Chapter 7

Ellie knew that when fighting the infected, the only official start to the battle would be the slashing of their nails and the barking of a gun muzzle. To that end, she wasted no time in firing both barrels. Her volley found its mark and the buckshot from both rounds slammed into its chest roughly where she'd shot Samuel downstairs. But this time, his reaction was very different. He barely flinched as he charged forward again and swung a hand wildly in her direction. She ducked under his swing and dodged sideways before rolling across a bed- one of three in the room- and getting to her feet as she broke open the shotgun. Both the shells were ejected and she quickly stuffed two more in.

Shooting the open wound hadn't worked. Immediately, she ran through her options and reassessed what she was doing. Shooting it in the chest clearly wasn't what had hurt it before. It must have been the mycotoxin sacks! With that idea in her head, she levelled the shotgun and fired one barrel. Unfortunately, Samuel seemed to be able to learn what the click of her trigger meant and was able to dodge to the left. Yes, he bumped into one of the kids' beds, but he still managed to evade the blast of her shotgun. Frustrated, Ellie broke open the gun again to reload that barrel as Samuel started clicking to try and work out why he couldn't walk forward because there was a bed in the way. As he tried to navigate around it, Ellie raised her shotgun to fire again.

This time, the shot landed true. A mycotoxin sack on Samuel's left side ruptured and he screamed out in pain, staggering back and hitting the back wall. Ellie pressed her advantage, firing again and rupturing the other pouch on his right hand side. He let out another scream as she broke the gun open again to reload, praying that he wouldn't be able to recover in time. Unfortunately her wishes weren't granted. The two ruptured mycotoxin sacks had turned the area around him into a hazardous toxic zone. As he ran at her, she was barely able to rip her gas mask from where it was mounted on her bag strap and press it to her face before ducking out of the way again. The toxins stung her skin, but she knew any damage was unlikely to be permanent. Her lungs, on the other hand, were safe. With that knowledge, she did the mask up properly and readied up again.

Samuel had stopped in his tracks and was twitching on the spot, clicking steadily to try and pick up where she was. As Ellie stared at him, she realised she'd lucked out. There was a huge cluster of mycotoxin pouches on his back. She carefully raised her shotgun again and moved her finger just over the trigger. In one swift motion, she pulled it as fast as she could. There was no time for Samuel to register the click. The bang was the first warning he got and he had no way to react that fast. The giant pouches exploded, completely coating the entire room in fungal spores. The explosion hit with enough force to launch him forwards and he landed heavily on his fungus-coated face. He hit with such an impact that the floor physically shook and as he tried to struggle to his feet again Ellie saw her chance. She flung her backpack off and pulled out the molotov cocktail she'd made earlier. In on deft motion, she lit the rag and threw it. The bottle exploded and showered the entryway- and Samuel- with flames. His shrill, inhuman screams were enough to chill her through and she forced herself to disassociate as best she could as he thrashed around. The heat from the fire began to turn the fungal plates on his face and body brittle as they blackened and cracked from the flames that clung to them.

Her look of pity hidden behind the gas mask, Ellie walked over, stepping through the dissipating flames as she shouldered her weapon again before levelling it with his head and pulling the trigger. The bang rattled through her body but the effect at point-blank range was nothing short of spectacular. Samuel's entire cranial vault sheared open in a bloom of powdered blood and fungal spores. As Ellie sat back and watched, the mycotoxin slowly dissipated from the air and she was able to pull her gas mask off and take a proper look at this room for the first time. It was clearly the kids' room. There were three beds, two on her left as she turned to face into the room and one on the right. They each had a name carved into the foot of them. The bed on the right was at an angle, but the names she could see on the other beds were Cain and Deanne. Marlene's bed would have probably been removed either when she moved out or after she joined the Fireflies. That meant the final bed belonged to the youngest child.

As she was about to go over to look at the final bed, Ellie's foot caught on something poking out from the one she was standing by. Bending down and picking it up, she realised it was a journal. It was caked in dried blood and had been slightly burned at the edge by her molotov, but as she leafed through it she found that most of the entries were pretty much in tact. But it was the final one that caught her eye the most.

"Marlene's gone. I heard Mom scream from downstairs. There's only one reason people scream like that: when they get bit. I heard Dad yell at her to get up here and defend us. Instead, she grabbed our sister and jumped out the window. I heard the crack and her screaming. She fucked it. She fell wrong and smashed her kneecaps on the wood pile down below. I could see other people moving to help her. They have Firefly logos on their arms so she's safe. But they won't be in time to save us. The infected are banging on the door, trying to get in. I've closed the window in the hopes they won't see her or hear her screaming enough to be drawn by it. She did the right thing. She saved the one of us she knew she could carry. Deanne and I were ordered to hide under our duvets but she's crying so they'll hear her for sure. I won't hide. I won't cower. I will hide this journal as best I can and stare Death in the face, departing this life with him as equals."

A spot of water landed on the book, smudging the words. Ellie quickly looked up to see if water- or potentially melting snow- was leaking in only to feel a coldness rush over her cheeks. To her shock, she realised it was her. She was crying. At one time she would have excoriated someone's stupidity for just accepting death. She would have felt insulted that they felt they had the right to give up when she'd fought through so much to live as long as she had. Now she could only marvel at the courage Cain had displayed. He'd accepted what Marlene had done in saving their youngest sister and bought her time to get away by shutting the window. The dried blood that she only now noticed matting the carpet under her feet and Deanne's bed sheets in the next bed over told the story. In a state of plenty, a horde would seek to expand. Once their numbers had swelled enough, they would move to feeding off their victims without trying to infect. They'd burst into the room. The fact that Cain's blood was on the floor and not in his bed showed that he'd kept his promise to stare death in the face right to the end. Deanne had clearly died trying to cower under her sheets. No one deserved to go out like that. Unfortunately, it was the way of the world now.

Feeling numb, she walked over to Deanne's bed. The duvet was on the floor, torn to shreds and caked in mould. It stank to high heaven, yet she'd smelled so much worse. She barely even flinched as she picked it up and spread it over the bed, covering the blood stain up as best she could. In an odd way, she felt like she was finally laying

The poor terrified girl to rest. With that done, she walked over to the final bed in the corner. She gripped it by the bottom posts and pulled to move it back into the position it should be in. As she did, her breath caught in her throat. The pieces that had been floating loosely in her head finally assembled into the complete picture as the name of the youngest child, the girl who'd felt so familiar in the family photograph, stared back at her.

'Riley'.