AN: Much shorter than the other two, but the next one will make up for it. I swear.
Joel gasped, his eyes shooting open. How…?
He looked around to find himself in a basement, of all things, lying on a mattress in relatively good condition with a quilt thrown over him. But there was something missing…
"Ellie?" He threw the quilt off and struggled into a sitting position with a strained groan, fire lancing his side. He got to his feet-or tried to, anyway. Joel got halfway up, then dropped back to his hands and knees, panting and covering the hole in his abdomen with his hand. He half-expected his hand to be red when he pulled it away, but it wasn't. In fact, there wasn't a speck of blood on him, save for a stray splatter or two on the jacket he didn't remember putting on.
"Ellie?!" Joel got to his feet and stayed there this time, taking a moment to look around while he got used to standing on oddly weak legs. A few books stacked neatly off to the side and an empty can of peaches confirmed Ellie had been there, but there was no sign of the girl herself or her bag. Only his, scoured thoroughly of his blood. He stumbled over to it and stooped to pick it up-expecting the pain this time-and he slung his backpack over his shoulders. It rested heavily on the wound, but he'd worry about that after he found Ellie.
Joel swiped the six pistol rounds and three rifle bullets she'd helpfully left on the crates next to his bag, then started up the stairs. It was hard going, and the door at the top squeaked noisily when it swung open. He hobbled into the kitchen and leaned against one of the counters, taking a moment to let the pain fade to more bearable levels. The kitchen and the adjacent living room were empty of all signs of inhabitation. He had to appreciate her caution. It made him...proud, he found. That pride was damped by the reality of the situation. Ellie was gone. "Where the hell are you?"
He pushed off from the counter and tried the doorway to his left. Ellie wouldn't have been using the front door; she's too smart for that. Joel found himself in a small garage with hay in one corner and a water trough in the other, the other side of the room taken up by old tool shelves. A bucket full of broken ice sat next to a hammer and the water trough. The horse-Callus, he reminded himself-was nowhere to be seen. He peered into the trough to find the water just starting to ice over again. A mixture of relief and fresh worry hit Joel like a semi-truck. Ellie had been here recently, she had the horse with her, and it stood to reason she'd be back soon.
Joel had never been very good at reason, and trusted the sinking feeling in his gut. He had to find her. He opened the garage door and walked out.
"Ellie!" He looked around and made a disgruntled sound under his breath. "Where'd she run off to?"
To his left there was a ridge and a shed, the rest of the neighborhood to his right. A body caught his eye a little ways down a trail going behind the houses. Fear and adrenaline pushed his injury to the back of his mind as he sprinted to it. It didn't register that the body was too big to have been Ellie until he was already upon it and blinking confusedly through a haze of panic. His side caught up to him, throbbing angrily, but he ignored it in favor of being more worried than ever.
The man's throat had been cut. That much was obvious. The snow had soaked up all of the blood already, and a light dusting of it coated the body and the horse tracks next to him. Joel crouched and rolled up the man's sleeve to touch his skin. Ice cold. He dropped the man's arm and stood back up. So Ellie had been gone for several hours, at least, and still wasn't back. Joel set his jaw and tried to breathe evenly, following the faint tracks to the street.
As he neared a house with a sturdy wooden fence, a shot rang out and ruffled his hair with its passage.
"There he is!"
"Shit," Joel muttered, ducking his head and scrambling to get behind one of the crates that had probably fallen from the delivery truck a little ways down the road. He pulled his rifle from the holster he'd fixed to his backpack and peered around the crate. Three men flooded out of the backyard, two falling in behind the crumbling sections of low wall and crates, and the other walking up the steps of the porch, spitting bullets that bit the snow beside Joel.
He shifted to the other side of his cover and popped up just long enough to catch the hunter on the porch in the chest. Joel settled back down behind his crate, his side burning something fierce, and spotted horse tracks a few inches from his foot.
The tracks continued on down the street, but if these hunters were here...No. No, dammit, she was fine. She was fine. She could damn well take care of herself, as she was so insistent upon pointing out to him. That girl was tough as nails and could shoot the wings off flies. There's no way these men with their piss-poor shots could so much as touch her.
Still, he thought grimly as he rose back to his knees to kill an assailant trying to flank him from the right, around the delivery truck. Things happen. They could've gotten to her while I was playin' Sleepin' Beauty.
"Move it! Don't let him get ya!"
"Run!"
The two in the yard turned and fled, reaching the sanctity of the backyard before Joel could get a shot off. With his ire and concern growing by the second, he roared, "Where is she?!"
There was no reply.
He growled under his breath and laboriously got to his feet, doggedly pursuing the runner. The hunter tried to ambush him as he passed through the gate, lunging with a poorly crafted shiv. Joel brought the butt of his rifle up in a smooth motion, and the hunter's nose shattered, blood gushing. He stumbled back with a startled cry, dropping his shiv. Joel closed the distance between them in one long stride and hooked his ankle behind the other man's, then gave him a light shove to take him all the way to the ground. Joel drove his heel into the man's face, bone and cartilage crunching under his boot as the hunter's face concaved.
Joel huffed and limped the rest of the way into the backyard, casting about for the owners of the footsteps he heard crunching the snow. A gleam of metal caught his eye, and he holstered his rifle to wrench an axe from a nearby pine. Melee was more his style, anyway. He eyed the low wood shed butting up against another fence and took off his backpack. Explosives were impressive, too. He just hoped Ellie hadn't raided his stash.
She had taken a few of his things, but she'd replaced them. Bless you, child, he thought, pulling out a nail bomb that looked like it was made inexpertly, but efficiently.
Joel clambered up onto the little shed, not just his wound but his old, cold bones complaining with the movement, also. He scowled and armed the bomb, then lobbed it behind a thin section of fence some genius had decided to use for cover. For Christ's sake, he could see the hunter's entire damn head. He shook his head with a sigh as the bomb detonated, taking out another hunter besides the one Joel saw. The flimsy fence was also a victim of the bomb, scattered uselessly into shards.
A third hunter rushed onto the scene, horrified. Joel jumped down from his perch-his knees creaked almost audibly in protest-and charged him. The man made a choked noise somewhere between a shout and a sob, then the axe blade cleaved through his sternum. Terrified green eyes locked onto Joel's face for half a second before they went blank and he slumped to the ground. Joel ripped his axe free, trying very hard not to notice how young that hunter had been, or how his eyes were almost the exact same shade of green as Ellie's.
He shoved the little part of him that was kicking and screaming, "This isn't fair!" into the little lockbox in the back of his mind, his hands tightening on the axe handle. He did what he had to. Now he had to move on.
Joel forced his feet to move, carrying him into a little alley between the fence and the brick house. He hauled himself over a fallen air conditioning unit and was almost immediately grabbed from behind.
"Gotcha, asshole." Jesus Christ, this man was an amature. Joel started prying the hunter's arm away from his neck with ridiculous ease. "Finish him off!"
"Hold him still!" A second hunter approached warily, holding his shiv all wrong and with a wide, open stance. Idiot. Joel kicked him neatly in the balls, or tried to. He'd underestimated the distance slightly and the kick connected sloppily, unbalancing him. His target still went down, but now the asshole behind him was leaning over on his back.
"Son of a bitch," Joel growled and reared back, snapping the back of his head into his assailant's face. He turned and shoved the other man hard into the wall of the house, then turned to the second hunter, who was recovering. He kicked the hunter hard in the face, blood splattering the snow. Joel slipped and went down on top of the hunter, but that suited him just fine. He grabbed the lapels of the other man's jacket and hauled him up, then hooked his arms under the hunter's armpits.
"You come with me."
"Lemme go. I'll...fuck you up."
Joel snorted. The only thing this man had fucked up were the chances of his and his buddy's survival.
He dragged the disoriented hunter into a house across the street and unceremoniously dumped him by the old radiator. Joel bound one of his hands to the tubes, then went back for the other man and set him up nice and cozy in a chair in the center of the room, wrapped up tighter than a present the day before Christmas.
While they were getting their bearings back, Joel poked around the house and came up with a pocket knife and a map of the area. The knife he left on the dining table, but the map he kept in his pocket.
Once he was sure the hunters were awake and paying attention, Joel crouched by the man tied to the radiator and punched him hard across the face, but not hard enough to break bones. After a few more hits like that, the man in the chair started to crack.
"What do you want?" he demanded weakly between hits. "What the fuck?"
Joel punched the first hunter one last time, then got to his feet with a stifled groan, placing a hand over his wound.
"You wait here," he muttered to the first hunter as he ambled over to the man in the chair, first crossing the room to pick up the knife. He dragged another chair over to the second hunter and sat down backwards in it.
"Now," Joel started, sinking back into 'interrogator' like he'd never left Boston behind. "The girl. Is she alive?"
"What girl? I don't know no girl." His voice trembled and broke at the end, a note of hysteria creeping in. Joel slid the knife behind the hunter's kneecap. He made a choked, gasping noise of pain, eyes and mouth open wide as he leaned to the side. "Fuuck!"
"Focus, right here. Right here." Joel lightly slapped the hunter's jaw, prompting him to turn an unfocused gaze on his torturer. Joel leaned in close and dropped his voice to a dangerous rumble. "Or I'll pop your goddamn knee off."
The man started crying, squeezing his eyes shut and rocking back and forth as much as he could with a knife in his knee.
"The girl."
He nodded fervently, and had to take a moment to get enough breath to speak around the pain. "She's alive. She's David's newest pet."
Oh no. No.
"Where?" Joel twisted the knife hard without waiting for an answer, tearing a scream from the man. David. That was the name of the man he'd have to dismember. Slowly.
"In the town. In the town," the hunter said, his words more of a desperate plea. Joel plucked the blade from the hunter's knee, then grabbed his jaw and stuck the handle between his teeth.
"Now you're gonna mark it on the map," he growled, taking the paper out of his pocket and unfolding it. "And it better be the exact same spot your buddy points to. Mark it."
The hunter leaned forward and dabbed a spot on the map with the bloodied knife, then spat it out. "It's right there. You can verify it. Go ask him. Go on. He'll tell ya. I ain't lyin'. I ain't lyin'."
Joel stood and walked over to the first hunter, folding the map up and putting it back in his pocket. He hesitated behind the man in the chair, then a flash of white-hot rage constricted his chest. This man had known exactly where Ellie was taken. He could have had a hand in hurting her.
Joel clamped his right arm down over the man's neck like a steel vice, his hand clutching the back of the hunter's head. He lifted him off the ground, chair and all, Joel pushing his head one way with his shoulder, and pulling in the opposite direction with his hand. After a few agonizing seconds of abdominal pain, the man's neck snapped like a toothpick and Joel let him fall.
"Fuck you, man. He told you what you wanted." the second hunter snarled, reminding Joel very strongly of a scared bully trying to act tough. "I ain't tellin' you shit."
"That's alright," he said, stooping to pick up a metal pipe. "I believe him."
"No, wait!"
Joel slapped the pipe into the man's temple. He went limp, the light gone from his eyes. Sighing, Joel dropped the piped and hobbled back out into the snow, the map burning a hole in his pocket.
I'm comin', Ellie. Hold on.
