hbo © the last of us
season 1, episode 1

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
LATE JULY ✷ 2023

━━ BOSTON, IN THE summer, smelled of nothing. Compared to all of the cities Lena Spence had visited — twenty-nine state capitals since the beginning of the outbreak, thirty-seven in total — she would've expected her hometown to have a familiar musk. Still, there was nothing but the occasional odor of burnt rubber or decomposing corpses to it.

Maybe if you'd asked an outsider like Joel or Tess, their answer would've been different. Perhaps they'd say that it smelled of death and infection, or shit, but Lena would never know. She wouldn't ever ask them. They had bigger issues to worry about than the smell of Boston.

As they made their way through the underground tunnels of the city, there were one too many times in which she realized they were going in the wrong direction. She knew all about Boston, memorized every street and every crack of the pavement from being jammed in their traffic every day for almost thirty years — but she knew better than to assume those strangers trusted her word.

To them, she was just a step in taking Ellie to the next Firefly checkpoint, getting whatever they needed and searching for Tommy (Joel's brother, as Lena had deduced from the scribblings on the post-its around the man's apartment.) and they had made it abundantly clear from the start: their joint apathy for Lena was enough to let her know that those people wouldn't bother burying her in a marked grave if she dropped dead in the middle of the street.

In any case, Lena promised herself that she was too busy to care. In a matter of a few hours, she would be reunited with her daughter, and she'd never see Tess or Joel again.

They had walked through the rat-infest tunnels for about half an hour when Tess — the one leading the procession — stopped in her tracks, pointed to the map that Joel was holding in his left hand, and said: "I think we're good. Somerset Street. Just outside the gates."

Lena would've suggested they continue along Woodbury Avenue, but the pathway down the street was blocked by a mount of fallen boulders.

Tess and her partner nodded at each other, talking in an unspoken agreement.

Joel was the first to make his way up the stairs and into the street, Lena the last.

━━━━━━━━━━

There were few things in life Lena hated more than the dark. She sometimes thought of herself as a little child, hiding beneath the covers of the monsters that leaped from below her bed. Even so, none of the fabrications in her mind were half as scary as all of the infected sneaking into the dark corners of the city.

One bite was all it took.

One bite and Cess would not have a parent anymore. She'd never learn about what happened to Lena and then would spend the rest of her life living and breathing the violence and bloodshed her mother had tried to keep her away from.

She wouldn't let it happen.

The group had ascended into a deserted street right outside of the quarantine zone, but still so close that they could hear the robotic voice barking instructions through the loudspeakers that were placed throughout the city.

"Observe mandatory curfew to fight infection and insurrection. Observe mandatory curfew to fight infection and insurrection." The hairs on Lena's arms pricked up at the sound of the message. She would rather not remind herself of the time she'd spent in the FEDRA prison facilities, back when her face and her name were associated with homegrown terrorism and racketeering through her involvement with the Fireflies. Still, that had been a long time ago; a different, younger Lena. She would not make the same mistakes, not let herself get caught again.

Ellie stood up from her crouching position, taking a few moments to contemplate the scenery surrounding her. "Holy shit." she swore. "I'm actually outside!"

The bright lights of the watchtowers spun around their base, catching a glimpse of Ellie as she marveled at the sights of the tall, dilapidated buildings of Boston.

Tess was fast to push the girl down by her sleeve, the two of them ducking behind a half-collapsed mortar wall.

"Okay, we're gonna take the left edge around the buffer zone." Tess explained in a whisper, pointing her finger toward a pathway that could barely be seen in the moonlight.

"Yeah, yeah, of course." Ellie replied, still shaken from what had happened seconds earlier. It reminded Lena of the first time she'd been out of the quarantine zone, four months after the beginning of the outbreak. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman, but she had been half as clueless as Ellie was.

"Let's go." Tess ordered.

Lena noticed Joel shaking his head at his friend, disapproval seeping through his glance. She wanted to turn around and tell him that she was as happy with their new pairing as he was, but the hovering lights of the FEDRA patrols were enough to let her know that telling him off five feet away from the gates of the QZ was as deadly as turning herself in willingly.

Instead, she chose to follow Tess' lead. She crouched and crawled underneath an old school bus, cursing silently as the small wet rocks and pebbles stuck to her palms and knees like little needles.

The place they wound up in was the remnant of an old highway, with sun-bleached cars and thick shrubbery growing from the cracks in the asphalt. There was nothing but metal skeletons to be seen for miles and miles — the only remaining sign of the hundreds of thousands of families who'd tried to escape Boston to the seafood shacks and quaint beach houses of Cape Cod but were trapped to their death — except for the strip of road that had been cleared out in the middle of the street.

The sound of a military vehicle could be heard coming closer and closer to the group's hiding spot, its headlights illuminating the dark road ahead; no doubt searching for any unfortunate individuals they could arrest and publicly hang as a way to ingrain the harsh martial law into the people's minds.

When the vehicle was gone, Tess gripped the side of the car she was leaning against and looked at the highway through the dirty glass windows. When she went back to her crouching position, she nodded in confirmation at Lena and Joel.

As the group of four continued walking, helicopters began hovering above their heads, threateningly close to the ground. That, and the splotches of rain that were furiously smashing against their faces, forced them to huddle closely together inside an empty construction pipe. As it seemed, the storm was nowhere close to an end.

Ellie glanced at the light projections made by the holes in the metal, her face pale as she pressed her hands against the metal to steady her shaking hands.

"Keep your head straight, Ellie. They're not here for us." Lena whispered, earning herself a small smile from the younger girl.

When the threat of the helicopters was over, Joel signaled to the two women behind him to keep moving toward the exit.

The small path led them to a clearing, right outside of the walls of an old building that had been repurposed for FEDRA raids.

When the lightning stroke again, Lena discerned the silhouette of a soldier, leaning against the walls of the building and holding something between his legs — pissing and whistling, she realized, amused by the scene in front of her.

Tess took a step backward and put her pointer finger against her lips. Silence, she mouthed. Through here.

The group walked up the clearing, the sound of their feet muffled by the violent splattering of water on metal. But before they could make it to the next hiding spot, the soldier zipped his pants and turned around, flashing his light in their direction.

"The hell?" he asked, cocking his gun toward Joel. "Hey, hey! Don't, don't, don't move!"

He inched closer to them.

Instinctively, Lena drew her hand over Ellie's chest, pushing the girl two steps behind her.

"Don't move!" the soldier yelled, raising the barrel of his rifle in the woman's direction.

Lena kissed her teeth and reluctantly followed Tess and Joel, who'd begun knitting their empty hands at the back of their heads.

The soldier lifted the visor of his helm just as another strike of lightning boomed through the sky, illuminating the glade. He glanced at Joel and Tess with a disapproving stare, almost as if he recognized them. "You gotta be shittin' me."

"Okay, let's talk this out." Joel said, his attempts at a negotiation being cut short by the soldier.

"Turn around."

"Hold on—" he pleaded, but to no avail.

The soldier kept barking orders about getting to the ground, but Lena would be damned if she was gonna scrape the skin of her knees for some FEDRA halfwit that was still sucking at his mother's breast when the outbreak began. Shit, she deserved some respect for making it when so many others didn't.

If she were the woman she had been fifteen years before, she'd kick his groin and shoot him in the head before he could even have the chance to react. But here, she had no chance of attacking him without alerting all of the other officers that were patrolling the area.

"What the fuck did I tell you, man? I said stay the fuck home." the officer spoke.

Lena began fiddling with her golden wedding band around her ring finger, as she often times did when she got nervous. Before she had time to rethink her actions, she put her left hand forward and walked toward the soldier with slow steps.

"I'm not looking for trouble. I'm just a mother, coming to pick up her daughter from school." Lena pointed to the girl behind her. The officer furrowed his brow, but Lena's smile disarmed him of anything he wanted to say.

Usually, it was easy to fool those idiots. Most of them were men who hadn't touched women in years, and the sight of bright grins and big racks was enough to make them believe that the night was day. Lena was a beautiful woman, and she had learned how to use that to her advantage.

Usually, they fell right into her trap. It was easy to cajole those idiots into letting their walls down, and before they knew it, she had a gun threatening to blow their brains out.

"Joel and Tess, they're . . . my friends. They're helping me out to find a car so I can go home, is all."

The solider looked behind her shoulder at the man and the woman, trying to scope if he was buying her story or not.

"This doesn't have to be like this, I promise. My friends, your friends. No one has to die today." Lena said, attempting to placate the situation. She unstrapped her backpack and placed it at her feet, sliding the zipper from one side to the other and pulling out a clear plastic bag containing white powder. The man's eyes widened, and she knew that she had hooked him in from two smiles and a couple of sentences. "I'm not just a dealer, but a chemist. I've got my own lab up in Vermont. Burlington QZ, y'know? I was married to General Frederick Prescott before those fucking Fireflies murdered him."

Lena remembered Frederick Prescott clear as day. Most of all, she remembered his pleading stare right before she wedged her knives in his collarbones. He had been her last kill as a Firefly.

"Well, before he died, he helped me set up my farms and my workers. I got crack, coke, crystal, molly, LSD, morphine, heroin, weed, oxy . . . all you could think of, and more. This is just a taste."

She threw the bag at the officer's feet, and he was reluctant to pick it up.

He inspected it for a few seconds, then looked at Lena and the rest with a grave expression. "No. I'm sorry, lady, nothing personal. But your friend Joel has been lying to me for too long. This' the last time. On the ground, now."

The gun directed toward Lena gave the woman no choice but to comply. She took a few steps and knelt between Ellie and Joel.

Lena could hear Tess groan from behind. "All right, let's just get down." she put herself on her knees, but not before trying to bargain with the officer once more. "Listen, you let us do this run, we'll split the cards with you."

"Oh, will you?" the man deadpanned.

"Yeah." the woman replied.

"I'm so blessed!"

"Just relax, kid. Nothing bad's gonna happen." Lena whispered at Ellie, though she wasn't sure if she was speaking the words as encourgement for the girl or for herself.

For the second time since coming back home, death had tried to grip her — but she'd already made up her mind: she wouldn't let it happen.

"Hands on your head. Eyes forward." the soldier instructed, taking out a device the size of his palm from one of his uniform pockets.

"Really, man?" Tess complained as he approached her and pierced her skin with the small needle of the infection scanner.

"Yep. We're doin' this by the book."

"Jesus Christ." the woman muttered, the device zapping around her throat. "All right. What about three-quarters?"

Ellie began shaking so hard she almost stumbled forward. Lena put a hand on her shoulder, nodding reassuringly. "You're afraid of needles, kid? It's okay, I've done this a hundred times before. You won't even feel a thing."

The girl kept staring down at the rubble beneath her knees, fear paralyzing her entire expression.

"No, Lena, it's not that—"

The scanner beeped, a green light showing up on Tess' read.

"Unauthorized exit and helping an unidentifited citizen enter the QZ with illegal merchandise. They'll hang you both for that." the soldier taunted, approaching Joel's neck.

"You sure this is even the right way to use that thing?" Lena asked. "From what I remember, you're supposed to sanitize the needle after each individual use."

The man cackled loudly. He knew he had power over all three adults, and he was taking pleasure in it. "You wanna sanitize it for me, honey?"

Lena rolled her eyes, biting her tongue from issuing a threat there was no coming back from.

"Fine, everythin' off of this run, and half off on all of the pills." Tess offered, desperation oozing from her tone.

So it was the pills the soldier wanted.

"I left a box of oxy hidden beneath the floorboards, back at Joel's!" Lena announced. Tess glanced furtively at her but said nothing. All of them knew her words were a crock of bullshit, but they needed to pretend they were as thick as thieves to save their skins. "You can keep half of it."

After Joel's test came back with a positive beep, it was Lena's time. She had never been a big fan of needles, but she had gotten so used to having her skin pierced every time she entered or left a government facility that the patch around her neck was always full of small pokes.

She sighed in relief at the audible zap, and then the man finally turned to Ellie. He put his big hands around the girl's throat, making her writhe in place.

"Risk my job for half off? You're outta your fuckin' mind—"

Before the man could read the result that came on the little screen, the girl pulled out a knife — that she'd kept hidden in her sleeve the entire time — and spun on her knees, stabbing him just below his hip.

"Ellie, what the fuck?" Tess turned toward the sound as the soldier began swearing in pain.

The girl looked down at her hands for a split second, almost as if incapable to comprehend what she'd just done. The moment was gone in the blinking of an eye, as she was quick to take a few steps back, placing herself behind Lena's back.

"Fuckin' bitch!" the soldier groaned, pulling the knife out of the wound in his leg. He pressed a hand against the gash to stop it from bloodying all over his clothes. With his other arm, he gripped the rifle and lifted it at his head level. "Get out of the fuckin' way!"

"Whoa! Whoa!" Joel raised his voice, putting his hands forth in a pacifying gesture. "We can fix this!"

"Move." the soldier said, keeping his weapon on Joel and his eyes on Ellie. He was set on revenge, but Lena wouldn't let him get it. She muttered something to the girl about staying close and watching her back, and then pulled out the sickle from its sheath on her weapon belt.

"Move!" the soldier repeated, this time louder, colder.

Still, Joel remained in place.

There was a moment, a single flash in the buckle of time, in which Joel's eyes shone with a glint of uncompressing anger. Before the soldier could shove him to the side and get to Ellie, he launched himself toward the younger man and began hitting him in the gaps of his helmet with his closed fists.

For a few seconds, Lena didn't know how to react. There was an impending look of terror on her face as she listened to the sound of skin lashing at skin in a way she hadn't heard before.

The punches kept coming and coming, each harder than the last, each motivated by pure anger, contempt, spite.

She glanced at Tess, waiting to see if Joel's girlfriend — or so she'd assumed — would try to stop him. He's gonna kill him, Lena wanted to say, but she stopped before she opened her mouth.

He's FEDRA, a little voice at the back of her head whispered, and all of them deserve to die.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest, brushing the patch of skin where her tattoos were placed. The Helena from her past could not forget the atrocities of war, and neither would this one.

Ellie moved from behind the woman to a spot where she could glance at Joel freely. Again, and again, and again, the man kept smashing his fist against the soldier's face, leaving the young teenager awestruck.

Joel didn't stop until the vigor went out of his opponent. He must've hit him a dozen of times, but his closed hands were enough to send the officer into unconsciousness. When he was finished, he lifted his head and glanced back at Ellie, the two staring at each other until Lena broke their silence.

"What the fuck?" the woman yelled as she looked down at the fallen scanner, a red light beaming on the screen. She reached the device before Ellie could grip it and throw it away, placing it above her head so that the girl couldn't reach it.

"What—" Tess asked, her eyes widening like saucers at the sight of the scanner.

"No, no! No! I'm not sick!" the girl cried out in a pleading tone, but her words went unnoticed by the frenzied adults surrounding her.

"Joel! Joel! Joel!" Tess yelled at his partner, grasping the device out of Lena's hand and shoving the red screen in his face.

"I'm not sick! I'm not sick!" Ellie kept repeating. "Look, this is three weeks old!"

She hastily rolled up her sleeve, revealing a set of bumps and indentations on the surface of her skin, marks that looked awfully similar to the bites of an infected. Only they appeared . . . healed.

"Nobody lasts more than a day!" the child screamed. "Does this look a day old to you?"

Lena began drawing in deep breaths, beding over while placing her left palm above the spot where her heart was. If the shit Lena went through every day didn't kill her, arrhythmia soon would.

While Tess and Ellie exchanged yells with one another, Joel approached Lena.

"You knew about this, didn't you? Oh, I bet you and Marlene orchestrated this. Got us on board to ship the kid halfway through the country. You're gonna go back to your boss, and you're gonna tell her that it's fuckin' over." he spat, stopping as soon as he noticed the state of the woman in front of him. "I swear to fuckin' God, don't you fuckin' die on me."

It's alright, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth. Instead, she pointed at the side pocket of her backpack, where she always kept a bottle of water and a box of bisoprolol.

He fumbled with the bag for a few seconds until he found the container, throwing it in Lena's direction.

She was quick to fill her palm with the small pills, gulping them down her dry throat. Usually, bisoprolol took a couple of hours to enter her system, but her homemade recipe was much more concentrated, and much faster.

"Thanks." she managed to control her breathing, even though her heart jumped against her ribcage like a deer prancing in a forest. "You think it's that easy to threaten Marlene, huh? Believe me, if it were, I would've killed her a looong time ago."

Lena slowly rose to her feet, marching toward Ellie and gripping the girl's arm in her hand. "Let me see!"

"Ouch!" the girl fulminated, earning herself a glare from the woman.

"So you're immune?" the question came in a quiet trickle, but everyone was able to hear it.

"Bullshit!" Tess riposted. "No one is fuckin' immune to this fuckin' shit."

Lena ignored the woman's words. "That thing earlier that you wanted to show me, back at Joel's before he woke up? This is it?"

"Yes! But I—"

"I should fucking kill you!" Tess screamed. "When did it happen?"

"It doesn't matter!" Ellie argued. "You have to trust me!"

Lena scoffed. It had only been mere five minutes since her medication, but she could already begin to feel the higher numbness the pills gave her. "Trust you? You're lucky I'm not killing you and leaving you as a little present on Marlene's doorstep!"

Lena was bluffing, but she didn't expect the young girl to catch up on it. Most kids her age shat their pants whenever the woman mentioned knives near their throats, but not Ellie.

"Yeah, do that and you can say bye-bye to Chelsea!" she sneered.

The woman was beginning to get annoyed. "Listen here, you little shit. You say anything else about my daughter—"

"Enough!" Joel's scream was enough to outmatch everyone else's. He looked at his partner. "We've gotta go. If we don't run, they're gonna come for us."

Only then could Lena distinguish the sound of sirens blaring in the distance.

The man looked back at Lena. "Can you walk?"

"Yeah—" she replied.

"Can you run?" he asked again.

The moment of doubt in Lena's voice was enough for him to know she couldn't. He reached for her fallen backpack, throwing it over his shoulder.

He then approached the woman, pulling her closer to him with a strong sweep of his arm. "This okay for you?" he asked, putting his hand on her hip, and sliding her right limb over the back of his neck.

Lena was taken aback by his sudden change of demeanor, but she wouldn't play ungrateful, not when this stranger was risking his life to save her. She nodded reassuringly.

Tess widened the hole in the metal fence, yelling at the two of them to come faster.

Before she left, Lena took one last glance behind her shoulder at the walls of the Boston Quarantine Zone. There she was, like a child, looking at her home as if it was the first time she left.

There was an aching feeling in her chest, and not from the irregular pumps of blood from her heart. She glanced at the city she'd lived almost thirty years in, and knew, deep in her soul, that it would be the last time she would look at it.

first and foremost, i know i promised a big chapter containing the rest of episode 1 and the entirety of episode 2, but, well, ermmm . . . i changed my mind (not because i felt like doing so, just because my brain was so fried this week that i literally couldn't connect two sentences together.)

still, i hope you enjoyed this chapter!! it was kinda boring, (mostly because i didn't have much to work with) but toward the end it's all about lena being a senior citizen before her time who can't run for shit and joel helping out his future wife lol.

i'm on vacation right now and oh my god i'm literally so in love with everything?? it's been such a long time since i've been to the beach but my brother's house is like a 30 minute walk from the ocean and that makes me so happy :)

i don't know how much free time i'll have this week since i'm trying to spend it all with this side of my family but i will update as much as i can!!

love you all, thanks for reading this book!! 💌

word count: 4075 words (bigger than i expected, wow)

date started: january twenty-fourth

date finished: january thirtieth

date published: january thirtieth