was supposed to be leading the team stationed at the south freeway entrance. It was the busiest one, since stragglers from the Jefferson City Quarantine Zone were almost constantly trying to drive through to avoid the bloodshed between rebels and the FEDRA soldiers. From what Joel gathered, the zone had run out of rations, so the civilians either fought or fled. And with the constant flow of people getting caught in the city, Joel was beginning to think the military was winning.
He crumpled the scrap of paper up and tossed it onto the concrete floor, letting out a deep sigh. He wished he could sleep, but memories decided to plague his mind just as he lay down to rest. It was no longer memories of Sarah and the deep red of her own blood on her concert T-shirt, it was now memories of what he had begun doing here. Tonight it was the image of a woman silently pleading him to spare her as he drove a makeshift blade into her neck. It was his first kill as one of these hunters, and he'd only done it because there was a whole squad of them watching him as he did so.
Joel sat ducked behind a pile of old compact cars, all beginning to rust due to years of being neglected. A distant rumble of an engine could be heard from the ambush, which was why Joel was waiting behind a rank heap of cars. Once the sound was close enough, Joel signaled for one of the others to act as bait; to go pretend that he was another traveler who had been attacked.
Joel and the rest of the hunters listened carefully:
The brakes squealed as the car came slowly to a halt. A door opened and a man's voice asked, "What's going on? You need help?"
"Yeah. I-I'm hurt and I don't have any bandages..."
"Hold on, I think we might have some extra." Footsteps-presumably back to the car. A zipper buzzed open, and the sound of rustling fabric was heard as the traveler rifled through a bag looking for something to dress an imaginary wound. Soon enough, their voice said, "Uh-this's all we've got. If I had some antiseptic I'd let you have it."
"Nah...this's just fine."
Joel raised a hand and the rest of the hunters all jumped out and quickly laid waste to the one traveler still standing outside their car. They quickly moved to surround the van, and Joel shoved his way through them to throw open the front passenger door and drag the wife of the man they'd already killed out. She was kicking and screaming profanities, threatening to kill him and all the other hunters if they laid a hand on the children.
Joel simply tossed her off to another hunter, who let out a quick snicker and pulled a hunting knife from his belt. Joel turned away just as he brought the blade to her neck, and a quick 'shink' followed by the gurgle of someone trying to speak through their own blood sounded. The children were still sitting in the car-a boy around nine or ten and his four year old brother-cowering and sobbing after witnessing their father mangled by assault rifle fire and their mother bled out right before them. Joel watched them, knowing he'd have to issue the order to have them killed. He sincerely didn't want to, but they wouldn't be able to survive on their own.
"Kill 'em. 'N make it quick. There's a lotta good stuff in the back a' the van."