The Last of the Fireflies

Chapter 1

Ellie stood still, looking at the back of Joel’s head as he started to walk down the hill. Jackson Hole was right in front of them. For nearly a year, Ellie had spent every waking minute with the man in front of her; she couldn’t imagine life without his presence, but she could hardly recognize him at that moment. The past couple of days had been a dream. They had been living in a ‘borrowed” Firefly truck, she had woken up wearing a surgical gown, and had been drugged at some point. Joel refused to elaborate on any of these points. Instead, he told her they had stopped looking for a cure. The one group hell-bent on getting her across the country had just given up at the last minute. It was fucking bullshit and Joel knew it.





What pissed her off more than ever was that he kept doing it. He kept lying to her day after day. And 5 minutes ago, he swore he was telling the truth. Ellie’s stomach burned like she had been stabbed in the gut. Looking at him marching happily towards their new home made her want to throw up. So badly, she wanted to yell at him, catch him off guard, admit he was guilty, and save their relationship before everything changed. “So be it…” Ellie muttered under her breath, fighting back the tears behind her eyes. If he’s comfortable throwing all this away, then so was she. Just as Ellie took her first step down the hill, a cold, hard barrel pressed against the back of her head.


“Say anything and I’ll blow your fucking brains out” …





The words “I swear” ran through Joel’s head as he walked down the hill. The shame he felt weighed too heavily for him to look back at the girl he loved. Ellie was too damn smart to believe his half-assed excuses. But what other choice was there? Sure, she might hate him, but she was alive dammit! The least he could do was keep the burden of knowledge to himself, the kid had suffered enough. Everything will get better in Jackson. Joel repeated again and again ever since they left the hospital. Ellie would find people her age, and he could keep busy catching up with Tommy. Things would have to go back to normal eventually.





He had gotten about halfway down the hill when he noticed Ellie’s footsteps weren’t behind him. Turning around, his heart began to race. She wasn’t there; she hadn’t even followed him down. Worse yet, he was too far to see her over the hilltop. Hoping, praying that she was only sulking up there and hadn’t run away, Joel raced back up the hill. His eyes narrowed in on the crest of the hill, scanning for her face, but the brightness of the sunset above him made it difficult to discern anything. Just as he reached the summit, his eyes landed on her, and his heart dropped. Standing behind a teary-eyed Ellie was a young woman who looked barely twenty, with brown hair and a toned body with muscular arms. She looked military and had a silver revolver pointed at the back of Ellie’s head. Before he could mutter a word, Ellie screamed as a shadow cast over the side of his head. The butt of a rifle burrowed into his skull, knocking the stunned man unconscious…








“Shit Abby! We can’t stay here; we need to move now! Maybe shut the kid up while you’re at it?” The man slung his rifle back over his shoulder as Ellie kicked and screamed in Abby’s grasp.





“Shut up you little bitch!” Abby hissed as she quickly tied a cloth around Ellie’s mouth. “Owen, see that lodge over there? That’ll be where we do it,” Abby turns to Ellie, her gun now pointed at Joel. “Any sudden movements and he dies”. Ellie Shakely nods her head, eyes fixed on Joel’s body as Owen goes to pick him up.





“Christ, the guy’s heavy,” Owen grunts, trying to hoist Joel onto a nearby horse. “Maybe if we’d slept even a little bit, it wouldn’t be this hard.”





“If we had, they’d be down there by now and we’d be fucked, you jackass!” Abby shoved the small girl in front of her. The lodge wasn’t much further ahead, but a patrol could come by at any second. Tossing Ellie onto the back of her horse, Abby jumped on and followed Owen down the dirt path West of the hill. Not long after, she began to pry into the sniffling girl behind her. “So, what made him do it? I mean, we waited months for you two to show up, and at the last second, your dad gets a change of heart? Was it you? Were you the greedy cunt who felt she was too good for us? Too good to save all of humanity? Or was it him? Was he the one who’d rather let the world burn before something bad ever happened to him?” Abby paused. The sniffling was gone, but the girl didn’t so much as make a sound out of her muzzle. “Don’t worry there, kiddo, he’ll tell us eventually, and you’ll be there to watch”.





Owen winced at Abby’s words. Sure, the man was well past due for his death, but to rope a kid into all this? That was never what the Fireflies were about. In his heart, he hoped Abby was bluffing. Almost like she was psychic, Abby pulled her horse up next to his. “He did this himself; he dragged the girl into this, not us”. The plot of land around the lodge was surprisingly well-kept despite its vacancy. There were no infected around, and the place seemed well insulated with all its windows still intact and luxury furniture inside. Tying the horses to the iron fence surrounding the property, Abby led Ellie inside as Owen dragged Joel’s unconscious body behind him. Once inside the main living room, Owen quickly tied Joel’s arms to a radiator and helped Abby tie Ellie to a table across the room. Abby’s boots dragged along the hardwood floor as she paced around Joel’s body. Growing impatient, she began to kick at him until the groggy man’s eyes slowly opened. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Joel. We have a lot to discuss…”