Chapter Text
OCTOBER 6, 2023
Lincoln, MA
Ellie got up early the next morning, but she was no match for Joel. While she was enjoying the plumbing and toiletries her guest quarters had to offer, Joel called to her from the hallway.
"Ellie? I'm just gonna go see if Bill and Frank are up. Stay over here. Be right back."
Ellie shouted her OK from her "oh, sweet" bathroom. (A term she was still insisting on despite Joel's explanation of en suite master bed/bath layouts.) She'd been stunned at the sight of such luxury (such privacy) after a lifetime of FEDRA dorms. A bedroom with its own bathroom! Joel liked how easy it was to barricade her in ("for Bill"). Since the bathroom window wasn't the kind "some infected" could break and climb out of, they only needed to worry about the bedroom window and door. Which they could block in such a way that "any normal teenage little shit" could quickly escape from but... enough said. No, the en suite was the way to go.
That first night Joel had positioned Ellie's bed so that the headboard blocked the window, told her to lock the window and door from the inside, and stuck a chair in front of the doorknob from outside. The second night, he totally half-assed it, just saying "G'night. Lock up behind me." After that, the subject was dropped.
Bottom line, Ellie was happy to chill in the guest house while Joel checked on Bill and Frank. She wanted very badly to know if something had happened to Frank overnight. But also, not. If he was gone, 15 minutes wouldn't change anything. Besides, she'd seen enough of Joel to know he'd want some privacy before having to talk to her.
But he came back satisfied that Frank was still around, but tired. Just sleeping in.
"Do you think "sleeping in" is a code?" Ellie asked Joel as they crossed the street to join Bill for breakfast.
"Actually, no. I didn't read that from Bill," Joel answered. "If that's just what he WANTS us to think right now, we should respect it."
After breakfast, some chores, and a proper shower, Ellie came back to the main house to find Frank... normal and chipper.
"Let's pick out some new clothes for your trip!" he proposed. Which turned out to mean watching her go through some boxes Bill had brought in, and telling her what the pictures on the t-shirts were from. In between, they talked about the LPs she'd listened to with Joel last night.
After lunch Joel helped Frank lie down for a nap. Just lifting him out of the chair and onto the bed, not undressing him or anything. Clearly an excuse to talk to Joel alone. While Frank rested, Joel told Ellie they would be leaving the next afternoon. The plan was to spend the night at one of Bill's safe houses, then get an early start on the real trip the next day. Joel's inflection on the word plan told her it must be part of THE plan. The Frank (and maybe Bill) plan.
"It's tomorrow night, right?" she asked Joel. "Bill wants us to not see it or whatever, but he wants you close by in case something goes wrong?"
Joel nodded once. He was silent for several seconds, then told Ellie, “The safe house is in radio range.”
Then he snapped out of it and craned his neck for Ellie to follow him outside. In the garage, he showed her a bunch of things about the truck, including the battery he and Bill had assembled and charged up.
She was about to tell Joel they should have just come here first, then remembered that “they” would have been just Joel and Tess. Who would have had no reason to track down batteries, bump into Marlene, and get stuck smuggling Ellie. And Tess would be alive. Ellie would still be with Marlene, or whoever she found to take her to that fucking statehouse. Joel and Tess would be long gone to Wyoming by now. Ellie might be long gone to wherever the hell the cure lab is, because they’d probably, like, already know where it fucking is. Which was good, right? But no reason to bring that up when Joel was in an OK, normal asshole mood.
After that, Joel set up a table and some benches in the garage. A Staging Area, he said. Where he would “vet” all the shit they wanted to bring before it graduated to the truck.
“Why can't we just leave stuff on the floor?” Ellie asked.
Joel gave a two-part answer. Part one was the creak of his old man joints as he got up from securing the table legs from underneath. Part two was raising his eyebrows, daring Ellie to comment on his old man joints.
“C’mon, man, you dropped that one in my lap,” she said. Thinking of Joel as old wasn't that funny today.
Joel just did his “I should reexamine my choices” eye-roll and told Ellie to grab any of her clothes that needed washing and then start bringing over canned goods. “Nothing dented or swollen.”
Sitting with Frank after his nap, Ellie abandoned all discretion.
"I'm sorry for showing up here and complicating everything."
"I'm not," Frank said. "Your timing was perfect. I was having a great week with Bill. And you showing up was exactly what I didn’t know was missing in my life.”
"Why?” Ellie asked. I’m just a fucking FEDRA orphan and weirdly the cure for mankind.
“Being with a young person like you, talking about drawing and the other things. That Frank has been asleep since Baltimore. More than fifteen years. It was nice to be him again.”
"Were you a teacher or something?” Ellie asked. In her experience, teachers were the fucking opposite of this dude.
“Something like that, for awhile,” Frank said.
“Well I’m glad I could… remind you,” Ellie answered.
Frank looked concerned. Told her it wasn’t just what she could do for him or remind him of.
“Those things aren't point," he said. "The point is the Ellie factor. The point is you, honey.” Seeing her look a little embarrassed and maybe confused, Frank filed that lesson away for now. He switched gears to the fact that they had one more great day.
“Starting now. Go to the refrigerator and see what Bill has thawing for tonight. Then bring me to greenhouse. We need to figure out what art supplies you’re taking with you. And then curate the tape collection for the truck…”
~*~
It turned out Bill was thawing a chicken to bury the meat in some rice he had stored. The rice smelled really good and was yellow from a spice called saffron that Bill said was ungodly expensive back in the day, but currently free. He presented the dish with a Spanish name he said meant Chicken and Rice (duh). A couple bites in, Joel told Bill it "took him back."
For dessert, Bill brought out a custard thing called flan and a bottle of sparkling wine called Cava. The flan also took Joel back, so Ellie figured it was Texan or something. Then Bill ranted about how some people call this wine champagne, but Ellie should be aware of how inaccurate that was, since Cava was a Spanish “geographical denomination” and Champagne was in France. Ellie didn’t get why this was funny to these old dudes from Before, but she did get Bill’s point, at this stage in her som-mol-i-ay apprenticeship. European wines were named after the place the grapes grew. Some castle or village or river or whatever. So now that she knew Champagne was a place, then duh. None of the other sparkly shit got to be officially Champagne. Like those onions that were required by law to come from Georgia, that Bill had “rooted” from grocery store stock and now used air quotes when he mentioned them at the table. Or hey, the "Michigan" cherries.
“It’s just cool to try something from Spain. You’re part Spanish, right?” Ellie asked Joel. She’d idly assumed he was, from his looks. And again, by the food discussions that dining with Bill inevitably inspired.
“By way of a couple places south of the border, sure.” Joel conceded.
The Cava wasn’t something Ellie would go out of her way to drink by itself, either, but it fucked with the taste of food the same way all Bill’s wines did, and the bubbles were still fun.
~*~
OCTOBER 6, 2023
Lincoln, MA
Joel repeated the new "check on Bill and Frank first" routine. When Ellie saw him coming back to the guest house, she knew Frank was gone. Joel was carrying some paper and walking different. His face was all tight in a way she'd seen before. After Tess.
"Is Bill OK?" she asked. Joel shook his head. Shit. He put a sealed envelope and a cassette tape on the hall table and handed Ellie a sheet of paper.
"Bill left us letters, Frank left us tapes. You can read the bottom part of mine," he said, pointing to the lines under Bill's signature.
P.S.: Frank got to the endgame tonight. I was going to greet you in the morning with the sad (but not unexpected) task of helping me put him to rights and see you two off.
But now there’s something acting up in my chest and I’ve decided to skip that experience. And so I wait for my final wine pairing (about 40 Vicodins and a nice Brunello) to kick in.
At least now it’ll be an actually clean job. Frank is, although I could still puke disgustingly, or something. Hahahaha.
Anyway, sorry to leave you with those two mortal coils we talked about, on such short notice and with the girl still here. (The letter addressed to Ellie contains a personalized apology.) If I’m any judge, that girl can handle shit, but it’s not ideal and I know it’ll get your protective instincts kicking in. (See paragraph three above.)
Ellie briefly scanned up toward paragraph three before remembering she wasn't supposed to read anything else. She handed the letter back to Joel. In return, Joel tilted his chin toward the table where her own parting words from Bill and Frank awaited. The label on the tape said "Private," so she pocketed it. Joel left her alone to read Bill's letter but was kinda obvious about staying close.
Like Joel's letter, hers ended with a P.S. section (whatever the fuck that meant), except her apology included one last wine lesson.
When she was done reading, Ellie found Joel in the kitchen. He gave her a "You OK?" sort of questioning look, and she nodded calmly. He looked visibly less tense after that, as if he'd been worried she might lose it or something. Like, ready to comfort her but hoping like fuck he didn't have to.
And she was sad. But it was more like knowing that something sad was going on than feeling her heart breaking or whatever. Maybe it was because she hadn't know Frank and Bill long enough. Maybe it was because she'd known this was happening at some point for practically her whole visit. Maybe it was because everything with the mall and Riley was still just like a month old and whatever made you melt down was like, drained out.
So Ellie broke the ice by mentioning that her note from Bill explained all about Brunello.
“He says there’s a church there where they had the head of this lady on display in a mini house. And her finger in a jar. What the fuuuuck? Not even FEDRA does that shit.”
Joel told her what little he remembered about the centuries-old tradition of holy relics.
“I've heard enough," she interrupted. "Let’s take care of them.”
~*~
Joel forbade Ellie from helping to move the bodies (mostly). But she insisted on seeing them and making sure they were wrapped up neatly in their fancy-ass quilts. ("No fucking Duck tape, Joel. Frank would hate it and Bill would say it's too valuable.") After making sure they looked peaceful, Joel said he was fine with that. Viewing a peacefully laid-out dead body was normal in lots of religions, including his parents’.
She's already seen bodies. Some kid at the mall. Goddamned FEDRA mass grave. That guy who scanned her and then I -- This'll be a nice change. Anyone in charge of a kid should let 'em see things like this done the right way.
After Ellie was satisfied, she held the wheelchair as Joel lifted Frank into it and opened doors so Joel could wheel him out to the gravesite. Once he was set on the ground, she hesitated, wondering whether to stay with him or follow Joel back to the house to get Bill.
Seems weird to leave him all alone. But that's stupid. He's fucking dead.
"Why don't you watch over Frank," Joel suggested, realizing her predicament. Ellie nodded and Joel took the wheelchair back for Bill. She didn't say anything to Frank because he was fucking dead and she hadn't listened to his tape yet. She'd catch up with him later.
Ellie kept her cool as they lowered each man into the grave. Joel allowed her to help handle the ropes and help shovel some of the dirt into the grave.
Ellie kept her cool through packing the truck, making and cleaning up their final meal from Bill’s kitchen, and securing the compound. Then kept up a decent level of chatter for about an hour on 90 West.
There was a moment, around the Worcester exit, where Ellie stopped speaking and got out her Walkman and earphones. Almost immediately turned her face toward the passenger side window -- confirming Joel's suspicion that she was listening to Frank's parting words. He let a random sniffle or two pass without comment.
Pretend along with her. Treat the earphones as plausible deniability.
He tamped down any contemplation about where that kid-handling tactic came from.
Ellie had cried briefly when the statehouse had blown up around Tess, but that had been in the heat of the moment. Oh, and it had been mainly screaming. At him, for dragging her out of the place. He hadn’t given her a shred of comfort, which was probably shitty, but there was the shock of Tess’s death. Now he was less shitty, probably, but you have to respect it when they're officially NOT crying in front of you, right? Especially when it's just a kid you're watching for another few days.
When he commented on her composure, Ellie just said “They’ve been dying the whole time I’ve known them. But they were officially my favorite living people till this morning. No offense.”
None taken.
FIVE MONTHS LATER
The man punched the provided code into the keypad and the gate obliged. One of his companions spoke into his walkie that they were inside the fence and starting the clearing process. That power was on at the perimeter. Weapons still drawn, the group proceeded down the main drag toward a dignified, white colonial. No. 15, in front of the church. Here, the group split into small teams. They knew what they were doing. Clear their areas. Check on the defenses. Ensure food and shelter for the next day or so. See to the utilities. Get organized for the long haul.
It was going to take some effort to find (or replace) the animals that hadn't stuck close to home. And spring planting was pretty urgent. But it was a breeze to send the good news back to their people. In the basement of No. 15, a couple punched the fence code (backwards) into another panel to access the sub basement bunker. Soon they were testing the radio they found there, and gushing over the "robust and meticulously curated firearm collection" stored within.
Everything they needed to power, defend, maintain, and farm the place was exactly where Tommy Miller had said it would be.