CHAPTER EIGHT:

A HIKE IN THE WOODS

TEN MILES WEST OF BOSTON

THE SOUND OF water could be heard all around near the woods and the creak as the frogs let out their normal sounds, hopping from one rock to the other, some of them even dropping down into the water.

By the creak just outside of the woods, Joel could be seen knelt down beside it as he places his bruised and beat up hand inside of the water, reveling in the way it felt on his knuckles as he grabbed a rock and placed it on top of the stack he had been making.

Once the stack was tall enough for his liking, he rose back up to his feet and moved away from the water and back into the woods with a blank expression. When he got back to camp, he saw the three younglings all in different spots.

Ellie was sitting on the ground, his jacket over her lap to keep her warm as she leaned against a tree. Alec was standing over her, taking many glances at the other girl in the group while he lightly paced back and forth.

And Y/n sat a few feet away, her back facing them with her knees up to her chest. She stared up at the sky as the sun began to rise. Her cheeks were stained with tears. Joel walked by the siblings, crouching down by his backpack.

"You want your jacket back?" Ellie was the one to speak up, staring at the man.

He just shakes his head instead of responding, bringing out some food. He takes a couple pieces, taking a bite of one before tossing the rest to the siblings. Standing up from his crouched position, he moves towards Y/n. The girl looks up, taking the food with a nod.

"I've never been in the woods. More bugs than I thought." Ellie admits out loud.

Alec takes a bite of a piece of food. "Get used to it. We'll probably be here for a while."

The fourteen year old just hums with a nod. Her eyes travel back to Joel and hesitantly, she opens her mouth, "Look, I've been thinking about--"

"I don't want your sorries." He interrupts.

"I wasn't gonna say I'm sorry. I was gonna say that I've been thinking about what happened. Nobody made you or Tess take me and Alec. Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a truck battery or whatever, and you made a choice. So don't blame either of us for something that isn't our fault." She explains.

After a moment of staring at her, the man nods as he fixes his bag while the siblings grab their own stuff. Glancing over her shoulder, Y/n slowly stood up, placing her own backpack over her shoulders with a sigh, giving Joel a nod when he looked at her.

Ellie hands Joel his jacket back, asking, "How much longer?"

"Five hour hike." Joel replies.

Alec nods. "We can manage that."

And with that, they were venturing down the trail and starting their five hour hike. Throughout their hike, they had crossed a bridge and many other trails in the woods. With time that passes, the now group of four found themselves walking down a much bigger trail.

Ellie walked alongside Joel with Alec right behind them. The nineteen year old glances over his shoulder, frowning at the sight of Y/n a few feet behind all of them. He slows down his pace until he was walking beside her. While neither of the two said anything, they could hear Ellie and Joel talking.

"Have you ever met them?" He asks after a couple minutes of silence. "Bill and Frank?"

She shakes her head. "No. Joel and my..." She stops for a moment. "...and my mom never let me leave the QZ." He could see how much she fought back tears. "I guess my mom didn't want what happened to her to happen to me."

There were a few more seconds of silence until Alec spoke up again, "She was proud of you, you know?" He nods with a hum when she looks at him. "I mean, she never told me personally, but I could tell. The way she looked at you, protected you. She loved you."

"Thanks." Y/n whispers after a couple seconds.

"So, um," he nervously rubs his hands on his pants, "what do you like to do?"

She furrows her brows. "What do you mean?"

"You know..." He shrugs. "Back in the QZ, what did you usually do? For fun, I guess?"

"Not really. Just worked for rations. Basically it." Y/n shoves her hands in the pockets of her pants.

Alec goes to open his mouth, but stops when Joel calls back to them, informing that he had to grab some supplies from an abandoned store they were now walking towards. Ellie didn't seem affected when the man grumbled about her asking too many questions. If anything, she agreed.

"We hide supplies on routes in case we find ourselves short on gear, which I currently am cause--" Joel explains.

"No way!" Ellie suddenly exclaims, speed-walking to a broken game machine. "You ever play this one? I had a friend who knew everything about this game. There's this one character named Mileena who takes off her mask and she has monster teeth, and then she swallows you whole and barfs out your bones!"

Hearing rustling behind her, the fourteen year old turns around, her and the other two watching as Joel moves around, opening and closing drawers as he tries to find his gear.

"You forgot where you put your stuff." Alec points out.

Joel shakes his head. "No. I'm just zeroing in on it. It's been a couple of years."

Ellie nods. "Okay, well, I'm gonna take a look around, see if there's anything good." The other two nod in agreement, beginning to move away.

"Trust me, it's been picked over already." Joel tells them.

Y/n shrugs. "Maybe, maybe not."

"Is there anything bad in here?" Ellie asks, pointing at the next room over.

"Just you." Joel replies.

The fourteen year old hums. "Getting funnier."

"Hey," Y/n moves to follow her, "I'll come with you."

She pats the younger girl's back as she moves inside with Ellie right behind her, both of them taking notice of another door in the room. The seventeen year old pushes the door open, squeezing through. She keeps it open enough for Ellie to squeeze through before they were looking around the smaller room.

Ellie was kicking some stuff away when she caught sight of a metal door on the floor, keeping her voice quiet when she was calling out the older girl's name, making the other girl walk over. The two girls stand side by side, staring down at the door. After pleading from Ellie, they were kicking things off the door.

Y/n pulled the handle and opened it up with all the strength she could, quickly calling back to Joel when he checked if they were alright. When she didn't hear anything, she slowly pushed the door open the rest of the way. The two girls stare down at the darkness below them. Ellie grabs a rock, dropping it down to see how far it was.

"I wanna go down there." Ellie blurts out.

Y/n looks at her with wide eyes. "What? Are you crazy?" She grabs the fourteen year old's arm when she took her bag off. "There could be infected."

"I don't hear anything." The younger girl holds her ear close, a deep silence following after. "Besides, it's not like I can get infected." Y/n didn't look convinced. "I'll immediately tell you if I see anything dangerous, I promise. Please, Y/n? Please?"

The older teenager was about to shake her head again to protest again when Ellie was giving her pleading eyes. That was how the fourteen year old found herself gripping one of Y/n's hand after she had turned her flashlight on and she was dangling through the doorway before her feet touched the sandy ground.

The older girl was left to crouch at the top, waiting for Ellie to be done so they could head back. As she was crouched there, Y/n tensed at the sound of a familiar clicking coming down from below just minutes later of only hearing Ellie cursing to herself as she moved around, and her voice was quietly and frantically calling out to Ellie.

After a few seconds of not hearing the fourteen year old, Y/n was about to jump down when Ellie told her she was fine, tone sounding surprised. There was a little bit of time that went by before Ellie was appearing back at the bottom of the hole. Y/n held out her hand, gripping Ellie's when the younger girl grabbed it.

She was able to ground herself on the floor as she pulled Ellie back up until Ellie was able to push herself up the rest of the way. The sound of Joel and Alec's voice calling out their names echoed in their ears as Y/n closed the metal door before grabbing her bag, seeing Ellie waiting for her.

As they moved out of the back room, Y/n rose a brow to see both Joel and Alec standing on either sides of the doorway, their shoulders loosening at the sight of the girls completely fine and uninjured.

Ellie holds up a box of tampons. "Picked over, my ass."

The girl took her bag off, placing the box inside while Joel was putting his supplies back down underneath the floor, adding the rifle to it as well. The other three only watched as he grabbed the floorboard to cover it back up.

"What are you doing?" Alec questions.

"There's not much ammo out there for this thing. Makes it mostly useless." Joel tells them.

Ellie steps forward. "Well, if you're just gonna leave it there."

"No." Both Alec and Joel protest, shaking their heads.

Y/n leaned against the shelves, arms crossed as she watched with an amused smile before she turned around and left the shop. Without saying another word, Joel grabbed his bag and followed her with the Williams siblings right behind him.

* * *

IT WAS STILL bright out, the white fluffy looking clouds moving in one direction with each second that was going by throughout the day. The occasional buzzing of the insects could be heard as they buzzed right by the survivors ears, startling them once in a while as the other insects like the crickets were hiding in the tall grass all over the field.

After feeling it had gotten a bit warmer outside, the group of three had taken off their jackets as the boys had their own dangled on the strap of their backpacks, making sure it was secure while the girls had the arms of theirs wrapped around their waists. Joel continued leading the way, the siblings behind him with Y/n behind them.

When Ellie let out a curse of surprise, Joel looked back at the youngsters to see they had their gazes looking to their left and when he followed their line of eyesight, he caught sight of a crashed airplane just meters away from them on the field. The airplane was laying on the hill, broken into pieces.

"You fly in one of those?" Ellie asks.

Joel nods. "A few times, sure."

"So lucky." The youngest of the group whispers.

"Didn't feel like it at the time." Joel states. "Get shoved into a middle seat, pay twelve bucks for a sandwich."

"Dude, you got to go up in the sky." Ellie reminds.

The older man gestures to the crashed plane. "Yeah, well, so did they."

With that, he was moving back in the direction they had been walking and continuing on forward with the siblings right behind him. Y/n lingered back a couple seconds, her eyes staring at the crashed plane. She couldn't help but wonder what life was like before the outbreak.

What her mother's life was like before the outbreak.

"So, everything came crashing down in one day?" Alec curiously questions as he walks alongside Joel, getting a nod. "How? I mean, no one was infected with Cordyceps, everybody's fine, eating in restaurants and flying in planes. And then, all at once? How did it even start? If you have to get bit to be infected, then who bit the first person?"

Ellie's eyes widen. "Was it a monkey? I bet it was a monkey."

"It wasn't a monkey." Joel turns to the only other guy, saying, "Didn't you go to school like her?"

"I left a few years ago. Didn't really listen while I was there." Alec admits.

"Left to join the Fireflies?" Y/n mumbles in question, voice laced in disbelief. Glancing back at her, the nineteen year old hesitantly nods, which she looks away.

"Besides, it's Fedra school." Ellie intervenes. "They don't teach us how their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic."

"No one knows for sure, but, best guess, Cordyceps mutated. And some of it got into the food supply. Probably a basic ingredient like flour or sugar. There were certain brands of food that were sold everywhere, all across the country, across the world. Bread, cereal... pancake mix. You eat enough of it, it'll get you infected. So the tainted food all hits the store shelves around the same time, Thursday. People bought it, ate some Thursday night or Friday morning. Day goes on, they started to get sick. Afternoon, evening, they got worse. Then they started biting. Friday night, September 26, 2003. And by Monday, everything was gone." Joel explains.

For a moment, neither of the four said a thing, an uncomfortable silence surrounding them. "Well," Y/n moves past them, gaze on her feet, "it makes more sense than monkeys."

The other three stare at her, all of them frowning. She had hardly said a word throughout their journey, and they knew why. They didn't blame her. She was grieving. The man only nods in reply before he was suddenly coming to a stop, holding his arm out in front of the siblings to get them to stop with him, only making them look at him in confusion.

"We'll cut across the woods here." Joel makes his voice loud for Y/n to hear, causing her to come to a stop and look back at them.

Y/n furrows her brows. "Isn't the road easier?"

"Yeah, it's just--" The fifty something year old man stops himself, looking hesitant. "There's stuff up there you guys shouldn't see."

"Well, now we have to see." Ellie argues as she begins walking forward down the road, a teasing smile on her lips.

"I don't want any of you to." Joel insists, though both girls ignore him. "I'm serious. Y/n! Ellie!"

"Ellie, come on." Alec scolds his little sister.

"Can it hurt us?" Y/n asks in annoyance, receiving a 'no' from her father figure. "Well, then we keep going down the road."

"You're too honest, man." Ellie smirks at the man. "Should've said axe murderer." As they continue down the road, neither of them caught sight of anything. "Whatever it was, I think it's gone."

Just as those words left her mouth, Y/n felt her entire body freeze as her eyes cast to her left. Her feet came to a stop, causing Ellie to bump into her from behind as she had been glancing around. The younger girl follows her gaze, feeling her breath hitch in her throat at the sight before her.

In concern, Alec rushes up, only to stop abruptly just like them. The three youngsters stared down at the skulls and bones, realizing that these were once alive people during the outbreak. The realization that this was what Joel didn't want them to see, though the girls had completely ignored him.

"About a week after outbreak day, soldiers went through the countryside, evacuated the small towns. Told you you were going to a QZ, and you were... if there was room. If there wasn't..." Joel informs.

Even when he had trailed off in his words, the other three didn't need any more information to understand what the government had done to these people before they even made it to the QZ.

"These people weren't sick?" Ellie questions.

Joel shakes his head. "No, probably not."

Alec clenches his jaw. "Why kill them? Why not just leave them be?" He tears his eyes away from the dead corpses, rubbing a hand over his face.

"Dead people can't be infected." The Miller man replies.

As they continued staring down at the bones, Y/n felt her gaze stop on a small skull that looked smaller than every other one. It had fabric that was decorated with rainbows laying against it, blowing in the wind. Tears pricked her eyes within seconds as she thought about the baby that probably had a big future planned ahead of it.

She blinks the tears back, being the first one to leave and continue down the road, her hands gripping the straps of her backpack. Alec felt himself staring at the back of her head, a deep frown on his thin lips as he watched her.