Chapter 30:
The walk south took longer than Clark hoped it would, but he didn't rush the dozen people behind him more than needed. Yes, he worried about others back at the farm. But these people needed a bit of time to get themselves back together.
From what he could see, there were two groups. One that was following Rick Grimms, and the others were following the ginger man. There was also the old lady that was at the very back, looking and researching an opportunity to leave them. But the man next to her, the crossbow guy, he kept her company. They weren't talking. Just being together, present.
After a while, the Korean dude- Glenn got closer to him, walking side by side and introduced himself. "Clark," he shot back. An awkward silence after, Glenn asked. "You from around here? Macon?"
Clark kept up the calm face, looking ahead, looking forward to see the farm on the horizon, ears and every instinct on their surroundings, but still nodded to Glenn's question. He wasn't sure how much to give, but he trusted Half Light for now.
"Was from here, Macon. Moved to Atlanta after I graduated from high school. But then…" He motioned to their surroundings, which Glenn nodded, understanding.
"Atlanta was bad," Glenn said. Not a question.
"Yeah." Clark kept his eyes on the road ahead, ears working the forest on both sides without him having to think about it. "I was in traffic with my parents when it started." He paused, deciding how much. "Didn't stay in Atlanta long after that."
Glenn was quiet for a moment.
"What about you?" Clark asked.
"Yeah, grew up here, and then moved to Atlanta way before the outbreak. Was delivering pizza when shit hit the fan."
"First time coming back down?" Clark asked, just to fill in the suffocating silence and keep the worries back.
"Passed through." Glenn's voice had something in it. "Early on. Before I found Rick's group." He looked at the tree line briefly, reflex rather than concern. "There was a motel. On the edge of town. We didn't stop."
Clark looked at him properly for the first time since they'd started walking. "Traveler's Inn?"
Glenn turned.
"You know it?"
"I lived there," Clark said. "For about a month." He watched Glenn's expression process that. "With a group. Thirteen of us, at peak." He paused. "Lee Everett. Carley-"
Glenn stopped Clark, grabbing him by his shoulder, his surprised expression turning into joy. "Wait, wait, wait, you know Lee?! You're with them?!"
Behind them, the others also stopped, looking at the two, analyzing and calculating. "Glenn?" Rick's unasked question seemed to be understood by the Korean man, a gasp-chuckling of joy leaving him, as he turned back to Rick, Carl, and even Carol and Daryl at the back.
"Early on, maybe days after the outbreak, I got stuck in Macon. Lee, Carley, and the others helped me out. The supplies that I had brought then, they were the ones to give it to me."
Rick didn't seem to remember, and neither did the others who were, at the time, with Shane, except Carol, though she didn't say anything about it, simply nodding.
"How are they?" Glenn turned back to Clark; the lack of reaction from others didn't bum his enthusiasm at all at the possibility of meeting people that had helped him out once. Clark let out a small smile, "Surviving." That seemed to dip Glenn's smile.
"But good."
"Lee and- Carley, she's-"
"They're at the farm," Clark said. "Both of them. Alongside Lilly, Larry, and Clementine."
At the name drop of Larry, Glenn winced, but it didn't kill the smile. "That old man is still alive and kicking, huh. I thought with his heart problems…"
Clark nodded, beginning the walk once more, "Yeah, he's stubborn. First time I met him, he made sure I knew I wasn't invited to their group."
"Yeah… I thought so." Glenn nodded, remembering the old stubborn paranoid man that had knocked out Lee after the pharmacy was overrun.
"But he's gotten better now. Less rough around the edge."
Glenn exhaled.
Behind them, the group kept moving. Rick had drifted closer, not obviously, but Clark had been tracking him since they'd started walking. The man listened the way people listened when they'd learned that free information was worth more than asked-for information.
Clark let him listen.
"How'd you end up with them?" Glenn asked, "Lee's group. You said you were from Atlanta."
Clark was quiet for a moment.
"I walked from Atlanta to Macon," he said. "Two and a half weeks. I was trying to reach my family, relatives back in Macon." He kept his face neutral. "They didn't make it."
Glenn understood the shorthand. He didn't ask follow-up questions, which Clark appreciated.
"Lee and Carley found me in an apartment as soon as I set foot here. I was-" He paused, looking for the accurate word. "I wasn't doing well. Barely had any muscle on me." He watched Glenn's expression absorb that and continue. "They brought me to the motel. Fed me. Let me sleep." He looked at the road. "That's when Larry barged in. I tried to leave, and Carley didn't want to. She worried for me, so I pointed a gun at her." He said it flat, matter-of-factly. Glenn and those listening didn't think too deeply about it. "She gave me food anyway when I left-"
"Wait, you pointed a gun at someone who fed you?" The young voice spoke up; Clark turned to the speaker, the teenager who had the cowboy hat. His question seemed to make everyone else return to that topic.
He noticed Rick grew tense, and so was Glenn, but ignored it, nodding, still naked, body bruised, and had switched Cat Form with Heat Object, laying it on his skin. The drain was minuscule, but still there. But he had no, because he was getting cold. An embarrassed chuckle left him, as he continued walking.
"Yeah, I… I ran into a cannibal group way before the dust had even settled after the outbreak. Days even." Clark scowled at the memory. A look of anger in his eyes that Glenn picked up, while others saw his back tense. "They promised me a lot of things. That they'd take care of me, help me get to my relatives back at Macon."
"How'd you survive?" Rick asked, cutting to the meat of the subject.
"I found out that they were cannibals days later." Clark almost gagged, but kept it to himself. "Then I proceeded to bring a horde in the hundreds to their doorsteps and watched every single one of them get eaten alive, and then turn."
"After that, I promised myself that I wouldn't get close to anyone."
"Until Lee and Carley saved you," Glenn muttered, and Clark's features softened, nodding.
"And I thanked them by taking one of them by gunpoint and leaving the day after." Clark continued.
"And she gave you food anyway." The teenager from before asked.
"Yeah. And an invitation that I was always welcome."
Glenn shook his head, the smile still there but different now, the smile of someone who had just received confirmation of something they already suspected about a person they met once.
"So how'd you end up back with them?" A southern accent asked; Clark turned, the speaker, a woman, maybe late twenties or early thirties.
"I came back," Clark said. "About two months later. After my relatives..." He left the rest unsaid. "They were still at the motel. I walked through the gate, and Carley came through it before I'd finished deciding whether to step out of cover."
Glenn looked at him sideways, a smile on his face and looking as if a load was gone from his shoulders. He shared a look with others behind them, before looking forward once more.
They walked for a moment, getting closer to the farm with every step. Which meant he needed to tell them about the dangers of the road.
"There are two groups- well, now one you need to know about," Clark said, shifting registers. "Threats."
Rick moved half a step closer without making it obvious. Daryl, at the back, had already been listening.
"Terminus was one of them," Clark said. "The farm that Lee and others are staying at, it used to belong to a family, St-Johns. They were working with Terminus, giving them more victims and dairy products. They targeted our group, and now, they're dead."
He sent a glance behind them, giving them all the reality of their situation. That while his group would probably be willing to take them in, they'd still have to find cars and trucks to prepare for Savannah now that Kenny left them. He still remembered his promise to Clementine, and he intended to keep it.
The problem came with the group- or groups that he was guiding towards the farm now. Did Rick's and Ginger Man's group want to follow them to Savannah, towards more danger?
"But there's a second group. Save-Lots."
Glenn turned his head. "Like the hardware store?"
"Like the hardware store." Clark kept his eyes on the road. "I ran into them early. Before joining the motel. I was surviving alone." He paused, listening to the forest on both sides out of habit, the stillness he'd been reading since the compound. They were clear of danger for now. "They're bandits, scum, preying on the weak and desperate, and they need to fucking die."
There was silence, the group tensing behind him at the sheer hate that Clark seemed to have for Save-Lots.
"Sorry…" He apologized, running a hand through his hair. "Sorry, I… I just… hate scum like them…"
"How many?" Rick asked. Not loudly. Just present.
"I don't know their current count," Clark said. He tried to keep his voice even. "But they were organized enough to have multiple camps from what I heard, which means there are others I didn't find."
"So, where we are doing, it's not safe at all?" One of the Latinas, the older one, asked, and Clark looked back at them.
"No, it's not. I wasn't expecting to bring back more than ten people with me back to my group." His words were harsher than he intended, but he continued to dispel the misunderstanding they'd probably get. "After Terminus, I planned to wipe out Save-Lots as well."
The group stilled, watching Clark with something else now. "Wiping them out?" Rick asked, a hand in front of Carl, guiding his son behind him, while putting a hand on his gun, the baby girl in his arm.
"Yeah."
"And how would you do that?"
"Hit and run method, and then bring down a horde on them."
Rick's face had the look it got, Clark imagined, when someone offered information that was useful and disturbing in equal measure, and the man was deciding which to deal with first-
He froze, his head snapped to one side, as his ears focused on something out in the distance.
"What, what's wrong?" Glenn asked, but Clark raised a hand, moving his head around, even closing his eyes to hear better.
"It's quiet." The crossbow wielder added, and immediately, everyone readied themselves, looking to their surroundings.
His ears worked the space ahead and to both sides, sorting the absence of sound into its component parts. Birds, gone. The low rustle of small animals in the undergrowth, gone. The ambient background hum of insects that the forest kept up regardless of most things, the thing that only went quiet when something large and wrong had entered the area.
Gone.
"What is it?" Rick said it low, barely a sound.
Then he heard dead leaves on the forest floor rustle, as if something that was hunting them moved to get better positioning.
Clark clocked it in his peripheral vision and moved his eyes back to the tree line without comment.
Then he heard it. The weight of it, the wrong rhythm, the particular gait of something that had too many points of contact with the ground to be standard, the pattern of movement that classified it as something crawling on the ground, fast.
It came through the undergrowth to the left of the road, and the first thing Clark registered was the color.
Black, its entire body covered in dirt and mud to mask its scent of decomposition. It moved wrong, lower to the ground than a standard variant, and fast, the broken sprint of a runner but lower, more compact.
Daryl fired.
The bolt hit it in the shoulder. It didn't slow down. Clark was already moving.
He crossed the distance before the group's collective intake of breath had finished, Superhuman boosting his reaction time far better than an average human. Clark didn't look to see who it targeted, because he already knew. It was the cap-wearing Latina woman who was a bit older than him. He simply ran and then hit it with his left side at the shoulder with his full weight and speed behind him.
They went down together.
The thing was strong, strong enough that it surprised him, stronger than the standard muscle-and-dead-weight of a regular variant, and it had its feet under it faster than he'd expected, already turning, already orienting toward the nearest target.
Clark himself.
Its jaw moved in a way that shouldn't, and then teeth found his shoulder.
The bite was sharp.
Even with Clark's Thick Skin and SuperHuman ability, it hurt. The closest comparison he could give in the heat of the moment was the bite of a baby. While it didn't hurt, it drew blood just a little, no more than a paper cut does.
Immediately, Clark broke its jaw.
The sound it made wasn't a crack. It was worse than a crack. The jaw came loose at both hinges simultaneously, and the thing made a sound that wasn't a moan, and Clark stepped back and drove his elbow down through the top of its skull with the full weight of Superhuman behind it.
It stopped moving.
Clark straightened up.
He was aware of the drop of blood on his shoulder, a small amount that was barely visible. But it had drawn blood- from him- which was alarming, extremely so. He might not have activated Stone Skin because he underestimated it. But even then, it was crazy to think that a variant could draw a drop of blood, while even rifle rounds could only leave bruises- even if Stone Skin would absorb most of the impact.
A crazy thought came to mind, to try and see how badly a standard rifle round would hurt him with just Thick Skin and SuperHuman. No Stone Skin to absorb all the damage. But he shook his head; that was crazy talk- or thought for now. If Clementine heard him, she'd probably punish him in some way or form for wanting to hurt himself like that.
He let out a sigh; he was aware of the group around him, the stillness of people who had just watched something happen that didn't have a context for them. He was aware of Rosita directly behind him, her breathing audible, and the fact that she hadn't moved since the moment the thing had lunged at her.
He looked at the dead variant for a moment. The wrong musculature, as if he had mutated. He mentally noted it. He would think about it later.
He wiped the blood from his shoulder with his hand, an automatic motion. Looked at his palm. Again, it was not a lot. But real.
Clark's thought of teaching Clem and the others the breathing method as soon as possible. Because if there were variants like these that could hurt him, even when he is underestimating them, and for others, it would be a true danger.
"You okay?" Glenn asked, the previous smile and carefree mood gone; everyone looked at him as if they were staring at a dead man- oh, they must have forgotten.
"Didn't I say it? I'm immune." He lied, replacing Leaf Blade with Immunity System- now he was immune. Before anyone else could question him about his freaky reaction time or his unnatural strength, he started walking.
Nobody moved immediately. Then Rick moved, and the rest followed, the momentum of a group that had decided to trust a lead due to Comforting Presence and was committing to it now. Though for one, Rosita, the trait was doing something else ever since Eugene's lie was brought to the surface, devastating her.
…
He heard her footsteps behind him; her approach was of someone who had made a decision and was working up the courage to act on it. He didn't turn around. He gave her the space to close it in her own time. Mainly because he knew what she wanted to give him and it would immensely help with him only wearing destroyed pants as clothing.
"Hey." Rosita's voice- he was thankful that Glenn introduced everyone to him after encountering that variant. Otherwise, her nickname was little Latina in Clark's head, since there was an older Latina in the group.
He turned, but kept walking.
She was holding out a shirt. Dark, long-sleeved, it had been worn enough to have some parts a little worn out, but still had its shape. She'd gotten it from the second biggest man of the group, the first being Tyress, who was watching from a distance with the blank, focused stare of a man who had recently lost the principle of his life and was watching the world continue. His body seemed to be walking, just because the others were.
"Abraham's," she said. "I asked him for it." Her voice was steady, casual, but had some strength in it, he noticed. He was starting to notice strange things now. "It'll be a bit big on you."
He took it.
It was big on him. He pulled it over his head, and the shoulders ended at his bicep, the sleeves to his forearms, the hem came to mid-thigh, but he didn't say anything about it because it was warm and it was a shirt. More importantly, she had thought to do this, meaning she trusted him, even if just a little, to not let him keep walking torso naked.
He hoped she would come back with shoes as well since he's got destroyed due to hybrid form.
"Thank you," he said, his tone being a little less graceless than usual. He'd take that win. Speaking of, it was time to focus on the three tickets that he got. Two golds for destroying the plots of two literature media and another one for taking out a giant compound with some help.
And on top of all of that, he was told that if he had done it without help, the gold would have been a platinum ticket.
Not that Clark cared for all those reasons. He had tickets now, and it was time to roll the D20 dice-
An 8, gold stayed gold-
[Eagle Eyes]
|Uncommon Trait|
Your sense of sight and visual acuity are far beyond the norm; you can see a lot farther and a lot more clearly than the average person.
Everything around him changed, but stayed still, his eyes blurring for one second, before clearing up- the "new" visual of the world around him became much clearer. It was as if before this trait, he was watching the world while squinting his eyes. While useless, Clark was still disappointed with the roll.
He would rather get an ability or a skill that could be either transferable to others or teachable. Like the breathing method, for example.
He tried selecting the skills category, but nothing. It still stuck on random. Shaking it off, the second die rolled to a 19. One thing he noticed was that he never really got less than 5 or if he did, he forgot. But Clark's average D20 rolls should be around 15. Which, while he was grateful, all his luck must've been used up on the D20 rolls instead of the ticket results.
Still, now he had two gold options-
[Lightning Breath]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to charge and unleash a breath of devastating lightning waves, the longer you charge for and the more energy you expend, the stronger the breath is.
OR
[Intermediate Ninjutsu]
|Rare Skill|
You are a Ninja, although more around the rank of a Ninja grunt. You are able to handle throwing weapons, knives, and swords with relative skill. And you are also decent at sneaking around and performing feats of acrobatics and espionage. Your training allows you to use tools in combat with more finesse.
Clark immediately chose the second option without a moment of hesitation. The skill was exactly what he needed for others, and including the Adept Teaching skill he had, he could increase the survival of his group a lot more.
Time for the last gold ticket-
[Intermediate Medicine]
|Uncommon Skill|
You are as skilled as a doctor, possessing a variety of medical knowledge and skills in treating injuries, illnesses, and problems, as well as familiarity with the body and medicine as well as its applications.
"Are you okay?" The voice of the woman- Rosita- brought him back, and he realized that he was smiling so wide and so full of joy that her face had turned red.
"Yeah, I'm really happy right now." He told her, every step carrying new energy that came from nowhere, his words striking the older woman in the heart so deeply that she stilled, others passing her and giving her their own smile of amusement.
…
Abraham was walking.
He had been walking since they'd left the compound, since the moment Eugene- that son of a bitch of a liar had told them that everything he had told them, everything that he had made others believe, was a lie, and that lie had landed in the center of everything Abraham Ford had built since losing his family and had unmade his entire world in less than ten seconds.
At first, he had raged and wanted to kill the fat man, but once everyone continued walking, that rage had died, just like his family, just like how he wanted to. He had lost his reason to live.
Yet, his legs were walking. Carrying him somewhere that he didn't even know. Simply because at one point, someone's hand was on his arm and had made him walk. He didn't know who it was.
He'd heard a voice asking him something, and he just grunted, eyes lost and looking down at his feet, walking, and telling them to stop. But they weren't listening to him.
He felt those same hands touch him once more, another voice, before it searched his backpack and took out one of his shirts. That brought him back to the present, from the darkness for a moment, as Rosita- so it was her who had made him walk- walked up to the kid, leading them somewhere.
He'd watched the kid take it, looking a bit surprised, but grateful. He pulled it over the bruised young body that had no business being as functional as it clearly was. He wondered if anyone had asked him about the origins of those bruises. They looked like someone had probably tied him up and kept punching him without a break- he would know since he had used the same strategy during his deployments. Usually, the captured target would then be shot in the head afterward.
After a little struggle, the shirt that had fit Abraham across the chest nice and tight sat on the kid like a coat. He couldn't see what happened, but Rosita's face flushed deep red, and a moment later, she had stopped walking with a very unusual face in their world.
"How old are you?" He asked, his eyes clearing just a little, the words coming out without thought. The kid- he didn't know his name- glanced back at him with eyes greener than forest and clearer than river. "Eighteen."
While Abraham didn't see Rosita's face, Clark did, as it turned into immense disappointment, before she remembered that age didn't matter so much now. So what if she was 25?
He was eighteen years old, and he was walking at the front of a column of thirteen people he'd known for less than a day, navigating from memory, tracking the forest with his body the way Abraham tracked it with training, and he wasn't doing it because someone had told him to. He was doing it because the people behind him needed a front and he filled the gap.
Abraham walked up beside him.
The kid didn't look at him.
"How are you doing it?" Abraham said.
Not how do you do it. Present tense, ongoing. It was a specific question that asked to understand instead of getting an answer to a question.
The kid looked at the road for a moment.
"I have people back at that farm," he said. "Who need me to go back to them." He paused. "And there are people walking behind me right now who need to arrive somewhere safe before dark." He looked at the road, voice soft, gentle, but firm. So much different than what the leader of Termanus promised. "I don't have time to be whoever I was before today. I can't afford it."
Abraham was quiet.
"Who were you before today?" he asked, the others behind them listening to understand the man that was so comfortable being with. Almost like he was home.
The kid's mouth did something brief, too quick to really see. "Someone who was stuck looking backward," he said. "Someone who kept expecting the world to be what it used to be..." He watched the road before shaking his head. "No, someone who had no expectation of the world nor of himself. Even when he started having people he could care about, that part of him stayed." Clark corrected himself; those exact words seemed to hit the six-foot-plus man right where he was the softest.
"That version of me got someone I care about hurt. Nearly got others killed." He paused. "So I buried it."
Abraham walked beside him for another minute in silence.
"And now?"
"Now? I look forward to tomorrow."
It took less than a minute for the decision to arrive quietly. It wasn't dramatic, and it didn't need days of soul searching. It just was there after those words, the way a tide came in, and you only noticed it when the water was already at your feet.
He was going to help this kid.
Not because he owed him anything. Not because the kid had asked. But because Abraham Ford had realized that for the last hour, he was watching the back of a eighteen years old carry at least thirteen broken people through a dark forest and gravel road toward somewhere safe, and that was the kind of thing that didn't happen by accident, and the kind of person who did it without being asked was the kind of person worth standing behind.
He'd lost his reason to walk forward. Maybe this would do until he found another one.
He said nothing. He just kept walking, shoulder heavy, yet lighter than moments ago, posture straighter than he felt… confident. There would be no more self-pity.
…
At the back of the column, Carol had stopped pretending after those words.
She'd been doing it since the compound. The slow, methodical work of someone cataloging exits and seeing opportunities that she could take, timing gaps in attention, thinking over the precise moment when she could peel away from the group without anyone noticing until she was already gone. Except it wasn't working.
Every time she found the gap, something pulled her back. It wasn't a hand. Neither was it a voice. Just the… strange air around the boy at the front, the way it settled over the group like warmth from a fire that you didn't notice until you stepped away from it and felt the cold.
She stood still for a moment, her eyes on the tree line she'd been planning to disappear into. Another and maybe the last opportunity lost.
Then she looked at the people ahead of her.
She exhaled.
"You staying?"
Daryl's voice. Quiet. It wasn't asking for much. Just the question, placed down in front of her without pressure, showing her that while he really wanted her to stay with them, to be with them, he wouldn't insist because he understood her.
She looked at him.
His eyes were on the tree line too, dodging her eyes, to not pressure her- until they turned to her, pleading with her to stay. That was all the pressure he would put on her.
"Yeah," she said.
Her voice came out steadier than she expected.
Something stung at the corners of her eyes, brief and involuntary, and she pressed her lips together and looked forward. She felt his hand find hers, rough and brief, the grip of someone who didn't make gestures easily and meant this one.
She didn't look at him. He didn't look at her.
They walked.
…
Rick walked with Judith against his shoulder and Carl at his side.
Judith had fallen asleep sometime in the last twenty minutes, her weight settled against his neck with the complete, boneless trust of a sleeping infant, her breath warm against his collar. Carl walked slightly apart, the distance of a boy who had decided he was old enough to walk beside rather than behind.
He was watching the boy at the front.
He'd been watching him since he turned his back to them back in the compound, helping them escape and then go right back in the chaos. At first, he suspected that he was a tortured victim of Terminus due to the bruises, and he went back due to revenge. Only to find out he was half right.
Rick had met a lot of people since everything ended. He'd learned to read them fast, the way you learned to read weather when your life depended on it. He'd met people who led through fear, through volume, through the carefully maintained impression of certainty. He'd met people who were good at looking safe while being dangerous, and people who were dangerous in ways they didn't understand themselves.
The boy at the front was none of those things, yet all of those at the same time. His instincts, his guts, told him that he could be trusted, but experience taught him something else. Gareth would be the last man on earth who Rick ever trusted. He would have loved to fulfill the promise Rick gave to him, to kill him with the machete, but Clark had beaten him to it.
He watched how Glenn moved around him, easy and unselfconscious, the body language of someone who had decided within twenty minutes that this was a person worth being near, and how he even introduced Maggie, who had started to ask him questions about the farm that his group was staying at. The thought of her father brought him… something else. If that man had been just 20 years younger, he would have been a much better leader than Rick ever was.
He still remembered his words, that he had indeed placed the lives of his family in Rick's hands and Rick had failed him. Beth…
He shook his head, shooting a glance towards the woman who was smitten with Clark's charm in just one conversation. Or was it when he had saved her from that… walker variant? Thinking of that moment, he frowned. The reaction, the strength, and the sharp hearing that he had… It answered Rick that Clark was extremely good at surviving. But that still didn't explain why he was the only one to come to Terminus to end them.
Did he sneak off?
Remembering the hate, the anger that Clark seemed to have for bandits in general, it fit. On top of those people targeting his people, yeah, Rick would also sneak off to hunt them down and kill every single one of them.
His eyes turned to Abraham, the only man, except for Clark, that could potentially stand up to him and refuse his orders if he took the man under him. But in just one conversation, he came alive slightly at the boy's side, and continued walking with something that looked, distantly, like purpose.
He watched Carl.
Carl was three feet to the boy's left and had been for the last ten minutes, not walking with him exactly, but not not walking with him. His son's attention was directed forward and slightly left, the angle of someone tracking the conversation that Maggie, Glenn, and Clark seemed to have; he hadn't been invited but was deciding whether to join- until Clark turned to him and asked him if he had ever seen a cow up close, which lit up Carl, but played it cool, shaking his head and asking a question of his own.
Rick had spent the last months asking himself what kind of world he was raising his son in. What kind of man Carl was becoming in it. Whether the world was taking things from his boy that couldn't be given back.
And came to see that there were still some things that hadn't been taken.
Judith shifted against his shoulder. Rick adjusted his grip without looking down, automatic.
He kept watching, as Carl smiled like a boy his age, genuinely looking excited for the first time in however long it was.
…
"We're close," Clark said. "Maybe fifteen minutes."
Glenn looked up. The tree line had thinned slightly on the left side of the road, and through the gaps, the flat Georgia dark showed the pale suggestion of open land ahead.
"Farm's just past that ridge-" Clark said, his smile freezing. He paused, the pause of someone whose body had registered something before their brain had finished processing it.
Then his head turned.
Just slightly. The angle of someone whose ears had found something his eyes hadn't caught yet.
Rick saw it. He wasn't the only one. Daryl had stopped mid-step behind him.
The forest had gone quiet.
It wasn't the quiet that came and went.
"What is-" Glenn started.
The shots came from the direction of the farm.
Not one. Not a warning. A burst, three or four, rapid and close together, and then a gap, and then two more.
Clark was already running, his face pale.
He didn't say anything. He didn't look back. He was just suddenly not standing beside Glenn and Carl anymore, and then he was at the edge of the road, and then the tree line had taken him, and the only sign he'd been there at all was the sound of something moving through the forest at a speed that had no business belonging to anything human.
"No," his voice carried back, barely audible, the word of someone whose body had run ahead of them. "No, no, no-"
And then he was gone.
Rick looked at Daryl and Glenn.
They looked at Rick.
"Move," Rick said.
===================
AN: Yooo, hope everyone is good.
A pretty long chapter and we're getting pretty close to the finish line. As read, I focused a bit more on the characters for this chapter, went a little deep. Rosita has been slaim by Clark's charm and misunderstandings. I liked writing the misunderstanding moment between them. It was fun.
Abraham is finding a reason to not put a bullet in his head. Clark is shown that while he has changed, he's not gone, as promised to Clementine. He's going back to her-
WAIT WHY IS THE FARM GETTING ATTACKED?!?!!? BY WHOOO?!?!?!
FIND OUT, IN THE NEXT CHAPTER, OF DRAGON BALL- I mean, ROAMING CORPSE!!
see you all soon.