Ellie saw the toddler slip through the tiniest gap in the wall surrounding Jackson as she and Dina were walking home from school, and a normal person would have called for help, called for Tommy, called for someone. But Ellie wasn't a normal person.
Self preservation just did not exist in her head, and while it was probably FEDRA's teaching that had stripped it from her, it sure wasn't Joel's teaching that was going to put it back. She was immune, after all, and that made her expendable for everyone else, in her eyes.
The concept of looking out for herself was foreign to her, and she always put others first before her own safety, much to Joel's chagrin.
So when she saw Tommy and Maria's little boy Joel Lee wander out of a crack in the safe confines of the community, she immediately ran after him. "Dina, go get Tommy and Joel," she exclaimed, giving the other girl a small push. "That was JL, he just slipped out of that gap in the wall! I got to get him back!"
Dina stumbled at the push, confused, then when she saw what Ellie was intending to do, she grabbed her arm.
"Ellie, wait, the sun is setting, maybe it was just a shadow. You can't just go chasing shadows around out there, it's dangerous."
Ellie frowned at her. "Dina, do shadows wear little shorts and a t-shirt with stripes on the back?"
"No, no, of course not, but hang on, wait, wait, let's just go get them together, Ellie. You can't go out there. It's not safe. What if there's infected wandering around out there? What will you do against a whole horde, all by your fucking self?"
"Just go get them," Ellie commanded. "If there's infected, they'll have JL eaten before anyone can get out there to even attempt to save him. Now fucking run. Go!" Her tone startled Dina into stumbling away, then breaking into a run, mind racing, looking everywhere and anywhere for the two brothers.
It should have been an easy rescue, Ellie thought, as she spent several minutes trying to squeeze through the gap. JL should have been just right on the other side of the wall. But JL was a fast little boy, and by the time she got herself through the gap and pulled her backpack through (minus the schoolbooks she haphazardly tossed out) he was nowhere to be seen.
A chill descended over her, as she stood for a moment on the dangerous side of the wall, the side without people, the side without protection, the side without Joel.
The side with infected, with raiders, with wild animals, with hunters, with nightfall coming fast.
Tommy was going to be sick when he figured out that his son had wandered off. Ellie found herself wondering why on earth no one was watching him, but then again, adults were just hard to understand sometimes. No one really watched the kids at FEDRA, so it shouldn't have been strange, but this was Jackson and it was Tommy and Maria's kid, and Tommy was just as overprotective as Joel, so to have him just wandering like that was unusual. But JL was also a chip off the old block, and he was a mischievous kid. Most likely he was supposed to be taking a nap and slipped out of the house. Ellie smiled a little. That would have been a Joel thing to do just to piss off Tommy. She made a mental note to ask Joel if he ever did anything like that when he was little.
She took careful steps, following the trodden down grass that JL had left behind. It wasn't much, as he was still rather light on his feet, but she took great care to keep a close watch, because the kid's life depended on her right now.
Any minute, Joel or Tommy would come riding out of Jackson all heroic to find her and JL and it would all be okay. Until then she had to find the kid before something else more terrifying did.
"Joel, Tommy!" Dina ran through Jackson, calling for the brothers, her face clearly distressed and worried. She ran into the restaurant, where other members of the community were already gathering for dinner.
Maria was following Tommy out of the kitchen, a large bowl of soup balanced in his hands. Dina nearly fell over a chair to get to them. Joel, who had been sitting at the table Tommy was headed toward slowly stood, one hand on his hip presumably where his gun was tucked, at the expression on Dina's face. He glanced behind her, then his face tightened. She knew why. No Ellie.
"Tommy," she gasped, trying to catch her breath. "Tommy, Joel, Maria, listen!"
"Woah, woah, kid," Tommy said gently, holding up a hand. He glanced at Joel, who had gone rigid and grim, and the younger man could see that Joel wanted desperately to start firing a barrage of questions at the girl, but an eye contact conversation silenced him for a moment.
"Slow down, Dina, and tell us what's wrong."
"JL," she managed to say, and Maria's face went pale.
"Where is he!" she demanded, grabbing onto Tommy's arm, nearly pulling him off his feet. Joel took a step forward too, glancing at the shocked, pained expression in his brother's face. He knew that look, and how it felt.
"Dina," he said, more of a command than a question.
"Ellie went after him," she continued, her words tumbling over themselves. Joel and Tommy shared a glance, and nodded encouragingly. "There was a crack in the wall and Ellie happened to see him squeeze out. She went after him and told me to come get you guys."
Both men were immediately moving toward the door, Tommy grabbing at Dina's shoulder to guider her with them. "Show us where, kid," he said tensely, but kindly. "Maria, why the hell wasn't he at home?"
"He was with Mrs. Jorgensen this afternoon to play with Lily." Maria shook her head. "I don't know why she would let him out of her sight, she's always been so good with everyone's kids, especially with Lily since her dad died in that horse accident and her mom died when she was born. Woman has a soft spot for the kids, and I trusted her, everyone does!"
"Kids wander off," Joel said roughly, trying to say anything that would keep the tears hovering in the typically strong woman's eyes from falling. "It's nothing new, they just do, no matter how hard you try to keep them corralled." Shit, he hated to see a woman cry. Tommy's back was rigid ahead of him as he strode toward the barn, at barely less than a run.
Dina threw her arms up in the air. "Can I help here, someone talk to me, I know where they went!"
Tommy pulled open the barn door. "Dina, thank you, kid, you've done enough. Show Maria where the crack is, then get a team of men on it to close it up. Then set a patrol of the wall to check for any more cracks. Then you and Maria look into how JL managed to wander off."
"I'm going with you," Maria said forcefully, as Tommy threw a saddle across his horse Ginger. "JL needs his mom. I can help." She grabbed at Tommy's sleeve, and he turned, grasping her upper arms in his hands.
"I am not losing you too," he grunted at her, a fierce anger in his dark eyes. "You stay here, figure out what happened. Make sure it doesn't happen again. Dina, up." He pulled Dina up on the horse behind him, and he and Joel rode off, leaving Maria standing in the doorway of the barn.
"Up past the school," Dina directed pointing. "Under those trees."
"What were you guys doing up here this late in the day?" Joel called up to her from behind Tommy's horse. He had not said anything during the ride over, but when Dina glanced back to look at him, his face was lined and worried. At the moment she was in both the scariest and safest place, right between two worried dads.
"The teacher was planning on doing a parent-teacher meeting next week and asked Ellie and I to help set up tables for Monday so we could have a snack table and a table to display some of the little kid's artwork. We stayed to help her, otherwise we would have never walked by this way."
Joel nodded in understanding and from the way Tommy tensed in front of her, Dina knew that everyone's minds was thinking that if the teacher had not asked the girls to stay, no one may have even noticed JL was gong for a long time yet.
What Dina didn't tell Joel was that Ellie had been very out of sorts at the announcement of a parent-teacher meeting. She wasn't sure that meetings were Joel's thing, and especially parent ones. Joel wasn't her parent, and she would feel really awkward asking him to step into the role. It was all pretend, this life in Jackson. Pretending things were okay. Pretending they were a family. The fact was they were not, but Joel didn't seem to worry about that. But Ellie did.
"Here?" Tommy asked, halting Ginger and sliding off her back, reaching up a hand to help Dina down. Ellie's schoolbooks were sill piled by the gap in the wall, and Joel fell to his knees beside them, carefully picking them up.
"He went right through here," Dina agreed, nodding at the books. "Ellie couldn't get her backpack through the gap so she left the books here."
Joel ran a thumb across the spine of her worn math book, and something painful blossomed in his heart. She hated math, desperately hated it and saw no use for it. Many nights they spent around the living room table, hashing out problems and trying to understand multiplication tables. She was smart, especially when she put her mind to it. But when she saw no practical reason for something, it was hard to get her to dive deep into it.
"Little shit," he said softly, then looked up, returning to the present, to see Tommy poking his head through the gap.
"Yeah, she would have fit, but you nor I will. We have to go out the gate, then come back around. Come on, Joel, time's wasting."
Joel shoved the books toward Dina, and he patted her shoulder. It was a Joel way of saying 'look after these, we will find her, don't worry, and thanks'. He wasn't anyone's fool, and he could see the concern for her friend in Dina's eyes. He hoped he had seemed sincere.
They would get them back. They had to.
It was getting too dark to see, and Ellie was beginning to be very worried. She had not caught a glimpse of the toddler since she had left the safety of the wall, and now she had spent the last hour trudging around in the middle of the woods, looking for a toddler as elusive as a ghost. Maybe she hadn't really seen him sneak out. What if her mind had been playing tricks on her this whole damn time?
Her knife was clutched tightly in her hand, the only weapon she had brought with her. Her ears were starting to make up noises in her head and she wished she had listened to Dina and brought Joel with her. He would know what to do. After all, leaving on a tracking mission with a backpack that just came from a school day was not the ideal situation to be in, from a survival standpoint. She had paused on the other side of the wall and taken stock of her situation and come up with only her knife, two cookies that Maria had given her after dinner last night, three erasers, her well loved joke book, a notebook of painful math notes, and two halves of two different pencils.
These math notes are gonna be fucking tinder, she had promised the spiral bound evil as she stuffed it back in her bag. First chance I get to build a fire, those are going in.
Right now, she knew that her first need was to get that sneaky little toddler safely tucked in her arms. She could protect him from everything then. But with the light going fast, she was going to be out of luck and so was JL. She didn't even want to think of how Tommy was feeling right now. But she had a pretty good idea if he was anything like Joel, which of course he was.
And she could definitely imagine how Joel was feeling. He was going to be scared for her safety and also a bit mad that she hadn't come to him first and traipsed off by herself. Well, it couldn't be helped now.
She kept an eye out for anywhere that could be shelter, as she was walking, and as she stepped out of the row of trees she had been walking through, she was thrilled to see JL sitting in the grass, playing with a stick.
"Joel Lee Miller!" she exclaimed, rushing over to him and grabbing a hold of his shirt, looking him over. His feet were muddy, and little bits of grass stuck to his bare toes and legs, but he was uninjured. She breathed a sigh of relief. Good. She could keep it that way. Uninjured meant Tommy and Joel wouldn't lose their shit when they found them or when she got back to town. "JL, what a naughty little boy you have been. Ellie has been looking everywhere for you! We were so worried!"
"Ellie!" the little boy whined, reaching his arms for her. She gladly let him wrap his arms around her neck, and legs around her middle, one hand steady on his back. "Want daddy!" His little face crumpled into sobs and Ellie patted his back.
"I know," Ellie soothed, hitching up her backpack with her free arm. "I know. I'll get you to daddy. Just hang on there and be really really quiet, alright? There are bad creatures out here listening for us and we have to be really, really quiet. Got it? It's like a game. Be super super quiet, and Ellie will give you a cookie when we get back."
"Two cookies," JL whimpered, lip quivering, and Ellie smiled.
"Be really really quiet and I will give you three cookies, alright?"
The little boy nodded, his face tear streaked at having been finally found, and he buried his tiny head into her neck. Ellie thought momentarily that this must be what it felt like when she did that to Joel. Warm contentment filled her heart, and she thought of how happy Tommy would be, and maybe Joel wouldn't be too mad.
"She did what?!" Maria exclaimed, her face slack with shock and confusion. "Since when did no one think to tell me this?"
"I'm sorry," the clinic doctor offered, hands held up in appeasement. "Mrs. Jorgensen was admitted this afternoon for heart troubles and passed away about an hour ago. We hadn't had time to announce it as of yet, paperwork and all that. Were you family?"
"It's me, Doctor Wills," Maria scoffed. "Maria Miller. On the board, remember? I need to know these things, so does the board. So I am assuming someone took Lily to their house, then, when she was taken to the clinic? Any idea why they didn't take JL too? Both of the kids needed somewhere safe to stay, especially JL because he's the younger one!"
The doctor's face paled suddenly at this line of questioning, and Maria fixed him with a frustrated glare. "It's a simple answer, Doctor. Where is Lily and why didn't whomever took her take JL too?"
"Well - ah, well, Lily wasn't there when we arrived to tend to Mrs. Jorgensen. She was heard calling for help through her window before she collapsed. We assumed someone else had Lily today because Mrs. Jorgensen wasn't well. No children were there when we arrived."
Maria's face paled again at the implication of those words, and the blood ran cold down her neck. There were two missing children then. Surely they both didn't go out the gap in the wall. Lily was a little bit of an explorer, though, and while she was older than JL, she was also faster. But Ellie had only seen JL escaping, according to Dina. Unless she ran across Lily too, the little girl might never be found. Maybe she had never left Jackson.
Maria ran out of the clinic, right into Mr. Thompson from the blacksmith's who happened to be walking by, and told him in a short version what had happened. Within minutes, the town was coming together in front of the restaurant, each one talking animatedly together, eager to help and begin searching every inch of Jackson, each one desperately hoping Lily was still inside.
It was getting harder to see as Ellie made her way back toward what she hoped was Jackson. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she chanted in her mind. Should have brought a flashlight. That was a no-brainer. City life is making you soft, Ellie, she decided. Time for her and Joel to start going out and roughing it a little, hone those survival skills again. Shouldn't be taking on survival sized tasks with the equivalent of a snack and a knife.
There was a ridgetop ahead of her, and if her calculations were correct, Jackson should be in that valley. She sure hoped she was right because without a light, they were sitting ducks for whatever was in these woods that could see in the dark. And that was basically everything scary and that could kill them.
"Lily," JL suddenly whined, grasping Ellie's shirt and pulling away, looking up at the older girl expectantly.
"Lily will be glad to see you," Ellie cooed, trying not to trip over sticks and fallen branches. "Just hang onto Ellie and be real quiet, and I will get you back so you can play with Lily and have your cookies."
"No! Lily!" the little boy demanded, his face crumpling, yanking on her shirt. "Lily here!"
"No, Lily's not here," Ellie replied, slightly exasperated. "She's at home, where we will be soon."
"No, here!" JL exclaimed, trying to pull away. "See, Lily." Ellie grabbed his shirt more tightly to keep him close.
"No no, young man," she commanded, channeling words she had heard Maria use once when JL was trying to pick up a knife at the dinner table. "You stay put. I am trying to get you to Lily, but you can't just run off on me."
"Lily over there!" JL exclaimed, pointing behind Ellie, and Ellie turned quickly, instantly on high alert, knife in hand. Lily? There was only supposed to be JL out here. It had to be -
Behind her stood Lily, a blank stare on her small face, an infected's raw, tearing bite clearly visible on her small shoulder, blood and mycelium trickling down her arm in winding tendrils. Her teeth were bared slightly, and Ellie gulped. No, no, no, no, not again. Not fucking again.
"Don't ask me to do this," Ellie murmured faintly, blood pounding in her ears. "Please, please no. Not a child. Not her."
She had one goal, and that was to get JL home, uninjured. There was nothing she could do for Lily now. Images of the many times she had played with Lily and JL in the restaurant, letting them chase her between the tables pretending to be a wolf trying to get them, until Tommy said to stop running and Joel chided that they would get hurt.
"I'm sorry," Ellie murmured brokenly, that old familiar ache long forgotten welling up again in her heart. It was like Riley all over again. Only this time, it wasn't her fault. Except it still felt like it was. This time she wasn't going to wait for the change. It had already started in the tiny figure, and Ellie knew too well how it went. She had to look out for Tommy's son now.
She had failed Lily.
She wasn't going to fail JL.
But she couldn't just take the life of a little child, standing there so solemn, so small. It just wasn't in her. Even after all the shit she had done along the way to Jackson.
You have a violent heart.
If only David could see her now, she thought bitterly. Violent hearts don't hesitate, and she was definitely hesitating right now.
Lily gave a bloodcurdling scream, that screeching sound of the infected by now so familiar, and launched herself at Ellie. Ellie reacted instinctively, shielding JL with her body as best as she could. The screech ended abruptly, and Ellie was left standing there, blood pooling at her feet from a life gone too soon, in a world so fucked up that even a mere baby wasn't safe.
She held desperately onto a screaming, fighting JL who didn't understand, pressing him as tightly as she could around her body with one hand, as she carefully piled stones and branches around and over the fallen child with her free hand. At least a wild animal wouldn't get to her. It was all the dignity that Ellie could give her for now. In the daylight, she would ask Joel to come back so she could put up some kind of marker and plant flowers for the orphaned child.
She tried in vain to shush JL as she worked, as whatever had bitten Lily was still surely somewhere around, and with the darkness, it would be harder to see it coming before it did its worst. But he was inconsolable. Eventually, she gave up, choosing to keep her knife in hand, and stay on high alert. He acted afraid of her now, begging for his daddy, and she hated it so much, but she had saved his life. She consoled her own self with that fact. One day he would understand. Maybe one day he would forgive her.
Then she found them a safe place to spend the night, a hollow beneath a rock, where the whole valley lay beneath them in clear view in the moonlight. Tucking the toddler against her side, and draping her jacket over him, she sat watching all night. His broken cries tore at her heart, until eventually he fell asleep against her, exhausted.
She knew how he felt.
"It's getting too dark to see," Joel called to Tommy, as they rode through the valley. "Tommy, we have to hole up somewhere. Infected jump us, we ain't gonna be able to see shit."
"Joel, I have to keep going," Tommy replied, his voice disjointed and a little deranged. "Got to find my son."
"Tommy," Joel commanded, nudging his horse Pepper to catch up to Tommy's and catching Ginger's bridle. "Tommy, my girl is out there too. I know what you are feeling. Tommy, damn it, I know, and you know that I know. You can't help JL if you're dead."
His words made sense to Tommy, but the pull to find his son tugged at the younger man in a way that Joel identified with. Oh how he identified with it. But he also knew that Tommy would have to deal with the ache a bit longer. They had to rest, had to find somewhere safe to stay.
"There's a hunting cabin not too far from here, up on that ridge. They clear it every patrol, and it's safe, and there's room for the horses. Tomorrow, we start out at first light. Clear?"
Tommy nodded wearily, his face a mere ghost of himself. It was an expression Joel knew well. He took charge, leading the horses up into the safety of the ridge, and proceeded to bed the horses and haul their meager gear into the old cabin. Tommy moved mechanically, making beds and getting a fire started, watching the flames dance while Joel heated up some cans of beans for them from the cabinet.
"They'll be alright, wont they?" Tommy asked suddenly, turning pleading eyes to his older brother. Joel swallowed hard, then pursed his lips and nodded.
"Course they will. Ellie's probably found JL by now and done exactly what we did, bedded down for the night."
"Wish I knew that for sure," Tommy mumbled, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. Joel nodded.
"Yeah, guess that goes for both of us. Here." He pushed a steaming can toward Tommy, who shook his head. "Tommy, you got to eat."
"My son is out there, hungry, cold, scared...Can't eat right now, Joel. It ain't right."
Joel fixed him with a dull frown. "Tommy, you punishing yourself isn't going to fix nothing, just make you look like an ass when he's found safe and sound tomorrow. If I break an ankle, you gonna break yours too?"
"No," Tommy replied, confused.
"Well, don't go joining your son's ailments either. You wouldn't have let me, and I ain't gonna let you. Eat. He needs his dad to be strong when you meet up tomorrow."
Tommy nodded once, studying Joel's open, honest face. Then he took the can and began to eat. Joel's shoulders visibly relaxed and he resumed his own meager meal.
He just hoped his empty promises came true.
In the valley, Ellie could see movement. She had been watching it for what seemed like an hour, and it was gradually moving closer. At first she hoped it was a small herd of deer, but her gut instinct told her it was more likely to be infected and she was stuck in a small hole in the ground with a knife for protection. Shit.
The smell of smoke reached her nose through the drifting air and she vaguely remembered there was a cabin on the ridge that the hunters sometimes used when they were on a trip, to shelter in. Smoke meant people and people meant maybe Joel and Tommy. It could also mean raiders but at this moment it was raiders versus infected, and she voted for the one less likely to eat them.
Trying not to jostle JL awake, she carefully climbed from their hiding place, and began to run down the hill. This startled JL and he began to cry so she desperately shushed him with a hand lightly over his mouth, but as if guided like a wave, the horde in the valley paused, heard the cries, focused on them, then as one large group, they began to run.
And so did she.
Up the ridge, stumbling over sticks, tripping over fallen branches, scraping her shins, the small thorny briars scratching her legs, but still she pushed on, the faint sound of the infected beginning to reach her ears. Stumbling, she ran the last hundred feet to the door of the cabin, and pounded heavily on it, head turned toward the shrill calls below them. The door opened cautiously, but adrenaline made her strong and she shoved against the door with all of her strength, falling into the abyss beyond, curling her body to protect JL as she fell onto the wooden floor dimly lit by a fire on the hearth.
Vaguely she heard, "What the actual fuck? Ellie?"
In seconds, she was up, shoving the door closed, yelling, "They are coming, for fucks sake, shut the fucking door!"
She latched the door tightly, then turned to see both Tommy and Joel in half crouched stances, shock on both their faces, and she breathed a ragged sigh of relief.
"So, not raiders, then," she said casually. She set JL down on the floor and he immediately ran to Tommy, who wordlessly gathered him tightly in his arms, then pulled away to examine him for injuries.
"He's not hurt," she said wearily. "But we are all about to be toast because there's infected in the valley running this way and ya know," she held up her knife. "Your girl is kinda out-weaponed by them."
Joel and Tommy nodded in understanding, Tommy's relief evident in his face and he stood, shoving JL back into Ellie's arms. "Stay."
Joel toughly nodded once again in agreement, his face dark and no-nonsense, and both men strode outside with their rifles. A volley of shots later, and they returned, visibly more relaxed.
"Daddy!" JL exclaimed, running to Tommy. Tommy smiled easily, kneeling to pick up his son.
"JL, you naughty boy. Running off like that, you could have gotten yourself really hurt." Or killed, he thought to himself. But how do you get a not even two year old kid to understand that?
"You alright?" Joel asked, setting his gun aside, and looking over Ellie from a distance. She shrugged, tears pricking at the back of her eyes as the gravity of the whole situation sand in. He knelt, taking one of her ankles in his hand and tugging up her jean leg. "Other than these cuts and scrapes. And thorns," he added, resting his thumb below a sharp briar that had imbedded in her skin. "This is gonna hurt a bit."
Ellie sighed heavily. "Had worse."
He glanced up at her, a frown on his face as he nearly told her to stop playing the martyr card. But there was something so childlike about her, something hurt, something afraid, that it made the words die on his lips and he gave her a kind half smile. "I know."
Tommy sat by the fireplace cleaning the dirt and smudges from his son, while Joel worked on Ellie. He was working on her ankles when he suddenly paused. "Ellie, why is there blood on your shoe?"
Ellie had been mesmerized by the fireplace, lulled by its dancing flames and warmth after their hours in the cold night that she nearly missed his question. But JL did not.
"She hurt Lily," he announced, his little face taking on an expression of indignation. Ellie's breath caught in her throat and she momentarily though to herself that it was a good thing that he wasn't screaming about it anymore. He wasn't old enough to understand the concept, so it would be a long time before he could truly understand what Ellie had done for him. But at least the screaming had stopped, and her ears would gradually stop ringing.
Tommy looked slowly from JL to Ellie. "Wait. Lily was out there, too?"
Joel was also looking at Ellie, his body language stiff, waiting, her ankle gently clasped in his hands. He knew her even better than Tommy and her body language had Silver Lake written all over it. It unsettled him, filled him with a desperation to wipe her memory of everything bad that had ever happened to her.
But as he and Tommy gazed compassionately at her, he knew it would never be. Some curses last a lifetime.
They were looking for answers. They had lived long enough to know.
And as she glanced at their faces, she knew that they knew what she had done. They were just waiting for her to say it.
"Yeah," she breathed. "Lily was out there. She - she's dead."
"Baby girl," Joel breathed, his voice pained, as Tommy rubbed his face, murmuring, "Shit."
"Sorry," she said softly. "He didn't get to see much, but it was hard to hang onto him and..." She made a vague stabbing motion with her hand, and Joel's face became impossibly more soft. "She had already started turning when I found them. He was fine," she added, as Tommy grabbed JL and began inspecting him again. "I- I made sure of that."
Tommy gazed at her intently, realizing by her words that she would have taken care of JL too, had he been bitten, to save Tommy from that pain, and his jaw flexed, but he could not say the words he wanted to say. Joel squeezed her ankle softly.
"You did what you had to do, kid. Again. Something you should never have had to do. That had to be hella hard." His voice trailed off faintly, as he tried to imagine his Ellie - no, his brain could not compute that kind of situation, yet, it had happened.
"It was," she said softly, dropping her gaze to her hands. "It fucking was."
"Love you, kiddo," Tommy said softly, JL cradled comfortably across his shoulder.
She looked over at him and gave him what he wanted, a smile. It did not reach her eyes however, and showed how haunted and hurt she felt. But her voice was sincere.
"Love you too, Uncle Tommy."
This was created in the middle of a fevered existence during a bit of norovirus fun...let me know what you think and if you want a part two!