Chapter 7:
The attempt was good from his power, but Clark didn't feel like it anymore. 'Everything's gonna be okay?'
Who said that?
As soon as the first tragedy hit him a couple of weeks ago, the only thing on Clark's mind was to reach his extended family in Macon, no matter what. Yes, he helped a couple of people from turning by mercy killing them. In return, they gave him a can or half-drunk water bottles.
The bandits that he let hordes destroy, he couldn't take anything initially because he had to save himself. And when they did die or turn, the place was filled with ghouls that it wasn't worth risking his life for a bite.
So, Clark starved and made do with what he looted and what others gave before dying. The rest of the time was spent walking towards Macon. He stayed away from survivor groups, a guilty conscience, and trauma, telling himself it'd be better to survive alone than risk yourself by joining a group.
All for the sake of reaching his family.
A family that had already turned and died off. With none of them surviving the initial outbreak or the weeks of chaos afterwards.
The rational part of him mocked him.
He could have supplied for days and maybe months in one of the neighborhoods in Atlanta. Made a base of operation, a place where he could bring all his loot to after a day of hard work. Maybe create a faction with other people, helping them and each other survive.
But he did none of that.
Because he had to hope that his extended family survived, no matter how bleak it was.
Clark wasn't sure if his choice was right or not as he finished filling the grave of his last relative, his uncle David's family, while taking care of the few ghouls who wanted a piece of him.
Even after the heartbreak, Clark let out a contented sigh after the hard work, which took most of the day, as the noon sky turned to evening. The sun slowly setting.
'What now?' He thought, throwing the shovel back inside the shed and closing it, before heading to his uncle's house, covering all the windows and shutting all the doors.
Just as he did with his other relatives' houses, he searched everything, finding a can of tomatoes and of corn. Immensely grateful for it, he put them in his backpack before heading to the master bedroom.
He settled inside the walk-in closet and willed another Soylent Green, as the liquid, as milkshake appeared in front of him in that aluminum tin that would disappear as soon as he finished it.
This was his fifth can, and the taste really changed. While the first one was like a mixture of ketchup, mustard, and cake, the fifth tin tasted like sticky glue mixed with honey. A shiver went down his spine at the disgust, but Clark swallowed it down.
[Gold Ticket Acquired.]
|Happy Birthday to you! —- Survive your first birthday in a new world.|
Again, the notification came, and Clark sighed. The physical labor, while it made him more tired and thirsty, was good in that it helped a lot with Clark's grief.
It washed away most of his sadness and depression… For now, at least. He still had that hollow feeling in his chest, but Clark wasn't sure if that was due to being aimless or due to the loss of his relatives.
Still, he wanted a distraction. What better way to distract oneself than using the silver ticket-
[Heat Object]
|Common Ability|
Allows you to heat up any object by touching it. The more energy you expend, the hotter and faster you can get the target object to heat up.
Oh… So, he was a living microwave now…
Clark stared at the notification for a moment, then looked at his hands. The rings caught his attention, 'I'm really used to them by now.' But back to the topic of being a living microwave.
He flexed his fingers experimentally, focused on the aluminum tin still sitting in his lap, and felt something stir- a warmth that moved from somewhere in his chest, down his arm, out through his palm, and into the metal. The tin grew warm, then warmer. When he stopped, the last sip of the green stuff was letting out steam.
A moment later, he felt exhaustion hit him, catching him off guard for a moment. It felt like he had run up the stairs from his room in the basement to the living room, which normally wouldn't do anything. But it reminded him of the few times that he got hit with tiredness and heavy breathing.
Except that feeling persisted for another two minutes, as he recovered by doing nothing. The cost of heating the object wasn't as bad as he thought.
He thought of using his gold ticket, only to notice a silent feature that was unlocked in the item section of his power.
"What?" He let out, ignoring the sounds of growls and moans from outside as the night made it easy for sound to travel.
Immediately, he got hit with information on how it worked. With wide eyes, Clark willed the rings in his inventory, the loud screaming of his instinct making him flinch, but he could hold it back enough not to cower from the sound.
Instead, he put the Speckled Stoneplat Ring and Ring of Steel Protection in the two empty places, and his two items fused after his agreement.
The result was:
[Rendal's Speckled Signet]
|Rare Item|
This ring once belonged to Knight King Rendal, its band forged from steel and set with a speckled stoneplate —the symbol of a true knight. It grants its wearer enhanced defense against both physical and elemental attacks, embodying the strength to face any hardship. Fusion of two items: Speckled Stoneplat Ring and Ring of Steel Protection
Immediately, Clark equipped it, having one ring on one thumb.
The ring, compared to the other two, seemed far less attention-grabbing, as it appeared to be a simple silver ring that wrapped around his thumb. There were some designs on it, but it was already too dark to see them inside the closet.
That still left him with his gold ticket-
[Cat Form]
|Uncommon Ability|
You are able to turn into a cat or a cat hybrid at will. Gaining enhanced agility, senses, reflexes, claws, and sharp teeth, as well as any other characteristics the average Cat would possess.
Immediately, he felt the change in him, making him blink at the unusual ability. Clark was unsure how to react to the new ability and the way to activate it that came to him. And as if that wasn't enough, as soon as he got the ability, his instinct almost went to overdrive, as it called him to merge them.
Half-Light and Cat Form.
[Half Light]
|Uncommon Trait|
Disco Elysium - You are unnaturally attuned to your baser instincts, fight, flight, and fuck to the point where you can almost hear your instincts speaking to your ear. Honing this sense can help you in combat, gauge the strength of others, know when to run, etc., but on the other side, if you cannot learn to control this side of yourself, you can just as easily become a paranoid savage.
It was taken from his trait section and brought to the empty box. Clark then took the new unused ability of Cat Form and put it in the second box.
[Feral Instinct]
|Rare Trait|
Your body responds to danger before your mind can process it, muscles coiling and senses sharpening into something between human and beast. In moments of threat, you move with feline grace—reflexes heightened, pupils dilating, claws emerging from your fingertips as primal awareness floods your nervous system. This animalistic intuition lets you gauge threats and react with supernatural speed, but push too far, and you risk losing yourself to the predator within, thinking in nothing but hunt, kill, escape.
And again, Clark felt the change on an instinctual level. While before, his instinct was still that of a human, no matter how barbaric and savage he could turn into, he was still human. But now, he felt everything much clearer and sharper. His ears automatically picked up on sounds that his previous instincts simply didn't due to not being sharp enough.
While Half Light was whispers in his ears, dangers and noises, Feral Instinct was… breathing. Due to being used to the previous version, Clark finally realized how loud his being was to him as he let out a breath in the quietness.
Another thing that he picked up on was that he could see just a little better in the darkness. Before, the closet was dark enough that he couldn't really see his ring on his thumb, other than some silver shape.
But now, he could see it clearly, the shape at least. The designs still eluded him.
He could feel his fingertips ready to extend and his nails turning sharp like claws. With a reflex flex, they answered, turning hard and sharp. He didn't want to make any sound by dragging his nails through the wall or ground, so Clark simply intended them to relax, and they did.
Almost like flexing his muscles, but for his nails.
His ears caught the ghouls outside before he'd consciously registered the sound. Three of them, he'd guess, from the pattern of the shuffling. Two close together, one further back. Moving east, away from the house.
He hadn't decided to listen for that. His body had simply done it and handed him the information.
Feeling somewhat reassured, Clark Rogers slowly curled into himself like a feline, closing his eyes to sleep through the night for the first time in many days. His body was still tense and ready for danger, but it had learned to turn off half his brain so he could sleep while the rest remained on alert.
…
…
…
He didn't dream.
Or if he did, he didn't remember it, which amounted to the same thing. His body had apparently decided that he'd had enough of those and had taken the executive decision to simply turn off.
When he woke, it was still dark. Not the full dark of midnight but the particular gray-black of early morning, maybe an hour before sunrise.
His ears told him before his eyes did.
A small horde of ghouls, less than two dozen, were walking down the one street up. A ghoul, near the oak tree, the one Marcus had fallen out of, shuffling in a slow, directionless circle that suggested it had been doing that for a while and would continue until something gave it a reason not to.
Nothing immediate. Nothing urgent.
Clark uncurled slowly and sat up in the closet, his back protesting the wall and his neck protesting the angle. He stretched his jaw, then his shoulders, then his whole body, holding that stretch for a good three seconds.
A shiver of satisfaction ran down his spine, which Clark let it.
First real sleep in… he counted back. Genuinely couldn't remember.
He sat with that for a moment.
The hollow feeling was still there. He'd half-expected it to be gone after the sleep, the way bad feelings sometimes packed up and left overnight, leaving behind just a dull residue. But it was still present, the same shape and weight as last night, sitting in the center of his chest along with traumas and survivor's guilt.
But his Feral Instinct and Randal's Specklet Signet - Clark decided to call it Randal's Ring from now on- helped immensely with pushing down those guilts for another time. Especially his instinct, as it made him restless if he even thought of sitting down and throwing himself a pity party.
For his morning breakfast, he downed his green choice of food filled with nutrition and strange tastes. It was time to stockpile some, since they would only reset after use. But surprising himself, his mind trailed to another item that he had ignored till now.
Ancient Fruit Wine. Clark read the description once more to make sure before he willed it from his inventory.
The bottle, as expected, was just like a fancy wine bottle, but thankfully, the bottle was already open. Using his new instinct, he sniffed it and was blown away by the fruity smell, sweet- almost like a juice, but not quite yet.
Carefully, he took a sip of it from the bottle, noticing the counter time tick down as soon as he had, alongside his breakfast. Having been satisfied with Soylend Green, he chucked down the sweet liquid, the taste assaulting him and overwhelming him.
It was so sweet and warm and…
Gentle was another word as he gulped another six times, taking a break to breathe two lungs full of air, and then downing the fruit wine again.
His stomach immediately protested once he reached half the bottle, a hiccup leaving him, as it gurgled and hurt. Due to not eating for weeks, it had shrunk a lot. Yet Clark Rogers didn't let it adjust.
It was also Clark's first time ever tasting something this perfectly sweet that it matched his taste buds perfectly, both before and after the outbreak.
He should have stopped at the hiccup.
He knew he should have stopped at the hiccup. The hiccup was his body filing a formal complaint, and Clark Rogers, seventeen years old and the only person in a three-block radius, chose to ignore it the way he ignored most of his teachers at school because he was 'smarter than them.'
He took another pull from the bottle-
Before all of it came back up from his stomach. A gulp or two of the fruit wine and Soylend Green entered the bottle, as he threw up the rest of his stomach in the corner where he slept during the night.
A full minute of throwing up later, both the contents of his stomach and his stupidity, Clark marched out of the closet, fully embarrassed and really happy that he was alone, the bottle with a mixture of vomit and fruit wine still in his hands.
"..." He looked at it before putting it down on the vanity of his aunt, walking away from it, his cheek still red from his indulgence.
—-----------------------
??? POV:
The horde behind them was the sloppy kind. Not coordinated, not fast, just numerous enough that running stopped being optional about four blocks back, and now Dex's legs were filing the kind of complaints that didn't have a polite version.
"Left-" Reyes hissed, and Dex cut left without thinking, ducking through the gap between a pickup truck and somebody's collapsed fence, the sound of the horde behind them doing that thing it did when it picked up a scent, that shift from directionless shuffling to something with a little more intent behind it.
Thankfully, there weren't any runners or other variants of them in the horde. There was one, which they immediately shot down. An undead with wasps covering it. And that's how they were being chased by a horde.
"House-" That was Milo, already three steps ahead, because Milo was always three steps ahead, which was the only thing Dex liked about him. "Blue one, door's open-"
They didn't discuss it. Discussion was for later. Right now it was just feet on pavement and the collective understanding that stopping was dying.
Dex hit the front door behind Milo and Reyes, and Torres came in last, pulling it shut behind him and holding it there for a moment, all four of them pressed into a hallway that smelled like something had gone wrong in it a while ago, breathing hard and listening.
The horde passed.
Not fast. Nothing they did was fast. But it moved, the sound of it peaking outside the door and then slowly, slowly thinning as it drifted down the street following something that wasn't them.
Nobody moved until it was gone.
"Clear?" Reyes asked.
Dex checked his corners. Living room, empty. Kitchen, empty. No movement from upstairs.
"Clear." He confirmed.
Torres let go of the door and pressed his back against the wall and slid down it until he was sitting on the hallway floor, chest heaving. "I'm too old for this." He announced.
"You're thirty-two." Milo said.
"In apocalypse years that's sixty at least."
Dex stepped over Torres's legs and moved into the living room, cataloguing out of habit. The place had been stripped, which wasn't surprising. Most of Macon had been stripped. But someone had been through it recently enough that the dust patterns on the shelves weren't settled, and there was a couch that had been shoved back from the door by the look of the carpet drag marks.
Recent. He filed that away.
"What's the tally?" Reyes asked, dropping herself onto the couch and pulling her bag onto her lap.
Milo crouched by his own pack and started unloading. "Four cans, a box of crackers that's only about half full, the knife I traded off that family by the creek-"
"You robbed and killed them, you mean," Torres said.
"I didn't. It's not my fault we're dealing with idiots who can't even look after themselves." Milo's tone had the particular flatness of someone who had already had this conversation internally and reached a conclusion he was comfortable with. "I'm not gonna do it for them. Anyway, lastly, the package from that farm."
"How much'd they give up?" He asked.
"Enough." Milo's mouth curved. "Boss'll be pleased."
"Boss." Torres made the word sound like something you'd scrape off a boot. "Boss and his whole circle'll be pleased, you mean. We haul it back, and suddenly there's a lot of mouths between us and the meat."
Dex sat down in the armchair across from Reyes. "There's gonna be meat?"
Dex leaned back and stared at the water-stained ceiling. "I haven't had pork since before all this." He said. "Real pork. Hot pork." A pause. "Do you know how long it's been since I've had something that came off an animal on purpose and wasn't a squirrel?"
"Oh, here we go," Torres muttered.
"I'm just saying-"
"You say it every time we come back from a collection run." Torres said. "Every single time. 'Oh man, I can't wait to eat meat.' Every time, Dex."
"Because every time I mean it." Dex sat forward. "And every time, by the time it actually gets cooked and served, the boss and Harlan and Chen and whoever else is sitting at the main table have already gone through most of it. And we get the-" He gestured vaguely. "The situation."
"The situation." Reyes agreed, without looking up from sorting her bag.
"I'm just saying." Dex repeated. "We carried it. We should eat it."
"You want to tell the boss that?" Torres asked.
"I want someone to." A beat. "I want someone to cut a little something off the back end before it gets weighed and accounted for. Just a little. Just enough that a man can remember what it tastes like."
Milo looked up from his pack.
The look that passed between the four of them was the kind that didn't need words to have a full conversation. Dex watched it go around the room. Torres, who had objected to everything for the last ten minutes, did not object to this. Reyes's mouth did something that wasn't quite a smile but was in the same neighborhood.
"Before the weigh-in." Milo said.
"Before the weigh-in." Dex confirmed.
"If Harlan finds out-" Torres started.
"Harlan won't find out." Reyes said. "Harlan can't count past eight without using his fingers."
Torres sat there for a moment.
"Just a little off the back end." He said.
"Just a little." Dex agreed.
That was settled then. Dex exhaled and looked around the room properly for the first time since they'd come through the door, the edge of the adrenaline finally flattening out into something manageable. The place was empty and quiet and ugly and smelled bad, but those were three things all places had in common these days, so he stopped registering them and started registering useful things instead.
"Anyone check the kitchen?" He asked.
"Nothing," Milo said. "Already looked. Somebody went through it clean."
Dex nodded. He got up anyway, the habit of checking things himself too ingrained to skip, and moved through to the kitchen. Milo was right. The cupboards were stripped, the drawers pulled. He ran a hand behind the bottom shelf of the pantry out of habit and found nothing but dust and one very expired packet of instant oatmeal.
He walked upstairs, turning to the bathroom, only to turn back when he spotted the vanity through the open bedroom door.
More specifically, what was sitting on it.
He crossed the bedroom without really deciding to and picked it up. A wine bottle, open, mostly empty from the weight of it, stoppered with what looked like a rolled-up piece of the label.
He held it up toward the window.
Maybe a third left inside, sloshing dark against the glass.
"Hey." He called back toward the living room. "Come look at this."
The other three appeared in the doorway.
"Wine?" Torres said.
"Fancy wine. Look at the bottle." Dex turned it so they could see the label, the embossed lettering, the particular design that said someone had paid real money for this once. "Ancient Fruit, whatever that means. Someone had taste."
"Someone had taste and left it behind." Reyes said, frowning slightly.
"Their loss." Milo crossed the room and took it from Dex, pulled out the makeshift stopper, and brought it to his nose.
The smell hit him first, and his expression shifted. The sharp, complex sweetness of whatever was actually in the bottle was strong enough to cut through the particular background odor of the house, which was saying something, because the house smelled genuinely terrible.
"Oh." Milo said.
"Good?" Torres asked.
"Sweet. Real sweet." Milo tilted it toward the light again. "Fruity."
"Some poor bastard opened a bottle of good wine in the middle of the apocalypse," Dex said, looking around the room. His eyes snagged on the closet door, slightly ajar, and he pushed it open with one finger.
The smell that came out of the closet was considerably more specific than the general background smell of the house.
All four of them looked at the corner of the closet floor.
A beat of silence.
"Oh no." Reyes said.
"Poor guy." Torres said, with what sounded like genuine sympathy.
"Drank the whole bottle," Dex concluded, doing the math. "Hadn't eaten properly in however long, cracked open the fancy wine, and-" He gestured at the closet floor. "That's the whole story right there."
"Died happy, probably." Milo said, which was a generous interpretation.
Torres shook his head with the particular expression of a man who had seen worse and was still capable of being sad about this. "Didn't even finish the bottle." He said mournfully.
"Still a third left." Milo raised it again, looking at the remaining dark liquid. "Waste not."
"That bottle was sitting in a room with-" Reyes started.
"The smell of wine is stronger." Milo said, with the confidence of a man who had already made his decision.
"Milo-"
He took a long pull from the bottle.
The room waited.
Milo lowered it.
His face did not move for one full second. It was the face of a man whose brain had received information and was taking its time deciding what to do with it. Then something happened behind his eyes. Then the information reached his mouth.
"What." He said. Not a question. Just the word, flat and alone.
"What?" Dex asked.
Milo looked at the bottle.
"What is-" He stopped. His throat moved. "That's not-"
"What?" Torres was on his feet now.
Milo held the bottle out, the way a man presents evidence in court, his expression moving through several stages of something that hadn't finished resolving yet. "That is not wine." He said.
Dex took the bottle from him and sniffed it.
The sweet smell was definitely there. Beneath it was something else.
Beneath it was several other things.
He looked at the bottle. He looked at the closet. He looked at the bottle again.
"Milo." He said.
"Don't." Milo said.
"Milo, I think-"
"I said don't."
Reyes had her hand over her mouth. Torres had taken two full steps backward for reasons he probably couldn't have articulated.
"Someone topped it up." Dex said, because he felt the situation required stating plainly.
"With what." Milo said. Still not a question. A man buying himself time.
"With." Dex looked at the closet.
Milo turned and looked at the closet.
There was a long silence.
"I drank someone's-" Milo started.
"Yeah." Dex said.
Reyes made a sound behind her hand that was trying very hard not to be a laugh and failing at the edges.
"That is-" Milo stopped again. "That is the single worst-" He stopped a third time. His hand came up and pressed flat against his mouth. "I'm going to be sick."
"Not in the closet." Torres said immediately. "There's already-"
"I know what's in the closet!" Milo's voice cracked slightly on the last word.
======================
AN: Yo, another chapter for you guys.
This one would be a followed after of the previous one. The main content for chapter 7 was bringing in the fusion of abilties, traits, and items. Not to mention, I had an opportunity to show Clark's maturity and wisdom as him being a 17 years old with no supervision.
I could have ended the chapter with him regreting his descision, but the bottle on the table tempted me to create a comedic scenerio. You can ignore it or not, it's up to you guys.
For now, here's all of Clark's rolls. The result of the fusions are shown, while the original items are deleted from the status:
PS: Let me know if I should add the descriptions alongside the items?
Name: Clark Rogers
Abilities: Sharpen, View Earth, Heat Object
Traits: Animal Lover, Feral Instinct
Skills: Intermediate Physics, Novice Performance, Novice Cooking
Items: Ancient Fruit Wine, Scrap Iron Candy, Astral Injection, Soylent Green, Rendal's Speckled Signet