One time, I lost Tess.
Joel doesn't know about it. Before I became precious and valuable to him, he forgot to pay attention to me and made sure Tess was there. If Tess was there, I was there. Naturally. But I lost her once.
When we were downtown, just outside the quarantine zone, and I was looking (seeking), I lost her. I was busy seeing trees growing uninhibitedly, busy not seeing military officers, busy noting the incredible takeover that nature at initiated some twenty years ago. I had never thought of the cordyceps as nature while inside the zone, only thought of it as some monster. But the cordyceps was a thriving, natural, living thing, clinging to life at every opportunity, like the vines growing into the creases of bricks on the buildings outside the zones.
You never realize you're walking so slowly when you're reveling in something. I think I had stopped walking entirely. I knew Tess was still going, because being outside the zones and seeing the world-she had done all that already. She'd had a life before the infection began. I had always wondered if Joel had been a part of that life. But for some reason, the world was happening in slow motion and fast forward at the same time. I couldn't absorb enough in the first three seconds I was outside, I couldn't see enough. I wanted to explore and wander and search but Tess was pushing ahead, too fast, too fast.
And then I lost her. Somewhere between ogling a semi-truck with orchids sprouting out of the cab and wading in a stream under a half-collapsed freeway, I lost her. I was holding a butterfly in my hand, its wings wet and heavy.
"Hey, Tess?" I wanted her to see, I wanted to share this moment. Nature in my hand. Something from the outside that might not try to kill me.
But there was no answer. I called for her again. The moment was fleeting. I was quickly falling out of the outside world that was harmless and remembering that this was Earth and the infection had hit Earth twenty years ago and Joel wasn't here and Tess wasn't here and I didn't have anything, not even a fucking gun or a shiv or fucking anything and my neurons collided and hit all the red lights on their way to my muscles because I froze and I couldn't do anything, couldn't move and couldn't hear anything but clickers that weren't there.
I panicked, my hands padding all over my body, searching for something, anything that could cut an infected. A button from my backpack, or my jeans? My breathing quickened, my heart rate spiked. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears.
For the first time in my life, I was alone.
And then Tess was there, scolding, "Ellie, what the hell are you doing?" I almost pissed myself. And then I almost cried. So I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and stared at her for a moment, noticed the dirt on her cheek and the tear in her clothes and I wanted to cry and smile but I couldn't do anything because I was so happy not to be alone.
I mumbled, "Nothing. Sorry." Tess scoffed but not in an annoyed way. Almost like she was laughing. Like she had expected me to get lost out here, four feet away from the zone.
She turned and made a gesture for me to follow. I climbed the broken freeway and saw Joel up ahead, searching the area for supplies. I didn't understand then that that was what kept him going. Supplies. Survival. Tess. Me.
Tess walked up to him and said something that I couldn't hear from where I was, but Joel turned. That was the first time he looked at me and wasn't scowling. He seemed... calm. Almost content. His eyes met mine and then he stared for just a second.
He shook his head in the same manner Tess had scoffed. I just stood there, watching them.
"Come on, Ellie." He said.
I never lost Joel. Not once.