The next day brought nothing to her but aching feet and sodden confidence.
They had a restless night to say the least; the weather had been inclement, wind gushing in and out of gullies, singing belligerently and refusing to be silenced, echoing, and holding her back from the deep embrace of sleep.
Two of the four vagabonds in the chalet had dropped into slumber the moment they'd hit the fabric of the sleeping mats, cascading into a dreamless rest in their bodies' vain attempt to try and recuperate some of the energy they'd lost during the extremities of the endeavour to the plant. Despite the throbbing pain that her wound was inflicting on her, the slender, black-haired, joking scientist had hardly stirred during the night, deeply breathing and snoring slightly on her inhalations. Whether her abnormally deep sleep was due to achieving a state of slumber, or just a product of agony-induced unconsciousness, Ellie couldn't decide.
She had pretended to be asleep for the majority of the night; partially in a vain hope to coax her tensed body into actually resting, but also to listen to and observe the other restless presence in the chalet. Adam had lay down onto the bedroll in the worst shape, out of chivalry for everyone else - however, the hulking scotsman had risen and moved away from the sleeping fold almost the moment everyone else had drifted off. She knew it wasn't from the discomfort of the wooden floor, or the stench of the slowly decomposing hides, but simply because he worried. The large man had silently moved across the room, and sat by his lover's bed as she slept, all night, unmoving, watching the steady rise and fall of her abdomen.
Eventually, a few hours before dawn, she got up and did the same, sitting by Joel's bedroll and leaning on him for the last few hours before daybreak. When she had approached, Adam hadn't acknowledged her; he had obviously been to engrossed in his thoughts as he gazed at the injured scientist, almost with a sense of despair in his eyes. He had removed his SAS jacket, and sat with his arms folded, the names written on his right bicep clearly visible. Every now and again, she watched him subconsciously stroke his tattoo of memoriam. She had looked for too long once, and he had met her gaze. He simply looked at her, sighed, and moved off to prepare his gear as the sun penetrated the horizon for the new day. She had sat there, leaning up against Joel, until he had woken up, wallowing in her silence.
Everyone had woken shortly after daybreak, though some more easily than others - Joel had grunted slightly, and tensed at the dull throbbing in his abdomen, but apart from that, he had risen almost normally and proceeded over to help Adam clean and load the guns they'd managed to salvage from their skirmish the previous day. Evelynn's awakening hadn't been as nonchalant - the moment consciousness had returned, pain had reared its ominous head. She'd accidentally rolled to the right, only to yelp loudly in pain as the bones in her badly injured leg shifted. Adam had darted over to her in a heartbeat, and deftly, with great care and attention, lovingly lifted her off of the floor and retied her splint, gently running his hand down her contorted face and muttering words of comfort.
Whether what they'd eaten that morning was to be classed as 'breakfast' was something of a mystery to her - the fresh meat they'd brought with them had been tainted by the oil of the damaged coupe, and the only supplement they had left was a pack of dried, salted venison jerky that Joel had prepared, and some questionable mushrooms that Adam had plucked out of the ground after a short time foraging the area around the cottage. Adam had become completely silent upon discovery that the canned food promised in the store had all been taken, or opened and left to rot, indicating a recent presence in the cabin. The letter to him had been concealed rather well, and as such had been overlooked by the previous tenants - however, the lack of food in the chalet made the idea the letter had been written weeks ago depressingly plausible.
The two types of food they'd prepared definitely did not mix, and the sensation was something akin to combining salty tyre rubber and rotten couch stuffing. Regardless of the unpleasantness that was their entree, the food partially filled a gap in her stomach that had been almost hollow since the last of her energy reserves were sapped fleeing from the gigantic infected. She felt moderately comfortable with her feed, although she realised that the injured woman and the two huge, towering men accompanying her would hardly be satisfied by the meager portions they'd eaten.
They had set off shortly afterward, not hesitating to leave the area due to the security risk of other people in the vicinity. Joel had ransacked a few cupboards, and upturned few valuable items; what he did uncover proved its worth, however. They made good use of an extra radio, a handful of batteries, an old, worn, olive-green hiking pack of which Adam moved all of the gear from his smaller backpack into, and a half-empty bottle of painkillers that immediately went down Evelynn's gullet. The last thing he'd found was a surprisingly pristine, high-quality electronic camera, of which she immediately asked to examine. No one gave any objections, so she'd sat and trawled through the hundreds of pictures displayed on the tiny display screen, mostly of birds and other wildlife from a time when that place had been used as a camping location.
After the medication, Evelynn could lay some pressure on her split leg, but she still relied on the strong backs of the two men to hold her upright. They took duty on either side of her, each with one of the woman's arms over their broad, hardened shoulders. Due to this complication, Evelynn told Ellie to keep the 22 Hunting Rifle, and Joel had suggested that she take point for them.
The terrain had initially been easy enough; the chalet was intersected by a simple but worn, sun-faded grey driveway, of which walking had been a breeze. Despite the ease at which they had spanned the seven-hundred meters the driveway had extended, the rest of the journey refused to follow suit. The road didn't lead anywhere; presumably, it'd been a work in progress, or there had once been a dirt track that had linked it to some other place, now long grown over by fauna.
They had clambered through trees, over boulders and up and down inclines for hours, and progress had been absolutely dismal. Even at full health, one was not capable of traversing country of that fashion quickly, and with four extremely fatigued people, one of whom was injured, the journey seemed to stretch on for a lifetime. On the odd occasion, she'd hear a muffled expletive from one of the people behind her, the speaker of which commonly changed.
She spoke a few herself; branches and bushes seemed to prop up suddenly out of nowhere and swipe her across the face, or the mud beneath her sturdy boots would give way and get the ass of her pants wet and filthy. By the time they'd reached a clearing in the relentless thickness of the forest, she noticed she had strayed a little too far ahead, and rested her aching body carefully onto a cool, moss covered boulder that jutted up and out of the soil. The men were equally dirty as she was, although Evelynn had been spared of the filth; the two strong pairs of shoulders supporting her had kept her out of the majority of the bog they'd practically waded through. They had temporarily stopped together at that boulder, and Ellie had drawn the dusty camera out of her backpack and suggested a photo shoot to lighten the mood.
To her surprise, everyone agreed.
The clearing they'd entered was beautiful; the thickness of the forest gave way to a steepish cliff, sharp but traversable, that led down through thin foliage into a little brook that bubbled and gurgled at the lowest point.
They had sat there for a few hours, catching their breath, and sharing friendly stories. It'd been the first time they'd properly spoken to each other as a group since they day before, and it helped massively in alleviating the stress that hung over them. After some friendly banter, they decided to take some photographs before setting off down the brook that gurgled below.
She shot one of Adam and Evelynn together; Adam looked haggard and worn, but still maintained his strength. Despite his appearance, he still smiled, and it was as natural as the dirt that clung to his clothes. Evelynn leaned up against him, and smiled equally, her teeth straight and a beautiful white. The picture they'd taken had highlighted her beauty; her eyes glowed an iridescent blue, and he face was flushed from the walk, giving her cheeks a bronzed colour. For the first time since Ellie had met her, Evelynn didn't look like she was under some sort of pressure.
She had gotten another one of Adam on his own, tending to the rifles, one of herself, and had given the camera to Evelynn, as she took one of her and Joel sitting together on the rock. She hadn't seen him smile in a long time, years almost; but the one he wore was as genuine as the love he bore for her. She made a moral choice to keep that camera for the rest of her life, immortalising the beauty of nature and the kindness of her friends, both old and new. She'd stowed the camera back into her rucksack, and the group finished up their business by the boulder.
The next leg of their journey had proved considerably harder than the first, and had dampened her confidence to the point where it was almost non existent. The brook had rapidly changed into a larger river, with rocks that were impossibly slippery and occupying the entirety of the floor. Her boots were sodden through within minutes, and as such the grip on their soles were rendered useless; she slipped over constantly, one time fully going in, despite the water only being knee high at its highest. As they'd journeyed downstream, they'd had to stop multiple times, as the stones and boulders that had fallen over the decades grew into taller and much more difficult to descend sculptures. She had to stop and help the men after one situation, where she'd struggled to get down the rockface, and they had had to strategically transfer Evelynn from top to bottom whilst keeping her dry, translating into both them and Ellie becoming drenched through after their efforts. Shortly afterward had called for another break, as Adam had finally cracked under the weight of the gun-filled hiking pack, and needed to pass it over to Joel to carry, in the consideration that the scotsman's back probably needed to stay in one piece.
It'd taken them nearly six hours to walk the length of the river, and they finally arrived where it opened up into a large, still, cyan-silver lake. Ellie stopped reminiscing about the day, and helped to set up a small camp as the evening set in, drawing up a fire and trying to dry their clothes as much as possible after they'd cleaned the filth and muck off of them. The boots were the worst off, and everyone had removed theirs to avoid the suffering of walking around in sodden footwear. The grass on the banks of the lake were cool and comforting on her feet, and the aches that she'd borne during the day gradually faded as the cool air stroked her exposed face. The two men had gone off together an hour or so previously, and she had sat herself lazily down next to Evelynn and discussed their pasts, feeling the need to distract the scientist from the throbbing pain of her snapped leg-bone.
"So how'd you two meet?" She said. "I kinda got the vibe it wasn't exactly a cakewalk."
"No, you're right." Evelynn replied. "It definitely wasn't."
The black haired woman picked up a small pebble, and lazily tossed it into the crystal lake, creating ripples across the surface.
"Adam and I met," The scientist began, "in a circumstance that really isn't that shocking nowadays."
"How'd it go down?"
"Hunters. Hardly one for variety, is he?"
Ellie chuckled lightly at Evelynn's humour.
"Anyway," she continued, "it all went down a long time ago. Nearing eight years, now."
"Were things different back then?"
"Some were, some weren't. Everyone was a lot more scared of the infected. Now, of course, the tables have turned. The human race does amaze me sometimes. We make the stupidest decisions."
Ellie cast her eyes to the floor. "I can vouch for that."
"So, everyone was a lot more scared of the infected, right? Including me. We'd just started to see the first few Clickers, and things were getting a lot more serious than they had been. Therefore, me, my brain, and my knowledge of biology plucked up a weird drive to go out and study them."
"Why?"
"Why not?" The black haired woman met her gaze. "It's no different to scientists studying any other virulent disease in the past. The only change was that I had no one to do my field work for me, so I picked up a gun and did it myself. It worked well, to begin with."
"To begin with?"
"Yeah. One day I got into a rough spot, and ended up lost in some woods. It was a week before I found any sign of civilisation, eventually coming across a city quite far north. I hadn't eaten, and had survived on water." She laughed quietly. "I was a pretty shitty shot back then. Hitting a deer was certainly a mission."
"You're still here, though. You survived."
"Yeah, but no thanks to my marksmanship. I was so hungry that I wandered into the town, my mind fully focussed on finding food, and only on that. As such, I didn't plan a way in, and some assholes got the jump on me. They caught me in a already-looted grocery store, and I fought like hell to get free. Didn't kill them though. They chased me around the town for the next whole hour."
"Why didn't you just shoot the bastards?"
She shrugged. "I don't know... I panicked, maybe? I honestly can't remember. All I can recall was the running, and then falling over."
"You fell?"
"Shot, actually. One of them managed to get a bullet into me. He was almost as bad at shooting as I was. He fired a volley, but all of them missed. One managed to rebound off of a metal sheet on the ground, though. It hit me right in the back of the leg, just under the knee. It fragmented, so I had a whole bunch of shrapnel in me."
"Then he appeared?"
"Bingo. He stuck his head around the corner, peppered the one who shot me, and hollered at the other to leave. He did, the coward. Dropped his gun and ran right off. Unfortunately, the gunshots had roused every fucking infected in the town. The last thing I remember saying to Adam was; 'Thanks for capping that bastard', then I passed out. Next thing I knew, he was sitting next to my bed, ready to take the shrapnel out."
"I thought you were the doctor?"
"I was. I taught him how to fix people, he taught me how to kill them. Ying and yang."
She hesitated for a moment, and then continued.
"Plus, I pulled him out of an incredibly hard time. He'd just lost the last guy in his squad. The guy's name was some military slang, I think it was-"
"Blufor."
"Yeah, that was it. Anyway, Adam hardly spoke for the first week, he was determined to hunt down the man who'd killed Blufor. It was bordering on an unhealthy obsession, so... I suggested we pull some infected in, so I could study them. That's when we decided we needed a better set-up. Shortly afterward, we were a thing. Bonded in grief, like so many others."
"Like Joel and I..."
"Yeah, just like you two." The elder woman ruffled the teen's auburn ponytail comfortingly. "But, bonds formed in fire are always the strongest."
Ellie smiled, and looked up to Evelynn.
"You come up with that one yourself?" She asked jokingly.
"What? Of course not." She chuckled in reply. "I always hated English. Too fucking vague."
They waited there together for an hour or so, and Ellie slowly began to get past the overwhelming sense of betrayal she'd felt at Evelynn's concealment of her infection. For her, that had been a fatal lie; she never looked at people the same way after that, and never would again; her bite was long healed, but Riley still floated around in the back of her consciousness. Despite this anger, and disappointment, the hostility she bore Evelynn for infecting Joel was starting to waver. Adam was right; the older woman and her were alike, and she definitely meant well. Ellie debated whether she would've done the same thing in Evelynn's place.
Before she had time to properly mull the situation over, the bushes just around the corner from them ruffled, and a silhouette appeared in the foliage, its identity masked by the evening light. Evelynn tensed at the disturbance, and Ellie quickly scooped up the 22 Hunting Rifle, and trained the barrel toward the rustling bushes.
"Ellie, Evelynn!" Joel's voice called out. "Get on over here!"
"You go." Evelynn murmured to her quietly, drawing a pistol to her side. "I can handle myself."
Ellie got up without a word, and made her way over to where Joel was now standing, the light machine gun raised and pointed into the bushes.
"What's up?" She asked when she arrived beside him.
He gave her a look that said 'wait and see', and then hollered into the foliage.
"All clear."
More rustling followed, and another two silhouettes emerged from the edge of the forest. One of them, at the rear, was Adam, who had restrained the other; she was younger, not much older than Ellie, and ghastly to look at. Where Ellie was holding onto her last shreds of innocence, this girl had clearly thrown all hers away a long time ago. Her head was half shaved, with a dirty brunette side-combed Mohican that stuck to the right flank of her face and stretched down to her lower neck, in vain attempt at recreating a punk-rock hairstyle. She wore a torn black singlet, with gothic and violent tattoos on each arm, vulgar and offensive where Evelynn's were beautiful. The girl's face was moderately normal, barring the two rings in her right eyebrow, and the tiny metal ball-bearing that protruded from a lip piercing.
"Get your damn hands off me, asshole."
"You ought to watch your mouth, girl." Adam spoke forcibly.
"Fuck you."
He wrestled her forward, his colossal strength dwarfing her own. The girl was moved toward Ellie and Joel, and Ellie could now see that she was no older than eighteen.
The girl turned to Adam, still playing the role of loudmouth.
"You better have a fucking good reason for bringing me here, you foreign bastard."
Joel muttered to Ellie.
"Real piece o' work, this one."
The girl shot Joel an obnoxious look of patronising distaste.
"No more than you, old man. What, you forget your dentures or something?"
Joel chose not to respond, and the girl turned her eyes to Ellie.
"Who's this tyke?" She asked mockingly.
The girl's tone, and her insults to Joel and Adam sparked Ellie's temper into a flame. Two could play the hothead game.
"It's Ellie, you bitch." She almost shouted. "And for the record? Those are my friends you're talking about, so how's about you shut the hell up?"
"What a tongue you've got, you little shit." The girl countered. "Might be I find somewhere else to shove it than your mouth."
"If you don't cram it, I'm gonna-"
Joel's hand clamped gently onto her shoulder.
"Drop it, kiddo."
"But-"
"Drop it. She ain't got nothing on us."
Ellie did as she was told, and the girl chuckled obnoxiously, seemingly satisfied with her meager victory. Adam ushered her forward, and the four walked back around to where Evelynn was sitting. Ellie glanced at the girl a few times, and noticed ligature markings on her wrists, indicating that she'd tried to wriggle free. Adam didn't tie knots for the sake of it; his were disciplined, tidy, and military; and probably more effective than handcuffs would ever be.
The girl was silent as they walked around the perimeter of the lake, only piping up to spew some belligerent abuse towards Evelynn when they arrived. The slender woman gave no reply, only shooting the teen an intense glare. Adam practically threw the girl down by a tree, and lashed her bonds around the outside of the trunk.
"This knot," he began, "will get tighter as you try to wiggle around. So if I were you, I'd be a polite little girlie from now on, yeah?"
"You're an A-Class asshole, huh?"
The scotsman turned away and left the girl tied sitting by the tree, wandering the few paces back over to where a little fire was popping and swirling as the night air drew in and the sky became darker, and everyone else sat around it, gathering warmth.
"Where'd you pick that thing up?" Evelynn asked, gesturing towards the obnoxious youth lashed to the small pine tree behind them.
"In the woods, a few miles from here. She was just wandering around."
"Damn good actor, that one." Joel added sarcastically.
"How do you mean?" His statement confused Evelynn.
"She was all tears and sadness at first, sayin' that we had to save a friend o' hers lost in the woods or something. She led us into a spot, and pulled a knife on us."
"Then I restrained her." Adam said.
Joel chuckled, remembering what'd happened.
"Restrained her? You tackled her like a football player."
"That still hurts, you fuck." The girl hollered from behind, apparently eavesdropping on their conversation. Adam turned, his patience being tested.
"What was that I said about being a good little girl?"
"Bite me, asshole."
Adam sighed, and turned back into the group.
"Yeah, I thought so."
Evelynn continued pressing for information.
"So what's her real gambit?"
"No clue." Joel replied. "She said she was from that town, though. Her name's Buck, or something like that."
"That's right!" The girl replied from the back. "Buck, it rhymes with-"
"We get the idea." Evelynn interjected.
The girl chuckled in satisfaction, then settled back down and mocked sleep, snoring loudly in her efforts to frustrate everyone.
"You think she's for real?" Ellie asked.
For a moment no one responded, all of them simply weighing up the situation. Adam spoke up first.
"I don't know, not for certain. Whether she's doing this for her own gain and lying through her teeth or not, I'm not sure. But, if she does know the way to this town, she might know Amber."
Evelynn contributed next.
"Maybe you should ask her."
The Watcher didn't respond, simply engaging in an action. He stood quickly, moved over to the hiking pack, and scooped his helmet up off of the ground, carrying it in his left hand. In his other, he held the gleaming .44. He deftly skirted around the side of the fire, gestured to Joel, and made his way swiftly over to the surly youth who was now illuminated by a dull orange glow. Joel followed suit, and stood behind Adam as he knelt down beside the girl. They were talking loudly enough for Ellie to listen in, so she stayed seated next to Evelynn, drinking in the warmth of the fire.
"You see this?" Adam inquired, holding the dull grey, steel-lined helmet up to Buck, and identifying the ornate blue eye patterned on the forehead. "What does this mean to you?"
"Oh, shit!" The girl replied, laughing almost maniacally, realising what the symbol meant. "No way, you're not... you're the goddamn Watcher? I heard he was Scottish, but..."
"But?"
Her face changed from fake humour to a mocking and almost absent glare.
"I fucking hate that guy."
He sighed, and continued pressing for information.
"Joel." He muttered.
Joel drew Adam's survival knife from his belt, and the scotsman took it in his hand, laying the helmet on the grass next to him. He raised the blade of the knife to the palm of the girl's left hand, and pressed slightly, just enough to draw a small amount of blood.
"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Your choice."
"I thought you were into good shit, bro. Like daisy picking, and knitting?"
Adam pressed the knife a little harder, trying to push past her sarcasm.
"Woman around here that goes by the name of Amber. What do you know?"
"Amber? Oh, that yellow rock? You collect stones too? Wow, you're such a fag, I had no fucking idea."
The temper Adam had displayed in the operating room a few days ago spiked up again. He didn't fuck around when it came down to protecting his friends. He moved the knife from the girl's palm to the top of her neck, just underneath her jaw, and continued the same technique.
"Amber. What do you know?"
"Fuck all, bro."
"What do you know?"
She spat on his hand, and his face contorted where he swallowed his rage.
He rotated the knife around, and gently pressed the point into her throat, just scratching the surface of her skin.
"Last chance, or I make you into a fucking pin cushion."
Adam's show of anger actually managed to sway Buck, and Ellie thought she saw a smidgen of fear swimming in those cocky eyes that mocked you as they looked you over.
Ellie glanced over to Evelynn, who was intensely observing the situation. She almost looked surprised by Adam's methods. Joel seemed to think of it as nothing more than a morning coffee.
"Easy, bro, easy. I'll tell you what you want to know. Just... take that there razor away, huh?"
Adam didn't reply, simply swiveling the knife around in his hand and slamming it blade-down into the soft earth.
"Alright." Buck began. "Who was it, Amber, right? Yeah, I know her. Crazy bitch. Some kind of military drop out, I don't know. She took it upon herself to run that town a few miles south, but I haven't seen hide nor tail of her in a while."
"But she's at that town, the town you're from?"
"I ain't saying."
"You're from that town?"
"I ain't fucking saying."
"Which means yes." Joel added cynically.
"Exactly." Adam leaned in close to the girl, intimidating her.
"Here's what's going to happen." He started. "You're gonna take us to that town, yeah? No strings attached, and no tricks. You try anything, and you'll end up a human kebab. You got me?"
"I got you, asshole." She replied.
Adam took that as what it was, and left Buck sitting by the pine, with nothing else to say to the disrespectful teenager. He wandered back over with Joel, and the two sat down by the fire with the two women. Evelynn looked surprisingly uncomfortable in Adam's presence when he was in this state. Ellie wondered whether she actually truly knew how Adam operated.
"You shouldn't have been so forceful." She said to him.
He looked up at her. "What?"
"You should've been kinder."
"She's a bully." He justified, turning his head back to face the fire. "Bullies respond to strength."
Evelynn also broke off the look, and turned her eyes towards the tiny, crackling flames. "It's just not like you." She murmured softly.
He didn't respond to that statement, only continuing to stare into the swirling orange and yellow of the campfire that warmed and protected them from the cold of the autumn night. Joel turned to her after a few minutes, and beckoned her over to him. They walked to the water's edge, and scooped up two the the sleeping mats they'd brought with them, lashed to the top of Adam's pack. He gently unravelled them both to avoid ruining the careful folds and poor stitches, then laid down on the shoddier of the two, leaving Ellie with the practically pristine modern sleeping bag.
"How's about you get some sleep, huh? Been a damn long day."
"Tell me about it." She lay down on the sleeping back and gazed upwards at the hundreds and thousands of shining white specks populating the night sky.
"Stay till it suits us, right?" She asked.
"Bingo." He replied. "I ain't exactly placing my full confidence in this town of his, so just be ready to haul ass, if we need to. I got a bad feeling about that Buck girl."
"Me too." She replied.
"If I didn't say before..." She continued. "It's good to have you back. I missed you so fucking much."
She saw him smile in her peripheral.
"Glad to be back, kiddo. Someone's gotta look after you." He turned over, hugged her gently, and fell back onto his own mat.
"Night, baby girl. Sweet dreams."
"Goodnight, Joel."
She shut her eyes, and fell into the deep embrace of sleep.