Bell hinted that Milly might not be able to ever go back to being in tip-top shape, but she might recover enough to go back to her day-to-day. However, she also cautioned against excessive optimism. Head injuries could have complications that take a little while to surface and, with no X-rays or sophisticated medical technology, there was no way to see them coming.

  The only thing to do was keep her fed, check the stitches on her scalp, make sure there wasn't any clear fluid coming out of her nose or ears, reduce swelling with plastic bags filled with snow, keep her head elevated, and hope for the best.

  In the meantime, now that Clay could move around again, he and Alan both took on Milly's responsibilities. Alan took care of calculating proper rations (which now included scrap wood to put in their wood stoves) and fixing up meals, while Clay remained on duty for doling out those rations and doing his own laundry.

  Doing laundry without machines is actual hell, especially when the only one to teach him what to do was Angie. Most of the people in the building took care of their own anyways, but this time Clay was in charge of his clothes and Alan was in charge of Milly's, Angie's, and Jesse's.

  Once he'd finished the actual washing, the only way to dry them when the weather was so cold was to place them next to the diesel heater when Alan deigned to turn it on.

  Luckily, he was promised he'd only have to deal with this until he could go out on scavenging parties again, after which these responsibilities could fall to Howard. With how few times people would need to change their clothes now that it was so cold, Clay was set to only have to do laundry this one time. It made Clay wonder why he was even being made to learn how in the first place, but Alan thought it was important.

  "The more people who know how to do this stuff, the better. It'll take some weight off Milly's back, so no belly-achin'."

  Clay didn't much like the idea of hanging his clothes where people could see them, so he allowed them to air-dry in his room at their own pace. Then he'd shove them under his sheets and warm them up with his body heat while he was sleeping.

  He thought he was so smart, but his sheets ended up uncomfortably moist by the time he woke up the next day. A thin layer of towels between his clothes and the sheets probably would have helped him greatly.

  It's a miracle he didn't catch a cold.

  "Are you going outside?" Angie asked as she walked alongside him down the hallway between apartments.

  "No, I'm just really cold."

  It wouldn't be strange to assume he was heading outside, though. He was currently bundled up in the same outfit he'd worn when he went with Alan to see Radman: two jackets, thick pants, and two pairs of socks. He even had his beanie down to cover his ears.

  He planned on giving out everyone's rations as quickly as possible, changing his sheets, and going back to bed.

  Unfortunately, now that it was looking more and more like Milly was going to be okay, the dour mood hanging over the building drifted away in favor of a new question.

  Who knew Clay had it in him?

  They had to hear about most of what happened secondhand through Alan, but now they could ask Clay about it personally without worrying about being insensitive.

  You're still being insensitive!

  Clay didn't like thinking about it, but it was all anyone wanted to talk about.

  What did he see? What happened on the roof? How did Clay beat him?

  Howard asked after some of the morbid details, but he couldn't get into it even if he wanted to because Angie was with him the whole time. She helped carry the rations so that Clay wouldn't have to make multiple trips. He was strong enough now that he didn't need her to do that, but he supposed it didn't affect him much to let her feel useful.

  Mostly though, she just listened to him tell the same story over and over again. Sometimes she'd jump in and throw in a few extra details from her perspective or ask some clarifying questions of her own, but it was mostly just listening.

  At least Angie's presence kept them from boldly asking about some of the parts he least liked to consider.

  Howard was the only one who'd pushed the envelope by asking about how much of the damage was from the fall and how much was because of Clay's 'fighting prowess'.

  Even if Alan told her that the guy's dead, that doesn't mean we have to write a fucking book about it in front of her.

  Clay brushed him off with a non-answer.

  "Uh, I couldn't really tell you. I was barely paying attention in the thick of it."

  "That's gnarly, man! Yeah, I can imagine you were seeing red! When the nerds fight back, am I right?"

  Alan later explained to him that Howard was a massive dork. It was the Alan way of saying he was something of a film buff who primarily got his kicks from watching action and horror movies.

  Now that he couldn't see the violence and gore he liked in his movies, he often asked Alan about the stuff he'd see when he was looking for supplies. For someone like that, the guy who'd thwarted a kidnapping and killed more special zombies than most people had even seen was a treasure trove of interesting stories he wanted to get at.

  There were rumors that he once threw his back out practicing moves with his nunchucks, but Clay could never possibly just ask him straight up about it.

  "Didn't you break your back playing with nunchucks?" Angie asked innocently.

  "Aww, come on, man. That's not what happened at all! See, I was practicing my Hachiji Furi and…"

  The answer was yes.

  Later, when Jesse broached the topic, she sensed that getting into it was making Clay uncomfortable.

  "Do you have lingering feelings?" She asked him.

  "Lingering feelings?"

  "Everyone these days is too accustomed to violence, but talking to you gives me the impression you're not an inherently violent person. I can't imagine what you must be going through." She lowered her head. "I hope you find peace."

  "Oh, uh, thanks. I appreciate that."

  Jesse turned her head to the side. "You too, Angie. The world is truly ending when children are at risk of going through what you have."

  "I'm fine!"

  "Of course. Sorry."

  He appreciated that Jesse was trying to make him feel better. However, he felt the issue ran a bit deeper than that.

  When they were walking back to Alan's apartment, Angie, probably left with a few questions after feeling the vibe of Clay and Jesse's conversation, started chirping up at him.

  "Don't you feel cool after beating that bad guy?"

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Clay glanced at her for a moment but continued walking. "Maybe? I don't know."

  "Uhmmm!" Angie worked her jaw like Alan sometimes did. "Are you…happy?"

  Not really.

  "I suppose."

  "Are you sad?"

  "People should be sad when other people die. It's normal."

  "But he was a bad guy! If I was you, I wouldn't feel sad at all if a boy like him goes away!"

  She was just a kid. She didn't know what she was talking about.

  "You shouldn't talk that way." Clay slipped his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "I'm not some kind of humanitarian or anything, but I do think it’s dangerous to write people off so easily. That man was just angry. If things had gone a little differently, maybe he wouldn’t have had to…'go away'."

  But if he was being honest, he didn't really feel that bad about Ed or any of the other guys dying. He couldn't say this to a child, but he agreed that the world would be better off if some people died. Likewise, some people were better off dead for their own sake.

  That was part of the problem. Even if they were bad guys who had it coming, shouldn't he, as a good and normal person, feel worse? When he searched for those feelings, the only one he found he felt sorry for was himself. All of the vomit and nights spent twisting in bed weren’t for anyone but him when he actually put his distress under a microscope.

  "Well, I still think you're cool!" She proclaimed.

  Would you still think I was cool if you saw what I did to that man's face?

  "Thanks, Angie." Clay smiled. "I think you're plenty cool yourself."

  "I hope I can get scars like yours one day!"

  "That might be taking it a little too far. I wouldn't recommend it, but I guess as long as you get your dad's permission, anything could be possible."

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

  The times when he could speak with Milly were limited by her healing process.

  A lot of the talking happened when Calvin decided to drop in. Now that he had to be slowly weaned off the painkillers, he was looking for distractions wherever he could find them.

  He sat in a chair on the other side of the bed, fresh bandages wrapped around his head that Clay had applied with directions from Bell. In his opinion, he couldn't see much of a difference between his wrapping and hers.

  "You didn't do it right," Calvin informed him. "Feels like it's gonna fall any second now."

  "Sorry." Clay didn't put much effort into actually sounding sorry.

  "Bah!" Calvin waved a dismissive hand. "Fuck, I ain't mad at you. I'm mad I let that…asshole get me like that."

  Clay half-expected him to use another slur just then.

  "You know how many exploding grenades I been near? Seven! No marks on me! I meet one shithead with a knife and suddenly I'm losin' my depth perception? Ain't right…"

  "No, it's not." Clay repeatedly opened and closed a water bottle. "Let's speak quietly, though. Milly's trying to sleep."

  Calvin glanced at Milly. She was sleeping soundly with a towel draped over her eyes. There was hardly any light coming into the room.

  He nodded, though he still spoke a little louder than Clay would have liked. "Sorry. I weren't kidding when I said I got stupid ears…"

  Clay just nodded back. It was too dark for him to be able to read, so it was either be left alone with his thoughts or talk to anyone who came in.

  "I got a question for 'ya," Calvin pointed a crooked finger at him, "how did you do that thing? When I was runnin' up on him, I coulda' swore I heard another voice that ended up distractin' ‘em."

  "Ventriloquism," Clay answered without looking up from the water bottle. "I threw my voice. It's stuff I learned from some stupid book I had as a kid."

  After being put in an awkward position by Angie, he'd thought back to any other time he revealed his powers and came up with plausible excuses in case anyone asked.

  "Ohhh…Didn't sound like you, though."

  "I disguised my voice as best I could, make it easier to believe there was someone else, you know?"

  "Makes sense to me. You do a puppet show or anything with skills like that?"

  "God, no. Puppets are creepy as hell, and with how out of practice I am, I don't think I could do it on that level ever again."

  Calvin hooked his thumb into his mouth and against his lower jaw. Clay guessed he was adjusting his dentures. "True enough. Battles like that really bring out everything a guy's got. Never woulda' guessed a twerp like you had so much goin' on underneath the hood."

  "Thanks."

  I guess.

  "You don't seem jazzed about it, though. I tell 'ya, when I got back from the war, I was the happiest I ever been in my whole life. That first month was nothin' but drinkin' and stoppin' at every restaurant I could."

  Clay shrugged. "Well, the 'war' isn't really over. Zombies still exist and bad people are still out there. There's nothing to celebrate."

  Calvin jerked his whole hand at him now. "This is why it sucks that your generation never went to war. You woulda' gotten a better perspective on how this world works."

  It might have been too dark for Calvin to read the confusion off of his face, so Clay vocalized it, "What do you mean?"

  "Take it from me, I know what it's like to get down in the dumps after winning a fight because all you can think about is the fact that there's still fightin' to do. Ain't no reason to not celebrate those little victories, y'know?"

  "All due respect, that's only a part of the problem from where I'm sitting."

  "Huh? What's your problem then, son?"

  Clay hesitated getting into it with this strange old man, but it felt like the only time he might get to say anything at all about what was on his mind.

  "Say everything goes back to normal, civilization returns to the way it used to be and everyone still alive can go on as if nothing ever happened."

  "Yeah?"

  "But it did happen, and in the midst of that happening, a lot of people ended up dead. People are dead because of me. Whether I want to try and dance around it or not, I killed people. If the world can't go back to the way it was soon, I don't think I'll be able to live in it when it eventually does."

  Clay didn't think he put that in the best way. He already regretted saying anything at all, especially to Calvin. For someone like him, these sorts of concerns probably didn't even register.

  People find out who they really are in situations like that, and apparently the person Clay really was included someone who could laugh after getting people killed. He was the sort of person who could resort to rubbing it in someone's face to get the upper hand.

  A long while ago, he thought maybe it'd be better if he became desensitized to violence, but now he wasn't so sure. He was already stressed over the idea of simply fighting other people, but now he faced an abstract problem that he felt overdramatic for pondering so much.

  Before he came here, Clay hadn't been this kind of person. What if this world continued to infect him?

  "I see what you're sayin'. That's a regular kinda way to think."

  What?

  "I was proud to fight for my country back in the day, but I don't think the conflict I got involved in was a battle that needed fightin'; it's got a lot to do with why I ain't ever trusted the government the same. So after the high of livin' wore off, all I could think about was that the world I came back to ain't the same one I left behind when I shipped out."

  Clay leaned in.

  "One day I'm wakin' up in a motel room I broke into, surrounded by beer bottles that done washed away the last of my cash. Had to take a long look at myself and realize that the world was exactly the same as it'd always been. I was the guy who’d changed."

  "What'd you do after that?" Clay asked. His hands were still.

  "I took inventory of myself is what I did. Took responsibility, even if my country wouldn't. After that, I took stock of the wrongs did to me too."

  Clay didn't say anything.

  "Lemme ask ya', do you think you were wrong to do what you did?"

  Clay opened the water bottle. "No. I definitely wasn't wrong."

  "Yeh, they forced your hand! Damn near killed the both of us! You did what you had to do! And you made it out alive, didn't 'ya? Be proud'a that! Long as you're proud to be alive, you can get over anything!"

  Calvin's words made Clay's fist clench.

  It was very possible he could be sent into another depression from being reminded of that battle. He could even end up losing sleep over it. There was no way of knowing how he'd feel tomorrow.

  However, right now, it felt like he was recapturing that feeling he had right after killing the Hammer. Even if living sucked, making it out alive was something to be proud of.

  When he truly asked himself if he could take responsibility for those distasteful actions of his, he found that he could. If there ever came a time when he couldn't reconcile himself with what he's done, then maybe there'd be something to mope about.

  The idea of that day coming didn't make him feel good, but…

  I'm alive! It was your lives against mine and I won!

  Clay remembered Ed.

  If you didn't want to deal with kids, you should have never become a teacher! If you didn't want to lose, you should have never come looking for trouble!

  "Get what I'm sayin'?" Calvin asked. "I'm feeling like I might be ramblin' a little bit."

  "No, you're fine," Clay responded calmly, "I think I understand what you mean."

  "Good, good. And don't you worry, I'm thinkin' I can teach you a thing or two about buying up real estate once the world's back to normal. Ain't nearly as hard as you think it is! I went from not ownin' shit to havin' this building before I was 40!"

  "To be fair, I'm pretty sure it was a lot easier to buy and own property back then." If this world’s history was anything like his.

  "And here I thought we was done with the whiner talk!"

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

  A week later, Clay and Alan's winter began in earnest.

  Supplies, kindling, parts and tools, and Crowder heads; these were their list of priorities in order of most pressing to least pressing.

  Without the asshole patrol there to keep them from using guns, it felt like Clay could relax a little better while they did their thing. On the other hand, he also had the sound of a gas pump exploding taking up one of his sound slots, which left him with only a single one to use for shooting guns.

  Clay couldn't just plop it down somewhere and free up his slot. Something this rare and loud had to be saved for a special occasion.

  He exchanged one power limiter for another, but it didn't feel like it mattered much when he was getting so much better at taking Crowders apart with his machete.

  >ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! [MELEE MAN]

  A very productive month passed in a flash.