A/N: Not much I want to say about this chapter for fear of spoiling things. While it's the shortest chapter yet, it's also the most revealing and one of the most intense, and I'll leave it at that. Two chapters left until the climax!
"It's what she'd want" - Marlene
Chapter 12: Google Maps
The hood and gloves and jacket and snow pants fail to keep her warm in the same way that the bandages and antibiotics fail to make her feel any stronger; Caroline insists that the wound isn't infected, but Ellie gets the sense that that's blind optimism founded in ignorance.
Kelly probably hopes for the worst.
Wyoming could be miles upon miles behind them, or they could have miles upon miles of the harsh, wintery Wyoming yet to traverse. Ellie's lost her sense of direction along with her ability to walk in a straight line, and she's worried that, when she leaves her newfound allies – or ally- she'll get herself so hopelessly lost that all she'll be is some Clicker's next meal.
"Who is she?" Caroline asks, lazily flicking the safety on her pistol off and on.
"Who is who?"
"Sammy. You keep saying her name under your breath." She frowns, looks up at the sky. "Kelly! We're running out of sunlight."
The woman flips the girls off, trudges on ahead, the de facto leader of the pack.
Ellie snickers, coughs. "We got plenty of sun."
"Not for you; you look like crap."
"Thanks."
Caroline shrugs. "Calling 'em as I see 'em. It's the cold, I bet."
"I hate the cold."
"Most people do nowadays."
The redhead sighs. "Not for the usual reasons."
"What happened?"
"She was shot on the morning of the outbreak, died in his arms." Ellie puts the empty can aside, leans back against a tree trunk.
The smaller girl shakes her head, picks at her teeth. "I don't even know what to say to that."
"Yeah, well, I didn't know either, not for a long time. For a while, I thought he only cared about me because of her, but I don't think it's like that anymore. I hope."
Caroline twists a lock of chocolate around on her finger, crosses her legs. "Can't believe you left him. Aren't you afraid?"
A sharp pain shoots through her ankle, and the redhead groans without meaning to. "Afraid of what?"
"Never mind."
"Of what?"
"Never mind."
A few feet away, Kelly sits bolt upright in her sleeping bag and scratches the side of her head. Her eyes search the surrounding trees, then the sky like there's going to be Infected and bandits raining down on them. She mutters a curse.
Another pain, another groan, this time covered with a cough. "Where are you going anyways?"
"I don't know," Caroline blurts out. Her voice bounces off of the trees that Kelly watches, bounces off of the mountains that loom overhead. She burries her face in her hands, massages her temples. "I wish I knew."
Ellie looks down at the pajamas she threw into her backpack before she left, the pajamas she hasn't worn since that night. They're not heavy enough for the weather; they're for a sentimentalist, not a survivalist, and she's not sure which one she is sometimes. "Can I trust Kelly?"
"Huh?"
"Can I trust her?"
The little one bites down on her lower lip. "Maybe."
But isn't that the answer to any question of trust? Henry and Sam easily could have stabbed her in the back. David did – almost literally too. Marlene . . . maybe. Maybe, indeed. But what damage could Caroline do? What damage would Caroline want to do? She'd be outnumbered in Jackson.
Outnumbered. Ellie was outnumbered in Colorado.
She lowers her voice: "A few miles from where you found me, there's a settlement. They've got walls, they've got guns, they've got electricity, they've got homes, they've got families. It's completely safe. My uncle and my aunt, they run it. If you can get there, they'll take you in."
Caroline gapes. "You had all of that, you had family there, and you ran away? For Utah? What the heck are you looking for, Els?"
Her friend runs her hand over the fabric covering her bite mark. "The Fireflies."
"No. No, please don't do that." The brunet leans forwards, takes hold of Ellie's hands.
"What's wrong?"
"They are not who they say they are. At all."
"Caroline."
"Where do you think I came from?" The little one closes her eyes, sighs, stares at the trees and the mountains like her silent, moody, begrudging overseer.
A million questions that can't go unasked, even if they should. "I don't understand."
Another sigh. "My parents, my sister, and I used to live in Colorado. A bunch of really terrible stuff, stuff I can't talk about, it happened there, but we somehow managed to stay together. I was pretty banged up, but my sister me going. We tried to get to the Fireflies, who we heard were in Salt Lake. But they found us first.
"We'd made camp, and a troop of them woke us up. At first, we thought they were Clickers. I saw their armbands, and I was so relieved, but then they told us that they were short on supplies and needed ours. We asked if we could come with them, and they shook their heads." She runs a hand through her hair.
"There weren't enough supplies; we needed all of them, and we tried to reason with them, but they wouldn't listen. They started screaming at us, telling us that we weren't helping to save the world like they were. One started hitting my dad, and, and I was stupid, so I tried to intervene, and they – like it was nothing – they stabbed me in the arm and shot Kitty. She didn't make it.
"After that, they tied us up, looted our camp. But they were sloppy; they didn't make my bonds strong enough; I got free, and they were my first kills. All of them. My parents and I buried Kitty, got the heck out of there, and you know the rest." As if the words have physically exhausted her, she slumps forwards, rubs her eyes, yawns.
Ellie pats the younger girl's back. "I'm sorry."
"It's just that I thought, after we got out of Colorado, we'd be alright. That was so naïve."
And that's when it hits her. Colorado.
"Els?"
She starts, yelps in pain, presses down on the bandage wrapped around her ruined ankle.
"Geez," Caroline mutters, unwraps the bandage, hisses through her teeth. She reaches into her pack, wets a small cloth with alcohol, dabs at the bloody tissue.
The burning is nothing in comparison to the stabbing, and the redhead realizes, with a gulp, that she barely feels her friend cleaning the wound. "Can you be honest with me?"
"With what?"
Another gulp. "Is it bad? Is it infected?"
Caroline looks up briefly, tucks a lock of chocolate behind her ear, goes back to work, clears her throat. "No, it's not infected, but it's not doing as well as I would have liked either. The trap cut deep. You do realize that this is another reason we should go back to this utopia you were telling me about? Wouldn't they be able to treat you better than I can?"
Ellie throws her hands into the air. "I'm not going back, alright?"
"Why?"
"'Cause I don't deserve that life."
"Please."
"You don't know what I've done." She crosses her arms over her chest and wishes she could get up on her own and storm off, but the former is impossible and the latter would probably do nothing but get her killed at this point.
Chuckling like it's the funniest thing she's heard all day, Caroline puts the cloth back into her bag, rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet. "Don't whine to me you killed people, not after what I told you."
Kelly coughs, spins her pistol around in the wet snow to her left.
"Besides," the brunet says matter-of-factly, "some people deserve to die. Like David."
"Oh my God," her friend squeaks, feeling like she's going to pass out. Colorado, the cage, the restaurant, his hands, the machete, the blood, the bits of bone and torn flesh. He must have captured Caroline too. Tortured her. Touched her. "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead."
She's vaguely aware of hands pulling her hair away from her face as she vomits into a bush, she's vaguely aware of the sound of Kelly's approaching footsteps, she's aware of her sleeve being pulled up, and she's fully aware of the gun pressed to her forehead.
"Kelly, what are you doing?" Caroline demands, leaping to her feet.
"How did you escape?" the woman demands.
Ellie raises her hands in defense, tries to control her breathing so that she doesn't start hyperventilating. "What are you talking about? Escape from where?"
"Him. David. How did you get away? How did you kill him?"
"Kelly, stop!" the little one squeals.
"Kid, I swear to God, get the fuck away from me. You'd better answer me, Red, or your brains are gonna be splattered all over the damn place."
A memory that should have been buried, repressed.
Crawling through the pet shop, pressing her back up against the counter, listening.
David stops outside the window, orders his men to search the town, talks with a woman.
A woman.
Kelly rests her finger against the trigger. "I'm gonna count to five, and then I'm pulling the trigger."
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Click.
Click.
Click.
