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 6 – Downtown Boston, Part 1 (Goldstone Building)
Joel was just jogging back to join his companions after looting a surprisingly large amount of vitamins and medication as well as (amazingly) a half-dozen 9mm bullets from a wrecked UPS delivery truck. Tess and Ellie were standing in the middle of a ruined plaza and looking up at two skyscrapers. One was tilted against the other at a crazy angle, obviously only held in a semblance of upright by the structural strength of the other building.
Ellie was clearly awestruck. "I've never seen the ruined city this close before! The buildings are… so big! What the fuck happened out here anyway?"
Illuminated by a distant flash of lighting, something caught Joel's eye, lying on the ground by a long-dead telephone booth. He walked over and scooped it up before returning to show it to Ellie.
The girl looked at the laminated notice, still legible after twenty years lying on the ground. "'Carpet bombing'? That doesn't sound so good."
Tess explained. "It was basically the last thing the air force did before they ran out of parts, men and reasons to keep their combat aircraft operating. They bombed the hell out of the areas immediately around the Quarantine Zones hoping to kill as many of the infected in their host cities as they could. It actually worked… for a while at least."
Ellie and Tess were both quiet but for different reasons. Joel hadn't been anywhere near any of the Quarantine Zones at that time but Tess had told him what it was like to hear her home town practically blown to bits around her as she and her surviving family cowered in their designated tenement in the Zone. Like she said, it actually worked for a while, so who was he to judge that plan?
The three moved onward and began to ascend an unexpected hill just in between two of the skyscrapers when a bone-chilling shriek cut through the air, seemingly in response to a crash of distant thunder.
Ellie span, her wide, green eyes searching the darkened ruins for some source of the sound. "Shit! What the hell was that?"
Joel frowned grimly. "Tess, did you hear that? What do you think?"
Tess thought for a moment. "That was a long way off; you know that they're not inclined to move too far to hunt."
Ellie didn't really understand, of course. "Are we safe?"
Tess blew out her breath before responding. "For now; come on."
Ellie, being Ellie, tried to dispel the tension with small talk. "So, this is Downtown Boston, huh?"
Tess swallowed a nostalgic sickness. "Once, yeah; now it's just another part of the wastelands."
"Over here!" Joel called from just at the top of the rise. Once there, they found out why they were clambering up an incline fairly quickly. In front of them, the ground disappeared. The bomb crater was huge, maybe 500 yards across and extending downwards some way.
Tess boldly walked out on a bit of pavement that extended over the chasm. She shone her torch light down into the darkness and saw a sparkle of metal below; maybe one of the city's subway stations.
Ellie tossed a pebble into the chasm. There was a metallic impact about ten seconds later. Deep enough for anyone, Joel thought. He sighed. "We'll just have to find a way around it!" He turned a circle and noted a gap of light shining through a nearby ruined building. He crawled into the shattered building and found his way out onto a grassy terrace at the bottom of one of the ruined skyscrapers, the Goldstone Building, according to a sign for a long-devastated terrace café.
"Found anything?" Tess called.
"Not right now but this terrace looks good; get over here!"
"Um… should I be doing anything?" Ellie's voice was plaintive.
Joel looked over as the girl emerged from the ruins of what had once been a shop and clambered out onto the terrace. "Just stick close to Tess for now."
"Roger dodger!" Joel actually spent five seconds trying to work out what the hell that meant as he walked up and down the terrace, thinking about their next move.
Trying to get through the skyscraper wasn't his first choice. The bomb had blown out the building's foundations and it was leaning over the crater at an unhealthy angle. It didn't look likely to collapse any time soon but he was no structural engineer. In all likelihood, just the weight of three moving humans might be enough to overbalance it!
He briefly glanced at the ID necklace of Joseph Lenz, Firefly #000113, which he had found hanging from a tree at the far end of the terrace and came to his decision. There was no other way through the chaotic terrain created by the bomb blast except through the building. He just hoped that the worst forms of local 'wildlife' hadn't returned after the bombing.
He gestured to an opening in the side of the building; a whole wall of what had once been a corporate meeting room was gone, turning it into a strange kind of lobby. "Tess, this looks like the only way."
The interior of the building was a mess; the bomb blast followed by the building's slow subsidence into the crater had sent machinery and furniture rolling across the floor and had blocked some doors. Some areas were impassable due to collapsed ceilings or floors. Fortunately, for Joel and his companions, the main stairwell near their entrance was unblocked and they could check every level for a way through.
It was 'fortunately' until they found the first dead soldier. The man was surrounded by a few empty magazines for his semi-automatic pistol and was… Well, he'd been someone's lunch. "Ripped apart," Tess concluded.
Joel touched the body. Cold but rigor hadn't worn off. That meant… what… it was about a day old? "This body's still fresh."
"Is that bad?" Joel looked over at a deathly-pale Ellie and was impressed that the girl had held down the chunk of meal bar that she'd been eating just a minute or so previously. "I mean… could whatever killed that guy still be around?"
"It could be," Tess murmured. "In any case, let's not stick around to find out."
Further up the stairwell, they found another corpse. This one had a clipboard lying next to it. Joel read it quickly. "Looks like FEDRA were sweeping the building for something. From these notes, I'd say the entire patrol was wiped out." Joel shook his head. "They died waiting for backup." To Joel, that was just another sign of just how bad things were getting for FEDRA in Boston.
Finally, they got as far up as they could get. Above level 6, the stairwell had pancaked in on itself and was impassable.
Joel forced open the door into level 6 and froze as he stepped forwards. On the other side of the darkened corridor was a thing from a nightmare: A skeletal, partially-mummified corpse that was practically glued to a door by a wild sporocarps growth. The thing's head was what drew your attention. Above the jaw… it didn't have one. All there was in its place was a grotesque, crown-like mass of fungal growths extending out of the hidden and doubtless partially-consumed cerebral cortex. Joel swallowed. "Goddamn it! Clicker!"
He stepped forward, his gun drawn and scanned up and down the corridor. There was no obvious sign of movement. If their luck held, this guy was just someone who settled down to make spores a long, long time ago. The lack of spores in the air did suggest that this was a very old corpse.
Ellie had gotten very close to the Clicker and was looking at its head in puzzlement. "I don't see any eyes!"
Tess sighed and switched over to 'lecture' mode; the kid needed to know what she needed to survive, after all. "That's what years of infection does to someone. The fungus grows on the brain until the pressure splits open the skull; the top of the head bursts off eventually, destroying the eyes."
"So… they're blind?"
"Yeah, but that's not such a big disadvantage for them. These guys 'see' with sound. Not only can they hear a lot better than uninfected humans but they can also generate pulses of sound that lets them 'see' objects and people just from the echoes."
"Like bats?"
"Yep; when you hear the clicks, find somewhere to hide and stay as still as you can."
Suddenly there was a horrible metallic groaning that filled the air. The floor shifted and there was the sound of stuff crashing against walls elsewhere. Joel looked around frantically. "This fucking ruin is waiting to collapse. We need to keep movin'." The corridors to either side of the stairwell exit had collapsed several levels; the only way out of the corridor was through the door 'guarded' by the dead Clicker. The big Texan grimaced in disgust before grabbing the paper-light desiccated corpse and yanking it away from its previous final resting place.
Without its grizzly guardian, the door opened smoothly. The three spread out in the open-plan office space, looking for any useful salvage. Ellie got the jackpot, finding a full standard first-aid kit in a cabinet over a sink to one side. Joel also found cleaning materials that he figured he could turn into a Molotov cocktail or a medical kit when he had a few minutes to rub together.
As they were checking the desks and finding a surprisingly large number of FEDRA ration bars, the building groaned again. This time, office chairs and even various cabinets and desks began to roll across the space, several smashing against the far wall. Joel couldn't blame Ellie for her little cry of panic or the way she was suddenly clinging to his side. He had to admit that the thought of dying alone in a building falling sideways into a goddamn abyss wasn't high up on his list of nice exits either.
He gently detached Ellie and they went over to the last door that remained unchecked. Naturally, given their luck, it was jammed. He gestured to Tess and, with their combined strength, they were able to force it open.
Joel scanned one way in the new corridor, noting that the floor had collapsed practically all the way down to the basement.
"JOEL!" In response to Tess's scream, Joel turned the other way just in time to see the Clicker lunging for him, its drooling, lipless mouth with the grotesque split upper mandible dividing its upper jaw practically into two heading right for the soft flesh of his throat. Somehow, Joel managed to get his forearm into the thing's throat and stop it from reaching biting range. Even so, the transmitted force of the Infected nightmare's charge knocked him flat. Joel didn't have the time or resources to think or come up with a plan. It was taking all of his strength to hold back the hissing, screeching thing as it tried to get close enough to tear him apart with its teeth. Four agonising shallow cuts were opened in his chest as the thing tried to claw him.
Suddenly, Tess was there, she'd pulled out a wooden bludgeon and swung it underhand into the Clicker's jaw and then into the centre of its face, sending it tumbling away. The creature's unnatural durability meant that it was stunned for only a few seconds but it had been enough. Tess pushed her boot into the screeching creature's chest and pushed it flat on the ground. Her Walther came out and she put two bullets into the mass of fungus protecting the remains of its brain and the fungal core. The creature shuddered and fell still.
Ellie was already next to Joel helping him to his feet. "Are… are you okay?"
Joel looked at the shallow cuts and dismissed them. CBI could only be transmitted by body fluid transfer or inhalation of spores. "This is nothin'." He turned to Tess and gave her a tight smile. "Thanks for the save."
Tess smiled back in that way that made Joel wonder things. "Let's check this level for supplies. I've got a feeling that there are going to be more unpleasant surprises further on."
"That was intense!" Ellie muttered to herself, wiping her forehead as they went through the door on the other side of the corridor.
Tess couldn't help smirk. "You said it!" She turned to Joel and tossed him a Medikit. "As I'm sure you'd not think to do it yourself unless someone mentions it, use this to patch yourself up!"
Joel looked around the canteen area into which they'd entered. Whilst the two ladies busied themselves checking the place for anything useful that may have been left behind, Joel got busy with other work. Using the convenient and near-intact counters as a work surface, he quickly threw together some extra tools with the various items he'd scavenged. A pair of medium-grade shivs, and a medikit took shape. "Do you think you need all that stuff?"
Joel blinked in surprise at how easily Ellie had sneaked up on him. This girl was quiet when she wanted to be. He recovered instantly, not wanting the girl the satisfaction of knowing that she'd surprised him. "You should never be out in the Wild without tools. Medikits, especially might be all that stands between you and bleeding out from a bullet wound. Shivs are used for more than killing; they're a tool for foraging too, if you know what to do with 'em." Ellie nodded thoughtfully and then turned away again.
Joel then turned to the scratches on his chest. A part of him wished he'd kept the slum armour but it had been so beaten up by the time he'd dumped it that the various bits of reinforcement were coming loose and it was more of a hindrance than a help. He walked out of the room into a next-door store-room. Two rows of metal-frame shelves had toppled over because of the precarious tilt of the building. There was a can of painkillers but nothing much else.
The next door over in the sequence was locked. He broke the last of his scavenged slum-blades using it to jimmy open the lock. Inside was something of a treasure trove: Several shelves had piles of office materials stacked up from which Joel was able to get lots of useful supplies, including a bottle of medical disinfectant and a bottle of multi-vitamins! There was even a box of 9mm ammunition (and God alone knew what that was doing in an office building's store-room), although there were only five rounds remaining in it.
"Okay, I think that's everything!" Tess called from back in the canteen room. Joel walked back. Tess slung over two bottles of clean water that had been sitting in the long-dead refrigerator. Joel nodded in thanks and slid it into his pack.
The three travellers crossed over the corridor and walked out into what was once the lobby of some kind. To the left, the wall and floor dropped away into the depths of the building. To the right was a wall leading up to a mezzanine level. The decorative wood-and-glass stairs up to that level lay dead ahead, collapsed flat.
"Yeesh!" Ellie swallowed her disgust and tried to ignore the very gnawed-on and dead soldier hanging in a tangle of yellow safety tape from the upper level.
Joel looked at the bloody mess of the man's throat and growled unhappily. He knew a Clicker's handiwork when he saw it. The building was pretty obviously infested. "Let's see if there's a way through up there."
Joel quickly got Tess and Ellie up onto the upper level and then Tess helped him ascend too. As he came up to his full height, noting that this place looked like some kind of trendy eatery, he saw Ellie freeze and look to the right in reaction to something she'd seen or heard. "Shit…! Clickers?" the girl whispered in horror.
Joel heard the clicking noise too; he practically threw his two companions behind a rack of what looked like old wine bottles near the windows of the open-plan wine bar they had entered.
All three crouched down and listened to the inhuman crackles, whines and hisses the Clicker made as it searched around, trying to find the source of the noise it had heard just moments before. Ellie had closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and was clearly holding in cries of terror by main force alone. Finally, the Clicker tired of its search and waddled away towards a door a few yards away leading to a corridor that ran along the far end of the office out onto the mezzanine.
Tess risked a look over the lip of the top of the rack and pointed. Joel nodded; there was a scaffold leading up out of this retail space to an upper floor's main corridor. Of course, they had to get past this Infected thing first.
Tess frowned and slowly slid one of the bottles out of the rack. Twenty years ago, it was probably worth hundreds of dollars. Now, it was just a tool. The woman rose up and tossed it across the office space to smash against the far wall of the mezzanine. The Clicker screeched and rushed towards the sound. Just when Joel was about to think it had worked… a second came out from an office on the other side of the internal corridor! Joel watched with growing frustration as the second Infected wandered out to a point right in front of the scaffold leading up and out and stood there, twitching spastically and making little screeching noises to itself.
Tess squeezed Ellie's shoulder and pointed to the left. The girl was white with fear but nodded and followed the woman as they crab-walked sideways along the arc of high dining tables towards the exit.
The second Clicker had wandered away a bit. Joel still didn't like the probable outcome of trying to climb the scaffold with those things nearby. He reached out and took a bottle from the table in front of him and threw it as hard as he could towards the lower-level lobby. There was a distant but startlingly loud shattering noise as the bottle it the floor of the lobby level. With a terrible screech, one of the Clickers raced onto the mezzanine walkway and stood there, clicking madly as it tried to detect what had made the noise. The other moved a few paces down the corridor but didn't go too far.
Joel grimaced. It was too much to hope for that the two things would have just jumped down into the lobby. He gestured savagely for Tess and Ellie to climb the scaffold before vaulting the tables and crab-walking slowly up behind the nearest Clicker. He could smell the musty rot in the rags that had once been the uniform of a waiter in a trendy wine bar as he lunged upright and drove one of his newly-crafted shivs into the creature's neck, carving open artery and vein. He then dove into a side office, likely the manager's, as the other Clicker spun around in response to the other's screech of death. Joel could hear the creature padding closer, the clicks of its echo-location filling the air. Joel flattened himself against the wall and willed his breathing to be shallow and silent as the creature scanned the office. Then he heard a faint 'clang' from outside. The Clicker turned towards the bar with a loud, dangerous hiss. As it braced itself to charge towards Ellie and Tess's location, Joel jumped out behind it and snapped the shiv off in the nape of its neck. The already-lifeless Clicker slumped to the floor.
Joel shot Ellie a scowl as she offered him a hand up to the top of the scaffold. A part of him admitted that it was pointless; this was hardly her fault, after all. However, his and Tess's 'cargo' had already been the vector of more trouble than they'd bargained for and a petty part of him wanted to blame someone.
Tess offered the girl a worried look. "You okay, Ellie?"
Ellie shot the woman a wan smile. "Other than shitting my pants… I'm fine."
The stairwell they found on the other side of the internal corridor was just trouble from the start. Up and down, it was regularly blocked and, although Joel was able to get them past a rolling architects' drawing cabinet that had somehow got jammed into one of the risers, even he wasn't going to get them past a collapsed ceiling.
"Do we go back up?" Ellie asked as Joel examined another eviscerated soldier.
"No, we go around the outside." Joel and Ellie both looked up to see Tess standing on a window cleaning/maintenance platform hanging outside the shattered windows.
"What? Are you serious?" Ellie blurted out. Joel didn't say it but the sign on the wall said 'Level 5', so he saw the girl's point. It was putting a lot of faith in a collection of metal planks, pipes, cables and connectors that had been hanging out in the elements without maintenance for twenty years and was hanging fifty feet up in the air.
"Aaahhh… this is crazy," Tess's voice had gone up an octave as she navigated the jiggling platform, its metal surface slick from the driving rain and the wind trying to throw her over the side. The woman turned and looked at Joel and Ellie, who were still in the stairwell landing, looking out of the shattered plate glass window after her with horrified expressions. "'S'okay," she lied through her teeth. "Just remember not to look down!"
Ellie nervously clambered the platform's safety rail and gently lowered herself down onto the platform's floor. "Okay… Don't look down… Don't look down…" She began to edge along the platform.
Joel sucked in his breath and vaulted onto the platform.
He probably let himself drop to the floor a bit too heavily because the platform rocked crazily from side to side, its support cables twanging and whining with the sudden stress. Ellie shot Joel a look of utter terrified accusation that the big man wasn't about to forget any time soon (although, if his clumsy move had killed them both, who could blame her?).
Tess gently eased Ellie up onto some kind of platform that was part of the corner of building. The two ladies edged around the corner, Ellie continuing to mutter her mantra: "Don't look down… Don't look down…"
Tess looked through the windows of another stairwell around the corner and touched Ellie's shoulder reassuringly. "You're okay; we've got our way through."
Joel never thought he'd appreciate so much the interior of a Clicker-infested ruin that was waiting to fall over into a bomb crater.
The way further down was blocked; really blocked. Joel, Tess and Ellie looked down from a second level set of windows, mostly broken now, at an open space, its side and roof blown away during the carpet bombing, with about a half-dozen Runners wandering about, raving to themselves. "Well, at least we know what happened to the rest of those soldiers," Tess remarked wryly.
Joel finished inspecting the loaded 357-Magnum revolver he had just obtained from another eviscerated solder. He looked down through the windows and scowled at the barrier of Infected killers. Any temptation on his part to try to shoot his way through them was ruled out off by the fact that, as Tess had indicated, half of them were former soldiers and were wearing body armour. There was no point whining about it, though. If they wanted out, they had to get past them. "I'll check it out; you stay up here with the girl."
Joel padded back the way he had come. To the left was a small office space whose floor had collapsed into a corridor running just behind the area infested with Runners. Joel dropped down as lightly as he could, very aware of the sensitivity of Infected denizens to sound. Joel noted a dead drinking fountain and, at its base a disconnected metal water pipe. He scooped up the treasure, twice as good as a club as any bit of wood could be.
Joel walked into the interior corridor. There were too doors leading deeper into the building; an office space of some kind. On the other side were the gaping frames of long-vanished plate-glass windows looking into the devastated office space beyond. Joel frowned. Apart for the five or six Runners, there was also a single Clicker, its head bowed, resting against a column.
Finding a cabinet to hide behind, Joel crouched down. What he needed now was patience. The strange thing about the Infected was that they tended to stay in more-or-less the same area where they Turned. They'd wander short and repetitive 'patrol routes' (often paths that held some significance to the human that they once had been) but didn't wander far from that unless they found something to attack. All Joel had to do is crouch behind the small end table and plot the routes they were taking. So long as he didn't make a noise or move in front of one of them, he was effectively invisible.
Quietly, he followed one of the Runners into the large office space on the opposite side of the corridor from the main open space. The creature seemed utterly oblivious of Joel's presence as he came up behind it, even though he had his torch on and he had no difficulty strangling the pseudo-life out of it.
Joel returned to his hiding spot and considered the disposition of the Runners and Clicker. It would be helpful if they were all in the same place and looking in the same direction. He pulled an empty bottle out of his pack and hurled it through the middle of the three doors between the corridor and the main open area. When the bottle struck home, there was a screech and two Runners ran over to it. The Clicker didn't leave its spot although it looked up at the noise. That was weird; why didn't it respond to the noise? Was it settling down to make spores? Whatever; Joel wasn't a fucking biologist and he didn't care what it was doing.
The big smuggler stalked back up the corridor and exited into a low-ceilinged area (low because the upper level had partially collapsed down) in pursuit of an ex-Military runner that was muttering to itself about something. Joel was just lowering the strangled corpse to the floor when there was a horrible shriek of discovery. He looked up to see a Runner charging him from the middle door. Once, Joel probably would have frozen but that was the man he was two decades ago. Today, he smoothly pulled out the brick he had stuffed into his pack and pitched it into the Infected atrocity's face. The creature's head jerked back from the solid impact and it staggered, losing the momentum of its charge. Joel met it half-way with a flat, horizontal swing of his pipe-club. There was a loud crunch as the front of the Runner's skull caved in and it was tossed back onto the ground in a spray of blood.
Nothing else responded to the Runner's attack cry or its messy death. Joel considered his options. There was a support column half-way down the area behind which stood the Clicker. Joel didn't fancy trying to sneak past that horror, so it was back out into the corridor.
A second runner emerged from behind the column, stumbling towards the same middle door out into the corridor. Trying to avoid making a noise, Joel sneaked up behind it. Not wanting to attract the Clicker's attention, he waited until the Runner was in the corridor before strangling it. Joel looked nervously over his shoulder. The Clicker was still quiescent and Joel was more-and-more sure of his ad-hoc theory that the thing was settling down to make spores.
Beyond the door by the long-derelict drinking fountain was a second runner wearing military body armour but seemingly unaware of Joel's presence. It was looking in the other direction. To keep things that way, he hurled the brick over its head and there was a loud crash as it hit the remains of the exterior windows. The Runner turned to the noise and hissed loudly, trying to detect prey. Thus it was unaware of Joel sneaking across the rain-soaked floor until the man slammed another brick he'd picked up from the fallen masonry that littered the floor into the side of its head and caved in its skull with three blows.
Joel looked around into the face of the Clicker from a distance of maybe five yards. The ruin of the Infected creature's face was looking right at Joel and the big Texan had no doubt in his mind that it had detected him during the noisy and messy elimination of the Runner. It raised its arms and took a single tentative step forwards with a faint ripping noise like a Velcro pad being torn open.
Joel pulled out his salvaged revolver and lined up his shot carefully. On the creature's third step, a 357-Magnum round punched into the centre of its chest, the impact knocking it backwards a pace. Joel re-sighted on the split mandible that passed as its top lip and fired again. The powerful pistol round blew apart the remains of creature's skull and the decapitated corpse dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Joel reloaded the revolver from the ammunition he'd found on one of the ex-Military Runners and swept the open area for more Infected. Nothing else moved; it seemed like this particular nest was now empty. "Alright!" he called up. "Come on down, Tess!"
Tess (with Ellie in tow) walked out of the middle door as Joel was tucking more rations and a few canteens of water into his pack. She was tucking a wooden stave into a loop on her pack. She looked around at the mess with an expression of grim approval. "I'm pretty impressed, Joel!" she remarked.
Joel gestured impatiently. "Let's just get out of here."
The way out was up onto the half-collapsed upper level, a section of which still extended from the left-hand wall. Joel clambered up onto the sloping concrete and left Tess to help their 'cargo' up. There was a dead soldier there with a Revolver with a single round remaining. Joel decided to hold the Revolver in reserve in case he needed heavy firepower. He tucked it into his pack with the three spare rounds he'd found and stuck his 9mm semi-automatic back into his waistband.
"Whoa!" Joel had to agree with Ellie. The area they had entered after an excursion through some office areas was an amazing sight. Large, open areas, probably corporate lobbies, had collapsed one after the other, leaving an open area leading right down to the basement level of the building. The view was spectacular, made stranger by the water pouring out of side corridors and the plant-life, possibly descendants of decorative plants in the offices, growing everywhere. It was like an indoor multi-level arboretum!
Tess was looking around but hadn't found any alternate routes. She gestured. "Down we go!" she remarked.
Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as it initially looked. It was possible to thread through the zig-zagging collapsed floors as if they were ramps. Finally, they emerged on the bottom level in what had once been the lobby of a corporate legal firm, by the still half-legible advertising posters and marketing brochures scattered about.
The way beyond that wasn't easy. The floor had collapsed in several places, leading into a darkened basement. Joel had to find a way through half-flooded tunnels created from partially-collapsed walls and corridors. Just to make things interesting, rain-water was pouring down from higher up in the building, creating waterfalls and currents that occasionally threated to knock the three travellers from their feet.
"Y'know… I was thinking…" Joel turned to Tess. The woman was fiddling with her Walther in a distracted way. "When this is all over and we're back home, maybe we should take it easy for a while?"
Joel stopped picking up the mechanical odds-and-ends and parts he had been scooping up and turned to face his partner. "You want us to take it easy?" he couldn't help but blurt with a mocking grin.
Tess stuck her gun back in her waistband and shrugged defensively. "Hey, you're the one who's always going on about 'laying low', remember?"
Joel quirked a sceptical eyebrow. "And you're the one who's always brushing me off!"
Tess shot Joel a smile quite unlike any other that Joel remembered seeing on her normally-grim face. "Well, I won't this time."
Joel actually laughed in a way that was not mocking. "I'll believe it when I see it!" he challenged. Tess shot Joel a look of flirtatious promise before walking past him.
"Joel and Tess, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…" Ellie sang quietly as she followed the woman in her exploration.
"Quiet, you fuckin' brat!" Joel growled but without much heat.
"Joel! Over here!" Tess called out from further along. "I've found a way down!"
Joel swung his torch around the subway station underground concourse that he, Tess and Ellie had just entered through a collapsed roof. A part of Joel remembered, when he was in middle school, being shown pictures of the underground tombs of the Pharaohs of Egypt. Long sealed off, a sort of frozen shrine to a vanished world and way of life filled with artefacts that once had a purpose and were now nothing but curiosities. From the look on Ellie's face that was definitely how she saw this place.
Tess walked over to a very, very fresh corpse curled up on its belly in a corner with rifle exit wounds through its back. She crouched down and checked it out. She tapped the black armband. "Firefly."
Joel nodded. "These guys aren't doing so good, in or out of the Zone." He crouched down too and picked up something loosely cradled in its arm. It was a very professionally-made Molotov Cocktail. Joel hefted the insurgent fire-bomb thoughtfully and, finding it of good quality, tucked it away in his pack. He noticed that Ellie was thumbing through a blood-splattered pamphlet titled 'Insurgent Ordinance – Basic Principles (Incendiary Devices)'. Joel snatched the how-to of building petrol bombs out of the girl's hands and tucked it into his pack too. She shot him an accusing look. "Nothin' the likes of you need to know anything about," Joel growled in response. He turned away and began to sweep the area for anything of use. "Let's just hope that there's someone alive to meet us at the drop off!"
Ellie shot Tess a worried look and Tess decided that the girl was worried about this… So was she, although she told herself that this was simply because they wouldn't get their pay-off if they couldn't prove that they had completed Marlene's errand.
Joel had gone half-way up the collapsed tunnel containing the escalators up to street level. Another bullet-riddled Firefly grunt was on the emergency stairs in between the escalators. Joel looked at the map he held in the corpse's hands. "Looks like these guys were advance security for the team that was meant to take the girl to the Capitol Building. They must have run into those soldiers before the Clickers got to them."
Tess squeezed Ellie's shoulder in an attempt at some kind of reassurance. "See? They're not our guys."
The trio regrouped and walked down a side-corridor with a sign indicating that the train platforms were this way; it was the only way out; the long-ago bombing had blocked every other exit with deep piles of rubble. As they stared down the corridor, their torch beams both caught an all-too-familiar shambling figure. All three instantly ducked down behind a toppled vending machine.
Tess shook her head in frustration as she watched several Clickers shambling around in the large waiting and retail area ahead. "Shit. God, we're almost out. Okay, Joel, you take point. I'll watch the rear. Ellie, no matter what, you stay right on his heels." She looked over at Joel and glared at him. "You stay sharp, you hear me?"
Joel considered their options for a moment. Unfortunately, Tess was right; there was no indication of a way out through the ruined skyscraper above. The only way out seemed to be to be through the Clicker-infested station. "Okay," he murmured. "Everyone remember to stay totally quiet. Check your every step and stay in close."
With extreme care, Joel began to crouch-walk into the open area. He swept his torch beam around; directly ahead was a seating area surrounded by wooden partitions, once topped with windows to either each side. Either side of that were rows of concessions – the usual variety of news-stands, food vendors and even book stores. On the far side were gates leading out onto the train platforms; Joel saw the sparkle of natural light that indicated that there was a way back up to the surface there. Naturally, it wasn't as easy as that. There were also several cave-ins.
To the left, a Runner in military gear was feasting on something, possibly a former colleague. Joel somehow resisted the urge to hold his breath as a Clicker shambled past with the type's distinctive jerky step close enough to touch. When it was past, Joel jumped up and rammed a fresh shiv into the side of its neck. The creature crumpled with a loud hissing breath. Joel looked around but nothing seemed to have noticed. Not liking the thought of something potentially threatening alive behind him, he then sneaked over to the Runner and wrung its neck.
The left-hand side shops were a dead end; the impact of the bombs had caused the way through to the platform gates to collapse on that side but it was the only way except through the trap of the waiting area; the way to the right-hand shops had also caved in. The shops yielded some potentially useful supplies. However, it was pretty clear that it was going to be difficult to sneak past the horde of Clickers that infested the area, assuming that it was even possible. The things kept coming out into the side walkways and the three companions were forced to lie low and quiet several times until one had passed them by.
Joel lowered a dead Clicker to the floor in the entranceway to a convenience store, leaving the snapped-off blade of the shiv in its neck. "I hate these things," Ellie murmured.
There was no choice but to double-back. Fortunately, Joel was able to lure the Clickers over to the far side of the main waiting area with a few well-placed thrown bottles and bricks, enabling the travellers to sneak through the waiting area to the area near the platform turnstiles. Joel hissed in anger when he realised that the gates were blocked by a Clicker and were obviously padlocked. The other Clickers would certainly be attracted by the noise of them forcing them open and it was even money if they could be closed again afterwards to keep the horrors from pursuing them.
Joel's mind raced. He didn't have enough quiet weapons to take out all of them. If he started shooting then the creatures would swarm; it took two or three hits to kill one, so they might overrun their group while they were reloading… The man frowned. Maybe he was looking at this the wrong way?
After getting Tess and Ellie to take shelter in the book store, Joel stepped out back into the corridor "Don't do anything crazy," Tess murmured, her scowl filled with fearful warning.
"'Crazy' was takin' on this job," Joel responded idly and threw a bottle down the length of the walkway to shatter against the cave-in at the far end.
Entirely as expected, the Clickers angled towards the noise and emerged into the walkway. "Okay…" he murmured to himself, pulling out the Molotov he'd salvaged from the dead Firefly. With a flick of his zippo, he lit the ignition rag and hurled it at the mass of Clickers.
It was a little-known fact that Cordyceps mycelium were highly flammable. As well as the strands on the nervous system, more grew on the skin, possibly part of the parasite's sensory system. Whatever their purpose might be, it made Infected incredibly vulnerable to fire if ignited. This was borne out now as the five Clickers at the other end of the walkway were turned into writhing, screeching blazing torches, most of which collapsed in seconds and were rapidly consumed by the hungry flame.
One staggered out of the inferno, somehow able to keep moving despite being an ambulatory distress flare. Joel stepped forwards and performed a perfect high-sweep with his pipe-club, practically knocking the creature's head off.
"Whoa!" Ellie's voice echoed as she gazed at the blazing remains of the Clickers.
Tess squeezed the girl's shoulder. "Keep it down; we don't know if there are any more down here!"
There were; Joel had already seen the Clicker standing by the gates. It was strange that it had not responded to the cacophony of the incineration of the others; maybe it was old and settling down to make spores?
Joel ducked back into the bookstore. As the note in the confectionary shop promised, there was a safe that, when opened, revealed long-useless money and some useful stuff like some spare parts and a box with around a half-dozen 38-calibre pistol bullets. Joel ignored them but Tess scooped them up.
Joel stalked towards the last Clicker, obviously a former soldier, from its clothing. The creature was definitely not interested in prey anymore and didn't seem aware of what was happening until Joel swung his pipe-club into its ugly mostly-gone face. Two more blows to the belly and head doubled it over and exploded the mass of brain and fungus that was all that remained of its skull.
A quick check confirmed that they weren't getting through the gates onto the platforms without a cutting torch. Fortunately, there was the bottom of a ladder jutting out above from a set of overhead maintenance catwalks. Joel boosted Tess up; the woman grabbed the bottom rung of the ladder and hauled it down.
Suddenly, Ellie shouted a warning. Joel looked up and saw a pair of Clickers clambering over the wooden partition from the waiting area. "Shit! So close!" Joel pulled out his Colt and sighted on the centre of the chest of the first charging Clicker. No time and no margin to try something fancy; he put four rounds into the creature's chest; like most things, the Clicker had a hard time moving with its heart blown into shreds of meat and collapsed. Joel hurriedly reloaded; two bullets weren't enough to stop or even significantly slow a Clicker…
Before he could get a shot off, Tess fired three shots from her recently-acquired 38-calibre revolver. The last Clicker staggered back and collapsed. "Come on, up! Go!" Joel gestured to the ladder. Tess practically flew up and swept the maintenance area with her torch and revolver. Ellie was up after her and Joel brought up the rear. As soon as he was up, he grabbed the ladder and hauled it up after him. No sense giving anything, human or once-human, an easier path to follow to find them!
After dropping down onto what had once been the Orange Line platforms, the three travellers found it relatively easy to scale the collapsed tunnel and road structure back onto the surface.
The dawn was creeping up over the horizon; Ellie stood still in the sunlight and just gloried in being out in the open and the light again. "Holy shit…! We actually made it!" She turned to her two escorts and actually grinned at them as if the whole thing had been nothing but a fun adventure! "You guys are pretty good at this stuff!"
"It's called 'luck'," Joel snapped before striding past the girl and out to a road junction marked with a shallow but significant bomb crater. "It is going to run out. Which way are we goin' now, Tess?"
Tess paused for a moment then pointed to the left. Everyone saw the sparkle of light off of the bronze dome. "The Capitol Building is that way."
To be continued…