PetrA

Chapter sixteen: Joachim

Ellie moved too quickly for Joachim to react, so she had him pinned against the wall her arm pressing painfully into his throat, making it hard for him to breathe. Up close, her eyes seemed more intense than from afar, and it scared him a little. A thin line of golden brown surrounded the irises and the rest was a shocking green. He had a hard time focusing as she stared at him coldly, as if he made one wrong move she would break his neck. It was scary, but at the same time, he found it somehow more alluring. After a long while, she let him go, "No funny business. Answer my questions when asked, and you won't have problems." She turned her back on him and walked over to the kid again. She started talking to him in a quiet tone, even if he had tried to hear what she said it would have been impossible.

"Did you get her?" Daniel asked. His eyes were colder than Ellie's not a single trace of warmth or any positive feelings towards him, and still he was more scared of what Ellie could do than Daniel. He knew what Daniel would do to him if he did one thing that didn't stick with him. Whereas Ellie seemed more unpredictable. He wouldn't know what she'd do, would she feed him to the dead, kill him on the spot (She would be more than capable to do that. That girl is strong...) or maybe she'd do something else, by all means she seemed like the sneakiest of the two. "No." he said. Daniel fixed him with a stare "No? I told you to get her." Joachim rolled his eyes, "Considering she kept me in a choking hold against the wall, I'd say she doesn't do as I say." Daniel shoved him aside so he hit the wall as he stomped to the living room. 

"They do not like you, at all." Henrik said amused. "Shut up." Joachim grumbled rubbing his shoulder. "I wonder what you did. To make them both dislike you." Joachim didn't answer, he did have a very good idea what made Ellie hate him. He probably shouldn't have sent those messages to her. Daniel he didn't exactly know, but something must have triggered his hatred. Instead, he walked up the stairs kicking up dust everywhere he went. The house obviously hadn't been used for a long time. Thick layers of dust were everywhere, and Gemma was running around cleaning the place. She didn't seem to like him very much either, Joachim wonder why they don't seem to like him.

"Move." Gemma ordered as she swept him away with the old broom. He jumped out of the way making his way towards the room he'd been planning to sleep in with Henrik. "You look happy." Kim said as he walked into the room. "Yeah well, your girlfriend doesn't seem to like me very much. She had me against the wall choking me, again." Kim looked up at him with raised eyebrows, "What did you do this time?" Joachim blew out an annoyed huff through his nose. "Might've ticked her off." Kim shook his head mystified by his friend. 

"Do you have a death wish? Ellie don't like you, and she refuse to tell me why, Daniel hate you, dunno what that is about, and Gemma doesn't like you either." Joachim muttered a string of colourful words under his breath and sat down in one of the chairs. It creaked dangerously under his weight, but it held. "Tell me about it." Henrik walked into the room and looked at Joachim. "What's with the long face?" He asked. An amused gleam in his eyes told Joachim that he knew exactly what was wrong. "Trouble in paradise?" he asked teasingly sitting down on the bed next to Kim. "If anyone's going to have trouble in paradise it's him." He pointed directly at Kim. "Me, why me?"

Joachim just stared at him and shook his head. "You certainly picked a girl everybody's going to go after, and somebody you do not want to pick a fight with. You, lucky dipshit." He muttered. "I'm not a dipshit." Kim said offended. "Besides if it hadn't been for Ellie dragging Kim along with her in the panic we probably would've been dead, walking around like those braindead zombies eating people." Henrik said. Joachim hated that he was right. He didn't want to believe that she was the only reason they were still alive. 

"Yeah I know, but that still doesn't mean they like having me here." He grumbled. Henrik raised his eyebrows. "Joachim, if they wanted you dead, don't you think they would have left you to die already?" he asked. Kim nodded, "I don't know about Daniel. He probably would, seems like the type. However, Ellie or Gemma wouldn't have. As much as Ellie do not like you, she also said she wouldn't leave somebody to die." The words coming from Kim washed over Joachim like a massive flood. Something in his gut told him that they were right, but he also somehow knew that Ellie or Gemma was the main force behind Daniel not having killed him yet. Yes, he had been used as live bait, but Daniel had killed the girl before she got close enough to bite or scratch him.