Chapter 31:
The farmhouse door clicked shut behind her, and Clementine stood in the hallway for a moment, feeling something amiss. Like a part of her was gone, until she realized that part was Clark Rogers. As long as she knew him, Clark was always close to her, or they were together. Even before they became more. They had been staying together, eating together, sleeping together, and so much more, that now, his not being close to him or in her sight had her feel… lonely.
She wondered if he was feeling the same thing as well. But in the end, Clementine hoped not. Her finger traced the ring on her ring finger; she hoped not. She hoped that her husband would focus on the mission he had given himself rather than her. She wanted him back without another bruise added to his body.
With a sigh, she turned to the golems, wishing they could do a quick sweep of the parameters before hiding themselves from the road- the golems moved, doing exactly as she thought. She couldn't help the fond smile that bloomed on her face, her heart melting at Clark's gesture.
She turned away from the door, entering the living room where Lee, Carley, Mark, Lilly, and Larry, who was sitting on the couch, were.
"Okay," Lilly said, from behind her. Not to anyone specifically. Just placing the word down in the middle of the hallway like a marker. "We have time. Let's use it. Search this place and let's inventory everything they had."
She nodded, her fingers traced the blue ring on her ring finger again in the absence of the man she loved- now that she was thinking of the ring, his ring on his finger seemed to be missing after the apartment.
She hoped it didn't break from when he transformed, and he wasn't even with them, so she could ask. She decided that once he came back, she would.
A small part of her got jealous of him getting snatched up by some skank, but Clementine shook her head. Clark was going to Terminus to start a massacre, not searching for a woman. With a tired sigh, she joined with Carley to search the house, starting from the kitchen, while Lee and Mark took over the basement. Lilly stayed in the living room with her dad, but also as a watch, to make sure no one could surprise them by walking up to the front door.
The St. Johns had been living here since before everything ended and surviving here after, which meant the farmhouse had accumulated the layered supply of a family that had known how to keep things.
The kitchen pantry was the first real find. Deep shelves, floor to ceiling, showing the care of someone who had been doing this for thirty years and had a neat and easy system before the outbreak and kept it after. There were canned goods. And lots of them- vegetables, fruit preserves, dairy-adjacent things in sealed jars- but behind those, pushed to the back of the lower shelf, were commercial cans. Chickpeas, diced tomatoes, black beans, and corn.
"Wow…" Carley let out, and Clementine couldn't help but agree with her. So much food that if they had it back at the motel, they could survive another month or two easily. On top of Clark's hunts, they'd be extremely comfortable with food, excluding the horn.
"With all of this… Why'd they even resort to cannibalism?" Clementine couldn't help but ask, her question dimming Carley's smile for a bit, but at the end, she shrugged her shoulders lightly, in a 'I-don't-know' gesture. "Some people… The world before the outbreak protected others from them… with general things."
After making sure the pantry was fully stocked, they moved to the shelves, and both Clementine and Carley almost vomited again.
"Stack those separately," Carley finally managed. She didn't explain why. Clementine understood. The St. Johns had been feeding their guests, and their guests had not always been willing or knowledgeable participants. Anything the family had prepared themselves, anything that had passed through their hands with intent, went into a separate pile.
The separate pile ended up in the backyard.
That's when Lee and Mark came up from the basement, with the former convict giving the former reporter a separate bag and a whisper shared between them regarding the contents inside. They sent a glance at Clementine, who raised an eyebrow, but let it go when Carley gave her man a peck on the cheek. Mark also did the same with Lilly, giving her a separate bag, but told her plainly that there were more pills and such downstairs.
The one that he gave her might help her dad. Larry scoffed, muttering something under his breath, but Lilly's expression changed into pure relief, giving Mark a tight hug and no doubt some very grateful words- and a kiss that had the trio hear Larry's order to stop from the hallway.
Back with the trio, Clementine tried her best to act normal with Lee, but seeing his face and the way he smiled at her, the words she wanted to tell him were stuck in her throat, which only made her give him a strained smile and a nod.
"You two checked upstairs?" Lee asked, and they shook their heads.
"Great, let's go then." He led the way, Clementine's eyes landing on the man's injury that seemed to have stopped bleeding. Another wave of guilt crossed her. She opened her mouth to ask him if he was alright, but the words didn't get out.
With a sigh, Clementine gave up, following after the two adults, not knowing that Carley had already figured out what was happening with her. While Carley and Lee checked out the master bedroom, Clementine looked to the bathroom, which thankfully enough, had running water-
She stopped, her eyes going to the soap on the sink. She checked the bathtub and saw another bar of soap. Hope seemed to bloom in her chest as she tried the valve- "Water!"
She muttered, a smile on her face.
"Guys! There's water in the shower!"
Immediately, Carley and Lee were the first to be present, and then Mark was on top of the stairs, while Lilly was at the bottom. "You're kidding." Carley let out, and Clementien gave her a bright smile, letting out just a little more water.
"And soaps!" She pointed to the bar on the sink and on the tub.
"Mark! Take the watch from me!" Lilly's voice traveled, a voice far more relaxed but light than anyone had ever heard.
…
…
…
The shower order had been decided by a combination of injury and other things… Lee went first because his arm needed cleaning and re-dressing, and Carley stood outside the bathroom door with the medical supplies and went in afterward to do it properly once the water had done its part. Lilly went third, only for Mark to sneak inside not even two minutes after the water was running.
At first, everyone was surprised that they weren't hearing Mark being killed or strangled by the unofficial/official leader of the group. And then Clementine despaired that by the time it was her turn, there would be nothing left but their business- only for Lilly and Mark to get out after fifteen minutes.
When Mark got out, he was subjected to a very understandable but pitying look-
"We did nothing that's in your heads! Get it out of the gutter!" A flushed Lilly shot back the stares, going down and dying her hair with a tower. They watched her back for a moment before their eyes went back to a glowing Mark.
"It was the best 15 minutes of my life."
Clementine went last, with the bathroom being almost filled with mist due to the hot shower. She missed the warmth so much that she had goosebumps. She was hopeful that by the time Clark comes back, he could get a warm shower as well to clean himself of all the dirt and remains of blood that he would have on him-
She remembered his cat form and decided then and there that she wanted to bathe a cat. Just imagining him all wet and hissing and crying out in meows like a normal cat had her giggling to herself under the hot water as she cleaned her hair first with soap and then her body. 'Gotta do with what we have…'
Larry refused point-blank when it was her turn and then went anyway because his daughter was nagging at him. Nobody missed his words under his breath as he went up with new clothes that Lee had given to everyone after their showers.
After everyone had a hot shower- Larry's chest pains seemed to have calmed down and had passed, just like he said they would- and then she had canned goods given to everyone, Carley getting one extra.
"Why aren't we using their plates or forks?" Mark asked.
"Sure, go ahead, but I like not having to think if those things touched cooked human meat." Larry's words immediately killed everyone's appetite. But they continued to eat anyway in silence, with Lilly keeping watch on the front yard and the treelines from where she could see while eating.
She thought about Clark in the silence of the living room.
She thought about his face in the farmyard, the stillness of it. Clementine had been honest with herself since the day she decided she loved him, so she was honest with herself now.
She was afraid of the man he was becoming.
Not afraid of him. The distinction mattered, and she made it clearly, even in the comfort of her own mind.
She was not afraid that he would hurt her or turn something dark toward the people they loved. The Clementine who had the company of a cat she didn't know was him and told him her worst worries were not afraid of Clark Rogers.
She was afraid for him.
She was afraid of the cost of becoming who he'd decided to be, and she was afraid she hadn't said the right things before he'd left, and she was afraid that "stay my Clark Rogers, come home to me" wasn't enough to be an anchor against everything the world kept asking of him.
She had already finished eating, staring blankly at the empty can in her hand.
"Clem." Carley's voice brought her back, and when she turned to her, the older woman was already on the stairs, alone, motioning for her to follow her up, which she did.
Carley led her to the upstairs bathroom, closing the door behind them with a quiet click.
She sat on the edge of the tub. Clementine leaned against the sink, arms crossed, not defensively, just the posture of someone who was bracing for something they'd already half-guessed was coming.
Carley reached into her jacket pocket.
She set two small boxes on the edge of the sink beside Clementine's elbow.
Clementine looked at them.
She looked at Carley.
"They were in the bag that Lee gave me earlier," Carley said. Her voice was careful, "They were filled with hygienic items for women. I set them aside, not all of them, of course."
"Carley-"
"It's been a while," Carley said. Not accusatory. Just factual, the way she said things that were true and didn't require softening. "Since the motel. And then again, from what Lee said, when you were at the apartment."
Clementine's ears went warm.
She really didn't want to have 'The Talk' with someone she looked up to like a big sister. Of course, Clementine also already knew about 'The Talk.' Before the outbreak, she wasn't as innocent as she liked to portray. She had gotten curious and had read magazines, had gossiped with friends who did have experience.
"Lee didn't say anything specific," Carley paused her thoughts, making Clementine turn even redder than she was, even if you could barely notice it. Her voice was small and comforting, directing the conversation towards the meat of the matter. "He said you were both okay, even if it wasn't the time. That's all." She looked at the boxes. "But it's been a few weeks. And the timing..." She paused. "Take one now. Take the second one tomorrow to confirm. That's all I'm asking."
Clementine looked at the boxes.
They were white and clinical and completely ordinary, the kind of thing that had been on the shelf of a hundred thousand pharmacies and bathroom cabinets before all of this, and now sat on the edge of a sink in a cannibal's farmhouse bathroom in the middle of a Georgia autumn, and her hands, when she reached for one, were steadier than she'd expected.
"Does Lee know you're telling me this?" she asked.
"No."
"Are you going to tell him… After?"
Carley looked at her. "That's not my thing to tell."
"What if-" she started, and stopped, because the sentence had several possible endings and she wasn't sure which one she was reaching for.
"Then we figure it out," Carley said. Simple. Present. The voice of someone who had already done the worrying part and was waiting for Clementine to catch up with her, her own hands covering her belly with a smile.
"You make it sound easy."
"I make it sound possible," Carley said. "Which is different." She looked at her hands briefly, and something moved through her expression that Clementine had been watching. "Nothing about any of this is easy."
Clementine looked at her.
Carley met it, and what she was managing was visible for a moment before she put it back where it lived.
"But we'll figure out something. Everything's going to be alright." Carley's eyes went down to her belly, softly going in circles.
Clementine couldn't help but think about it. Carley had been pregnant only for a week, two at most. And if what the test showed and confirmed tomorrow… Clementine would be joining her in being a burden-
"Don't think like that." Carley's voice snapped her out of it, with stilted Clementine.
"Please don't tell me you've awakened some sort of power like Clark."
The older woman giggled, her stern look vanishing for a moment, her head shaking.
"No, but it was really clear what you were thinking."
"Ah…" Clementine nodded, with Carley giggling a little.
"Does Lee know?" Clementine asked.
"He knows." Carley's voice was careful. "He's-" She paused, choosing. "He's trying to figure out what it means. For plans. For where we go." She looked up. "He keeps thinking about it, even when we are alone, worrying even more than me."
Clementine reached over and took her hand.
Carley looked at their joined hands for a moment, ignoring the small tremble in them, and then she looked at Clementine. "Have you told Clark that you might be…?"
Clementine shook her head, "There never really was a time for it. Either he was too injured, or tired, or well… whatever situation we are in now…"
They sat like that for a moment on the edge of the tub with the hot water still threading steam into the air from the showerhead.
"I'm sorry I snapped at Lee," Clementine said. It came out before she'd planned it, arriving through the opened space between them now. "Back at the apartment. I told him he didn't have the right to call me sweet pea." She stopped. "I was terrified, and he was there, and it came out at him. I didn't mean it the way it sounded."
"I know," Carley said.
"Does he- He told you?"
"He did." She nodded.
"He'd already forgiven you, Clem." She squeezed her hand once. "But if it's eating at you-"
"Tell him myself."
"Not for his sake." Carley's voice was gentle but final. "For yours."
Clementine nodded.
She picked up one of the pregnancy tests.
"Go," Carley said. "I'll be right outside."
…
She didn't look at it immediately.
She set it on the edge of the sink and washed her hands and looked at the wall for a moment, the water-stained plaster of a farmhouse bathroom that had been someone's everyday ordinary before it had been this, and she thought about Clark. About his voice, quiet and graceless, in the corner of the parking lot: I give you my body, my heart, and my every thought. Forever.
She thought about the ring on her finger.
She thought about what it would mean, and then she stopped thinking and picked up the test.
Two lines.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she set it down, carefully, face down on the edge of the sink, and looked at herself in the mirror. The mirror was fogged at the corners from the shower steam, and her reflection was slightly soft, her dark eyes and the ring on her left hand catching the light from the bare bulb above the sink.
She looked like herself. She looked exactly like herself. She wasn't sure what she'd expected to look different, but nothing was.
She picked up the test again and looked at it once more, in case it had changed.
It hadn't.
Her heart… stayed where it was. It didn't change the beat, or it didn't come out of her mouth.
She opened the bathroom door.
Carley was sitting on the hallway floor with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, looking at nothing in particular. She looked up when Clementine appeared in the doorway.
Clementine held out the test.
Carley looked at it.
"It might be a false positive," she said quietly.
…
"Yeah…" Clementine agreed, her voice appearing… exactly like Clark, a little graceless, tactless, and even shaking just a little. But it wasn't a bad feeling.
She stood, slowly, and took the test from Clementine's hand and looked at it. Her expression did several things in rapid succession and settled on something that was careful and warm and trying not to be anything else yet. "Take the second one tomorrow. Or the day after. Before you-" She paused. "Before you build too much of anything around one result."
"I'm already building," Clementine said. Her voice came out quieter than she'd intended, as thoughts of their child, boy or girl, didn't matter, were running around in the field, cries of joy and playfulness as Clark chased him down.
Carley looked at her.
"I know," she said. "So am I."
They stood in the hallway for a moment, the sounds of the farmhouse below them and the distant generator hum, and the silence from where the golems were keeping their patient, earthen watch at the perimeter.
"Don't say anything yet," Clementine said. "To the others."
"Of course not."
"Not even to Lee."
Carley was quiet for a moment. "He'll need to know eventually." To plan, to worry, and everything else.
"I know." Clementine looked at the ring on her finger. "I want to tell Clark first. Before anyone." She paused. "He deserves to hear it from me."
Carley nodded once, the nod of someone who understood that completely.
They went back downstairs.
…
…
…
The afternoon settled into the particular gray-gold of a Georgia autumn evening, the light going long and flat across the yard. Clementine sat near the window that looked toward the drive, one knee drawn up, watching the golems just… being there, unmoving like statues. The canned goods sat heavily and good in her stomach. The soap smell was still in her hair and skin.
She thought about the test- she couldn't help but think about the test.
It had been maybe two hours since the bathroom, and in those two hours, she had thought of very little else, the test and its two lines appearing between every other thought like a card being shuffled back to the top of the deck, no matter how many times you moved it.
She thought about Savannah.
The thought arrived fast, from nowhere.
Her parents had called home, and she knew about it when she hid in the tree house from the moving body of her best friend that she had put down herself.
Lee had played her the messages early on afterward. Their voices had been scared. Her mother, trying to keep the fear out of it for Clementine's sake, and not quite managing. Her father wasn't even in the call since he had been bitten and they had gone to the hospital. One of the worst places to be at the start of the outbreak.
We're trying to get back to you.
They couldn't get back to her. That, Clementine, knew, ever since she left home with Lee. Then meeting the old man at the farm with his family, and then Kenny and his family the next day…
She'd known that for a long time. She'd known it in the part of herself that knew things before she was ready to know them, the part that had been filing facts quietly in the background while the rest of her kept walking toward Savannah because walking toward something was better than standing still with nothing to walk toward.
She looked at her ring.
Clark would keep that promise for her. He will carry it until he succeeds in bringing her to her infected, rotting parents or die trying. He'd built Savannah into his nonexistent plans the moment she had told him about her parents, as a thing that was going to happen because he'd said it would.
She was going to release him from it.
Not because the promise didn't matter. Because it had mattered completely, and she'd needed it to matter, and now she needed something different, and the most honest thing she could do with a promise that had served its purpose was to let it go cleanly.
When he comes back, she thought. When he's standing in front of me, I'm going to tell him that we're not going to Savannah. That wherever he wants to go, that's where we go.
She felt steadier for having decided it, even when a pit had formed in her stomach, and tears were on the edge of her eyes, her lips trembling, as she barely kept the grief from collapsing her.
She thought about the test again as a distraction.
She thought about the baby that might be there, quiet and new and completely unaware of the world that was waiting for it, and she thought about what a baby needed, which was not Savannah, not a city of the dead, not a destination chosen months ago for reasons that no longer applied.
A baby needed somewhere to stay.
She looked at the window and thought about where that might be, as tears escaped her eyes, staining her cheeks. She heard familiar steps stop next to her in the hallway, and then his firm, but soft hands brought her to his hug.
For the first time in months, she finally grieved her parents, the friend, and the life that she lost, while Lee comforted her and kept her warm in his arms as one does to their daughter. Guilt gripped her heart and squeezed, as her silent cry deepened.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed.
He didn't pretend to not know what for.
"I know," he said.
"The apartment. What I said." She looked at the wall. "You didn't deserve that."
"Clementine-"
"I'm really sorry for telling you that. I'm sorry."
"Hey, it's okay. I understand," Lee whispered back to her, even letting out a soft chuckle, "There's nothing to forgive."
She pulled back enough to look at him properly, her eyes wet, but her face had a nice smile.
They sat down together on the hallway floor, their backs against the wall, the same position she'd been in outside the bathroom two hours ago, and the light through the window was going gold and long, and downstairs the murmur of voices was low and continuous, and outside the golems kept their patient watch.
"Carley told me you were thinking about something," Lee said carefully. "She didn't tell me what."
Clementine looked at the window.
"I don't want to go to Savannah," she said.
Lee was quiet.
"My parents… They are dead, turned into those things," she said, the ring giving her strength to say it without crying again. "You know this as well as me." She looked at her hands, at the ring, while Lee's brows frowned; he didn't say anything, just nodded. "I knew then. I just-" She paused. "I needed somewhere to go. I needed it to still be possible, even when I knew it wasn't." She exhaled. "And Clark picked it up and carried it for me, and I let him, because it was easier than putting it down."
"That's not a bad thing," Lee said. "Having somewhere to walk toward."
"It was for him." Her voice was quiet. "He almost walked himself to death once already, for people who were already gone. And now he's carrying Savannah the same way." She shook her head. "I'm not going to let him do that. Not for me."
Lee looked at the window.
"I agree." He finally told her, wrapping an arm around her and bringing Clementine into a side hug. "Savannah… It would have been a good plan if we still had Kenny with us." Clementine frowned, but didn't say anything. "But we don't. And you probably know, but Carley's pregnant." At that, she nodded.
"I've been thinking about what Carley needs," he said. His voice was soft. "About what a place would have to look like. What it would take." He paused. "She won't say it that way. She'll say she's fine, that she can manage anywhere, that we don't need to make decisions around her." He looked at Clementine sideways. "She's wrong about that."
Clementine said nothing, though she felt like he knew about the test in her jacket. Which was impossible since she trusted Carley not to tell him anything.
"She needs somewhere we can stay," he said. "Not a few weeks. Not until the next problem moves us on. Actually, stay." He looked at the window. "Long enough that she can- that there's ground under her feet when-" He stopped. Afraid to say it because it might make every real, even when it is. "Long enough."
"I know," Clementine said.
They sat with that for a moment.
"So where?" Clementine asked.
"I don't know." He said it honestly. "Somewhere that isn't a destination anymore, and starts being a place." He looked at the window. "We'll have a group meeting as soon as Clark comes back tonight."
The silence that followed was comfortable, the sense of loss replaced with a sense of belonging. She might have lost everything, but she gained another family in Lee, Carley, and Clark. And lastly, probably, the baby that's slowly growing inside her.
Then Lilly's voice came from the first floor.
"Someone's coming up the drive."
…
Clementine and Lee were already at a window facing the drive as soon as Lilly's voice traveled throughout the house, her hand on the frame, her eyes finding the figure coming up the farm drive in the long gray light of early evening.
He was moving wrong.
It wasn't the shamble of a walker- she liked annoying Clark by calling them- and it wasn't the deliberate pace of someone approaching with bad intentions, but the stumbling, overcompensating gait of someone who was exhausted and hurt and had been moving for a long time on whatever had kept him moving after the adrenaline ran out.
She recognized him before she recognized his face. The height. The hunch of someone who had spent months trying to take up less space than they occupied.
Ben Paul.
He was pale, his arm dark at the sleeve in a way that was familiar and bad; his face was blank, but every so few times, he would get close to crying and pain, before shutting it down.
They said nothing for a moment.
"Stay here," he said.
She didn't stay there.
She followed him down because she wasn't going to watch this from a window, and the staircase opened into the living room, where Lilly was already at the front window with her rifle at a low ready, her eyes tracking the figure on the drive and then at the surrounding trees, and Larry was on his feet.
Larry was on his feet despite everything his body had been filing complaints about for the past several hours, and the look on his face was the look of a man who had made a decision and would fight anyone who opposed it.
"Dad." Lilly's voice, from stiff, turned careful.
"I see him," Larry said it flat.
Ben reached the green gate.
He stopped.
He looked at the farmhouse, and his face did the thing she'd seen it do a hundred times at the motel, in the parking lot, at the fire. The face of someone arriving somewhere and hoping to be let in, and not being certain they would be. He'd worn that face since the first day she'd known him, and she'd felt sorry for it then and had tried to treat him accordingly, which she had as best as she could while dealing with her own survival.
His mouth opened, saying something that they could hear from inside the house.
Larry moved.
He crossed to Lilly before she'd registered he was moving, and his hand was out toward her rifle. She pulled back instinctively, but not fast enough, because Larry was a stubborn old man with strong hands and specific intentions. The rifle was in his hands before Lilly had finished saying his name, and then, he was outside, in front of the entrance.
"Please- help! I-
"Dad-"
"No." His voice was the voice of a verdict.
He raised the rifle.
He looked at Ben through it- the boy froze, and so did his words.
Ben looked at the barrel, his eyes wide and filled with fear and pain.
"You don't belong here," Larry said. The volume of it was lower than his usual register, which was somehow more final than shouting would have been, yet it reached Ben clearly. "You never did. You were dead weight from the day we found you, but we kept you fed and warm. You knew it, and we all knew it, and we tolerated it because that's what decent people do." He paused. "Instead of paying us back, you betrayed us." His finger moved to the trigger. "Turn around. Walk. Don't look back. I'm going to count to three, and if you haven't moved from there, I will kill you."
"Dad, put it down-"
"One," Larry said.
Ben's face had gone white, someone whose body had received information about its immediate future and was currently deciding what to do with that information.
"Two."
Ben's legs made the decision his brain was still processing. He turned. He ran. He hit the gate on the way out, bounced off it, and kept going. The sound of his footsteps on the drive turned to crashing undergrowth and then faded.
He was gone, the only sound left was the generator hum and the evening birds starting up. Larry huffed and breathed through his nose. He lowered the rifle as soon as Ben's figure disappeared into the tree lines.
=====================================
AN: A very cute chapter for character development for the motel group.
And also some things that I've been building up to. Hopefully, they are well received.
While writing this chapter, I had a huge plan and wanted to squize? squeese? squeze? Whatever- put it all in one chapter.
What you just read, it's 20% of the plan that I had for chapter 31... That's how crazy I was going with this with the promise of ending this story in 6-7 (hehe), chapters.
UNTIL FREAKING @Gooey SHOWED UP!
Litteray him:
image of titan yapping
No, just kidding. Thank you for the compliment and for liking the story Im trying to write. And the same goes for everyone else who likes this story and wants to see more.
Truly, thank you.
But I think I'll go back to around 3k-4k chapter lengths instead of, you know, 6-7 (I'm funny)k words. So, enjoy!
This also gives me the chance to watch The Boys and plan things out and then start writing it.
PS: Is there an alternative to patreon? Cause when I have a huge stack of The Boys, I'll dump them all there. But it won't be behind a paywall. The reason I'm asking for this is cause I'm in need of support.