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."

Threaded | Flat

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?"

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