Chapter 20: Our Girl

I just wanted to lose consciousness... The deepest part of my brain had thoroughly been clouded over, and there were moments where I felt I could almost slip away... but the intense pain in my chest and my arm would wrench me back to my senses before I could follow through. I knew my fate but her voice only drove me back, the love of my parents turning into new love, her love... She kept me alive somehow...

"Ha ha, Rylan stop that tickles." Ellie giggled as his fingers danced across her bare belly.

"Well then if it makes you happy..." He continued his relentless assault on his girlfriend's exposed skin; truthfully her entire body was a weak spot for intimate tickling.

"I'm gonna kill you if you-! HAhaha! Stop!" She laughed as she pushed away his hand as they continued to cuddle; he was a sucker for snuggling.

"I don't think you want me to with you making that face~" He smirked as his memories of the girl enamored his personal heaven. "Tell me another one of your stupid puns."

"But you've heard them all from the book." She pouted as she turned to meet his gaze. "You want me to make one up? On the spot?"

"That's what I always do."

"Shut up. You're not that awesome..."

"You're not exactly little miss sunshine either."

"Damn right I'm not."

Joel jogged his way across the winter meadow on his trek to kill the bear for Jackson. He feared however that the avalanche he heard far off would scare anything alive away from the surrounding area, but he also knew he had to stay on guard for Infected as well.

Joel found himself rounding around a huge boulder then surprisingly he tripped over a Runner who certainly wasn't running anymore, for it had an arrow sticking out of its skull. Joel found some footprints in the snow that caught his eye and they eventually dropped down into a rocky ravine which snaked its way out of his sight. "Looks like a big chase ran through here..."

Joel hopped down and landed on his feet. This trench was so dangerous, but somehow his gut told him to go this way. It was eight or nine feet high on both sides and it was wide enough for only two people to walk side by side. The trench finally opened up into a depression which was a low point in the ground. Basically he was in a sinkhole, surrounded by higher ground in all directions. As to be expected by now, Joel noticed that there were multiple bodies of Infected all over the area, and countless footprints lay in their wake. "Jesus..."

Rotten blood stained the white snow around him as Joel stepped forward to investigate what happened. But then his eyes widened when they fell on a familiar body lying next to another boulder on the far side of the depression. And it was the boy... Rylan.

Joel ran towards him, panicking since he feared the worst for Ellie's absence with him, especially since he saw her switchblade in his hand. "Kid! Come on boy, you still alive?"

Joel could see the teen had already lost a lot of blood, his brown jacket stained darker to a deep scarlet across his chest and left shoulder. A stream of red also collected in the left palm of his hand and his arm was wet with blood as well. To put it simply, "God... what the hell happened to you?"

He wanted to shake him awake, beat him, something to make him tell what happened to Ellie, because something horrible had to occur for her to part from that switchblade. Joel pulled out some bandages from his pack as well as a handy-dandy medical kit. He made sure Rylan had a heartbeat before he went to work; it was faint but it was there, barely.

"You're not dying on me yet boy..." Joel mumbled as he applied pressure to his wounds and wrapped them up with gauze. "Not yet... not until I know where Ellie is, and you're gonna tell me, y'hear?"

He had gotten no response from the teen as the old man did his best to bandage and fix him up as best he could. The bullet hole Joel had discovered in Rylan chest fortunately went clean through him and looked like just a flesh wound. No vital organs were hit, but his loss of blood is mostly likely the cause of his unconsciousness. When Joel got finished with his chest, he went towards his bleeding arm and rolled up his sleeve. With all the Infected around, he should have expected it, yet still as he saw the definite bite he had a look of shock on his face.

"Christ..." Joel hitched on his breath as got up and took a step back. How long ago had he been bitten? It looked like a fresh chomp, but still he's seen people turn in as short as a matter of hours, or a long as two days. He could only fear the worst for Ellie's fate...

The cold snap finally hit him though as he felt the sun finally set and twilight descended on them both. Joel lost track of time with all of his worrying, but now he and Rylan were probably in one of the shittiest situations imaginable.

"...Goddamn..." Joel shivered as he rubbed his arms for warmth from the quick chill. "Gotta find some shelter and make a fire, fast." He looked around and saw a convenient rope slung around a tree branch that could lead them out of here. "That'll work." He then grabbed the boy and slung him over his shoulder; they had to move quickly or they would both freeze to death. With each breath, Joel could feel his throat and lungs burning from the cold air exposure. "Let's go kid."

It took a lot of Joel's strength to climb out of the sinkhole, and it was even tougher when the night brought a winter storm in a matter of minutes. Blowing and whistling, the sheer frozen wake showed no mercy to Joel and Rylan as they shuffled through an increasing level of snow and wind. Not too long after that however, Joel barely spotted what could be a cave, an answered prayer for them hopefully as he made his way toward it.

They both found themselves in a shallow cave or a rock shelter where they could spend the night and make a fire to escape the cold. Joel carried Rylan a few feet into the cave only to have his nose be filled with a horrible stench. "Oh god." He held his nose with his free hand. "What's that smell?"

It was leftovers... or the remains as Joel shined his flashlight in the back of the cave and saw an enormous brown furry creature eating a half-devoured corpse. It turned its head at its new intruders.

*ROOOAAARRR!* Well shit.

Joel's eyebrows rose in astonishment as he dropped Rylan like a sack of potatoes and pulled out his shotgun. This was no time for a cheesy one-liner but...

Time to go into hibernation, permanently.

The enraged Grizzly charged at Joel on all four paws, revealing his blood-stained teeth to intimidate and to kill. But before the man-eating beast got too close, Joel fired his twelve gauge and the cave echoed from the resulting bang.

*RAWOAAH!*

A chuck of the bear's shoulder was shot clean off and the sound of large amounts of tissue and flesh being splattered littered Joel's eardrums as he fired again and then a third time. The Grizzly's skull was close enough to the barrel of the lethal shotgun to make a mess out of its now eviscerated muzzle, leaving it a furry large face into a mesh of animal gore.

The monster bear's body slumped and it soon fell on its side, indefinitely dead, and Joel let out the breathe he unknowingly held in. Well, that solved Tommy's problem. He put away his shotgun and picked Rylan up and comfortably set him up against the cold cave wall. Yeah, the cold... Joel had to make a fire quickly.

Joel went around the giant bear's corpse and found the mauled remains of its most recent victim. The man before him looked familiar but his face was so shredded and tore apart that his identity was unrecognizable. "Anything still in one piece?"

Joel had done it before, but with the awful smell of dead flesh mixed with blood and saliva, it didn't make it easier to loot his body. His neck was ripped out and Joel deduced that he quickly bled to death and looked like he picked a bad place to take shelter. Would have been smarter if he had a bigger gun, the pistol Joel found was empty of bullets, but he took it regardless.

In his pants pocket, Joel surprisingly found a set of truck keys. "Nearest road around here ain't for a couple miles..." He mumbled as he pocketed the keys for himself and went on.

Suddenly, a mild static noise broke the silence of Joel's breathes and the winter storm outside. It was coming from the dead man's coat. "…tschhhhhhhh *static* ...Gr... tschhh ant?"

Odd, Joel raised an eyebrow and he reached inside the coat and pulled out a small black walkie-talkie. It was sputtering out incoherent scrapes of words from the other side. It looked undamaged enough, so Joel turned the dial on top of it and angled the antenna upward and the voice become loud and clear.

"You fucking moron, answer your goddamn radio!"

Joel's blood ran cold and goose bumps went up and down his body when he recognized that vengeful tone. There was no mistaking it since he last conversed with it.

"You reckon?" Devlin chuckled. "...No, there is no amount of blood and flesh that could possibly outweigh the cure for the Cordyceps. Absolutely-fucking not!"

"What do you want me to say then?!" Joel yelled. "We are ALL survivors! ...And I found a reason to survive."

"Ellie..." Devlin snorted and spat on the ground. "That girl more important to you than the entire world?"

"She IS my world..."

"GRANT! Where are you?!" Devlin roared through walkie-talkie, expecting an answer from his dead second-in-command. "What's your ETA?"

Then it clicked. Joel realized that this was another attempt to capture Ellie; the thing was he didn't know if Ellie got away or she was taken, with Grant being their only casualty. All those Infected... there were too many pieces missing for him to know for sure until Rylan woke up, if he doesn't turn first. Judging though from Devlin's inquiry, they hadn't checked in with him yet, at least not Grant, however Joel though with the animosity of a dragon but still keeping his composure as he held down the button to talk back and say hello.

"Grant's unavailable now, can I take a message?" Joel growled as he let go of the button and waited for a response.

"..." At first he thought he wasn't going to reply but then... "...Joel. What the fuck happened?"

"Your friend here couldn't bear with it..." Ellie would have been proud of Joel for that unbearable pun. "He's dead."

"You.." Commander Devlin was reeling as it could be clearly heard he was taking in a big breathe. "...Fine Joel, then take a step back and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE! Now I don't care why you keep resisting the inevitable... but I promise you, I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm on you, you're gonna have to fucking beg me within an inch of your soon to be short life for a quick death! I am talking about stabbing your eyeballs out until their soup and then scraping your brains off my boot, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I WILL FUCK YOU UP!"

So this is what it really sounded like when Devlin was angry, no more like insane mode. So Joel kindly retorted. "That all? Because I reckon after I find Ellie... I'm gonna find you, and I'm gonna end you..."

"...Well I hope you at least get to see Ellie's lifeless body..." He could tell that he was smirking on the other end of the radio. He had gotten his temper back under control. "I do want you to see her after I'm done with her... and then see the light die in your eyes."

Joel snarled. "I'll see you in Salt Lake City!"

"Looking forward to-!" Devlin was cut off as Joel threw the radio on the ground and stomped it with his foot, smashing it to pieces and breaking it beyond repair.

"Ellie..." Joel shut his eyes in emotional anguish. He couldn't lose, he CAN'T lose her, and so he rubbed his eyes and got back to the initial matter at hand. He had to make that damn fire before he and the boy would freeze to death...

The cackling and the heat of the flames provided the little but sufficient warmth to keep them alive. The fire Joel had scrounged up projected long shadows and danced across the surrounding walls of the cave, twisting and curling in obscure shapes and providing a small radius of light. It was mesmerizing to watch, colors of orange and red gave way to yellow and white near the center, where the emanating heat was the greatest. It was their life for the night.

But it depends, because Joel was pointing a gun at Rylan, only because it was a precaution in case the boy lost his mind and turned right then and there. Joel noticed he began to stir, so he hopped he didn't have to pull the trigger. "Kid... Kid you okay?"

The brunette's remaining eye twinkled from the fire as it peeked and leered at Joel. To the old man's relief, Rylan croaked out. "Why you pointing a gun at me?"

"You're bitten." Joel simply reminded him. "Reason why you're still alive is I gotta know something... Where's Ellie?!"

Rylan blinked or winked whatever you want to call it, he was still really sore and weak. He noticed his wounds were bandaged and realized how much blood he probably lost. "...People took her. It was Grant."

"He's right over there." Joel motioned towards him and the dead bear down at the end of the cave which they could see. "But it's just him."

"Then she got away..." Rylan sighed contently but then anxiety enveloped his mind again. "Oh shit..." He turned his head to look out the mouth of the cave and the blizzard along with the blackness of the night. "She's out there..."

"I gotta know exactly what happened so I can get her back!" Joel shouted at him. "First of all, why were you two even out here? No kids outside the wall without an adult or-!"

"It's my fault! Okay?!" Rylan had burst out all his guilt, all of his emotional pain as he explained. "I wanted to kill that stupid bear!" He looked over and did indeed notice the dead Grizzly by Grant's body. He didn't care about that anymore though. "I was out nearby looking for it and Ellie followed me..."

A silence crept between them, but after a moment Joel coldly broke it. "Go on boy... I ain't got all night, and neither do you..."

"We were ambushed..." Rylan continued as his eye watered up at the memory of helplessness and frustration. "A small four-man team captured us led by Grant. Ellie mentioned she knew them and called one of them Bill."

"Hold on," Joel stopped him there. "You say Bill?"

The boy nodded. "Yeah... you know him too?"

That couldn't be a coincidence... Joel and Ellie just meeting up with Bill and his two buddies a day's walk away, had he been working for the Fireflies too? "I know him, yeah... what happened next?"

"We were all walking back to their trucks and then a freak avalanche happened. We were separated and I was with Grant and Ellie. Infected came after us and he just took Ellie away from me and I..."

Joel noticed that Rylan was staring down at his left arm, looking as if it were alien to him. He grasped it and removed his sleeve to see his blood-stained bandage wrapped around the bite. "Stay focused... Rylan." Joel brought him back to reality.

This worked and brought the brunette's attention back to him. He rarely addressed him by his name, Joel usually only referred to him as 'kid' or 'boy' for his distaste in Ellie's company, but since he had limited time anyway, a little comfort could go a long way. "Alright. ...Ellie came back to me though."

Joel assumed Grant met his demise because of Ellie and the Grizzly, using the beast to help her escape and backtrack her steps to Rylan again. "And that's when Bill took her?"

"Yes." Rylan nodded again. "She's still alive as far as I know."

"Okay good. I'm gonna keep it that way." Joel declared as he scratched his beard to come up with a plan until he heard a jingle in his pocket. "...Could use the keys I found to drive to Salt Lake."

"Salt Lake City? Why there?" Rylan questioned as to the destination of where Ellie could be.

"That's where the Fireflies are based. That's where Devlin will take her." Joel then looked down at his gun and wondered if the boy would actually accept the mercy killing from him. Did he want to wait till he turned? Before he could ask that pivotal question, Joel had to make sure. "I'll leave in the morning, but is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?"

Rylan however pulled out Ellie's switchblade, playing with it and remembering its owner. "After I was shot... they took her, and that Bill guy checked in with Devlin I think. He said he had Ellie and killed you... wait."

Joel perked up at that. Had Bill actually lied to keep him alive but still take Ellie to satiate Devlin's demands for a cure? Must have been because of their history together, that turned into Ellie's last chance. "Guess he couldn't... Bill ain't all bad but even he has some hell to pay."

"My first impression was a little different." Rylan spat back. "I don't know why but their call sign or whatever were the last words I heard. 'Go Bighorns'... stupid."

"Son of a bitch..." A light bulb went off in Joel's head. That word he associated the place with, the origin of that mascot. Had he...

"What? What is it?" Rylan asked as Joel shot up into a standing position.

"Did that bastard take her to the University of Eastern Colorado?" Joel mumbled loud enough so that Rylan could hear him and he stood up too. "...But it was abandoned." It was a long shot, or perhaps a hunch at best and definitely not a sure thing.

"Joel! Wherever you're going, I'm going with you." Rylan proclaimed his resolve.

"You're bitten boy." Joel deterred as he felt his forehead with his hand. "And you're burning up."

"I've been fighting a fever since this morning, but I don't care!" Rylan yelled as he slapped Joel's hand off of him. "I want to help you get to Ellie for as long as I am able."

"No." He shook his head at that. "No, you'll just slow me down and Ellie ain't got much ti-!"

"I won't slow you down, I promise." Rylan went on to declare. "I won't wait here and die knowing I... knowing I could still do something. Please let me go with you..."

"You'll turn before we get to either place and I won't walk with an Infected kid right behind me." Joel argued.

"You've been doing that for over a year with Ellie!"

"You're not immune!"

"Please Joel, I need to fix this... I have to try." Rylan begged as he fell back and his back sagged against the cave wall. "She's our girl now..."

Joel felt pity for the boy, but he also felt anger for him because if he wasn't around Ellie would've been waiting for him back home in their house in Jackson. Whether or not he could blame him, that was up to his more dominant feeling.

Rylan sighed again as he inquired from the old man. "What are you going to do Joel?"

Decision Time: *Kill or leave Rylan behind? *Or take Rylan with us?

Decision Time: Go back to *St. Mary's Hospital in Salt Lake City or the *University of Eastern Colorado?

You may decide the outcome...

A/N- Review with your submissions and if you please tell me why. Give me your thoughts about the chapter and the eventual climax of these characters. Will Joel catch up to Devlin, Ellie, and even Bill? What will happen next? Stay tuned.