Sanzojoe: You've never played it?! Oh my goodness, you must! You must!
Chibi1309: Thank you as always.
Supernova1215: I am glad I immediately read your review for the previous chapter, because it pointed out to me that I had Clem using her crutches in this installment after they were supposed to have been broken at the end of last chapter! Major error there. So I deleted the last version and have now updated it. As for the mushrooms, Clem actually licked them in my play through! I was giving a shout out to that. As for the husband bit…give it time. That's all I'm sayin'. I have two more installments planned, and that topic just so happens to be on my list of things to touch on before it's all said and done.
An Arm and a Leg
"There it is."
Clem heard the awe in her traveling partner's voice, something echoed inside of her, but she tried very hard to keep her expression neutral. The closer they'd gotten to the factory, the more and more hopeful she'd become. But that hope was laced with fear.
She was allowing herself to think of all the things she'd be able to do once she had an artificial limb. She was thrilled at the thought of no longer being a liability, of being a productive member of the group again. But all of that excitement was dampened by the worry that they wouldn't be able to find the factory, that it would have burnt down, that it would be overrun, that there wouldn't be any appendages that fit her. There were so many things that could go wrong. And if life had taught her anything, it was that if things could go wrong, they did.
But they now stood within walking distance of the factory. Not that she could walk very well after losing her crutches. She was making do with a long, sturdy branch that was a poor attempt at a walking stick.
The building tucked back away from other buildings and had a high fence surrounding it. They'd found it. It hadn't burnt down. And as far as she could tell, it looked deserted. "There it is," she whispered in response.
Louis didn't seem to have the same reservations as she did, because he grinned over at her, not a trace of wariness on his face. "You ready to go in there and get you a new leg?"
Knowing her expression had to be so serious and focused, the polar opposite of his, Clem nodded. She couldn't help it. She'd relax and be excited once they were inside and they'd found something for her to use. Until then, she would approach with caution. "I'm ready to try."
He snorted and elbowed her playfully. "That's the spirit." They'd been walking to give the horse a bit of a break. He now led the rested animal to the fence surrounding the factory and looped the reins through the links, making an intricate knot to keep it from getting away while they were inside. "Do try to contain yourself," he teased in a mockingly solemn voice.
Clem shot him a small, guilty smile. "Sorry. You know I just never let my guard down until a task is finished. I'm paranoid that way."
"That's what I love about you," he said easily as he walked past her toward a set of double doors built into the fence. The doors were made out of the same material as the rest of the metallic barrier. They would swing open on hinges—if they weren't padlocked closed.
But she couldn't focus on the lock at the moment. No, her gaze was glued to the retreating figure of Louis. He'd tossed the "L" word out, and so casually. She was fairly certain he hadn't even realized he'd said it. He probably didn't mean it in the literal sense, but it still hit her in the chest, still made her pause.
Unaware of her reaction, Louis lowered the bag on his back to the ground and pulled out a compact bolt cutter. "I knew these would come in handy." He maneuvered them into place and with one quick snap, he had the lock falling away. He removed it from the door and dropped it to the ground before putting the bolt cutters back into the bag. "The fact that it was bolted closed is a good sign, right? Bosses don't tend to lock in their employees at night."
She nodded, a thoughtful frown on her lips. Then with a cautious glance over her shoulder, she pushed open one of the doors. It squealed on unused hinges, causing her to cringe, but thankfully all remained quiet.
Louis pulled out a small hand ax they'd found at an abandoned campsite this morning and stepped cautiously onto the premises. He moved carefully along the paved walkway that led to the factory's main doors.
Clem watched him with more than a little admiration. He might have the mindset of 'live for the moment', but he wasn't foolish. He knew how to take care of himself and when to be serious.
Louis reached the doors first, Clem hobbling along behind him with her branch. He tucked the ax handle under his arm and jiggled the handle. "Closed up tight." He shot her a grin. "This place is looking more and more secure by the second."
Clem nodded, feeling optimistic despite her internal warnings not to be. Whoever had closed up the place hadn't been in a frantic run for their life. They'd locked the place up properly. There was no sign of a struggle, and there was no blood anywhere. "Only problem now is finding a way inside."
Louis grinned at her and reached into his pack. "I've got this part covered." He pulled out a slim black box and flicked it open. Inside rested a lockpick set.
"You know how to pick a lock?" she asked with open surprise.
"What can I say? I'm a juvenile delinquent." On her raised brow, he chuckled. Pulling the necessary equipment from the case, he set to work. "Don't worry. I'm not at risk of being a cool bad boy. Not even close." He snorted as he fiddled with the lock, trying to get it to pop open. "It's actually a really stupid story."
"I want to hear it," Clem said with an amused smile. All of his stories tended to lean toward the silly. Before the world went to hell, he'd at least had some fun.
He sighed and shook his head, but then with a grin, he said, "There was this arcade not far from the school." He shrugged. "Ericson's was pretty strict about video games. They didn't let us leave the school and go to the arcade, with us being delinquents and all. And they didn't let us bring any outside electronics from home. So, as a young boy, it was a torturous form of hell."
"Naturally," Clem said with a wry smile.
"Marlon found this lockpicking kit in the janitor's closet. I guess they kept it on reserve in case one of us troubled youths locked ourselves in our rooms. Anyway, we spent a few months learning to use it well. Then we would borrow the thing and sneak out of the school. A forty-minute hike through the woods and we were at the arcade."
"A forty-minute walk through the woods. At night?" She couldn't keep the surprise off of her face. "Weren't you like nine when the apocalypse started?"
He chuckled and nodded his head. "We were brave little delinquents."
Clem pictured a seven- or eight-year-old Louis sneaking out of the school just to get to a few video games. Somehow, it didn't surprise her all that much.
"So we would break our way into this arcade a couple nights a week," Louis continued. "We'd start up the games and spend hours there. I swear we'd put two hundred dollars worth of quarters into those machines a week. I had more money than I knew what to do with and nothing to spend it on. We may have been breaking in, but the arcade was definitely benefiting from the arrangement."
He chuckled as he worked at the lock. "A few months later, we were at the arcade, dead of night…and the owner walked in, calm as could be. Marlon and I were so terrified we nearly shit our pants." He grimaced. "I think I may have even cried a little."
"What? A hardened criminal like you?" Clem teased.
"Very funny," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, it turns out the owner was fully aware that we'd been sneaking in since day one. Foolish of us not to think about the fact that they had a security system and cameras. Not to mention that their machines were bringing in much more money than usual than on average weekdays." He shrugged guiltily at his past ignorance. "The owner told us we didn't need to break in if we wanted to use the place at night. Turns out he'd gone to Ericson's too and understood the need to get away every once in a while. As long as we weren't doing any damage to the place, he had no problem with our little visits. It would be our little secret with him. He even gave us a key to the front door."
"Wow. VIP access."
"Yeah," Louis said with a wry grin. "VIP access. But the point of that story is how I became a master at lockpicking—breaking into a business so I could give them extra money."
Clem leaned in against his side in a wobbly, unbalanced hug and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "My bad boy. The master of breaking and entering."
"Yeah," he said with a wry chuckle. "I'm a real bad ass." There was an audible click and then a grin spread across his lips. With an air of accomplishment, he eased the door to the warehouse open. "At least my life of crime comes in handy now."
Clem ignored the joke, her thoughts going serious again as Louis opened the door a little wider. They were in a small lobby. It didn't hold much more than a desk for a receptionist, two chairs along the wall for visitors, and a fake potted plant. Nothing looked disturbed.
She let out the nervous breath she'd been holding and shot him a grin. "One step closer."
He packed away the lockpicking set and lifted his hand ax once again. "We've got this, Clem. You'll have that new leg in no time." He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room. There was a small door behind the receptionist's desk. A hallway led to the right, with signs for restrooms above it. Then a large hall led to the left.
Louis pointed to the small door behind the reception desk. "That probably leads to manager officers." He pointed to the right. "That one is self-explanatory." His gaze shifted to the hallway to the left. "I would bet anything access to the main floor is this way. You probably have an employee breakroom followed by floor access."
Clem waved him forward, motioning toward the hallway on their left. His logic seemed rather sound. It was a good place to start anyway. "Lead the way," she encouraged.
Lifting his ax up in a defensive position, Louis moved toward their targeted area of the building, Clem falling in step behind him. The hall was rather dark, filling her with unease, but Louis pressed on until he reached a door on the left-hand side.
Carefully, he eased it open to reveal what looked like an employee breakroom. It was bare and quiet, but light from the windows stretched out into the hallway, making it seem less threatening. "Told you there would be a breakroom." He pointed to the solid double doors at the end of the hall. "Which means that takes us to the factory floor."
Clem noted as she hobbled by with the help of her makeshift walking stick that the breakroom held an unpleasant odor, but it was a familiar one—cooped up, rotten food. It seemed the door had been closed for some time, sealing in the smell of decomposing food and perhaps old milk that had gone sour in the fridge once the place lost electricity. One stench the room was thankfully missing—death. No one had died in here.
Smiling, she followed Louis to the final door, the one that would grant her so much freedom, the one that would change everything for her. She was so distracted with thoughts of being able to move about with crutches anymore that she didn't notice Louis had stopped. She slammed into his back, giving a little oomph of surprise. "What's…"
Clem trailed off, her eyes going wide. Inside, on the main factory floor, dozens of monsters shuffled about. There had to be close to a hundred of them. Her jaw dropped open and her heart sank. There was no getting through all of those. It was too dangerous. That meant they'd come all this way—she'd allowed herself to get her hopes up—only to be stopped right before the finish line. "No," she whispered, taking a stunned step backward.
Apparently, she'd been wrong when she'd assumed companies didn't lock their employees in. Because that was exactly what this factory had done. Someone had locked all of their employees in this room and taken off. She prayed all of these lost souls had already been infected when it happened. She hoped against hope they hadn't been left in here to turn on each other.
Either way, she wasn't getting that leg now. The workers were still here, forever protecting the merchandise they'd once created for a living.
Louis looked over his shoulder at her and whatever he saw on her face brought an expression of resolve to his. "I'm not accepting no for an answer. We're getting in there."
Clem gazed into the sea of monsters and shook her head in disagreement. "No. There's no way we can—"
"We're getting you that leg." Before she could protest again, Louis grabbed her by the waist and hefted her up onto a stack of boxes against the wall. Then he shoved Marlon's bow up and into her hands. "Climb up to the top," he instructed, pointed to where the boxes were piled halfway up the wall. "Take out as many as you can from up there. And…and if things get really bad, I think that window there will drop you right into the manger's offices." He pointed to a window connecting one part of the building to another. It was just within reach of the top of the stack of boxes. "You can find a way out of the building that way, out the back entrance." He stared backing up toward the door, his eyes on the mob.
"Louis, no!"
He grinned up at her, looking almost sheepish. "You're worth the risk, Clem. Now, get to shooting." That said, he turned and banged the metal blade of his hand ax against a pipe sticking out of the wall, and a resounding clang filled the air. "Hey! Hey, over here!"
Clem opened her mouth to argue with this idea, to tell him it wasn't worth the risk to his own life, but the dead were already turning in his direction. While she sat stunned, they were steadily advancing on his position. "Shit." Awkwardly, she hobbled up higher onto the stack of boxes. Then she lined up her sight with the approaching mob. He hadn't left her much choice but to defend her position.
Her arrows were not innumerable, but she had enough to take out a couple dozen of the dead if she was careful with her aim. Taking a shaky breath, she then used her exhale to pull the trigger on the crossbow.
The bolt went zinging through the air and took down the closest monster to Louis.
He immediately glanced up at her with an appreciative grin, before banging his ax once again into the pipes. "Come on, you ugly bastards! Follow me."
As a monster approached him, Louis lifted an artificial arm from the closest box and swung it around into its face with his left hand, knocking it off balance. Then with his right, he swung down with the ax. Bone crunched and the monster crumpled to the ground.
Louis used the arm to fend off the next in line while he yanked the blade from the corpse at his feet. Swinging the arm in the air, he hollered and drew attention his way. "Follow me! Over here!" With that, he backed up into the hallway, luring the mob in his direction.
Clem watched him go. She stared after Louis until she couldn't see him any longer. Her heart seized with concern as he disappeared from her line of view. There had been so many last times she'd seen people in her life. She did not want this to be the last time she saw Louis. Not for something so utterly selfish. She needed him. Her life was just finally starting to be something good. Losing him would take all of that away.
Chiding herself at such girly thoughts, Clem forced herself to focus. Like all things in life, if she wanted something, she needed to make it happen. So if she wanted to see Louis again, she had to make it happen on her own, not sit on her ass whimpering and worrying.
Lifting the crossbow, she let loose another arrow. Then another. And another. Monster after monster tumbled to the ground, but others always replaced them. Others pushed past into the hallway, making their way toward Louis. She just wasn't making a dent in their numbers.
Her heart pounded in her chest, worry for him filling her mind as she notched another bolt into the crossbow. "Damn it, Louis." A new leg was not worth him dying for. She'd rather be in a wheelchair the rest of her life than lose him. Did he not realize that?
She took down another corpse as it shambled toward the hallway, her bolt slicing right through its eye socket. She dropped monster after monster after monster. Her aim was always true, and all of them stayed down. But it still wasn't enough. She'd gotten maybe a fifth of them, leaving more left upright than one person could handle alone.
Cursing, Clem inched her way back down the boxes until she hovered just above the mob. Whipping out her knife, she drove it down into the skull of the closest shambling corpse. She yanked the blade back out as the monster collapsed to the ground.
She did this again. And again. Over and over and over again she brought her knife down until her arm was sore, until blood caked her hands and face. She did this until she almost couldn't remember ever having done anything else. At least the repetitiveness of it distracted her. She couldn't linger on her fear for Louis when she was busy working to keep the number that got through to him as low as possible.
She worked at thinning the horde until a pile of unmoving bodies lay at the base of boxes. She didn't stop until there were no more monsters within her reach. As the last of them stumbled out a sight, she finally allowed herself to sit back and take a moment to recover.
Her breath was coming in ragged pants, and she knew she must look a frightful mess. She had done her best. Now she just had to hope it was enough.
Sliding to the edge of the box she sat on, Clem carefully lowered herself to the ground. She grabbed her walking stick from the box and then hobbled off down the hallway, following the stragglers.
She wanted to call out to Louis, to hear his voice and know he was okay, but every survival instinct in her made her hold back. Yelling out wouldn't do anything but draw attention to herself. So she instead crept carefully and quietly down the eerily silent hallway.
She followed the last few animated corpses out the front doors and into the courtyard of the factory. A frown touched her lips as she watched them move with purpose toward the side of the building. Louis had looped around toward the back, but why? What had been his plan?
She followed, worry filling her. Louis wasn't used to being out here on his own. A handful of days was not enough to catch him up to her years of experience. She shouldn't have let him go. She shouldn't have—
She came around the side of the building, moving as quickly as her crutches would allow. The sight that greeted her when Louis came into view drew a surprised laugh of disbelief from her throat.
Louis stood in front of a small pit. It looked as if the factory had been attempting to add on a second, smaller building. The beginnings of a basement had been built, but they'd not gotten any further than that. What was left was a very dangerous looking hole—the kind of thing monsters stumbled into and couldn't get out of.
Louis was near the edge. In his hands he held a plank of wood. As the dead moved toward him, he guided them instead into the pit with a careful shove of his makeshift weapon. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he worked, but he didn't look to be in any immediate danger.
Clem approached, craning her neck so she could look down into the pit. Whatever dead remained after she'd taken them out with her knife, Louis had forced into a hole they couldn't crawl out of. They reached up for her, but none had the agility to pull themselves out to actually get a grip. "Louis…"
"I saw this on the way in and it made me think of your cosplay story," he said, voice slightly strained as he forced the last two monsters into the half-finished basement. "I figured if it worked once, it would work again."
She stared at him in amazement. He was so much smarter than she gave him credit for. Though he'd taken her story for what it had been—an amusing tale—he'd also paid attention to how it could possibly save a life. He was truly amazing.
Louis shot her a grin, as if he could read her thoughts. Then he tossed the plank of wood into the pit. "I found a whole stack of these. I'm thinking we toss them in and set the whole pit on fire. It'll take care of the dead much easier than it would be for us to lie on our stomachs and take them out one by one with our weapons."
Unable to help herself, Clem went to him and cupped his face in her hands. Then she drew him to her for a lingering kiss. "You're amazing."
His lips tugged into a pleased smile. "I learned from the best." Then he lowered his mouth to hers for another kiss.
OOOOO
Clem stared down at the artificial leg now attached to her at the knee. It was slightly uncomfortable, but she figured it would be for a while, until she got used to the sensation. She lifted her leg, testing out the mobility.
"Well, what do you think?"
She lifted her face up so she could look at Louis. His expression was eager as he awaited her review. They'd spent the better part of the afternoon looking through all of the artificial legs the factory had to offer. With what they'd found, she'd be able to take half a dozen home with her. She wouldn't have to worry for a very long time about not being able to move around on her own. Even if something happened to her new leg, she had replacements waiting.
"Let's see how it feels to walk," she said in way of answer.
Louis was at her side in an instant. He took her hand and helped her ease carefully to a standing position.
Swallowing back her nerves, Clem took one careful step with his help. Then two. It was slightly awkward at first, but after a minute or two, she was able to let go of him and walk on her own—without the crutches.
A beaming smile spread across her face as she moved from one side of the room to the other. When she spun back around, Louis was gazing at her with open affection and something close to pride at watching her take control of her life back.
She understood she never would have been able to do this without him. She'd been prepared to abandon the factory, to leave the possibility of a new leg behind. But he'd stubbornly fought for her independence when she'd been too afraid to.
Going to him, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. "Thank you," she whispered into his neck. "For everything."
"Like I said, you're worth it."
Smiling, she pressed her cheek to his chest and just took a moment to enjoy a win. They seemed few and far between at times. But today was most definitely one of them. She'd gained her independence back. And all because of the man in front of her.
He hugged her tightly for a moment before whispering against the top of her head. "Let's go home, Clem. I've no doubt AJ misses you."
She lifted her face to him, then stood on tiptoes to press a kiss against his lips. "Home is wherever you are," she whispered back, knowing that it was the truth. "But let's go get AJ."
He grinned, pleased by her statement. "Let's go get AJ." A wicked grin spread across his lips as he added, "Though a couple extra days of having you all to myself isn't something I'm going to complain about."
She returned his grin. "We've got a few more days of our solo vacation. Let's not waste it."
He wrapped her in his arms and leaned in to kiss her again. "No. Let's not waste it."