Chapter 1
Ellie could still hear the off-key guitar strings hum, rattling around her brain as she stepped off of the farm. She heard the song she couldn’t bear to sing. She heard Dina.
Dina was right. She was so right, in every way. But Ellie didn’t listen. Didn’t want to listen. She needed something to do, something to make the rushing of her thoughts slow down.
Her stride cut to an awkward pause as she walked past the gate, realizing for once that she had no plan. Nowhere to go. Ellie had nothing. She wasn’t going back to Jackson. Dina and Tommy, they both deserved better than that. Better than her. She had more or less ruined everything they had ever loved about her. Who else did she even know? Riley was dead. So was Marline. And Joel, and Jesse. She hurt Dina and Tommy so badly, she never wanted to see their faces again. Who else had ever cared about her? Ever, in her life? Cat? Did she even count? Was Cat even still alive?
Ellie stood still as a statue, missing fingers aching with a phantom pain. Her clothes were bloodied, her body scarred, and her will dead.
Her death was supposed to mean something. She was supposed to die for a purpose, to save everyone, to create a vaccine. Now, her death would mean nothing. And she wants nothing more than that meaningless death. To leave all of this behind, to do what should have been done years ago. Her immunity meant nothing anymore.
She wasn’t a person. She was a spectre of death and decay. All she had ever been able to do was kill, mutilate, and maim.
She may not have turned. She may not have lost herself initially-
But she really had been one of the infected all along, hadn’t she?
Erratic clicking sounded out from somewhere off in the distance, too far to see. Ellie’s hand snapped to her bow all the same, her instincts kicking in before the distance registered and she let her arm relax. She ran her fingers over the wood, realizing how much it felt like JJ’s crib.
Maybe Ellie wasn’t human. Maybe she was a murderous freak. Maybe all she had ever been good at was feeling hate, using that hate. But she loved. She knew love. She cared about the people close to her.
Ellie set her jaw, pulling her bow from her pack and nocking an arrow as she set off running toward the sound of the clicks.
She wasn’t any good at being a person, clearly. But she was great at killing.
She would kill the infected for them, use her immunity for their benefit.
Ellie was going to kill every last one of them.