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lovers-spit-left-on-repeat · 1 year ago

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nonbeliever; ellie williams.

chapter two - waiting hours.

series masterlist

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art = @sunsbleeding

summary: A name is scratched from the list.

general warnings/notes: language, violence, brief gore, cursing, death, weapons (guns, knives, axe), familial issues, mentions of religion/implied religious trauma, implied suicidal thoughts.

word count: 6.4k

Isolation was nothing foreign to Amaya. She felt its breeze throughout childhood, recognized its kiss when the Abel curse sang true, and saw it in the mirror every waking moment. In the grey walls of the FEDRA military academy, Riley and a then 9-year-old Amaya had shared a room, but the youngest Abel was certain her older sister slept in someone else’s every night. She just didn’t know it was Ellie William’s, whose roommate was thrown into the “hole” and never came back. Fuck her, Amaya would repeat in a mantra once the clock passed 10 o’clock, too late for there to be a chance for Riley to shuffle through their door. It’s her choice. However shitty.

When the sun rose, she would get up with her alarm, haze through her day like a ghost, and only come alive once the clock’s arms skidded past 4. She called the window of time the Waiting Hours, where Amaya would bask in the silence of her solitude on her rickety bed and stare at the doorway in expectance. Riley only came through it twice.

The first time was the day following their arrival. After eight hours of school and training like the girl hadn’t become Death itself barely a week prior, Amaya was glacierized upon her bed. She pressed herself further and further into the metal frame but felt no pain, no sting of cold from the chilled brass. She waited and watched and when her eyes grew heavy, Amaya dug her nails into her palms until the blood pooling in the divots was enough to keep her up. It wasn’t until after dark when Riley arrived.

Her head hung low, she shuffled in. Whether it was in shame or grief, Amaya didn’t know. Riley grimaced as she dropped her hunched body onto her bed, still unmade from the night before. She turned away from her younger sister, features drowned in the shadows of the dim room.

“Riley?” Amaya whispered, her voice not yet vacant of childish wonder. Her sister stayed firmly in the shadows for a couple of seconds, then finally turned, allowing the flickering desk lamp to unveil her true nature. A bruise, purple and swelling, burrowed itself over Riley’s watering left eye. It, unlike the shadows that she left behind, was all-consuming, like all that made her face up was that violent, aggressive black eye. Amaya was silent. Even as Riley turned back around and fell onto her pillow. Even as the hour reached that of ungodliness. Even as her sister left with the sun’s call.

She didn’t know why she offered nothing, but this wasn’t her sister. This was not the girl she grew up with, hiccuping laughter and rebellious grins accompanying every sentence. This was a stranger who just happened to be violently familiar. Riley didn’t come back the next night, or the hundreds that followed, and the guilt was sharp against her veins. So Amaya learned some first aid. She took out nearly a hundred books on all types of burns, bruises, and breaks at the academy library, hoping that maybe next time Riley returned with a black eye, Amaya’s skills would be enough to convince her sister to stay.

The second time Riley came back was a little over two years later, in the peak of the morning’s glow. There was no black eye this time, but trembling hands and bleeding knuckles. Riley, now almost fourteen, was starting to look more and more like their mother; thin braids wrapped back by green fabric, full cheeks, and freckles kissing the bridge of her nose. She stood in the doorway like she didn’t belong there, then shuffled passed where a dumbfounded Amaya sat at her cluttered desk. Riley fell onto the nearest bed, which was exactly how she left it; unmade, cold, empty. She looked at her sister, and Amaya understood.

Ignoring the sting of angry tears and ringing of unsaid chastising that ricochetted in her head, Amaya pulled the bandages and stolen gauze from the readied box under her bed and ripped a piece from her already frayed bed sheet. Slow and careful, like Riley was some rabid beast ready to lunge, Amaya stepped towards her sister and kneeled at her feet. Hands still shaking and dripping onto the wooden panels, Riley faced them toward the ceiling, displaying two crooked fingers that quaked with very shuttering breath. The work was done quickly, and not without tears or groans. When she was finished, Amaya forced Riley to lay back on the bed and tucked the covers up to her shoulders like their father used to do.

In the morning, she was gone again.

In the morning, Amaya first felt the paralysis. In its first wave, she was alone, but not without the ghost of her sister staring back at her.

In the morning, once the chill of stillness has thawed, Amaya moved to sit at her desk again, where she kept a small mirror. A face, ever-patchy and dull, the grey twinge of stress creeping along her hairline despite her young age, stared back at her. Like Riley, this girl wasn’t the one she grew up with. Or maybe she had always been there, festering beneath the surface. Either way, she never vanished, even three years later when there was no hope that Riley might come home.

To be alone is to be unburdened, her mother used to say, ever a poet. But Amaya had never felt a burden greater than this isolation and was becoming so familiar that she might as well start calling it a sister. And now, trekking across a highway of overgrowth and decay, surrounded by three more strangers, she wished for nothing more than to be alone.

Her axe heaving with the weight of longing for its original owner, Amaya swore her bones grew heavier with every step. Maybe it was because of the head wound or how she hadn’t slept since Boston, but this fatigue was past physical; whatever life she had left in her was slowly dissipating, seeping from her veins and pouring from her fingertips. So slow, that it felt like it would take a million years to finally deplete. Amaya wondered what crimes she might have committed in past lifetimes that would warrant such a punishment, but quickly remembered the atrocities of this one. With the hundredth huff of the afternoon, Amaya slogged on.

“Has the bleeding stopped?” Amaya resisted the urge to look at the sienna eyes that unabashedly stared her down. Ellie, who was about as well-rested as the taller girl had ever seen her, hadn’t strayed from her side since leaving their temporary camp on the outskirts of the city. She was there when they’d seen how the sun’s magnificence bounced from the glass panels turning eroding skyscrapers into statues of divinity. She was there when Tess made them stop to reapply the bandage haloed around Amaya’s head (as she bit down on a piece of cloth to muffle the groans, Amaya wondered if the tears were from the pain of her wound of the sheer ferocity of the fire in Ellie’s stare). She was there now, even as Amaya tried to lose her between Joel and Tess.

“I’m fine,” was all Amaya could push out. In some odd way, she was relieved that Ellie was close. Tess and Joel could handle the four of them fine, but deep underneath the cloth of time and memory, Amaya wanted to be near in case of danger. For the promise.

Protect Ellie.

Amaya tried to speed up for the millionth time, but her lack of energy and the fact that Ellie seemed determined to stay barely an arm’s length away drowned her efforts away. As Ellie glanced over for the umpteenth time, she wondered how skeletal she might look now as the sun seemed to make everything glow but her. Lost in her thoughts, she missed Ellie calling to Tess and Joel for a short break and was thankful when they all found a place to sit.

Pulling herself up on the closest abandoned car hood, Ellie leaned against the one opposite to her.

“You should’ve slept,” she chastised as metal creaked beneath her weight.

“Would you rather have been completely vulnerable and have a bullet in your skull right now?”

As Ellie dreamed as peacefully as she could on a patch of grass hours prior, Amaya stayed awake on her armchair just out of reach of the sunlight pouring from the opening in the ceiling. Half to prevent a ghost from staring her down when she woke up, half because she knew now what Joel and Tess were capable of; after Amaya was lucid enough to question where the FEDRA guard went, Ellie filled her in. She pictured her and Ellie’s bodies buried somewhere, the adults finally worn tired of their antics, then realized that Joel and Tess probably wouldn’t even have to decency to give them a proper burial.

After slapping on the small watch Marlene packed in her bag, she counted down the hours until daybreak, watching Ellie’s chest rise and fall as the wisps of hair that escaped her ponytail flowed over her face in waves when the wind chose tranquility.

Ellie grimaced. “They wouldn’t do that.”

“We don’t know that. We don’t know them. If they wanted to get rid of us, it’d be an easy fight.”

Ellie hummed in dissent, a grin beginning to creep its way up her cherubic face. “You did some damage with that rock last night.”

Amaya turned her face toward the sun to hide a grin of her own. “Only ‘cause I’ve been running on adrenaline and canned beans for the last few weeks.

A silence settled over them and a voice reminded her that she was not allowed peace. Her legacy was not one of stillness and quiet.

“Come on,” Tess called as Joel glowered behind her. “We’re losing light.”

It was barely afternoon yet, but Amaya was thankful for the excuse to ignore the prying of the ghosts that made her up.

“Where the fuck are they already?” Ellie asked from a few feet ahead of Amaya. They had been walking for three hours now, and it was like the sun was glaring especially bright just to make her headache worse. From where she stood in their line, Joel taking up the back and Tess the front, she peered out towards the wreckage of Boston. However colorless and broken down, the view was calming. The beauty in chaos, as Maria would have called it.

“You’ll know it when they’re close,” Tess called back.

“I didn’t know last time,” Ellie mumbled. But Amaya did. She had known, looked it straight in its yellow, veiny eye. How could she miss the beast when its claws, fangs, and evil were born from her blood?

“How did you get bit?” Tess inquired. If Amaya’s stomach hadn’t dropped before, it was plummeting now. A chill settling over her shoulders, she slid past the pair and claimed a spot at the front of their procession.

Her anonymity, her erasure from this narrative was the one thing Ellie could grant if she chose to. Maybe even one thing she might deserve in the eyes of whoever claimed holiness in a world of iniquitousness. Amaya’s eyes fell to her feet as her nerves rattled.

“You know the old mall in the QZ?” Ellie began, and Amaya’s nerves rattled.

“The one that’s sealed off and boarded up, and no one’s supposed to go in…ever? That the right one?”

“Whatever,” Ellie sighed. “I snuck in, wanted to see what it was like. Didn’t think there was gonna be anything in there, and then one just came at me outta nowhere. Thought I got away, but…”

“So it was just you in there, alone?”

“Yeah,” she said and Amaya unclenched her calloused hands, pretending not to notice specks of blood in the crescent-shaped creases. But Ellie’s gaze rested on her, and that’s how she knew she was fucked. Amaya could feel it; blistering and sharp enough to cut all the blood from her body. But the odd thing about it was when it came to comparing the sun’s glare and hers, only one could raise the dead within her.

Tess said nothing more, and the older woman might not have connected the dots fully, but there was a knowing glint in her bruised eyes when Amaya briefly pivoted to look back at the rest of the group. So much for secrets.

The quartet eventually reached Tess and Joel’s choice lookout spot; 20 stories of mold infestations and mildew. The hotel, complete with a makeshift pond in the lobby and a new biohazard on each floor, was probably a hot spot for all types of disease and infection. As they moved up ten flights of groaning stairs, Amaya had to refrain from raising her shirt over her nose.

“Fuck,” Tess heaved as they reached the landing and Joel cleared the hallway.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad,” Ellie teased as she looked back at Amaya, smirking at her struggle up the last step.

“You try climbing ten fuckin’ floors with our knees, see how you feel.”

Water dripped from the ceiling and sunlight shone through fogged windows. Amaya leaned against the door frame and panted, her mind shot back to the Fireflies’ base in the city. However unwelcoming, she was starting to miss it. The group rounded the corner into a dimly lit hall to find their path blocked by a caved-in ceiling.

“Well, when the fuck did that happen?” Tess grumbled as Joel began to poke around the rubble with the mouth of his gun. Once they discovered that both doors that paralleled the group were jammed shut, Tess proposed that she climb through a small gap in the rubble and snake her way to the other side, but Ellie objected.

“Well, I’m the smallest so it’d be easier for me to get through,” she reasoned.

Tess tilted her head and Ellie sighed, knowing her answer before she even opened her lips. “You die and we get nothing. You stay.”

“What about me?” Amaya proposed, voice hoarse from the lack of talking. “I’m only a little bit taller than Ellie and the Fireflies don’t need me, anyway.

“What about that Maria woman?”

Amaya looked down at her palms, still stained with the red tint of guilt. Did she have something waiting beyond this? A sister, a family, a life? Since finding out about the possibility that Maria managed to survive the past 5 years, she’d been trying to stop the pessimistic thoughts, but just because there was hope, didn’t mean there wasn’t sorrow to come. Amaya kept thinking about her ‘paradise in hell’ and wondered if it was just doublespeak for an unforgiving afterlife.

“No point in searching for someone who’s probably dead,” she abridged.

Tess considered her with concern for a moment before shoving her pack into the younger girl’s hands. “You both stay,” she commanded and began her ascent.

Ellie looked at her with worry in her eyes. Despite the flutter of her ashed heart, Amaya did nothing but shrug and lean against the wall as Joel boosted Tess up. A few awkwardly silent moments passed and Ellie moved to sit by Amaya’s feet like she had back in the QZ. Steadily growing more bored each second her sullen companions remained silent, she started flipping her switchblade in the air.

“Nice knife” Joel grumbled out. Ellie paused, looked at him, then continued her act. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

“The circus.”

Joel and Amaya gave an exasperated sigh in sync, causing Ellie to roll her eyes.

“Where are you from?” she asked, less in kindness and more in obligation. Joel began to grumble a response, but Amaya's attention, ever vigilant, was captured by something other than small talk and sienna eyes.

Her axe glinted as shards of gold sliced through the rumble, creating ribbons of rippling fire across the walls like back in her childhood room. When she allowed a brief glance at Ellie’s eyes, no difference existed between them and the glow. The beginnings of a smile twinged at the sides of Amaya's lips but quickly vanished when she realized Joel was watching her.

“Where’d you get it?” He wondered, probably the kindest words he’d ever said to her. Amaya watched him for a second, looking for any pinch of ingenuity in his stare. She found nothing.

“Off some dead guy,” she feigned nonchalantness.

“Yeah,” Ellie continued, “after she killed him.”

Joel raised a brow in suspicion as Amaya, lips thinned, looked at the girl incredulously.

“What?” Ellie whispered, but not quiet enough for Joel to miss. “I’m trying to make you look tough!”

Amaya rolled her eyes and stalked off down the hall, losing her battle against a grin as Ellie continued to describe to Joel all the ways her accomplice could kill a man. She wandered into a guest room, which was just as pristine as the lobby. Dragging her fingers across the ledge of a rusted mirror, Amaya wondered what it might’ve been like here on outbreak day, what the panic of being away from home might’ve felt like. Cold and heavy and ardent, she supposed. Not exactly unfamiliar.

She settled herself on what was left of the mattress, carefully dodging the suspicious stains by the foot of the bed, and let the tension flow from her muscles. To be alone was to be unburdened, she remembered, even when this room screamed death and decay. The open window flowed nature’s breath against the torn fabric of the curtain, and on the dresser, a small piece of paper quivered. Deciding to entertain her curiosity, Amaya leaned across the bed and picked it up. For the second time in two days, she would soon wish she hadn’t let eagerness win.

On the backside of the yellowing polaroid four words were scrawled— “Super Sammy - 2019”. The handwriting looked like that of someone her age; messily looped and barely legible. Amaya flipped the picture over to reveal a young boy who couldn’t be older than 10. His brown skin was of the same shade as hers and one of his front teeth was missing. Despite the holes in his shirt, he smiled up at the camera like sunshine itself. Over his eyes, colored in with red marker, was a mask like Amaya had seen on superheroes in the few children’s books she had back in New Jersey. If it weren’t for the grey, eroding setting behind the boy, the picture could’ve been from a time when all someone had to worry about was taxes. Amaya didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone so happy.

“Amaya?” Ellie’s voice rang out from down the hall and she was throttled back into her reality; mildew, mold, and monstrosities. She shoved the picture into her back pocket where it rested against The List and hurried back to the group.

Once Tess unjammed the door separating her from the rest of the group, she led them past the wreckage and to a plastic-shrouded balcony. As soon as she slipped by the plastic which Tess held back, her sinuses were overwhelmed with the smell of rot from the enveloping plants as a lofty buzzing filled the air. Ellie eagerly rushed to the ledge and leaned so far forward, Amaya was tempted to pull her back by the sleeve of her jacket. The older girl looked back to Tess and Joel, who stood looking out on the city with solemn expressions.

“What?” She questioned and tightened her hold on her axe. Tess shook her head and walked up beside her.

“You see that?” The woman pointed to the patch of yellowing grass between two crumbling rows of houses. Confused, Amaya squinted, before realizing her mistake in recognition. It wasn’t a patch of grass. The strange buzzing wasn’t the wind and the smell of rot wasn’t from the encompassing nature. A herd of infected, maybe a hundred of them, lay on the concrete in close quarters like they were one unit. Some slithered, some were motionless. But all of them hissed with a hunger that ran for generations. If Riley were with them. she would’ve joked that it was just another Abel family reunion.

“I thought that was just more overgrowth…” Amaya mumbled and stepped away from the ledge.

“The last time we were here they were still deep inside the buildings.”

“And how long ago was that?” Ellie wondered. The sun passed over the herd and they squirmed, screeches echoing louder like they were being burned alive.

“…Three weeks.”

Ellie hummed in response and joined Amaya on leveled ground. “So we’re not going that way, huh?”

“No,” Tess sighed.

“What do we do then?” Ellie's eyes widened as she remembered their other option. “The short way?”

“Museum.”

Squashed between ivy-covered rubble, the building didn’t exactly look welcoming. Windows punched in and the door ajar, patches and vines of cordyceps snaked over its brick face. Amaya eyed it suspiciously and backed the group like merely peering up at the clusters would send her into a murderous frenzy.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ellie frowned.

“There’s a way across from the top floor.”

Joel stepped passed Amaya and punched the butt of his gun into the nearest cluster of fungi, which cracked and caved in, releasing a puff of dust. Amaya took another five steps back. The last time she was this close to the fungus, there was blood on her hands when the sun rose.

“It’s bone dry,” Joel stood. “It could mean they’re all finally dead in there.”

He and Tess bent down and swung their packs down to the knees, pulling out flashlights. Amaya did the same.

“Marlene pack you one of these or just sandwiches?”

Kneeling on the ground, Amaya sifted through her bag, packing and unpacking, until she realized that there was no flashlight. She groaned and slumped against her legs.

“You can have mine,” Ellie reached her torch out to the frustrated girl. “Nothing’s gonna happen to me even if I can’t see them coming.”

Tess peered back at her. “You’re not immune from being ripped apart. You understand?”

A silence settled over the group and Ellie pressed her chapped lips together. Distantly, Amaya could still hear the infected’s hissing. She raised herself from the vine-covered ground and readied her axe. They proceeded through the door.

Littered with dust and a few bodies of infected, their heads caved and limbs webbed together like some fucked-up version of an embrace, Ellie and Amaya stayed close to each other. They stalked through the first hall, eyes sharp, and only saw a single body. Amaya quickly concluded that he had been shot outside of the museum and simply crawled inside, seeking a quiet place to die. Until she saw the claw marks and Tess’s words ricocheted around her head. With a push of her arm, she forced Ellie in front of her as Amaya kept an eye on the darkness slowly swallowing the hall behind her.

Silent as instructed, they climbed the stairs. As they creaked, the ceiling gave an aching groan, dust loosening like snow above the group. Like the herd back in the open, a cluster of infected bunched together on the second landing. Yellowing tendrils stretched from their empty eye sockets and mouths. Luckily they had fused with the rest of the rubble and no hissing could be heard besides that of Amaya’s pulse, but Joel’s shoulders remained squared.

A crunch echoed and everyone froze. Looking down, she saw Ellie’s converse-clad foot over the hollow hand of one of the beasts. The ceiling groaned again, but not with age—-with the presence of something ancient and wicked. Quicker this time, Joel crept up the remaining stairs and hurried to creak the door open, but as soon as he was passed the doorway, the ceiling gave a final lurch. Within two seconds, dust, beams, and concrete hailed down as Ellie and Tess flung themselves passed the doorframe. Amaya, who had been peering down the steps, had no time to react. If she had moved barely a foot, the wooden beam that swung tauntingly would’ve pierced right through her.

Amaya could faintly hear Ellie’s muffle voice yelling her name, but all she could process was her heavy breathing. “Fuck,” she panted and started to claw at the ruin, only giving up when her palms started to tear. “Fuck!”

Then, a screech. Sharp and pitched like a bird’s call, bloody and desperate like a starving animal. All was still. There was no shuffling on the other side of the ruin. Ellie didn’t dare yell for her and Amaya didn’t dare breathe. As the breath caught in her throat, she turned her head to look through the settling dust and down the stairs.

When the clicking started, Amaya ran.

She could hear the beast barrelling up the stairs and knew to not look back until she reached the dead end of the hallway. Swerving left and right, she prayed for a place to take shelter, and for the first time in her life, her wish was granted. Amaya barrelled through the narrow doorway to her left and practically fused herself with the wall. The room was doorless and nearly pitch black. On the other side of the wall where Joel, Tess, and Ellie might be, more screeching rasped. But they had guns and flashlights. They weren’t alone. All Amaya had was an axe she didn’t know how to wield and ghosts, who she soon would join.

The beast was up the staircase now and barely even ten feet away. It clicked and rasped as it stalked down the hall. Amaya clamped her mouth shut and it was just like the day before at the QZ, but this time, Ellie’s warmth couldn’t be felt. Amaya was alone. She was going to die alone.

Right next to her ear, the beast clicked and beckoned her toward fate. It should have been you. It should have been you.

Amaya supposed Riley’s voice could only mean that death was creeping closer and anger began to brew in her stomach. This wasn’t fucking fair. Not even 24 hours after she was told that Maria might still be alive, she was inches away from her own demise. It didn’t matter that she, regardless of Riley and Marlene’s claims, was likely rotting somewhere—a mirror of beast beside her.

She could let it happen as she would have let Marlene kill her back at the QZ. Maybe fate would spare her and make it quick. Or maybe it would take its time as it had with her sister, her mother, her father. It clicked again like it was trying to tell her something in morse code. Amaya remembered then the stolen book still in her bag, waiting to be read. She remembered how Riley has wanted to learn when they were young but gave up after a day. She remembered the picture of Super Sammy in her pocket. Would he give up this easily? No. Super Sammy was a believer in hope, not fate. A saint amongst sinners. He would not cower like she was.

Fate was like a father to her; absent when she needed it, glaring and unabashed when she wanted to be left alone. And she wasn’t going to let it win this time.

Whipping herself around the corner as she should’ve done when Joel and Tess first intruded at the Firefly base, Amaya stuck it in the neck. Not enough to kill it, but enough to send it reeling back into the wall. She stuck her foot into its stomach and yanked the axe from its neck, sending blood squirting into her face. Amaya had almost forgotten that she was 14 and inexperienced.

The clicking beast screamed with more terror and grabbed her by her shoulders, pushing her to the floor, and pinned her arms above her head. Amaya screamed for Joel, for Tess, for Ellie, but no one would come. She was alone. She was going to die alone.

Amaya was fed up. Of being left behind, of only knowing anger and sadness as friends. She was fed up with fate and faith, with chance and luck. This wasn’t fucking fair. So she did what she did best—-swung until she saw red.

Reaching to her left where her axe had fallen, she plowed it into its shoulder, into its chest, back into its neck. When it fell motionless, she didn’t stop. She kneeled over it, screaming and swinging, never taking her eyes off its face. Hair patched around the remnants of its scalp and it still had a single eye intact. Brown, like Ellie’s. Like Maria’s. Like Riley’s.

When she was finished, she took her damn time to try and find a way to the other side of the rubble. Eventually, she stumbled upon a jammed door, and on the other side, gunshots echoed against screaming—-Ellie’s screaming. Amaya slammed her body against the door until it gave way, revealing an infected toppled over her and Joel as they struggled. Amaya slammed her axe down again and this time it landed in the dead center of its skull.

Panting, she didn’t care to retrieve her weapon. She looked down at Joel and Ellie, who only stared back.

“What the fuck was that?” She asked. No response was given. Ellie was still staring. Not at her, Amaya quickly realized, but at the blood that patterned itself across her brown skin. She could taste it on her lips, feel it drip from a spot on her cheek. Weapon, killer, monster. **

You killed them, May.

Amaya quickly turned away from them and wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket. Behind her, the beast began to screech again and drag itself, impaled head and all, towards her. Tess, who had just rounded the corner with a gun of her own, delivered the final shot.

Amaya stared at her victim in silence. Once everyone was breathing normally, Joel asked “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Amaya glowered. “Thanks for fucking leaving me by the way.”

Her eyes flew from person to person but came to rest on Ellie. Amaya’s ears burned as she blinked rapidly. She knew that the pile of rock and wood between them would have withstood anything Ellie might’ve thrown at it, but still. Amaya would have tried. If not for the stupid promise, then for her own sake.

Ellie looked like she wanted to say something, but Tess stilled and pointed to her wrist.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ellie rolled up her shirt sleeve to reveal another bite mark and Amaya had to resist going off on her. Riley was barely even bitten and it took four hours for her to be gone. Ellie had now been bitten twice, and nothing would happen. She wouldn’t start to twitch as Riley did. She wouldn’t lose control of her mind, her body… this wasn’t fucking fair.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

On the roof of her almost grave, Amaya stared out at Boston again, growing further and further away from what rooted her there. With her red-tinted gaze, it was getting harder to see all that beauty Maria would talk about.

Joel and Tess sat by the windowsill and splinted Tess’s sprained ankle, but the pair kept looking at Amaya across the makeshift bridge. Maybe in anticipation for Ellie’s sanity to crumble, maybe in shame for abandoning Amaya. Probably not the latter. i

She tried to put as much space between her and Ellie, but it was like she magnetically attracted tragedies; she could feel Ellie’s gaze and didn’t have to think twice about who was cautiously coming up behind her.

“I’m sorry,” was all she said. No explanation and, Amaya was trying to convince herself, no remorse. The state house glowed almost as maliciously as her thoughts.

Without considering Ellie’s presence any longer, Amaya spun to Joel and Tess. “We should keep moving. The sun’s starting to go down.”

The place was fucking deserted. First, it was the odd silence, then the empty truck, then the blood on the steps. And lastly, the bodies. Ridden with gunshot wounds and in pools of their own barely settled blood, their stares were black. Upon seeing the corpses, Amaya rushed to inspect each one, looking for familiar locs of black hair.

“Shit,” she kept whispering as she sailed to the next body. The last one was a man, barely over twenty with dark hair on his shoulders. His eyes had gone grey and angry veins crawled up the side of his face. Amaya released her lungs from the clutches of fear when she saw nothing familiar.

“One of them was bit,” she called to the rest of the group. Tess was frantically searching through the dead Fireflies’ supplies and quickly turned on the girls.

“Where did Marlene say she was taking you?” She demanded.

“Just west,” Amaya mumbled cautiously.

“Just west. Fuck. Okay.” She ran a hand through her greying hair. “And what about that Maria woman? Where’s she supposed to be?”

“I…I don’t know. The only people who did are dead now.”

Grateful that her sister wasn’t amongst them, she hadn’t had the chance to consider what this meant for her. Maria wasn’t there. There was no one alive able to tell her where she was last. She no longer had any point of direction.

“One of them has got to have a map on them, right?” Tess continued panicking. “Joel, can you help me?”

“It’s over, Tess. It’s over. We’re going home.”

“That’s not my fucking home!”

Amaya’s fingers wrapped tight around the hilt of her axe as she distanced herself in front of Ellie, who had slowly sailed to her side. Joel’s silence was unlike the quiet that was constantly settled over his shoulders; he watched Tess, who kept backing away, with his lips parted, but he could not speak, paralyzed with something Amaya knew well—-otherness.

Tess raised her chin and stood. “I’m staying. I mean…our luck had to run out sooner or later.”

“Fuck.” Ellie whispered. “She’s infected.”

“Show me,” was all Joel could work past his lips. Tess pulled down the collar of her red button-up and showcased the beginnings of decay. Veiny and angry, the red tendrils were already creeping up her neck.

“Take your bandage off,” the marred woman commanded. Ellie, eyes heavy with memory, sighed and did as she was told. Just as Amaya dreaded, her bite was just that—a bite. No redness, no vines of malice.

“Joel, this is real,” Tess continued. She held her arm up against Ellie’s and pulled her forward in display like a circus animal. When her arm started to shake, she flopped it to her side. “Joel, she’s fucking real…I need you to get her to Bill and Frank’s.”

“No.”

“They’ll take her off your hands. They’ll know what to do.”

Unsure of her place in this discussion, Amaya mumbled, “My sister—”

“I’m sorry, Amaya, but you’re sister is probably fucking dead. You said it yourself. Go with them. Stay with Ellie, protect Ellie.”

Amaya shut her mouth in a snap. She’d almost forgotten. As Joel shook his head like a screw was loose in his neck and Tess repeated ‘they’ll know what to do’ like she was trying to convince herself. Amaya was back in the mall.

Staring at the marbled title, Amaya thought of her victims. Two she forbade herself from thinking about for more than a few seconds, one who she killed barely an hour ago. Was the person-turned-beast from the museum once a parent? A child? A sibling? Had she been staring at some fucked-up version of foreshadowing the whole time? And was Tess not the same now? Was Riley not the same?

Amaya was no stranger to guilt, and she knew Ellie wasn’t either. Why her and why not those who deserved preservation? The reason Riley had been in the mall in the first place was to make her happy. Not as deep down as she’d like rested a red-hot resentment of the girl, but also a sense of comradery, a connection born of tragedy. Their lifelines connected the moment Amaya decided to step foot in that goddamned mall and it would remain intertwined for the rest of their lives. She shouldn’t blame someone that was practically a mirror of herself. But now, as Tess’s eyes began to water, Amaya felt a deep sorrow for the girl.

She only came alive when a bullet sliced through the skull of the awakened Firefly by Ellie’s feet. They were all still for a second as the feeling of foreboding settled in the air. Something was happening. Something was awakening. Not too far in the distance, the hissing began again. Joel hurried to the door, poked his head out, and returned with his stony eyes set on one thing—Ellie.

Amaya raised her axe past her waist and assumed her position in front of the girl. Her head pivoted between Tess and Joel. If she hadn’t been scared of them before, she was now. Tess wouldn’t be able to buffer Joel’s rage and apathy this time.

“How many?” Tess asked in an eerily calm tone.

“All of them. We got maybe a minute.”

Tess began knocking open the barrels the Fireflies left behind until the circle of them created a sour-smelling brown river over the floor, pooling in the divots of the marble. As she dropped a crate of grenades over the substance and pulled a rusty lighter from her pants pocket, Amaya realized her plan. She was making sure they wouldn’t follow.

Tess closed in on an emotionless Joel and whispered to him. He stared at the woman for the few seconds he allowed himself, then turned on his heel and grabbed ahold of Ellie. Amaya moved to protest, raising her axe above her shoulders, but a quivering hand rested itself on her shoulder.

She felt like the biggest fucking hypocrite. Five minutes ago, she had been storming about them abandoning her back in the museum despite knowing there was nothing they could have done. Now, staring into the eyes of a woman cursed, she was doing unto them as they did unto her. But this was Tess’s choice. If her death had to come, it would be by her own hands.

Ashamed, Amaya looked down to see the glass of her watch glimmering. 5:32, it read. Just on time. It was the Waiting Hours, but it was her turn to leave. With one last glance, Amaya hurried away.

Without her knowing the name was even on it, Tess was scratched from the list.

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lovers-spit-left-on-repeat · 2 years ago

Text

nonbeliever; ellie williams.

chapter one - graveyard city.

series masterlist

------------------------------------------------------------

art = @sunsbleeding

summary: Amaya Abel makes a decision.

general warnings/notes: language, violence, brief gore, nightmares, sleep paralysis, cursing, death, weapons (guns, knives, axe), familial issues, mentions of religion/implied religious trauma, implied suicidal thoughts.

word count: 6.6k

They kept them in separate rooms. At night, she heard Ellie’s hoarse voice and the brash of her cuffs through the thin walls but pretended to be deaf to them. Some part of her charred heart rested easy knowing it meant they’d both heard each other break.

“You killed them, May.” That voice had been rattling around in Amaya’s skull for more days that she cared to count; no matter the time that passed, it would always be there. When it did call out to her, she was no longer in the grungy, mildew-scented room Marlene was keeping her guarded in. The mall’s neon sheen blazed behind her eyelids and the smell of a childhood she never had became all she could discern. If the mall hadn’t been dead silent that night, maybe Amaya would never have heard how her sister’s voice quaked—“You killed them, May.”

Her sister, ever-strong. Her sister, ever-stony. Her sister, ever-dead.

When its call ceased, she almost missed it. To feel like an iceberg had replaced whatever lived beneath her ribs was better than feeling the absolute hopelessness she felt now. Amaya knew what the bones and blood expected of her; do good on her promise and keep Ellie safe. She should be protesting louder every night a wall continued to separate them, demanding an answer from Marlene when she came in the morning: What are you planning for us? When can I see her? What do you know about Maria? When are you going to kill me? And yet with every passing moment, she remained still, just as she was taught.

Today was no different.

Marlene came late in the afternoon, or at least when Amaya thought was afternoon by the warmth pouring through her boarded-up window, briefly turning choice shards of the area from gray to gold. Exposed arms littered with grime, Marlene watched her with a calculating stare for enough time that the sunlight shifted an inch. Amaya tried to imagine Marlene younger, before the outbreak. Did her smile gleam? Did her skin glow? Did her eyes hold a thousand miseries as they did now? Maybe. But as Maria used to say, monsters have always been monsters.

Amaya wondered how her oldest sister would feel saying that to her now.

“You here to finally kill me?” The coily-haired girl asked, eyes boring into the older woman. Her skin, however rich and dark in the noon sun, looked dull as ever. Her cheeks were beginning to hollow out, lips cracked and peeling, the roots of her curls beginning to turn grey with the weight of a long life—however long a 14-year-old’s life could seem.

Marlene took a step closer and Amaya had to keep in mind not to flinch. Her heavy boots dropped laboriously against the creaking wood and she bent down to the younger girl’s eye level. Amaya had imagined for many nights how it might go. A gun to the head. A knife to the throat. Or maybe they would just chuck her into a herd of infected.

Marlene scanned her again with the eyes of a hawk. "You have a choice," she said. Amaya raised her hickory eyes in confusion.

“My sister didn’t have a choice,” she snapped. She did, though, Amaya thought. The people who didn’t want to give Riley a choice in the first place were who people like Marlene, like Riley, fought against. But she was bitter. And so fucking angry.

Marlene raised her hand for silence. “Don’t start with me, girl. I know what you’re feeling.”

“Do you have a sister?” Amaya asked, letting her thoughts stray to those of a younger version of the Firefly again. She said nothing. “Then you don’t know what I’m feeling. You knew her for six weeks. There hasn’t been a moment in my entire life where I’ve ever existed without her.”

“Until now.”

Despite her frail state and the heavy eyelids, despite her paralyzing grief and debilitatingly absolute feeling of sinking, Amaya had never wanted to raise her fists more. Not even Bethany from the FEDRA academy inspired such rage. Not even Ellie inclined such loathing.

“Your friend’s gonna be brought in her in a few minutes,” Marlene said, as if she hadn’t ever said a word of damage. “You are both to stay quiet. You hear me? No bickering, no yelling, quiet. And when I’m finished with my business, we’re going west.”

“Great. A girl you think may go batshit any moment is gonna be locked in here with me, a 14-year-old, who is starving—”

“By your own doing.”

“—weak, and completely unarmed.”

“You know what she is, Amaya. You know what this means. That’s why we’re going west.”

It was Amaya’s turn to watch her. Down the hall, booted-feet shuffled against wood and calls of orders ricocheted. They were leaving. They truly thought Ellie was immune. Sure, Amaya was there the night she was bitten and saw her remain perfectly sane, but she was reluctant to pass faith just yet. She still hadn’t ruled out that God, if there was one, was only keeping Ellie’s sanity in tact to torment her. Based on past events, it wasn’t entirely inconceivable.

“And where exactly in this scenario am I getting a choice?”

Marlene settled into a sitting position. “You can leave with us and keep your promise to Riley—”

She certainly had Amaya’s attention now. The girl sat up rigidly and pressed her back farther into the wall. “How do you know about that?”

The older woman had the nerve to grin. “You talk in your sleep.”

Her ears beginning to burn, she was grateful that it didn't show through her thick curls. Amaya wondered what else the older woman might’ve heard and asked, “Or?”

“You stay. Fend for yourself and probably die trying.”

“Doesn’t seem like much of a choice.”

“Maybe not. But you have a chance to redeem yourself of whatever horrors you’ve committed. A chance to do good by your sister. To honor Riley.”

Amaya looked at the strings of light gliding through the planks bolted to the window. When she was alone, she twined her fingers through them and watched as they danced upon her skin. Fire on fire. Sorrow on sorrow. Just like the day she made The List.

Amaya was eight when she saw her angel last. Her angel, with black locs of omnipotence as a crown and wings of fire on her back, had long since flown from the nest of instability that was their family. Maria shared only half of her blood with Riley and Amaya but had always been equally a part of them as they were of her. She never shared their home but visited enough to be familiar with the morning songbird’s tune. Riley might’ve been the voice in her head, but Maria was the beat of her heart.

One hushed winter night that Maria was visiting, she brought up this place she and her father built in the west; “paradise in hell” the 30-something-year-old called it. Maria thought it would be a good idea for the Abels to move there, but their mother disagreed. There was enough yelling that night to last a few lifetimes, but when it was finished, Maria was gone. They kept in contact through letters narrowly 3 times a year delivered by strange men: one in a jean jacket, the other older and grayer, but never saw her again. Once, Riley tried to escape with the men by sneaking from their shared room a night they’d come by, but the denim-clad man found her almost instantly. As Amaya pretended to not ache at the thought of the last sister she had left leaving her behind willingly, Riley started her cycle of acting out.

After the newly estranged siblings were brought to the academy the week their parents were slain, the letters stopped coming. Amaya pondered for a long time if Maria simply didn’t know what happened or where they were or if she did and was so innately disgusted by her actions that she decided to forget she ever had sisters. When they were still speaking (barely more than a few sentences a day, but something) Riley claimed with malevolence that she was probably dead. Amaya never believed her. Her heart was still beating, so Maria’s was too.

Still, Maria Abel was on The List in bold, black ink, along with every other person she was getting ready to lose. And once she felt her sanity slip from beneath her, it was transferred to a physical copy, kept in the back of her jean pocket where it lay eroding. Not yet sliced from it with whatever writing utensil she could find, but lying in wait for the moment Amaya would raise one in confirmation. However nonsensical and concerning the slip of paper was, it served as a comfort, like she had control over who was scratched off even if she never did. It was also a reminder of what she was, what she had done.

Amaya stared for a second longer at the ropes of sunlight. “You would never let me go,” she mumbled thoughtfully. “I’ve seen too much. I’ve heard enough to end the Fireflies in Boston. You’ll kill me if I say no.”

And Amaya wasn’t even sure if she would protest.

Marlene studied her for a few seconds. “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

She almost scoffed. There was a lot she wanted to say. A lot she wanted to scream. But once again, she couldn’t part her lips and force sound from her arid throat when emotional paralysis took over.

After remaining sleepless three nights in a row when she and Ellie were first brought here, Amaya finally caved and let her back melt into the peeling wall. Uncomfortable, yes, but she had the perfect view. As moonlight streamed like a bird’s song through the boarded window, she could see the moon, whole and milky and content in its loneliness. As it shone, she temporarily forgot about all the treachery that made her up. She forgot that she wasn’t forgiven. When she roused in the morning, Amaya couldn’t move.

For a few minutes that she swore were decades, her body laid there, eyes wide and steeping, but completely and tragically still. Across from her, sat who she thought was simply a reflection at first. But Amaya didn’t have fine brown braids tied in cloth or her mother’s face. Riley was unmoving too, but the early morning sunlight illuminated her eyes and grey skin to the point that it looked like she was crying silver tears. Amaya hadn’t slept since.

So yes, she was giving into gutlessness and refused to ask Marlene the question her sister’s dying wish beckoned.

Protect Ellie. Maria is alive.

Maria was alive, and Riley thought Marlene knew where she could be. As she could barely feel her own heart much anymore, she refused to get back a definite answer when it could destroy all the hope in her chest she pretended didn’t exist. The List was begging to be altered, and she was too afraid to lift the pen.

Marlene left without another word.

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Amaya could hear Ellie in the next room. Cursing and infuriated, as usual.

“Amaya wouldn’t —” her hoarse voice rang before the rest of her words got lost between wood and stone.

She didn’t think she’d ever heard Ellie say her name. Not in the five years they were at the FEDRA military academy together, not in the night they were forced into adulthood three weeks ago. Wouldn’t do what? Leave her? Stay with her? What she wouldn’t do is let herself think about the shorter girl and the rage her sienna eyes brought for longer than two seconds.

“She’ll fucking kill you—” Ellie began to yell again.

A gunshot crackled. For a second, Amaya was benumbed by the thought that they finally decided to get rid of Ellie. Fed up with their lies and lack of cooperation, she would be next. Amaya stood severely and looked around the room for anything to defend herself with, but it was vacant except her drab quilt and the jacket she'd been using as a pillow in the corner. She didn’t want to die. She had a promise to keep. Part of which could’ve already been broken.

Protect Ellie. Maria is alive.

Marlene, now armed with a gun, barged into the eroding room. She held a bulky violet backpack that looked a couple of decades old.

“Shit,” she mumbled distractedly. “Fucking Kim. Can’t handle an exchange to save her life.”

Marlene waved over whoever was standing beyond Amaya’s vision into the room. Three people came in; two weary Fireflies who looked relatively young, and Ellie, alive and as well as someone who was infected could be. The adults wasted no time in leaving. Marlene looked back at the pair a final time. She tossed the pack towards Amaya, which thudded through the uneasy silence.

“Don’t kill each other,” she prayed and slammed the door behind her.

Amaya didn’t know what to do besides stare. For the few seconds of hush, she stood perfectly still, like her mind had just sprang from a dream. But this time, it was eyes the shade of vengeful fire that bore into her instead of the brown that matched her own. Ellie wore the same thing from the mall, new rips and patches of grime as accessories. She had a pack of her own and something glinted against the shards of sunlight in its side pocket. Her posture was just as bad and her expression was just as confused. But her eyes. Her fucking eyes.

The kiss of a bruise was gone, and the florescent lighting from the mall on the last day Amaya saw her clearly was replaced by something raw and golden and terrible. Fire on fire. Sorrow on sorrow.

Other than the dirt and old clothes, Ellie looked healthy. Her face was twinged with a shade that corresponded with her lips and her loose umber hair curled at her hairline. And worst of all, Ellie’s eyes had the nerve to blaze like burning wood. Maybe with malice. Maybe with fear. Fucking asshole.

“You look like shit,” Ellie said, crushing the silence with her usual vulgarity and dragging her eyes over Amaya. She withstood the urge to cross her arms over herself in insecurity and opted for a snarl instead.

“Thanks, Veronica.”

“D’you know what’s happening?” Ellie disregarded the comment. She moved to peer out of the boarded window but got a face full of nothing but sky and brick. “They were just running the usual tests and brought me here.”

Amaya shrugged. “Marlene said we’re leaving.”

A sharp bang tolled out. Amaya tried to look unfazed as Ellie flinched.

“Leaving? And going where?”

“West. Wouldn’t tell me specifically.” Maybe to their deaths, maybe to Maria’s 'paradise in hell'. Amaya picked at her nail beds in aggravation at their joint state of confusion.

“Why?”

Amaya glared harder. “Wouldn’t tell me.”

“Who knows what they could do with us?” Ellie began to pace. “They could be selling me to some fucking mad scientist for my…blood or whatever.”

Protect Ellie.

Another gunshot. The girls leered at each other again for a few seconds before Ellie snatched what had been flashing from her pack’s side pocket; a switchblade. She advanced towards the splintering door and would’ve turned the knob if Amaya hadn’t seized her wrist, red rings around it from her cuffs.

“Marlene said to stay put.”

Ellie turned back to the girl and smirked. “She should’ve known better.”

She opened to door and started to slink down the hallway in the opposite direction of the sounds of aggression.

“Ellie,” Amaya whispered sharply, poking her head past the doorway. She watched as the shorter girl looked back at her and beckoned her to follow. “Ellie!”

Another gunshot, this time accompanied by some yelling that chimed barely 20 feet away. Amaya had no choice, she realized. Not if her sister’s voice was whispering along with the creaks in the wood.

Protect Ellie.

She hurried to grab her backpack and ducked out of the room.

Daylight which was steadily getting dimmer peaked through holes in the walls, much like the room she’d grown familiar with. Each floorboard screeched like they were carrying a million dead bodies on their unbending shoulders. Ellie was in sight, but too far to yank back. The girls treaded together for a few seconds, flinching with every bang and yell. Then, the commotion ceased. The world was still apart from Ellie and Amaya’s lingering breaths.

The shorter girl turned to face Amaya, eyes unsure. Amaya feigned valor and nodded to her to keep going. As they walked, they found a soiled man with a lake of crimson beneath him and an entirely spotless axe a foot from his outstretched hand. Amaya picked it up and frowned when she saw her reflection in the foggy steel.

“Guess this guy didn’t have much luck,” Ellie commented. Amaya shushed her, but when Ellie realized the axe was still in her clutch as they trekked away, she said, “Interesting weapon choice when everyone around us has guns...”

“Better than a switchblade.”

They walked through two more corridors in silence, weapons braced. The smell of gunpowder and blood was causing Amaya’s head to whirl, but she pushed on. Then, Ellie, still in front, came to a halt. She turned to face Amaya and placed her palm out.

“Hold on,” she whispered.

“We need to keep moving before we end up like the guy back there.”

“I know, just not down this hall. We’ll find another way.”

Amaya could tell by the metallic scent dawdling above them what was behind the corner. “I’m not a fucking baby, Ellie.”

“Amaya—”

But she wasn’t listening. Being eternally bewildered and treated like a child was worse than the freezing fear. As far as she could tell, she’d yielded all claims to innocence long ago. Amaya plowed past the sienna-eyed girl and twisted around the corner.

The acidic aroma of flesh beginning to rot was nearly enough to knock her over. Barely ten feet away, a girl who couldn’t have been older than her early 20s lay with her neck bowed against the wall, body slack and straight on the floor. Her eyes were unobstructed and Amaya swore they were looking right at her. Dark, gaping, and barren. A bullet found home between them and leaked red-tinted despair and venom. Amaya wished she listened.

She had been completely indifferent towards the man with the axe, but this girl was familiar. It didn’t matter to Amaya that in the world outside of the youngest Abel’s pain, she was a stranger. And Ellie knew exactly how it would affect her.

Amaya knew that face. She shared that face. The ochre glow of the dim hallway made her brown skin glare as the corners of her eyelids kissed. Riley.

Amaya didn’t care to acknowledge the sound of stomps and pained grunts coming closer. She didn’t comprehend Ellie’s hand on her shoulder or the pull of bile in her throat. As of she was drowning in remembrance, the flickering lightbulbs, faded wallpaper, and scent of blood blended in one great, sloppy, tragic painting. Riley.

Amaya was in the mall again, hands marred with red-hot guilt. The body’s mouth began to move; “You killed them, May,” it whispered.

It took more than a yank of her jacket for her release. Ellie seized her hand and dug her nails into her shoulder, not letting go as she hauled the girl away from the body and down into the next corridor. She shoved Amaya into a vacant room identical to the ones they’d been staying in and thrust her against the wall next to the entrance.

“It wasn’t her,” Amaya told Ellie as she continued to hold her clammy hand, but it sounded more like a plead than a declaration.

“I know,” Ellie huffed. She stared at Amaya’s blown eyes and drooping face. “I know.”

The grunts of pain Amaya had barely processed were rising louder, only a few feet away now. Ellie, who still hadn’t taken her damned eyes or hands off her wondered allowed: “Marlene?”

Then, another noise sounded. A scrape, coming from their right this time.

“Not Marlene,” Amaya whispered, but Ellie wasn’t listening. She took her hand from Amaya’s and flipped open her switchblade. Before Amaya had any time to pull her back a second time, she pounced through the doorway.

Amaya squeezed her eyes shut as a mass bashed against a surface. A gruff, masculine grunt rang out on the other side of the wall Amaya was fused to.

“Fuck,” a winded Ellie panted as the click of a gun echoed in the stillness.

“Joel?” It was Marlene’s voice this time.

“Marlene?” The man’s words had a distinct twang to them.

A frustrated sigh puffed. Her next words were directed to Ellie. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Amaya still had her axe. Whoever was on the other side of her wall could be down in seconds, even if she was inexperienced with wielding the weapon. But he had a gun and wasn’t alone. Amaya’s thoughts swam rapidly.

Protect Ellie.

“Ellie…” Marlene called. When the only response she got was more heavy breathing, she called again. “Ellie. Where’s Amaya?”

“Right here.” Amaya forced her body forward and slowly swerved out of her hiding place. She let her axe clang to the floor and raised her hands. Eyes still blown and cheeks flushed, she peered around the room; A tall man with a graying, patchy beard and a plunging crease between his eyebrows was scrutinizing her, Ellie, and Marlene. Behind him, another woman idly pointed her gun at Amaya. Ellie was on her ass, her back to the wall. The southern man dwarfed Amaya as his shoulders squared in defense. She carefully maneuvered herself around him as he watched, keeping her back against the wall as she'd been taught.

Amaya looked to Ellie again, who was already glaring at her, clearly vexed. “You should’ve just stayed in the room,” the girl grumbled.

All dread and recollection of the woman with familiar eyes vanished as Amaya’s eyebrows settled harshly over her pointed eyes. “And you should’ve waited for me before charging at a man armed with a gun,” she snarked back.

Ellie shook her head but didn’t take her fiery eyes off her accomplice. Amaya stood with vigor as she held her sore body upright, setting her lips straight as she skimmed her eyes to Marlene.

The older woman was holding her hands out like her, gun directed at the ceiling instead of the attackers. A dark stain was growing on her ratty tank top.

“Shit,” Ellie whispered as she took in her appearance too.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll be alright. And you,” —she glimpsed from Ellie to Amaya— “can’t be stupid like this. You have a responsibility.”

She didn’t need another reminder.

“We were gonna move Ellie out of the zone tonight,” Marlene began to say to the older man. “But we won’t make it anywhere like this. Not for a while, anyway. So now I’m thinkin’…you’re gonna do it.”

“The hell we are.”

“I can do it,” the Firefly by Marlene’s side said.

“I’m not going with them!” Ellie peered back up at Amaya with pleading eyes. “We’re not going with them.”

Amaya didn’t know who to look at. Ellie’s sienna stare was fixed on her like she was the only thing she'd ever seen and Marlene observed her in anticipation.

What exactly was her responsibility now? She found Marlene. She kept Ellie safe to the best of her abilities. Amaya endeavored, even when she was stricken with callous grief and fueled by rage alone. Their fate was out of the hands of a promise.

But it was more than that, no matter how many times Amaya tried to disavow it. The fact that Riley didn't know the pledge would last longer than the mere hours it should've taken for Ellie to turn had no significance any longer. It had ceased being just a promise the second the bullet soared three weeks ago, the second Riley Abel was struck from The List. It was symbolic of something bigger and greater than the guilt of sisterhood. She felt its reverence with each heave of her feet. Yes, she’d found Marlene. Yes, she’d protected Ellie to the best of her abilities. But her job didn’t stop there and that thought alone nearly made Amaya crumble to her knees and lift her hands to the heavens.

Amaya wasn’t raised religious. No one was anymore. How could you be when this world was so absent of all good, all righteousness, all serenity? There was no God. If there was, Amaya wouldn’t be haunted by his children. So then why was she praying to one now? Was it for guidance? Was it for repentance? Was it for him to strike her down where she stood and relieve her of this all?

Amaya didn’t know what would happen if she followed Ellie west with two strangers, but she did know one thing. It wasn’t just a promise. It was an oath of truth, a wish for peace, a dream of deliverance. Made for a girl-turned-corpse. Marlene told her she would have to make a choice. This was it.

God fucking damn it.

Amaya let her eyes drift to Marlene, who stared back knowingly.

“Tess,” Joel looked around at the woman who still held her revolver in Amaya’s direction. “We don’t have time for this.”

Tess watched him, then turned to the bleeding woman. “Who is she?”

“To you? She’s cargo. And her…” Marlene pointed to Amaya now. “They’re a package deal.”

Below her, Amaya watched a little relief bleed into Ellie’s expression.

“Hold on, now you want us smuggling two kids?” Tess exclaimed.

“We don’t smuggle people. Sorry.”

“I can do it,” the short-haired firefly--Kim, she shortly learned-- said again.

“Kim, you don’t have a fuckin’ ear on your fuckin’ head. Could you please?” Marlene paused to rub her temples. “There’s a team of Fireflies waiting for Ellie at the old State House. They’ll know where to take Amaya afterwards.”

Amaya’s head shot up. “You mean—”

Maria is alive.

Amaya knew Riley would never lie about their sister, but the possibility had never felt real until that very second. Her chest swelled with warmth and her head reeled with alleviation. This was what hope feels like, she realized.

“Yes,” Marlene confirmed. “Last I heard, a contact there knows where Maria last was. It’s not a promise, but a possibility.”

Amaya nodded gratefully. Joel scoffed.

“I know what’s out there,” she continued. “We were going with an entire squadron for that very reason. But now, I don’t have a truck, I don’t have a squadron, FEDRA’s five minutes away…what I do have is you. And I know what you’re both capable of. For better or worse."

“What’re they capable of?” Ellie wondered aloud.

Neither Tess nor Joel made any movement.

“You get them there safely, they’ll get you what you need. Not just the battery. The whole thing, whatever you need. I swear. I swear.”

Joel looked to Tess, who jerked her head. The pair stalked a few feet away and began whispering. Amaya let her shoulders drop and sighed. She reached down to pull Ellie up from the floor, who brushed dust and dirt from her already dirty clothes and looked the taller girl in the eye.

“Thanks,” she said, and Amaya was reminded of the circumstances of their relationship. Fire on fire. Sorrow on Sorrow.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she snarked, careful to keep her voice low as she picked up her axe. “I couldn’t give less of a shit about a vaccine. I’m doing this for my sisters.”

“I know,” Ellie looked away, rubbing the red rings around her wrists from her shackles.

Amaya could admit to the sprawling ball of warmth in her chest and quit her pessimism. She could admit that maybe she wasn’t all grit and stone, but eager to be good. For Maria. For Riley. She could acknowledge her fear and intrinsic need to protect. But Amaya was an Abel. And Abels didn’t break.

The deal was made. Soon, they were off into the cold streets of the Boston QZ, heads low, splashing steps eager for freedom. Tess and Joel brought them to an apartment complex, complete with mice nibbling on crumbs in the corner and water leaking from the ceiling. As Amaya and Ellie entered their space, Tess cleared her throat.

“Give us a minute,” she instructed and shut the door behind her. The girls were alone again.

Ellie pivoted to watch her abetter look around and shuffle her feet from one corner of the room to the next. Flower pots and coffee table books replaced by whiskey bottles and loose trinkets, the place was certainly lived in. But Amaya was no one to judge given that the most luxurious place she’d ever stayed had multiple mold infestations.

The adults' voices were only slightly muffled by the armor of wood separating them. Ellie began to pick around the mess of the living room as Amaya watched critically.

“Don’t touch their shit.”

“And what exactly do you call what you’re doing?”

Amaya looked down at her bustling hands that explored the contents of a nearby shelf but only rolled her eyes. Slanted against the nearest windowsill, her tawny skin mixed with the pinks and yellows and blues of the glass butterfly whirling in the window. Ellie watched the colors kaleidoscoping in silence as Amaya leafed through the pages of a book— “Morse Code and Other Essential Languages”.

There was a serene glow coating her dark eyes, the look only a person who didn’t know they were being watched could capture with such nuance. Before Ellie’s thoughts could pull her further down a rabbit hole, Joel stomped back in.

“So,” Ellie began, holding her own book now that she’d used to distract her from the girl with rainbows in her skin. Joel sat down on the ratty sofa and looked like he was holding back an exasperated sigh. “Who’s Bill and Frank?”

He glared in warning and Amaya stepped in front of the subject of his annoyance, blocking his vision of the prying girl.

“The radio,” she pointed to the back box and pulled the slip of paper Ellie was trying to decipher. She read it over. “It’s a smuggling code, right? 60’s, nothing changed; '70’s, they—whoever they is—got new stuff…”

“But the ’80s,” Ellie went up on her toes to read over her shoulder. “Just has an ‘x’ next to it? What’s that one?”

The couch creaked as Joel rose and Amaya regretted leaving her axe on the windowsill. She instinctively reached a hand back and hovered it over Ellie’s forearm, trying to drive her back, but Ellie wouldn’t budge. He approached them, took Ellie’s book, and rashly tossed it on the cluttered coffee table. Ellie put her hands up in annoyed defense.

“Told you not to touch their shit," Amaya shrugged.

Within minutes, the trio had settled into appointed spots; Joel on the couch feigning sleep, Amaya sinking into the cracked armchair after making sure Joel couldn’t see her cramming the morse code book in her pack, and Ellie sitting crisscrossed by her feet. She knew it was stupid to not remain vigilant, that this man not even five feet away had already exhibited his ability to harm them. Her axe was in clutch, resting against her leg. Eventually, sleep, like her sister’s call, caught up to her.

When she woke, she was still. The sun had set and streetlights were their only illuminators. Ellie was still at her feet, back resting against the leg of the chair and half-reading a book, and Joel lay stiffly on his sofa. Above him, though, posing on the arm of the sofa by his feet, rested the golden eyes and silver tears. Riley.

They were a mirror of each other, a cursed, blasphemous symbol of sisterhood. Monster reflected monster. Dead reflected dead. Neither creature said a word.

Amaya could dart her eyes around, but couldn’t bring herself to squeeze them shut. You killed them.

She looked to Ellie, wondering if her mumbling as she flipped through a book could be her saving grace, could pull her from this nightmare—no, this was no nightmare. This was as real as she was evil. This was real, and she was evil. Ellie's proximity made her chest flutter underneath her fear and she thanked God that the mumbling girl was facing away from her. Amaya felt the glacier in her ribs expand, pressing against her chest. She felt ready to burst. If she did, she’d go willingly.

Just then, the buzz of a helicopter jolted Joel awake and the feeling of an all-consuming winter dissipated.

Tess returned not long after and they started their journey in the dead of night. By the time they reached the surface of their underground passage through the Boston QZ, Amaya was panting and resisting the urge to retch at the scent of mildew and feces. However awful the room at the Firefly base was, it simply stood no chance compared to Boston’s sewage system. As she groaned while climbing over the rust-ridden latter, Ellie, eyes bright with the exhilaration of actual freedom, reached her hand down to assist her. Amaya glared and pulled herself up without her help.

After a couple of close calls (most of which were brought about by Ellie) they made it to the city wall. For a few fleeting moments Amaya began to think that their journey wouldn’t be as hard as Marlene made it seem, but fate had other plans.

Facing away from them stood a young, black-clad FEDRA soldier. Tess made a quick hand motion, instructing them to try and move silently around the man, but as she moved, Amaya stepped on a stick of wood. Its snap echoed like a gunshot in the night.

The soldier twirled around after zipping up his pants and aimed his gun, which flailed from criminal to criminal. “Don’t move. Don’t fucking move.”

At the sight of his gun drawn, Amaya dropped her axe. She grabbed Ellie’s arm and pulled her behind Joel and Tess. The quartet huddled close as lightning began to flash, each flash a frame in their final moments. The soldier lifted the panel of his helmet and Joel’s shoulders slightly unbunched. He seemed to recognize the young man but kept his hands up and his movements slow.

“You gotta be shittin’ me.”

“Ok, let’s talk this out,” Joel tried to reason as he and Tess moved in front of the girls, but the soldier jutted his gun again.

“Turn around. Get on your fucking knees. Do it!”

They obeyed.

“Fuck did I tell you, man.” The soldier’s attention was solely on Joel now and behind her, Amaya could feel Ellie try and pull herself from her grasp. She only held on tighter; Protect Ellie. “I said stay the fuck home.”

“Listen,” Tess called, ever the diplomatic voice, “you let us do this run, we’ll split the cards with you.”

He ignored her and directed them to raise their hands to their heads. From his belt emerged a scanner and as Tess complained, Ellie and Amaya looked at each other with fear bubbling deep in their stomachs. The first zap ricocheted in the air, then the second, until the cold metal pressed against Amaya’s neck.

Her axe, she remembered. But it was feet away, glimmering and sleek in the midnight rain.

Protect Ellie, Riley’s voice echoed.

Protect Ellie.

The soldier moved to the subject of Amaya’s whirlwind thoughts and in one swift movement, Amaya grabbed a rock by the soldier’s foot and swiveled to jab its sharpest edge into his calf. As he yelled, she kicked the back of his knees. The soldier, once illuminated by the power-hungry glow of nature's boom, fell to his knees. Amaya wasted no time in tackling him backward.

Ellie scrambled away as Tess and Joel watched in stunned silence as Amaya had the upper hand, pushing all her weight into her fist and pounding down onto his face. But her glory was fleeting. The soldier clamped his gloved hands onto her throat and squeezed. Instantly, the punches ceased and she was thrown to the ground with a worthless thump.

Amaya gazed up at the night sky in her concussed daze. She could hear the click of the soldier’s guns aimed at her and then a war cry and thump, but she didn’t take her eyes off the sky. Its tears looked like snow from her view and she was briefly reminded of her family’s shack in Camden during the winter months. She so desperately wished to be tiny and mushy-brained again, joined in the virgin snow by Riley as she swept her arms up and down to create wings of the holy. She had prayed every night for mercy, that she might be able to play in the snow with her big sister in some version of the afterlife. Despite all the heinous acts she’d committed, despite the oath that rested on her tired shoulders, Amaya believed she deserved at least that.

For a second, she thought she was getting her wish. An angel flew into view. Not one like Maria, but something that transcended even immortality. As it stared down at her, kind and round-faced and cherubic, its wings blurred in bursts of light around its head as it reached for Amaya's face. The angel placed its hand there and once she felt the inexplicable warmth, she regretted cursing religion’s name and claiming its falsehood.

“What was that about not charging at grown men armed with guns?” The angel asked.

Amaya blinked. Nails drilled into her skull as she was pulled upright and leaned against the rock on which she was thrown. The soldier was nowhere in sight, but Joel’s knuckles were bloodied and shaking. Ellie crouched in front of her with a hand hovering over her shoulder.

“What the fuck?”

Tess came over and nudged Ellie to the side, moving to peer at Amaya’s head wound, which was beginning to pulse along to her heightened heart rate. Tess pressed two fingers against it, feeling for blood or an open cut as Amaya shuddered. She was briefly aware of Ellie’s staring and Joel’s hand-flexing.

“Is she gonna be okay?” Ellie asked.

“Definitely concussed,” Tess began to conclude, “and I don’t see too much blood, so…probably.”

“Probably?”

“I’m fine,” Amaya claimed as she began to rise from the dirt. Joel was looking at her now with a mist of peculiar sorrow over his eyes. “I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

No one made any protests as Amaya found her axe and backpack, which had been flung off in the fight. But before they could get back on the move, something caught Tess’ eye; a red so bright coming from the missing guard's scanner, Amaya was surprised she hadn’t seen it sooner. Tess stared for a second, before moving to get it. Tess raised it to herself, then to Joel, who flung around and pulled Amaya away from Ellie.

“Joel,” Tess called as Amaya tried to pull herself from Joel’s grasp.

“Wait, she’s not sick!” She yelled. “She isn’t sick!”

Ellie’s eyes flew around the trio until settling on Amaya pleadingly.

“She isn’t sick!” Amaya tried again. Then Ellie did the one thing she wasn’t supposed to.

“Look!” Ellie yelled as she pulled up her sleeve, revealing the only reason she was still alive. She looked at Amaya. One of the reasons.

“This is three weeks old,” she explained as Tess dove to grab her arm, stretching the marred flesh of the bite mark. “Nobody lasts more than a day, right? Does this look a day old to you?”

“She isn’t lying,” Amaya claimed, finally breaking herself free of Joel’s iron grip. “I was there. I swear, we wouldn’t lie.”

“You would’ve killed me if we'd said anything!"

“I should fucking kill you. Both of you!”

Amaya crept up to Tess, who was staring at the ground in complete disbelief. As slowly as she could, she raised her hands in caution as she had few hours prior.

“Look, I know it’s impossible,” she began to reason, ignoring the incredulous wide-eyed glare Ellie was sending her. “I didn’t believe it at first either, but it’s real. I was there. This is real. And they’re gonna catch us if we don’t go. Now.”

Right on cue, a siren started to wail. Tess gave herself three seconds to think, then hurried to start pulling the girl’s away from the city wall. Joel was still staring at Ellie with an unreadable expression.

“Joel, we gotta move,” Tess called after him, still moving the girls farther away. Ellie gripped the arm of Amaya’s jacket as she led the way toward a gap in a nearby wire fence. “We gotta move, Joel!”

In the violent downpour of a terror-filled night, Amaya could hear distant screeching. She paused and looked back on Boston as her curls plastered to her forehead; her home of five years. Somewhere in the rubble and sorrow that made up the city, rested the reason she was still breathing, as well as the reason she didn’t deserve to be. Her skin prickled in shame to leave her behind, even if there was no longer anything in her besides disease and death. Everything felt so explicitly real for the first time since she was nine, and Amaya was doing everything in her power to push that feeling away and focus on her task. All she had to do was get to the Fireflies and find her sister. After that, no more diplomatic women, grumpy old men, or sienna eyes. Couldn’t be that hard.

“Come on,” Ellie called from a few feet away. She had let go of her arm a while ago, and Amaya almost missed the feeling of her, even if her touch was only to hurry Amaya along. Amaya looked back to the girl with fire eyes and a cherubic face, then to Tess and Joel, who stood talking in hushed tones as they waited. She looked back at the graveyard city once more and said goodbye.

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