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📻 — CHAPTER ONE ..
' cloud specialist '

          THE NEEDLE OF AN empty syringe was stuck deep in the neck of an infected when a gloved hand wrapped around it and pulled it out with a grunt. Holding it up to the gas mask, the observation was easy to make: the needle was bent under heat in at least three different places. A sigh followed peacefully, as if it had aimed to give nature that which it missed at that point through the absence of the wind. The atmosphere was still over the neighborhood turned graveyard for the infected.

"There was a paper at some point affirming that you can still hear what's going on around you two minutes after death and that gives me just about a couple dozen seconds right now left to explain," the muffled voice struggled to speak to the dead Stalker from behind the mask. At that point there was no longer a matter of whether anything human remained under all what the fungi had made of the victim, because she's proven it, tested the theory and turned it into a fact, even if just for herself and Pete. 

"What I injected into your neck brings us a step closer to finding a way out of this," Wendy explained, at her usual fast paced speech, while beginning to remove the needle. Her hands were covered in plastic blue gloves, now stained almost entirely with dark blood, dried and coagulated over. 

"A cure," she tossed the needle away, far across the street. It probably rolled and stopped into another one of the bodies making the field of death look in flower. Blood mixed with dust and ruble. A massacre of infection turned yet another nature-overgrown neighborhood of Carroll into a scene that completed the painting of desolation initially abandoned into the tragedy of houses burnt and crumbled to ruin. 

"I've identified and isolated antibodies which decompose Cordycepin, then made a toxin out of them that triggers a chain reaction amongst remaining active enzymes of the host's system," she slipped the body of the syringe into her pocket. "Upon injection, they coordinate mass burning of all Cordyceps bodies it can identify inside the host. Unfortunately, it currently works too slow and it causes severe damage to any of the tissues that the fungi has infected and attached itself to."

Wendy took a moment for a single short breath, "I'm sorry for the excruciating pain you had to go through in your last moments." Looking down at the infected made it hard not to grimace. There were several stages of infection and while the first one has gotten easier to look at over the years and still see the reassembly to a human, from the second stage upwards, it was hard to swallow disgust and fear to comprehend that even if tendrils have grown out through their eyes, burst their skull and formed the first bodies of the Cordyceps fungi, a human consciousness was buried in that body turned maimed prison. "But I hope you understand."

"Hey-"

A single shouted intrusion on the hushed conversation with the corpse had Wendy grasp her shotgun and turn around with it armed and ready to fire. Keeping it up didn't last though, as the person she was showing the end of the barrel was the furthest thing from a danger to herself. "Sorry," Wendy lowered the shot gun and being offered a hand, she got herself pulled back to her feet from beside the body.

"Didn't you hear me?" Though their gas masks were blurred by blood and dust leaving close to no chance at even hoping to glimpse at each other's eyes, Wendy needed no sight of Pete's expression to tell that he had been worried sick not to hear her response. He shrugged his rifle on his back, readjusted the plastic recipient in his left hand and put the pistol in his right away. 

"Can't tell I have."

"Are we clear in this area?"

Wendy double checked with a quick look around, noting the car on top of which she begun the cleanup, as planned, now surrounded by piles of infected, and then the sporadic kills across the street. "I think so," she nodded in confirmation and Pete's sigh of relief was audible.

"Had a couple Clickers in the yards," Pete's voice gradually became clearer as he pushed the gas mask up on top of his head. Still, a bandana covered his mouth while he squinted towards the direction where he was responsible to do the clean-up. His tone was playful, oscillating and undulating around the idea that finally, he could relax in the only company he really needed besides that of his rifle's. "The houses are clear of infected and of supplies thanks to me. And..." After shaking his head hard enough to knock the bandanna under his chin, he looked down and lifted the plastic recipient, "Got us some fuel too."

Having gone through the same unveiling process of her senses, Wendy sighed out a deep breath of fresher air and smiled, "Seems it was a good choice stopping in Carroll after all."

"Sure thing," Pete chuckled at the sight of her faint smile, proud on his behalf of the accomplishments listed, "if three days of almost non-stop cleaning is worth ten liters." Keeping mental stocks of their ammunition was an untrustworthy process because just then, he was unsure whether or not they had more or less than when they entered this town and settled camp for a while.

"Ten liters and invaluable samples," she added, stepping aside and presenting him with her previous chatting partner. "We haven't come across a second stage infected in months. Timed it and the new toxin killed them in about seventy seconds. Which is still slow, but much better than last month."

Seeing Winnie talk with the dead will never not make Pete's skin crawl, but given he knew exactly how important this part of her work was to her, he's gotten used to not commenting about it anymore. Though he knew the facts she's discovered, he learnt inside out the science she explained to him so patiently, he looked down at that thing and all he could see was a monster. Nothing more, nothing less. 

And perhaps that was for the better. He couldn't afford moments of hesitation, he couldn't exactly afford suddenly losing the only skill which kept the two of them safe. 

"That's great, right?" Pete raised his brows with a slow shake of his head. 

He earned himself a push of Wendy's fist into his shoulder, "Yes, it is."

"Then we have reason to celebrate tonight so how about we star heading back to camp before that cloud become a problem." He looked over her head and with a confused little blink, Wendy followed his gaze and turned around. Past the uneven tree lines, on a horizon decorated with a water tank busted open and corroded until only the 'C' out of Carroll could be distinguished, a looming darkness had formed unbeknownst to her.

She could have sworn the morning had a clear sky, a warm wind, a humid air classic to summer. But now, after the passage of time has gone unfelt, it seemed the skies have turned grey and the horizon held the fury of a gigantic cloud, a dark wall with raging greens smoldering within its mass. There was no wind and since they've stopped talking, it was also quiet.

Warmth crept on her back and before Pete's chin rested on her left shoulder, Wendy already knew he has stepped closer, taking full advantage of the silence to hug his right arm around her. "It looks like it could get here in twenty minutes. Hail most likely."

Wendy had turned her head to the side just about enough to not shrug Pete off of her, only so she could glimpse to the fullest at how casual concentration looked on him. After living with each other for ten years, one would think she would have learnt all his expressions inside out. And she did. However, that didn't mean she got tired of watching the speck of color dance in his eyes with light. 

"Alright, my cloud specialist," Wendy turned around and left a kiss on his cheek. "I'll be done gathering the last samples in five minutes then. Less if you help me with any Runner from that pile over there."

"Miss my chance to stick my hands into an infected brain for you?" Pete's voice failed to elate with the same excitement as his words while he grimaced away a pained smile. "I wouldn't dream of it."

Wendy buried her chuckle into her motion of bringing the bandanna back over her mouth and nose and lowering back down next to the corpse. The sampling process was simple for infected at this stage, as much as it was disgusting. There was no need to get out her pocket knife or cut anything at all, but it was sufficient to bring the tiny vial down under the inflated eyes of the infected, now but gaping pits still oozing a yellowed color liquid flattening tendrils onto the decayed skin. The substance would flow into the vial at its own time and that was it.

In less than five minutes, they were back on the road, heading to the outskirts of Halbur, where they set camp in the garage of a ruined house. Playing from inside Wendy's backpack, the battery radio was singing an old Johnny Cash cassette that has made it with them since the outbreak day.

"We're lucky they bombed this region," Pete sighed out once they could see in the distance the part where plants would go scarce, marking the bare fields, half scorched by a summer weather coming to an end and half suffering the backlash of what measures the government has employed in the early years since the CBI begun claiming victims. Carroll City itself was nothing but a crater, while Middle Raccoon River had been contaminated and turned to a swamp.

"Don't say that," Wendy nudged him.

"We've killed just about two hundred infected here and made enough noise since Dedham to wake up half the county. But it's quiet still, which means the area's been sanitized well by the bombs and the military, with little to no visitors," Pete ended his explanation with a shrug meant to better hold his backpack. It was more filled than usual and looking rather heavy from Wendy's perspective. He did have, after all, the bad habit of hoarding supplies, and it was up to her to convince him at the end of each day what they actually needed and what they could leave behind. 

"Or," Wendy proposed, "the rest of the population survived and made it out before they dropped the bombs."

"I like my version better," he commented shamelessly.

"Of course you would," she chuckled, though deep down she knew his judgement was correct and a good self preservation hope to hold. From experience, non-infected humans were most of the time far worse than the infected.

Thunder has marked the moment when day darkened to night and a cold gust of wind blew from behind them, up the hill. It was only flashes of lightning and ground shaking noises until Pete lifted the door of the garage and Wendy slipped inside, then thunder so loud it felt like the very sky torn in half let out hail the size of golf balls. 

"How did you know it was going to hail?" Wendy inquired, even as she was out of breath from helping Pete scoop up the garage door and get it to the stopping point at which it can remain open on it own, about enough for Pete to get inside. Though under a roof, they had to shout to hear each other from the commotion outside, the very opposite of the silence they've gotten so used to since the clean-up was done. 

"Experience," Pete shrugged it off and pulled down on the garage door. "You see a bad storm enough and you start being able to tell when it's around, from more than just cloud shapes." Glancing down, he caught sight of the two round metal tags hanging around his neck from a leather thread. He looked back up and pulled harder on the door not budging anymore, "Rosey used to sneeze all day before a big storm hit us."

"Smart girl," Wendy pointed out stepping forward to help out with the door. 

"No," Pete stepped back and gestured for her to stay away, "it's stuck, no use to pull a muscle for it. Get me some light on its gears there to the right and I'll see if I can clear out the rust and have it go down by itself. We're gonna have a problem if we cannot close the garage overnight."

The storm got much worse in under half an hour. 

Wendy sat down on the ground, keeping the flashlight pointed upwards at the place where Pete had to get up on a chair to reach and hope to fix. From down there, in that position, she was as tall as the opening of the garage door and able to keep a close watch on how the storm turned from hail into heavy rain making it near impossible to see a single feet in front. Frequent lightning fortunately revealed from time to time that the front was clear of any infected, but Pete insisted she kept the shotgun in her lap, just in case they missed any house in the surrounding area. 

Then again, Wendy was a bit more reasonable and less likely to sweat over this: they had a roof over their head, a functional sturdy car with them, one in which they could sleep and hide from infected, which were unlikely to have made it past their cleaning tactics anyway. As for other humans... They haven't seen a single one in well over a month. 

"Maybe we can start a fire and get to cooking-"

"I'm almost done," Pete cut her off. 

Taking a chance was an equivalent of asking for death in this world, no matter how certain you are of your odds. Frankly, he knew no matter the outcome of his attempts with the door, all this stress will prove to have been murderous on his appetite for sleep that night. Or his appetite for anything at all in general. 

He could already see it: his hand freezing on the trigger of the pistol, his muscles locking, his eyes forgetting how to blink, even though, in theory, with Winnie snuggled to his chest, he should find peace. And it was serenity, the sort that made him want to keep watch; the sort that reminded him why he needed to protect her.

"Hey," his voice pitched as the light fell off the place he was working on and the knife he's been brazing rust off with went in blindly, chipping on his finger. "Want me to cut my hand off here?" Though he was building a laugh-it-off situation, the laughter stuck in his throat when he looked down and saw the wide eyes with which Wendy looked outside.

"There's someone..."

"Did they see us?" Pete jumped off the chair and snatched the flashlight from Winnie's hand just to switch it off. 

"No," her voice was weak and uncertain. 

"Good. Infected or not?" He didn't know how to whisper and still be heard while the wind howled outside threatening almost to tear of concrete from the ground, so he still had to shout, even as he picked Wendy off the ground and took her shotgun, ready to put her behind him. 

Aware she was still rather squeamish about killing those that weren't infected without a more solid reason than "just their safety", this was Pete's way of offering to take care of it himself. It was a realization that slapped Wendy across the face the second he tried to turn away from her so, electrified with that, she grasped his arm, "There's a kid, out there, Pete!"

On his tongue, he could feel the burning of an answer that even he knew went past all moral codes he could ever hope to still be worthy of counting under. He bit his tongue, looked right into Wendy's eyes and hesitated. It was clear what Wendy wanted them to do and it was clear to both of them that Pete was not going to accept that any time soon.

"Please," she tugged on his sleeve and his very heart ached to have to stand his ground against this. Wendy wrapped her hands around his forearm and pulled him closer, "Do you know how fast someone can lose a limb from soaking in the rain for too long? All other houses in the area are completely destroyed, no more roofs. We know. 'Cause we checked." A pause marked her own hesitation where her fib would come through with a softer, much calmer voice, "It's just a kid..."

First came the pout of uncertainty, then the silence of listening to the heavy rain and at last, a puff by which Wendy had successfully reanimated the spark of Pete's humanity, such a scarce light to shine on anyone else but her. With his nod of approval, Wendy immediately dashed outside. Two steps into the rain and she was soaked to the skin. 

Hands cupping her mouth, she shouted through the storm and found herself with an expected reaction from the adult who was there with the kid, the adult she saw but knew that if she told Pete about, they would have gotten into the car and left those two to their own business which would most likely be gaining sickness in a world that kills anyone remotely weak. 

The stranger raised his gun and with the curtain of rain becoming thinner, Wendy heard the click of another gun's safety coming off. Pete was right beside her, somewhat behind, ready to step forward and shoot. His teeth were gritted, jaw tensed and nothing could have broken that hatred in his gaze but Wendy's hand coming over the barrel and pushing it down while waving the strangers over. 

"We have shelter!" she shouted to them and watched as the child shared a look with the older man. 

"You knew there were two of them," Pete mumbled near her ear.

"Father and daughter," Wendy assumed.

"We don't know them," his concern cut through in plain paranoia as the strangers crossed the street. "They've got weapons. I don't like this, Winnie."

"It's alright," she quickly brushed her thumbs over his hand, "we'll skip sleep and keep watch." After a short smile, she rushed forward to greet the jumpy old man and the wide eyed girl; both looked like they have been through hell, which at this point in time might as well be the new look of humanity because no one alive hasn't gone through the worst there is. "Come on in-"

A noise as loud as it could get inside a storm came from the left, turning all four heads in that direction. 

Pete felt a tug at his ankles and as he squinted towards the direction of the noise rather blindly from how dark it was outside, a brazing lightning helped the trigger of true terror.

"Tornado!" It was a blur whoever called the horror for what it was: a natural force with pure rage, tearing house from the ground and hurling debris in the air. 

"Get in!" Pete yanked Wendy back towards the garage, yet she turned around only in time to see a car tossed by the wind beginning to pick up again right into the garage door, slamming it closed than being brushed off, over their heads, flying further up the street where it disappeared into darkness. "Shit," Pete rushed forward and the older stranger ran past Wendy understanding that a roof over their head was a common goal at that point. Side by side they pulled up on the garage door without a single budge of the curved metal.

"Joel!" the child shouted panicked over the wind that pushed her right into Wendy's side and was now held there in place as she had wrapped an arm around her. The man answered to the name and looked over his shoulder. "We need to get the fuck out of here."

Wendy looked over her shoulder and announced, "It's getting closer. Pete!" 

Pete left the attempt to get the door lifted last, turning around only to get his hand into Wendy's and take a quick look around at a surrounding painted in darkness barely flashed by lightning. "The river," he recalled vaguely the opening to the sewers dropped into a thin river nearby. 

"How far is it?" Joel asked.

"Can you run?" Pete's question retorted on the spot.

It wasn't much of a choice: run or die.

Running was perhaps the dumbest thing to do in case of a tornado, especially one that, in their three seconds of glimpsing at it, looked massive in diameter. But it was also their only option, given the certainty of a terrain that allowed no other shelter options. All other sewer entrances were too small to fit even the kid with them so the big one by the river was their only shot and even then, if the tornado stayed on their tail by some cosmic bad luck, they were in big trouble still, risking to be hurled around with nothing to hold on to. 

Luck has all but run out for all of them because while breathlessly making it to the river, all sorts of objects which did not belong that high in the air flying and getting tossed around was a sign the tornado's path was exactly towards the sewer they crawled into. 

Wendy went in first, by Pete's insistence. Then followed the kid, Joel and finally Pete.

The sewer went deep and it would have been perfect if they could get further from the entrance, so they advanced in and almost fell in the hole right in the middle of it. 

"There's a ladder," Wendy called, looking down from being right beside the wall. She helped the child pass around the hole in the ground towards further down the sewer tunnel. "Looks like a hideout," she turned to look at Pete. Wind was strong, but bearable, despite all surfaces being beyond slippery.

"A human made one," Pete grimaced at the very thought of an unsafe place being so close to them. 

"The wind's almost gone over here, guys," the girl called out, pointing her flashlight ahead.

Reading on Wendy's face that she was contemplative about this, Pete moved ahead of her and crossed over, offering his hand to her as encouragement and help to get moving, as fast as possible. Pressured, though constantly looking down at the pitch black hideout, Wendy crossed past it and Pete let go of her hand so she could move forward.

Moving became instantly harder as the howling of the wind screeched. 

"Joel!" the kid made a step forward and all chaos unfolded uncontrollably from there on. 

Joel had been pinned to the wall, nails digging into the metal of it and slowly hurting too much to resist being pulled out by the wind. 

The kid's step forward had Wendy take a step back and the wind pulled her off her feet within the second. Slipping on her back, she couldn't help a scream, over which she thought she heard Pete calling her name.

Pete reached his hand out to grab her upon hearing her scream, but she slipped right past him and into the ladder down the hole in the ground, disappearing into it. 

"Ellie, stay there-!" Joel delivered through gritted teeth a sound matched by the creak of the ground beneath his feet, giving in that little space they had to step on and further opening the hole through which he slipped after bumping on the same ladder, now demolished from its hold.

Pete caught Ellie's arm, but his own hand slipped from a half decent hold and both of them were swept off their feet, past the hole in the ground and right on the roof of the tunnel, sliding towards the exit. 

Five seconds was all it took for things to get from bad to worse, but the passage of the tornado over the river felt like an eternity.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
OKAY here we go !!! Oh my gosh, watch the first episode of the adaptation this morning and it was kinda cool ngl, really pumped up with drive to finish this chapter today and get this started

Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and this book so far
and hey, feel encouraged to comment as much as you please cause I really want to talk about tlou and this book !!

The four of them barely just met and chaos is already starting haha
( for timeline guidelines, this happens after ellie and joel leave pittsburgh, like a week or two away from it )