CHAPTER ELEVEN:

BRAND NEW DAY

THE SUN FOUND itself hiding behind the grey-ish type of clouds as the early morning rolled in for the infected and the lasting survivors living on the planet they considered awful since the outbreak occurred twenty years ago.

The chirping of the birds could be heard all throughout the forest as they flew past the branches and trees and up in the sky. Their nests could be seen high up on the trees, the animals occasionally landing in them after they had grabbed some food for themselves and their babies in the nest.

Only two out of the group of four could be seen awake. Joel was standing at the end of the truck, the bed of the vehicle already full of stuff as he put some stuff he had brought out earlier into a metal box before closing it shut while Alec was rolling up his sleeping bag.

Y/n shifted in her spot, rubbing her tired eyes as she woke up. Ellie pokes her head out of her sleeping bag. The brightness of the morning had her eyes squinting when her gaze landed on a silver pot with something boiling in it.

Curiosity getting the best of her, she lifted her head from her backpack and moved to get on her knees. One hand lifted the lid of the pot up before she took a sniff, only for a disgust expression to appear on her face.

Ellie groans, eyes widening. "What the fuck is that?"

Joel snaps his head towards her. "You don't like coffee?"

The girl watches as he raises a brow before she puts the lid back on before rolling back onto the ground, head resting again on her backpack. It wasn't long till everything was packed up and they were all in the truck as Joel began driving again.

Alec was in the passengers seat, the map in his lap while the occasional sound of Joel taking sips from his coffee broke the silence. From the back beside Y/n, Ellie could only stare at the adult in silence, disbelief in her gaze as she remembers the smell of the coffee.

"Is that seriously what those Starbucks in the QZ used to sell?" Ellie asks in disbelief.

"Well, theirs was a lot fresher than what Bill saved up, but, yeah, this is what they sold." Joel replies.

"Smells like burnt shit." The fourteen year old comments.

In response, the man slurps his coffee loudly. "Eyes on the map." Joel demands.

Alec points at different spots on the map. "Seventy-six west and then seventy west for a while." He drops his arms. "Where in Wyoming did you say your brother was?"

"Last contact came through a radio tower close to Cody." Joel replies.

Ellie mumbled the name 'Cody' to herself as she looked over Alec's shoulder, reaching over to point at where she found it. "That is deep up in there."

"And if he's not there?" Y/n questions.

"Then odds are he'll be near a settlement, probably close to another city out there. Ain't too many of them in Wyoming." Joel informs.

"Chee-Yen." Ellie reads off the map.

"Cheyenne." Alec corrects.

"Che-- really?" Ellie asks, getting a nod. She continues to read off the map, "Cheyenne, Laramie... Casper?"

"What's his name?" Alec questions.

Joel furrows his brows. "Whose name?"

"Your brother."

"Tommy."

"Younger or older?"

"Younger."

"Why isn't he with you?"

"A long story."

"Is it longer than twenty-five hours? Cause I think that's what we got." Ellie tells him.

Joel hesitates for a moment, side-eyeing them before speaking, "Tommy's what we used to call a 'joiner'. Dreams of becoming a hero. So he enlisted in the army right outta high school. A few months later, they ship him off to Desert Storm. It's what they called that war. It doesn't matter. Point is, being in the army didn't make him feel much like a hero. Cut to twelve years later, outbreak happens. He convinces me to join a group making their way up to Boston, which I did mostly to keep an eye on him, keep him alive. It's where we met Tess."

The man stops himself for a couple seconds so he could take a sip of his coffee while the youngsters watch and wait in silence. Alec takes a brief glance over his shoulder, noticing the clench in Y/n's jaw as she stares out the window.

He continues, "And that whole crew, we, uh..." He hesitates. "Well, for what it was, it worked. And then Tommy meets Marlene. She talks him into joining the Fireflies. Same mistake he made when he was eighteen." Joel shakes his head in disbelief. "Wants to save the world. Pipe dream. Him, Fireflies, all of them... delusional. Course, last we heard, he quit the Fireflies, too. So now he's on his own out there, and I gotta go get him."

"If you don't think there's hope for the world," Ellie slowly begins, "why bother going on? I mean, you gotta try, right?"

"You haven't seen the world, so you don't know. You keep going for family. That's about it." Joel states.

"We're not family." While it sounded like a question, they all knew it was a statement.

Joel shakes his head. "No. You're cargo. And I made a promise to Tess."

"She was family." Y/n whispers to herself, but it was loud enough that everyone else in the truck heard her. An uncomfortable silence follows them.

"What if you don't find him?" Alec slowly asks.

"I will." Joel's reply was quick.

Ellie raises a brow. "How do you know?"

"I'm persistent." There was no emotion in his tone. "You guys got up pretty early. If you wanna grab more sleep--"

Ellie interrupts with a roll of her eyes, "I'm not even tired." Not long after she said that, light snores were escaping her as she slept soundly against Y/n's shoulder.

It was a couple hours later when she woke up, sitting straight up as she glanced around the narrow road Joel was now driving on. Both girls leaned forward, Ellie leaning against her brother's seat while Y/n leaned against Joel's, who suspiciously parks the truck in front of a tunnel.

Only making sure they stay put, Joel slowly exits the truck, reaching into the back for his gun before closing the door behind him. They watch as he moves forward towards the abandoned vehicles flipped over with dead corpses laying inside some of them.

The man crouches down in front of the tunnel that was blocked off, peeking through a hole to see the other side. All he got was a gust of wind blown in his face, to which he slowly stood back up and looked back at the people in the truck.

His footsteps were quick as he put his gun back in the back before getting back in the driver's seat. "Where are we?" Y/n questions, peeking over Alec's shoulder at the map.

"Kansas City." Alec replies as Joel takes the map from him.

"How far back do we have to go to get around this?" Ellie asks.

Joel doesn't reply right away, his finger trailing along the map before he looked back at the tunnel. The three watched him until he cursed under his breath, slamming the door shut before he started the engine once again.

He only briefly explained what he was doing as he turned around and drove down another road to get around the tunnel. And soon enough, they were driving through the city as Joel and Alec argued back and forth about where the highway was.

Ellie was the one who got them to stop, followed by Joel pressing his foot on the break. All of them looked through the window at where Ellie was looking, seeing the QZ just to their left. However, the gates were open and it looked completely abandoned.

No Fedra in sight.

Their attention was immediately off the abandoned QZ and straight forward at the sound of a voice desperately calling out to them. A seemingly injured man stumbles out from behind a vehicle, clutching his stomach in pain, begging for help.

"Put your seatbelts on." Joel demands as he does just that.

Y/n follows, the other two doing the same. "Aren't we gonna help him?"

"No." Right after, Joel grips the steering wheel and presses on the gas. The man, suddenly all better, jumps out of the way just as bullets are shot at them.

It was then that Ellie, Alec and Y/n finally saw other people attacking them, realizing that it was all a ruse and the man wasn't actually injured. Just as Y/n shouted the man's name, a large brick was thrown onto the track, cracking the windshield.

The truck swerves around as they drove over sharp pins, blowing out the tires within seconds. When a man runs out and aims his gun at them, Joel swerves the vehicle and drives straight through the window of an abandoned laundromat.

Alec spins around to look at the girls. "Are you guys okay?"

Joel does the same. "You're not hurt? Nothing?"

Y/n shakes her head. "I don't think so."

All of a sudden, gunshots rang through the air, bullets hitting the now ruined truck, breaking the windows. Frantically, they all got their seatbelts off, leaving through the right side doors to avoid the gunfire. Sneakily, Joel opens the back door to grab his gun.

When his eyes stop on a hole in the wall, he speaks up, "Hey, you guys see that hole? Can you guys squeeze through?" Only Ellie nods. "When I say go, you guys crawl to that wall, and you squeeze through, and you don't come out until I say, okay?"

When the window above them breaks, the fourteen year old flinches as she glances around. Quickly, Alec checks the bullets of his gun as he prepares himself to attack, giving Joel a nod when their eyes meet. Y/n had been digging into her bag for her own gun.

"And they're not gonna hit you. Look at me!" Joel shouts when he notices Ellie wasn't looking at him. She does. "They're not gonna hit you. You stay down, you stay low, you stay quiet."

"Joel, I can help." Y/n speaks up before he could give the signal to go.

He was immediately shaking his head. "No."

"Joel, I know how to shoot. You know that. Let me help!" She argues.

"No!" The man exclaims. "I already got Alec. You stay with Ellie, keep each other safe. Do you understand?" After a moment of hesitancy, she nods.

After a couple seconds, Joel shouted at them to go, which they began crawling towards the hole, staying as low as they could while the two males of the group stand up and aim their guns over the truck, firing back at the people who were attacking them.

Ellie threw her bag through the hole before following it, Y/n right behind her and pressing their backs against the wall. The males outside ran to hide behind the counter after there was only one man left. The man slowly moved inside the laundromat, gun held high and tight.

The fourteen year old hesitantly peeked through the hole at the sound of heavy footsteps, which Y/n quickly pulled her back before he could see her. Ellie jumped when a gunshot rang through and a body fell to the floor. Joel and Alec were now standing up after Joel shot the man dead.

For a moment, it was silent. The males looked at each other, both of them thinking the same thing. Was it over? Were they all gone? However, that silence didn't last long when the door slammed open from behind Alec as the man went to shoot at him.

The young man was able to kick him, getting the bullet away from him. Joel went to reload his gun, curses escaping him when he realized it was jammed. The man pinned Alec against the counter with his much larger gun. Forgetting about his gun, Joel rushed towards them.

He wrapped his arms around the stranger's neck from behind, pulling him off the the younger male. The man shot up at the ceiling, trying to shoot the Miller man. He was able to ram the butt of his gun against Joel's face, sending him stumbling before Alec attacked him.

The two gripped his gun as they fought for it before the young man was pinned to the floor, the gun right against his neck. "Now you're gonna fucking pay!" The man shouts.

Y/n grabs her gun from her pocket, trying to reload it as she takes a frantic peek through the hole. However, her gun was jammed. It wasn't working. At the sight of this, Ellie immediately began to dig into her bag.

Joel stumbles to his feet as Alec's face began to turn pale, losing the air in his lungs. Neither of them had noticed the person coming up behind them before a bullet rang through the air, causing the man to fall beside Alec as he clutched his leg.

The young man coughed loudly as Joel rushed to him, crouching down beside him. The adults slowly looked up to see a stricken Ellie standing there, a small gun in her hand as she aimed it at the stranger. Y/n's head was poked out of the hole, eyes wide.

The man holds up his hand when Ellie took a step forward, desperate pleas leaving him, "No, no, no! It's okay. It's over. We're not fighting anymore. I'm gonna go home. I'll tell everyone you're good." He begins sobbing. "I don't know what to do. My legs don't work."

At the sound of him beginning to cry, Alec noticed his sister's face started to soften. Her hand shook as she slowly dropped her arm, still gripping the gun tight.

"My mom isn't far, if you could get me to her." The man continues crying. He tenses when Joel and Alec begin to stand up. "We could trade with you guys. We could be friends. I didn't know." He holds his hand out towards the girl. "I'm Bryan. What's your name?"

Joel stumbles the rest of the way up, panting heavily. Glaring down at Bryan for a couple seconds, he turns to Ellie and holds out his hand. Ellie slowly gives him the gun, which he snatches it the rest of the way.

"Wait, wait." Bryan cries when Joel brings out his own gun. He unsheathes his knife, tossing it to the floor. "You can have it. It's a good knife."

The Miller man bends down, grabbing the handle of the knife and gripping it tight. Looking back at the young girl, he grumbles, "Get back behind the wall."

"No, no, no! I'm sorry! Please. We could just talk. I'm sorry!" Bryan rambles on through his cries, his hand held out in a desperate manner.

His cries grow louder when Ellie turns around and speed walks back towards the hole. Y/n moves away as she climbs back in the hole. They both look at each other as Bryan continues to plead with the man before him.

Squeezing her eyes shut to get rid of the tears, Y/n clutches her head when he begins calling out to his mother. And then all of a sudden, everything is silent as the knife makes contact with his skin, killing him instantly.

Joel's heavy footsteps could be heard from the other side of the wall. "Girls," he calls out, "we gotta get in there. We can't fit through."

Y/n wipes the tears away, eyes casting to the desk in front of the door. "There's some stuff against the door."

"Well, can you move it?" The man impatiently asks.

In seconds, both the girls move to the desk, gripping either side as they pull it away from the door. Joel had been shoving his body against the door, getting it open. He lets Alec go in first before following, slamming it shut behind him. The four push the desk back against the door so no one would follow.

"We're okay." Ellie assures when the males looks at them, reaching for her bag. "We're good. I got some food in here still, and I got your lights still." She brings out their flashlights. Both men grab them.

"What now?" Alec questions.

"We go up." Joel replies.

"To get a better look?" Y/n asks.

Joel nods. "Hopefully, we spot a clear route out."

Slowly, he opens a door and peeks inside, flashing his light through the darkness. The kids nod when he tells them to stay close before they move further into the building to get to the other side. It didn't take too long until they hesitantly stepped out onto an alleyway.

With their knees bent, the group of four stay low and move behind an abandoned vehicle just as a couple vehicles pass them and in the direction of where the fight had just been. Voices could be heard as they yelled out their fellow men's name, one of them being Bryan's.

Double-checking and making sure the kids stay in their spots, Joel rushes to the other side of the alley just as a voice yells out to the others about finding a body, revealing it was Bryan's. Opening a door and peeking inside, Joel looks back at the others and gestures for them to follow.

Peeking up, Y/n felt a hand grab hers before they moved across the alley. Just as she reached the door, she noticed Alec was the one holding her hand. The young man pushes his sister and the girl inside before closing the door behind them.