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📻 — CHAPTER SEVEN ..
' humanity's bane '

          UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO. NO FIREFLIES left to tell a tale of their incompetence, their mindless, desperate cruelty and their inability to accept just how in over their heads they truly were at the time. The walls try as they might to speak of the tragedies within them, but there is only so much recorders and journals can do.

"You do this often?" Joel inquired, tightening his grasp on the rope he tied for a lasso. Beside him, Pete positioned for sniping with one monkey already fixed for target. The yard between the science buildings of the university was filled with the quiet drag of several monkeys, overlooked upon by possible entire hoards of infected. 

Looking through the scope, Pete observed his target. The primate has been an inadequate experimenting subject which the Fireflies picked with little to no consciousness or morality. Unnatural red eyes, little sense of the environment, most likely blind. Those idiots deliberately infected monkeys to study the CBI. It didn't shock Pete anymore the extent to which those desperate people would go in order to pretend they've got everything under control, but he was not spared the disgust, keeping his features scrunched in a grimace.

That expression only hardened hearing Joel's voice. "As often as necessary," Pete replied bluntly. 

After Ellie was taken back by Joel and his brother, Tommy, whose presence had made Pete very uneasy on whether or not he had seen that face before, not even a day passed him and Winnie by quietly until the four of them were reunited and Joel himself presented them with a horse and an offer. It was a dangerous proposition, given that, at the time, they were sure, based on Tommy's tip, that this was a place where Fireflies still conducted their operations. 

Wendy's input had been the only factor able to convince Pete to risk it: a university with science courses surely had labs which, if Fireflies conducted activity on the ground of, are still in decent working condition. 

It was a good enough point. She needed new tools if she wanted to test out this new cure formula idea and it was unlikely to be able to get those tools from a corner shop on their way to the West coast, where, either way, they had no clear plan moving forward with their goal of reaching Europe. That goal had changed since to at least reaching Asia and doing the best they can from there. 

Until a better plan was made, such delays were acceptable and great was Pete's relief to find out the Fireflies abandoned this base of operations a significantly long time ago. Though Joel was unaware of it yet, Pete knew him and Ellie just dodged a bullet. 

Sure, the labs were perhaps not as well equipped as Wendy had wished they'd been, but it was still better than nothing and a lot of the equipment left behind simply required some small improvisations to be put into function. 

Pete rolled his shoulders, carrying their aches from all the cleaning they've been doing since morning. The main building ahead had to be fully cleared before stepping outside and fetching Wendy her test subject. Did Pete mind shooting the monkeys? Not really. Those animals were dangerous, according to a lab recording they've found. Thinking back of that recording brought him a lot of memories he did not ever want resurfaced. 

"If you're looking for the Fireflies, they've all left. I'm dead. Or I will be soon. Got time to reflect. I dedicated my life to this cause and now I won't get to see whether we make it or not. I joined the Fireflies shortly after the Outbreak. Here was a group willing to do whatever it takes to save us from this plague when the government was willing to retreat to ghettos.

I couldn't just give up on our country. Give up on humanity. God that sounds trite. Anyway... There have been years that felt like we were onto something... like we might eradicate this thing. Those were usually followed by years of utter despair. Like this entire fucking thing was a goddamn waste of time. It feels like the past few years were more of the latter. We haven't had a breakthrough since the passive vaccine test we ran... What? ...five years ago?

Now this entire lab has been compromised and the higher ups have decided to abandon the University. I'm just fucking tired... I can't do this anymore. I'm not gonna do this anymore. If you made it here looking for the others, they've all returned to Saint Mary's Hospital in Salt Lake City. You'll find them there. Still trying to save the world. Good luck with that."

"Salt Lake City," Pete sighed away from the scope and looked to the side, at Joel. Remembering the recording, the way it twisted his stomach, the way it made Wendy faint, holding onto his hand and feeling each other grow colder and colder... 

He hasn't felt that sort of scared in years and with nightmares having little time to surface in his maximum of five hours of sleep, Pete made the dangerous assumption that he has gotten over that day, that he's grown past that moment. 

A damn recording brought it all back and with it, Wendy's words near Alpine had a whole new nuance of guilt to it. How could you wish for anyone to go through the shit we went through because of her? Wendy's question made Pete gulp before committing to asking Joel,  "Are you two going there after this?"

Joel nodded, "It seems so, yeah." He needn't learn anything more about either Pete or Wendy to be able to tell these two had a bone to pick with the Fireflies. It could as well be a personal opinion they protected, but Joel sensed from the abrasiveness on the topic that there was more to it than just some pride. "Got a better option?"

"Not really," Pete looked away, positioning himself back to take the shot, go through with their plan of hitting two birds with the same stone. "But seeing how operations went here for the Fireflies, I assumed you'd be at least a little reluctant by now to hand Ellie over to those lunatics. Tell me, do they look like they know what they're doing? Infecting animals with no plan whatsoever, knowing their test subjects can spread the virus, and just letting them roam freely anyway. Letting these monkeys have all the chances in the world to just spread Cordyceps not just to humans, but other animals as well. Tsk," Pete scrunched his nose. "Doesn't sound like a 'saving the world' attitude to me, man."

"Some would argue they are doing the best they can," Joel huffed. The emptiness of Pete's eyes held stories of darkness, stories of a survivor who tasted the worst of the world. Joel knew all too well what those eyes held back, what sort of storms laid behind their glassy presence, a mere ghost of the life they used to have. This bitterness of Pete's made him uneasy: a man with a reason so anchored to loathe a group many would call 'humanity's last hope'. "If you know something I don't, do share."

Pete pulled the trigger. The recoil buried in his shooting shoulder and he pulled back the bolt, ejecting the ammunition casing. Ahead, the monkeys panicked just slightly at their fallen friend, gathering around to observe. Around Pete and Joel, the buildings were coming alive with the moans of pain and screams of one too many Runners. 

Pete wasted no breath; their location was still hidden to the primates so he pulled the trigger again. And again, even as Runner ran into the yard and Joel stood up. And again, even as a monkey spotted Joel and consequently, Pete too. He gunned down every single one of those infected animals, even if that forced him to stand up and change his shooting position, even if it woke up every single infected in the area. 

While Pete was raising the alarm, Joel had a more specific task: capturing an infected. 

Used to rather killing those things, this was a task which alas made him rather nervous to stand up, eye the first Runner and use every single second of ranch experience he had in his faraway childhood to throw the lasso. 

Missing the first try, he pulled out his pistol from the side of his belt and shot the infected getting too close to him right in the head. Though he would have preferred the gun to remain in his hand, Joel put it back and pulled the rope instead. He got ready to try again this madness of capturing one of those things alive and the reason why shocked him too: he'd seen what Wendy could do with an unfinished substance. But with a completed cure? He'd be rather hypocritical in front of Tess' dying wish not to at least try to give this doctor what she needs. 

Second Runner. Second try. 

Joel pulled on the rope and the lasso tightened around the Runner's legs, swinging the ground from under its feet and dragging it across the concrete to Joel, who snatched the sack from his feet. The second the Runner was next to him and still dazed, Joel pulled the sack over its head and tightened it at the bottom. Those putrid hands grabbed on his legs and oh, his fingers were itching for a trigger to pull. 

Instead, he locked his jaw and got down to pry the infected hands away and tie them up with the remainder of the rope. 

From his left side, Joel could heal approaching noise. Below his gaze, the infected wriggled, screamed, made it a lot tougher than expected to tie it up enough to carry it. "Pete...," Joel called warily, yet before the name was properly worded, he saw the man's boots beside him and the gunshots confirmed Pete was now covering for him. 

"Pick it up," Pete commanded, hurrying up the process. 

"Where'd you get your shooting practice?" Joel groaned, fixing the bag over the head of the thing and finally picking it up, tossing the infected over his shoulder. That little shit still wriggled like a worm. 

"What, the apocalypse ain't enough to motivate a fella?" Pete backed up after Joel steadily, still gunning down infected after infected, until his magazine was empty. Then, he flung his rifle's holding band over his shoulder and the careful steps turned faster gradually through pulling out a pistol. He aimed and fired one round before fully turning around and running with Joel towards the main building. 

He made sure the old man got in first. Joel tossed the infected on the ground and turned back around to push closed the metal bar door on the right side. Pete tripped and slipped on his way in, but even with a new ache, he scattered back on his feet and turned around to push on the left side door. 

Infected bumped into the door and one head stood out. 

Pete lifted his right hand holding the gun and Joel lowered his head just about in time to be missed by the bullet which went through the putrid base of the infected head. The rest of the decapitation was done by the doors themselves, which once locked, started trembling from the pile of Runners pushing into them from outside, sticking their arms inside, trying to grab hold of the man now stepping back. 

From underneath the door, a red wire had been spread inside, leading to a push button controller they improvised into a power generator. Pete ran towards it and pulled on its handle. Once. Twice. The third time the light flickered on in the entire building and the screams coming from outside turned auburn under explosion flares. The infected trying to get in started burning and at the sight of that fire, Joel and Pete finally sighed relieved. 

"Texas farm," Pete got up. "That's where I learnt how to shoot." Looking next to the man, he grimaced at the still wriggling infected. "Let's get that thing to the girls."

The lab room they left Wendy and Ellie in was filled with a certain level of chatter that almost made the setting itself fade away into a distant, unimportant void, standing behind the prominent piece of a child ranting on while the adult listens and reminisces melancholy through smiles blossoming more and more often still. Pointedly, nothing there looked pristine, no matter how hard Wendy's been trying to clean some surfaces before trusting them with her life's work. The end of times had dropped everywhere ten years worth of dust and the wrecked desolation of rust and vandalism, all three of which being permanent marks, casting shadows and tales of profound tragedy right into the essence of the building.

It was not a friendly environment. It wasn't even a salubrious one, which used to be one of the main requirement for a lab back in the day. But no one should ever fall as far as beginning to underestimate how much sound can make a difference. There was a reason why Pete and Wendy held onto those old cassettes, despite how important it was to travel light; both of them would argue that most of the time, those cassettes were just as important as their guns or the synthesizer, because they did what none of their other supplies could: kept them sane.

What a beautiful reward it was to be able to claim a little luxury of getting lost into a song from time to time. The world filled with noise turned silent at the lashes of cruelty and now, noise was what was missing. 

The little old radio ate up a Johnny Cash cassette, playing the background buzz to Ellie's loud and excited ranting, listened from across the room by Wendy noting down in her journal some of the preliminary tests she's been running for a while now. Since they've gotten there, she was able to produce two sets of vials for the new cure attempt. 

"... and she's really just the coolest, even if I am missing several bits of her story," Ellie hit on the cover of the latest 'Savage Starlight' comic book volume Joel found for her. "In fact," she looked down lovingly at the art while lowering the book down in her lap, "you are a lot like Dr. Daniela Star." The dangling of her feet off the edge of the table she's been sitting on came to an abrupt stop right before she decided to jump off.

"Is it because we are both scientists?" Wendy chuckled, not parted from paying attention to her work. Warmth has long spread in her chest as the familiarity of spending time with Ellie was yet to distance itself from memories of Mira. Images of studying for exams while her little sister wanted nothing more but to inquire and play fleshed out before her eyes so vividly Wendy was almost compelled from time to time to blurt out a sudden exclamation like 'just ditch your work and spend time with your sister, you fool'.

"Mostly because of that, yes," Ellie stretched her arms above her head. "I can borrow you the first volume if you want," she offered. 

Mira would love to read this, Wendy answered in her mind's privacy, jotting down the few observations she could make through the cracked lenses of a microscope. From the corner of her eyes, she saw Ellie had approached, showing curiosity towards what she was doing over there at last. 

"Do you want to take a look?" Wendy offered, leaning back from the microscope. Her analysis was long done, so there was no hurt in just taking this chance to offer the child a brief, albeit too simple, science lesson.

Receiving a short and curious nod from Ellie, Wendy's smile was almost immediate to follow. She fetched the alcohol imbued cloth from the table and handed it over to the girl. "Hands," Wendy gestured. "Clean them first. Your hands have to be clean when working in a lab. Always. And frankly just generally clean. You know how we always rub our eyes to clear our sight from tiredness, from sweat in the summer or just generally from all the dirt laying around? Well, spores attach to our skin, our clothes. Most infections with CBI these days don't come from actual infected, but from spore-filled surfaces brought in contact with bodily fluids. And the eyes? Bring dirty hands to the eye and it's a good chance to get a disease. We're all playing a Russian Roulette with our lives by not at least trying to keep our hands cleaner."

"But I'm immune," Ellie laughed shortly, cocky in her humor, despite following through with the lab rule Wendy gave her either way. She rubbed that damp cloth all over her hands, feeling the alcohol sting every cut she didn't know she had on her palms and around her fingers.

Once her hands gained a cleanness Ellie hasn't felt a single moment of her life so far, Wendy stepped back and let her get the place in front of the microscope. By standing behind Ellie, Wendy was able to guide her hands to familiarize with the device, and correct her hunch posture, before properly stepping aside.

"So what exactly am I looking at?" Ellie slipped the gasped inquiry; sure, dots and lines were interesting to look at, even through a cracked scope, but wouldn't it be even more interesting if she knew what all those lines and dots were?

Wendy had already busied herself up with tying her journal and getting it tucked into her backpack. That's where Ellie's question found her, at that very second when she discovered the comic book the kid talked about for the past hour already hidden amongst her lab supplies.

"Infected tissue tainted with C38.1," Wendy explained, a smile distinctively already on her features. She got up and reached towards another sample glass prepared beside the microscope. "The darker colored bits you are seeing are burns on areas in which the Cordyceps has completely corrupted the host tissue, leaving nothing salvageable."

"Cool," Ellie confirmed with a nod and a wide smile. "Where did it go-?" her momentarily exclamation came as a response to Wendy switching the samples. 

"This one is untainted infected tissue. Believe it or not, under those fungal cells and between them, there is human tissue still. And the toxin can tell them apart even if the eye cannot."

"Ew," Ellie leant away from the microscope after seeing the lustrous, yellowish thing pulse. 

"Yep," Wendy laughed at the reaction, switching the microscope off. "The sample with fungi on it is still very much alive."

Ellie trailed off a sigh, her puzzled expression somewhere between a clear disgust of what she's just witnessed below the microscope and a decent dose of admiration that Wendy wasn't vomiting her guts out working on this for the sake of the world. "You're definitely a real life Dr. Star..."

"Well," Wendy clasped her hands behind her back, "I'll have you know you also remind me of someone."

"Someone cool, I hope," Ellie beamed, more than grateful to change the subject.

"I would like to think she's cool, yes," Wendy nodded along, but her sight started descending, losing its focus to a glaze of deep thought, almost itching to just glance at the radio and hope to hear interference over the distant song. 

Ellie watched, but couldn't help her desire of not letting the silence seed itself too deeply. Not while her curiosity was buzzing in her ears. "Are you going to tell me who that is or not?"

Wendy knew exactly why the less people knew about them, the safer they would be in the long run: it only took one wrong trust placement for everything to come crashing down and if she couldn't be sure about that simply by knowing Gen and Mira had to run away from a Denmark quarantine zone into the middle of nowhere in order to escape fanatics who did not take well on the idea of immunity to the virus being a thing, then Wendy could count on her own damm experience with the Fireflies to prove that while she believes there's still some humanity left, testing that theory out all the time was simply just a bad idea. 

However... Ellie was just a child. 

Even if she avoided following through with her little informative slip and she completely escaped telling her about Mira just as she escaped before in explaining how her own immunity helped make this cure idea in the first place, Wendy couldn't deny spending these days with Ellie had only accentuated her guilt of secrecy, of knowing what was waiting for her and for Joel in Salt Lake City. 

"Ellie," Wendy's façade cracked and crumbled, senselessly almost kneeling her just to get her on eye level with Ellie. She simply couldn't take it anymore: all the lying, the watching from sidelines, the fact that she knew exactly what was going to happen to this child... And she couldn't help it, thinking that if she lets this one kid die then something bad was guaranteed at some point to happen to her own sister too. 

Somehow, after all they've discovered happened here at the University, Ellie still did not see the plainest of issues in what the Fireflies were doing. She held hope, all because of Marlene, whom she knew since her very first days to remember.

But Wendy knew Marlene as well.

That was the final thought Wendy managed to filter on the border of rationality before grasping Ellie's hand and firmly shaking her head, "You shouldn't go. Whatever you think you know about Marlene-"

The door to the lab was forced open and the screams of the infected Joel and Pete were carrying finally came through. The walls of the lab were pretty thick, so the gunshots and explosions scarcely made more than perhaps a metal drawer in there vibrate. As for the electricity... the microscope used a dying battery on it's last stretched hours, while the radio had its own batteries as well; everything else was dark until the boys stumbled in and Pete smashed his hand on the wall beside the door to turn on all the lights.

Wendy straightened up and rushed forward to help with tying up the infected to the table she's cleared and cleaned in the center of the lab room. Habit prioritized everything for her, turning the lab into a chaos zone, isolated as Joel closed to door. From beside the exit, he watched the madness unfold, able to take into consideration all the smaller pictures it highlighted with different hues. 

On the one hand, there was Pete, gun at the ready to shoot the infected if the ropes didn't hold or the knots were not well done. On the other hand, Wendy's assembled a clean needle onto a syringe with a surgical precision. Shoving the tip into the first vial out of the four she prepared in the stand on the desk with the microscope, the syringe body filled with a beige, almost translucent liquid. 

They've done this before, Joel noted an observation just as Pete moved his eyes away from the infected awaiting wordlessly a command he knew was coming. 

"Upper right arm," she informed, already pressing down her right elbow on the infected's wrist; her palm anchored above their elbow and held it as still as she could. The screams of protest from the infected got louder, their body flinching and trying to turn towards Wendy, bite even through the sack covering the head. 

Pete did not lower the gun, not as he stepped around the table to join Wendy and definitely not after pressing his left palm down on the shoulder of the thing. Now, he was closest to its covered mouth, the center of the attacks. Pete rested the end of the barrel down on the head of the thing and waited with no hint of curiosity in watching what Wendy was doing. 

Her hands worked carefully, even gentle, in inserting the long needle into the infected flesh. It was a slow process of pushing all that liquid into the infected host, so Joel had the fracture of a moment to look up and seek Ellie into his line of sight.

 There, to his surprise, he was met with only a ghost of the energy that kid usually had. Her eyes were wide, empty, pensive... her expression was painfully dull, as if she was unsure of her stand, fact which left Ellie looking at this scene numbly, without even sensing herself present.

Joel couldn't deny it now even if he could: a knot of worry tied under his diaphragm. 

But before that past familiar sensation would get the chance to take over and make him speak, the screeches and croaks of the infected choked out into the lurk of silence. Finally, the Johnny Cash tunes could be heard again and it wasn't exactly an expected consequence of the first vial. 

Wendy pulled the needle out of the still lightly flinching arm, both her and Pete stepping away from the table more than a bit bewildered by the reaction.

"What happened?" Joel inquired.

"I think...," Wendy answered slowly, moving towards the table with the radio to turn on a little kitchen timer, "they ceased being in pain just there." Unexpected progress had thrown her mind into a swirl of thought, turning her a bit too distant to even comprehend the moment when Joel left to check the perimeter and Ellie volunteered to join him, holding a clear sense that she didn't really want to be left alone there and have the chance of finding out what exactly Wendy meant by her half-warning.

All Wendy knew was that all of a sudden, the room was dark again. She blinked and saw Pete stepping away from the light switch with a shrug. "Feels weird having light," he admitted. "And since night is falling, I'd rather we don't get our eyes too used to this much brightness. Hope you don't mind." 

Wendy did not reply nor complain. After a short smile, she returned her gaze to the infected heavily breathing, still on the table an arm's reach in front of her, with that sack over their head; she allowed Pete's steps to join with the background noise of the end of the cassette, playing behind her, next to a timer ticking away.

"There's so much tension here," Pete let his hand caress up between Wendy's shoulder blades, delighted to see her glance back at him over her shoulder after she had almost completely ignored his presence. It would be a lie not to at least innerly admit that she often drifted away into the unreachable corners of her mind; sometimes, Pete wondered if smart people like her simply needed more mental stimulation to get by as per general, in which case, he planned to provide as much as he could, from his restricted array of knowledge. 

He massaged his palms up her back to her shoulders, gave them a small rub until she sighed into his touch, then Pete moved his hands away and simply retorted to hugging her from behind, ended up with his nose nuzzled in the side of her neck. In that position, his mere breathe was enough of an instigator to a pure laughter which Wendy barely held at a decent noise level, threatening to squirm away form him.

Not even wanting to think about letting go after not just days, but entire weeks in a row of keeping his guard up and being left almost utterly unable to just enjoy her company in its singular beauty, Pete lifted his face and readjusted his posture in order for his chin to rest on her shoulder. "Want to think out loud?"

Pete's warmth was a summer's blanket draped over her shoulder in a protection veil weightlessly magical. Ten years spent together already and Wendy would still consider it a fact that they've had far too few chances of simply enjoying the tenderness of their love. So, truly, she had no shame to lean into his touch, to rest the back of her head on his shoulder, to let her arms hug his hands under her chest, brush her thumbs onto his rough skin.

"Thinking out loud...," Wendy tilted her head, still looking down at the twitching body of the infected as she took on Pete's offer. "I can now support the theory that the fungal growth inside muscle tissue is in fact the cause of the pain receptors flaring signals in all test subject brains. The first dose of the dual-injection idea slows down the metabolism and therefore also the spread of the Cordyceps, which fortunately takes away a whole lot of the pain for the host. But that does not change their nature. The host is still showing signs of aggression based on hearing senses and the twitches of the body might be the residue actin potentials of lower intensity. If the remaining human brain identified clearly the locations of the infection in this stage, without the pain factor being unbearable enough to decrease lucidity, the second dose might actually be more effective in burning only the pathogen and not the whole tissue it infected." 

"Now all we need to do is fly you back to your sister where all your smart words and theories can actually make a difference in salvaging something," Pete answered with just a hint of snarky bitterness that he's long convinced his own country was well beyond saving. 

"If I can make a cure out of this...," Wendy turned around without really putting any substantial distance between her and Pete. She didn't want to give up her warmth and less than he did, so with wide eyes and her heart beating close to his, she looked up at him, "we are saving the world."

Pete did not shy away to hide that his eyes still liked to trail down to her lips when she was this close to him. They may have gained some wrinkles, some white hairs and a lot more stars than they could count, but this right here was the only thing stuck in time, on the bliss of 26th September, in a car still smelling of home. "Your positivity," he slowly lifted his gaze up her features, smiling at her freckles, until he met her eyes again, "I am afraid to announce, is highly contagious."

Wendy rolled her eyes. "At least you're no longer denying the existence of hope entirely. I'll take what I can get."

"It always starts small," Pete lively dramatized, though his tone was tired to say at least. "First you accept your girlfriend is the smartest scientist on Earth and then, before you know it, you almost find it reasonable to warn a stranger about fanatics even if it deters your security protocols," he blurted out. Ten years and he still couldn't hide the smallest of things from her. 

Receiving the righteously shocked reaction of Wendy just half stepping back to get a good look at his embarrassment display, Pete nodded his head in defeat, "Yeah... Almost told Joel about the whole thing with the Fireflies. I felt bad for him and it's all your fault. You're such a bad influence, Winnie, I swear."

"I almost told Ellie too," Wendy admitted breathlessly, pretty much giving voice to the only thing able to lift Pete's head up, tilt it and then let his features scrunch into the a match to his delightful burst of laughter. 

"Look at us, growing soft first chance we get," he laughed at heir state.

Though her cheeks may have been warmer, Wendy played it off in a doctoral superiority, "Humans are social animals at their core, I'll have you know."

"Absolutely ridiculous of us," Pete shook his head firmly representing an exaggerated, but true denial. "How dare we be human?"

"We've got an infected right here," Wendy pointed behind her, playing along effortlessly in a back-and-forth she's missed too dearly, "if you feel you need to spice it up." All those shitty self-improvement books were right: one would have to have less of something to fully appreciate it. Less opportunities to spend alone time with Pete proved to have resurrected how utterly young their love still felt. 

"Oh, you want spicing up?" There was nothing as dangerous as the mischief of Pete's little grin. That was the sort of smile that used to get them into trouble back in her university days: stealing his old man's car, sneaking her out of campus in the dead of night, sneaking him into campus also in the dead of night. Yes, that was the most dangerous and charming thing about Pete, something she was thanking in silence any higher power for not taking away from her lover in this terrible world they've been baptized to by fire.

Pete stepped closer, rising his eyebrows and trying his best not laugh himself before even finishing saying what he wanted so badly to bring up, "Because I may have found something in one of the dorms while cleaning out infected..."

"You found-!" 

A condom wasn't exactly what Wendy expected to see Pete pull out of his pocket.

She clasped her left hand over her mouth to hold her laughter quiet and her right over his hand to get him to just put it back, out of sight. 

"The package is not even torn," Pete whispered, finally breaking into little fits of chuckles too, interrupted by sharp inhales. "Do you know how rare that is in this society? Like damn, it feels like the Lord is giving us both a clear reminder here, we're not getting younger, hun!"

"Seriously?" Wendy's whole face was a lot redder than usual. "Right now? Right here?"

"Well," he pursed his lips in hesitation, looking around. "I don't know how comfortable I am with that freak watching us," he nodded towards the infected on the table behind Wendy. 

"Exactly," she let go of his hand. "So how about you hold onto that condom for when we are in a cleaner, more private place, huh?"

Pete gave it a second of thought, "I will pretend you didn't just narrow down the location to almost impossible to find and just say that I will definitely hold you to your promise."

"Just not a car backseat again."

He whined, "Now you're narrowing it down even further."

"I'm sure we'll figure something out," Wendy approved solemnly. "For both our sakes," her nod was shameless in being a quick examination and appreciation of her boyfriend's physique, somehow still in decent shape despite their severe malnutrition and the piling deficiencies she was barely holding in check. "It's been a while," Wendy found herself mumbling.

She had no idea what that stare of hers just did to Pete's heart and unfortunately, she had no chance to even learn of its consequences because the kitchen timer blasted out into incredible noise, filling the whole room and making the both of them jump, startled. 

Their tasks have clearly and quickly been assumed: Pete was about to take care of turning that stupid thing off before it made their ears bleed and Wendy took the already prepared syringe to a much calmer infected test subject.

"You're going to be okay," she managed to whisper, through all that noise, at the human who, she liked to think, under all those layers of the virus, was confused and lost, and perhaps desperately wishing for this cure to work, as much as she did. She pushed the needle into the arm and started administering the perfectly clear liquid. The infected started hissing in agony gradually, but Wendy locked her jaw and concentrated on not getting distracted. 

At first, the glasses started breaking near the wall to her left. Then enough of the door has been punctured by bullets for the noise to break out just as Pete smashed the damn alarm. 

Gnawing pain made her see red within the second. She screamed and her lucidity was gone.

Gunshots paired with Wendy's cries made Pete's skin crawl; he woke up into a nightmare of pulling Wendy away from the table just as whoever was shooting at them reloaded. Her whimpers were ragged and she was hugging to her chest her right hand; blood was slipping through her left hands fingers, all over her chest. 

"Can you grab your backpack?" Pete held her face, tried to see any sign that Wendy was still conscious behind the unbearable state she was in. She gave him a rushed nod. "Stay low, get your things. I'll cover for you and we'll bandage your hand when we'll out of here. Remember the storage room to the left?" Though he received her nods and started to see her teary eyes opening, Pete rushed his explanation, letting go of Wendy and also checking his ammo for his pistol. "It has a rusted ventilation entrance that we can climb through. You ready?"

The second Wendy moved towards the part of the room covered in shards, Pete stood up walked behind the table and pushed it to block the door with both the metal structure and the infected tied to it, now more rabid than before they got there. He hit the test subject in the face with his elbow then stepped back and aimed out through the door too. He could afford firing four blind shots. 

Behind him, Wendy left her blood all over the counter as she made a conscious priority in taking the remaining two vials and tossing them into her backpack before even considering to get to the storage room to the left. On her stumbled, dazed way there, she snatched the alcohol bottle, bit its cap off, spit it out to the side and rushed to pour the liquid over her right hand, fully expecting the stings intense enough to make her bow over her knees screaming.

Pete started backing away from the table and the door at her scream. "Sounds like a whole lot of them outside. We need to get the fuck out of here and fast." He had no idea who those people shooting were and frankly, why would it even matter? Whoever they were, their status had been decreased to a very simple one in his eyes: danger.

He shot one more time and ran to Wendy's side, scooping her arm over his shoulders and helping her rush into the storage room, whose door he closed then, with just as much hurry, he pushed over the shelves under the vent to block the entrance altogether. 

"What ab...," Wendy could barely articulate words anymore, but she insisted on finishing her inquiry while Pete figured out the fastest way of breaking the vent entrance lid off, "... Ellie and Joel?"

Yes, he's grown soft with hope. But he hasn't grown stupid overnight. 

If Pete had to choose between those two and Winnie, the choice made itself. 

AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Goood lord this week has been hell and this chapter took wayyy too long to write in between all the work I had to put in for my dissertation😭😭😭😭

Kudos to lionessoftheseas for making the gif used in the intro of this chapter and big shoutout to aurunium whose comments really were the only reason why I still pushed through to want to update this.

I cannot stress this enough: the foreshadowingggg this chapter includesssss bruhhhhhhhh