I ASKED THE GOVERNMENT FOR CHANGE
NOW I HAVE NONE LEFT IN MY POCKETS
Ellie stands and cranes her neck, staring at the scrawling observation painted in thick white letters across the underbelly of the bridge. The train tracks beneath her feet are covered in mould and moss, the worn soles of her Converse shoes constantly shifting to keep her upright on the disused sleepers. The growths remind her of a joke from her book of puns:
Her lips are invaded by a smirk, which quickly retreats, chased away by a roar of thunder and a flash of lightning that leaves dots in her eyes. Jokes about fungi probably wouldn't be welcomed by the majority of the survivors, and justifiably so given the occasion, but she doesn't care. Their moods should be lightning up, she thinks, but they're thunder so much pressure. Oh god, that was awful...She giggles anyway. Fuck it.
"It's not my fault I'm a pun master," she mumbles, the words verbalising themselves without her permission.
"Huh?" Joel's gruff voice materialises over her right shoulder, startling her slightly. For such a big guy, he could be so quiet when he wanted to.
"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinking about how much of a genius I am."
"I've said it once and I'll say it again: You're a weird kid."
"Shut up. I prefer the term "eccentric", it sounds fancier. You're just jealous."
"Mhmm...Sure." This was Joel's default conversation ender, used only when Ellie's mouth was driving before her brain was in gear. However, she persists regardless, curious about the graffiti:
"What does change mean?" she asks, continuing hastily before Joel can give her the obvious definition. "I mean, I know what CHANGE change is...but I don't get what he means by 'Now I have none left in my pockets..." Her head cocks slightly to the side, giving her a distinctive puppy dog appearance, reinforced heavily by her oversized, shimmering eyes.
"Uh..." Joel momentarily struggles for an explanation. Sometimes, he finds himself forgetting that Ellie's never experienced most of the activities that were commonplace before the Outbreak. He lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort, not unlike a horse blowing air from its nose, mystified by the fact that this concept is foreign to her.
"Change is like...coins and stuff. You know what money is don'tcha?" It seems like a patronising question to him, but he needs to know what he's dealing with.
"Pfft! Of course I know what money is," her chest puffs out as if she had just won an internal mental war with her memory. "Well...I've never used it...or seen it...but we read about it in class..." both her voice and her initial confidence trail off into a tiny mumble.
"Alright. Well change is what people used to call coins. Like nickels and dimes and cents. All the small..." What's the word... "denominations. That's what change is." Ellie's eyes widen, giving the impression that her brain is expanding and pushing them further out of her head to make room for this new nugget of information she'd obtained.
"Ohhhhhhhh. Cool!" Her voice contains genuine interest. Joel can't help but smile. Who'd have thought a kid would ever find something like that "cool"? He ponders. Things sure have changed.
"So, why was he angry? Did the government take all his money away?" Ellie asks, ears perking up with anticipation. A clap of thunder booms in the distance, like an orchestra of shotguns at the climax of a violent symphony. She winces.
"Yeah, I reckon so. Before the Outbreak happened, the government introduced a whole bunch of new taxes and economic policies tha-" He pauses, noticing a wave of confusion washing across the girl's face. "It's...it's complicated, but yeah, they took all his money away. Hell, they took everyone's money away."
"Those fuckers!" Ellie hisses, feeling outrage and a new found sympathy for her unknown artist ally. Joel senses another question hanging in the air, dangling above her head like one of those idea light bulbs in a kid's cartoon. "Why was money so important back then?"
That's a damn good question, kiddo.
"Uh...I'm not sure, really. It just was." He mutters. Ellie's face droops with disappointment, saddened by this new concept being snatched away from her. Knowledge is like currency to Ellie, one of the few things that take top priority, along with reading, comic books and the man stumbling over his words in front of her. Joel feels obliged to redeem himself. "You might think people are greedy now, but they were ten times worse back then. It's hard to explain, but I think money was supposed to act like some sorta deterrent so that people wouldn't kill or steal from each other." He was impressing himself and the girl even more so. "It didn't really stop people though. You still had guys robbin' banks and shooting people for no good reason."
"Robbing banks?! There were bandits before everything went to shit? Badass..." Ellie gasps, mouth wide with awe, her features lit up by a flash of lightning like some dramatic mask. Now it's Joel's turn to wince, her description of the time before the Outbreak accurate, but poorly communicated.
"I wish you'd stop sayin' that...but yeah, people used to rob banks. I don't know why," He assumes that this is his companion's next question, his assumption confirmed by her mouth closing slightly, "maybe they needed money to feed their families or maybe they were just greedy. I reckon some of them did it just for the adrenaline rush. We didn't call them Bandits though, they were around durin' the Wild West era, but that's a story for another d-" Another boom cuts him off, lonely and moping without its visual companion. It's followed by another pair of quick, sharp blasts, a sound all too familiar in these times.
"Shit! Ellie, get down!" He pushes down on her shoulder, eyes scanning the wooded area ahead, darting back and forth in the gloomy darkness. "Hunters," It amazes him how a single word can double his heart rate. They skulk forward, leaning their bodies against a nearby stack of barrels and galvanised metal sheeting, the motion practiced and smooth from experience. Ellie's hunched back rises and falls rapidly, her breath coming out in quick pants.
"You see anything?" She whispers, her head brushing the centre of Joel's marred denim shirt.
He sees plenty of things, none of them human. The swirling gale stalking through the forest seems to send every branch and leaf into sudden motion, an elemental Pied Piper inconveniently leading its victims across their path.
"No, the Moon's not strong enough." His hot breath creates puffs of smoke in the night air.
"Fuck...there's shitloads of bricks, we could throw one! Lead them away, y'know?"
"No way, these ain't Clickers, Ellie. They have brains, they can think." He looks over his shoulder. The portion of the bridge behind them consists of nothing but rubble, twisted pieces of rebar protruding randomly from it. The gap left in what was the road is reachable, but one wrong move and he'd be speared on the pipes below. He had survived it once but only because of Ellie's quick thinking. The scar on his abdomen lets off a dull throb, providing a second opinion.
"Well there's no other way out, so we can either sit here and shoot the shit or move our asses." The girl has a point. The longer they sit there, the higher the probability that their unexpected company will wander up and bag themselves two proverbial cats, killed by their curiosity. They'd kill Joel for sure. Ellie though...
"Come on." He prods her in the back, squatting forward and staring worriedly at the 30 or so feet of tunnel that extended before them. Thankfully, survivors had previously used this area as shelter from conditions similar to the ones outside, their predecessors' roughly made barriers of pallets and concrete shielding the pair from view to some degree. Tommy had mentioned the origin of the destruction behind them to Joel in passing, explaining that the leader of a survivor group had thought it a good idea to blow the bridge, stopping any "tourists", or outsiders, from assaulting the area with vehicles. His idea had been solid. His knowledge of plastic explosives, however, had not. He had shoved the clacker into his pocket, strolled out to confidently place one package on the bridge, bent down and consequently squeezed the detonator's trigger with his leg. Tommy's exact words had been: "That poor bastard went everywhere." No wonder the trees around here grow so fast, Joel reflects. I heard human makes great fertiliser.
"Hey, fuck you, man! I ain't lyin!" A voice floats up from the dark. The tunnel suddenly appears 100 metres longer to Joel; the exit becoming no more than a pin-prick of light. "She was all over me, man. I could see it in her eyes. She's got a face like a slapped ass but...what can I say, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. It's slim fuckin' pickings, y'know?"
A deep laugh follows: two men. Probably bigger than me, judging by their voices, he thinks. Ellie makes a harsh "Tsss" noise through her teeth, expressing her distaste for the Hunter's topic of conversation. "Let's see how your fuckin' face looks after I get done wit-"
"Quiet, Ellie! We gotta move. Stay right behind me." He places an obvious pause between those four words. Ellie –as clever as she is– had developed an alarming tendency to forget that she's immune to Cordyceps, not bullets. Her time in the orphanage had given her a vigilante mentality where she felt the need to deal with every problem herself. It was admirable and understandable, but nevertheless dangerous. She gives a gentle nod, a few strands of her auburn hair falling down into her eyes. Her hand instinctively sweeps them back up behind her ear, leaving a streak of white through the collection of ash and dirt on her face; her freckled, fair skin shines through. She pushes out from cover. The ground outside the tunnel slopes gently downward towards the forest; covered in a dense layer of plant life and slick with the previous night's rainfall. Ellie spots the top of someone's head bobbing up and down on the green horizon, a bleak silhouette against the nocturnal luminescence, and dodges to the right, crouching behind a small pile of bricks. Joel follows suit, huddling close to her.
"I fuckin' hate this forest, bro." Mr. Deep Voice is surprisingly thin, his lanky frame now coming into view; outstretching his partner's by at least 5 inches. The second man is stubby but not fat, his wide torso and arms cradling an equally stubby submachine gun. Automatic weapons were hard to come by these days. Just our luck, fleets through Joel's mind. Both are dressed in olive green ponchos and khaki pants, implying a uniformity that usually comes with Hunter groups. "Place gives me the creeps. I think I almost shit my pants back there...fuckin' foxes. I always feel like somebody's hiding in the trees, just fuckin' staring at me." He fakes a shiver. His friend smiles onwards; they've both reached the summit of the small gradient, no more than 15 feet away. Ellie's foot nudges a section of pipe and it topples from the pile. The ding ding ding echoes through the space, each ding reciprocated by a clenching in her narrow shoulders and a grinding of her teeth. She looks at Joel and the words are almost painted across her face: I am so fucking sorry.
"What the fuck was that?!" Wide Guy's hands grip the handle and stock of the submachine gun in a panicked flurry of motion. Both Joel and Ellie hear the staccato click of the safety being flicked off. "Whoever's in there, you better get the fuck out here right now, hands in the fuckin' air!" Goddamn it, Joel thinks, and uses the racket Mr. Deep Voice is making to grab his revolver from its leather holster. He glances at Ellie and observes the already opened switchblade in her trembling hand. He knows her hands aren't shaking from fear, but rather a mixture of adrenaline and her white-knuckled grip on the knife's ivory handle. His heartbeat shakes his vision. Here we go.
Joel pushes through his heels with a grunt, rising from his squat and levelling the .44 Magnum in front of his eyes. Wide Guy starts to bring the submachine gun up, his slow reflexes like the hangman pulling the lever. Joel can almost see the lights go out in his eyes, realising that this was it.
"OH SHI-" The ejaculation is cut short by a crack like a thousand whips, made ridiculously louder by the confined space. A puff of dust spurts out of his poncho, coupled with a final guttural grunt. Wide Guy's knees give out and he falls back into a puddle of murky rainwater, his body giving a final twitch like some overgrown fish tossed onto the deck of a ship.
"Fuck, Joel!" Ellie shrieks. The gunshot had been unexpected and, regardless of how many times she'd heard it before, it still leaves her ears ringing and her bladder weak. "Shit, get the other guy!" She points towards a shadowy figure scurrying behind one of the heavy barrels at the mouth of the underpass. Mr. Deep Voice's breathing is laboured and rapid; his head twitching in minute fractions, calculating escape routes or plans of action or some other desperate thing. He doesn't have a gun...Joel's gut instinct whispers. Joel scoots forward, boots scraping loose small pebbles and chips of concrete underfoot. A darting look back at Ellie lets her know to hang back until the situation has been handled. She hesitates, itching to help her companion, but decides against it and remains stationary, ass to the grass in the sidelines. Her bottom lip pushes out slightly like a sulking child, unbeknownst to her.
"Greg? Greg?! Ah FUCK!" Mr. Deep Voice's attempts to somehow vocally revive his fallen partner are lost to the blackness. He rocks his body back and forth, reminiscent of a sprinter preparing their muscles for a race, and darts out towards the lifeless body juxtaposed to him, crouching, hands fumbling manically with the submachine gun's strap. Joel strains his neck trying to see over the barrier covering them, all the while quickening his pace, almost on top of his enemy. 5 feet...3 feet...
"Shit shit shi-" Mr. Deep Voice rips the gun free from the deceased Greg and squeezes the trigger. A single round punches into Joel's right bicep and he drops the Magnum. Joel raises his leg mid-step and thrusts the sole of his shoe into the assailant's chest, taking the man by surprise and knocking him backwards. Joel's momentum carries him forwards and he stamps down on his enemy's cheek, his upper body tilting forward from the force. There's a wet snap, like shallow ice breaking; Mr. Deep Voice's legs jerk spastically and then fall still. The victor simply stands there, as if trying to remember the events of the last 20 seconds. His breathing bounces back off the tunnel walls, a harsh pattern of inhalation and exhalation that bears resemblance to someone sawing wood. Ellie's footsteps grow louder and louder behind him until she seems to pop out of his right armpit, face red and flushed and damp with sweat.
"Whoa..." she pants, chuckling from the relief, "that was some superhero shit! Remind me never to mess with-" her voice catches in her throat, eyes falling upon the ragged hole in Joel's arm. "Oh man...oh shit he shot you, Joel!"
"Yeah, looks like it..." he keeps his cool, but it hurts like a motherfucker. The pain is searing and constant. One of Johnny Cash's tunes he used to listen to comes randomly to mind. "Burning ring of fire..." he grunts.
"What?" Ellie questions; perplexed.
"Never mind," he mutters "Just get me some of that bandage from your backpack, will ya?"
"Yeah yeah, sure," She throws the pack around her shoulder and rips open the clasps, rummaging through items of varying importance therein: A t-shirt, some spare socks, her Sony Walkman, her joke book that Riley had given her...Shit Ellie, now's not the fuckin' time for getting all depressed! Her conscience barks. "Got it!" she shouts, both accepting the advice offered by the little voice inside and informing Joel of her find, pulling a small roll of white material free from the pack.
"Good girl. Now just wrap the ba-"
"I know what to do," she proclaims. "I've kinda saved your life before, remember?" There's no animosity or attitude behind the statement, just a nostalgic affection. That makes two of us, Joel observes inwardly. She unties the bandage and wrenches it tightly around Joel's wound. He winces, gasping at the roughness.
"Jesus, girl, take it e-"
"Oh suck it up, ya big wuss." She sighs, "It's just a little bullet-hole, no need to get all teary-eyed." Joel just laughs, forever amused by her seemingly god-given ability to lighten the mood of any situation. After 4 or 5 orbits of his thick bicep, she cuts the bandage with her switchblade and ties it tight, taking a step back to admire her work. "There, all done." She says. A chuffed smile spreads across her soft lips. Joel looks down and turns his own mouth downwards, nodding.
"Not half bad, kiddo," he tells her, "I knew you'd come in handy for somethin'."
"Shut up!" she laughs, pushing him playfully; thankfully avoiding the freshly wounded arm. "We should get out of here, just in case Fatso and buddy-boy have some friends wandering around." Joel nods his head in agreement. He's about to step over the body when he notices the matte black submachine gun propped against Mr. Deep Voice's corpse.
"Speaking of comin' in handy...it'd be a shame to leave this behind." He stoops down, picking the weapon up with his weak arm, examining the craftsmanship. It's an MP5, a German-made weapon widely used by Special Forces units and military police. It seems that Greg and Mr. Deep Voice had stumbled upon a military barracks somewhere along their journey.
"You should give that to me..." Ellie muses, almost licking her lips at the thought of such power, her eyes wide with excitement. Joel's brows furrow, considering the proposal. She's right...she can handle herself now, he reflects. She's shot guns with a lot more kick than this thing...
"Okay," he says. Her mouth falls open momentarily and her face brightens. How much blood has this guy lost? She thinks, awestruck by this sudden change of policy regarding weaponry and Ellie's hands. She reaches out eagerly, fingers gripping the handle. "BUT...!" Joel barks, yanking the weapon away slightly, "This ain't a pistol, okay? Treat it with the utmost respect. If you have to fire it, which hopefully you won't, don't hold your finger on the trigger. Squeeze it lightly for as long as it takes you to say 'motherfucker'."
"Motherfucker..." she repeats quietly, a word that Joel hears all too often from such a youthful creature. He places the submachine in her hands and she stares at it, turning it over and backwards and every which way in her hands, in awe of her newly acquired toy. "Motherfucker...okay! Let's get outta here, I'm gonna starve to death if I don't get some food soon." She begins marching towards the maw of the tunnel, a skip in her step that hadn't been there before.
"Goddamn Ellie, you eat more than I do and I'm a grown man..." He almost stumbles over some rubble, his dangling right arm making balance more difficult than usual. "Wait up, girl!" he calls ahead.
She slows, hugging close to the eastern wall and poking her head out around the corner, checking thoroughly for anymore unwanted company. Satisfied with her search, she turns around to check Joel's whereabouts and makes her way out of the underpass, closely pursued by her partner. The stretch of ground between here and the Dam is completely uphill; the mud trails slippery and waterlogged from the storm. Paths had been worn out in the hills by the same people who had provided Ellie and Joel's cover against Mr. Deep Voice and Wide Guy. The whole layout reminds Joel of all those old war movies him and Tommy had loved so much in their adolescence, always depicting a troop of apparently invincible soldiers sneaking through some enemy-infested Vietnamese jungle, constantly waiting for some insane Asian warrior to explode from his underground dugout, covered head-to-toe in vines and other foliage. Tommy had experienced war of a different, more modern nature before the Outbreak, thankfully returning from his tour in Iraq to their peaceful Texan hometown with timing that was both perfect and horrible. Those years had been a rough time for Joel. Tommy still swears that he felt a rib crack when his brother hugged him on their front porch the night he returned.
"Jesus..." Ellie's breathless outburst slaps Joel across the face, putting an abrupt end to his daydream. "Out of all the places we could have picked to look for supplies," she draws in another rattling breath, "it had to be at the bottom of Shit Mountain." Her tired ranting brings Joel's own physical discomforts to the surface, his superficial injury still pulverising the nerves in his arm, his legs beginning to feel like he'd taken his boots off down in the tunnel and pulled on two slabs of concrete in their place. He grunts in reply and agreement. He can see the homely glow of the Dam's recently repaired lights in the distance, leading the pair upwards like a gargantuan will-o'-the-wisp; 100 metres lay between them and the walls of their home. Home...the word seems to fill his heart with hot chocolate instead of blood, a comforting warmth spreading through his chest. Joel feels the slope of Shit Mountain gradually levelling out beneath his feet, and he's relieved to hear Ellie confirm the good news.
"Thank fuck," Ellie pants, "we made it."
"Ah come on kiddo, it wasn't that bad," he jokes, attempting to laugh lightly; but the ache in his bicep draws the curtains on the amusing show.
"Screw you, Joel. Next time, I'm pickin' where we go. Somewhere nice and flat, no fuckin' jungles and fat guys with machine guns and stupid..." she continues to grumble to herself like some grumpy old man complaining about disrespectful teenagers, moving out of earshot. The wind drowns out her deadpan ranting. Dawn begins to break through the twilight, one of salmon pink shades and wisps of cotton-candy clouds. Its magnificent beauty is starkly contrasted to the dark events of the earlier morning, but Ellie's eyes are tinted a rosy shade and she can't help but stop to take it all in. The image of tall steel walls overpowers the Dam's electric glow, the cold grey partitions a perfect opposite to the sky.
"Look at that..." she says softly, "It's beautiful." Joel moves to her left side and gently puts the hand of his wounded arm on her right shoulder. She doesn't flinch or jump or even acknowledge it, hypnotised by the lulling palette overhead.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor's warning," Joel recites. Doesn't matter what colour the sky is nowadays, he thinks, every colour's a warning.
"That's nice," Ellie comments, "Did you make that up just now?" Joel smiles lovingly at her ignorance, shaking his head in the negative when her cordate face tilts upwards to his for an answer.
"No, it's just an old saying I heard once," he mutters, "Come on, let's get inside, I gotta get this thing looked at," he nods his head towards the bandaged wound, "and I don't think I've ever felt this tired." Ellie takes one last glance upwards then plods forward at his side, comfortable and happy despite her exhausted body. The gate is already cracked open as if to welcome them. A bearded man clothed in worn jeans and a mottled khaki parka stands waiting there. He raises his hand, the other half of his body obscured by the large doorway.
"What's happenin', big brother?" He calls, a Texan drawl sluggishly lolloping through the air to meet them. Joel's smile widens upon hearing his baby brother's voice. Tommy steps forward, shoulder-length mane bouncing loosely in the morning air. He stretches his arms out at his sides and embraces Joel in a familiar way, Joel's right arm drawn almost behind his back, keeping out of harm's way. "It's good to see ya. We were gettin' worried...you two've been gone a hell of a long time," the hug finishes, and both men draw back. Tommy turns grinning to Ellie and ruffles her hair affectionately, her face scrunching up in protest but relaxing a moment after. "You find anything worthwhile?"
"Nah...We got into some trouble," Joel mumbles, eyes flicking unwillingly towards the bandage, "We handled it though. Ellie fixed me up good." Ellie looks down, mulling the dirt with her right shoe, feeling strangely embarrassed by the compliment.
"Jesus boy, how many times you gonna make this girl wrap up your booboos for ya?" Tommy laughs, strolling to his brother's side and tapping the arm softly. Joel winces and retracts, gasping in pain and Tommy laughs even harder, Joel shooting him a warning look but smirking at their brotherly interaction. "You did a mighty fine job on this old fucker, Ellie," Tommy exclaims, as if Ellie were some mechanic who'd brought a long dead car back from the jaws of death. His eyes follow his brother's to Ellie's pleased grin. "Looks like we got a regular little Florence Nightingale on our hands, Joel," The reference floats over Ellie's head, and she raises an eyebrow at the pair standing before her.
"Florence...who?"
"Florence Nightingale. She was a nurse who saved a whole bunch of soldiers during the..." he trails off, struggling to remember the details.
"The Crimean War," Joel intervenes.
"Yeah, the Crimean War. She's a real famous lady, prob'ly one of the most famous nurses that ever lived."
Ellie truly wants to be interested but her eyelids start to sag from the fatigue, the sun's warm rays drawing a yawn up from the depths of her torso. It looks rude but she can't help it.
"Gee, I better let you two get some rest, you must be wrecked," Tommy head turns towards Ellie, "Say Ellie, how would you feel about gettin' a little first aid trainin' from the town nurse?" he asks. The area had been peaceful for quite some time, but luck –among other things– was in short supply these days and only having a single nurse for the entire encampment spelled Disaster with a capital D for Tommy. "Her name's Iggy and I'm sure she'd be happy to show you a few of her tricks," Ellie nods her head sleepily, the words nurse, Iggy –Whatever the fuck that is, she thinks– and tricks floating into her ears.
"Yeah sure, sounds good. I'll go over later," she mumbles.
"Good, good. Okay guys, go get some sleep and I'll talk to you later on," Joel nods in agreement and brushes by Tommy, who takes a step back and places a hand against his uninjured arm. "Oh, by the way, we need to have a word later, big brother," he explains, "I got a coupl'a favours to ask of you." Tommy winks, turns and paces briskly off towards the camp, leaving Joel standing there with a blend of confusion, worry and curiosity splashed across his face.
This can't be good.
The medical shack is one of the few structures in the Dam with a solid front door, attached after the community members complained about the lack of privacy brought about by the wind gusting up under the thin tarpaulin coverings, exposing the patients inside in a comically Marilyn Monroe-esque fashion. A crude cross is carved into the pine surface, the centre of which Ellie delivers three sharp knocks to.
"Come on in," a voice calls from within, a chirpy and cheerful tone to counter Ellie's groggy appearance. Her sleep had been satisfying but turbulent, plagued by alternative outcomes to the struggle in the tunnel. One particularly odd and frightening scenario resulted in Joel simply vanishing through the floor; no screams, no protest, just a whooshing suck and then isolation. She shivers and gulps. "Hello? We're open for business," Where the fuck's that voice coming from, she wonders. Oh shit, the door. I knocked the door. She shakes her head from side to side, trying to dispel some of the fog therein, turning the handle and poking her head through the gap. Two gurneys, several small cases of items never before seen by Ellie, and a desk littered with stationary and linguistically-saturated notepads. A flash of blonde occurs somewhere to the left, forcing Ellie to stretch her neck around the doorframe.
Holy shit...
Ellie's stomach seems to drop down into her feet, her heart replaced by some fluttering, hyperactive woodpecker. Beside a waist high shelf of glass jars stands a woman who could well be in her early twenties, if not for the topography of graceful wrinkles spread across her oval face. Her eyes seem to be darkened by a natural shadow, reinforcing the blue in her irises. Ellie had seen make-up and eye-shadow in a magazine back in the Boston QZ, but she has a feeling that most of the pharmacies had been raided by egotistical 40-something-year-olds, desperate to maintain their beauty despite the bloodied former-humans hammering violently on the shop windows, wanting nothing more than to tear those immaculately painted faces to shreds. A conversation between her and Joel flits into her conscious:
"I thought there was tons of food back then."
"There was."
"Then why is she so skinny?"
"Some people chose not to eat."
"Why?"
"For looks."
"Pfft...That's stupid."
She constantly struggled to relate to customs of a world long past, but her tolerance allowed her to observe everything through an unbiased eye, understanding that now is different and that she could only dream about life before this. The blonde smiles, bright and bold and...Sexy, Ellie observes, shocked by but simultaneously supporting of her own choice of words. A tingle runs down through her arms and legs, ordering the hairs there to stand to immediate attention. The blonde strolls forward, hips kicking right and left, jiggling her ample bosom.
"You must be Ellie," she says, holding her hand outstretched. Her words are clear and pronounced. "I'm Isabelle, but everyone calls me Iggy," Ellie looks down, slowly taking the offered hand and shaking gently, afraid that she'll somehow damage Iggy's dainty fingers. She rolls her head back to meet Iggy's eyes, the latter standing a few inches taller than her.
"I'm...uh...Ellie," her voice is airy and low, softened by Iggy's anaesthetic presence. "But everyone...uh...yeah," Iggy stares confused at her youthful features, then giggles heartily.
"My, aren't you just a cutie," she observes, and Ellie fears her head might pop off like an erupting volcano if she gets any redder. The blush invading her face is hot and intense. "How's about we get started with our little lesson, huh?" The inclination of her voice makes Ellie weak, and she can only smile and nod.
"Yeah. Yes please."
"So, what happened out there big brother," Tommy raises his head momentarily towards Joel's injury. The two sit hunched in antique wooden chairs about a metre apart, shadows drifting lazily around Tommy's ramshackle office. Joel picks at a loose fibre dangling from his jeans.
"Two guys found us down in the tunnel under the bridge. I shot one and then...dealt with the other. Second guy managed to get a shot off on me though, fuckin' lucky it was only in the arm." Tommy bounces his head up and down while staring at one of the legs of Joel's chair, mouth turned down towards his chin and eyebrows raised.
"You've changed, Joel. I remember a while back, a few years after all this shit started...you'd look at blood or a body or somethin' and just turn away like you were gonna puke. Now you're runnin' around killin' motherfuckers like it's nothin'." Joel looks disapprovingly at him.
"It ain't nothin', Baby Brother, I still gotta live with it. It's just easier when they're tryin' to kill you too."
"I know that, I know that. I didn't mean nothin' bad by it," Tommy raises his hands a couple of inches, fingers splayed in an apologetic manner. "In fact, I wanted to ask you about somethin' pretty big." Joel's ears perk up, curiosity heaving to discover the meaning of this meeting. "Truth be told, we're starting to run pretty short on supplies in this place. We got some medical supplies and guns to beat the band, but the food's runnin' out and some of the guys are startin' to get restless," Tommy raises his head, eyes sorrowful but still sharp as tacks. "There's 20-odd families in here, big brother. Reservoir water and stale bread just ain't gonna cut it for much longer."
"So whaddaya want me to do about it?" Joel asks. He already knows the answer.
"I need you to lead a team to look for supplies. I've already got a few guys together who think you're pretty good at what you do." Joel hesitates and looks away into the distance, eyes darting left and right.
"How many of us?"
"Five in total, you included. It'll be you, two guys from the guards, Lee and Twiggy, and another two technicians from the plant, Jack and Bruce." Joel begins to nod his head in agreement, stopping when his calculations leave one figure missing.
"What about Ellie?" His baby brother's eyes roll upwards slightly, head swaying and legs fidgeting.
"Fuck Joel, you know we can't risk havin' a goddamn kid runnin' around out there with the grown-ups..."
"She's not a kid, Tomm-"
"No Joel, she is a kid. She's 14 fuckin' years old, man. I don't care how many guys she's killed, she ain't mature enough to play in the big leagues yet." Joel barks a laugh into the cellar roof, voice rising with distaste. He stands up from his seat, turning his head away and then back towards Tommy, arms held out at his sides.
"Mature? Jesus boy, she's killed more men than half of these guys put together! You think she's just gonna sit pretty up here while I'm fuck knows where with a bunch of guys I don't even know?"
"Well she's gonna have to, because the only way she's gettin' out this place is over my cold dead fuckin' body." His lips are curled into a snarl. He joins the upright Joel, the two brothers circling like dogs in a fighting pit. "You two are gonna have to just learn to be apar-" His voice cuts off, eyes wide and planted on something of interest over Joel's left shoulder. Joel shifts to the right, turning towards the office's entrance. The door sits on the hinges, hanging open lifelessly. Ellie's petite frame stands frozen on the threshold, lips pursed bitterly and fingernails digging into her palms, her usually feminine eyes now burning with violence and pointed directly at Tommy. Her mouth opens and a threatening and guttural statement spills out:
"I'm going with him."
AN: Hey guys! Well, it took me exactly 3 beers, 2 drafts and 1 headache to finish this, but I got there in the end. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! I plan to publish a new chapter every week (more specifically every weekend) but, should I find the plot to be poorly developed or the writing to be half-assed, I'll take more time to re-write and re-think it. One of the primary purposes of this project is enjoyment, after all, so how can I expect you to enjoy reading something that I didn't have fun writing! Finally, thank you for taking the time to read my work and I hope you continue with me on my journey with Ellie, Joel and the rest! Please favourite, follow, review, share with your friends and criticise heavily!
Happy reading,
Dale