Author's Note:
Sorry that this chapter is kind of short, I'm suffering from a little bit of writer's block. However, once this and the next chapter go online, I have the rest all written up and edited and all I have to do is upload and write the author's notes. Before this one, I did create a number of other fanfics, but they never got off the ground because I didn't have much of an idea as to where it would go. It was just an excuse to get beloved characters and/or OCs to mash privates together. Thank you for reading my first fully fleshed out work of fanfiction.
Thank you so much for reading, reviewing, following, and favoriting. I hope you enjoy reading this almost as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
Chapter 12: Watch Tower (Part 1)
Spring had slowly and uneventfully turned into summer, bringing with it a heat wave that seemed to slow time itself. Though shaded under the roof of the watch tower, Ellie couldn't help but wish that the wind was blowing. She missed early morning rains, the kind that were gentle and slow and that would bring worms to the surface and hungry birds with them. She missed the smell of it. She liked to be out in the rain, just letting the water soak her clothes until they were clinging to her skin. Joel had always warned her that it was dangerous because one might get hypothermia, but Ellie had always ignored him.
But now, summer was in full swing, the sun beating down from the cloudless sky. The early morning walks to the watch tower were fine, as the sun had barely risen over the horizon yet, but the mid-afternoon walks back were a literal trip through Hell. By then, the sun had had plenty of time to roast the pavement streets to a temperature that rivaled its own surface. If someone tripped and fell, they usually sprang right back up, hollering. And God forbid if you accidentally touch one of the old car husks. The searing metal was hot enough to cook a raw egg. At least, that's what Ellie thought. She'd never actually tried it, though she was sure it would work. Inside the houses didn't help either. The air conditioning worked. Kind of. When the plant was running, which was only sometimes. The heat seemed to permeate into every pore.
She scratched her bitten arm. Boston had never been this hot. Of course, in Boston she could wear short sleeves. Technically, she still could, seeing as everyone knew that she was immune, but she didn't like wearing short sleeves anymore. The deformed scar was just another reminder of-
"Whatchya got there?" Amanda asked, breaking Ellie's train of thought. Ellie suddenly realized she'd absentmindedly taken out Riley's pendant and was playing with it. She quickly returned it to the back pocket of her jeans.
"It's nothing. Just a…thing I keep around."
Amanda gave Ellie a quizzical look, but said nothing about it. After an uncomfortable silence, Amanda finally spoke again, "You know, this heat's nothing compared to where I'm from."
"Where are you from?"
"Arizona. I never saw snow until I moved up here with my dad. See, the sun got so hot that if you stood out in it for a few hours, it would suck all the moisture out of your skin until it started to crack, as well as give you a nasty sunburn. Craziest thing, though. When the sun went down, it was so cold you could see frost on the cacti."
"Holy shit, really?"
"Really. No snow though. You need a lot more moisture in the air for snow."
"Wait, you 'moved' up here? What does that mean?"
"Well, back before the whole infection thing, people used to buy and sell houses."
Ellie gave Amanda a perplexed look, "Why the hell would anyone do that?"
"Yeah, it's stupid, I know. Why would you pay to live on the planet? I bet it's really strange to you. But anyway, when you went to a new house, it was called 'moving'. But when I say we 'moved' up here, we were trying to go as far north as we could to get away from the infected. There were a whole bunch of people that thought that if we went north, come winter all the infected would freeze to death. It…" Amanda suddenly stopped speaking and looked down, breathing out, "it didn't work."
Ellie could tell that whatever happened was most likely personal. She didn't press the issue, even though her nagging curiosity begged her to. So she decided to try to steer the conversation somewhere else, "I hate not being able to wear short sleeves."
Amanda looked over at her, "Really? I think you still can."
Ellie rolled up her sleeve and showed Amanda the bite scar, "No I can't. Everyone'll stare at it. Some people still back away from me when I get too close," she rolled her sleeve back down and stared back out into the woods.
Amanda leaned closer, concerned, "Is this about Marcus and his buddies? I told you that if they -"
"It's not that, no. They're okay," Ellie became silent, her thoughts running wild. She didn't really want to complicate anything by explaining what was going on in her head. She didn't want anyone to know she was suddenly concerned about her arm. Well, that wasn't technically true. She was always concerned about her arm, usually in the vein of "Is someone going to shoot me because I look infected?" But now her concern was something different, almost a kind of vanity. She thought it looked unattractive. Ugly. Gross. A turn off. A turn off? Turn off to whom? Where the fuck did that come from? she thought.
"Hey, you okay?"
"I'm fine," she muttered, keeping her eyes straight forward. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
"I can tell when something's wrong. You can level with me."
To be completely honest, there were a number of things that were bothering her right now, all of them things that she didn't really want to share at the moment. Amanda, however was not going away. Ellie reached into her back pocket and pulled out Riley's pendant. It felt heavy, like it always did, the weight not coming from the material, but from what it represented.
"That's a Firefly pendant. Where did you get that?"
"This…this was a friend's. Riley. We were screwing around in a mall in Boston when we got bit. Together. She gave it to me just before…she…" Ellie sucked in a breath and blew out, trying to calm herself before saying it out loud, "she shot herself. Right in front of me."
Amanda rubbed her shoulder gently, "Oh, Ellie. I'm sorry."
"It's just…it won't go away. I just keep seeing her face," Ellie rolled up her sleeve again, "I can't look at this because every time I do… I see her. Standing there. With a gun to her head."
Amanda scooted her chair closer to Ellie and wrapped her in a comforting embrace. Ellie rested her head on Amanda's shoulder. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't. The tears just wouldn't come. Amanda reached down and pulled out something from her own back pocket. It was a pair of dog tags.
"My dad used to be in the army," Amanda said somberly, "When I was little he was always 'going over'. He'd be gone for months at a time, and every day I'd sit out on the porch, wondering, 'Is daddy gonna come home with a medal or in a box?' One day, a truck pulled up with a couple of officers, and they told us he was going home forever. Mom and I were so happy until they told us why. He'd been driving his truck in Baghdad and ran over an IED. He lost his legs. I won't ever forget when I saw him roll up to the house in a wheel chair, only stumps where knees used to be. We had a couple of stairs in front of the porch and I felt so guilty that I couldn't help my mother lift him over those tiny steps. It was like that all the time after that, but he never stopped smiling. He kept telling me, 'Hey, don't worry, now I don't have to stand up all the time anymore.'
"Then, when I was sixteen, the cordyceps struck. We all piled in a car and headed north. We got to Colorado when winter was starting to set in. It got really cold. We and a bunch of other people made this little camp in the woods. One day, Mom went out to get firewood and just never came back. They found her later, frozen solid. Dad wasn't the same after that. He stopped smiling. All of the energy he used to have was just gone. He barely ate, he slept a lot. He just wasted away, slowly, no matter what I tried to do to help him. A few years later, I woke up one day and he was lying there, completely still. Peaceful. He just…woke up dead. He was gone. But you want to know the weirdest part? He was smiling.
"So that's what I choose to remember. Not him coming home with stumps instead of legs, not him looking at me with so much sadness that it made me cry, but him just smiling. Happy. It's not easy, but it helps."
Ellie tried it out, remembering the joy she felt dancing. The laughter they shared as they traded puns. Throwing bricks. Playing in the costume shop. It brought a smile to her lips.
"I guess it's not all bad, is it?"
"Nope. I'm here if you need me," Amanda said, squeezing Ellie tighter.
Thank you for reading and I hope to see you at Chapter 13: Watch Tower (Part 2)
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