The Last of Us

Thirty-Nine

I try not to panic, but it isn't much use.

I can feel the terror rising through my bones as I haphazardly scan the room with my phone light. I look away every time I spin toward Katie's body.

"Danni!" I shout uselessly.

Yet again, she doesn't respond to me.

I already felt as though I was wasting time. Who knew what was currently happening to her?

I dial for the police, my hands shaking violently as I explain my situation. They tell me to stay on the phone, but I'm already pulling the phone away from my ear before they tell me twice.

I can't just twirl around the room, blindly thinking she's still somewhere inside. I need to find her before she just becomes another victim.

I step back out into the night. It's eerily quiet, and I feel a shiver creep over my shoulders like fingernails running across my skin.

I feel the urge to sink to my knees, resting in the dirt and letting the world swallow me whole. She hadn't even been the one who wanted to come. It was all on me.

I hadn't had a close friend in a long time, and Danni was becoming the nearest thing to that. Her death would haunt my conscious for the rest of my life, just like the rest of them, if I lost her.

"Danni!" I call, letting the streetlights help my vision this time.

The building was the only isolated structure for miles. Nature had begun to take its course; weeds grew through smashed bricks, and trees expanded inside. The land behind the building gave way to a forested area, a great place to commit an act of murder.

It felt like a death trap. The killer had the upper hand if Danni had already been taken to the forest. I'd be the one entering blindly, the unknown ahead of me.

Regardless, I begin walking towards the dressing lines, signing my death.

I didn't have a plan. I don't think I'd made a plan since finally escaping the hands of Jason Randall. Since then, I'd been living day-by-day, grateful when some opportunities came to me without much thought.

I want to shout for Danni again, but my voice sticks in my throat. The fear gets the best of me, trying to make me flee. My feet almost stick to the ground, but I trudge on desperately.

My conscious screams to wait for the police, that I'm unlikely to find Danni before they get here, but I fight against it until it's no louder than a slight echo in the distance.

Twigs snap under my sneakers as I face the dark rows of trees that seem to continue into the thick, black void.

Many of my nightmares used to face this way. It begins with an abyss that wants to suck me as I constantly try to run from it until I tire, waking up in a puddle of my own sweat.

Now, I'm living that nightmare. Only, this time I'm facing the darkness.

"Danni," I whisper.

I felt a presence, almost like a tell-tale sign that she'd been here. I felt close to her in a way that calmed me momentarily.

No one else would die today.

A bird flutters from a tree, and I cringe at the harsh sound as though it will somehow uncover my location. The trees rustle in the wind, swaying like giants looming over me.

I suddenly remember that I still have my pocket knife. Hopefully, that means Danni has hers too. It gave me even more hope that I knew she could protect herself.