ENDURE [joel miller]

[4]

Chapter Four
Where the Path Leads Us
Warnings: (for authors note) gun violence

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NADIA MARTELL STOOD BACK as Joel forced the sliding doors of the hotel's main entrance apart, with Tess and Ellie just a few feet to her left. The metal creaked and groaned under the force but parted, nonetheless, to reveal the dim hotel lobby. The auburn-haired woman grimaced, giving a displeased look to Tess after taking in the murky green water that had flooded the first floor of the hotel. Joel was the first to enter the rundown hotel, with Ellie and Tess not far behind him.

"You've gotta be kidding me!" Ellie exclaimed, eyes wide with wonder as she took in the—once—marvelous hotel. The auburn-haired woman's face remained twisted with disgust as she followed the other three into the lobby—clearly not feeling the same enthusiasm about the hotel as Ellie. The teenage girl turned her head to glance back at the other two women, "you ever stay in a place like this?"

"Uh—no, little out of our league," Tess answered, remembering how expensive the nicer hotels used to be.

"What about you?" Ellie questioned, tilting her head slightly at the other woman. Nadia shook her head, smiling slightly at the girl's curiosity.

"My mom worked way too much to ever take me on vacation," Nadia revealed.

"Why didn't you go on one?"

"How old do you think I am, kid?"

The Williams' teen carefully thought it over, not actually sure how old the woman was. She knew she was younger than the two smugglers—probably by more than a few years considering her lack of grey hairs and smoother skin—but Ellie hadn't been around enough adults in her lifetime to understand the subtle differences that indicated their ages.

"I don't know," she mumbled slightly, not sure where the woman was going with this.

"I'm thirty-four right now—"

"Oh—," Ellie cut her off, eyes widened with realization. Nadia couldn't have gone by herself. The outbreak had happened twenty years ago, which meant Nadia had only been the same age that the teen was now—fourteen.

A frown ghosts over the teenage girl's lips. For a moment, she sees her future self staring back at her—a tinge of darkness in her doe eyes, ghosts of long-healed scars still lingering on her pale skin, and shoulders beginning to crumble under what seemed to be the weight of the world. The girl pushes the thought away quicker than it had appeared.

"Yeah, little too young to be stayin' in places like this."

"How do you even know what this is?" the man questions just as the teen comes to a stop a few feet away from him, not letting her reply to the auburn-haired woman. Tess is next to join them, falling in-line between the two at the top of the stairs that led down into the vile water. Nadia stepped in between the two females, her shoulder bumping slightly into Tess's. The Servopoulos woman nudges her back.

"Have you heard of books?"

Nadia holds back her laughter, watching from the corner of her eye as both Tess and Joel shot the girl an unamused look. The Miller man is the first to move on from the girl's remark, his feet beginning to carry him down the stairs and into the water.

"Wait, are we going in there?" Ellie asks, worriedly.

"Yeah, we gotta get to the stairwell on the other side," Tess informs her, still stood at the top of the stairs. It's clear by the way that she looks at Ellie that she had assumed the girl understood that they would have to go through the water.