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It takes Ellie a while to realise just how cold it is out here. The blazing building behind her is throwing off a lot of heat, and Joel’s body pressed against hers is shielding her from the wind. But when Joel’s body turns and adjusts his jacket around Ellie’s shoulders, the cold starts to set in.
It’s snowing all around, and Ellie’s lost her ugly coat that Maria gave her back in Jackson. Left only with the thin sweater David had put her in. Joel’s jacket is warm around her shoulders, and the weight of his arm grounds her against the bitter cold, but it sets into her bones quickly.
‘C’mon, Ellie. Time to go,’ Joel mutters in her ear as he presses against her back, urging her away from the fire which is now sending black billowing smoke high into the air.
Ellie can’t help but look over her shoulder as they move away. She imagines David’s mutilated body burning in there, the blood stains she left on the rugs evaporating into nothing and the metal table David had tried to kill her on melting into the ground.
Joel gives her a nudge and she turns back to look where she is going, leaving the cannibals behind to their fate and Ellie prays that she never meets anybody as terrifying as them. She’ll fight a hundred clickers if it means she never has to face someone so evil ever again.
Snow falls from the sky, little flakes drifting through the air in every direction. They land on Ellie’s cheeks and nose and fall down the neck of her sweatshirt that hangs too loose around her shoulders. The wind whips around them, tousling Ellie’s hair and making the tail of Joel’s jacket flap around by her knees. Joel keeps pulling it tighter around Ellie’s chest, but the cold is already setting in.
Ellie wants to ask where they are going, but her jaw feels stuck and her tongue hangs like lead in her mouth, unable to do anything. Besides, Ellie isn’t really sure that Joel even knows where they’re going this time. He leads them through the woods, just off the shoreline of the lake. They pass a few fishing huts and small cottages that would have been inhabited years ago. Now, they stand decrepit and one harsh wind from falling down.
As they walk, Ellie tries to keep her thoughts on what is in front of her; the eagle that flies across the lake, or the fox that darts in and out of the trees. But the eagle screeches like David’s blood-curdling scream as he hunts her down, and the fox looks like Ellie, darting for cover to hide from her predator. She can still feel his breath on her face, his hand on hers, and every time Ellie looks back over her shoulder, she expects to see him bursting out from the thick woods, clothes flaming and eyes wild as he lunges for her.
The tears freeze on her face almost as soon as they fall, and her hands are too stiff to wipe them away. Joel looks down at her once or twice and whispers something she can’t hear, before leaning down to press a kiss to the top of her head. His face is cold against her head, and she wonders how he hasn’t frozen to death already, being only in a thin jacket while his winter coat is wrapped around her shoulders.
And despite the fur-lined coat wrapped tightly around her by Joel’s steady hands, Ellie shivers. She tucks her hands under her armpits, trying to soother the burning cold in her fingers, but it only serves to make her shiver worse as her feet begin to falter beneath her.
‘Keep goin’, baby girl. We’ll find somewhere to hole up soon,’ Joel promises her, and Ellie tries to steel herself and continue to put one foot in front of the other.
Her lungs burn from the frigid air she breathes into them between sobs she barely recognises as her own. Joel’s arm grasps her shoulders tighter as he pushes her slightly to urge her forwards. Ellie knows that they can’t stop. If they stop now, they’ll die and then all of this will have been for nothing.
But Ellie’s feet are frozen in her boots and her ankles buckle with each step. She stands on one of her laces and it sends her pitching forward face-first into the snow.
Joel manages to grab her by the back of her sweatshirt as she falls, stopping her from landing fully in the snow. But the cold seeps through the knees of her jeans quickly, freezing her legs as she gasps from the shock of it as Joel’s coat slips from around her shoulders, landing in a heap next to her.
‘Get up, Ellie,’ Joel orders gruffly, grabbing her by the arms to pull her up, but Ellie’s body feels like jelly. She can’t possibly get up. In fact, she might just lie down on Joel’s coat next to her and go to sleep.
‘No,’ Ellie whines, leaning forward into her knees as more tears fall down her cheeks. ‘I can’t do it,’
Her words are not so much a protest as a realisation. Pure hopelessness washes over her as she realises that she hasn’t got anything left in her to give. She will die here, frozen like one of those carcasses in David’s freezer and there is nothing anybody can do about it.
‘We don’t talk like that, Ellie. Get up,’ Joel says firmly, once again grabbing her and trying to haul her to her feet, but still she cannot move.
Ellie hears Joel sigh in frustration above her and she hates that she is doing this to him, but her whole body is burning with cold, save for her hands and feet which have lost feeling entirely and she simply doesn’t see a way out of this.
But Joel is crouched in front of her now, and he takes her face in his hands and looks at her with such a fierce look that she can’t turn away.
‘Ellie, listen to me. Get the fuck up,’ Joel hisses and Ellie can tell he’s trying so hard not to shout at her. Her eyes sear with cold tears and despite how badly she wants to lay down and die, Ellie can’t do that to him.
So she reaches out and tries to grab hold of Joel’s arms, except her fingers are frozen blue and completely useless. Joel grabs her, though, his own fingers blue and cracked from the cold, but it doesn't seem to phase him. Or maybe he just won’t let her see that. He pulls her up and Ellie does her best to get her feet underneath her again.
‘That’s it, sweetheart, you’ve got it,’ Joel tells her as he crouches back down to tuck her loose laces into her boots. ‘C’mon, I can see a cabin up ahead, we’ll be able to hole up in there, I reckon,’
Ellie tries to find the cabin Joel speaks of, but she can’t see anything through the thick, swirling snow around them. Joel’s big coat is draped once more around her shoulders, though it doesn’t really offer any warmth anymore.
They push on once more, squinting against the wind and snow blowing in their eyes, desperate to make it through one more day.
***
Luck is on Joel’s side today. He hadn’t seen any cabin up ahead; he had lied to Ellie and maybe he’ll feel bad about it later but he needed to get her to move. His heart still hasn’t quite stopped pounding in his chest from the fear of seeing her so defeated, slumped in the snow and ready to accept death. It’s not an image Joel thinks he’ll ever get out of his mind.
But it only takes another five minutes of stumbling through the snow before Joel really does see a cabin up ahead; and it’s not one that’s falling apart and clearly hasn’t been used since the outbreak. No, this is a well-built cabin with all four walls and the roof seemingly in-tact and Joel finally breathes a sigh of relief.
It’s half way up the side of a hill, set about fifty foot back from the lake and there’s a rickety looking staircase leading up to the front door. But even from here, he can see that the front door is shut, which means it will keep out any draught from the storm outside.
Joel does his best to squeeze his arm around Ellie’s shoulders once more, but he can barely feel his limbs anymore, and it’s by pure muscle memory that they are still soldiering on through the snow.
‘C’mon, baby girl, we’re almost there,’ he tells her.
He prays that there is wood in there for a fire, maybe even a blanket or two and— if they’re really lucky— something to eat.
Getting up the steps to the front door is probably the hardest part of the entire journey. Joel’s knees refuse to bend and he has to reach down and physically lift each limb up onto the next step. Ellie keeps tripping and falling until she just gives up on her legs and drags herself up step by step as Joel leads the way, testing each step before trusting it with his weight.
Finally, after what feels like years but must only be a few minutes, they reach the front porch and Joel reaches for the door handle. If the metal is cold beneath his fingers, he doesn’t feel it, and he wrenches the door open, pulling on its frozen hinges until it comes free. A frozen bolt snaps like a piece of straw, no doubt degraded by weather over the years.
Joel reaches down for Ellie who is trying to scramble to her feet and helps lug her up and through the doorway.
In the back of his mind, Joel knows that he should scout the cabin out first; make sure there are no Infected waiting for them. Realistically, he reckons that staying out in the cold a second longer is far more dangerous than running into an Infected or two.
Ellie heads straight for the moth-eaten sofa, collapsing down on it and curling in on herself in one little shivering ball. But Joel can’t join her just yet.
He heads straight for the fireplace where a few half-burnt logs are still sitting in a pile of ash. By some heavenly miracle, there is a pile of wood and kindling next to the fireplace and Joel thanks whatever being is looking out for him. He digs the matches out of their backpack and stuffs some kindling and a fresh log into the fireplace. He still has a few pages from some of the magazines they took from Bill’s place and he rips one out before lighting it and using it to light the rest of the wood.
It takes a moment, but finally little flames begin to flicker and lick at the wood. Joel reaches his blue hands forward, selfishly searching for some heat to thaw out his frozen body.
But then he hears Ellie groan behind him and he turns around to see her drifting off on the sofa. He curses quietly and scrambles clumsily to his feet.
‘Ellie, stay awake,’ he demands, stumbling over to her and tapping her gently across her leg. ‘Open your eyes, you gotta stay awake, kiddo,’
Ellie only groans in response and Joel feels the fear from before seeping in again.
‘Damnit Ellie, open your eyes!’ he shouts as loud as his aching lungs will allow him as he uses the remaining magazine pages still clasped in his hand to smack her on the leg.
‘Jesus, fuck,’ Ellie mutters at the sudden noise, but her eyes peel open and that’s all that Joel cares about.
‘Take your boots off,’ Joel tells her sternly. ‘And those jeans; they’re soaking wet,’
Ellie scowls at him, but moves to obey regardless, so Joel sets about searching the rest of the cabin for something to keep them warm whilst the fire slowly grows in the fireplace.
There isn’t much in this cabin save for some essentials like flashlights, matches and a fishing rod. Joel grabs one of the flashlights, which thankfully still beams a decent light around the dark cabin, and moves on. He finds a cupboard under the stairs that houses a rifle, a bow and a quiver of arrows in one corner. But there are also two pairs of fur-lined boots on the shoe rack, and heavy winter coats that Joel snatches up.
He heads back to Ellie and tosses the smaller pair of boots towards her and a coat.
‘Take your socks off too, then put the coat on,’ Joel tells her. He waits only long enough to confirm that she has understood his instructions and is following them before heading upstairs.
There are two bedrooms and a bathroom up here, all sparsely decorated and Joel wonders if the people who lived here simply didn’t want a lavish lifestyle, or if they sold everything they had like many others did in an attempt to survive.
The smaller bedroom is empty save for a chest of drawers that houses only a few dead mice and a dusty bed. Joel snatches the duvet off of the bed and makes for the main bedroom.
His chest clenches as he opens the door.
The room smells like death, but not a recent death, more like the ghost of it still lingering in the room as time slowly moves on around them.
There are two bodies in the bed, their skeletons intertwined together like they had died holding each other. An old, bloody knife sits on the dresser, rusted with time and a copy of The Secret Garden lies open between the two bodies, droplets of blood staining the pages crimson. Joel turns away and finds himself looking out of the window into the pitch dark night beyond. There are scratch marks on the windows, like something was trying to get in, but never could. He had noticed a similar pattern on the front door earlier, though he hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
The Infected must have come to this cabin years ago, trying to reach the couple lying on the bed. They had chosen their own fate by then. Joel wonders if the Infected gave up because they were already dead, or because they couldn’t find a way in the house. Perhaps these people killed themselves for nothing.
There isn’t time to dwell on this now, however, because Joel can hear Ellie coughing downstairs and he is jolted back to the present. He turns away from the bodies on the bed and instead starts rifling through the draws, pulling out every jumper, scarf and pair of socks he can find before heading back downstairs with an armful of garments.
Ellie has moved off of the sofa and is sitting barefoot and pantsless in front of the fire. Her hands and feet are stretching out towards the warmth whilst the coat Joel had given her lies over her lap.
‘Here, got some more layers to put on,’ Joel tells her, motioning for her to come over. Much like him, Ellie is unbalanced as she pushes herself to her feet and staggers towards him. Her toes are black and blue and Joel wonders if all ten toes will make it through the night. He knew a guy who had to snap his toes off once because they had died of frostbite and were infecting the rest of his foot.That seems like a problem for later, though.
Joel passes Ellie a pair of jeans he had found in one of the drawers; they’re a little big on her, but they’ll do the job for now. She puts two pairs of socks on and then stuffs her frozen feet into the boots he had found earlier. Once she’s wrapped up in as many layers as Joel can get on her, she sits back down in front of the fire which is now blazing hot enough that the room temperature is beginning to rise.
He turns around to take off his own wet boots and socks and the thin jacket that has been soaked through with snow. He wraps blankets and scarves around him and then he takes their wet clothes and hands them on top of the fireplace so they’ll be dry by morning. Then, he sits down next to Ellie and pulls her against his side, holding her as tightly as his exhausted body can manage.
Ellie is staring into the fire, a distant look on her face that tells Joel she’s thinking about something miles away from where they are now. He leans down and presses another kiss to the top of her head. There isn’t much he can do for her right now, other than hold her and pray that everything will turn out okay.
It takes a while before Ellie’s eyes lose the faraway look, and when they finally do, she blinks slowly and wiggles her toes in the stranger’s boots. She doesn’t turn to look up at Joel, but she does incline her head ever so slightly in his direction.
‘We’re going to be okay, right?’ she whispers hoarsely. Her fingers, slowly losing their blue colour, drift across to his leg where they twist slightly into the fabric of his jeans. ‘Please say that we’re going to be okay?’
Joel doesn’t know the answer, and he knows that she’s asking him to lie. He’s never been one for false promises, but for his girl, he’ll do anything.
‘Yeah, baby girl. We’re gonna be just fine,’ he promises her and squeezes her closer as if he can hold her tight enough that nothing and nobody will ever hurt her again.