"Snow's too damn deep," Alan complained. "I remember the last winter bein' a lot easier to manage."
"The spear doesn't seem like such a cumbersome weapon all of a sudden, eh?" Clay trudged through snow that reached halfway to his knees. At least he could take solace in the fact that the Crowder on the street in front of him was having an even harder time moving around.
Unable to properly close in, it was easy pickings for Facestabber II.
>+10 XP!
"Heh! You sure rammin' them through the face is a good idea, genius? Ain't you supposed to be gettin' those heads to Dick?"
Clay shrugged against his shouldered spear. "He's got plenty for the time being."
They'd lugged so many heads to Radman by this point that he could start making headmen instead of snowmen, so Clay probably had a week before he’d suffer any pestering.
Clay used Facestabber II to pierce the snow and make sure he wouldn't step on anything strange.
The snow made it easier to pick off any Crowders they found outside, but it also made travel a real pain. Carrying totes of supplies back home wasn't easy when losing his balance became a real concern. It did also end up making his spear into a liability more often than not, even if he was in too deep to admit such a thing.
Still, using his melee weapons as much as possible was good for conserving ammo. It also ended up garnering him a massive boon.
---------------------------------------------------------
[MELEE MAN] (+5 Skill Points)
Kill 100 zombies with melee weapons!
---------------------------------------------------------
This was something he'd received pretty early in the month-long grind, and the benefits reaped were many.
---------------------------------------------------------
You are Clay
HEALTH: 4/4 | STAMINA: 8/10
---
LEVEL: 2/11 | EXP: 1755/2000 | SKILLS: 4/5
---
STAT POINTS: 0/12 (FrL: 7 | FrA: 5) | SKILL POINTS: 2/7 (FrL: 7 | FrA: 5)
---
BODY -
Strength: 5 | Speed: 1 | Resilience: 2 | Endurance: 2
MIND -
?? | ?? | ?? | ??
HEART -
Luck: 0 | ?? | ?? | CIDURAC
---
-SKILLS-
[IMMUNITY - LV 2] | [SOUND OF SILENCE - LV 2] | [Id BOOST] | [NICE SHOOTING - LV 1]
---
-ACHIEVEMENTS-
(+5 Stat Points | +5 Skills Points | +1 Max Level | +3 Skill Slots | +1 WtSkill)
---
CURRENT WORLD: Dead and Dying
OBJECTIVE: Survive
TIME REMAINING: ???
---------------------------------------------------------
Unlike the Stat Points he received in similar fashion, he spent them right away.
The first thing he'd done is use 3 of them to upgrade [Sound of Silence]. He'd debated with himself on it, but the time he spent walking around with only one sound slot was unpleasant enough that he took the plunge.
>Upgrading this Skill increases the amount of sounds you can store
This vague wording had been the main source of his discomfort. How many more would he get? He suspected it would only go up by one, but when he finally forced himself to buy it, he'd been pleasantly surprised.
>Current Sound Slots (CSS): 4
Excluding the sound of the exploding gas station that had made its home in his sound slots, he had 3 free slots. Not even a little buyer's remorse for this one.
After leveling up [Sound of Silence], he purchased [Nice Shooting] almost instantly.
---------------------------------------------------------
[NICE SHOOTING - LV1] (3 SkP) - Passive - (CSL: Intermediate)
If you want to survive in this world, you’re gonna need a lot more than just your fists. Weaponry, after all, is the great equalizer, especially guns.
You are (Intermediate) with any mundane firearm you pick up.
Upgrading this Skill increases your level of competency.
---------------------------------------------------------
It was only natural to use the Skill Points he had left over to buy up one of the Skills he'd had his eye on since the beginning, especially now that he could use guns freely again.
The Chiappa Rhino was nestled in a holster on his belt (a present from Alan after the loss of his toolbelt), and there was plenty of extra ammo in his pockets, put into speedloaders that had come with the gun when Alan bought it years ago.
Back when their partnership started, Alan hadn't been likely to give him spare ammo. Whether it was because he hadn't trusted Clay not to shoot him or hadn't trusted him not to waste all of his ammo while under the impression he could always get more, he hadn't specified.
Now, their relationship progressed to the point where Alan talked about ammo stashes with him like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.
"If I ever go down and you need extra ammo, you can find more bullets for your gun in this part of my bag right here. Ain't gonna be in speedloaders, though."
"Gotcha'."
Clay never asked about it, but any uneasiness caused by either of those prospects were lessened by time and trust. Of course Clay wasn't going to shoot Alan in the back or carelessly shoot zombies when he didn't need to.
It was funny; despite the lack of hesitation buying [Nice Shooting], he felt it was the purchase he was getting the least mileage out of. Whenever he shot a zombie, he didn't feel like his aim had gotten that much better.
Actually, that wasn't entirely true. His aim was getting better, but it felt more like the sort of improvement that came from shooting often and becoming accustomed to his gun. The redistribution of force that the Chiappa Rhino was sold on might also play a part.
It's just that he expected a bigger jump from a Skill.
He didn't consider it a waste, though.
Given there was an Achievement for killing zombies with melee weapons, there might also be an Achievement for killing zombies with guns - that was something to consider. Plus it was just the first level of the Skill. Who knows what he could be capable of when he puts more points into it?
That's something he might be able to find out about very soon.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
>EXP: 1755/2000
His next level up was on the horizon, and the Skill Points he'd get from it would bring his total to 3. Clay could funnel those straight into [Nice Shooting] and see if it made more of a difference.
Maybe.
Alan brought him back to the present, not for the first time.
"You spacin' out, or are you lookin' at your V-Man windows again?"
"I wasn't looking this time, but I was definitely thinking about them," Clay admitted.
"Shit, suppose I can't blame you too much. I used to play Planet of Battletrade a fuckton back in the day and I got myself so high up on this one server I'd sometimes just peek in to look at my username on the leaderboards. You ever play that?"
"Was it an MMO?"
"So you heard of it, at least!"
"Not really. It just has that kind of name, I think."
Squeak!
Kissy got her two cents in from inside the hood of his puffy black jacket.
"Never thought of it that way. Thanks, Kissy!" Alan waved in Clay's direction.
Thanks to the snow, she didn't get to do much scouting for them when they were outside these days. She acted as moral support during these inelegant walks.
Squeak!
A week ago, she squeaked on accident after Clay's foot got stuck on something in the snow and he almost tripped.
"She done told you to watch out, kid!" Alan improvised.
For some reason, that made Clay laugh.
After that, it just became a running gag for her to occasionally squeak, allowing Clay and Alan to bow to her wisdom.
Squeak!
"You tell 'em, Kissy!"
Squeak!
"One day I'll transcribe all of this into a book for future generations," Clay said at one point.
Just like every day before this one, they made their way through a building while killing any zombies in their way. In some cases where there weren't any waiting in the wings to attack them, Clay would seek them out on the street and kill them for their XP and their heads on the way home.
This was what today's plan had been after their supply search had gone a little too smoothly.
That was when the snowfall became too dense to see properly, and the wind picked up enough that they couldn't hear each other over the sound. Clay even attempted to use [Sound of Silence] on it, but it hadn't made any discernable difference in the blizzard.
For a little while, he even lost sight of Alan. If it weren't for the fact that they had worked out a while ago what to do in this situation, Clay might have panicked.
Instead, he just stood still and counted down from sixty. If he couldn't spot Alan by the time he reached zero, then he had to either meet him back at the apartment complex or take shelter if conditions were severe enough.
He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Alan trying to communicate something to him over the howling winds.
"Over there…!"
It was all Clay could make out as Alan pointed toward a building nearby. He got the gist.
They trudged over to a bar with large windows that allowed them to see inside of it when they got close enough, which was probably why Alan chose this to be their shelter. It wasn't a good idea to rush into an enclosed space without knowing for sure whether or not they'd be jumped.
Contrasting with its extravagantly sized windows, its sign was a small square next to the front door.
'Drinker's Delight'
Once they pushed inside and got their supplies on the table of a booth, they rustled the snow from their clothes.
"Yeesh! Usually it don't get that bad until nighttime!" Alan lifted the hem of one of his gloves to exhale inside of it.
"It's getting darker a lot faster now, maybe the snow is just clocking in early." Clay felt some movement on his back as Kissy shoveled the snow out of his hood with her body. "You okay back there, Kissy?"
Squeak!
Clay took his beanie off of his head and silently urged Kissy to hop into it. Once she did, he wrapped up everything below the neck and slipped her into the pocket of his jacket. While that was happening, Alan was poking his head into a room behind the bar and whistling at what he saw.
"Kid, you ain't gonna believe this…"
When Alan stepped back out, he was plunking a wooden case onto the bar. Upon opening it, he revealed that there were dividers inside that segregated eleven bottles from each other - eleven bottles of whiskey. The total number of sections was twelve, with one left empty.
To have a look for himself, Clay lifted a bottle and found that it was completely drained. Alan made a face and pulled out another bottle, which was also empty.
They took turns lifting bottles until, by the end, they found that only five of the bottles had anything in them. If Clay wanted to be particular, he'd say they had four and a half bottles from the half-empty looks of that last one.
"Alright, not as good a find as I thought," Alan waved away the invisible criticism that Clay wasn't even sending him, "but still amazing. You know how hard it is to find premium shit these days, kid? Mmh! Nah, you wouldn't get it. I can tell from the looks of you that you'd cough up a lung if you had a sip of the good stuff!"
He was probably right about that.
"I didn't take you for a drinker." Clay inspected one of the bottles. It was rectangular with a black and white weasel character holding a shotgun on the front of it. It was a drawn picture, but the weasel was rendered realistically.
Weasel's Whiskey
'Shotgun Wedding Edition'
"You can't Weasel your way out of this one, Ted."
"I ain't no drunkie or nothin', but I did sometimes like to have a little somethin' for holidays and parties." Alan had a look at one of the empty bottles. "These days, I don't usually like to have too much alcohol lyin' around. Don't want someone in the building turnin' out to be a depressed drunk, y'know?"
"I guess?"
"Mostly, if we have any someplace, it's just as emergency disinfectant." Alan twisted the cap off of the half-empty bottle and took a whiff. "Whew! Yup, this stuff would get anyone shitfaced! It'd definitely be irresponsible of me to bring this home, wouldn't it?"
"It says on the bottle to drink responsibly, though. I think you'd be fine as long as you listen to whatever the bottle says."
"You got a point there, my friend! Only good things have ever happened to people who listen when a whiskey bottle is talkin'."
Clay turned the bottle around and pointed at small pictures on the back advertising other limited editions with a crooked grin on his face. "Look, it also says to buy the other bottles. Some of them are even different flavors."
"You don't say…" Alan leaned against the bar while rubbing his chin. "We wouldn't wanna disappoint the bottle, huh? Let's keep an eye out!"
"They're historical artifacts. It'd be irresponsible not to collect them all."
Alan glanced away, seeming to put the jokes out of his mind to put actual consideration into it.
"…Ah, what the hell! It's almost Christmas, let's bring home somethin' for the grown-ups!"
Clay raised the bottle in his hand in celebration, even though he wasn't really a drinker. The last time he had alcohol was when he drank some champagne on New Year's Eve. The time in this world wasn't one-to-one with his, which meant he'd be celebrating the winter holidays again before a full year had a chance to pass from his perspective.
"You enjoy looking at those." Clay stepped away. "I'm going to check upstairs real quick."
"Will do! Call me if you need me!"
With his revolver in hand, he took the opportunity to make his way up a skinny spiral staircase toward a smaller loft area above the bar. There were beanbag chairs, bookcases lined with books that had no lettering on their spines, and a doorway obscured by a bead curtain.
In response to these ambiguous doorways, Clay always took a moment to collect himself and mentally prepare for anything he might find. After realizing he could have nipped the Hammer situation in the bud if he'd just been a little more proactive, he'd become determined not to be done in by his fears again.
He whipped the entire curtain to the side at once, gun primed to fire anything that might be in front of him.
Except the thing that happened to be a normal person who seemed more surprised than him.
It was an Asian woman wearing a parka with the hood pulled up. The fur lining the hood perfectly framed her delicate features and caught Clay off guard in a way opposite to what the Hammer had made him feel.
Not even a second after Clay appeared, the woman fumbled for something on the floor next to her. Her movements were sloppy enough that he was confident he could have shot her before she pointed a crossbow at him.
He'd already started lowering his gun when he realized it was a human, but something else kept him from putting it back on her when she started acting frantically.
She's cute…
Just like that, she had the advantage even though she'd been the one initially caught unaware.
Needless to say, he was feeling pretty foolish. Clay was past puberty now. He shouldn’t be getting fixated on girls in situations like this, no matter how pretty.
"Why-uh…" Her speech was slurred. "Did you just low'r your gun?"
Clay's eyes glanced over at a bottle of whiskey next to her with a quarter of its contents missing. That explained the missing bottle, at least.
"Uh…Yeah?"
"I asked--uh...Why'd you do that? Feels pret'y stupid." She shook her shoulders like she could shake off her inebriation. "You stup'd?"
"Sorry? Am I 'stooped'?"
"I said stupid." She glared at him in a way that looked more like a pout. "Let's not play that game like you can't understand me, alright?"
"Uh, no, it's just you said it kind of…." Clay sniffed. "You said it kind of weird. It doesn't matter."
"It does matter!" She suddenly raised her voice at him. "Seems kind'uh stupid to lower your g--Wut's your deal, man? You're acting totally weird right now!"
Clay frowned. "I am?"
"Okay, let's not play that game like you don't know you're acting weir-duh."
What was she talking about?
…
Oh.
Why am I acting so casual? If I was on the other side of this, I'd think the dude I was talking to was playing a game like those guys in the asshole patrol.
"Sorry. You're right; lowering my gun was kind of stupid. I just did it on instinct after I realized you weren't a zombie."
"What are you apologizing f--?"
Thunk!
The arrow loaded into her crossbow vanished.
Clay noted the unpleasant sound it made when it hit whatever it hit.
On that, what had it hit?
She had a dumb, wide-eyed look on her face. He followed that gaze to his lower half, where he found the crossbow bolt sticking out of his thigh.
It hit him? Wow, it didn't even hurt.
At first.
Clay started screaming.
"You scared me!" The woman defended before he'd even said anything.
"How!? How did I scare you!?" Clay moved his free hand towards the shaft of the arrow to touch it, but his fingers ended up hovering indecisively around it instead. "I lowered my gun and everything!"
"Aghhh! I dunno!" She dropped her crossbow on the ground and started inching towards him on her knees to have a look at the wound. "Sorry, I'm jus'a little drunk right now and this is kind of a lot!"
"Did you seriously just say that!?"
"Ugh, you're being such a baby! It doesn't even look like it hit you anywhere impor'ant!"
Clay heard pounding footsteps on the stairs until Alan stepped up next to him to look into the room as well. He was wearing a Drinker's Delight branded hat on top of his fisherman's hat.
"What's goin' on up here!?"
"This chick just shot me with a fucking crossbow!"
"I said I was sorry! I'm-drunk!"
"You're still responsible for the things you do when you're drunk!" Clay cried as Alan helped him over to a chair.
"We're gonna have to get some things ready before we take this thing out, kid." Alan looked over his shoulder at the woman. "You ain't lookin' to get your ass shot, are 'ya?"
"Uhh…"
"If not, I suggest you help me gather up what I tell you so I can make sure this guy don't bleed out."
"Ah-ah! Okay! I'm really sorry!"
After a few minutes, Alan was using Clay's lighter to heat up a knife he kept in a sheath attached to his ankle. He had the woman sitting to the side with a small pile of paper towels and some metal cocktail skewers.
Alan had her heating up one of the skewers in a similar manner while he used another knife to cut a hole in Clay's pants around the arrow. He explained his next steps at the same time.
"I'm not good enough with this shit to know if she hit an artery, so we're gonna play it safe and prepare things like she did." Alan briefly turned his leg to the side. "It didn't go all the way through. Dunno if that's a good or a bad thing."
Clay breathed tightly through his teeth.
"If blood starts splurting everywhere once I pull this sucker out, I'm gonna use a hot skewer to try an' cauterize your artery. If there's nothin’ to worry about in there, I'm gonna use my knife to seal you up."
Either way, this fucking sucks!
"You ever do this before…?" Clay asked hopefully.
"Nah, but I saw it on TV once!" Alan held a rag out that Clay reluctantly bit down on.
"Maybe we watched the same show," the woman brought up. "Where'd you see it?"
"Quit distractin' me! I ain't got the mind or the time to pal around about TV with you! Hold down his leg for me!" Alan looked at Clay and whispered. "It was on Saving Captain Flyn. You ever see that?"
"Hmn--?"
Alan used that moment of confusion to pull the arrow out of his leg all at once.
"HMNNNHGHHH!"
Even though he'd wanted to freeze his leg in place, his body convulsed from the pain. The woman had to put all of her weight on his leg to keep it anything resembling still.
"I can never tell if you're lucky or not. Seriously, shit just always happens to 'ya," Alan said conversationally while splashing whiskey onto the open wound to disinfect it. "At least this time it looks like you were lucky enough not to have your artery hit."
Clay had to have alcohol put on wounds before. It was proper antiseptic wipes at that time, not whiskey. He remembered it stinging a bit, but nothing he couldn't power through. That was the sort of pain he'd expected when the whiskey came out.
It wasn't even comparable. This hurt so bad that he felt tears spilling out of his eyes as he screamed around the rag in his mouth.
The pain that had already become unbearable was followed by something even more excruciating that made his vision darken.
Then it cleared back up.
It'd felt like less than a second, but the fact that Alan and the woman seemingly teleported to the other side of the room told a different story.
"Look! He's already awake!" The woman shouted.
"That don't mean shit! He wouldn't have even passed out if you hadn't done what you did!"
"Maybe he passed out because you put'a hot knife against an'arrow wound! Ever think of that?"
Alan seemed more puzzled than angry at her assertion. "Yeah, and why did I have to do that again!?"
She looked like she hadn't expected to be countered so easily.
"Jesus, you haven't sobered up a little by now?" Clay snapped.
"Shove off, man! You've only been out a few minutes! I've barely even had time to come to terms with the situation myself, so could you guys stop yelling at me!?"
He's taking back every nice thought he had. This girl wasn't cute at all.
Clay glared down at his leg where Alan had created a makeshift wrap around the wound with paper towels, tied around his thigh with some string he ripped from an apron.
"It doesn't look like you took any serious damage, at least," Alan said.
"Yeah, you're one of the luckiest guys I've ever seen!" The woman chirped. "Nobody I've ever shot with my crossbow has ever lived to talk about it!"
"Nothing you've said so far has done anything to help my impression of you," Clay informed her contemptuously.
As for his lack of damage, he could probably thank his Health for that.
In the time since his battle with Ed, he'd worked out the broad strokes of how his Health works. Even if it keeps his body mostly safe from damage, taking attacks still hurts. There's also still a bit of blood. If an attack can't bring his Health to zero and then some, it doesn't leave lasting damage.
Of course, the arrow did enough damage to break through his Health, but it at least saved him from a weeks or months-long recovery period.
Clay winced. It still hurt quite a bit, though.
The woman knelt down next to him and pressed a shopping bag filled with snow against the bandaged-up part of his leg. "What about this? Does this feel better at all? I got some snow from outside for you and everything."
"Don't press so hard! That hurts! Just give it to me and I'll do it!"
Usually, Clay found it hard to be so aggressive, but something about the amount of pain he was in caused his usual politeness with strangers to be thrown out the window.
"It's startin' to get dark out," Alan observed while peeking outside through some blinds. "If the storm goes on much longer, we're gonna have to camp here for the night."
"If that's the case, maybe we should introduce ourselves." She put her hands on her cheeks and flashed Clay a cutesy smile. "My name's Cynthia, and I'm very sorry!"
Unfortunately, Clay's shine for her was gone. "People that use their looks to get away with stuff piss me off. You're also not nearly pretty enough to get away with doing this to me, anyways."
"Mean!"
Alan laughed. Maybe her trying to butter Clay up so much had something to do with the fact that her crossbow was currently in the older man's possession.
