CYOA Page 182
Sep. 12th, 2013 01:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lumy12You don't ever want to see that creature again. Even if it is guaranteed to be less scary in daylight and when properly armed. Besides, you're eager to get on your way and finish your mission.
You reach the outskirts of the city by early afternoon, and you've seen zero other animals or humans today. It feels pretty strange... you suppose because you're so used to living in a big town now. It's big to you, anyway, as it has even more people than your school, although Joel still holds to his antiquated notions of 'big towns' having like... 20,000 people (and cities would have way more than that!).
When you head into the actual city streets, Joel of course tells you to be alert, and you of course say you always are... and he seems unsettled. "Are you getting one of those bad feelings about this place?" you ask him.
"No... well, yeah, some. They did say there are other people livin' in the area..."
"...so why haven't we seen them. Is that what you're thinking?"
Joel shakes his head. "I shouldn't be. We have to go a few miles in yet to get to the hospital. I don' know... somethin' still feels off."
You look around at the buildings and parking structures, the signs and traffic lights and bus stops and all the cool-looking city things, and you think it looks like it was once a pretty nice place. There's not even any graffiti, at least not that you can see from afar. "How many people do you think lived here? We didn't pass that many houses on the way in..."
"There's prob'ly more down that way. But I really have no idea how many people lived here."
"More than 10,000?"
"Oh, easily."
"Then you do have some idea," you tease. "You know what I was just thinking? Right now, there's more people alive who knew the world before, like you... there's more of you than people like me, who didn't. But that's going to change. The more time that goes by, the less of you there will be... and when I'm your age? There's gonna be like... none of you. It's sad... there'll be no one who remembers that all the weird shit in movies actually happened."
Joel chuckles. "Not all of it. Not even most of it. That's why they're movies -- they ain't real."
"You know what I mean, though -- I'm not talking about the scifi and magic stuff. I mean the normal everyday things. Like everyone driving cars... going to restaurants... talking to each other on those phone things..."
"Yeah. Real weird shit." He gives you that wistful smile of his that you see sometimes when he misses those days... or when he's wishing you missed them. That you had experienced them. "It's always been that way... old folks dyin' off, takin' history with 'em. No one alive right now was here in the 1930s. That's why we had museums. To preserve things an' show future generations."
You've seen museums, both in movies and in real life. The real life ones, all looted and broken and fucked up, look nothing like the pristine movie ones that Joel remembers. "But things in the 1930s were prob'ly similar enough to like... the 2000s. Whereas--"
"Ohhhh no they weren't. You've seen movies set in different time periods -- you can see how different they are."
"Okay, but like... people still drove cars and went to restaurants and all that. It's all the same. Not like comparing now to... 30 years ago."
He chuckles. "Is that what you kids think now? All those decades of history are just all blurred together into one big lump, all the same: Before."
"I don't know about you kids, but... I guess kinda, yeah? But you think like that, too. You talk about ~Before~ and ~After~."
"Sure, but there's still different... eras, of each of those. I thought you said they taught you American history in school. I know they teach the kids in Jackson."
"Yeah, I get that they were different," you say, irritated that he's not getting it. "I'm just saying they're not as different. You have to see that! I mean... you lived it."
"Sure," he replies... with a shrug in his voice.
Good enough, I guess... "Don't you think it's sad that... that the only things the people after us will have of the old world is the books and movies that those old people left behind -- if it hasn't all been totally destroyed by then -- and they won't know how much is true and how much is made-up..."
"It's sad. Yes. But I hope that in your lifetime, you see things beginnin' to return to the old ways. More civilized. No more infected, or not enough to make much difference. No more Outside versus Inside... communities connected to others again..."
"In my lifetime, you think that will happen?"
"I don' know. I just hope it does."
"Maybe in your lifetime, too?"
"I doubt that."
"Well, you're gonna live forever, so maybe you're wrong. Maybe we'll both get to see it! Maybe shit will happen faster than you expect." You feel a pang in your heart at the mere thought of experiencing big new things without Joel by your side to share them with.
"Sure. But hush for a minute... do you hear that?"
Oh! Finally people? ...maybe... "... ...No...?" But it's not unusual for Joel to hear things first. Or to hear them with his gut rather than his ears. "Are we getting close to the hospital now?"
"Maybe close enough that... there's people around..." The frown on his face is not a good sign. Not that he's usually all smiley or anything, but... he's extra concerned.
"Hunters? Or... no -- it's infected, isn't it."
"You hear it too?"
"No, I can just tell. What do you hear?"
"Don' know, exactly..."
"You're hearing with your gut, then. Well... it's okay. We ran into those infected yesterday and it was fine. Now we're not even rusty anymore, right?"
He doesn't answer that. "This is the street. We turn down here, an' it's just a few blocks--" He pulls up on the reins and motions for you to stop, too. "There -- you see 'em?"
You look where he's pointing. "Runners. Sleeping Runners, at least..." You yank the binoculars up to your face for a better look around.
"I hear some more... that way... shit. I think there's a lot of 'em, kiddo. I think we should stash the horses back here somewhere an' go check things out. If we can get up to a high floor in one of these buildings... find a good vantage point where we can see the whole area without gettin' real close."
Your binoculars don't pick up any others. "We could sneak by those ones and see--"
"No. Let's just look from on high first. Maybe I'm just bein' paranoid, but..."
"...but you're convinced there's a shitload, so... okay, yeah, let's do it. The building we just passed, maybe?" It's taller than any of the others you can see right now.
Joel nods. "Good call. That should work, if we can get in an' get up."
You hitch the horses in the courtyard, and find that you can do both -- in and up. But it's a reeeeeally tall building, and you start feeling really winded after about a zillion stairs. "Do we have to... go all the way... up?" you pant as you trudge up the stairwell after Joel.
"You tired already? Thought you could do twice this many."
"Pfff... you're tired, too... I can hear it... in your voice..."
Joel tries the next door, and it appears to be locked. "Guess we'd better keep--"
"We should go down one," you groan. Oh my God... what if none of them open? We climbed up and up and UP only to not be able to enter any of the floors?!
"Wuss," he teases. "All right, let's go in here then." ...and he opens the fucking door!
"You were faking? ... Joel, you scared me!" you chastise him. You don't have the energy to swat him very hard when he lets you through.
It's just an ordinary-looking office floor. Lots of cubicles with office shit strewn about. "Hey, we should look for pencils to take home." The pencils always work. The pens, not so much. "And maybe some staplers... paper... ooooo look, this one has fluorescent sticky notes!"
But Joel isn't interested in looting office supplies; he moves immediately to the window facing the hospital. "...Holy shit."
"What?" You hurry to his side to see the holy-shit-ness for yourself.
"Oh fuck. Joel... oh my God." You're up high enough that they look like little bugs. Some sleeping, some ambling around... they're somewhat spaced out, but there's too many to even count. "Do you think this means..."
"That's the hospital there, see? Gimme the binoculars."
As usual, you don't give them to him -- you just move in real close (and let him tug you even closer by the cord when he raises them to his eyes). He studies the hospital for a few moments and sighs. "They're inside, too. I wonder what the hell happened. They have guards an' shit."
"So... you don't think there's people trapped inside. You think they're all infected?"
"Looks that way."
"Fuck. How are we gonna find Danny in this mess?"
He hands the binoculars back to you. "We ain't even gonna look. We're goin' home."
"But we don't know if he's infected or not!" you protest. "What if he's in there, just praying that someone will come along--"
"He had two guns. He could get himself out."
"But so did the guards, right? Obviously they weren't able to use them, or this wouldn't have happened!"
"You see how many of 'em there are, don'tcha?"
"Yeah, but we've killed more before!"
"At once? No. There's at least fifty in the streets. Who knows how many more inside."
"You're exaggerating. There's like, twenty. And we--"
"Ellie, this ain't up for debate. We are not goin' in there. We're gonna move out the same way we came in, where the path is clear--"
"Uuuggghhh but then we came all this way for nothing! ...Just like our last trip."
Joel snorts. "Only that one was just a tiny bit longer than this one."
"Just a tiny bit."
"And it ended up not bein' for nothin'," he reminds you. "Just took you a while to see it."
You wrap your arms around his neck and smile at him adoringly. "Not that long. It took you longer to see... this." You kiss him sweetly.
"Not that long," he mimics you, returning the smile. "I 'saw' it long before I actually did anything about it."
"You mean before I actually-- or, before you let me do anything about it." You turn your gaze to the hospital again, suddenly sobering. "We're gonna have to tell his family. Those kids are losing a parent and a grandparent... what do we say? 'Sorry, we didn't actually verify it, we're just assuming they're either infected or dead' -- oh, hey, you saw the bodies in the streets too, right? Maybe we could just--"
"No. We're gonna go home an' tell Tommy. If he wants to send a caravan up here, that's up to him, but I say the military needs to do their job an' clean this place out." He kisses your temple and threads his fingers through your hair (loosening your ponytail, but it feels nice enough that you don't care about that). "It's sweet of you to want to make sure, but... it's unnecessary."
You bury your face in his shirt so you don't have to look at all the lost souls wandering around down there... but you find that you still see them when you close your eyes. "The military doesn't always care, right? If Tommy does wanna send people up here, can we come back and help?"
He sighs. "Maybe. If it's that important to you. It'd have to be a shitload of people, though."
"Wuss," you echo him from earlier.
He chuckles. "You know I worry about somethin' happenin' to you, more than--"
"I know, and I'm already fucking infected." You lift your head to give him a withering look.
"Immune," he corrects you -- whispering, as if someone might be hiding nearby (and you didn't just announce it yourself)?
You pull away from him. "Can we go? This city's too depressing."
"I'm sorry, baby girl."
"Yeah... me, too."
Especially because you know it's going to bug you that you didn't technically finish your mission. You didn't find Danny. He might not even be among the infected, for all you know. Maybe he got away... but then got hurt or something and can't make it home yet...
But you know there's no way Joel will ever let you talk him into trying to enter the hospital. Or to sneak up close enough to every Runner to see if it's Danny or not. You're just going to have to live with the not knowing.
If you'd like to start another adventure, return to page 1.
carlos
Date: 2021-07-02 12:05 pm (UTC)