As Joel ducked behind the flipped over desk, the two guards, standing at the end of the long straight hospital corridor fired a salvo into it. As he was showered with fiberboard debris, Joel mentally ticked off his assortment of weapons, even though he didn't need to; they were all empty and he knew it. He hadn't survived all these years by losing track of ammunition. He had even used the last two rounds in the revolver; he had always saved them in case worse came to worse and he had to kill Ellie and himself.

Ellie… stupid girl… She had seen her immunity as the possible salvation for all mankind by way of creating a cure. That was her noble quest. He was under no such delusion. He knew it was too late for a cure. Let's say they actually did find a cure; what then? They would need to start up a power plant that was close to a manufacturing plant, gather the materials to make the pills, produced them, and then distribute them fast enough to wipe it out.

Joel had worked both sides, the good and the bad. He knew what would happen as soon as word leaked out that there was a cure. Every warlord and potentate the world over would descend on them and try to take it. Just a single pill would be worth a fortune. Without the infrastructure to manufacture and distribute the cure, there was no point.

So, why was he here? He had a different quest: keep the girl alive. They chose him because he was a survivor. He was willing to do whatever he needed to do, to stay alive, without some hoity toity sense of morality getting in the way. Marlene had gambled that if the girl stuck close enough to him, she would survive too. She had been right. He had kept Ellie alive, apparently just so they could kill her in the quest for their useless cure.

"Ellie…" he muttered her name aloud without realizing it. He had been traveling with- escorting really, that little girl for a year. He knew if she were here right now, she would be looking at him with hopeful adoration; she was an optimist and always saw the silver lining in everything. "Clouds…" he knew he had one smoke bomb left but he had been saving it for their escape. He always used them to run away…

Suddenly an idea struck him. He looked back down the length of the corridor and examined the height of the ceiling. He couldn't throw it all the way to them, it would come up fifteen to twenty feet short. But looking behind him gave him inspiration.

He popped up from cover and fired his empty revolver at one of them and the hall resounded with the defiant click of an empty chamber. He ducked down again and hurled the smoke bomb as hard as he could- side-armed.

"He's empty!"

"We know that sound mister!"

Just then the smoke bomb exploded well short of them and then the two men heard the sound of Joel running. "Yeah, you better run!" one of them yelled as the other lowered his rifle.

Joel appeared from the smoke at an all out sprint and hit the pompous one before he could even widen his eyes at the ax coming toward his face. The other man dropped his rifle and clip, then went for a blade, but it was too late. The ax descended in a brutal arc and hit the man where the neck meets the chest; he was nearly decapitated. Joel used the weight of the falling mans body to help pull the ax free, as he continued his charge, never having broken his stride.

He impacted the doors at full speed and fell through them onto the stairwell landing. Without looking to see if they were dead, much less search the bodies, he blocked the doors with a cart and locked the wheels.

He couldn't let her die after all of this; it couldn't all be for nothing. "Hold on Ellie girl, I'm coming…"