The Last of Us

Based on the story by Neil Drukmann

Disclaimer

The Last of Us was written for Naughty Dog on behalf of Sony Computer Entertainment by Neil Drukmann and Bruce Straley. It is a trademark property of Sony Computer Entertainment. This is a not-for-profit fan-work for free distribution through the world-wide web. No infringement of trademark or copyright is intended.

Author's Notes

I haven't seen a decent 'straight' novelisation of the game story so far and it was this that led me to start work on this. However, as I continued, I decided that, whilst I will be avoiding OCs, I wasn't content to just turn Neil Drukmann's fine story into a narrative story form. There was one change about which I had lots of ideas. With encouragement of a few other fans of the game, I decided to take this story in this new direction. I hope that I won't be changing any of the key points and themes but I really, really wanted to make this change.

You'll see what I mean in time.

Censor – M – Violence, profanity and description of death and disease

Act 1 – Summer

Chapter 5 – Outside

Joel came awake with a painful jerk, Sarah's name dying on his lips before it was uttered.

"You talk in your sleep," a young voice announced thoughtfully. "I hate bad dreams…"

"Yeah… Yeah, me too." Joel groaned and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand before he looked over at his 'cargo'.

Ellie was sitting in a chair, looking silently out of the window of the apartment into the night. "You know, I've never been this close; to the Outside, I mean." Rain was clattering against the aged glass but, despite that, the mighty wall surrounding the Quarantine Zone was clear to their sight. To one side were the dim but steady lights of various homes in the Zone. The walls were dotted with powerful halogen floodlights that illuminated the area just in front of and below the walls. Beyond that was a dark void that had once been a vast city of millions of human beings… "Can't be any worse out there… can it?"

Joel surprised himself by not sighing or laughing as he busied himself lighting a small hurricane lantern. That was a level of naiveté, painful and bordering on lethal, that you could only expect from someone who has never been out of the Quarantine Zones and in the Wilds, where the dividing line between man and beast had all-but vanished. "What on Earth do the Fireflies want with you?" he murmured, his disbelief finding voice.

Ellie looked over from her consideration of the darkness of Outside to reply.

Whatever she was about to say was lost to time as the door to the apartment swung open, revealing Tess. The woman smirked at Joel, whose Colt was levelled at her. "Hey, sorry it took so long!" Joel gave his partner a glare before tucking his gun away into his waistband. "There are soldiers fuckin' everywhere!"

Ellie had jumped up when Tess had entered and now took a few uncertain steps towards her. "How's Marlene?"

Tess nodded at the girl. "She'll make it," she remarked before turning her attention back to Joel and the really important news. "She showed me the merchandise; it's a lot. Wanna do this?"

Joel looked at the excitement and, maybe, just a little bit of greedy lust in Tess's eyes. He sighed and nodded. "Yeah."

The trio picked up their stuff and walked into the next room where a wide array of windows looked out across the perimeter wall and out into the Outside. Tess stood by the window, looking out pensively. Although she was eleven years old at the time of the Outbreak, she'd spent most of her adult life in the Boston Quarantine Zone only going outside it on rare occasions for small trips to the drop spots to meet up with their suppliers.

"Don't you think that it's a bit strange that they're asking us to do their smuggling for them?" Joel murmured to her.

"Marlene wanted to do it herself. We weren't the first choice. Hell, we weren't even the second; that was Robert of all people! She's lost a lot of men and is on the run. You know that beggars can't be choosers!"

Joel grunted noncommittally. "Well, let's just hope that there's someone left to pay us after this is over!"

Tess nodded decisively. "Someone will be around; don't worry about it." She turned to Ellie, who looked both worried and eager. "You ready, kid?" Ellie nodded too, if a bit jerkily with nerves. She watched as Joel and Tess moved a small book-case aside revealing a narrow gap into a previously-hidden utility room.

After sliding sideways into the small room, Joel walked over to start up the generator whose only function was to operate the North Tunnel, several stories down at the bottom of an electric platform elevator. It was another indication of how bad security was in the zone that this sophisticated installation had never even been once noticed by FEDRA. Joel waited until the green power light was shining steady before palming the button to activate the motor. There was a grumble and then, loudly, the platform began to descend on its chain drive the eight stories down to the tunnel level.

Joel decided to hear the rest of Tess's news. "Who's waiting for us at the drop-off?"

"Marlene said it's a group of Fireflies who have come all the way from another city." Tess turned do look at Ellie who kept her eyes straight ahead on the successions of levels passing by as the platform descended. "The girl must be important. What's the deal with you anyway? You some bigwig's daughter that they want in a secure location?"

Ellie's smile was surprisingly cold and closed for a barely-teenage girl. "Something like that." Somehow, Ellie managed not to remark on being dehumanised to being 'the girl'. Instead, she turned to something important to her. "How long is this going to take?"

"If everything goes as planned, we'll reach the Capitol Building in about three hours; around about sunrise." Tess's eyes narrowed. "Ellie?" Hearing her name brought the girl out of her introspection and she looked at the older woman with a little surprise. "Ellie, this is very important. You have no idea, none, of just how dangerous it is outside of the walls of the Zone. When we get out there, there is no sass, no back-talk and no wandering off to 'explore'. Got that? You follow our lead and you obey our instructions to the letter and you do so immediately. Am I clear on this?"

Ellie was silent for a moment before she replied in the affirmative in a way that Joel felt indicated she'd been listening to and understanding everything they'd been saying all along despite her introspective expression.

There was a juddering thud as the elevator reached the bottom of the shaft. The tunnel to the exit to the outside was about twenty yards long and was illuminated by red electric lamps strung up along the walls.

Tess checked the patrol route map that was pinned to the wall by the exit. It was supposed to be kept updated but the last few amendments weren't that recent. She blew out an exasperated breath. "Looks like the patrols have been moving towards the tunnel entrance. We'd better keep alert as we leave the tunnel."

Joel frowned as he watched the soldiers' Maglites moving along the line of the old road just beyond the wall. "Hold up, patrol up ahead!" After a few moments, the lights turned away as the soldiers moved into the shattered stone jungle of partially-demolished buildings beyond the Zone's North Wall. "Alright, we're good."

Joel turned to help Ellie out of the covered entrance to the North Tunnel then he and Tess slid the pressboard cover back on top of it.

The entranceway was hidden away in the ruins of a building, little more than a partially-demolished brick box with shreds of plastic hanging down from the upper level that created a barrier like man-made vines dangling down. Joel looked up the length of the path away from the tunnel. It was basically a row of buildings that had been demolished down to the basement, creating a man-height ditch running in between the wall and a shattered road. In the distance, a tractor-trailer lay where it had skidded off the road into the ditch, also serving as a convenient way of clambering out.

The rain was slamming down still, reducing visibility to a dozen yards and meaning that every step created a racket as you sloshed through standing water.

"Holy shit…" Joel turned to Ellie. The girl was staring around her, her eyes wide open. What Joel saw as basically a huge impediment to his survival was clearly a wonder to her. "I… I'm actually outside!"

Joel briefly debated saying something but thought better of it. "This way," he instructed, leading the way down the ditch to the semi-trailer that was the way out.

Joel later decided that he was surprised that their luck ran out so quickly. In retrospect, he supposed that he should have been more wary of ambush, especially in the far-from ideal circumstances in which he found himself. As it was, as he reached the back of the semi-trailer, ready to jump out onto the old, long-abandoned roadway, the first warning he got that he was in trouble was the flash of pain when the butt of an assault rifle caught him in the back of the head.

"Don't try anything stupid," a second soldier growled, his Enforcer levelled at the back of Tess's head.

Joel was in a bad mood and his head hurt. Nonetheless, he wasn't about to do anything stupid with an equally pissed off soldier pointing her assault rifle at the three of them as they knelt in the mud at the back of the trailer. "This is Ramirez in Sector 12," she growled into her radio. "Requesting pick-up for three stragglers." There was a pause as Ramirez listened to the reply. "Understood." She looked up at her partner. "Scan 'em. Pick up's on the way."

Joel's mind was racing to try and figure out a way out of this. It was clear that the same was the case with Tess. He was impressed that, although Ellie looked terrified, the girl wasn't obviously crying or hysterical or anything. Something about life in the Zone toughened kids up in ways that would have been unimaginable beforehand.

"Look the other way," Tess advised the soldier scanning her in a calm, level tone. "We can make this worth your while."

"Shut up, bitch." He looked over at Ramirez. "What's the ETA?"

"Five minutes." The soldier scanned Tess and Joel, finding both to be clean. Then he scanned Ellie, who was muttering to herself in a way that indicated that something had suddenly scared her in a big way.

Naturally, both soldiers' attention was focussed on the two adults. They hadn't really been paying much attention to the small teenager, probably thinking that a child wasn't a serious threat. That was dumb; anyone and anything could be a threat, especially if you didn't treat them with appropriate care. Both soldiers had been so focussed on Tess and Joel that neither had noticed that Ellie had palmed her switchblade when the soldier had come up behind her and Tess. It was now child's play for her to flip out the blade and drive it into the soldier's calf as he stood right behind her, scanning her for CBI.

The blow was hardly lethal but the sharp blade punching through his calf muscle and scraping across his femur created an agonising blaze of pain. Tess rolled forward out of the way as Ellie yanked out her knife and also dived forwards to get away from the soldier, who had pulled his Enforcer half out of its holster. Joel rose to his feet and, with a single smooth move, tackled the man down, trying to yank the gun out of the man's hand.

Ramirez cemented her 'rookie' credentials in Tess's eyes by focussing on the struggle, raising her rifle and trying to get a clear shot at Joel and ignoring Tess and Ellie. She never noticed Tess coming up into a kneeling position, pulling her Walther out of her waistband and aiming carefully. Then Tess put two 9mm slugs through her temple and it didn't matter anymore.

Joel calmly forced the other soldier's gun (still in the man's grip) to his forehead and pushed down on his trigger finger, blowing a 45-calibre hole through the man's head with his own weapon.

Ellie couldn't help but gape at the blood and gore. She was hardly innocent but this was a lot more intense than anything else she'd experienced before. "Shit! I thought we'd just tie 'em up or something!"

Tess, acting on an instinct that she would never be able to adequately explain, picked up the CBI scanner; maybe it was the blinking red lights. Either way, she saw something that changed her life forever. "Oh shit! Joel look at this!"

Joel stared at the simple message on the screen: Infected. He looked up at Ellie and felt ice water in his veins. "Jesus Christ! Marlene set us up? Why the hell does she have us smuggling an infected girl?" As much as a part of him wanted to feel a grim satisfaction at the realisation that he'd always been right about Marlene, he still found it hard to credit that anyone could be that cold! Joel pulled out his Colt, ready to do the girl the last favour that he could do for her.

Ellie saw her death in Joel's dark eyes and instinctively raised her hands in a warding off gesture. "No! I'm not infected!"

Joel always swore that he would treat someone in this situation in the right way. So, instead of just blowing the girl's brains out, he threw the scanner over to her. "So, this thing is lying?"

Ellie scowled at the display and Joel noticed that she didn't look that surprised. "It's complicated but I can explain!" Not exactly the world's most surprising response, all things considered.

"Better make it fast, kiddo!" Tess snapped lining up her Walther.

On the edge of panic, Ellie yanked up the right sleeve of her long-sleeved tee-shirt, revealing an ugly set of scars. It was clearly a human bite mark. "Look at this!"

Joel gesture dismissively and turned away in disgust. "I'm not interested in how you got infected!"

"This is three weeks old!"

Both smugglers shot each other sceptical looks. "No, the longest anyone goes after being Infected before they Turn is two days, so you'd better stop bullshitting us!"

"No, just look at it!" The skin was still red and inflamed but the injuries themselves were healing over; the scabs had time to start falling off. "Does this look a day or so old? I swear it's been three weeks since I was bitten!"

Joel frowned. "I'm not buying it…" he said, but his anger was fading; he had to admit to himself that the injury looked old and that the whole scenario seemed off.

"Even if I was lying, which I'm not, why would Marlene go to all this trouble just to set you two up? I mean, the timing would need to be perfect and no-one knows what determines how soon someone Turns after they've been Infected! It would be nearly impossible to pull off!"

Tess and Joel looked at each other again. The whole situation was almost too weird for words. Neither of them was sure what to do next or even really what to think about the situation. Suddenly, the time to think was over. Two HMMVRs were rolling from the nearest gate towards them, searchlights probing towards them. "Shit! Tess! Run, now!"

Tess took one step away before looking back at the terrified Ellie. "Girl, I don't know what the fuck is happening but if you want to keep living, you'll run! MOVE NOW!"

Ellie staggered to her feet and Tess grabbed hold of a fist-full of her shirt. She pulled the girl down a muddy embankment back into the ditch running along the front of the walls of the Zone. They joined Joel huddled behind the rusted skeleton of a car. Behind them, they could hear the soldiers' furious reactions to finding their colleagues' dead bodies. Within seconds, alarms began to blare and searchlights began to track backwards and forwards. Doubtless, there were plenty of snipers up on the wall trying to find something to kill.

Joel looked at his partner, anger and fear on both their faces. "They're gonna be out in numbers now, tryin' to find who killed their boys!"

Tess looked around desperately. To the left, up a slight rise, she could see a set of collapsed trenches turning what had once been a set of roads and the basements of obliterated buildings into a labyrinth of concrete and shattered sewer pipes. She nudged Joel; he saw what she saw and nodded. She turned to Ellie. "Alright, when I give the signal, we run, got that?" Ellie nodded. Tess waited until the regular movements of the spotlights passed over their hiding place. "RUN!"

Somehow, Joel didn't know how, they evaded the seemingly innumerable soldiers standing on top of the trenches, aiming the Maglites on their assault rifles downwards and looking for any sign of the 'stragglers' responsible for killing two of their own. Based on the unerring principle of 'get the hell away from here', Joel led his partner and their 'cargo' (whatever the hell her story was – it had better be a good one or Marlene would be hearing from him soon) through the trenches and through the remains of a sub-surface garage complex.

The next stage of their flight was hairy to say the least. The soldiers were systematically spreading outwards through the ruins of the buildings immediately around the walls of the Zone. Maglite beams swung back and forth and snatches of conversation that Joel heard suggested that they'd been labelled 'Fireflies' and that this only made the soldiers more determined to kill them.

After somehow sneaking past a group in the hollowed-out ruin of a house, the three fugitives found themselves skulking down a ruined road. They crouched behind a long-disabled and abandoned Bradley AFV. Joel looked down the street and didn't like what he saw. There had to be a full platoon methodically sweeping down the street whilst more were on the rooftops of the still-standing brownstone buildings, covering their colleagues with rifles, Maglite beams tracking back and forth. "There's too many, Tess!"

Tess reached over and squeezed her partner's shoulder. "They haven't seen us yet; let's go around."

The buildings to the right were hollowed out by long ago explosions and fires but their walls were still standing and promised shelter from the soldiers' lights. After waving Tess and Ellie past, Joel pulled a brick he'd grabbed earlier out of his pack and hurled it back the way they had come. The projectile struck the Bradley's turret, the loud metallic noise attracting the attention of all the soldiers.

Joel ghosted into the interior of the building as urgent footfalls told him the soldiers were rushing down the road to investigate the noise. He was just telling himself that his ad-hoc plan had worked when he heard Ellie, crouched behind an old dresser, hiss out a terrified warning. "Oh shit! They're in here with us!"

Joel scowled as a single soldier, armed with an Equaliser with an under-barrel Maglite began to sweep the interior of the ruined house. There was no time to sit tight. Joel's distraction would only last so long and then they'd be up to their armpits in soldiers who had less and less incentive to show a hint of mercy.

He waited until the torch beam swung away from their hiding place and then he threw the brick he had snatched off of the floor right at the soldier's head. It was too much to ask for that the blow would be enough. The guy had a riot helmet on but the sudden impact certainly stunned him. Joel lunged forward and followed up with his wooden bludgeon, striking at the soldier's face with a powerful overhand baseball swing. The simple force of Joel's attack was enough to shatter the soldier's Lexan faceplate and smack his head against the wall behind him. Joel drove his fist into the man's throat. There was body armour in the way but only a relatively thin layer and Joel felt it give under the blow. Choking, the soldier slumped forward and Joel drove a powerful overhead swing of his bludgeon down onto the exposed back of his neck. The bludgeon snapped in two but it wasn't the only thing. The sound the soldier made as he hit the ground was hollow and the gasp of his breath leaving his lungs was very, very final.

Tess was doing the right thing and watching their backs. "More lights; they're coming back Joel!"

Joel stopped his search for the fallen soldier's gun and gestured frantically for his companions to run. He gestured towards a half-collapsed side window leading back out onto the streets. "Up there; go!"

"The lieutenant's down!"

"Fuck! Sweep the area! Find those Firefly fuckers!"

"Go, go! Run, run!" Joel hissed urgently pushing Ellie to urge her to more speed. Suddenly, he heard assault rifles beginning to fire. Bullets kicked up the blacktop all around them. Tess and Ellie jumped into a huge bomb crater that split the road apart. A rifle shot clipped Joel's right side, just under his armpit making him glad that he'd bought that armour yesterday afternoon. He took a running jump and…

Two hammer-blows slammed into his back.

Somehow, Joel managed to stagger to his feet despite what might be a lethal injury. Well, I'm not dead yet; better keep movin'. "T… Tess? Where next?"

"It's hard to know; everything's so different but…" The Bostonian woman paused and then nodded decisively and pointed to a set of stairs leading down and deeper into the basement. "This takes us in the right general direction."

The three of them soon found themselves wading through hip-deep water (waist deep for Ellie) through storm drains. One section of the drains had a massive overhead grille. Several torch beams were being shone down into the drain from the road level above. Joel grabbed Ellie and, in response to an instinct that he didn't care to think too deeply about, held the girl tightly to his chest, a hand over her mouth to block off any talk, scream or other audible idiocy.

"Charlie Squad, report!"

"No contact with target sir!"

"Echo Squad reported a contact about a block back East. You've not seen anything?"

"No sir! Nothing either surface or subsurface!"

There was a pause as the guy in charge considered this report. "Okay, this has gone on long enough; we're leaving those Firefly fuckers to the Clickers! Break off pursuit and rendezvous with other squads in sector eleven."

"Copy that! Alright, you heard the man! Mount up!"

Joel waited until the sounds of HMMVR engines faded away before releasing a scowling Ellie and gesturing for his companions to proceed onwards.

"Is he going to be okay?"

Tess was more than a little impressed that Ellie was holding the torch so steadily to provide light as Tess bound the fortunately mostly-cosmetic puncture wounds in Joel's back. "Yeah, that shit took most of the damage." She gestured at Joel's ruined slum armour. The back plate, made of pressboard and an old steel dinner tray of all things, had been devastated by the impact of two 22-calibre assault rifle bullets but had absorbed just enough of the impact energy that the bullets had been unable to penetrate too deeply into Joel's muscular back.

Ellie nodded. She switched topic to what she saw as the next biggest priority. "Are we safe now?"

Tess caught Joel's sardonic quirk of an eyebrow but decided to treat the question seriously. "No; they're still around and won't give up easily given that they've lost some of their own today. Just take this as a chance to catch your breath." She took her torch back from Ellie and re-attached it to her backpack's shoulder strap. She threw Joel's battered but still-serviceable plaid flannel shirt over to him. "You'll live, Joel. Now, look around and see if there is anything we can use."

"Sure thing, Boss!"

It quickly became clear that the basement room, apparently once a maintenance and engineering room for the city's sewer system, been abandoned for so long that there was nothing of use to them. It had either long since been looted or had degraded into uselessness. Joel found some interesting mechanical parts that he figured he could use for things and also a pack of three pairs of kitchen scissors, still in their wrapping, in a locker.

Joel turned a corner and found a junction of sewer pipes. One definitely seemed to be going upwards. "Tess, I'm thinking that this here pipe is the way out." He flung the ruined armour and the equally-ruined knuckledusters into one of the lockers (no need to make it easy for searchers to find their trail). Then he led his two companions on again.

They paused for a while in another storm drain with a massive grilled roof as HMMVRs and trucks roared past overhead. However, no-one seemed to be looking for them anymore. It looked like, for now, the pursuit had been abandoned.

A few minutes later, the trio emerged through an outfall grille into a ditch running alongside what had once been a highway leading through the centre of the city. Just to make Joel's day perfect, the rain was still pouring out of the sky as if someone had left a faucet open.

Tess looked at Ellie who was sitting in a defensive crouch, some distance away. She drew in a deep breath and then walked over to the girl. "Ellie? Tell me what the plan was?" Ellie looked confused. "Look, let's say that this works by some miracle. We get you to Marlene's pick-up squad in the State Capitol Building. What then?"

Ellie seemed to have to travel deep inside herself for a moment before she could reply. "Marlene… She told me that the Fireflies have their own quarantine zone somewhere. There are doctors there who are… who are still trying to cure the Cordyceps."

Joel snorted indelicately. "Yeah, we've heard that before, right Tess?"

Much to Joel's surprise, Tess did not respond to his mockery in kind. Instead, the brunette woman focussed her attention on Ellie, wordlessly encouraging her to continue. "She said that… that whatever this is that has happened to me… may be the secret of creating a vaccine; something that will stop people from getting infected ever again!"

Joel shook his head and couldn't hold his scornful contempt in. "Oh, Jesus! That shit again!"

"Look it's what she said!" Ellie snapped.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure she said that, kid!"

Ellie was on her feet and glaring at Joel. "Look fuck you, old man! I didn't ask for any of this shit!"

"No, me neither!" Joel replied in a dismissive tone. He turned to his partner. "Tess, what the fuck are we doing here again?"

Tess was picking at her lip thoughtfully. "Joel… What if this is true?"

Joel couldn't believe his ears. His normally oh-so-level-headed and pragmatic partner was the one saying this? "Bullshit! I can't believe that…"

"Just what if, Joel?" Tess turned to her partner with a pleading expression on her face that suddenly made her seem so much younger and so much more in need of a reason to carry on than she had ever looked before. She sighed. "We've come this far; what more risk are we taking by finishing it?"

Joel was suddenly in Tess's face, glaring at her as he pulled her close. For the first time in a very, very long time, Tess was more than a little afraid of him. "Look, Tess, do I have to remind you of what is out there?" he asked as he savagely gestured at the ruins of Boston and the wild lands beyond.

Tess's voice turned harsh, communicating that she'd made her decision and that he wasn't about to change it for her. "I get it Joel." She turned towards the ruined freeway and gestured to where it passed under a shattered overpass. "If we go this way and cut through downtown, we'll reach the State Capitol by sunrise tomorrow."

Joel shook his head "We hope," he murmured to himself as Tess turned to Ellie and extended her hand, her expression surprisingly gentle. Uncertainly, the girl took her hand and let herself be led away.

Joel briefly considered leaving Tess and her cargo to their fool's errand but that was self-deceit and he knew it. If not for the forlorn hope that had stolen Tess's good sense, he would do this for Tess.

To be continued…