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i wake in the night, i pace like a ghost / the room is on fire, invisible smoke / and all my heroes die all alone / help me hold onto you
Ellie
The flat of the machete glitters with rippling reflections of orange fire. Lodged in David’s shoulder, caught on his collarbone, it looks bigger than before—menacing. Monstrous.
Ellie’s brain feels like it’s being spun on a top as she jams her hand into David’s front pocket, frantically feeling around for a set of keys. His mouth is agape, showing off a full set of graying teeth. His eyes are to the sky, fixed on something she can’t see.
When Ellie’s fingers close around a thin ring of metal, she yanks it to her chest and fucking bolts.
Nearly slipping on a wrinkle in the scarlet carpeting, she fumbles over to the doors. By the fourth time trying to jam the right key into the lock, her vision is going soupy around the edges, speckled with white. Ellie chances a glance behind her, sees David’s lumped body still on the ground, and tries again. The key slots through, and she turns it so sharply that something in her wrist twists, hard. A small cry of pain escapes her as she shoves her entire body weight against the door, urging it open against the rising snowdrifts outside.
The cold air and falling snow bite at—then almost immediately numb—her face. Her leg aches, the one she landed on when Callus went down. It’s difficult to limp through the deep snow; her foot keeps dragging behind her.
He’s fucking dead.
The second time it crosses her mind, Ellie whispers it to herself, voice inaudible under the howling wind. “Dead.”
Then arms are on her, and it’s like every muscle in her body goes rigid, like she’s been doused in gasoline and set on fire. Thrashing and kicking does her no good; the grip on her biceps is iron-clad. Her screams pierce the air, words pouring out of her without any sense of what she’s saying.
When the arms shove her in a 180, Ellie’s knees buckle, kissing the snow before she’s hauled back up again. Eyes falling on a dirty suede jacket, she begins to beat against her attacker’s chest. They let her, big, calloused hands coming up underneath her ears, firm and gentle. Gentle.
“Look,” Joel says, his voice thin and reedy in a way that’s wholly unfamiliar and entirely unnerving. Joel. His face swims in her vision, blurring around the edges like he might just be fake.
Ellie left him half-dead. That she knows to be true. Him, here—now—is incongruous. Snow catches on the fur lining his collar, and she holds the fabric between her fingers. It’s cold on her palms. Real.
“It’s me.” Joel, his bewildered—terrified—expression crystallizes in front of her. To her surprise, Ellie finds herself crying like a little kid—in successive, halting keens. “It’s me,” he repeats.
Pulling her hand into the sleeve of her sweatshirt, she cuffs her fingers around his wrist, the one still glued to her face. Though her legs still feel like they might collapse at any moment, it’s this bit of contact that she latches onto, uses to keep herself upright.
When her breaths go stuttering, Joel nods once. “It’s okay.”
“He—” she whines, and any other words die on their way out of her throat. Ellie’s not sure what else she was going to say in the first place. She tries again, but her second attempt at sound produces nothing more than a strangled mumble.
It’s not until her understanding of Joel’s presence truly sinks in that she realizes how scared she is. Bone-scared, hunted like the buck she killed this morning. Ellie shoves her face into the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, the same spot she shoved that machete into David.
“It’s okay,” Joel says again, pulling her into him with tender hands. It’s not enough. Ellie wants to be crushed, made small, invisible to the naked eye. Her sharp inhale has his arms tightening around her, and breathing suddenly becomes easier. One of her hands latches onto the other behind his neck.
The feeling that her brain is trying to peel its way out of her skull seems to abate with the steady pass of Joel’s hand down the back of her head, settling soft and firm on the scruff of her neck. “It’s okay baby girl,” he says.
And there’s nothing Ellie can do with that besides heave trembling, sobbing breaths into his coat.
“I got you. I got you.” His words bounce off the inner walls of her chest and then curl up somewhere in her heart. I got you. It’s what she feels, being held by Joel. Kept.
Rubbing her forehead across the collar of his coat one more time, she pulls back. Still, the two of them keep hold of one another, anchoring.
Joel must see the static buzzing behind her eyes, must feel the same urge to run, because his head dips once, slightly, in understanding. “Okay.”
Before either of them can make another move, a loud thunk has their heads snapping in the direction of the steakhouse. The door through which Ellie left the restaurant is still propped open by the thick, downy snowdrifts. Smoke bustles and thins as it dissipates into the open air, the fire inside still raging.
When a hand suddenly becomes visible, clawing an arc down into the snow, Ellie shrieks, the sound gurgling up from somewhere in her stomach. shearing straight through the gusts of wind. It startles Joel, his shoulders going up towards his ears. By the time he reaches out to yank her back towards him, Ellie’s already hurling her body straight back into his chest, both of their eyes still glued to the steakhouse doors.
Hackles up, Joel slings his rifle off his shoulder and points it towards the door, where David has begun to drag himself out into the open, in slow movements on hands and knees. Alive. Joel must clock the machete next—still wedged deep into David’s shoulder—because Ellie feels more than hears his sharp intake of breath. All she can manage to do is cling to him.
“Ellie,” Joel breathes, head tilted down towards her but eyes still locked on David. His voice betrays him, gruffness replaced by abject horror.
Like a mockingbird, David echoes. “Ellie.” It’s that same tone, the unstable singsong that had her stomach roiling mere minutes ago. It’s clear he’s lost some of his steam, though, run ragged with blood loss. As it is, he leaves a thin red trail in the snow.
The sound of her name, called from his mouth, has Ellie whining unintelligibly; she stumbles to hide behind Joel’s back, gripping the back of his coat until her knuckles turn white. Red hands, white knuckles, purple fingertips. From her vantage point, she can still peek underneath his arm at the snow ahead.
The point of Joel’s rifle follows David’s every move, no doubt trained on his head. The pastor looks up at them finally; two hungry, desperate blue eyes going straight for Ellie. Ever-so-slowly, he tilts his head to the right to mirror her own, and a smile lights up his face.
Joel shifts to the left, further obscuring Ellie from his vision. She sees the way his back straightens, stiffens. She can’t speak, but she tries to project her thoughts into his mind. Fucking shoot.
“What’s this?” David questions. His teeth are stained orangey-red with blood. “C’mere, Ellie.”
It feels like a hot knife is piercing her chest, over and over and over. Ellie just whimpers again, breathes tiny sobs into Joel’s back. With one eye, she watches in terror as David lifts a shaky hand and hefts the machete out of his collarbone. Blood pours in thick sanguine channels onto the snow. His entire body shudders with the release of it.
Eyes catching on Joel now, David’s face splits wide with a sick grin. Smoke billows and snakes behind him like a villain in a comic book. He hauls himself up onto his knees, stomach curling and rolling with agony.
“I get it now. Never—” he mars the snow maroon with a mouthful of blood “—never should have gone after such a wrung-out fucking cunt in the first place.”
Joel growls, and a shot rings out, the muzzle flash leaving a blue imprint in Ellie’s vision. By the time it clears, Joel’s turned around to face her, blocking the sight of David.
Dead. For real this time. He must be; Joel doesn’t miss.
Joel
In the nights following David’s death, Ellie sleeps in short fragments—out for three hours, up for two. Over and over. She has nightmares—it’s all she has, as far as he can tell—but they don’t seem to affect her in any real way. Two or three times a night, she wakes with a furrow in her brow, limbs stuck in wheezy, lumbering movements, like whatever she’s just seen in her head has confused more than scared her.
It isn’t until they get out of town that it all goes to hell. According to Joel’s maps, Silver Lake Resort is roughly 25 miles south of the university; it’s an offshoot of a town called Eldorado Springs. He and Ellie proceed west, towards Salt Lake City, because—of the few things she says to him—she insists that whatever happened not derail catching up to the Fireflies.
They loosely travel adjacent to I-70, using the maps and highway signs and (when all else fails) the positioning of the sun to keep them on track. It’s the fifth or sixth day out from Silver Lake when they follow a cracked, two-lane road to a faded sign that reads Coal Creek Canyon! in sweeping white font. Where the odds are with you, so claims the slogan below.
It’s unnerving, as it always is, passing through a town, but this place can barely be classified as such. They make it from one edge to the other by the time night begins to dampen the light of the sky. All that’s left of Coal Creek Canyon on this western border is a collapsed gas station, a Wendys, and a car wash—Arlo’s, the crimson sign above the roof reads.
Joel makes Ellie crouch behind a half-crushed Volvo while he sweeps the Wendys. When he lobs a loose brick through the massive front window, the satisfying sound of shattering glass is overlapped by a high-pitched wail, hoarse and inhuman. Clicker. It shoots out from the kitchen on thin, waxy legs, fungus plates bursting from its face in a not-quite-even split down the middle. Despite its blindness, Joel crouches down on instinct, peering at the thing from over the lip of the broken window. His heart races in his chest.
The clicker rears back when it careens into a white linoleum table. It screams again, each click of its throat sounding as if it’s right in Joel’s ear. Stepping straight into the mess of brick and shattered glass, it whips its head back and forth, searching for more sound. When it steps forward again, its foot lands on an upturned shard, cutting a vertical slice up the side of its ankle. Dark, muddy blood trickles from the wound, the open skin exposing the mess of tendrils underneath. The clicker squeals again and shambles back towards the kitchen.
Whipping his head around, Joel stares at the Volvo in the parking lot and meets the gaze of Ellie, whose head is peeking out from the hood of the car. The whites of her wide eyes gleam pearly in the dark, contrasted sharply by the twin bruises underneath each. The cut across her nose is red and scabby, and her mouth is open slightly, exposing the tips of her front teeth. Lifting one finger to his lips, Joel holds his other hand out in front of him. Don’t move.
Ellie nods once, the movement barely visible under the blackening sky. He waits until the clicker has retreated from sight and then heaves himself to his feet, taking care to be silent. He could go shoot the thing, give them a place with four walls and a roof to hole up in for the night, but he really can’t waste the ammo. Can’t risk attracting any more infected with the noise, either, though he imagines the brick through the window would’ve alerted them, had they been around.
In soft, padding steps, Joel retreats across the parking lot until he gets back to Ellie, holding out two hands to help her to her feet. When she stands, she shuffles her legs around as if they’re asleep.
“Now what?” she whispers. The small sound carries low in the night’s silence.
Joel pitches his voice to a murmur and juts his head across the street. They only have one option. “Car wash.”
The freezing wind twinges their cheeks red as they meander across the abandoned road. Though it’s not snowing, there’s a couple inches dusting the ground, with larger piles in corners and under awnings, where the wind catches but the light doesn’t reach. He doesn’t have to remind her to be quiet—she’s quieter than she’s ever been lately.
Arlo’s is an old self-service place, a row of six yawning wooden garages, their peeling white paint stained brown with time and dust. It only gives them coverage on three sides, but it’ll at least keep the wind at bay.
The two of them dive into their night routine with a practiced ease that’s as mindless as it is comforting. Ellie’s face is ashen, though, as she wordlessly unfurls their sleeping bags and zips them together. That began the night after Silver Lake. She was freezing and dazed and clinging to him, unwilling to separate even in sleep. And then she just kept doing it, zipping the bags together each night and dividing them again the next morning. It was as if she worried he’d tell her to stop. The thought makes Joel want to kick his own teeth in with the shame of it all.
Hoses are strung up on either side of the garage walls, and one hangs off its hook, a long cord of gleaming metal curling across the floor like a snake. He kicks at it until it’s shoved against the wall, and Ellie lays the sleeping bags down on the now-empty cement floors.
Like so many nights previous, they sit with their legs underneath the padded nylon and eat dinner, tonight’s meal the two cans of pink salmon they’d found in an underground shelter earlier that day. It’s disgusting, and it’s meat—which Ellie’s been throwing up—but the pungent fishy smell actually seems to keep her nausea at bay.
Her nose and knuckles are twinged pink with chill; he’d bet her ears are too, but he’s been making her keep her hair down until they find her a hat. The coat he’d nabbed a couple days ago practically swamps her. A bit of its sherpa lining peeks out from underneath the tan flannel at the collar. She looks small and bruised and cracked wide open, and it makes Joel’s nose burn and his throat ache.
“That girl is creepy,” Ellie says. Her can is three-quarters empty and perched at her feet, and her chin sits atop her knees.
Joel whips his head in the direction she’s looking, heart falling flat. “What girl?”
“Wendy.” She points to the big sign across the street, raised into the sky by a thick metal column. Bright red hair, blue bows—she is kind of creepy.
“Jesus Christ.” The sigh he lets out is laced with more irritation than he means it to, and Ellie presses her mouth against her knees, fixing her gaze on the sleeping bag.
“Sorry,” he tries again, nudging the side of her boot with his own. “Just scared me, s’all. Thought we was about to get jumped or something.”
“Or something,” Ellie muses. “Though that clicker might make a return.”
“Ellie.”
“Might even bring friends.” She shrugs. “Whole party.”
He chuffs out a quiet laugh, above all else just happy to hear her talking, even if it’s just the kind of bullshit that comes out when she can’t think of any more weird questions to ask him.
After a pause, Joel asks: “Are you sleepy?”
Ellie turns her head so her cheek is squished against her knees; she could look at him from this angle if she wanted, but her eyes are fixed somewhere behind him. She shrugs. “My eyes are tired, but my brain is awake.”
He nods. It’s something she’s told him so many times in the months they’ve been traveling together, and his response comes easy, automatic, same as it’s always been. “Just close your eyes, then.”
“Wake me up for second watch?” she asks, knowing full well that he won’t need to. With Ellie sleeping in such short stretches, eventually she wakes up and flat-out refuses to lay back down, giving him three or four hours to sleep before the day gets ahead of them.
He nods at her anyway. “Yeah.”
Scooching down until only the tip of her forehead is visible from underneath the sleeping bag, Ellie curls up against Joel’s legs. As she tries to fall asleep, she begins to fidget restlessly, and he runs a hand across the stretch of hair he can see, smoothing it back and away from her forehead, repeating the motion until she settles into sleep.
For a while, he stares up at the line of fluorescents on the ceiling of the garage, the electricity that once powered them long gone. Small dark shadows of dead bugs still rest inside, a memorial to where there was once light. With only a sliver of moon to light Coal Creek Canyon, Joel’s eyes can only adjust so much to accommodate the darkness, but he tries to watch for danger anyway. He only has one good ear, but he tries to listen for that clicker besides.
Hours go by; he can tell by the way his shoulder blades start to pinch and the backs of his thighs go numb. Ellie begins to fidget beside him again in her sleep, rolling onto her back and freeing her face from the sleeping bag. In an attempt to soothe her, Joel places a hand on top of her head and runs a thumb down between her eyebrows.
The scream erupts from her throat before she’s even awake, the sound keening and loud, cutting across the winter winds of the street ahead. A half-second later, Ellie’s sitting up, eyes wide and blinking, hands braced on Joel’s thigh as she hunches over him. His body gets swept up by panic a moment before his mind comprehends the danger, a moment before the echoing cry of the clicker pierces a hole right through his chest.
The decrepit figure comes hurtling out of the broken window and across the parking lot, its thin arms flailing.
A breathy squeak leaves Ellie from her place behind Joel, as if she’s lost her voice in the wake of the attack. He can’t bring himself to turn his head to look at her, just lets his body run on automatic. It’s the kind of dissociation that allowed him to interrogate those Silver Lake acolytes in the basement. The kind that had him beating a FEDRA soldier to death for her on the same day they met.
The smooth wooden grip of his rifle is cold to the touch, and Joel stumbles forward on crouched legs, nearly getting his foot caught on the sleeping bag. He shifts slightly to the left, prays he’s covering Ellie.
By the time he can get his aim straight, the clicker’s crossed the faded yellow lines of the main road, less than 100 feet away. The gunshot rings out, deafening against the silence, and the clicker stumbles, but doesn’t stop. Joel yanks his hand back to reload the chamber, fixes his aim, and shoots again. It goes down, fungus plates leaking blood into the thin snow.
He breathes once, rubs his nose against the hem of his sleeve, but doesn’t let go of the rifle. He waits, one moment and then another, his left ear tilted out towards the opening of the garage. Nothing else comes running; they’re lucky.
Slumping down over his hunched knees, Joel lets the rifle hit the floor and does a 180. The sleeping bag is in a crumpled heap and Ellie’s backed herself up against the furthest wall of the garage, hands splayed on the cement and shoulders crunched up by her ears. Thin pieces of her hair stand in disarray, whether from sleep or panic Joel can’t be sure.
“Kiddo?” he asks, inching closer (his knees fucking ache). “You’re okay.”
There’s no indication that Ellie hears him, and the panic ping-ponging around his body coalesces into a sphere, pitted right at his center. It’s the very same blank, disconnected expression he’s been spending nearly a week trying to untangle and unwind. She looks utterly gone.
Finally, he crouches in front of her, one shin pressed hard into the cement floor.
Joel tries again: “Ellie.” His voice is laced with a reedy fear that he’s incapable of folding away. Still, she gives him nothing, only rapid, shallow breaths, eyeline somewhere beyond—through—him.
The need to know she’s not completely lost in this, buried under the weight of everything that’s happened, is all-consuming. It drives Joel to a level of panic that clouds any thought beyond getting back the tenuous, fragile bit of life they’ve been building since Silver Lake.
“Ellie?” When she doesn’t reply (or look at him or even blink), he rouses her, maybe a little too roughly, shaking her with two hands against her upper arms. “Ellie.”
“Stop!” she cries, sudden and sharp. The insides of her wrists clamp onto her ears, effectively knocking Joel’s hands away. “Stop.” This time, the word comes out as a wail.
Chastened, Joel rears back on his heels, hands fisted into his sides. Ellie tucks her elbows together to hide her eyes, shuddering out an exhalation.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “Kiddo, come on. I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, wheezing a little.
“I’m right here. I won’t touch you. Deep breaths, come on now.” Joel’s not sure she’s hearing him, but her chest seems to rise a little slower. “Atta girl, there you go.”
“Joel,” she pleads, voice a low whine.
“Right here. You take your time, honey.”
Ellie stays that way, head shoved down into her arms, until her breaths grow less labored. For a moment, the wind turns in their direction, rustling the fabric of the sleeping bag against the floor.
When she finally lifts her head up, arms coming down to wrap against her knees, her eyes are all huge and pink around the edges in a way that makes Joel’s heart leap forward to reach hers. Almost subconsciously, he extends his hand towards her slightly, palm up. Ellie takes it immediately, tumbling forward into his chest. The force nearly sends him on his ass, but he manages to stay upright. One of her hands grips the back of his shirt collar, the other crushed up between their chests.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“Nothin’ to be sorry for.” Joel hesitates, rubbing a heavy palm up and down her back. “What happened? Bad dream?”
“He…”
He what? Not for the first time, Joel shoves the words back, the demand to know what exactly happened in the burning restaurant. What led this kid—his kid—to stick a machete into a man’s collarbone and walk away from the fight with enough injuries to make Joel see red every time he thinks about it.
He knew her name.
C’mere, Ellie.
Joel breathes in, sharp, near gasping. He forces his next one to be steady.
Never should have gone after such a wrung-out fucking cunt in the first place.
The words of a man dying in the snow. They’ve been sticking to him like a bad burn for days.
“He had your gun,” she finally says.
“In your dream?”
Ellie leans back and stares at him, looking older and graver than her fourteen years should ever allow. “He had your gun. He had—he had me.”
She lets in a shaky breath, and Joel cups her neck, her shoulders. “You’re alright. S’okay.”
Like a blown fuse, her face crumples and her chest begins to heave. He’s pretty sure he feels himself tear in two.
“And you were—” she sniffs, voice high and thin, “—fuck, I don’t mean to cry.”
Joel shakes his head, runs his hands from her shoulders down to the crooks of her elbows. “It’s okay. You can cry.”
“No,” she insists, even as more tears run down her face.
“You can cry.”
And she does—in thick, rolling sobs, face tucked down into his elbow. Joel shushes her, free arm tucked across her back and around her side.
She wheezes, then lets out a strangled choking sound. Without warning, Ellie’s coughing violently, in such quick succession that she can’t even catch her breath in between.
“Breathe, kiddo.” The cresting panic gives Joel half a mind to start banging on her back, but he manages to keep his hands still—though trembling—around Ellie’s body.
“Smoke,” she rasps in between wheezes.
He shakes his head. “No. No smoke. Just the cold. You’re fine.”
Ellie continues to cough, and though it feels like an eternity, it can’t be more than a minute or two before the fit begins to calm and her breaths become less gasping. Joel has the flat of his palm pressed hard into her back all the while, rubbing tight circles into the center of her spine.
“I got him, kiddo, he’s gone. I—” He heaves a breath, suddenly overcome by the sensation of helplessness, of failure. It flickers through his body like the flame of a thousand candles, passed hand by hand. The words he’s finally able to say come out choking: “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there sooner.”
Ellie picks her head up just enough to wrap her arms around him properly, face smushed into his shoulder.
“I just—you’re alive.” She shakes her head into his coat. “That’s all.”
That’s all.
“That’s all you,” he corrects, one hand coming to rest on the back of her head. (Her hair is tangled; he should fix it for her tomorrow). “You did that.”
Slowly, some intangible thing between them begins to ease, lighten. Like something they can carry. Shaking her head again, Ellie presses tighter, bumping her forehead against him. Joel hears a wet sniffle and one corner of his mouth twitches.
“You wipin’ your nose on my shoulder?”
“Yeah.” The word is muffled, spoken through the thick fabric of his coat.
Joel grabs the back of her head and shakes it a little. “Should throw you out to the wolves.”
“Nuh-uh. You like me too much.” It sounds like she’s smiling, but the statement feels almost vulnerable.
“Guess so,” he replies, and hopes she can’t feel the weight of his affection for her in the words. Or maybe he hopes she can.
A heavy sigh tumbles out of Ellie’s mouth. Joel pulls her back a little; she goes reluctantly, avoiding his eyes as they attempt to catch her gaze.
“Are you alright? D’you think you can sleep again?”
She sits back and pulls her knees to her chest. In one slumped motion, her head comes down onto her knees. “No. I’m so tired.”
He tilts his head, chooses not to acknowledge the paradox of her words. “Maybe you should sleep, then.”
She sniffs miserably. “I don’t want to be near it.”
When Joel follows her eyeline, he finds she’s staring at the body of the clicker, its blood congealed and frozen in the snow. Its face is practically flayed.
“We don’t gotta be near it.” Joel shakes his head. “Let’s move to a different garage, okay?”
Ellie nods, wipes two rough sleeves against her cheeks, which he counteracts with a gentle swipe of his thumbs across the same area.
“C’mon,” he urges, and when he stands, she follows. Joel carries both of their backpacks and Ellie drags the sleeping bag behind her like a little kid drags a security blanket.
The garage at the other end of Arlo’s is much the same—exactly the same, really, besides its proximity to the dead clicker. They settle down just as they did hours previously, Ellie tucked into the sleeping bag and Joel beside her. He keeps his rifle a little closer than before.
“Joel?” The whisper comes from the side of his thigh, onto which Ellie’s forehead is pressed. She looks up at him, and Joel feels every place where their bodies touch like a balm on his heart. Ear to thigh, fist to knee, knees to calves.
“Yeah?” His reply is so quiet, it’s nearly lost to the silence.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay up for second watch?”
He passes the pad of his finger down between her brows and across the bridge of her nose. It’s the kind of easy affection that’s still surprising Joel, even as he does it. He shakes his head.
“You just sleep now.”
And she does, all curled and crooked against him. Her small puffs of breath are the only sounds in the world as darkness gives way to daylight.