The First Of Us | TLOU Prequel

Chapter Seven

2013

spring

He held onto your waist, looking down your ear to try and line his eye up with yours. It was comforting in a sense. He spoke quietly.

"Right, exhale, focus. Fire."

And you did. And you missed, again. A profanity escaped from between your lips. He sighed in your ear.

"It's fine, exhale, focus, repeat."

You had left the QZ nine days ago. It had been a rocky start until you'd sourced a car, then some fuel, a working battery, hiding in buildings and nibbling on rations. He drove you far away, far enough away that there were no infected. At first you took turns to sleep at night, tense with the expectations of being targeted by bandits, driving with the lights off from sundown, crossing fields to park in woods at night. Soon though, you were in no man's land, safe. Or as safe as you could be.

"I don't want to." The insides of your ears were ringing from the shots.

"You have to learn, I can't defend you all the time. I wish I could've taught you before we left but..."

He couldn't. He would've been hung. They'd resorted to some medival forms of punishment for breaking the rules in the QZ. The tensions had ran so high you were lucky to have slipped out in the dead of night. It wasn't without help, a couple guards who owed him favours, saving up tens of ration cards each to hand out like it was the lottery.

"My ears..." You raised your hands up to cover them, trying to wait out the ringing. At this rate you would be deaf at 45.

"WHOA, bloody hell, give me that," He snatched his pistol back out your hand. "Can't be waving that around! You'll blow my fuckin' head off!"

"Sorry."

You kept your palms clamped over your ears, the ringing was slowly subsiding. How he did this every day, how this had been his job, you'd never understand. The sun shone down, glinting off the empty cans he'd set up in the backyard of an abandoned farm house you'd come across, the owners of whom you imagined had escaped, were living happily elsewhere, hopefully Canada. None of that was true, of course. Just a dream for some strangers. They were most likley shot at the side of a road during The Pick-Ups; a QZ too full to handle more, a country too over-run with infected to leave them to turn. So, they were shot in the back of military trucks, their bodies thrown into ditches, left to bloat and rot and disappear.

No one was supposed to lay eyes on them, contained in QZ's until no trace of them remained. But people were restless, people like the two of you. Nothing could last forever, and that included peace under bordering facist rule, treated like third-rate citzens, left to starve, die from disease or from dehydration.

Not all QZ's were like this though, word filtered through that Boston was the place. The Vatican. That was the final destination, though you weren't exactly confident that you would make it. You looked at the honey shade of his skin in the sun as he shaded his eyes from the light, the fullness of his lips. He would, he was trained for these things, he knew them, he fought them. You'd perish, pathetic and useless as always. And maybe not even to infected or bandits, probably to the sun as it beat down and burned your pale skin. Probably to cancer or something with no drugs, no hospitals to treat you, no bandwidth left to survive.

The house had been useful, clothing, food, medicine, all tucked away sealed and unused in cupboards and a sizeable basement. They would've probably used the basement, the family who lived here, if they hadn't been given an evacuation order. They would've stayed underground, safe from outside, eating and drinking and surviving. You knew it wouldn't have lasted. The truck you'd essentially stolen was tucked into the garage, keeping it relatively safe from harm. It was a diamond in the rough. The stroke of luck to come across it after some wrong turns down the country roads was fate. What else could it be? You didn't believe in God, there were no miracles here.