It was barely dawn when Jane woke up. Not out of ordinary - you wake up early, so you can cover more ground. If you're alone, every hour with the sun out counts.

She stretched, a pleasant crack coming from somewhere in her spine, and slid out of her sleeping bag. She sat quietly for a few minutes, either fully waking up or prolonging the inevitable. Eventually, she rolled her sleeping bag and hid it in the backpack.

When she entered the kitchen, Joel was sitting at the table, tinkering with a rifle in front of him. She reached for her jacket and put it on. She didn't want to disturb him but it seemed rude to walk out without a word.

"I better go now," she said, others words lost somewhere in her throat.

They didn't matter anyway, because Joel looked at her with no emotion on his face before standing up with an annoyed grunt. She stepped aside as he approached the door to remove the construction holding them in place.

She didn't know why she felt a certain kind of blues. Maybe because it was weeks since she spent the night with another person, or maybe because Joel seemed like the type that could handle himself. Ones like him were sought after in the apocalypse.

Finally, the door opened. He was seizing her up and down.

"Take a northeastern route. It's a shortcut. You may be able to cross the river there."

"Thanks," she mumbled and walked outside.

Jane turned around to look at him one more time, but he was staring at something in the distance.

She spent the next hours making her way through the forest. The air was icy cold, but the freshness made her fully awake and glad to be moving forward. At one point, she almost forgot what kind of world she was living in.

Until she heard voices.

Her blood ran cold but Jane couldn't allow herself to freeze. She got down on her knees and crawled into the bushes, blood pumping in her ears as she tried to listen.

She reached for her knife and held it with shaky hands. She was praying for voices to go away but it never worked like that.

"Who's there? Come out, come out whoever you are," a man called out.

Jane held her breath. She remembered how in the previous life someone told her that it was safer to run away than to play dead. Before she knew it, she was up on her legs and sprinting in the direction that she came from. She could hear frantic steps behind her.

Her heart was thumping in her chest, throat dry and painful as she jumped over the log and continued up the hill. It was a matter of survival and she'd rather drop dead than give up now. But she couldn't have predicted her foot catching over a root. She fell down with a thud and gasped for air at the very same time as the voices caught up with her.

"What have we got here," one of them said. He grabbed her ankle and turned Jane on her back. The man was scruffy-looking, same as his companion who was towering over her with a creepy smile. "Don't worry girly, we just want to chat." He let go of her ankle to draw his knife and Jane started to back away quickly, her body digging into the dirt. "Hey, hey," he said aggressively while bending over to catch her leg.

"Fuck off," she shrieked and kicked him straight in the face.

He stumbled back, blood spraying from his nose. The other man pulled out his knife.

"Little bitch," he huffed moving forward, and before she could dodge him, the blade sliced through her thigh.

Jane screamed at the same time as a gun went off. One of the men fell down, blood and gore covering everything around him. The other one started backing away with visible fear in his eyes. As he was about to raise his hands, pleading to whoever was holding a gun for mercy, a bullet flew directly through his forehead.

Jane started to crawl away. She wasn't going to die here. A slicing pain radiated from her thigh, but she didn't care. She had no idea who killed those men and she wasn't about to stay and figure it out.

But as she heard his voice, her head jerked in his direction automatically.

"Joel?" She gasped. "What are you doing here?"

That was one person she did not expect to see.

"I tried to catch up with you," he said flatly and extended his hand to help her up.

"Well, you did," she said as she caught it.

When Jane stood up, she decided that the bleeding was worse than she thought. Before she could joke about it, Joel kneeled next to her, trying to seize the wound.

"It's not deep enough to have hurt the muscle, but you still need stitches." He took out a bandage out of his backpack and secured it around the wound. "Can you walk?"

She took a step forward. It hurt but she knew she had to make it.

"It's all right."

After some time, her thigh became almost completely numb. Jane decided that it was better than constant, irking pain.

"Why were you trying to catch up with me?" She asked Joel to stop focusing on the goddamned wound.

He didn't answer for a few seconds.

"I decided you'd have a better chance of crossing that river with another gun at your side. I needed to hunt anyway," he didn't look at her, "but now it seems that I have to take you back to the cabin."

Jane sensed that he wasn't happy about it.

"Well, you could have left me there." He huffed but remained quiet. "All right then," she whispered.

As they were nearing the cabin, blood started soaking through the bandages. Jane didn't say anything, but Joel noticed anyway.

"You are making it worse by walking. I shoulda known that." He stopped and she almost bumped into him. He scanned her from head to toe, his expression unclear. "I'll carry you," he said finally.

Now she was doing the huffing.

"You don't need to do that. We're not far away now."

His forehead wrinkled in irritation.

"You're not the one who's goin' to have to stitch that up and I ain't gonna mess around with an unclean cut."

Well, put like that. She quietly nodded her head, but he didn't seem comfortable with touching her, or, maybe, touching her so closely. She wasn't a damsel in distress type either. Still, once she was in his arms, it felt nice. Too nice for her own liking. She ascribed it to the loss of blood.

They made it into the cabin by dusk. Joel put her down on the couch, gently enough for her thigh not to get any worse, and went to look for the medkit. Jan had had her fair share of injuries, but the thought of stitches never got any more pleasant. She had a mark on her forearm after some badly done ones.

"You need to remove the trousers," Joel said without looking at her.

Another awkward moment. Just what they needed. She slowly removed the bandage and the sight of sticky blood around the wound made her feel nauseous.

It was weird. Decades of this life and blood and wounds were still hard to look at. On living people anyway. Guts of the infected stopped being disgusting when she was still a child.

Joel kneeled by her legs, holding thread and needle in one hand, and a bottle of an unidentified liquid in another.

"What's that?" She asked pointing at the bottle.

"Moonshine."

She took it from his hands and put it to her mouth. The taste was vile but then again, she didn't have much experience with alcohol. It was mostly a medical ration - at least where she came from.

Her face twisted as she handed the bottle back to him. She thought she saw a hint of a smile on his lips, but it disappeared too quickly to be sure.

"That's one way to go about it," he said under his breath and poured some on her wound.

If moonshine tasted terrible, the pain was the equivalent. Jane hissed a quiet fuck as her wound started burning. Joel seemed unphased. She wondered if he had to stitch many people in his time - maybe he used to be a doctor.

"Don't move now," he said and put a hand on the inside of her thigh, looking at the cut.

He started stitching her. The alcohol that she drank sedated her enough to not scream, but she was wincing every time the needle went through her skin.

Joel looked at her and for a second she believed that he felt sorry for her. "All done," he said finally, and she exhaled loudly.

"Sorry for wincing," she shifted in her seat.

Joel slowly rolled the bandage around her thigh, holding it in place tightly. Then he collected the rest of the stuff and stood up.

"No running for you now."

She reached for her trousers and slowly slid them back on her legs. The alcohol and winding down adrenaline made her sleepy. She lied on her back and closed her eyes, not caring what Joel thought about it.

Jane woke up completely lost. It took her a few seconds to remember what happened and where she was. When she did, she stood up, wincing as the muscles in her thigh moved - with no alcohol in her bloodstream, the stitches were annoying. She walked to the window, the first rays of sun hitting her face.

It was then that she realized he wasn't around.

"Joel?" She called out quietly.

There was no response. Figures. It wasn't her business to know his location, and she was sure that he would tell her the same.

Still, she preferred to know where he was. Just in case. She went through the kitchen and reached for the door, realizing that they weren't obstructed. She slowly peaked outside and her heart fluttered when she noticed him making his way down the clearing. He turned around as if he sensed her presence from meters way. He didn't seem happy to see her though, so the flutter stopped.

She retreated into the kitchen quietly as he continued his walk into the trees.

With nothing better to do, she started going through all the drawers and cabinets. Even though life after the infection was shitty, there was one part about it that she liked. Scavenging. There was something fascinating about walking into houses that stood abandoned for years.

Sometimes they'd bring dim memories of her previous life, but she was only a child when the outbreak happened, so there wasn't much of that. Usually, she'd wonder about how everything looked back then. When she was younger, she'd go into random rooms and try to imagine herself as a person from the days long gone.

Of course, it wasn't all daydreaming. Scavenging was a requirement of survival - dig through stuff and find something useful.

There was nothing of that in the kitchen though. The drawers had some rusty spoons and forks. If there were knives, Joel must have taken them. She found some jars with dry foods, but considering how long they had to stand there, she doubted they'd still be good.

Disappointed, she ventured into the living room. It was weird. Space felt Joel's, despite the fact that the cabin wasn't really his. And even though there weren't any personal items in there, she felt bad about snooping around.

She decided to go upstairs. She'd wondered why Joel was sleeping in the living room anyway and the question was answered when she opened the first door.

Two clickers lied on the floor, their heads blown out. Well, she wouldn't like to sleep in a bedroom with two dead bodies either. She took a measured step inside though, just to check the wardrobe. There were some pieces of clothing, but nothing suitable for the weather.

She opened the next door - a bathroom, but with its cabinet emptied out. The next and the final room seemed like a kid's room. Belonging to a little girl, judging by the pink bedding.

Jane sat down on the bed, which seemed comfortable, even after years of withering away. She wondered why Joel wouldn't want to sleep there.

Sure, all of it was a bit sad, but hey, it was a room with a good bed. Then she looked at the bed stand; a cracked lamp and a picture frame lying face down. She reached for it slowly, as if unsure if she should touch something quite so private. The picture was of a man and a little girl. The man was holding a rifle with a huge grin on his face and the kid was replicating the father's smile only with a tooth missing.

Jane smiled. There weren't many families around anymore and people weren't exactly in the right place to create new ones. Of course, pregnancies happened, but they were mistakes. Who would want to bring a child into such a world?

She understood why Joel picked the living room. Maybe he had a family before. Maybe he even had children. She thought of her own father and suddenly the room felt too tight.