Read the bolted author note below regarding me needing help for the gacha system since giving Clark tickets upon meeting people is too op.
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Chapter 5:
The first thing Clark Rogers noticed was that he was full.
Not the hollow, lying-to-yourself kind of full that came from drinking too much water on an empty stomach, where your body accepted the weight of it and pretended, briefly, that it was something more. Not the desperate, frantic, full of eating grass, and pretending that it was good, and paying for it twenty minutes later.
Just. Full.
The kind of full he hadn't felt in so long that his brain didn't recognize it immediately. It sat in his stomach like something foreign, warm and heavy and real, and for a long, disoriented moment, he just lay there and existed inside it, not thinking, not processing, just being full and quiet and still.
Then his brain caught up.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named — You have encountered Lee Everett.|
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named x2 — You have encountered Carley.|
Clark read the notifications twice.
Then he read them a third time to make sure.
Lee Everett.
Carley.
He had no faces to put to either name, no voices, no context. Nothing that his foggy, slowly-rebooting brain could pull up and say yes, that one, I remember.
The last thing he actually remembered was his mother's kitchen. The butter smell. The orange juice. The back of his head was warm and heavy, and his mother's hand was moving through his hair, and the particular chuckle of his father that broke the silence of a house full of people who loved each other.
And then the ceiling of the apartment. And then nothing.
So somewhere between the ceiling and the nothing, he had apparently encountered two people significant enough for his system to hand out bronze tickets, and he had been completely unconscious for the entirety of it.
He frowned at the inside of his eyelids.
Why these two?
That was the thing that was bothering him, picking at the back of his skull with small, insistent fingers. He had met other survivors. He'd met a couple in the farmhouse outside of Atlanta who blew their brains in front of him, the group of four he'd spotted from a distance on the highway who were moving fast and clearly didn't want company.
He'd met bandits twice, which he counted as meeting people even if the meeting had consisted mostly of running and one very close call with a bullet in his head.
None of them had generated so much as a notification.
But Lee Everett and Carley- two names he didn't even know yet, attached to two faces he hadn't consciously seen- got him bronze tickets each.
Named, the system called them. Like it was a category. Like it already knew something about these two people that Clark didn't.
He filed that under deeply unsettling and moved on, because the alternative was lying here spiraling about it. Something that he couldn't afford because he had no idea where he was. Either someone moved him to that dirty mattress in the shit-stenched apartment, or he was moved.
He should open his eyes.
He did.
The ceiling was low and textured, the kind of popcorn plaster that made him want to smooth the ceiling. A water stain in one corner, pale brown and settled. A light fixture above him that hadn't worked in weeks, probably, its bulb long since dead.
Clark blinked at it for a moment, then let his eyes travel.
The room was small. A motel room, he immediately picked up on, due to resting in them a couple of times during his journey. The twin beds with their patterned covers in muted green and brown were another indication. The covers were worn, pilled at the edges, but someone had pulled one over him, and it smelled faintly of dust.
The bed he was in sat against the left wall. The second bed, across the narrow gap, was made, its pillow undisturbed. A small table sat between them with a lamp that was also dead and a ring left behind by a glass that had been there for years.
The window to his right had its curtains drawn. They were the blackout kind, thick and heavy, but daylight was leaking through the gap where they didn't quite meet in the middle, a pale gray stripe falling across the carpet, which meant it was morning, or overcast, or both.
Clark's hand moved automatically to his hip.
His pipe was there. He felt the cool metal before he'd finished the thought, already half-sitting up, and the Glock was on the nightstand to his left within reaching distance, safety on.
Someone had put it there. Within his reach.
He stared at that for a moment.
Whoever had brought him here had left him his weapons. Had put them close. Had pulled a blanket over him and fed him- he could taste faint traces of something savory at the back of his throat, something that had been soft, almost pre-chewed- and had then apparently gone somewhere else and left him to sleep.
He was in a motel room he didn't recognize, in a city he'd been barely conscious in, with two people whose names his system apparently knew and his brain didn't, and his weapons were on the nightstand.
Clark Rogers sat up slowly, swung his legs over the edge of the bed where his backpack was at the end of it, leaning on the wall, and put his feet on the rust-colored carpet. His hands, when he looked at them, weren't trembling.
The rings caught the gray light from the curtain gap. One on each thumb.
He checked his backpack next, slow and methodical. Everything was there. His supplies, what little remained of them, his spare shirt, his water, his half-eaten bar, and the untouched ones. Nothing was missing, nothing moved that he could tell.
Whoever these people were, they had gone through considerable effort to not make him feel robbed. If they robbed him in the first place.
Clark was still deciding what to do with that when the door opened.
His weakened body moved before the thought finished, strength filling him for one moment. He had the Glock off the nightstand, safety off, arms raised, the barrel fixed on the doorway in one motion that his muscles had apparently memorized due to necessity.
The woman in the doorway froze.
She was maybe mid-twenties, dark-haired, with a camera bag over one shoulder and a pistol at her hip that her hand had gone for and stopped halfway through the motion. She had quick eyes, the kind that assessed fast and recalculated faster, and she was reading him the way he was reading her with his trait Half-Light, except she was doing it considerably more calmly.
Her hand dropped away from her hip at the same time his instinct told him that she meant no harm.
Slowly. Deliberately. Making sure he saw it.
"Okay," she said. Her voice was even, low, the kind of calm that wasn't performed but practiced. "Okay. I'm not going to reach for it."
Clark didn't lower the gun. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, Half-Light buzzing at the edges of his mind, categorising exit strategies one after another, with at least two of them requiring him to shoot down the woman in front of him if she proved his instinct wrong.
She didn't step back. Didn't step forward. Just stayed in the doorway and let him look at her.
"My name is Carley," she said, and Clark's eyes widened just a fraction, finally putting a face to the name. If the woman noticed it, she didn't say anything. "You were unconscious when we found you. We brought you here- this is the motel our group is using." A beat. "Are you okay?"
The question landed oddly.
Clark's arms didn't loosen, but his grip eased, just a little, the death-clench of panic softening into something more deliberate.
He looked at her and nodded. Carley let out a sigh with a small smile, but she still didn't push her luck and stayed at the doorway.
"Did you… Who fed me?" Clark asked, his eyes not leaving hers, but he still brought his backpack closer to him and the pipe setting to his side.
Carley's mouth curved slightly. "That was me." No need to give more information than necessary.
Clark processed that. Then he lowered the Glock, clicked the safety back on, and set it on his knee. Not the nightstand because she could still give him the slip and reverse the situation.
Carley noticed. Didn't comment.
"How long was I out?"
"Most of yesterday. It's early morning now." She leaned against the doorframe, arms loose at her sides, the posture of someone who understood that the fastest way to make a cornered person bolt was to crowd them. "You were pretty far gone when we got to you."
"Yeah." He looked down at his hands. The rings caught the gray light again, surprised that they were still on him. "I know."
A beat of quiet settled between them, a little uncomfortable, but normal when two people were still figuring out each other.
"Thank you," he said. It came out quieter than he intended, stripped of whatever deflection he might have wrapped around it on a better day. He was too tired for deflection. "For… All of it. The food, and uh." He gestured vaguely at the blanket still pooled around his waist. "Bringing me here."
Carley's expression softened. Just a fraction. "You're welcome." She pushed off the doorframe, making him tense. "I'm going to let Lee know you're up. Are you okay if I come back?"
"No!" Clark demanded, gun still back in his end and aimed, startling Carley, whose end immediately went up.
"No." He repeated, his posture tensing as his instincts warned him of everything that could go wrong. She might betray him and take everything he had, no matter how little. If not her, then her group.
Her eyes were doing that fast, recalculating thing again, trying to find a way out of here.
"Okay," she said, same even tone as before. "Okay. Talk to me."
"How many people are in your group?" Clark asked.
"Enough."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the one you're getting until you tell me why you're pointing a gun at the person who fed you."
His jaw tightened at the solid argument, but the use of logic did not mean no harm. Half-Light was running its read on her- posture, micro-expressions, the way her weight was distributed, and it wasn't screaming danger at him. It was saying cautious and alarm. It was saying she's scared too, just better at not showing it.
He didn't lower the gun.
"I don't want to die." The words hit Clark exactly where it hurt, reminding him of his parents and the people he killed so they couldn't turn.
"I didn't mean to scare you. If you don't want to meet others, it's fine." She continued, seeing her words affect the frightened boy. As a war reporter, Carley had seen things that most wouldn't be able to handle.
She saw people die, be executed, and be tortured. She saw communities be destroyed and the people, normal people, kill themselves over food and clean water. She had seen children pick up weapons to defend cartels' territory.
The outbreak, the sights of it all, while different, were nothing new, and so, she adapted fast and watched as the scenes repeated themselves in her home country.
And currently, the boy in front of her, no older than Clem, was doing everything he could to maximize his survival against a group whose intentions he didn't know what they wanted.
"We mean you no harm." She started, softening her looks even more, "I understand you're afraid. But I have to let my friends know. If they come in and see you pointing a gun at me, this'll get much worse."
His jaw worked for a second. Then, slowly, he lowered the Glock back just a little.
Carley let out a breath. Small and controlled, but he caught it.
"Okay," Clark said. "Okay. Go."
She nodded, no sudden movements, and stepped back toward the door. She was halfway through it when he spoke again.
"I'm coming with you."
Carley stopped. Turned back. Her eyes moved over him once, the struggle to get on his weakened legs, but with the ring of Stoneplate giving him strength to push through any hardship, he stopped the shaking and pulled his hiking backpack on his back with the pipe. The pistol was still in his hands, but pointing to the ground, safety still off.
She realized that he was preparing to run off if things went wrong, and Carley didn't blame him for it. Especially with Lilly and her dad screaming to throw the boy out to be food for walkers since they themselves didn't have much left anymore.
"You sure?" she asked. "You still haven't recovered. Your body's in a bad state, Clark."
The sound of his name in a stranger's mouth was strange. He filed that away.
"I'm used to it," he said.
It wasn't bravado.
Even on a full stomach that was slowly filling him with more energy and strength, it still wasn't enough to put up a pretence.
Carley looked at him for another moment, her lips parting to argue that he needed another twelve hours to stay in bed for recovery. To argue that a kid who almost starved to death two days ago shouldn't be up and walking.
But she said nothing. Because at the end of the day, his instincts had kept him alive this long ever since he got it, and so did the items and abilities.
He wasn't about to stop listening to them because a stranger had fed him and pulled a blanket over him.
Even if the blanket had been a kind gesture.
—-----------------
Getting out of the room, Clark noticed the time of day, mid-morning. Another thing to notice was that he was on the second floor of the motel, with the doors being accessed from outside.
He kept pace with Carley, one step behind and to her left, his back never fully to any door they passed. The Glock was holstered to not make a bad impression on the rest of the group, making them think he was taking Carley hostage or something. But its safety was still off.
In case things went wrong, she'd be his shield while he emptied the remaining nine bullets he had left.
They walked the open walkway that overlooked the parking lot downstairs, and Clark slowed a little without meaning to, to take everything in.
The lot had been blocked off, of course, with cars and trucks that would stop any ghoul or person from jumping into the lot.
His eyes went up.
There was a woman on top of the RV. Yellowish paint, faded, with a CB antenna still attached to the roof. She was sitting with a rifle across her knees, and she had already seen them- had probably seen them the moment the hallway door opened, because her head was turned and her eyes were fixed on Clark with an expression that had no warmth in it whatsoever. Opposite of Carley in every way.
While the woman in front of him was warm and kind and careful with him, the woman on the RV was filled with rage and frustration and despair. His instincts warned him that if it was up to her, Clark would be used as bait for something worse.
She didn't raise the rifle, thankfully.
Carley seemed to notice him unconsciously tense and noticed his look, "That's Lilly." She started, bringing his attention to her, which she used to nod off downstairs at a tall old man with a big stomach whose looks weren't much different from those of the woman called Lilly.
"And that's Larry, her dad. They'll be the most cautious of you, but they mean no harm." She lied because Clark's Half-Light warned him that they wanted him dead out there.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named III — You have encountered Lilly.|
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named IV — You have encountered Larry.|
They reached the stairs, and the man called Larry was just standing there… Menacingly, with the particular stillness of someone who had planted himself there intentionally. Big, broad through the middle, with the kind of stomach that said he'd been comfortable not long ago and hadn't quite shed it yet despite everything.
The opposite of Clark, who was at this point, all skin and bones.
"Hey!" A man's voice, tense and frustrated, broke the tension.
A man with a fishing cap, green jacket, and jeans walked towards them, clear frustration on his face, leaving behind a heavy-looking woman and her son, Clark assumed, at the door of another RV. The call seemed to bring some people out of their motel room as they gathered by the parking lot.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named V — You have encountered Kenny.|
Again, Clark pushed the notification out of his mind, more focused on this dangerous situation, every fiber in him ready for action, the woman, Lilly, in his peripheral vision, no matter what, since she was the most dangerous and had a clear shot at him.
"Kenny-" Another voice called, a man also, but dark-skinned, with a white shirt under a true long-sleeve T-shirt and blue jeans. The man's expression changed as soon as their eyes met, and he saw Larry hissing at the woman, trying to calm him down.
"What's going on?" Kenny asked, reaching the bottom of the stairs and glaring to his side at the old man, his eyes cutting between Larry, Carley, and Clark quickly before his glare settled on the tall man.
"I'll tell you what's going on." Larry didn't dignify Lee with a look when he reached them. He kept his eyes on Clark, and his voice carried the kind of volume that wasn't accidental.
"Your criminal friend and the camera girl dragged in another mouth we can't feed. A sneaking little snake who probably looted every house between here and whatever hole he crawled out of on the way in."
Clark's grip on his pistol tightened, but he kept it pointed down.
"Look at him." Larry continued, gesturing at Clark with open contempt. "Skin and bones, no use to anyone, a brat who'd sell us out for a candy bar. Probably already has, for all we know. Bastard's been here one night, and he's already armed and walking around like he owns the-"
"Enough."
Lee spoke up, his glare doing nothing to Larry.
The lot went very quiet, not because of Lee finally snapping. But due to Clark aiming at the old man's forehead, right between the eyebrows.
Lilly shifted on top of the RV. Clark caught it in his peripheral vision and didn't move.
Larry stared down the barrel and went red, then a dangerous, mottled white-red that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with fury.
"You little- "
"I've had enough of you blabbering." Clark started, shifting his position so Carley was between him and Lilly, who was openly aiming at him now.
"Here's what's gonna happen-" He changed his target as soon as he saw Carley attempt to move, halting her and then going back at the man about to explode.
"You- Carley, will lead me away from this place, a block at least. You try anything, your head will explode."
The parking lot held its breath.
Kenny's hand had gone to his hip and stopped there because there was nothing there. Lee hadn't moved, but his weight had shifted forward, the particular readiness of a man deciding whether to step in or step back. The heavy woman by the RV had pulled her son behind her, and Clark registered all of it in his peripheral vision like data, cold and immediate.
Larry's face had gone past red into something uglier. His hands were fists at his sides, and the vein at his temple was doing something Clark could see from six feet away.
"Kid," Lee said. Low. Careful. The voice of someone who had talked people down before and knew the shape of the moment. "Put the gun down."
"Block away," Clark repeated, eyes on Larry, voice flat. "That's all I'm asking."
"And then what, Clark?" Carley asked from beside him, giving his name away, her tone entirely without accusation, just the question. "You walk away? Back out there alone?"
"That's my problem."
"You almost died alone." She tried.
"Almost." He acknowledged that it was true and argued that arguing with true things was a waste of energy. But it was better than being here in this instant. With Larry shouting at the top of his lungs, he wouldn't be surprised if a herd of ghouls heard them.
"Gun down, Lilly."
Lilly didn't move.
"She won't shoot," Lee said.
"She's been deciding whether to since I walked out of that room," Clark said it without heat, just observation, and he heard Lilly shift again on the RV roof, and he didn't know if that was confirmation or denial, and it didn't matter.
"I'm not your enemy. I'm not your anything. I just want to leave and find my family."
He saw Lee, Kenny, Carley, and even Lilly's expression shift just a little, but in a standoff like this, it didn't matter.
"Then leave," Kenny said, clipped and frustrated, but Clark detected understanding. "Nobody's stopping you."
"Larry is." Because the man hadn't moved from the bottom of the stairs, and his body language was a wall. "Move."
Larry stared at him. The fury in his face had compressed into something harder and colder, the kind that didn't make noise anymore.
"I said. Move!" He demanded, finger on the trigger and ready to pull. He didn't want to kill him, but he would if he had to.
Then, slowly, the old man stepped aside. His instincts whispered to him in his ear, but as long as it wasn't dangerous to him, he let it in and out the other ear.
Clark moved.
He kept Carley between himself and Lilly's sightline, descending the last two steps with his back to the railing and his eyes on the group, the Glock still up. Lee tracked him without moving. Kenny's jaw was set. The woman by the RV had her hands on her son's shoulders. He spotted a figure or two in one of the rooms, but it wasn't clear who they were.
His back hit the gap in the barricade after a couple of steps, and one of the cars nudged out enough to allow entry and exit. He felt the opening behind him without looking.
"Clark."
Lee's voice. He stopped but didn't lower the gun.
"You've got no food. No water beyond what's in that pack." Not an accusation. Just facts, laid down plainly for him to reconsider, and Clark did in a matter of seconds. "You made it up to here running on empty. You'll be dead before nightfall if you don't rest."
Clark's jaw tightened.
He knew that. He'd known it the moment he woke up full and warm and understood what that meant, that someone had spent resources on him that they didn't have to spend, and now he was pointing a gun at them for it.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
"I've got far enough to get farther," Clark replied, and he heard how thin that sounded, and he said it anyway.
Lee looked at him for a long moment. The kind of look that didn't push, just waited.
"We're not your enemy either," he said.
Clark stopped for a moment, considering. "We can help you look for your family, Clark." Carley tried, and he shook his head. "No, let's move." He ordered her, hand on her shoulder, that she could easily slap away, but didn't.
Before they could disappear around the corner, he glared at the people in the parking lot. "You follow us, she dies. You don't, she'll come back without a scratch."
"It's up to you to decide."
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AN: Hello hello.
A long chapter for you guys, hope you enjoyed it and enjoyed the introduction he's had with Lee's group.
Based on timeline, I am extending it just a little. After reading wiki and some research, Lee's group stayed in the motel for about 3 months after the outbreak, they got invited to the human-eating farm towards the end of the 3 months, before they had to move due to the bandits attacking them.
In my timeline, let's say they stayed in the motel for at least 6 months after the outbreak. Right now, it has been, let's say around 2-3 months since the outbreak.
Regarding the situation that just happened, I hope I've done a good job of "showing" rather than telling and not making it too repetitive. I had to crame the characters in and make it short since most of you all know them.
But I'll explain myself anyway. Reminder, Clark is a seventeen-year-old, alone, depressed, starved, and on the brink of collapse and then dead. If lee and Carley didn't help him, he'd have died alone, in a room filled with shit's stench. He'd be no better than that little starved walker:
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That's not even including his list of traumas. Larry taunting him also didn't help and him seeing a big fight about to happen, he'd want to get the fight out of there as soon as possible. He is, in essence, a frightened teenager running on his instincts and his instincts are telling him to get out without drawing attention to their location. He's had no one else to rely on but himself, so of course, he'd listen to himself.
Taking Carley was insurance on his part, since she took care of him and he build a connection with her, so in a way, he's protecting her in case a fight did break, not knowing he's putting her in more danger.
Anyway, that's all I want to overexplain since my brain is kinda fried from writing all this.
I do need you all's help with the ticket giving. Can someone give me a list of feats or something? While I know the feats in the index of the gacha, to me its not clear for TWD.
I need some milestone from you guys since I have no idea. Milestone that you want to see Clark reach.
Reminder, I've modified the gacha:
Ranking for tickets: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. There's nothing higher than diamond.
Category for Tickets: Ability, Perks, Skills, Items, and Random. I've removed the familiar one.
Basically, if you can, give me your list for each ranking. And when Clark reaches that milestone, i'll choose that rank and pick the random. If I get a familiar from the draw, I'll pull again.