Chapter Text
Do you ever wonder...............
Why lives intersect,
React to one another -
What makes our hearts connect?
“You ever wonder what happened to them all?” Ellie asks, her face pressed to the glass.
“No.” Joel keeps his eyes solidly on the road. He’d already had to dodge at least three potholes as big as a German shepherd. He wasn't looking to pop a tire or, worse yet, crack an axle on their second day of driving.
“Dude, they're all just sitting there. You really never once wondered where all the soldiers went?” She turns to him, her eyes piercing. He sighs and shrugs his shoulders.
“I don't rightly know, kid. The days after the outbreak were confusin’. Some’a the government said they should be doin’ things this way, and some of ‘em said they should be doin’ things that way.” Joel stares off into the distance. A sign advertising twenty-year-old gas prices, rusted and rotted, raises into the air, presiding over a bevy of decrepit semis like a fucked up scarecrow. “I once saw a group of ‘em drop their weapons, get out of their trucks, and walk away. Their commandin’ officer spittin' and swearin’, goin’ red in the face, and they just turned their backs on him and left.”
“Man, that's crazy.” She traces her finger along the glass, moving it up and down to avoid obstacles as the truck drives past, like her version of Mario Bros. “Some of the girls in school did something like that once. It was like 98 fucking degrees, and we’d already been outside digging this pit for hours, I don't even know why. One of the girls got all red like a tomato one minute and white as a sheet the next, and then she just keeled over straight into the dirt. Passed out cold. The instructor yelled and screamed and told us to get back to work, but some of the girl's friends wouldn't do it. They wanted to take her inside. But he told them she was just being dramatic.”
Joel shouldn’t ask, he knows he shouldn’t ask. He ain’t gonna like the answer. So far, everything he’s heard about this damn school she went to has only reinforced what he already knew about FEDRA, that they should never be put in charge of the raising of children under any circumstances.
But he does anyway, and maybe it’s morbid curiosity, or maybe it’s just boredom creeping up on him after being on the road for 4 hours already and knowing they probably have another 8 hours ahead of them.
Whatever the reason behind it, he asks her. “What happened to them?”
“The older girls threw down their shovels, grabbed the girl who passed out, and took her inside. Each one got ten lashes with a belt and a week in the hole.” Ellie looks down, twisting a piece of loose thread from the bottom of her shirt around and around her finger until it starts to turn purple, then tugs it loose and drops it to the floor. “The girl who passed out got bit a month later when she was on her first patrol. She’d just turned seventeen.”
Ellie reflexively scratches her right forearm, right where Joel knows her bite scar rests, while her eyes continue to scan the landscape as they pass. He's noticed it's a habit of hers whenever something comes up about someone turning, glancing at her arm, or brushing her fingers across the space.
He ignores it. Who’s he to say anything about strange habits?
“That's too bad,” Joel grunts, swerving to avoid a shopping cart in the middle of the road. How the hell did that get there?
“Yeah.” she hums, falsely nonchalant, her finger going back to jumping and diving across the glass.
Joel catches sight of a tank on its own a little further down the road, coughs, clears his throat, and starts to slow the car down. “Ah, gotta take a leak, kid. Gonna pull over here.”
Ellie nods, not paying attention, too distracted by her imaginary video game, until he pulls to a stop, and the tank comes into view.
“Holy shit, Joel!” She yells, her hands pressing against the window.
“You can get out of the truck, but stay here till I get a chance to clear the area first. Still gotta piss, so unless you want an eyeful, stay put.” He climbs out of the truck, and she nods vigorously as she scrambles out after him.
He can say one thing for the kid: when it really counts, she listens. She might like to push her boundaries, but she always seems to know when it's important. Maybe it's from all her years at Fedra dealing with assholes, fellow kids and adults alike, that are perfectly willing to throw a punch her way if she dares to step wrong. Whatever the reason, she stays by the truck, nearly vibrating out of her skin, but she stays.
It’s not too hard to clear, the tank’s set up in a wide-open field, the waving viridescent grass overgrown to nearly knee-high in places. He’ll have to have her check for ticks when they’re done with this little pit stop, but otherwise, it’s free of any other hiding places. He rounds the tank, overgrown with moss and clinging vines, checks the ground for any bodies or patches of cordyceps, and examines the machine itself to ensure nothing’s hiding under or on it. Everything looks clear, so he holsters his gun, quickly relieves himself, and returns to the truck.
“Alright, you got about fifteen minutes to do your business while I check the tires. These potholes are gonna kill me. Don’t wander, ya hear?”
With a shouted, “Yeah, man,” she’s off like a shot, ponytail bouncing as she gallops through the field like a goddamn gazelle. He shakes his head, suppressing the smile that wants to creep across his face.
“Dude, this is so fucking cool.” he hears her yell and looks up from where he’s checking the rear tire to see her clambering on top of the tank. She teeters a little as she picks her way across the rusted metal, her arms pinwheeling to keep her balance. Joel feels his heart skip painfully as he pictures her pitching over the side, can almost hear her agonized cry as she lands on her arm or leg or even her head. He knows the pinched look that would be on her face, the wide, wet eyes filled with terror, the pale grey color of her skin, the mewling sounds she would make as she grabs the injured limb, bone cracked, or twisted, or god forbid, broken through the skin.
His skin pricks, and his pulse races as he makes to rush across the field, but then a giggle peels from her lips, and the moment breaks, the echoes of it reverberating into the recesses of his mind to be called up in his nightmares night after night for weeks and months to come. With a shuddering inhale, he forces himself to turn away, to finish the task he started, to not think of what it would be like to watch another little girl die under his watch.