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Ellie kept asking him how long it would take. Hell if he knew, but crossing nearly two damn states was not going to be a fast jaunt and he didn’t even know if they’d find Tommy at the end of it. He wasn’t going to lie to her, so he just told her to prepare herself. Replaced her shoes, got some camping gear from an old Bass Pro Shop, and set off.
What they were bound to come across in such a trek he did not know, but he hoped nothing would be like the mess that was Kansas City. He wasn’t going to push their luck. They avoided major cities and stuck to wide open countryside where they could see what was coming. In Nebraska, that meant not a lot of cover.
It took one day of clear skies, not a cloud in sight and Ellie risking bare arms because she was “literally going to set on fire and there was probably no one out there for miles” for her to be itching and whining the next day, her skin red and radiating heat.
“Don’t scratch, you’ll tear your skin.”
She was in long sleeves again at his behest, but she had the fabric scrunched up in her fist to rub at her skin.
“I want to rip my fucking skin off.”
“Well don’t, it’ll make it worse.”
What was worse was her face, blossoming redness on all the high parts which darkened each day, peeling then burning again in quick succession until she looked like a cracked tomato. Didn’t help that she wouldn’t leave it alone, pulling strips of skin even when it made her wince and cuss. He was kicking himself for not finding her a good hat when they had the options. The girl was too pale for this. She’d spent all her days in the imposing shade of downtown Boston.
“My skin feels weird.”
“Move your hand.” There on the high point of her forehead were a row of little bumps he almost mistook for sweat. Blisters. “Shit. Alright. That’s it.”
They cut across the field, her holding her thin flannel above her head like a tarp. He peered through the windows of the farmhouse then broke in through the back when he was certain enough of its abandonment.
“Go find a hat, anything’ll do.”
He did a quick check of the kitchen as he listened to the creaking stomps of her footsteps upstairs. Between the moping over Henry and Sam and the incessant discomfort she was in, she was having a real bad time and not doing much to hide it.
“There’s nothing even here,” she said, coming down the stairs.
He pointed to a closet near the front door. She flung open the doors and there, displayed on the top shelf like it was placed just for her, was a wide-brimmed sun-hat with a yellow ribbon around the head, not faded one bit.
He barely held in a snort.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She rustled around in the closet, throwing things behind her.
“It’ll keep the sun off your face,” he said.
“You expect me to wear this shit?” Ellie plopped the hat on her head. It made her look like just a tiny thing, its floppy sides as long as her shoulders were wide. Matched with her boyish clothes and deep frown, she painted an absurd picture. He had to press his lips together.
“You’re literally laughing at me. Asshole!” She used an old scarf to wipe the dust off the mirror in the hall way and turned the hat this way and that. “I look like I’m going to the fucking beach. And my name is Sally-Lou.”
Amusement bloomed in his chest. He never knew what books she picked up at the QZ to get her frame of reference of the world when she didn’t even know what an ice cream truck was or that you had to pay rent every month to live in an apartment like the one they went through in Kansas City, but he chuckled out loud.
She started laughing almost immediately, as if his laughing pulled it right out of her. “At least if any hunters come across us they won’t do shit ‘cause they’ll be too busy fuckin’ pointing and laughing.”
“Now, now, it’ll do you good ‘til we can find something more your style. You’ll be happy when you don’t got third degree burns on your head.”
“You’re so mean.”
He followed her back out, settled slightly now that he wasn’t cursing each ray of sun for hitting her so relentlessly. The hat almost totally obstructed her face from his above view, so he let himself grin. She was trying to position it so it didn’t fall in front of her eyes, muttering complaints without any real anger behind it.
He hadn’t heard her laugh like that since they were with Sam and Henry. He could hardly remember the last time he’d laughed, at least until she’d gotten it out of him that night in Kansas City. That goddamn joke that shouldn’t have been as funny as it was. Between the hundreds of bad jokes, she somehow knew how to save the best to get him.
She wore the hat until the afternoon left them behind. He was glad for the stretches of silence, if only because he struggled to take her seriously in the thing. It was worse when she tried to make him laugh, putting on a voice and mimicking what she thought someone wearing that hat would be like. Incomprehensible prattling about vacation days and flower pots and whatever else she thought a middle-aged woman would drone on about. Just like that, she was her animated, weird little self again. Just when he thought Sam and Henry might have broken something irreparable in her.
The next morning she insisted they find her a different hat and his mood soured before the sun had hardly even risen. They had an almost inconceivable way to go without a car and he was already scared of what they would find on the other side. Or worse, what they wouldn’t find. With their slim pickings to scavenge, they needed to be on top of things.
“It’s not a fashion show out here.”
“My head is sweating so much, I swear this thing weighs ten pounds. Can’t we just look?”
“Sometimes beggars can’t be choosers,” he said, but a few miles out they detoured to another farmhouse and almost immediately she found a cowboy hat that released a cloud of dust when she picked it up off the counter. It was more in line what Joel was expecting to find in these parts. He was surprised when the sight made an old ache pulse ever so slightly in his chest. A memory—a tiny pink cowboy hat bought from the stands. Wiping dust from little red cheeks. How the bulls terrified Sarah but the horses were okay. The ‘not my first rodeo’ jokes for weeks after while she played pretend in the back. Wiping sunscreen on her face when she allowed it.
“Dude, this is so awesome.” She slapped it a few times, coughed, then lifted it onto her head by the rims. Only a little too big. Undoubtedly an improvement from the horrendous sun hat.
“There, now you can quit complainin’.” He stormed past her to the other room.
He searched the cupboards, pushing away his thoughts. In the pantry he hit the jackpot with a few off-brand cans of pasta and soup. He took his time packing them away.
She came up next to him to look, inadvertently poking his shoulder with the rim. “See? This is why you should always listen to me.”
When the sun was low again and they were sitting around the embers of their tiny fire, just enough flame to heat their cans and not themselves, the hat remained on her head.
“It’s no Chef Boy-or-dee, but it’s something.” She leaned over her bowl and the hat tipped with her. She pushed it back with her forearm without letting go of her spoon.
“Don’t ruin that now, you just got it. That’s the last hat we’re stopping for.”
“I’m not gonna ruin it. It’s my hat now.”
He grunted, returning his attention to his food. He could feel Ellie’s eyes on him.
“You should have taken one,” she said. “There were more. We could be matching.”
“Don’t need one.”
“Could hide some of those grays.”
He glared at her. She searched his face. It felt like she was trying to ask something else. What was it like where he was from. Why did he sound the way he did. Did she even know how people used to sound like the parts they came from, before everyone got scrambled up into different QZs?
He could handle the cowboy jokes. He couldn’t handle relating to any of it.
She lost the hat a month later when a small hoard of infected emerged from the woods and he made her run down the bank of the river, where the wind picked up and blew it beyond where they could reach. The sun wasn’t a problem anymore, and he refused to console her over the loss. The next town they found her a beanie then packed some gear for the weather he knew was coming sooner or later. They kept on going.