Chapter 2:
'How do I even-'
A sudden jolt ran down his spine, and not a second later:
[Sharpen]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to sharpen objects you are touching; you can sharpen a blade until its blade is monomolecular.
'Huh…' Clark let out, feeling something foreign drip down his body, but inside, as his first and new ability settled in. Instinctively, he could already feel the knowledge being with him, as if he had it since puberty.
Which was a couple of years later than everyone else.
Making sure not to make any noise, he slowly picked up his pipe and focused-
'Yep, it's there.' Clark thought, as he could feel and see the pipe in his hand sharpen, as if it were a blade.
Which was great, because now, he didn't have to use all his force to bust down a ghoul's head.
Deciding to push away the temptation to swing his metal weapon around, he went back to the mental text, saying that he now had two golden tickets.
With another intent of use-
[View Earth]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to share your vision with the earth, feeling everything the earth feels, and knowing the location of everything inside the earth. The default range is 30 meters, which can be increased with training.
Another influx of knowledge and instinct was rammed into him, inducing a little bit of headache, but unlike the Sharpen ability, he couldn't directly use it. The reason being, he was limited to one.
Thankfully, with all of these weird things, the knowledge of how to switch between abilities also came to him, and the limits. He couldn't switch abilities whenever he liked. If he wanted to switch Sharpen with View Earth, he could, but it would put the first ability in a cooldown period of half an hour. And if he got another ability and switched that with View Earth, then it would put the second ability in the cooldown period.
Which, while useful, Clark didn't hesitate to switch the two. At least for now, since he could test it.
A thought, and he felt the connection settle inside him. In a radius of 30 meters around him, he could pick up the earth and only the earth. The floor of the house that he had settled in for the night, he felt nothing, nor the streets covered by tar or driveways by concrete. Those were his blind spots.
But he could feel the dirt underneath them.
Useful, but also very… bad for his current situation due to being surrounded by a small horde. The gunshot to John Walker's head certainly didn't help the matter, but well. He didn't want to become a ghoul, and who was Clark Rogers to refuse?
Getting up from his place, he slowly and cautiously walked up to the windows covered by the blinds, watching as the ghouls walked around in their signature way of limping, some even on the closet doors of the houses nearby, knocking or trying to turn the knobs to enter.
He spotted one ghoul, a fat one, honestly, turn the knob of the house right next to him, opening the house and moaning its way in. He kept down his goosebumps as he slowly backed off, making sure the blinds didn't blow from any sudden movement.
He was almost clear of the window when his eyes caught them.
Two ghouls. Standing in the middle of the street, facing his direction. They weren't limping around aimlessly like the others. They weren't clawing at doors or bumping into fences.
They were just... looking. Right at his window.
Clark froze.
One of them was a woman, or had been. Office clothes, what remained of them. The other was shorter, younger, maybe a teenager like him once upon a time. Both of their milky, dead eyes were fixed somewhere just above the blind he'd been peeking through.
Had they seen him move it?
A second passed. Two. Three.
Then the woman's jaw dropped open, a low, guttural moan leaving her throat, and her feet began shuffling. Toward the house. The younger one followed without hesitation, that same hollow sound rising from it as well, like an echo.
They weren't running, which was a plus.
Clark exhaled slowly through his nose and stepped back from the window, pressing himself flat against the wall. He listened for a moment before backing off the window and doors, towards his backpack.
For a moment, just one moment, Clark Rogers was ready to break down and start sobbing, but he held it back, wiping the small tears from his face, and started to think about which escape plan to use.
He thought back to Sharpen, but there were still 28 minutes left before he could switch. With his use of View Earth, he picked up on the fact that the backyard was still somewhat empty since last time he checked. There were two "sleeping" ghouls by the fence on the other side, but that's all.
The neighbors were also somewhat empty, a couple simply standing still or just bashing their heads on the wall.
He gulped, moving to check with his own eyes- yep, the backyard was empty, safe for the two sleeping ghouls. There were an additional two others that were standing on a covered surface on the neighbors' side that he didn't pick up on with View Earth.
Click.
The front door knob. Turning.
Clark's whole body locked up. Not a flinch, not a step, just a full, involuntary freeze, like his nervous system had hit a wall. His heart slammed against his ribs hard enough that he was almost convinced the ghouls could hear it.
Click. Click.
It turned again. Then again. Persistent in that dumb, animal way, they sometimes got. They had no real understanding of what a doorknob was anymore because they were DEAD, just a hand that had grabbed something and kept applying pressure out of some broken, leftover muscle memory.
A shiver ran through him before he could stop it. He hated that. He hated that his body still did that- still reacted like a scared kid, even after everything. He pressed his back against the wall beside the kitchen and forced himself to breathe through his nose. Slow. Even.
Everything was already covered up. The windows and the doors were shut and locked, even the backyard one.
Don't move. Don't make noise. Just wait.
The knob rattled again, harder this time, and Clark's jaw clenched so tight it ached.
Is it just one?
That was the question.
One ghoul bumbling around and grabbing a knob out of reflex was manageable. One ghoul was almost routine at this point. But if that moan outside had carried- if the two from the street had drawn others, if there was a cluster forming on the other side of that door right now. It would only be a matter of time-
He made himself stop that line of thinking.
One problem at a time.
He counted in his head. One. Two. Three. Kept his eyes on the door, watching the knob, the faint shift in the light on the peephole. He could only pick up movement from where he was, not how many there were. But even he could hear them.
Shuffling, not stomping.
No secondary moans bleeding in from outside, no chorus of them- just the one, dull and close.
Click.
Then nothing.
The shadow behind the door shifted. Then moved away.
Clark didn't move for another full ten seconds, counting each and dragging it enough that each second was in fact its own ten. Once he reached ten, he restarted, his eyes on the front door's peephole, seeing the figure just standing there.
Clark wasn't sure how long he stayed that way, making sure his exhale was slow and calm, even if it was shaky, and unstable, and his inhales weren't sharp in fear that the thing outside would notice it.
His hands, he noticed, were trembling slightly. He looked at them for a second, almost detached about it, then made a hard fist and reopened his hand.
Still trembling.
Then the gunshots went off.
Three of them. Rapid. Close enough that Clark felt them in his chest before he heard them properly, the sound cracking through the quiet neighborhood like the world splitting open, and his heart, his heart just left his body.
He bit down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper.
Don't make a sound. Don't make a-
The neighborhood answered.
His knees almost gave up, but he didn't let them. Instead, he slid down the wall and hugged his knees as close to his chest as he could.
The moans and hollow groans started out like fireworks as the horde answered the call.
It started with one. Then three. Then it became louder, the sound travelling further than usual due to the time of the day and the quietness of it all. The ghouls' hungry calls were like a dinner bell for those further away, as if they were communicating.
Clark pressed his back harder against the wall, as if he could melt into it- wishing he could at least.
Through View Earth, he felt them. Not all of them, the tar and concrete swallowed most of his range, but the ones on dirt, on grass, on the narrow strip of soil between sidewalk and road.
Dozens of them. Moving. Converging. All drifting in the same general direction as the gunshots, which meant they were drifting past him, which was good, but the sheer amount of information bleeding through his ability made his head swim.
He killed View Earth before the input made him actually sick.
The moaning was bad enough on its own without feeling it too.
He could feel them marching down the street, and it was terrifying, giving him the impression they could probably run down any house in their path.
His legs moved before he made the decision to move them, crawling, as silently and as low as possible towards the kitchen area, testing every floorboard to make sure there won't be a creak.
Otherwise, the dozens of ghouls would turn to him and make him the dinner.
The kitchen tile was ice cold, and it helped a little in resetting his brain, but Clark continued to crawl towards the cabinet under the sink.
It was completely empty. He checked when he looted it.
He opened the door as slowly as he had ever opened anything in his life, wincing at the faint creak.
Then he folded himself inside, sticking as close to the wall as possible while using his hiking backpack as a second line of defense, the first being the cabinet door.
It was tight. He was seventeen and not exactly small, but he'd make do. It was either this or lose his mind outside of the cabinet. At least, in this small and tight space, he could feel his heart slowing just a little.
Something hit the kitchen window. A palm- not that he could see it- flat, sliding down the glass. Then gone.
He didn't move.
He couldn't move.
But he commanded his lungs to breathe and his heart to slow down a little. His limbs, in the quiet space, didn't have the room to shake.
Outside, the horde rolled through the neighborhood like a slow tide, formless and inevitable, the sound of it peaking and then, gradually, mercifully, beginning to thin. The moaning didn't stop. It just drifted. Following the gunshots, following whatever poor idiot had fired three rounds in the middle of a quiet neighborhood and essentially rung the dinner bell for every ghoul within a half-mile radius.
Clark hoped they were still alive.
He didn't have a lot of hope left to spend, but he directed some of it there anyway.
Speaking of hope, he turned his attention back to the last golden ticket remaining. Distraction was another form of coping that he had picked up after killing his parents. With a thought-
[Buerocrats Eye]
|Uncommon Trait|
You have the eye of a bureaucrat, allowing you to easily understand all legal jargon and loopholes in contracts as well as being able to quickly brief documents. This will definitely save you some time in any world with an established government.(If not, the ticket this trait came from can be rerolled)
Oh… Well, Clark wasn't sure how to react to that. The trait could have been useful a couple of years ago, but now, it is nothing. Thankfully, he had another chance, and Clark immediately took it.
[Ring of Steel Protection]
|Uncommon Item|
This ring belonged to the Knight King Rendal. It grants its wearer protection by boosting defense against physical attacks.
He didn't know who this Rendal was, and he didn't care much. It might have been an item from the Middle Ages or even past that time period, but it didn't matter.
What mattered was that right now, he had a ring on his thumb. A ring that "belonged" to his dad, and after he killed him, it was passed to him. It felt weird to Clark for a moment, as the information clashed with what he knew.
But he didn't complain.
It helped give him a sense of security and calmed him down further. With a sigh, he quietly let his head rest on the wall, rubbing his arms to warm himself up a little.
Hopefully, tomorrow, there will be far fewer ghouls around him. From there, he would spend another few hours looting the houses and even grocery stores before he make his way to Macon.
At least, that was his goal. His uncles and aunties were in that city, and if they were lucky, maybe they made it out and were hidden in some corner of the city.
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AN:
Hello hello. A small chapter 2 upload. Don't have much to say except stay well and have a good day.