THEY WALKED FOR A LONG WHILE, probably not the best choice to make in the middle of a storm in pitch-black darkness. Lou didn't have the energy to care, she just leaned on Ralph as she walked and stared at the ground.

She had never seen the outside world before. She was born five years after outbreak day, meaning she was never able to see the sights before everything fell to shit and she was kept in the confines of Boston for the rest of her life. She didn't really want to see it right now. She was too tired and scared and it was too dark to even make anything out in the first place. She just followed her dad as he followed Joel.

Eventually, they found a place. It was old and dusty and mossy, but it was better than wandering around in the dark all vulnerable and weak for the rest of the night. Almost immediately, an argument broke out, but it was surprisingly not between Joel and Ralph, though the latter was involved.

As they stood in the big, open space of the main room, they began hashing out bedroom plans. Joel already seemed to be on top of everything, knew where every room was, which meant he and Tess must've come here a lot while they were smuggling. It was a pretty solid plan- Joel with Tess and then Lou with Ralph until the youngest of the five asked the obvious question.

'What about Ellie?' Lou asked, furrowing her eyebrows at Miller and pointing back at her new friend. Even Ellie looked like she hadn't noticed that she was being excluded until it was pointed out, and then proceeded to get just as angry about it.

'Yeah, what about Ellie?' Ellie crossed her arms and glared at the adults who were clearly trying to sabotage her. She didn't exactly blame them, but Tess and Ralph had seen the bite, they knew it wasn't fresh and they knew nothing bad was happening to Ellie, at least not yet.

It was no shocker that Ralph was trying to throw her under the bus, but she expected better from Tess. Whatever happened to girl power!?

'Ellie will probably be fine by herself.' Joel looked her right in the eyes as he said it, like each and every word was meant to feel like a stab in the heart. He turned around and began to walk to the room he had picked out for him and Tess, but turned around when Lou spoke again.

'I'm not leaving her.' She announced, standing in the middle of the room, tiny but mighty. Joel didn't think she'd put up a fight, not with how tired and hungry she was, but he was quickly being disproved. Ralph took a step forward and opened his mouth, but Lou interrupted before he even started. 'What if one of those boogiemen comes for her?'

'She's already bitten, honey.' Ralph didn't want to have to put up with this right now. He was tired, they all were, but especially him by the looks of it. His hair was messy, hanging down in front of his heavy eyes, and he didn't even care enough to move it at this stage.

'So?' Lou planted her hands on her hips in a superhero stance. 'It doesn't matter, there's nothing wrong with her. Besides, what happens if Joel and Tess lose their "cargo"? They can't go back to Boston, not after beating up a FEDRA agent, and neither can we!'

'What happens if our cargo turns into a gremlin and mauls you while you sleep?' Tess countered, raising her eyebrows. Lou seemed stumped for a moment, and the grownups turned her brainstorming as a window to run for their rooms before she could say anything else.

'Come on, do you seriously think I'd kill Lou?' Much to everyone's dismay, Ellie spoke up and looked at them all like they were crazy. It was an odd question that earned her a few curious stares. 'She'd be the last one on my list!'

The trio looked at each other, all of them wondering who would be first and who would be last, completely ignoring the topic at hand for a handful of seconds before Ellie spoke again.

'Listen, I don't really care if I turn into, like, a goobledy-gop, but I really care about going to sleep right now. So, whatever is whatever.' She murmured, making no sense and throwing her hands up by her shoulders in momentary surrender before tossing her backpack down onto the patch of greenery in the middle of the room and sitting down on it.

Lou sat down right next to her, narrowing her eyes at Joel and his pre-discussed bedroom planning, and placed her bag down in front of her.

'Lou, we don't have time for this.' Ralph sighed, tilting his head back and whispering something to himself. Lou didn't even bat an eye, she just began searching for the most comfortable position to lie in. Ralph clicked his tongue and waved his arms around in defeat. 'Okay, fine, then! Hope you and Ellie are still besties when she gnaws off your buttcheek.'

'Love you, dad!' She called out as he disappeared into the room on the right, the sound of his bag hitting the ground echoing.

'Love you too, hon.' Ralph was much less enthusiastic about it, but he still meant it.

The two adults still in the room began to talk to each other quietly. Then, Tess began to set off, and Joel followed Ralph into the room off to the side instead of what had been discussed.

It was silent between Ellie and Lou for a while.

They listened to the sound of Tess moving stuff around, they heard Ralph and Joel mumbling to each other (probably arguing, again), and they looked at the stars in the sky above them. Lou seriously regretted not bringing pyjamas, but there were worse things than sleeping in a t-shirt and sweatpants.

'...I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, your dad is an asshole.' Ellie said randomly, keeping her eyes locked on the stars in front of her. She was chill about it, like she hadn't even noticed she had said it until Lou looked over at her with an unconvinced face and she was forced to look back. 'I'm serious. He's super weird.'

'He's not an asshole. He's just... Skeptical.' Lou shrugged to herself, wriggling around a little to stop a rock from digging into her ankle. 'He doesn't like people. He's always been like that. The only people he likes are me and my mom.'

'Doesn't he like Joel and Tess?' Ellie asked.

'Not really, they're just our neighbours. He likes me because I'm his kid, and he likes my mom because she's my mom.' Lou said simply, yawning and stretching her arms out over her head. Ellie opened her mouth to ask another question, one about Lou's mother, but Lou beat her to it. 'How come you're not a... Goobledy-gop?'

Ellie chuckled at the usage of the thought-up nickname from earlier, and then shrugged her shoulders. 'I don't really know all the science and biology behind it. All I know is that I'm not and that I'm happy about it.'

'Can I see it?' Lou asked quietly.

Ellie sat upright, shuffling, and Lou turned onto her side to face her. She reached for the sleeve of her hoodie and dragged it up to the crook of her elbow, holding her arm out. Lou held it gently, like she was holding something fragile that could break at any moment, and brought her face close to squint. The darkness didn't help much, and Lou had to run her fingers over it to locate it, but when she finally felt the raised, scarred skin, she ducked back and shuddered.

'Ew! That feels so gross.' She threw her hands over her face, dramatic as ever, and Ellie threw her head back and laughed.

'It looks way grosser. Consider yourself lucky, Zhenya.' She taunted, leaning forward only to be playfully pushed back and given a funny look. It went quiet for another moment, and Ellie began to shuffle back into her original position whilst Lou rolled onto her back again. 'We should probably sleep.'

'Yeah, probably.' Lou nodded sleepily, rolling to her left and facing away from Ellie.

She wasn't fazed by the action, but Ellie continued to stare at Lou. It probably looked creepy in hindsight, but Ellie didn't really care. She rolled over and smiled to herself as she drifted off to sleep, happy to finally have a friend again.

...

'THANKS.' Ralph said suddenly, breaking the silence between him and Joel.

'Didn't do it for you. Did it for the kid.' He grumbled back, already knowing what he was referencing.

'Either way. You still did it.' Ralph shrugged at the roof, not even bothering to look at Joel because he knew he wouldn't be looking back.

This room actually had a mattress, which was a nice change. It looked like it had been infested with numerous generations of cockroaches and bedbugs, but he would take this over the cold, hard, dirt-covered ground any day. Joel had planted his backpack in the middle of the mattress, creating a sort of border between them for reasons entirely unknown to Ralph. Zhenya didn't mind it, though. He just wanted to sleep.

'I did it because I had to.' Joel continued, facing the wall and looking lifeless from where he lay. If he wasn't speaking, Ralph would be totally convinced that Joel was dead. 'Couldn't lose our cargo.'

'I wasn't your cargo.' Ralph pointed out the obvious gap in Joel's story, tilting his head a little bit. 'You could've let the asswipe shoot me.'

'Well, I didn't want him to.' His voice was getting louder with each question, clearly tired and out of it and not wanting to be here. Ralph used his common sense skills to figure out that Joel wasn't up for playing Twenty Questions right now, and rolled over on his side to finally get some shut-eye.

Even if the conversation wasn't all that friendly, at least Ralph now knew that, if presented with such an issue again, there was a strict seven out of ten chance that Joel wouldn't let him get shot, and it helped him sleep a little bit better than usual.

...

WHEN ELLIE WOKE UP THAT MORNING, Lou was gone. She wasn't awfully concerned about it. She knew that someone was probably inspecting her in the other room to make sure that Ellie hadn't gone all goobledy-gop on her in the night.

Ellie shuffled around for a moment, glaring up at the sky for waking her, and looking around the room cluelessly. It took her a while to remember why she was in such a position in the first place. Then she remembered that she was being shipped across the country by some group of weirdos.

She turned around and discovered that the group of weirdos she was thinking about were sitting on the set of steps directly in front of her. Joel held an assault rifle in his arms, even though it was obvious he wouldn't be needing to use it. Tess sat next to him, shadows casting over her face and making her look super eerie. Ralph was at the end of the step, not accompanying Lou like Ellie thought he would've been, and tying the laces of his right boot.

'Morning.' She said cheerily, shimmying around to stand up. The second she made the motion, Joel's grip on the firearm tightened, and she took the hint to sit back down. She knew what this was about. '...Do I look like I'm infected-?'

'Show him your arm.' Joel demanded just in time as Ralph looked up from his shoe and made eye contact with Ellie. She rolled her eyes at him and reached for her sleeve as Ralph stood up and sauntered over to her, yawning on the short journey there.

He reached down and grabbed her arm, an unnecessary move, and looked at it for a moment.

'Yeah, it's not getting any worse, is it, Einstein?' Ellie barked at him, narrowing her eyes. The second his grip loosened, she snatched her arm back and tugged down her sleeve, letting her hands thump to the grass below her before raising a question. 'If we're out in the open city, why aren't we getting swarmed?'

'That's, like, a completely normal arm, man.' Ralph confirmed their suspicions, looking back at Joel and nodding his head. He grimaced and gestured. 'Apart from all the, like... Scarring, and bumpiness, and-'

'Yeah, we know that, dumbass.' Tess scoffed, patting the step next to her and inviting Ralph to take a seat again despite her mean tone.

It was weird, and felt nearly impossible, but aside from the tunnel and right now, Ralph hadn't interacted with Tess that much. Probably because he found her scary, even if she did have a little bit of a soft spot for Lou, and Ralph didn't like scary things.

He could tell that Tess wasn't ill-intentioned. She was just trying to get by, and, to some degree, he respected that. Smuggling wasn't the most honorary line of work, but it was certainly a high-paying one. And Ralph was in no position to judge people based on careers.

'What was Marlene doing with an infected kid?' Tess asked, mainly to Joel, but it didn't stop Ralph from butting in.

'Who's Marlene?' He asked, looking between them both.

Ellie furrowed her eyebrows, wondering why he would be so concerned about it, but she ultimately kept her mouth shut- at least about Ralph's question. 'I'm not infected. She found me after I was bitten.'

'And she didn't shoot you?' Joel asked.

'Clearly not. She locked me up and had some of her guys test me every day to see if I was getting sick.'

'Test you how?' Tess questioned.

'I have to pee-'

'Test you how?'

'...They made me count to ten and hold out my hand and then keep it steady. But, you know, I think what really impressed them was the fact that I didn't turn into a fucking monster.' Ellie got to her feet, shoving her backpack out of the way so she could steady herself. 'Now, can I please?'

Joel stood with her, his gun firm at his side and at the ready.

'Fine.' Tess decided, which seemed to sway Joel a little bit too. She nodded her head towards the door on the left, the one that led to the bedroom she slept in. 'Back there, you can find a spot. Try find that little troublemaker while you're at it, make sure she hasn't burned anything down. And here,'

Tess ducked down and picked up a magazine on the floor beneath her, tossing it to Ellie with a flick of her wrist.

'Tear out a few pages.'

It was obvious that Ellie found this less than ideal, but, alas, she began her journey to go and find a spot to pee.

'There's not gonna be anything bad in here?' She waddled off.

'Just you.' Joel answered. 'And Lou.'

...

NOTES!

some people may say that this is a filler chapter. those people would be correct. BUT i still love it regardless bc ellie and lou r besties and joel kind of tolerates ralph

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!
im very much single and very much ready to mingle, but i hope u guys had a wonderful day regardless of my loneliness :')

AND THANK YOU GUYS FOR 2K READS HELLOOOO?????
this is actually CRAZY, ive had this book published for about a week or two and its grown SOOO fast i still cannot believe it. i love and appreciate u guys so much, all the comments and votes make me so happy, and im so grateful for every single one of u!!! <3

OKAY no more silly corny stufffffff toodledoo lol