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 7 – Downtown Boston, Part 2 (Echoes of the Past)

The three travellers had found themselves in a remarkably peaceful corner of the ruins of Boston. Even with the Goldstone Building looming overhead (tilting away from the road they were standing in, which was better for Joel's peace of mind), the sun was warming up the area nicely.

Joel had finished scouting around the crossroads at the centre of a set of low-rise brownstone buildings and had found nothing of interest. Tess and Ellie were standing by a semi-trailer that someone had somehow manoeuvred so that it completely blocked the street from one wall to the opposite wall. Joel figured that someone had been trying to set up some kind of barrier to keep out Infected before the evacuation into the Quarantine Zone began. "We need some way over this truck," Tess announced. "With all the streets around here bombed out or collapsed into the subway tunnels, this is the safest way to get through to the Capitol Building; definitely the quickest anyway. Look around and see if you can find anything to help us get over, Joel."

Joel decided to try what had once been a bank on the corner of the crossroads opposite the Goldstone Building. The doors were gone; probably torn off during the rioting in the period between the Outbreak and the formation of the Zones. It was weird, looking back to that time. The world was coming to an end so people wanted to take as many pieces of paper as they could find! Pre-Outbreak definitions of 'value' had long since been demonstrated to be delusional; it was probably one of the few things about the world that was that Joel honestly didn't miss.

"Joel!" Joel didn't need Ellie's urgent hiss of warning. He hadn't been so far gone in his introspection that he missed the threat before he even reached the doorway. The interior of the bank was a wreck; the rioters had torn out most of the furniture, leaving just an open wood-panelled box with impressive stone columns at the corners. More importantly, there were three Runners standing around in their hunched 'resting' position that most Infected took when they weren't actively hunting.

"What do we do?"

Joel shot the girl an ironic look. "We ain't doing nothin'. You go and stand with Tess, girl."

After considering the placement of the three Infected inside the room, Joel decided to take this slow and safe. He slowly advanced on the nearest, only too sensible that the slowly rotting wooden floor beneath him could betray him with a creak or groan at any moment. The way around it was to spend as little time on the floor as possible.

After wringing the neck of the nearest Runner, Joel carefully backtracked out of the building and then ran around to the side entrance, gaping open just like the first. Once again, Joel was able to sneak in silently and take down the second Runner without making too much sound.

The last one promised to be a bit more challenging. It… it used to be a 'she' but Joel refused to apply such personal terms to the creatures that were all that was left after Cordyceps snuffed out someone's humanity… was on the far side of the room beside a closed heavy wooden door leading into the bank's interior. Joel swallowed, pulled his battered but still usable pipe-club off of his backpack loop and slowly began to creep forwards towards the last Runner.

Luck runs out was a mantra of Joel's and it was borne out when, less than half-way to his target, a floorboard let out a creak that was practically deafening in the silence of the bank's grand room. The Runner looked up with a snarl, its blind eyes shining in the gloom. Joel didn't hesitate; he took two paces forwards and delivered a swinging overhand blow to the creature's face, sending it staggering back into a wall. Joel reversed his swing and drove the curved end of the pipe into the Runner's face again. Infected, even recently Infected, tended to start rotting from the inside in some way. The progressive destruction of their body tissues for nutrients by the Cordyceps made their bodies extra-fragile. So, Joel wasn't surprised when the Runner's head exploded like a ripe melon, painting the wall with blood, brain matter and glowing yellow lumps of Cordyceps fungal core.

Joel looked at the broken-off end of the pipe and with a curse, threw it aside. A change in the light levels forewarned him of Ellie and Tess appearing at the front entrance of the bank. Tess knelt down by the first Runner Joel had taken down and poked at its body armour thoughtfully. "Are all these guys soldiers, Joel?" Joel looked up from where he was considering a heavy set of drawers on caster wheels that was sitting in the middle of the floor. He nodded once in response to Tess's query and then began to push his find towards the entrance; it would serve his needs adequately. Tess frowned. "They weren't turned long ago."

"Which means whatever Turned them is still in the area and more besides," Joel growled. "We gotta go!"

Joel manoeuvred the drawers alongside the trailer and hauled himself on top of it before clambering up onto the trailer's roof. A quick check showed no indication of any Infected on either side of the barrier. Of course, all that meant was that none had come this way… yet. "Okay, climb on up!" he called.

Ellie ran over and was up on the roof surprisingly quickly. Joel jumped down on the other side and began to scout around for another way out. There was certainly no way through on street level. A brownstone had partially collapsed and its rooftop water tank, a gigantic thing, had fallen sideways into the street, creating a smooth-sided ten-foot-high unscalable curved wall.

To one side were roller-shutters to a loading dock of some kind. The chain for the pulley seemed in good order and so did the raising mechanism as best as Joel could tell. "Maybe we can cut through here," he mused.

"Yeah, that one worked out great last time!" Joel looked over at Ellie who was posed in practically a parody of a 'smartass little girl' posture, one hand on a cocked hip, a smirk on her lips. Joel glared angrily at the teenager in a way that made her wilt slightly. It probably would have been more effective if Tess hadn't had to hurriedly muffle her snigger behind her hand. "Sorry… I'm just sayin'…" the girl attempted to apologise.

With a growl of annoyance (and it was amazing how often the little brat was making him do that), Joel turned back to the chain and began to haul. Despite two decades of neglect, the roller shutter began to groan upwards hand-over-hand. Tess suddenly hissed for silence. "Did you hear that?"

Joel looked around. "I didn't hear nothing…" There was a loud, inhuman screech that was created by a human voice and it was far too close by.

"Okay, double-time!" Tess snapped out, fear sending her voice up an octave.

"Shit! Look!" Joel did the dumb thing and did just that in response to Ellie's panicked cry. At least two Runners were standing on top of the semi-trailer and glaring down at them. Several more were clambering up with them. "They're coming!"

"I KNOW!" Joel replied, hauling on the chain for all he was worth as the first Runner leapt down into the street and began to charge them.

Tess shoved Ellie towards the shutters "That's enough! Under now! Go! Go!" Ellie and Tess dived through the barely hip-high space. Tess jumped back onto her feet and grabbed the shutter with a growl of effort and discomfort, struggling to hold it open.

"Okay, Joel! Come on!" Ellie shrieked.

Joel barely escaped the clawing fingers of the first few Runners as he threw himself under the shutters with a shout of "DROP IT!" Tess and Ellie jumped back as Joel yanked his feet back inside, just barely getting clear of the shutter as it slammed down with a loud crash. Tess hauled her partner to his feet as the Runners beat relentlessly on the unyielding metal, screaming their frustrated hunger. With every deafening blow, all three jumped back a pace.

After a long few moments, everyone's breathing and pulse rates dropped back down below 'crisis' level. Ellie noticed something and looked downwards. What she saw made her pale. "Uh… Joel? You've… you've got something on your shoe!"

Joel looked down too and grunted in annoyance. One of the Runners had clearly got hold of his ankle. The falling shutter had sliced through the Infected's festering arm like a cleaver and the lower arm, ending just above the elbow, was still firmly attached to its prospective prey. Joel shook it off without any change of expression. It might be a horror to Ellie but he'd seen far worse things in his time. "Okay, so how do we get out of this place, oh fearless leader?" he snarked to Tess.

Tess shot Joel a sour look. "We'll have to find out but there's no rush. The place seems secure; it would be smart to wait until the ruckus dies down just a bit." Tess jerked her head towards the shutters where the Runners were still pounding and shrieking. "Let's see what we can find here."

The two smugglers spread out and began to search what was clearly a combined loading dock and garage area for any useful stuff that had been left behind when this part of Boston had been evacuated nearly two decades ago. It quickly became clear that the place had once been a treasure-trove. One-of-a-kind artworks and irreplaceable historical documents were boxed and lying around, both on the loading dock and in the back of the small truck parked in the middle of the space. They were clearly had all awaiting evacuation to the hidden national archives somewhere to wait until the crisis had passed. Now, they were just kindling, firelighters, rot and dust waiting to happen.

However, Joel almost immediately found something interesting. The garage area had a fully-equipped work bench and engineering station. More surprising was that, when he tried it, the high-wattage angle-poise lamp snapped on. Even more shockingly, the soldering iron powered up. He guessed that the building had solar panels on the roof as an emergency power source and that, by luck, the cabling hadn't decayed or been damaged yet. There was enough stuff lying around that he was able to do something he'd wanted to do for a while and do some equipment maintenance on their guns.

After cleaning both his and Tess's pistols and ensuring that the cylinder swing on the revolvers were lubricated to allow a quicker reload, he turned his attention to the nine-millimetre semi-automatics' magazines. In the last few years before the Outbreak, the government had been taking increasingly stringent measures to control gun violence. One of these measures had been rules to limit magazine sizes on semi-automatic-loading rifles to ten rounds, shotguns to four rounds and pistols to six rounds. Most weapons outside of FEDRA's military these days conformed to those standards. However, Joel knew a way around this. He hadn't done it before because being caught with a technically legal pistol was bad but survivable; being caught with one that had been customised outside FEDRA's regulations (before private ownership of weapons was outlawed altogether about a decade back) was fatal. Something told him that such subtlety wasn't going to be an issue for him and Tess for a while from now.

Tess, meanwhile, had found large 50-gallon water bottles with their seals still intact. It was unlikely that there hadn't been any contamination from the plastic in the bottles themselves but it was still water and anyone who had lived in the QZ for any length of time had built up resistance to a certain level of contamination in water.

After filling up all the small 2-litre bottles she and Joel had in their packs, she filled up a pair of tin cups and walked over to where Ellie was sitting on the edge of the loading dock. She offered the titian-haired girl one of the cups and the two of them sat down together in silence for a while.

After a moment watching Joel work, Tess turned her attention to her 'cargo'. Ellie was reading a small pamphlet she'd found lying inside the truck's cab whilst chewing meditatively on a chunk of ration bar. It had been written by some group called the 'CDC' and contained details of how CBI affected people. It was obviously very old; probably from shortly after the outbreak given the relative lack of details about anything worse than Runners.

There was something cute about Ellie's concentration. Tess restrained the urge to mess up the girl's hair. Instead, she nudged her shoulder gently. She didn't know what she had been thinking of saying but, seeing the pamphlet that she vaguely remembered from those terrifying few years between Outbreak and Collapse decided the direction of her thoughts. "So, Marlene thinks that you're immune to Cordyceps?"

Credit where it was due, Ellie managed to stay cool despite Tess treading on sensitive ground. She looked up at Tess for a moment before replying in an equivocal tone. "Well, that's what she believes, yeah."

Tess nodded. "How were you bitten? I mean, you must have been somewhere you shouldn't to have found Infected in the Zone!"

Ellie sighed slightly. She folded up the pamphlet and tucked it into her pack. "I was in the military boarding school for orphans. It was… well, 'boring' don't really cover it. So, I'd sneak out whenever I could."

Tess blinked in surprise. "You'd 'sneak out'?"

Ellie couldn't help but offer the smuggler a fey smile. "Easier than you'd expect. Anyway, I wanted to explore the city and the like. I was in the Mall when I was bitten."

Tess couldn't help but be impressed. There was so much salvage in that place…! If she and Joel could get in, they could earn enough Cards to set them up for years! "That place is so completely off-limits! How did you get in there?"

Ellie shrugged vaguely. "I… I've got my ways. Anyways, I was in there when one of those… What do you call 'em? The ones that still look mostly human and alive?"

"Runners."

"Yeah, Runners. One of them bit me. That was that."

"So, you were with Marlene when this happened?"

Ellie shook her head. "No, I was with Ri…" Tess's shrewd eyes caught Ellie's wince and wasn't surprised by the girl's next words. "I was with one of my friends. She didn't make it. I went to Marlene for help when I realised that I hadn't Turned."

Tess snorted. "I'm surprised she didn't shoot you on sight!"

"She almost did!" Ellie sighed. "I hope she's alright."

"She's a survivor," Joel growled. Ellie and Tess both looked up as the big Texan joined them. "She's going to be fine." The big man passed Tess her Walther and Smith &Wesson 10V 38-calibre Police Special. "I've taken out the mag size limiter, so you can fit eight rounds per magazine. The revolver was in good order but I've eased the spring on the trigger a touch to make it easier and quicker to fire. Be careful with it; it'll be a bit more hair-trigger now than before."

Tess dropped the Police Special into her pack and tucked her Walther into the waistband at the back of her jeans. She got up and helped Ellie up too. "Okay, we've all rested up enough; let's get moving."

CRASH!

"Shit! Sorry! That was me! My bad!"

Joel growled and squeezed the bridge of his nose to hold back the early threat of an oncoming headache. Like most kids, Ellie just couldn't help but touch stuff. In this case, big, heavy, fragile and probably priceless stuff that had just smashed on the floor and likely brought every Infected in earshot running. "Tess," he said in an elaborately calm voice.

Tess scowled at a grimacing and remorseful-looking Ellie and yanked the girl close to her side. "You… stick… close!" the woman snapped.

"Sorry!" Ellie squeaked quietly and sounded like she meant it.

Joel hauled himself up to the second storey using the collapsed ceiling as a makeshift ramp. He swung his torch beam around the room, tracking with his nine-millimetre and alert for any sign that Ellie's clumsiness had attracted attention of the worst kind. Thankfully, that bullet seemed to have been dodged.

Joel picked up the ID tag of Michael Kiper, Firefly #000109 and decided to take it as a good sign – He and Tess were still going in the right direction.

He watched as Tess and Ellie worked their way up the 'ramp'. Ellie looked around the room, her brow puckering in confusion. Joel couldn't blame her. Inside the Zone, anyone who wasn't a high-ranking FEDRA functionary or ranking Lieutenant Colonel or above didn't tend to see stuff like real oil paintings, sculptures and the like. Ellie had probably never seen anything close to this gallery of the treasures of the old world. "What is this place?"

Tess looked up from where she was picking up a bottle of multivitamins that had been sitting on a window-sill. "It's an old museum. Most of this stuff was hundreds of years old!"

"Used to be pretty much priceless, too," Joel noted. "Places like this were guarded and this stuff had armies of folk that kept it safe and intact!"

"Really? Wow!" Ellie looked at a certain famous picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River with his men. She'd seen a photo of this picture in her history book at school but there was something about seeing the much larger original. She had an interesting question: "So, if this shit is so valuable, why did FEDRA leave it here to rot? I mean… shouldn't they have taken it to the Zone to keep it safe from bandits and the like?"

Joel had never been into history or museums; he was a practical man at heart. Nonetheless, he saw Ellie's point; one day this would be gone and people would forget it had ever been. "Times change," he opined after a brief pause. "Stuff that used to be important…? Well, if it don't help you find food, shelter and keep the Infected off your back, then it's just is a lot of trouble and lives at risk for no gain now."

There was some indication that the museum's evacuation was unexpected and early. As they searched the second storey galleries, Joel and Tess found lots of tools and bits lying around that might prove useful. However, it was clear that time was catching up with this place. The only way through to the other side of the building was blocked by a collapsed ceiling.

Joel and Tess shone their torch on the mess blocking a doorway. Heavy lumps of concrete and fallen timbers. Neither of them liked the look of it. Finally, Joel made up his mind. "Okay, I think I can lever the rubble out of the way with this beam. You've got to get under fast, okay? Don't know how long I can hold that load."

With a growl of discomfort, Joel hauled down on the beam, lifting several hundred pounds of fallen concrete and brick up and giving a relatively tiny crawl-space for the other two. "Okay, now watch your head and hurry! Go! Go! Go… shit…!"

Ellie had just followed Tess through the gap when the beam suddenly snapped with a deafening crack that would have echoed through the building if it hadn't been drowned out by the roar of falling rubble. Joel rolled back and out of the way, making like a turtle and covering his head. After a few moments, the sound of falling brick and concrete stopped.

"Joel!" Tess's voice had a sound of urgent terror that roused Joel at once.

"I'm still alive!" he called back. With the partially-collapsed ceiling, there was no way Joel could stand up straight. He crouch-walked over to the door; there was no way they were moving that mess in anything less than an hour. "I'll have to make my way around to you. Find somewhere secure and I'll find…"

Ellie suddenly looked over her shoulder and gasped in fear. "Tess! Look, they're here!"

Tess looked too and cursed angrily, yanking out her semi-automatic pistol. "Damn it! Run! Run!" The woman and girl fled and, a few seconds later, Joel found out why as two Clickers, rattling and crackling in their inhuman way, staggered past.

Joel crouched in the partially collapsed room for a seeming age. "Tess…!"

After getting out of the nightmare maze of partially-collapsed rooms, Joel found himself at one end of a long corridor stretching the length of the building. He was very much in enemy territory and could clearly hear the hollow crackling of Clickers' echo-location calls in the rooms to one side.

The man's mind was spinning with worry for his partner. Joel had always tried to keep things professional and business-like with Tess but now, with her missing and in this Infected-filled death-trap of a museum, he admitted that he'd failed. She was a friend… Maybe she was more; it didn't matter really. The point was that he had once again proven his maxim that developing emotional connections was bad for the head in this post-Outbreak world where they could be taken away at any moment. Even the thought of Tess made Joel hiss out a breath in despair.

Suddenly, he had something else to worry about as a Clicker lurched through the door from the corridor. The big man froze and, miraculously, the creature didn't seem to detect him. It wandered past and turned into the exhibition galleries running along the length of the building beyond the corridor.

The time had come to stop worrying and start acting. Staying as quiet as he could, Joel snuck up behind the creature and followed it through the door. Once into the square room, Joel lunged forward and drove his top-quality shiv into the side of its throat, ripping open its trachea and the blood vessels. The Clicker made a shuddering gasp and crumpled; Joel lowered it quietly to the floor.

To one side a room led into a far larger gallery with, of all things, a horse-drawn carriage as its centrepiece. Joel looked around the semi-darkened room and held in a curse; making a noise right now wouldn't be healthy. There were at least four and possibly as many as six Clickers lurching about the space. Joel mentally catalogued his weapons – He had a shiv that was probably good for a couple of more uses, fourteen rounds for his nine-millimetre semi-auto and nine rounds for his revolver. Theoretically enough to disinfect this room but Joel knew that his chances would be a lot less in reality; the way the things tended to swarm loud noises would overwhelm him quickly.

So, as Tess always advised, he decided to do things smart. He quietly retraced his steps back to the corridor. After sneaking through the doors from the junction room into the corridor properly, Joel noted another Clicker patrolling up and down the corridor. Sucking in a deep breath and taking his courage in hand, he waited until the Infected creature turned around and began to creep along behind it.

When the corridor opened up to the left, Joel ducked inside, hoping to find some position from which he could explore the area without having to dodge around Clickers.

The former fast-food concession was Infected-free, which was a good start. Joel quickly snuck through the space to duck behind the counter. "Tess…? Shit!" Well, it was probably too much to hope for that Tess was hiding out somewhere here; he had to check though. The area yielded some supplies, including a can of FEDRA rations and enough bits that Joel was able to knock together a basic shiv.

Joel couldn't resist using it immediately to get access to a store-room to the left of the wide doorway out into the corridor. The expenditure was almost immediately rewarded. The place was survivalist's goldmine with a full first-aid kit, some FEDRA meal bars, a pallet of bottles of water and a sealed tool kit without a hint of rust on the tools. Best of all, Joel found a couple of half-empty boxes of ammo for his semi-automatic and revolver. Someone had this set up as a store of supplies although the layer of dust on everything suggested to Joel that whoever had done so hadn't visited for a long time.

Joel peeked out of the concession back into the corridor and found that his head was clearer. Good, I'm no good to Tess if I'm so messed up I can't think! He flung a glass bottle that he'd grabbed from behind the counter into the far gallery. With a hiss, the Clicker guarding the end of the corridor lunged into the gallery and Joel could hear the frantic rattling as the creatures all tried to locate the source of the loud sound.

Joel double-timed it as quietly as he could to the corridor and found that the Clicker had been standing by an open door. Joel ducked through and closed it behind him.

The Runner that was furiously trying to smash open the door at the end of the top floor corridor was so focussed on its task that it didn't notice Joel's approach until he wrapped his arms around its throat in a sleeper hold and choked its life out.

Joel dropped the corpse when he heard the familiar voice from beyond the door. "Ellie, stay back…! Get the fuck off of me!" He didn't bother with niceties but simply kicked the door inwards. Inside was a cluttered store-room filled with likely-priceless pieces of history and works of art. At the far end, Tess was bent over backwards over a low cabinet table by a Runner that was trying to tear her apart. The woman had a wooden stave across its throat but was barely holding if off. Joel yanked his newly-crafted reinforce wooden club out and charged towards the confrontation but it wasn't necessary. Tess got her boot into the Runner's gut and pushed back. This gave her enough breathing room to smack it in the side of the head. As the Runner reeled back, Tess was able to get back upright and deliver a far stronger blow to the side its head, basically smashing off the front of its skull.

"I… I'm fine," Tess snapped at Joel as he reached her side, all but brushing off his concern. Suddenly, Ellie cried out in fear from somewhere beyond the storeroom. "The girl!" Tess immediately tossed the remains of her club aside and lunged through another door into a gallery stretching across the width of the building.

The problem with Runners is that they rarely, if ever, came alone. They almost inevitably seemed to come in packs and they tended to swarm. Just in front of Joel, a Runner was trying to get a bite of Ellie whilst more were charging in from two archways into another, larger gallery to the left.

Joel yanked his revolver out of his waistband and put a 357-Magnum bullet through the temples of the Runner planning to snack down on the 'cargo'. Two more Runners were charging forwards from the opposite end of the gallery. To his left, Joel heard Tess's Walther firing and saw four blood-red rosettes splash into being on one's chest, sending it tumbling back onto the floor. Joel lined up his gun on the other and tried another head-shot. The window behind the Runner shattered. Joel didn't indulge himself with a curse but re-aimed and put a bullet into the creature's chest, making it stagger.

"Joel, to your left!" There was no time to do anything in response to Ellie's shout except raise his left elbow to get it in the Runner's throat and block its attempted bite. The big man shoved back, causing the Runner to stagger back against the wall. With an opening, Joel was able to get the upper hand. He stuck his gun back in his waistband and delivered a bone-crushing one-two punch to the creature's face; stepping forward, he grabbed it by the back of the head and rammed it face-first into a display cabinet. Cordyceps-weakened bone met aged hardwood and the wood won out. Looking up, he saw Tess slam a brick into the side of the head of the Runner he'd shot a few moments ago, finishing it off.

Another Runner charged out of the archway but Joel was prepared. He pulled out and swung his new improvised club. He was quite proud of this construction – a long, thick wooden tool shaft with metal shelf-frames duct-taped around the corners to give it more strength. The first head-height swing sent the creature staggering sideways. The second caved in its face and sent it down for the long count.

There was no time to take stock. At the far end of the larger gallery, at least eight more Runners were coming in through a window leading out to some kind of balcony, perhaps a fire escape of some sort. The majority were charging along the far wall. Joel's racing mind was 'in the zone' and gave him a plan, fully prepared in an instant. Reaching into his pack, he pulled out a Molotov, ignited it and threw it at the mob as they reached a display showing a model of a mounted Minuteman horseman and began to split up, some heading for Joel and the other to the far arch into the gallery where Tess and Ellie were.

As with all Infected, the Runners were vulnerable to fire and the majority went up like road flares. There was no time to deal with any that escaped the fire because one Runner had done an end run across the end of the gallery and now was charging right at Joel. He yanked out his revolver again, put a bullet into its chest, making it stagger. He took a moment to aim and put a second bullet into its forehead, ending its mockery of a life.

"Joel!" Joel swivelled and saw something from his nightmares. Tess had been grabbed by a very large Runner and had staggered back against a bench, catching the back of her knees and forcing her down into a sitting position. The Runner had the advantage of leverage and was using it to try to get a bite in. Pulling a brick he'd grabbed earlier out of the pack, Joel raced into the room, ready to knock the Infected horror away. Then he heard another inhuman screech from a human mouth. Another Runner was charging right at him from the far end of the small gallery. Joel slammed the brick it into the charging creature's face. A second blow followed and, with the third, he felt its skull shatter.

"Hey, asshole! Chew on this!" There was a sound of glass shattering; the girl? Joel whirled back to his partner to see the Runner staggering away from Tess and Ellie, posed aggressively with a broken bottle in her hand. Tess was still on the bench, looking stunned; there wasn't time for pretty tactics; Joel yanked out his revolver and, sighting carefully, blew the Runner's Infected brains all over the wall.

For now, the fight seemed over. Joel stormed over to Ellie. "God damn it!" he roared, jabbing a finger in her face. "Have you got a fuckin' death wish? From now on you stay out of the line of fire and don't get in the…"

"Joel!" Joel shot Ellie a dirty glare before turning to Tess. "Joel, it's okay! If… if she hadn't… If she hadn't knocked that thing off of me…"

Tess looked badly rattled, something that Joel wasn't used to with his normally ice-cool partner. Then he noticed that she was holding open a ragged tear in the shoulder of her blouse. "Jesus, Tess! Are you okay? Did it bite you?"

Tess managed to give him a shaky smile. "Close, but not today. It was about to chow down on me; if she hadn't knocked that thing off at that very moment, it might be a different story!" Tess looked over at Ellie who was glaring at Joel resentfully. "I guess that's one we owe her."

Joel hissed out a breath. He wanted to say something like: 'No, it's one you owe her' but, somehow, he wasn't able to force the lie across his tongue. Finally, he chose to deal with his feelings by swinging open his revolver's cylinder, ejecting the spent brass and reloading it.

After reloading their guns, quickly sweeping the two galleries and finding nothing more useful than a couple of bricks, the three stood beside the window through which the Runners had been entering. As Joel had expected, there was a fire escape running up to the roof.

Tess was unnaturally pale and seemed distracted, rubbing at the shoulder where she had a near-miss with Infection. Joel could empathise; it had been too close and with just a bit too much time to think about it before the moment of truth. He reached over and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you okay?"

The woman sucked in a breath and shot her partner a defiant glare. "Just winded," she insisted. "Come on; let's get up to the roof. I bet we'll be able to find a path from up there."

As Tess ducked through the window, carefully sweeping around herself with her Walther as she did so, Joel turned to Ellie. The girl had been standing with awkward posture nearby. Joel couldn't help but be impressed by her ability to just shrug off the carnage and keep functioning but she was only a kid. Remembering his manners, he moderated his voice a little. "How about you, kid? You okay?"

Ellie offered him a shaky smile. "Define 'okay'."

Joel rolled his eyes. "Are you still breathin'?" he clarified.

"Do short, panicked gasps count?" Joel nodded with a humourless expression. "Then I'm okay," the girl confirmed.

"Hey!" Tess called from outside. "Let's pick it up!"

On the roof, Tess was standing, looking out over the cityscape of post-apocalyptic Boston at a bronze dome shining in the dawn's light. The brunette woman gestured at the distant landmark. "There she is!"

Joel considered the location. He had no intention of going back down to street level. However, there was another option. The roof of the next building was very close; it was possible that there was only a narrow alleyway between them. It was too far to jump but… Ah! Good!

A few moments later, Joel had the bit of builder's lumber he'd found on the roof set across the gap. He turned to Ellie, who had been looking around her with an expression of wonder. "Okay, kid, you're up first. Now, watch your step because it's gonna be a little…" Ellie brushed off Joel's incipient lecture about plank-walking safety with a sound of disgusted contempt before agilely clambering up onto the plank and confidently walking across to the next roof.

Joel looked over to Tess who… was the bitch laughing at him? If she was, she hid it well. She raised her eyebrows and gestured for him to follow Ellie over.

Joining Ellie at the far end of the roof, Joel considered how the girl was looking at the skyline. There was something about how she was reacting that made him think that it wasn't just naiveté. There was something genuine about her wonder for this ruin of a world from before she was even born. Being outside the walls of the Zone really did mean something to her. He couldn't help but hope that the hell of the real world wouldn't break that wonder too cruelly. "So, is it everything that you hoped for?" he asked.

"Jury's still out," the girl conceded. "But… man! You can't deny that view!"

With a disgusted growl, Joel tossed aside the orders that had been carried by the unfortunate Firefly they found in the backyard of a square of tenements. It hadn't told him anything that he didn't know, other than the growing gnawing in his gut that this was going to turn out to be a wasted trip. He surprised himself by actually thinking about what they were going to do with Ellie and how she might fit into his growing determination to quit Boston.

"Is there gonna be anyone left to meet us?" Ellie asked fearfully.

"Yes, there will," Tess snapped. Maybe Joel only imagined it as he dropped the two 357-calibure bullets he'd grabbed off of the dead insurgent into his ammo pouch but it sounded like Tess had whispered. "There has to be someone left!"

After getting across the roof of an area sealed off for never-to-be-completed maintenance work, the three travellers ended up in a wide boulevard. Dodging around a few long-abandoned police barriers, they found themselves standing within spitting distance of the Massachusetts State Capitol Building. Joel didn't make any comments about luck but it figured that there would be one last problem. Something had flooded Derne Street and turned the whole front approach to the building into a lake.

"Um… Just to get this out there… I can't swim." Joel looked over at Ellie. That figured too.

"It's shallower on the right-hand side," Tess responded neutrally. "Stay on that side and you should be okay."

As they waded into the water, Ellie suddenly spoke up. "Y'know, I'm glad that Marlene hired you guys!"

Joel, seeing a sparkle of light off of metal struck out to a rotunda at the street end of the flooded courtyard. He figured that either the Charles or Bass River had to have burst their long-unmaintained levies and banks and then flooded this part of downtown sometime recently, given that there was an old tour boat rammed up against the railings.

Meanwhile, Tess looked at Ellie in surprise. "What do you mean?"

Ellie blushed slightly. "Look, I know that you guys are gettin' paid to get my ass here but… What I'm saying is… I'm trying to say 'thanks', okay? I doubt that I'll have time later; the other Fireflies will probably want to get me out of the city now rather than later."

Tess couldn't help but smile slightly. Being told 'thank you' was a rare enough thing, these days. "Yeah… sure thing."

The woman and the girl slogged out of the flood and mounted the stairs to the grand entrance of the building. Joel was a minute or so behind them, still looking thoughtfully at the ID pendent of Melinda Davidson, Firefly #000214. As he walked up to the door, he pulled out his revolver. He nodded at Tess, who had her Walther ready. The two smugglers pushed together and the doors burst open.

Inside was a scene of carnage. At least five Fireflies; from their injuries, they'd been hit by Clickers. Joel looked around and noted three of the Infected horrors, all riddled with bullet-holes. He was snapped out of his contemplation by Tess's cry of rage. "No, no, NO!" she shouted, her voice breaking in fury and despair.

To be continued…