AN: Please read the last 3-4 lines of the author note at the end!! I suggested something fun.
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Chapter 8:
A couple of weeks had passed since the multiple funerals Clark Rogers attended alone. Clark wasn't sure how long, but it felt like years yet maybe less than two months.
(AN: Total is 3 months since the outbreak)
He didn't leave the neighborhood immediately. He wasn't sure why, but he was on the move constantly. The houses already cleared and mapped, the ghoul population thinned by his own hand, little by little. He did think of the choice that Carley gave him multiple times, even saw her once as he was hunting during her group's supply run, but ultimately, he shook his head and hid from her.
He gave it some time before he went and checked up on them, as he was feeling weird and uncomfortable about taking her up on her offer. If she had taken his advice and left the motel with people she trusted, he could easily track her down due to his Cat Form and Half Light working together well enough and watch over her group from a distance.
He wasn't a hunter before it, but turning into a black cat and then knowing how to hunt squirrels, rats, and birds immediately after, well, safe to say he got some practical knowledge as well during the past weeks.
Other than that, he'd also spent time, whenever he wasn't hunting in cat form, to fully test out his powers and learn more, banking on the bronze tickets he got for hunting three different kinds of food.
His lottery power had become something close to a routine, the same way checking windows and clearing rooms had become routine. Something his hands did while his head was somewhere else as he thought of ways to combine them.
The fusion mechanic had revealed itself properly the day after using the feature, as he woke to find Rendal's Ring separated back into its two components on his thumb. Meaning, it would only last for a day, before separating, which, while useful, Clark feared that he might have to wear twenty rings on his fingers at some point. The information came with it, the way it always did- not explained so much as simply known, like muscle memory he hadn't earned.
If he survived that long anyway.
Anyway, another thing he found out was that the fusion had cooldowns just like Soylend Green did. After using it three times, it would give him a timer that Clark counted to be a full seven-day week.
He'd noted it the way he noted most things now. Filed it. Moved on.
The rings, he kept them on himself again. Sharpen for the mornings when he was clearing houses. View Earth for the evenings when the horde patterns shifted, and he needed to know what was moving on the dirt strips between roads. Heat Object had proven itself when he remembered that he could do that, by now cooking his prey that he had hunted in his cat form.
It was embarrassing for Clark to hunt prey and then devour it in his cat form. Though truth be told, it still tasted delicious raw.
But he wasn't an animal, so after remembering that he had Heat Object, Clark turned to cooking whatever he hunted. After finishing the corn, he used the left behind can, boiled water after confirming that it was safe to drink with Half-Light, and made himself a tomato soup that had meat in it.
Thanks to his Novice Cooking skill, each meal after that point, even in his human form, which was starting to concern Clark, was good. In short, he was eating like a king, learning from his previous vomit-inducing error that he had to control his urges.
Which he had failed thrice more, once even in his cat farm, due to eating too fast.
The Soylent Green's taste had stopped surprising him- a lie that he had to tell himself to adapt- which he counted as adaptation. Good thing they were made from plankton; otherwise, Clark was sure that his power would give him a ticket for cannibalizing. Still, it confused him as to why the taste changed…
Maybe it really was human remains, and his power lied to him about it being plankton… 'You know what, I'll stop eating that from now on…'
Nevertheless, it was time to use his three bronze tickets instead of waiting for another two and then fusing them into silver.
[The Straw Hat]
|Trash Item|
Holds a lot of sentimental value to a certain anime character, but not much material value.
'Oh…' Clark couldn't help but let out a disappointed sigh before rolling the next one. Though he could use a headwear against the harsh rays of the sun, so maybe not useless.
[Gills]
|Common Ability|
You have gills. You can breathe underwater, but it's inconvenient.
Another disappointing roll-
[Ability slot added due to having 5 abilities.]
Okay, so not entirely useless, as it helped him have two abilities always active. Though he was thankful that the gills weren't a trait, as it would have been very inconvenient. Anyway, on top of having Cat Form, he equipped View Earth for what he had found out a day ago.
Which is what he'd be scouting for today in his Cat Form. The extra ability slot would be immensely useful to mind his surroundings and make sure he wouldn't be taken off guard while he'd peep on some bandits- Save-Lots bandits, which was a stupid name.
Time to use the last roll-
[Compass]
|Trash Ability|
You can conjure a mental compass that acts like a regular compass.
'Oh, very useful. I'd always know where north- fucking bullshit. It's useless!' Clark raged in his mind before calming his mind.
No matter.
Time to put in some work and remove some scum.
…
…
…
The black cat form was still new enough that the transition made him pause every time.
It felt weird to have your very human instincts dull and have your body grow so small that everything was huge. It made him uncomfortable, but it was only during the phasing. As soon as he was fully transformed, the cat inside him would immediately take over, and it would feel like normal.
The fact that he could use the knowledge of how to hunt in the body of a teenage cat in his own form was a plus that made him really like this ability. If he didn't have to look after his backpack, which contained his family's picture now and his weapons, which were now more sentimental due to his power- except the gun- he'd leave them behind and fully embrace this new ability.
The oak tree at the forest's edge was old enough that its lowest branch was still twice Clark's human height- 5 feet 10, when anyone asks, even though his tests show 5 feet 7- but in cat form, it was nothing. Four jumps, each one automatic and fluid in a way that still surprised the human part of his brain watching from somewhere behind the cat's eyes, and he was up.
He picked his way along the branch without thinking about it, paws finding purchase on the bark the way his hands never quite had on anything, and settled into the crook where two thick branches divided, pressing himself flat against the wood as if he was hunting. The leaves closed around him.
From below, he was nothing. A shadow, maybe. The suggestion of something small that the eye would skip over.
His tail curled around his paws and went still.
View Earth hummed underneath everything else, feeding him the ground thirty meters in every direction- the soft impressions of feet on soil, two sets, both human, both stationary about twelve meters north-northwest. His ears, already sharper than anything he'd had in human form, gave him the rest even if they weren't trying to be subtle.
Two men. Sitting, from the sound of it. One voice lower, one with a particular frustrated edge that carried.
He listened.
"—third time they've shorted us," the frustrated one was saying. "Third. Time."
"Gary said it–"
"Gary says whatever the brothers tell him to say." A sound… something hitting dirt, maybe a boot.
A pause.
"So what do you want to do about it?"
The lower voice took its time answering. Clark's ears flattened slightly. Not in fear- the cat in him registered it, focusing on that single conversation, body flat against the branch.
"I want to remind them," the low voice said, "what the alternative to dealing with us looks like if they go back on their deal."
"You sure? You'll have to convince Jack of all that, you know?"
"I'll deal with it."
Clark had heard enough, but didn't leave yet. It was only a matter of time before these scums went to the main group, where Clark would do what he did best.
Find a way to make the bandits pay for preying on those trying to survive.
'But speaking of the farm, were they targeting the St-John's farm?' Clark thought to himself. From what he remembered from the tour and from the days his family was still living in Macon, St. John's farm was a dairy farm run by a family.
They used to make killer cheese and butter. His relatives and his parents were one of their bigger customers that weren't a business, and well… In memory of them, he owed a visit to the farm and a helping hand against the Save-Lots bandits if they really intended to attack them.
…
…
…
POV CHANGE: LEE EVERETT
In the past three months, everything in Lee Everett's life had changed. He went from catching his wife's cheater and then beating him to death to going to jail and being found guilty to surviving the initial wave of the outbreak due to pure luck.
If all of that wasn't enough of a rollercoaster, he had found a teenage girl by the name of Clementine who hid in her treehouse when he found her. A girl who hesitated killing him by dropping a sledgehammer on his head when he was underneath her treehouse.
He didn't want to know how or why she had a sledgehammer in her treehouse, but he could guess why, as he found out the hard way when her friend was bitten by a neighbor and turned in her house.
She used that same sledgehammer to crush her best friend's head, saving him from dying and then turning.
From there, he acted as her guardian, ready to help and protect her until they found her parents. As days went on, both of them talked less and less about it, knowing the chance that they could survive in Savannah of all places was less than nothing. Especially as he finally told her about the missed phone calls and the voicemails on their home phone.
Still, their goal didn't change to reach Savannah as Kenny was a fisherman, and they could use his boat to stay out of the reach of the walkers. Still, Lee could see Clementine not letting go of the hope that her parents were alive.
Shaking his head to get the thoughts out, Lee focused on the thing in front of him, swinging down the axe as the walker let out a croak and stayed down.
Mark, a former United States Air Force member, walked up to him with a rifle as he searched the ground that the walker was eating from. "What'd they get this time?"
And there it was, "looks like a rabbit." Lee muttered, shaking his head.
"Well, that's another meal lost…" Mark nodded, following after Lee as they continued their search and had some small talk regarding the food that Mark shared with them from the commissary, where he had locked himself in after the initial outbreak.
Which was the only reason Lilly allowed him to join their motel group, food for safety.
"When I accidentally grabbed for Carley's rations the other night, I thought she was gonna take off my hand!" Mark let out, still a little fearful of that interaction going down.
"We're all on edge lately… Especially her, just… cut her some slack." Lee defended her, and Mark let out a sad sigh, saying nothing for a moment, remembering the source of her worry and unease and the rations she was hoarding to herself.
Just in case the boy they had saved would come back anytime.
"She still going out almost every day?" Mark asked after a moment, his voice careful in the way people got when they were talking about something that had stopped being small talk.
"Every supply run we've had this week and the weeks before," Lee confirmed, eyes scanning the tree line out of habit. "Yesterday she went with Kenny. Day before that, she came with me. Before that-"
"She went alone." Mark finished.
Lee looked at him sideways.
"I saw her leave when I was lookout," Mark said, with the particular tone of a man who had decided not to make it his business and was still thinking about it. "Early. Before anyone else was up and came back before the lookout change."
Lee didn't say anything to that immediately. He moved through the underbrush, stepping over a root, and filed the information next to everything else he'd been filing about Carley this past week. And truthfully, he wasn't surprised, but he still slowed down and let out a frustrated sigh at that bit.
"You should have told me," Lee warned, and Mark nodded, an apology leaving him. He decided he needed to have a serious talk with her before she really did something dangerous and stupid.
Ever since the boy, Clark, had left, Carley couldn't stop her worry. He could understand her as just imagining Clementine out in the world filled with walkers; it terrified him. But one thing that puzzled him was how fast she had connected with Clark. Though if he thought about it, he could see how, as she did spend an entire day being a mother chick to the boy when he was unconscious.
Making him drink water, chewing for him and feeding him food, cleaning his face and hands with towels, making sure he was comfortable on the bed, and hoping that he wouldn't starve to death in their motel.
It's been weeks now, almost two months since they last met, and still no news or sight of him being alive out there.
He stopped- 'Yeah, it makes perfect sense how deeply she worries about him now.'
"She ask you to keep quiet about it?" Lee asked.
"No," Mark said. "That's the thing. She didn't even try to hide it. Just walked past me like it was the most normal thing in the world, rifle over her shoulder, that camera bag she never leaves behind filled with her rations." He paused. "I think she knew I saw her and didn't care."
That landed somewhere uncomfortable in Lee's chest. Carley not caring who saw her was a different kind of worrying than Carley sneaking around. Carley sneaking around meant she still had enough awareness to know the behavior was a problem. Carley not caring meant the behavior had become normal to her.
"She say anything to you?" Mark asked. "About the kid?" Though Mark had never met him, since Clark had left two or three days after they took in Mark.
"Not directly." Lee stepped over a root and kept his eyes on the tree line. "She doesn't talk about it. She's eating half of her rations and saving the rest. That's part of what concerns me."
Mark made a sound that was somewhere between understanding and uncertainty. "Some people process things by doing something about it."
They walked in silence for a stretch, the underbrush thinning slightly as the tree line opened ahead. The air was different out here at the forest than at the motel- cleaner.
"You think he's still alive?" Mark asked.
Lee opened his mouth to give the practical answer and stopped.
Because the practical answer was probably not, and he knew it, and saying it out loud felt like something he couldn't take back, as Carley's eyebags came to mind as she waited. Like naming it made it true in a way, it wasn't quite true yet.
"I think," Lee said carefully, "that a kid who survived alone for however long he did, and did it well enough to still be walking and thinking clearly even when he was half-starved, has better odds than most."
"That's not a yes."
"No," Lee agreed. "It's not."
Another silence.
Before Mark started another small talk, complaining about how Lilly ran things with the rations, if Kenny had any luck on his side of the forest, and the fighting between Lilly and Kenny, or even sometimes Carley tearing Larry into pieces with her words for causing Clark to run away, and then him having to defend her from Lilly's abuse of words, which Kenny would join in on their side…
The situation was bad… Very, very bad.
Bad enough that when- not if- Kenny got his old RV running again, he'd take Clementine and Carley with him. Mark, he'd have to choose, but he doubted the father and daughter duo wanted to come with them.
Then the scream tore through the air-
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CHANGE POV: CLARK ROGERS
Clark heard the scream and was already moving before he'd made the decision to move, his hiking backpack on him, a metal pipe sharpened as he switched the Cat Form and put it in a cooldown for ten minutes.
His instinct threw up every flag it had. Noise equals attention equals death. He knew that. But the scream had a specific… THING to it… Raw pain, not panic, no gunshots threading through it, no shouting back and forth that his ears could pick up on right now since he was too far away. Someone had gone down hard. A twisted ankle, maybe. Or something worse, and the worst case was the reason why he was going towards it.
Maybe someone needed help. His rational self mocked him for running towards danger, but he shut that part of himself off by reminding himself that Carley helped him out. Twice even. Once for bringing in to her group and the other for giving him her rations before they separated.
Good people still existed in this world, and he wouldn't throw his humanity, his good side, away just so he could survive another day. He'd try to keep that as long as he could.
View Earth filled in what his eyes couldn't yet see. Two sets of footsteps moving frantically around something stationary. The third man, the one screaming and in pain. He sensed, then heard the ghouls before he saw them. Four of them, drawn by the noise, moving through the underbrush in their limping way.
He didn't give them the chance to reach it.
The pipe came down twice in quick succession, clean and quiet as he could manage. A third ghoul turned at the sound and got the same. The fourth he caught mid-step, the sharpened edge splitting the crown of its skull before it had fully turned toward him.
He kept moving.
Another scream of pain shot through the area.
He immediately stopped as another three pairs of footsteps came into his range of View Earth, yet he was still too far to see them or hear them with his own ears or eyes. They stopped by the screaming man.
All of them had functional footsteps without a limp, meaning people. He switched from his pipe to his secondary after killing another ghoul who had its hand on him, the Glock with 8 bullets in it.
Then, in a matter of seconds, there were shots being fired, which Clark immediately hit behind a tree, not risking a severe injury if by chance they were aimed in his general direction. Even if the one shooting was trying to kill the ghouls approaching, and buying time.
And then it stopped, as the shots attracted even more ghouls from behind the trees and beyond. The entire forest came alive, as Clark could feel himself being almost overwhelmed by the input that View Earth gave him.
By the time he reached the scene, he saw the back of a few men, one carrying an injured one on his shoulder, from the shots fired earlier, Clark assumed.
Meanwhile, the cause of all the ghouls being attracted to the scene, the man, seemed to be trapped in a bear trap as he screamed for help, attracting more ghouls, as the clearing's edge moved and revealed more ghouls.
With a tightened jaw, Clark aimed and hit a ghoul in the head, hoping for the gunshot to attract the ghouls to him, but while two did turn and limp towards Clark, the others stayed on the screaming man.
Another two shots had two ghouls dead, but by that point, it was useless, as the man's voice and fresh meat in front of them had locked in.
"How stupid…" Clark muttered, dodging a hand from the side, and cut the ghoul's neck with his pipe, piercing the brain afterwards. Seeing no ghouls around him, he walked up.
The man's voice cracked on another scream, raw and animal, the kind that had stopped being a call for help and become something else. Just…just sound, just pain, the body doing the only thing it had left.
Clark looked at him. Really looked, for just a second.
This was what he unleashed onto bandits as he led the hordes to them in the past. And what he'll do to the Save-Lot bandits.
He didn't know his name. Didn't know anything about him except that he was caught, and he was being eaten, and he knew it, and his eyes- when they found Clark's through the chaos and pain and his muscles being thorn- weren't asking to be saved anymore.
Clark recognized that look. He'd seen it before, at close range, with his hands on a gun.
What was his name again? John something? What were the names of others?
He raised the Glock.
It wasn't tactical. It wasn't strategy. It was just the only decent thing left to do.
The scream stopped.
Leaving Clark with four bullets.
Using his Half Light instinct, he lost the remaining ghouls, following after the tracks of the men he saw run from the scene. If they were another group of scum, well, thankfully, there was a horde of ghouls forming from all the screaming and gunshots.
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AN: I told you I'd be releasing longer chapters after finding my flow.
Regarding this chapter, I had to "fix" some of my last chapter's blunders regarding the fusion. A lot of you guys got worried before I could go into much detail about it in this chapter. Hopefully, it's much clearer than the last chapter. Maybe I should do this more cause the number of new suggestions and ideas I got from you guys had me revisit some of my own.
The next arc will be the St-John's farm, which if you don't remember from the game, it's the cannibal farm where Clem almost eats human meat and Duck just vacuumed his plate without care.
Regarding this chapter, the summary was: Explanation of his fusion feature, use of his cat form ability, him messing around with it and even ready to abondon his self so he could be more "free" from his guilts and trauma by being a full time cat. I also prepared him to be linked to both the farm through his relatives and parents whilst also connecting him to the bandits by his hate boner for them.
What do you all think about the Carley bit when Lee and Mark were talking about her? I wanted to show that like Lee, who found Clementine to take care of, as if she was his own. Carley found that someone in Clark.
And left unsaid was how during long survival, her instincts to care got dialed to 11 and formed a connection with him that would be hard to explain outside their context.
The next chapter is teased by the change pov to Clark again. It's time for Carley's worry to be put at ease as Clark returns to the motel group, safe and sound and looking much healthier and fuller than the last time they had seen him.
PS: Who wants to create an original variant of zombies with me?
We have the following:
[Astral Injection]
|Rare Item|
An injection made from the essence of the starborn astral blight, MASSIVELY increases energy regeneration for 10 minutes but while the effect is active your insides will start tearing up and rotting from the influx of astral energy. Restock time: 120 hours
Let's say Clark "captures" a bandit, injects him for experimentation. 10 minutes later, he dies, but a variant zombie of our own making would be born. I've seen variants that are specific to France and Texas, but not to goergia. I am using the variants of "smarter" zombies and climbers and runners. But come on, a variant of our own making with its own spreading.
In the draft version, "The Chaotic Walking Dead", a roll had us turn the CDC plot points into a freaking arc. Why not change the world in the worst way possible with this [Astral Injection] in this fic?!?!
What do you guys think?! Please, please, let me know.