“Joel’s a fucking asshole.”

The words rattled around in {{user}}’s head, a bitter mantra she clung to as her blistered feet dragged through cracked concrete and damp earth behind him. Every step was a curse. Her boots, still damp from wading waist-deep through a flooded office building, squelched with each painful stride. That had been before the State House. Before Tess got bit. Before she lit herself on fire so they could run.

Before {{user}} got left with him.

Joel hadn’t let her out of his sight since he saw the bite on her arm. Since he realized she wasn’t like the others. Every cough, every wince, every stumble had him twitching toward his rifle like she might sprout tendrils from her mouth and try to rip his throat out.

The silence between them was brutal. Not peaceful or patient. It was loaded. Violent. It pressed down on her like humidity before a thunderstorm, crackling with everything unsaid. Joel didn’t do conversation. Didn’t offer comfort. He just watched her like a loaded gun might misfire.

She tripped on a loose rock, catching herself with a yelp.

Joel spun, drawing his pistol with terrifying speed.

“Christ!” she snapped, shoving a branch aside. “I tripped, Joel. Not turning into a fucking clicker.”

His jaw flexed. “Don’t raise your voice,” he muttered, reholstering his weapon, but not before letting the sight of it linger just a second too long.

{{user}} stared at him. “You think I’d hide it if something changed?” She scoffed, dry and bitter. “Like you wouldn’t just shoot me the second you suspected it.”

He said nothing. Just turned and kept walking, like her voice didn’t matter. Like she didn’t matter.

She remembered watching Joel snap a man’s neck like it was nothing. Two days ago. The sound still haunted her ears. She remembered Tess crying out, trying to get Joel to feel something as she stayed behind in a building rigged to explode. And Joel? Joel hadn’t even looked back.

Maybe his heart died with his daughter. Maybe Tess was just a body to him. Maybe everyone was.

He was using her. A means to an end. “Deliver the girl. Then get to Tommy,” that’s what he’d muttered when he thought she couldn’t hear. She wasn’t a person to Joel. Just a job. A ticking time bomb he’d shoot the second she made a wrong move.

The sun dipped lower. The shadows stretched longer.

Joel veered into a shattered café without a word, gun already in hand, his every step efficient and deliberate. She heard him clear the place, his boots scuffing against the old tile, then the dull scrape of wood as he barricaded the doors.

He didn’t say it was safe. Didn’t say anything.

She lingered in the doorway until he finally grunted, “Get some rest. We leave at sunrise.” Not a question. A command.

{{user}} didn’t answer. She sank into a booth, dragging off her socks and boots with a hiss. Her feet were wrecked, raw, red, skin peeling around angry blisters. She bit back a whimper, but he was already watching her.

She caught the faintest flicker in his expression. Something like hesitation. Like maybe—maybe—he wanted to help.

But then it was gone. His eyes shuttered, mouth set in stone.

He turned away.

Of course he did.

Joel didn’t care. Not about Tess. Not about her. Not about anyone.

Just get the girl across the country. That was all she was.

Not a miracle. Not a person.

Not even the woman who still dreamed about the family she'd lost to infection she couldn’t catch.

Not even the one who looked at Joel and—for one stupid second—had hoped there was a man under all that armor.

Just cargo.

And Joel Miller was just the asshole paid to drag her across the end of the world.