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joels-shitty-puns · 11 months ago

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Pins and Needles - Chapter 4

Pairing: Post-Outbreak!Joel Miller x Reader

Series Summary: Joel has known you for several years, but it was always strictly business, which was easier and preferred. However, after you run into him in Jackson, avoiding him is more of a challenge than you'd like.

Series Warnings: 18+ only (MDNI). Alluding to sexual scenarios. Mention of masturbation. Kissing. Age gap, reader is 39/40 Joel is 56/57. Violence!!! This features outbreak day memories. Blood, stabbing, cannibalism, death, infected. An airplane crash. Spoilers from season 1 of TLOU HBO. Deaths from that season are mentioned. Nightmares. Angst/tension. Let me know if I missed anything!!

Other stuff: Reader is referred to by the nickname Needles, but other than that descriptors are avoided! Reader is fem.

This series was based on these two anon requests! Here and here

Series list: Here

Word count: 2k

The morning of your first assignment, you showed up at the town community center, ready to meet Tommy and get this over with. Hopefully you could escape this town as soon as possible.

It wasn't that you didn't like the idea of comfort and community. In fact, you would love to relax and maybe settle down with someone. But you also knew that was improbable in this world. It was naive to think that you could live in contentment and not be in danger of the horrors outside these gates. So you ignored that longing feeling and ran for the hills whenever it approached you, in the same way an evil witch with a poisoned apple would approach, trying to lure you with its beauty.

You opened the door to the large meeting room, a swirl of blistering cold air following you inside. The air in here was nice and warm, a large fire roaring at the front. You shivered as your body adjusted to the change.

“Needles,” said Tommy, calling your attention to him. Joel stood at his side. “We're gonna have you start on patrols. I'll run this first one with you to get you started, sort of like a shadow shift at a new job. After that, you'll likely run with Joel a couple times a week. You already have worked together, so it seems like a good option.”

You nodded once, wondering how much Joel had shared about you with his brother, not that he would really have much to share. You made sure of that.

_____

You weren't always so closed off. Before the outbreak, you were actually very sweet, and much more willing to share and be social. You had friends, a boyfriend, a loving family. But that was all gone now.

Back in 2003, you were 19 years old and you boarded a plane by yourself for the first time, on a trip to see some family out of state. The flight was relatively empty, maybe only 50 passengers or so, which you found slightly odd. But, being that you had some extra space to spread out, you weren't about to question it.

You had just fallen asleep, the aircraft rumbling through the sky and passengers around you all focused on a quiet activity. You had been so exhausted from school that you slept right through the in-flight meal of a sandwich and cookies.

You weren't sure how long you had been asleep, but you woke with a jolt, the plane hitting some turbulence. Blinking your eyes open, you noticed the cabin was still very quiet. But something felt… off. The flight attendants were nowhere to be seen, the quiet turn of pages and shuffles had dissipated, and instead, a strange sort of growling… panting… slurping… filled the cabin. It was hard to see anything among the rows of seats, but you weren't confused for much longer when a blood-curdling scream sounded out, followed by a crunch.

But oddly .. nobody else was reacting. Nobody rushed to the screaming passenger’s aid. There were no murmurs of confusion or panic.

You stood from your seat by the window, and what you saw shook your entire being. The earth had spun off its axis. The floor was covered in bodies, passed out on the floor. They looked sick. Their bodies were graying, mouths oozing some kind of… foam? No… not liquid. Plants? Pasta? Thread?? What the hell was that in their mouths?

A raspy croak quietly sounded from the middle aisle behind you. Your heart hammered in your chest, and you wondered whether teenagers could have heart attacks from fear. You almost wished you would go into cardiac arrest to avoid this nightmare. Was this a nightmare? Were you still asleep on the plane?

You turned hesitantly, a crunching noise practically echoed off the walls of the aircraft. A man stood, hunched over a woman, kissing - no… no no no… EATING her neck.

Your breathing was coming in rapidly now, yet you somehow felt like you couldn't get any air at all. All these people on the ground - they had wounds. Deep, deep wounds, and as you looked around the flight, you noticed others just like the man. Croaking and biting and dripping with blood.

You could only pray that the pilots were safe and you could land on the ground. Please let it be soon.

There were no weapons on the plane. No knives or guns or bats. No pepper spray or stun guns. No defenses. Weapons weren't really permitted before 9-11, but now you couldn't even take a toothpaste on the plane. What were you supposed to do? Throw a suitcase at them? The TSA didn't plan for whatever the fuck this situation was. Who could have!? What even is this? A cult of cannibals? Some sick disease? Rabies?

Your throat suddenly had a boulder, making it hard to swallow, and your eyes were welling up with hopeless tears. Is this how you die? Eaten alive at 30,000 feet above sea level?

A lone tear streaked your face as you struggled to find some kind of answer. A way out of here. A way to defend yourself. A way to hide. If only I could tell the pilots, you thought.

The flight attendants were dead, and there were few passengers still alive near you, looking just as horrified and fearstruck. There were no answers. You looked around the plane, trying not to think about the lives of all these people, just looking for a solution. Any solution.

And that's when you saw it.

An old lady sat near the left side of the plane, still alive, unharmed, yet frozen in terror. She still sat in her seat, eyes wide and meeting yours as she peered over the row to gauge how far away the threat was. She made a cross over her chest, praying for her life. Her eyes were wet with tears and your heart ached for her. She's lived for probably 80 years - you'd guess - only to be struck with this nightmare of a flight, straight out of a horror movie.

But what you saw in her lap is what made you pause. Her in-flight entertainment. You never understood how it was allowed on a plane when you couldn't bring your medium sized bottle of lotion, but now it was your only saving grace.

Metal knitting needles.

You met her eyes once again and pointedly looked at her lap. She gave a confused look at first before realizing what you were implying. Her eyes closed hard, a tear rolling down her face as she sucked in a deep breath. You're sure this was much more violence than she signed up for, but it was your only hope.

Keeping your eyes on the living predators behind you, you slipped over the row of seats next to you, quietly tiptoeing over the bodies on the aisle way, trying to ignore the thought that they were people just like you - going on vacation, visiting family, and now… dead.

Silently, you reached the old woman, pointing at her knitting needles and asking permission with your eyes. With a single nod, she handed them to you and you carefully removed the yarn creation, setting it back on her lap.

You'd never had to stab anyone before and you really weren't sure if you even could. But these monsters - these humans - were going to kill you if you didn't kill them first.

Did the pilots even know?

Tucking one of the needles into the waistband of your jeans, next to your hip, you gripped the other in your dominant hand. There were at least four of these cannibals to deal with, and you panicked at the idea of them charging you, even if you managed to sneak up on them first. What if they couldn't even be killed? That sounds like a silly thought, but they clearly aren't fully human if they're acting like this.

You ran your thumb over the rounded base of the needle, point facing outward to stab your enemy. Creeping ever so slightly down the aisles, you wiped your hand around the needle on your pants. The nerves were making you shaky and sweaty, neither of which would help you in this situation.

Reaching the first one you saw, a woman not much taller than yourself, you gripped the needle tighter, approaching from behind and swinging your arm over her shoulder to plunge the needle into her neck. Blood pooled around your hand as you removed the needle, and she collapsed, thread-like organisms sprawling from her mouth as she did. Were they some kind of mushroom?

With the gurgling of your first victim, the next nearest parasitic-host turned to face you, eyes cold and almost frightened. You wondered if the human was still in there somewhere. It screeched, climbing over the seats to charge at you. You began flailing backwards, running behind you and gripping the needle as it grew closer. With one leap, it came after you and you swung your arm up again, plunging the needle in its neck.

With a crunch, you stepped on the hand of a victim on the ground, which somehow alerted the other two creatures still eating a few rows ahead of where the first two were. They sprinted, running faster than you ever could even in your best shape, and you gripped the needle in one hand, unsheathing the other from your hip into your other. As the first lunged toward you, you sunk the needle into its chest, stopping the movement immediately. The other continued its sprint and you added the other needle to your dominant hand, the old one still plunged in the heart of the last.

With a large bound, it reached you and you stabbed once again. Now all you had to do was reach the pilots and you could get out of this nightmare. But as you removed the needles - just in case - and wiped them on the shirts of your victims, you started to hear stirring from the bitten bodies on the floor.

What the actual hell??? You thought, quickly making way for the cockpit.

“We need to land, now,” you ordered. The pilot looked shocked, but saw the blood on your body and the knitting needle in your hand. To him and his copilot, you might look like the crazy one, but there's no way to logically explain this to them. Instead, they turned back to the controls, contacting the tower. Hopefully they were finding the nearest landing point.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before the jet was descending and you could see the buildings below growing closer. The runway was coming into sight, but the bodies in the plane were beginning to stir even more. The first sat up, others following behind it like some kind of interconnected body as you looked on with horror.

“WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!” you shouted at the pilots.

The copilot turned enough to see behind him and his eyes widened in fear, quickly turning back to the controls and signaling to the tower that something was terribly wrong on this plane. There was some kind of attack and the police should be ready at the airport.

The creatures began to walk towards you and as frightened as you were, you knew you couldn't risk them reaching the pilots. Running to the side of the plane, you stood in wait, needles in hand.

The first one reached you and you stabbed, pulling out the needle immediately, but the second and third were following close behind. You could see the buildings below getting closer and closer as the plane reached the airport. But right before the plane was set to land, one of the cannibals began moving towards the cockpit.

“NO!” You shrieked.

But it was too late. The pilot was unaware when the creature bit into his flesh, quickly killing one pilot after the other. The plane touched down on the runway, screeching and beginning to tilt and spin, not slowing down without the pilots to step on the brakes.

The plane tilted towards the nose, and with a crash, you slammed forward down the aisle, hitting your head and falling unconscious.

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