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“Fuck!”
“What’s up?” Joel asked sharply, his hand shooting out to grip the rifle propped against the rock he was sitting on while he warily inspected the dark forest around their campfire.
“Another fucking cliffhanger,” Ellie explained, making a valiant effort to keep the sulkiness from her voice while he sighed and retrieved the shiv he'd dropped. She glowered at the ‘to be continued’ printed across the bottom of the last page before letting the comic book fall onto her lap. “Ugh I want to know what happens next!”
“Don’t we all,” he said sagely, his lips twitching. “I’ll keep an eye out for more of them.”
“Thanks,” she muttered, giving the comic book one more scowl before shoving it into her backpack.
Deprived of her main source of amusement for the night, Ellie pulled her knees to her chest and tapped her fingers against her legs while she surveyed their makeshift campsite. According to Joel, they were somewhere in Ohio—wherever the fuck that was—and they’d spent the day trekking through endless, overgrown farmland and rolling, hilly forests.
Her cursory scan ended on Joel, who'd resumed whittling something with the shiv. He’d recently started doing this after they’d made camp for the night, and it was still a little weird even after a few days of watching it.
It made sense that he had other hobbies besides—fuck, smuggling and killing things—but it was strange seeing someone capable of such brutality being so…delicate. Of seeing the same hands she’d repeatedly watched beat people to death now handling a piece of wood with such precision and care.
Ellie observed him for a while, her eyes following the steady, controlled movements of the knife while a shape slowly formed out of the wood. “What’re you making?”
“In theory? An owl.” He held up the piece of wood and contemplated it while rotating it between his fingers. “In reality? We’ll see how it turns out. Been a while since I done somethin’ like this.”
Huh. That was kinda fucking cool—and surprising.
Joel had been surprising her a lot since Pittsburgh with either small shit like this or bigger shit like when she’d wanted to bury Henry and Sam. She’d been ready for a fight when she’d voiced the request—for him to give her that same cold, hard expression from the hotel and flatly tell her no.
But he’d just looked at her for a long, heavy minute before wearily nodding and murmuring something about finding shovels. It’d thrown her off-balance—had shaken her in a different way than what she’d just experienced in the radio tower.
Sam, his face open and scared the night before he’d died, turning to her for comfort that she hadn’t given. Henry, his expression shuttered with grief, seconds before he—
Nope, she wasn’t gonna think about that right now. She shook her head in an attempt to clear away the thoughts before forcefully rifling through her bag for a pun book.
“Okay, this is fucking boring. It’s time to liven things up,” Ellie said, ignoring his sigh while she flipped through the book. “Here we go. How do trees feel in the spring? Releaved.”
She snickered while he rolled his eyes. “What happens when a frog's car breaks down? It gets toad away. Heh that’s pretty fucking good. Oh! What’d the conductor say when she found her missing music? Score!”
Joel snorted, not even bothering to glance up this time, and Ellie flipped to the next page. She scanned it, grinning when she found another good one. “I swatted a bee today. It was kind of a buzzkill.”
“Terrible.”
“You’re terrible.”
He leveled a look at her. “You need some better jokes.”
“Okay then, you fucking tell a joke,” Ellie shot back at him once she’d recovered from her indignation, irritation seeping into her voice. Fuck this guy was a drag sometimes.
Joel went still, his expression turning distant and a little thoughtful. She rubbed a finger under her nose and rested her arms across her knees, letting her gaze wander when the silence stretched.
She’d already chalked it up as a loss when his gruff voice made her pause. “Alright. Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses—he ain’t breathin’ or movin.’”
Ellie slowly looked at him like any sudden movements would make him stop, almost holding her breath when he kept talking.
“The other guy calls emergency services and says ‘I think my friend is dead. What do I do?’ The operator tells him, ‘Calm down. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.’” He leaned forward, his expression intent, and she reflexively mirrored him. “There’s silence—then a gunshot. The guy gets back on the phone and says, ‘Okay, now what?’”
Ellie waited for him to continue, her brow furrowing when he just stared at her expectantly. His expression faltered after a few seconds, his gaze turning unsure, and that’s when the punch line finally sunk in.
She lost it, more at his deadpan delivery than the actual joke, sucking in such an abrupt series of breaths that she fucking snorted and half-hiccupped—and that’s when he started laughing too, his teeth an unexpected flash of white against his beard while his eyes crinkled with mirth.
“So fucking dumb,” she said appreciatively between bouts of giggles, wiping away some moisture from her eyes. “Where the fuck did you even hear that?”
“I dunno,” Joel said with a shrug, his eyes still bright with residual laughter. “Probably Tommy.”
“Well, that was still a pretty decent joke for someone who’s living proof that dinosaurs once roamed the earth.”
He glanced skyward and sighed while she cackled, a corner of his mouth curving up, and she wasn’t sure how she’d never noticed it before, but—for such a serious fucking dude—there was a soft edge to that almost-smile that made his eyes gentle.
Huh.
Ellie tilted her head, scrutinizing him with sharp curiosity while the light from the campfire flickered over his features. What was that fucking saying? Still waters run deep or some shit?
She suddenly wondered what he’d been like before the world had gone to shit. Had he done this same thing once upon a time—traded jokes with his brother over a campfire? Or maybe gone to one of those barbecues Henry had mentioned, enjoying delicious food while swapping funny stories with his friends? Had there been a time when he laughed more openly?
How many things had he left behind?
That ain’t the hard part, he’d quietly told her in Bill’s town, and it hadn’t really made sense until now that were things that couldn’t co-exist in this world if you wanted to survive.
“You should tell another joke sometime,” Ellie blurted, gripping her fingers and rubbing them when Joel just looked at her. She cleared her throat, adding more nonchalantly, “Or whatever.”
And maybe it was just the lighting, but his expression was still soft when he murmured, “Sure, I reckon I can come up with somethin.’”
He went back to whittling, missing the crooked smile she gave him.
Using her backpack as a pillow, she laid down and gazed at the vast expanse of stars. The night was calm and balmy, the only noises the occasional crackle of the fire and the continuous serenade of crickets chirping.
This wasn’t half bad. She tapped her fingers against her stomach, idly recalling facts about space in her head while Joel remained a steady, reassuring presence at her side.
Yeah, not bad at all.