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When Joel finally agrees to let her go on one of the group trips to the great outside that the teenagers sometimes take, Ellie is sure she’s never been more ecstatic. She doesn’t even care that Tommy’s one of the chaperones (which she knows is not a coincidence, but rather a compromise, a stand-in for Joel). Freedom is freedom, and she’s been itching to get out of Jackson and stretch her legs practically since the second they got back three months ago. If Tommy wants to tag along, the more the merrier.
“You have your flashlight?” Joel asks as he walks her to the stables, arm slung around her shoulders, on the morning she’s set to leave. Ellie knows it’s killing him to stay behind, but he also knows he’s been trying to make an effort to give her more independence, more breathing room, even if it’s at the expense of his own peace of mind. She’s grateful.
“We’ll be back before dinner,” Ellie reminds him. “And it’s the middle of June, anyways. The sun doesn’t set til, like, nine.”
“Things can go wrong,” he says seriously. She rolls her eyes. “How about your water bottle? Hat? Did you—”
“I have my water bottle, hat, flashlight, trail mix, emergency blanket, fire starter, switchblade, first aid kit, paracord, and compass,” she lists on her fingers. “And my backpack weighs a thousand pounds just to prove it, if you wanna feel.”
“They’re called the ten essentials for a reason, kiddo,” Joel replies flatly, unamused, and Ellie can see the tightness in his jaw, the way he’s stiff against her as they walk. She sobers a little.
“I’ll be fine,” she insists. “There are only eight of us going, plus three chaperones—including Tommy. And the place has been scouted, like, a million times.” She knows he knows all of this, knows it’s the only reason he’d agreed in the first place. “I’ll be back before you even miss me.”
“Miss you? I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet, the whole house to myself, no pests monopolizing my TV—” Ellie shoves against his side, dislodging his arm and knocking him off balance.
“Dick,” she mutters, laughing as he pushes her right back.
When they get to the stables, but before they’re in sight of where the rest of the group has started gathering, Joel pulls her in for a long hug. She tucks her face tight against his shoulder, squeezing around his ribs. She’s excited, overwhelmingly so, but now that the moment is here, she also can’t deny the nervous tingling at the base of her neck.
Ellie knows the way Maria whispers to Tommy, displeased, about codependence and unhealthy attachment, but she thinks that if Maria walked across the country with someone, she’d probably be pretty attached to that person, too. It suddenly feels as though going without Joel is like exposing an open wound to the elements.
He lays a palm over the back of her head, pressing it even more snugly against him. Serious as a heart attack, he whispers, “Please be safe.”
“I will,” she promises, giving him one last squeeze for good measure.
And just like that, she’s on a horse, reins in hand, Tommy at her side as they move through the open gate.
Free at last, she thinks.
Midday finds their little troupe riding two-by-two, spread out on the trail, talking about the berries they’d found foraging and the old strip mall a few miles out and where they should stop to have a picnic lunch.
“It’s nice in the shade,” she says contentedly to Tommy next to her. They’re bringing up the rear, and she’s enjoying the easy pace and the quiet that comes from lagging a little bit behind everyone.
“That’s something I don’t miss about Texas,” he comments. “Goddamn sun never quit. It could be 7am and you’d feel like a piece of bacon on a cast iron if you were out in it for longer than ten minutes.”
Ellie hums thoughtfully. She wants to ask more about Texas, about his life Before with Joel—and with Sarah—but she doesn’t want to break the peaceful bubble that’s settled around them. Maybe the peace is what gives her the courage to ask anyway; being away from Jackson, feeling small compared to the trees and the never-ending sky, makes her brave.
“Are there other things that you do? Miss, that is. About Texas.” She cringes as the question comes out stilted. If she’d thought long enough to fully form it, she’d have lost her nerve.
When Tommy’s quiet for a minute, Ellie worries she’s offended him. She starts to apologize, to say Never mind, of course you don’t want to talk about the awesome life you had with your brother and niece twenty years ago before the world absolutely fell apart, forget I even asked, when he answers.
“There’s lots to miss,” he pauses. “Mostly new movies. I always wondered what would happen in the third Star Wars to make Anakin go all Darth Vader.” She nods sagely; she can relate to this maddening curiosity. His answer is joke-y, and she’s happy to give him the out, ready to change the subject, but then he goes a little more serious.
“I miss going to the grocery store with Joel and Sarah. That’s a big one.” Tommy’s smile is sad, as if touching the memory makes it ache like a bruise. “It sounds dumb, but every Sunday we’d walk up and down the aisles and fill up a cart. I’d put something in, he’d take it out, then Sarah would put it back in and he’d let it slide. We had a perfect system,” he recounts fondly.
The thought makes Ellie jealous, and she wishes desperately that she could have been a part of these weekly errands. She doesn’t know why she asked him about Texas, should have known that it would make her feel like an outsider to the Millers in a way that’s rare these days. But it also makes her feel closer to him, and to Joel, like if she learns enough of their history, she could somehow end up sharing it, could have some real, tangible connection to them.
Her spirits are buoyed slightly by the thought of Joel getting bullied into buying sugary cereal or three kinds of potato chips because that’s what his daughter demanded; it feels eerily similar to the man she knows will scrape half of his dessert onto her plate if she so much looks at it. Some things never change, it seems, apocalypse or not.
So focused on the thought of Joel-the-long-suffering-sucker, Ellie doesn’t notice the clicker barreling in from the side until it’s too late.
It comes up on Tommy’s left, crashing through the underbrush as it takes out his horse by clawing at her legs. Ellie can’t even see it at first, just hears the branches snapping and the horrible staccato clickclickclickclick. Then she watches the chestnut mare—Ziggy—going down, and the shock on Tommy’s face as he scrambles for purchase. She’s reaching for him in an instant, yelling at him to grab her hand or her reins or her goddamn pant leg, no plan other than keep him out of biting distance. There are gunshots ringing out as the other two chaperones draw their pistols and come galloping back from where they’d been ahead on the trail. Over the ringing in her ears from the adrenaline and the shots and the terror that she’ll be too late, she thinks she hears them urging the kids to move forward, away from the action.
Fuck that, Ellie thinks. She’s closest to where Tommy is moving to get up off the ground; there’s no way in hell she’s leaving him to die. Plus, out of everyone, this threat is the least dangerous to her—not that anyone else knows that.
She’s off her horse the next second, just as the clicker has realized that there’s a much more desirable target than Ziggy and has begun advancing on her rider. It pins Tommy to the ground, his arms up in defense, gun lost somewhere in the chaos. The other adults can’t get clean aim in the tussle, else they risk hitting Tommy on accident. Never one for hesitation, Ellie darts in and grabs it from behind, arms around its throat, using her slim advantage from having taken it by surprise to drag it backwards. Her—admittedly half-baked—plan is to get the clicker off of Tommy, then get away from it (this is the half-baked part) long enough to open up a clean shot.
What she hasn’t accounted for, besides how she’s going to open up that clean shot, is the steep slope that stretches from either side of the trail. As she drags the squirming thing away from Tommy, its jerky movements knock her off balance, and then she’s tipping over, arms still full of infected.
She and the clicker tumble down the hill, rolling over and over and over, knocking into trees and roots and patches of thorns. It’s snarling furiously, jaws snapping as she holds her arms up to keep it away from her face while they slide together, and she feels a sudden, sharp pain in her head as her skull thwacks against a rock. This slows their momentum, sending them skidding to a halt.
Ellie’s temple throbs, her eyes feel like they’re being prodded at from the inside, and the world goes blurry, distant. The clicker gets a nip in, she can feel it just below her elbow, and all her brain supplies is Thanks motherfucker, now I have to burn it again.
The damn thing really won’t let up, even after it’s gotten a taste. Her arms are made of jelly as she pushes against its neck, its face, its chest, but she just can’t get out from where it’s pinned her. She feels sick at the pounding of her heart in her chest and the way the thudding migrates to her forehead, mixing with the growling sounds the infected is making right next to her ear.
Knife, her brain suggests distantly. She scrambles for where her switchblade is tucked in her pocket and flicks it open, jabbing blindly. She catches it in the eyesocket, then again in the side of the head and on its cheek.
“Jesus Christ, just fucking die already,” she huffs out, stabbing at whatever other parts of it she can reach. The final, fatal blow comes from a slice to its neck, and the clicker finally stills.
Its weight on top of her makes her feel nauseous, and she struggles trying to push it off, but it won’t budge. The best she can do is roll onto her side, dislodging it, but her body decides that’s too much movement, and she’s powerless to stop the heaving as it comes in waves, barely managing to get up onto all-fours so she won’t ruin her favorite shirt (and if it’s actually Joel’s shirt—well, that’s nobody’s business but hers, and possibly Joel’s).
As the retching subsides, she pants, gulping down air that isn’t enough, feeling her muscles trembling. That’s not even really the right way to describe the tremors wracking her body; they make it so she isn’t strong enough to stay upright, and over the pain in her head she registers a dull ache in her ribs.
Distantly Ellie hears footsteps and shouts, and then there’s a blurry figure in front of her, and that figure leans in enough to sharpen into Tommy. His lips are moving, his gaze harried, but she can’t work out what he wants from her. She leans back against a boulder jutting out of the ground, trying to breathe through the shaking in her hands. Tommy kneels, still talking at her. She still can’t hear him.
The sweat clinging to every square inch of her skin makes her cold, even though it must be pushing 90 degrees outside. Overhead, despite the shade of the tree canopy, the sun that slips through feels sharp and stabbing against her open eyes. She closes them in defense.
There’s something wet oozing from her temple and from her nose, and when she reaches her palm up to wipe at her face it comes away streaked with red.
Ellie’s suddenly hyperaware of the thick blood sliding down the back of her throat from her sinuses, metal coating her tongue, and that’s what breaks her. The taste and the light and the noise are too much, and she cuts off whatever Tommy was saying abruptly.
“Joel,” she pleads. “Please, I want Joel. Please,” and she’s crying she realizes, and through the tears she can’t breathe and Tommy is reaching out a hand to try and placate her but she doesn’t want it. She flinches away, pushing herself more firmly against the granite at her back and shaking her head vigorously despite the way it makes her brain throb.
His words come into focus, then, like some barrier has been broken.
“Okay, darlin’, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay,” Tommy’s soothing, speaking softly like he does when one of the horses is spooked or when Benji won’t settle for a nap. He’s crouching in front of her, hands out but not reaching. “Just take a minute, you’re alright.”
Ellie thinks this is false; she doesn’t feel “alright.” The blood is still warm where it’s flowing down the side of her face, and she can feel a split in her lip starting to swell. The world feels like it’s wrapped in gauze; she can barely focus on Tommy in front of her, and she thinks she might throw up again.
“Joel,” she tries again around her shuddering breaths, like maybe if she says his name enough he’ll appear. “Please, Joel, please,” she implores, but it doesn’t work, and through the concussed haze, she can see Tommy’s face go more worried, eyebrows knitting together.
“He’s at home, honey. He’s waiting for us to get back to him, that’s all. We’ll leave as soon as we can get you settled, okay?” His voice is steady. She wants to find comfort in it, but in the throbbing fog it just doesn’t feel right.
Ellie leans over and vomits once, then twice, then a third time for good measure, her bruised ribs protesting with each heave. She thinks, deliriously, that she’s glad Joel braided her hair before she left because he isn’t here to hold it back now.
It makes her cry impossibly harder, and then that becomes more like hyperventilating, gulping down air that somehow still doesn’t feel like enough, trying to get oxygen to her cells. She can’t really hear what Tommy’s saying anymore, can just see his mouth moving and his hands still held out. She thinks maybe she’s still asking for Joel, but she can’t be sure. Then there’s another figure next to Tommy, a shadow silhouetted against the sun, and he’s standing to talk to them.
Ellie lists sideways to lean against the cool stone, ignoring the way the pressure makes her head throb more. She thinks she might be sick again, can feel the saliva gathering behind her teeth, mixing with coppery blood. Everything is spinning, she still can’t breathe, and desperately she wants rough hands and worn flannel to wrap her up and whisper gentle assurances.
When there’s a heavy hand on her shoulder a moment later, she thinks wildly, instinctively that she might be magic. But when she lifts her ten-ton eyelids, she finds Tommy in front of her, closer than before. She shrugs his hand away with a whimper, can’t muscle through how wrong it feels. He lifts it immediately, tucking it in his pocket instead.
“Katie’s gonna go get Joel,” Tommy tells her gently. He settles next to her, back pressed against the rock. “An hour, tops, darlin’, and you’ll have him. You just hang in there,” and she thinks it isn’t that big of an ask but worries about her ability to comply anyways.
Tommy keeps talking, recounting stories about Texas and the movies he did get to see and all the times he thought Joel was going to kill him for doing something stupid.
Ellie tries to focus on what he’s saying, she really does, but it’s taking everything in her just to stay conscious. Her breath still won’t come easy, and, as she pants, the world is moving too fast and too slow and her body feels like it's in the middle of falling from something very, very tall.
She’s closed her eyes for a moment (or maybe it’s longer than that?), just to see if it'll help the falling-feeling, when she hears hurried footsteps and rustling leaves over the rushing, white noise in her ears.
“Ellie?” Her eyes snap open, and then there are big hands framing her face, gentle thumbs brushing just under her eyes. She feels tears well up in relief. “Jesus Christ,” Joel mutters tightly as he takes her in.
“Joel,” she pleads, hating how small it sounds but unable to rein in the desperation through the nausea and the throbbing and the trembling and the heaving breaths.
Then it’s like someone has cut her strings, and she’s tilting forward suddenly, trusting him to catch her. He does, gathering her up as he takes Tommy’s place leaning against the boulder. She clutches at the front of his shirt as she cries, gripping the cotton like her life depends on it. He smooths one hand up and down her back, the other resting against the side of her head where it’s pressed against his chest.
“You’re alright, baby,” he soothes. “Shh, it’s okay, I promise, you’re okay. Just try to breathe,” and she wants to follow his instructions more than anything but she can’t make her lungs listen to her brain and the lack of control just makes her cry harder. “I’ve got you, baby girl. I’m right here, deep breaths.”
Ellie isn’t sure how long they sit there like that, her clinging to his shirt and trying to catch her breath, using the worn flannel as armor against the noise, the light, the ceaseless thumping of her pulse in her temples. Eventually, though, she’s anchored by his gentle murmuring, different combinations of it’s okay and I’m here baby and you’re alright all strung together in a constant stream. She lets out a shaky sigh, releases one hand’s grip on his shirt and rubs at her eyes. The world is still dizzy, but she feels more grounded. Joel’s hand pauses where it’s rubbing circles on her back.
“How you feelin’, kiddo?” His tone is impossibly quiet, almost inaudible.
She hums in response, resisting when he tries to tilt her chin up to look at him.
“Can I take a look?” He asks, bringing his hand up by the cut on her forehead but not touching. She nods carefully and lets herself be maneuvered to sit up on her own next to him, rather than propped against his chest.
Joel rests one hand on her cheek and uses the other to cup the back of her head, beginning his inspection. As he checks the wounds on her temple and her nose and her lip, he whispers over and over again, “It’s okay, you’re okay. Everything’s alright, baby girl,” almost to himself, like a prayer or a promise.
He’s quick with her midsection, hands light as they press against her ribs and around her belly, but it still twinges. She tries to keep her face neutral, but he can read her like a book even on her best days.
“Sorry,” he murmurs at her grimace. “Nothing feels broken, but you’ll probably be sore a few weeks,” he says regretfully.
Ellie’s forgotten about the bite on her arm until he goes to inspect it, making her flinch at the sting when he presses tenderly around the marks. “I’m sorry, just need to check,” and she sees him twist to make sure no one is lingering, but there’s just Tommy a few paces away, dutifully keeping watch.
Joel’s face goes hard as he inspects each puncture, stark against the tight, shiny canvas of her burned-and-healed forearm. Over and over, his fingertips glide across the raised tendrils creeping out from the wound, careful, probing. His hands are trembling, barely noticeable, but she sees the worry stretched across his features.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t— it wasn’t—” she stutters, trying to explain that her actions were necessary, not reckless. She can’t get the words together right, though, can’t find it in herself to tell him she’d do it again in a heartbeat, even though she would.
“I know, baby,” he softens, folding her hand up in his. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s just get you home.”
When Joel’s done examining, has assured himself that she’s not going to keel over, he pulls his sleeve over his thumb and wets it using clean water from his canteen. More gently than a man his size should be able to, he rubs at the spots of blood on her face, careful of the bruising. She could laugh at the focus clear on his face if he wasn’t so tender, and if she wasn’t the focus of it.
Clean(ish) and safe, Ellie realizes that, most of all, she’s exhausted. The adrenaline has worn off, and there wasn’t much else keeping her awake in the first place. She still feels woozy and detached, like maybe she could float away if the wind blew hard enough.
“Try to keep your eyes open, baby,” Joel taps her cheek lightly, kneeling in front of her. He’d gone to speak with Tommy, and she hadn’t even noticed they’d slipped closed. “We’re gonna start heading back, okay?” The question makes her grin deliriously; it’s not like she’s in a place to disagree, even if she wanted to. No, I think I’ll stay right here, thanks.
Instead, she nods wearily as he wraps her limp arms around his neck and pulls her against him before standing. She presses her nose against the side of his throat, letting her eyes fall closed again.
“I gotcha, baby girl,” he mumbles to her as he makes his way over to where their horses are tied.
Getting mounted behind Joel requires more effort than she has, and Tommy ends up doing most of the heavy lifting. She wants to apologize to him for earlier, for being insufferable and inconsolable, but her tongue feels heavy and she doesn’t quite have the words.
The way Tommy says “There you go, darlin’, you just hang on tight,” once she’s settled makes her feel like maybe he isn’t holding it against her. She links her hands around Joel’s waist and lays her cheek against his back, listening to the thud of his heartbeat and his steady breaths, trying to match her own to them.
The ride back to Jackson is hell. Ellie’s ribs ache and her head throbs and her eyes sting. The sway of the horse makes her motion sick, and she feels too hot and too cold and too high up and too stuffed full of cotton. She tries not to make a big deal about it, is already feeling embarrassed by the magnitude of her meltdown, but she knows Joel catches every whimper, every flinch. Each time, he squeezes the knot of her hands looped around him, runs a thumb over them and asks if she’s doing alright. He tries to stop a few times, but she tells him she just wants to be home. They keep riding.
She’s excused from a clinic visit given the bite on her arm; it’s been wrapped and slathered with antibiotic ointment, but Tommy and Joel don’t want any of the doctors to insist on a full exam and get suspicious when it’s refused. When Joel delivers this news, displeased, she can’t help but think, Sorry, but at least that’s one win for me today.
The alternative to a clinic visit, it seems, is being confined to Joel’s bed and not being allowed to sleep for longer than an hour at a time. There are worse places to be held captive.
Ellie’s stretched out against him, head on his shoulder and bandaged arm curled across his chest, holding the collar of his shirt loosely between her fingers. She’s almost asleep again, having just passed her third wake-up check, lulled by his hand running up and down her back and his heartbeat and the rumble in his chest as he tells her stories about Before. It’s all she’s wanted all day long; crying and desperate and confused, this is the only thing that was ever going to fix it.
Suddenly, the funniest thing in the world (at least, through her concussion-tinted glasses) occurs to her.
“Hey, Joel?” She mumbles against his shirt. It’s funny, but not funny enough to bother lifting her head.
“Hm?” He mumbles right back, face pressed to the top of her head. He sounds half asleep himself.
“Would you agree that today was, like, worst case scenario?”
He’s quiet, considering.
“Yeah, kiddo, I probably would. Or pretty close to it, at least.” He squeezes her a little tighter to him.
“And you know what we didn’t need? A hat, or sunscreen, or trailmix, or a compass—”
“Jesus, you’re insufferable,” but she can feel him laughing through it, pressing a kiss to her temple, gentle around the goose-egg that’s swollen up.
“We even made it back before dark,” Ellie reminds him, curling closer, closing her fingers a little more tightly where they’re wrapped around the neck of his shirt.
“There’s always a bright side, I guess,” he concedes, settling his big palm over the back of her head to keep it snug against his shoulder. When he speaks next, his voice is impossibly softer. “Try to get some rest, baby,” he murmurs, kissing her head again, adjusting his arm so that she's lying flatter, smoothing a hand down her back.
For once in her life, she listens.