The ideas I get while shoveling, I swear.
The shot that ends Henry's life comes long before Joel could have possibly stopped it and a lifetime after he anticipated it.
As soon as the younger man goes down, Joel's flinching away in horror, far too accustomed to the death yet somehow still stunned by the brutality. Ellie's backed into a crouch against a wall and swearing like a sailor as he stumbles back from the bodies of the freshly-fallen brothers. Her eyes are wide as they take in the pooling blood that paints the sudden catastrophe into reality.
Sam's hands are still at his throat where they'd been locked in his final moments as he choked on his own blood. His eyes are dark coins, flat and glazed, distinctly devoid of their old light and the rabid hunger which had so recently tainted them as he'd clawed at Ellie. Beside him, Henry looks much the same, the lifeless horror in his eyes clear despite the messy hole in his head as he lays still under where he's just splattered his own brains against the wall.
Joel's still choking on his own horror and shock as he gestures desperately for Ellie to look away.
He manages to get both himself and Ellie outside after several minutes of concerted and stunned effort. He's not entirely sure what the point is since Ellie got more than her eyeful of the carnage, but if there's any shreds of guilt in him for not getting her out sooner, they've been rendered insignificant by the sheer immenseness of the situation and he dismisses the thoughts quickly.
They stop just behind the building, slumping against it and taking in deep, heaping breaths of air. The few birds not scared off by the quick succession of gunshots and screams flutter timidly through the air, and Joel wishes they'd just go the hell away. They don't belong here, chirping cheerfully in a place where two boys just died, but he supposes it's fitting that the damn things are flying around anyway. After all, this world hasn't given two shits about timing or justice over the past twenty years, and it has no reason to start now just because two more lives were claimed.
Ellie's elbows are braced on her knees, the heels of her hands pressed against her forehead. She's muttering curses under her breath, holy shit holy shit holy shit again and again as if the repetition might help the situation finally sink in. It doesn't.
He's not sure how long has passed when she finally stops muttering. Her eyes are still colored with shock, but she believes it now, even if she doesn't want to. Ellie looks so confused for a moment, her toughness stripped away under the weight of the trauma, and Joel thinks briefly that he's looking at a shadow of someone who used to be, because the girl sitting beside him looking like she wants to cry but can't find the energy to do so seems simultaneously too old and too young to be the teenager he's been travelling with for the past month.
The thought occurs briefly to him that he should ask how she's holding up, should say something that might be at least marginally reassuring even if it's a lie.
"We should bury them," he says instead.
Ellie nods. For a moment, she stays silent until she finds words again. "Let's go find shovels."
It takes nearly an hour for them to locate a discarded shack with a few shovels leaning against the wall in a puddle of dirty bedsheets that had no doubt once protected something from dust before the world went to hell and dust became the least of anyone's concerns. Luckily enough, the shovels are still functional, and Joel brings the sheets along too so the bodies can at least be wrapped up before getting pitched in the ground and left behind.
By the time they return, the sun is steadily climbing towards noon. Joel estimates it to be somewhere around ten, which he's glad for. Ten o'clock means the day's still getting started, means that if they move it they can get the graves dug and filled and put this place in the past before dusk starts setting in. They can move on, keep surviving. It's what they have to do.
He hands Ellie a shovel and nods solemnly as he jams his own into the dirt. "Start digging."
There's a rhythm to it as the two holes in the ground grow from little divots into gaping tombs hungry for the latest casualties of their everyday war. Neither Joel nor Ellie speaks as they work, but the sound of the shovel digging into the dirt provides the perfect white noise, just loud enough to push away the silence before it can become uncomfortable.
They're about halfway through when Ellie suddenly stops. Her shovel digs into the ground and doesn't resurface, and after several long minutes of putting it off, Joel finally asks what's wrong.
She stares at the dirt, then up at him. She takes in a breath, opens her mouth to speak, and then she shuts it again. "Nothing," she says.
Joel nods at her lie, then gestures to the hole she's digging. "Come on," he says. "Let's keep going."
Another ten minutes pass and she stops again. She lays down the shovel quietly and walks over to the tree where she's leaned her backpack, sitting down beside it without a word. Joel doesn't say anything, just watches her for a second out of the corner of his eye before returning his focus to digging. He's only ever been the type to pry answers from one person in his life, and she's been dead for twenty years now. Ellie didn't answer, and he won't ask again. If she doesn't want to talk about it, he sure as hell doesn't want to either, and it's not like he doesn't have his fair share of secrets that he doesn't feel like sharing.
She sits there for several minutes while he digs before he finally looks toward her again. She's quietly turning over a plastic toy in her hands. Joel recognizes it as the one from the toy store, the one Sam wanted that Henry made him put back. He supposes Ellie must have taken it somehow without anyone noticing, but he doesn't dwell on it for long. Instead, he keeps digging until she joins him again after nearly half an hour. Neither of them speak.
It takes the better part of seven hours to dig both of the graves between the two of them, and there's a deep sadness in the air as Joel and Ellie look without smiling upon the work of their day. It seems like a horrible prize for so much effort, but that's a part of this world now. No one ever claimed that good deeds yielded good rewards in an apocalypse. Everything these days appears to produce the same empty holes and piles of shit, not that it surprises anyone.
Joel tells Ellie to wait outside, and she does so without comment. When he comes back outside with something heavy wrapped in a bedsheet, and then a second bedsheet full of the same, she keeps her silence. They place the brothers in their adjacent holes in the ground.
He looks down at the bodies, and she does too. There's a distinct sense of incompleteness as they see the blood and dirt on the sheets and the way that one is wrapped around a load which is far too small to be fair.
"We should say something," Ellie murmurs.
There's a long pause. They say nothing as they start to fill in the holes.
Replacing the ground goes far faster than taking it away, and within two hours, the graves are refilled. Two mounds of freshly turned earth sit side by side. A cairn rests at the head of each, made from rocks Ellie personally went to go and look for.
Dark is coming. It's seven in the evening and they've lost a whole day here and far more than the time as well, and the sun is on the verge of starting to dip under the horizon. Within an hour, dark will be upon them both. Joel knows it would be wise to stay and wait here in the safe haven they found rather than heading out to rough it right away and take their chances with the other survivors and the Infected in the dark.
He clicks his flashlight on and off a few times to make sure the beam of light is steady. It is.
"Let's go," he tells Ellie.
She nods. "Okay." With one last look, she turns from the graves and starts walking.
They don't make it far before they lose the light and they spend nearly an hour wandering in the darkness before they stumble upon a small shed, the same one they'd found earlier. It's not the best as shelter goes and the roof is so far gone that even laying inside the shack feels like stargazing, but it's a place with walls and a couple of shingles and that's good enough for him.
Joel sets up a fire in the middle of the shed and keeps it carefully contained. They heat up a can of food and take turns eating it without saying a word and the silence marches on.
After the fire goes down, Joel looks over at Ellie. Her head's on her backpack and she's staring at the holes in the ceiling without comment, her eyes bright and searching. There's a distance in her gaze that says she's not entirely there, and Joel doesn't bother her. It's been a harsh day, and even on the best of days he's not too inclined to go starting conversations where they don't need to be started.
Still, there's something about her that says she's still thinking of something from the day before. Something she said or didn't say. Did or didn't do. He could ask, but he doesn't bother. She'll get over it or spit it out eventually. He's not about to influence which one. Either way, it'll be worked around somehow, and that's the important part. Not talking it out. Not pretending it matters.
Nothing matters anymore besides survival, because this might not be living but they sure as hell ain't dead.