Without Ma around and the spider deity’s insatiable appetite to manage, the Hillbilly wasn’t quite sure what to do with the survivors after he’d stumbled upon their cabin in the woods without Evan in tow save for the echoes of his agonized hollering still haunting his fuzzy memory still struggling to shrug off the after effects of Ma’s poison. The Entity had lulled him limp with promises of injecting more powerful hormones than he’d first received upon his entry into the realm--anything to help him grow strong enough to be a sole provider of its demanding diet. With no one he trusted more than the owner of the talons that had once shielded him from a second bullet meant for his monster’s skull, he’d held still for the branches of spider legs to surround him like a cage so there was little ways for him to twist free of the fangs that pricked his back and pumped a cool liquid through him, sedating his muscles slack until the fog that hung over the realm seemed to fill his veins. He couldn’t recall much else after the injection. Evan was yelling--outraged about something or another, but the Trapper wasn’t exactly known for having a lamb’s temperament, so it didn’t strike Billy as odd. When Evan barked at him to leave, he groggily complied, figuring it was his turn to venture out of the realm and help drag back unsuspecting souls, but the path ahead was difficult to navigate until the haze in his mind began to lift with the realm’s fog. When he found the survivors resting on the porch of their cabin, he still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with them, but more pressingly, he had little idea what to do with himself. They granted him a place on the floor to sleep off the rest of his daze, and even though Phil was there to fill him in gently of their new alliance with the remaining survivors, his body so belligerently built and enhanced for hunting down the survivors didn’t take idling by their sides too well the first few weeks of his stay. Any quick movements like darting to the oven to stop a tray of toast from burning agitated his hunter’s instinct, and there were plenty of bruises he inflicted upon his housemates by grabbing hocks of their hair and body-slamming the sprint out of their frantic steps.

   If Phil weren’t there to calm him down with that bell of his ringing some sense into the crooked man, he probably would have killed one of the softies by now, but as days dwindled and months made miles behind him, it was getting easier for him to ignore the urges, even if they helped him keep the memories of his Shadow Ma alive in his thick skull. Despite everything he’d been told--about how close he’d come to being consumed by the very force he tried so hard to take care of like a good son, he couldn’t come to thank the real stars that blinked on in the sky halfway through twenty-four hours that he’d been spared and sent to this strange place known as reality. Ma might not have had the best intentions for him in the last days, but he missed Her all the same--enough to fill quiet nights with pitiful lowing whenever Phil wasn’t close by to knead them out of his vocal chords and fill the empty spaces between his knuckles with sympathetic kisses.

   Perhaps it was the deep hole missing his Shadow Ma had opened wide as the bedsores riddling his arm, but the desire to try and fill it came slowly through acts of gardening and gentle smiles from the botanist. With her vast knowledge of plants and how to tend them, he’d usually granted her clemency more than once in their trials just for the chance to have her doctor a few of his wilting charges like the rotten cornstalks he’d cared for, and now helped tend outside the cabin in the little patch she’d helped plow for him. Without the support from the spider complimenting him on a job well done, he devoured the botanist’s praise in its place, practically relying on its frequency for sustenance the platters of beans and other edible collectibles the garden provided them. So fiercely dedicated he became to winning her attention that it also became much harder than usual to ignore the very obvious blossomed romance between her and the reformed saboteur. He’d caught them more than once tangled up in their bare flesh while barging through the dimly lit cabin, and subsequently flipped the mattress they’d made into a love nest in a desperate attempt to scatter the heaviest concentration of their animal urges, and though it earned him more scolds than smiles, the botanist couldn’t convince the bull still raging in him to settle for less than 90% of her undivided attention. Jake could go sit on a ten inch dick for all he cared. And besides the corn, Phil, his replacement mother, he didn’t care for much.

   Rain was a rare occurrence, and one he’d come to fancy. Splitting wood on the outskirts of the property just wasn’t as satisfying without the drops from the sky to cool him off as he slaved away slamming an ax down and split logs as easily as he had survivor skulls back in the Entity’s realm. Claudette wouldn’t be thrilled to find him out in the rain catching his death, but he figured he’d bypass the majority of her displeasure by slipping out while she busied herself with peeling potatoes for a stew in the making. As he split another wooden slab in two with the full force of his shoulders falling upon the task, he catches a glimpse of something bright orange weaving through the thicket. Curiosity stoked, he stumbles around the cutting block, toting the ax along behind him, it’s sharp head dragging a line through the mud he figures he can use to get back to the house if he wandered too far. When he happens upon the figure the orange coat crunching through the undergrowth, he freezes not out of fear, but out of uncertainty. Ever since he’d arrived in this new and disorienting realm, the only human activity he’d been exposed to was that of the survivors who’d stuck around and make their stake in the woods. Tilting his head one way and then another as the figure turned and caught sight of him. “What the fuck?” The words don’t seem welcoming, but then again, Evan had never sounded all that welcoming when Billy stampeded his way, eager to jump the older fog beast after a long and stressful hunt. Needless to say, it’s not much of a deterrent to keep him from squaring his shoulders and charging excitedly at the stranger. It doesn’t strike him as the wrong move to make, even though he’s armed with an ax and a face like a backwoods experiment in generational inbreeding.