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
Act 1 - Summer
Chapter 3 – The Slums
It had been a long time since Joel had used the East Tunnel to get to Area 5. As was always the case in the lower-status parts of the QZ, things were always changing. In this case, the area outside the alley where the route ended was now a slum market.
The simple fact was that FEDRA's ration system didn't even pretend to provide everyone what they needed. The 'subsistence' level of rations for those who didn't work beyond the wall, provide FEDRA with a vital service or had access to enough black market goods to obtain extra ration cards was very, very low. So, the people of the Zone had to provide a lot of things for themselves. Places like this were where these things were bought and sold. With his first look around, Joel saw a hot food stall (selling roasted and fried rat – always a near-inexhaustible foodstuff in the rubbish-infested Zone), a guy selling attack dogs and stalls selling clothing, furniture and candles (probably using recycled food wastes as wax).
"Hey Tess!" an excitable man with a weird high-and-tight haircut was babbling in a way that made Joel think he had somehow got hold of some kind of mind-altering drug that had permanently screwed over his synapses. "Pretty lady! I hear that you got merchandise! I got good cards! I got…"
"Not now, Terrance," Tess snapped. The guy reached towards Tess but her glare was enough to stop him dead. "Not now!"
"Okay, okay! No need to get all huffy-puffy about it!" Joel walked up and shot the man a look of his own, just to reinforce the message that hands-on with Tess was a bad idea. The man looked too far gone to understand.
As Tess walked off to a tight cluster of stalls leading to the other end of the former courtyard that was now the market's venue, Joel walked over to a corner where a fat, sweaty woman was selling clothes. He'd seen something that might come in useful.
The woman glared at the heavily-built smuggler. "Whatever you want, I'm not interested in trading for bullets. It's food, Cards or nothing!"
Joel nodded. "I've got food," he responded. "A ration bar for that vest." He pointed at what looked like a heavily-padded shirt. It was a Slum Flack Vest, basically two shirts sown together and the in-between stuffed with rag, cork-boards, bits of scrap metal and just about anything. It was crude but it was the closest thing someone outside of the Military could get to body armour in the Zone. Joel had a feeling that he was going to need it. Normally, he wouldn't bother buying from a place like this except in an emergency, but that particular shirt looked like it was made to a good standard.
The woman looked at Joel shrewdly. "Two bars, brother. I'm not a charity."
Joel shook his head. "Your work is good, lady, but not that good. One."
"For that, I'll do without the deal!"
"Okay, I'll add a bottle of clean water too."
Clean water was a major commodity in the QZ where the water didn't always flow and, when it did, it was contaminated more often than not. The woman's eyes lit up. "Pal, for that, you've got yourself a deal! I'll even throw in an extra!"
Joel shrugged out of his pack and put on the jacket, which was a good fit. With the sewn-on belt ties tightened, it was also a snug fit and gave good mobility. He was glad that his eye for these things hadn't let him down. The 'extra' were a pair of leather straps with earthing irons riveted in at mid-length. Wrapped around his upper finger joints, they would make fair if crude knuckledusters. He pulled his pack back on and walked over to Tess.
"Finished your shopping Texas?" Tess didn't mind. What Joel did with his stuff was his business. Besides, it was a good buy; he wasn't as good as dodging around as her and, besides, the extra bulk of the jerry-rigged armour made him look that bit more impressive as her 'muscle'. In this situation, psychology was important and some guys would just choose not to force a confrontation.
As the two smugglers entered the row of stalls, a man sitting on a chair in one with a woman perched on his lap spoke up. "Hey, Tess! It's been a long time! You never visit anymore! Where you been?"
"Who the hell is that?" the woman hissed, triggering an argument with the guy that made him forget all about Tess.
"You touch it, you bought it," growled one of the stall keepers to Joel. Joel decided against answering, instead skirting around what was obviously the guy's stall.
Climbing onto a long-immobilised bus through its rear emergency exit, Joel saw a small fenced-off area to the right where two men were engaged in a furious fist-fight. From the loud yells, encouragement and insults being offered by the onlookers, as well as the wagers being passed back and forth, Joel figured it was a prize fight.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?"
Joel's eyes narrowed as he considered the man standing, blocking his way through the bus to the far end of the courtyard. He was about Joel's size, muscular in his own right and had a look in his eyes that told the Texan man that he knew how to fight. "It's okay Malik!" Tess called as she stepped up behind her partner. "He's with me!"
"Oh… Didn't know you'd got yourself new muscle, Tess! Go on through!"
"Who's that?" Joel murmured as they disembarked.
"An old headache; don't ask."
Joel looked around the much more quiet area they had entered. This area seemed to be more where people were trying to make their shelters rather than a place of commerce. Over at the far end, by a set of locked chain-link gates, two locals were muttering about someone 'hoarding all kinds of stuff' in his warehouse – no doubt talking about Robert. Joel also found some interesting little bits of local colour. First was a 'Wanted' poster for no less a personage than Marlene herself. The second was an Outside Work Duty draft notice with some interesting suggestions scribbled over the official text about what the city commander could do to pleasure himself.
Tess was waiting at the entrance to an alley. As he walked back to her, Joel passed a little girl who was obsessively stroking the hair of what he realised was some kind of rag doll. She shied back from the big smuggler's gaze, drawing the toy protectively against her chest and hiding her face behind her dirty blonde hair.
Even childhood was an endangered species these days.
"I'm looking for Robert. Has he been through here lately?" Tess asked an African-American man in a hoodie who was loitering by the entrance to the alley, offering him a ration card.
"Yeah; 'bout half an hour ago with some of his muscle. Said he was going back to the wharf; he's probably still there now."
Tess nodded and gave the man his payment.
Tess and Joel walked into a small courtyard in between a square of tenements. A few empty pallets of boxes were scattered around. Three very large and armed men walked in from an alleyway at the other end.
"Aaannnd here we go," Joel drawled quietly as the men formed a simple cordon line, blocking access to the alleyway from which they had just emerged.
"Let us through." Tess's words weren't a suggestion or a plea.
The goons weren't impressed. Their apparent leader, a shaven-headed, black-skinned giant replied in a soft, dangerous voice: "You guys need to turn around if you know what's good for you."
Tess shook her head. "Our beef isn't with you or your crew, it's with Robert. Whatever he's paying you, it isn't worth you getting tangled up in someone else's business."
"Turn the fuck around and leave, NOW!"
Tess wasn't impressed. "I'm not going anywhere without Robert."
The giant seemed to lose his temper and stepped closer to Tess. "Bitch, I will bash in your fucking skull if you don't turn around and get your dumb ho ass…"
"Fuck this!" Tess sighed. Her Walther flashed up and she put a bullet in the man's head and heart before he had a chance to finish his last sentence.
The other two goons clearly hadn't been expecting that. With cries of panic, they jumped behind one of the sets of crates. Joel and Tess did the same. "I'll keep their attention; you get the angle on them!" Tess snapped out.
Joel nodded. Tess popped up and wasted two bullets on the wall behind the goons hiding place, discouraging them from sticking their heads out of cover for a moment. Simultaneously, Joel darted across an open area to dive behind another crate. A bullet cracked against the side of the crate as he dropped into cover.
Joel popped up and the left-hand goon spotted him and squeezed off a shot that clipped the right shoulder of his padded vest but doing no other damage as he dropped back into cover. The right-hand goon fired two shots at Tess who replied in kind, forcing him to duck down before she dropped down herself to reload. The guy on the left popped up again but, this time, Joel was ready and his Colt spat, clipping the goon's cheek and making him jerk back with a cry of pain. Joel corrected and put the second shot right on target on the centre of his target's face, dropping him instantly. He then ducked down as the other man fired once at Tess and then once at Joel. Tess popped up again and fired back a single time, forcing the remaining goon to duck.
Joel took the opportunity to duck across to a third set of crates that ended right alongside the goons' hiding place. The remaining goon had finished reloading and popped up to take a shot at Tess. Tess got her shot in first, the shot shattering his collar bone, knocking him back and making him drop out of Tess's line of fire. Joel, unnoticed, leaned out around the side of the crate. He centred his gun on the man's temple and pulled the trigger once, sending him down for good, still down in his hiding place.
The courtyard fell silent. Tess stood up, nodding grimly in approval of the outcome of the gunfight. "Nicely done Texas," she remarked dryly. She gestured at his reinforced shirt. "Looks like your fashion statement got creased!"
"It's what it's here for," Joel growled back. He picked up the goons' guns: Two nine-millimetre semi-autos and a semi-auto in an exotic calibre for which Joel doubted he would ever be able to find ammunition; he just left that where it lay. Tess took the full clip from one of the 9-millimetres and Joel the four rounds remaining in the other guy's gun.
The two smugglers left the field, loading their spoils into their guns. Joel shook his head. "Where the hell is Robert finding all these people to fight for him?" It wasn't as if Robert was a popular guy or the sort for whom people were lining up to work and, potentially, die.
Tess shrugged. "If he's good for anything, Robert is great at writing blank cheques. What say we put an end to that?"
After passing through a rat-infested alleyway and another boost-and-lift with a six-foot high wall beside a locked gate, Tess and Joel found themselves at what both felt certain was 'the warehouse' the locals had been complaining about.
The two smugglers clambered through a hole in a chain-link fence and then dropped down into the courtyard and ducked down behind some packing crates; full crates this time. Just in time too, as two armed men walked out of the building that had once housed Spencer's Computer Supplies. "How do you know they're coming?" the first asked.
His buddy snorted. "Two of our guys died trying to take out Tess this morning. I guarantee that she and Joel are on their way over, right now, to pull the payback out of Robert's ass!"
The first man shook his head, his eyes getting wider. "Shit! We shouldn't have taken this job!"
"Not our call. Let's spread out and make sure no-one's creeping around here."
"We take 'em out fast and quiet," Tess murmured into Joel's ear as the big man wrapped on his slum-crafted knuckledusters, figuring he'd need them now the fight was getting a bit more intense. "Stay low and stay away from those windows." Joel nodded. There were sure to be more sentries inside the warehouse, given how central it seemed to be to Robert's operation.
Tess crab-walked towards the first guard, ducking from packing crate to packing crate as Joel quietly padded in the wake of the second. A few moments later Joel heard a grunt of surprise followed by a tearing sound as Tess grabbed her man from behind and rammed her butterfly knife into the side of his neck.
Staying low, Joel came up close behind the second guard, who was standing beside a long-derelict truck parked by a set of gates so rusted that it was unlikely they would ever open again. Joel looked towards the warehouse; no sign of anyone watching. He popped up and grabbed the guy around the throat, dragging him down and strangling him as he did so.
"Move up! Move up!" Tess hissed as she darted for one of the two entrances to the warehouse. Joel crouch-walked over to the window and pressed himself to the wall, listening for movement.
Two guards were inside, talking loudly and unconcernedly. "Yeah, I meant to tell you: I was down on Jordan Street and all these soldiers showed up with a group of about five civs, all in handcuffs!"
A second voice responded in a tone of amusement. "Let me guess; Fireflies?"
"Yeah, that's what they said. They lined them up against the wall and bang, bang, bang! They just executed all of 'em!"
"Holy shit!"
"Yeah, I hear it's like that all over the city! They're cracking down on them hard!" There was a pause. "I got a cousin with them."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah; idiot thinks he's gonna save the world! Hope he's alright."
Joel lifted himself up. There were two people in what looked like an office space. One man was standing near the window, watching a second man who was half-heartedly searching some shelves by the far wall. Beyond the second man was a door into another part of the warehouse. Joel saw Tess peeking around the corner of the doorframe. Joel caught her eye and pointed to the guy by the shelves. She nodded. Joel quietly hauled himself through the window, every shard of the glass long gone and grabbed the nearest guy from behind.
So silent was the take-down that the first hint the other guy got that there was trouble was when Tess jumped on him from behind and ripped open his throat with her knife.
Tess shook her head at the mess. "Let's check this area again and then see if we can find our way through to where Robert is."
Tess found herself four bullets for her pistol whilst Joel found another ration bar and a family-sized can of FEDRA food rations. The official canned rations reminded Joel of tinned dog-food (indeed were probably more-or-less the same thing). Nonetheless, when heated, the reconstituted meat-and-vegetable mix was a decent enough meal if you were desperate. A lot of folks these days were desperate.
Most importantly, Joel found a small key that fit in the lock of the door that led out of the office area and further towards the sea-front.
The moment the two smugglers passed through the door, they were back in enemy country. Joel and Tess dived into cover behind another tarpaulin-covered collection of packing crates. Outside, in an open area between several warehouses, a few of Robert's hirelings could be heard talking in a way about their boss that indicated that they were in it for the Cards, not love of the man.
"Hey man, we consolidated the supplies in the south warehouse and locked up."
"Good; let's do another once-over then head out. It's getting too close to curfew and I want to get back before then."
One of the men stopped right in front of Joel, blocking the door out into the open area. Tess looked at Joel with raised eyebrows, clearly asking him to decide on the next move. Quietly, Joel's fingers closed around an empty glass bottle that was lying on top of the packing crates.
"What about Robert? Who's he staying with tonight? Guy's too paranoid to stay here tonight all by himself!"
"Fuck if I know. We'll check in with the others and figure something out…" The second man walked off, ascending a set of metal stairs into the upper level of another warehouse. Silence fell aside from the guard in the doorway muttering about Robert's cowardice and issues with trust. Joel used this opportunity to sneak up behind him and strangle him, earning a muttered word of approval from Tess.
A quick sweep of the warehouse opposite the exit from the first building found nothing of interest other than piles of useless air conditioning units (although Joel supposed their component parts could be cannibalised into something useful). It was obvious that the more of Robert's seemingly-inexhaustible muscle were in a two-storey warehouse at the other side of the open area. There were two obvious entrances – a ground-level loading gate and what looked like an office entrance at the top of a set of external metal stairs.
Joel didn't like the look of the ground-level entrance. There was too great a chance of sentries on the upper level turning it into a shooting gallery with him and Tess as the ducks. Carefully, the big Texan ascended the external metal fire stairs, wary of causing even the slightest noise that could give away his presence.
At the top of the stairs, Joel peeked around the corner. The area looked like it used to be a workshop of some kind. There was an auto-lathe and racks of tools and drill-heads all around the walls (all long since rusted into uselessness, of course). At the far end of the room was a door leading out into the main warehouse area with a denim-clad guy with dirty blonde hair in a ponytail and nervously handling a snub-nosed revolver of some kind. The guard looked around and suddenly set off for the door out onto the emergency stairs. Joel braced himself, the fingers of his right hand finding the handle of the shiv at the small of his back.
Joel shot Tess a look over his shoulder, clearly communicating the need for silence and then pressed himself against the outside wall as the man strode unhurriedly out onto the landing at the top of the metal stairs. The man didn't get a chance to scream – Joel's hand slapped over his mouth and used the hold to yank him sideways off of his feet. The big Texan's shiv slammed into the guard's throat, tearing open vein and artery alike. Keeping his hand over the dying man's mouth to muffle any final cry, Joel waited until he had stopped flailing about and then lowered the corpse to the landing. Then he nodded at a grim Tess and the two snuck into the workshop.
The door into the warehouse confirmed that Joel had been right to be cautious earlier. A mezzanine with a metal wall ran around the first floor of the warehouse area. It was patrolled by two pistol-packing guards who were circling to and from two small office spaces either side of the workshop door. Had they gone in through the roller-shutters, they would have indeed been in a death trap where the guards had all the advantages of high ground and cover.
Fortunately, for an experienced bushwhacker like Joel, the design of the mezzanine offered several advantages. The first guy walked into the right-hand office and never saw Joel, hidden in blind corner behind the door, until the smuggler's huge arm seized him and dragged him down.
The second guard was a bit of a problem. He had sat down in one of the moth-eaten office chairs in the left-hand office and was slowly spinning it around whilst cleaning under his fingernails with an ugly-looking basic shiv, his revolver in his lap. Joel decided against trying to time his approach to get around him. Instead he sneaked through the left-hand office again to the stairs leading down to the main floor of the warehouse. Joel considered the third guard, standing in front of the open roller-shutters. He pulled out the bottle he grabbed earlier and tossed it expertly into a blind corner (all that playing ball with Tommy and Sarah having paid off, it seemed).
The loud crash of shattering glass broke the tense silence. "Hey! Did you hear that?" The guard by the shutter yelled.
The other guard walked out onto the stretch of mezzanine in between the offices. "Yeah! Check it out! Stay frosty! That psycho motherfucker Joel and his bitch are supposed to be on the way!"
Tess, who had been still hiding in the workshop, didn't need a special invitation with an adversary's unguarded back right in front of her. She leapt up like a striking cat, slapped a hand over the guy's mouth and carved open his throat with her butterfly knife.
Joel ducked back into the left-hand office to grab another bottle that was on a window ledge and then snuck down the stairs, intending to blind-side the remaining guard who had paced out of sight behind one of the piles of crates containing now-useless consumer electronics. "Ah, I don't see nothin'," the guard called out. "I definitely heard something fall over though! Jones, Harry, do you see anythin' from up there?" Naturally, the other two guards didn't answer, being dead. "Jones? Harry? This isn't funny guys!"
Shit. Joel tensed and halted. The guard sounded scared and Joel knew perfectly well, having spent a long time hunting the world's most dangerous game, that this would make him wary and ready for a fight at a moment's notice. A thousand and one possible tactics flew through the Texan's mind as the guard warily stepped around the side of the crate, leading with his gun.
Joel didn't hesitate but flung the bottle in his hand into the man's face. It shattered on impact and the guard squealed in agony, dropping his gun as his hands instinctively snapped up to cover his lacerated face. Joel lunged forwards, grabbed the guy's head and slammed it down onto his right knee. The guard tumbled to the ground and Joel finished the matter, bringing his right foot crashing down on the guy's ruined face and feeling the man's skull give under the force.
Turning his back on the guard, who was no longer of any concern, he jogged back up the stairs to meet Tess at the workshop door. She was looking on dispassionately as she examined the second guard's revolver. "Robert's got a fuckin' army here!" she spat. "We should have hired a couple of bodies to bring along!"
Joel shrugged. "Ah, more bodies would have just slowed us down."
Tess laughed. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
Joel walked into the right-hand office and found the second guard's shiv and a medical kit sitting on the desk in front of the chair where he had been sitting; he picked up both. The shiv went into the sheath on the back of his belt – No point putting wear and tear on his good, crafted shiv when he could use these slum blades folk left lying around. They weren't good for much use but they only needed to work once. A pause to pick up the first guard's full magazine from his 9mm pistol and the two smugglers walked down to the main floor of the warehouse.
Tess gestured at a closed set of roller shutters. "The docks are this way. C'mon; let's finish this."
The wharf area was huge with stacks of crates, empty 30- and 60-foot shipping containers and a honest-to-Neptune dry-dock with some kind of rusted hulk of a ship inside that must have been under repair when the Outbreak hit and was left there to decay with the work crews either dead, Infected or hiding in the Zone waiting for the world to become sane again. Most important, in Joel's eyes, were the dozen or so guards and workers wandering around the area, some armed with guns, others carrying pickaxe handles as makeshift clubs. Tess was right; looked like Robert had somehow found himself an army.
Speaking of Robert… "There's our boy!" Tess hissed. Robert was talking with one of his men. Joel never quite figured out what it was about the black marketer that seemed so weasel-like. Was it the tattered zip-up cardigan? Was it the greasy black hair, tied back in a ponytail as if he was trying to look cool or daring? No, perhaps it was the watery, shifty blue eyes that never really seemed to meet your own but were always darting around.
Clearly confident in the number of men protecting this location, Robert sauntered off into the covered dry-dock area as if the owned the place… Which, let's face it, he pretty much did. "Cocky son-of-a-bitch!" Tess muttered dismissively.
Joel hid his smirk, remembering that they had a game on. "Let's go wrap this up."
The two smugglers ghosted down from the loading dock at the back of the warehouse and dropped down behind some of the crates. "There are a lot of them," Tess whispered. "We need to be smart about this or we'll be torn to pieces!"
Joel's experience eye tracked left and right. The best cover he could see was to pass through several shipping containers that had been left open to the left. To the right, the area was open and there were at least three guards standing in a group by the entrance to the dry-dock shed that faced the warehouse.
Joel gestured for Tess to go right and get into cover behind a set of crates closer to the dry-dock building. From there, she could cover him as he made his approach from the side. Then Joel darted down towards the far end of the wharf area, passing through two opened containers and picking up a shiv someone had left lying on top of an empty fuel oil barrel.
At the far end of the wharf area, Joel emerged from a container behind one guard who was sauntering along the side wall of a locked-off warehouse (the FEDRA biohazard door seals making Joel wonder just what nightmares it might contain). The smuggler grabbed the guard and wrung his neck silently before picking up the wooden stave he had been using as a weapon.
Sneaking along the line of containers towards the dry-dock shed, Joel considered his next move carefully. He dropped down behind a set of crates just next to the side entrance to the shed and strained his ears for clues as to his foes' positions. "Shipments have been dry for a long time," Joel heard one of the guards remark to his buddies by the other entrance.
"Yeah, well we lost our contacts in the north, lost our contacts in the south. Shit. I don't know who's left out there to sell us stuff. Guess this is why we're taking shitty protection jobs."
"Fucking Robert! He'd better be good for what he promised us!" a third voice snapped.
Guess Robert isn't so popular with his 'army', Joel thought with a secret smirk. One thing to hire men to fight for you; it was something else entirely to have their loyalty.
"Even if he is, so what? I'm telling you, brother, this Zone is done for! We'd better start thinking of an exit strategy!"
"You're insane! Even thinking of going outside?"
"Plenty of other smugglers do it! What do you think's gonna happen here when the supplies run out?" Joel's eyebrows went up, surprised to hear his own darkest premonitions so baldly echoed. The fact that he wasn't the only one to see the signs only hardened his intention to somehow talk Tess into bailing out of Boston whilst it was still possible to do so.
"I'd prefer to take my chances in here," the first voice muttered unhappily.
Joel peeked from behind the crates and watched as the pow-wow broke up. Two of the guards sauntered off towards the loading dock (and towards Tess) whilst the other walked the other way and took up a position almost right in front of Joel. The smuggler checked and didn't like the odds. If he took out the guy in front of him, his buddy by the other entrance would have an age to start shooting and the third guard would hold Tess back long enough to stop her from covering her partner's fight.
Joel ghosted out from behind the crates, following a wide loop towards the other entrance. Darting from crate to crate, he snuck up behind the guard standing out in the open, yanked him behind a crate and used one of the crude shivs he'd been finding lying around recently to tear open his throat. The weapon snapped immediately (no great surprise; whoever had crafted them didn't know shit about reinforcement or sharpening).
"Niiice!" Tess murmured flirtatiously from behind the crate opposite him.
Joel decided that he would consider her behaviour later. Instead, he snuck up behind the other guard on this side of the entrances to the shed. He seized the man around the throat and clapped the muzzle of his pistol to the side of the man's head. Surprisingly the guard at the other entrance didn't react to the loud 'clank' as his buddy's club dropped to the ground.
"L… Let's be cool, brother!" Joel recognised the frantic whispering voice. This was the man who had been advocating getting out of Boston. "You got me; now let's not do anything…" Having got the guy behind the nearest crate, Joel slammed the butt of his pistol against the man's temple and sent him down for the count. He couldn't understand why he didn't finish the guy; maybe he appreciated his Survivor's instincts.
"I just love watching you work!" Tess said with a lethal grin.
Joel noticed something sticking out of the unconscious guard's jacket - an old school exercise book. The guy was keeping a journal! From reading the most recent entries it was clear that Robert had been big on promises but short on Cards to pay his newfound security detail. Joel also found out how he'd got them: Their most recent attempt to smuggle stuff in by boat had been intercepted by FEDRA but Robert had been able to bribe the military into letting the gang go. No great surprise; low-level FEDRA soldiers didn't get much in the way of luxuries either and an extra ration card or two was a nice bonus. The smuggler wondered if he was threatening to get the same tame soldiers to arrest his newfound muscle if they started getting ideas of striking out on their own again.
Back to work, he counselled himself. Joel gestured to a stack of crates just inside the nearest entranceway to the "Move up to those crates and cover me."
Joel moved back around to the side entrance and came up behind the remaining entranceway guard. He yanked the man backward and into the shadow of some shipping crates stacked up inside the dry-dock shed and wrung his neck efficiently.
"Psst!" Joel looked over at Tess, hiding behind a nearby set of crates. The woman held up a finger, made a 'walking man' gesture and pointed to the other side of the shed. Another guard; probably looking towards the entrance and probably had a nice wide and clear field of fire. Fortunately, there was an open shipping container that was like a tunnel leading to the other side of the shed. Joel sneaked down it and looked out through a side door to see…
"THERE!"
Shit!
A second guard was standing with Robert by the entrance to a set of pre-fabricated office units at the far end of the open area. Joel ducked back into the container as at least three shots zipped through the entranceway. The 'clang' of their impact on the far wall was deafening in the enclosed space.
"Get the fucker!" Another volley of shots kept Joel pinned down.
"Hey! Assholes!" Behind her cover, Tess opened fire; she couldn't see the second guard but she could see the first and give Joel some assistance. Her shots tore a foot-long splinter out of the crate behind which he had ducked. This gave Joel a moment to duck out and fire two shots at the second guard by the office door. At this range, the likelihood of a hit was low and Joel wasn't particularly surprised to miss; the point was the gunman ducked down, giving Joel an opening as the first guard turned towards him to fire at him. The first shot hit the crate but the next three caught him the chest and throat, sending him down for good. Unfortunately, that had taken too long. The second guard was up and shooting again. Most of his shots went wild but one sliced across the side of Joel's abdomen, fortunately only spilling padding from the armour. Another slammed into his left upper chest, shattering the pressboard 'plate' under the cloth of the slum armour and digging into his flesh.
Despite the shooting pain through his left arm, Joel managed to back-pedal into cover. He swapped clips as Tess came up behind a set of crates shielding the corner around the end of the dry-dock itself and fired a wild brace of shots. This opened up a moment for Joel to charge forwards into cover behind the set of crates the man he'd just shot had been using for cover.
"Odds are against ya! Not too late to bug out, pal!" Tess shouted out.
The guard clearly wasn't smart although he clearly was either brave or too scared to stop fighting. "Fuck you, bitch! That's my buddies you and yours have been killing!"
Tess ducked around the side of her crate to take a shot and the guard popped up to shoot at her. Joel was ready and began firing at the guard as soon as he showed his face. The first shot hit the wall of the office prefab behind him but the next one went into his right eye and the last into the middle of his face.
Joel reloaded again, putting in his last fresh clip and snatching the clip out of the dead first guard's gun before standing up. "That office!" Tess snapped, gesturing at the prefab with her gun. "Robert must have run in there when the shooting started! Let's not wait around."
Joel shook his head and raised a hand in caution. "Let's make sure we won't have any of his 'hired help' coming up our asses first!"
This caution was justified. As Joel stepped past the edge of the stack of crates at the top of the dry dock, a scared-looking kid swinging a pickaxe handle lunged out at Joel with a high, terrified battle cry. The makeshift club slammed into Joel's chest but the makeshift armour took most of the impact. The kid backpedalled and tried a head-shot instead under which Joel ducked as he shoulder-charged the kid, knocking him back against the safety rail and sending his weapon tumbling from his hand. Joel came upright and laid a massive haymaker right to the kid's jaw that (thanks to the knuckledusters) nearly shattered his jaw, span him half around and offered his unkempt hair as a convenient handhold for the big smuggler to smash his face into the safety rail.
"Two more!" Tess yelled behind Joel. He turned to see two more of Robert's seemingly-inexhaustible legion of muscle charging towards them, one firing a semi-automatic pistol wildly and the other with a pickaxe handle, raised for an overhead smash. Tess lined up on the gunman and sent four slugs his way, making him dive behind the crates further up the side of the shed. She ducked back and started reloading.
"I'm gonna kill you, you mutha…" the charging club-wielding guard was yelling. Joel met him half-way, leading with his own bludgeon and using it to block the guard's downward swing. Both wooden staves shattered from the impact but Joel was expecting that; he used the moment's distraction to kick the guard in the abdomen; this had little effect, the man was wearing the vest portion of some old-style police riot armour. The dark-skinned man lashed out at Joel with a wild punch that impacted in the centre of his chest armour, causing more damage to the guard's fist than Joel. The smuggler responded with a tightly controlled one-two that sent blood and teeth flying into the air.
The gunman pocked his head up, aiming his gun to support his buddy but had clearly forgotten Tess, who was positioned and braced; she put two bullets a dime's width apart into his forehead and he went down. Simultaneously, Joel drove his dancing partner's face into the concrete floor with a pile-driving stomp that shattered every bone in his face.
With a pained grunt, Joel turned his back on his fallen foe and picked up the club dropped by the stupid kid that had tacked him earlier. "Okay, now we move. This shoot-out's gonna have every soldier in the area come runnin' especially as Robert's been makin' nice with them!"
Tess had just recovered the gunman's clip and grimaced at the mess that had been made of Joel's chest. Fortunately, most of the craters were in the armour but there was no mistaking the bullet wound in his left shoulder. "Get that shit off," she growled, pointing at Joel's armour. "We need to deal with that before your bleed out or get an infection!"
"Tess, I ain't needed motherin' for about forty damn…"
Joel hissed in pain as Tess pushed the muzzle of her Walther into the bullet wound. "Bullshit," was her opinion. With a growl Joel yanked off the armour. Tess frowned as she looked at Joel's shoulder wound. Then the god-damned psycho bitch went and popped the bullet out as if it were a zit! She slapped a medical kid into Joel's hand and glared at him until he unwound enough to disinfect and dress the wound before pulling back on the damaged but still-serviceable armoured vest.
As Joel busied himself with that task, Tess scooped up the magazine from the fallen guard by the door's pistol (as well as a ration bar that had probably been his intended lunch). She then pulled out a shiv that she'd picked up out on the wharf and used it to jimmy open the locked door of the office.
Maybe it was a desire to prove that he wasn't so badly hurt as to no longer be able to make a contribution but Joel was the first into the reception area of the prefab. A small table with a couple of chairs showed that someone had been playing cards not too long ago. There was only one door. Joel opened it and was confronted by a terrified Robert, standing behind a paperwork-strewn desk and pointing a semi-auto at his face. The smuggler ducked behind the door frame as, with a screamed order to stay back, Robert started shooting wildly, bullets clipping the door frame and slamming into the far wall.
Tess dived across the opening (dodging a few shots in the process) and came upright on the other side of the doorframe. "We just want to talk, Robert!" she called out.
There was a series of clicks that indicated Robert was reloading his gun. "We got nothin' to talk about you cock-sucking whore!"
The insult flowed off of Tess's back as if it were unuttered. She'd been called worse. "This ain't helping you, Robert! Put your gun down!"
"Go fuck yourself!" Robert starting shooting randomly again; his gun quickly ran dry and, with a snarl of mixed rage and terror, he flung the useless weapon out the door before the two smugglers heard rapid footsteps.
"He's running!" Tess snapped. "This way!"
Joel was already around the doorframe as Robert dived out of a side door. "Robert!" he roared as he power-strode down the short corridor and kicked open the door out onto the streets on the other side of the dry-dock.
There was a short pursuit during which Robert tried to lose his pursuers in a set of abandoned warehouses. Joel jumped through a window (the glass of which had long since shattered to nothing) and saw Robert a short distance down the alleyway, struggling futilely with a locked metal gate.
Tess clambered out next to Joel, her face suddenly shining with sadistic delight at seeing her quarry finally trapped. "Hello Robert," she purred.
"Tess, Joel," Robert said nervously, stepping away from the gate and shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was clearly weighing up the odds of success if he tried running past the two blooded and furious smugglers and not liking the numbers that were coming up. "Um… Yeah. Look, no hard feelings? Y'know… About the 'cocksucker' thing?"
"Aw no, none at all!" Tess responded as she pulled the pickaxe handle she'd grabbed off of one of Robert's former guards off of its loop on her backpack. Robert's only frayed nerve broke and he rabbited down the alleyway. Tess's expression didn't change as she caught him under the knee with a low sweep of her club and sent the black marketer crashing to the pavement with a cry of pain. "We missed you at the payment meet," she spat.
Robert tried crawling but even trying to move his likely-broken leg was agony. "L… Look, whatever shit people have been telling about you about me, it's a lie, okay? I just want to say that…"
Tess cut off the flow of bullshit. "The guns, Robert: seven nine-millimetre pistols, a pair of double-barrels and three three-oh-eight hunting rifles, all fully loaded. You want to tell me what happened to those and to the two-fifty Ration Cards that they were worth?"
Robert broke out in a cold sweat, making Joel frown. Whatever was going on here, someone had put the frighteners on the black marketer and whoever it was, they must have been bad news to make him more scared of them than he was of Tess and Joel. "Look," Robert stammered. "Yeah, look, I'll talk but… it's complicated, alright?"
"Then uncomplicate it," Joel suggested, loping over towards the fallen man.
Robert started to babble as Joel closed in. "Just hear me out on this! I got to…!" Joel kicked him in the face, hearing the cartilage in his nose snap. Robert shouted in pain. Joel knelt beside the black marketer and grabbed his arm, pulling his right elbow joint back against its normal direction. Robert cried out in agony. "Fuck! Stop it! Stop it! I'll talk!"
"Quit your squirming," Tess spat in disgust. She scowled and bent down, getting in the man's face. "You were saying?"
"I SOLD THEM!" Robert squealed.
There was a long pause as Tess and Joel exchanged a horrified look. They'd half expected this but they still couldn't believe that Robert had screwed them over so thoroughly. "Excuse me?" she finally squeezed out.
"I… I sold them. Look, I didn't have much choice here! I owed someone! It was that or they'd be usin' my hide as a shower curtain!"
Tess somehow restrained her impulse to cave in the weasel's skull. "You owed us Robert! It looks to me like you backed the wrong runner here!"
"Look, you'll get your Cards anyway!" Robert babbled. "The cargo's gone but who gives a shit about that? I'll get you your Cards! Give me… a week! No more…!"
Tess's response was cold and dry as she stood, her eyes filled with rage. "Y'know, I might have trusted you to do that before you fucking put a hit on me!"
A dead silence fell as Robert realised just how much Tess knew about his attempts to tie off the loose end that she represented. Finally, the black marker managed to murmur a reply with a sick, terrified smile. "Um… Look, Tess! It was nothin' personal, 'kay? It was just… business?"
Tess hissed in annoyance. "Who did you sell our cargo to?"
"I can't tell you! God, don't you understand? Look, I need two days! Three at the most and…!"
With an impatient growl, Joel hauled back, dislocating Robert's elbow with a horrible sound of snapping bone and tearing tendons. Robert screamed in agony and voided his bladder. "Let's try this again!" Tess snapped. "Who has our cargo?"
"THE FIREFLIES! I OWED THE FIREFLIES! FOR FUCK'S SAKE, YOU KNOW THAT NO-ONE SAYS 'NO' TO MARLENE WHEN SHE 'ASKS NICELY'!"
Joel released his whimpering prisoner and clambered to his feet, his face ashen. Tess didn't look much better. Robert was right: In the underworld of the Quarantine Zone, the Firefly insurgents were the serious power. You fucked them over at your own peril and, when they wanted to do 'business', you took the price they offered, no matter how bad and were grateful that you didn't end up flayed alive and left hanging upside-down from a light pole and bleeding out the slow way.
Robert took the tiny reprieve as an opportunity to fill the air with more bullshit. "Look, I hear the military are really moving in on them in a big way! They are… well, shit, they're mostly all dead right now. The way I see it, the three of us… hell just the two of you… could wipe out the few that are left. Then you take your cargo and whatever else you want from their equipment dumps and I'll sell the rest! It's a great deal! What could go wrong? Huh? How about…?"
Robert's cajoling voice was cut off when Tess put a 9mm round through his forehead and then another, just to make her feelings plain. "Yeah. Fuck over the country's second biggest military power after FEDRA. That's a stupid fuckin' idea, Robert!"
Joel shot the dead man a brief, contemptuous glance, then looked at his partner in a worried way. "Well, now what?"
"Now…?" Tess sighed and ran a hand through her sweaty hair. "Now we get our merchandise back."
Joel's thick eyebrows effortlessly reached his hairline. "How we gonna do that?"
"Don't rush me! I'm makin' this shit up as I go right now." Tess rapped out a humourless chuckle and rubbed the bridge of her nose before continuing. "Look, we'll figure out some way to explain it to them; maybe work out some kind of trade. The first step is that we've got to find us a Firefly."
At that moment, a chocolate-smooth voice with an edge of charismatic humour spoke out. "Well, I can tell you now that you won't need to look far!"
Tess and Joel's heads snapped around to the speaker. It was an African-American woman, slightly shorter than Tess, with her long, braided silver-shot black hair tied back in a messy dreadlocked ponytail at the back of her head. She was holding a Beretta semi-automatic pistol and had a hand clenched to a gunshot wound in the right side of her abdomen.
"You wanted a Firefly?" Joel remarked. "Well, here ya go. The Queen Firefly herself!"
To be continued…