sunshine // joel miller

TWENTY FIVE

Chapter Twenty Five
The guy who shot and missed

After the excitement of the giraffe's had calmed down the three had headed towards the hospital once again. The air felt heavy, but this time it wasn't Ellie's quietness that was causing it, it was Joel's. Part of him knew Ellie wouldn't agree to abandon the original mission - getting her to the fireflies to create a cure - but another part of him hoped somewhere deep down that she would've agreed to just head back.

After everything the three had been through, he didn't want the story to end, he didn't want their journey to be over.

Salt Lake City as a whole had been quite nice to walk through, the greenery after the cold winter was a beautiful touch to the abandoned city. It made Fran wonder what it looked like before everything had got destroyed. If the people there were friendly, or if it was just another lonely city.

"Was this a FEDRA thing?"

Ellie was a little ahead of the two, looking out at what appeared to be a makeshift hospital. There were broken and damaged tents all over the place, old machines that hadn't worked in at least a decade. Beds you'd see when camping were set up, now covered in leaves and dust.

"No. Army." Joel answered Ellie's question as they began to walk into the medical area, "They put these places up all around the first few days after the outbreak."

"Emergency medical camps." Fran remembered them now - she'd been in one for maybe a day or so to get her burns checked over and her ankle looked at.

"Obviously didn't last." Joel said, looking around the place and down at Fran. Her eyes however were on her hand, tracing the burn scars that still haunted her.

"They had me in one just like this."

He wasn't really expecting himself to open up about his time in a camp. Considering to him it was the lowest he'd been, physically and emotionally. He thought if Fran could open up, so could he.

"With Sarah?" Ellie asked him quietly, turning to face the two adults as she walked backwards. She was waiting for Joel's reaction, knowing the subject was one that was touchy.

"No, she was gone already." Fran lightly squeezed his arm at his words, understanding the topic was a difficult one.

"Oh." Ellie nodded, moving to walk on the other side of Joel, "So what was wrong with you?"

"It was for this." He pointed to the scar on the side of his head, one that Fran had traced many times with the pad of her thumb.

"Ah, the guy who shot and missed." Ellie recognised the scar, remembering the story Joel had told all the way back in Boston, "I figured that would've happened later."

"No. Second day." Joel admitted quietly. The admittance making Fran furrow her eyebrows as she looked down at the ground. Sarah gone by the second day, Joel ending up almost being shot. There was more to the story.

"Well, I've gotta hand it to the Army people. They were way better at stitchin' you up than I was," Ellie said, but Joel had stopped walking, looking down at the floor as he thought about what to say. Fran could see the hesitance in his eyes. It finally piecing together.

"Was it..." She couldn't say it, she only managed to whisper the two words when Joel's eyes snapped up to hers like a deer in the headlights. Ellie noticed, now confused as she found herself out of the loop.