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📻 — CHAPTER FIVE ..
' people who change '

March 1988,   Rondônia, Brazil

          IT'S BEEN A LITTLE LESS than a year since Joaquim Fontes Vargas took his wife's name and left São Paulo for the cold, but charming Denmark. Diana Larsen's inheritance and prestige in law, their young love and similar thirst for life, all played a part in how a business trip and purely coincidental meeting had swiftly taken the young accountant away from his barely blossoming job and into a life dedicated to family. 

Their first child was on the way when they've decided to quench their thirst for travel with another visit in Brazil, a place close to their soul. 

Three months into the pregnancy and Diana has already built the habit of resting her hands into her lap just to be a little closer to who she hoped with every fiber of her being would turn out to be a girl. She's always wanted a girl, perhaps out of the dreamy wish of being a better mother than the one she had herself, or rather for the selfish reason of giving her daughter all she personally always wished she had in her seldomly colorful childhood. 

Joaquim often voiced he wanted a boy, but deep down, he knew he was just happy to be a father, to love his child as tremendously as his own old man had. Most of his mannerism and antics sprung from the humble home of the Fontes a whole community loved the jokes of; Joaquim could abide any new social rules and hide in any posh attire, but at the heart, he was a simple man and that was exactly why Diana loved him. 

A rented Volkswagen Beetle from '67 bounced on an unpaved road going through the State of Rondônia. It's been with them since Porto Velho, where they flew at the recommendation of a São Paulo boasting days on end he knew someone who could give them the best tour within the Amazonian forest.

The news of new construction plans demanding mass deforestation in these sides of Brazil had a global uproar, so the sensation of 'now or never' has compelled the couple to extend their trip by three days in order to appreciate the miracle of the planet while it was still there. 

Temperatures were hardly at their all time high for the Equatorial climate, but a lukewarm summer in the sprout of spring was still far more than a Danish woman could handle for an extended drive, be it without the roof of the car on. 

Wind was blowing, but they weren't going fast enough through the holes on the road to actually feel anything else but the lack of trees on the side or the lack of a friendly cloud. Humidity clogged Diana's nose and hence, her handkerchief was almost an extension of her right hand. 

Her left hand was going through the pictures scattered in her lap, all taken in the vicinity of Porto Velho, yesterday. Since the tour guide was only available today for an extra two tourists on his boat, they spent the entirety of their first day in this new Brazilian state visiting a coffee plantation that the guide himself recommended. 

Even Diana, who was religiously following her doctor's recommendations for the pregnancy couldn't resist a taste of the coffee freshly made there. 

"I look fat in this one," she put on picture aside. 

"Well, you are pregnant, dear."

"That is no excuse," Diana cut Joaquim's kind comment off with something as easy and venomous as a huff. "If Tina managed to have her boy without any weight gain, so can I. I shouldn't have had that coffee...," she sighed and fixed her sunglasses further up the bridge of her nose with a groan. A bitter taste on the back of her tongue had long formed and it was not going away, so she grimaced into her handkerchief and rolled her shoulders back.

"You look a bit pale," Joaquim had glanced to her only briefly to be able to distinguish that worrisome detail. His right hand parted within the second from the steering wheel and touched his wife's forehead, sliding his palm underneath her bangs. "Darling," he breathed out shock, tugging on the wheel to pull over already, "you're burning up."

"Well, it's damn hot outside, Kimi," she exclaimed, reaching out to the wheel and get them back on the road. "The sun is killing my eyes, so let's just get there already. I need some shade."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Diana quickly dismissed and closed the subject by turning on the radio. However, once her hands were back in her lap, she held them a little safer around her stomach. Leaning her head back, she remembered too little from the actual journey to the meeting point with the tour guide. Joaquim though she had fallen asleep, but if she had, then Diana only woke up in the middle of walking towards the boat they would take up the Madeira River. She had no knowledge of getting there and startled to consciousness, she forgot how to walk in an instant.

That would be the day Joaquim will grow old and describe as "the day he almost lost Diana". She didn't remember it, but he recalled too well every single grotesque detail from the second her knees collapsed on the ground and her blood stained the rocks. 

He remembered the vomit and its yellow rot, smelling like the forgotten closet no one has opened in a while. He remembered her shaking, her whimpers, the red of her bloodshot eyes. His own panic was intoxicating: the hospital was all the way back in Porto Velho.

"It was the kindness of the people that saved your mother," he would say once decades saturated this nightmare into a memory long averted. A local with a motorized boat waved them over; the tourists gathered for the tour helped Joaquim carry his wife, becoming erratic, to the boat. The whole boat drive he froze over, but she was burning up still, regurgitating every single vitamin in her body. 

His hopes for the pregnancy had been vanquished altogether and when he arrived at the hospital, all he could shout after the doctors was, "Por favor, salve... salve minha esposa!". Please, save my wife. 

Thirty six hours later he met with the doctor that took his Diana. "Both the lady and her child are safe," the doctor presented calmly, being met with the sudden exhale of relief of the man. Joaquim grasped the hands of the doctor between his and bowed his forehead down to them. He couldn't even complain about how ridiculous it's been it was nothing alarming, yet he still waited there for so very long without knowing what has happened, without being able to see her. 

"It was simply an oddly strong food poisoning case," the doctor continued his explanation. "We've been getting quite a lot of those lately. It's nothing to worry about. We'll keep Mrs. Larsen under observation for the following week so we can return to the body all the nutrients both her and the child have abruptly lost, and to also avoid such a long flight so soon. Could you, perhaps, identify what might have been the cause of this?"

He didn't have to think too hard to know: the coffee plantation. 

Diana's lost her appetite since that coffee; ate no dinner, no breakfast more substantial than an apple, acted oddly irritated, more so than usual. The second she recovered, she confirmed it was the coffee she drank that must have made her sick and two months later, Danish lawyers have sued the local producer and successfully closed the business. 

📻

JOURNAL ENTRY, Mar. 2015

          Evolution of this scale does not happen out of the blue. Gen and I have identified the immunity me and my sister benefit from might come from a precursory of the CBI virus manifested during the 80s in northern Brazil, where my mother had a food poisoning case from coffee while she was pregnant with me. Having survived it, she passed on the antibodies necessary to kill the virus once inside the host. 

Theoretically, the Fireflies have resources which would help confirm the origin of the mutated Cordyceps. Theoretically.

This only deepens my concerns though. To go from insects to one of the most complex mammals in existence is a leap that not even a thousand years should have been sufficient for the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis to make. Unless... of course, we are not dealing with a natural evolution, but rather an artificial one. A biological weapon rather than a natural disaster.

How are we supposed to make a cure if we don't know how all of this even started? 

We theorize the cordyceps has mutated with an unidentified bacteria, hence the spreading has branched out to direct contact with infected bodily fluids instead of remaining just spore-based. We are still missing too many variables and since half the population is gone, I doubt those with answers are still alive. 

I need to talk with Marlene about this. About all of this. While it's great we were able to find more immune, I feel we'd make more progress if we were to understand the origins of the infection first. I don't care as much as Pete about telling her of my immunity. I trust her wish to cure the world as much as I trust my own drive. I'll talk with her tonight. 

📻

Three Weeks Ago

          "HOW?" THE QUESTION turned to a demand just as the wounded whine had previously turned to a question. Wind flapped the plastic cover of the tent behind Joel's statuesque posture. He was the boulder threatening the avalanche over the side of a mountain road and with their safety in peril to such extent, Pete's pistol was aimed directly at Joel's head, with no prospect of lowering it down until the conversation has been spent.

The sight of the end of a barrel would have usually made Joel uneasy enough to become rash and irrational, grit his teeth on a need for survival and nothing more. But he was breathing borrowed air and his lender was looking at him with wide, patient eyes. 

"How did you do it?" Joel looked up at Wendy, the courage of doing so cracking and bringing down his whole avalanche of emotions; he could see them before his eyes... Sam, Henry, Tess. Good people, people he cared about, whose lives would have went on had they had a cure.

Joel's face scrunched down in a glare. Why did they have to die and why did he have to live? 

His right hand lifted a finger to point at Wendy and he took a step forward, "I was infected and you-"

Pete stepped forward; Wendy raised her hand to his chest to stop him from advancing in front of her.

"You had a cure this whole time," Joel accused, bitter and slow, unable to see that Ellie, watching from behind Wendy, looked at him with a knowledgeable pity. He had no way to know the child was the one who caused the bruise on Pete's face, lashing out ready to beat answers out of their saviors for she too had people claimed by the virus, people she wished were still alive.

"It's not a real cure," Wendy sighed, lowering her hand down.

Joel's chin shivered. Stupid, he could hear his own voice thunder in his mind. You assumed you were saved. "Am I...?"

"No," she shook her head. "You were infected for about half a minute. But you are not infected anymore."

"Am I immune?"

Wendy shook her head.

"This is a cure."

"It doesn't work for everyone, Joel," Wendy said, filaments of remorse turning her voice tender. "If I had a real cure I wouldn't be hiding it. I didn't know it was going to save you. I sure hoped it will, but the certainty was not there. I've seen it go completely wrong before and though I am working on it, it's just going very slow."

"How?" Joel insisted, lack of reason springing out of the wounded soul of a man who has heard of countless attempts to make a cure, followed by just as many failures. He was a man who has felt the worsening of the world on his very skin from the first day of the outbreak and all through the years that followed. "How are you working on it?"

"I'm doctor in biochemistry," Wendy nodded, neither disturbed nor panicked in front of his roughed tone. "Worked in genetical engineering before the outbreak...," her pause told hesitation, but after a sharp inhale covered it up, a pause was just a pause. "It's sort of what I do."

"You're with the Fireflies then?"

"We're not with those fuckers," Pete answered that question for her. His guard was up. It has been up since she saw Wendy shove that needle in Joel's arm because he knew no matter the outcome, things would get bad. 

On one hand, Joel could have turned, in which case, Pete would have had to kill him, making Ellie lash out; while Pete was hellbent on protecting Winnie, that did mean he'd kill a child with a light heart. He didn't want that sort of blood on his hands if he had a choice to avoid it. 

On the other hand, Joel could have been saved, in which case he would have woken up with questions and with the dangerous knowledge that Winnie possesses something everyone wants. People like to step over the dead to get what they want in this world and frankly, though the killings have been avoided for now and the damn thing saved Joel's life, Pete expected all hell break loose at any moment. Ellie's anger outburst before they left Fairmont proved that to him, that he should never assume the reasonable out of desperate survivors.

"We've had our differences with them," Wendy explained much calmer. "It's just me, Pete and a friend from Denmark working on this."

"So you better not tell anybody that you met us. Alright, buddy?" Pete couldn't help but blurt out his true only worry. This safety he tried to keep Wendy and himself into only worked as long as those who unfortunately knew them either didn't know them well enough or had no idea where they were at. Joel seemed like a true survivor, the sort that had been hardened by this world; there was nothing as bone-chilling as looking into a mirror, so Pete glared, "Or I'll hunt you down personally to put a bullet in your head."

"He won't tell anyone," Wendy shook her head lightly, bringing the reassurance none expected.

"I won't?" Joel tilted his head to the side.

"Ellie told us where you two are going," Wendy looked back over her shoulder, but Ellie only looked at Joel, a shade of remorse playing across her features. "The whole story," Wendy sighed her attention back to the man. "You don't tell anyone about us and we won't tell anyone about the guy travelling the country with an immune girl."

Joel's hands tightened into fists and he looked away. They were in a forest, probably not even that far away from Fairmont, but rather just in the first secluded space they could find to set camp. 

"Maybe we could sit down and discuss...," Wendy offered quietly, but Joel already turned back to her and made another step forward.

"Why doesn't it work for everyone?" Joel pondered his suspicious self out loud. "The cure."

"We don't know yet," Wendy admitted, bowing her head. "We theorize it has something to do with blood compatibility, but I don't have any working equipment or facilities which would help me centralize the issue and fix it. I can barely manage to create test vials as it is and I scarcely have biological test subjects to analyze results through anyway."

"She's working on a cure for all," Ellie cut into the conversation, stepping at Wendy's side. She wanted to justify herself for having gone against Joel's rules, having revealed everything to people she hardly knew really. But it was what Wendy made Ellie feel that had the child open up involuntarily: hope. After all the anger and the sense of unfairness, she listened to what Wendy had to say and for the first time in so long, she felt hopeful that this state the world was in, was not a forever sort of thing. 

"For all?" Joel repeated, confused. "How does that... how does that work?"

"The test vial I injected you with had its best success rates within one minute from infection on the host," Wendy explained. 

"But she is also working on a toxin that destroys the Cordyceps from already long infected victims...," Ellie took over the explanation, putting in passion that startled Joel. 

This would have sounded like pure madness had he not felt the bite, the virus, the pure fear that follow, culminated with the healing he now breathed the miracle of in. He's travelled so long with Ellie, not even sure if it will be worth it in the end; the taste of hope made him tremble with waves of paranoid murmurs. 

"What?" Joel's face scrunched in a nuance of disgust and stepped back. He was barely mumbling at this point.

Ellie did not pause, nor did she lower her excitement. "Runners, Stalkers, even the damn Clickers." Can you imagine it? the flicker in her eyes tried to whine. Not losing people to the infection. 

"How?" Joel inquired towards Wendy.

"It's an isolated antibody I've identified could decompose cordycepin and burn the fungal growth containing the substance. That's what I used to cure you, a diluted form of it anyway. Higher stage infected require a bigger dosage and that proved to be fatal to the host so far, through uncontrollable internal burns." 

"This is the real deal, Joel," Ellie breathed out, a wide smile across her face. 

"And what do you want?" Joel straightened up and still looked just at Wendy. 

"We want you to not tell anyone else about us or about your incident," Pete affirmed promptly. "But also...," he trailed off looking at Wendy.

"Ellie's immunity is special," she started, "because she's still infected, but the virus is not allowed to grow inside her system."

"Excuse me?" Joel narrowed his eyes, confused.

"She's been bitten and the infection was passed into her system. It's in her arm, but it doesn't grow further than that focal point under a now healed wound. It's actively being kept dormant, but it's not gone, which is what makes her immune to spore infestation, something I wasn't able to achieve through none of my test versions. The infection manifests through Ellie differently and it might just be the piece I've been missing all along, to understand why and how this is happening to her."

Finally, Wendy took a moment to breathe, to lower her hands with which she's been gesticulating. "She agreed to provide the samples I need, but for me to collect them, we'll have to tag along. We found a map and we could go as far as Alpine, in Lincoln County. After that, we're parting ways and I would really appreciate if you didn't tell your brother about us."

Joel sniffed after a particularly short moment of thought. "Deal," he straightened up. "But you're giving me a vial of that stuff you put in me."

"No-"

"Deal," Wendy agreed over Pete's disapproval, waiting calmly for Joel to come closer and extend his hand for her to shake. "You understand the toxin is not a guaranteed save from the virus yet, yes?" she repeated her initial biggest concern while Joel firmly shook her hand, but he didn't answer.

📻

Now

          THESE THREE WEEKS MARKED an abrupt change of weather and of perspective. Leaves have turned just slightly copper, but since the altitude picked up on a steep hike through humid, brisk air, the nature remained evergreen around the four travelers. They changed cars before entering Wyoming state, but the new car, though acquired through much struggle, broke down on the Highway 89. It was for the better, as the road close to Alpine was blocked and much easier to traverse on foot.

The mountain air in Lincoln County has forced them to scavenge for jackets before venturing over the rocks, following the river valley north. Though nature did not shy away from its white noise of rustling trees and fast flowing river, their journey was accompanied by a commodity not even the paranoid Pete could part ways with: the country music cassettes. 

Their radio, hanging by the side of Wendy's backpack, ingurgitated one of the cassettes and has been playing lightly every since, tunes with the formidable power of making them all forget, from time to time, that they were walking in a cruel, dark world. 

Ellie had long agreed in her soul that spending time around Wendy and Pete was intoxicating; they danced, they laughed, they held hands, even took pictures after they've discovered a film camera in their last car. All while killing ruthlessly when needed. They brutal survivors, still living their life, as much as they could between the perils of existing in such a time. 

"It's our song," Wendy chuckled after the next song of the cassette had visibly made Pete's face go red, his eyes grow wide; it was the sort of reaction Ellie couldn't help but question. In the radio sung the rough edged voice of David Allen Coe. "Pete and I met while I was studying at a university in Dallas. His family's farm was like two hours away from the city so we had to plan our meetings, ya know. And back then, there were two types of clubs: the country clubs in small towns or the big city clubs."

"Wendy was surrounded by all these posh city kids," Pete leant his head back to let the cold mountain air wash away his embarrassment. "And apparently there was this one guy who simply didn't get the hint that she already had a boyfriend because he couldn't believe she'd go out with a farmer."

"Ronnie...," Wendy recalled the guy's name.

"Fuck that guy," Pete shook his head, laughing.

"And what's the link with the song?" Ellie watched curiously the couple.

"Well, I went out one night at a city club with my friends and found Ronnie there too, and he started getting too close, too touchy, so I escaped to the bathroom and gave Pete a call."

"I was almost done with cleaning the stables when my old man shouts from inside the house that Wendy's on the phone, but I already knew she was out with friends so I was a bit confused as to why she's calling so early."

"So I tell him about Ronnie and I ask him to give me some ideas on how to get out of there without having to deal with that guy anymore."

"Wanna know what I did?" Pete raised his chin with a whiff of pride.

"Let me guess," Joel huffed, looking back at the group he's been leading up the river valley. "You drove to the city to get your girl."

"He made the road in half the time," Wendy laughed.

"Classic," Joel shook his head, hiding his smile by looking back ahead. He wouldn't admit it out loud, but the youth Winnie and Pete exuded was refreshing, no matter how disturbing it was to look at Pete and see himself in him or how gripping was the terror of knowing just what talent laid in Winnie's hands. 

"Did you beat up Ronnie?" Ellie skipped her steps, excited to hear the rest of it.

"Of course I did," Pete shrugged, playing it cool, however, his sentence didn't even end properly that he woke up with a nudge punching his shoulder. 

"If by 'beat up' you mean he took my hand and glared at the guy the whole night, then yeah," Wendy rolled her eyes.

"And that's when the song comes in unfortunately," Pete deflated altogether, fighting the urge to just hide his face.

"You remember how clubs had that 'tip the DJ, get in a song dedication' sort of thing, right, Joel?" Wendy nodded ahead towards the man who simply shrugged. "Well, my boy was two hours into the glaring contest, three glasses of whatever in and definitely tipsy when Ronnie finally sat up and left our group. Less than a minute later..."

Pete cleared his throat and roughed up his voice to a comic, unrecognizable amount, "The next song is dedicated to the farmer boy meeting the city for the first time."

"Tennessee Whiskey starts playing, the whole club falls silent and the whole group stares at Pete, who exclaimed delighted to hear the song come on. 'Baby, this is our song,'" Wendy mimicked Pete and laughed.

"But you played along," Pete bumped into Wendy's side with a cheeky smile on his face already giving away that he did so to wrap an arm around her shoulders and get close enough to kiss her temple. 

"At least Ronnie didn't bother me anymore after that."

Ellie smiled quietly while Pete begun lightly humming along the song he genuinely enjoyed, regardless of the little embarrassing drunk moment he remembered a blur out of. Looking ahead though, the young girl was faced with the reason behind all the noise pick up they've been getting. "Woah," Ellie's steps slowed down, besides Joel.

"Salt River Power Plant," Wendy read out loud the fallen plaque marking the tall structure ahead, still acting as a dam for the water flowing back in this valley's river. "What sort of power plant do you think this one used to be, Ellie?"

They've been having involuntarily lessons for the past three weeks. Ellie couldn't help asking and Wendy couldn't help talking which made for the perfect match to share the most nonsensical blabber on all sorts of topics Joel hasn't heard the mention of since... well, since Sarah ranted to him about her homework. 

"A hydroelectric plant," Ellie answered proudly. 

"Do you remember how they operate?"

"Yes," Ellie nodded along and pointed ahead. "River water is redirected to flow through a pipe that then spins the blades in a turbine, which, in turn... spins a generator that produces electricity." Looking up she was greeted with Wendy's proud smile.

"Hope those lessons of yours help us get across this thing cause taking the road is out of question," Joel sighed, looking up at the power plant, with his hands on his hips. 

"Well-"

"This is as far as we go," Pete cut Wendy off, voice much more serious than before. Everyone turned back to him to see him fold back a map of the area they scavenged along the way. "You two should head ahead through the facility as residential areas should begin after it, but me and Winnie will have to cross the river here and hopefully get to Idaho Falls by tomorrow. We don't want to have to climb a whole mountain."

"You're already leaving?" Ellie couldn't help mumbling her exclamation. She's been getting herself ready for the past few days to part ways with the two, but no amount of preparation could ever hope to save her anymore form this crippling sensation of abandonment she got to taste each time people left her. Why did everyone she grew to like have to leave?

Wendy took a deep breath and looked back at Ellie, lowering down to her eye level, "You still want to go see Marlene, don't you? The offer still stand you know." Wendy has proposed, despite Pete's visible disapproval, that Joel and Ellie just join them to the attempts to get to Europe, rather than searching for the Fireflies. She knew Joel wouldn't have minded that anymore, not as he knew there was some true hope for a cure at last, but Ellie's connection to Marlene was the true immovable object

Don't make me choose, Ellie's eyes begged. "I promised her...," she mumbled. "Will I ever see you again?"

"Not if we have a choice with it," Pete mumbled from behind Wendy, already assessing the best part to cross the river through.

Wendy avoided answering altogether, lifting her hands and placing them on Ellie's shoulders. "Just remember," she spoke quietly enough for just the two of them to hear, "your life is invaluable for only as long as you are living it."

A sniff was the only thing Wendy heard before Ellie shyly stepped closer and gave her the warmth of a hug. 

Wendy's eyes stung. Joel noticed her hands shivering as she hugged Ellie, the same way they shivered every night, when she stood watch beside the radio and read over the translation of the messages she got from Denmark. Her sister hasn't been talking with her since the missed plane deal. 

"I should have flown that plane myself," Joel recalled Wendy's cries from one night, muffled into Pete's chest. At such a memory, he looked away from them and back at the power plant, "Let's get moving, Ellie."

Wendy couldn't keep her tears at bay the moment her smile was towards two people walking away rather than a pair of hopeful eyes genuinely mourning this departure as much as she was. It was inevitable to look at Ellie disappearing with Joel into the facility and recognize this gap felt like the day she realized her sister was alive and she had no way to get to her. 

"We should have warned them," Wendy finally muttered. "About Marlene," she turned her head towards Pete who didn't even look at her, having found a way to get through the river. "Pete."

Only at her call, he stopped advancing and turned around, being faced with the tears in Wendy's eyes. "Honey, you know we couldn't have told them without giving away the fact that you're immune."

"But Ellie's going to die," Wendy cried out, arms crossed at her chest. She was hugging herself in such a trembling manner that Pete turned back and made it to the shore, in front of her, looking up. 

"We don't know that," he reached out to touch her arm, grab her hand, but Wendy stepped back and shook her head.

"Yes, we do."

"Weren't you the type to believe that people can change?" Pete snapped back at her without thinking. 

"Not Marlene," Wendy raised her voice in return. "How could you wish for anyone to go through the shit we went through because of her?"

"Well, I don't care about them, Wendy," he raised his hands in defense. "I care about you and your safety. You know why we cannot tell anyone about your immunity. You know how dangerous people really are. And you can like them all you want, but no one's fooling me."

She knew all that. She knew his instincts were always better than hers and that deep down, she was too caught up in wanting to believe in the good of people to see their malice, their ill intent. Wendy was aware that Pete may be right, but it her chest was aching of emptiness, so her vocal chords froze while she stepped down and passed by him into the river they had to traverse.

"Wendy," Pete called after her, trying to catch up with her silent agreement to just move on.

Guilt was the erosion on her weak voice backed up by a swift, shivered gesture with her hand, telling him that she needed her silent moments now. Pete could understand that, because as long as they were moving away from the trouble of that pair, he was happy to endure her silent treatment. His heart quivered, but the mind calmed it down with a single phrase: at least we are safe. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
And so begins Act 2 <3

Yes, the first flashback says the cordyceps infected through the biggest export in Brazil aka coffee 😎 and yes, Wendy is convinced this was a man made disease, because mutations of this scale do not happen this fast.

This is the act with Tommy Miller and Jackson city mention in the game, but I am just changing the fictive location of "Jackson County" in Wyoming with the real location of "Lincoln County" in the same state.

This act will include all the info about the cure Wendy is working on, including all the techncial stuff too, and will also re-write the action at the university aka I AM SO HYPED FOR ALL OF THIS 🥰💖 hope all of you are here for it too.

Would love to hear your opinions <3