A/N: Hey, everybody! Here's the sixth part of the post-spring act. As always, thanks for sticking with the story, and please leave a review if you have the time. Until chapter eleven . . .
"Maybe it was meant to be." - Marlene
Chapter 10: Hypothermia, My New BFF
It hits her as she hoists herself up onto a rock outcropping and holds her hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun. It hits her as she sees the freezing Wyoming landscape stretch out in front of her, daring her to try and cross it. It hits her as the wind picks up and the thick blanket of snow begins to swirl around her and whip her already numb cheeks. It hits her that she didn't bring a blanket.
She sighs, knows she'll never get out of Jackson again if she tries and goes back, trudges onwards. Her jacket flaps about her like the cloaks those guys wear in Tommy's old wizard movies. The snow fills in the empty spaces in her boots, and, by the time the sun begins to set and she knows she's far enough away that she won't be found tonight by search parties, she can't feel her toes.
By nightfall, she's found a small wooden shack. Pulling her pistol out of the waistband of her jeans, she eases the door open, slowly steps inside, tests her weight against every floorboard like it might explode. The shack is only one room, so all she has to do is check inside of a small closet to be sure that she's alone.
Ellie takes off her boots, dumps the snow on the tiny porch outside, sits with her back against a wall and tries to massage some feeling back into her feet. An almost violent shiver shakes her slight frame, and the few memories she has of last winter when she was too sick to move come back to her.
"Fuck," she whispers, rummages through the closet. No blankets; only a few tattered coats. She puts her pistol beside her, takes the coats down from their hangers, makes them into something that reminds her of a rat's nest, curls up inside of it, tries to catch some sleep.
She dreams that she's back in Jackson, sitting next to Sammy in Marcus's office. He's telling the blonde that she's infected, that she's going to die, that she has maybe two days. Sammy cries for a long time, but she lashes out when Ellie tries to soothe her. And then it's not Sammy anymore, it's Joel getting infected. And then it's not Joel anymore, it's Tommy, then Maria, then Sammy's father, then Riley.
"Check in there."
Ellie sits bolt upright, picks up her weapon, presses her ear to the closet door. The front door to the shack squeaks open.
"Jesus fucking Christ, Nathan," the same voice says, "we ain't gonna find anyone out here."
A different voice, a hoarser voice, one that reminds her far too much of David and a cold cell and a burning restaurant and grimy hands on her throat: "Shut up, Roger. You heard that old man; somebody got out of Jackson. And that means she's gonna help us get in."
Old man? Joel? Did he go out after her?
Please, that's not even a question.
Did they kill him?
Her grip on the weapon tightens, and she fingers the trigger as she feels hot tears prick the backs of her eyes.
"Why didn't we force the old man to help?" a third voice asks.
"Cause, stupid, he looked like the fuckin' Hulk. I ain't gonna get into a brawl with that," Roger spits.
She doesn't know what a Hulk is, but she quietly sighs with relief, changes her plan from kill back to wait out.
'Look, they said it was a fifteen year old girl. How do we even know she's still alive?"
Nathan chuckles. "Cause I can see her right now."
Her heart stops. She looks down, sees the little hole in the corner of the closet door, sees that the toes of her left foot are sticking out. A cold sweat slips down her brow, and she puts her finger back on the trigger.
"Come on out," he says, now more David than his own self. "We want to talk."
Before she can respond, the door is thrown open, and a short man with a receding hairline is standing over her. "Aw, look at you. Ya don't belong out here all by yourself."
She raises her gun automatically, without even realizing that she's doing it, and his eyes widen right before a bullet buries itself in his forehead. Diving between his legs, making a break for the door, she's out on the porch, and another three guns are in her face.
"God dammit!" Roger shrieks. "How many people are we going to lose this winter, Nate? Now we're getting picked off by a kid?"
The three new men have their hoods drawn up, so she can't see their faces, but she can feel their eyes on her, roaming, violating. Taking a step back, she glances over her shoulder and sees her backpack in the far corner of the shack. "No."
"No what, Kid?" Nathan asks. His skeletal face is bundled up in a grey beard in the same way that the rest of his body is bundled up in heavy winter clothing. He follows her gaze before she can look away, smiles, picks up her pack and slings it over his shoulder.
Ellie looks back out at the gunmen, tries to see a way around them without getting her brains blown out. There isn't one. One day, she made it one day on her own without being caught. How stupid is she?
"She even payin attention?" Roger wonders aloud.
"I dunno," a gunman says, but the darkness makes it impossible to tell which one. "The old man said something about her not bein in her right mind. Figures that we gotta catch the nutcase."
And that's when it hits her. They need her alive, so they can't blow her brains out. As long as they can't don't catch her, she can run right towards the barrel of one of their guns. But her pack.
Her mother's note is still inside.
"Grab her," Nathan commands.
One of the gunmen lunges forwards, and Ellie dives between his legs. Her foot connects with his jaw, knocking him to the ground. She scrambles to her feet, runs, slips her pistol back into her jeans and weaves in and out of the trees.
Bullets kick up the snow around her feet.
Of course, shooting her legs out wouldn't kill her.
"Shit, shit, shit," she spits into the night air, leaps over a large rock sticking out of the white powder, trips on a twig and falls onto her side. "Shit!"
"I see her!" one the men calls.
She's on her hands and knees, she's crawling forwards, a bullet is missing her ear by an inch, she's on her feet again, she's running, running, running, she's panting, she feels like she's dying, there's a brutally sharp pain in her chest.
"Where is she?"
There's a sickening snap and a crunch, and she can't stop the scream that escapes her blue lips. Warm blood drenches the snow and ice. A bear trap bites into her ankle, rips away her pallid flesh. The pain in her chest is forgotten, and she's trying to pry the trap open, but she can't.
One of the gunmen appears from between the thick and whitened tree trunks.
Her eyes widen, and she's able to open the trap the slightest bit, but her hands, damp with her own blood, slip, and the trap snaps closed again. The pain overwhelms her, and she screams again, draws the other men to her, draws any Infected who are remotely nearby closer, closer, closer.
"Don't touch her," a small voice demands.
Ellie looks up, blinks the tears out of her eyes, sees a silhouette a few feet away, a shotgun in its hands.
And that's when she blacks out.
"We need to help her."
"Shut up, Caroline. You don't make the rules here."
"But she'll die on her own with a wound like that."
"Not our problem."
Ellie can hear the crackling of a fire, smell the smoke. There's something wrapped around her ankle; it throbs, but it doesn't feel like it's being amputated anymore. She opens her eyes, finds herself inside of a blue sleeping bag.
A woman with blonde hair like Sammy's sits a few feet away, feeding sticks into the fire. Her gaze is fixed on a little girl with chocolate brown hair and soft blue eyes who has a shotgun in her lap.
"Great," the woman says when she sees the redhead try to sit up. "You handle her, Ms. Guardian Angel."
The girl puts the gun aside, saunters over, plops down beside Ellie and gently pats her shoulder. "Relax. You're safe here."
"Did you set that fucking trap?"
"There are Clickers all over the place; it's insurance."
"Shitty insurance."
"It caught you, didn't it?" the girl asks, tilting her head to the side.
Ellie scoffs, finally manages to sit, forces herself to look at her ankle. The skin is black, blue, and red, the veins stand out sharply, and its so swollen that she doubts she could put her boot back on, even if she still had one. "I'm gonna be sick."
The girl covers the wound with a damp cloth. "Then don't stare at it. What were you doin out here without any supplies?"
"I had supplies, I fucking had supplies, but the bandits took my pack. Dammit, they took my note!"
"Your note?" she asks with raised eyebrows. "That's what you're worried about?"
"Fuck you."
"Okay," she says, raising her hands in defense. "Look, if you'd like to be more sociable, I have food."
As soon as the girl stands, Ellie's stomach grumbles, and she blushes.
"That's what I thought."
"Hey," the redhead calls. "Wait. What's your name?"
The girl crosses her arms over her chest. "Caroline."
"Alright, Caroline, I'm sorry. That note is-was really important to me, that's all. Can I leave it at that?" Ellie feels like she should be running back into the forest to find her pack, to find those bandits, but she's immobilized. She's immobilized, and she's tired, and she's hurt, and she's ready to throttle somebody, maybe even this stupid kid.
But she's also starving.
Allowing the smallest smile to twist her lips, Caroline reaches into a bag by the fire, takes out a can, pours its contents into a little wooden bowl. "Hope you like old noodle soup."
Ellie bites back another insult as pain shoots through her ankle. It occurs to her that she doesn't even know where she is; she ran from the shack, but she could have run towards Jackson, away from Jackson, in a direction parallel to Jackson . . .
"Eat," Caroline says, handing over the bowl. "I could carry you, and I don't have much muscle."
"I'm short," Ellie offers, starts shoveling the soup into her mouth.
"Yeah, but I'm eleven. You're what? Sixteen?"
"Fifteen."
"Close enough."
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the woman skinning a squirrel and spitting into the snow every now and again. "Who is that?"
The younger girl rolls her eyes. "Kelly. She's not your biggest fan."
"That why you carried me?"
"Yeah. She's not my biggest fan either; we met a few months ago, and she took me in, but only because she saw how good my aim is."
Ellie gulps down the rest of the broth and puts the empty bowl on the ground. "You were on your own?"
A glimmer of something appears in Caroline's eyes for a split second, but then it's gone, and she's blank and unreadable. "I was traveling with my parents, but, like I said, there are Clickers all over the place."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," she says matter-of-factly. "Life if life. If that makes me a cynic, no skin off my bones. Wish I could say the same for you."
"I'll be fine."
"Never doubted it." She lies down on her side in another sleeping back, props her head up on her arm.
"Thanks," the older girl says. "For saving my life."
A grunt in response.
The desire to throttle the poor kid is starting to fade. She feels like she's lost a loved one, maybe because she has. This must be the denial phase; it hasn't hit her yet, not really, not hard. But can she really mourn her mother? They never met, they were never a family, they were never anything.
Her family should be Joel, but she can't be with him, not when he lied to her, not when she kills everyone she loves one way or another. Maybe the Fireflies won't still be in Utah, but they also might be.
What happens if she finds a deserted hospital? Where does she go?
Then again, where is she going now?
"You look like you're having a migraine," Caroline says.
"Huh?"
"I get 'em too."
Ellie takes her shaking hands from her temples, realizes that she must have been rubbing them. Self-consciously, she puts a finger to the space below her nose. No blood.
"It makes sense; you must be pretty stressed. If you weren't, I'd wonder if something was really wrong with you." Caroline picks at dirt underneath her fingernails and yawns.
They listen to the crackling of the fire, stare up at the sky, watch the stars fade in the early pink light of the waking sun.
"Why haven't the bandits attacked us?" Ellie finally asks.
"We've run into them before. They're afraid."
"Wouldn't that make them more likely to make a move while we're asleep."
Caroline laughs. "You don't know cowards when you see them, do you? Those guys are some of the most yellow-bellied people in all of Wyoming."
The redhead allows herself to grin. "You're not yellow, I take it."
Her companion pats her stomach. "None in here to speak of. You?"
"I'd like to think not."
"You were out here on your own. That speaks volumes."
"What if I didn't have a choice?"
"Do you have a gun?"
"Yeah."
"Then you had a choice," Caroline says, twirls a few locks of chocolate brown hair around her finger. "Where you headed, anyway?"
"Out West."
"Obviously. Where you headed?"
Ellie fingers the pendant around her neck. "Utah. Salt Lake City."
"Wow. Quite a journey ahead of you. You're welcome to stay with us until our paths have to diverge; I'd like to keep an eye on that leg of yours."
"Don't worry about it," she responds. "I used to be a sort of nurse in Boston, and it doesn't sound like I'm welcome here."
Caroline shakes her head. "You're welcome if I say you're welcome. What's she going to do? Shoot me? Shoot you?"
They return to silence, and a light snow begins to fall.
"So," she drawls out, "you know my name, but I don't know yours."
David's face again appears in Ellie's mind; he wants her to be honest with him, he wants her to join him, he wants to touch her, to hurt her, to make her beg.
No. This girl isn't David. He went after a child; he was a coward, and Caroline isn't a coward.
"E-Ellie," the redhead says, holds out her hand.
Caroline smirks, shakes it. "Formal, huh?"
"Sometimes."
"Well, I can officially say that I'm glad I didn't leave you to die."
"That makes two of us."
The pendant glistens as snowflakes melt atop its dented and rusted surface.
Right?