EPILOGUE

The boy asked me a question, but I don't answer. Not immediately. I'm so damn tired. He has a lot more energy than me, and the climb is taking it out of me. An old injury to my leg is aching again. Usually, it's quiet, but it isn't quiet right now. It is absolutely intent on reminding me what happened.

He asks me again, trailing behind me. Maybe he thinks he's doing me a kindness – not trying to brag. Good kid.

"I don't know," I say.

"How can you not know?" I don't answer. He says, "Jay. Jay."

"Leave it. All right?"

The kid goes silent. I steal a look back at him, but his head is pointed downwards now. A mop of messy brown hair streaking edgeways down the sides of his head. He's feeling shame. Maybe guilt. Growing up — which I did, fast, too fast — I didn't feel shame. Just headstrong, ready to go, like the ground beneath my feet was hot. Guilt, I think, looking at him… I don't want to think about guilt. I'm feeling it right now.

The air is cool, where we are. I think I can tell where we are, at this point. At the end, pretty much. Up the hill, towards but not at all close to the grey overcast and then along a flat ridge. Is this really what it looked like?

"Sorry," I say.

"It's fine," he mumbles.

"I really don't remember."

"I'll never forget what age I am," he says. "I'm ten."

I don't tell him he's been with me for longer than a year. He was ten then, maybe, but he isn't ten anymore. His voice has even started to change. All I need, is that when his hormones kick in, is for him to stay reasonable. Not to get us killed. The terrified silence he falls into when we meet them — a silence that keeps him alive — needs to stay.

"Nearly there," I say.

"Where are we going again?"

"Vantage point," I say. "Should tell us where to go next."

"I thought you knew where we were going."

"This was all I had. I'll know where we're going next."

"My dad always said it was bad this way. Swarming with clickers. You can't take any steps without them hearing you, and that they got so hungry they would attack each other for food."

"It's just stories."

It was a bit worse up here now. The only areas where industry churned up, producing the grey smog lingering above us. When they got the factories going again, making weapons and bullets, word spread that the clickers came from miles away. And the clickers had changed. Evolved, that was the word. Sound didn't just draw them now. They could smell you. A lot of people probably died before that was figured that out.

"I like stories."

The hill flattened. The north-east stretched out before us, and the kid lined up beside me to take it in, tilting his head curiously. The toppled buildings were still toppled, leaning on one another, closer to the ground than they used to be. Nestled towards the east and beside the water, one of the factories was billowing black smoke. Even miles away, sentries dotted makeshift towers along amateurly-built boundary walls.

"Are we going there?" the boy asks. He points to the factory. "There's people."

"No," I said. "They aren't good people."

"Oh."

They'd gun us down before we even got close. And even if they were looking for workers, I'm not making that gamble on his life. I never heard his father's last words — the hunters gunned him down before he said a word — but if he'd had time, she would have told me to keep him safe. Like people kept me safe.

I look out towards the west, where the flat hill ridge sharpens to a point. A stone protruding from the dry ground. Dull grass in small tufts grew around it.

"That way?" he asked.

It's a siren call. Slowly, I begin to walk towards it… the pain in my legs isn't gone but it isn't demanding to be felt right now. The boy isn't either, for that matter, or maybe it's just that the world has gone sort of quiet. The wind is beating against my face, trying in vain to drive me away, but west is the way to go.

The wind gets worse the closer I get. It's not just the wind, I realise. It's the weight of all the lies I've told, beating down on me, weighing on me. Pointless lies. Nothing omitted. Sometimes I give them completely willingly, trying hard to built up a new version of myself. With the kid's father, I could keep them all straight without writing one thing down. That's how desperate I was… to shed my old skin, make something up. Even to him. Even to someone I cared about.

I did this on repeat for a long time, anywhere I visited, with any people I met.

Amy.

Samantha.

Kimmy.

Erin.

My name's Jolene right now. It was Jolene when I met his father, and then I got scared and left for a long time. The kid calls me Jay, after I snapped at him for calling me Jo. It was a stupid choice of name, but I panicked a long time ago. Every time they called me it, I flinched, and then I ran away. I don't like being called Jo. Sounds too much like something else, especially when a kid says it. Going back, finding out about the kid… That was tough. I didn't love his father. I still wish he hadn't died.

He notices I'm standing over the rock and that my eyes aren't leaving it.

"What's that?" Stupid kid habit. What is that? What is that? What is that?

"A grave," I say. Truthfully.

"How'd you know?"

"I was there when they dug it."

"What? You've been here before?"

"Yeah. Long time ago."

"Who…?"

"Joel. His name was Joel."

"That's like your name." I don't answer. "What happened to him?"

"He died."

"Funny."

"That's me."

"Where do we go now, Jay?"

The old wound is aching, for some reason. Not the one in my legs. That's fresh, all things considered. My right arm, tingling and pulsing. Ugh.

"Call me Ellie," I say.

"Huh?"

"Just call me Ellie."

"Why?" I don't answer. "The questions are annoying you."

"There's just a lot of them. It's my name."

"I thought your name—"

"—my name's Ellie. I lied before. I'm telling you the truth now."

"Okay," he says. "Where do we go now… Ellie?"

I'm not going to tell him any more lies. Not outright, anyway. He's so young. I wish I had someone with me who I could talk to properly. I wonder if Joel ever felt that way. Like he couldn't explain things to me. I was so young, and it was all so long ago. It shouldn't have turned out this way. I look over towards the city, towards Boston. I hate that damn place. I'll never go back again. Riley, Joel, Marlene. It takes me a minute to remember Tess' name. I haven't thought about her in a while. People that died for me.

I look down at the kid. If I'm going to die for him, well, that's not a bad way to go.

"Your scarf," I say sharply. He pulls it over his bite. Clickers, runners, they can only kill us if they really kill us. People find it a lot easier. We're not going towards Boston.

"That way," I say. "West, then north. Walk around the city. New Hampshire, Vermont. A lot of green that way. Make a quiet life."

"Let's go, let's go, let's go."

"Let's sit down for a while first. Have some food." I pull off my backpack and unzip it.

"Tell me a story while we eat?"

"Sure," I say, smirking. "I've got one in mind already."

I make something up with a happy ending.

Author's Note: If you've read The Last of Them, I just want to say: thank you. Not only thank you for reading the whole thing, but thanks for being so patient. The amount of abusive messages I received during the long waits between the final chapters was outnumbered by the private kindness. I've changed a lot while writing this story; I'm not the same person I was during those years.

I'll talk, a little, about what happened. Joel did, of course, die at the end of the last chapter, and the plan — initially — was to write a final cycle. A series of short stories detailing what Ellie did after Joel died: the places she went, the relationships she forged. I imagined she would fall in love with a woman somewhere, and live for a long time. I also imagined that, briefly, at the age of twenty-two or so, she'd have a brief relationship with a man from somewhere. A man she didn't love, and who called her a name she picked in panic. But: she became pregnant. And then, as Ellie had changed, she had learned to run away. The kid was born, and Ellie ran again, unable to take being called Jolene and unable to cope with the lies. Eventually, Ellie went back, but something happened. The man died. Now, she has a kid to look after. A kid who shares her immunity.

Reader, I'm sorry. I didn't have it in me. I don't have this story in me anymore. Like Ellie says in the story: I was so young, and it was all so long ago. I preserved the ending to the story, with a considerable time-jump (think fourteen to fifteen years) because I needed you to know how the story was meant to end. With The Last of Us: Part II coming up, I felt it would only be right for me to end this story before that one begins. I can't say I'll never revisit this story, or the other series I wanted to write — Joel's time as a hunter — but I write mostly original fiction and journalism now, so that's coming first.

I hope you all enjoyed The Last of Them, even if you find the ending let you down. I put so much care into this last chapter, trying to inform you of what happened without Ellie just telling you. I also felt, after all this time, maybe it was time to make the story hers. Because it is Ellie's story. The Last of Them always has been to me.

I hope you enjoyed the ride. I'm sorry if I let you down. If you have any questions about what happened in the time jump, let me know. I'm open to filling in the details by uploading all of the notes I wrote years ago as an extra, bonus chapter, if anyone's still reading.

Thanks for all the support, even when it was less than kind — I didn't forget. Life just did that thing it does: getting in the way.

As always, don't forget to review, and let me know what you thought.