Authors' Note: And here we go again. It's been a little while since the last chapter, I know, but I had to come to terms with what went down. That's been in the planning for a while now; to me, Tommy's death is a huge changing point for different characters. This chapter has the challenge of showing how things have changed, and how quickly. Ellie will be changed because of this, and Joel will be too. Maybe they'll be irreparably broken, maybe they'll slowly come to terms with things, maybe they won't last until the end of the story because of where they're headed. Either way, things are starting to become a lot more intense. Make sure to leave a review letting me know what you think. Every single time I get a review I go back and write a little more (and I write in giant blocks, two or three thousand words at a time), so you'll understand why they help. What do you think of the way things are going? Also, how do you feel about Tommy dying?


ELLIE IV


Ellie didn't know how long she'd been wandering the tunnels. Each tunnel felt like the next, they rolled into one another. Maybe she'd been going in circles, she wasn't sure. If she had had Joel's mind, she might have wondered if she was going to die down here. Luckily, no such thought had crossed her mind. There were a few guards here and there, and the man with the fedora had passed, his eyes elsewhere. His eyes were hard, Ellie knew the look – it was the look Joel wore often, when he was thinking.

"Go back to the control room," he had said walking past, his voice trailing and echoing up the corridor, his voice quiet. "The girl might be there. Arm some more brothers – Crowley and Allis, yes. They'll do. Bring all of the equipment you can. I don't mean for her to escape alive."

He had gone silent then, only the echoes of their footsteps continued to reach her ears. She knew they were talking about her, and it made her worry for Joel. What've they done with him? She doubted he was dead… there was something about Joel and Tommy that made them invincible, some thick armour they had against attacks. Anything that the world had thrown at Joel, at Ellie, even at Tommy, had been defeated. Death had knocked on Joel's door, and he had told them to get to fuck. But maybe I'm wrong. I've been wrong about people before…

She'd been wrong about navigation before too… how Joel had managed to trek them across a landscape scorched with infected she did not know. He was a good man, and Tommy was too. She wondered a little about their parents as her feet clicked off the wet ground below, the fronts of them shining with muddy water from below, though the mud was probably shit. I'll ask them about their parents when this is done. When we're out in the light again. Shadows danced erratically back and forth, sometimes they followed Ellie and sometimes they lagged behind. They're probably as fucking lost as me, she thought. The lights were weak, pale yellow and oranges. Some didn't work at all, some flickered out for seconds. She had Joel's 9mm in her hand, though she wasn't familiar with it, and she didn't know if she'd be much use with it in a fight. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. And why would it? I've avoided them so far.

She had followed the man in the fedora, Joel, Tommy and the guards for a while down the corridors. It hadn't been difficult, though a few times Joel had turned, hearing noises behind her. Just keep going Joel, she kept thinking. If you see me the guards'll know, and then they'll shoot me in the damn head. Soon enough, however, she lost them. She'd been following the route she thought Ora had come back from for ten minutes or so now. They can't be too far ahead. The tunnels reeked of old shit, and something else too, something damp. Ellie slid out the clip for the third time and made sure it was full, and then pushed it back up until it clicked into place. She kept her hands wrapped tightly around the grip and trained straight ahead, though there was little her eyes could pick up in the darkness.

It was around then that she heard the screaming. "Joel," she muttered, and bound off down the corridor, into the dark, though it was much lighter than it seemed. Ellie traced the sound – a deep, wet crying – to a locked door, and she kicked at it once before she said anything.

"Let me fucking out of here!" she heard Joel say from the inside. She looked around the door; there was a big keyhole about the size of her fist, and there was a slit. She grabbed at the rusted handle, brown and flaky, and pulled hard. It slid, with some initial resistance, and light seemed to streak out of the room. Whatever was happening, Joel was well lit. She peered into the room. No, no, no…

Her eyes stuck on the bodies. First the one she did not know, and then… and then…

Joel still wasn't looking at her. His arms were stuck through bars, contorted around Tommy's body. He was rocking back and forth.

"Tommy… come on, little brother… don't do this to me Tommy… we were gonna get us out of here. Come on… Tommy, come on – no – no – oh, my god… please…"

"Joel…"

His head snapped towards her, but for a minute she wasn't sure if it was Joel. It was his voice, barely, but his face seemed old, haggard, savaged by grief, red and puffy and wet. She knew the look well; it was her face after her mom; after Riley. His eyes were bloodshot and sore, and full of a pain that made Ellie well-up and cry too. A real cry. She pressed her hands against the door and her cheeks squeezed themselves together and the tears ran down them and she wanted to know what happened.

Tommy. Tommy. Tommy.

What happened – oh, shit – Joel? Joel!

Riley. Tess. Sam… Tommy? No, not Tommy.

She wanted to go in there and she wanted to hug Joel and tell him it was going to be alright but she couldn't because he was in a locked room. She kicked the door hard and she hurt her foot. "Joel," she said, "Joel I can't get in I don't have a key," she said, weakly. A key.

It was then Ellie realised that she did have a key. She took the rucksack off her back and reached in deep; Joel kept a lot of things in this bag, but there was only one she needed, and she couldn't find it. No, no. I can't have lost it. I don't lose things. And then she heard them jingling, and she felt the rough, rusted edge of the ring. She pulled it out from underneath everything else and fumbled with them. Joel still hasn't said anything. He's gonna be okay, Ellie, he's gonna be –

"I'm tellin' you I heard something, woman," said a man's voice from down the hall. She heard the footsteps then too.

Fuck, no. She took a hold of the gun and sprinted around the corner, barely two metres away. She listened a little while longer and their voices travelled to her…

"It sounded like the damn girl."

"How do you know what she sounds like?"

"I heard 'em in the truck. Doc gave me reign out of the outside when they were meant to be comin' in. He trusts me."

"Shut up, you idiot," said a woman, almost a hiss. "We didn't know when they were coming back. All Doc said is that they was goin' to."

"That's because They told 'im," he said. "They told him that they was gonna come back, and they did – and he picked me specifically. He trusts me."

Ellie moved a little bit, too loudly, and they hushed. Shit, they've found me. "Well, well, well…" said the woman's voice. "What've we got here?"

Ellie took a deep breath. They won't take me. Not like they got him. And then she felt angry. These are the fuckers that killed Tommy. The FUCKERS.

Ellie swung herself, gun first, around the corner, and unloaded an entire clip into them. Each shudder of the gun left her hands shaking at the wound in her arm aching with pain. The hunters didn't have time to reach for their guns, and they didn't see her until they were sinking to the floor beside Joel's backpack, spraying it with drops of blood. The woman, she saw, even after six bullets in her chest, was still alive – reaching weakly for the gun she had dropped on the way to the floor. Ellie ran over to her and took out her switchblade, flicking it up, and then plunged it swiftly into her neck, blood spraying her face a little. She took the revolver and walked back over to the bag, reaching in for the keys and tugging them out. Her eyes kept looking back over to the bodies she'd left and they made her think of the others again.

"Ellie? ELLIE?!" Joel shouted from the room, and then his red eyes were at the slit.

"I'm okay," she said. "Guards."

Riley. Tess. Sam. Tommy. And now there's two more, she reflected, looking through the keys for one that seemed to match the lock.

"The keys," he said. All the strength had left his voice, and it made Ellie want to cry more, but she wouldn't. Not while those fuckers were still out there. There were more of them. The ones that did this.

"Hurry, Ellie. More of them will be comin'."

She had almost given up hope when a key slid in and gave way. The bolt sealing the door flicked open and she pulled the door open hard. Joel stumbled out of the room, and so too did a smell. A reek she tried not to acknowledge; if Joel was detecting it, it wasn't on his mind. She wandered into the room a little, and then she felt his hands on her shoulder. Through her shirt, she could still feel the heat they gave off. She wondered how cold Tommy's body was. Joel turned her around.

"You don't need to see this, Ellie, come on."

"What about –"

"I gotta get you out of here. They'll come back."

"They won't come back, Joel. They were either here to sit by you until you fucking starved, or they were here to shoot you." She looked over at Tommy again, her stomach rigid with guilt, though she kept it to herself. She wanted to cry again, and she did. Joel wrapped his hands around her.

"Come on, we've gotta go… we've gotta go…"

"It was him, Joel? The one with the fucking hat?"

Joel tensed a little at that, but still he kept his armed around her. Tight, as if he didn't want her to go anywhere… like he was afraid she too would slip away, like Tommy had.

"Yeah, baby girl," he said quietly. He was crying again, and she was too. "It was."

"He walked fucking past me, Joel. I should have shot him in the fucking head and ended all this. There were – there were only three… I could have got them… they… I…"

"This isn't your fault, Ellie," he said, moving back a little, resting his hands on her shoulders. "This isn't… this isn't your fight."

"It's our fight, Joel. They –" though her hand hovered and her finger pointed inside that room, beyond the cage, she couldn't say it aloud. She looked at the floor and blinked hard, tears falling to the floor. She looked up at Joel. "I want him to die, Joel."

His eyes met hers and they stayed there for what felt like eternity. His were the first to blink and tears fell out of them too. He looked at her hard, and she wondered what he was thinking. She wondered if he was sickened, or if he was angry, or if she was a monster. I'm not.

Joel took a few steps back and looked down at the bodies on the floor. The woman's eyes were still open, though the man had fallen face-down and she couldn't see his face. The thin layer of dust across the floor glistened with the spray of blood she had let loose when Elie stuck her blade into the side of the woman's throat. They would have killed her otherwise, and she had Joel to think about. I've got to protect him too.

"I know, baby girl," he said, reaching down and picking up his backpack. Joel bit his lip hard and looked at Ellie. "But I won't drag you along on my vendetta."

"I want to see him dead," she said, as if the point had not been clear.

"It isn't your fight –"

"The hell it isn't!" she said, taking a step towards him. She felt guilt churn inside her again. You're shouting at him. He just lost his brother, Ellie. "We're in this together," she said, quieter. "You're not alone."

He sighed deeply and wiped some of the sweat and tears away from his face, though there was blood drying on his hands and it streaked and smudged it. "I'm not willin' to put you in that kind of danger," he said and she scowled. "This man is dangerous –"

"David was dangerous, Joel. Do you remember what happened when you found me?" she said, her voice breaking and trailing off near the end. Ellie could feel her bottom lip shaking but she couldn't stop it. Her hands were twitching too. "This world is shit, Joel. We can't do anything about that, but we can make sure the sick fuck that did that is put down and I am going to be a part of that. This isn't for you or for me, it's for Tommy. I will be okay."

Joel looked over at Tommy once more and then dropped his gaze to the old broken watch on his wrist, rubbing his fingers over it slightly. "We need to get out of here. We have to – how did you get through the hall without everyone seeing you?"

"Nobody was looking I guess," Ellie replied, shrugging. "I walked up the side, there were columns and tables. I crouched behind them, followed you out the back door. I was following you the whole way."

"I heard something."

"It was me."

He tried to smile a little but it came out as a sort of grimace.

Ellie wanted to ask what they were going to do with Tommy's body, but there was nothing they could do with it. They couldn't take it with them, it would have to stay where it was. Ellie thought a little of all the other bodies that risen again and she wondered then if Tommy's would. Her eyes wandered over a bit to Tommy the other body, its face almost like pale green wax.

"He won't turn," Joel said, and that was the end of it.

They walked in silence for a while back down the routes Ellie remembered, though Joel didn't need much guiding. As always he walked in front, holding the revolver she'd taken from the woman. The man's gun, though she took it too, was empty of bullets. They'd locked the door and then taken the keys back, jamming them into the bag. Joel had the bag now, though Ellie didn't mind. It was the last thing on her mind, but had she thought about it, she would have been pleased. She'd left her own backpack in the cabin and, since then, her load had felt much lighter. She didn't mind carrying the load for Joel, but he took it without a word. She wondered how long it took Joel to deal with his daughter's death, how long it took him to start living again.

"Was Tommy with you when this all happened?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Yeah he was."

"And Sarah?"

A pause. "Yeah."

"Why did you split up?"

"Hrm."

"Too much?"

"Yeah."

That old silence again as they walked. The lights were flickering lower, dimming. It seemed they valued the little resources they likely had, so they only turned the lights on when they had to, Ellie thought. Fuel was hard enough to come by when we were in that damn car. She wondered how much it used for all of these cars… for the generator.

"How do you think they got all this fuel?"

"Tommy mentioned they had a lot. Maybe – maybe the bastard was liftin' it and bringin' it back here. Tommy wouldn'ta noticed a few barrels here and there. Tommy was the trustin' one. He saw the best in people. He was always looking for the light."

He knew him, Ellie remembered suddenly. He knew him and he killed him. He was friends with him.

"That's how he ended up with Marlene?"

Joel's head dropped and it seemed like all the weight of the world fell upon him. His shoulders tensed and his legs buckled and he stumbled away and fell down at the wall. He pressed a thumb against one temple and spread across his eyes. His other hand held his wrist, over his watch. Both hands were trembling. Ellie moved straight down and placed a hand around his back, nuzzling in with his head.

Ellie had thought of grief, but she had imaged Joel's differently. She had imagined an unrelenting rage, where Joel was no longer Joel. Joel became a being of immense hatred and anger and wrath. She imagined him carving a path through waves of people. She imagined something different, and it prodded at her still. A sense that once there was a well of rage, and now it was dried up.

"You'd just come after her."

They heard the footsteps before they heard their voices. They were hard and heavy footsteps – there were a lot of them. Joel heard them too and his head snapped up, listening. He got to his feet. "Come on, Ellie, we've gotta go," he said, and he began to walk backwards. He wiped his face again, smearing more blood across it.

"It sounds like there's a lot of them, Joel."

"Can't tell because of the echoes. Damn footsteps bounce back and forth. Come on."

They started running back the way they came until they found their way into a small room – Joel kicked at the door, though it was locked, and he kicked harder until the lock broke; there were still, noiseless tanks inside that Ellie doubted held anything, though the smell was unbearable. There were six tanks in the room – two rows of three each, and they went to the back, hiding behind the farthermost tank in the left hand side corner away from the door. They could hear the footsteps hurrying closer, moving on.

"… she'll be trying to get him out …"

"… little bitch don't have a key, damn it, she'll die there …"

"… why does Doc want her dead so bad …"

"… dangerous, he said. She's a danger to us all…"

In her chest Ellie bubbled with anger. Maybe she was being filled with the rage that had depleted in Joel. She wanted them dead, but that would have to wait. They had a revolver and a gun with no bullets. She hadn't even checked how many bullets she had in the gun –

She heard the click and looked, Joel was – as if reading her mind – checking the bullets. He stared at the chamber for a moment and then slotted them back in, spinning them. Four, he mouthed. The footsteps got closer and louder, blocking out all noises from anywhere else, and then they ran past, barely even looking at them… and then Joel and Ellie heard a sort of hissing, and their heads turned to behind them. Nothing. Behind them was only darkness. Joel's hand moved up and clicked on his torch, and there was a body, eyes wild with want, banging and clawing at the glass container that held it.

Ellie's heart began to race and she looked around the rest of them; Joel directed the light around and saw they were everywhere… three, four, five of them, all in plastic or glass cages. "They've got air holes, Joel," she said, too loudly. All of them began to scream in their cages. Runners, the lot of them. The footsteps came back into their hearing.

"Ellie, this way," she heard, and Joel was off. His light was on a pair of ladders, though she couldn't see where they led to. She went up first and he followed; she could feel his hands always just behind her feet. She moved from rung to rung as fast as she could and then crawled back; the ladder led to a metal platform, with two wooden boxes that only barely just hid them. Just at the right time –

"… I heard noises from the damn god-vaults, I swear it…"

"Sometimes They talk," said a woman. "Let us be sure."

There were heels on the ground first, high. There were at least four of them, maybe five, Ellie couldn't be sure. Joel had his eyes closed, listening so carefully.

"My lords," said the woman, "we did not mean to disturb you." The infected in their cages hissed and Ellie could hear them pawing at their prisons. Does she really think they can hear her? "We must search the area. People who wish harm on you may be in here, conspiring…" she said as though she could never understand why.

The footsteps moved around the room slowly, spreading out and checking behind each of the containers.

"There's nothing here, Valerie."

Ellie could almost feel the woman's fanatical eyes tracing over the room. Please don't see the ladders. Please don't see the ladders.

"The ladders. Check them."

"Valerie, if there were someone –"

"Now."

Joel looked at the revolver in his hand and then listened for the footsteps. Slowly, they were making their way towards them. Joel looked at Ellie. Trust me, he mimed, and handed Ellie the revolver.

"Don't shoot me," he said, raising his hands in submission.

"Ah," said the woman. "Don't check the ladders, he says." The woman cackled, her voice was high and her laugh was deranged. "Where's the girl?"

"Girl?"

A round went off, lighting the room. Joel flinched but she hadn't fired at him, otherwise he'd have fallen down beside her. Dea – no. Don't. Don't.

"No, no, no," the woman said. "I want an answer. Where is the girl?"

Joel lowered his hands again. The box came up to his stomach. He held out his right hand flat and she placed the revolver in it. This is fucking nuts, Joel. Please don't, she wanted to say, but she was rooted. And then he slammed his hand up and fired the gun – one, two, three, four. But it wasn't bodies she heard collapsing into heaps on the floor, no; it was the high, shattering of grass, and the screams of the infected unleashed from their cages. Joel crouched back down beside her; one tried to shoot at Joel and missed.

She heard the first hunter go down screaming, the wet crunch of teeth on flesh. Ellie closed her eyes and she could still hear it, over and over… Slowly the hunters emptied their rounds into them. Ellie looked out and Joel peeped up.

"There's only one left – an infected," Ellie said, looking down, but she noticed something else too –

"The woman's gone," Joel said and made to go down the ladders again, but he stopped. Ellie could still hear the gargling and the hissing. She looked over the edge with Joel. It was there, clawing with its hands at the ladders, unsure of them.

"At least they don't remember how to climb ladders," Ellie said, and not a moment too soon. It began a very slow ascent.

"Hrm," Joel said. He took off his backpack and started looking around inside it. Ellie looked down again. It was still coming, though its feet never touched the rungs; its arms were taking the full weight. She imagined trying to do that for a moment, and shivered. She looked around at Joel who was still reaching inside his backpack. He's lost his brother, Ellie. He's not going to be himself for a while.

But how long? I need him.

You're being selfish.

The guilt was back again. Riley. Tess. Sam. Tommy. She tried to push their faces from her head but she couldn't. She just wanted them to go away. It wasn't her responsibility, none of it was. Joel had told her that it wasn't – he had said the immunity wasn't about her anymore, there was nothing for her alone to do. So why did she still feel like she should have died? It should have been me, not Riley. Not Tess. Sam. Tommy. She looked down again at the infected climbing the ladder and then she looked at Joel.

Whether it's now, it's whether it's five years from now… I won't let him be next.

She took a deep breathed and blinked the tears down.

"Ellie?" Joel said.

Ellie smiled and took a few steps away from the ladders.

And then she ran and jumped.