Author's note: Sorry guys I've been busy with life, so updates may take a while. In case anyone was confused, I do not own the Last of Us. I also want to take the time send a shout out to my favorite author here for the Last of Us Fanfiction, Bluesky509. It's amazing enough to have one very good story on this site, but to have three really good, interesting stories is remarkable. If you haven't already read her stories, I would go read them prior to this chapter, they are amazing. Then come back and read this one because, I like to have readers too. Anywho, on with the story.

Chapter Four

On the Road Again

Clickers. I fucking hated clickers. I had only ever met one once and it was with Roger. He had blown its head off before I even knew it was there. They weren't as scary with their head blown off, but it still looked creepy. I figured we could kill one of them if it came to that, but it was not to be.

Three of the creatures walked past the window frantically clicking and running toward where the bomb went off. I motioned for Damien to move toward the far wall and slowly crept over to the windows. There were about thirty or forty infected milling about the remnants of the intersection. They were happily gnawing on the pieces of people who had been caught in the blast.

Damien came up beside me his eyes wide with terror. He probably hadn't seen many infected before in his life and now there were plenty. I slowly crept to the window and climbed out, lightly landing on my feet. Damien copied me, albeit with a little more noise, but still quiet enough not to attract attention. As we slowly crept along the fence to make our way out of town an infected came hobbling along beside us. I could tell that we weren't going to be able to sneak around without being spotted once the fence ended in a few feet.

I made eye contact with Damien and motioned for him to boost me over the fence. He gave me an inquisitive face, but didn't question my reasoning. He braced himself near the fence and steadied himself. I bounded over and stepped on his hand while he simultaneously lifted, propelling me up and over the wall and directly in line with the infected. I had my Pocket knife ready and jammed it into the side of the monster's head.

I fell to the ground with its corpse, which I stabbed twice more for good measure. Damien walked around the fence and gave me a thumbs up. I smiled and returned the gesture. I took the time to wipe off my knife before we continued sneaking away from the gathering of monsters in the intersection.

We slowly crept down Main Street to the other end of town. Cars were parked all over the streets and sidewalks, making it difficult to traverse the narrow gauntlet. We reached the other end of town without much trouble, but at the end of the street there were four or five runners milling about.

Cars blocked the route to either side of us and there were even more of the creatures wandering around on the other roads. I didn't even want to attempt to find out what could be waiting in the buildings. I looked over to Damien who was hefting a pretty large piece of asphalt. He gave it a heavy throw and it struck one of the buildings on our left. The infected were startled by the noise and ran to investigate. I gave Damien an air five as we crept past the runners who were too focused on the piece of the road to notice us slip past.

Once we were out of ear shot I let out the biggest breathe I think I've ever held in my life. Damien seemed just as relieved about our sneaking as I was. We both laugh nervously at the situation we were in. It turned out that the world was much more violent than we had previously thought. Between getting chased by infected and people trying to kill us we had a pretty eventful day.

"Nice work back there Damien. We'll make a tough guy out of you yet."

"I don't know Rach. I don't want to have to do anymore killing people."

"Don't worry, neither do I. Hopefully we can make it to Greenville without any other problems. What does the map say about this next part of our route?"

"It says that Roger wants us to go through Hillsboro which is seven miles away. I think if we keep a good pace we should be able to get there by night fall." I noticed that Damien was right. The sun was dipping lower in the sky and in no time at all it would be sun down. If today was any indication of how the world was during the day, I did not want to spend a single night outside.

So Damien and I walked down the nearly empty road toward Hillsboro. We got through many games of I-spy and other travel games, but didn't seem to make any progress. There were just rows of trees and fields to that seemed to go on forever.

"Are we there yet?" I whined. Damien snickered and kept walking. "Damien, I'm hungreeeee." I don't think Damien could have dealt with this treatment prior to the infection, but we aren't in the past and as such Damien simply rolled his eyes and continued walking toward Hillsboro.

"Look, the remains of the town." Damien pointed out the out a large round ball a top four larger supports. The exterior read, Hillsboro, in faded lettering. I'm still not sure how he picked out that structure from that far away, but he was right. We soon came across the remains of old houses that had been reclaimed by nature. Rows upon rows of houses were run down. If their roof wasn't collapsed, the house was destroyed in some other way.

After a couple of miles we reached a large building with a sign that read Firs Commy Hills. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I did know that it looked like a great place to sleep. I led Damien up the front steps. I slowly opened the front door. It was dark inside, and the setting sun cast strange shadows across the room. I flipped on the tac light at the end of my rifle and slowly swept the room. Thankfully my light identified the room as clear and we moved into the expansive foyer.

The room had a large lobby area. It had a counter at the far end and behind that was a giant safe. We walked across the room to the counter and threw down what supplies we had. I grabbed one of the granola bars that we still had left and started to eat that. Damien left the food alone for a second and walked around the counter and checked it out. After he made sure that it was clear he pulled our stuff over the counter and started to unpack. After we got everything settled in we took a few minutes to block the other interior doors with chairs and other furniture to prevent anything from breaking in.

"Did you want to take first watch?" I asked. Damien didn't seem as tired as I was. He nodded and laid down the sleeping bags that we had. I crawled into mine and laid down next to Damien. He was leaned up against the wall. Just the look that he gave told me he wasn't going to get sleep tonight. I didn't contemplate that fact for more than a few minutes before sleep caught me and I slipped into the dream world.

Sleeping is never easy post infection. Tonight was just much worse. There was too much carnage. The minute I fell asleep I already had slipped into a nightmare. I dreamed we were back in Springfield and I was immobilized while Roger blew up the gate again, taking himself with it. Then my mind meshed the events of later that day with our time in Springfield. I was blinded by the explosion for a second and when my sight returned I saw an arm, and pieces of body strewn across the road.

Suffice to say I screamed. I woke up with a start, and had my mouth covered by Damien. He looked me in the eye with concern, but said nothing. By some miracle there were no infected in the area or at least none that heard my scream. My heartbeat slowly returned to normal following the event, but it was so quiet I could hear each beat.

"Are you alright?" Damien asked. His voice riddled with concern.

"Yeah, I'm good." I responded/lied. Thing was, Damien knew I wasn't a good liar, but also knew not to press the issue. He scooted over and laid down next to me and just stared me in the eye.

"Don't worry, I have the same problem, but it starts every time I close my eyes." Damien forced a smile. This kid was far too mature for his age, but nowadays everyone has to grow up fast. I smiled back. Three days ago I didn't even know him, but now here we were. The two of us were relying on each other just to get to a place that was marked on the map. I moved a bit closer to Damien, and laid there, the two of us staring silently. I drifted back off to sleep, but this time dreams stayed away and I awoke the following day.

Damien was already up. He was doing some kind of exercise so I left him to that. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and grabbed my pack. The map was still in great shape for the torture we were putting it through, which we were grateful for. I opened the map up and made a note of where we were. It would seem that if we just followed 127 straight south we would hit Greenville in roughly twenty miles by my estimate.

Damien had finish with his work out and walked over. He looked over my shoulder, just shrugged, and started picking up our stuff. I folded the map back up and slipped out Roger's book. The cover was worn, but it held together well. I flipped open to the first page. It was a note that Roger had been given. The handwriting was clearly feminine and had a distinct style to it.

It read: Thanks for everything you've ever done for me. I know I haven't always listened to you like I should, but it's late for that now. The Military is shutting us down. After years of work it appears that I won't be able to find the cure that we were searching so hard for after all. I leave my notes for you in the hope that you will be able to do something with them that I never could. We are being transferred south to the Grand Rapids QZ. It's a lot smaller than the others but it is much more stable that the others.

I hope this note finds you well. I know that you've been moving around a lot with your group, but you can't get rid of them all. You know that as well as I. Your age will catch up to you and it's only a matter of time before those things finally get you. Take some advice and settle down somewhere, maybe just for a bit. Love you and be careful. Kristen.

I read the note twice and still didn't understand half of it, but I shrugged it off. I closed the book and put it back in my pack. Damien was ready and had the door open for me already. I thanked him as we walked out of the building. I shielded my eyes from the sun and got my bearings before we headed south on our road.

"So, when I met you, I couldn't get you to shut up, and now that talking is the only thing we have to do for hours you don't say a word. You are one strange girl, you know that?" Damien chided after we had been walking for some time.

"Hey, you can't force perfection. It just has to come naturally."

"I wasn't forcing perfection I was forcing you. Besides you didn't need a topic to talk about before. You just started talking for no specific reason." I punched him for that one and shook my head.

"If you weren't so boring I wouldn't have to come up with random things to talk about." I joked back. I grabbed Roger's book again and opened it to the next page, it too was a note, but this was in Roger's distinct hand writing. I began to read it aloud.

I told you that it would happen. Don't worry we'll find it soon enough. Just stay safe and don't do anything to get yourself into trouble. The group is just finishing clearing around Springfield, so I might spend a bit of time there, but I'm not going to make any promises.

In a week I'll come up there and grab your work. I may even stop by to say hi. Please stay safe I don't want to have to worry about you. See you soon, Love Roger.

"Hmm seems interesting. I didn't know Roger knew anyone else." I looked over to Damien. "Have you heard anything about the Grand Rapids QZ?"

"No, when we left Cleveland they were still sending down shipments of food when they could. To the best of my knowledge they were good."

I turned to the next note in the book. There were spots on the paper and it was wrinkled, some of the words were smudged, but the letter was still legible.

It was fun while it last, but we all have our time eh? One of my patrols on the outskirts went bad and most of my team was killed, I got bitten, but made it safely back to base. I was the only one. Perhaps if they had let me finish my research this wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe I would have been able to prevent this from happening at all, but that's in the past.

Right now I'm under armed guard. They think I might try something. I think I'm the last person to be worried about, but they have their priorities. Don't worry about me anymore. You still have your way of finishing this. My notes are still untouched at the university. I don't know if you'll ever make it there, but they are sitting on the counter in the library. You won't be able to miss it it's the giant glass building at the intersection of the two main roads.

Thanks for everything you've done for me. It's been a long time and those years pre-infection were some of the best we'd ever had.

I love you Dad and I always will, Kristen.

Roger never talked about having a daughter; in fact he never talked about his life before he adopted me at all. Although the date on this last note was very familiar to me it was the day before he found me. I found myself crying even though I never met Kristen. Given Roger's age I would have guessed Kristen was in her early fifties. I just wish I could have met her. There are so many things I could have asked her.

The next few pages in the book were words I couldn't understand to save my life. In fact the rest of the book besides the last two pages was comprised of diagrams and words that were way above my level of knowledge.

The last two however were written exclusively for me.

Dear Rachel, if you have this book it means that I'm no longer among the living, but you are. These pages contain the closest attempt to reach cure for the infection as we've ever accomplished. Kristen was adamant that she was almost there, but she was only missing one piece, I believe her. I need you to get this journal to Al in Greenville. He'll know what to do. Good luck. Love Roger.

"Well we're going to get there so I don't think that he has anything to worry about on that end. If it's any consolation I think he picked the perfect person for the job." Damien smiled. He always seemed to have a way on making sure I looked at the brighter side of things. I turned the page to the last note and silently read it. Thankfully forgetting that I was supposed to be reading the pages aloud

P.S. I think that your boyfriend is a nice gentleman I completely approve. Keep him safe and he'll keep you safe I can guarantee that. You guys will make it safe I'm sure; just don't do anything inappropriate while I'm gone. Tell Damien to take good care of my little girl.

I was equal parts proud that Roger believed in as and embarrassed that he had that written. I shut the book rather quickly. My face must have been through every shade of red out there because Damien suddenly got very inquisitive.

"What'd he write?" He asked.

"He said that he was proud of us and that he thought we'd be fine without him." It wasn't a lie, it was more like a half-truth.

"Yeah and what else?" Drat, caught in the act. Not knowing how to continue I just decided that running was my best option. I ran out ahead of Damien down the slight hill ahead of us. He gave chase and it wasn't too long before he caught me. Dang height advantage. I ran across the road and into the field next to us. He followed, tailing me perfectly. I think for the first time though I was running for enjoyment and not for the necessity of saving my life. It was nice.

Unfortunately as Roger was always so keen on saying; all good things must come to an end. We were about halfway across the field when I looked back to see where Damien was and noticed the runners following him. Needless to say I kept running but pointed behind him. He looked back and saw them too; he picked up his pace a bit so that he was just barely out racing me. He pointed to a house that was sitting on the end of the property.

I was relieved that we had somewhere to go until I saw the clickers coming out of the house ahead of us. They had most likely heard the shrieks of the runners behind us. We couldn't out run them and we had nowhere to go. I went to reach for my rifle when I noticed something come at me out of the corner of my eye. I tried to yell to Damien for help, but no words came out and everything went black.