Alan at least had the common courtesy to turn his head away before spewing the soda in his mouth out onto the floor. As it started to soak into the floor of the first apartment they secured, Clay's first thought was ants. That sugary sweet wet patch was going to attract ants.
He caught himself. Had he really just thought that?
"Blehh!" Alan made a face at Clay, stared at him for a second, then repeated, "Blehh!"
"Not a fan, I reckon," Clay keenly observed.
After dispatching the zombies, Clay and Alan retreated back to the first apartment they’d secured in case the noise they’d made attracted any more. After waiting a while, they’d returned to scouring the complex and ended up killing plenty more zombies. Progress was slow, but they'd built a rhythm that had let them secure all the way up to the fifth (of seven) floor before Alan had realized that it was starting to get dark outside.
It was getting closer to the winter months now, which meant the sun set sooner. Even if they’d left at the moment of realization without picking which loot to bring back, there wasn't any guarantee they'd make it back to Alan's home before it got dark enough that the Spookers would come out to play.
So it was decided they'd be staying the night in that first apartment and take the extra time to finish clearing the building of any threats. It hadn't gone perfectly, but the amount of mishaps was low, and their severity was negligible. Now that Clay had Alan there watching out for him, the minor problems he had never spiraled out of his control anymore.
Luckily, there also hadn't been any special types of infected to cause them problems. It was Crowders all the way up.
Once every hallway and apartment they could easily get into was clear, they’d moved back down to the first floor with the intent to rest up before it got really dark and they ended up having to navigate the building with flashlights. However, Alan had singled out a locked door and decided to use a few of his more questionable tools to unlock it.
They'd have to do this with all of the locked apartments at some point, something he’d seemed giddy to dive into, but he restrained himself to just this one for the evening.
No zombies had been waiting for them, but instead a few things of interest. Clay had entered the room of what he suspected was a teenage boy and walked out with a small stack of books, both comic and otherwise. When he’d met back up with Alan in the main room, he was excitedly holding up a can of Dr. HurtsYou soda and a small bag of coffee beans.
The can had been sitting in a powerless fridge at room temperature for four years, but Alan had seemed plenty willing to give it a try. Clay advised against it…yet he had also become very curious what four years would do to a soda. Would it still be any good?
After a bit more scavenging and moving things to the first apartment, as well as covering up any windows with bookcases to reduce the risk of their flashlights attracting attention, Clay sat on a couch across from a recliner that Alan was relaxing in while taking a good sip out of the can. He’d expected something, but hadn’t thought Alan would just suddenly spit it out like that.
"It's all flat…and got this really shitty metallic taste to it. Can't have shit anymore, man." Alan gingerly placed the can on a small table next to the recliner as if he was saving it for later, but he couldn't even bring himself to look at it anymore.
"I don't know for sure, but I think glass bottles might do a better job maintaining the taste," Clay offered while diverting his attention to his status screen to see how far he'd come. Alan had let him do most of the killing, but sometimes there were situations where he'd needed to step in.
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You are Clay
HEALTH: 0/0 | STAMINA: 0/4
---
LEVEL: 1/11 | EXP: 715/1000 | SKILLS: 2/3
---
STAT POINTS: 0/5 | SKILL POINTS: 0/5
---
BODY -
Strength: 2 | Speed: 0 | Resilience: 0 | Endurance: 2
MIND -
🔒 | 🔒 | 🔒 | 🔒
HEART -
🔒 | 🔒 | 🔒 | CIDURAC
---
-SKILLS-
[IMMUNITY - LV 2] | [SOUND OF SILENCE - LV 1]
---
-ACHIEVEMENTS-
(+1 Max Level | +2 Skill Slots)
---
CURRENT WORLD: Dead and Dying
OBJECTIVE: Survive
TIME REMAINING: ???
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He was much closer to leveling up than he'd been at the beginning of the day. It was stressful work, but if he and Alan could keep up this pace, getting stronger wouldn't be a dream.
"Yeah? That'd be nice." Alan swished some water in his mouth and spat that out onto the floor as well. It was fortunate that he hadn't been facing Clay after that, because he would have definitely seen the younger man narrowing his eyes in disgust. "There's tons of shit I miss, like going to the range or hitting up the ping-pong tables with the boys, but I'd have given all that up if I could keep a steady flow of Dr. HurtsYou…and Bunker Beans coffee, too!"
Clay's eyes narrowed a little more.
"What about you, genius?" Alan asked while pulling the lever on the side of the chair and reclining back, "What do you spend long nights wishing you had? 'Sides a girlfriend."
If Clay's eyes narrowed any further, they'd be closed. When he didn't immediately respond, Alan turned to look at him. In the time it took for him to turn his head, Clay's entire posture changed so that it appeared he'd been looking over pilfered books the entire time.
No Mystery Man comics, unfortunately.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
"I miss going on my computer, but I think the thing that I miss as much as you miss Bunker Bean would be…" Clay considered without looking up. "Air conditioning."
"Ha!" Alan barked, "I hear that! It's been so long that I totally forgot about air conditioning!"
Clay's body stiffened at Alan's volume, which Alan seemed to take notice of.
"Heh, oh yeah. Usually I'm at home by the time I'm relaxing like this, so I went into safe-mode for a second there. Sorry."
Clay glanced at the barricaded window. "Speaking of which, is it really okay that we aren't heading back today? Milly's probably starting to worry."
"Probably, but it ain't no big thing. I've had to spend the night in weird places before and things turned out fine. They got enough supplies to last a few months without me, but the longest I've ever stayed out was…maybe three days?" Alan motioned towards the window. "And we definitely ain't staying that long. Once the sun comes up, we're gonna load up our bags and make the first trip back to the house to give 'em proof of life. Then we're dragging our asses back here and looting until we've milked this place dry."
Clay didn't see any problems with that, so he just nodded and loosened the cap on his water bottle while Alan continued speaking.
"Oh, and I also gotta say that I'm a pretty big fan of your arms-first maneuver. Going for the neck or the head is usually gonna make for a quicker kill, but I'm not against loppin' off the grabbers in a straight-up fight."
Clay finished sipping from his bottle to respond, "It's only good when the number of zombies is low, I think. Given your experience, you probably had to have done the arms-first maneuver a few times yourself and worked out that weakness on your own."
Alan shrugged. "Maybe I've cut off an arm or two, but I can’t even remember that for sure. You gotta remember that us normal folk don't have V-man immunity, so we usually like to kill Crowders before they even realize we're there, and that's when we have to kill them. I've probably killed more Crowders today than I have in the past few months, if I'm being honest. Arms-first is perfect for dudes like you who can take the risk of being bitten."
"Fair enough…"
Right. Normal people, people who didn't get experience points and level up from killing zombies, would probably prefer not to fight unless they had to. Alan was only going out of his way so he could invest in Clay's potential.
Speaking of investing in me…
Clay opened up a packet of crackers he'd found and brought one close to his coat pocket for Kissy to begin biting into.
If it weren't for the rat, he'd probably never have met Alan in the first place. Looked like the price of one candy bar ended up getting it pretty far.
Clay continued, "I think I'd prefer something with a little more range, though. Maybe…a spear? That'd be pretty easy to make with a broom, a knife, and some duct tape."
"Only problem with that is it'd be hard to move with it." Alan moved his hand side to side. "Well, more like it's not something a scavenger like me would find all that appealing. I like to have both hands at the ready when I'm not killing a zombie, but I also like to be able to get my weapon out in a split second. A spear would also probably need a holster on the backpack to be able to travel, so it wouldn't be a speedy enough grab. Climbing through a window with it jutting up would be a real pain, too…"
He gave Clay a bemused glance. "But I guess someone who's lookin' for trouble would probably find a spear pretty useful. I like to keep it stealthy, but you get face-to-face enough that you could justify it."
Clay nodded without saying anything. He didn't have anything constructive to add to the conversation when Alan laid things out for him like this, so the best thing he could do was listen. It felt awkward to just let him do all the talking, though…
"On another note, I'll stay on the lookout for that soda you like," Clay said. "If there's a supermarket in the area, I think it's likely to have a few brands in glass bottles if they're big names."
"Hey, I appreciate the thought." Alan's face had a knowing smile. "Downside is that all of the supermarkets I know about around here are already either looted or infested. Usually both."
Clay had expected him to say something like that. Still, it wasn’t impossible that he could find a glass bottle of Dr. HurtsYou in a fridge somewhere like they had with that can…
But Alan went on, "'Cept maybe for that Ball-Mart a drifter told me about. It's outside the city and word is that zombies more or less steer clear from it for some reason."
Clay raised an eyebrow. "Is it far away?"
Alan leaned farther back into the recliner, shotgun on his lap, while he closed his eyes in thought. "It'd be a full day's walk just to get there, not including the extra maneuvering we'd have to do to make sure we didn't run into any Crowders. Even if it were a little easier to get to, I probably wouldn't bother."
"Why? Because it wouldn't be worth the trip?" Clay asked. If they didn't have anything to transport huge amounts of supplies at once, it'd be better to stick to looting like this.
"It ain't all logistics, genius. I'd just hate to come face-to-face with whatever it is in there that's scaring away the zombies." He huffed. "Even the shit we've been doing today is something I don't usually do unless I got somebody backing me up. At least, not at this level."
So this excursion had been a break from the usual routine? He should have guessed that.
Clay took his shoes off. "Did you use to do more stuff like this in the past?"
"Yeah, sorta."
And that was the end of that topic. Alan spoke up again before the silence could ferment for too long.
"One other thing, genius. It's pretty obvious you're not used to shooting." To his credit, Alan continued without waiting for Clay to ask how he could tell. "The way you get all close before firing is a big hint, but mostly it's the way you let the kickback rock your arm up because you don't steady your aim with both hands. Shooting a revolver that strong with one hand as a limp-wristed rookie—you're lucky it didn't fly out of your hand."
Maybe it's the points I put into Strength.
"Anyway, what I'm getting at is that we're gonna need to get you more experience shooting things that aren't right in front of you. Guns are meant to take things down before they get close, y'know?"
"Yeah, I get it," Clay said blandly.
"Don't get mopey, kid," Alan grinned. "You still did plenty good for your first real outing."
"I'm not getting mopey. I think I'm just tired, is all." Clay's hands toyed with one of the books he’d found. "Hey, I was just wondering, do you not have a ton of ammo for your shotgun?"
Alan blinked.
"I know you said that we couldn't rely on your shotgun because ammo is a resource, but the fact that we didn't end up using it even once…I just think it could have been useful when we had to deal with those three zombies in the one apartment earlier."
Alan didn't answer his question immediately, which made Clay nervous. The friendly atmosphere made him feel more comfortable to question things, but he still wasn't entirely sure whether or not this man was someone who didn't like having his rationale closely examined.
However, it appeared that Alan had just been taking a second to consider how to properly put his thoughts into words that Clay could understand.
"Well…" He still sounded casual, but now it felt slightly forced to Clay's ears. "I have plenty of ammo at home, but I can only carry so much with me when I go out. If things had gotten real hairy, I wouldn't have minded taking a shot, but I like to conserve them for other reasons besides just not being wasteful."
"What sort of reasons?"
"Taking shots at Crowders when you don't need to is just risky for no good reason, but being able to save yourself from something like a Jumper or a Cutter is worth making a little noise. So saving my shots for the real bad zombies is one reason."
Cutter? Clay hadn't asked for as much extra information from Alan during that two week reprieve as he should have. He'd spent most of that time either delivering rations, helping Milly, or alone in the room they set aside for him.
Alan's reasoning didn't end there, though. "But the biggest reason is people. I need my gun loaded and ready for if I meet another survivor."
Now Clay was the one blinking.
"I don't just go around shooting people, genius. If I did, you and me probably wouldn't even be having this talk. It's just that this whole thing…society going to shit, it's made people go crazy. They ain't acting the way they used to." Alan took his fisherman's hat off of his head and rested it in his lap along with his shotgun. "People used to be neighborly. Now you gotta worry about getting held up or shot every time you meet someone new. Times must be making them desperate."
"Or maybe society collapsing just revealed who they really were all along," Clay said without thinking about it, then chided himself. Why say something so pessimistic and contrarian for no reason? All talk like that would probably do is make him look immature.
But Alan's response didn't give the impression of annoyance, or even hard disagreement.
"Maybe. Maybe. Even if that's the truth, the ones that were secretly bad all along never bothered me until all this. Maybe not even they knew they were bad until they got put into a bad position." Alan clicked his teeth. "Maybe even someone who's good to the core could go bad if that position were bad enough."
"I think there's truth to that, too. I've heard a lot about how overall decent people end up becoming completely different once they spend a couple of years in prison. Still, I wonder if bad circumstances can excuse the sort of terrible things people do sometimes."
"Yeah, it can get real complicated. The only thing a dummy like me thinks on is whether or not someone is trying to kill or rob me; either one puts my people in a bad spot. Makes me do shit I don't wanna do, you know?"
Clay laid down on the couch, resting his head against one of its soft arms at the same time that Kissy slipped out of his pocket and scampered along his body so she could hop over to the table next to Alan's recliner and try to drink some of his forgotten soda.
"You ever had to kill someone?" Clay asked.
Alan hesitated, but answered, "Yeah. It was me or him, and I'd choose me any day of the week if I could do it again, but I was a little shocked at how good I did. Even though he started it, he was all panicky and wasting ammo all over the place once shots started a-firing. Me? I don't think my hands ever felt so steady, and my head was clearer than it'd ever been. I was more scared of how not scared I was."
Clay didn't say anything. He lay there wondering why Alan, unprompted, was giving him so many details. They weren't exactly friends, more like something between strangers and acquaintances, so why was he opening up so much?
"I didn't even feel bad about it until I was walking home. Killin' people definitely does something to your soul, makes you feel like a bad guy, but I guess it's not something you always feel in the moment. I hope you never gotta know what I'm talking about." Alan said, a little awkwardly.
Clay realized that this was probably the first time Alan had ever recounted this story out loud.
He understood it. Alan couldn't bring some of these darker moments home, couldn't describe how he killed people in the heat of the moment with a disturbing coldness that he hadn't realized he was capable of. In front of his people, Alan had to act like he had everything under control. Even if they likely suspected what sort of things could happen, he couldn't confide in them.
What would his daughter think if she knew her father was a killer? At her age, would she understand that he did what he had to do, that he did it for her?
There weren’t any working therapists now, so the best he could do was the younger man he’d beat into submission two weeks ago.
"I probably won't," Clay admitted, "I don't think I can kill people. Even killing zombies tends to make me feel bad."
Alan chuckled good-naturedly. "Well, it probably ain’t a good fit for the world as it is, but I don't hate that kinda attitude."
"Uhh, don't get the wrong idea. I don't think I hate the idea of killing people because I'm such a great guy or anything…"
After finally being able to get her face into the can enough to lick up some soda, Kissy immediately yanked her head out and ran away from it like she'd been bitten by another animal.
Clay hardly noted it. "Once you start killing people, it means you're prepared to accept the idea someone might kill you, too. I don’t like pain, so I don't want to accept life-or-death battles as a requirement to live. Even if logic and Darwin say that I'm in the wrong."
He glanced over towards Alan, who'd covered his eyes with his fisherman's hat. "Even if it's cowardly, I believe that sort of thinking is normal, something most people can relate to. Which is why someone like you, who can put that aside and risk his life all the time, can't be anything except…cool?"
"Haha!" Alan's body jolted as he let out a loud laugh as if releasing all the tension in his body at once.
Clay's face started to burn. He let himself get a little carried away because he wanted to make Alan feel alright after opening up so much, but…
"Cool? Shit, I was not expecting to hear that." Alan said in between childish giggles.
Aren't you, like, 45 years old?
He calmed down before long and peeked at Clay from under his hat. "Can't believe I let the topic get all heavy. Sorry about that, genius. I guess it's just easier for things to take a turn like that when it starts getting late."
Clay waited until Alan was no longer looking at him to roll his eyes. "It's fine. I was the one who suddenly asked about killing people…"
"But if I can say one more thing on it before it gets to be sleeping time, I'd want to say that I like where your head is at…and also you have to stay up for a few more hours to keep watch in case anything happens."
Clay sat up all at once.
"Huh?" He hadn't meant for it to come out so dejected.
"Yeah, wake me up in a while and we'll switch." Alan turned over onto his side. "You got extra stamina from your V-Man powers, right? You'll be fine."
But my Stamina ran out a long time ago! I've been on my actual reserves for like half the time…
"A-Alright. Sounds good…"
Even Kissy had curled up in one of his shoes by now.
At least the books gave him something to do.
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A week passed without major incident. Clay and Alan settled things in their first building within two days, then moved on to the next one. Many zombies were killed and much loot was secured, though there was still a worrying lack of Clay's favorite comics.
He still scrounged up whatever books he could and even ended up cultivating a small collection that he kept in boxes underneath his bed.
Most importantly, in an alleyway on the way to a gas station they were planning to plunder, Alan watched on as Clay killed another armless zombie with growing ease. Immediately after, Clay heard a cheery tune play in his head.
>+10 XP!
>(Clay)'s Soul grows in size!
>You have leveled up! (2)
>+2 Stat Points! | +2 Skill Points!
Finally!
"Alan! It says I leveled up!" Clay shouted excitedly.
"I honestly forgot that's why we were going out of our way to kill these guys."
>Applying Benefactor Bonus!
What?
>Benefactor Bonus is [Wheel of Welter]!
>Will you spin the wheel?