4:02 PM
Dot [Ellie]
Callus took them back to where they left Joel as fast as she could make him go. Once inside the garage, she jumped to reach the latch of the door, pulling the whole thing down. She let out a breath as soon as the outside world was hidden, finally beginning to feel safe. Those two assholes were probably still out there, probably looking for them.
She just had to hope they couldn't find them.
"Okay…" she breathed, taking off her backpack and rushing past Clementine, and deeper into the house. She had to get this medicine to Joel. She went down the stairs leading into the basement two at a time, stopping only once she reached the bottom, her eyes trailing towards Joel's form on the ground.
"…Joel?" He let out a pained breath then, sending a wave of relief coursing through her. He wasn't dead, thank God. She dropped her backpack to the ground, kneeling next to him. "We only managed to get a little bit of food." Well, a rabbit. "But… we did get this."
She pulled out the bottle of penicillin and the syringe, pulling down Joel's blanket while telling him to move his arm. She pulled up his shirt, examining the patch job Clementine had done to him the week before. It was looking bad, but not nearly as bad as before. She filled the syringe with the liquid, holding it tightly for a moment.
"Here we go…" She took two seconds to prepare herself, cursing before finally sticking the needle into him. Joel grunted, his breathing quickening as Ellie let out a hushed "sorry!" She pulled the needle out then, sighing. "All done. That's it." She lowered his shirt, pulling the blankets back up to his neck. She held a hand over his forehead, feeling the sickening warmth of his skin. "You're gonna make it," she promised, turning to look towards Clementine on the other side of the room.
" We're gonna make it."
Art [Clementine]
Their food was gone, pretty much all of it save for the rabbit Ellie had caught prior. They had those dubious guys on their trail, and worst of all, only a sparse amount of medicine to make up for it, with almost no other supplies to speak of, and one horse short.
And, still, Lee... and all that stuff Henry said, managed to be the only thing going through the girl's head.
Clementine had since crossed her arms, a frown etched across her face, regret piling up like trash being dumped by a truck on a particularly noxious junkyard. Terrified, is what she felt, scared of what was to come, and of not having the means to stop it. Most of all, and certainly most painful, was the thought of Lee still being out there, held captive by those animals. The source of all that nervousness was either it, or the recognition of just how far-fetched that idea was, the troublesome knowing that she'd really take that flimsy hope for granted, if not only for a small chance of seeing him again.
Maybe she was dense after all.
While Ellie made a check up on Joel, Clem did the same with her horse. The poor thing was putting up a fight, tussling on the floor in pain, his old whining reduced to quiet whimpers. She couldn't tell if Whiskers had caught a disease from the cold or if all that was simply lack of food. "Those don't work on horses, do they...?" She found herself asking, eyeing the supplies they'd brought along, only to be met with silence and a lingering feeling of despair. Clementine didn't know what to do. She didn't want to have tothink about what to do, knowing there was probably only one way out for the anguished animal.
Clem walked up to Ellie, eventually, staring her down with a degree of severity she rarely shared with her friend. "We can't stay here," she urged, marching back and forth, footsteps echoing in the garage.
"I say we fight them off."
Dot [Ellie]
Was she hearing her right? The very thought of fighting these guys off was… frightening. They didn't know how many assholes worked with this guy, so what were they going to do? They had to run, get out of here. Making a stand just wasn't an option.
"You heard what he said," she countered as she stood up, looking towards her friend. "He's got a whole group. We can't just… fight them off ." She shook her head, sighing. "It's suicide."
"We need to just get the hell out of here."
Art [Clementine]
"And go where...?" Clementine rebutted, her nervousness not just apparent, but also telling in her voice. "Ellie, we're out of everything, Joel's still recovering, and..."
She stopped abruptly, as if something had robbed the girl of her ability to speak before she had the chance to turn her thoughts into words. Clem's eyes were glued to the floor, while her brows huddled together in some mixture of fear and foreboding. She knew what she was about to say, how foolhardy it sounded. What would Ellie think...? That was the one thing keeping the back of her throat in a clump, blocking out the sounds trying to come out through it. In a low voice, finally, the girl finished. "If Lee's really with them, I-"
"I can't just go."
Dot [Ellie]
Ellie responded to Clementine's rebuttal with silence, mouth half open in a look of both shock and dismay. Ellie wanted to believe that Lee was alive, even if it was in the hands of these assholes , but the evidence just wasn't there. She couldn't risk their lives for it.
"Clem," Ellie's voice was tense, stern, but equally troubled. Her eyebrows fell into a look of concern, and she glanced between her friend and Joel before sighing. "Listen, Joel's barely awake long enough to eat or shit, and Lee's… we've got no idea if they're even telling the truth." She cursed under her breath, shaking her head. "You're all I got, Clem," she finished, as if that statement was enough to justify abandoning the search for Lee, again.
But she meant it. She couldn't lose her, too. She couldn't lose Joel. Their food situation was shit, but fighting back wasn't going to fix that.
Any further comment was halted by the sound of multiple footsteps outside, filtering through the broken window of the garage.
Fuck. They tracked us. God fucking-!
She jumped onto a table sitting underneath the window, peering through the curtains hiding the interior of the garage. About a dozen men, their faint voices slowly coming into focus.
"Y'sure this is the way they went?"
"Tracks led this way, so I'm pretty fucking sure."
She jumped back down from the table, pacing the room frantically as she whispered to Clem in a breathy voice. "Fuck… Clem, get Joel ready to move. I'm going to take Callus and try and draw them away. Once the coast's clear, get him out of here. We'll meet up after, by the lake. Okay?"
Art [Clementine]
The noises outside were a dead-giveaway, confirming Clementine's latent suspicion that they weren't about to just be left alone. Knowing it was coming didn't ease her uneasiness one bit, though it did keep her from freezing up on the spot, the girl backing away from the garage door, and saving anything else she had to say for later.
They couldn't afford to get caught. Not now.
Ellie had a plan; a really stupid one. By the time her friend spoke up, Clementine had already occupied herself with gathering everything they had, the little that was left. It wouldn't be long until those fuckers burst through the doors and found them... until they found Joel. She figured Ellie and her would be on the same page for once, but in what was looking to become a trend, Clementine was dead-wrong.
"No! No, it's not! We're not doing that!" She shouted in a whisper from the other side of the room, kneeling down while she stuffed their spare backpack with their things: Pretty much all they'd left laying around, minus her rifle and pistol. Clem had a hunch she'd be needing both. "Ellie, we fucking stick together!"
Dot [Ellie]
Of course she would fight it. At this point, Ellie wasn't at all surprised. She wanted to fight back, to tell Clem that she was staying here and that was that, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. For once, she was going to have to give in to what Clementine wanted to do.
So, wordlessly, the two quietly open the garage, letting Callus out before closing it behind them. Thus far, the bandits haven't heard them, but that could change at any minute. Ellie was the first to climb on top of Callus, reaching out a hand to help Clementine.
This was it. Time to see if her 'plan' would work out.
She pulled on the reins, sending Callus into a quick gallop. Shouts echoed through the street they were approaching, followed by gunshots as the bandits got a bead on them. Ellie ducked, cursing under her breath as she led the bandits, hopefully, away from Joel.
The world was a blur, and more and more bandits were appearing as if out of thin air, and she had trouble weaving through them. It was a miracle that they haven't been shot already.
She knew it was coming, though.
Art [Clementine]
With Ellie on the reigns and she as a passenger, Clementine and her friend zigzagged half-a-dozen guys itching to fire their guns at them, both girls lowering their heads to avoid the incoming bullets. She couldn't tell where they were going, or even how far they'd gone to, but it only took a minute for both Joel and Whiskers to be left far behind, where hopefully no one would dare to look again. They'd just have to hope they were making the right call.
It was no time to start cheering. As they moved farther and farther away, one of the men managed to grab their horse by its saddle, trying to impede them from escaping. It was insane. That whole situation was fucking crazy.
"Get off!" Clementine stomped her foot against the man's nose, the sound of fracturing bones being muted only by that of Callus' hooves digging into the snow. The man held on, still, aiming his bleeding features at the girl standing between the two of them, the one keeping the horse moving in a straight line. Clem acted fast, perhaps only a second before he had the chance to.
The fourteen-year-old quickly shoved a knife into his throat, with about every bit of strength she could muster. Red liquid sprayed anywhere it feasibly could, though only momentarily. His soon-to-be corpse had no means of latching onto the horse anymore, plummeting down toward the snow and taking Clementine's knife with him. She tried not to let it phase her, forcibly shutting her eyes while the man's blood ran down her cheeks, but there was no helping it. Doing that - especially that fast - made her feel indescribably sick.
" Shoot the horse. Shoot the fucking horse! "
For as much as Clementine wished she had the time to, hammering away at stabbing that guy in the neck could only last a few seconds before the warmth of bile rising in her stomach froze cold. They'd both heard it, she was sure, but Clem tried to warn Ellie nevertheless. They were so close to losing those bandits. If they could just make it another mile, maybe…
The gunshot was much faster than her.
It hadn't landed on either her or her friend, which was close to the only good thing the following seconds entailed. Callus fell first, an explosion of blood around his torso area forcing his legs to stop, and sending both girls flying in opposite directions. Clementine didn't get very far, tumbling down to the snow below, rolling twice before landing on her face and stomach. She'd grazed her knees and elbows on the ground, covered her hands in cuts from having them scraped against the pavement. A cut in the bridge of her nose was as bad as it got, even if everything else still hurt like crap. Clem tried to crawl away despite not getting very far, shouting for her friend who'd fallen down nearby, along with the horse. She only hoped Ellie would land far enough away to outrun those guys. There was no getting out of there for Clementine.
Dot [Ellie]
Her face was numb, buried in the snow she slid through after Callus collapsed underneath them. She struggled to push herself up, groaning as her face was met with the even-more-freezing air. Shouts echoed all around her, like vultures circling their prey. Any moment, they'd be here.
Then her arms gave out, her face colliding with the snow once more. Footsteps crunched nearby, and she lifted her head to be met with a familiar face.
Henry.
A wicked smile played on his lips, and he kneeled next to where Clementine struggled to crawl away from him. Ellie watched helplessly as he stood back up, taking Clem's rifle from where it'd fallen.
Her voice was strained, angry, as she shouted towards him. "Don't!"
Instead of looking towards her, he smashed the rifle against the back of the baseball-capped girl's head. She fell to the ground, Ellie's heart beating against her chest as Henry directed another man to grab her.
She wanted to rush him, to stab that fucking prick right in his throat and watch him bleed out, but her body had other plans. The adrenaline pumping through her system was finally enough to allow her to get back onto her feet, and before Henry could do anything, she made a break for a drainage pipe nearby, crawling into it.
She could hear shouts from behind her, but they were unintelligible. Her hands were covered in a slimy substance, likely years of water that'd sat here for the past decade and a half. Behind her, she could hear someone entering the pipe, following her.
Fuck fuck fuck…
Light… she emerged from the pipe just outside some sort of hotel near the lake. The area was empty, thankfully, but wouldn't be for long. That asshole behind her would be here any minute.
She sprinted towards the building, eyes desperately scanning her surroundings for any potential escape routes but came up with nothing. The only way out was through the resort.
She could hear footsteps now, only hastening her decision to cross through the building. The interior was dark and just as freezing as the outside world, and the eerie quiet sent a shiver down her spine.
She let out a breath once she reached the other side, opening the exit before-
A hand grabbed her by the throat as she crossed the threshold. She went for her knife, slicing at the man's arm. He let out a harsh howl, knocking her back into the dining hall she'd just emerged from before stepping inside, shutting the door behind her.
"You're quick," Henry breathed, anger and pain floating beneath his tone. "I'll give you that."
She reached for her pistol, only for Henry to charge at her with an enraged shout. He crushed her arm beneath his boot, keeping her pinned before grabbing her other arm, yanking the knife out of it.
She let out a slew of curses, spitting in his face, but her attempts at resistance were only met with a hearty, maniacal laugh. She was helpless as he let go of her arm, squeezing her throat with enough strength to send all the breath out of her lungs.
As blackness began to envelop her, she could hear his voice at the edge of her consciousness, rough yet quiet.
"Sleep now, child. Go to fucking sleep."