Author's Note: Heeeeeeeeeeeello, there. Welcome to another Queenofthedreamers Joellie story! So, here's the deal for those who aren't caught up.
As of right now, the Shepherds Series is being left on hiatus because it's at what I'm calling a "comfortable resting point," but I almost certainly will pick it up again later when my creative headspace is itching to work in that storyverse again.
I will be finishing We Could Be Dead Tomorrow while writing this fic. WCBDT is nearing completion.
This story will update rapidly, as do almost all my stories.
As with my other Joellie stories, here's the low-down… this is a Joel/Ellie story! Dead Dove, Do Not Eat! Don't Like, Don't Read! This story is an AU slow-burn set squarely in the timeline of HBO's Season 1. If that squicks you out, kindly moooooooove along like a happy cow that comes from California. Do not pass go and do not leave angry comments. All others, feel free to read, enjoy, and leave your feedback. Thanks and so much love to all!
"You sure about this?" Kim, the woman who seemed like Marlene's second-in-command, grumbled where she stood with a handgun at her side, her dark fingers twitching on it like she wanted nothing more than to aim it at the group standing before her.
"Kim, get back," Marlene snapped. She stepped forward and said carefully to Ellie, "You understand why we're sending you out West. You have a purpose, Ellie."
Ellie cocked up an eyebrow, adjusting her backpack as she glanced at the four rather smelly adults behind her, and she said in a snarky tone to Marlene,
"Yeah. I'm special. You mentioned that. So fucking special that you're shipping me off with these fuckers."
"Hey!" grunted one of the men behind Ellie, and Marlene glared at him as she reminded him,
"You want the guns we promised you, Darnell? Then play nice."
"Oh, we'll be nice," said a woman's voice slickly, and Ellie shivered as a hand curled around her neck. "Don't worry, sweetheart. We're gonna take good care of you all the way out West."
"Hands off, Viper; she's a kid." Marlene rolled her eyes, and the woman behind Ellie made a sad little noise. Ellie snarled and tore the woman's hand off of her neck, angrily turning to see that she was maybe in her late thirties with a pretty face, Asian features, her long black hair pinned up into a high ponytail. She made a kissing sort of expression at Ellie, who shuddered and asked Marlene,
"You sure one of you guys can't be assed to drive me out there?"
Marlene let out a long breath and admitted, "Look, Ellie. You've been hearing explosions in the QZ for the last couple of weeks, right?"
Ellie raised her eyebrows. "Indeed I have."
Marlene admitted, "We're trying to get out. We're not making good headway."
Ellie looked around the facility they were in, and she pursed her lips. "You know, for a bunch of terrorists who have been blowing shit up for decades, you guys are kinda… um… what's the word I'm looking for…"
"Incompetent?" teased the woman behind Ellie, and though Ellie hated to agree with her about anything right now, she shrugged and said to Marlene,
"Kinda sucks that you had to, like, sell me to a pack of criminals."
Marlene looked abashed. "Well. It's a complicated world these days, Ellie. Unfortunately, you do what you have to do to get things done."
"Oh. Yeah. Machiavelli." Ellie jabbed a finger at Marlene. "See, that FEDRA school you sent me to was good for something, after all. Okay. Well, I should get going… with my new friends…"
She gestured grandly to the pack of four criminals who had accepted Marlene's offer to smuggle her out of the Boston QZ in exchange for a massive payload of weaponry once they reached their destination. She bowed a little, with mock reverence, to Marlene, and she said,
"It's been an honor and a privilege to be locked up here. See you never again. Goodbye."
She turned then and felt herself behind shuffled somewhat aggressively toward the red metal doorway that led from the industrial facility toward the alley, and Marlene called,
"Ellie… be safe."
"Okay! Fuck you!" Ellie held up her middle finger, and she let the woman who called herself Viper curl her long fingers around her neck again as they went outside into the chilly Boston night.
"Can I ask why we've stopped here?" Ellie pulled herself out of the stolen FEDRA truck that the pack of criminals had been driving with the intention of taking Ellie out West.
"No. You can't. Shut up." Leo Martinez, a lanky man in his mid-20s with shaggy hair to his shoulders, spat on the ground near Ellie, and she scowled at him. She determinedly demanded,
"What is this place? We've barely left Boston. Why did we stop?"
Suddenly she'd been pushed roughly on her shoulder, and she fell hard onto the pavement. She would have had the wind knocked out of her, she thought, if she hadn't had her backpack on.
"I told you to shut up," snarled Leo. Viper, the pretty woman from earlier, started quietly telling Leo not to be so mean to her, but Ellie heaved herself off the ground and jabbed her finger against Leo's sternum as she seethed through her teeth,
"Listen up, motherfucker. You are being paid, like, a lot, to take me out West! I am precious fucking cargo, you little bitch! Don't you fucking dare shove me on the -"
"You wanna keep talking like that?" Ellie felt the cold press of metal against her temple, and she realized with a shiver that there was a gun against her head. She stopped her tirade and let her hand fall from Leo's chest as she took a half step back away from him and muttered,
"Uh… nope."
"Good." The man holding the gun, Grady, who was so tall and broad that he terrified Ellie, sniffed and asked the others, "How long until he gets here?"
"How long until who gets here? And where are we?" Ellie demanded sharply. Grady adjusted his hold on his handgun and snapped,
"Are you gonna learn to shut your mouth, or am I gonna shut it for you? We'll get rid of you either way."
Ellie just gaped at him then, thinking suddenly that she was not going to wind up out West with the Fireflies, thinking that Marlene had made an awful, terrible mistake. She gulped heavily and shook her head a little. She licked her lips and glanced around, frantically trying to make sense of their location.
They'd snuck out of the gate of the Boston QZ because Darnell, who had been driving the stolen FEDRA truck, had passed something out of the driver's side window to the soldier at the gate. That, apparently, had been all that had needed to happen. Ellie, who had felt utterly terrified where she'd been huddling in the backseat of the truck, having never been in any fucking car before, had watched in alarm as the gate had been opened and the stolen truck had been waved through, like it was nothing, like they were fucking FEDRA agents. Whatever Darnell had passed through the window had apparently been like gold, because not one word had been exchanged. Just… Here you go… Move right along.
They'd driven for about ten minutes. It couldn't have been longer than that. Ellie hadn't been able to see much out the windows of the FEDRA truck in the complete pitch black, even though she'd desperately wanted to, because she'd always wondered what the hell was outside the QZ. She'd been frustrated as she'd felt road rumbling under the truck tires, knowing they were driving past the old city and knowing she was missing it. But then they'd pulled into some random parking lot and just… stopped. They'd just stopped, a five-minute drive outside the QZ, and Ellie had frowned, feeling very deeply confused when the foursome of smugglers had barked sharply at her to get the fuck out of the car.
She squinted now in the pale bluish moonlight that bathed the area around them - a light she'd never really been able to fully appreciate in the tangled, electrified QZ - and she saw a pink and orange sign outside the squat, square building before them. Dunkin' Donuts, it read, and Ellie scowled as she wondered why in the hell the people Marlene had paid to take her out West so the Fireflies could use her immunity to try and save humanity had stopped at an extinct doughnut establishment a five-minute drive outside the Boston QZ and forced her out of the car.
"Ha! We're getting the sweet end of this deal. Like fucking pirates, I tell you. I'm sorry… word on the street is that fucker has five thousand fucking hydro pills." Leo Martinez sounded positively gleeful then.
"I'll believe it when I see it," said Grady in a skeptical voice. Viper, the woman, reached to stroke at Ellie's hair as she purred,
"He'd be a ridiculous fool to turn her down. She's delicious."
Ellie slapped her hand away. "Stop touching me."
Viper whirled Ellie around, jerking her chin up. Suddenly her beautiful face was twisted and angry, and she snarled, "You listen here, little girl, and you listen good. The plan has changed. You are not going West. You are not going to the Fireflies. So you get that silly little idea out of your head. Do you want to stay alive or not? Hmm? Answer me, sweetheart."
Ellie licked her lips, but finally nodded. Viper raised her thin eyebrows and tipped her head.
"Then may I suggest perhaps not shoving away the gentleman who shows up here in a few minutes, should he decide to sample the merchandise? Hmm? Just a suggestion. Some friendly advice… girl to girl."
Viper narrowed her eyes and curled up her lips, tapping Ellie's cheek.
"Good talk."
She whirled Ellie back around, and Ellie felt sick all of a sudden. Gentleman. Merchandise? They'd stopped here because someone was showing up with a bunch of pills and… and she was not going West to the Fireflies, and some guy was going to show up here to manhandle her, and she was going to be merchandise?
Oh, shit, Ellie thought, horrible thoughts flying through her head. She'd grown up in FEDRA school, but FEDRA school was inside the Boston QZ. She wasn't fucking stupid. She knew, intellectually, what happened in the QZ. She knew who the Fireflies were and what they did. She knew about rations. She knew about work details, about the execution protocol for anyone detected to have become infected. Ellie was not stupid.
And so Ellie had heard about sex slaves inside the QZ - usually young women who had been kidnapped, for whatever reason, by criminal gangs and sold for contraband or ration cards and then held hostage and forced to…
Oh, shit, Ellie thought, and she actually bent over and gagged a little, nearly vomiting on the ground as a horrid wave of anxious nausea washed over her.
"Get up," hissed Viper, yanking on Ellie's backpack. "Get up, you little bitch; he's coming."
"Joel!" called out Leo enthusiastically, sounding much more upbeat and almost friendly to Ellie's ear than he had since she'd first heard his voice in Marlene's presence. Ellie managed to right herself, and when she did, she saw a rugged-looking man, maybe in his mid-fifties, stalking toward the group. He may have been armed, but if he was, he was hiding it well; he had a light jacket and a backpack on over a well-worn, loose shirt that seemed blue in the moonlight. Ellie studied his face; he had a graying beard and matching graying hair that had grown out into waves that blew about a little in the night's breeze. He stopped about six paces from the group, adopting a casual stance and putting his hands on his hips as he examined Ellie curiously. He jerked his chin toward her and immediately asked,
"Who's this?"
"Oh… we'll get to her in a minute," smiled Leo broadly, and Ellie frowned then, because Leo actually had the gall to rub his hands together, like he could already taste the deal he had come to make. Ellie turned her face to the man who had come. Joel? Had they called him Joel? She shook her had at him, knowing her eyes were wide, pleading, begging him not to fucking buy her. He glanced briefly at her and cleared his throat, sniffing lightly, and then he looked around and asked,
"Tess didn't know anything about this; did you all not…"
"Tess isn't a part of this, no," said Darnell very firmly. "This deal just stays between us and you. I know you're very close to Tess and that you two work well together."
"We do, yes," Joel affirmed, and Darnell continued, his hands held up,
"And we respect that… fully. But this particular deal… doesn't involve Tess. And we think you'll understand why in a moment."
Joel shifted his weight where he stood. "Hmm. I… might have some idea. But go ahead."
"We heard a rumor," said Grady, who towered over even the tall and relatively built-looking Joel, "that you've come into a very substantial amount of hydro, straight from Atlanta."
"That may be true," Joel shrugged. He sniffed again. "Yeah. Possibly. Depends on who's asking, and it very much depends on, you know… where it's going, and… in exchange for what. That shit's expensive as fuck."
Ellie marveled then, looking back and forth between Joel and the others. Holy shit, she thought. All of these people were supremely fucked up. Joel, it seemed, was some kind of leader of a drug cartel with some woman named Tess, and apparently, he was thought to be open to purchasing a sex slave. And the others had agreed to take her to the Fireflies in exchange for guns, but then had betrayed Marlene so they could sell her as a slave… for drugs.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Ellie found herself muttering out loud, and when they all looked at her, she shrugged and couldn't help saying, "You all are, like, the absolute worst."
Joel actually smirked a little at that, scuffing his boot on the pavement where he stood. But Viper, the woman who had brought her here, came in front of Ellie and slapped her clear across the face, so hard that Ellie's cheek stung badly. Ellie gasped and recoiled, grabbing at Viper's wrist and preparing to fight back, but Viper snarled at her,
"You don't need your eyeballs to do what we're selling you for, you little bitch; you just need your mouth and your cunt, and we have ways of shutting that mouth up, too. Be. Silent."
Viper yanked her hand out of Ellie's grasp and stalked away, and Ellie was left standing in open-mouthed shock, blinking a few times as she felt sick again. She glanced up to see that Joel, the drug smuggling guy, was just looking at her with a very strange expression on his face. He licked his lips and finally gestured toward her, and he cleared his throat as he asked,
"I'm guessing… um… she's the offer, huh? The girl for the hydro? That's the deal."
"Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner." Leo laughed again, sounding a bit maniacal. He paced just a little and rolled his hands around as he said, "I mean, of course, there are logistics here, Joel. We may have to consider other offers on her; we may have other interested buyers on her; she's… as you can see, she's a prime cut of meat, and the quantity would have to be there, so…"
"I've got 7,500 pills on me. You can have them. Right now. I was a dumbass and packed them in a fucking backpack to sneak out of the QZ; could have taken a bullet to the head for it. But I've got them. So."
Leo stopped his pacing and eyed the others in his group. He chuckled darkly and shrugged. "If you've got a backpack full of hydro, Joel… why shouldn't we just shoot you, take the pills… and sell this girl to somebody else?"
"Well… that would be a dumbass move for several reasons," Joel informed them. He reached around in his backpack and started pulling out many plastic bags that were loaded with white pills, which he started piling on the pavement. "Because, first of all, I told Tess I was coming here to meet with you guys. I figured you were gonna want this hydro, and that you were gonna propose some crazy deal or another. Now, I admit… I didn't see a girl involved. But, it was enough that I did tell Tess. So she knows I'm here."
Leo flashed an irritated look to Viper, who snarled with frustration. Joel continued to yank out fistfuls of bagged-up pills where he crouched on the ground, and once he'd finished, and there was a massive pile of white pills on the back, slick parking lot, he pulled something else out - a pistol. He stood up and somewhat casually said,
"The other reason, Leo, that you might not want to try shooting me and taking the girl is because I'll have a bullet in your fucking skull before you've got your finger on the trigger. Send her over to me and come get the drugs."
Ellie felt herself being roughly shoved forward by Viper's hands, the hands that had caressed her earlier when they'd been around Marlene. Ellie turned and scowled at Viper and mumbled,
"Fucking bitch."
She sighed and took a few steps toward Joel, and when she reached him, she eyed him with suspicion, because he said quietly to her, in a voice that was strangely gentle compared to the harsh, aggressive way he'd been speaking to the others,
"Turn around. Back to me. I'm gonna put the gun to your head for just a minute, okay?"
Okay? OKAY? Was this asshole seriously asking for permission to hold Ellie at fucking gunpoint? She threw up an eyebrow at him and scoffed.
"Yeah, sure," she said disbelievingly, and she arranged herself in front of him like he'd ordered her to. She expected to feel metal against her temple again, like she had earlier when Grady had put a gun to her head. But Joel held his gun down at his side for a second, and Ellie frowned as she watched his fingers moving on it. As Darnell and Grady and Leo scrambled to scoop up baggies of drugs and move them into the FEDRA truck, Ellie realized that Joel had released the tension on the firing mechanism of his pistol and returned the hammer to its original position… it wasn't cocked now, she thought. He didn't want to accidentally shoot her. He raised the gun back up to her head and held it there, and above her she heard his voice murmur so quietly that she knew the others couldn't hear,
"I'm not gonna hurt you."
Ellie frowned deeply. What the hell did that mean? This guy had just fucking bought her! He'd just handed over a payload of fucking drugs and had accepted her, ostensibly as a sex slave. He had a gun to her head. He was, apparently, a notorious smuggler in the Boston QZ. And she was supposed to believe that he was not going to hurt her?
She struggled to say silent and not to move. But as Viper sardonically waved goodbye to her, Ellie shook her head and snarled,
"That fucking bitch. They betrayed… those fuckers were supposed to be driving me to a Fireflies base out West! In exchange for guns! And they changed their mind and decided to sell me for fucking drugs. Assholes."
"Huh. Well. Smugglers are a… fickle bunch." Joel said from behind her. "Don't move yet."
"Very nice doing business with you, Joel," called out Leo happily as he climbed into the passenger seat. "Hey… uh. Keep that girl hidden, will you? Marlene wouldn't be too happy to find out she's still hanging around Boston."
Joel let out a bitter little laugh and said, "No worries, Leo. The deal's done… you got your pills… it's all good. We're good, man."
"Woooo!" Leo banged the side of the stolen FEDRA truck in raucous celebration as Darnell raced out of the parking lot of the abandoned Dunkin' Donuts. Ellie's breath trembled then as she felt Joel's pistol fall from beside her head, and she blinked rapidly and felt heavy, hot tears form in her eyes. She gritted her teeth, took a few steps from him, and whirled around. She considered her options for a moment. She could just lay back and take everything he was going to throw at her, she supposed. That was probably what most people did in this situation. She could, like, bite him during it. That might get her killed, but it would be satisfying as fuck. She could try and wrestle his gun from him right now. Finally, she just crossed her arms over her chest and chastised him,
"You know, you're a horrible human."
Joel gave her a surprised look. He tucked his pistol into his waistband and actually gave a conciliatory nod as he said,
"Yeah. Okay. Let's start there. Hi. I'm Joel Miller, and I'm a horrible human. And you are…?"
"Fuck you!" Ellie started to storm off, stomping her feet aggressively as she made her way in the general direction of the hollowed-out Dunkin' Donuts building. She heard Joel rushing after her, and suddenly he'd grabbed her arm. Ellie whirled and struck at his jaw as hard as she could, which was pretty fucking hard, actually. Joel seemed shocked with the force behind her punch, and he clutched at his face and scowled at Ellie as he informed her,
"Hey! Hey! Maybe don't go running off unarmed into the middle of the fucking night outside the QZ by yourself! Huh? Jesus. There's infected out here. There's bad people out here… ya know, people like me, people like the ones who just fucking sold you. Jesus, that fucking hurt. Where'd you learn to hit like that?"
"FEDRA school." Ellie tipped up her jaw proudly. Joel kept rubbing his jaw and eyed her curiously.
"Who the fuck are you? You were supposed to be smuggled out to the Fireflies… out West? What's your name?"
Ellie hesitated. She wasn't quite ready to tell him that yet. She just shrugged and said, "I'm an orphan; I was in FEDRA school. I… there's something weird about me. I'm weird. So… anyway, the Fireflies needed me to go out West, to one of their bases. Marlene paid those people to take me out there. They were gonna get a bunch of guns for it. But they decided it would be easier and faster to sell me instead. I guess drugs are better than guns."
Joel huffed a breath and shrugged. "Well. Uhhh… if you don't have a reason to be going West, I guess… you know, they probably thought… the drugs let them stay here in Boston, and… well, those people don't have a lot of humanity left in 'em, so. Selling girls off in exchange for pills is…"
He just shrugged again. He seemed deeply troubled for a long moment, and finally, Ellie asked him,
"Well, are you gonna, um… like, use me as intended? Like, you gave them a lot of drugs for me, so…"
Joel flashed her a look of righteous indignation and crinkled his face in disgust. "Jesus. No. I'm not gonna fucking… I gave them the drugs so they would go selling you off to somebody who would actually fucking use you like that, Little Miss Whatever-the-Fuck-Your-Name-Is."
"Oh." She realized then that he had rescued her, had saved her from the hell of slavery of had possibly saved her life, and she blinked a few times as she gathered her composure and twined her fingers together in front of her. She licked her lips and said quietly. "Ellie. My name is Ellie."
Joel put his lips into a straight line. "Fine. Nice to meet you, Ellie. You wanna, like, get the hell out of here?"
"Yeah." Ellie nodded. "Okay."
Joel started walking somewhat confidently past the abandoned Dunkin' Donuts, and Ellie scrambled to keep up with him, feeling completely terrified in the eerie darkness. She tried to stay close to him; he'd mentioned all sorts of threats out here. After a few minutes of walking, she murmured,
"J-Joel? Um… Mr. Miller?"
"Joel will work fine," he said sharply, and Ellie gulped as she asked,
"Um… I'm sorry I punched your jaw so hard. And… uh. Thank you."
"No problem," he said gruffly. Ellie jumped in terror then, but when she realized that the source of her horror was nothing but a stray ginger cat in a nearby bush, she let out a quaking breath and released Joel's jacket sleeve, to which she'd clung momentarily. He shook his head and muttered,
"I swear, you QZ kids are soft. Damn stray cat… come on. Let's keep going."
They walked for another few minutes, until Ellie could see the walls of the QZ approaching.
"How are we gonna get in?" she asked, feeling afraid.
"I know a guy," Joel said simply, and Ellie frowned.
"But you gave away all of your drugs."
"No, I didn't," Joel replied. He proved that a few minutes later when he simply strode up to a FEDRA guard in a uniform and passed over a little bag, much smaller than the ones he'd doled out in the parking lot. Ellie watched the FEDRA guard empty pills from the little bag into his own uniform pocket and pass the small baggie back to Joel, and then he nodded and guided Joel and Ellie to a small doorway, which he used a key to open. Joel grabbed Ellie's hand and yanked her through quickly, wordlessly. Ellie's heart thunked in her chest as they crept inside; there were guard dogs barking in the distance and searchlights were casting an eerie, ghostly white glow on the ground every now and then. Joel pulled hard on Ellie's arm and encouraged her to run fast, and as they raced across the open space between the wall and the inhabited area, Ellie's breath burned in her lungs.
She was silent as Joel guided her through the streets, past night guards and fistfights, past people sleeping rough for whom there was insufficient housing space these days. They passed a FEDRA guard on horseback, and two more patrolling side by side who saw Joel, very obviously recognized him, and then pretended not to know who he was. Ellie followed Joel around a corner where trash was burning and someone was standing and playing an old guitar while someone else drunkenly sang along. Finally, they came to a brick building that had probably once been prime real estate. Joel pushed open the front door of the apartment building and started climbing stairs, and Ellie demanded in a hushed voice,
"I thought you said you weren't keeping me, Joel."
"Can you just… we'll discuss this in a second, okay?" He sounded out of breath and irritated, and when they reached the third floor, Ellie yelped, because a rat the size of a damn cat emerged from the wall and shamelessly stood in front of her for a solid ten seconds while Joel unlocked his apartment door and shoved it open. Ellie watched in horror as the rat went back into the wall, and she shivered. She followed Joel into his apartment, which was relatively shabby but honestly quite spacious by Boston QZ standards. It looked like he lived alone, which was an almost unspeakable luxury; Ellie didn't see any signs of a roommate. But she cleared her throat and dared to ask,
"That woman they were talking about… Tess. Is she your wife?"
Joel shut his apartment door and flicked on the floor lamp in his little living room, shaking his head. "Tess? My wife? Jesus, no. I mean… Tess and I work really well together, and I… but, no. No."
"Okay. God. Wow." Ellie held her hands up defensively. "Touched a nerve. I just thought… you know, if there was a wife involved, she might be kinda pissed that you just sold all of your drugs for a sex slave."
Joel gave Ellie a profoundly irritated look and shook his head. "I didn't fucking sell all of my drugs to buy a sex slave, Ellie. That isn't what happened. Let's be really fucking clear about that, okay? I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that."
Ellie slowly sank onto his ratty sofa as he stalked into his small kitchen and called, "You thirsty?"
"Yeah. Parched. Thanks," Ellie replied.
"Whiskey?" Joel asked, and Ellie frowned, feeling confused.
"Uhhh… I'm fourteen, Joel."
She turned over her shoulder to look at him, and an odd look came over his face as he nodded and knocked back the whiskey he'd poured for himself. "Okay, then. Water?"
"Sure." Ellie pursed her lips and drummed her fingers against one another. She waited until Joel came into the living room and handed her her glass over water, and as she mumbled her thanks, he sank into the tattered armchair beside his sofa and shrugged.
"So. What's your deal? You must be some kind of special for Marlene to have gotten involved with those guys," Joel said. "Like… I know Marlene. She must have been desperate to get you out to those Fireflies. So what's up? Who the hell are you, really?"
Ellie sipped her water and shrugged. "I told you," she said lightly. "I'm an orphan, and I was in FEDRA school here, and -"
"And you're weird," Joel nodded. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and narrowing his eyes. "Uh-huh. But, like, what the hell is up with you that they wanted to send you across the damn country? Do you know how dangerous it is to cross this country, Ellie? It's… very dangerous. They must have had a very good reason."
Ellie just sipped her water and shrugged. Joel sighed and looked around the room for a moment, and then he quietly said,
"I kinda need you to fess up, Ellie. I gave those guys more hydrocodone in one fell swoop than this QZ has had in, like, the entire last year. Just so they couldn't go selling you to somebody else. So I think I deserve to know why the hell Marlene wanted them to take you out West in the first place."
Ellie shut her eyes and sighed. Well, she thought, maybe this was unavoidable. Maybe he was right. He probably was a really fucking horrible human being. And he might just pull out his gun and shoot her straight between the eyeballs as soon as she showed him what her deal was. But he had very willingly surrendered thousands and thousands of hydrocodone pills to take her away from the other smugglers, apparently because he'd been afraid that if he didn't "buy" her, someone with much more nefarious intentions would.
Ellie finally licked her lips and set her glass of water down on the little table beside the sofa, and she pulled back the sleeve of her long t-shirt. She turned toward Joel and somewhat brazenly revealed to him the remnants of the bite she'd suffered in the mall, when Riley had also been attacked and had turned, but Ellie had not. Joel's mouth fell open, and his right hand started to move to where his pistol was tucked into his waistband, but Ellie said calmly,
"It was weeks ago. I'm immune."
Joel eyed her very skeptically, and he choked out a little noise. "You're… immune."
"Yup." Ellie yanked down her sleeve.
"Bullshit," Joel scoffed. Ellie shrugged.
"Go ask Marlene if you don't believe me, Joel. They had me locked up for weeks… literally fucking chained up… making sure I didn't turn. I'm a goddamn miracle! A marvel!"
Joel gave her an incredulous look. "So… what? The Fireflies want to use you for, like, a cure?"
"Yeah, apparently," Ellie said. "That's the idea. Those smugglers were supposed to take me to a Firefly medical facility out West so the Firefly doctors could do research on me and, you know… like, save the world."
Joel actually let out a barking little laugh then and shook his head. "Oh, man," he said, almost wistfully. "This whole thing again."
"What do you mean?" Ellie felt a little surge of anger at that, but Joel sighed,
"Right after the Outbreak, they tried… man, they tried so hard. The doctors who really knew told them… there's nothing you can do. But they worked and worked for a vaccine, a cure, anything. Nothing worked."
Ellie frowned and picked at the ratty sofa. She shrugged. "It could work this time. I'm immune."
Joel sounded highly doubtful then as he pointed out, "It's been twenty years, Ellie. You'd think they would have figured something out by now. And, like, you can't be the first immune person, right? And of all the people to figure it out… the Fireflies? They can't even bomb their way out of Boston; you're telling me they suddenly have amazing laboratories and researchers and surgeons and… and even if they did figure something out, how exactly are they intending on scaling it up and distributing it to everybody left? Half the humans left on this planet live in the middle of the woods in, like, rural Montana."
"Okay! I get the picture. Geez." Ellie folded her arms and furrowed her brows at him. She shrugged. "So what do you suggest, Mr. I Just Traded Thousands of Pills For A Human Girl? Since your morals are so perfect? Like, what am I supposed to do with the fact that I'm immune?"
Joel scoffed. "Uhhh… maybe… don't tell anyone that, for one thing. And also… that's a very nice advantage you have there, Ellie. How nice for you. Again… keep it to yourself. Wear long sleeves!"
She crinkled her face, and then an odd look came over her as something registered. "Oh, no. I can't go back to school."
Joel tossed his hands up and admitted, "I'm not a hundred percent sure that was the plan, given how shit went down with Marlene and everyone else, but… you want to explain?"
"FEDRA scanners," Ellie choked out. Joel's mouth made a strange movement, like he was trying to figure out what to say, like he'd already processed what she meant. Ellie nodded. "Marlene's people… they had a scanner. Look, I don't know how I'm immune. But I've never once scanned positive before in my life. We had them at school; they did random scans. But then, after I was bitten, Marlene's people scanned me every day. Positive. Every single time."
Joel nodded slowly. He seemed to recognize the implications of what Ellie was saying. Anywhere where FEDRA was, she was now monumentally fucked. A positive scan meant immediate execution, absolutely zero questions asked. And nobody would give a single shit about hydro or sex slaves or anything else. Joel's throat bobbed visibly as he drummed his fingers on his jeans and muttered,
"Okay. Um. Well, you need to leave the QZ."
Ellie shrugged helplessly. "Well. Yeah. I was supposed to! I was supposed to go out West to the Fireflies, and -"
"Listen. I'll make a deal with you." Joel gave her a look. "I've got a brother. He's… missing. Kind of. Well. I know approximately where he is, but he's been out of touch, and I'm kind of worried about him."
Ellie felt a bit confused. Joel was going to take her out to the Fireflies in exchange for… for what, exactly? He just dragged his fingers around the knees of his jeans and shrugged.
"Look. You decide where you wanna go. I'll get you out of Boston, and… if you wanna come west with me once I hook myself up with a car, that's fine. You can do that. If you want me to figure out where the Fireflies are and drop you off there… um… I mean… it's… out West, apparently. And I'm headed that way, so."
"Yeah, you're headed… in that very general direction," Ellie noted, "but they did teach us in school that the American West is kind of… big."
Joel didn't seem to appreciate her snark. He just huffed a breath and pointed out, "You need to get the hell out of Boston. I will take you West. I gave up a lot of very profitable drugs to make sure nobody else bought you for the reason those guys were trying to sell you. And, no, I am not going to use you for the reason they sold you to me. So… you know, maybe you could think about saying, Wow, thanks, Joel. What a plan! Sounds great."
"Wow! Thanks, Joel. What a plan! Sounds great," Ellie echoed in an almost perfect mimicry of Joel's voice. He cleared his throat and pulled himself off of his armchair. He got up and stalked out of the living room, and a moment later he came back and tossed a raggedy Afghan crocheted blanket in gaudy colors down onto the sofa.
"You can sleep here for tonight," he informed Ellie. "There's a little bit of food somewhere in the kitchen cabinets if you're hungry. Tomorrow I'll work out a plan to get us out, and tomorrow night we'll leave. Get some rest."
He started to move into his bedroom, and as Ellie watched him go, she blinked rapidly and opened and shut her mouth, unsure of what to say to him. Finally, she called out,
"Um… Joel?"
He paused in the doorway to his bedroom and turned back to face her, but he didn't say anything. He just stared, looking as irritated as ever, and Ellie just shrugged a little as she said again,
"I'm sorry about you losing all your drugs."
"Don't worry about it," he said nonchalantly. "They're just pills."
"Thank you," Ellie said softly, and Joel nodded, turning back and shutting his bedroom door behind him.