bezoar | searching home still

"Wake up," Joel whispers urgently. He crouches down by the dirty mattress Ellie is asleep on; bracing a hand on her thin shoulder, he gives it a quick shake. "Wake up, baby girl."

In the distance comes an echoing thunder of gunfire. Someone shouting nearby. Footsteps pounding along the metal scaffolding just outside the room that's become Ellie's room in Tommy's settlement.

Joel's heart is pounding. He'd been downstairs with Tommy, rugged up in thick layers to keep warm against the oncoming winter, playing poker with a pack of old, tattered cards by the dim glow of a light overhead, using empty bullet shells and useless scraps of metal as chips, a half-empty bottle of contraband whiskey shared between the both of them, when the alarm sounded that the compound had been breached. Hunters, Maria had shouted as she came bursting into the room, breathing hard with angry panic in her eyes. Fucking Hunters. A whole pack of them this time. The compound is outnumbered. The fuckers had waited until the dead of night to ambush.

"C'mon," whispers Joel, whiskey on his frosty breath, "we gotta move. Now."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject