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“No one followed us, right?”
The words are so quiet that Joel half-thinks he imagined them. He turns his head toward Ellie without moving the rifle in his lap. “They’d have killed us by now,” he answers bluntly.
Ellie winces, her gaze skittering away to focus on the decaying workbench on the far side of the garage.
He bites back the apology on his tongue. It sucks, but it’s the truth. Ellie curls in on herself a little more, shivering despite the mild air and residual warmth of the sun on the pavement. It’s not his job to comfort her; it’s his job to keep her safe. She’s old enough to know exactly how brutal the world is outside the walls of a FEDRA-run QZ.
Turning back to the partially demolished house across the yard to scan it again for intrusions, Joel lets out a low sigh. He’s going to have to figure out a system with Ellie so they can communicate efficiently. There isn’t time for doubt when infected (or worse, humans) attack. Tess just folded herself into his and Tommy’s lives without permission or question. She possessed the innate ability to read Joel immediately.
The kid has no such skill.
And why should she? She’s a FEDRA orphan. Just about every interaction Ellie’s had with an adult was probably with a military superior. Joel thinks back to when the first round of military-raised orphans had graduated from the academy and joined the FEDRA ranks. He could tell they’d been socialized well within a hierarchy but had no idea how to interact with people they didn’t answer to.
Ellie seems empathetic enough. But she’s only fourteen and no matter how clever or intuitive she may be, she has a lot of learning to do. He can’t rely on her to make the right decision every time; he has to be the one to call the shots.
His one- or two- week-long trip out west with the cargo is now going to be at least two months. Maybe more. They’ll be lucky to find Tommy by winter.
She’s not a bag of coffee beans, Joel, Tess reprimanding him wearily. You can’t just throw her over your shoulder and check back to make sure nothing’s spilled.
Shut up, he growls in response.
“Huh?”
Should have growled mentally. “Nothin’. Go to sleep,” he grunts.
Eyeing him warily for a moment, Ellie draws her knees even tighter to her chest. “You need to wake me for second watch,” she demands after a moment. “We used to have drills in the middle of the night all the time so we’d learn how to function without enough sleep, but I never got the hang of waking up at two in the morning naturally. So you have to wake me up.”
Joel can already tell he’s going to love learning about how FEDRA treats the children under its care. “You ain’t takin’ a watch,” he grates out flatly.
Ellie rolls her eyes as if he’s the one causing all the problems. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you become some kind of cybernetic human-computer hybrid that doesn’t need sleep to function correctly when I wasn’t paying attention?”
He sighs. This is what he means — they’re going to have to develop a system. “Oh, wait, no, I know,” she continues in a confrontational tone that is, frankly, amusing, “Tommy’s invisible and he’s traveling with us but you two are secretly playing a fuck-with-the-orphan game so whenever you sleep, Tommy’s taking watch?”
He sighs again. Deeper. It’s still not satisfying enough. “Ellie—”
“You need to sleep at some point, asshole,” Ellie argues, her nose flaring as her anger increases. “If you don’t, you’ll start seeing shit. And then I’ll be fucked when your sleep-deprived brain decides I’m a fucking clicker or something.”
The way this kid is simultaneously deeply suspicious but trusts him with her safety astounds him. “I ain’t sleepin’ tonight,” he snaps, before adding: “I know what I’m doin’.” He wants to get angry at her for daring to question his choices. He also wants to give in to the withered voice gasping to comfort a scared child.
A frustrated groan comes from where Ellie parked herself. “Look, I know you’re not going to, like, hurt me or be a perv or whatever,” she says bluntly. “You’d have tried something already. I trust you and you haven’t given me a reason yet to think I shouldn’t. But I still don’t know you. What is it, Thursday? We literally met four days ago.”
She crawls over to where he’s sitting so that they can make eye contact. “Marlene may know what you’re capable of, but I don’t. Not beyond what I’ve seen you do. So yeah, I’ll do what you say, but I’m also going to question any batshit crazy decisions you make when there are other choices. And, dude, deciding you want to see flying green elephants everywhere instead of taking a fucking nap counts as a batshit crazy choice.”
“Pink,” he corrects without thinking.
“What?”
Joel shakes his head at his carelessness. He knows better than to engage like this. “The flying elephants — they’re pink.”
“No shit?” She sounds genuinely surprised. Joel takes his eyes off the treeline and looks over at her with what he hopes is a blank expression. Ellie looks to the side for a moment as she thinks. “That makes so much more sense. We never understood that fucking song because the elephants were all green.”
“FEDRA sure did screw you over,” Joel mutters loud enough for Ellie to overhear. A stifled giggle floats through the air. “Kid, I spent ten years survivin’ outside a QZ. There ain’t a whole lotta folks who can say that these days.”
Ellie rolls her eyes and wraps her arms loosely around her legs as she regards him. “Obviously. I’m not dumb, Joel. I guess what I’m saying is — I don’t know how you think. Like, I don’t know how to anticipate what the next thing to do is yet with you and I fucking hate that. And, honestly? I don’t think you’re going to hit me or starve me for asking you to explain why you do shit sometimes.”
Got a good head on her shoulders, Tess chuckles somewhere. Don’t fuck this up, big guy. She’s just a kid. When did Tess become his goddamn conscience?
Tess and Joel had spats, arguments, and even one memorable brawl that ended in an even more memorable fuck in the crypt under the Old North Church, but they’d only ever had a handful of actual fights. He thinks back to the early days when he and Tommy were still learning to navigate the depths that were Tess. Joel had teased her in a rare moment of levity — c’mon, Mamacita, show us what ya’ve got, he’d taunted. She’d nearly shot him for that. Took Tommy two days to track her down and another two to talk her into coming back to the little camp they’d made in Bumblefuck, Tennessee.
They’d had a conversation years later, violently honest thanks to a combination of pills and bootleg booze. Tess made breakfast for dinner that Friday night. She was going to make pancakes for breakfast, but Nicky had climbed up onto the counter and was about to tumble off head-first. Tess, being a responsible mother, saved her kid and shattered her favorite mixing bowl. Nicky pitched a fit in the way only a five-year-old who wasn’t adjusting to full-day kindergarten can so and Tess gave in, stopping at the store to pick up a box of pancake mix. She’s still not sure why she didn’t just use the ingredients she had at home — it only took a couple of extra minutes to make her own mix. But she was tired and Nicky was cranky and Harry was going to be late because the board meeting ran long, so she took the easy way out.
She took the easy way out and twelve hours later Harry had his teeth in Nicky’s chubby little leg.
Tess told Joel that she wished she’d saved the mixing bowl instead. That she’d killed her son out of neglect rather than abandoning him to a locked basement in her greatest act of cowardice.
“If you’re ever in Ann Arbor without me,” she’d slurred so badly that he spent the night making sure she didn’t overdose, “please don’t kill him. He’s only a little boy.”
An image of that child clicker following Ellie and ripping that insane woman to shreds flashes through his mind. She was only a little girl.
Another child is staring at him like she expects a response. “I ain’t gonna hurt you on purpose,” he confirms. “But there are gonna be times you don’t eat or when you’re hurt or sick and we continue on even though we should be stoppin’.”
She blinks at him in surprise. “Oh.”
“Look,” he sighs heavily. “I don’t want you takin’ watch tonight because I don’t know when the last time you had a decent night’s sleep was, and I ain’t takin’ risks this close to a fallen QZ,” he explains after a moment of awkward silence.
Ellie considers his words and then slowly nods. “I don’t know when the last time I had a decent night’s sleep either,” she admits sheepishly.
Another sigh, this one because maybe she’s starting to see past the teenage need to control everything. “If you close your eyes and stop your yappin’, the answer could be tonight,” he grumbles. “Go on back to that wall; don’t want you sleepin’ exposed up here.”
She turns and gives him a curious look. “How is that less exposed than this? Here you can see me; back there, I’m stalker bait.”
Joel raises his eyebrows at her. “You tell me,” he offers as a peace offering.
“Sure, now that it’s the fucking middle of the night, you want to teach me shit,” she grumbles. There’s a hint of a smile giving away how pleased Ellie is with this turn of events. “Uh… if I’m against the wall then… no one can come at me from that direction?”
“And with me here, no one’s comin’ at you from this direction either. Makes it easier to cover yourself in the event someone manages to overpower me.” It hasn’t happened lately, or even often, but there are men in this world who are stronger than Joel. Joel makes a point to avoid them whenever possible.
When Ellie nods, it’s with wide eyes. “Yeah,” she breathes. “But… you don’t think anyone followed us, right?”
The question that started them down this little path.
“That’s right,” he affirms, trying to soften his tone. “But anyone we come across out here could be from that QZ, and we have no idea what those people want.” With a sigh, Joel gestures to the back of the garage. “Look, Ellie… I ain’t tryin’ to scare you, but there’s no point in babyin’ you. You’re old enough to learn about survivin’ out here, but that don’t mean that you should. You have to, but…”
“It ain’t fair?” she asks quietly.
Joel nods. “That’s right.”
She tilts her head to the side as she examines him. “All’s fair in love and war. And this is war,” Ellie declares after a moment. “So we just have to learn to live with it.”
Joell nods slowly. “Reckon you’re right about that. Go on and—”
Motion near the house draws his attention, the floorboards creaking when he shifts to aim the rifle. Ellie’s attention snaps to him, her eyes wide and alert as she silently draws her backpack closer to retrieve her gun. At least she knows to be prepared if they need to make a run for it. He holds a hand up, signaling her to stay put and she nods, her fingers tightening around the grip of her pistol.
Slowly, Joel rises to his feet, every moment deliberate and silent. He edges toward the garage’s small, grimy window, keeping low and out of sight. The overgrown yard beyond is still once more.
Too damn jumpy. The lack of sleep isn’t helping. He’s about to wave Ellie off when he catches more movement. He carefully raises the rifle, using the scope to get a better glimpse of…
A fucking porcupine.
He lets out a humorless chuckle and turns to Ellie. “It’s nothin’. C’mere.” As Ellie approaches stands, he notices she’s still clutching her pistol. “Don’t need the gun, just wanna show you somethin’.”
With a nod, Ellie places it next to her bag and approaches, looking warily between Joel, the rifle, and the window. He bends down enough to be on her level, checking to make sure the scope is focused on the correct spot. “No touchin’,” he warns as he nods her over. “Should be straight ahead.”
She squints through it, wrinkling her nose as she looks over at him skeptically. “There’s nothing there.”
“I can see the damn thing movin’. Look again,” he instructs, checking that he’s pointing the right way. Looks like two animals, not one.
With a dramatic sigh, Ellie looks through the scope and shakes her head. “I think you’re fucking with me.”
“I think you ain’t lookin’ right.”
“If you’d let me move the rifle, I’d be able to see whatever the fuck it is,” she retorts with a glare.
Joel sighs heavily, shaking his head. “Fine,” he begrudgingly agrees. “It’s under the left window.” As she reaches for the gun, he tugs it away. “Barrel only. I don’t want to see fingers anywhere near the forestock.”
Ellie snickers and looks up at him with the most falsely innocent expression he’s seen from her yet. “Is the forestock like—”
“Guess you don’t want to look after all,” he mutters flatly, moving to put the rifle down.
“Dude,” she whines. “Why are you punishing me for wanting to expand my horizons? You just started explaining shit without being a total asshole.”
Joel sighs, torn between amusement and exasperation. He only allows the latter to show on his face. “Fine. But you keep your hands on that barrel where I can see ‘em. We’ll go over the parts of a gun another time,” he instructs as he unloads the weapon. Best to not take any chances.
Ellie nods eagerly, carefully grasping the barrel of the rifle to adjust its aim. She peers through the scope, her brow furrowing in concentration. After a moment, her eyes widen. “Holy shit,” she whispers. “Is that… are those porcupines?”
“Yep,” Joel confirms, studying her as she studies the animals. “Saw two. Might be more.”
“I’ve never seen real ones before,” she admits, still staring through the scope. “Just, like, in books. They’re kinda cute. They don’t look that prickly.”
Joel snorts. “Don’t get any ideas about pettin’ ‘em. I ain’t pickin’ quills outta your face. Those things hurt like hell.”
Ellie finally looks up from the scope, a curious smile on her face. “Did you ever get stuck by one?”
“Nah,” Joel shakes his head. “My dumbass brother did, though. Thought he’d be able to eat it. Couldn’t hold a gun for days. It was damn annoyin’.”
“No eating porcupines. Good to know,” she grins, returning her focus to the scope again. “So, Tommy was being a prick when he went after the porcupine? Oh shit, they’re fighting! Oh, no, that’s… ew. Ew. How do they even do that?”
Of fucking course he’d do something nice that ends in the kid watching real-life animal porn. “Carefully,” he drolls, reaching for the rifle. “You don’t need to be watchin’ that.”
Ellie rolls her eyes at him and tugs it away from his grasp. “It’s educational, asshole. You basically kidnapped me from school, how else am I supposed to learn about the world?”
Joel sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Five more minutes, then it’s time to sleep.”
“Deal,” Ellie agrees quickly, returning her attention to the porcupines. He watches her for a moment, noticing how her shoulders have relaxed slightly. The kid’s been wound tight since they met but she’s been managing it well. He’s impressed, even if he’ll never admit it.
After a couple of minutes, she wrinkles her nose and glances over at him. “…that didn’t take very long,” she says with disappointment. “I guess when you’re bumping uglies with someone who has knives sticking out of them, you want it to be fast.”
Christ, does she have no sense of decency? “We ain’t talkin’ bout this,” he grunts. “Time’s up.”
“No way!” she protests, tightening her grip. “It hasn’t been five minutes yet.”
He has to take a very deep breath, repressing the desire to snap at her. “It’s been ten.”
“How do you know that? Your watch—”
“Don’t. That’s off-limits. You’re done; go to sleep,” he orders sharply, pulling the gun away with more force than necessary.
She looks surprised but allows him to take it without further protest. “Whatever, dick,” she mutters angrily, retreating to her wall. He listens as she tries to get comfortable, purposely not looking over as he settles in to keep watch.
Her restlessness continues for several minutes before he hears her sit up. “I need to ask you something.”
Glancing over, Joel grunts and returns his attention to anywhere but Ellie.
“Do you always have to be such a fucking asshole?” she complains. It sounds like she’s fiddling with the zipper on her bag.
“That’s your question?”
“You know it’s fucking not,” she retorts. “Is there other shit that’s going to make you get mean again? It’s annoying as fuck when you’re pissy.”
This time he allows himself to study her. It was phrased as an insult, but he can tell she’s just trying to navigate him. They’re going to be together non-stop for months; he doesn’t blame her for wanting the lay of the land. “Tess,” he says after a minute. “The watch.” He swallows and sighs, allowing his head to drop forward the slightest bit. “Reckon there’s others. Just… let it go when I tell you to.”
Ellie meets his gaze for a moment before looking at the floor. “I don’t like Halloween. Or, uh, water guns.”
“Alright,” he says quietly, shifting in place and checking their surroundings again. “I won’t bring them up.”
Ellie nods, seemingly satisfied with their exchange. She settles back against the wall, using her backpack as a makeshift pillow. It’s still warm, but they’ll have to find sleeping bags soon enough. For a few minutes, the only sounds are the rustle of grass outside and Ellie’s soft breaths.
“Joel?”
“What?” He grunts in response, not taking his eyes off the window.
“Thanks for showing me the porcupines,” she says softly. “It was… nice. To do something kinda normal, I mean.”
Joel’s jaw tightens, but he manages a curt nod. “Get some sleep, kid.”
Ellie falls quiet after that, her breathing eventually evening out as she shifts into sleep. He glances over one more time before getting to his feet to do one more patrol around their shelter.
As Joel makes his way around the perimeter of the garage, he keeps his steps light and deliberate. The porcupines have long since scurried away, leaving the area still and silent. He pauses at each corner, listening intently for signs of danger.
Maybe it won’t take as long as he’d thought to teach her about surviving out here. She seems intuitive enough to know when an order is truly an order, which will be helpful. The kid’s too damn curious and stubborn, and that’s going to get them into trouble sooner or later.
Joel completes his circuit and cuts off that train of thought as he slips back inside the garage. Ellie’s still asleep, her face lax as she lets out the occasional snore. She looks young in a way he hasn’t noticed before — still baby-faced despite the heap of expletives that seem to guide her speech, probably small for her age.
And now it’s his responsibility to keep her safe until they locate Tommy or the Fireflies. For what? The off chance that they’ll be able to create a vaccine? It’s a pipe dream. Even if they did manage it, how would they mass-produce it? Knowing that group, they’d keep it to themselves and only distribute it amongst themselves.
He shakes his head, pushing the thoughts away. It doesn’t matter. His job is to deliver her safely, nothing more. Best to not get attached or caught up in false hope.
They’ll have to haul ass again tomorrow. He’s hoping they’ll be far enough from this whole mess to use the day after as a half-day. If they’re lucky they’ll make it to Lawrence and veer north. Ellie kept up well enough today, but he suspects shock and grief drove her forward without complaint. She’s not used to walking twenty-plus miles a day — he isn’t either anymore. He’ll have to monitor her endurance and work them up to a consistent distance.
Joel groans softly when he suppresses his third yawn in as many minutes. Ellie’s right about one thing: he’ll need to sleep at some point. She’s a good enough shot to protect herself until Joel takes over. With another sigh, Joel pushes himself to stand again; if he stays seated, he’ll fall asleep and they’ll both be defenseless.
Tomorrow. He’ll find them a more secure shelter for the night and teach her the basics of keeping watch tomorrow.
That will have to do.