Silent Death - The Last Of Us

Chapter Five: Not Your Territory

My head is spinning, I can barely hear before someone slaps me across the face. I open my eyes, just barely.
"This isn't your territory." The man grimaces, waving my knife in my face. He's taken everything I had on me for fucks sake.

As the man rattled on I looked past him, Ellie was tied up as was I. The room is some sort of school. Desks coated in moss all around and a large skylight now covered in a green film was once surely clear and clean.

Unsuccessfully I try to undo my restraints, I pull at the rope binding me to a pole. It is useless. "Hey I'm speaking to you!" The man shouts, punching me across the head.
"Fuck you." I say.

Suddenly another stranger enters the room. Surely stopping the previous man from beating me senseless.
"What the hell'r you doing?" The new man asks, a pistol in his right hand.
"Nothing, I'm trying to figure out what they know."

It doesn't seem like the man who punched me is supposed to be here. I wonder why he is.
"Who cares what they know?"
"We don't know how many of them there are!" The second man looks at me, his eyes analyzing me before he says,
"Doesn't matter. We have a new order," the man points his gun at me." Kill all trespassers." I clench my eyes, this is it. This is how I die.

"Woah woah woah, they have information!"
"Wel-" The second man drops dead, blood spraying as I hear a gunshot. I look around in a panic before I see Joel in the corner of the room.
"Travis! You son of a bitc-" The puncher is then shot down too, a hit right between the eyes.
"Joel?!" I shout, he rushes over to me.
"Come on we gotta go." He then cuts me free finally. Looking over I run to Ellie, shaking her.
"Ellie?" I ask, she slowly opens her eyes.
"Yeah... what happened?" She groans.
"Doesn't matter. We need to get the hell outta here, every guard here's gonna come running to those shots." Joel says, grabbing me by the wrist as we run down and out of the room. Ellie close behind us.

Our running is stopped as another stranger appears. Joel yanks Ellie and I behind a tipped over vending machine. The stranger is armed, and I see more in several different rooms. All with rifles.
"Where the hell are we?" I whisper to Joel,
"The WLF we're in one of their bases." He says back, Ellie looks over with wide eyes as she whips out her blade. "There's a stairwell that leads to the roof just over there."

Joel points to a door down a hallway. Too many windows to sneak down without being seen. We need to tale down every one of these bastards.
"There's three rooms. I say we each take one and handle them." Ellie says,
"There's four in there. You got 'em?" Joel asks me, pointing to the library just to the side of us.
"Don't get yourself killed." I kiss him before crawling over to the room.

I sneak into the library. Carefully I hide behind one of the many bookshelves as four armed guards look around for us. A stream of murky water running through the building made it easy to sneak around without being heard.

With my knife in hand I sneak up behind one of the strangers, using the cover of a bookcase  to grab the woman and cup her mouth. She groans and thrashes violently before I plunge the blade into her throat. She gurgles on her blood before I drop her to the floor. The woman going limp in a pool of red.
"Perez?" One of the others asks aloud, the other two didn't seem to care.

As the stranger approaches me I grab a rock, throwing the stone at their head. The stranger groans as I rush them, thrusting my knife up under their chin. Piercing their head. Blood poured to the ground underneath them. And they spit it onto my face. A feeling I've come to expect.

As I drop them to the floor the stranger knocks over a shelf, immediately alerting the two other guards to my position.
"Shit!" I mumble to myself as the two closed in on me, rifles trained and ready to fire. With my breath held and steady I stand behind a bookcase and wait for the two guards to arrive on the other side.

Just as I hope they stood on the other side to analyze the body of the guard I just killed. Using all of the strength I have in my upper body I shove the bookcase over, tipping it onto the two strangers as they scream. The heavy wooden case pinning them to the ground.

The two groan and attempt to move, their guns out of their grasps as they begin to panic. I think of just jumping on the back of the bookcase until it crushes them but that seems like it'd take a while. Looking around a can of gas caught my eye, and gives me an idea.
"What are you doing please-" one of the strangers begs as I douse the shelf in gas, pouring a trail a safe distance away from them as I stand above it. And with a match in hand I pause.

Looking down I should felt pity. But I don't, I'm happy with what I am doing as I drop the match. The two scream and howl as the bookshelf and themselves ignited and were engulfed in a violent blaze.

Someone definitely heard that, so I run back into the hallway. Joel and Ellie are waiting for me ready to run.
"Let's go!" I shout, running off to the stairs as more WLF members approach. We got lucky with those guards, but once I look around the roof I see the shear size of this place. There's no way in hell we can take all these people down.

Ellie runs ahead of me and Joel, looking around for a way down presumably.
"How'd you find us?" I ask,
"I hitched a ride in one of their trucks." Joel smirked, yeah that seems about right. Very sneaky for him. Usually he's loud and rough.
"Hey! Quit jerking off and get over here!" Ellie shouts under her breath.

Took hours to get out of that damn place. Not that we were even fighting, we just hid for long intervals just waiting for guards to move. We had to sit through a man's lunch break just to not be spotted. However we did manage to escape.

I quickly came to realize that we were in Castle Rock, I'm not sure why or how but we were. Joel found a small motel to stay at for the night, overgrown and dusty but no infected to be seen.

Joel feel asleep as fast as he usually does. And like usual I was having trouble sleeping, so I climbed on to the roof of the motel. It's only one story so a flipped car was easy to use as a sort of ladder up to the top. I like to just stare at the stars when I can't sleep. Helps me get my thoughts right.

"Hey."Ellie says, looking over I saw her on the roof too.
"Hey." I reply, a little happy for the company.
"Is it cool if I sit here?"
"Yeah of course." Ellie smiles just a bit as she sits beside me. And we stare at the sky together for a moment.

It's after that moment I notice her crying just a little bit, "What's wrong?" I ask,
"Can I tell you something..?" She sniffles, rubbing her nose and looking at me.
"Yeah." I reply,
"Promise me you won't tell Joel."
"You have my word." I won't tell Joel if she doesn't want too. I love Joel but if she doesn't want to tell him something it's for a reason.

"Dina wasn't kidnapped. She was... killed. I want to get the people who did it." She told me, I paused for a moment. So this isn't a saving mission. This is for revenge. Which I can understand, and I figured Dina would be dead anyway so this isn't much of a change.
"What's with the tears?" I ask, is lying to Joel really that much of a tragedy?

"I just can't believe she's gone." She cried, looking at the roof in defeat. I know the feeling well.
"I had a boyfriend once. Ewan. I loved that boy more than anything. For a good while it was me and him against the world. Then I lost him." I say, maybe I can help. Maybe.
"I'm sorry." She says, I didn't want to make this about me, I'm trying to tell her something.
"I didn't want your condolences." I say, a bit rudely"It hurt. Hurt so much I could barley take it. Didn't feel like it at the time but it made me stronger. I learned that nothing in this world is precious. And it can all be taken away just as you got it."

Ellie cried but she also mumbled,
"I hope you're right. Because right now I feel as weak as I've ever been."
"I promise you'll be okay."