They continue walking for another hour before Maddie Williams can finally see the wire fence glinting in the distance under the sun. She can only assume that this is where Frank and Bill must reside. Which also means, if that is the case, she could finally distance herself and Ellie extremely far away from Joel. Like, on the other side of the country far. As the group walk closer, the smuggler glances down to Rex staring at the fence in curiosity, presumably hearing the buzzing sound from the electricity. Joel sighs through his nose and nods to Maddie stood beside him. "Don't let him touch it."
She rolls her eyes in exasperation and jabs a finger to the sign plastered to the fence reading, 'DANGER, high voltage.' "I'm not fucking blind," she retorts heatedly.
Joel's jaw clenches and he takes a deep breath before turning to Ellie who studies the gated community that was once a bustling town. "Stay there," he orders in a rough voice.
As he moves over to enter a combination into the keypad to unlock the gate, Ellie rolls her eyes and leans over to her aunt to mutter, "What does he think I'm gonna do? Sprint in the opposite direction?"
Maddie stifles her laughter and tilts her head to the side in thought. "That's probably what we should be doing," she mumbles back. "You know, while he's distracted and shit..." The keypad buzzes, the numbers that Joel entered having been accepted, and he allows the three to go before him, then closing the gate shut as he follows suit.
As she treks down the deserted street, Maddie takes in the surroundings in a slight awe. Twenty years into the pandemic and she has never seen something like this outside of a quarantine zone. Sure, she had her own isolated shack up north, but this? This is something entirely different. For starters, there's an electrified fence sheltering the inside from possible chaos wanting to enter. The abandoned and desolate town appears eerily quiet with the occasional dead plant rustling down the cracked tarmac road courtesy of a gentle breeze.
Joel had explained to Ellie and Maddie that he had met Bill and Frank a handful of times but made sure to make it extremely clear that they were never friends. From the limited information Maddie had gained on Bill and Frank and from what she could see right now, she's got the feeling that either one or both of them are not only paranoid but incredibly wary toward strangers. However, she can't blame them. If she had something like this herself, having shielded the town away from all the death and destruction that amassed over the decades, she would be protecting it with all she had.
