The Last Of Us: Part I - Darker Days (Male Reader)

Chapter 9 - Irrational Fear

A/N: Mentions and acts of suicide are present here because I love to torture my OCs.

You have been warned!

You don't know what it's like to walk a mile in my shoes - Unknown

Life was like a steam roller that never stopped moving, a roller coaster of events that just seemed to keep on going no matter what happened next.

Because that was life, and what a shit life it certainly turned out to be.

Panting hard, he ran behind his parents, the two of them facing their own tiredness of exhaustion that was not at all connected to the lack of sleep, but the waking paranoia that something was going to kill you at any moment.

That, and well, the large group of infected that was chasing them right behind.

So, either one really.

"Come on, let's go!" His father shouted, the one leading their retreat further through the hallway, as infected runners and clickers preyed on their behinds.

It had all happened so quickly. One moment they were idly chatting about their day, and then the quarantine city was overrun by raiders and infected both.

So, in the face of everything, Y/N's father and mother had shoved them inside the first building they could. An observation post just beside the towering metal walls and guard towers that were aflame.

Running between them, his mother just behind him, Y/N put all his energy into his legs, overdriving his body's need for rest, and pushing himself to the brink as they outran the death that followed.

And it seemed their luck was about to prove them victorious.

"Here!" His father shouted, his finger pointed towards an open door leading into a supply room. They immediately made a beeline towards it and pushed through whatever stood in their way.

His father was the first in, pushing open the door with great desperation and speed that would have crippled any man. Next, Y/N barrelled on through, panting hard as made it through, and already his father was hoisting himself up onto a stack of crates and to a little perch that housed a small window.

Except, the mother, her luck had run out.

He always viewed his mother as a strong, capable person. Someone who got things done, and could face death in the eyes and say: "Screw you." But, today, that day four years ago.

It seemed Death was doing the screwing.

As his mother reached the door, her hand just barely clutching the frame of the entrance, and immediately an infected jumped from the corner and took her down.

What Y/N saw, he could only describe as pure terror as his mother was broken into, as her forearm was chewed on, defiled as an infected bit through the flesh and bone of her arm.

Her cries, and screams of agony would remain with him till the day he died.

Y/N was lost in that moment, he was unaware of what was happening, as his father screamed in his ear as he dragged him up and pulled him through the now opened window.

His mother seemed determined to see it through though, as she lifted her revolver to the infected head in time and blew its brains out, and pushed inside the room. Shutting the door behind her and bracing herself against it, fear in her eyes as the bite on her arm began to set in.