The Last of Us
Based on the story by Neil Drukmann
Disclaimer
The Last of Us was written for Naughty Dog on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment by Neil Drukmann and Bruce Straley. It is a trademark property of Sony Computer Entertainment. This is a not-for-profit fan-work for free distribution through the world-wide web. No infringement of trademark or copyright is intended.
Author's Notes
I haven't seen a 'decent' straight novelisation of the game story so far and it was this that led me to start work on this. However, as I continued, I decided that, whilst I will be avoiding OCs, I wasn't content to just turn Neil Drukmann's fine story into a narrative story form. There was one change about which I had lots of ideas. With encouragement of a few other fans of the game, I decided to take this story in this new direction. I hope that I won't be changing any of the key points and themes but I really, really wanted to make this change.
You'll see what I mean in time.
Censor – M – Violence, profanity and description of death and disease
Prologue – Hometown
Awoken by the sound of her father, Joel, nearly slamming the front door, Sarah Miller stretched and yawned in a way that she'd forever deny was cute. She tried to blink the fatigue out of her mind as her dad stormed across the living room, talking urgently on his cell phone.
"Tommy, I… Tommy… Tommy, listen to me! He is the contractor, okay? I can't lose this job!" There was a pause as Joel's brother replied. "I understand. Look, let's talk about this in the morning, okay? We'll talk about it in the morning, I mean it. Alright… goodnight."
Joel terminated the call and tossed his cell onto a side table near the kitchen island before dragging himself towards the couch and his daughter. Sarah drew her legs up underneath her and looked up at her father, her cornflower blue eyes shining with mischief. "Scoot," he advised his daughter, gesturing. The girl shifted to give her father room to sit down on the couch. Joel turned on the TV and sat glaring at the sports news, his eyes unseeing.
"So, I'm thinking it was a fun day at work, huh?"
Joel briefly considered trying to handle Sarah's sass but he decided that he really didn't feel anywhere near human enough tonight. He decided to focus on something a little easier to handle than his current employer loudly declaring that it was his brother or his job. "What are you doing up? It's late!"
Sarah gasped and sprang upright, staring at the clock over the couch. "Oh crud! What time is it?"
"It's way past your bedtime is what it is!"
The twelve-year-old girl smiled at her father in a cocky way. "But it's still today!"
"Honey, please not right now. I do not have the energy for this!" Ignoring her father's complaint, Sarah dived under the couch and emerged with a gift-wrapped box. She presented it to her father with a broad smile. "What's this?"
"Your birthday… or it will be for the next half-hour or somethin'!" Joel opened the box and his jaw hung open in an undignified way. Looking at him was a very, very nice looking high-end analogue wristwatch. "You're always complainin' about your busted watch, so… So, I figured… You like it?"
Joel strapped the watch on and frowned at its face in confusion. "Honey, this is…" He put his ear to the face of the watch.
Sarah's face crinkled with concern as she took in her father's expression. "What?"
"This is nice but… I… I think it's stuck! It's not…"
Sarah gasped in dismay. She grabbed her father's hand and yanked it over to her. "WHAT? No, no, no, no! That can't be!" Sarah looked at the steadily advancing second hand and all the other indications that the watch was working normally. "Oh, 'ha, ha'!" she growled at her maliciously-grinning father.
"Honey, this is great but where did you get the money for this?"
Sarah decided that one joke deserved another. She arranged herself casually against the arm of the couch and shot her father a haughty look. "Drugs; I'm a major dealer in hard-core drugs."
"Oh, good," Joel responded seriously, his eyebrow quirked. "You can start helpin' out with the mortgage then!"
"Pfft! Yeah, you wish!"
For all her determination to wish her father a happy birthday, Sarah was only twelve years old. Half an hour later, she was fast asleep. Joel turned off the TV and gently gathered her into his arms.
Truth be told, she was pretty much his life. When they placed that tiny baby into 17-year-old Joel Miller's arms, even though he knew it was going to change his life forever, he knew that he'd spend the rest of his life loving this girl and making sure that she wanted for nothing. He didn't care that Amanda wanted nothing to do with her and that by insisting on caring for her he'd probably ruined his first serious relationship and his plans for the future. He had given up his dreams and had instead become a blue-collar construction worker. He'd gone through hardship and worries for her. What is more… he didn't regret one moment of it.
Joel lowered Sarah onto her bed and dropped a gentle kiss onto her forehead. "Goodnight, Baby Girl."
4:13am CT, September 27, 2013
Sarah was roused from a deep sleep by the 'phone terminal on her bedside table ringing. Through her stupor, she somehow managed to lift up the receiver and hold it to her ear. "H… Hello?"
"Sarah?" It was Tommy, her father's younger brother.
"U… Uncle Tommy?"
"Sarah, honey, Ah need to talk to your daddy right now! There's somethin'…" Then, suddenly, the line went dead, only a series of rapid-fire clicks could be heard.
"Uncle Tommy? Hello?" Sarah tried hanging up and opening the line again, hoping to call her uncle back but there was no dial tone. "The 'phone's dead! What's happenin'?"
Woozily, the girl staggered to her feet. As her mind struggled to awaken, she circled her bedroom, her eyes falling briefly on the 'Dawn of the Wolf' poster on the wall. She swore again that she'd get her dad to take her to see that film, no matter how much he complained about 'chick flicks', whatever that was supposed to mean. She also noticed the birthday card that she'd bought her father but she'd forgotten to give him.
'Let's see… You're never around, you hate the music I'm into, you probably despise the movies I like and yet somehow you still manage to be the best dad every year. How do you do that?'
Sarah couldn't help giggle. She was proud of that little dedication. She hoped he would appreciate it when she gave it to him tomorrow. Sarah rubbed her eyes woozily. Priorities: Right now, she had to tell her dad to call Uncle Tommy.
Sarah didn't currently feel even remotely awake or aware enough to do anything. She went into the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Whilst in there, she noticed that today's… well, really yesterday's paper was sitting on top of the basin counter. She briefly looked at the front page headline, talking about some kind of disease running around; apparently spread by contaminated shipments of fruit. Sarah had been aware of the fact that faces had been disappearing from school and that fresh produce had suddenly gone off the menu in the cafeteria. However, she hadn't really understood that this was a big thing! According to the article, there had been hundreds of product recalls and thousands were sick across the country! Wow! She was going on a strict pizza and soda diet from now on!
The girl stepped back out into the hall and called out for her father. There was no reply. She could see the light on in his bedroom and the sound of his TV set in there on. She entered and saw that he wasn't around. The TV was playing some report about a fire in town somewhere.
Sarah turned to the screen and frowned in confusion; the reporter didn't seem to be talking about a fire: "It appears that what we initially reported as riots seem to be somehow connected to the nationwide pandemic."
Pandemic?! Sarah wasn't familiar with that word but it sounded enough like a word she did know – epidemic – to sound bad. She frowned at the screen and suddenly her tired brain was hit with a surge of recognition. "Wait! That's nearby!"
"We've received reports that victims afflicted with the infection show signs of increased aggression and…"
Suddenly, there was confusion behind the reporter. A riot cop strode towards the camera, gesturing wildly. "There's a gas leak! Hey! Move!"
"There seems to be some commotion coming from beh…"
"Lady, get the hell out of here right…!" Then the picture turned to static. Sarah jumped as she heard a loud explosion, not from the TV set but outside the house! Sarah jumped to the window and saw an orange-red fireball climbing into the night sky. Suddenly, she realised there was lots of fire out there. All across this outer suburb of Austin, Texas, there were patches of fire and where there wasn't fire, the street lights seemed to be out in wide swathes of the city. Sarah's sense of sudden disorientation and dislocation paralysed her and she barely noticed as the TV anchor-man's worried apology for the 'temporary loss of our live report' suddenly was cut off mid-word.
Sarah turned and saw only static on the screen. She scrabbled for the remote and, ignoring one of her father's cardinal TV rules ('Thou shalt not change the channel your old man is watching'), she began frantically changing channels. The local live news channels were all showing static. The national 24-hour news networks were showing a logo of the Presidential seal and the caption 'Emergency Broadcast System – Stand By' or 'technical difficulties' cards. Some of the entertainment channels that were showing pre-recorded shows were still on the air but others were dead, showing only test cards or just static.
Sarah felt a fear as deep as she'd ever known. For her… for any child… she was suddenly confronting her deepest fear – a world gone mad and full of danger… and her father was nowhere to be found. "Dad…? Dad! Daddy, where are you?"
Sarah somehow didn't break her neck running down the stairs. Outside a convoy of police cars and ambulances screamed past the house, their lights flashing and sirens blaring. Was that gunfire?
In the suddenly horrible, alien and overtly threatening darkness of the living room, she was startled by a completely mundane sound – the SMS text message alert from her father's cell-phone. Sarah dashed over to this tiny island of sanity in a dissolving world and looked at a long stretch of text messages on the screen from Uncle Tommy. The last one, to her relief, indicated that he was on the way. Where was her father?
Suddenly, there was a noise from the room her father used as an office for his handyman business. Sarah whirled to see her father stagger through the patio doors. In the moonlit near-darkness, it was difficult to tell but he looked rather pale. He slammed and locked the patio doors and snapped on the light on his desk. Sarah ran over to her father. "Daddy! There you are!"
Joel nearly jumped out of her skin and whirled to face Sarah. When he identified her, he dragged her into a hard hug. "Sarah! Honey, are you okay? Has anyone come in here?"
Sarah tried to focus her mind beyond her fear, the clear terror on her father's face not making it any easier. Neither was the frantic barking of their neighbours' dog. "N… No! Who would come in…?" Sarah's eyes opened a bit wider as her father pulled out of the bottom desk drawer the box that he had strictly ordered her never, ever to touch, no matter how curious she got.
Joel pulled out his 357-Magnum Taurus-66. He slid six cartridges into their places and snapped the revolver's cylinder back into the body of the gun. He pulled out the half-full box of revolver ammo (maybe another 12 rounds) and slid it into his pocket. "Sarah, listen to me, Baby Girl. Do not go near any of the doors or windows. Just… just stand behind me, okay?"
Sarah swallowed her terror. "Daddy, you're… you're freakin' me out here! What's goin' on?"
"It's the Coopers," Joel jerked his chin in the direction of their neighbours' house. The man's eyes were haunted; the eyes of a man who'd seen something that he didn't want to remember. "I… I think that they're sick!"
Sarah frowned, remembering the newspaper article. "What kind of sick…?"
At that point, there was a tremendous crash as something heavy hit the patio doors. Both Joel and Sarah stared in horror as their neighbour, Jimmy Cooper, slammed himself bodily against the plate glass time and time again, his face smashed into a bloody mask by the impacts and his eyes an unseeing white tinted with a glowing gold. "Jesus, Jimmy!" Joel shouted. He grabbed Sarah and yanked her back a few paces, pushing her behind him.
Suddenly, the plate glass doors exploded inwards and a bloody Jimmy staggered into the room, making half-mad slavering noises and shrieks. The normally mild-mannered and kind man looked up at Joel, his mouth open in a desperate and hungry gaping grimace. "Jimmy, stay back!" Joel shouted over Sarah's terrified cries and Jimmy's mad babbling and wails, half-insane with terror himself. Jimmy showed no indication of any understanding not even of the shaking gun pointed at him. Instead, he gathered his legs underneath him, ready to lunge. "Jimmy! I AM WARNING YOU…!"
With no indication of comprehension, Jimmy launched himself towards the Millers. More on instinct than any real conscious choice, Joel's finger squeezed the trigger and the high-power pistol round slammed into Jimmy's chest, exploding out of the back in a shower of red. The man staggered back two paces and the, despite the fact that he'd had a lung blown out, righted himself and lunged forwards again. Joel aimed high this time and this time squeezed the trigger with more purpose, although his eyes were closed and his voice was muttering a prayer for forgiveness.
The back of Jimmy Cooper's head blew off and the man's corpse dropped backwards to the ground, thrashing like a beheaded chicken for a few seconds before falling still.
Horror had shut down Sarah's brain. All she could do was gasp out "You shot him! You shot him!" over and over again.
"Sarah!" Joel shook the girl, trying to break her out of her loop.
"I… I only saw him this mornin'…!"
"Listen to me! There is something bad going on. We have got to get out of here. Do you understand me?" Joel gave Sarah a little shake and the girl's eyes were focussed on him again. "Do you…?"
"Y… yeah!" Sarah was finally able gasp out.
Joel pushed Sarah towards the front door as a set of high-beams suddenly shone through the front windows. Joel, in the middle of reloading his revolver, identified the pick-up immediately and sighed in relief. "Tommy…!"
Joel and Sarah bolted out of their house as Tommy jumped out of his pick-up, terrified and angry at the same time. "Where the hell have you been? I tried to call you a dozen times! Have you any idea what's goin' on out there?"
Joel snapped the revolver cylinder closed. "I've got some notion." He yanked open the pick-up's rear door and turned to Sarah. "Come on, Baby Girl, let's get you in there!"
"Holy shit! You've got blood all over you!" Tommy took a step back from his brother in horror.
Joel didn't have time to think, let alone process the fact that he'd just killed a man. "This ain't mine," he reassured his brother. "Let's just get out of here!"
"They're saying that half the people in the city have lost their minds!" Tommy was babbling, terrified.
Joel was trying to keep it together, if only for Sarah's sake. Tommy wasn't making it any easier. "Tommy, later; just keep us movin'."
"According to the news, it's some kind of parasite or somethin'!" Tommy looked at his blood-splattered big brother and narrowed his eyes in worry. "Are you plannin' on telling me what the hell happened to you?" His big brother's expression indicated that it was a conversation that he didn't intend having any time soon. Tommy looked into the rear-view mirror at a very small, vulnerable and terrified blonde girl strapped into the rear seats, tears streaming down her expressionless face. "Sarah, honey? How'ya holdin' up?"
"I… I'm fine. Can we hear what's on the radio?"
"Good idea!" Tommy responded with a fake-as-hell smile before turning on the radio. There was only static. He frowned as he began to cycle through the radio's pre-set stations. Nothing but dead air on any of them!
Joel growled. "Just peachy! No cell service; no radio. Looks like we're doin' great!"
Tommy snorted in annoyance. "Minute ago, the newsmen couldn't shut up!"
"They say where to go?"
Tommy tried to rally his rattled wits as they accelerated down the road out of his brother's home suburb. "They said… uh… Oh yeah, the Army's been called out. They're puttin' up roadblocks on the highway. Travis County's sealed off; no gettin' in or out!"
Joel nodded. "That means we need to get the hell out before they decide to do the same here. Take Seventy-one."
"That's where I'm headed!"
The family raced down the darkened road for a minute or so, passed at regular intervals by police cars, ambulances and fire trucks.
"Have they said how many are dead?" Sarah's voice was quiet and desperate.
If Tommy were a little less rattled himself, he would have probably thought twice before answering. As it was… "Probably a lot; there was word that they found one family all mangled up in their house…"
"Tommy!" Tommy looked at Joel and understood the mute warning on his brother's face. The road ahead was blocked by police cruisers. Tommy turned off onto a dirt-track, hoping to get around the blockage
Joel shook his head. "Jesus Christ, how did this happen?"
"They got no clue! We ain't the only ones, though! At first they were saying it was just the South. Now they're going on about the East Coast, the West Coast... Holy hell!" Tommy's exposition was cut off by the sight of a blazing homestead to their right. "That's… that's Louis's farm!" The three Millers gaped at the burning house for a moment, thinking of the ill-tempered old widower with a grudge against the whole planet who had lived there. "I hope that son-of-a-bitch got out alright!"
"I'm sure he did," Joel said, trying to sound like he meant it.
The pick-up turned onto a parallel road through the centre of the county and to a highway out of town. However, it quickly became clear that they were heading further and further into trouble. Tommy and Joel got into a fierce argument about driving past a family who had been yelling for help. Joel clearly was firmly of the opinion that they had to look to their own problems and let others sort things out for themselves. Tommy clearly wasn't as hard hearted. Both men were not as aware as they should have been of poor Sarah, who was drifting off deeper into a kind of shock as the world she knew collapsed around her into a waking nightmare.
Then, suddenly, things got a lot worse. The pick-up got trapped in a traffic jam through the centre of town right next to the hospital. At that point, they got a ringside seat of just what this 'parasite' could do. Two people, screeching like banshees, ran out of the hospital, ripped open a door of the car in front of them and yanked the driver out before beginning to feast on the screaming man in a mad cannibalistic ecstasy. The second looked into the car and leapt into the car's interior, leading with her teeth, and tore out the throat of the woman in the passenger seat. A third man lunged for the Millers' pick-up and only the fact that Tommy was already turning around and accelerating stopped the berserk glowing-eyed creature from smashing its way in.
Tommy steered into town but the streets were borderline-impassable with crashed vehicles and burning, collapsing buildings. Cars were screaming out of side roads at full speed and colliding with buildings or other vehicles before exploding into flames. Everything was anarchy and people were running in hysterical panic trying to find some kind of sanctuary. Joel and Tommy were screaming at each other, Joel insisting the Tommy move the truck now and Tommy refusing to contemplate running over the fleeing pedestrians.
Joel pointed and shouted at his brother. The pick-up somehow got through a gap in the crowd by a jack-knifed bus and Joel was just starting to believe that they'd make it when they were T-boned by an out-of-control car that shot out of a side street like a missile.
Joel came awake in response to Sarah's desperate pleas, lying on his side and looking out through the shattered but still-in-place windshield at the car that just hit them. Grotesquely, the woman who had been sitting in the passenger seat was frantically trying to eat the corpse of the driver.
The big man shook his head frantically, trying to get his mind working again. He kicked out the windshield and dragged himself upright. At that moment, another frantic, foaming and maddened person threw himself at him, bloody teeth snapping at Joel's throat. Joel somehow held him back for a moment before Tommy suddenly broke a wooden axe-handle over the back of the guy's head, sending him down – dead or unconscious neither Miller brother cared.
Sarah staggered out of the overturned pick up and winced in pain as she tried to put weight on her left leg. "It's… it's my ankle," she sobbed.
Tommy was looking around fearfully. "Joel, we got no choice but to run!"
Joel thought frantically for a moment before handing Tommy his revolver. "You keep us safe! Come on, Baby Girl!" He swung Sarah up into his arms and the two began jogging away from the wrecked vehicle. "Now, you hold on tight, Sarah!"
"Y… yeah! Daddy, I'm scared!"
Joel pushed his daughter's face against his neck so she didn't have to see as two burning men staggered out of blazing building, too far gone even to scream as they were consumed by the out-of-control fire. A third person lunged out of the front of the next building and slammed into someone just ahead of Joel in the fleeing cloud, tearing into their victim with teeth and fingers curled into claws. The screams were indescribable.
A car screamed out of a side road into a gas station and the station exploded, sending debris flying across the street and taking out several refugees instantly. "This way!" Joel hollered, turning the way the out-of-control car had come from. He had to find somewhere safe but nowhere was safe!
"They're… They're on fire!" Sarah wailed.
"Keep your eyes shut, honey!"
At the end of the street was a movie theatre. An out-of-control SUV slammed into it and there was an explosion. Instantly, all the lights in the street went dead – obviously a power-line had been taken out. Joel looked around frantically; behind, he could now hear the screams of the insane cannibals getting closer. He took a left turn and ran down a side alley. Tommy slammed the gate behind them. A few seconds later the first of the monsters hit the gate but they didn't seem to have enough brain left to even deal with the simple slide bolt that Tommy had slid closed.
Tommy gestured to Joel. "There's too many of them! Go!"
Joel turned and, suddenly, another cannibal lunged for him, his eyes white (subtly glowing gold in a way that a strange, calm part of Joel realised wasn't reflected fire) and his gaping mouth drooling in anticipation. Somehow, Joel managed to stick an elbow into the living nightmare's throat and hold it back whilst still keeping a hold of Sarah. A moment later, Tommy smashed a brick into the inhuman mockery of a man's head, making it stagger away. A second blow to the face knocked it back and Tommy pinned it with a foot to the chest. The creature struggled and howled, clawing at Tommy's leg; Tommy levelled the revolver and put a bullet through its head. "It's dead; keep moving!"
"They've torn through the fence!" Sarah yelled. Joel saw the chain-link fence off to one side collapse under the weight of snarling, slavering and howling once-people. He took to his heels and ran down the alley into the rear garden of a bar. He and Tommy ran into the bar proper and Tommy slammed the door shut behind them. Outside, the creatures shrieked their hunger and pounded on the door. It was taking all of Tommy's weight to hold the door closed.
Tommy thought frantically. "Get to the highway!" he commanded. Joel looked at his brother in horror. "Go! You got Sarah! I can hold 'em here and then outrun 'em once you've got a head start!"
Joel shot his brother a grateful look and thrust the box of revolver bullets into his free hand. "I will meet you there." It sounded like an order and Tommy couldn't help but smile as he nodded in agreement.
Joel ran out of the bar's front door. Ahead there was a short stretch of scrub separating the town from the distinctive bridge leading to the highway. Sarah was weeping uncontrollably. "We… we can't leave Uncle Tommy!"
"He'll be okay, Baby Girl. Let's move." Joel took to his heels. To his left, another monster-once-person slammed into some other unfortunate but Joel had no way to help and, right now, was so scared and so focussed on getting Sarah to safety that he didn't care to even try. The two refugees passed a crashed paramedic's ambulance. The casualty had pulled himself out of the interior and was dragging himself along the ground, muttering insane gibberish, slavering and making howls of raging hunger.
"They're getting closer, Daddy!" Sarah cried out.
Joel tried to sprint uphill but he could hear two of the monsters… they were EMTs once… closing in on him. He prepared for the impacts of them hitting his back…
There was a roar of automatic rifle-fire and both of Joel's pursuers went down blood spurting from their chests.
Joel looked and saw their saviour, a soldier in the uniform of the Texas National Guard, wearing a gas mask and pointing an assault rifle equipped with an under-barrel Maglite at them. "It's okay baby," Joel whispered to the sobbing Sarah. "We're safe now." He looked up and waved at the soldier. "Hey! We need help over here!"
"Halt or I fire!"
Joel froze. He couldn't see the soldier's face but he heard the fear in the man's voice and he knew full well that fear made men do dumb things. "Look, brother, please, it's my daughter. I… I think her ankle's broken!" The rifle remained unerringly pointed at Joel's chest. "Look, I swear that neither of us are sick!"
There was a pause before the soldier spoke into a radio clipped to his chest armour. "Got a couple of civilians at the outer perimeter; please advise." There was a mostly inaudible crackling reply. "Please repeat that, I don't copy…"
"Daddy, what about Uncle Tommy?" Sarah whispered.
"We're gonna get you some help, then I'll get help from the soldiers so I can go back and find him," Joel promised.
"Please repeat," the solder said, sounding appalled. "Sir, one of them is a little girl! She can't be more than ten or twelve years… I… Yes sir. I understand." The soldier released his radio handset and looked up at Joel. "Brother, for what it's worth? This is fucking bullshit but we can't take the risk of this disease getting out of Austin."
Joel couldn't believe this was happening. "Listen, buddy, we've just been through hell, okay? We just need…" Joel heard the 'click' as the rifle's safety was released. "Oh sweet Jesus, NO…!" Joel turned to flee just as the rifle fired. Sarah went flying from Joel's arms and Joel's left arm exploded into pain as a hammer blow slammed into his wrist. Joel tumbled backwards onto the ground. He looked up blearily and felt his bladder void with terror as the soldier walked up and aimed the rifle right between his eyes. "God, no! Please… please don't…"
BLAM! The soldier's head jerked sideways, blood spurting out of the side of his head and he crumpled lifelessly. Joel looked over to see Tommy step out of the bush, his revolver aimed at the fallen soldier. The younger Miller looked away from his target and went deathly pale. "Oh… oh no!"
Joel ran over to Sarah, who was lying on the ground, squealing in pain, her hands pressed over a huge bloodstain on the belly of her nightshirt. Joel scooped her up and desperately tried to think of something, anything, he could do. "Sarah! Sarah, honey, I know it hurts but I need to see Baby Girl!" Joel tried to stop the bleeding but the moment he put pressure on the wound, Sarah made a wail of torment and tried to push him away. Her eyes snapped open and all the intelligence, humour and love Joel normally saw was gone; there was not even any recognition of her father, only the blank, terrified, stare of a mortally wounded animal; all he could hear were the gasping, pain-wracked terrified, wails that were the closest things to breaths escaping her lips.
Joel desperately tried to reassure her, tried to somehow reach through her pain and give her love. "Listen to me; I know this hurts, baby. You're gonna be okay, baby; stay with me. Alright, I'm gonna pick you up." Sarah cried out in agony as her weight shifted. "I know, baby. I know it hurts. Come on, baby, please. I know, baby. I know…" Suddenly, the agonised cries stopped. "Sarah?" The girl gasped and then was limp in Joel's arms. "Sarah...? Baby Girl...? Don't do this to me, baby. Don't do this to me, Baby Girl. Come on... No, no... Oh no, no, no... Please! Oh, God, please! Please, don't do this. Please, God... Baby Girl… no… NO…!"
Joel Miller could not see through the tears. He rested his cheek on his daughter's chest for a long moment. Then he threw back his head and screamed.
Twenty years later, Tommy Miller would still say that he knew only too well the sound of a man's soul being torn from his living body.