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lumy12Title: "Singularity" Chapter 18: "The Good, the Bad, and the Ornery" [18/49]
Fandom: The Last of Us (first game only)
Characters: Ellie, Joel, Tommy, Maria, OCs
Pairings: Joel/Ellie
Warnings: Underage
Word Count for this chapter: 9,071
Rating (for fic as a whole): R
Author's Note: Chapter title from... a Looney Tunes dvd set featuring a certain character mentioned in the chapter, but again I didn't want to put this note at the end cuz... um... reasons.
Also, in C14 I kind of made it sound like that tractor song was by Brad Paisley (Joel didn't explicitly "say" that, in his thoughts, but the wording strongly implies it). It's actually by Kenny Chesney. Oops! Since I don't like to change what I've posted unless it's a typo or something pretty bad (y'all didn't notice I used the wrong OC's name somewhere in Uncertainty, right? Heh -- I did fix that one), I'm gonna say Joel just misremembered it, at least in that moment. It happens!
~
Ellie officially abandoned her idea of keeping track of their daily miles traveled. The time loop thing had left too bad a taste in her mouth. And she didn't even know how to count today... or maybe it was yesterday, now? ...broken up as it was by what Joel called their "little siesta." What had she even been planning to do with that log, anyway? Pore over it later for no reason? At least that notebook where she'd started keeping track of bands and albums and songs had a purpose. A defunct purpose now, because she had since decided it was silly kid stuff, but still. I've grown up SO MUCH in the past year! The last eight months, especially. Since becoming Joel's girlfriend -- his WOMAN!
And she felt even more grown up when she was driving the jeep... at night... and she heard the most beautiful of sounds (well, one of them?): the dulcet tones of Joel snoring. Not such a pleasant sound if she couldn't sleep because of it, naturally (and that was rare; either she expertly tuned him out most nights, or he didn't snore every night... she tried not to wake him up to get it to stop... because middle-aged people need their sleep!), but she wasn't trying to sleep now, being in the driver's seat and all. It's the amazing sound of ABSOLUTE TRUST, she thought happily.
Even if it's... uh... accidental trust?
No, fuck that -- it's JOEL. If he was really scared, he wouldn't fucking fall asleep. ...The hours after Those Two Days notwithstanding, that is -- when Ellie had been mostly unconscious and Joel so exhausted that he had slept Outside in broad daylight. In a big city, even -- with only Sophie, hapless and unskilled, as guard. Yeah -- total bodyguard fail there on our part. Sorry, Soph!
Nothing bad had happened then... and nothing bad happened this time, either. The vast majority of the time, nothing of note happened. The problem was the one time out of a hundred or whatever that something did, it could cost you your life if you weren't prepared. It went without saying that if she encountered anything unusual -- like, say, hearing a fucking helicopter? -- Ellie would wake his ass up. Although she was convinced that Joel would hear it before she would -- even in his sleep!
Joel had been pretty adorable when he woke up, too:
"Mmff..."
"You're awake! Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!"
"...It ain't mornin'."
"Oh good, at least you're not gonna argue the BEAUTY part! It IS morning. Pretty sure it's well after midnight."
"I'll argue the sleepin' part. I was just restin' my eyes."
"Bullshit!"
"It's true."
"Then how do you explain the snoring? Huh?"
"I wasn't snor--"
"You were too! Like a fucking freight train! Except... trains don't snore, so that's a stupid saying. I guess it's cuz... they have loud horns? So if you snore loud, then... but it's a totally different SOUND, with the horn being more like a steady... uh... horn type sound?"
"I don't snore."
"Right. Like you don't jerk off. And... your shit don't stink! I like THAT saying. It makes sense. Cuz there's no fucking way that anybody's--"
"I never claimed that mine don't stink. It's fouler than most people's, even."
"Figuratively speaking? Whatever, Joel -- we ALL have stinky shit, okay? Yours isn't so special."
"Tch. How long you reckon I was restin' my eyes for?"
"Um... not long. Five hours, maybe."
"..."
"What's that look for? You don't believe me? Would I lie to--"
"Yes. You would."
"I'm just guesstimating. Guess you'll have to wait 'til we get to something on your map for you to like... measure by. Hope I didn't take a wrong turn back there..."
"You better not have taken ANY turns -- we take the same road all the way to--"
"Relaaaxxxx! I'm just fucking with you! This is the only way through the next mountain range. I KNOW."
"How long was I out? Seriously."
"I have no fucking clue! Long enough for me to stop and siphon more gas, though."
"Uh-huh. Now I'M callin' bullshit."
"No, I did! And I already used it all up, what I got, so you can't tell by checking the can."
"Is that so? I know one way I can tell..."
"You can't kiss me when I'm driving -- get back over there-- besides, I drank some mouthwash after."
"You didn't DRINK--"
"Used -- whatever."
"All right, my lovely little liar... my turn to drive now. You can sleep."
"Pfff. Do I sound like I'm fucking tired?!"
"...Can't say that you do."
"That nap was MORE than enough sleep for me. Go back to sleep, Joel. I got this!"
Ellie won that battle -- not that it could even be classified as a battle, really, because Joel conceded so quickly. He didn't doze off again, that she noticed, but Ellie thought he came close a couple times. She didn't start feeling sleepy herself until the sun hit her. The way it obnoxiously blasted her in the face made her want to close her eyes... and then not open them again. She made do with squinting hard, and they pushed on just a little farther, into another little cluster of trees. And not even the first one they came to -- the desert was starting to give way to more trees as they headed into the mountains. With no houses or other buildings in sight, they decided to just thread their way -- jeep and all -- into the 'desert forest' and find a nice shady spot to snooze. Joel claimed he only needed a "cat nap" -- those were apparently pretty short -- and he'd be good to drive, but the horse needed a break, too, so they ended up staying longer. Still no more helicopters... and Joel said he wasn't worried about that so much with the mountains looming. Ellie didn't think it would necessarily help them all that much, because the helicopter could spot them anywhere, couldn't it? And what if they didn't get the chance to hide themselves because by the time they heard it, it was too late? After another futile "that won't happen"/"but what if it DID?" exchange, Joel said they could ditch the jeep and take off into the forest and no one would ever find them. That this mountain range was bigger and more tree-dense than the last one.
Really, though... if Joel wasn't worried about it, Ellie wouldn't worry, either. She trusted that he knew what warranted concern and what didn't. And he seemed pretty confident that they were getting out of helicopter range if Monterey's was the only one they had to worry about, and if there weren't any places for it to refuel. Two pretty big 'if's when we don't know jack shit! But... it wasn't like he was throwing caution to the wind or anything; he was still operating in 'alert' mode. If he was just trying not to worry her... well. She went back and forth on whether she wished he would trust her enough not to bullshit her, or if she appreciated him sparing her some useless anxiety.
What she did not appreciate so much was the way he loved to have a laugh at her expense. They stopped for the night by a river -- a cool mountain river! -- and Joel had tried to scare her:
"Don't get too excited about it, kiddo."
"What? Why not?"
"You see that bridge up there?"
"...Yeah?..."
"Notice anythin' off about it?"
"Uh, yeah... it's busted?"
"We gotta cross it."
"No!"
"Yep. If you check the map, it takes us right over the bridge -- no other way to get around."
"But... I thought we were going THIS way..."
"Seein' as how the jeep can't swim -- at least not in DEEP water -- I don't think we're gonna make it across. That means we have to go alllllllllllllllll the way back, an' find another way through."
"Bullshit!"
"Sorry. Wish it was."
"...I think the map is fucked up."
"Ha-- maps like that don't get fucked up."
"No, I mean... it doesn't make SENSE for us to cross the river when-- Wait. Wait a minute! There's TWO pencil lines... see? This one's faint, but I see it..."
"Hm?"
"...Oh my God. You know what I think?! I think YOU fucked it up! On purpose! To fuck with ME!"
"Now would I do somethin' like--"
"YES! YES YOU FUCKING WOULD! You erased the real line! Which is very wasteful, by the way. We barely have any eraser left as it is."
"Damn. You figured it out awful fast. -Ow!"
"You're such a dick! FUCK. ...But, you know... next time, you should act a little more pissed off. You didn't even say 'goddamnit' or 'shit' or anything. And you were barely scowling. I mean like not even more than your usual resting face."
"I-- my USUAL... ? Never mind. And in case you haven't noticed, I try to stay calm when tellin' you somethin' that's gonna get YOU upset."
"Whatever! You blew it. Just admit it."
Of course, stubborn-ass Joel would admit no such thing. He even tried to say that he had no way of knowing the bridge would be out ahead of time so why would he draw the extra line on there for a prank he didn't even know he could pull off... as if he hadn't just been left alone, and the atlas unattended, while Ellie went off to pee minutes earlier. She was too happy about the river to even pretend to be annoyed with him for long. If only I didn't have icky blood to wash out of my clothes, I MIGHT have convinced him to do my laundry to earn my forgiveness! Joel probably wouldn't have even minded... but she wasn't that mean.
She kind of wished Joel hadn't confiscated her clothes from that night at the base. He hadn't particularly wanted to take them along, but also hadn't particularly wanted to leave incriminating evidence behind -- after all, that would have contradicted his stupid lie! Where would all that blood have come from if not from killing Shelby? Anyway, he had told her he would 'take care of' her clothes so she wouldn't have to see them. At the time, she hadn't cared to ask what he meant by that. Was he planning on secretly washing them so she wouldn't have to see all that blood and maybe flash back to that night, or would he secretly dump them somewhere so she'd never have to lay eyes on them again? If he had stashed them somewhere, he'd picked a good place, because she hadn't come across them anywhere. She did occasionally think about asking him, but always thought better of it; both of them just wanted to forget it had happened.
So, now she only had this one pair of jeans. If she washed them, she'd be stuck wearing wet jeans. She decided to just spot-wash them... but even then, she'd be lucky if those spots dried overnight. For underwear, she at least had the luxury of having several pairs. Not that it helped much when she wanted to wash all the pairs... but the cleanest pair was fine to skip, really. Especially if she wanted to talk Joel into letting her wear his sweat pants to bed. Maybe kinda rude of me to ask that at this time of month... but even more so if I'm going commando! Ha! (That was another old saying that made no sense to Ellie -- what did wearing or not wearing underwear have to do with commanding anything or being in charge? Joel said it had something to do with soldiers in the field... and he couldn't even remember exactly what it referred to.) Of course, in the grand scheme of things, there were worse things in life than wet jeans. But since Joel didn't feel the need to wash his yet, he actually suggested that she wear his sweat pants -- saving her the trouble of asking! -- and she didn't feel guilty about accepting the offer because Joel wouldn't have bothered to change into them anyhow. He was more comfortable being uncomfortable when they were Outside!
Then there was the matter of where to sleep. If there were any houses hidden nearby, they would have needed to know where to look, because it had been hours since they'd seen one... or any buildings, for that matter. Ellie wanted to snuggle under the stars... Joel wanted to sleep in the jeep. Because we don't spend enough time in the fucking thing already?! She didn't complain, though... (much)...
"Why can't we just make a nice little nest on the ground, Joel?"
"It feels colder than yesterday... we're at a higher elevation..."
"I thought you said we weren't that high."
"As far as mountains go, no. But we ARE higher than yesterday. Feels like it might snow."
"We're still in California!"
"Yes we are, but remember I told you--"
"Yeah yeah. Okay, but in case you forgot, the jeep kind of has NO DOORS."
"It has a roof and a backseat. We move all our shit up in front, block the air as best we can... we can make it cozy enough back there."
"For me, maybe, but both of us?!"
"We'll fit. Thought you liked being squished."
"I do! But YOU don't!"
"I'll be fine."
"Man... one more day or so and we might be able to have sex back there finally."
"I got no problem with--"
"Eww, no."
"That's right -- you don't wanna waste your... 'plug'... takin' it out early. That's fine. You jus' say the word when it's go time."
"What if we do it and I just don't take it out?"
"Uh......"
"Yeah -- then maybe you can stay in when you finish?"
"Okay... first of all, you think we're both gonna fit in there at the same time?"
"Well, it's kinda small, really..."
"... ...The plug, or..."
"OF COURSE the plug! Haha! You're so cute, Joel. Remember I told you you were BIG and you were like NO IT'S JUST AVERAGE, and now you're worried it's--"
"SECOND of all -- if we do both fit, I'd be rammin' that thing up so far we might never get it out."
"Ooo, that sounds hot..."
"Sounds like... INFECTION."
"I'm already infected. -HA! Ha ha!"
"Smartass. Sounds like PAIN, then. Plus... pretty sure it don't work that way. I'd still have to pull out, so there's no point."
"Eww -- I'm not letting you pull it out, that's so--"
"Pull out. Not pull IT out. We ain't usin' that thing as birth control."
"Why not? I know they look small in the package -- um, plus I just SAID it was small -- but really, they do kinda blow up in there..."
"I'll tell you why not: because if it actually worked, I reckon it would've been a thing. Everyone would be doin' it."
"...And it was never a thing."
"Nope. Anyhow, I don't see how you'd be able to pull it out yourself, if it's wedged way up there."
"Okay... too gross. The whole thing is. Just... EWW."
"Maybe not. There's a river right--"
"What, so we get all nice and warm from the hot sex, then have to go jump in the freezing river to wash off all my blood after it gets everywhere?!"
"It wouldn't get EVERYwhere... although I reckon it WOULD be better if we were in a nice hot shower..."
"OH! We're SO doing that when we get home! It'll be so much nicer than cold shower sex!"
"...We never actually had cold--"
"Exactly! Because it sucked so bad we couldn't do it!"
Aaaaaand they didn't have backseat sex that night. But it did feel a bit cocoon-y back there, snuggled up together under as many layers as they could manage. They used their rain ponchos to 'seal' the doorways, like tarps... and although the material was too thin to provide insulation, it did effectively block the wind. They also 'widened' the backseat -- by moving the seats as far forward as they would go, of course, and then stuffing bags on the floor to be more or less flush with the seat level. It actually worked pretty well. It had to be better than being on the cold hard ground.
Joel asked if it was too enclosed for her... and yes, that thought had crossed her mind. But she was much better now! She truly felt that Joel's presence made all the difference, mentally. She was pretty sure he would have liked to stretch out a bit more, but he claimed he was comfortable enough. And this time he couldn't roll away from her in the night!
When they woke up the next morning (both of them nightmare-free) and peeked outside, they found that the grass was all sparkly and pretty -- just with frost, not snow. The chill in the air totally made Ellie want to stay in their cozy little nest. Snug under the blankets, her nose tucked into Joel's neck to keep it warm... it felt like the two of them were the last two people on the planet. For the millionth time, she felt extremely grateful she wasn't alone. Not just that she wasn't alone -- but that she was with Joel, the most awesome person ever, and she got to feel his loving arms around her every single day. She got to watch the sun rise and set with him. She got to share every meal, every chore, every joke... She had kind of started taking that for granted, back at Golden Sands, and she vowed that she never would again. How fucking different would this trip be without him? It seemed he had become weary of her expressing such sentiments... but she couldn't help how she felt. He owed her nothing. He just... loved her, for some reason.
They were back to the winding mountain roads again now, steadily going uphill, more than doubling their elevation in half a day's time. Which means tonight is going to be even colder! As they made their way into some mountain peaks in an area that used to be considered a park, Ellie found herself speechless.
"Sure is pretty here, ain't it?" Joel remarked; he had a knack for reading her mind sometimes, but Ellie couldn't imagine any human encountering such a place and not being impressed, so it was no great feat this time.
She silently looked around in awe. 'Pretty' didn't quite cut it. Breathtaking, more like. They'd just driven through an archway made of boulders -- one boulder leaning over to kiss the other... a portal to some sort of fantasy world! She'd seen the mountains from a distance, but now she and Joel were like... part of them. Towering silvery gray and purple peaks, dusted with snow, striped and dotted with trees in some places, smooth as slate in others. She felt very small, looking up at them... but not in a bad way? And somehow, even the duller colors (like gray) felt more vibrant to her. Everything looked... rich. She found that she preferred to take it all in with her own eyes and not the tunnel-visioned binocular eyes, even if she wasn't seeing as much detail that way.
"We should put the top down," Joel suggested.
"Oh! Can we? Really?" She hadn't even thought of that; it had been up the whole trip and she'd eventually forgotten that was an option.
"I don't see why not." Joel stopped the jeep and "whoa" 'd the horse.
"Good job," Ellie congratulated him. When he looked at her funny, she added, "You didn't go off to the side!" -and he chuckled. In olden times, cars wouldn't just stop in the middle of the road, so Joel still had a tendency to drift off to the side to park even for the shortest of breaks -- like this one, where they weren't even leaving the jeep to go do anything. It made sense to do that, of course; it was rude (and dangerous) to make everyone go around you. But she had yet to see another moving car on the road with them, on any of their trips. There just weren't enough left that actually worked. (Joel said he suspected that even though their jeep was a 2013 model, it was manufactured a long time after that -- which meant new vehicles were being produced. Just not for civilians, apparently.) Getting off the road like that was actually called 'pulling over,' but Ellie had mistakenly called it 'pulling out' once, earning herself some teasing from Joel about her "filthy little mind."
She helped him un-do the jeep top; apparently some vehicles would put it up and down at the touch of a button, but not this one. It didn't want to budge easily, either. "What did you say this place is called again?" she asked before groaning with the effort to unstick the thing.
"Yosemite."
At least Joel's not getting his side that easily, either, she noted with satisfaction. "Yosemite... fuck, that sounds so familiar..."
"Because it's on the map. Plus I already told you the name when--"
"No, I mean like I've heard it before. A long time ago. Before Monterey." She managed to free the top before Joel could try to come around and do it for her.
"You're thinkin' of Yasmany." A guy on Joel's crew back in Jackson.
"No, that's Yasmany, not Yosemite. Duh!" They rolled the top back together.
"They sound similar, is all. It is a well-known park. Maybe you heard Sophie or someone talkin' about it."
Sophie had grown up in California, but much farther south -- and they never really talked when they were in Jackson, which is where the memory was jiggling Ellie from. "No... I think it was one of the kids at the house, actually." Meaning Tommy and Maria's house, where some of the littler kids would congregate after school to use their TV or play games and stuff. Ellie helped keep an eye on them sometimes, and she enjoyed playing with them.
"I think I know what you're rememberin'," Joel declared as he came around Ellie's side to help her fasten the top down (because of course he just had to beat her). "Actually, it's who."
"I got it," she shooed him away -- though he didn't shoo far. "Who? It's not Yasmany."
"Nope. How 'bout Yosemite Sam? That ring a bell?"
Ellie let the name bounce around in her brain for a moment. "Yeah, actually, I think it does?"
"Cartoon character. One of the bad guys... blustery little dude... ornery as hell..."
"Oh yeahhhhh! Always cussing jibberish under his breath!" She finally secured the top, without Joel's help. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Waving a couple of guns around... big mustache... kinda reminds me of you!"
"Me?" Joel scoffed. He returned the embrace by wrapping his arms around her waist and giving her a little kiss. "No, no... more like you."
"Pffff -- me?! How do you figure that?"
"Red hair... two guns... cussin'..."
She giggled. "Um, I don't have a mustache, though?"
He traced above her lip with his finger. "No, but his is so bushy an' long... kinda looks like your hair when you put it in a ponytail."
That was certainly a stretch! "Okayyyy... but I don't do two ponytails, so..."
"Plus he's little. Kinda cute. That's definitely more you than me."
"Ha! Um, not really."
"You are much cuter than--"
"I mean him. Unless you mean like, cuz he's a cartoon, and cartoons are supposed to be cute? You're kinda cute, too, though." She giggle-kissed him.
"Mm. You're very cute, actually."
"Oh, then, see? You're only kinda, so he's more you than me. Also -- I don't think he'd appreciate being called 'cute.' Just like you! You're both like... 'I'm a bad-ass an' that's that.' "
That one earned her a big smile (as her bad impersonations often did). "When do I ever--"
"And you always say you're the bad guy and I'm the good guy, right? Plus he's all grumpy and stuff. Also! -- you're both boys, for fuck's sake!" She should have led with that last one, it was so obvious.
"Ain't it bad enough you made me the dog? Now I'm--"
"What, you mean Toto? That's not bad! You like dogs," she reminded him.
"All right. You win."
I always win! Ellie thought triumphantly. She turned to look at the mountains again. "Was this place named after Yosemite Sam?"
Joel hugged her close to his chest and chuckled. "I don't think so."
She didn't mind her view being limited when it was for a good reason... like a sweet out-of-nowhere hug. "Other way around, then? But... that makes zero sense."
"Maybe it's a coincidence. Or the name means somethin' that we don' know about."
"Oh hey!" She looked at him again. "We should look it up in the baby name book!"
He kissed her eyebrow. "You do that, if you remember this conversation a month from now."
"I will!" The book wasn't one Ellie had ever taken notice of in the library, but once it had found its way onto Tommy and Maria's coffee table (on which no coffee was served), she'd found herself idly flipping through it nearly every time she was at the house. She and Joel both had godly names, thanks to sharing the 'el' syllable, which meant God in another language... but she also had 'light' in her name whereas Joel's was redundant; he just had some other variation of God. "I wonder what names they picked out. Do you think by now she's had the-- I know, I know, you have no idea," she answered for him, because sometimes he seemed to want to answer even her rhetorical questions seriously. "I can't wait to meet him!"
"Or her."
"It's a boy, though. You just wait and see." She snickered at another old memory. "What did we end up making the bet for... ten kisses or something dumb like that?"
"What's so dumb about kisses?" His lips grazed her neck in precisely the way that made her the most ticklish.
"Stop!" she squealed, shoving him playfully. "Nothing's dumb about them, really, it's just... we weren't having sex back then. Now we could make it more interesting."
"Up the ante?" Joel snorted. "If this is some way for you to trick me into lettin' you do stuff I don't want you doin'--"
"Noooooo! Would I do that?" she asked, all innocence and sweetness.
"Yes." This time he kissed her nose... and then his gaze shifted just slightly, his thumb caressing the side of her face feather-lightly.
She knew what he was looking at. "Does it look better yet?"
"It does. More greenish."
"It doesn't hurt anymore," she assured him; he hadn't asked, but she assumed he'd be glad to hear it anyway. "I don't even feel it."
"Good." He planted a final little kiss... on her forehead. "C'mon, we ain't actually stoppin' here. Back in the car."
Ellie didn't mind dropping the subject of the bet, for now -- she needed time to think of something amazing to win, after all. She vowed she'd come up with an epic prize to substitute for the kisses... and then, using her 'feminine wiles,' she would force him to agree to her terms. Ha!
The scenery was even more amazing with the expanded panoramic view afforded by the rolled-back top (even if some of the mountain peaks did have bizarre names... Devil's Dance Floor? Really?! I better not see any more fucking devils in the water somewhere!). And as they drove a little farther in, there were waterfalls! Fucking waterfalls! With falling curtains of water and everything. They'd seen waterfalls before, but none as magnificent as these. "Can you even see the top of that one?" she asked Joel excitedly, pointing.
"Uh... not really."
"That's cuz it's like... pouring out of heaven or something."
Joel chuckled. "We're prob'ly just a little too close to--"
"Shut up -- it's from heaven," she insisted. Even though she wasn't sure there was a heaven. If there is, it should totally look like this...
"Whatever you say, baby girl," he replied in his you're-so-cute tone.
"Man... this is the most gorgeous place I've ever seen in my life," Ellie declared.
"It is? Monterey is old hat now?"
"...Old hat, did you say? What do hats have to do with anything?"
"Just an expression. This beats it, though, huh?"
"Yes!"
"Hm. It's prettier than... the sun turnin' into a big red ball as it 'melts' into the water?"
"Yes!"
Joel glanced at her. "Or maybe our last day there jus' soured the whole thing for you."
"That... also has nothing to do with it! Have you ever seen anything prettier than this? -And don't say me cuz that's bullshit." Not that she didn't still love it when he said that particular brand of bullshit...
He smiled. "No it ain't. It's romantic."
"Romantic bullshit, you mean! Wow, look at that one-- over there-- we should go find how to get to the bottom and take a shower under it!"
That idea amused him, too. "You know how cold that water is? It's comin' from the snow. It'd be colder than showerin' at home. At the resort," he clarified.
Ellie was so used to using 'home' to refer to Jackson... but they had come to think of Monterey as their home, too. They'd actually lived at Golden Sands almost as long as they'd lived in Jackson. A person can have two, right? "We'll have to come back in the summer then. Oh! Maybe if we go back to the beach for the winter! We could come this way again, right?"
"Mm."
A dismissive response, or non-response. Translation: "whatever, kiddo." Which she could possibly attribute to him being Outside Mode Joel now, but he'd just been somewhat talkative (on the Joel scale), so Ellie figured it was because he refused to think that far ahead. I can't even get him to talk about what we're gonna do when we get to Jackson -- and that's only a few weeks away! "So can we stay here a while? In Yosemite? Maybe get out and go look at some of these places up close?"
"We're gonna be here a little while yet as it is. Look on the map. See that part with the big... half-loop thing... and you wondered why we couldn't just cut right through to the other side, instead of goin' around longways?"
"Yeah. I get it now. You could've just told me the trees and rocks and stuff would be really thick through here."
"How would I have known that?"
"I don't know. You seem to know everything else!" she teased. Like when a fucking helicopter we can't even hear is about to find us?! They actually had no way of knowing what that helicopter was doing, but Ellie assumed -- as Joel probably did -- that it had been searching for them. That those other possible explanations for its presence were just pulled out of his ass to try to put her mind at ease.
"Any time the road winds around on the map, you can assume it's 'cause it's got no other way to go. It was prob'ly designed that way... to take people through more of the park than a straight shot through. Not the most practical, for folks who wanna just pass right through... Anyhow, we'll be here a bit, sure, but we're gonna be out... relatively soon. Wouldn't make sense for us to spend the night. We'd have to stop too early."
Ellie hadn't even been thinking about spending the night, since it couldn't have been later than about midday, currently... but now Joel had put the idea in her head. "Well -- like we've said before: what's the rush? Right? It wouldn't kill us to... 'waste' a few hours of travel time to enjoy a pretty place. We can find where one of those waterfalls ends so Fox can have fresh water, and we can make more."
"We made plenty from the river. But... you're right, we may as well drink some more an' make some more."
And since the purifier could only hold so much at a time, it would take... oh, probably at least an hour to replenish what little they'd used since yesterday. "Drink up!" Ellie said cheerfully, hoisting her thermos in a mock toast.
Joel didn't join her, though. And... he didn't look happy.
Uh-oh... did he just... "What's wrong? Are you starting to get that feeling again?"
"...You don't feel it?"
"No... but it happened at different times before--"
"Not really. I felt somethin'... off... early on. Just didn't have any experiences as early as you did." Experiences -- that's what they'd taken to calling them now.
"It's that-- that dancing devil mountain! What the fuck is it with California and devils... or diablos..."
Joel didn't answer. He brought them all to a stop again and turned the jeep off.
Ellie could tell he was listening hard. All she could hear was the roaring of one or more of the ginormous waterfalls in the distance, and they were far enough away that the sound was somewhat muted. She sat there quietly, letting him listen... watching his face...
"I think it's Infected," he finally said, much to her surprise.
"What? No! It's just -- it's like ghosts or something!"
"What do you mean 'no'? Did you forget that we--"
"It's too pretty here for there to be Infected!"
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head, chuckling.
"What!" she demanded.
"You. You've turned into such a... ..."
"A what?!"
"...a girl."
Ellie gasped in mock horror and slugged his arm. "You take that back right now, Joel Miller!"
Joel jerked his arm away and started rubbing it. "Ouch. You don't hit like a girl, that's for sure," he smirked.
"I didn't even fucking hit you that hard!" She unclicked her seat belt. "You wanna see how not like a girl I can--"
"Whoa whoa whoa -- fine, you ain't a girl. We'll have to break up then, 'cause I ain't into boys."
She giggled... started to climb into his lap... but he took hold of her arms to halt her. "Ellie, I'm serious -- I think there might be Infected up ahead. We need to stay alert."
"We're always alert," she said... even though she knew it wasn't exactly the truth.
"More alert, then." Joel frowned. "Think I've gone a little soft. This is a good reminder for us. No messin' around."
Ellie bit back the naughty response that naturally bubbled up to meet that 'gone soft' remark, knowing it would only annoy him in this particular moment (that knowledge didn't always stop her, but it did this time). She also thought Joel was being a little hard on himself (ha!). After all, their momentary lapses... distracted moments... whatever -- none of them had actually jeopardized their safety. "So... what do we do? If they're not by the road, we could just drive on through, right? I mean... we might be able to do that anyway, if there's not a lot, or if they're like... well-placed?"
"I think they're close enough we can check things out on foot, goin' around that bend up there. If I'm wrong, we'll--"
"You're not wrong," Ellie said with absolute certainty. Because she could just fucking tell. Something in his voice.
"Well. We won't go too far ahead. If they're too close to the road, which I'm thinkin' they might be, we oughta just get rid of 'em, if there ain't that many. Grab all your shit."
She started strapping on her holster belt. Joel already had his on, he just had to sling more gear over his shoulders and assess his backpack. She watched him assemble a Molotov cocktail.
"Good thing you found this." Joel waggled the bottle of 'Molotov alcohol' at her. "We could use some more... but it'll do for now. You need any?"
Ellie had previously replenished what she could carry in her backpack. "I'm good. I have three ready."
He snorted. "You're better prepared than I am."
She didn't like the way he said it; it sounded more like self-deprecation than praise for her preparedness. He's been doing that more and more lately... I can't just let it slide! "It doesn't take long to make them. It's smart to keep alcohol in reserve like that, in case we end up needing more for first aid instead of--"
"We don't."
"But down the road--"
"Let's just go, all right?"
...Yeah, he was probably onto her, and he was having none of it.
They hitched Fox to a tree and then set off at a normal pace along the road, until they neared the bendy part, which steered them left. Joel slipped into the trees, beckoning her to follow, and she naturally matched him when he slowed the pace almost to a creep... then stopped altogether. He extended his arm like a bar to keep her from moving forward. As if she might just go right on past him?
Ellie looked ahead of them, saw nothing, looked again with the binoculars... still nothing. "Why are we stopping here?" she asked him softly. "Do you hear something?"
He kept his voice low as well. "Yes. Just past that rock there."
That rock was like a huge wall, hugging the road to their left. She watched him size it up.
"Oh no. Don't even think about it," she warned him.
"How do you know what I'm thinkin'?"
"I just do. You want to climb up there and attack them from the high ground."
"It would be easier than--"
"Except for one thing: we can't climb up there!"
"People used to climb rocks like these all the time. The peaks, not just these little ones. Climb straight up. No goin' around."
"What? No way. Stop messing with me. That's video game bullshit."
"Maybe, but it's also real. There's enough footholds on the face of 'em... they ain't perfectly smooth."
"That doesn't mean you can climb them!"
"That's exactly what it means."
...He looks totally serious... but he CAN'T be... well, one way to find out-- "Fine. I will climb it cuz I'm... what did you call me before? More agile? You can catch me if I fall."
He grabbed her arm before she even took two steps, thus confirming her theory. "Thing is, those people all had special equipment. Which we don't have."
"Ha! I knew you were fucking with me!" She slugged his left arm for a change -- since the right one tended to take more of a beating, with Joel being to her left the majority of their travel time.
He chuckled. "I did think about it for a second. Not climbin' straight up, but goin' back a little... over there... might be able to get a vantage point from those rocks... but you're right. Too dangerous."
"Good. You and heights are not a good combination."
He seemed miffed at that. "I fall one time -- in the middle of a fight, no less -- an' now you think--"
"Yeah yeah," she cut off his self defense. "Maybe there won't be that many. Maybe we can stealth it no problem."
He nodded. "I was also thinkin'... I ain't sure how stable some of these rocks are. We don't wanna do anythin' to trigger a rockslide. Even if we don't get hurt, might block the road."
"Oh fuck... I didn't even think about that! What if it's already blocked somewhere cuz of some idiots doing that?" We'd never be able to navigate this place without using the highway!
"If it is, it is. There's another entrance on the west side here, and one on the south, if worse comes to worst."
Whew! "Okay, so no big deal. It would be like oh darn, now we have to look at this beautiful scenery some more! Right?"
He ignored this. "C'mon. We better get back to the road to pass this thing. If we get spotted... and there's a bunch of 'em..."
"Run back to the jeep," she finished for him. "And the horse. Fox can turn around on this narrow road better than that jeep can!"
"You're prob'ly right. If we can draw 'em back to someplace where we can find an off-road way forward..."
"That the jeep can do, you mean?"
"Yeah."
She smiled. "Look at you, not jumping at the excuse to ditch the jeep anymore!"
"I still say we ditch it at some point before we get home." That was the way his thoughts ran now, more often than not: to use it as long as possible, and just keep it a ~dirty little secret~ by not driving it all the way to town.
...Like me! Ha! "We hide it," she corrected him. "Where we can get to it if we want. We can take it for joyrides like once a week." Because Joel had pointed out that vehicles need to be used often enough to not go to rot, like the zillions they had seen on their travels. Ellie had figured once every couple months or so would be good, but Joel said it shouldn't go more than a couple weeks.
"We'll see how things go. They might still be lookin' for us, you know."
She followed him back out to the road... closer to the invisible Infected... until finally she thought she could hear something, too. "Shit. They're gonna be right up there, huh. Where the road curves again."
"Think so, yeah."
"Clickers?"
"Yep." Joel frowned. "Runners, too. I don't like havin' no cover."
Clickers couldn't see, so that didn't really matter, but it seemed most Runners could still see pretty well. "Just... go slow," she advised unhelpfully. As if he didn't know. As if he wasn't doing that already!
"See if you can spot any with the binoculars."
They inched around the bend, unsure how far away the fuckers were. Ellie looked with her enhanced eyes. "One o'clock... ish... maybe two o'clock. In the trees. Runners."
"I see 'em, yeah... I think there's a Clicker close by there... maybe behind that boulder..."
"Twelve o'clock but farther away -- more Runners. They're like... below the level of the road. There's a little drop." Not enough of one that the fuckers couldn't traverse it, though...
"So there is. And a bigger one beyond it, to the right. See that? Well, shit, this might be real easy. Pitch the bastards off a cliff. Let gravity do the rest."
Except when Ellie envisioned that, she saw him grabbing one to push over, only to have it tug Joel down with it, both of them tumbling into the abyss... an abyss she couldn't see right now, but it was right there in her fucking imagination! "Joel, no. We're not doing that. You'll die."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Damn. Since when do you have zero faith in me?"
"I have a sixth sense about these things!"
"I was mostly jokin' anyhow. That's just a little valley down there. Not a real steep drop. But-- ... --shit."
Ellie followed his gaze to their left. Skulking about on the other side of the road, was a... "Fuck, that's too big to be a Clicker! Plus it's... not clicking." She tried to get a better look with the binoculars, which brought the creature frighteningly close to her face; it was closer to them than the others, even though it was on the other side of the highway, stumbling around through the trees.
"Pretty small for a Bloater. Maybe it's somethin' in between."
"A bloated Clicker," she mused. "Or a clicked Bloater... bloated Clicker sounds better. I could bow-and-arrow it? If I get a good head shot--"
"Still might not kill it." He was right; it might have too much fungal insulation around its brain. "Let's leave that one for now."
"It's the closest one," she pointed out.
"It's also the least likely to be killed quietly. Unless you're right about the head shot, but that ain't a sure thing. Let's just keep goin' an' see if we can get close enough to see what all's down below."
"Yeah. It looks kind of... cliff-y, over there."
"Hard to tell how steep the drop is, but it don't look all that bad to me. If there's more down there, will they be able to come up after us, is the question. I feel good if it's just these ones here, but..."
Excluding the Bloated Clicker, she counted seven. The Clicker she couldn't see made eight. Not bad at all, if they could pick off the majority without notice. "Maybe we could flame the big guy?"
"Sure. Keep an eye on him, wouldja? Tell me if he starts wanderin' over this way."
"Got it." Ellie figured that Joel sometimes asked her to do stuff like that to sort of appease her, or make her feel useful when really she wasn't doing jack shit... like on the beach, when she asked one of the kids to fetch her another pail of wet sand she didn't need just to keep them from bickering about who was getting to do more or something. But on this one, she got the feeling that he really didn't want to keep looking over his shoulder, worrying about that silent fucker. That he was like... shifting the worry to her to free up more worry space for the others -- another sign that he trusted her.
...Or maybe he was trying to prevent her from having to kill any of them herself. Ha! We'll just see about that!
"Looks like there's a couple waaaaay over there," Joel observed, his voice lowered to a near-whisper. "Ain't worried about those. They might not even hear us if things get ugly."
"That waterfall helps muffle it, right?" They weren't even close to it, but the constant white noise certainly had muffled the sounds to Ellie's ears -- and those Runners were closer to it than she and Joel were.
"Yeah. All right, I'm gonna take out the Clicker first," Joel announced.
"Oh -- did you even bring that knife?" He had scored a nice utility knife off one of the soldier's corpses.
"Don' need it." He patted his holster belt.
Ellie rolled her eyes. "Shivs? Still?"
"Old habits die hard. They work real good."
"So does a knife!" She would offer him hers, but she knew he wouldn't take it. "Gimme the bow. I'll get... those two over there, by your Clicker." The handful of Runners in the little valley weren't as immediate of a threat. "And I'm still watching our friend across the street."
"Good girl. I won't even be able to see him when I go behind that rock." He shrugged off the bow and quiver and handed them to her, looking at her thoughtfully. "Actually... here, why don't you take this, too?"
Joel still had so much shit on his person that she couldn't even tell what else he was removing for a couple seconds. ...Is it what I think it is?! -It IS! "Whoa... really? You want me to take that?"
"Your guns might not be real effective on that thing."
"You have a couple guns that work good on Bloaters, though. And I have a couple Molotovs in my bag."
"You might not have time to light one. If you'd rather have a gun instead--"
"No! I'll take it," she assured him quickly, accepting the fucking flamethrower he was handing her. "I was just surprised. You never let me use it." And she'd always wanted to!
"You remember how? From watchin' me? Just... little puffs is all you need, don't empty the tank all at once. Only if you need it, now -- if the thing charges you all sudden-like. You still... yell for me, if you..."
"If I what?" she prompted him when he left the words hanging. "If I fuck it up?"
He looked amused. Apparently so amused he couldn't finish his thought. "No, just... you just reminded me... you remember that night I came back from the sister farm... when little Clicker almost caught us kissin' in the park? You put all my gear on while me'n'him were horsin' around. You look like that now."
Playing dress-up was not on the list of memorable things about that night... but Ellie did remember. She smiled. "You thought I looked cute."
"You did. You do."
"This isn't even half of what you lug around. Or what I put on that night, for that matter." But she probably did look kind of funny now with the oversized weapons slung over each shoulder.
"It reminded me anyhow. All right, I'm gonna go make my way over to the other side of that. You follow me when you're done, yeah? Follow my same route."
'That' being the massive rock structure between them and the Clicker. "Okay. Be careful," she said dumbly. The unnecessary words just slipped out automatically.
But he did toss her a "You too" as he crept toward the rock.
Ellie surveyed the scene for a few moments. True to her word, she did glance at the bloated-- the Blicker! -- best name yet! -- She wanted to tell Joel, but he was too far away to share things quietly now, and she didn't want to alarm him for something so silly.
I should've told him I love him, she chided herself -- pretty much out of the blue. But he's not going far... nothing's gonna happen to him... fuckfuckfuck--
Okay, NO REALLY -- NOTHING'S GONNA HAPPEN TO HIM. She needed to focus.
The logical choice was to aim for the Runner closest to Joel. Even though it wasn't anywhere near him. She nocked her arrow, drew the string back... zing! Straight into the motherfucker's head! Another glance back: the Blicker was now at the edge of the highway, but was meandering more toward where she and Joel had come from, not to where they were currently. Surely it won't go all the way down the road to where Fox is... no, these things pretty much stagger around in circles. -Circles with smaller radiuses than THAT.
She couldn't see Joel anymore since he'd gone around that rock (she knew why, of course, but it was still a little unnerving). She nocked her second arrow, took aim, aaaand -- totally missed! What the fuck? Ellie glanced about furtively, as if someone might have witnessed that embarrassing display. Even though Joel hadn't even seen it... probably. Okay... misses happen sometimes. FOCUS, BITCH -- account for the breeze --
It took two arrows to kill this one. Three, if she counted the one that had sailed into the ether. She'd only had six arrows to start with, so she hoped most of them were re-usable -- and that she didn't end up breaking them while trying to yank them out of the bodies (it happened sometimes... like if the arrowhead got lodged in the ribs or something). She skittered over to her first target and wriggled the arrow (still good!) out of its brains, taking care to wipe the arrowhead off on the Runner's T-shirt. Their arrows were never clean enough to eat with or anything, but she at least liked to get the drippy bits of gore off before shoving it back in the quiver. She didn't bother looting the body; she could come back for that. Glance at Blicker -- check. Glance at Joel -- still nothing. She should be able to see him after moving a little farther out, toward the second Runner. The ground was beginning to slope down there, right about where the body was.
There's Joel! And fuck, was he ever close to the edge. She quickly realized there were two Clickers; Joel had slain the first one and was now creeping up behind the second. He must have been waiting a minute for them to move apart or something... The drop was a little more sudden over by him. That fucking cliff... ugh. It made her nervous; even if it wasn't steep enough for the fall itself to kill him, what if he landed on his head? What if he impaled himself on some random thing on the ground? What if there were ten more Infected down there waiting to catch him?
She couldn't help him from where she was because no way would she risk hitting Joel with her arrow. Even if she hadn't had such a wide miss already, she wouldn't risk that. If she hurt him... I would literally DIE. She could maybe try to signal him to call off the stealth kill altogether and let her handle it... but she couldn't see him going along with that when the kill looked so easy, and he was nearly in position to grab-and-shiv already. She just had to trust that Joel would be fucking careful.
Ellie hastily retrieved one of the two remaining arrows, leaving the broken one. Joel had told her to follow his path when she'd disposed of her Runners, but something... made her not want to do that. Something told her to stay where she was. Or go down the hill, even, off to her left where the slope was gentler... but that made less sense than staying put. She had the high ground and could bow-and-arrow the ones below her if she moved a little closer to them. He just wants me out of his way here... but that might not be the best--
Fuck--
She involuntarily held her breath, oddly paralyzed, watching Joel skirt the edge...
Watching the fucking Clicker turn sharply-- no no no, FUCK -- it's not supposed to do that! It 'sees' him now!
Watching Joel lunge for it--
Watching them grapple for a moment (the kind of moment that somehow happened in slow motion), Joel kicking at the edge like he couldn't actually stand there, the rocks and dirt tumbling away from his feet, out of sight--
--And watching in abject horror as both Joel and the Clicker followed suit, vanishing before her eyes.
~Continue to Chapter 19~
Fandom: The Last of Us (first game only)
Characters: Ellie, Joel, Tommy, Maria, OCs
Pairings: Joel/Ellie
Warnings: Underage
Word Count for this chapter: 9,071
Rating (for fic as a whole): R
Author's Note: Chapter title from... a Looney Tunes dvd set featuring a certain character mentioned in the chapter, but again I didn't want to put this note at the end cuz... um... reasons.
Also, in C14 I kind of made it sound like that tractor song was by Brad Paisley (Joel didn't explicitly "say" that, in his thoughts, but the wording strongly implies it). It's actually by Kenny Chesney. Oops! Since I don't like to change what I've posted unless it's a typo or something pretty bad (y'all didn't notice I used the wrong OC's name somewhere in Uncertainty, right? Heh -- I did fix that one), I'm gonna say Joel just misremembered it, at least in that moment. It happens!
~
Ellie officially abandoned her idea of keeping track of their daily miles traveled. The time loop thing had left too bad a taste in her mouth. And she didn't even know how to count today... or maybe it was yesterday, now? ...broken up as it was by what Joel called their "little siesta." What had she even been planning to do with that log, anyway? Pore over it later for no reason? At least that notebook where she'd started keeping track of bands and albums and songs had a purpose. A defunct purpose now, because she had since decided it was silly kid stuff, but still. I've grown up SO MUCH in the past year! The last eight months, especially. Since becoming Joel's girlfriend -- his WOMAN!
And she felt even more grown up when she was driving the jeep... at night... and she heard the most beautiful of sounds (well, one of them?): the dulcet tones of Joel snoring. Not such a pleasant sound if she couldn't sleep because of it, naturally (and that was rare; either she expertly tuned him out most nights, or he didn't snore every night... she tried not to wake him up to get it to stop... because middle-aged people need their sleep!), but she wasn't trying to sleep now, being in the driver's seat and all. It's the amazing sound of ABSOLUTE TRUST, she thought happily.
Even if it's... uh... accidental trust?
No, fuck that -- it's JOEL. If he was really scared, he wouldn't fucking fall asleep. ...The hours after Those Two Days notwithstanding, that is -- when Ellie had been mostly unconscious and Joel so exhausted that he had slept Outside in broad daylight. In a big city, even -- with only Sophie, hapless and unskilled, as guard. Yeah -- total bodyguard fail there on our part. Sorry, Soph!
Nothing bad had happened then... and nothing bad happened this time, either. The vast majority of the time, nothing of note happened. The problem was the one time out of a hundred or whatever that something did, it could cost you your life if you weren't prepared. It went without saying that if she encountered anything unusual -- like, say, hearing a fucking helicopter? -- Ellie would wake his ass up. Although she was convinced that Joel would hear it before she would -- even in his sleep!
Joel had been pretty adorable when he woke up, too:
"Mmff..."
"You're awake! Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!"
"...It ain't mornin'."
"Oh good, at least you're not gonna argue the BEAUTY part! It IS morning. Pretty sure it's well after midnight."
"I'll argue the sleepin' part. I was just restin' my eyes."
"Bullshit!"
"It's true."
"Then how do you explain the snoring? Huh?"
"I wasn't snor--"
"You were too! Like a fucking freight train! Except... trains don't snore, so that's a stupid saying. I guess it's cuz... they have loud horns? So if you snore loud, then... but it's a totally different SOUND, with the horn being more like a steady... uh... horn type sound?"
"I don't snore."
"Right. Like you don't jerk off. And... your shit don't stink! I like THAT saying. It makes sense. Cuz there's no fucking way that anybody's--"
"I never claimed that mine don't stink. It's fouler than most people's, even."
"Figuratively speaking? Whatever, Joel -- we ALL have stinky shit, okay? Yours isn't so special."
"Tch. How long you reckon I was restin' my eyes for?"
"Um... not long. Five hours, maybe."
"..."
"What's that look for? You don't believe me? Would I lie to--"
"Yes. You would."
"I'm just guesstimating. Guess you'll have to wait 'til we get to something on your map for you to like... measure by. Hope I didn't take a wrong turn back there..."
"You better not have taken ANY turns -- we take the same road all the way to--"
"Relaaaxxxx! I'm just fucking with you! This is the only way through the next mountain range. I KNOW."
"How long was I out? Seriously."
"I have no fucking clue! Long enough for me to stop and siphon more gas, though."
"Uh-huh. Now I'M callin' bullshit."
"No, I did! And I already used it all up, what I got, so you can't tell by checking the can."
"Is that so? I know one way I can tell..."
"You can't kiss me when I'm driving -- get back over there-- besides, I drank some mouthwash after."
"You didn't DRINK--"
"Used -- whatever."
"All right, my lovely little liar... my turn to drive now. You can sleep."
"Pfff. Do I sound like I'm fucking tired?!"
"...Can't say that you do."
"That nap was MORE than enough sleep for me. Go back to sleep, Joel. I got this!"
Ellie won that battle -- not that it could even be classified as a battle, really, because Joel conceded so quickly. He didn't doze off again, that she noticed, but Ellie thought he came close a couple times. She didn't start feeling sleepy herself until the sun hit her. The way it obnoxiously blasted her in the face made her want to close her eyes... and then not open them again. She made do with squinting hard, and they pushed on just a little farther, into another little cluster of trees. And not even the first one they came to -- the desert was starting to give way to more trees as they headed into the mountains. With no houses or other buildings in sight, they decided to just thread their way -- jeep and all -- into the 'desert forest' and find a nice shady spot to snooze. Joel claimed he only needed a "cat nap" -- those were apparently pretty short -- and he'd be good to drive, but the horse needed a break, too, so they ended up staying longer. Still no more helicopters... and Joel said he wasn't worried about that so much with the mountains looming. Ellie didn't think it would necessarily help them all that much, because the helicopter could spot them anywhere, couldn't it? And what if they didn't get the chance to hide themselves because by the time they heard it, it was too late? After another futile "that won't happen"/"but what if it DID?" exchange, Joel said they could ditch the jeep and take off into the forest and no one would ever find them. That this mountain range was bigger and more tree-dense than the last one.
Really, though... if Joel wasn't worried about it, Ellie wouldn't worry, either. She trusted that he knew what warranted concern and what didn't. And he seemed pretty confident that they were getting out of helicopter range if Monterey's was the only one they had to worry about, and if there weren't any places for it to refuel. Two pretty big 'if's when we don't know jack shit! But... it wasn't like he was throwing caution to the wind or anything; he was still operating in 'alert' mode. If he was just trying not to worry her... well. She went back and forth on whether she wished he would trust her enough not to bullshit her, or if she appreciated him sparing her some useless anxiety.
What she did not appreciate so much was the way he loved to have a laugh at her expense. They stopped for the night by a river -- a cool mountain river! -- and Joel had tried to scare her:
"Don't get too excited about it, kiddo."
"What? Why not?"
"You see that bridge up there?"
"...Yeah?..."
"Notice anythin' off about it?"
"Uh, yeah... it's busted?"
"We gotta cross it."
"No!"
"Yep. If you check the map, it takes us right over the bridge -- no other way to get around."
"But... I thought we were going THIS way..."
"Seein' as how the jeep can't swim -- at least not in DEEP water -- I don't think we're gonna make it across. That means we have to go alllllllllllllllll the way back, an' find another way through."
"Bullshit!"
"Sorry. Wish it was."
"...I think the map is fucked up."
"Ha-- maps like that don't get fucked up."
"No, I mean... it doesn't make SENSE for us to cross the river when-- Wait. Wait a minute! There's TWO pencil lines... see? This one's faint, but I see it..."
"Hm?"
"...Oh my God. You know what I think?! I think YOU fucked it up! On purpose! To fuck with ME!"
"Now would I do somethin' like--"
"YES! YES YOU FUCKING WOULD! You erased the real line! Which is very wasteful, by the way. We barely have any eraser left as it is."
"Damn. You figured it out awful fast. -Ow!"
"You're such a dick! FUCK. ...But, you know... next time, you should act a little more pissed off. You didn't even say 'goddamnit' or 'shit' or anything. And you were barely scowling. I mean like not even more than your usual resting face."
"I-- my USUAL... ? Never mind. And in case you haven't noticed, I try to stay calm when tellin' you somethin' that's gonna get YOU upset."
"Whatever! You blew it. Just admit it."
Of course, stubborn-ass Joel would admit no such thing. He even tried to say that he had no way of knowing the bridge would be out ahead of time so why would he draw the extra line on there for a prank he didn't even know he could pull off... as if he hadn't just been left alone, and the atlas unattended, while Ellie went off to pee minutes earlier. She was too happy about the river to even pretend to be annoyed with him for long. If only I didn't have icky blood to wash out of my clothes, I MIGHT have convinced him to do my laundry to earn my forgiveness! Joel probably wouldn't have even minded... but she wasn't that mean.
She kind of wished Joel hadn't confiscated her clothes from that night at the base. He hadn't particularly wanted to take them along, but also hadn't particularly wanted to leave incriminating evidence behind -- after all, that would have contradicted his stupid lie! Where would all that blood have come from if not from killing Shelby? Anyway, he had told her he would 'take care of' her clothes so she wouldn't have to see them. At the time, she hadn't cared to ask what he meant by that. Was he planning on secretly washing them so she wouldn't have to see all that blood and maybe flash back to that night, or would he secretly dump them somewhere so she'd never have to lay eyes on them again? If he had stashed them somewhere, he'd picked a good place, because she hadn't come across them anywhere. She did occasionally think about asking him, but always thought better of it; both of them just wanted to forget it had happened.
So, now she only had this one pair of jeans. If she washed them, she'd be stuck wearing wet jeans. She decided to just spot-wash them... but even then, she'd be lucky if those spots dried overnight. For underwear, she at least had the luxury of having several pairs. Not that it helped much when she wanted to wash all the pairs... but the cleanest pair was fine to skip, really. Especially if she wanted to talk Joel into letting her wear his sweat pants to bed. Maybe kinda rude of me to ask that at this time of month... but even more so if I'm going commando! Ha! (That was another old saying that made no sense to Ellie -- what did wearing or not wearing underwear have to do with commanding anything or being in charge? Joel said it had something to do with soldiers in the field... and he couldn't even remember exactly what it referred to.) Of course, in the grand scheme of things, there were worse things in life than wet jeans. But since Joel didn't feel the need to wash his yet, he actually suggested that she wear his sweat pants -- saving her the trouble of asking! -- and she didn't feel guilty about accepting the offer because Joel wouldn't have bothered to change into them anyhow. He was more comfortable being uncomfortable when they were Outside!
Then there was the matter of where to sleep. If there were any houses hidden nearby, they would have needed to know where to look, because it had been hours since they'd seen one... or any buildings, for that matter. Ellie wanted to snuggle under the stars... Joel wanted to sleep in the jeep. Because we don't spend enough time in the fucking thing already?! She didn't complain, though... (much)...
"Why can't we just make a nice little nest on the ground, Joel?"
"It feels colder than yesterday... we're at a higher elevation..."
"I thought you said we weren't that high."
"As far as mountains go, no. But we ARE higher than yesterday. Feels like it might snow."
"We're still in California!"
"Yes we are, but remember I told you--"
"Yeah yeah. Okay, but in case you forgot, the jeep kind of has NO DOORS."
"It has a roof and a backseat. We move all our shit up in front, block the air as best we can... we can make it cozy enough back there."
"For me, maybe, but both of us?!"
"We'll fit. Thought you liked being squished."
"I do! But YOU don't!"
"I'll be fine."
"Man... one more day or so and we might be able to have sex back there finally."
"I got no problem with--"
"Eww, no."
"That's right -- you don't wanna waste your... 'plug'... takin' it out early. That's fine. You jus' say the word when it's go time."
"What if we do it and I just don't take it out?"
"Uh......"
"Yeah -- then maybe you can stay in when you finish?"
"Okay... first of all, you think we're both gonna fit in there at the same time?"
"Well, it's kinda small, really..."
"... ...The plug, or..."
"OF COURSE the plug! Haha! You're so cute, Joel. Remember I told you you were BIG and you were like NO IT'S JUST AVERAGE, and now you're worried it's--"
"SECOND of all -- if we do both fit, I'd be rammin' that thing up so far we might never get it out."
"Ooo, that sounds hot..."
"Sounds like... INFECTION."
"I'm already infected. -HA! Ha ha!"
"Smartass. Sounds like PAIN, then. Plus... pretty sure it don't work that way. I'd still have to pull out, so there's no point."
"Eww -- I'm not letting you pull it out, that's so--"
"Pull out. Not pull IT out. We ain't usin' that thing as birth control."
"Why not? I know they look small in the package -- um, plus I just SAID it was small -- but really, they do kinda blow up in there..."
"I'll tell you why not: because if it actually worked, I reckon it would've been a thing. Everyone would be doin' it."
"...And it was never a thing."
"Nope. Anyhow, I don't see how you'd be able to pull it out yourself, if it's wedged way up there."
"Okay... too gross. The whole thing is. Just... EWW."
"Maybe not. There's a river right--"
"What, so we get all nice and warm from the hot sex, then have to go jump in the freezing river to wash off all my blood after it gets everywhere?!"
"It wouldn't get EVERYwhere... although I reckon it WOULD be better if we were in a nice hot shower..."
"OH! We're SO doing that when we get home! It'll be so much nicer than cold shower sex!"
"...We never actually had cold--"
"Exactly! Because it sucked so bad we couldn't do it!"
Aaaaaand they didn't have backseat sex that night. But it did feel a bit cocoon-y back there, snuggled up together under as many layers as they could manage. They used their rain ponchos to 'seal' the doorways, like tarps... and although the material was too thin to provide insulation, it did effectively block the wind. They also 'widened' the backseat -- by moving the seats as far forward as they would go, of course, and then stuffing bags on the floor to be more or less flush with the seat level. It actually worked pretty well. It had to be better than being on the cold hard ground.
Joel asked if it was too enclosed for her... and yes, that thought had crossed her mind. But she was much better now! She truly felt that Joel's presence made all the difference, mentally. She was pretty sure he would have liked to stretch out a bit more, but he claimed he was comfortable enough. And this time he couldn't roll away from her in the night!
When they woke up the next morning (both of them nightmare-free) and peeked outside, they found that the grass was all sparkly and pretty -- just with frost, not snow. The chill in the air totally made Ellie want to stay in their cozy little nest. Snug under the blankets, her nose tucked into Joel's neck to keep it warm... it felt like the two of them were the last two people on the planet. For the millionth time, she felt extremely grateful she wasn't alone. Not just that she wasn't alone -- but that she was with Joel, the most awesome person ever, and she got to feel his loving arms around her every single day. She got to watch the sun rise and set with him. She got to share every meal, every chore, every joke... She had kind of started taking that for granted, back at Golden Sands, and she vowed that she never would again. How fucking different would this trip be without him? It seemed he had become weary of her expressing such sentiments... but she couldn't help how she felt. He owed her nothing. He just... loved her, for some reason.
They were back to the winding mountain roads again now, steadily going uphill, more than doubling their elevation in half a day's time. Which means tonight is going to be even colder! As they made their way into some mountain peaks in an area that used to be considered a park, Ellie found herself speechless.
"Sure is pretty here, ain't it?" Joel remarked; he had a knack for reading her mind sometimes, but Ellie couldn't imagine any human encountering such a place and not being impressed, so it was no great feat this time.
She silently looked around in awe. 'Pretty' didn't quite cut it. Breathtaking, more like. They'd just driven through an archway made of boulders -- one boulder leaning over to kiss the other... a portal to some sort of fantasy world! She'd seen the mountains from a distance, but now she and Joel were like... part of them. Towering silvery gray and purple peaks, dusted with snow, striped and dotted with trees in some places, smooth as slate in others. She felt very small, looking up at them... but not in a bad way? And somehow, even the duller colors (like gray) felt more vibrant to her. Everything looked... rich. She found that she preferred to take it all in with her own eyes and not the tunnel-visioned binocular eyes, even if she wasn't seeing as much detail that way.
"We should put the top down," Joel suggested.
"Oh! Can we? Really?" She hadn't even thought of that; it had been up the whole trip and she'd eventually forgotten that was an option.
"I don't see why not." Joel stopped the jeep and "whoa" 'd the horse.
"Good job," Ellie congratulated him. When he looked at her funny, she added, "You didn't go off to the side!" -and he chuckled. In olden times, cars wouldn't just stop in the middle of the road, so Joel still had a tendency to drift off to the side to park even for the shortest of breaks -- like this one, where they weren't even leaving the jeep to go do anything. It made sense to do that, of course; it was rude (and dangerous) to make everyone go around you. But she had yet to see another moving car on the road with them, on any of their trips. There just weren't enough left that actually worked. (Joel said he suspected that even though their jeep was a 2013 model, it was manufactured a long time after that -- which meant new vehicles were being produced. Just not for civilians, apparently.) Getting off the road like that was actually called 'pulling over,' but Ellie had mistakenly called it 'pulling out' once, earning herself some teasing from Joel about her "filthy little mind."
She helped him un-do the jeep top; apparently some vehicles would put it up and down at the touch of a button, but not this one. It didn't want to budge easily, either. "What did you say this place is called again?" she asked before groaning with the effort to unstick the thing.
"Yosemite."
At least Joel's not getting his side that easily, either, she noted with satisfaction. "Yosemite... fuck, that sounds so familiar..."
"Because it's on the map. Plus I already told you the name when--"
"No, I mean like I've heard it before. A long time ago. Before Monterey." She managed to free the top before Joel could try to come around and do it for her.
"You're thinkin' of Yasmany." A guy on Joel's crew back in Jackson.
"No, that's Yasmany, not Yosemite. Duh!" They rolled the top back together.
"They sound similar, is all. It is a well-known park. Maybe you heard Sophie or someone talkin' about it."
Sophie had grown up in California, but much farther south -- and they never really talked when they were in Jackson, which is where the memory was jiggling Ellie from. "No... I think it was one of the kids at the house, actually." Meaning Tommy and Maria's house, where some of the littler kids would congregate after school to use their TV or play games and stuff. Ellie helped keep an eye on them sometimes, and she enjoyed playing with them.
"I think I know what you're rememberin'," Joel declared as he came around Ellie's side to help her fasten the top down (because of course he just had to beat her). "Actually, it's who."
"I got it," she shooed him away -- though he didn't shoo far. "Who? It's not Yasmany."
"Nope. How 'bout Yosemite Sam? That ring a bell?"
Ellie let the name bounce around in her brain for a moment. "Yeah, actually, I think it does?"
"Cartoon character. One of the bad guys... blustery little dude... ornery as hell..."
"Oh yeahhhhh! Always cussing jibberish under his breath!" She finally secured the top, without Joel's help. She turned and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Waving a couple of guns around... big mustache... kinda reminds me of you!"
"Me?" Joel scoffed. He returned the embrace by wrapping his arms around her waist and giving her a little kiss. "No, no... more like you."
"Pffff -- me?! How do you figure that?"
"Red hair... two guns... cussin'..."
She giggled. "Um, I don't have a mustache, though?"
He traced above her lip with his finger. "No, but his is so bushy an' long... kinda looks like your hair when you put it in a ponytail."
That was certainly a stretch! "Okayyyy... but I don't do two ponytails, so..."
"Plus he's little. Kinda cute. That's definitely more you than me."
"Ha! Um, not really."
"You are much cuter than--"
"I mean him. Unless you mean like, cuz he's a cartoon, and cartoons are supposed to be cute? You're kinda cute, too, though." She giggle-kissed him.
"Mm. You're very cute, actually."
"Oh, then, see? You're only kinda, so he's more you than me. Also -- I don't think he'd appreciate being called 'cute.' Just like you! You're both like... 'I'm a bad-ass an' that's that.' "
That one earned her a big smile (as her bad impersonations often did). "When do I ever--"
"And you always say you're the bad guy and I'm the good guy, right? Plus he's all grumpy and stuff. Also! -- you're both boys, for fuck's sake!" She should have led with that last one, it was so obvious.
"Ain't it bad enough you made me the dog? Now I'm--"
"What, you mean Toto? That's not bad! You like dogs," she reminded him.
"All right. You win."
I always win! Ellie thought triumphantly. She turned to look at the mountains again. "Was this place named after Yosemite Sam?"
Joel hugged her close to his chest and chuckled. "I don't think so."
She didn't mind her view being limited when it was for a good reason... like a sweet out-of-nowhere hug. "Other way around, then? But... that makes zero sense."
"Maybe it's a coincidence. Or the name means somethin' that we don' know about."
"Oh hey!" She looked at him again. "We should look it up in the baby name book!"
He kissed her eyebrow. "You do that, if you remember this conversation a month from now."
"I will!" The book wasn't one Ellie had ever taken notice of in the library, but once it had found its way onto Tommy and Maria's coffee table (on which no coffee was served), she'd found herself idly flipping through it nearly every time she was at the house. She and Joel both had godly names, thanks to sharing the 'el' syllable, which meant God in another language... but she also had 'light' in her name whereas Joel's was redundant; he just had some other variation of God. "I wonder what names they picked out. Do you think by now she's had the-- I know, I know, you have no idea," she answered for him, because sometimes he seemed to want to answer even her rhetorical questions seriously. "I can't wait to meet him!"
"Or her."
"It's a boy, though. You just wait and see." She snickered at another old memory. "What did we end up making the bet for... ten kisses or something dumb like that?"
"What's so dumb about kisses?" His lips grazed her neck in precisely the way that made her the most ticklish.
"Stop!" she squealed, shoving him playfully. "Nothing's dumb about them, really, it's just... we weren't having sex back then. Now we could make it more interesting."
"Up the ante?" Joel snorted. "If this is some way for you to trick me into lettin' you do stuff I don't want you doin'--"
"Noooooo! Would I do that?" she asked, all innocence and sweetness.
"Yes." This time he kissed her nose... and then his gaze shifted just slightly, his thumb caressing the side of her face feather-lightly.
She knew what he was looking at. "Does it look better yet?"
"It does. More greenish."
"It doesn't hurt anymore," she assured him; he hadn't asked, but she assumed he'd be glad to hear it anyway. "I don't even feel it."
"Good." He planted a final little kiss... on her forehead. "C'mon, we ain't actually stoppin' here. Back in the car."
Ellie didn't mind dropping the subject of the bet, for now -- she needed time to think of something amazing to win, after all. She vowed she'd come up with an epic prize to substitute for the kisses... and then, using her 'feminine wiles,' she would force him to agree to her terms. Ha!
The scenery was even more amazing with the expanded panoramic view afforded by the rolled-back top (even if some of the mountain peaks did have bizarre names... Devil's Dance Floor? Really?! I better not see any more fucking devils in the water somewhere!). And as they drove a little farther in, there were waterfalls! Fucking waterfalls! With falling curtains of water and everything. They'd seen waterfalls before, but none as magnificent as these. "Can you even see the top of that one?" she asked Joel excitedly, pointing.
"Uh... not really."
"That's cuz it's like... pouring out of heaven or something."
Joel chuckled. "We're prob'ly just a little too close to--"
"Shut up -- it's from heaven," she insisted. Even though she wasn't sure there was a heaven. If there is, it should totally look like this...
"Whatever you say, baby girl," he replied in his you're-so-cute tone.
"Man... this is the most gorgeous place I've ever seen in my life," Ellie declared.
"It is? Monterey is old hat now?"
"...Old hat, did you say? What do hats have to do with anything?"
"Just an expression. This beats it, though, huh?"
"Yes!"
"Hm. It's prettier than... the sun turnin' into a big red ball as it 'melts' into the water?"
"Yes!"
Joel glanced at her. "Or maybe our last day there jus' soured the whole thing for you."
"That... also has nothing to do with it! Have you ever seen anything prettier than this? -And don't say me cuz that's bullshit." Not that she didn't still love it when he said that particular brand of bullshit...
He smiled. "No it ain't. It's romantic."
"Romantic bullshit, you mean! Wow, look at that one-- over there-- we should go find how to get to the bottom and take a shower under it!"
That idea amused him, too. "You know how cold that water is? It's comin' from the snow. It'd be colder than showerin' at home. At the resort," he clarified.
Ellie was so used to using 'home' to refer to Jackson... but they had come to think of Monterey as their home, too. They'd actually lived at Golden Sands almost as long as they'd lived in Jackson. A person can have two, right? "We'll have to come back in the summer then. Oh! Maybe if we go back to the beach for the winter! We could come this way again, right?"
"Mm."
A dismissive response, or non-response. Translation: "whatever, kiddo." Which she could possibly attribute to him being Outside Mode Joel now, but he'd just been somewhat talkative (on the Joel scale), so Ellie figured it was because he refused to think that far ahead. I can't even get him to talk about what we're gonna do when we get to Jackson -- and that's only a few weeks away! "So can we stay here a while? In Yosemite? Maybe get out and go look at some of these places up close?"
"We're gonna be here a little while yet as it is. Look on the map. See that part with the big... half-loop thing... and you wondered why we couldn't just cut right through to the other side, instead of goin' around longways?"
"Yeah. I get it now. You could've just told me the trees and rocks and stuff would be really thick through here."
"How would I have known that?"
"I don't know. You seem to know everything else!" she teased. Like when a fucking helicopter we can't even hear is about to find us?! They actually had no way of knowing what that helicopter was doing, but Ellie assumed -- as Joel probably did -- that it had been searching for them. That those other possible explanations for its presence were just pulled out of his ass to try to put her mind at ease.
"Any time the road winds around on the map, you can assume it's 'cause it's got no other way to go. It was prob'ly designed that way... to take people through more of the park than a straight shot through. Not the most practical, for folks who wanna just pass right through... Anyhow, we'll be here a bit, sure, but we're gonna be out... relatively soon. Wouldn't make sense for us to spend the night. We'd have to stop too early."
Ellie hadn't even been thinking about spending the night, since it couldn't have been later than about midday, currently... but now Joel had put the idea in her head. "Well -- like we've said before: what's the rush? Right? It wouldn't kill us to... 'waste' a few hours of travel time to enjoy a pretty place. We can find where one of those waterfalls ends so Fox can have fresh water, and we can make more."
"We made plenty from the river. But... you're right, we may as well drink some more an' make some more."
And since the purifier could only hold so much at a time, it would take... oh, probably at least an hour to replenish what little they'd used since yesterday. "Drink up!" Ellie said cheerfully, hoisting her thermos in a mock toast.
Joel didn't join her, though. And... he didn't look happy.
Uh-oh... did he just... "What's wrong? Are you starting to get that feeling again?"
"...You don't feel it?"
"No... but it happened at different times before--"
"Not really. I felt somethin'... off... early on. Just didn't have any experiences as early as you did." Experiences -- that's what they'd taken to calling them now.
"It's that-- that dancing devil mountain! What the fuck is it with California and devils... or diablos..."
Joel didn't answer. He brought them all to a stop again and turned the jeep off.
Ellie could tell he was listening hard. All she could hear was the roaring of one or more of the ginormous waterfalls in the distance, and they were far enough away that the sound was somewhat muted. She sat there quietly, letting him listen... watching his face...
"I think it's Infected," he finally said, much to her surprise.
"What? No! It's just -- it's like ghosts or something!"
"What do you mean 'no'? Did you forget that we--"
"It's too pretty here for there to be Infected!"
He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head, chuckling.
"What!" she demanded.
"You. You've turned into such a... ..."
"A what?!"
"...a girl."
Ellie gasped in mock horror and slugged his arm. "You take that back right now, Joel Miller!"
Joel jerked his arm away and started rubbing it. "Ouch. You don't hit like a girl, that's for sure," he smirked.
"I didn't even fucking hit you that hard!" She unclicked her seat belt. "You wanna see how not like a girl I can--"
"Whoa whoa whoa -- fine, you ain't a girl. We'll have to break up then, 'cause I ain't into boys."
She giggled... started to climb into his lap... but he took hold of her arms to halt her. "Ellie, I'm serious -- I think there might be Infected up ahead. We need to stay alert."
"We're always alert," she said... even though she knew it wasn't exactly the truth.
"More alert, then." Joel frowned. "Think I've gone a little soft. This is a good reminder for us. No messin' around."
Ellie bit back the naughty response that naturally bubbled up to meet that 'gone soft' remark, knowing it would only annoy him in this particular moment (that knowledge didn't always stop her, but it did this time). She also thought Joel was being a little hard on himself (ha!). After all, their momentary lapses... distracted moments... whatever -- none of them had actually jeopardized their safety. "So... what do we do? If they're not by the road, we could just drive on through, right? I mean... we might be able to do that anyway, if there's not a lot, or if they're like... well-placed?"
"I think they're close enough we can check things out on foot, goin' around that bend up there. If I'm wrong, we'll--"
"You're not wrong," Ellie said with absolute certainty. Because she could just fucking tell. Something in his voice.
"Well. We won't go too far ahead. If they're too close to the road, which I'm thinkin' they might be, we oughta just get rid of 'em, if there ain't that many. Grab all your shit."
She started strapping on her holster belt. Joel already had his on, he just had to sling more gear over his shoulders and assess his backpack. She watched him assemble a Molotov cocktail.
"Good thing you found this." Joel waggled the bottle of 'Molotov alcohol' at her. "We could use some more... but it'll do for now. You need any?"
Ellie had previously replenished what she could carry in her backpack. "I'm good. I have three ready."
He snorted. "You're better prepared than I am."
She didn't like the way he said it; it sounded more like self-deprecation than praise for her preparedness. He's been doing that more and more lately... I can't just let it slide! "It doesn't take long to make them. It's smart to keep alcohol in reserve like that, in case we end up needing more for first aid instead of--"
"We don't."
"But down the road--"
"Let's just go, all right?"
...Yeah, he was probably onto her, and he was having none of it.
They hitched Fox to a tree and then set off at a normal pace along the road, until they neared the bendy part, which steered them left. Joel slipped into the trees, beckoning her to follow, and she naturally matched him when he slowed the pace almost to a creep... then stopped altogether. He extended his arm like a bar to keep her from moving forward. As if she might just go right on past him?
Ellie looked ahead of them, saw nothing, looked again with the binoculars... still nothing. "Why are we stopping here?" she asked him softly. "Do you hear something?"
He kept his voice low as well. "Yes. Just past that rock there."
That rock was like a huge wall, hugging the road to their left. She watched him size it up.
"Oh no. Don't even think about it," she warned him.
"How do you know what I'm thinkin'?"
"I just do. You want to climb up there and attack them from the high ground."
"It would be easier than--"
"Except for one thing: we can't climb up there!"
"People used to climb rocks like these all the time. The peaks, not just these little ones. Climb straight up. No goin' around."
"What? No way. Stop messing with me. That's video game bullshit."
"Maybe, but it's also real. There's enough footholds on the face of 'em... they ain't perfectly smooth."
"That doesn't mean you can climb them!"
"That's exactly what it means."
...He looks totally serious... but he CAN'T be... well, one way to find out-- "Fine. I will climb it cuz I'm... what did you call me before? More agile? You can catch me if I fall."
He grabbed her arm before she even took two steps, thus confirming her theory. "Thing is, those people all had special equipment. Which we don't have."
"Ha! I knew you were fucking with me!" She slugged his left arm for a change -- since the right one tended to take more of a beating, with Joel being to her left the majority of their travel time.
He chuckled. "I did think about it for a second. Not climbin' straight up, but goin' back a little... over there... might be able to get a vantage point from those rocks... but you're right. Too dangerous."
"Good. You and heights are not a good combination."
He seemed miffed at that. "I fall one time -- in the middle of a fight, no less -- an' now you think--"
"Yeah yeah," she cut off his self defense. "Maybe there won't be that many. Maybe we can stealth it no problem."
He nodded. "I was also thinkin'... I ain't sure how stable some of these rocks are. We don't wanna do anythin' to trigger a rockslide. Even if we don't get hurt, might block the road."
"Oh fuck... I didn't even think about that! What if it's already blocked somewhere cuz of some idiots doing that?" We'd never be able to navigate this place without using the highway!
"If it is, it is. There's another entrance on the west side here, and one on the south, if worse comes to worst."
Whew! "Okay, so no big deal. It would be like oh darn, now we have to look at this beautiful scenery some more! Right?"
He ignored this. "C'mon. We better get back to the road to pass this thing. If we get spotted... and there's a bunch of 'em..."
"Run back to the jeep," she finished for him. "And the horse. Fox can turn around on this narrow road better than that jeep can!"
"You're prob'ly right. If we can draw 'em back to someplace where we can find an off-road way forward..."
"That the jeep can do, you mean?"
"Yeah."
She smiled. "Look at you, not jumping at the excuse to ditch the jeep anymore!"
"I still say we ditch it at some point before we get home." That was the way his thoughts ran now, more often than not: to use it as long as possible, and just keep it a ~dirty little secret~ by not driving it all the way to town.
...Like me! Ha! "We hide it," she corrected him. "Where we can get to it if we want. We can take it for joyrides like once a week." Because Joel had pointed out that vehicles need to be used often enough to not go to rot, like the zillions they had seen on their travels. Ellie had figured once every couple months or so would be good, but Joel said it shouldn't go more than a couple weeks.
"We'll see how things go. They might still be lookin' for us, you know."
She followed him back out to the road... closer to the invisible Infected... until finally she thought she could hear something, too. "Shit. They're gonna be right up there, huh. Where the road curves again."
"Think so, yeah."
"Clickers?"
"Yep." Joel frowned. "Runners, too. I don't like havin' no cover."
Clickers couldn't see, so that didn't really matter, but it seemed most Runners could still see pretty well. "Just... go slow," she advised unhelpfully. As if he didn't know. As if he wasn't doing that already!
"See if you can spot any with the binoculars."
They inched around the bend, unsure how far away the fuckers were. Ellie looked with her enhanced eyes. "One o'clock... ish... maybe two o'clock. In the trees. Runners."
"I see 'em, yeah... I think there's a Clicker close by there... maybe behind that boulder..."
"Twelve o'clock but farther away -- more Runners. They're like... below the level of the road. There's a little drop." Not enough of one that the fuckers couldn't traverse it, though...
"So there is. And a bigger one beyond it, to the right. See that? Well, shit, this might be real easy. Pitch the bastards off a cliff. Let gravity do the rest."
Except when Ellie envisioned that, she saw him grabbing one to push over, only to have it tug Joel down with it, both of them tumbling into the abyss... an abyss she couldn't see right now, but it was right there in her fucking imagination! "Joel, no. We're not doing that. You'll die."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Damn. Since when do you have zero faith in me?"
"I have a sixth sense about these things!"
"I was mostly jokin' anyhow. That's just a little valley down there. Not a real steep drop. But-- ... --shit."
Ellie followed his gaze to their left. Skulking about on the other side of the road, was a... "Fuck, that's too big to be a Clicker! Plus it's... not clicking." She tried to get a better look with the binoculars, which brought the creature frighteningly close to her face; it was closer to them than the others, even though it was on the other side of the highway, stumbling around through the trees.
"Pretty small for a Bloater. Maybe it's somethin' in between."
"A bloated Clicker," she mused. "Or a clicked Bloater... bloated Clicker sounds better. I could bow-and-arrow it? If I get a good head shot--"
"Still might not kill it." He was right; it might have too much fungal insulation around its brain. "Let's leave that one for now."
"It's the closest one," she pointed out.
"It's also the least likely to be killed quietly. Unless you're right about the head shot, but that ain't a sure thing. Let's just keep goin' an' see if we can get close enough to see what all's down below."
"Yeah. It looks kind of... cliff-y, over there."
"Hard to tell how steep the drop is, but it don't look all that bad to me. If there's more down there, will they be able to come up after us, is the question. I feel good if it's just these ones here, but..."
Excluding the Bloated Clicker, she counted seven. The Clicker she couldn't see made eight. Not bad at all, if they could pick off the majority without notice. "Maybe we could flame the big guy?"
"Sure. Keep an eye on him, wouldja? Tell me if he starts wanderin' over this way."
"Got it." Ellie figured that Joel sometimes asked her to do stuff like that to sort of appease her, or make her feel useful when really she wasn't doing jack shit... like on the beach, when she asked one of the kids to fetch her another pail of wet sand she didn't need just to keep them from bickering about who was getting to do more or something. But on this one, she got the feeling that he really didn't want to keep looking over his shoulder, worrying about that silent fucker. That he was like... shifting the worry to her to free up more worry space for the others -- another sign that he trusted her.
...Or maybe he was trying to prevent her from having to kill any of them herself. Ha! We'll just see about that!
"Looks like there's a couple waaaaay over there," Joel observed, his voice lowered to a near-whisper. "Ain't worried about those. They might not even hear us if things get ugly."
"That waterfall helps muffle it, right?" They weren't even close to it, but the constant white noise certainly had muffled the sounds to Ellie's ears -- and those Runners were closer to it than she and Joel were.
"Yeah. All right, I'm gonna take out the Clicker first," Joel announced.
"Oh -- did you even bring that knife?" He had scored a nice utility knife off one of the soldier's corpses.
"Don' need it." He patted his holster belt.
Ellie rolled her eyes. "Shivs? Still?"
"Old habits die hard. They work real good."
"So does a knife!" She would offer him hers, but she knew he wouldn't take it. "Gimme the bow. I'll get... those two over there, by your Clicker." The handful of Runners in the little valley weren't as immediate of a threat. "And I'm still watching our friend across the street."
"Good girl. I won't even be able to see him when I go behind that rock." He shrugged off the bow and quiver and handed them to her, looking at her thoughtfully. "Actually... here, why don't you take this, too?"
Joel still had so much shit on his person that she couldn't even tell what else he was removing for a couple seconds. ...Is it what I think it is?! -It IS! "Whoa... really? You want me to take that?"
"Your guns might not be real effective on that thing."
"You have a couple guns that work good on Bloaters, though. And I have a couple Molotovs in my bag."
"You might not have time to light one. If you'd rather have a gun instead--"
"No! I'll take it," she assured him quickly, accepting the fucking flamethrower he was handing her. "I was just surprised. You never let me use it." And she'd always wanted to!
"You remember how? From watchin' me? Just... little puffs is all you need, don't empty the tank all at once. Only if you need it, now -- if the thing charges you all sudden-like. You still... yell for me, if you..."
"If I what?" she prompted him when he left the words hanging. "If I fuck it up?"
He looked amused. Apparently so amused he couldn't finish his thought. "No, just... you just reminded me... you remember that night I came back from the sister farm... when little Clicker almost caught us kissin' in the park? You put all my gear on while me'n'him were horsin' around. You look like that now."
Playing dress-up was not on the list of memorable things about that night... but Ellie did remember. She smiled. "You thought I looked cute."
"You did. You do."
"This isn't even half of what you lug around. Or what I put on that night, for that matter." But she probably did look kind of funny now with the oversized weapons slung over each shoulder.
"It reminded me anyhow. All right, I'm gonna go make my way over to the other side of that. You follow me when you're done, yeah? Follow my same route."
'That' being the massive rock structure between them and the Clicker. "Okay. Be careful," she said dumbly. The unnecessary words just slipped out automatically.
But he did toss her a "You too" as he crept toward the rock.
Ellie surveyed the scene for a few moments. True to her word, she did glance at the bloated-- the Blicker! -- best name yet! -- She wanted to tell Joel, but he was too far away to share things quietly now, and she didn't want to alarm him for something so silly.
I should've told him I love him, she chided herself -- pretty much out of the blue. But he's not going far... nothing's gonna happen to him... fuckfuckfuck--
Okay, NO REALLY -- NOTHING'S GONNA HAPPEN TO HIM. She needed to focus.
The logical choice was to aim for the Runner closest to Joel. Even though it wasn't anywhere near him. She nocked her arrow, drew the string back... zing! Straight into the motherfucker's head! Another glance back: the Blicker was now at the edge of the highway, but was meandering more toward where she and Joel had come from, not to where they were currently. Surely it won't go all the way down the road to where Fox is... no, these things pretty much stagger around in circles. -Circles with smaller radiuses than THAT.
She couldn't see Joel anymore since he'd gone around that rock (she knew why, of course, but it was still a little unnerving). She nocked her second arrow, took aim, aaaand -- totally missed! What the fuck? Ellie glanced about furtively, as if someone might have witnessed that embarrassing display. Even though Joel hadn't even seen it... probably. Okay... misses happen sometimes. FOCUS, BITCH -- account for the breeze --
It took two arrows to kill this one. Three, if she counted the one that had sailed into the ether. She'd only had six arrows to start with, so she hoped most of them were re-usable -- and that she didn't end up breaking them while trying to yank them out of the bodies (it happened sometimes... like if the arrowhead got lodged in the ribs or something). She skittered over to her first target and wriggled the arrow (still good!) out of its brains, taking care to wipe the arrowhead off on the Runner's T-shirt. Their arrows were never clean enough to eat with or anything, but she at least liked to get the drippy bits of gore off before shoving it back in the quiver. She didn't bother looting the body; she could come back for that. Glance at Blicker -- check. Glance at Joel -- still nothing. She should be able to see him after moving a little farther out, toward the second Runner. The ground was beginning to slope down there, right about where the body was.
There's Joel! And fuck, was he ever close to the edge. She quickly realized there were two Clickers; Joel had slain the first one and was now creeping up behind the second. He must have been waiting a minute for them to move apart or something... The drop was a little more sudden over by him. That fucking cliff... ugh. It made her nervous; even if it wasn't steep enough for the fall itself to kill him, what if he landed on his head? What if he impaled himself on some random thing on the ground? What if there were ten more Infected down there waiting to catch him?
She couldn't help him from where she was because no way would she risk hitting Joel with her arrow. Even if she hadn't had such a wide miss already, she wouldn't risk that. If she hurt him... I would literally DIE. She could maybe try to signal him to call off the stealth kill altogether and let her handle it... but she couldn't see him going along with that when the kill looked so easy, and he was nearly in position to grab-and-shiv already. She just had to trust that Joel would be fucking careful.
Ellie hastily retrieved one of the two remaining arrows, leaving the broken one. Joel had told her to follow his path when she'd disposed of her Runners, but something... made her not want to do that. Something told her to stay where she was. Or go down the hill, even, off to her left where the slope was gentler... but that made less sense than staying put. She had the high ground and could bow-and-arrow the ones below her if she moved a little closer to them. He just wants me out of his way here... but that might not be the best--
Fuck--
She involuntarily held her breath, oddly paralyzed, watching Joel skirt the edge...
Watching the fucking Clicker turn sharply-- no no no, FUCK -- it's not supposed to do that! It 'sees' him now!
Watching Joel lunge for it--
Watching them grapple for a moment (the kind of moment that somehow happened in slow motion), Joel kicking at the edge like he couldn't actually stand there, the rocks and dirt tumbling away from his feet, out of sight--
--And watching in abject horror as both Joel and the Clicker followed suit, vanishing before her eyes.
~Continue to Chapter 19~
