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The street lights cast a warm glow over the porch where Joel sat, but the night brought an autumn chill that prevented him from getting too comfortable. Ellie was just inside, curled up with a book, but he’d told her he needed some air, that it was too stuffy in there with the fire going. The stillness was occasionally interrupted with short bursts of laughter or talking, but most of Jackson’s residents were in bed by now.
The QZ had never been quiet like this, streets always rumbling with FEDRA patrols, megaphones, sometimes gunshots. Tess would probably hate it; she tossed and turned all night the few rare times they stayed with Bill and Frank. Joel tried to imagine her here, safe, healthy. In the dining hall, putting some meat on her bones. Late nights like this on the porch, almost like Kentucky all those years ago. Walking the quaint little streets, her stride easy, no gun at her hip. Waking up next to her again, hearing Ellie barreling down the stairs. Would she want that? Domestic life had been fraught in Boston, strained. Those walls had never made her feel safe.
He went to look for the one person who remembered her, the one person who knew the two people he’d lost firsthand: Tommy. Thriving here, graying slightly, practically running the whole damn place with his wife, found most nights at the Tipsy Bison leaning on the bar, making small talk. He was alone today.
“I’m sorry, Joel. She was really something. I don’t know if I ever really understood it completely, you and her, but she was a force of nature.”
“I’m not sure I ever really understood her either. I thought I did, thought I had her number. But when she—“ Joel took a shaking breath. “She died thinkin’ I didn’t care anymore, that I didn’t feel anything. She tried to knock some sense into me, in the beginning, said I was too wrapped up in my own shit to really see her. I tried, I did. But after you left… she was right.”
“She loved you. She told me.”
“I know. But I hadn’t told her in a long time, and I didn’t act like it. I didn’t like the person I was with her, but that wasn’t ‘cause of anything she did. She deserved better, and I wish— I wish she got this. But at the same time, I don’t know how she would have handled it, not bein’ constantly fightin’ for her life all the time.” Joel covered his face with a hand. “When did she tell you?"
“2008, I think. I’m pretty sure she did right from the beginning, though. At least since Cincinnati.”
“Remember the RV, 2004, when she got scratched? That’s when I knew, when I woke up, and she was still her. Of course, I didn’t tell her until Boston. You left, everything went to shit, and I only ever told her a few more times after that, at least once to throw it in her face.”
“I’m sure she gave as good as she got, at least. Had some pretty choice words for me when I told her I was leaving. I don’t think she’d want you makin’ her out to be some sort of martyr.” Tommy took a breath. “We’ve got a shrink here, you know. Might do you some good.”
“Tired of hearin’ me bitch and moan?”
“No. Just thought you might finally have a reason to want to change.” There was an edge to Tommy’s voice.
“What, now that she’s gone?”
“Not that. The kid, she’s good for you.”
The pressure built up in Joel’s head as he imagined offering this newer, softer version of himself to Tess. Tess, who had compelled him to take Ellie. Tess, who somehow he could never change for. That she wasn’t worth it, that he wasn’t good enough, that he couldn’t— the guilt flooded him again. He wanted to snap at Tommy, to purposefully misinterpret his brother’s words and funnel some of this feeling into an unprovoked shouting match. Tommy had never seemed to think Tess was good for Joel, despite trusting her with his own life many times over. Of course, Tommy hadn’t thought Joel was good for her, either.
He remembered an argument from 2012, probably only a few months before Tommy left for good. Joel had retreated to Tommy’s apartment to cool off and complain to his brother after an fight with Tess.
“Jesus Christ, Joel, if you’re so miserable, why don’t you just leave?”
“Because I owe her. I promised.”
“You ever think maybe she doesn’t even want you around anymore either?”
“It was always you and me, Tommy, right from the beginning. The shit she had to do alone? I’m not puttin’ her in that position ever again unless she asks me to, unless she tells me right to my face to get the fuck out. You don’t know her like I do, Tommy, and you don’t know her at all if you think she’d rather be alone.”
“The lying, the killing, the torturing, that’s all okay, but you’re all hung up on one promise to a woman who hates you? You ruined her life, Joel, just like you ruined mine. You made us this way. Do you think she wanted this?”
Did he make her the way she was? In many ways, she had made him the man he was, both who he had been in their years together and who he was now. He was still living off her dying wish, wasn’t he? Still set on the path she had put him on.
He swallowed his anger down and stood, draining his drink.
“‘Night.”
“‘Night, Joel.”
Ellie was waiting up for him when he got home.
“You were out late, old man.”
“Just grabbin’ a drink with Tommy. Sorry, I should have told ya.” They both got nervous if the other person deviated from their regular schedule.
He cut his hand on the lid of a can of peas one night, alone in the kitchen, and he sank to the floor. Was there still a scar from all those years ago, that first morning they woke up on the run? It was too much, so he reached for old comforts. Opioids were far more scarce in Jackson than in the Boston QZ, but there was plenty of moonshine. He clutched a kitchen towel in his bleeding hand and thought of the nights he had wasted there, drinking alone, finding her in the morning for the day’s work, her eyes ringed with dark circles, face hard.
The thought that forced Joel off the floor and upstairs into his room was that Ellie could not see him like this. He would never ask her to share the burden of his guilt, nor would he let her witness it. She was at Dina’s house this evening until her ten o’clock curfew, and while it still panicked Joel to let her out of his sight, he was glad she was making friends. She was safe here, warm and fed, but still easily startled, still waking up screaming or crying, still watching him like a hawk. Neither of them had been left unscarred by their journey, physically or emotionally.
He lay in bed, his head swimming, until he heard her boots on the porch, the creak of the front door, two thumps as she threw her shoes off carelessly.
Sleep took him back to his old apartment in the QZ, standing in the kitchen while Tess sat at the table, squinting at the radio parts laid out in front of her. He set a candle beside her and lit it.
“You’ll ruin your eyes doin’ that.”
Her hair glowed honey-gold in the warm light, falling over her face in a soft curtain.
“Don’t nag. Not like I’m going to live long enough to have my eyes go, anyway.” The corner of her mouth quirked up.
“Ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“It’s February, Joel. There isn’t much sunshine to go around at the moment.”
He tucked her hair behind her ear and brushed his lips against her jaw.
“You know this has to be ready for tomorrow, right?” She gave him a stern look.
He backed away with his hands up, knocking the candle over with his elbow, and the flame caught on a small stack of ration cards sitting on the table. The wooden table began to smoke, fire licking her fingers. Tess kept turning the pieces over in her hands while the blaze roared on all sides, and Joel watched as she burned.
Ellie took a deep breath when Joel hung his jacket by the door after a day of work some months later. “I dream about Tess sometimes.”
“I do, too.”
“I was thinking, I want to know more about her. I know she was smart and brave, and she was nice to me, and she was from Detroit, but that’s it. What she did— I want to remember her. Tommy knew her, too, right? I can ask him if you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tess was—” he broke off. “I’d like to tell you about her. I’d like to try, at least.”
“Were you guys…?” Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah. We met after the outbreak, in 2004.”
“What was she like then?”
“Hungover, threatened to shoot us. Tommy and I left Texas and just kept walking, ended up havin’ a fight over something stupid in her front yard.”
“In Detroit?”
“No, Kentucky. She had come down with a group, but they were gone by then, we were wanderin,’ and we just sorta met in the middle. She saved my life a few weeks later, took the head right off a clicker with a shovel.”
Ellie grinned. “That is so fucking cool.”
“She was practical and so goddamn smart. She knew how to survive, and she just did whatever it took. And god forbid anything or anyone try to hurt her, me, or Tommy. I think you might’ve made that list, too.”
“Because I’m immune.”
Joel furrowed his eyebrows. “No, not just that. I think you reminded her of herself a little.”
He continued. “She was good with radios and stuff, good at figurin’ out how things went together. They would’ve liked her here for that. Good with people, too, good at makin’ deals and comin’ out on top. Didn’t like ‘em much, but she was good at pretending. She was a chameleon, sorta.”
“What’s a chameleon?” Ellie asked, confused.
“A lizard that can change color, blends in with the environment. I think they lived in the rainforest. Probably still do.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
“I’m dead serious. Ask your teacher down at the school.”
“She’s gonna laugh at me!”
“Maybe you’ll find one in all those books you’ve had your nose stuck in.”
And just like that, the conversation devolved into good-natured ribbing and debate over the existence of chameleons. Tess lingered on his mind, though. Chameleon was a good way to describe her— adaptable, hard to know.
Ellie raised the subject again over baked potatoes the next night. They still ate at home most nights, neither one enjoying the hustle and bustle of community dinners.
“What was her favorite food?”
“Tess? She liked pasta. Fresh fruit was always a treat when we could find it, too. I’m sure you never got much of that from FEDRA.”
“They fed us alright, actually. No point in sending us off too weak to fight, I guess. Did she like Chef Boyardee?”
“Yeah. There was a noodle place on Commonwealth we’d go to sometimes, too, when we got sick of FEDRA rations.”
The questions kept coming.
“What did she wear when she wasn’t on the job?”
“Same kinda stuff you saw her in. Took my shirts half the time. She liked to wear steel-toed boots, made a nasty surprise for anyone who tried to be smart with her.”
The memories flooded his mind unbidden, and his voice died in his throat. It was always violence with the two of them, a violence he now tried to keep hidden away from Ellie inside himself. He never let that flame burn out, though, ready to call on it at a moment’s notice to protect her. He didn’t want to give her stories of Tess kicking in the kneecap of another smuggler trying to poach their route, shooting a former ally turned traitor without a second thought, or worse yet, Tess with a gun to her head, Tess on the ground with a man’s knee in her back, Tess wiping off blood from her hands, her mouth, a slash on her bicep. So much blood.
Joel could tell, already, the allure that violence held to Ellie. Though she didn’t know about the trail of bodies left in the narrow hallways of the hospital, she had watched him punch Lee’s face to a bloody pulp that first night, and he had caught a glimmer of awe on her face when he turned around, fist battered, mind twenty years in the past. That wasn’t their world now, here. Joel turned his gaze back to her, though she hadn’t seemed to notice his brief absence.
She rested her chin on her hand. “Did she like dogs or cats?”
“I dunno, never came up.”
“Never came up in twenty years?”
“Nope.”
“Did she have a favorite book?”
“Hmm.” Joel scratched his beard, trying to remember. “I don’t know if it was her favorite, but she did like Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Her parents named her after the main character— just Tess, not short for anything.”
“Do you think the library here has it?”
“It might. We can try and find it. It was a classic, the kind they used to make you read for school. Reckon there are a few copies lyin’ around somewhere.”
“Did she and Tommy get along?”
“For the most part. I think they both liked havin’ someone other than me to talk to, and he’d tease her all the time. Didn’t always see eye to eye, and she took my side when he left Boston.”
“Did she have any family?”
“She didn’t have anyone close left after the outbreak, I think. She had—” he stopped himself.
Tess had kept so much of herself hidden away from the world, from him even, and now he was giving up all of her secrets easily. Would she want Ellie to know?
Ellie drew back. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright. Just, maybe we do this another day.”
She didn’t ask him again.