It was hours until she found him, sitting on the side of a lush green hill, covered by the shade of the trees as they swayed gently in the cool mountain air. He was staring into the earth, his head down and solemn. Next to him lay a fresh kill – he'd already gutted, skinned and carved a large doe that he'd taken down. Surprisingly enough, she hadn't heard a single gunshot, though he was holding a long and razor-sharp survival knife his in left hand, of which she assumed was the suspect. She remembered the deftness he'd displayed when he rescued her, and wasn't surprised that he could sneak up on a stray deer that was too busy devouring the grass directly beneath its muzzle.

She felt sorry for him, sitting in his despair; not the feigned 'sorrow' she had felt for others, which was just like a sad sense of being the lucky one, but a deep and pained sadness at what'd occurred over the last day.

Evelynn been infected for two years, and so had he. She kept the information from him in her cowardice, and didn't give him the respect he deserved, despite her bullshit excuse about an inhibitor she'd invented. She was crafty, that one. Ellie made a note to watch what she said around her. Despite her caution, she felt a strange guilt and responsibility for the whole situation. If she'd never suggested going in to that town, or moved towards that rifle on the counter, none of this would have happened.

Although, if it hadn't happened, they would surely have died.

Evelynn was looking desperately for a cure, and Ellie had it. She wasn't going to let the mad scientist into her brain anytime soon, though.

Shortly after leaving, she'd had a sudden urge to return to Joel, shocked that her anger had made her walk out on him. By that time, she was already a good mile away from the crumbling, dilapidated mine, and assured herself he would be fine. If anything happened, he could easily overpower Evelynn, and then Adam would be the main problem.

She banished the thought of having to kill them from her mind. Adam had been betrayed by a loved one; and as far as she could tell, the only one who could keep him sane after what he'd suffered. Anyone else and he would've tipped over the deep end and plunged into insanity a long time ago.

She stood in cover behind a tree, out of his line of sight. She peered around the edge cautiously, unsure of the state she'd find him in.

"Come out." He said, almost trivially, not looking up from the floor. "I know you've been following me."

His ability at situational awareness was almost unnerving. Still, he was a hardened survivor as well as a trained and disciplined trooper. It was his job to know where people were.

"Adam… I'm sorry." She walked over to where he was sitting, and lowered herself down next to him. "I didn't mean for that… it's just… Joel and I have come too far. Losing him to infection… it's an insult, it's just a fucking insult to all he's done for me."

He lifted his head from his arms, and turned to face her. She could see the redness around his eyes and tracks down the dirt on his face where he'd been distraught earlier. It was oddly reassuring to her that she'd seen him cry – he had humanity, a trait that Joel sometimes lacked. A warm smile spread across his face, and she felt his muscular arm wrap around her, and his hand ruffle her hair.

"It's alright, champ. You did the right thing."

She was surprised by how quickly he'd coped with the situation. The yellowish flecks in his eyes were increasing in size – they were ever so slightly thicker than they had been a few hours ago.

"Wha… you're not pissed at me?"

"No. Evie was the one at fault."

"You're pissed at her, then?"

"No, I'm not. At the time, to say I was emotionally compromised was putting it very lightly. It just… seemed like such a waste. Everything I'd done, done for her, for Joanna, for you… just to turn into a mindless walking mushroom. Regardless of her not telling me, she also did the right thing. I'm proud of her guts, and her initiative. And of yours."

The sun was slowly descending over the crest of the mass of hills, casting a beautiful, bright gleam over everything it looked down on. The grass turned a shade of gold, and the trees were wearing robes of flowing yellow and burning orange. There was still beauty and perfection left in this broken world, both in people and places.

She wrapped her arm around his broad shoulders, and he did the same with her. She rested her head on his shoulder, exhausted by her anger-provoked journey to this little spot.

It was nowhere in particular, and it wouldn't be marked on any map. She was more than thankful for that. Beneath them, a tiny stream gurgled and bubbled, the crystalline and transparent water reflecting the glow of the evening sun and travelling like a rivulet of molten copper, pure and bright. The air was gradually cooling down, and a shiver spiraled around her body. She had left the base in such a state that she hadn't even picked up her jacket from Adam's room.

He sensed this, and removed his, gently placing it over her arms and onto her body. The jacket was old, and carried a wide array of aromas, from synthetic gunpowder to the earthy musk of mud, and a plethora of others that she couldn't place. It was charcoal grey, and water resistant on the exterior – some type of hide or leather – with an interior of pure wool underneath a layer of polypropylene. It insulated her better than anything she'd ever worn before, despite being almost big enough for her to sleep in. The epaulettes carried a strange and dutiful pattern that she'd never seen – when she asked him what it meant, he explained it as an identification system for his fellow soldiers. Sure enough, embroidered over the breast pocket were the words 'GUNNERY SGT. ADAM J. CASSEL.'

"So… with Joanna? I'm sorry for bringing it up earlier. I know how shitty it is to talk about your pasts with people."

"It's fine, Ellie. 'Memento, populum qui fecit vos'."

She wondered what he was talking about, until she glanced at his shoulder and read the tattoo a second time.

"'Remember the people who made you.'" He translated. "It does me good to remember. It gives me drive. Motivates me to save others, and stop the same from happening to them."

She leaned back into his arms, and gazed up at the sky, ablaze with orange.

"Do you ever get tired with it?"

He chuckled, and jokingly replied.

"Truth be told, I'd rather drop this whole business and sit in front of the telly with a glass of whiskey."

"Jack Daniels?"

"Fuck no!" He added sarcastically. "Scottish whiskey. Real whiskey."

She continued their conversation, asking what she thought was right as it came into her mind.

"How did Joanna die?"

He sighed gently. "What I told you was really the basic details. The truth behind the matter was the Pyotr and his men raped her after they'd shot her. Idiots. She died of the wounds to her chest long before they finished."

"Shit, that's gross. They may as well have been fucking a Clicker."

There was silence.

"No offence." She added, worried that her joke had gone amiss.

"None taken." He responded casually. "I understood your intention."

"I guess… I just wanted to say, I know what that's like."

He looked at her, unsure of her meaning.

"What what's like?"

"The… the raping."

"Oh my god. Surely you haven't been…"

"No, no. Joel got to me just in time, but… I know the fear. The one in your base, the cannibal you crossed out with black?"

"That guy? What, David or something?"

She shuddered at his name, and that gave Adam all the confirmation he needed.

"A real shady character, that one, along his entire group."

He didn't elaborate any further; he just sighed deeply and looked into the distance, still holding her gently in his arms.

"Desperation makes animals out of men." He muttered quietly.

That sat together in the meadow for another few minutes, simply wallowing in the peace and comfort of the moment. Eventually, Adam suggested that they ought to return to the base and face whatever awaited them there. He was almost as apprehensive to see Evelynn as she was. Joel was probably still dreaming, completely unaware of the drama that had unfolded meters away from him only a few hours previously.

They had just got up to collect the deer and leave when Adam remembered something, dropped the meat, and moved in the opposite direction.

"It's this way." He said.

"What is?"

"A job for us."

She did as she was told, and tagged closely behind him as they approached and began traversing a steep hillside that crumbled easily underfoot. They helped each other ascend, with her going first, directing him into foot and handholds that were big enough to accommodate his size without collapsing under the weight. To her right, she saw the path he had taken up the dirty hillside earlier – it had slid away, creating a large gap in the earthen ramp and revealing a thick wall of fresh, moist dirt that lay below.

Every now and again, a root sprouted conveniently out of the side of the bank and allowed Adam a little reprieve from the threat of sliding all the way back down to the meadow. They had climbed a good ten meters, and top of the sharp ridge was in sight, revealing a tiny flat plateau. She couldn't see over the top, and wasn't tall enough to reach the brim. He acknowledged this, and jumped the last two meters, grasping hold of the grass and dirt and heaving himself up onto the flat, rocky platform. He moved over to her and pulled her up – she was weightless in his grip, and she flew up and over the edge with ease. Observing her surroundings, she noticed Adam's gigantic rifle set up on a stone outcrop, turned south. Beyond that, she saw the very tops of two gigantic cooling towers; grey monstrosities that interrupted the lush beauty of the forest. Nearby, she assumed was some form of electrical power plant. It made her realise just how far they'd strayed from the base. On the top of one of the towers, she saw black writing, but it was too far away to discern.

Adam was prone on the ridge, gazing down the scope.

"I was here the day before I left to attack the red-rings." He said, angling the gun carefully. "And this wasn't here. It's recent."

He locked the gun into place, and moved away from it. With curiosity, she lowered herself to the ground, and shuffled into the massive weapon. Her arms barely reached beyond the trigger.

She lowered her head, and pressed her cheek up against the cool metal, her right eye looking directly into the scope. The magnification on it was huge, and there was a tiny '20x' scribed on the bottom of the lens in black, beneath the mill dots.

She focused her eyes, and as she adapted to the magnification, the fuzzy image at the end of the scope became clear.

Written on the side of the tower in massive, black letters, were five words.

'WATCHER, HELP US.' And beneath that, 'SOUTH EAST.'

"Holy shit." She muttered.

"I know, I thought the same. Look to the second tower."

She gently nudged the gun to the right, and the second tower slid into view.

The crest of Pyotr's hunters hung on the concrete like a curse; a bright red circle, with a line perpendicular to the top on the interior. The words 'BRING GUNS' were written beneath, in the same writing.

"There's a large town about thirty miles south-east of that plant. It powers the whole area, but that signal was written by people in the facility. Looks pretty fucking abandoned to me, though."

"What're you thinking?" She asked, leaning up from the gun and looking at him.

"We go and take a look." He said, surveying the area. "There's an entrance just over there." He gestured to a gap in the treeline, way off in the distance. "We get in, see what happened, and leave."

"What if there are red-rings?"

"We don't engage. I survey the situation first."

"Gotcha."

"Let's head back, it's getting late. I need to tell Evelynn, and gear up."

Ellie continued to look down the scope, marvelling at how far she could see. She scanned the area, trying to find anything of interest to discuss with him. She saw the exterior chain-link fencing, and what looked like bunkroom-type buildings inside the compound – the forest had been cleared away in swathes to make room for the man-made monstrosity, but it was slowly regaining its territory. The last light of the sun warped the shadows of the trees and objects in the compound, extending them so that she could see them in detail.

One of the shadows moved.

Adam crouched next to her, aware of her sighting.

"What do you see?" He asked, once again all business.

"I see some kind of… what the fuck is that?"

A huge, grotesque humanoid figure came lumbering out of one of the bunkhouses, its body swollen massively, pulsing and throbbing from the Cordyceps that had taken hold of it. The thing was gigantic, and fungus exploded erratically out of its head and stomach; its arms were disproportionately large, and the fungus had grown to form vicious-looking spikes from each wrist down. She couldn't tell for definite, but it looked larger than even a Bloater.

"Move." Adam said, his voice hushed. Ellie was transfixed, examining the abomination from the safety of distance as it limped around, hunched over.

"Move!" He said again, more forcibly. She shuffled to the left, and he positioned himself on the gargantuan rifle.

"God… I've never seen one like that before. That… that can't be natural."

She squinted at the towers, trying to identify the beast without the help of a magnifier.

"If we're going in there, I don't want that thing alive."

"How the hell are we supposed to kill it?"

He didn't look up or reply, instead pulling back the bolt on the rifle and snapping it into place. She got the idea, and covered her ears.

He waited until the monster decided to stop, and then carefully trained the crosshair of the scope in the centre of the fungal plume that had burst out of its skull.

He raised the rifle, angling the mill dots accordingly to the distance they were at. He inhaled deeply, and on the exhalation, fired.

The sound the gun made was massive, ricocheting around the valley below. He saw the massive anti-personnel round tear through the natural armour, ripping a majority of it away from the skull of the behemoth.

The abomination turned, and looked toward the sound it'd heard. From Adam's perspective, it was looking straight at him. The round had done nothing.

"Oh shit!" He cursed, hurriedly pulling the bolt and slamming it back into place, sending a used cartridge cascading out the side of the rifle. He re-adjusted and fired a second time. Due to his hurry, the bullet fell short and entered the beast's left shoulder, tearing the arm from its socket and spraying giblets all over the compound. He saw it roar, and the blood-curdling sound hit them moments later. Down the scope, it began moving straight towards the chain-link fence at the edge of the compound, directly towards the outcrop.

"A…Adam?" Ellie managed, fear seeping into her voice.

"Holy fuck!" He almost shouted, half in frustration and half in fear. The bolt was pulled back and a second cartridge flew out the side of the weapon, cascading down the hill.

The target was advancing, and very pissed off. A moving headshot at just short of 1000m wasn't an easy one by any means. He aimed the crosshair straight at the remainder of the beast's head, accounted for distance, and loosed another round on his exhalation. There was an explosion of crimson, and the infected's upper torso was torn straight from its body. The unnaturally large corpse collapsed backwards onto the cracked concrete floor of the compound.

Then the screams started.

Runners poured from the bunkhouses and the plant, stirred by the immensely loud rifle, and their comrade's roar – there were too many for Adam to count, and far too many to fight. Where their abominable colleague had strength, they had speed, and outmatched two unequipped survivors.

"Run." He said, rearing back from the rifle.

Ellie just stood there, shocked by the situation.

"Run!" He shouted again.

He scooped the rifle off of the floor, quickly folded away the bipod and slung it over his shoulders, sprinting back towards the edge of the plateau. He moved towards the drop-off, and when Ellie hesitated, jumped off the side and slid down the dirt on his back, coming rest in the cool grass of the meadow. She followed suit, coming to a stop just by him. They ran over to the deer carcass, and he hurriedly collected the two haunches of meat in each arm and moved off, breaking into a sprint. He was fast, and she was struggling to keep up with him. They were almost ten miles away from the base, she calculated, and she was sure he could run that distance in under an hour alone. She was fit, but he was in his physical prime.

"That deer should keep them busy for a little while, but we can't afford to dawdle, c'mon!"

As the sun shrank below the horizon and the cooling air flowed in and out of her lungs, she reflected on the burly Scotsman running in front of her. The screams behind them had dissipated to silence a few minutes later, and Adam had slightly slowed his pace at her request. He had a strange mentality; where the despair he endured on a daily basis would crush most people, he used it as fuel, as drive for his cause. He'd done some amazing things, and some terrible things, if you heard him tell it. Ellie was just glad he had the mercy to get her out of the cage.

She wondered what his squad were doing in the States, and why they came here in the first place; she never saw it for herself, but Marlene had told her that the outbreak in the US dwarfed anything that had happened elsewhere in the world.

They ran under trees and natural canopies, with the damp of the forest and the sound of birds the only thing present. The weight of Adam's jacket was hard on her, but she kept pace with him well, pushing herself to match him. They ran solidly for half an hour, and when darkness overwhelmed the forest, she found her eyes becoming gradually keener at discerning shapes and objects. The trees became vanguards, standing watch over her, giant and silent, ready to crush her foes.

They stopped briefly at the ruins of an old, rusted-out pickup truck, and caught their breath. Adam drew his brown leather satchel, and took out a syringe, this time with Eveylnn's inhibitor sitting thick and transparent in the tube. He carefully stuck it into his arm and injected the lot.

"Physical stress accelerates the infection, we saw as much with the first few cases… I always hated having my shots, but it's paying off now."

He chuckled anecdotally, thriving on the adrenaline of the situation.

"We're nearly back; we made incredible time. Ready to go for some more?"

"Sure." Ellie managed between her panting, and broke back into a steady jog behind Adam.

They ran together for another solid half hour, with Ellie taking one of the deer haunches to make life easier on Adam. They reached the road leading up to the mine, and passed through the gap in the orange-rusted chain link fence where the gate had once stood. The gravel track was harder on her feet than the earth, and the incline of the hill ignited a fire in her thighs that burned vigorously for the entire ascent. Despite the physical pain, the clenching in her neck and the dryness of her throat, she kept pace with Adam the entire way up, and entered the mouth of the cave first. Both of them had neglected to bring a flashlight, and so navigating the cave took longer than usual. They found the door after about 5 minutes, shifted the cabinets, opened it, and moved inside, replacing the camouflage and sealing the air-lock tight. They opened the second door and spilled into the brightly-lit cave, both panting vigorously. Ellie leaned up first and rested on her elbows, and started laughing. Adam leaned up, and joined in. The two lay there, laughing hysterically.

"Something tickle you two?"

Evelynn was sitting on a wooden crate on the other side of the underground stream, a wide grin stretched across her face.

"Where have you been? I've been so fucking worried about you!" She asked jokingly, mainly being happy that they'd managed to return in one piece.

"I went to find Adam," Ellie began, "but he'd-"

"- Gone to track a deer." Adam contributed, holding up one of the bloody haunches of venison.

"Oh yeah? Well, that's convenient."

Adam stood, and walked over the bridge to her.

"How so?" He asked, open to what she had to say.

"We've got another mouth to feed."

She turned slightly, and raised her voice.

"Joel?"

The door behind her edged open, and a man carefully walked out, trying to cope with his injuries.

"I heard you, I'm coming. I was just looking at the-"

"Joel?" Ellie shouted with delight, running over the bridge and past Adam.

"Ellie?" He turned at her voice, and moved towards her, tearing up.

"Joel!" She said, and threw herself into his arms. The two embraced tightly, and Joel drew sharp intake of breath, wincing.

"Careful, kiddo, that still ain't quite fixed." He chuckled gently, ecstatic to see her again.

"Joel…" She said, gently sobbing into his shirt. "I thought, I thought you'd… when he stabbed you, I mean-"

"I know."

"And then Adam was there, and he killed that fucker, and saved you, and we-"

"I know, Ellie. Evelynn told me everything."

He looked up at Adam, still holding Ellie in his arms.

"Everything, including the man who saved us. I owe you, Adam. Truly."

"It's nothing." He responded courteously. "Did she tell you about…?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she did."

Adam stood there, trying to formulate an apology.

"I'm-"

"Don't be sorry." He interjected, almost sensing Adam's remorse. "It gave me a better chance than I would'a had anyway. But... there's something little Ellie didn't tell you about." He ruffled her hair affectionately.

This took Evelynn's interest, and she hopped off of the box, taking her place next to Adam and sliding her hand into his.

"What is it?" She asked, the spark of curiosity in her eyes.

Joel smiled for the first time in an age, and said:

"She's immune."