Chapter 9:
When Clark Rogers was by the edge of the forest right in front of the Traveler Motel, the only thing he could hear was shouting and screaming, and then glass breaking.
"Lee!"
And then a gunshot-
Clark froze at the edge, behind a tree for cover.
And then another round of yelling, before silence, and then more talking. Clark chanced a sneak peek, only to freeze once more as a set of brown eyes settled on him.
"Hey, you!" She called out, gun aimed at his general area, "Show yourself!"
For a moment, Clark wanted to run away from all of it, and it seemed that he had done it enough that it had become his instincts, but looking at the familiar face and starved look on the woman who saved him from starvation, it felt incredibly wrong.
"Okay, don't shoot." He showed his hands first, a metal pipe in one of them. Her eyes widened, alongside the other adult who had saved him, Lee. And when he fully exited the cover of the tree, the entire despair and depressive mood changed. He spotted the same old man and the other woman, Lilly, frowning at him.
While Carley's face turned into joy and immense relief, seeing him alive and well. The two months of settling down in one place had done him a lot, as he had regained his weight and earned some muscles. Though he still needed to work to get into the healthy range again.
"Clark?" She called him, and the 18-year-old nodded.
"Yeah, it's me."
The makeshift gate- two trash bins put together- was already moving before he'd taken three steps out of the tree line.
Carley had pushed one to give her enough space to pass in between with the strength that had left her a week ago. She was looking at him, the way someone looks at a thing they'd half-convinced themselves they'd imagined or lost.
Clark had enough time to register that she was moving with purpose before she closed the remaining distance and her arms were around him, and his brain, which had gotten very good at cataloguing threats and exits, took a full second to catch up with what was happening.
A hug.
She was hugging him.
The urge was immediately there to back off, to remove her arms, to go back into the forest and disappear, but there was a much bigger temptation of basking in the embrace. So, that's what Clark did, wrapping his arms around hers as well, shoving his head into her shoulder, and letting go of worries for just a moment.
Just one second- maybe two- or ten.
His instinct, sharpened now into something that didn't ask before it worked, catalogued her before he'd registered he was doing it.
Woodsmoke, she smelled of woodsmoke, and his memory provided that it was about to be winter, and they had a makeshift fireplace in the middle of the parking lot, and it made sense as the smell got into fabric and stayed there no matter how many times you aired it out.
Under that, dried sweat was reapplied and dried again until it became less a smell and more a record of days. Something faintly chemical threaded through next, hand sanitizer or antiseptic, the kind of smell that meant someone had been keeping wounds clean and hands careful.
Underneath all of that, barely there, the ghost of something that might once have been soap or shampoo, faded now to almost nothing after three months.
It wasn't a good smell, objectively. Nothing smelled good anymore, including him. But Cat Form helped that he would always groom himself when as a cat. Multiple times a day, even, it was just his clothes that stayed dirty.
Half Light took all of her in and immediately stopped screaming in his ear. Instead, it calmed down and then went to sleep, as Clark took a deep inhale, that hollow feeling since the first tragedy, it got filled with comfort and warmth.
He didn't know when he tightened the embrace, but he did, and Carley returned it, a sniff and broken whimper leaving her.
"What's wrong?" He asked, now rubbing her back in comfort, outside the fence from a group of survivors that were having mixed reactions, from confusion to who he was, to relief, and then worry and frustration. The last one being Larry.
"Nothing," she said, which was the kind of nothing that meant everything, the particular nothing of someone who had been holding hope for something together for a long time and had just been given permission to stop because that something had returned.
That something being him.
"Nothing's wrong. You're just-" She stopped. Pulled back enough to look at him properly, her weak hands moving to his shoulders, and her eyes doing that fast, reading thing they always did since he first met her, moving over his face, neck, and his arms, checking for damage the way someone does when they've been imagining worst cases for weeks.
"You look better."
"You look worse," Clark replied bluntly, taking a step back from the hug since it was becoming uncomfortable for him, and she did look worse, and he wasn't going to lie about it.
She laughed. Short and slightly broken. "Yeah." She wiped her face with the back of her wrist, quick and efficient, taking another sniff, the motion of someone who didn't like being caught doing it. "Yeah, I probably do."
A beat. He wanted to apologise for something-
"You came back," she said, her eyes going behind him, expecting something- oh right, he's a relative. But he was alone, and she understood without words.
"It took me a while." He said instead, the message was getting across to her. After a nod, she took him by his arm, "Let's go, I have to introduce you to some new people." Carley pulled him towards the group, pushing him inside the parking lot and then following after, as Mark then closed the makeshift gates.
As soon as he met the eyes of everyone-
"Everyone, I'd like to introduce Clark to you." Carley started, while Clark got notification after notification for meeting the group.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named VI — You have encountered Katjaa.|
The woman was heavyset, and she was calm in a way that was natural instead of it being because of fear or uncertainty. She had kind eyes, but right now, they were haunted as her clothes, hands, and even her face were soaked in blood. She gave him a brief nod and a fragile smile before Kenny, remembering him because of the ticket, took her away to clean her up, with their son soon following them like a duckling.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named VII — You have encountered Kenny Jr.|
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named VIII — You have encountered Mark.|
The former Air Force man he'd already seen from a distance in the forest. Up close, he had nothing that reminded Clark of someone from the military. Heck, he didn't even have that "military straightness" to his posture that three months of apocalypse for sure wouldn't have taken it out of him, since it might have never been there in the beginning.
He was looking at Clark with a smile and worry that even confused his instincts about whether the man was dangerous or not.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named IX — You have encountered Clementine.|
He almost missed her at first.
She was standing slightly behind Lee and was around his age, from what he could guess and assume. She was watching him with dark eyes that held a grudge, and Clark, for the life of him, couldn't figure out what he did to piss her off.
Her hair was short, even shorter than his, dark brown, and unevenly cut, with loose strands here and there. It fell around her ears and was tied at the back of her upper neck in a slightly messy way. He pushed the weird, anxious, and uneasy feeling he got from her away and out of his mind to focus on the next person in line.
[Bronze Ticket Acquired.]
|Named X — You have encountered Ben Paul.|
The last one was a teenager, maybe a year or two older than him, with the look of someone who had been frightened for so long that it had started to become his default expression. Lanky, hunched, and uncomfortable in his own limbs, standing slightly apart from the group in the particular way of someone who hadn't quite figured out where they belonged in it yet.
Clark's eyes went to his clothing and remembered the trapped man whom he had mercy-killed as the ghouls were eating him. That meant Ben was new here.
Ben met Clark's eyes and immediately looked away.
Clark filed him away and was about to push all the notifications to the back of his mind when a new one arrived, different in weight from the rest.
[Silver Ticket Acquired.]
|Last Man Standing — You have encountered the sole survivor of the Stone Mountain High School Group.|
[Silver Ticket Acquired.]
|Meeting the main cast — You have encountered one of the main cast of survivors in this world!|
He thought of a lot of things, briefly, and then stopped thinking them, because the parking lot was still tense and Larry was still standing at the edge of it looking at Clark like a problem he hadn't solved yet, and there was work to be done.
He turned back to Carley.
"So," he said. "What did I miss?"
…
…
…
It turned out, Clark missed a lot, but not much either. After he "escaped" Carley and the others, two or three days later, they found Mark in an abandoned Air Force base, who shared his supplies of food in exchange for safety in numbers.
Clark doubted the man's background, because unlike him, Lilly and Larry, both also military, retained their edge and that air around them that had his instincts on cautious more than others. The same was true for Carley, and when he asked about her background, she said that she was a war journalist and then switched to being just a journalist in the US.
"Huh…" He let out.
"What?" Carley asked, watching him think.
"Nothing." He glanced at the fire. "Makes sense, is all."
From there, he shared a little on how he survived for the past three months. How he'd been constantly on the move, dodging hordes of ghouls, not resting in one place for more than hours before he resumed his walk to Macon, which explained his dire state when Carley and Lee found them, all for a chance to see his relatives.
When he quietened at that part, everyone but Duck seemed to get the message and didn't ask about it. Of course, he'd let some things in the dark, like how he'd lead hordes of ghouls to bandits and the reason for his rage boner against the scums.
From there, Lee talked a little about himself and how he found Clementine, who had apparently put her grudge against him on the back burner for now, and he talked about how he promised that he'd get her to her parents, but they were now stuck in this motel. He picked up on Carley's gentle smile aimed at Lee, a proud and loving one, even.
Lee's words, actions, and promise to Clementine brought back bad memories, but he was still happy for Clementine. It seemed that the first group that took her in had her well-being in mind. His jaw tightened at the first group that had taken him in after the death of his parents-
"You okay?" Lee asked, bringing him back to the present.
"Yeah, just some bad memories." He deflected- his mouth opening, "I could also help you out with your parents." He turned to Clementine, picking up on others being surprised, especially the girl herself.
No one was expecting it- 'Damn me and my bleeding heart!' not even Clark himself.
But he pushed through anyway since he voiced it out. "I can understand your situation, and I wouldn't mind helping out a little."
Clark didn't forget the odds of them being alive in a big city like Savannah. Heck, Atlanta was one big city, and most people in there had died out. So, for two tourists who didn't even know the layout of the city, the chances were extremely low. Almost improbable.
But not impossible.
Plus, he'd be an incredible hypocrite to judge her for wanting to find her parents when he walked himself to death to reach Macon.
"Thank you." Clementine finally voiced out, and Clark waved it off, alongside the weird, anxious, and uneasy feelings in his gut.
By the time it was evening, Lilly had changed shifts with Kenny, and everyone went to their room, with Clark being pointed to a room that wasn't used for anything. After placing his things close to his new but dusty bed-
The knocking on the door stopped his train of thought.
Opening it, he saw that it was Carley, with a plastic bag in her hand.
"Hey." She greeted, Half Light, letting him know that while she was feeling awkward, she was also happy that he was now with her group.
"Carley?"
"Yeah, I wanted to give you these-" When Clark accepted the bag and opened it, his eyes widened in surprise.
Food.
Three little packets of jerky, crackers, and even four string cheeses.
His head whipped back to her, "I can't!" He denied, wanting to give her back, but she simply took a couple of steps back, wanting to leave. "Carley, I can't!" He raised his voice, his heart beating faster than anything ever before.
Not even his crush back in high school had it beating this fast.
"You can and you will." She tried to use her adult (maternal) voice at him and Clark shook his head, taking her hand before she could escape.
"Carley." His voice came out quieter than he intended, stripped of the argument he'd been about to make. "You're already splitting your rations. I can see it." He watched her jaw tighten slightly, which was confirmation enough. "I'm not taking food out of your mouth."
"You're not." She said it with the practiced ease of someone who had rehearsed this exact sentence. "I've been saving some aside. It was already set apart."
"For me."
She didn't answer that.
"Carley."
"You were gone for two months." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact, the way she said most things. She wasn't accusing him of anything. Just stating a fact that had apparently been sitting with her for a while and had gotten heavy. "I didn't know if you were alive. I didn't know if-" She stopped. Recalibrated. "I had food set aside. That's all. It's yours. I'm not taking it back."
Clark looked at the bag in his hand. Then at her.
Half Light was doing its quiet read, and what it gave him wasn't danger or threat or calculation. What it gave him was something tired and stubborn and deeply, specifically relieved.
He exhaled through his nose.
"Thank you," he said. Same tone as last time when he said it to her- stripped, a little graceless. He was starting to think that was just what honesty sounded like when you'd been alone long enough.
It immediately needed fixing because if this woman kept doing these things for him, then she deserved much more. And speaking of it-
"Okay-" He accepted her rations, but didn't let go of her hands. "But you won't go back empty-handed."
"Clark-"
"Carley, please. You're… let me do something before I do something stupid to pay you back." He begged, because at this point, if she asked him to go kill a thousand ghouls before the end of the night, he'd do it with no questions asked.
A nod was all he got before he invited her inside.
Going back to his backpack, he searched for a bit before finding what he needed. The can of corn was used as storage for something valuable in these situations.
"I want you to take this. You can share it with whoever you want tomorrow morning." He stopped her from looking inside it.
"What is it?" She asked, and Clark shook his head.
"A surprise. Don't open it here." He told her that, because if she did, Clark knew she wouldn't leave the room until she returned it, no matter what.
After some minutes of thinking, she released a sigh as she saw the same stubbornness that others identified in her. At least in this subject.
"Fine."
She left shortly after, the can tucked under her arm, and Clark closed the door behind her.
The lock was a simple push-button, the kind that hadn't been reliable even before the world ended, but he turned it anyway and then braced the back of the chair from the desk under the handle. Force of habit. His body had stopped asking permission before it did these things.
He moved to the window next. The curtains were the same blackout kind that he barely remembered from when he had visited a hotel, thick, patterned in a faded geometric print that might have been green once.
He checked the latch first. Already locked, but the frame had warped enough that there was a sliver of gap along the left edge that he packed with a folded strip of a spare shirt and pressed flat.
Then he pulled the curtains across, overlapping them in the middle and tucking the edges behind the nightstand on one side and the dresser on the other so they couldn't shift.
The second window, the narrow one above the bathroom sink, he dealt with last. Too small to matter much, but he stood on the toilet lid and latched it properly and let the frosted glass do the rest.
When he came back out, the room was dark enough that his adjusted eyes filled in the shapes: bed, dresser, desk, chair. He crossed to the bed and looked at it for a moment.
Clark grabbed the corner and pulled it back, then ran his palm across the top of the mattress once, twice.
Dust. Not a lot, but enough.
He grabbed the pillow and beat it twice against the side of the mattress, turned his face away from the cloud that came off it, and set it back down. He did the same to the mattress cover, shaking it out toward the floor and then smoothing it back.
Then he sat on the edge of the bed, took off his boots, set them where he could reach them without looking, and fell backward onto the mattress.
A cloud of dust rose around him immediately.
He coughed. Once, twice, a third time that was longer and more committed than the first two, pressing his forearm across his mouth and nose until it passed.
The ceiling was low and textured, the same popcorn plaster as everywhere. He remembered his first time waking up in one of these rooms.
Clark stared at it.
The room settled around him as he breathed deeply. Inhale, exhale- he tasted dust, which had him sniff two times, which he silenced with his hands.
He went through his day the way he went through rooms methodically, cataloguing.
The forest. The trapped man. The mercy of it, and the four bullets it had cost him. The forest again, the tracks, the back of retreating men. Then the tree line and Carley came through the gate before he'd finished deciding whether to step out of cover.
The hug.
He didn't catalogue that part. He just let it sit there and enjoyed the memory. He couldn't even remember his last hug. His mom sure hadn't hugged him in her last moments, afraid that she'd turn and take an easy bite out of him. The same for his dad.
After his first group, he was mostly alone and didn't trust any strangers to get too close to him.
The food in the plastic bag and Carley's kindness. He, without knowing, had put them in the pocket of his backpack, where his family's picture was.
Her brown eyes that were so… motherly- the thought almost freaked him out till he forcibly calmed himself by turning to his side.
He turned his attention to his ability slot, because he needed a distraction, and made the switch - View Earth stepped out, and Cat Form stepped in. He could feel the cat in him stir and then relax, aware it wasn't being called on, just held in reserve.
He lay still and counted.
Bronze tickets first. He went through them carefully. Five bronze tickets and two silver ones. He noticed the rates for rarity were different from the average ones. Which brought him to the source of it all.
For almost two months, he barely got any tickets. The only ones he did get were from his first hunts as a cat. Squirrel, pigeons, and rats.
Then he turned his attention to the second silver ticket he got, especially the title and description of it.
|Meeting the main cast — You have encountered one of the main casts of survivors in this world!|
It brought him very, very unpleasant feelings to the surface. But he shut down his feelings and let his overthinking run with it.
'One of the main casts of survivors' meant that Carley, Lee, and others, to his power, in a TV show logic, were one of the group of survivors in this outbreak. That meant there would be others. And if there were others, how many groups are out there in the entire world that are considered 'main cast' material?
Was he considered one of the main characters by his power?
Were there others like him out there-
He stopped himself and ignored all the clutter in his head. He didn't care about any of those. No, what he cared about was making sure that Carley was safe above all else and that he kept his words to Clementine about finding her parents.
If staying with the group meant that he would get more tickets, and even get high ticket ones like gold, platinum, and even diamond ones, he'd stay. Because tickets meant more abilities and items, things that he could use to increase their survivability chance.
And that'll start now. Instead of fusing all his bronze tickets to silver, he opened the first one-
[Larger than Life]
|Common Trait|
People feel like your presence is larger than it should be. Even if you are a head shorter than them, it will still feel like you are towering over them.
'That… hmm?' Clark hummed, thinking about the new trait he got. He didn't feel different compared to when he got Half Light. He remembered that even Animal Lover didn't change anything in him, but his hunts still got easier as his prey would simply run towards him.
But still, this was a good trait for handling future arguments in this group if he really planned to stay. Again, he felt the unease and other emotions that came with that thought process.
Next-
[Cor Leonis]
|Uncommon Ability|
Re:Zero - Cor Leonis allows you to sense your allies as spots of light in your vision. By using Cor Leonis, you are able to take on their physical and mental conditions, such as exhaustion, onto yourself. You can also transfer these conditions to your allies as long as they are willing.
Immediately, Carley's tired and exhausted face came to mind, and Clark had no doubt that he'd use this on her first thing tomorrow. No way would he ever let that woman suffer or be in a weakened condition if he could help it. And now, he could.
Her kindness and generosity, he could never pay back. So, he'd at least try to make up for even a percent of it. If she asked out, he'd… find a way to talk about his powers without freaking her out.
Maybe if he gave her all the advantages of having him around, she'd keep him-
Wait- why was he afraid of her refusing him to join her group now? What was wrong with him?
Clark shook his head and used Distraction.
It was super effective-
[Horseshoe Necklace]
|Common Item|
A horseshoe fashioned into a necklace that grants the wearer the stamina and leg strength of a Mustang Horse.
The third bronze ticket wasn't bad. Actually, it was pretty good. Tomorrow, he'd try to sneak out or convince others to let him out to hunt some game for Carley, Lee, and Clementine. Even Kenny Jr., as well, and it'd be a good opportunity to test this item out.
And speaking of items, couldn't he give one or two of them to others? Like his Steel Ring of Protection. Carley could use it.
Fourth ticket-
[Double Jump]
|Common Ability|
You are able to jump off of thin air for once, as if it were a physical surface.
'Hmm… useless.' Clark thought. At least in his human form. He could maybe, at his peak, jump at least two meters. Double that would only be four-
He remembered the latest item he got and the description. A boost of stamina AND leg strength. He'd have to try the new item and new ability out tomorrow. Oh, and he also had a hybrid cat form… the less talked about that disgusting form, the better.
He'd looked like those furless cats with a mix of human and cat features. He shivered at remembering that. He looked like a creepy monster in that form. Which was why he banned it.
(AN: Think of Navi but with the same skin tone as humans instead of blue and spots.)
Clark used Distraction!
It worked… Kinda-
[One Thousand Bottles of Baby Oil]
|Common Item|
Confiscated from a certain mansion. One thousand unbranded bottles of standard baby oil.
Oh… Well… At least the girls in his group would have some good skin care routine compared to the rest of the world. And why did the description sound so haunting? Mansion, what mansion? Clark scratched his head.
No matter, it was time for the two silver tickets-
[Thermal Vision]
|Trash Ability|
Allows you to switch your vision to a perfectly accurate thermal vision, allowing you to see heat signatures while not impairing your regular vision.
Clark wasn't sure why this ability was classified as trash when it would be extremely useful. Based on the instinctive information he got from it, during his night hunts for prey, this would be extremely useful to find preys that are sleeping.
Combined with his Animal Lover trait, he didn't even need to sneak into their den or nest, just knock them off and then eat them.
Clark was satisfied with it and moved to the last one-
[Seamster]
|Uncommon Trait|
You are naturally very talented at sewing, you can spot flaws in clothing, and easily make your own or fix others
Well, now that was useless as information was jammed into him. How would he even sew clothes when he had no needle or string to begin with? And even if he did, he'd have to find the materials, gather them, and then take precious time out of his day to sew, when he could just kill bandits and take their clothes.
Pushing aside his disappointment, he finally activated the ability he liked the most, as his body shifted and grew smaller and smaller. Black fur grew on his skin, as his emerald eyes turned to slits.
His final form was just a bit younger than a fully grown cat, as he went under the covers and used Heat Object to get more comfortable.
Within moments, he was asleep and purring.
=================================
AN: Hello, hello.
I found it weird that I've been getting so many notifications for this story. So, I went and looked at "Watchers" and "recent readers" and immediately got intimidated.
What do you mean there are about a thousand watchers coming to read this stupid story every update?!
Now I'm afraid of being torn to shreds if I make some mistakes or blunders.
So, I only request this from you, dear people, if I do make mistakes with some options, please be gentle. Use one of the thousands of baby oils Clark got as a roll-
As a gift and consolation prize! What did you think I meant, you pervert and degenerate!
On other news- I lost my train of thought... Well, let me know what you think of this chapter. Where I can improve.
This chapter was another closer look at Clark's vulnerability and his "nature" and how easy it is to take advantage of him this early in the apocalypse.
He's naive and lets down his guard too fast for people that has helped him. I.E Carley being the target of this chapter. But I've also hinted throughout the chapter, at his past group and how certain/most of his issue regarding joining a group is connected to the ones who took him in after his parents' death.
OH GOT MY TRAIN OF THOUGHTS BACK.
Thank you for everyone regarding the question regarding the variants to include at the last chapter's author note (brain fart).
There were some good points made and suggestions and I think I'll introduce one or two variants from other works. example: L4D and dying light and even last of us. But at least, not now.
First I have to think if I really want to include those and if I do, what will their roles be instead of just fast and dangerous zombies. Can I stick a narrative plot on them. Etc.
If it becomes too complicated to me, i'll keep the story simple and go with the variants in TWD.
That's all from me. I really hope you guys enjoyed this story. I'm trying to make it wholesome and fluffy, but also not too overpowered and woman-catching-pokeball (or other way around? Idk the term. sorry).
Speaking of women, who do you want in the harem?
Clementine for me is 100% in there.
I was suggested Alicia Clarke by one of you, and so, I am now watching Fear TWD to understand her better and see if I want to include her in the harem. So far, I like her and she'll suit Clark's circle well. Not guaranteed for harem though.
If you have some suggestions, give me your list.
Below is the status cheet of Clark. The bolted ones are results of fusion:
Name: Clark Rogers
Abilities: Sharpen, View Earth, Heat Object, Cat Form, Gills, Compass, Cor Leonis, Double Jump, Thermal Vision
Traits: Animal Lover, Feral Instinct, Half Light, Larger than Life, Seamster
Skills: Intermediate Physics, Novice Performance, Novice Cooking
Items: Ancient Fruit Wine, Scrap Iron Candy, Astral Injection, Soylent Green, Rendal's Speckled Signet, Ring of Steel Protection, Speckled Stoneplate Ring, The Straw Hat, Horseshoe Necklace, One Thousand Bottles of Baby Oil