Clay woke up from the dream with pain all over. He had unbearably sore muscles and only one eye that would open properly. Sitting up in bed was full of wincing and embarrassing sounds of discomfort, so he stopped trying.

  He'd been so amped up that he hadn't realized at the time what taking that many punches and kicks could do to him.

  Jesus Christ. I hope nothing's broken…

  Squeak!

  Clay managed to tilt his head and see Kissy sitting over the covers on his thigh.

  "I--" His voice barely came out.

  His mouth felt so dry. How long had he been asleep without being able to drink any water? On that, he hadn't gotten to drink any water in between all those bursts of excitement.

  That all happened, right?

  All this absurdity. It could have been mistaken for a dream.

  He opened the window to have a look at his Health and Stamina.

  >HEALTH: 0/4

  >STAMINA: 0/10

  Even when he hadn't had a good night’s sleep and didn't eat as much, his Stamina would still go up at least a little bit. There wasn't any frame of reference for Health, but was it possible that his condition was bad enough that his system-based vitals couldn't recover?

  That sucked. He barely had the strength to reach over and take the water bottle someone put on his bedside table for him.

  Rather than drink the water properly, he attempted to guzzle it down while lying flat on his back. Of course, he ended up having to put the water down as he went into a coughing fit.

  His hacking was loud enough to catch the attention of someone outside his room, who quickly stepped inside to greet him.

  It was Alan.

  Awkwardness crept up on Clay in the moments between Alan entering and saying something. The last time they saw each other, he'd been a mess of diesel and tears.

  The diesel popping up in his mind now made him think about the fact that his nose no longer twitched from the potent smell. Then he considered the soaked clothing he’d been wearing during that time, as well as the fact that he was now stripped down to his boxers with only the blankets to offer him any warmth.

  Even more awkward.

  On top of that, he wondered what he should say to a man who just lost his wife. Shouldn't he be standing up? It felt a little disrespectful to talk about something like that when he was practically naked.

  "Damn, kid, you slept like a rock!" Alan chirped.

  That was the last thing Clay expected to hear.

  He started saying something but had to stop to clear his throat a few times.

  "Take it easy. From the sounds of it, you just got your ass put through the wringer."

  "M…" Clay covered his mouth to keep any spittle from hitting Alan. "Milly…Is she…?"

  Alan's jovial attitude darkened slightly, his arms crossing and his eyes moving diagonally to the floor. "She's better than she was."

  Clay was brought up to speed on Milly and Calvin's conditions.

  As it turned out, Angie actually did as she was told and went to Howard's apartment. Howard and his wife (whose name Clay couldn't remember) bolted from their apartment on the third floor as fast as they could.

  "Her name's Beverley, by the way," Alan clarified, somehow reading the embarrassed confusion off of Clay's swollen face.

  Give me a break!

  He had to commit a lot of people to memory that day.

  "I always just called her Bell 'cuz she's got that southern bell way about her. You into that sorta thing, genius?"

  The fact that Alan could joke like this at least put Clay in a position to hear some good news.

  As Angie told it, Ed and Milly got into an argument about him taking Angie with him. Milly moved between them and had a knife swung at her for the trouble.

  He drew blood, but the wounds caused by the knife were superficial. The problem came from Ed taking advantage of a loss in balance to trip Milly to the side, inadvertently slamming her head on the sharp corner of a coffee table.

  Calvin didn't suffer any life-threatening injuries, but there wasn't much that could be done for the right eye that had been cut. Maybe if he could go to an actual hospital, there'd have been hope. As it stood, he was probably going to lose the eye.

  Bell had been a nurse in a retirement community before the world ended. Her area of expertise had been in elder care, but she was still a certified nurse who received enough training to have a better idea of what to do when the severity of injury moved beyond needing a few stitches.

  She was constantly tending to Milly while Howard watched Calvin to make sure his condition didn't take a turn. They used some medicine that was left lying around to let him sleep through the worst of his pain.

  "So…Milly's going to be okay?" Clay tentatively asked.

  "She ain't out of the woods, I don't think, but Bell is talkin' like it'll be a good sign if she wakes up. As long as we keep takin' care of her, it'll be fine!"

  "Ah, alright…"

  That didn't sound good to Clay at all when he looked past the surface. Did Bell speak in vaguely optimistic terms to keep Alan happy?

  No, it felt more like Alan was putting his own spin on what he'd been told.

  Clay was too tired to think much deeper than that.

  "She's a tough lady," Clay said, "tougher than me. She'll for sure make it."

  "Aw, you're plenty tough, kid. Plenty tough." Alan grinned down at him. "Even if you didn't end up killin' that Hamslammer or whatever, you're still one of the toughest guys I ever met."

  "I did kill it…"

  "Hm?"

  "I killed the Hammer. It was a little touch-and-go, and things didn't go exactly as planned, but I did kill it."

  Alan blinked. Clay imagined he must have assumed that him even being here and alive meant that he just bailed as Alan had.

  Thinking about it, there wasn't a legitimate reason for forcing a fight with the Hammer beyond the convenience of having a chance to eliminate it after it was weakened by fighting ten fully armed men. Even then, its fight with the asshole patrol hadn't felt like it made that much of a difference. Even the resource its presence stole from them was expended so Clay could kill it.

  It had only been for the sake of removing a possible future threat and Clay's growth. Also, if he hadn't killed it and gotten the [Id Boost] Skill, that could have been the end of the line for him.

  "Huh…That explains why you ain't dead, actually! I bet you must've leveled up like four or five times off of killing something that strong!"

  Clay frowned.

  "Speaking on your toughness," Alan started speaking a little slower, choosing his words carefully, "what exactly happened up on the roof? Before you say anything, I'm just wantin' to say you're not gonna get any judgment from me. Honestly, I'm a little sad I didn't get a minute with the asshole myself."

  One of Clay's eyebrows tried to lift on their own but only succeeded in making him wince.

  What was Alan talking about? What did it look like happened?

  …

  Oh.

  All Alan knew was that Ed ended up falling off the roof to his death. From his perspective, it seemed a lot more likely that Clay pushed him than what actually happened.

  Still, Clay told him the truth.

  "Wha--? He killed himself?"

  Clay nodded. "A few things he said made it clear he's had experience with special abilities like mine in the past…My assumption is that he was trying to avoid a situation where we juice him for information. Maybe he even thought it was possible I had a Skill that could let me rip intel straight out of him."

  Alan didn't seem entirely convinced Clay wasn't just creating a more palatable story in place of admitting he shoved Ed off the roof, but he let it go in the end and told him about what happened in the moments following unleashing the Hammer.

  After Alan ran off, he'd done his part in letting Radman know what was going on so they could move forward with the rest of the plan, even if they'd bickered the whole time.

  However, there hadn't been any reason for them to do this in the first place. Not one member of the asshole patrol actually lived long enough to make it back to camp, meaning that Ed was the last one.

  When he first saw Ed, Clay thought that he'd made a call under the gun and tactically moved away from his team to secure a bargaining chip while they got to safety.

  He should have known that they'd all died when Ed told Clay that he'd just been looking for an opportunity to kill him. Ed had been making things up as he went along to get himself closer to revenge.

  Clay wasn't sure how he felt right now. He wanted to focus on something else.

  "Alan?"

  "Yeap?"

  "I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I'd seriously hate to still be stinking like diesel, but who was it exactly that got me undressed?"

  "Uhhh, well I got your clothes off so I could check your condition. You weren't awake to tell me what hurt, so I had to make sure you didn't have no broken bones or nothin'."

  Clay's frown turned into a grimace.

  Alan either didn't notice or pretended not to notice. His face felt swollen enough that one could easily mistake his annoyance with pain.

  "Good news is that nothin's broken! Better news is that Bell tagged in to give you a sponge bath so you wouldn't stink up your bed!"

  "Sponge bath…?" Clay asked despondently.

  "Don't worry, Bell asked me to step outside so I wouldn't see nothin'."

  "See nothing…?"

  Did that mean he was naked?

  Clay lifted the blanket enough to peek underneath, but he almost immediately forced them back down. His worries were confirmed.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  These were not the same pair of boxers he went out with.

  "It's not that big of a deal," Clay told himself, hurting his face in an attempt to smile reassuringly at the ceiling. "She's a nurse. It's all professional. Nobody saw anything."

  Squeak squeak!

  "Oh yeah, your rat's been glued to you since we found ya' on the roof. We tried to get it in a cage, but it kicked up a fuss and nobody really wants to be touchin' it in the first place."

  "You watched her giving me a bath, didn't you?" Clay inquired kindly. "It's alright, I won't be mad."

  Squeak!

  "I should have let that guy squeeze your guts out through your goddamn eyeballs," Clay said just as kindly.

  It didn't take long for Alan to find some pajamas Clay could wear.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  While they were at the asshole patrol's base, they found everything that had been stolen over the course of their stay. Kyle's gun, some of the food, and even the box of comics that Calvin originally gave to Clay.

  Clay only needed another day to sit up and start reading through his book pile. When his eyes got tired from reading actual books, he re-read some of the stuff in Calvin's box.

  Clay felt like he recovered enough to at least walk around, but Bell insisted he take it easy for a little while and limit getting out of bed as much as possible. Alan would usually bring him food and water, but sometimes he'd be too busy looking after Milly when Bell was resting and have Angie take care of it instead.

  Where Alan would usually engage in small talk and tell him how his face looked, Angie wouldn't even look at him. She'd walk in, place a tray on his bedside table, then leave without saying anything.

  Clay preferred Angie's approach a lot of the time.

  He could just count on her giving him his food without having to put down what he was doing and entertain a child.

  Some of the time, he felt a little annoyed at himself for not at least trying to say something.

  It reminded him of the old days when he was a jobless 19-year-old and his mother coming into his room to give him food before going about the rest of her day.

  It was embarrassing that she'd always be waiting to hear him say something about getting a job or possibly getting into some kind of trade school, but the only thing she ever heard was…

  "Thanks, Mom."

  Shit…I'm just making myself sad for no reason.

  It was up to him to break the awkwardness. Not only was he the adult in this situation, but Angie had just experienced a very traumatic event.

  It might also have to do with the fact that one of the few times Clay spoke to her directly involved him screaming at her to shut up. Definitely not a good look.

  One time, when she brought him a bowl of rice, dried meat, and cheese, Clay picked at the mixture with his fork and spoke before Angie could make her hasty retreat.

  "Hey."

  Angie stopped halfway, turning to look in his direction without actually looking at him. She didn't say anything, so Clay just said what he needed to say.

  "Listen, I'm sorry for yelling at you in the middle of all that. I don't want you to think I was mad at you or anything." When she still didn't say anything, Clay just kept going. "When I realized your mom was seriously hurt, I got…I don't know, I was just mad. I would have yelled at anyone at that point. I'm sorry."

  She looked more confused than anything, then turned shy.

  "It's okay…I'm sorry that I cried."

  "Huh?" Clay was visibly taken aback. "Why are you sorry for crying? Situations that intense are what crying was made for, I think."

  "I made it harder for you to help because I was crying so much, right? Maybe mommy wouldn't have gotten hurt if I didn't throw a hissy fit…"

  Clay bit down on nothing.

  "No! That's the wrong way to think about it, Angie!"

  She jumped at his sudden yelling.

  He continued, softer now.

  "If it weren't for you causing such a commotion, earless Calvin over there might not have realized that something was happening." Clay started vaguely moving his hands as he spoke. "Kicking and biting him also slowed him down and made it harder for him to focus. You're a lot braver than me when I was a kid; I'd have definitely given in once I saw the knife."

  Angie was looking at him, eyes opening further with each point he made. Even to a kid, he had to be making a lot of sense.

  "Letting that stranger take you away would have also made the situation a lot harder to deal with. Fighting was the best choice, and I know your mom would agree with me!"

  He had her full attention now, but something was weird. Clay followed her eyes to his left arm, where his movements caused his sleeve to slide down a bit.

  "Can I see your scar?" Angie abruptly asked.

  Clay's mouth turned into a thin line across his face.

  Well, at least his apology worked.

  "Are you sure?" Clay pulled his sleeve back up. "It's really scary looking."

  "I saw it before when you were getting stitched up though! It can't be scarier than that!"

  Clay couldn't argue with that.

  "Alright, just for a little bit." He said quietly, like he was telling her a secret. His sleeve was rolled up so she could gawk at the scar the Jumper gave him. An ugly, jagged mark.

  "Coolll…" Angie marveled. "It looks really cool now! You got bit by a Jumper, right?"

  "Uh, yeah…"

  "Then why come you aren't a zombie?"

  Damn, he forgot about that part. Clay usually wore a jacket whenever people in the building saw him, so he'd never had anyone see the bite on his arm before.

  "I'm immune. Nobody I've spoken to about it knows why."

  Excellent excuse. Succinct and not open to questions.

  "Woww! Do you think I'm immune too?"

  "Probably not. It's super rare, I think."

  "I could so be immune!" She whined. "It can't be that rare!"

  This was closer to the sort of attitude he expected from her.

  "You ever meet someone who was immune before you met me?"

  Angie stopped, then pouted. "I don't think so…"

  "Well, there you go."

  "But how is someone supposed to know if they're immune before they get bit? Maybe I met tons of immune people without knowing!"

  That was a good point, actually. Clay was immune because of his Skill, but was it possible there were more people out there immune to the virus for a more in-context reason?

  "I guess the only way to find out is to let you get bit by a Crowder." Clay pointed at himself with his thumb. "Leave it to me. I'll let you get bit by 100 Crowders just to make sure!"

  "Wha--! I don't wanna get bit though!"

  "I think maybe even if you aren't immune, the 100th Crowder bite might just give you immunity. Some people do the same sort of thing with snakes. It's called micro-dosing."

  "I don't wanna my-crow-doze! I'd die! I'd just die!"

  "200 might be more effective. It's also a much more impressive number than 100. Doubly so."

  He felt he'd patched things up with Angie just fine. In fact, maybe he patched things up a little too well. It took a whole hour to get her to finally go away.

  When the conversation drifted back to his scar, he was forced to give a quick rundown on his battle with the Jumper. Skipping over the scarier bits made his victory seem less impressive when he said it out loud, but she seemed plenty into it.

  Before she left, Angie asked him a hard question.

  "Whatever happened to that scary man with the knife?"

  Clay should have guessed she might ask about that at some point, but he hadn't. He assumed she'd leave him be after the apology, so only considered the conversation that far.

  What should he say? Be honest and say he's dead but leave out the gory bits? Say he just went away?

  "That's something you should ask your dad about."

  Leave it up to Alan. Don't overstep.

  "Oh…" She sounded dissapointed. "Alright."

  Then he was alone with his thoughts again, thoughts about Ed and Ronny and everything else.

  Clay avoided dwelling on those things, but he could only read so many books before it was time to go to sleep. The thoughts didn't stop.

  What was there to think about? He didn't do anything wrong. Why should he spare this any more consideration?

  Even if he did feel bad about it, it wasn't like getting depressed fixed anything. Things were better this way.

  He stood up from his bed and walked over to his bathing bucket, placing it on a stool in front of him while he got out of his pajamas and started rubbing himself down with a wet rag. Now that it was so cold, he didn't sweat enough to require a bath every single day, but he liked to have one at least every other day, even if he didn't feel gross.

  There were nasty bruises on his body that stung when he pressed against them too hard, but the soreness in his muscles had dissipated enough that he could move just fine. He'd insist on being allowed to walk around normally starting tomorrow, even if an actual outing wouldn't be in the cards.

  The water dripped down from the tip of his nose into the bucket. Even if the difference in consistency can't necessarily be felt, Clay thought that the water had a gentler feel to it than diesel. It didn't stink and it didn't give him the sensation of sticking to his skin.

  "You killed my friends, you stupid piece of shit!"

  "Hrrk--!"

  Clay vomited straight into the bathing bucket. The meal he'd just eaten went to waste.

  It felt like more bile came up than should've been possible, given the small amount he'd actually eaten. He just kept expelling the contents of his stomach until it was empty, and then he threw up a little more.

  "I bet you were giggling like a little fucking kid about how smart you are after you killed my friends!"

  It got to a point where he moved the bucket to the floor so he could kneel over it instead of forcing himself to stand.

  I was laughing.

  Clay heaved and panted over the bucket.

  Shit, they were bad for sure, but…

  Clay pounded his fist against the floor.

  No, I don't want to feel even a little bit sorry for those fucks. Just forget about it already. I didn't even really kill any of them. It was the Hammer. It was Alan. It was Ed.

  Clay smiled to himself shakily. It was so convenient that he hadn't directly killed anyone - there was room for him to make these pathetic excuses. At this rate, he could dance around the main issue forever.

  Why did he laugh?

  He was aware that he'd gotten at least five men killed at that time, but he was still laughing his head off.

  It wasn't because those men died.

  This was the truth. At least, it wasn't entirely because those men died.

  Clay laughed because that's what his body wanted to do. The chemicals in his brain were at fault.

  He spat into the bucket.

  This was true to an extent, but there was something else. For the first time in a long while, he'd felt so happy to be alive.

  In the end, there was only shame. Something had been tainted.

  "I'm fucked…" Clay whispered.

  He spat into the bucket again.

  Where did he get off acting so traumatized?

  Clay brushed some of his hair away from his eyes and realized Kissy was sitting a few feet away, just staring at him.

  "This is usually the part where you bite me."

  Kissy scampered off, but only so she could start pushing a second bucket toward him with her body.

  Squeak!

  Clay spat what remained in his mouth into his bucket. He'd have to brush his teeth again now.

  "I don't understand. I already have a bucket."

  Squeak squeak!

  She hopped into the second bucket.

  It still took Clay a moment to realize what she was trying to convey.

  "You want a bath?"

  Squeak!

  It was so baffling that Clay's mind didn't drift back towards his inner turmoil until hours after he finished giving Kissy a bath.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Milly woke up the next day, just in time for Alan to finally allow Clay to walk around the apartment complex normally. He'd slept through the tearjerker that had been her initial reawakening, but he was one of the ones in charge of taking care of her now that he was regaining capacity.

  >HEALTH: 0/4

  >STAMINA: 5/10

  He needed to recover a little bit more before his Health would come back, but Alan assured him there was no rush.

  Milly complained of head pain so intense that one of his duties was making sure she took painkillers on a set schedule. Unfortunately, this meant that a lot of his time with Milly was spent with her either asleep or too loopy to hold a proper conversation.

  However, he at least got to have a word alone with her while he was using specialized cutters to cut her pills in half. The dosage on them was high enough that Bell claimed she wouldn't need a whole pill.

  Angie had been there for a little while, but Alan removed her so that Milly could rest without the risk of any of the loudness inherent to children bothering her. Alan himself was usually the one keeping an eye on Milly and spent every free moment in the room, but now he also had to busy himself with Milly's responsibilities.

  "You're so fast," Milly commented from her bed. To keep any light from getting into her eyes, not only were the windows completely covered up but she also had a hand towel draped over the top half of her face. She could tell how good Clay was at cutting up her pills from the short length of time between the sounds of them being chopped in half.

  "Am I? I guess it's hard to be bad at it when Bell had this pill cutter handy." It was a little dishonest, but not an outright lie.

  "Mmm, I guess that's true."

  With the way she was, it was easy for loved ones to want to speak at length with her. He'd seen it before.

  People just don't know when to be quiet.

  Clay had decided to stay as silent as possible to avoid being that type of person.

  "How are you feeling, Clay?" But it seemed Milly was one of them.

  "How am I feeling?" Clay only glanced up from his task for a second. "Fine, I guess. I'm not telling you to shut up or anything, but shouldn't we keep talking to a minimum for your sake?"

  "You have a nice voice and you're being plenty quiet." She smiled just wide enough to rustle the towel. "Al made it sound like you were already swelling up by the time he found you. Just thought I'd ask."

  His body ached. "I'll be alright. It's you everyone is worried about."

  "I heard something happened to Calvin too, though."

  "He'll live," Clay said hastily, then immediately regretted it. To say 'he'll live' implied 'whereas, you might not'. "Everyone's going to be okay, including you."

  "Okay, but if you start feeling some sort of way, please take a break."

  "If anything, I think I just want to get something off my mind."

  "Hm? What's that, honey?"

  Even if he was ultimately being self-important, Clay still wanted to say it.

  "I'm sorry that things turned out this way. If I'd been more careful, thought a little further ahead, you and Angie wouldn't have been in any danger." He cut another pill in half. His voice remained steady. "It was my idea, so I was the only one who was supposed to shoulder anything. That's the way it should be, you know? If someone proposes a plan with substantial risk, they should keep that danger centralized on themselves as much as possible."

  Milly said nothing.

  "I know you understand what I'm saying, it feels like you always do. That's why you took my side when I wanted to go meet Radman in the middle of the night; you understood as well as I do that it's better if an outsider like me is the one at risk." Clay clipped another pill, but one of the halves was sent clattering to the floor.

  You're too nice a person to consciously think less of me for it, but somewhere deep down there has to be some kind of resentment.

  It was a familiar feeling to him.

  "Is that what you think of me…?" She let out a breath that was almost a scoff.

  Clay was reaching down for the half-pill that had fallen but stopped halfway.

  "Oh, Clay…I'm not as smart as you think I am. You always seem so sad and scared, I couldn't imagine why you'd have been willing to put so much on the line just to talk to Richard, even if your argument was persuasive."

  Clay remained hunched forward, hand hanging limp towards the floor.

  "Honestly, I never really know what you're thinking. You're like Kyle, always stuck in your own head." Her hand slowly moved in his direction, fingers drifting into his view before reeling back and trying again. "I was actually going to veto the idea until I saw the look in your eyes. You looked so sharp and dashing. Seeing a kid like you work yourself up like that stirred up something in me and I ended up agreeing with you before I could stop myself."

  He felt her hand land gently on the top of his head.

  "You live here, too. I'd be sad if anything happened to you, so don't have such a morbid view of me, alright?"

  You're being so nice, but you don't really even know me.

  The tip of his finger started to press against the half-pill.

  It's true that you're not as smart as I thought. If you were, you'd be smarter about who you say these sorts of things to.

  "Clay? Are you alright?"

  Seriously, it just sounds fake when you talk to me that way.

  Clay nodded against her hand without saying anything.

  He couldn't trust himself not to sound choked up.

  The idea that the world almost lost you is so frustrating.