CYOA Page 259
You breathe a sigh of relief. It's not him! Thank God! You make the last kill cleanly and efficiently, then travel from corpse to corpse to retrieve your arrows and pick up whatever you can find of value. Which isn't much... just a small box of ammo.
You see Joel only has a couple of Runners left. You decide to help him out by arrowing the last one, and then looting the bodies in his wake.
"Thanks, kiddo," he says after laying down the Runner he was strangling. You tend to let your knifing victims fall unceremoniously to the ground, but Joel lays them down like he's putting them to sleep or something (it's kind of cute).
"So Danny's not infected!" you conclude cheerfully.
"Not that we've seen, anyhow. We should poke around here a little more, just in case."
"Okay." But you know you won't find anything now. Like... if he was going to be infected, he would've been that guy that sort of looked like him. Since it wasn't him, that means he's fine. Maybe it doesn't make logical sense, but... neither do Joel's gut feelings, sometimes. It doesn't make them any less accurate.
You can't exactly feel happy, though... not totally. You were searching all these people's faces, looking for someone you know. All of them look different... all of them are different, being different people and all, yet they've all been reduced to zombies who behave in exactly the same way. Whatever personality -- whatever humanity they had -- it's gone. And every single one of them was someone's Danny. Or at least, they used to be... even if they had no friends and family left whatsoever, they had them, at one point in their lives... even the lowliest hunters have people who care about them, right?
It's easy to forget sometimes... to just brand them all 'infected' and immediately dismiss them as worthless creatures, never considering what they used to be.
"...Ellie?"
You realize Joel's been trying to get your attention. "What? Sorry."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing!" You wonder what Joel would say if you shared your thoughts with him. He might say something dismissive like "we never knew them, so how CAN we think about who they used to be?" Or he might agree that it sucks, then say it's not worth dwelling on.
"You sure?"
"Yeah, sorry, I was just... thinking about stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"Um... I'll tell you later, okay?"
He accepts this answer... and he will ask you about it later, if you don't tell him first. He'll remember. Anyone else might forget, but he won't. You've never had a real parent so you don't know for sure, but you imagine it's the way parents are supposed to be with their kids, if they think something's troubling them. ...And I'm not even TROUBLED, really, just... it's fucking sad?
If you guys are hanging out around a nice cozy campfire tonight, and he's in the right mood, maybe he'll commiserate with you... tell you a story from his past that may or may not be applicable... and somehow say exactly the right thing to make it okay. Maybe without even realizing he's doing it.
You feel a little better already, just imagining that.
If you'd like to start another adventure, return to page 1.