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📻 — CHAPTER SIX ..
' human vs animal '

          "ABSOLUTELY NOT," MARIA barked in the face of her husband. 

Since their separation, it seemed the younger Miller found himself the hope he's truly been looking for all along, getting married and making a life for himself in a small but tightly knit community in Wyoming. "You tell him to go find somebody else," her raspy voice came with all the thorns the beautiful rose of marriage usually brought with itself; it was the loud concern that covered the whole facility past the power plant entrance, hence also making the entirety of the conversation no secret to Joel, instructed to wait a little further away for the verdict. 

"Maria," Tommy tried to whisper  the best he could, "I can't have this hanging over my head."

"Do you have any idea how many men we lost here today?" she snapped back at him in return, still carrying the adrenaline rush of a gunfight pumping her blood with tension. 

After Joel and Ellie arrived, not long after they repaired the power plant to start producing electricity at least for the next week, bandits came in too, guns blazing and aiming to raid all they could, hijack their little hard-worked miracle of light. The whole valley was littered with bodies because of a handful of bastards who saw light as an invitation to lay waste of everything in their path. Moths to a flame, if the flame could get hurt too. 

"What's that all about?" Ellie asked from beside Joel, finally making him look up at her with the sort of look she had trouble deciphering. Was he upset? Was he angry? The line between those two emotions often seemed to be non-existent, making the two coincide in a moment where looking at Tommy, someone supposed to help them on their way, get a lecture was close to bone chilling.

Though Ellie's tone was thin and vulnerable, Joel dismissed with a grunt, planning to just look away, back at his brother and a conversation that now turned to a full blown argument. 

"Does that have anything to do with me?" Ellie inquired, forcing Joel to look at her again. 

It was the first time Joel cursed Wendy for ever having crossed paths with them, because had it not been for her, perhaps Ellie would have learnt to keep her mouth shut already and quit asking questions that couldn't have an easy answer. Annoyance and worry forged Joel into the worst he could be at that time, speaking over the girl with a tired tone, "We'll talk about it later."

Both of them knew 'later' was synonymous to 'never'. Ellie has learnt this much about her escort: he didn't like talking. Not about this, not about the people they lost along the way, not about the graves they dug or the people they killed with their own hands to rescue each other. 

It was inevitable now to feel her heart's very sigh of disappointment as a thought flashed before her eyes: maybe he just didn't like talking with her. 

No, Ellie's reason argued in her mind immediately. That can't be it.

With that confidence, she furrowed her eyebrows and stepped forward, standing in front of Joel. "Did he tell you where the lab is?" At least that's what she though their goal remained. It was the goal she was told about, but Joel's abrasiveness knew all too well that he has since changed his mind. Or at least... he's always known what he wanted, but did not wish to trouble Ellie with it too. 

The thing about getting used to a certain life, no matter how vile, is that doing anything out of its circle of commodity is a strain ruled by a chain reaction of misfortune. One wrong deal and Tess got killed; from there on, Joel wanted nothing more but turn back time, be just a smuggler in a quarantine zone in its last days of survival. He wasn't cut for this impact, for causing this sort of ripples and being saved by miracles he most likely never deserved. 

"We'll talk about it later," he almost glared at Ellie though he knew the child was not to blame for his despair to return in the world where every breath taken felt deserved. 

Ellie watched Joel turn his head away from her. "Later...," she repeated, rising her eyebrows, burying her hope. 

Disbelief played across her face and in a matter of seconds she understood what this meant and her features scrunched on their own as a reaction. "Right." It didn't take a genius to see... Joel was tired of her and this? Her eyes stung with the realization that this was him being disappointed that he cannot get rid of her at last, pass her on to his brother like she's not a breathing, living girl who risked her own life for his so many times. Like she hasn't... killed for his sake already. Like she's never proven her worth by his side. 

She walked away with a puff and there was nothing stopping her from doing so. No flinch of regret from Joel. Ellie's hands turned into fists and her neck tightened over a lump. Another abandonment. How could she have been so dumb?

📻

JOURNAL ENTRY, FALL 2023

          Ellie's immunity is filling in the gaps. Her reaction to CBI is a genetic anomaly that reveals weaknesses in the fungal system, such as the way spores recognize infected bodies and avoid redundant infection. While I get a fever after breathing through spores, Ellie is unaffected because she's carrying the Cordyceps physical strain inside her already.

Gen encourages me to extract the latent antigen from Ellie's samples and test out the classic vaccine formula we've been avoiding since the beginning due to the high mortality rate of the CBI and its chaotic means of infective spread.

However, I noted that Ellie's immunity system is defective due to the presence of the Cordyceps. The virus' latency is costing her body a dangerous deficiency. This might be less of a consequence of infection and more of a cause of immunity though.

Immunoglobulin A is part of blood's plasma and it's a primary antibody and a protein. Similarly, enzymes that help speed up metabolism and other chemical processes in the body are also proteins. Certain neuraminidase enzymes act either pro or anti inflammatory, regulating the way immune cells move and interact within the body.

Why am I drawing this parallel? Because of the cordycepin, a derivative of nucleoside adenosine, usually found in Cordyceps species. Adenosine is one of the four nucleoside building blocks of RNA, which are essential for all life. Because cordycepin is similar to adenosine, some enzymes cannot tell the difference between the two, which is viable for CBI as well, where this further facilitates infection and compromises the system's integrity.

What if the CBI doesn't spread because of the slow immunity system?

From our first tests, our main problem was the rapid spread of the virus. If we had a way to slow down the spread in an infected body and only after that administer the toxin isolated from my blood... it might work. It might actually work. 

📻

          PETE NODDED TOWARDS WINNIE from across the room. 

Dust suspended its Browning movement in the space between them. 

Their breaths were short and hinged to make no sound, despite the ragged gasps natural after a run that sweated their foreheads regardless of the cold. 

But while their bodies were pressed each to a wall framing the entrance into a long hallway spreading parallel to them, the cabin itself was roaring shamelessly with sound. Old floors carried the heavy booted steps of people, creaking protest moans projecting through the reason why a once beloved tourist cabin at the base of the Black Mountain of Idaho was now but a ruin, stripped naked of all that had made it a home, destroyed beyond recognition to no longer hold even a speck of its old charm. 

Fresh bullet holes through thin walls welcomed inside the whistle of wind, rejoicing it roamed a land where the distinction between summer and winter was scarcely noticeable with the bare eye and almost never with the bare skin. 

Wendy slowly lifted her right hand, holding out three fingers. 

Three bullets left.

Pete lifted one finger. 

These people got a jump on them and, in less than twenty minutes, had them run out of ammo, hiding inside a frail cabin, hoping these futile covers will give them the time to breathe and plan. 

'A walk in the park' has been turned by the end of times into a phrase declaring the hardships that come with deciding to travel. You couldn't take a shit without bothering some land claimed by a couple of bastards. If many thought the chaos was restricted to the big cities divided and left in rubbles between FEDRA, Fireflies and the infected, the true survivors knew better. 

Paradoxically to the phrase, no one lives long by staying in one place; catching roots is an equivalent to inviting the danger of jealousy in. And to add envy to an already wrathful population...? Bad news.

Then followed up the idea that maybe there was some strength in numbers after all, another false pretense that made humans form groups and well, do what humans do best: find a way to fight each other. FEDRA and the Fireflies were the big league, but these depths of the wasteland aftermath were ruled by territorial mindless pigs instead.

Bandits is the callsign for those unfortunate ones with small groups, going from settlement to settlement, raiding all they can carry, killing all they can kill. Then, come the hunters, whose numbers are significantly larger and thus tend to need bigger towns or cities to work their way through; yet their goal remains the same: getting supplies, even if that means killing other humans and stripping them naked of all they have. Finally, Wendy's least favorite group, the one she hoped never to get the chance to come across: the cannibals, who love their filled bellies so much they don't care who they have to cut to get their daily intake. 

The bright side of this situation was that they got stormed on the path by just some bandits. Everything else about this, however, was downright horrible. 

"Search the whole house," an order was barked behind them as the last three people entered the cabin. "We'll take the ground floor." That meant the first three were all now upstairs. 

It wasn't that big of a cabin. Some wall parts were missing too. Sooner rather than later, this hiding spot would be compromised. This wasn't Wendy and Pete's first rodeo in the ring of human cruelty though. 

They've come across so many of these groups trying to rob them that eventually, 'bout five years ago, they purposefully decided to take their chances entering a library and finding a book on sign language. Need pushed them both to learn it and since then, the attacks remained frequent, but they turned in much harder targets to catch slipping. 

"There's two guys on the right," Wendy signed. "Behind me. Going through the rooms." Pete watched attentively the movement of her hands, matched soundlessly from place to place by the movement of her lips. "I can get out that window," she pointed towards the already broken window, on her side of the room they were hiding into. "Find another window, get an angle..."

"There's guys outside," Pete signed back, agitated. 

"We don't have time or ammo for something else," Wendy responded, not even trying to pretend she was pleased with her proposed course of action. It was the only way she could see out of this; experience whispered they couldn't bargain and dignity reassured her they had nothing to trade with these bandits but their lives, which was out of question. Going around them? Avoidance rarely worked in their favor before and it will not start working now. 

Out of ammo, there was only one way out: take them out from up close.  

"Be careful," Pete grimaced looking at Wendy slowly moving away from the wall and towards the window. She assessed the situation of the window, pulling down on her sleeves. There was no easy way to exit due to the sharp shards she couldn't exactly break, so Wendy decided on the spot to just grit her teeth and take the pain.

She rolled out of the window and landed outside with a deaf thud. She kept her head down, palms on the outer wall of the cabin. 

"Did you hear that?" a bandit's voice echoed from inside. Nowhere near close. 

One look to the right. Another to the left. She looked back over her shoulder at the cold mountain and sighed, straightening up and catching Pete's gaze.

"Take the left," she gestured for him with a short smile and moved away, going low and steady around the cabin, towards the next window.

"...Rick's requested us as backup at the power plant," a distant voice came from the front of the cabin, roughly loud enough for Wendy now to overhear without struggle and perhaps also with a notch of interest, given that there weren't that many power plants in the area and one of them is where they parted ways with Ellie and Joel. "Remember those fugitives we've been tailing? Maria's guys got the power plant started so they tried to overrun it."

"We got power back?"

"Not if we blow up the station first," a third individual laughed, causing Wendy a disgusted grimace. She kept herself close to the wall in order to peek through this window frame missing the actual glass entirely, as well as a whole chunk of wood above it. 

One short peek -!

She almost cursed out loud seeing a bandit already in the room. 

Pressing her back to the wall instantly, Wendy thinned her lips into a line and waited. While counting the steps of the bandit, she thought she had previously caught glimpse of them carrying a shotgun, but couldn't really know for sure. 

It doesn't matter, she hoped to convince herself, but with or without her mind's calm, she already lowered down, under the window, prepped her hands and steadied her winded breath. The bandit was nowhere near the window so, she took one sharp inhale and got up.

The bandit's back was at her. 

With no time for a sigh of relief, now trapped as a knot in her throat, Wendy jumped inside, landed as lightly as she could, stepping between the larger glass shards shattered everywhere on the ground; the movement was continuous and no breath taken was cycled through a pause or a waste.

She closed in on the hostile from behind in just a couple of steps. They were looking towards the exit of the room, a door parallel to the window, going into the long hallway.

A step away from them, Wendy's right hand reached around back, under her backpack, from where she retrieved a refurbished kitchen knife. Pete had it sharpened, even wrapped its handle up for a better grip before giving it to her a good while ago. 

The second the blade was kissed by the cold air of the cabin, Wendy's mind ceased all of its calculations and preparations. All of what made it reasonable flicked its switch and shut down to the background function. 

Before her bright blue eyes, catching and reflecting the shadows and decay of the cabin, flashed the moment she's killed for the first time. The ear ringing, the shoulder pain, the hammering thuds of her heart looking down at Pete's mother, but only being able to see the woman she shot off of her. Her sight was blurred, her mind ached and the image faded away as rippled as the shake of her hands.

Wendy's hands were steady now. Her right tightened on the knife and then the second person she's ever killed haunted her too because that time was different. November, 2013...

A cold passage into winter. Eyes felt the taste of iron through Rosey's whimpers, Pete's raging screams, and the thuds matched with her gasps spurring bruises and cuts, blood over the ground. When the foot stepped away from her and her hands felt too little to try and hug herself away from the shivers, her eyes blinked their frailty through carnage, saw what no one should have to see. 

The same boot stomped on the whimpers. Her ears were ringing then too, when she knew Pete was next, when she knew they already lost everything they had so this one guy left was nothing but an executioner, a face to associate with the end. 

Pete couldn't stand and she didn't know she could either, until she did. It wasn't a knife, but just a shard, one she couldn't even remember picking up. Her ears were ringing and all she could think about was not the anger or the sorrow or the fear, but her pounding despair: not him. 

Her sight was painfully clear, hyper-attentive to every screaming shade in the dark and forming a stark outline to the hunter. 

Her breath was ragged; he heard her over the disgusting pleasure he took in hitting Pete. 

The hunter turned around and Wendy went deaf. All sound was sucked out of her to the nothingness of a gasped second: with both hands, she hit the shard through the guy's left eye. She pulled both the shard and the eye out and stabbed again, cutting his cheek out, then his forehead. 

How many times did she hit him? 

Enough to wear her hands crimson, enough to wake up hearing her own cried breathing when she dropped the shard and pushed herself away from the corpse, dragged away on the ground, almost crawling back to Pete. "Are you okay?" she heard her unrecognizable voice tremble as she knelt there with him, holding up his face in the cup of reddened palms she was just learning the heaviness of.

"Are you okay?" he echoed, biting back on his groans of agony for having to move his leg in order to get closer, for having to let his wound bleed to bring up his hand and hold hers at least. 

The return of the question was a slap across Wendy's face at the time. It turned her head to the side and forced her to see what she's done to that hunter. It was the carnal sight no one should ever see, a carcass left behind not by a scientist, not even by a human, but by an animal. 

"Hey," Pete's voice, even choked out, struggled to exude a smile he could barely hold. He couldn't know peace before his hand's abrasive fingertips met her rough skin and tugged on her cheek to look back at him. "We're okay," he whispered.

How could he say that?  Tears broke out of her eyes and she could not see clearly anything else but the bitter sweetness of his smile, closing in. Before she knew it, she was resting her forehead on his shaking shoulder. 

"We're okay," Pete repeated, drawing his hand through her hair softly, his breath dying out.

"We're okay...," she finally mirrored. 

Wendy mind emptied after the second memory, nothing but wisp of light and darkness brushing her senses aside, leaving room for the void. 

One step.

She grabbed the collar of the bandit and pull them back.

There was no turning back now. She didn't need for it to be another way anymore. 

They leant back and their gasp got buried into Wendy's left palm, clasped tightly over their mouth. She pulled their head on her shoulder, opening their neck up to swift, deep stab she shoved. 

The knife got buried into their artery. 

Wendy felt the fanned choked breath of the bandit right on her palm; she registered their desperate tugs on her arms, anywhere they could grasp, even the screams her palm was keeping in. 

Without blinking, flinching or shaking, she ripped the knife out and shoved it in the other side of the neck too. There was no need to let the bandit suffer. 

The human turned into a body, limp weight in her arms and with a harsh exhale, she lowered the corpse on the ground quietly, pocketing it on the way. One handful of shotgun ammo. Not much, but more than she had to begin with. 

Wendy slipped that in her backpack and got a move on, glimpsing as she passed the door to the hallway how, across from it, Pete sneaked up behind another one of the bandits, wrapping a wire around their neck and choking them out with brute strength she had seen it be sufficient to dislocate bones. 

However, her task was through the door to her left, going towards the entrance of the cabin, towards the stairs. The last guy on the ground floor wasn't looking. Wendy moved slow.

A thud coming from the left side of the cabin, from Pete most likely, alerted the bandit before Wendy and her breath hitched. She hurried her step and her procedure, grasping a handful of the man's hair, pulling him back and stabbing his neck fast, three times. 

One notch harder on his steps, Pete approached, gun at the ready with his one bullet and eyes wide with panic. He knew a sound like the loud one he just made could have compromised Winnie and their whole plan there. 

Instead, he was met with his girlfriend, laying down the corpse pretty much missing their whole neck. 

Wendy straightened up and leant to the side to glimpse at the window next to the door. 

Before she could approach it, Pete, who has had the time to count about five guys outside the cabin, placed his hand in front of her and pointed to the stairs. "You go up and clear to cover me," he signed. 

Wendy's eyes widened with disbelief and she tilted her head, "You're not going out the front door."

"Through the back."

"One bullet?" her eyebrows raised. 

Pete looked down and picked up the rifle the guy she just killed died holding. She waited for him to check the weapon and nod at the ammunition, then, lowering it down, Pete leant forward. His right hand freed itself and grasped her side of the face, lips finding their home on her forehead. 

"Go," he whispered there. 

Wendy let her right hand tighten again on the blade and brought up her knuckles to hit Pete's chest. 

"Don't die," she barely mouthed to him before backing a step away. 

She watched for his nod, both carrying their longing distantly in their eyes, in the tingle of their fingertips, before gulping it down and turning around to tackle their individual tasks. 

The strength was never in numbers, Wendy has been brought to realize through the fires of survival. The power which made a difference in this world was hidden in the rarity and bravery of trusting the one you fight besides. You didn't need an army to take down groups made out of paranoid individuals, hungry, disoriented, with no proper training other than the hardness of a nationalism-ruled heart and an animalistic drive to hunt and think of the self as superior on the food chain, when clearly, humans have been dethroned.

Just Pete and her have been enough for sufficient time to now back up the theory as viable. 

Wendy climbed the steps slowly. One step after the other, laid carefully on creaking wood, through steady breaths focusing her mind. She couldn't afford getting distracted now. Pete was counting on her as much as she was counting on him. It wasn't just quiet, but instead it was plain silent, obscure with a looming danger towards which she walked. 

Boom!

One explosion went off outside. Wendy dropped down until her chin touched the wood. 

She was almost at the top of the stairs. The upper floor turned brazed by running steps of two people. When the running stopped and the cursing begun in wonder, Wendy knew her time to act was running out. 

That explosion must have been Pete with a Molotov, a match made in Hell, because if this end of times taught him anything was that he really had an arsonist's heart. 'Fire is efficient,' as he liked to say.

Pushing herself up, Wendy rushed in the direction she heard the steps going towards too and then, without measuring the room and the positioning of the three hostiles there, she grabbed the bandit closest to the door. Their throat was sliced open instantly, their dead weight falling back on her. She held them up as a fleshed shield for the bullets to come. 

Wendy groaned. Holding the weight was making her knees buckle.

Though she barely saw the target right ahead, to the window, she saw clearly enough the one slightly to the left. Clearly enough to move the knife to her left hand and throw it. 

A scream was her opening as it overlapped the need of the other bandit to reload.

The knife landed in their left thigh of the person to the side.

Wendy dropped the corpse, stealing the gun from their hand and shooting it up at the person ahead, without really having the patience to aim. She hit the window behind them a couple of times but the shooting outside covered a broken window well and either way, the third and fourth bullet hit once in the stomach and once above the sternum.

Another down.

From the corner of her eye Wendy saw the last guy raise his weapon with the same cruel intention as her: shoot without thinking. However, unlike the other guy, this one held not a gun, but a crossbow. 

Wendy saw the arrow. Nothing happened in her mind close to the realm of panic. It was moving towards her and her body tensed on its own, having her leap and stumble aside. 

"Shit," the guy cussed at the missed shot. He bowed over, hands shaking in trying to fix on another arrow. 

He's got his brains blown out before he could.

And so, another gun was emptied. 

Wendy discarded it to the side and picked up the crossbow, along with three arrows she could easily spot on the guy. She fixed on one arrow while walking towards the window, then propped one foot down and aimed the crossbow out towards the remaining bandits in front of the cabin.

The harshest rule of survival in this world was unfortunately the fact that mercy comes with a high price. If you let your attackers live, then you face the high possibility of waking up getting killed by exactly the ones you spared. Don't leave survivors or don't expect to survive. 

One short exhale later, the first arrow was released and it pierced through the head of one bandit. Wendy leant back to fix another arrow on. She aimed again, but instead saw Pete, waving up at her. 

His smile brought hers back and once her smile returned, the noise of the void dissipated and left room for the human sensations: the tingle of blood hardened on her hands, the tickle of the crimson drops joining her freckles on her face, the ache in her right arm still thinking of the first window, the heaviness of the backpack and especially the cold making her shiver ever so lightly, at last.

Wendy let out a deep sigh, closed her eyes tightly and relaxed her posture, let go of the tension in her shoulders, second by second. By the time she opened her eyes again, her hands were shaking. 

Life made it so she lost count of the people she's had to kill to make sure Pete and her survived; she used to want to look at their faces but now, she tried to walk past the corpses like they weren't even there.

We do what we gotta do to survive, she kept telling herself what she heard Pete whisper when he thought she was asleep, back in the first days, when both of them hoped this virus will not last as long as it really did. 

Fortunately, she was able to breath clean air and see Pete right outside the cabin in no time substantial to fuel the gripping terror of being alone with the person she's been persuaded to become in a despair to live another day. 

Without hesitating a second whatsoever, Pete wrapped his arms around Wendy and pulled her close. There was a time when he'd have to do all this nasty work alone, when she'd inevitably defend him through brute force and he'd be the one to have to hold her as she cried and mourned. It used to trouble him how innocent she could remain sometimes, but now, he knew that Winnie was not naïve or delusional, but simply trying to remain human. She may be immune to the virus, but she's not immune to the world ruled by malevolent people bitter enough to live by selfishness. 'All of us or none of us.' No one could lucky in this new world order. 

But Pete and Winnie... They've come a long way since their hands feared the crimson gloves, but that did not mean a hug did not help as often as they could spare a moment for it. 

It was good to remember what they fought like hell for. It felt safe to let life slither under their fingertips so they forget the chill of death.

"We're okay," Pete breathed out instinctively the second the scent of ash and alcohol got replaced with the scent of home. 

Before Wendy could meet his eyes, a rustle of leaves separated them. 

Pete turned around and raised the rifle he held. He felt Winnie's hands grasp his shirt at his waist and hold on tightly in the height of the fright. 

From the tree line to the right, there was movement. 

Pete tensed, pulled the trigger and realized he was out of ammunition. 

In the middle of stepping in front of Winnie to shield her, a familiar voice broke through.

"Winnie!" Ellie called out in a cry, running towards the two after having almost fallen off the horse in her hurry. 

Pete gasped at how close he had been to shooting that damn kid again; he was so startled he didn't notice the girl's horse waiting for her near the trees, nor her tears. At least not until she crashed into Wendy and wrapped her arms around her in a puff of relief.

"Ellie?" Wendy struggled to speak with so much air knocked out of her at once, but it wasn't much to process apart from her immediate need to hug the girl back and look around to try and see where was Joel. Her heart skipped a beat and she immediately assumed the worst: what if she didn't heal Joel after all? 

Before Wendy could ask anything, Ellie held onto her tighter and moved her head to the side. "He wanted... to leave me," she mumbled through hiccups.

"Who did?" Winnie lowered down and put some distance between her and Ellie to help wipe away her tears; a plan good up to the point that Wendy remembered her hands were bloodstained and there was no reason to want to alert Ellie of their mortuary surroundings. "Joel?" 

Ellie articulated no more words. It was too hard to speak about what she barely could accept as a thought: she was tired of being alone. Sick of being left behind. Disgusted with surviving for so long while all she inhaled through was chronic loneliness. 

No parents, no family, no friends who stayed alive. Frustration was just a cover up for how absolute her despair really was. 

She wanted to cling, to feel safe, to hope without the doctrine of a fallen world taking away from her everything she read children her age should have. Thousand of journals of kids from hundreds of houses stood witness pillars to Ellie's dream of a good life. 

She wanted to get away from Joel before he could hurt her by leaving and in doing so, she subconsciously followed Pete and Wendy's trail. Why? That was easy: she's never felt safer than during that night, by the fire, after they've had their talk and made sure Joel was laying safely in the tent. 

Pete was holding slice of a potato to his face, pouting through a conversation that has long since calmed down. "It will all be over soon anyway," Wendy had startled Ellie with a smiled sigh, nudging a small fire underneath their improvised cooking pan. Boiled potatoes were better than nothing. 

"What do you mean?" Ellie frowned. "Like they'll kill us all before we get the chance to finish the cure?"

"What?" She had laughed then in her face. "Ellie... The Cordyceps don't want to rule the world. A world where the infected are the only ones who exist is not an ideal environment for them and if anything, the Cordyceps behavioral patterns haven't changed through the mutation: they want to survive as much as we do."

Seeing some nuance of confusion play on the girl's face, Wendy straightened up to explain further, "Before it mutated, this strain of the Cordyceps used to solely infect insects. We've studied this fungi for many years and it was proven that though capable of killing a whole ant colony, Cordyceps killed systematically, controlled, giving the ant population time to grow so that their food source doesn't run out. Since this fungi has a considerably small life span, it doesn't want to run out of food. The second humans are gone, they'll be gone too."

None of that sounded comforting to Ellie, not until Wendy smiled, "I've tracked the growth patterns for the past ten years and I approximate than in another fifteen years, the Cordyceps rate infection will have decreased to under 1%. Not because the virus would be gone, but because it will consciously slow down and give humanity time to grow again." She shrugged and looked back into the fire, "It's not much... But it's nice to know that we might have a quiet ten year period in our future."

📻

          IT DIDN'T TAKE JOEL ALL THAT long to catch up with Ellie once he realized the kid ran off. Undeniably, his heart was poisoned with guilt and anger and concern, from the very first second since the realization, but especially after seeing how dangerous these parts really were, bustling with bandits with a considerable amount of ammunition and weaponry.

To find her travelling with Wendy and Pete had been rough. Screaming went down in the moment of privacy they were given. Things were said. Things he regretted.

"I'm not her, you know," he could still hear Ellie's voice, digging up some buried emotions in him. "Maria told me about Sarah..." Oh he felt his world still collapsing after hearing that name. "I'm sorry about your daughter, Joel, but I lost people too."

She was crying and he was as cruel as a wounded animal. 

"You're right," his voice was rupturing through his memory. The last words they shared. "You're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad."

The hooves of three horses threaded lightly on the way back: Tommy's, Joel's and Ellie's. Daring not glance at Ellie again, though at least he was quietly glad she didn't choose to leave with Pete and Wendy, Joel couldn't help but notice the questions playing on his brother's features. He wondered about those two stranger advocating for the kid, about the glaring guy, about the big mouthed woman, about the blood on them. But he didn't ask a single thing, respectful of the silence. 

They were almost to Jackson, the small town Maria helped make when, slowing down his horse, Joel has had enough of his replay of the same scene. "Where's this lab of theirs?" he sighed out the question.

"It's all the way out," Tommy nodded, a notch confused by their stop on the middle of the path. "University of Eastern Colorado."

Joel huffed a short, ghostly smile, "Go Big Horns..." He took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders back, "Well, we gon' hang on this fellas if that's alright with you." 

"What are you doing?" Tommy immediately inquired. Joel glanced back at Ellie, her whole face lit up with hope. 

"Your wife kinda scares me," Joel played it off with his coy smile. Showing weakness in front of his little brother was not exactly what he was a pro at, so a diligent fib had to do. "I don't want her coming after me." Looking his brother in the eyes though... Joel knew Tommy was aware of exactly why he changed his mind all of a sudden: it was the human thing to do. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
THE SATISFACTION OF SEEING WINNIE AND PETE PERFORM STEALTH TAKE DOWNS GAME STYLE YESS PLSSS
We need to talk about thiss

Also, this chapter marks a beginning of a section that will follow more closely action from the game. If you've played it/watched walkthroughs, you know what scenes I am building up to right now 👀👀👀

&&& the journal piece in the middle?? The amount of research days that went into that is ridiculous, I swear 😂 give me some validation sense for it ahh