Chapter 26:
As soon as Lilly was safe, Clark also jumped after her, landing in the parking lot and wincing at the bruises, deactivating Superhuman and Stone Skin for a moment. There was a sarcastic comment on the tip of his tongue about getting new injuries while not even healed from the previous ones, but he held it off as Lilly fired another shot and missed.
He looked to everyone else. Lee had taken Carley back inside, and he had told Clementine to duck into the bathroom of their motel room, so she was safe. That left Kenny's family, Mark, Larry, and Ben, who were all behind cover and weren't injured.
"Shit." Lilly cursed, crawling back from under the vehicle and hiding with him as their enemies started to fire around where she was.
Seeing that everyone was safe, Clark focused on the firing squad, as instincts and knowledge of how to deal with multiple people came to him due to his past dealings with bandits. He counted the intervals between the shots, not fast enough for trained shooters, not slow enough for panicked ones. These were people who had done this before, and they had done it to other groups before theirs.
"Count of twelve, maybe fifteen," he said, low, to Lilly. "Two positions, but they're close to each other." He continued, fully using Half Life. The trait immediately took into account where the bullets came from and from which direction.
Immediately, Lilly moved to another position, which Clark followed and stayed right behind her. "I see four in the tree line to our right," Lilly said, her eye already back at the scope. "Maybe five. The fifth keeps moving."
"Flanker or someone to watch out their backs."
"Yeah."
Another burst, three rounds tight together, chewing through the fence boards. "We'd have to move. Take our stuff from here. The ghouls have already heard about the shots." He warned her, and Lilly nodded, finally turning to him. All four of his slots were used. Immunity, Superhuman, Stone Skin, and finally, Double Jump.
He replaced Double Jump with Cat Form, putting it in a half-hour cooldown.
"I'll deal with them. Get the others and put them in the RV Kenny was working on-"
"Wait." Lilly interrupted, a frown on her face, and immediately, Clark was clued in, so were the others.
The gunshots.
They weren't being fired at anymore.
"Stay down!" He told everyone, activating his defense abilities. He took a peek and found the last figure running away into the forest. But Half Light was still buzzing.
"Shit! They were baiting us! They're attracting ghouls to us!" He told everyone.
The realization landed in the parking lot like a second gunshot.
"Everyone up! NOW!" Lilly was already moving before Clark had finished the sentence, her rifle slung, her voice cracking across the lot with the authority that didn't ask for compliance.. "We're leaving! Take what you can carry to the RV!"
The parking lot exploded into motion.
Kenny was already at the RV before anyone else had fully processed the order, because Kenny had been ready to leave for two months now, and his body knew the drill before his brain had to tell it. Clark heard the groan of the engine turning over, catching, dying, and then catching again before fully starting. Katjaa and Duck were already inside, with Lee not behind them as he helped Carley settle in, and then coming out to open the gate so they could escape as fast as possible.
Clark stayed at the fence line, his back to the activity behind him, using Half Light to track what was coming.
It was coming.
Fast.
For the first time since he got it, he switched Immunity System with View Earth. A moment not too soon, he gulped. "Clark! Let's go!" Lilly shouted, bringing in the water gallons alongside Ben, Mark, and now Lee, while there was more stuff in their storage.
They weren't there yet.
Not yet visible, and wasn't audible to anyone else yet, but the animal awareness that had become as natural as breathing due to Half Life was filling in the picture from the vibrations in the ground, thanks to View Earth, the shift in the ambient sound of the forest, and the way whatever birds had come close to their motel thanks to his Animal Lover traid, had stopped. The horde that had been drawn by the gunfire was already oriented toward the motel. The shooters had known exactly what they were doing. They'd fired, pulled back, and left the cleanup to the dead.
Rage, pure, unfiltered rage took over Clark, and he wanted to chase after the scum and tear their body apart, one limb at a time, and then feed them alive to the ghouls, purifying them so they wouldn't turn.
"Clark!" Lee shouted-
"Hey! What the fuck is going on here?!" Two strangers ran to them. Clark turned to them with a glare that said he'd kill them-
"What the fuck are you doing here?!" Lilly shouted over, glaring at the two brothers from yesterday. "The deal. Gas for food and medications! We brought it over-"
"They're getting close!" Clark warned them, calming down his urge to kill. Lilly scowled for a moment, with the brothers looking at each other with worry. "Get on!" She finally decided, "We're leaving. Now. Clark!"
"You two as well!" She ordered the two brothers, who immediately ran to them. Half Light buzzed, and Clark glared in the direction from which he was sensing the danger coming. It also warned Clark about the two strangers, but the buzzing was louder from where the ghouls were coming from.
As soon as everyone was inside, Kenny hit the gas. Kenny accelerated away from the motel and didn't look back.
Clark looked back anyway, alongside most others, through the rear window.
The first of them broke the tree line thirty seconds after they cleared the gate. It wasn't the shambling, walking kind. It was runners, at least two of them. With the last being a crawler that jumped from a tree and dived straight towards the motel's doors.
Clark stopped looking back, a scowl on his face that immediately stopped when Clementine finally noticed his wound from the bone was starting to bleed again.
Her hands were already at his side, guiding him to sit on a seat. "Did- did he get shot?" Ben hesitantly asked, a wave of- something went across most of the group's face, with Carley and Lee being the clearest being in worry.
When he looked down, he could see the dark stain spreading through the fabric of his shirt. The scab had given way; immediately, Clementine had him remove his shirt from the injury as she started to clean it away.
"It's not a gunshot wound." He told them as Clementine put a cloth over it to stop the bleeding- her eyes went to his back. Already, black and blue bruises seemed to be forming from the rifle bullets that he took for Lilly.
She took a deep breath and exhaled, putting down his tight t-shirt.
"Clem." He met her eyes. "We'll deal with it when we stop." He looked to the two strangers who were in the corner of their vehicle, talking to themselves in worry, with a back over one of their shoulders. Lilly had her rifle across her knees and her eyes on them, and she hadn't looked anywhere else since they'd gotten in.
She finally nodded.
The shorter one was doing the talking amongst them, almost like convincing his older brother of something. For some reason, the way he was sitting in another group's car with ease was rubbing Clark the wrong way. It wasn't arrogance. Something more practiced than arrogance. The ease of someone who'd learned that looking comfortable was its own kind of armor.
The older brother, he was watching. Not the roads passing by or even answering Lilly's glares. No, he was watching Clark, as if he found something interesting. It was almost as if a cat had found prey. Half Light didn't buzz in warning. But it alerted him enough that the men in front of him were… wrong.
Clark watched him back.
The taller one's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile and then went back to neutral, as he finally nodded to his brother's words.
He didn't hear most of it, but he heard something about the farm, help that they could use, and about the generators.
"Where are we going?" Lee asked from the seat behind Kenny. His tone seemed… lost at worst, but the resignation was clear that everyone could hear. Carley, looking a bit better, was sitting next to Clark's side, finally hugging the boy who worried her sick. Clark returned her hug.
"Brothers said they've got a farm," Lilly answered before either of the brothers could, making the shorter one glance at her with an expression that registered the preemption and found it slightly amusing. "A bit outside of Macon. South."
"St. John's Dairy," the shorter one said. Immediately, Clark got alerted, eyes wide. "Andy." He nodded at himself and then at his brother. "Danny."
"Wait, that John's dairy?!" He interrupted, his expression doing something that no one could name. But they could describe it as if he were aging back before the outbreak.
"You've… heard about us?" The older brother cautiously asked, and Clark nodded, a smile forming on his face as he remembered the trip.
"Yeah. My family, the Rogers-" the younger brother's eyes shone- "you were one of our biggest domestic clients."
"Roger and Diane Rogers," Clark said. He hadn't meant to say their names, especially his dad's, since his grandpa was something of a practical jokester, naming his son, Roger Rogers, with the middle name being Roger as well, which meant his dad's full name was Roger Roger Rogers. They came out before the filter caught them. "That was my mom and dad. You don't remember?"
Everyone in the RV froze as they looked at the usually easygoing and pushover boy get animated, eyes wide open in joy at remembering something that he had forgotten.
"They used to drive down twice a year. We used to buy a ton of-"
"Butter, cottage cheese, sour cream, milk, and always five cheesecakes." Andy listed off, his face softening just a bit at the memory from months ago that felt like lifetimes. "Roger Rogers- funny man- he always tried to convince us to add ice creams to our menu."
Clark's smile widened at that, involuntary and real, the kind that arrived before he'd decided to let it. "He spent forty-five minutes every single visit trying to convince our parents that vanilla soft-serve would triple her revenue." He shook his head slightly. "Our ma kept saying the equipment was too expensive and he'd grumble about it."
Danny's expression had done something complicated and quiet.
"Ma remembers him," Danny said. His voice had lost the practiced ease it had been carrying since they'd climbed into the RV. "She used to say he was the only customer who ever made her feel like she was running a restaurant instead of a farm."
The RV was very quiet.
"Where… is he? And Diane?"
Clark's smile broke down, turning more forced and complicated than ever.
"I see… Shame, they were good people," he continued, closing his eyes in respect for a moment. "But I'm glad that they live through you."
Clark looked at his hands for a moment. The ring on his thumb caught the gray morning light through the window. "My mom used to complain the whole drive down," he said. "That we were spending too much, that we could just buy dairy at the store, that it was ridiculous to drive two hours for all of that." He paused. "But she always bought the most every time so she could share it with our relatives."
Andy made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh but was in its family.
"Yeah, your ma- she was something else," he said. "Had your pa 'round her finger and eating from palm of her hands."
Clark made a sound between a snort and a chuckle.
"Yeah…"
"Why don't y'all stay at our place for a few days? Get your bearings." Danny suggested, and no one said otherwise after the whole past that Clark seemed to have with them.
"Do you still make the cheesecakes?" Clark asked, and Andy sadly shook his head, his expression turning sad. "We're barely surviving out there ourselves-" Clark's eyes turned a bit dark, with Clementine taking one of his hands into hers, squeezing it in comfort.
"But just for you, I'll talk with ma and see what we can do. It's the least we could offer after meeting with a friend's son nowadays."
With that, they shared the farm's address with Kenny, while Andy and Clark talked about a world before the outbreak, sharing small bits and pieces of who they were before the world ended.
…
…
…
The farm came into view on a long, flat curve of road, and Clark saw it before anyone else said anything.
He recognized it.
The shape of the barn against the tree line. The long fence running parallel to the road. The color of the main house was a faded white that had been that color for long enough to stop being a choice and start being a fact.
"We repaired sections." Danny's voice from the back was careful, watching him. "After everything started."
"The gate was green," Clark said. "The one at the end of the drive."
"Still is." Andy had turned slightly in his seat to look at him. "We repainted it two summers ago. Came out the same color."
The RV came to a stop in the yard between the barn and the house, and Kenny killed the engine after a sigh. Katjaa, who was seated next to him, her hand went immediately to Duck's shoulder.
The farm looked bigger than he remembered. Not because it was thriving, exactly, but because it was functional in a way that the motel had only been functional on its best days. The fence around the perimeter would need a lot of work. Andy had told him that's what they needed the gas for, and Clark understood. But if they had to face a horde or even just a couple of runners, those fences would be brought down.
There were also light- actual lights, strung along the barn eave, thanks to the generator; he could hear it now, a low, constant hum from somewhere behind the barn. He frowned at the noise, but pushed it to the side. He was looking forward to the cheesecake, and then, since they no longer had anywhere to settle, it was time to go to Savannah.
Clark needed to have a talk with Clementine, Lee, and Carley. He had promised her that he'd try to find her parents and help out with what else they needed there. But he hoped that afterward, they'd come back to Macon.
The farmhouse door opened.
A woman came out first. She was older, even older than Katjaa, but was well put together and looked the same age as Katjaa. Her hair was silver at the temples, and she was wiping her hands on a cloth that she tucked into her apron as she came down the steps.
Her eyes went to the RV, then to Andy and Danny, then past them to the group emerging, and then to him.
She stopped.
Clark stopped.
She looked at him the way Andy had looked at him in the RV as they continued their talk. The same something was moving through her expression that was mixed with recognition. She was surprised for a moment before a grandmotherly smile bloomed on her face.
When she was in front of everyone, "You look like your father," she said.
Clark's throat did something he didn't ask it to do.
"Everyone says that," he managed. His voice came out even, which he was grateful for.
"And everyone would be correct." She continued with a smile, greeting the others with a brief nod and smile.
"I'm Brenda." She held out her hand, flour-dusted at the knuckles, and he took it. Her grip was firm and brief, the handshake of someone who had been shaking hands across a counter for thirty years. "And you're Clark, that troublesome Roger's son."
"Yeah."
"Danny called ahead on the radio. Heard something about a cheesecake, hm?" She glanced at her son, and a silent conversation happened in a moment, before choosing hospitality by choice rather than by force. Clark blushed, but nodded. "All of you, come inside. We've got room."
She turned back toward the house without waiting to see if they followed, which they did, because Brenda St. John was the kind of woman whose back you followed without being asked.
At least, it felt like that.
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…
The farmhouse interior smelled like something Clark hadn't smelled since before everything ended.
Not just food, though there was food- something on the stove that had onions, meat, potatoes in it, and something else he couldn't name, and the warm undercurrent of a house that had been cooking in it long enough that the smell had settled into the walls. It was the smell of a house that was still, somehow, a home. Not a shelter. Not a base. A home.
He stood in the doorway for a moment longer than he meant to.
Clementine's hand found his elbow from behind, a brief touch that wasn't a question, just presence. He stepped inside.
In the past, he had toured the farm, but the main house was always off-limits due to the family living there. He had asked about Mr. Johns, and Andy had a face of grief and regret, which was all Clark and everyone else needed to know.
Brenda, seeing Carley's recovering pale face, offered her a room to rest, but she declined, saying that she didn't want to impose, and then added that she was more comfortable being with people she knew.
Branda looked at Carley for a moment and nodded, understanding the look of grief and the slow recovery afterward. Though she didn't know that her grief, at the end, was for nothing since her three precious people had returned to her.
"At least sit," Brenda said, and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. Carley sat.
The kitchen was the kind of kitchen that had accumulated its character over the years rather than through decorating decisions. A shelf of canning jars along one wall, most full. A hook by the back door with three different coats on it. A calendar on the wall, the kind with a different farm scene for each month, stopped on a month that no longer matched.
Brenda moved to the stove without ceremony, lifting lids and checking things with her usual confidence of someone who didn't need to think about this part.
That's when Andrew, or Andy as he liked to be called, started to speak. "I should check on Maybelle." He said it to the table generally, but his eyes went to his mother first. "She was off this morning. After the calf."
"Still?" Brenda's expression shifted slightly. Not alarm, but the attentive kind of concern that didn't waste energy on panic.
"Wouldn't take water when I went out earlier."
Katjaa had straightened in her chair. "What kind of off?"
Andy looked at her in question. "You know animals?"
"She's a vet," Kenny said, with the complete confidence of someone stating an obvious fact and was proud of it, and Katjaa put a hand on his shoulder.
"I was," she said carefully. "Before."
"Before is good enough." Andy looked at her with the direct assessment of a man who had learned to take competence where he found it and not ask too many questions about its packaging. "If you wouldn't mind."
"Of course not." Katjaa was already standing.
Kenny looked at Duck, who was excitedly waiting for his look, a plea on his face.
"Baby cow?" Duck asked.
"Born three days ago." Andy's mouth did something at the corners. "Still trying to figure out its legs."
Duck looked at Kenny. Kenny looked at Duck. The exchange took approximately one second.
"We'll come," Kenny said, as if he had just decided for the sake of Duck, rather than his wife, who would be alone with a stranger.
They filed out through the back door, Duck already asking Andy what the baby cow's name was and whether it had been named yet and whether he could suggest a name, and Andy answering each question with the patience of a man who had been around children enough to know how to listen and walk at the same time. At the same time, he understood why he was called Duck and not Kenny Jr.
The kitchen was quieter without them.
Danny had waited until the door settled before he spoke. He was leaning against the counter with a cup of water, and he addressed the table generally, but his eyes moved to Clark and then to Lee. "Fence needs work. Got a couple of them Turners stuck in the wire on the north side." He paused, and something in the pause had a shape to it. "Need an extra set of hands to clear them out. Shouldn't take long."
"I'll come." Mark was already pushing back his chair, with the readiness of someone who'd been sitting still long enough. He'd been leaning forward since they'd arrived, taking in the fence line, the generator setup, the structure of the yard. He had the look of a man who had found a place to settle already.
Lee glanced at him. A quick glance, the kind that asked a question without asking it, and Mark met it with the expression of someone who didn't fully understand why he was being looked at that way. Lee sighed, "I'll come too."
Danny pushed off the counter, nodding once, and set his coffee cup down. "Good. I'll grab the wire cutters and a pole."
Lee caught up with Mark in the doorway, and Clark heard him, low, as they passed: "Just watch what you say, okay?"
Mark looked at him with genuine confusion. "What do you mean-" A look of realization, "ohh, don't worry. I won't say a thing."
Lee sighed through his nose, and they went out into the yard, following after Danny.
That left only Clark, who was watching them go their way from a window, Lilly leaning on a wall, looking around the room and then outside the house through the windows, as if she was thinking about how to take over this place, Larry, who was flirting with Brenda at the stove, and she was flirting back with him, if her giggles were anything to go by. Clementine was watching them with a smile, and finally, Carley, who had a worried look and a hand placed on her belly, softly.
"Carley, you okay?" Clark asked her, and she smiled reassuringly, though a little worried. "Yeah, never better." When Lilly and Clementine turned to her and saw her hand position, their eyes widened in realization, which Clark missed as Half Light buzzed and whispered. That something was wrong, that they aren't humans.
He turned to Branda once more and saw an old lady flirting with someone her age. Clark frowned at the whispers.
"The generators, are you all worried that it'd make too much noise and attract a horde?" Lilly asked, still keeping an eye on Carley and wordlessly telling her that they'd have a talk.
"Oh, that, no." She waved off the question. "My sons were worried about it first as well, but there's a shelter close by, Terminus." She told them, and everyone in the kitchen looked at each other, finding the name didn't mean anything to them. "They call themselves the 'Saviors of Humanity' after the outbreak. They take people in, shelter them." A pause as she stirred a pot and then checked the oven, a cheesecake being baked. Clark's eyes widened. "We couldn't leave the farm behind, and they saw how useful the land was. So instead of losing it, they send patrols a couple of times per week, and we give them dairy food as a thank you."
"Terminus… How many people do they have?" Carley asked, and Brenda hummed in thought. "I don't know, maybe a couple of dozen? Hundreds at most?"
"That's a lot," Lilly commented, and Clark agreed.
"Wait, yesterday, there were some shootings-" Clementine interjected, and Brenda's expression cracked a little; something cold settled before she pushed past it. "Yes, they had a… disagreement with another group." She shook her head, "Andy called them Save-Lots, like the hardware store." Clark froze, then he scowled, remembering the bandit group that he had pushed to the side after joining the motel group.
"We've also been running-" Brenda gets cut off by the sound of Lee and Mark's yells.
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AN: Yoyoyoyo, another surprise chapter.
Had a day off and decided that instead of wasting time on League of Legends, I'd waste time writing. So, here is another chapter.
I was a bit excited since, for those who don't know, I finally found a way to connect Clark's group with Rick's group. And that's the group Terminus. I haven't seen the show or how Terminus is, so I'd have to watch a video that recaps or just focuses on that part.
In this chapter, I went a little deep on the point that Clark had a past with St. John's farm before the outbreak. Here, in this chapter, I connected it and gave more insight. The name, Roger Roger Rogers, was inspired by a short I saw on YouTube regarding a film that had the guy named Serjant Major Major Major and the army promoted him to Major, so he became Major Major Major Major.
Regarding the farm, I also wanted to "show" rather than tell that this farm is the last remaining "untainted" place that Clark shared with his family. By that, I mean, everything that he has a connection to is tainted with blood and trauma. And he's found the only place that has survived, which explains why he would push past his Half Light trait, warning him. He's listening to it, but he isn't taking it with the alert that he should, and since he's half ignoring that instinct, it's slowly turning less sharp. This is what we call *TRAUMA* .... I'm really getting good at writing broken characters…
I need to stop watching character breakdowns on YouTube, even though it's super interesting.
PS: That guy who said that he could write an essay about Clark and Clementine at the end of Vol 1. I haven't forgotten you, and I'm waiting for that essay. My fellow readers, PING HIM AND BRING HIM TO ME! (Not you, webnovel readers. It's QQ only.)
PSS: If anyone would like to help me out, is there an animated timeline or animated map of Clementine's journey? And the Fear group?
That's all from me, expect me to drop another chapter tonight!! Or not. We'll see.