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katsheadinclouds · 5 months

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chapter 11

Joel Miller x gn!/f! reader

series masterlist - chapter 10

summary: You go hunting with Dan and one of the patrollers. You don’t end up using your skills for hunting though, when you stumble upon a horde of infected and a bunch of teenagers trapped in an old library.

rating: mature

chapter warnings: angst, anxiety, insecurities, violence typical for the TLOU world, killing of infected, I literally have no experience with guns so more knowledgeable people please forgive me if something doesn’t make sense (let’s pretend that it does for the sake of this fic), mention of self-harm, feelings are confessed, no use of y/n.

word count: 14.4k

dividers by cafekitsune

There’s an odd anticipation in the air. You haven’t been able to forget what Ellie said to Dina at the bar, something about an unknown plan. You asked around a bit, if people had heard about some event happening this weekend, mostly from the ones who came to the stables to get their horses for patrols. You kept your questions discreet and good natured, managing to sound nonchalant while still being interested in finding out what Ellie was up to.

“So, anything exciting coming up this weekend?”

“Any plans for the upcoming weekend?”

“Do you know of any get togethers happening this weekend?”

The last question only made the older man look at you with a sly smirk on his face and a cocked eyebrow. Apparently your question prompted him to ask if you’re looking to get wasted in a few days. You gave him a tight smile before you slipped into the stalls to get their horses. The consensus was, though, that no one knew about any plans and there was nothing out of the ordinary happening in a few days. It should’ve eased your racing thoughts. It should’ve comforted you.

But it didn’t.

You couldn’t shake the thought out of your head that something was going to happen and it wasn’t going to end well. You didn’t know who it wouldn’t end well for, who would have to carry the brunt of it. The closer you got to the end of the week, the more you felt the anticipation in the pit of your stomach, like a clock ticking without you actually hearing the sounds of the pointers.

You just knew they were moving and you were getting closer to something. You were preparing for that unfamiliar, working yourself towards it. When you were with others, doing normal things, forgetting the feeling for even a moment, you somehow managed to talk yourself out of the uneasy sensation. Nothing is going to happen. You’re just being nosy and imagining it all. Until it all came back stronger, filling you with trembling anxiety and unrest.

You haven’t seen Ellie since you heard her at The Tipsy Bison. You haven’t been able to talk with Joel, who you could tell your worries to. You’ve only seen him when he’s already on his way, riding out for patrols or going home with his head held low, dark circles under his eyes, the cold wind biting his cheeks and ears red.

You’ve thought about running after him but something has always stopped you. Either you’ve been with others, especially Dan, who is keeping an eye on you and who is ready to tease you for your crush on Joel, or you’ve been running errands. Or you’ve been making excuses why you couldn’t speak with him, too nervous to have a chat with him even if it was about Ellie.

You should just put it aside really, the fluttering of your heart around him, and the shivers that run down your spine when you see him even from afar. Or the memory of his low rumbling voice against the shell of your ear before he kissed you and made you forget everything except him. It should all be secondary.

What would you even tell him though? That you heard Ellie talk with her friend about some plan but you don’t know any specifics or why you’re worried. Just that they have plans this weekend. Ellie probably has a lot of plans with her friends most weekends.

You’re fighting with yourself on this. The feeling of expecting something to happen only gets worse and you don’t know where to direct that energy to. It’s eating at you, feasting on your every thought and finally swallowing them until you can only think about that glass that is teetering on the edge of a table, an axe in the air ready to come down on a log, a spark that is about to light bark on fire. The anticipation is there, you just don’t have a clue what it’s for.

“She has been complaining about her knee, it’s still bothering her.” You hear Clara talk with Dan when your work day is coming to an end and you’re ready to go home.

“Still? Has she been to the doctors?”

“Yes. He just told her to rest it and gave her a brace for it. She has still gone out for patrols but I think she needs to take a few weeks off to recover.”

“So we’d need to find someone else to come hunting with us?” Dan’s question makes your ears perk up.

“You’re going hunting?” You ask them, pulling your coat sleeves up your arms. Clara looks at you with narrowed eyes and her head tilted which makes you more self-conscious than you’d like.

“Yes, but we’d need to find a third one since it’s a longer route.” Dan watches you with a similar intensity in his eyes. Suddenly it feels like you’re being evaluated in front of judges.

“You once said you’re a good shot.” Clara talks like she’s digging her memory, pinpointing the exact moment and then showing the evidence to you and Dan.

“Really?” Dan is intrigued right away. You don’t talk about your past at the stables. The fact that Clara knows about you being somewhat decent with a gun, based on your own words, was because you had to say something to their questions.

“Have you been hunting before?” Clara pushes on. Unconsciously you hold yourself a little stronger, your arms pulling back and you grab your other wrist behind your back.

“Yes.” This is like a job interview that you don’t have any experiences with before.

“And you know how to handle a hunting rifle?” Dan flaps his gloves against his palm, and the slap wakes something in your brain. A memory of holding a rifle in your hands, the butt digging against your shoulder and the kickback after firing it.

“I’m experienced.” It’s like you’re owning up to it, admitting that you’re no stranger to the violence a gun represents.

“I’ll speak with one of the people from the shooting range, if they’ll trust someone new with a gun.”

“If you’re interested to come hunting with us that is?” Clara asks right as Dan finishes thinking out loud.

“Yeah, I’m interested,” you tell them and they both look pleased, almost too pleased. Like they’re two kids who are going to see something new and exciting and are going to look forward to it for the next few days.

That’s how you end up at the stables too early on a Saturday morning. Your hands are freezing and the woolly jumper Brenda kept insisting for you to wear under your coat doesn’t seem like an overkill at all. You tuck your chin into your thick neck warmer when Clara comes to the stables with three hunting rifles on her back. One for her, one for Dan, and one for you which she carefully reaches into your hands and looks at your reactions when you check if it’s already loaded and to make sure the safety is on.

You hang it on your shoulder and the corners of her mouth lift in pride when she sees how you handle it. She gives you ammo, which you put into your backpack. You tie the bag on your saddle and make sure you have everything you need.

You pull your gloves on and mount Willow. As the three of you walk to the gates and finally hear them close behind you, the weapon becomes instantly heavier. The sheathed knife on the back of your jeans is securely in place on your belt, reminding you of what you learnt back in the QZ. Even if you run into infected, you’ll know what to do.

You take your time riding your horses into the forest. Smokey, sagey greens and glittering greys of the tree branches welcome you into their frosty embrace. Their dark veins reach towards the cloudy sky, breaking the monotony of different shades of faded colours.

The longer you go on, the more you realise how muted everything around you is. The sounds of the ground against the horse’s hooves is softly crackling in the air. Your breath puffs in front of your mouth in fleeting clouds of smoke where you can pinpoint each particle of moisture.

As you watch your riding partners, Dan in front and Clara behind you, you think your little group doesn’t belong into this world of greying pause. You’re in vibrant color, alive and moving, while everything around you seems to be frozen. You can smell the crispness of winter, feel the cold drying out your skin and the need to protect yourself from lust of the cold that is trying to reach your bones through your layers of clothes.

You move in silence, your head lulling into a slow repetition of the scenery and the movement of Willow under you. You don’t even notice when it has started to snow, but when you do, the small flakes floating through the air and landing on your coat sleeve mesmerise you with their unique patterns and reluctance to melt.

It takes a good few hours to ride out to a regular hunting spot for deer. You find yourself at an old barn that has all the doors locked and the windows boarded up.

“We hide our horses here, keep going by foot and settle in the hideout a bit of ways away,” Clara tells you. You let her and Dan guide you. When you lock the doors to the barn again and your feet securely against the ground, you notice how the gun against your back and the knife in the back of your jeans make you walk a little taller.

You’re suddenly on high alert, your feet moving a little quieter and you hide your mouth in your neck cover to keep your breathing silent. The instincts of hunting come naturally, the rush of the wild immersing you into something you had long forgotten.

Your heart is beating faster, your hands are hot in your gloves and every sound that doesn’t come from your footfalls make your adrenaline send a little signal that you have to keep your eyes open and your reflexes at the ready.

Clara and Dan are much more relaxed. They’re so used to the hunting routine and the surroundings but you’ve never been here. This forest is new to you, so is the possibility of danger that it can cover.

“There are some infected from time to time, they hunt for game as well. The cold does seem to slow them down a bit and usually we just see animals around here,” Clara reassures you with her hushed voice.

Her words don’t calm you in any way though. You’re expecting to see something lurking behind the dark tree trunks, hear a screech of an infected, or a howl of an animal getting mauled by a horde. Thankfully it’s silent and you can only hear your own movements and the soft breaths of Clara and Dan, their footsteps much louder compared to yours.

You find the wooden hideout some people had built on the edge of a meadow where deer and moose pass regularly. You sit with your side pressed against the wall, the cramped small space barely fitting all three of you in there. But you can sit and hide from the cold blow of the wind inside the walls and watch out for life in the open field.

You lean your palms against the butt of the rifle and the quiet of the forest starts to sink into your body as well, relaxing it from the initial need to be aware of everything around you. Dan digs up a thermos from his backpack and offers you and Clara mugs of hot herbal tea. The sugar from the honey he brought along smooths out your jittery heart even more until you can lean your back against the backwall.

“Why aren’t we hunting for smaller game as well?” You whisper, watching some of the birds in the trees. They’re silent.

“Some people came out to hunt rabbits yesterday. If we catch something today, it wouldn’t make sense to also go check out the traps after we’ve strapped our bounty to our horses.” You nod at Clara’s answer.

You know people hunt here, regularly. Just like people go out on patrols, there is a group that goes out hunting and secures the game for the dining hall and people who have ordered meat. You just haven’t really paid any attention on how things work for them, how they organise it all or how many people actually go hunting. Maybe you should’ve done a bit more homework on it before you left the town to go do the actual job.

“Do you have any coffee?” Clara asks Dan after she has finished her tea. He’s already pouring more into your mug as you offer it to him and you gladly cradle your palms against the enamel.

“Sorry,” Dan shakes his head and you hear the woman groan in despair.

“Why didn’t you bring any?” You wonder out loud, directing your words to Clara, confused why she wasn’t prepared as she has been out here many times before.

“No, I’ve ran out.”

“You think I would’ve brought tea if we had any coffee?” Dan’s voice says it all. Tea isn’t his first, or even the second choice, but you have to make do with what you’ve got. So tea it is, no matter how you don’t like it. You’ve come to enjoy it though, especially now as the warmth steadily spreads through your whole body to the tips of your limbs.

“Is it usually this slow?” You ask after you’ve had three mugs of tea and still no animals in sight other than the small birds in the trees that fly in sudden bursts and then land on their chosen branches.

“Sometimes. We just have to wait,” Dan sighs. You all settle to lean against the back wall. You start to count the different birds you see flying from one tree to another. You don’t know what they’re all called but you recognise familiar looking ones taking you years back as you’ve seen them before as well. And some are new, with their long tails or quick little trills before they all quiet again.

“It seems like they knew someone new with a gun came out here today,” you joke after another stretch of silence. Your companions please you with their muttering chuckles.

“Who knows if they can trust you to kill them fast,” Dan bumps his elbow against your arm and you all hold in your laughter. It almost feels good to joke about something so gruesome. It makes you feel that conflict of joy and power, of kindness and violence. It makes you wonder what you like about having the gun and the knife, what sort of emotions are attached to the willingness to be eager to wield them.

Clara checks the watch on her wrist, but you can tell the day is already turning towards afternoon as the brightest moment of the day is gliding past you towards the all-consuming darkness that arrives too early this time of year.

“We need to head back soon before the sun sets,” Clara’s disappointment is clear in her tone. But what can you do, if there’s no animals, there’s no animals. You’re the first to start stretching in the small space of the hideout. It encourages Dan and Clara to start moving too, the thermos getting stuffed into Dan’s backpack, Clara checking that her gloves are in her coat pocket. You make sure the safety of your gun is still on, even though you know you haven’t touched it.

The way to the barn is longer than you remembered. You’re going uphill, not too steep of a rise but still gradually making you more out of breath and your thighs warm. The horses are munching on hay that has been left for them. Willow’s soft muzzle reminds you of home, of the safety of Jackson.

Ellie’s words from last weekend come to your mind and you realise that she must’ve been talking about some party the teens had put together. They wouldn’t want the grownups to know about it, otherwise they’d need to have chaperones there. It didn’t even cross your mind before as you never had those kinds of teen years in your life. Life was all about survival in the QZ. Here those kids get to test their boundaries, experiment without fears of getting arrested by FEDRA. They get to be kids.

Clara is leading you out of the forest and you’re the one keeping watch over the rear. The quiet of the forest is unnatural. You haven’t heard birds, even a lonesome crow, in a while and even the small animals have abandoned you.

It shouldn’t make you worry. It shouldn’t make you look over your shoulder every few minutes to check that there’s nothing following behind you. The only things you can see are trees and their bark covered in the cold shimmer of frost. Something’s not right though, you know it. A forest should have some life in it, not just the occasional flap of bird wings when it rushes away from you.

“Sssshh,” Clara stops abruptly. You’re quick with your moves to pull the reins back. You’re surrounded with silence. Except it’s not complete silence anymore.

“It could just be an animal,” Dan hisses, but the hairs on your skin have already stood up.

“You don’t believe that for a second do you?” You ask him. You know he’s smarter than that, and he knows it too. He just doesn’t want to believe it. You stay dead silent, as you listen to the distant screeches of runners. It’s unmistakable.

“We should get closer, locate them, and then get back to town to get help. You have your radio?” Clara sounds just as you expect her to sound. She’s full of reason, calmness, and that hard focus that you need if you’re a patroller.

Dan digs the inside pocket of his coat and gets the radiophone out. He tunes onto the right frequency. You should hear the slight crackle of the line, the connecting sound. But it stays quiet. He shakes it and tries again, still quiet. He taps it against his palm, another switch to the right line. Nothing.

“Tell me you tested it before we left?” There’s a crack in Clara’s composure.

“Yes, and it worked fine.” He’s shaking it again. You know it’s useless. You keep your other ear open for the sounds of the infected. Those have quieted as well.

“You took it from the box on the right?” She asks. You don’t know what that means while Dan does. He stops shaking the device, just stares at it.

“So the battery has died.” Clara sighs. Anxiety claws into your chest and squeezes your throat. You might’ve been cold before. Not anymore though. You can feel the sweat trickling down the back of your neck and your whole body is tense with what this means. If you’re surrounded by infected, no one is coming to help you. You don’t give into your fear. You weren’t trained to be afraid of them, no matter what.

“We should still get closer, find out where they are, and then go back to let people know.” You whisper loud enough for Clara to hear as well. Both of them consider your words, but it’s Dan who first looks over his shoulder at you.

“You sure? We can also just ride straight back to town. We don’t have to do this.”

“We’re armed, we’re here hunting, we might as well go take a look since we heard them now. They could be gone by the time patrollers ride out.” Clara turns to look at you as well. The hardness on her face is mirrored on your stiff features. “It’s best to know which direction they’re at, at least, so there’s some clue where they might be headed next.”

“Okay, let’s go slowly, follow the sounds,” Dan nods and turns his horse towards where you heard the screams.

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Clara reminds to the two of you. You don’t continue in a single line anymore, but keep a bit of distance to each other, both of them to your left. Willow senses the change in mood, her movements tenser and careful. You keep her walking, but even the crack of a branch or a rustle of a bush could mean the difference between life and death.

The sounds get closer the more you hike away from the normal route. You see a few rundown buildings, mostly with collapsed roofs and cracked and crumbled blackened walls. Clara is the first one to start guiding her horse towards you, Dan only follows what she’s doing.

“This used to be a town, most of it was wiped out by a fire a long time ago.” She whispers. It explains why the ruined buildings look like they’re covered in char, even after the seasons and weather have made a number on them. Nature is taking its land back, and over time those buildings will only be a memory of something that once was.

You don’t see any infected, but the sounds are getting louder. You flip the rifle off your shoulder and keep it against your middle. Your hands are ready for it. They’re itching for it.

“Sssssht,” Dan hisses, his hand reflexively extending up. You stop at once and look into the direction he points his hand at. There, still far away but close enough for you to clearly see, are a couple of infected running between the trees. They don’t notice you. It’s like they’re not even interested in noticing you.

“You know what’s out there?” You ask Clara. If she knows about the fire in this town, she might know what the infected are running to.

“There’s only an old library, but something must’ve had to lure them in there,” she shakes her head in thought. Your anxiety sinks deeper into your stomach.

“We should get closer to get a better look. It’s under a hill, we’ll be relatively far away if we stay up here,” she is the first one to move. You follow her, and the hold you have on your rifle only tightens. The closer you get, the more you hear the infected. It’s a big bunch, no doubt about it. The screaming of the runners mixed with the distinctive screechy clicking sounds make your blood run cold.

The roof comes into view slowly. The once beautiful library must’ve been a landmark of sorts with its curved floor to ceiling windows, the stairs leading up to the now open double doors, the red brick standing out in the grey of the frozen forest like a splash of paint. The building is covered in vines and the windows are broken and there’s holes in the roof. But it survived the fire untouched and the walls are still proudly upright with no major collapses in sight.

It’s not just the infected that you hear screaming.

“Can you hear that?” You ask through your teeth. You’ve never been surer of hearing people scream as you’re now of them screaming inside the building. Clara looks scared, not because of the infected, but because of the constant wails that seem to echo through the whole valley.

It all clicks. The timing, the plan, how one of the kids had gone somewhere with his dad. There’s no secret party they were planning. It was this. Sneaking out of the town and coming to a library that is still intact. You know who the horde is after.

“Someone has to get help,” you whisper urgently. Your heart hammers inside your chest. This can’t be happening. The urge to protect kicks in and you’re only thinking about how you’re going to get through this. How on earth are you supposed to get them out of there before the infected get to them first.

“And what then?” Dan snarls at you. “Who are you going to send out?” You look at them both, the focused anger on Clara’s face as she keeps an eye on the library and Dan’s worry on his.

“You, you’re a better rider. Me and Clara will get closer. We have guns, we can handle this.” Your words make her slowly turn to look at you. She wasn’t expecting that.

“We don’t know how many are inside,” she is scared, you can hear it in her voice.

“What else are we supposed to do? Let them die in there?” The question shuts them both up.

“We don’t know if you can handle it. At least me and Clara have both been out here before, we know how to use our guns.” Dan tries to reason.

“I know how to use weapons because I was taught. This isn’t my first time killing.” Your mouth barely moves from the tightness in your jaw.

You understand him. You understand his fear of leaving you two out here on your own. If this is the last time he’s going to see either of you alive. You understand the double meaning in his question too. He’s looking out for you because he’s worried you’re not going to be able to handle this mentally. You push his concerns for you out of your mind and let your instincts take control.

“Take the shortest route you know.” Clara is evaluating you and your abilities even though her words are directed at Dan. You shake her eye contact off and listen to the sounds coming from the building ahead. You can only hear the infected, but they’re calming down as well.

Either you’re already late or the kids knew where to hide. You wish it’s the latter even though you fear the worst. You don’t know what you’d do with yourself if the infected got to the group. You should’ve tried to speak with Joel harder. You should’ve listened to your gut feeling when you knew something was wrong. You should’ve spoken with Ellie, ask her what’s going on.

“You keep each other safe,” Dan’s grave, intense stare chills you to your bones. He trots the other way on his horse, before he takes off in a gallop when he’s further away and the heavy thuds from the hooves are only light muffled thuds against the frozen ground.

The anxiety you might’ve had before is steadily flowing out of you and giving room for the emptiness of being a killer. It has been a while since you recognised this side of you in yourself, but it’s there, strong and capable, unrelenting and fierce.

“How should we approach?” Clara whispers. Her determination keeps you grounded here with her. You consider what you could do so this doesn’t turn into a suicide mission.

“let’s hide the horses, then just—”

“Get to it,” Clara finishes your sentence. You nod and empty your lungs with the last hints of nerves from earlier. Total peacefulness takes over and you work in complete calmness.

If someone told you that you were going to go into a library full of infected, you would’ve laughed to their face and thought how terrified you’d be, how you wouldn’t even imagine doing anything like that without having the worst panic attack of your life since getting to Jackson.

You would try to convince yourself how bad it would be for you, how what you know wasn’t ingrained in you since you were in your late teens. Yet here you are, your hands unwavering as you tie Willow to a tree a bit of ways a way to keep the horses safe. Your head hasn’t felt this clear in a long time.

Nothing else matters when it comes to saving those kids and killing the infected. You fill your pockets with ammo and make sure your rifle is at the ready. You touch the handle of your knife and wrap your palm around it. It feels easy, like it belongs in your hand. You pull it out just a little, just to make sure it’s easy for you to free it like all those times before.

You make your way down the hill, keeping yourself behind trees. You stop every few steps to listen to the sounds from the library and to keep an eye on the hill. The closer you get to the building, the heavier the rifle feels in your hands. It’s deadly. It’s violence. The death grip you have on it like you’re depending on it gives you a point of control. Adrenaline is flowing freely and it’s giving you recklessness that you don’t want to welcome.

The brick wall of the library scratches against your coat. You press your back against it and peek around the corner to see the main doors, that are hanging on their hinges. There’s a lot of tracks on the snow flake covered ground, all leading into the library. You push yourself off the wall and take a step forward, but Clara grabs at your arm.

“We have to be careful in there. I’m leading. If something goes wrong, if something happens to either of us, we save ourselves first. Understood?” The direness in her voice and the dread visible in her movements pinches at something inside of you.

She’s not supposed to be scared now. She can’t be. You’re not used to someone being scared when you’re holding the weapons. Peter taught you to forget about fear, he taught you to shut it all out. Afterwards you can be as scared as you can be, but for you to be able to do whatever you’re needed to do, you have to shut your emotions off.

Diana is going to have a field day when you tell her about that back home.

“Understood,” you whisper and her shoulders drop down. She calms down visibly as well, her tenacious spirit coming through.

“Follow me.” She lets go of your arm and with light feet you make your way to the door. She slips in, you follow and she pulls you behind a pile of chairs and down on the floor. She points to your right, then to your left. Up the stairs and towards the second-floor mezzanine with more tipped over book shelves. There are clickers all around you. You hear the runners somewhere close by but see none of them.

“Have you killed clickers before?” She asks you and you’d like to laugh at the question. But you only nod, she wouldn’t understand your glee. They’re your favorite kind to kill.

“Take the other side, stay down,” she instructs. You do as she tells you. Soon enough the knife is in your hand and the sharp blade is slicing through the cartilage in your first victim’s neck.

Dan rides out of the forest and pulls a red handkerchief from his pocket. He whips it around long before he’s at the gates. People guarding the wall will see it with their binoculars, raising the alarm when he still has a while to ride to get into town. It has taken him too much time to get back here. The library is far away and the longer it has taken him, the smaller the chances are they’ll find any survivors when they reach the library again.

He hears the yelling on the other side of the wooden walls just as the gates start to open and he pushes forward with his trusty horse. People are running towards him as he dismounts the animal. He’s trying to make sense of all the questions around him but it’s impossible.

“There’s a horde of infected at the old library, followed a bunch of people in there.” He tries to raise his voice over the loud chatter. Something’s happening. If this would be a normal day, patrollers would be alarmed and they’d get here in a few minutes time.

These people have been here for a while. Patrollers would listen to him and they’d let him speak. These people are a mix of townsfolk, not just the ones who ride out, and they are yelling out questions over each other, making them incomprehensible.

“The library?” Hutch’s face is as white as a sheet. Dan has never seen him scared. He’s always too confident, the one who says he can handle anything but in reality he always needs someone else to help him out.

“It has to be them!” Another man cries out. He works at the greenhouses and has a big family with his wife, mostly kids who have lost their loved ones when they were young. “You took your boy to the library!” He’s yelling at Hutch, his face red with anger. Hutch raises his hands up as the others take steps back as the others let out words of disbelief.

“I showed it to Robbie, yes, but it was last spring. He never seemed interest in going there again so we can’t be sure it’s them” Hutch holds his palms towards the others in a plea to stop yelling at him. He’s trying to deescalate the situation, but his words only have the opposite effect. There’s more yelling, more accusations.

“You’re telling us your kid took all of them out there?” The question echoes in the air. Dan is doing his best to piece the puzzle in front of him together to only conclude that this isn’t just some random people at the library being hunted by infected.

“No, like I said, we can’t be sure,” Hutch yells back frustrated. Dan hears heavy footsteps behind him before the laboured breathing. Joel and Tommy run to the group, both of them looking distressed, but Joel most of all.

“Did you hear about them?” Tommy barely manages to squeeze the question out of his mouth in a calm manner.

“They’re at the fucking library!” Talia, Dina’s older sister, yells. Tommy radios someone and walks away from the arguing.

“This is on you if someone has gotten infected or hurt!” Another woman can’t contain her screams. Joel quivers with rage next to Dan. He’s breathing harshly, his hands flexing and closing into tight fists, his knuckles white.

“We’re letting out six!” Tommy shouts over the accusations, the instructions from Maria hanging heavy over the group. Dan sees people running at the stables, patrollers, with rifles on their backs. “No parents allowed!” Tommy continues. Joel shakes his head and starts running towards the stables.

“Joel, you heard what he said,” Dan tries to go after him, but almost crashes against Joel’s chest when he abruptly stops and turns to him.

“Try me.” The growl leaves little room for questions. Dan watches him running to get himself a horse and a gun. It only means that the group of teenagers are all from families Dan knows. Kids he has seen grow up in the town. Kids he has seen at the stables, trying out riding for the first time and getting used to the animals. Kids he knows want to become patrollers like their parents. Kids who are too reckless for their own good.

“We’ll have walkie-talkies with us, we’ll let you know.” Tommy tells Dan, his troubles shining through before Joel brings him a horse and a rifle.

Sweat pours down Dan’s back as he watches the group ride out, only the heavy sounds of the hooves beating against the ground ringing in his ears as he watches the gate close behind them.

You sneak behind a flipped table and see one of them. An infected, twisting in their agony, letting out little yelps of pain. You don’t see others around. You cleared the clickers downstairs. Of course the second floor has to be harder to empty.

Some of the runners have wondered up behind the last few clickers, standing in places that are too visible and vulnerable for getting noticed by the rest. Clara stands behind a column, eyeing at another runner just in front of the one you’re planning to take down.

Your knife feels incredibly light in your sticky hands. Your whole body feels light. You lean your arms against the wooden surface and close your eyes. You take a breath, another, third, and open your eyes, letting your breath stream out of your open mouth. It’s completely quiet. You feel at ease, serene, grounded. Like you’ve missed this more than anything.

You peek over the table and see the infected walking again, twitching steps here and there until they stop with their back turner towards you. You wipe your hot hand against your jeans and secure the knife into your sweaty palm. You stay low. Your thighs and knees burn from the constant grouching.

Just as the infected is about to move again, you jump and secure your hand to their forehead, revealing their neck. The stab crunches through the cartilage and you relieve the blade through the skin. The creature eases their fight against you, letting you lower them to the floor. Blood streams generously from their open neck, gurgling with the last breaths the infected will take. Clara rushes past you, copying you and taking the miserable life of the grey skinned undead.

The clickers stay oblivious to your massacre. You keep even lower, move even quieter, breathe peacefully through your mouth. Your skin prickles with the rush of power.

Another throat. Another splatter of blood. Another weak last screeching from the dying clickers mouth. They lay dead at your feet, the second floor cleared. Clara wipes her knife on her trousers and points towards the doors of the auditorium down by the mezzanine stairs, on a landing. You’re not safe yet.

Someone’s banging on a door, others are letting out those agonising screams. They hear something you can’t. You follow the sounds. Clara follows you. Her fingers are squeezing the bottom of your coat, pulling it taut against your shoulders. You reach for her hand and the drying blood on your palms squishes together.

At the door, you finally see what you still have to get through. A couple of clickers, and a bunch of runners. They’re all at the bottom of the rows of chairs, craving to get through a door to a storage space. It’s barely holding on as the infected keep on crashing their fists against it. The clickers have lost their interest, screeching at nothing, while slowly making their way up the chair rows.

“We have to distract them,” you whisper against Clara’s ear.

“I’ll lead them away from you, you go down there.” She points her finger first down towards the main doors in the hall, then at the infected by the storage room. Her hand shakes just the tiniest bit. It only encourages you more.

She breathes deep and lets go of your hand. When she takes her rifle off her shoulder and starts her way down the stairs, you start to prepare for what’s to come. There’s a broken book case next to the auditorium door, fallen on the floor with books spread all over, some open, some torn, some dirty from the years of neglect. You kneel behind the bookcase and wait until you see Clara quietly securing the double doors closed with a plank and gives you a thumbs up. You nod and give her one as well.

Clara bangs the stock of the rifle against the wall, once, twice, and the sound makes you shiver. The infected stop making noise. You count how long the quiet calm lasts. Six seconds. You hear them. All of them. Clara aims her gun at the stairs. The infected scream louder. The sound rings in your ears. They burst out of the auditorium, crash against each other and the doorway. Their only target is Clara. She fires shot after shot, bodies falling one after the other.

You crawl over the bookcase and look inside the vast auditorium. No infected. You run down as quietly as you can and get to the storage room. You listen to the shooting outside, yet there’s something banging much closer. Screeches which don’t sound like they’re made just by runners or clickers. Your eyes scan the room. On your left, doors. And something is banging against it, making it rattle against its hinges. It’s been secured though, with a metal chair. It will not break. You wish it won’t break.

You try the handle of the storage, but it doesn’t budge.

“Someone in there?” You press your mouth against the door, then your ear, but there’s no answer. It’s completely quiet in there. Clara is still shooting, random shots ring through the air. You swallow. You know you’re taking a risk. You take it anyway.

You lightly tap you dirty knuckles against the surface.

“Is anyone in there?” You try again. Then you hear it. Something is dragged across the floor, just on the other side of the door. You look up. Still no infected. Clara must’ve got them all. The banging against the other door has calmed down.

The door clicks and you look back.

“Ellie.” Your relief is short lived. You hear it. The sound. The distinct croaking mixed with a groan. It’s not just on the other side of the blocked doors. It’s coming somewhere in the auditorium.

Stalkers. They’re lurking somewhere, but you can’t tell where. You just hear them.

“Get the fuck out of there,” you snap at the teens while Ellie looks at you in horror. They all run out of the storage room, all in different stages of fear.

“You have to run when I tell you to, find Clara. Understood?” Some of them nod, some of them seem to be in too much of a shock.

“Understood?” You whisper more harshly. You see movement from the corner of your eye. You’re their target. You pull the gun off your shoulder and load it with experienced hands. Your heart slams against your ribcage when you feel the claw of fear in your chest. Sweat drips down your neck and back. It would be different if the kids wouldn’t be here. You’d be calm. You’d be ready. As you look at these teens who have no idea what they’re up against, you now have a responsibility.

“You,” you point to three of the kids, the ones who look the most composed, Ellie included, “you’ll pull rest of your friends out of here no matter what.” They all nod.

“And you’ll keep on—” Close to the doorway. Something grouches between the seats, low in its movements. You push the teens behind you and point the gun at the stalker. It’s not just the one, it’s never just one with these. There’s movement here and there, like spiders under a see-through sheet.

“Ready?” No reason to hide your voice anymore. You don’t wait for an answer when you see the growth covered face of a stalker. The shot echoes around you. The butt of the rifle kicks back against your shoulder. The bullet pierces through its forehead. It screams and crashes on the floor up by the doorway.

The sound is like a war cry for the others. Six jump out, climbing over the staggered chairs, all coming for you. You hear one of the teens scream but drown it out with your rifle. You shoot another one and make it fall on the chairs. They’re getting closer. Ellie gasps behind you when you hit one that was getting too close.

The rest are almost reaching for you. Three left. You shoot one. The bullet smashes its head open.

“Now!” You yell and the teens take off running. All hell breaks loose. You stick to your place and shoot at the infected that are trying to get to the kids. Your rifle pushes out shelling as you keep loading it. You can smell the gunpowder heavy in the air. When the last one is dead, you run up the stairs two at a time with your ears ringing and your shoulders and arms begging for a pause from the kickbacks and heavy weight of the gun.

The teens didn’t do as you told them to. They’re all running back into the auditorium holding each other’s hands. The gunfire starts again, but you’re not shooting. You grab Ellie by her wrist and the others follow behind. You breathe harshly, barely catching it when you get to the door and see the bottom of the stairs. Clara. Shooting infected, who are climbing through a broken window. They found another way in.

You aim, shoot, reload, shoot, reload, shoot, one after the other. You stand your ground, your head going blank from the sheer volume of infected. Clara is almost overwhelmed with the pressure, trying to find a higher spot on the stairs so none can surround her while you’re trying to avoid hitting her.

The screaming from the infected is ear deafening, bursting through the gunfire in a chaotic cacophony. A crash. It’s too close. More moans and groans of the infected, not from the infected at the bottom of the stairs, dropping from the window, landing on the floor. Behind you. You turn around just as one is rushing up from the auditorium.

They got through the door.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…” you repeat under your breath. You take off running and pull Ellie to follow you. They’re still holding each other’s hands, and they run behind you like a chain up the stairs to the mezzanine. The runner is right behind you, but you stop and let Ellie run past you with the others right on her heels.

You aim your rifle. Shoot. And miss his head with just a couple of inches. Another shot fires out, not from your or Clara’s rifles. A different shot. The runner goes down. You look back, Ellie has her arm stretched out, a revolver in her hand.

You puff air from your lungs and reload once again. There’s more infected running your way and you let the gun do the work. You reach for more ammo in your pocket, but your fingers touch only one more mag. Six bullets.

There’s a few more infected left but don’t know how many are still outside. Clara is still shooting. You shoulder the rifle and reach for your knife. You know your nondominant hand is weaker, but there’s no other choice than to run down the stairs and plunge the knife into the runner’s throat. As the infected sinks to her knees, you try to yank your knife free while another is already lunging at you.

You drive your fist to his face before you release the knife from the dying corpse and get it through the second one’s eye. One more, a heavier runner, and you run to Ellie. You grab the revolver from her hand and shoot the last one. The gun digs against your palm, the pain familiar against your hand.

More shots. But not from inside. Outside. A wave of relief washes over you. This is almost over. At least Dan got the word out. You look over the mezzanine balcony, ignoring the teens completely, when you rush to use the last ammo in your rifle and the revolver.

Clara is already using her knife, her exerted wails telling you she’s tired. She gets the runner down. You shoot two more. Quiet sinks over the main hall. The shots outside are more sporadic, but you can still hear some over through the ringing in your ears. Clara leans her hands against her knees and catches her breath. You check the revolver. One bullet left. None in your rifle.

You shoulder the rifle and push the revolver into the back of your jeans next to your knife. Adrenaline is still pumping in your system, but it’s not the only thing anymore. You turn towards the teens but can’t even say anything.

The steps down to Clara are like a blur, you feel like flying. Your feet don’t feel a thing, you’re just doing what your reflexes tell you to do. The group follow behind you, dodging the bodies on their shaky legs. Clara stands up stiffly and her rage could make even you feel a little scared if it wasn’t for the emptiness that has filled you.

She says something to them through her teeth but you can only hear the hiss of blood in your ears. The teens look like they’re in shock. Except Ellie. She’s looking at you with wild eyes. You need to get away for a moment.

You walk the steps back up on the landing and take in all the infected bodies and the dripping blood covering the floor. You’re working solely on adrenaline and it’s making you even angrier. You slow your steps down when you get to the door of the auditorium.

You need to occupy your head with something else than the fury hammering through everything else. You can’t remember if the teens were carrying backpacks, and if they weren’t they must’ve left them behind.

You take support of one of the chairs when there’s a clicking. A snarl. A screechy groan. Something hits your back hard and you come face down against the edge of a chair. Your cheek bursts with pins and needles from the impact.

You barely have time to get yourself up off the floor when the stalker is already swinging back towards you. It stares at you with its one eye, the misshapen fungus across its face almost covering it. The cordyceps make it look lopsided. Its lanky figure growing the fungus all over its arm and shoulder like a harness.

Your hand finds your knife first. You lunge forward. Your knife grinds painfully into your palm as you hit the blade against the attacking stalker’s shoulder. It tries to reach for your neck but you manage to force it on the floor. You straddle it, pull your dripping knife free with a grunt and sink it into the creature’s temple. It shakes under you for a second until it reaches its miserable end.

You don’t think about the dead stalker between your thighs though. You don’t have time. Movement up next to the upper chairs. You try to follow the stalker’s whereabouts while trying to maintain an eye on the whole room. You pull at your knife, but it’s useless. It’s stuck.

Your palm is sticky and slippery with blood at the same time. You hope it’s all from the infected, and your skin is unbroken. You wouldn’t know if one of them bit you, not when your adrenaline is dulling down all the pains you’re already feeling. You take out your revolver and hope for the best.

You’re ready for an attack. You wait for it, expect it. Hope for it. You got to get this angry energy out of you. You back towards the supply room and reach for anything in there.

Stalkers are funny creatures. They can still see some things but rely on hearing as well. You throw the box of chalk against the wall. It works as you wished. The stalker jumps out, straight for you. The revolver in your hand goes off. The bullet hits it straight to its face. It bursts open like it’s a natural continuation for the growth that’s spurting out of its head.

You should’ve known. You should’ve known that there’s one more before it surprises you. But you’re tired. So you don’t expect it, not when you already thought you got them all. It runs out of the ruined side door. Your weaker hand reaches for the knife, still can’t get it dislodged.

Your feet get you running. You have to get some distance between the two of you. Its teeth are protruding out of its mouth, the cordyceps grown on its head like a crown. You pant as you run up towards the doorway, but the infected climbs over the chairs, the horrifying body reaching you faster than you can get away.

You swing the revolver against its head, making its eye bulge out. It doesn’t stop. You hit again and hear bone crunching. It takes wobbly steps towards you, but you’re faster. You run back down and throw yourself on the floor, your hand grabbing at the knife. It dislodges, finally. With tired legs you force yourself up and just as the stalker attacks, you bury your knife in its throat and slice with all your strength. Blood pours out and follows the blade with a mighty splash.

All three stalkers lay on the floor, bleeding out. You stand heaving and your head spins from the stress. You drag yourself on your heavy feet to the storage room and peek inside. It’s empty. There’s a couple more backpacks on the floor, and a flashlight attached to one of them, that you shake and it goes on.

You hear someone calling your name through your violent haze. You step out of the room and see Clara standing at the top of the auditorium.

“You okay?” She doesn’t wait to hear your answer when she’s already running down the stairs. You get your knife and wipe the blood on your ruined jeans.

“Yeah, you?” The words push out through your teeth as you secure the blade into its sheath and squeeze your fingers against the shoulder straps of the backpacks. “Did they clear out the outside?”

“Yes, it’s clear now,” her voice shakes. You nod at her and shoulder the bags, stalking the stairs back into the main hall. You hear Clara following you. Your body starts to shiver as the adrenaline finally eases up. Your whole body throbs with discomfort and there’s not one specific spot you could say hurts more. You’re in a lot of pain and it’s only making you grit your teeth together.

“You clean?” Clara questions you. You stop, you didn’t even think about checking yourself over. You turn to her and she can tell you have no clue. She checks you over, your neck, hands, arms, your legs, lifting the edges of your clothing to reveal your sweat covered skin and searching for tears in your clothes.

“Clean,” she nods, still on edge, but relieved for you.

“You?” You ask it like you memorised it from a script, no real emotion behind the word.

“Yeah, I’m clean.”

“Sure?” It comes out of your mouth like a little gasp.

“Yes.” All of a sudden she reaches for you and hugs you tightly against her chest. You don’t know what to do with her gesture, with her touch, with her pressure against your body. Your arms lay limp against your sides and you wait for her to be done.

“You’re a better shot than most,” she suddenly laughs, “and even better with a knife!” She pulls back but keeps her hands on your shoulders. You don’t say anything to her, just avert your eyes and turn away from her.

You step out of the ajar door. Evening is already stretching across the sky, darkness sucking the life out of the nature. There’s a big group outside. Horses and the people who came to your rescue. And the teens, all standing in the middle of the group, all in different stages of shock. Some people are hugging the more traumatised ones, the ones who are crying, convincing them they’re okay.

And then there’s Ellie, tears streaming down her face. Her shoulders are swallowed by Joel’s hands. He’s saying something to her, leaning down to be at her level. She’s nodding her head vigorously, her small hands wiping at her cheeks furiously. Tommy stands next to them, only kindness in his eyes. He smiles and nods at something Joel is saying. It all makes your blood boil and your nerves snap.

Your feet stomp against the ground. Tommy is the first one to notice you. His face twists in surprise. He has the same surprised face as Joel does. Eyes wide, mouth a little open, a hundred emotions running across his face at the same time. Impressed, joyful, fearful. Surprise.

You drop the backpacks on the cold ground. It makes Ellie jump. Joel looks first at the bags, then at you. Like you knew, he shares the same face with his brother. But Joel’s features adopt pure fear when he sees you, and he takes a step back.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” You hiss at her, not caring about attracting attention.

“I didn’t—” She gasps, but her mouth hangs open when she doesn’t get a chance to finish.

“You didn’t what? Think about what could happen? What you could run into? That you’d be in fucking danger?” You take a step closer to her. You’re so incredibly empty and full at the same time, the feelings of relief and rage competing against each other. But the last bits of adrenaline want to stick to the rage, so that’s how you take out all the last pieces of violent energy you have stirring in your head and chest.

“Of course but—”

“You thought you could handle that on your own? You think people come out here just for fun, to wave their guns around and shoot infected?” You take out the empty revolver and swing it around so you hold it by the barrel. The grip is smeared with blood, evidence of your capabilities.

“You seemed to be doing just fine!” She finally manages to finish a sentence, but the teary screech only makes you angrier.

“You think I don’t know that? You think I could handle that out of nowhere?” You lean towards her, to be eyelevel with her. “You think I haven’t killed before? You think I haven’t sliced enough throats to know what it feels like? That I haven’t aimed enough guns to know when it will go straight through your brain and kill you instantly? You think I haven’t protected people in the past, killed for them, watched them die in front of my own eyes? Fuck, Ellie, you seem so clever. But I can see you’re just a little kid who doesn’t know anything about how this world works.” She can’t say anything to it through her tears.

“Hey,” you hear a gentle voice. You straighten up and look him straight in the eyes. He looks almost… mournful. You’re the animal once again, ready to take flight, run away, your eyes blown black, your skin stinging from the rush of emotions and the injuries.

But this time you’re not weak and vulnerable. This time you’re deadly and ready to attack, all your senses on high alert. You turn back to Ellie and shake your head slowly.

“I hope you won’t do something like this again for your own sake. Because the next time someone might not accidentally stumble upon you and save you.” You push the gun towards Joel. He stares at it but eventually takes it when you shake it in the air. His fingertips linger against your dirty skin but you can barely feel it. You only see it.

You turn from them and find your horse. Someone must’ve brought it down from the hill. You climb on and your shoulder objects against the movement. Your face burns and stings right under your eye and you feel your brain filling with white noise. You see people starting to ride out, and you follow them, not hearing the gallop of the horses against the ground, the quiet chatter around you, the whooshing wind in the trees.

You’re deaf to the world as you let yourself breathe and feel the comfort of violence in you. Everything around you slows down, and it’s almost like you’re floating. Your head is empty, you’re just a shell.

You’re you and someone who is a machine. The one who gets praised for killing, for being swift with a knife and sharp with a gun. You’re the one who doesn’t care about fear, injuries or the pain. You’re you, the one who likes to hurt. You breathe the feeling in, smell the iron under your nose from the cut on your face. You don’t wipe the dried blood off, you wait until you get home.

You feel his eyes burning on your back, watching you, following you, making sure you’re okay. What he doesn’t know is that you’ve missed this. You’ve missed the kickback of a gun. The feel of blood spluttering on your hands, the pains and aches of charging against something that you know you have to kill. He doesn’t know how you love the feel of your body after a fight like that, proving that you’re alive.

The town walls come into view suddenly, and the gates open with a groan. You ride in and to the stables, where people are waiting. You dismount Willow and take your backpack off the saddle. Something touches your shoulder. You shudder from it and see Joel’s intense eyes on you.

“Can we talk?” His low voice rumbles and it’s like balm to your racing, yet incredibly simple thoughts.

“Not now.” You manage to say. Your throat is dry and sore from the tension in your neck.

“Okay.” You nod at him. His hand drops from your shoulder. You didn’t even realise it was still on you.

You walk away from the group, ready to wash away the evidence of your own violent heart and the tears that only make you feel wrong about your thoughts.

You wrap yourself with Brenda’s coat and scarf when you step out of the house. The streetlight buzzes gently as you walk past it and the yellow gleam flickers in the cold evening. You hide your face in the scarf when you see a couple walking on the other side of the street. They can’t see you anyway, you just don’t want to take any chances. Luckily those are the only people you see and you get to walk in peace.

Your clothes are still in the wash. You’ve scrubbed them twice now, but you can still see the stains. They weren’t as bad as you thought, just droplets and some bigger smears from your hands and knife. Blood. Your clothes are secondary to you though.

What you do care about are the burst blood vessels under your skin. Your arms and shoulder ache and the bruises on your temple and in the corner of your eye, under the cuts from the impact with the chair, have started to properly bloom. A few of your knuckles are scraped and they’re tender to the touch.

Diana and Brenda were worried when you got home. News about the teenagers sneaking outside the walls had reached the whole town by then and people were ready to see the ones who got them home safe. And the people who were out hunting in that direction. You’ve been avoiding going outside even though you would’ve had work today.

Based on what Brenda told you yesterday, you weren’t really interested in seeing the nosy ones who tried to ask her questions about what had happened at the library. Not to mention the ones who were suddenly interested in taking care of some horses and had asked when you were supposed to go in for work.

The talk you had with Diana wasn’t as you expected. She saw how worked up you were and she let you go through it. She didn’t try to calm you down or make you talk about what was happening inside your head. She let you sit on the living room couch in your dirty clothes until you couldn’t handle it anymore.

The anger wouldn’t ease up. So she offered you a couple of decorative pillows from the arm chair she was sitting on and freedom to do whatever you wanted to them. So you threw them against the wall again and again, until you were panting and sweating again, all the frustration coming out bit by bit. You took one of the pillows and buried your face in it. You didn’t care about the sting of your face or the old smell of the fabric, you just had to scream the rest of the chaos inside your head out.

They both helped you undress and into the shower. You washed away the blood and watched it circling the drain before the water was completely clean. Diana gave you something to further calm you down. It helped you relax and fall asleep.

She didn’t ask about it until the next morning. And you told her. How thrilling it was to feel the rush of brutality, to hear the crunch from the bodies when your knife sunk through the skin, to fire a gun and feel the kickback in your body, to experience the danger. You went through all the kills in your head, from the day before, and from the time before you arrived in Jackson. You explained how it was always different with infected than with living people. You might be okay killing infected, knowing they can’t be saved. People on the other hand, they’re their own breed.

You tell her about the thrill of being on that fine line of life and death. You enjoyed it. But you didn’t enjoy when it involved Clara and the kids. You didn’t enjoy that you had the pressure of other people’s lives on your shoulders. The killing, that was easy. It was second nature to you. But them being there reminded you too much of what you went through with your siblings. Especially Ellie, who is still so young and doesn’t deserve that crushing fear. She doesn’t deserve to know how to escape death. None of them should.

“You’re right, they shouldn’t. But they still know what it means to grow up in this world. And some of them will learn how to kill, just like Ellie did when she shot one of the infected.” Diana was so understanding. She didn’t judge you. She never has. “I don’t think this anger isn’t about Ellie or the other teens at all?” She asked gently. Of course she knew it wasn’t about them.

Diana went to the stables this morning, to let Dan know you weren’t coming in. That you’ll need a day or two to recover.

“Joel asked you to come visit tonight, I told him you’d be there,” she only informed you when she got back home and didn’t leave any room for you to object. It’s not a surprise she did it. You have to talk with him.

You stand behind his door. The warm lights inside shine dimly through the curtains over the windows. You hear soft guitar playing inside and listen to it. It’s a familiar tune that mixes in with different memories from the life before. Your hand hangs next to your body, you wouldn’t want to raise it to knock. So you listen a moment longer until the music stops and you’re surrounded by the lonely quiet of the darkness.

You tap your knuckles against the door and it opens almost immediately. Joel is surrounded with warmth. The comfort of his home, the gentle haze of the old lamps and the glow that illuminates him. Even though he’s just standing there, he’s comforting you in a way you didn’t know you needed. There’s tenderness on his face and in the rich dark brown of his eyes.

“Come in,” he speaks quietly and you step inside. He helps you out of your coat and scarf and hangs them on the coat rack in the corner. You follow him into the living room and sit on the opposite ends of his worn, leather couch. You tuck your leg under you and face him. You don’t have to hide your bruises from him.

“How’s your face?” The question makes you smirk.

“Wonderful,” your answer makes the laugh lines deepen next to his eyes.

“Thanks for coming. I wasn’t really sure if you were ready, but Diana said—”

“I wanted to come and talk, no matter what Diana said.” He nods and you remind yourself of the things you want to share with him. You’ve compiled a list in your head, some more personal, some more mundane and insignificant thoughts that you’d want to tell him. Some make you so nervous that you’re not sure if you ever want him to know them.

“I…” You can’t get the words out. You look at him, the downward curve of his brows. He grinds his teeth together and his jaw twitches.

“Why is this so hard?” You gasp out a single laugh. You watch him dip his chin down, but there’s a gentle smile stretched across his lips.

“I knew about it.” This isn’t what you wanted to start with. His eyes turn towards you and he leans against the back of the couch. You’re reminded of the time when you came here last. How you sat the same way on this sofa, how everything was so much different then. He even has his arm bent like then, his head leaning against his hand the same way, his eyes half lidded and watching you through his lashes. His other hand is reached towards you against the back of the seat, his fingers lazily tapping a rhythmless rhythm.

“I heard Ellie with her friends in The Tipsy Bison last week and they were talking about some plan. I should’ve told you about it so none of this would’ve have happened.” He raises his brows and blows air through his mouth. “I was angry at myself for not—”

“You don’t have to blame yourself for it.” He’s quick to say.

“Please, let me finish.” He shuts his mouth when he hears your whispered plea and gives you his full attention, turning more towards you. “I was angry that I didn’t tell you they were planning something. If something happened, it would’ve been on me. If you had lost her as well, I would never forgive myself.” You watch his eyes fill with salty tears. One escapes and he wipes it away with the back of his hand.

“I don’t really know what to say to that,” he confesses with a headshake.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“But I want to.” He fixes his gaze on you and leans forward just the slightest. With him though it feels like he takes up all the room in your field of vision and surrounds you with himself and his presence.

“I worry about her like she’s my own. She is my daughter at this point.” The other side of your mouth lifts up at that. “The thought about losing her scares me all the time and if that would happen, I don’t know what I’d do. Because there was something I already did to save her once and I would do it again. What terrified me more was the look on your face, when you walked out of that library.” He hides his eyes from you, but you can still make out the sorrow.

“I know how you felt in that moment, the emptiness. It was like I was looking at myself through a mirror when I saw the rage and the grief and want to kill.” You pick at your cuticle but his hand reaches out and takes yours into his, forcing you to face him. He’s even closer. He’s inside your head, knows exactly what kind of a rollercoaster you were on in that moment.

“I enjoyed it,” you whisper and he puffs out a chuckle.

“Can’t say I haven’t enjoyed it either,” he confesses.

“How fucked up are we?” You ask and it actually breaks the thin surface of quietness and he smirks at that. You hear his real, rare laugh, the low rumble from deep in his chest. More warmth, more him. More comfort being around him surrounds you.

“Can I ask you something?” You nod at him and his brows crunch together.

“How on earth have you come to enjoy killing?” Your mouth goes dry. You clear your throat and fill your lungs in an attempt to give yourself time to decide what to tell him.

“Remember when I told you about the ex-FEDRA soldier who taught me to shoot?” He nods his head.

“It was a long time ago. His name was Peter. He was my first…” You stop yourself and he blinks when you feel your cheeks heating up. “He was someone who I knew I could trust to turn a blind eye if my sister was in some sort of trouble back in the QZ. We came up with a deal when I asked him to teach me how to use a gun and a knife. And he did. And he was the one who asked me to leave the QZ with my siblings.”

Joel is hanging onto your every word. You can tell he’s locking them in his memory, to not forget anything you’re willing to tell him. He’s intense with his stare, microscopic changes rushing across his face with every sentence that you share with him.

You’re tired of hiding from him, of not being completely honest with where you come from or what you’ve been through. You want him to know and understand you without him having to guess your past.

“He trusted me and I used that to my advantage. I killed because he asked me to. Infected and living people. I learnt how to shut it all out and it was just a chore at some point, something that had to be done. But I didn’t like myself when I was around him. So me and my siblings made a plan to leave the settlement with a few others. I still sometimes blame myself for making them leave the QZ even when life was shit in there. I feel like I’m the one to blame for their deaths, because they followed me.” Relief fills you the more you tell him. Letting him in doesn’t scare you anymore.

“When Ellie found me behind that rock,” you chuckle at the memory. How bizarre that all was. “I considered taking my life. Or at least that you’d kill me quickly. I’m glad you didn’t.”

“If it was just me, I probably would’ve done it. Ellie, she’s the one who stands up for others. Just like you.”

“I was too hard on her,” he nods and a whispered yeah flows into the space between you two. “I need to speak with her, to apologise.” A hint of anxiety twinges in your chest.

Has she been here this whole time, has she been able to hear what you’ve been telling Joel? You turn to look behind you as you think you feel her standing behind you.

“She’s at Maria and Tommy’s,” he reassures you. Your shoulders relax at that. He’s still holding his hand over yours, the weight of his palm like an anchor to keep you from drifting off with your thoughts.

You touch the skin on the back of his hand with your fingertips and turn to cradle it between your palms. His hands are massive, the roughness of his skin apparent in some places, and in other places his hands are incredibly soft and comforting. You run your thumb against the lines on his palm and follow them over and over.

“I too…” When you look at him in the eyes he swallows thickly. He touches his right temple, the scar there. “I almost… too… After Sarah.” It doesn’t take a lot for you to piece together what he’s saying. You’ve always seen the scar, but it takes a whole other meaning when he touches it. A constant reminder for him about the past.

“I blamed myself for a long time, how I couldn’t save her. So I killed, poured it all into hurting others.” The coldness in his eyes chills you to your core.

You came across a few of those people after you left the QZ. People who were hurting, who were crushed by what had happened to them. It didn’t surprise you that they wanted to do something with the anger that they were dealt with, or that they couldn’t feel anything anymore. Just pain. The world was over anyway, who was there to stop them? As you look at Joel, know him, you understand him.

“I didn’t like it, but it felt like it was the only option.” He speaks as if his words are only meant to be said in the darkest of darkness. They don’t fit the golden embrace that his home is filled with. Then you think again and realise that maybe this is the only place where he could say something like that. Maybe he didn’t plan to tell any of it to you but couldn’t stop himself either.

“I understand,” because you do. And you want him to know that too. The spark in his eyes through his lashes is holding you still, completely rapturing you with the dark confession and the relief that you’re not seeing him as someone unworthy of affection. You’re terrified of how you feel about him. It feels too much, too fast, overwhelming you with its force.

“I wanted to say something else as well.” Your fingers still against his hand.

It's fragile between the two of you, the connection that spans for month. You feel it between you every time, a fluttering of electricity somewhere deep, making you nervous and anxious at the same time and you’re not always sure if you like the feelings.

It’s in the way he’s gentle with you, all soft words, and dark eyes, watching you, taking you in. The same way you’re watching him, waiting for him to do something to ease the aching anxiety that forms in the pit of your belly every time you’re around him.

He can’t do anything, only you can ease that uneasiness. You think you can recognise the look in his eye even though he wouldn’t admit it. The deep feeling that you’ve tried to deny for a long time. How much you’d want to let go and throw yourself into the chaos of desire. Still, there’s so much healing to do for the both of you.

“I’m not sure if I’m ready for anything yet.” He smirks and his shoulders slump down.

“I agree, I’m not either.”

“Really?” Your question gives you a chance to hear his laugh again.

“Are you surprised that I might not be ready?”

“No, I mean, you kissed like you were ready to devour me, but I guess it makes sense.” The hearty bubbling of his delight makes you giggle.

“What about you then, I could still feel you ripping my hair out when I got home,” he eggs you on and you bite the bait. You press your thumbs against his palm and enjoy the easy laugh that quiets down into a comforting silence.

“Didn’t mind it though,” his voice is like a continuation of the silence and your smile fills the void of your answer. You don’t want this moment to end. You stretch it as long as you can. You want to lay in it, savour it and memorise the feeling you have now. The incredible bittersweetness.

Your head is a mess, your heart even messier and you know this is what is right. Neither of you is ready to let yourself get taken into the waves of something more. This is good. You can breathe now.

He hums and when you look up, he’s shaking his head gently.

“What?”

“Just something Maria said a while back.” He sounds like he’s deep in thought.

“What did she say?”

“That I like you.” But he sounds more like he’s asking that from himself. The look of openness in his eyes tells you he knows the answer but has been too afraid to admit it. Or even think about it. No matter if you kissed or not, it’s different to let those feelings loose.

“Do you?” You want to make sure.

“I guess I do.” You breathe the words in.

“I think I do too,” you exhale. The prickling warmth on your cheeks seems so silly, so foolishly naïve.

You realise this might be the first time you’ve actually felt something like this for someone else. A crush, feelings of real attraction without it being a way to protect someone else or to gain something for yourself. That’s what’s so scary about it. It’s selfish in a way, to want that reciprocating feeling from someone else who has his own skeletons in a closet.

“I think, it would be for the best, if we gave each other some space,” he almost whispers. It nearly breaks your heart to hear it although you agree. It’s the best thing in this situation you’re in. You need space without pressure or expectations. You need to find your yourself in this town, be with yourself and grow into the life that you’ve been offered here.

The clock ticks on. The evening turns even darker and the moment is starting to pass. You ease your fingers from his hand. You’re leaving something here, a memory, a part of you that you’ve been living with since last spring. This is not a goodbye but a clean slate.

Joel walks you to the door and lifts your coat from the rack while you put your boots back on. Your head throbs when you tie them up, all blood flowing against the cut and bruise on your face. His brows pull together when you stand back up and have to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to settle to discomfort and dizziness that follow. He helps you put your coat on and watches you carefully when you’re wrapping the scarf around your neck, your face turned towards the rusty light of the hallway.

“I think you need to be prepared, if you haven’t heard already…” The scarf covers your mouth and he pulls it down softly. His fingertips trace the lightly swollen skin where the bruise lays. He’s careful not to put any pressure on it.

He’s no stranger to injuries, this is just to make sure you’re going to be okay. A reassurance for himself, that you’re taken care of, and for you, that he would take care of you. He would know how, and he would be gentle.

He still manages to leave a line of tingles under your skin, not the ones that hurt, but the ones that excite.

“Prepared for what?”

“People have come up with a nickname for you.” His grimace tells you enough. People are talking, so much so that it has gained you a nickname that Diana or Brenda haven’t wanted to share with you. “Clara has been tight lipped with her stories, telling only a few what happened at the library. But those few have been more generous and told some other people and—”

“Just tell me.” You’re dreading it. People you don’t know, people who have no idea what kind of a person you are, are sharing a version of a story that has probably gone through the machine of grandeur, changing it into something it’s not.

“Savvy,” Joel says and he waits for your reaction. You repeat it back to him and his annoyed sigh. “It could be worse. It’s… cute.” The word rolls off his tongue like it’s a curse wors. Your smirk makes him roll his eyes.

“If I hear you calling me Savvy, I don’t know if I’ll ever want to speak with you again.”

“You think it’s that bad?”

“No, it’s not bad. But you know my name. They just know a story.” His features soften.

You stand awkwardly in front of the door, heat pushing through your skin under the coat and scarf. He looks like he’s not sure what he’s supposed to do in this moment. What he should say.

“I’ll see you around,” you offer. It’s enough to make Joel move. He takes a step forward but stops himself. He stands still, giving you the chance to either leave without another word or say goodbye. You choose the latter.

It’s easy to melt into his embrace. You press your good cheek against him. He’s warm and steady, safe and reliable. You close your eyes and you think you could stay here, wrapped in his arms for hours. You listen to his slow breaths and feel him fit against your body like he belongs there. Maybe he does. You just know he feels like someone you’ve missed and finally found.

His breath puffs against the edge of your jaw and his bearded cheek scratches gently against your skin. He inhales and you pull him even closer, your arms tightening around his back. Your palms run up and down the firmness of it, memorizing the heat you can feel through his worn, soft shirt. His arms wrap around you even more, like they grow in length to keep you caged in his embrace. You wouldn’t mind it.

You’re the first one to ease away from him. He lets go slowly until his hands drop down your shoulders, elbows, wrists, until he’s holding one of your hands in his. He opens the door for you and you step outside, still holding on.

You turn back around. He’s surrounded with the glowing warmth of his home. You’re surrounded by the cold, dark falling night. This reminds you of another moment a while ago, when you stood in his doorway in a similar manner. He leans his body against the doorframe, still close, but not close enough.

The gentleness in his eyes, the softness of his smile sparks your need for him deep inside of you. His fingers reach for the inside of your wrist and hold still, listening to the beat of your thrumming heart under the delicate skin. You pull your hand slowly away and let his fingertips make a lingering line from your wrist to your palm, hold still for a moment until the hardened fingers brush against yours and let go.

When you walk down the street, almost home, you still feel his touch all over your hand. He’s still holding it, his large hand wrapped around yours. You’re sensitive to his touch. You crave it while wanting to keep your distance. You touch your hand, your fingertips reaching for your wrist. It’s not a goodbye. It’s a promise.

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