"I swear." I could see the lie on Joel's face as he said the words. You don't go through what we'd been through and not know exactly what the other was thinking. A moment passed as I considered how to respond.

"Okay." I finally said.

There had to be a reason for Joel to lie to me. After all this time together... he would never do anything to hurt me, he must be protecting me from something. But what? I decided not to pry it from him. One day, if it really mattered, he'd tell me.

We continued marching to Tommy's. We arrived at the main gate, the same place we were at just last Fall. Was that really only a few months ago? Everything before this past Winter felt like it happened a million years ago...

We were greeted by a guard in a watchtower, his rifle pointed at Joel's head, "What the hell do you want?"

"We're lookin' for Tommy. He's my younger brother." Joel said.

The guard looked only a couple years older than me. He looked at Joel warily, "What's your name?"

"Joel."

The guard started talking into his walkie. I could barely hear what he was saying, but a moment later he climbed down and opened the gate to let us in. Joel talked to the guard for a couple minutes while we waited for Tommy to come. I didn't pay much attention, and stared at the ground, lost in thought. Tommy arrived and greeted us, "Well I'll be damned. Its nice to see you again brother." Tommy gave Joel a hug, to which Joel reciprocated.

"Oh and don't think I forgot about you." he said to me, rubbing the top of my head, messing up my hair.

"Hi." I said.

Tommy turned to Joel, "Well I'm glad you decided to take me up on my offer. Just like I said, we have room for you both. Matter of fact, we have room for you two and then some."

"Why's that?" Joel asked.

"Well some folks have been leaving lately, say we "ask too much of 'em". All we ask is that everyone pitch in a little bit, help keep the community's wheels turnin'. But anyways, we can discuss all that nonsense once you two are all set up. Let's get goin'."

We got into the heart of the town, people were walking everywhere. The center of the town had a huge park, full of bright green, freshly trimmed grass. There were benches all along the concrete paths leading through the park, each full of people talking about this or that. Along the outside street of the park were buildings, each with signs in front of them saying what they were. Movie theater, town hall, marketplace, kitchen, but most importantly, library. I gasped at the sight of it, a huge white building with huge windows in the front on both sides of a double door. "Holy shit! Is that whole place filled with books?" I asked Tommy.

"Well just about yeah. Any time we go out on a run we try and pick up any books or movies we can find. We gotta preserve all this stuff or else it'll just be gone. Like it never even happened."

Joel looked at me with a smile. I smiled back, feeling happiness in my stomach that I didn't think could return.

Tommy led Joel and me to a small two-story yellow house. The paint was peeling in some places, but as long as there was a roof over my head, I didn't really give a shit. We all walked through the fence gate and up the little path to the front door. Opening the door revealed a living room on the right which held all the natural amenities a living room should have, and on the left was the kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms, each had a dresser, a bed and that was it. "Maria has people getting some sheets and stuff ready for you guys, we took 'em off all the houses for the beds that were all occupied. The place has electricity, the T.V. works and all the lights too. There's even a DVD player in the living room and, if you want, you can borrow movies from the movie theater. Just don't take anything from the kid's section. we need those for when they have movie nights."

"Thank you, Tommy." Joel said.

"Thanks." I said.

As I laid down to sleep I thought to myself. I thought about how this place, here with Joel, could help me forget the awful things I'd seen. But mostly, I was just excited to dive into that library and read everything I could get my hands on.