Author's Note: Hello! So I'm back after a delay of a few days (apologies!). This chapter took some planning and really launches the story forward. It's the first Joel chapter in a little while, because I wanted you all to see from Ellie's perspective how his mind was unraveling a little, and now you get to see it from Joel's, which is different. You'll see how it plays out, I suppose, and I just hope that you enjoy it. I really did enjoy writing it, as much as I love writing Ellie, I like Joel too; he's very aware of what's going on, he's trying to deal with his own issues, and he's trying to reconcile himself to this teenage girl. It's very interesting to explore that. Unfortunately I don't think this chapter is funny. At least, I didn't think it was when I was writing it. Joel's in a much darker place than Ellie is right now, so her chapters are where most of the humour comes from now. As for what the next chapter will be, I'm really not sure. I'm toying with a couple of different ideas right now. I'll let you know in the next chapter, I suppose. In any case, enjoy! Read and review, follow and favourite if you haven't done so already!

JOEL

How can a place be so different, and so familiar?

They'd passed the fence twenty minutes or so ago and were walking around the backstreets of Joel's hometown. Its name kept summoned by his mind, crying it out against his will, and he tried to forget it. Its name don't mean nothing anymore, it's just another dead town, he thought. And that it was – more dead than most. With the big cities you couldn't help but shake the feeling that people had just abandoned it, left them to the grass and the weeds. But with the smaller ones, you knew that the world had taken everything from them.

Joel peered inside the window of a shop he'd only visited a few times before – the stock was kept below ground, but you paid on the top floor, right before you left. Inside it didn't look like much; an empty checkout behind a glass window, with a slider where you'd give them money. It was a post office too. That's what he'd bought – stamps.

"Come on," he whispered, "there's an exit 'round back. Maybe we'll have more luck there."

They hadn't said anything above the level of a whisper since they got into town. Maybe Ellie had the same hesitation he did; there was something not right about it. In the distance sometimes they heard noises, but it didn't seem like small noises close up; it was big noises, far away.

Two cars lay sprawled at ridiculous angles, blocking the lane that would take them around the back of the store.

"That was one bad crash," Joel said.

"You saw it?"

"No, but I can see it now." He looked inside the blackened car and saw nothing but a skeleton, coated in thick dust and ash. They were never white like you used to see them on television, they were always grimy, dirty. The arm bone was stuck in a worse angle than the cars were. Infected probably tried to pull him out, eat him, and only got the hand.

"Will we go around?"

"It'd take too much time. Let's just go over the car."

Joel put his right foot on the left wheel of the car, a wheel that had gone flat a long time ago. Then, once he was on the bonnet of the car, he helped Ellie up. They jumped down on the other side and made their way down the alley. Once, rats would have scattered around their feet. Now, nothing.

Usually Joel wasn't one for making those types of comparisons but now they weighed heavy on his mind. What used to be, and what remained. The door there was locked too, but it had a real lock, one that Joel could use. He took a shiv that he'd crafted earlier, back in the cabin, and jammed it into the lock, raking and raking. A click came from inside the lock and he pulled out the now-broken shiv, dropping it to the ground. The door gave way easily when he turned the lock, and the metal hinges scream at being put to use after such a long, long rest. He opened the door slower. "Easy does it," he said. Ellie nodded.

He pointed his rifle in the dark room, looking around. From behind, a beam of light broke the darkness and showed the room; Joel moved in first, slowly, Ellie following with her torch. Joel expected the floor to be littered with envelopes and scattered stamps; empty packets strewn across the floor as if by a great wind. Instead, the floor was clean. The ropes that separated the aisles to the glass teller were still standing, held up by metal sticks, flimsy things that Sarah use to duck under and back. He remembered her falling once, laughing whilst she did it.

"It's so clean," Ellie said, eyes apart in wonder.

"That it is. The door was locked, the cars blockin' the path, no doubt people hadn't found their way in here."

"Wow. Do you think there's stuff to eat?"

"There was a little shop downstairs, so there might be." Ellie moved towards the door. "Let me go first." There was something Joel didn't like about the place, and in the darkness it felt all the more sinister. The still silence was unnerving too, and Joel's ears were listening for any excuse to get them out of there.

Why did we even come in?

"To get away from the demons outside, Joel," he heard and swung his rifle around – there was a man standing there, Joel almost fired, and then he saw the man's mauled face; such pale death there. His neck was gargling. Joel's rifle shook in his hands. "You shouldn't have come back here, Joel."

"Joel, are you okay?" And then Tommy was gone.

"Yeah, I'm fine Ellie," he said. "Just thought I saw something." Joel moved the slider on his chest onto the on position, the torch flickering into a solid beam, streaking the doorway ahead with yellow light. The door frame was black with rot and damp, and around the wet corners, snugly sitting, was moss. Moss? It was a relief to see moss in the world and not the creeping roots of the cordyceps, he had to admit.

He shone the light further into the room as he walked towards it, the darkness so empty that at first it simply swallowed the light whole. Behind him he could hear Ellie's breathing; slow, deliberate. She's trying to calm herself. He wanted to say something, but there was nothing he could say. His mind flashed back to pushing her, to punching her, slapping her. He didn't remember what he did. He only remembered that he hurt her and the guilt that panged and stung at him. He wanted to turn and apologise again, but there was no need. Not right now. Later, Joel. Stay focused god dammit.

The stairs did not creak under their weight, a fact that surprised Joel to no end. They were metal, but they had not yet rusted beyond their function.

"All things considered," Joel said, "these stairs aren't doing half bad for not being touched in twenty years."

"I'll say."

There were no bodies on them, nor at the bottom of them. The store was downstairs, he could see it now – the shelves glistening with all colours of food, the unlit refrigerator glass glimmering in the distance from the torchlight.

"Holy shit, Joel!"

It was only then, when Ellie budged past him on the stairs, that the realisation of what he was seeing dawned on him. He couldn't help but lower his rifle to take it all in; crisps in boxes red and orange and blue. No doubt half the shit has gone hard, but it's there, he thought. He kept his eyes looking around but there was nothing in the room with him; surely some of the stock would be missing, at least. He wondered where the shop owner had gone, if he had fled from the town and not given an extra thought to his stock. Joel tried to remember his name, but it had slipped away from him sometime in the past two decades. He felt a little bad about that.

"I agree," he said, moving closer to some of the food supplies.

"What can I eat?"

"Look for rolled oats, and dried things. Dried tomatoes might be okay, out of the light and in the dark. It's pretty cold down here too."

She nodded and disappeared behind another aisle. It'd been so long since he'd seen shelves that were stocked. Most of the food wouldn't be edible anymore, but it was the sight that got him more than anything.

Sarah appeared from around the aisle. "Dad, are you gonna make me blueberry pancakes? You have to now that you're back. Look for pancakes, please?" Joel's head began to thump and scream at him. A slicing pain from the back of his skull, making his head twitch; he tried to steer his head into the pain, make it go away, but it stayed, gnawing… Make it stop, he thought. Sarah, leave me alone!

"Joel? JOEL! Joel, what's wrong?"

He was sitting in a carpet of dust, back against an aisle. Old food strewn around him, fallen when he did. His torchlight pierced through the darkness ahead of him from his chest, cutting a circle of light on the aisle in front of him. Ellie's hand was on his shoulder.

"What the hell happened?"

He blinked hard; his head was still pounding. With effort and the aid of Ellie and the aisle behind him, he got to his feet. His legs quivered beneath him, struggling to hold him up. The knife at the back of his skull was gone – that he was thankful for.

"I don't know, just feelin' a bit dizzy. I wonder…" He trailed off and limped away from Ellie, inspecting the aisles. In slow motion his eyes trailed over the shelves; he lifted up packets of nuts and oats and seeds that were likely to be edible, shoving them into his bag as he went, and then found the white boxes we was looking for. Painkillers, though nothing as strong as he'd like. It amazed him, the names. Names and brands he hadn't seen in so long. He took a couple out of a white box, little blue pills, and swallowed them. For a moment he wondered if his throat was going to put up a fight, but then it gave way and they disappeared.

"What's that?"

Ellie was behind him – directly behind him. "They're painkillers. My head hurts."

"Drugs?"

"Yeah, medicine."

"Were they expensive?"

"No. They used to be pretty cheap. You could buy the weaker ones, and the stronger ones you had to go to a doctor for. Those you had to pay for."

"You had to pay for your health?" Ellie asked, eyes widened. His torchlight was spilling over the drug shelf, and the light caught her wide, glistening eyes. "That seems pretty shit. I thought things were good before the infected?"

"Things were –"

He stopped dead when he heard it; his head snapping towards the stairs. Voices came from outside, they were bouncing and echoing off the walls from the alley outside. A finger to his lips to tell Ellie to hush, and then he slowly moved towards them… listening.

" – I remember thinkin' we should get some engineers down here'ta check out this door, 'cause it's always been closed so long as I been doin' the patrols 'round here, and that's been a long time. That's how'a know it's open."

"If you say so."

Both of their accents were thick, southern accents; stronger than Joel's and Tommy's – the kind of southern dialect he associated with the deep, small country towns that (according to television and films) drove out black people with pitchforks. The religious zealots.

– Ora sliced into his mind, unbidden. "I'm alive, you demon."

Their footsteps were above them now. He could hear the weight of their boots, big military ones, on the floor upstairs. He flicked his arm away, telling Ellie to hide. She did, carefully. Upstairs their slow, deliberate steps were making progress. Edging towards the stairs. Light, just like Joel's had, spilled out onto the staircase, and Joel backed off. His eyes moved quickly around the room, seeing nowhere real to hide. The aisles would not do. If they see us and they shoot us we're dead, if we shoot them there might be more out there. He thought hard, but there was so little time to think…

He crouched and moved underneath the staircase. He'd barely gone under when yellow light came through the slants of metal that made up the stairs. Their boots clanked off the metal. When he lifted his head a little he could see them through the slants; only two of them. His hunting rifle was full. Can I risk shooting them? I need to wait and see if they see us.

"Jackpot shit!" said one of them, the one with the thicker accent. Not much else set the two apart – they both wore military uniforms. One wore brown boots, the other wore black. This one was the one with brown.

"There's so much shit down here," Black Boots said.

"Look, there's stuff fallen of that shelf – people have been in here, I'm tellin' you."

"Well, it don't look like they're here 'nymore." Black Boots moved into the room, looking at the food Joel had caused to drop on the floor. He remembered Sarah's head around the aisle, smiling at him... and he tried to push the thought away, out of his mind. "The lady's gonna be delighted with us," he said, his voice bursting with excitement. All over, he was twitching with anticipation.

It was then that the trepidation disappeared from Brown Boots and he moved down the remaining steps quickly. "Shit, she'll reward us, man!" They both began to laugh and giggle. Out of the corner of his eye, movement stirred. Ellie. She was crouched behind the aisle farthest to the right; Joel could see her, and she could see him. One of the guards had their back to Joel, the other to Ellie. She's been looking through the aisles.

"What'll we do? We can't leave it, not with the door broken like that."

Don't get Ellie involved, she might get hurt – but maybe it's a good idea.

"It's a sound move, Joel. You get Brown Boots, I'll get Black."

Tess was crouched down behind the aisle on the far right. Joel nodded at her and she nodded back, bringing out a switchblade. Slowly and without creating any noise, he uncoiled himself from his prone position and came out of the darkness. Both were facing away from him, but they would see him at any moment. If Tess didn't get the other in time, shots would ring out.

She was beside him then; black hair pulled back from her face, and her jacket was cream. It wouldn't be until later he thought of all the red blood it had soaked into its fibres, and the bullets that riddled her chest. With a nod from her, he grabbed Brown Boots around the neck and he started to struggle. The soldier reached for something at his waist – a whistle or a weapon, it made no matter – so Joel applied more pressure, and then he tugged the man's neck one way, then violently twisted it the other; a cracking fissure came from the inside of his neck, and he fell to the floor.

With a similar thud, the other body sank down too, though with much more blood. Blood dripped from the ceiling from the initial spray, where it'd come from when she'd slit the other's neck. The neck is always a weak point in the armour, he thought. For a second, looking at Ellie, there was something strange there. Some unseen force wavering around her that he couldn't understand, and his head threatened to pound again.

"We should go," he said, beating his train of thought away, changing the topic. Did I put Ellie in danger?

"Yeah."

"They'll send a patrol looking for these guys. Let's not be here when they find them." He took another glance around the room and then, jumping over the bodies, made a last round of the shelves. They found a few bottles of water, those went in Ellie's bag. No doubt they're all rank, but they should be fine to drink. A few boxes of drugs were left on the shelves; he scanned through them and took what he thought could be useful, into his own bag. Back up the stairs. "You, uh, you did good there."

"Us or them." She said it almost too casually, in a way that worried him.

Rifle at the ready, he swept the alley outside with his eyes and the rifle before he let Ellie come out. There were no people, but at the edge of the Ellie was a tank; massive and dark green. There could be someone inside. He handed his rifle to Ellie and whispered, "If someone is in that tank and comes up, shoot them." Quickly, he tried to shut the door, but the lock had broken. Shit, he thought and looked around for something – anything! – that would block the door. An old trashcan would have to do. Careful and quick was what he had to do; he gripped it by the rusted rungs and lifted. It wasn't heavy, but it wasn't by any accounts light either. He stuck it under the handle, as close to the door as possible, but it looked odd – it looked out of place. Anyone with eyes can see that it doesn't belong there.

"Can we go?" Ellie asked.

"Not yet," he replied and looked hurriedly for another. When he had three cans down along the door and to the wall beside it, he was satisfied. "Okay. Let's go." She handed him the rifle back and he eyed the tank; the mounted firing cannon, huge, hadn't swung around, trained its sights on them. Yet. There could still be someone in there. The cars that it sat behind blocked their full view of the vehicle, but in his memory he still associated the top half with the bottom; the tracks that trailed in a loop, laying ruin to anything in its way. Joel glanced behind him; a brick wall. Why did I check? I knew it was a dead end.

"Get down Ellie," Joel said, and Ellie did. They crouched together, sticking close, and got down behind the car as quickly as they could. Up close Joel could see where the paint had flaked, in the places where it wasn't black with ash. Through the windows he could see the tank; sitting still. He was close enough now that he didn't have to worry much about the tank's mounted cannon, but surely anyone inside would have a machine gun.

"What'll we do?"

"On three I'll go over the car. You remember the next alley down that way?" He pointed left and she nodded. "That's where I'm going. If nothin' happens, if the tank don't move, wait ten seconds and then come after me. Count them slow, Ellie. Don't rush it."

At that moment he wondered where Ellie had learned to read and write and count; schools weren't around when she was younger. He made a mental note to ask her later and placed his hands on the bonnet of the car, pushing himself up and over. He made a sprint for the alleyway, and then a shout thundered at him.

"STOP WHERE YOU ARE, ON THE ORDERS OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT!"

Joel didn't stop; but they hadn't shouted until he was well past the tank – and this shout wasn't from the tank. He dived into the alley, shots rang out, battering and sparking against the walls to the side of him, and he sidled into cover behind a giant metal dumpsters. It must have held things inside, 'cause otherwise the thin aluminium would have been pierced by bullets.

FEDRA? Joel wondered.

"Identify yourself!"

He looked behind him; another dead end alley, on the floor were pieces of garbage, burst from a book. A few wrappers, a broken mirror. Mirror, he thought, lifting it. He angled it out and saw them coming; four of them, five of them, a sixth on a roof in the distance. They all wore military outfits, grenades hanging from their belts, and guns. Shit, shit. Did they see Ellie? They must have missed her.

There was no way out.

"Tommy," he said, loudly. "My name is Tommy."

"Do you have any guns on you Tommy?"

If I surrender they might kill me, if I fight then they will. There's too many of them. Too many.

"I do."

"My name is Jarrod, Tommy. I'm an officer in this government."

"Do you run a quarantine zone?"

"We used to," he said. "The other quarantine zones are our brothers, I guess." His voice was southern too, much like Joel's own. "But we gave up on that a long time ago."

If I resist they only need to throw one of those damn grenades and then shoot me apart when I run.

"Are you gonna come out, Tommy?"

"Are you goin' to shoot me?"

"If you make this hard, we will shoot you in the head. Are you alone?"

"Yes."

They were whispering, though Joel couldn't make out what they were saying, such was the point of whispering. Some words came to him, when he pushed his ear closer to the side of the can.

"… think … started the fire?"

"… if he did… she'll wanna see him…"

"… take him to her…"

Their whispers died and the man who had spoken before cleared his throat. "Tommy, we have the ability to protect you, but you have to come with us, and not fight us. That won't end well for you, and it won't end well for us."

"What do you want to protect me for?"

"Well, we don't, but we can't let you go, and we don't kill people without a reason. Will you come with us, or will this be difficult?"

The synchronised loading of six different rifles, maybe more, set Joel even more on edge. Most of all he was worried about Ellie. What will she do if they take me away? His hope was that she would wait here until he could get back to her – there was enough food in there for her to survive for a week, maybe more. More likely, she would follow him.

"I'll come."

"Good man. You understand that we need to take your weapons. Throw them over to us." There was some mutterings on their side. "A rifle, and the revolver too, as well as anything we didn't see."

Joel threw them over, each of them clattering against the ground. He took the ammo out of the revolver, sliding it into his trousers pockets. "That's it. Come on out now, easy does it." The broken shard of mirror he snapped off a section, pointed and straight and what could easily be a decent weapon, and slid it into the band of his trousers. The point cut into him at first, but when he stood the feeling disappeared completely.

"Well done, son. Come with us."

"Sir, shouldn't we wait for the other two?"

"Maybe. I don't wanna stay out here any longer than I have to. Steve, Stanley – will you two go check on those two idiots?"

"Aye," said one of them, and they moved off.

"Where are you taking me?" Joel asked. If I seem strong, they will know I am. They will see me as a threat, and they will kill me. But if I seem weak, maybe they'll kill me anyway.

"Surely you saw our base. The place with the lights."

"I saw it."

"Well that's where we're taking you."

"I'd much prefer to stay here," Joel said, raising his voice a little. "To wait here 'till you pass."

"That isn't an option, Tommy. I'm sorry."

You sure as shit ain't sorry, was what he thought. "Yeah," was all he said.

The other men followed slightly behind and in front of Joel, their assault rifles all knowingly loaded, ready to shoot him in the back at the first sign. The look on their faces seemed to say that they wouldn't mind if it came to that either. This soldier of diplomacy and tact walking beside Joel seemed better, but no doubt it was all an act. Every seemingly good man played a part in the death. Usually, they didn't fire the guns. They just provided them; they gave the brutes the bullets. They told them who to shoot. His mind fell to Sarah for just a moment. "Sir, there's a little girl. But – yes, sir."

Slowly, he tried to move his head around to see Ellie; the tank slid away from in front of her cover, and he saw the two guards that this man sent in after the other guards mounting the bonnet they'd used as cover. Shit, he thought. Ellie. He hoped she was hiding, and hiding well.

"Eyes front," said one of the guards, and Joel's head turned promptly.

Joel marched on, a prisoner in everything but name. The shard of mirror pressed against his skin, cold and sharp.