**Preface: This chapter explores how an Umbrella BOW interacts with civilians;
Naughty Dog owns Ellie and Joel
CAPCOM owns Ada wong
Content Heads-up: BOWs are violent, even when they are not. If you don't like violence against women just skip. I'm not trying to ruin your day, just mine.
It was very cloudy and windy. There was a stack of bodies in the field across from the house, but the whole street was cleaned, and cars were all too neatly parallel parked. The front lawn was mushy from all the rain. Two tall lodgepole pines stood on the right side of the lawn. Ellie walked off the front steps into the lawn, looking around at the empty scene. Troy was nowhere to be found, although she could hear clicking in the distance behind this house. She walked backwards onto the concrete path, and then tread slowly to the driveway. She saw the brown fat hen from yesterday laying beside the parked truck.
She heard the front door shut, and turned quickly-walking a few steps to the entrance. Must've been the strong wind.
"Troy," she said cautiously. "Troy where are you?"
She hadn't seen him out front, and so she went back to the driveway to look again. From the driveway looking forward and across the street, was a large church and parking lot. She looked up the street, which sloped upwards rather sharply. Infected were shambling along the sides of the road-but they weren't coming close to her.
She needed to name these things; Piercers.
Because of their one big dagger bone arm that pinned their victims down.
And these piercers also secreted black acid goo too when Troy ripped them apart.
To rip a body apart…it was a gimmicky videogame mechanic, but in real life it was horrifying to actually witness.
Troy grabbing the motionless sitting woman by her head.
She shut her eyes tight and shook herself, to clear it from her mind.
She peeked around the other side of the house. Nothing She was trying to see in the dusty dirty window of the other house, when she heard whistling, like indirect fire.
The whistling echoes gave Ellie chills. She squatted down with her gun out, and looked sideways and up. Out of the corner of her eye she saw black, and then looked up to see jagged claws right above her and lowering fast. She felt her body being pushed uncomfortably hard into the ground as pressure slammed her head. She yelped in surprise and then crouched, petrified in shock.
Somehow she had entered into an alligators enclosure, and was now its toy. She prayed desperately that he wouldn't suddenly snap his claws shut onto her.
She could feel a kind of radioactive presence that was peeling off her skin, making it into that static that Riley was describing.
"Elllieee!" Joel shouted. "Ellie come inside!"
The claws moved in and out loosely from around her, barely scraping the pavement. From the way he moved, it seemed he was unable to dig in. She heard her own laughter-from his body, and Troy's face finally came into her view. His eyes were closed. His nose twitched, as if his mouth muscles were trying to open. His maxilla and mandibles did seem to be doubly plated bone and muscle.
"What the shit, Troy?" She breathed out, hyperventilating. Now was the worst time to panic. "I thought…I was...your boss!" He stopped entrapping her.
He lay down in the prone position beside her, facing away. It was the same as an alligator decidedly ignoring its prey while going and laying still beside it.
He slowly crawled behind the house, quickly reappearing with his extra-large military rucksack. He dug in and retrieved his notepad. Then he scraped onto the pad, nudging it toward her feet on the grass.
'TRAINING BOSS'
"Oh yea." She muttered, her hand over her quickly fluttering heart. "Yea you need training, new employee. But." She cleared her throat.
"First things first- new employee. You need to heat up this house. I'm fucking freezing! And last night you forgot an important-"
Troy's curled lips was inches from her own, showing the hint of two large canines, looking longer than her finger-just like that bear thing which had attacked her yesterday. She leapt back in surprise, because for a second she had felt his murderous intentions cutting her apart. He pretended to cough lightly and sat down with his arms behind his chest. He was slumping into slumber. Ellie counted to three, gathering her wits about her.
"Hey! This is a business Troy! It's MY" She pointed at her chest, "business! I need you to pull your shit together because we got so much work to do!"
He nodded at her cartoonishly slow and chirped lightly. Her shoulders slumped with relief, even though she was freaked out.
"Yea so like, we need a heater, we need to, ummm…heat the bath water. Right the client wants a warm bath, so we gotta figure out how to heat up the water. Can you do that?"
He wrote,
'INSIDE BOSS'
She walked backwards slowly, as her heart beat a few miles per second. She saw his leg muscles convulsing with each of her footfalls and slowed down even more. Finally she got inside and closed the door. She banged her head against it lightly. She heard Troy's rumbling growl turn into a roar that carried for miles.
Then she turned around and noticed something.
On the wall of the hallway, the words were etched, 'YOU ARE STUPENDOUS'
She traced each letter. The indentations for 'you', 'are', 'stup' were very deep and wide. Then the remaining characters were light calligraphy.
"Nice" Ellie said to herself proudly. Troy had scribbled that in the night while she was dead asleep. She grabbed up some of the rags beside the couch and hustled up the stairs. The woman was back asleep, curled up with goosebumps on her skin. Ellie lay on the bed and put the towels over the woman. Ellie's fingers combed through the matty hair, staring at the peaceful face.
She whispered, "Hey! Lady? Come back to me! I need some advice."
A light huff let Ellie know that the woman was listening.
"The new employee wants training, lady. He wants me to teach him but I don't know-"
The woman said, "What?"
"Teach him how to help survivors. He's not normal-hes like-like yesterday, he killed a whole neighborhood of infected. He's like the male version of Angel Knives..you probably don't know that arcade thing though."
Ellie shook her head in disbelief at the events from yesterday. It wasn't easy to wrap her head around being alive right now. He wants training. Had an alligator ever wanted to save a human being? Was such a thing possible with alligators? But this alligator had actually kinda asked.
The woman's whole body trembled. Her eyes looked upon Ellie.
She held out her palm flat. Her keen eyes pointed, and Ellie slapped her hand down onto the woman's palm. The woman nodded, and a light left her eyes. It was like she had found and lost her will to live in only a few brief moments, and it broke Ellie just a little bit. Maybe she should've shut her trap about the new ghost town.
Ellie cuddled with the woman on the bed, planning her lesson. She had just had a panic attack looking at Joel's hand. In Riley's last moments, she herself had been clutching onto her hands. It seemed too simple. Almost laughable.
It wasn't long until Joel was yelling for her from downstairs.
She went down to the living room, crouching beside him on the couch.
"The client wants a bath. She's gonna help me teach Troy how to save survivors."
Joel thought back to the bruised neck and her shaking bruised arms, with her eyes closed in pain.
"What?" he said incredulously. He still couldn't move.
"Ellie. Here's the thing with this guy; it's all gonna slip. He was not supposed to be anywhere near us-near people. Ok that's the truth now-from me to you. Just let him stick to his original job Ellie, for fuck's sake!"
"Joel. Ok…but this woman is helping me learn how to run a business. She's gotta be like, trained or something to survive on her own on the outside-right? She fucking said she wants to help him. She said it!"
"Color me shocked if I don't fucking believe that for a million bucks." Joel said. "Listen Ellie-she's a dead woman and you need to hear it. You need to accept that she has-lots of internal bleeding. And we don't even know or have any medical tools to find out what else! Ellie we can leave this place without her and find a new survivor, got it?"
Ellie hung her head, tapping on the living room table. Her sides were radiating pain. "We found her. We got her here!"
"We did. Sure. That's how a business runs, this is a business Ellie-remember? Just. A business. Some people don't want to be saved."
Ellie looked off into the corner.
"Ellie. Help me up, I want to go outside and take a leak."
She moved the living room table off to the side and rocked Joel off of the couch, using that small momentum and his grasped hand to lift him a bit. He leaned on Ellie heavily as she tried to steady his body. He ended up falling on her back before he got his footing. He and Ellie walked outside together. Ellie noticed how Joel's legs didn't really bend naturally when hitting the steps-as if his legs were asleep still.
"Something's wrong with my nerves right now. I hope it passes soon. That lady-wouldn't be surprised if that backwound severed some nerves too."
Ellie went back inside to get the woman down the stairs and onto the couch.
It was surprising to Joel, just how different the infected were from what they had encountered before. These infected were newer, but far too different for him to believe it was the cordyceps. Had Colorado terrain been hosting competing fungi? Joel spit angrily on the ground while he relieved himself clumsily. He saw the giant onyx figure traipsing quickly down the road a bit later. Troy wasn't carrying anything, but he was pulling a metal car undercarriage with supplies tied down to it. Joel could guess with quite a bit of certainty that Troy's perceptions were much stronger than theirs. More than likely-the way Troy worked- his hearing and his smell were his main way of interacting with his environments.
Troy dropped the cargo onto the lawn and began putting together a military heater. Then he launched himself through the glass window of another house and brought out a water heater. He sliced through the top metal easily, as Joel watched. Joel's heart jumped at just how strong this thing was. Troy's head snapped over to him and he laughed deeply, taunting Joel. Troy went over to dig out his magic pad from his backpack and then crawled over to a paralyzed Joel.
Troy used the canine on his tongue now, to write onto the pad.
Status?
"I don't think that woman is going to make it. But this base, uh-it's a Special Forces base isn't it?"
Troy acted confused. Joel moved his foot successfully.
"Alright Troy you can't fucking interact with these women. because I told them not to even be near you. "
Troy dug his claw into Joel's mouth. Joel jerked back, and pretended nothing had happened. He sucked the dirty blood and swallowed it.
"And believe me-even if I said they should; they wouldn't. If you hurt them…if you hurt me…they won't talk to you. It's real simple logic here. If it is physical or if it's mental…Ok?!"
Troy pushed Joel down and laughed.
Ellie heard the whole exchange and realized that Joel probably couldn't come inside without her help. She pushed her head out to peek through the front door.
"Joel! Need some help?"
"Nah, Ellie. Just go inside. I'll come in when I'm good and ready."
Troy had a lit match in his palm, about to put it on firewood he'd collected.
"Wha…did you-how did you light a fucking match. You're a wizard." He laughed a little as she pressed herself against the front door and sidestepped over to Joel.
She noted his hands. No current signs of any debilitating issues; opening and shutting and easily working to drag the water heater over the lit fire.
'WATER' he scratched. Ellie happily went back in and dragged cord with tassled gallon jugs out through the door. He lay down as she went next to him, and he looked away.
Am I even supposed to be alive right now?
She shook the thought away even though her edginess remained.
"Troy I'm just gonna uh…get that heater inside?"
She saw him get up slowly, and she backed away-falling on her ass. Then he was at the side of the house. The claws were going through their broken living room window, and moving the bookshelf. He was inside now. She heard wood cracking and breaking, and then the porcelain tub was traveling and parking itself beside her.
She drew in a big breath, after realizing that this woman would be naked outside in the rain and the wind. Troy sat in front of her, this time looking off to the side at the street.
"Troy…Joel thinks there might be something wrong with this woman's nerves. And, she doesn't want to be saved-but I don't think so." Ellie frowned at Joel for giving up so simply and so fast.
"All you gotta do, is grab her hand and just hold it. You know, just like ok hold out your hand now."
When he did-this time- it was tightly closed into a type of loose fist. Ellie realized that if she were to try and reach out, he might hurt her as he was so used to doing to the infected.
It was incredible to her, she felt like she had just been slapped-that something so small to her now seemed impossible as he held his shaking fist steady near to her torso. This woman may have been asking too much already.
"Just open up your hand Troy." She saw that he was still looking far and away from her.
"Ellie, lay down now." Joel called out. She closed her eyes and heard claws digging into the earth beside her. She gulped. She was too paralyzed to run back to the woman and ask.
Joel cleared his throat and said steadily, "Ill let you know when he does."
She repeated herself over and over again over five minutes.
"I'm taking a nap." She lied to herself. She pictured herself being far away, holding Riley's hand nervously and blushing.
"Ellie hold your eyes closed and drag yourself towards my voice."
Her thoughts started spinning out of control. "That woman needs a bath, she-she needs a bath, y-yea so like, she needs a nice setting."
There was a loud noise beside her on the driveway, as a car was pushed around. A hen started clucking furiously. She turned her head over and peeked.
Ok, so the car was kinda blocking the wind. Troy was putting gas into the military heater, while the hen pecked at his military pants.
"I'm gonna grab the woman now." Somehow she was now dreading this. She tiptoed inside. The woman had insisted though. Those hand signs could cut glass.
The woman on the couch had open blank eyes. Ellie maneuvered so that the woman's body plopped onto the floor while her head was cradled safely. Then she put a blanket over the woman and dragged her along the carpet and out onto the steps.
Joel was able to stiffly grab the woman's bare feet and move a few steps back as Ellie went down the front steps. Ellie grabbed the feet from him and laid them gently onto the path. She heard Troy laughing at her struggling. Then she continued to drag the woman over to the tub. She got up and wiped the sweat from her brow.
"Whewf! We'll get you a nice warm bath, lady. Ellie's business is the best of the best."
Troy brought over the hot water heater and dumped cleanish hot water into the tub.
Joel lurched over. Ellie placed the woman's head down gently, and picked her legs up for Joel again. Then she lifted with all her might, sliding the woman into the tub. Ellie covered the top of the tub with the blanket.
"Grab those towels Ellie." Joel instructed. She saw Troy's attention split between Joel and the church across the street from their driveway.
While Ellie was gone, Joel took the opportunity to say his piece to Troy.
"Troy, you need to know what you've done to this client. From the first moment you saw this woman Troy, you fucked up. You took away her power, when you lifted her up. You took away her voice, when you choked her. Now she may never get those things back, because there's no cure for it. I sure as hell fucking can't fix it. As long as I've been alive, I've never seen a woman manage to break through the kind of emotional chains you put on this one. If I could kill you a hundred thousand times, in a hundred thousand ways, it would still not be enough for me. Now you need to give this woman back her voice, and give her back her power. You need to, Troy. Because when she has those, only then can she protect you."
Troy laughed deeply, his red eyes attached to the still woman. He clapped his hands comically. He shook his head in disbelief.
Joel heard splashing and checked that Ellie was still inside.
"She doesn't want to live Troy; you'd be doing her a huge favor."
The splashing stopped.
Ellie went outside with some soap and towels. She saw, him, crouched. Troy's open palm holding up the woman's limp hand beside the tub and smiled proudly.
"You did it Troy!"
He lay down beside the tub nodding at her. Joel rushed over and pulled the woman up out of the water, pumping her chest with his hands. She sputtered and gasped. Ellie was beside Joel, peeling the blanket back. The water was red with blood and dirt. Ellie was afraid to ask what had happened. But looking at Troy's closed eyes and still body, she rushed to get the woman cleaned up. The military heater was quite warm. She could hear something like rocks being tossed about inside of it. The woman looked at her, placid eyes now fully cognizant.
"Ms. Ellie." The woman breathed. Then vomited into the tub.
Ellie started crying. "Yes."
"I need an IV drip, can you get that?"
Ellie nodded hard and ran inside.
Joel allowed himself to look at the tub. "Who are you?" He asked, a bit panicked. He was scared that he'd witness violence in this tub, in this empty space.
"I was-I feel so sick." she shook her head no just the slightest bit.
"Are your nerves severed?"
The rain was pattering onto the sheet.
Her hand danced up lazily and she inspected it. She was holding back from trying to vomit as she forced herself to talk.
"I can move."
Ellie returned and carefully slipped the needle of the IV drip into the woman's purple arm. When she saw the woman grimace, she took it back out. Ellie ran her hands over the woman's scalp, getting the dirt off of the white hair.
They were looking at eachother then, gathering strength from one another silently. The woman held up her hand, palm flat. Ellie smiled and placed her own palm on top, intertwining her fingers. It was a language they knew, that somehow could not be spoken by Troy. It was a language that Joel refused to speak-or perhaps, needed to relearn. It was their nerves, sensitive and active, responding and asking-like the mycelium networks of the fungi. The woman put pressure on Ellie's palm, and Ellie could see a hint of sensual grace in those monolid eyes. Then the pressure was lighter, and Ellie felt again that friendship she craved, was exactly what the woman could and would abide by. The woman signed into Ellie's palm; 'you. Have. Saved. Me.' Ellie grabbed the woman's hand again with both of her own and kissed it, crying a bit and nodding.
