It is Winter, and Ellie kills a rabbit with an arrow. She then spots a deer and hunts it down, hitting it with the bow a couple times before tracking its blood trail. It collapses near a barn on the outskirts of an abandoned coal mine. As she approaches it, two strangers appear, David and James. They offer to trade with her for the meat, and she says that if they have medicine, they can have the whole deer.

David asks her to come with them, but she refuses and sends James to get penicillin while Ellie holds David at gunpoint. They go inside a large warehouse to avoid the cold, as a large number of infected start to surround them. They hold their position for a while but are forced to run away, only to get cornered again. After they dispatch them, she sits down with David as he tells how a bunch of his men were killed a few weeks back by "a crazy man", a man who was traveling with a little girl.

Alarmed, she gets up and points the rifle at him as James arrives. David orders him to stand down and give her the medicine, and Ellie runs away back to an abandoned house, where Joel is unconscious and feverish. She gives him the medicine and lays down next to him. The next morning, Ellie wakes up hearing the bandits outside. She mounts Callus and rides off in order to get their attention, but they kill the horse, forcing her to hide in an abandoned resort. She makes her way to an inn, and as she tries to leave, David shows up behind her and chokes her until she passes out.

Joel wakes up, and as he goes outside to look for her, a group of remaining bandits starts to shoot him. He deals with them, and manage to capture two. He then proceeds to torture them for Ellie's whereabouts, and when one of them gives in, Joel kills them. Cabin Resort Ellie wakes up in a cage; she sees James cuts off a corpse's limbs for his group to eat.

David comes in, and says that he doesn't want to kill her — he only wishes for her to join them. Now realizing his true intentions, she refuses to cooperate, breaking his finger to make a grab for his keys. Later, he and James hold her down on the table to kill her for food, and she tells them she's infected. Taking advantage of their distraction, she grabs David's knife, kills James, and runs out into a snowstorm. Armed with only her switchblade, she goes to an abandoned restaurant while David tracks her. Holding the keys to her freedom, Ellie must sneak and catch David by surprise — while the building starts to catch fire and burn.

After stabbing him several times, he panics and grabs her by her hair, slamming her into the ground. They both fall unconscious. Ellie wakes up first, and crawls to get his discarded machete. As she gets close, he rushes over to kick her, taunting that she should just give up. When she struggles to move, he hits her again, pinning her down and nearly strangling her. She blindly grasps for the hilt of the machete, and slashes his arm.

Caught unexpectedly, he screams and rolls off her. She repeatedly hacks at his face in a rage, until Joel arrives and pulls her off. Holding a crying Ellie in his arms, Joel consoles her and leads her away.