The Clicker staggered closer to Ellie, and she felt the familiar fear creeping in on her, slowly. The memories of teeth sinking into flesh made herinvoluntarily shudder, rattling a discarded bottle nearby.

With a rasping, clacking noise, the Clicker whirled around in her direction, tensing its arms.

"Fuck this," Ellie said, and she popped up with her hunting rifle, taking aim quickly, and fired. The bullet smashed into the Clicker's fungal growths, showering fungus everywhere. Unperturbed, the clicker squealed and ran at Ellie, scrabbling on the ground.

Cursing to herself, Ellie slid the switchblade out of her back pocket and, as the Clicker attempted to grab her, she stabbed it several time in the chest, then, ducking under its grabbing hands, she slid underneath the creature, jumped up on its back, and stabbed it multiple times in the head. After the Clicker went silent, she cursed, wiping infected brain tissue and fungal plates off her blade.

Sighing, she pulled the bolt back on the hunting rifle, wincing slightly as the bullet casing ejected and bounced on the ground.

"Shit."

She knelt next to the Clicker, grimacing at the sickly-sweet odor of rotting flesh, and frisked its body, giving a slight chuckle of victory as she found a few 9mm bullets and a scissor blade in the bastard's pocket. Giving a cursory glance to the doors and listening for the telltale clicking or screeching sound of Infected, she opened her backpack, and looked at her materials. She had only two guns, a 9mm pistol, which had around 12 bullets or so, counting the ones she had just found, and a bolt-action hunting rifle with 10 bullets. Additionally, she had two first aid kits, which she had made from scavenged material, and a makeshift shiv that she had made from a kitchen knife piece and tape. Now, she took the scissor blade, and, wrapping tape over the handle, had another shiv, which she stuck in the back of her jeans for quick use.

Joel had taught her how to do that.

It had been great fortune, she thought, that she came across a sickly horse in a stable, left behind by some Hunters, she thought. She had fed it food and cared for it, and then ridden it down a dilapidated highway to the southeast. Her destination was fixed in her mind, yet she wasn't fully committed to the prospect; she wanted to go to Salt Lake City. Now, a week of hard riding later, she had arrived; yet the Clicker and infected presence had only intensified. Now, taking refuge in a building a few blocks away from the hospital, she was having the fight of her life.

Close by, the scream of an Infected echoed through the building. Zipping her backpack up and reloading her rifle, she ran down a hall, ignoring the skittering sounds of Infected sliding on the slick floor.

It took another day of hard running and evading Clickers to finally reach the hospital. Cautiously, she entered the main entrance, and was greeted by bodies. The main doors, which had obviously been locked, had been forced open. On the ground, Clicker and Firefly bodies littered the floor. Yet, dishearteningly, many of the Firefly bodies sported gunshot wounds.

She knew it had been Joel.

As she walked, stepping over Infected and Firefly corpses, a story began to show itself. From a room, a rampage; a Firefly with his head blown off; others with cracked necks; she could almost see Joel coming from behind to strangle them.

What had driven him to this? Why had he done this? She knew Joel, or at least, she thought she did, and she reasoned that something had driven him to this.

Why did you come here, Ellie?

I wanted to return, to finish what I started; to… to make sure that Riley, Tess, Sam, and Henry didn't die in vain. I want to give a chance back to humanity that Joel fucking stole from me.

Tell the truth.

I… I want to know the truth. I want to know why.

After walking some more, she came across the first tape recorder. The label was faded, and bloodstains spattered it, most likely from the dead Clicker and Fireflies that lay dead there.

The recording began with the sound of gunfire.

This is fucking insane; the smuggler went absolutely fucking berserk, and his fucking killing most of us brought the entire fucking city's infected on us.

More gunfire; the shout of men giving orders.

They broke through the main door; the first level's fallen, they're coming up here now; we can barely hold all of the stairs and entrances. Let's—

The rapid rattling of several assault rifles, the boom of a shotgun, even the krak of a hunting rifle.

NO, HOLD THEM BACK! Okay if you're listening to this, you need to go back from where you came from; the Fireflies have fallen—

Then, an agonizing scream and the rattle of a Clicker tearing into flesh.

Ellie stared at the recorder in silence. It pleased her, in a perverse way, to know that Joel hadn't killed all of the Fireflies by himself.

She found the next one after following a trail of bloodsplatters and bodies. After a while, she had come across some barricaded doors, which gave her comfort in knowing that the Infected weren't here, as the echoes from far below indicated.

The familiar voice of Marlene came on, and Ellie's heart left; but then, the words sunk in, and only certain phrases registered.

…no way to extricate the parasite without eliminating the host…Fancy way of saying we have to kill the fucking kid…I gave the go ahead… a chance to save all of us…asked me to kill the smuggler…the one man…that might understand the weight of this choice …exhausted and I just want this to end… So Be It… Your daughter will be with you soon.

The horse's trail had gone cold, but Joel knew Ellie enough to start despairing; he knew where she had gone. The last trace of her was a single bullet, ejected from a hunting rifle. In the direction of Salt Lake City.

Tommy knelt by the casing, examining it, and then studying the grass.

"The trail goes cold here. I'm not skilled enough to tell where she's going."

Joel stood in silence, the guilt gnawing at his innards like a buzzard. Grabbing his hair in despair, he let out a long breath.

"She's going to the city."

"Why would she—," Tommy started, then his eyes widened. "Oh, Shit. That's where you—"

"Yeah."

"Fuck."

Tommy knelt by Joel, taking a deep breath in, and releasing it slowly.

"You goin' after her?"

"Yup."

"Lots of Clickers."

Joel grunted.

"I have to, Tommy. She's all I got left."

"She could just shoot you."

Rubbing his beard, Joel grimaced.

"If she decided to, I wouldn't be opposed."

"You're my brother, goddammit, you've gotta live."

Joel turned towards Tommy.

"Look, Tommy, I get it. I do. Why you knocked me out, why you value me over her."

"I never said that…"

"Brother, you know I love you. But she's everything to me. If you wanna go back, that's fine by me. I'd prefer it that way; I don't want your ass getting killed, either. But either way, I'm goin' after the kid."

Tommy frowned, and then stood. Looking at Joel, then the distant horizon, then in the direction of Jackson, he ran his hand down his face. Then, he spat in the grass, and slung his rifle over his shoulder.

"Well, shit. Might as well."

Joel nodded, and then walked in the direction of Salt Lake City. He pulled out in front of Tommy, who paused, looking back in the direction of Jackson.

"I'm sorry, Maria."

The phrases whirled through her head, and she sobbed. It felt like her last ounce of determination had evaporated. Now she knew why. Why Marlene had been like a mother, but never quite there. Why Joel had killed, and then lied. She felt betrayed, depressed, and guilty.

What Joel did was unforgivable. But I know why he did it.

Do you?

Because we're friends.

Nope. You know why, deep down, why he did this.

Don't even fucking start. Don't start with this sappy shit.

He sees you as a daughter, and face it, I know we look at him like our father.

Bullshit. He killed Marlene.

She was an okay mother. I'll give you that. But what really, did she ever do? You said it yourself; she was a friend. That's fine if you hate him for killing your friend but don't be calling her a mother if you don't mean it.

I do, though. She's my fucking mother, you bitch!

Not as much as Joel's your father. Marlene; she cared for you because of a promise. But she must have known about your having to die for a long time; since Boston, at least.

I would've died for her.

And she would have died for you… but only because of a promise to your mother. What, she talked to you about school, took you with her on Firefly business, but most of the time you were in military boarding school and she was busy fighting the military.

She still didn't deserve to die…

Did she ask you if you wanted to die for humanity? No. You heard her; she made that choice for you. She may not have liked it, but she told the doctors to go ahead and kill you for the vaccine.

So did he.

He didn't ask if you wanted to be saved, yeah, and that was fucking greedy of him. But hell, if he hadn't you wouldn't be here right now, right? What were the chances of success, anyways?

In a daze, Ellie walked into the operating room, where the doctor lay dead, shot in the head, a scalpel in his hand. To the side, two nurses lay dead, thin to the bone; they had starved, in addition to gunshot wounds. On the counter was the last recorder.

A raspy voice, undoubtedly that of one of the surgeons, came on the speaker.

We never had much of a chance, anyways… We're starving to death. Tania's already unconscious. It has been three days… three entire fucking days. The guy shot both of us; Tania's is more severe. I guess he thought we would live through this, what with the other fireflies here. Well, the clickers came, and so too died our hope. I guess… I'm almost done here, so I'll come clean. I never agreed to kill the fucking girl. If anything, she was the most convenient choice. Back at the University, we tried on immune primates, even our immune friend. Dozens of trials, not to mention the attempts at the CDC to produce a vaccine from immune survivors. Not one success. Ever. Who are we kidding? We scrabbled at straws; our last chance was the girl. I guess this is what I get, agreeing to do such a atrocious fucking thing. Not to mention that the vaccine would have had a negligible effect; only uninfected people would become immune, leaving, what, a handful of military and a shitload of Hunters, cannibals, and criminals? How would we even distribute, or reproduce the vaccine? It was never going to work. I wonder if this was what Nature intended for the last of us; a slow death, full of despair. I'm… I'm sorry, Tania.

Sinking to the floor, Ellie cried and cried and cried until there were no tears left.

It had been earlier, after they left Bill's town, listening to the music, that Joel had first cracked. The rain had poured on the car, and Ellie was sleeping. Hitting a pothole in the ground, she sat up.

"What was that?"

"Nothin', just a pothole. Go back to sleep."

"Nah, I'm not tired."

Joel had chuckled softly, making Ellie grin.

"Do you miss it? The old world, I mean?"

Frowning, Joel, glanced back at her, then returned his eyes to the road.

"Yeah. I do. Things were simpler back then."

"Tell me a story from back then."

Joel stared at the road for a while, thinking.

"This one time, Tommy and I went skydiving."

"What the hell's skydiving?"

"They would take you up in planes, and you would jump out, and get caught by a parachute that slowed you down. Now, we had been saving up for this for a while, and Tommy, being the braggart he is, was tellin' me how he was gonna fly circles around me. Well, needless to say, he was so scared that he wouldn't leave the door, so I had to push him out and we both landed in the lake," he said, chuckling.

Ellie laughed, not quite understanding all of it, but seeing Joel happy made her smile; the gruff, cold man had seemed to warm up. Yawning, she stretched and lay back down.

"Thought you weren't tired," Joel noted sardonically.

"Goodnight, Joel."

Joel remained silent for a few minutes. Then, as his eyes began to fill with tears, he wiped them away, concentrating on the road.

"Goodnight, Ellie."

So that concludes Chapter 3! A quick note on Ellie's internal conversations; she is not schizophrenic. She's having a conversation with herself about certain things; think of the truth telling voice as the embodiment of Ellie's survivor's guilt. Also, I decided to have Ellie revisit Salt Lake City not because she wanted to give the cure, but because she desperately wanted to know the truth about what Joel did. For those of you who figured this out on your own, kudos.

Thanks for the reviews and keep 'em coming!

Sincerely,

IGDude117