A/N: Please remember to review with any comments, question, concerns, or constructive criticism that you might have.
Chapter 1:
Here We Go Again
"You can't save her. How long before she's ripped apart by a pack of clickers? That is if she hasn't been raped and murdered first," Marlene said, pointing the gun in her hand at Joel.
"That ain't for you to decide," he replied, showing no fear as he held the unconscious Ellie in his arms.
"It's what she'd want," Marlene insisted. Joel looked down and Marlene, thinking he was considering handing her over, pressed forward, "And you know it. Look…" she said, lowering her gun and taking her hand off of the trigger, "You can still do the right thing here. She won't feel anything." She started moving forward to take the girl from his arms.
b*BANG!*/b
Joel woke up with a start. He looked around and found himself back in his room in Jackson County, Wyoming. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes in an attempt to clear his mind. It had been three months since that day, the day he rescued Ellie from being sacrificed in order to hopefully create the cure for the Cordyceps infection that's ravaged the world. The day has been haunting his dreams ever since he killed Marlene. He didn't know why because he did it to protect Ellie and give her a chance at life. He was snapped out of his thoughts by someone knocking on his bedroom door.
He pulled on some pants and a shirt before shouting, "Yeah!?"
The door opened to reveal Ellie, the auburn-haired fourteen-year-old that Joel protected from Boston to Salt Lake City. She doesn't know the truth about what happened back in Salt Lake City, but Joel often worries that she suspects there's more than what he told her.
"Joel, Tommy's here. He wants to talk to you."
"Thanks, Ellie," Joel said, as he walked out to the front door where his brother Tommy was waiting. "What's going on, Tommy?"
"I was hoping you could help me with a little something," the unofficial leader of the county said, "We found a hidden military base and I was hoping you'd go with the team. I need the best people on the team and you're one of the best that I know."
"Alright, let us just go grab our gear and we'll meet the team."
"We?"
"Ellie's coming too," Joel said, heading back to his room to pick up his pack where his weapons and supplies were stored.
"You sure?" Tommy asked, looking at the fourteen year old, who was following Joel down the hall to her own room.
"She's been through worse. Besides, she'd come whether or not we brought her along, right, Ellie?"
"Fuck yeah, I would!" Ellie said, grabbing her own pack.
Tommy wasn't completely sold on the idea of Ellie joining the team, but figured there wasn't anything he could do to change either of their minds, due to both being well-known for their stubbornness.
"Alright," Tommy said, "Meet them at the front gate. Amir knows the way and he'll lead the way." With that, Tommy left the house to do some other business that required his attention.
Ellie and Joel made their way to the front gate after getting their packs and found their team of three others, Amir, another man named Steve, and a woman named Hannah.
"Didn't know this was gonna be a babysitting mission too," Steve said, his dislike of Ellie's presence being completely obvious, much to the annoyance of the girl.
"Hey, fuck you, man! I can take care of myself!" Ellie replied.
"Sure you can," Steve said smirking
"Can we get on with this already?" Joel asked.
"Yeah, come on, Steve, we've got a job to do," Amir said, leading the group out, "Okay, the base we're going to is a couple hours away by foot."
"If it's so close, why's it taken this long to find it?" Hannah asked.
"Apparently, it was being kept hidden for some reason. So much so that even before the world went to shit it couldn't easily be found unless you knew it was there. The way there seems to be free of clickers."
"What about inside?" Joel asked.
"Unknown, but it looks like the place hasn't been looted yet, so we could find weapons, medicine, food, who knows what else," Amir said.
"Fuck, how did we find this place?" Ellie asked.
"Old records, rumors, and a lot of luck," Amir replied.
The rest of the trip was done in relative silence until they reached an automatic gate. It was blocked off from the other side and the top was blocked off with barbed wire.
"Shit, we gotta find some way in," Amir said, looking around.
Joel and Ellie started walking around the right side of the fence, while Hannah and Steve took the left with Amir waiting back at the gate to watch if any clickers showed up. Joel and Ellie found a hole at the bottom of one section of fence. Ellie, having done it many times before, crawled through and started making her way to the gate. Joel used the walkie talkie he had on his pack to call the others, telling them what they were doing and to meet him at the gate.
Ellie unblocked the gate and opened it up, smirking at Steve, "Still think I need babysitting?"
"Guess you've got some use," Steve said, walking past her.
"Nice one, Ellie," Joel said, giving her a pat on the shoulder.
"Thanks, Joel," Ellie said smiling.
The large metal door to get into the base was ajar so the group got inside relatively easily. There were still emergency lights, which didn't really surprise anyone as the generators in charge of such things were typically built to last. They moved as silently as they could in an attempt to avoid the attention of any infected within the base. Moving through one of the main halls, Ellie made a discovery on one of the walls.
"Hey, look at this," she whispered, her flashlight illuminating a map of the base.
The others crowded around, stealing glances around to make certain nothing was creeping up on them in the dark.
"Here," Amir said, pointing at the area of the map marked 'medical facility,' "If there's medicine anywhere, it'll be here. Steve and Hannah will go there and grab the medical supplies. I'll head to the armory marked on the map and grab what I can there. Joel, Ellie, I want you two to head to the mess hall and gather any unspoiled food that you can. We'll meet back here," he said, pointing to a large room the map showed was connected to the place marked as 'vehicle bay.'
Joel and Ellie took the hallway that would lead them to the mess hall. There were still no clickers to be found. That changed when they opened the door to the mess hall. As soon as the door was open a crack, they heard the telltale sounds of clickers. They immediately crouched down and slowly entered. There were three clickers just milling around. Joel moved up behind one and stabbed it in the neck with one of his homemade shivs. He repeated this with the second one, but when he attempted to do the same with the third, he accidently knocked a glass bottle off the table, causing it to smash against the floor and alerting the clicker.
"Shit!" Joel said as it shrieked and charged him.
Ellie jumped on its back and stabbed it repeatedly in the head with her switch-knife, killing it.
"Thanks, Ellie," Joel said.
"You're welcome," the girl said before they started searching through the kitchen, looking for any food they could still eat. They found a few MREs, some canned food, and a couple unsquished twinkies.
"Looks like that's all we'll find here," Joel said, "We better head back."
"Right behind you," Ellie assured him.
The two made their way back down the hall and went to where they were supposed to meet the rest of the group. Amir was already there, his pack heavy with ammo and extra weapons, and Hannah and Steve arrived a few minutes later.
"Any luck?" Amir asked.
"Not much in the way of food, but we managed to find some stuff we can use," Joel said.
"We pretty much drained the clinic dry of medicine and other stuff," Steve said, gesturing to his pack.
"Good, let's move," Amir said as he opened the door they headed through the hall to the vehicle bay.
When they headed into the vehicle bay, they found that going inside was a mistake as the sound of the squeaky door alerted the not one, not two, but three bloaters to their presence. The massive infected roared and began to lumber towards the group.
"Shit, run!" Amir yelled as they ran back the way they came, hoping to outrun the massive infected.
Two of the three hallways that were now blocked by clickers that heard the bloaters' roars and came to seek the source of the noise. The group ran down the third with Joel and Ellie being the last two in the line. About twenty feet down the hall, a clicker burst out of a side door and grabbed Hannah before sinking its teeth into her neck. She only had time to scream once before her throat was ripped out. Knowing they couldn't afford to slow down, the two took the door and kept running as fast as they could. They quickly found themselves in a dead end with a heavy locked door being the only way to go.
"Fuck! What'll we do, Joel?" Ellie asked, panicking as the infected started moving down the hall.
"Try in here!" Joel said as he began slamming against the door. It wouldn't budge from his slams and the infected were getting closer and closer until Joel finally broke through, "Inside!" he ordered and the two piled into the room before they slammed the door closed and blocked it off. A few seconds later, the infected started banging on the door.
"Fuck, what'll we do now?" Ellie asked.
"I don't know," Joel replied after a quick scan around the room.
It was a lab of some kind judging from the advanced technology filling the room. One of which seemed to be a big metal tube with a small window in it. From what Joel could see, there wasn't another way out.
"Hey, Joel, unexcavated means that it wasn't dug out, right?" Ellie asked suddenly.
"Yeah, it's usually for when people build a building around bedrock or something. Why do you ask?" Joel asked, glancing through some papers that had been left abandoned in the room. They were filled with scientific terms and methods that he couldn't even begin to follow.
"That map we looked at earlier said that this area was unexcavated. Why would they say something wasn't built if there was a room here?"
"Either the map was out of date or they didn't want someone to stumble on this room by accident."
"Why? It doesn't look like there's anything interesting here," Ellie said, moving over to the tube.
"Do I look like a scientist? I can't make heads or tails out of these notes," Joel said, tossing the papers back down.
Ellie pulled herself up to peer into the window on the tube. What she saw startled her enough that she dropped back to the floor with a yell of "Fuck!"
"What is it?" Joel asked, rushing to her side.
"Th-there's a person in that thing!"
"What?" Joel asked, moving to look himself. Sure enough, there was a man in a hospital gown in the tube. He had short black hair and Caucasian skin. It looked like he was frozen solid. "What the hell?"
"Sh-should we get him out of there?" Ellie asked.
"It's not our problem. We don't have time to waste trying to let him out. We've got to find a way out of here."
"But, Joel, he might know a way out that we don't!"
Joel sighed and moved to the console nearest to the tube. He started pressing random buttons, trying to get something to happen. It was a few minutes before he managed to get a message that said "UNFREEZING PROCESS COMMENCING." The process took a few seconds before the tube opened with a hiss and the man inside dropped hard to the ground. After a few seconds, the man groaned and coughed a little before he rolled onto his back. He blinked a couple of times to clear his eyes and looked at Ellie who was standing over him.
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" the man groaned, making Ellie look at Joel in confusion, but the elder man waved it off. The unfrozen man stood up and looked at Joel, then Ellie, and then back at Joel, "Aren't you Blackwatch guys recruiting a little young? What is this, 'bring your daughter to work' day?"
"Blackwatch? Who's that?" Joel asked.
"Uh, the owners of the base you're in. How could you not know?" the man asked, thoroughly confused.
"This place has been abandoned since the outbreak. We had no idea who ran this place," Joel said.
"Outbreak? They haven't wiped out the Mercer virus?" the man asked, "What year is it anyway?"
"It's 2034," Joel said, much to the unfrozen man's shock.
"What the fuck!? I was in there for over twenty fucking years!?"
"Keep quiet," Joel ordered, "The outbreak we're talking about is the Cordyceps infection. It's caused people infected with it to become what we call clickers and try to kill or infect the healthy."
"Uh huh," the man said, looking at the blocked door, "Why is the door blocked off?"
"There's a bunch of clickers outside and we were hoping you'd know another way," Ellie said.
The man smirked, "You two have no idea what the Mercer Virus does to people, do you?"
Ellie shook her head and Joel said, "Just that it turns them into monsters."
"A crude, but accurate description," the man said moving over to the door before moving the barricade. He looked back at the two. "You may want to stay back." The two people stood back as the unfrozen man pulled the barricade out of the way and opened the door. One of the clickers burst into the room, but the man hit him with a frontal kick with the force of a wrecking ball. It splattered against the wall on the opposite side of the hall from the door. A second tried to attack him but he punched straight through its chest. The man turned back to the two others, "Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Alan Cogburn Thompson," he said as he bowed to the two, seemingly not noticing the third clicker that was coming up behind him. When it got within grabbing range, Alan's hands turned into massive claws and sliced the clicker in half.
"What the hell are you?" Joel asked, drawing his pistol and aiming it at Alan.
"I'm infected with the Mercer virus," Alan said, "It turned me into a living virus, giving me all sorts of unusual powers. Unfortunately, I was captured by Blackwatch and brought here. Don't worry though, I'm not contagious."
Joel kept the gun pointed at him for a few more seconds before lowering it, "Alright, I'm Joel, this is Ellie. Why don't you lead the way?"
"Better not try and mess with us or we'll fuck you up," Ellie said.
"I'll be sure to remember that, baby sister," Alan said, smirking as he grabbed some of the papers to look at a later time. He used his powers to make his body change the clothes he was wearing to a dark grey hoodie, a black leather jacket, black jeans, and black boots. His arms also turned back to normal.
"Whoa, that's awesome," Ellie said at the demonstration of his abilities.
"Thanks, baby sister."
Joel contacted the others through the radio. Amir and Steve were all right and could get back to the meeting point if the bloaters could be eliminated. Alan shrugged when Joel looked at him questioning. Since he didn't know what bloaters were, he figured he'd give it a shot. They found their way back to the meeting point. The bloaters shot their balls of caustic spores at the three, but Alan pushed the two humans back through the door and shut it, taking the full brunt of the attack.
Alan hacked and coughed upon inhaling the spores, something about them affecting even his blacklight-powered body. Shaking it off, Alan charged at the massive fungal infected, his claws brought to bear. He cut the head off one and drove his claws into the gut of another, eviscerating it. The third managed to grab Alan, picking him up off his feet by grabbing his arms with its thick hands. It bit into Alan's shoulder, making him cry out in pain. Fighting through the pain, Alan tried to find enough leverage to use his claws, but couldn't break free. The bloater had enough strength to keep him from breaking free. Its grip was broken when Joel came back in the room and shot it in the head with his hunting rifle. Alan dropped to his feet and decapitated the bloater before tendrils came out of his body and absorbed the massive creature.
Rather than feel regenerated like he expected, it suddenly felt like his entire body was on fire and he should know considering he was once lit on fire. He dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around his body as if to smother the invisible flames. The tendrils that made up his body began to writhe as it fought off the effects of the fungal infection.
"What's the matter?" Joel asked keeping Ellie from getting too close.
"I, ugh, don't know. This has never, unh, happened before," Alan said, getting back to his feet, the pain finally subsiding and his wound healed itself, "Guess the Cordyceps and the Mercer virus don't react well together."
"How did you do that absorbing thing?" Ellie asked.
"It's called consumption. It's not so much eating as the name makes it sound, but rather like how some one-celled organisms absorb other such organisms. When I do it, I gain the abilities, skills, and memories of the target, assuming they were killed recently. I'll even gain the ability to transform into the person that I absorb."
"Cool, sick, but cool," Ellie said.
Just then, Amir and Steve arrived and their eyes immediately went to Alan.
"Who's this?" Amir asked, distrustful of the new face.
"Name's Alan. I was, uh, living in here until I found Ellie and Joel. I helped 'em out and they invited me back."
"Fine," he said, not entirely buying the story, but accepting it. He led the group to the vehicle bay where they managed to find a van with gas and the keys nearby. They took it and drove back to Jackson County, not knowing that the releasing of Alan activated a silent alarm.
Meanwhile, in the ruins of New York City, a man was rushing through a military base, searching for someone.
"Sir! Sir!" he called, seeing his commanding officer.
"What is it, Sergeant?" the man asked looking up from the reports he was reading.
"Do you remember that alert report that you told us to watch out for?" the first man asked, "The one in Wyoming?"
"Yes, what about it?" the officer asked.
"It's gone off."
That got the officer's full attention, "Scramble all troops! We need to head to Wyoming now!"
"Yes sir!" the man shouted running off to do his orders.
"If we don't hurry, what little order we've been able to put into place will be destroyed," the officer said, muttering to himself.
Back in Wyoming, Joel's group was still driving and just came over a ridge to see a sight that chilled their blood.
"What the hell?" Joel asked.
"I'm guessing it doesn't usually look like that," Alan said.
Jackson County was in flames.
A/N: And there's chapter 1! Please remember to review with any comments, question, concerns, or constructive criticism that you might have.