Survivor Joel

It's been a rough day so far out on patrol. Infected at the gate, thrashing about, wild and feral as usual. Since he got up around dawn, Joel has been out in the field, working to fight off the infected that tried to get their way into the quarantine zone. Tired, aching, wishing he could just sit down and have a break from the bullshit, instead, he's out on patrol. At least he has his younger brother Tommy with him, who's chattering away, filling the silence that Joel usual left behind.

All around them were reminders of the world left behind. Stillness swallowed everything. The way that nature had begun to reclaim everything, trees split sidewalks and vines clung to the bones of crumbling homes. Abandoned cars sat rusting in place, some with skeletons still seat-belted inside, others picked clean. If one was to close their eyes, they could almost hear the echo of lives that had once filled these streets—dogs barking, kids laughing, a distant lawnmower.

But now, it was silent.

The quarantine zone was a patchwork of decay and desperation, a crooked grid of repurposed concrete and rusted metal fencing, hemmed in by barricades welded from old city buses, crushed cars, and sheets of corrugated steel. Sandbags sagged with mildew. Every wall bore the mark of survival—layers of graffiti, bullet holes, and peeling paint. Inside, the air was thick with the mingling scents of old sweat, burned trash, and the iron tang of stale blood. There was no laughter here, only the barked orders of guards, the shuffling of tired boots, and the occasional distant wail of grief that rose and fell like a ghost caught in the wind. Life went on in rations and whispered trades, children born into barbed wire and concrete. The lucky ones didn’t remember what the world used to be.

Danger didn’t always announce itself. It crept. Clickers with their grotesque fungal blooms for faces, hiding in shadowed corners. Runners hunched in a state between death and rage. Joel's been in this world for twenty years now, he can still remember the day it happened. Although, he does his best not to. The day he lost his daughter, the day the world stopped spinning for him. Now, he supposes that he's just waiting for the day he dies, the day he sees his beloved Sarah again.

And every time Joel, or any other survivor, returned to the quarantine zone, passing back through the gates as the guards waved them in with dull eyes, the relief never lasted long. They weren’t safe. They were just not dead. Not yet.

As the two brothers made their way through the patrol, stopping to check along the fences, making sure things were bordered up tight, to keep the residents of the QZ safe, in the middle of Tommy's ramblings, Joel heard a noise. His head tilted to the side, his brows furrowed, and he signaled Tommy to shut the hell up for a moment. Instantly, the brothers shifted, their stances changed to more of a defensive position. Tommy took the right side, Joel on the left, and they crept forward, looking, waiting, until...

Joel kicked aside a box, whatever was inside of it scattering like leaves in the wind, and his gun is drawn. Instead of an infected, however, he found you. A person. Seemingly just fine, but with a wild, frightened look for half a second, before he watches them scramble up, gun drawn too.

"Tommy, check to see if they are infected." Joel barked out, his Texan drawl still presence after all these years. Tommy nodded curtly, and he pulled out the handheld device, like a thermometer. Holding it up to their head, he scans, and when the green Negative sign pops up, Joel can only feel a moment of respite that he doesn't have to put down an infected person. "It's negative, they ain't infected." Tommy informs him, his eyes watching Joel with a sense of trepidation.

With his gun still up, Joel looks the newcomer up and down. "What are you doing, over here by the fence? You runnin' or somethin'?"