Damon looked at the empty bowl and was 10x happier than he had 6 minutes ago. He remembered how practically all of Tara's fustration, anger, sadness and fear could be solved with food.

"So uhmm...How did you and your dad get to this place?" Damon asked looking at Joel reading on the couch.

"What? Oh no he's not my dad. He's just a friend." Ellie replied.

Although a few weeks ago Ellie had joked about the possibilities of adoption but he brushed her off.

Damon raised an eyebrow.

"Now I'm even more interested, how did you and your 'friend' get into this situation and living together.

"Well about a year and a half ago Joel's job was to deliver me to the fireflies. You see this?" Ellie said pointing to her bite.

"Jesus you've been bitten!" Damon said dropping his spoon.

"Yeah but it's 15 months old, I'm immune."

"What the fuck?!"

"I know, anyway he was meant to deliver me to the Fireflies so they could create a vaccine but it turns out that there are hundreds like me and all attempts to create a cure have failed...including me." Ellie said looking at her arm.

"I've never heard of anyone who's immune. Are you sure it didn't work? That could change everything!"

"Yeah...I'm sure." Ellie said. "So we sort of bonded along the way and decided to stay together. We've been through alot together."

"Wow, doesn't happen everyday. Yet it sounds very familiar."

"Does it have anything to do with the girl you were muttering about in your sleep? Tara was it?"

"Y-Yeah..."

"Girlfriend?"

"Mentor. Survival coach. Best friend. She was a member of the Fireflies then left. Things went to shit for me and she took me with her on her travels. Sort of like a female Joel actually."

"She sounds nice."

"She wasn't" Damon smiled reminiscing. "She was short-tempered, violent, ruthless and selfish. But she was the greatest human being to ever live. Wish I had had a little more time to tell her that."

"I'm really sorry."

"Don't be, she could have easily pushed me in front of her as a shield against those clickers if she wanted to live but she didn't. I have a feeling she didn't want to live anymore anyway."

This is what made Damon emotional. He wished he could have had someone punch him on the arm and tell him to harden up. He still had a permanent sore spot on his arm from those days.

2 clickers. 2 clickers were all it took to kill his entire family. They sat in their apartment. The banging of the door was like an mplificated version of their heartbeats. Every second it got louder and faster. More frantic. Until eventually the door cracked. Damon had been holed up with his parents for 5 days. They had food, water, 2 blankets, eveything they needed except their safety. His 6 year old little sister had died the month before while they were trying to get from one apartment in the city to the next and get to the quarantine zone. His dad hadn't been the same and lost most strength he had to try and protect him. He had turned into one of them, metaphorically speaking. He didn't talk, just grunted at answers and ate food even though he had no reason left to live. The truth was he loved his daughter more than his son. His dad had a gun in his hand with 3 bullets. The 3 bullets Damon thought he'd use to protect his family. He didn't.

The 2 clickers burst through the door. The two clickers grabbed Damon's father and bit into him. The gasp of his mother revealed her location and they went to Damon's mother instead. She didn't make a sound. Maybe she had fainted before they got to her. Luckier than most people. Damon's eyes flickered between his fathers body and the clickers eating away at his mother. He looked around the room searching for something to defend himself with.

He pryed the gun with now three bullets out of his fathers blood covered hand and started choking with tears. The clickers heard him and looked up he sprinted out of the destroyed doorway and started running. He didn't know where he was running and his eyes were blurred with tears. Of course the clickers followed. They were faster than him and he knew it. He also knew he was about to die. He stumbled as a clicker swiped at his back knocking him of balance. He hit the ground. A hand took the gun from him.

Thud. Bang! Bang!...Bang!...Click...Click click.

"Shit." Said the voice dropping the gun.

SMACK!

Damon just heard heavy breaths for a few seconds. He opened his eyes that had been shut tight to hold back tears.

Damon looked up at the person. It was a dark haired girl in her mid twenties. She had bright blue eyes that had dark rings under them and her hair was in a long braid. She had a black hoodie with a fur around the hood and grey track pants. Damon's head was inches away from her black and blue sneakers, in surprisingly good condition. Damon recognized them from a few years ago, he had seen them before. Well at least the same make and brand. They were in the window of an abandoned store and cut his hand multiple times trying to break the glass of the shop. He didn't manage to reach them and almost bled to death. Or at least that's how he remembered it. The limited edition pair she was wearing were pristine other than the freshly spilt clicker blood and some dried grass.

"You uhhh...You shouldn't stay here for too long kid." She said putting her hand on her hip.

Damon saw her walking away and tried to speak but couldn't. He'd meant to say thank you but something different came out.

"Wait!...T-Take me with you!" Damon choked getting of the gravel.

"Yeah I don't think that's a good idea-"

"Please. I don't know where the fuck to go and I won't be a nuisance."

She sighed.

"I'm heading to a small refuge. You can follow me and I'll drop you there how bout that?"

"Yeah...Yeah okay." Damon said relieved. "I'm Damon."

"Tara. Follow me."

"She sounds like she was pretty great." Ellie said. "Enough with all this depressing talk. There's a market in the centre of town, I'll show you around."

Damon and Ellie walked through the streets. Cooked rats, trinkets, second-hand clothing. The place was like a real market.

"Hi, two sandwiches please." Ellie said.

"What's in them?" Damon asked.

"Meat...I think. Who knows, best not think about it, tastes great though."

The two sat in shelter from the snow with a few other people around a fire trying to warm up.

"So what happened to your parents?" Damon asked.

"They uhh...They were killed by runners like everyone else." Ellie replied looking down at her sandwich.

"Oh...I'm really sorry."

"Don't be. That's the world we live in."

"Feels sort of unfair that we were chucked in this shitty world while the one before us lived like royalty."

"It's fucking ridiculous. Maybe it doesn't have to be like that though."

"What do you mean."

"I mean surely there's a way to find a cure, right?"

"I guess but it will be a while before that happens."

"Yeah...Our generation has been completely screwed over. There's like 10 other kids my age here and all of them are paranoid and scared and wierd. I wish we were given a chance just to...relax. Even for a little bit."

"Yeah, to be honest I haven't had much interaction with kids my age. It's all adults that find you annoying."

"It's nice to have someone else to talk to you know...Take your mind of things.?"

The two walked back in the cold. They got back to see Joel asleep.

"Hey I'm just going to do something for a bit okay. Alone." Damon said knowing she would have asked what.

"Okay, suit yourself." Ellie said walking into her room.

Damon took the black hoodie and the broken bow from the closet room he had been sleeping in and walked outside into the cold again. He kept walking till he found a spot behind a building with beer bottles everywhere.

He dug a hole in the snow and threw the hoodie and bow in it. He couldn't bare to throw in her pendant. In fact, he took out the hoodie and decided to keep it. He couldn't afford to throw out warm clothes in winter. And she had loved it too much, too much for him to feel good about leaving it in the snow. He closed up the hole. Wrote TARA, with sticks and placed a beer bottle at the top of the memorial. She had really liked beer. The only two things she had still liked in this world were alcohol and him.

Tara and Damon sat with all the other huddled occupants of the bunker. When Tara said refuge he had thought there'd be more people. The close to empty bunker had 5 people including Damon and Tara. Tara was just sleeping here for the night. Then she would leave. Damon wondered why she didn't want to stay. He looked at her making shivs in her Puma backpack and wondered what was going on in her head. Was she one of those nuts who's family had been preparing for the apocalypse for years and had stocked up on canned food and guns. Or did she just take well to this kind of world. The other 3 occupants of the bunker were sleeping and Damon didn't want to go to sleep until she did. Possibly because he was scared she'd leave early without saying goodbye. Maybe he'd wake up, she'd be gone and he'd be stuck with some random strangers. To be fair, he had only been with her for a day and a half and they didn't talk much during their travel. She owed him no goodbyes. He put his head down on his old tattered camping pack. And looked at her staring at her hands before closing his eyes.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

Damon and Tara woke up startled by the gunshot to see the other three survivors had committed suicide.

"Jesus fucking christ!" Damon said clutching his head cringing. "Did they just..."

"Yeah looks like it." Tara said knot wanting him to finish the sentence. She looked at the blood sprayed note the three had left.

"Why did they do it? Let me see." Damon said reaching out for the note.

"This isn't something you should be reading. The just of it is, people commit suicide when they feel they can't go on. This worlds a hard place and they just preferred to not live in it."

"Yeah I know that just let me see the note."

"You can see it when you're older. Let's go."

Damon lowered his hand and looked at her as she opened her back and put in all of the rations of food and water.

Damon was happy for some reason. This meant she intended to stay with him till he was older.

She passed him some cans to put in his bag and they walked out. He didn't know where they were going but he didn't care.

After walking for about half an hour in silence Tara stopped walking. "Hey uh Damon." Tara said not turning around to face him. "Don't commit suicide okay. It may seem hard but someone will come around a corner in your life and make it easier."

"Yeah, okay."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Damon looked at the mound of snow and started to cry. Tears streamed down his face

as finally realized why she had said that. A few minutes before she had saved him. She was about to take her own life. Damon had no idea why. He was the person around the corner.