This is Not the Last of Us

Chapter 16

Ace was starting to have second thoughts as he and (Y/N) traveled down to the cars. Not even ten minutes had passed, but Ace could hear the calls of alert from his walkie talkie. Joel was certainly making himself a target.

Ace continued to move his daughter through the crowd. Soldiers were shouting orders at one another and yanking guns out of crates. The men only spared glancing looks, much too busy with the situation to question what he was doing. (Y/N) was holding his hand tightly while they moved. She would occasionally look up at him, or her eyes would flit to the men moving away from them. She seemed almost apologetic towards them, understanding that they were walking towards a fool's errand.

She had seen what Joel was capable of, anyone who got into his path was sure to die.

And for the first time, she didn't seem all that concerned for others. (Y/N) was a naturally nurturing and kind person, but she couldn't feel bad for people that were willing to sacrifice one person for a mere chance of success.

The two of them took a more roundabout path, running into fewer and fewer soldiers the more they walked. They could hear the gunshots and screaming in the distance, but it didn't stop them. The two of them ended up taking the stairs, just on the off chance that Joel got to Seth and Ellie faster than Ace had accounted for. If Joel had to wait for the elevator to come up, he had a good chance of dying. And Seth would get mixed up in that.

Which meant that it was incredibly sub-optimal in Ace's eyes.

His daughter was wheezing by the time they got to the bottom of the steps, but they both understood that they didn't really have the time to stop here. Ace pushed open the door and glanced around the immediate area. He listened in absolute silence for a few moments, trying to ensure that it was clear. When he heard nothing in the space, he turned and offered his daughter a nod.

He stepped in first with his gun drawn. He may not have heard anything, but that didn't mean there wasn't a chance. Ace hadn't seen so many operational vehicles since pre-outbreak. The entire lot was filled with cars, some of them had their hoods open with lights pointed inside of them. Ace was no fool, that meant that those ones needed repair. He should avoid those ones.

They would need at least a five-seater car, which was standard. The only issue was that most of the five-seaters he could see were being repaired. He didn't really want to get a bigger car, they were typically less fuel efficient, and working gas was already hard to come by. The Fireflies had been able to "make" functioning gas, but they wouldn't be that lucky out in the wild.

He needed a fuel efficient vehicle, and ideally with a lot of gas already in it.

(Y/N) seemed to be thinking the same thing, at least to some extent.

"Papa, how about this one?"

Ace turned his attention towards her, she was seated in one of the cars and seemed to be studying it. It was a van, not necessarily ideal... he leaned into the car and stared at the fuel gauge, flicking it hard to see where it pointed.

A full tank.

"They'll put Ellie under anesthetics, she probably won't wake up for a while. It's best to give her somewhere to lay." (Y/N) suggested.

Ace's eyes widened for a moment, he hadn't even thought of that. He remembered when he was a kid and broke his arm, they had him under anesthetics and he didn't wake up until the next morning. They'd essentially be moving around a human sized brick.

"Sounds like a plan," Ace agreed, "Now we just have to wait."

The two of them sat in silence in the van. Ace sat in the driver's seat, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel anxiously. Putting Seth's safety in someone else's hands didn't really sit right with him. This wait was like hell on earth for him. What if Joel had failed? How long would it take for them to know?