Silence

By Lovova

I read in TV Tropes that Ellis will go completely silent if one of the other survivors dies, and will not start to talk again until all players are revived. While there has been talk of this being merely a glitch in the game, fandom has generally accepted it as another aspect to Ellis's personality, and I wanted to play with that a little. However, I love all four characters, and I couldn't figure out who to kill off…so I picked randomly from a random generator online.

So, in honor of the Random Generator, RIP…

"Nick." Rochelle said, her voice high and clear, strength and control so tightly wound up that her sheer grief would likely have been less obvious had she been weeping openly, "You were a good man. I know you wouldn't believe that, that you'd laugh to hear me say it…but it's true, love. You were a hard man, and a man difficult to understand…but you were always a good man to us."

Rochelle placed the flowers in her hand, regular, everyday flowers that she found and picked on the road while they had gathered the timber necessary for this, onto the pile of wooding that covered her fallen teammate, before stepping back with Coach and Ellis. Her face was painfully straight. Once, Nick had told her that the thing he liked most about her was that she didn't act the way most people thought girls ought to in times like this. She was strong, and yet not stupidly independent, or out to prove anything; she accepted help as much as she gave it. She didn't weep when times got tough, or angry at the world of men that had made it so. When times got tough, she picked up a shotgun, and then went to look for help. That's what Nick said he liked about her.

Straightening her shoulders so she could feel the heavy weight of the gun currently strapped onto her back, Rochelle stood with her team, and taking comfort in their presence, refused to cry.

It was Coach next. Like Rochelle, Coach stood straight, rigid, but instead of the grief on her face, his was full of anger. He held a blood stained Ax in his hand, and looked like he wanted to use, on the wood pilings, on the zombies, on Nick, on himself, on the whole god damned world and all the stupid, cruel things in it. But Coach knew that no matter how angry he was, there was no one to attack, not really. The Infected personally responsible for Nick's death had died in the explosion with him, the people responsible for the Infected, whoever they may be, were probably infected themselves, Coach was too religious to act on the anger he was feeling towards the devine plan at the moment, and…well…

No one blamed Ellis.

Coach stood at the wood pilings, wishing they had time to make a proper grave, knowing they didn't, and said, "Nick, when this is all over, I'm going to say a prayer for you, and I believe, I really do, that even though you didn't believe in God, as you told me often, I'm choosing to believe that my prayer, and as Rochelle said, your goodness will be more then enough to allow you into the kingdom of heaven, waiting for us to follow in our due time."

"However, because I know that prayer wouldn't mean much to you, here's something I think would. My GrandDaddy, God rest his soul, used to tell me stories that he says his GrandDaddy used to tell him, who said that his GrandDaddy, back when my family was a tribe in Africa, that it was the custom and belief that each family would pick a fallen member to send to the afterlife with a weapon, for the afterlife was filled with fraught and terrors, and that member of the family was given the honor or the weapon burial due to him being considered the most trustworthy and greatest warrior of the family. That member would be buried with the weapon, and his immediate decedents could live and die in peace, knowing that they're chosen family member was keeping a path clear for them, waiting to lead them to safety before heading to paradise themselves. It was the ultimate sign of trust"

Coach looked at the blood stained weapon before laying it on top of the wood pilings, as tenderly as he could, and saying quietly to the grave, "I placed my trust in you in life, and my God Nick, you didn't let me down. You were and are family to me. Thank you for sending our youngest back to us. We will see you again one day. "

Coach placed his hand firmly on the wood of the axe before getting back up and backing away. After a moment, both Coach and Rochelle glanced worriedly at each other before looking over at Ellis. It was his turn.

The boy looked terrified.

"Ellis, sweetheart," Rochelle finally whispered to him, trying to coax the boy out of whatever fog he seemed to be in, "We can't stay long. It's amazing we've been undisturbed this long. Don't you have anything to say?"

Ellis looked over at her, swallowing dryly, a terrible look of lost in his eyes. Ellis hadn't said anything since last night, before the unexpected hoard attack on the safety room. Though they had eventually put together the pieces and figured out what had happened, it had not been Ellis who had told them that, upon the teams separation, he and Nick had been trapped between a hoard and a Tank, and that Nick had made the ultimate sacrifice. He had not said a word about anything, not on Keith or on whatever infected might be nearby and certainly not on Nick. At first they had thought it was shock. Then they had thought it was guilt. Then of course there had been talk of it simply being grief.

But now, a day later, a lifetime when your life was being attacked upon the hour, he was still as silent as a broken bell, even at this most important moment, when he seemed, in his eyes, so eager to speak, that Rochelle and Coach had to consider the fourth possibility: that Ellis's already highly fragile psyche' might have finally snapped.

Ellis stepped forward, toward the grave, by half a step, still so close to his teammates that he could reach out and touch them, and opened his mouth…nothing. It would have looked humorous, had the grief and the fear in his eyes not been so horrible to watch. He seemed to try again, and there was a squeak, a painful sounding release of air, and Ellis started to sweat, as if even that much noise had proved exhausting. Tears were starting to well up. It was a horrible thing to see.

Coach stepped up and placed what he hoped was a reassuring hand on Ellis's shoulder, who looked up at him, his gaze pleading, as if he hoped that Coach could somehow make this better, to make all this not so. Even at 23, Ellis was so damned small, hardly any bigger then Rochelle, and Coach knew that Ellis wasn't likely to get any larger this late in age. Only a little over a month ago, before the Infestion, this light stature wouldn't have mattered, Ellis would have lived a fine, damn long life despite it.

Now…well, now Coach wished that anything he did would make Ellis better equipped for the man kill man world that he knew was waiting for the kid out there, knew in his gut that someday, for whatever reason, Ellis wouldn't have himself or Rochelle to watch his back, and Ellis, damn good with a shotgun but so damn little, so already lost in the stories inside his head, who would trust his life and friendship with whoever happened to be around, without compromise, freely, to people who hadn't earned it and never would…it kept Coach up at night.

And now, as if God, praise his name, needed to throw one more test at the boy, give one more flaw to the young man so already ill-equipped to survive in this dying world on his own, as Coach was convinced he would one day have to, to have the mechanic actually struck mute…Coach wished a hoard would just appear, so that he could take the baseball bat on his back and the gun at his hip and just unleash his fury and frustration and fear on the mindless bodies of those poor, sick, frothing people, God have mercy on their souls. He wanted to rip their bodies apart, shoot bullets into their faces, and then turn to Ellis and say, "Alright, Ellis, the hoard is dead, I'm ready to hear that story about Keith now, where did you leave off again…?"

But there was no hoard, only these three mourners at a poorly made grave, so instead Coach said to Ellis, "You don't have to say nothing if you don't want to, Ellis." Coach informed him, squeezing the shoulder as he continued on, his voice almost stern, "But you know you should."

Ellis swallowed dryly again, nodding, before turning back to the grave. Coach took a step back, allowing Ellis his space, and in that moment it seemed as if Ellis an the poorly made grave were the only two things in the world right now.

Ellis swallowed. He swallowed again. Tears were starting to fall down his face as he seemed to desperately search for his voice, odd noises coming out, whispered sounds that might have been words but came out as nothing but choked pains. Something, as feared, had cracked in Ellis's mind, and while physically nothing was wrong with his throat, the mechanic had never had such a difficult time with anything before in his life and he practically breathed rather then spoke, "Nick…"

Rochelle and Coach tensed, waiting to hear what Ellis had to say. Ellis swallowed.

"Nick…I'll check every damn one," breathed Ellis, "Every damn closet, ya hear? From here to New Orleans, I'll check, okay?"

Rochelle stole a glance from Coach, who shrugged, just as befuddled as her. What the hell was Ellis going on about? Both were too respectful to ask though, right up until they heard this next part, which made their blood run cold.

"So…" Ellis swallowed, "You best be in one of them, understand? We need you back soon, so, you just find a closet and rest in it, and I'll come find ya, okay? Just like we said, okay? Okay?"

Rochelle brought her hand up to her mouth, horror in her eyes as she whispered, "Oh…oh, Ellis, Ellis, Ellis."

Coach, in turn, had no idea what to do. The closet thing was a strategy the four had come up with in case they were separated and in desperate trouble, if one of them was so injured that to go any further would mean certain death, they were to hide in a closet and wait for the others to kill off all the zombies around before coming back for them, searching the closets until they found their missing member and then taking them to safety. That couldn't possibly be what Ellis meant, could it? Ellis couldn't possibly have such a limited grasp of what was actually going on here…

But, then, maybe he did, because Ellis then nodded firmly, as if he had said all he could bare before stepping back with Coach and Rochelle, who stared at him helplessly. What could they say? There was nothing to say. Nothing to talk Ellis out of whatever quiet, demented fog he had taken refuge from reality in, to make him understand that Nick wasn't going to just show up, that they were going to leave him here, under a pile of woods they planned to burn away with a Molotov the second they were far enough so that the zombies the fire would attract wouldn't be any harm to them.

So they said nothing, and they did just that, and they walked away from the flames, Rochelle's head bowed in grief, Coach's straight and looking ahead for any further danger to those he felt were in his charge, and Ellis just as quiet as quiet could be.

It was two days later. Ellis, without sound, went to check the closets of the house. Rochelle and Coach had stopped trying to stop him, and instead looked for new guns and ammo as he did so. There were three closets in the house.

Nick was in the third one.