June 19, 2025; It was daylight, finally he was continuing his journey home. Jill and Tonya were close behind him, neither of them happy.

  He had stayed away from everyone yesterday. Jill, Tonya, and even Dawn had come by the room to try to check on him. He had told them to go away. He'd be coming out at daybreak to resume his journey regardless. One more day was as much as he was willing to give up.

  They had stood at the door and tried to talk him into staying just one more day for the rest his body needed. He had told them, "You all can stay then. I will be leaving at daybreak. It's been good traveling with you if I don't see you before then." Then he had ignored them. He was determined to make it home. And the longer he took, the more dangerous the journey was going to be.

  And he was already convinced the system was trying to kill him. Kris had assured him it wasn't, but it sure felt a lot like it was!

  He had woken up at 4 AM and gotten what he needed ready. Putting all of it in his spatial storage except his weapons. Jill had not been happy he hadn't said anything to her about it. And he was sure the lot of them had left scavenged goods they wanted to keep behind at the brick house. He hadn't waited or looked back. If they came with him, so be it, if not, probably better for them in his opinion.

  "Clay..." Jill tried to talk to him but he just kept heading south along Highway 55. From now on his only goal was to make it home. She and Tonya looked worried.

  Well there wasn't any reason to worry about him.

  "Mr Clay, can we slow down a little bit." Hope asked, she was carrying three bags of supplies and sweat poured off her forehead as she tried to maintain the pace Clay had been maintaining.

  "I'll stop for a break at lunch." Was his response. He never looked back or slowed for long.

  When he walked into an ambush from a group of three-foot-tall mutated groundhogs he didn't hesitate as he said, "Dark Bolt." And dropped three of the four groundhogs with one skill, and casually ended the last with a downward chop that stopped its squealing fruitless charge at him. He didn't even slow down.

  He heard the others talking quietly behind him as they saw him react to the ambush, but they had let him walk ahead a short distance and he couldn't make out their words.

  Maybe they were thinking about going their way finally.

  At noon he stopped, took out a chair a bag of jerky and a cola he had put in his space, and sat down to eat while the others caught up. He didn't pay them any attention. Jill and Tonya sat close by, their heads close together as they ate their meals. The other two couples were chatting amiably with Dawn still shooting him those looks.

  After about an hour of rest, he stood, put his chair back in his spatial storage and hefted his axe onto his shoulder and started walking south again. The sky was a constant gloomy, hazy gray that the sun only ever briefly showed through. Fields along the highway were stunted with a slight dusting of snow. There wasn't any accumulation on the ground though and by nightfall Clay had wrapped himself up in a corner of an abandoned house near the highway and after everyone else made their way inside he simply passed out sitting there.

  He woke up about three in the morning and softly told John he would take over until daylight. John grunted in acknowledgment and hurried off to the room Amy and himself had claimed for their use. Jill and Tonya were cuddled up together on the couch, not surprisingly where they could easily keep an eye on him.

  "Am I doing the right thing by trying to make them hate me?" He asked himself, thinking about everything that had happened since the start of this, from receiving the System Seed and Kris' voice. It had said something then that he hadn't thought about. But it kept running through his head as he tried to sleep.

  "Your people will need your strength to survive the coming apocalypse." She had said. What did they mean? He sure as hell wasn't a leader.

  But the more he thought about it, the more it dawned on him that everyone had been, and still was traveling with him. He hadn't even thought about it. Why the hell were they following him? He hadn't told a soul about the bunker his deceased brother had spent a fortune on so no one knew why he was so hell-bent on getting home.

  He spent the next three hours on watch contemplating everything that had happened and asking himself the same question, why? He found himself looking at Jill and Tonya sleeping and felt his heart drop. He hated being a dick to them.

  "Mr Clay, can I have a word?" Came Luke's voice as the man walked into the living room from a hallway. His boots weren't laced yet and he was shrugging his muscular shoulders into an insulated Carhartt jacket.

  The temperature wasn't getting very much warmer after the nonseasonal snowstorm. Another reason to get a little farther south.

  "Sure, it's still a free country as far as I'm concerned." He waved to a chair at the table he had sat down at not long ago.

  Luke chuckled, nodding as he took a chair. He looked at Clay and said, "I'm glad you're alright. We were all worried about you." He stopped as if thinking about his next words carefully. "Mr Clay, in what little time I've known you I've never once seen you shy away from helping others." He started tying his boots as he continued.

  "But," he looked up from his laces, "you don't seem like you like accepting when others are trying to help you." He finished tying his boots and stood, stepped around the table and placed a hand on Clay's shoulder.

  "I'm not a very smart, or wise man Mr Clay. But I can tell you are a good person. So can everyone else. I don't know why you're in a hurry to get home, but I'll do my best to help you get there. It's the least I can do for you saving Dawn." He patted his shoulder and headed outside.

  Soon after that, everyone else started waking and getting ready. By seven they had started again. Clay didn't quite set the same hard pace he had the day before but they managed another full day's travel and he could see Granite City Illinois ahead. He wasn't far now but it was dark, or pretty close to it.

  John found a small house nearby and it had a fireplace. As he watched Hope and Luke get the fire started and Amy and Tonya started boiling water. They were having MRE rations tonight it looked like. Clay ate quietly, though he didn't go off by himself he didn't really talk either and soon said a simple, "Goodnight." Before covering up on the floor in his bedroll and an extra blanket not far from the fireplace and falling asleep.

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  * * *

  "Plunk!" Came the sound of a lure hitting the top of the water. Clay realized he was holding a fishing rod, and sitting in a boat. As he looked around puzzled, he realized Jake was sitting at the front of the boat rilling in a line slowly.

  "Don't look so surprised little brother. Since you seem to need to talk so badly, I figured fishing was a better scenario for this than our hunting stand." He chuckled, "Now what did you do?"

  He took a breath, resigned himself to the criticism he knew he would get from Jake, and told him all of it. From the point he had told them both he couldn't worry about a relationship until after he made it home. To having the system issue the bonus quest to save Doc. And having to defeat a Zombie King and a Zombie Lord, unlike what the system said.

  Jake had commented that the zombie might have evolved due to something the system hadn't factored in, or maybe the King wasn't supposed to be there when he got there, i.e. he had rushed as fast as he could to get to Dawn. Regardless he'd been reimbursed with both abilities and gained a title.

  Clay thought about that and agreed that might be the case, but it still didn't sit right with him.

  Then he got to the poison, and Jake's look turned more serious. He went from grinning smugly to worry for his little brother. Then Clay explained what he could remember of the injuries he had received throughout the journey so far that had finally caught up with him.

  He had been unconscious for two days and thanks to Jill and Tonya's "babying" as he called it, he was stuck for two more. He told him of waking up to both women and what he had said to Tonya and their reactions. He whistled as he pulled the lure up and cast again.

  "Yeah, but you're a grown-ass man and could have left. Be honest with yourself, you needed the time." Jake said. "As for your girlfriends, and the way they reacted..." He stopped rilling his line in and looked right into Clay's eyes, "I think you fucked up little brother."

  Clay couldn't deny that he felt the same. "Why though? I'm even acting like a complete dick to them."

  Jake laughed. "You really are fucking dense aren't you Clay. Think about that statement. You are acting like a complete dick. But they both fell in love with the real you. The one that rushes to help others. Even nearly dying in the process. And you think they don't know it's an act." He shook his head.

  They were quiet for a while. Clay could hear the grasshoppers and cicadas in the tall grass surrounding the pond and it was oddly relaxing as he slowly rilled in his line.

  "I think you're putting too much thought into it," Jake said finally. Clay looked over at him and he shrugged. "Just let things be. Everything will work itself out. By the time you get home, you are bound to have an answer to your situation one way or another."

  He sat in the boat for a while thinking about that as everything faded away.

  * * *

  "BANG! BANG! BANG!" Came the sound of gunshots from the highway outside the house.

  "Whoever's in the house, come out now without a fight. We just want your supplies and you can leave without anyone getting hurt!" Came a gruff voice from outside.

  Clay had rolled out of his bedroll as soon as he heard the shots. He could see John at the window as several lights showed into them from outside. "I only see four." He said as Clay went by him to the other side. He could hear Luke and everyone else hurriedly getting dressed or ready to fight. He looked himself and had made it to 6 people standing around the man that was speaking when the man started talking again.

  "Times up!" He could see the six men rush forward, and at the same time, he heard Luke cursing from the kitchen where the back door was.

  He summoned his axe and pistol from his spatial storage and rushed to the front door to take a position beside it. John gripped a metal baseball bat tight as they prepared for a fight.

  The door jarred hard from the first blow as what sounded like a body bouncing off. The second blow busted the door jam and the man, a Beastmen with the looks of a fucking minotaur staggered through! Clay let John have him as an orc came through right behind the minotaur Beastmen, a machete in his hand. His axe was already in motion and he caught the orc in the shoulder cutting deep as it plowed into the back of the minotaur.

  "Phonk!" Came the sound of John's bat as it collided with the side of the Beastmen's head just below his ear the muscular brute went down on one knee as its head wiped sideways and into the drywall from the force of John's blow.

  The Orc was on its knees, clutching at its neck as blood freely flowed down its blue jean jacket as another Beastmen with the characteristics of a boar barreled through the door already swinging a crowbar at John.

  Clay drew the pistol up and fired, "BANG!" The boar Beastmen's head exploded as the .38 round pierced its temple and it crumpled into the Orc and minotaur Beastmen with its momentum. That's when Clay got hit by a wolf-like Beastmen's tackle. Clay immediately sent the gun away into his spatial storage and called out his buck knife.

  He landed on his shoulder and rolled with the wolf Beastmen's momentum crashing into the couch as they struggled in a grapple, Clay's knife only inches away from its eye. He heard another, "Phonk!" And then Tonya's voice from behind the Beastmen.

  "Get the fuck off my man!" He saw her drive a foot into the man's kidney. His knife instantly found its mark in the man's eye as the blow had cost him his life. Clay could hear more feet running towards the house as he rolled the Beastmen off the top of him and stood up with Tonya's help.

  Tonya immediately pointed her finger out the door and said, "Mind Blast!" Just as the next enemy, an Orc wearing a skull bandana dropped to the floor in the doorway with a pool of dark blood quickly spreading from where it lay. And immediately her eyes glowed azure fire as she said, "Bewitching Gaze!"

  She waited for a moment as more boots hit the porch outside. Clay could hear fighting in the kitchen too. John was dealing with the minotaur again. It had a machete now. Then Tonya said, "Protect me!"

  Outside the door he witnessed a bear-like Beastmen grab an Orc that had just jumped to clear the body in the doorway and brutally smash its head into the porch pillar next to it. Another Orc started fighting with it and he heard the man outside yelling to keep pushing.

  Clay stepped up to the door and raised the gun, "BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!" He dropped four of the five charging enemies as they got near enough he was certain of his shots.

  The last charging Beastmen was attacked by Tonya's charmed Beastmen and Clay looked back just as he saw John let out a yell as he finally managed to overpower it and snap its neck. Clay could see he had a long cut across one arm and his hand was bleeding badly.

  He looked out the door just in time to see the man that had been yelling outside, fall to the ground with a crossbow bolt stuck in his chest.

  His ears still rang from the gunshots and he felt Tonya walk past him and through the door where the bear Beastmen was standing smiling at her as if smitten. She gestured for him to bend closer as if for a kiss and slammed the knife she had hidden behind her under the man's chin and stepped back drawing it out.

  His body landed lifeless at her feet. And she casually bent down to wipe her knife off on the man's shirt.

  Suddenly it was quiet except for a couple of painful moans from the kitchen before they went quiet after a "No, no, no pleas...."

  And then near silence fell.

  Then they heard the sound of something big running towards them crashing into, or through a house nearby. He couldn't make out what it was. "Get inside." He said to Tonya who was already backing up towards the door.

  "Fuckers drew'em to us," John stated stepping up next to him. He was holding his bat again.

  "Yeah. But what the fuck is it?" Clay asked.

  "It's big," Tonya added. "Really fucking big."

  That's when a house across the road seemed to implode as a giant spider-like creature crashed through it.

  Tonya let out a cry as she saw it and backed farther into the house. "I fucking hate spiders!" She said, fear in her eyes as she looked at the massive beast.

  It came closer, inspecting the bodies and even dragging the ones off the porch to inspect before tossing them into a pile and turning back to the house Clay and the rest were still hiding in. It lowered itself as if to look inside the door from outside the porch, chittering and Clay knew it was aware of them. He took a breath and said, "Dark Bolt!" He stepped out and launched all three bolts into its face. And immediately followed by another, "Dark Bolt!" And sent those three right behind and slightly higher than the first three.

  The first three hit the mutated spider's face, tearing off a large mandible and puncturing one of its eight eyes, as the third one sank deep into the beast's head as it instinctively tried to raise away from danger. But that only caused the fourth bolt to slam into the underside of its chin, squirting out a purple-colored mist of blood under high pressure that covered Clay and the front of the house.

  "DING! Congratulations! New Skill Acquired: Web Bomb. The host launches a condensed ball of web the size of a basketball up to a distance of 30 feet. When the ball strikes anything it explodes in a ten-foot radius covering everything with thick, sticky webs that hamper movement and can trap smaller, weaker opponents. Cost: 5 Mystical Points."

  The second and third Dark Bolt from the second volley struck the spider in the abdomen. Both cleanly punching through its thick carapace as it whipped around with unrealistic agility as one leg smashed down through the roof only missing Clay by six inches or so. But he did receive a splinter of wood that pierced down into his shoulder deep.

  He swung the axe at the leg as hard as he could manage one-handed. He was rewarded as the blade cut through the rigid leg like a hot knife through butter. The top portion of the leg slipped downward as the bottom portion was no longer supporting the weight and the spider's squeal echoed for miles as it tried to strike again.

  "Imma kill you, bug!" Came John's roar as he charged out the door and launched himself at the spider's abdomen, his bat already in motion.

  "Mind Blast!" Tonya said stepping up to his right. He could see the beast stagger, and then a thick leg flashed forward right at Tonya. He stepped into her knocking her out of the way as he swung his with everything he had at the limb coming at him. His axe struck the side of the appendage, his angle being all wrong as it cut into it.

  But it wasn't enough to divert the blow or even lessen the force as he was hit in his right shoulder, the tip piercing through it as he heard. "Noooo!" From Tonya, who was looking up at him from the floor where he had shoved her out of the way.

  And then he was flung sideways, through the drywall and several wall studs as he slammed into a dresser with a groan. He heard the beast squall in pain again, by the sound of it Jill and Clay had entered the fray. He managed to rise onto his knees using the axe he somehow managed to maintain a grip on to finally stand.

  He limped out of the room, he was losing blood and he knew it. He saw Tonya on the floor, blood-streaked her beautiful pea-green face. He looked up and saw Jill thrown away like a toy, though she crushed one of the legs before it clipped her, sending her flying.

  Clay felt his heart twist in his chest and something snapped inside him.