Chapter 19:
The next morning, after sleeping together in the same bed for the first time, Carley had taken Clementine away from him for a few hours, and when she came back, there was a worry in her expression, but also determination. Whatever it was, Clementine didn't say much and just said they'll find out in a few weeks.
And Clark trusted her more than anyone, even more than himself, so he nodded, kissed her cheek, and went hunting.
The day after that, they needed to organize a supply run, which Lee and Kenny would have been the ones to go on, until Clark volunteered so he could put his Seamster trait to use, and then Clementine volunteered as well because she also needed to find some women's supplies.
"Ready?" Lee asked him, and both nodded, with Kenny taking the lead. A few blocks down, the group met a fat ghoul that was just standing in the middle of the street, with a few shambling around the area.
Kenny led them around, through an alleyway, and then a house that they cleared, before getting out at the back, jumping over a fence.
After a few more evasions and cracking a few ghouls' heads, they reached their target, an apartment complex.
Their list of items was short, but extensive, from some clothes that can be turned into bandages to hygiene supplies and even, if lucky, some entertainment items, such as cards or books.
Due to Clark having the biggest bag, most things would be held by him, and the small ones by others. He was adamant that he wouldn't part with his hiking bag when Lee or Kenny tried to take it from him.
The apartment complex had 10 floors and the stillness of a building that had been empty long enough to stop feeling like it was waiting for anyone to come back. Everyone assumed that there were at least a couple of ghouls in the building, but they had a need.
The lobby doors were glass, one pane already gone, the other pushed inward and left there. Kenny went first, rifle up, Lee a step behind him with his own makeshift weapon. Clark noted that Lee seemed to be following his lessons with Clementine, even if the man didn't join her in practice. Clark followed with Clementine at his shoulder, her sign pole that Clark turned to spear held low and ready in the way he'd drilled into her, point forward, elbow in, don't telegraph.
The lobby smelled like mildew, rotten eggs, and dead bodies, and something older underneath it. A bank of mailboxes along one wall, most hanging open. A thorned up plastic plant by the elevator was covered with dust in its pot. The elevator itself was stuck open on the ground floor, dark inside, and Clark gave it a wide berth on instinct. Enclosed metal boxes with no exit options were a specific category of bad idea.
The stairwell was better. Smelled worse, but open. At least, from what they could see. Clark took the lead from Kenny, silencing the man's protest.
While he didn't have much experience in supply runs, he had other advantages that he or others didn't have. Such as his abilities. Currently, with four slots open, he has Immunicity System, Sharpen, Phantom Sensation, and Stone Skin active.
He would never turn his immunity off due to giving him supposed immunity from whatever that let the outbreak happen, alongside toxins. Sharpen was simply there to sharpen his pipe after every use, making sure its edge and tip were sharp enough to pierce and help out Clementine with her spear.
The third ability was active because he wanted to leave trails of kisses up Clementine's face and fear whenever they were taking a break, and the last one, Stone Skin, was there so that he could activate it in case of an ambush.
While he trusted his immunity now, he wouldn't let a ghoul bite through a big chunk of his flesh if he could help it. That thing hurt from what Clark saw of the bandits' cries.
And speaking of bandits, he still hadn't dealt with the Save-Lots, which he would have to sooner rather than later.
A touch on his shoulder, and Clark led them, Kenny behind him, then Clementine, and then Lee in the flank.
"First floor," Kenny said, low. "We go room to room. Nobody goes anywhere alone."
Nobody argued.
The first-floor hallway had ten doors at least, five to the right and another five to the left. Clark used Half Light and had his ears noting the quiet in the rooms closest to them, and then sorting sounds by distance and direction without him having to think about it. Somewhere above them, maybe on the third floor, something was moving with the shuffle-drag pattern he'd learned to recognize. One, maybe two. Not close.
There was nothing on the stairway that he could pick up. That meant either no ghoul or there were in their dormant mode. As long as no one made too big a sound, they would remain in their power-saving mode.
He filed it and kept moving.
Door one was unlocked, thankfully, but it also meant that it was probably looted already. And if it was, it meant the entire building must have been cleared by another group.
Clark pushed it open, pipe first, and they moved through it in the configuration they'd settled into without discussing, but with simple signals and hand movements. Kenny and Lee cleared the main room and kitchen while Clark and Clementine took the bedroom and bathroom. Two minutes. Empty. Someone had been here before them, recently enough that the cabinet hinges were still clean of the rust that had started forming on everything else.
They took what was left. A box of baking soda. Two candles. A sewing kit that Clark's hand closed around before he'd consciously decided to reach for it, the Seamster trait registering it before his brain had finished processing what it was.
"Nice," Clementine said quietly, watching him tuck it into the bag. He nodded. It was better than nice. Thread, needles, a small pair of scissors, and a thimble. Everything he'd need to start actually using the trait instead of just having it.
He watched her jeans, which had a little tear in the knee and at the ankle. Clark promised himself that he would patch them up.
Door two had a 'dormant' ghoul in the bathroom that woke up when Lee entered. He put it down before it had fully made any growls and groans and alerted possible others, and the sound it made wasn't loud, which was good, but it was enough that Clark's ears went up and tracked the third-floor movement for thirty seconds afterward and then the stairway.
Nothing.
He relaxed his shoulders and kept moving.
By the fourth apartment, the inefficiency had made itself obvious. Four people in a one-bedroom apartment meant three of them standing in front of the door while the fourth confirmed a closet was empty. Kenny had been in charge of his fishing boat long enough that the redundancy was making his jaw tight in a specific way. Lee also had the same expression after looking at the time fly by.
"This isn't working," he said, low enough not to carry.
Nobody argued, because nobody could.
"We're burning daylight." Kenny looked at Lee. "Four people in a one-bed is three people watching one person check a closet. We split."
Lee's jaw tightened before Kenny had finished the sentence. "No."
"Lee-"
"No." He kept his voice low, but the word was flat. "We don't know what's above us. We don't know how many are in the rooms we haven't hit yet. Four people is four sets of eyes."
"Four people is also four people tripping over each other in a bathroom." Kenny's voice had the particular patience of a man making an argument he considered obvious. "We've done six rooms. At this rate, we'll be here until dark."
"Then we go back."
"With half a bag." Kenny looked at the bag on Clark's back and then at theirs. "Not even. We came for supplies. We're not getting them four-to-a-closet."
Lee looked at him. Kenny looked back with the expression of a man who had made a decision and was waiting for the other people in the room to arrive at the same conclusion he had.
Clark had been listening to the floor above them while this was happening. The third-floor movement hadn't changed, still the same one-or-two shuffle-drag he'd clocked on the way in. The stairwell was still quiet. The hallway outside was still quiet.
He looked at Clementine. She was watching him already. He made a small movement with his chin- question. She read it, tilted her head slightly- your call.
He looked at the two men.
"Two and two," he said.
Lee looked at him.
"Kenny's right about the efficiency," Clark said, because Kenny was, and saying otherwise would be the kind of dishonesty that got people hurt. "You're right about the risk." He looked at Lee. "So we minimize it. Two pairs, same floor, adjacent rooms, door stays in earshot. If something happens, we're close enough to respond." He paused. "We don't go up until the floor is done. We don't go anywhere where we can't hear each other."
Lee was quiet for a moment.
Kenny looked at Clark with the expression he sometimes got, the one that was clearly approval but was being held back by something else. "That works."
"I want visual contact maintained in the hallway," Lee said. Not agreement yet, but not refusal. "Every time you move to the next room, I see you in the hall first."
"Fine," Kenny said.
"Clark and Clementine stay on the left side. We take the right." Lee looked at Clark directly. "You hear anything above us, you signal immediately. We don't push further than six doors."
Kenny made a frown, but pushed it aside. If Clark had good enough clearing that Lee would listen to an evacuation on his words, then who was Kenny to refuse? Though he'd for sure want to see it in action.
Kenny was already moving toward the door, locked, and Lee, using what Carley had taught him, picked it open with his tools. A stare, and then Lee followed after Kenny inside.
Clark looked at Clementine before nodding to their door. She had her spear low, point forward, elbow in, the way he'd drilled into her. His heart did a little fluster and clenched a little in love, but now was not the time.
He touched her elbow once, light, the brief contact they'd developed over weeks of training. She touched his arm back in signal. Then they moved into the hallway.
Kenny and Lee peeled right, toward the door numbered five. Clark and Clementine took door six, the one directly across from it. Clementine got on her knees, and after a moment, it was unlocked, which Clark pushed open with his pipe and went in first, Clementine a half step behind him, put her equipment in her pocket, and then her spear, clearing the frame, followed after.
The apartment was small, smaller than the others, a studio rather than a one-bedroom, which meant they could see most of it from the doorway. A couch turned on its side. A window with the glass intact, letting in the morning light. A kitchenette with the cupboards already hanging open, with stuff inside.
One closed door. Bathroom. The door had red handprints- blood, all over it.
Clark held up a fist. Clementine stopped.
He moved to the bathroom door, paused, and then used his hearing. Half Light sorted the sounds, as it always did; the distant shuffle above that stopped, Lee and Kenny's quiet footsteps across the hall, Clementine's breathing, even and controlled, and gave him nothing from behind the door. No movement. No breathing that wasn't his.
He looked back at Clementine, held up one finger- wait- and she nodded, spear point raised slightly, watching the room behind him while he handled the door.
He turned the handle slowly. The resistance was wrong, heavier than it should have been, the particular drag of weight against the other side. He noted it, adjusted his grip on the pipe, and pushed.
The door swung inward six inches and stopped.
One of them was inside as Clark got hit by the foul stench of a rotting corpse, but he controlled his expression. He got his ear to the gap, dark in there, no window, and waited for sound, still nothing. He turned to peek, his eyes adjusting fast to the darkness, and he could see a shape in the shower. Unmoving.
He pushed the door the rest of the way.
A woman. Or had been. Hanging against the shower wall with her back to them, her neck around a belt that was tied to the shower head, which was getting loose. Clark moved, piercing through the back of its head.
The twitches of movement stopped.
The blood on the door was hers, handprints at shoulder height, smeared downward in a hurry, the record of someone who had feared turning after a bite- Clementine pointed to her hand when her vision adjusted- and didn't want to turn. So she took her own life, only to turn anyway.
Clark took a breath, they both stepped back, and pulled the bathroom door most of the way closed. Not shut. Just closed.
He looked at Clementine. She was looking at the door with the expression she used that told Clark she was feeling sad for whoever the woman inside was. He touched her elbow once, different than the usual one he'd do during their training session. She touched his arm back.
They turned to the rest of the apartment.
Clark moved to the kitchen first because that was the order of operations. Clementine went to the couch, righted it automatically, and started working through the shelves built into the wall above it.
The kitchenette had been gone through, but not thoroughly. Most of the food that was left behind due to the door being locked was spoiled. Heck, when Clark opened the pot on the stove, he learned that the woman had Mac and Cheese as her last meal.
That was good news, because it meant there could be food. He searched through the cabinets and found four packets of spaghetti and macaroni.
"Clem."
In another, he found cheese and even a little melted butter that Clark wrapped in a clean trash bag that he found underneath the sink. All of them immediately went to his backpack.
Clementine made a sound between excitement and joy, wrapping her arms around him tightly, before starting her own search in the kitchen. Clark- for one moment- got hit by a thought.
Them in the kitchen, moving around to take food. If only, instead of taking, they were preparing it in their own kitchen. Cooking together.
"It would have been beautiful," Clementine spoke up just a little.
"Hm?" He asked, turning to her, and she gave him a nostalgic smile. "Cooking together, living together." She looked to the ruined place, "This could have been ours in another life."
Clark filed the thought away with care, the way he filed things that mattered, and turned back to the apartment. Another silent promise to himself. He'll try his best to make her words happen.
The bedroom alcove, because that's what it was, barely separated from the living area by a curtain that had been pulled back and left, had a wardrobe that hadn't been touched.
Inside was a woman's wardrobe. Not survival gear. The real kind, the before kind, assembled by someone who had opinions about what she wore and the time to act on them.
Clark moved through it with careful hands. There were a lot of clothes. From everyday attire to business and even pleasure, such as clubs or bars. There were also drawers under the bed that Clark opened, saw plenty of women's underwear, and then closed them back immediately.
'Why am I getting hard?' He thought to himself, sending a glance back at Clementine over his shoulder. He watched her reenter the bathroom, in search of some specific things that she had let him know. Period items and more.
Going through another closet, he found some clothes that would fit Clementine well and keep her warm in the cold weather. Winter was approaching fast, after all. There was a cream colored soft turtleneck that would be big for Clementine, maybe even approaching her thighs in length. Her hands would also be covered if he left it like that, but thankfully, Seamstress gave him ideas on how to fix it. Clark also found a couple of jeans that weren't skinny tight. They were loose, but warm inside. He immediately took them as well. By the entrance, there was another closet that Clark checked at the end, finding a couple of jackets.
A couple of them were leather in different colors. Black, chocolate brown, and even one white. Clementine did once tell him that she loved her pink one, so he took them all. It would fit her well.
He was on his way back to her when his foot caught the edge of something under the bed, a shoebox, pushed back far enough that he'd have missed it.
He pulled it out.
Inside: a pair of running shoes, barely worn, the soles still clean. White with sky blue paneling, the kind of shoes that cost real money before money stopped meaning anything. He turned them over, checked the size, and held one up against his mental estimate of Clementine's foot that he had memorized about her.
Slightly big. She'd grow into them, or she'd stuff the toe with a strip of cloth. Either way, they were better than what she had, which had a sole that was starting to separate at the heel.
He set them on top of the pile.
Then he went back to find her.
She was in the bathroom, crouched by the cabinet under the sink, with the focus of someone who had been looking for specific things and had a smile that told him she found them. He caught the edge of what she was packing, a box of tampons, another of pads, the kind of supplies the group had been running dangerously low on for weeks. He looked away and kept his eyes on the wardrobe.
Then he saw what was next to them on the shelf.
A small box of condoms. A strip of birth control pills, still sealed. And, sitting slightly apart from the rest with the particular weight of things that asked questions, two pregnancy tests that were unopened.
He didn't say anything. Clementine had already seen them and had brought everything there and then put them inside her backpack without a word. "It's for Carley." She answered his unasked question, and Clark's posture calmed just a little.
He wasn't relieved or disappointed, simply nodded, gave her a short kiss on the lips that she responded to, and then they moved. Clark didn't believe she was pregnant. Not yet, at least, because they'd only done it once, and from what he'd heard from others and magazines, once was not enough.
He guided her to the piles of clothes that he had prepared in the showcase. And while she was examining his taste in women's fashion and judging if he'd be good at dressing her sometimes, Clark was looking outside the place, into the hallway, and directly inside the apartment that Lee and Kenny were in, watching as they entered the living room with their own pile and started to organize it, when something below the table caught his eye, a pair of sunglasses, black frame, the large round kind that had been fashionable before.
He sensed Clementine lean into his side, go to her tiptoes, and plant her lips on his cheek. "Thank you." He felt his ears burn, but nodded. "Do you need anything else?" He asked, helping her pack everything they got. The surplus went into his hiking backpack, filling it up halfway through. He bent down and picked them up, examining them.
"No, but I'd rather we keep this place locked up." She voiced, looking at the glasses in his hands, and Clark agreed.
He turned around and put them on her face.
She went still for half a second. Then her chin lifted, automatic, wiggling her eyebrows, fishing for compliments. "It suits you."
A happy smile burst on her face, and she wiped the leftover dust with her sleeve. "Thank you."
On their way to the hallway and then to Lee and Kenny, Clark locked the door from the inside and pulled it closed as they left. A soft click. When Clark tried to open the door again, he couldn't.
The difference between this apartment and the studio was immediately obvious. Someone had been here longer, or had prepared better, or both. The furniture hadn't been overturned. The curtains were still drawn on one window, and the other had been covered with a bedsheet tacked at the corners.
A corner of the main room had been cleared and organized, meaning that someone had been living here for a bit after the outbreak. Kenny was crouched by the kitchen counter, and when Clark came in, he held up two fingers with the brightest and proudest smile he'd ever seen on the man's face, then pointed at the floor by his knees.
Two cases of bottled water, stacked.
Then he moved to show them piles of cans, organized into three. One for veggies, such as crushed tomatoes, corn, chickpeas, black beans, white beans, green beans, and more.
One for fruits, such as pumpkin, peaches, pineapple, and more.
And finally, anything meat-related, chicken and beef broth, tuna, salmon, and more.
Clementine made a sound beside Clark that she immediately controlled, pressing her lips together. Meanwhile, Clark hadn't peeled his eyes off the peaches' cans as memories surged forth from a corner that had gone dark.
Before the outbreak, before all of it, he remembered that he loved canned peaches. How he hated the fruit, and it only changed once he tasted canned peaches and mangoes. His memory of why or how he had come to love them was unclear and blurry at best, but he remembered the taste.
"I know," Clark said to Clementine, as she took his arm in a death grip in excitement.
Lee appeared from the bedroom doorway, his mood dark and depressive, contrary to what the trio was feeling. He was holding something, and his expression had the quality it got when something had caught him off guard in a way he hadn't prepared for.
He held up a child's jacket. Green, with a hood. Small. Duck-sized, roughly, or close enough that with a belt cinched and a hem taken up, it would serve. The kind of jacket with deep pockets and a thick lining, the kind of jacket a parent bought for a child because they intended it to last a winter.
Nobody said anything for a moment as they looked down.
Kenny looked at it after a moment. His jaw moved once.
"There's more," Lee said. "Kids' section of the wardrobe. Whoever lived here had a kid." He set the jacket down carefully on the cleared counter beside the peaches. "Hat, gloves, a couple of sweaters. Maybe Duck's size, maybe a little big. Katjaa would know."
Kenny picked up the jacket. Turned it over once. Set it back down, smoothed the collar flat with one hand, and didn't say anything, but the set of his shoulders had changed in a way Clark recognized. The same way his own shoulders changed when something landed somewhere he hadn't been guarding.
"I'll… I'll take a look." He finally mustered, going where Lee came from.
"First aid kit," Lee added, and produced it from under his arm, a proper one, hard plastic case, the kind that stocked first aid stations rather than medicine cabinets. He set it beside everything else.
He opened the latch and went through it with quick, practiced efficiency. "Bandages, gauze, antiseptic, medical tape." He paused. "Ibuprofen. sealed. Tweezers, medical scissors." Another pause, longer. "Suture kit."
Clementine's hand found Clark's, and his fingers closed around hers automatically. He felt her squeeze once.
It wasn't much by any accounts. For a group nearing fifteen, it was nothing, but it was still much, much better than nothing at all. They were running low on medical items, such as bandages, due to wasting most of them on Ben's teacher, who, in the end, turned and almost bit into Katjaa.
After the count, Lee put it inside his jacket and started to put the cans in his backpack. Halfway through, they realized it would be too heavy. So Clark unloaded some of Clementine's clothes, filled however many Clark could, which was all the fruit cans, and then packed back Clementine's clothes.
The hiking backpack had turned extremely heavy, but Clark could still move around quickly. But if he had to run, he'd have to abandon his backpack. The other half was taken by Kenny.
"We've got everything we need." Lee started, and others nodded. There was greed in their eyes, wanting to scavenge more and see what else the rest of the apartments and the other floors had, but they wouldn't be able to carry it all back to the motel.
Already, Kenny and Lee's arms were occupied by the two stacks of bottled water.
After looking at the apartment, with Clark at the front, they slowly walked down the stairway and then outside-
Except they came face to face with a shambeling fat ghoul. The same ghoul that they'd seen at the beginning of their supply run and had evaded.
Clark stopped others behind the cover and approached to end it-
'Why is it getting bigge-'
BOOOOM!
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AN: Hello hello
I Hope all of you are doing well. I promised a chapter and I delivered. Though the time frame was wrong. Been busy with setting myself up with unions and finding a new place to move to due to work.
Ranting about my personal life a little, but here we go: I hate that single studios or even 3 1/2 appartments are so freaking expensive. On top of groceries. I planned to eat once a day after looking at the prices cause wtf. My work is construction so one meal per day would also fuck me up. So, I decided to rent one bedroom. Gotta check that shit tomorrow. Otherwise, it's back to searching places.
In the meanwhile, here's my usual lenght chapter. Took me a couple of days to write it.
This chapter and following would focus on the following arcs: The farm, the save-lots bandits, and maybe another group. Though not in that order. Or is it. Figure it out on your own.
I hope you liked the introduction of the bloaters from L4D. My plan was basically to have Clark lore dump all the variants, but it changed to him and the group and you guys discovering them together.
This leads me to a question, if- IF- clark survives the bloater, what rank ticket would you give? Bronze to Diamond, including advantage or nah?
Also, I changed the Immunity System description. Now, it will only deal with toxins, illnesses/diseases that are inside Clark. Haven't updated it on the character sheet, but well, ill do it one day.
For now, that's all. Gotta deal with some Union shit from work and more in real life. So, might get super busy until the end of the month May. But will try to upload a chapter or two during those times.
PS: I expect you guys to be on me if the quality of this story drops. Like, tell me or even DM me and let me know, so I could fix it. I won't- at least try to- be using the "I'm tired" excuse to upload shitty plot points and ruin a good story that you guys enjoyed.