It's Winter, and we see Ellie kill 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 series of abandoned cabins, and as she approaches it, two strangers appear, David and James. They offer to trade 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 cautious, 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 on Callus and rides off in order to get their attention, but they shoot the horse dead, 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.

Ellie wakes up in a cage; she watches on as 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 cooperates, breaking his finger to make a grab for his keys. Later, he and James hold her down on the table to kill her, and she tells them she's infected. Taking advantage of their distraction, she grabs David's knife and kills James, before running outside into a snowstorm.
With no weapons or equipment other than her Switchblade, she sneaks out to an abandoned restaurant, with David tracking her all the while. 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 enough times, he panics and grabs her by her hair, slamming her into the ground. They both fall unconscious. She wakes up first, and crawls to get his machete, that had been discarded beneath a table. As she gets close, he rushes over to kick her, taunting that she should just give up. When she struggles to move up and forward, he hits her again, pinning her down to strangle her. She blindly grasps for the hilt of the machete, and slashes his arm. Caught unexpectedly, he screams and rolls off her. Taking advantage, she repeatedly slices and mutilates his face, until Joel arrives and forces her away.

Holding a crying Ellie in his arms, Joel consoles her.