bezoar | searching home still

The sound of gunfire popping in the distance already has her stirring, but Joel's familiar hand on her shoulder rouses her like he's doused her in ice water. She immediately slips from beneath the covers, reaching for her shoes and coat.

"Hunters?" she asks breathlessly, wrinkling her nose at the smell of the alcohol. The second her shoes are laced she's throwing on her coat, grabbing up her pack and leaning on her bow to get it strung. It's cold, and her fingers don't want to work.

Her arrows clack together as she shoves the rest of the supply into the hole in her pack, pockets her gun.

"What about the fence? Are they in?"

"Hunters," Joel confirms. "Loads of 'em."

He quickly stands up, pulls his pistol out of its holster, checks how many bullets are loaded in the cylinder. Full chamber. "They're in. Don't ask me how. Didn't have time to ask."

Snapping the cylinder back into place, he shoves the revolver back into its holster, grabs his 9mm out of his waistband, quickly checks the magazine. As he locks it back into place, a round of gunshots echoes through the building, sounding closer than the last round.

A quick mental check of his weapons: machete, bow and arrows strapped to his back, shotgun, rifle. Shit, he's tired. The alcohol swilling in his veins is no longer making him pleasantly drunk; the adrenalin has done a good enough job of chasing off all of that.

As he approaches the door, he backs up against the wall to stealthily peer out. Coast seems clear. For now. Without looking at Ellie, he beckons her silently with a wave of his hand.

"Stay with me, kiddo."

"Mother fucker," she whispers, falls into step behind him without thinking, sticking right on his heels. Old habits die hard, and she's never tried to shake this one.

She searches his hands for signs of weaving or tremors, worried about the alcohol she caught a whiff of, and wonders if she should take point.

"Getting out or charging in?" she asks, bracing herself and loading up the bow. Nobody's noticed them yet, maybe she can take out a few before anyone realizes she's there.

"Gettin' out."

The thought makes his stomach sink. He's so god damn sick of running. Not that he has any time to dwell on it now. A loud explosion booms somewhere outside the building, followed by a spray of gunfire somewhere inside.

Joel crouches down, heart racing, everything else inside him otherwise cold and dead. Always best to approach these situations with no emotion, a clear head and no room for remorse.

"C'mon," he murmurs, pistol cocked and ready and, staying crouched down, he creeps out of the room and hurries with stealth behind a wooden crate.

Last chance to check on Ellie. He looks back at her once she's followed him out, concern hidden beneath the weather-beaten, heavy-set wrinkles lined in his tired face. "You good?"

"What about Tommy-?"

Ellie's voice catches as an explosion rocks them. They've got bombs. The fence could come down at this rate, and the whole dam could be in danger. As they move she immediately goes quiet. Now is not the time to distract him with arguments or worries.

Joel already knows what he's doing, she's not going to change his mind, and it's dangerous to try.

"Good," she whispers back, getting close. "You steady?"

"Steady," he confirms. "And don't worry 'bout Tommy. He knows how to take care of himself."

Tommy. Jesus, Tommy. He pushes the sudden burst of worry for his baby brother back down. Joel knows that if he tried to get his brother out with Ellie in tow, Tommy'd yell at Joel to get the fuck out of here, to get the girl to safety.

That's not to say that he won't try to get Tommy out of here. And Maria. If he can find them. But in the event that he can't get to them--

Tommy can look after himself. Joel has to believe that.

"I'll take point. You cover. Got it?" And with that, he sneaks out from behind the crate and keeps low as he hurries along the open corridor. He ducks behind another crate, waits for a few seconds, listens hard, and is ducks back out.

He comes to a sudden stop, an arm coming out to block Ellie's path. Just below the scaffolding, he can see Hunters prowling around slowly, rifles at the ready, scanning the vicinity. Joel quickly looks behind him at Ellie. He cocks his head down towards where the men are. Ellie's a dead shot with those arrows - the quieter those assholes are taken out, the better.

"Take 'em out," he whispers.

"Gotcha."

Ellie blows out a breath, pursing her lips as she creeps silently behind Joel, arrow notched into string, paying close attention to everything they can see. It's dark, but her eyes are used to it. Better than the Hunters with their torches and bombs.

A quick nod lets Joel know she understands. She gets up next to him, works slowly over to get the angle on them. They're looking ahead, not to the sides. Maybe they've already searched this area, or it's just too quiet.

Ellie targets the man on the end, carefully pulls back on the sting, sighting down the shaft. She gets the man's neck in her sights, finds the notch just behind his windpipe, where it'll cut off any screaming. Without thought, without breath, she looses the arrow.

Even before the point and shaft passes clear through his neck and out the other side, Ellie's pulling out another arrow, pulling back and shifting up for a new angle. The second Hunter is just turning around when Ellie's shot punches clean through his eyeball, lodging deep into his skull. They slump down among the crates, and she targets another. The pause is longer, waiting for him to come into range.

Closer, closer-

There is a sound, the thunk and crack of an overripe melon bursting open, and the third Hunter goes down. One nearby stops, alters his route. Waves to catch the attention of another, and nods towards the place the sound of his fellow dying came from.

Fuck. They'll be discovered any second.

While Ellie takes aim, Joel stays back, pistol at the ready, surveying their immediate surroundings. He hears the quiet ping of the bow, the even quieter whistle of an arrow sailing down towards its target, the faint wet sound of the arrow sinking into flesh. The choked, gurgling sound that comes from the asshole Ellie's just shot. Rinse, repeat.

He creeps forward just in time to see Ellie take out a third; his eyes cut across to another Hunter that's heard a disturbance.

"Shit," he whispers under his voice. "Back, back, get back." Hand grabbing her backpack, he scurries backwards, tugging Ellie with him. And just in fucking time: a shot suddenly fires right at the very spot Ellie had been crouching just seconds before.

"Up there!" he hears one of Hunters down below shouting.

Joel wastes no time. Giving Ellie a firm shove, he hisses, "Run! Run!" at her just as footsteps start pounding up the metallic stairs, just as another gunshot fires up in their direction. "I'll be right behind you! Run!"

Ellie gasps at the shot but doesn't cry out. They've both taken bullets in the past, she's not the type to be made shaky by a close call.

"Fuck-"

Ellie throws the bow up, hooking it over her shoulder, pulling her gun as she runs, full-tilt. She takes point and lets Joel guard. They've done this many, many times, and she doesn't spare a minute to worry that he's not following closely.

She fires at the top of the stairs, charging headlong past one of the bandits on the upper floor. He screams, falls, and Ellie keeps running.

Gunshots spray after them, deflected by the metal of the stairs, but some get through. One grazes her arm, and she gives a soft yip of pain, but doesn't falter.

Joel takes off straight after Ellie, his heavy footfalls pounding along the metal grating. As he thunders down the stairs after Ellie takes a shot at a Hunter on the steps, he elbows another forcefully in the face, then brings his fist up in a slamming punch to their windpipe just as another lets off a spray of bullets.

The Hunter goes flying backwards with a strangled, choking noise, rifle clattering to the ground, hands flying up to his throat. Joel ducks down, swipes up the rifle, takes aim at the guy's head with his pistol in the other hand, makes him eat a bullet. Skull and brain fragments explode from the exit wound at the back of his head, splattering messily across the floor.

As he takes off to continue after Ellie, he almost startles at another Hunter charging at him. With a growling bare of his teeth, he grips the rifle in both hands and brings it up, slamming the butt straight into the asshole's face and then grabbing him by the hair to smash his head into the wall. Jumping over the body slumping to the ground, Joel continues after Ellie.

His heart is fucking racing. Adrenalin-induced sweat is starting to pour down his temples. He races as fast as his legs will take him through the building, ducking away from another spray of bullets coming from somewhere up above. A bullet grazes across his left cheek with a sharp, hot shock, sending him stumbling off to the side with a hand clapping over the wound. It instantly throbs like fucking hell but Joel has fared far worse, it's just a scratch.

Just as he catches up with Ellie, another explosion much closer by goes off. The reverberation of the boom seems to make everything shudder, and Joel ducks, startled, as glass comes suddenly showering down over him. He swings his arm up to point the pistol at whoever had just caused the glass to come crashing down - and sees an open window. The explosion had shattered the glass.

"Ellie! Ellie!" Joel gasps, blood gushing down his face and trickling down his neck from the wound. He's already started climbing up onto a stack; with a small jump, he'll be able to climb his way out of the window. "This way!"

Ellie skids around a corner, no time to feel the pain burning in her arm, taking point as the other catch up to Joel from behind. Her gun ends up buried down the throat of one of the hunters, and she pulls the trigger twice, double-tapping out of shock. When that one drops, another jumps in to grab her from behind, pull her up to start to strangle her.

Gagging, Ellie chokes, feels her throat start to give, and realizes she can't get a good angle with her gun. Pulling her switchblade, she jams it into his wrist. He screams loudly and immediately pulls away. Ellie spins and brings her gun up, sighting down the barrel to blast his face open.

"Joel-" she yells, looks up to see him making his way to her, blood all down his face, in his eyes. The explosion rocks everything under her feet, and she takes off, gripping the handrail to avoid slipping in blood.

"Careful of your arms," she calls out, her voice sounding far away in one ear. Shit, that explosion was close. She's close on his tail, but she'll probably need his help to get up without slicing herself.

With the butt of the rifle, Joel smashes away the jagged fragments of glass still sticking up from the window frame in a quick swiping motion. He reaches behind him, shoves the pistol into his waistband, slaps the rifle up on the window frame. With a jump and a grunt, he pushes himself up and struggles through the window.

The sight he's met with outside: a few dead bodies, some smouldering and singed; Hunters firing at the building; screams and shouts and chaos. Fuck. He hasn't been seen yet, though - but they've gotta hurry.

The moment he's out of the window and on his feet, he whips around and crouches down, holding a hand out for Ellie to take. "C'mon, I gotcha."

Without hesitation, Ellie pulls her sleeves over her hands as much as she can, and jumps up to catch Joel's hand, using his strength to climb up. She only narrowly makes it to the top before someone grabs at her ankle.

And yanks her back.

Ellie loses her balance and falls hard across the windowsill, scraping herself on the broken glass. It's a blessing that Joel cleared it, or she'd have a gut wound right now. As it is, being pulled down is raking her shallowly open, and she gives a winded grasp of pain as she attempts to shake free, to kick the guy in the face.

Something.

The sudden tug of someone pulling Ellie back down is a nasty surprise; Joel lets out an expletive and quickly tightens his grip while scurrying to pull Ellie as hard as he can.

No use. Asshole has got hold of her too damn tight.

"Hold on, don't let go," Joel tells her between clenched teeth, blood running down his cheek and sweat beading down his forehead as he whips his hand around behind him for his pistol. "Keep your head down!"

He hears the guy who's got a hold of her hiss, "Get down here, you little bitch!" Shoving his arm through the window past Ellie, Joel cranes his neck to get a better vantage point of the guy, taking aim at him, and fires.

The first shot misses. Ricochets off the ground with a spark and a small explosion of cement. "Hold still, don't move!" he says to Ellie as he takes aim again. Fires.

The bullet sinks into the asshole's eye socket, tearing out flesh and exiting out the side of his skull with a wet splatter of blood. The guy's grip instantly goes limp as he slumps to the ground.

Shoving the pistol back into his waistband, Joel gets a better grip of Ellie, his hands grabbing her upper arms. "C'mon, baby girl, c'mon," he urges quietly.

Not that there's any point in being quiet. His gun firing has caught the attention of the Hunters out on the ground.

The sound of the gun so close nearly tears out her eardrums, it feels like, but she stays still and trusts Joel, as she has a million times before. The second she feels the grip go slack, she leans on him and hauls herself up, gasping for air.

There's blood on the front of her shirt, and it stings in a sharp, annoying sort of way that she knows isn't going to be particularly dangerous to her health unless it gets infected. But there's no time to worry about it. Not now.

"On your left," she gasps, and tugs him as she dives down for cover. Bullets spray over their heads, but they haven't got a good enough angle. Her eyes flicker to Joel, trusting him to lead. He knows this place like the back of his hand, and Ellie is only rarely up here.

Looking sharply to his left as he grabs up his rifle, Joel's eyes widen before he, too, dives down. He does his best to shield Ellie, grabbing her close to him and spinning around so at least if one of them is shot, it'll be him and not her. The spray of bullets is deafening; bits of brick and rock chip off in small explosions around them as the bullets pepper into the wall.

"This way!" he hisses, and he drags Ellie along with him behind the dumpster so they can catch their breath for just a second. He wipes away blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, smudging it across his skin; his cheek is already starting to swell and bruise but it's at least not a bad injury.

"Nail bombs - you got any?" he whispers harshly to Ellie as he shrugs off his backpack. His broad, calloused hands are shaking slightly from the adrenalin as he rips open the zip to fish one of his own nail bombs out.

No time to reply, Ellie just wordlessly complies, still trying to get her breath back. She watches Joel's head wound worriedly, but this is no time to stop and doctor him up. They need to move, to make this happen.

"Molotov," she hisses, pulling the bottle out from inside her pack, thumbing the rag deeper into it.

"Tell me when."

"That'll do," he whispers back as he rips the zip shut again, slings his bag back over his shoulders, stores his rifle. The moment he's set, nail bomb in hand, he takes position. Crouching against the side of the dumpster, listening hard over the sound of bullets firing and his own pulse drumming hard in his head.

"There! They're over there!" he hears someone shout from near where the bullets were fired from. And that, he decides, is just going to have to be their cue.

"Now!" Joel orders.

Jumping up, he darts out from behind the dumpster, greeted with a clear view of the men that are now running in a pack towards them. "Ellie!" Joel calls out warningly because they've gotta get these guys now if they want any chance of getting out of here alive.

With a grunt, he lobs the nail bomb as hard as he can towards them, where it lands with a scraping metallic skitter along the ground.

Ellie's quick, and she's always had great aim. The bottle flies base-first just beyond the bomb, and Ellie ducks down before it goes off, covering her ears.

The force of the explosion of fire is incredible, and the impact creates a chain reaction that sets off the bomb. Whatever the flying shrapnel doesn't finish off, the fire does.

The air's filled with high, terrible animal screaming as the men slump down and die. Were she younger, Ellie would keep covering her ears to block out the screaming, but this time she knows they just have to get away. Before everything settles and all the fire's out, she's up and ready to follow, looking pale but determined, gun back in her hands.

The screams are still all around them.

Joel dives back down against the side of the dumpster just as Ellie lobs the Molotov; he braces himself against the explosion that rocks the air in a shattering boom that reverberates through the ground and sends off a shockwave. He feels nothing towards the screams of pain that tear through the air, thinks nothing of it, just takes his rifle back in his hands and turns around, ready to run.

He counts to three in his head - one... two... three... - and then he's off, pushing away from the dumpster and running in a zigzag across the compound so no one can get a proper aim on him, and ducks behind a cluster of old oil drums. Counts again to three in his head, pushes off again, and takes shelter next to a stack of small shipment containers.

He swipes at the blood running down his face again, spots a couple of Hunters up ahead stalking slowly around the burning debris as though wary of another bomb going off. Just ahead of them is a gap in the fence that will lead Ellie and himself out of here. If they can just get past those Hunters quietly without attracting any further attention.

He stores his rifle and pulls out a shiv. "Get your knife out," he murmurs to Ellie, and then slowly begins encroaching towards them.

The air is heavy with dust and debris, and Ellie's quick on Joel's heels, making good use of cover to keep hidden. She's more quiet than he is, so it tends to be easier. As loud as the bombs and cracks of gunfire are, not to mention the coughing, they're staying unnoticed.

She slides into place next to him, staying down while he checks things out.

With a quick nod, Ellie moves down to one side of the oil drums, taking out her knife. Thankfully, the Hunters stick together, and as soon as they draw into range, Ellie locks eyes with Joel, vaults a drum, and jumps on one man's back, punching her knife into his throat. He drops with a wrenching, desperate little gurgle, and Ellie rides him down, wrenching with her wrist to make sure it tears open everything vital.

The pool of blood quickly reaches lethal size, and she gets off him, bolting for the hole in the fence.

"No sign of Tommy and Maria?" she whispers as they duck through. Thinking quickly, Ellie scoops a hand-sized chunk of concrete from the ground, taking it with her.

-and as they make it through the fence, one of the Hunters outside makes a grab for Joel's hair.

Edited 2014-04-06 06:01 (UTC)

Joel stays crouched down as he nears the Hunters - and the moment Ellie is jumping over the drums and onto one of the Hunters' backs, Joel launches himself forward and grabs an arm around the other Hunter's throat. The man lets out a shout, which is instantly cut off by Joel stabbing the shiv deep into the side of his neck and then ripping it forwards, outwards, severing the man's vocal chords and jugular vein.

There's a sudden gushing spray of blood as the man gurgles and claws at the air at nothing in particular while Joel lets him go and lets the man slump to the ground. There's blood all over Joel's hands, on his sleeves, but he pays no attention to that, just launches into a run towards the gap in the fence with the shiv still clutched in his hand.

"No sign of--" he begins answering - and lets out a startled shout as he's grabbed from seemingly out of nowhere. He staggers to the side and instinctively lashes out with the shiv; the Hunter lets out his own shout of pain as the shiv slices across his arm but it's not enough to make him let go.

Joel finds himself being hauled to the ground on his back with brutal and winding slam, blood from the wound on his face flicking into his eyes. The first thing he sees is man towering over him with a fist coming down hard towards his face - and Joel, with teeth gritted while struggling underneath the weight pinning him down, stabs at the first thing he can angle the shiv at, which right into the man's left eye.

At the same time Joel's shiv punches into the man's eyeball, Ellie's chunk of concrete slams with a sickening crunch into the back of his head. He slumps across Joel, bleeding all over him, a heavy dead weight.

"Fucker," Ellie mutters, and grabs the guy's arm to drag him off, reach out a hand to help Joel to his feet.

"What was that you were saying?" she asks, catching her breath, one arm pressed across her stomach. There's so much blood on the both of them it's hard to tell where the injuries are.

With a winded grunt, he helps push the man off him, shiv left dug deep into the asshole's eye socket. Blood from the man's gouged eye had sprayed over Joel's face and seeped into his mouth; as he rolls over onto his side and then gets onto his hands and knees, he spits the blood out, wipes the back of his slightly trembling hand across his mouth and rocks back onto his haunches.

"No sign of 'em," is all he gruffly answers, and fuck, he hopes to god Tommy is safe. That Maria is safe, scary though that woman can be. As he climbs to his feet, covered in blood and sweat and his breath coming out in thick steam from the cold, it crosses his mind to go back in there and find his baby brother.

But-- No, Tommy knows how to take care of himself. And besides, as he turns to Ellie and notices the way she's holding her stomach, he knows he's going to need to get her to safety to check her over. No way in hell it's safe anywhere around here, not even to check over wounds.

"C'mon, let's get moving," he huffs, and with a wipe of his bloodied hand over his blood-stained face, he breaks out into a hard run for the trees.

Ellie shakes her head as Joel spits, keeping a good eye out. The battle's still raging inside the walls, and it's only a temporary respite out here. What she doesn't know yet is if they're going to go back in, to help the people still trapped inside. Not all of them are fighters. There are families in there. People with kids.

Thankfully, the people of Jackson have drills for this sort of thing, and they know their resources better than Ellie and Joel do. They're likely to hunker down, secure everyone before they fight back.

Ellie hesitates when Joel breaks for the trees, looking between them and the city in complete disbelief before she breaks out with a loud, dismayed curse and runs after him. The summer is long over, and the night is bitter cold, fallen leaves making a good carpet on the ground as they head for cover, make it to the tree line cloaked in darkness.

As they make it up higher, Ellie stops and turns back towards the compound. The power's off, but fires have started to break out. There is screaming, high and faint, even this far away. The gunshots sound like popping corn.

"Shit, holy shit," Ellie whispers under her breath, her voice strained. An explosion echoes through the quiet of the night, and Ellie is furious, terrified.

"Joel? What are we gonna do?" she asks him, throwing out a hand towards the settlement. "We're going back, right? Right?"

With a stitch starting to seize hold of his side, Joel eventually comes to a stumbling stop by a dark thicket of trees. He's breathing hard, a strong taste of copper and blood in his mouth and throat; adrenalin is making his shins and calf muscles burn.

He takes stock of the view below: the fires blazing from the building, the explosions going off, the thundering peppering of gunfire. Jesus, he hopes Tommy got out, Jesus, Jesus. Joel don't give much of a damn for anyone else, just Tommy. And Maria, given how much that woman means to his brother.

"I'm thinkin'," he says to Ellie's question about what they're gonna do, and then angrily explodes when she presses the issue, "I'm thinkin'!"

He runs a bloodied hand through his sweat sodden hair, the cold air like dry ice going down his burning throat with every breath in. Jesus, that settlement had become their home; it had become a place where Joel had finally found some semblance of hope, some semblance of normality, after all these god forsaken fucking months of running.

By habit, though, he's already squashing the impending grief trying to claw up his chest. If they go back... If the Hunters themselves don't kill them, the fire will. Joel ain't willing to risk Ellie's life for that. He's not going to risk losing her, doesn't matter how many people are burning alive in that building right now. He watches with hollow numbness the roof at one corner of the building suddenly caving in under the pressure of heat.

"We ain't goin' back."

Ellie falls silent when he raises his voice, turns to look back at him when the roof begins to collapse. The screaming is distant, but it feels like it's tearing her apart.

The look on his face is what she feels. That hollowness, that dim pain of knowing the full reality of what's happening, but also knowing that it's not something that they can handle. They aren't heroes. There's only two of them. They can't save those people. They could barely save their own skins.

Young and idealistic as Ellie is, she's smart enough to get that, but it still feels like a betrayal. Like they should have at least tried. She sucks in a breath around the lump in her throat, expression crumbling before she looks down at her feet, shakes her head, hard.

"Jesus Christ," she whispers, soft and broken, and starts to lock it up, lock it away. When she looks up again her face is pale, but resigned. No tears.

Joel allows himself just another few moments of silently staring at the inferno. He forces himself to catch his breath all the while, chest heaving hard and pulse still thumping in a rhythm of terror through his veins and temples.

He becomes vaguely aware of the throbbing in his cheek and how swollen his cheek is becoming. It in turn reminds him of the way Ellie had been clutching her stomach.

Right. Push down the panic, the grief, the worry for his brother. Lock it away. This is a cruel, unforgiving world they have to live in and it never allows any time for grief and suffering.

He drags his eyes away from Tommy's settlement to look at Ellie. He notices the way she's looking down at her feet; he's grown to learn over the months how to read Ellie and he knows what she's probably thinking. The words she whispers next confirm his thoughts. Shit, that place had become her home, probably the only damn good thing she'd ever had, and now it's... gone.

When she looks up at him, Joel settles a hand on her shoulder, gives it a faint squeeze. But then, he drops his hand away. Time to look forward now. Always look forward. Don't ever look back.

"We'll find us someplace safe, get cleaned up."

Ellie appreciates the squeeze. It's something they've grown into over the past year and a half or so. It's been a long time since she stopped being jumpy, and now it feels like his steady hand helps her keep it together.

Slowly nodding, she puts her back to the flames, the only light in the area, squaring her shoulders.

"Okay."

They can't stop here, not so close, but Joel's head isn't looking so good, and there's a chance he might have a concussion. Ellie herself isn't sure how her hurts are. Her stomach still stings sharply, but both it and her shoulder have stopped bleeding.

"You feel dizzy or sick?" she asks. She's noticed that he's a touch more unsteady than normal. Was it the alcohol, or the injury?

"Nope," he answers, and that's all he's going to say on the matter. Even if he was feeling dizzy or sick, now isn't the time to be worrying about it.

Truth be told, though the adrenalin had killed off the buzz of alcohol that had been swilling in his veins, it's left a sluggish aftereffect. That damn graze of the bullet across his cheek sure didn't fucking help.

More importantly, though... "How 'bout you? You holdin' up okay?"

"Holding up okay. Got grazed by a bullet but the bleeding's stopped already."

She's learned, over time, to always speak up about shit like that. It's better if they treat it sooner rather than later. The fun part about Ellie's injuries seems to be that she has absolutely no tendency to have her wounds ever fester or feel feverish.

It's like the Infection won't allow any other sickness to take hold. She jokes about her superpower, but never really wants to test it.

"What about you? Near miss?" Ellie keeps moving at his side. He's slower than normal, she notes, and thinks of taking point. They know these woods. Maybe too well, for all the time they spend out in them, hunting.

"Where are we headed? The cabin?"

It's fairly secluded, up high, a place they use for overnights. But the bandits might have found that, too.

"Near miss," he confirms dismissively. "Nothin' to worry about."

He's fared far fucking worse than a bullet coming a little too close for comfort. At worst, it might require a couple of stitches, nothing Ellie can't handle if need be. He's quick to head off in to the woods, the blaze from the settlement casting an eerie orange glow through the trees. Shit, it's damn cold.

"The cabin. Assuming it's still safe."

If it isn't... Well, they'll just have to deal with that when they come to it. For now, it's the only place Joel knows that's close enough and secluded enough to get them to safety.

A twig snapping somewhere behind them has Joel suddenly halting in his tracks. He whips around, listens hard, looks closely.

"You hear that?" he whispers.

"Put some pressure on it," Ellie tells him. Head wounds bleed like anything.

It seems like it takes forever to get up to side of the mountain, but her senses seem twice as raw. Ears ringing, eyes a little teary with smoke, blood still clogging her throat with the scent.

Even before Joel points it out, Ellie's pulling out her bow, sliding an arrow into place. She gives a short nod, peers into the trees, keeps moving towards cover. They know better than to stay in the open, or stay still.

Joel wastes no time in idling about. He's instantly on the move again, shoving his gun back into place and then reaching back for his bow. He whips an arrow out, too, nocks it ready against the string, throws a cursory glance over his shoulder towards where he'd heard the sound. If they are being followed by someone - or several someones - it'll be safer to take them down by stealth while running through the woods at night than to draw attention to themselves by means of gunshots.

He hears another twig snapping, followed by a scampering of faint footsteps. Shit. His own feet crunching over dead leaves and branches, regardless how quiet he's trying to be, sounds about as subtle as firecrackers going off to him.

"Take cover," he hisses in a whisper to Ellie, and trusting that she'll do exactly that, Joel leaps over a rock jutting out from the ground, over a thick log and then crouches down behind it. Listens hard, bow and arrow ready. Ready to launch attack without mercy.

Jesus, he's already had enough of this bullshit.

Ellie goes quiet, backing up and into the trees, melting into the cover of darkness in the moonlight. She wishes for snow, even if it would make their tracks easy to find. It's quiet.

Ellie follows him more slowly, cutting a track farther back into the thicket and then staying still. Even Joel may not be able to spot her from her vantage point, but it gives her a good view of the trail. Their wait seems to stretch onward, before the bandits finally appear.

Just one is visible, but he's whispering to someone else.

"Fuck, lost them. I thought they were taking the trail."

"There's no other good path up. They have to be here. If we get the girl first, the old man'll be easy. We've just gotta keep her alive."

Joel spots one of them. Only just - he can only just make out their thick bomber jacket, the hoodie pulled up over their head - but he can hear them talking. And the way they talk about Ellie makes his stomach twist with deep, coiling disgust and anger.

"That fuckin' little bitch is fast, though," replies the one.

"You go this way." Joel can't see the other one, but tries to make a guess where the guy is referring to. "I'll go 'round this way. Circle 'em. If you see the guy, take him out."

"And the girl?"

"Use her a bait if you get her first. Like you said."

"On it." Footsteps quietly taking off.

Joel takes aim with the arrow. Fucking assholes. They ain't gonna get anywhere near his girl. With his head cocked slightly to the side, eyes fixed sharp on his target, he draws the string back to a firm tension, waits to make certain he's got a good angle. One of the men steps into better view. Perfect headshot.

Joel releases the arrow with a soft ping. There's a wet thunk and a strangled wheeze as the arrow cuts straight in through the guy's windpipe.

"Bowers? Hey, Bowers!" Joel hears the other guy softly calling out to the man Joel had just taken down. "That you?"

Joel's already reaching back for a second arrow as he watches the guy clawing at the air and at his throat as he sinks to the ground, gurgling.

Behind Joel, there is a creak of wood against wood, and all is silent but the wind. There is a soft crackle in the leaves, farther down the trail.

The footsteps get closer, but not into range, then come to a dead stop, probably within sight of the corpse.

"Oh, shit-"

The man takes off running, back down the trail, back towards Jackson. But Ellie comes bursting out of the brush, aims, and lets the arrow fly. In the dark, it whistles through the air, landing home with a thunk and a splitting scream, a heavy stumble.

"Fuck!" Ellie hisses and takes off down the trail, towards the guy now hollering his lungs out for help.

"Ellie!" Joel hisses at her as she begins taking off. "Ellie!"

The sound of the guy's screams for help is like a deafening alarm going off, bound to attract attention, but Ellie running straight for him--

Fuck. Fuck. What if there are more of them nearby? What if they're nearby and are making a beeline for the guy's screams? The guy's gotta be finished, Joel knows that, but protective instincts kick in: clutching his bow tight in his hand, he vaults over the log and launches into a fast pounding run.

"Up there!" he hears someone shout not too far away down the steep outcrop, and Joel finds him ducking madly for cover as a bullet suddenly fires off into the night, whizzing right past his head.

Down the steep path, the screaming stops with a cutting gurgle, and Ellie's footsteps flutter off into nothing, silence as she melts back into the shadows.

Joel gets to cover just in time, as four more men come pounding up the path, hot on their trail.

Ellie is nowhere in sight, and they immediately spread out, talking in hushed, angry voices and sticking together, within sight of each other.

One of the men is nearly on Joel, when a soft gagging noise cuts the night, and one of the men falls to his knees. The one next to him gives a wordless yell of alarm and shoots wildly into the dark.

There is a stumbling sound, a soft yip of pain, very close, across the path from Joel. All three of the remaining men are between Joel and Ellie, and all of them know where she is.

There's a dull thunk of something clattering to the hard earth when the first one drops to his knees. Joel spots it as he's ducking down behind another log: a metal pipe. The sound of the gunshot firing aimlessly off into the air cuts into Joel's head like a knife, sending his eardrums ringing.

And then he hears Ellie. That soft sound of pain she makes. Sees the remaining men turn sharply in the sound's direction. Starting charging off towards where Ellie is.

Oh no, they don't. No, they fucking don't. Leaping silently over the log, he crouches down low, reaches for the metal pipe, snatches it up in his grimy hand. It's heavy; he can feel the warmth where the man now dead on the ground had been gripping it just moments before. Clutching the pipe in both hands, he creeps up behind one of the men. Brandishes the pipe against his shoulder.

There's a sudden sickening crack of metal striking a skull as Joel leaps up and takes a swing as hard as he can. The man lets out a stunned howl of pain, which Joel is quick to cut off with another savage blow, this time to his back, rupturing the man's liver. And then another slam of the pipe down on the guy's head again and a fine mist of blood as he goes stumbling to his knees in a gasp of breathless pain.

The other two men have their weapons drawn. One fires; it just misses Joel, goes shooting off into the woods, and Joel reels around and lands a fierce blow against the guy's face with the pipe.

"Ellie!" he shouts over the top of the commotion.

Getting shot always stings. Thankfully, it's another graze -- she ducked in time -- but it feels like somebody raked the back of her shoulder open. She's bleeding. No telling how badly, but her arm still works.

She's only just pulled her gun when she hears Joel leap out and start laying into the men, and she peeks over the side of the log, lining up the closest guy in her crosshairs and firing. Good, clean headshot.

He drops, which leaves Joel smashing the last guy in the face with a pipe. It's too close, and they're moving too much for her to risk hitting Joel. She picks up a rock from the side of the trail, throws it at the bastard.

"Get away from him, fucker!"

The rock hits the guy square in the face, bounces off, very nearly hits Joel against the side of the head just as he's about to take another swing. It lands with a heavy thud on his shoe and Joel lets out a vague hiss of surprise, but it's forgotten in an instant - he's bringing the pipe down on the guy again, and then again, beating him down to the ground.

The guy is screaming. Shouting for help in a strangle of choked wheezes and a gurgle of blood. Joel stands over him, stares down at him with hatred and fury, and brings the pipe down again. Strikes the guy so fucking hard across the chest that the pipe bends slightly.

"Stop!" the guy is shrieking, holding a trembling, bloodied hand up at Joel. "Stop--"

Switching the pipe across to his left hand, he whips his pistol out with the other, stamps on the guy's face, slamming his head hard on the ground, and then takes aim and fires. Headshot. Bits of brain and skull shatter out across the earthy ground. The guy goes completely silent. Just a quick dying twitch of fingers and feet.

Joel throws the pipe away from him and makes a beeline for Ellie. He's covered in blood - his and the men he's been taking down, and as he reaches her, he's shoving his gun back into his waistband with one hand while reaching out to seize her shoulder with the other.

"C'mon, quick. You okay to run?"

It's not like she hasn't watched him do it dozens of times. Watched them beg, and scream, and tried to plead with them. Watched Joel not listen. The first few times, it scared the shit out of her. Now, she can't imagine ever giving in.

Part of her, though, a deep, sad part of her, has been wishing they were done. That maybe in Jackson those days could be put behind them. Instead, she watches Joel put a bullet in this guy's brain, and closes up that part of herself that ever believes there will be peace.

Joel's hand on her shoulder hurts like hell, and his touch instantly slicks him up with blood, but she nods, barely flinching.

"I'm good," she insists, and leans down to grab a rifle from one of the corpses, an extra clip from his belt. They can't carry the extra guns, but the ammo was going to be helpful.

"Ready."

Joel feels the warm wetness of blood smearing over his palm as he touches Ellie's shoulder. Oh, shit. This isn't a safe place to stop and get patched up, though; if they can make it to the cabin, if the cabin's safe--

Like Ellie, he steps over to one of the other bodies, snatches up the gun, empties out the clip. He quickly checks the pockets for any other ammo. Everything he collects, he pockets or reaches behind him to stuff into the side pockets of his backpack.

"C'mon," is all he says once they're done, and then he's off, running as fast as he can up the uneven track. The fire down in the settlement is full ablaze now; it provides enough light so that Joel doesn't need to hit his flashlight on, but he has to make himself not look in the fire's direction. Don't look back. Never look back. Push forward. Just keep pushing forward.

Soon, finally, he sees the cabin up ahead in the distance, forlorn and dark and hopefully deserted. The fire is far back behind the trees by this point; the only light that shines down is from the moon up in the cold night sky. Joel doesn't want to risk putting on his flashlight, not just yet, in case he draws attention to them both, and so he resorts to crouching low and approaching the cabin with careful stealth.

Just as he's about to head out into the clearing that leads directly to the cabin's front steps, he turns and looks at Ellie. "I'll take point through the front. You go 'round the back. If it's clear, secure what you can."

By the time they get up to the cabin, Ellie is breathing a little hard. It's not much worse than anything they've had before, but her shoulder hasn't stopped bleeding quite yet, and she hadn't put pressure on it. It's sluggish, but still going.

Ellie doesn't complain. Joel's head wound is probably making him feel worse than just her little cuts, and she's not about to suggest they stop. It's still too close to the firefight.

"Gotcha. Meet in the main room."

Carefully, Ellie moved through the greenery at the edge of the meadow, never coming within sight of the cabin's windows. They'd been there enough times for her to know the range, and where the best spots to camp the place were. There were plenty, but there were also blind spots.

In the back, Ellie found the shaft of darkness thrown by the chimney and crept up to the side, following along the base to a loose part of the foundation in the back. Carefully, she slipped underneath the house, listening for any sign of voices or footsteps.

So far, nothing. She waited, knowing Joel's approach would be louder. If anybody was in there, they'd be roused by him, and she'd have his back.

searching home still

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