Chapter Text
Tommy doesn't remember the moment it had hit him, that the world was well and truly ending. It had been very slow in retrospect.
First, cases began popping up all over Europe. Mutations, they said. Nothing to worry about. Then a week later they called it a potentially dangerous virus, and advised people not to travel.
Two days later they were overrun.
Tom Simons had been thirteen. The sun had been shining, glittery and golden on crystalline lakes and cold metallic solar panels. Spring on the brink of summer.
Within a day's work it had all been twisted beyond recognition. The plants began to die. The streets were painted red with blood, sunlight now breaking on crooked shards of glass stuck lodged into pudgy skin and empty lifeless eyes. No birds were singing but the nights were never silent, filled with the near and far groans of undead creatures dragging themselves through rubble and mud, tattered clothes drenched in blackened blood.
You could have mistaken Tommy for one of them, a pale face splattered red and brown, half stumbling half crawling along the highway. In the end he'd passed out somewhere, laid down and might've died were it not for Wilbur.
Wil had risked his life twice over to get back to his apartment and find the piece of paper Tommy had scribbled his number on two years prior, but by then the landline had been out. And at the Simons house, all the windows were smashed in. Tommy remembers the crash, a clear and terribly mundane sound, and the first indicator that something was horribly wrong.
It's a coincidence that Wilbur finds him at all. Luck in a time otherwise so unlucky. He remembers coming back to consciousness to Wilbur hovering over him, eyes wide and fearful.
“Tommy, can you hear me? Tommy, come on, don't die on me now...” he'd muttered. “Are you bit? Answer me or I can't help you, are you bit Tommy?”
Back then it had just been a guess. But when survivor groups started tearing apart from the inside, when people began hiding their wounds, and when Tommy was made to show his arms and legs after every run, the Bite became much more real.
Wilbur had carried him back to their base, an old High School that had lost all but one of it's students. They had checked him twice over to see if he was infected. Then they'd asked so many questions.
“Who the fuck are you?” A boy with pink hair had demanded angrily, but his hands had shaken. He'd been sat on the edge of a desk, still in a messy school uniform.
“Calm down, mate, I'm sure there's an explanation for this, right Wilbur..?”
Wil had cleared his throat, hand still resting firmly on his shoulder. “This is Tommy,” he'd said. “He stays.”
Tommy had looked up at him, feeling tears well up in his eyes. Then, he'd passed out from exhaustion.
..
Two years later, Tommy still can't quite comprehend that their world is dead.
When he peeks out through the barricaded windows of their latest base he half expects to see green leaves sprouting on spring's branches, perhaps a blackbird wrapping it's claw-like feet around the fragile wood. Instead, there is wasteland. Dust where the blood had once turned it to mud, a dull greyness where there'd once been red. Nature has yet to reclaim the streets and ruins and some days he feels it never will.
He still thinks it must be just a bad dream, something to wake up from come morning, and then tell to a thoroughly disinterested Techno over breakfast.
But then again he wouldn't know these people if the world were still alive. No unthinkable circumstance would have forced them to take him in. Phil had said that once, that really they'd been lucky finding each other. Tommy doesn't care much. He'd had Wilbur when the world was alive and he was still here now that the world was dead.
Their base is the fourteenth they've held. Tommy marks a line on his arm for each one, and then at night he runs a finger along the puckered flesh, counting.
They've taken up residence in an old wine cellar, a cool, airy room with walls thick and concrete. Techno has nailed shut the thinly drawn windows and barred the door with an old closet and a long broken refrigerator. A small adjacent room houses two buckets of murky water.
In the beginning, Tommy hadn't talked much at all.
Then Wilbur had started making up silly stories about ruined cities and mangled corpses, calling their bases kingdoms and the skeletons simply long forgotten kings and queens.
When Techno came back from raiding a shopping street with a baseball bat, Wilbur had placed it in Tommy's hands with a sly grin. “Tommyinnit,” he'd said, “As my Vice President you need to be willing to protect our nation.”
And he'd allowed Tommy to name their great nation and he'd picked L'Manburg from the fancy French wine bottle Wil had been drinking. When L'Manburg was overrun by zombies they'd sought refuge in the sewers.
“Pogtopia.” Tommy had muttered, kicking a stone into the darkness.
At night he'd put his hands over his ears and pretend not to hear Wilbur and Phil argue in hushed tones. It had been something you got used to quickly in their group. He supposes there's a reason Wil had been homeless when they'd met.
“I'm not gonna run back home to my dad.” he'd said, not meeting Tommy's eye as he strummed aimlessly on his guitar.
And if Wil's dad was anything like Tommy's, he thinks that wouldn't have been a surprise. But Phil was kind, and spoke in a soft voice, and he'd never hit any of them, not Tommy, not Techno, and certainly not Wilbur.
..
They sleep in shifts. Three makeshift beds are strewn across the concrete floor, and one chair sits lookout by the door beside the window, scratched up binoculars, their sturdiest bat and a thick wool blanket beside it.
Now that he's fifteen Wilbur allows him to take half of his shift every now and then, and it feels adventurous, exciting in a way, eyes fixed on dark shapes on the horizon.
Their supplies are split, half in Techno's, half in Phil's backpack. Tommy carries his bat and a small bag of personal belongings. Wilbur has his guitar strapped to his back. On some nights he will sit beside the window and play his songs, sad sad melodies befitting their lives.
Tonight it's barely dusk. Soft grey light still pours in through the cracks. Tommy is sitting by the door, weapon in hand. He can feel anticipation curling in his gut.
“He should be back by now.”
Techno looks up at him from his reading. “Maybe he got bitten and locked himself in a basement.”
“Shut up, he wouldn't do that. I just- he promised he'd be back by now.”
It's silly, he knows that. They're in the middle of an apocalypse and he still worries every time Wilbur runs late. But he'll never forget those days before he'd found him. The stench, the heat, the terrible gurgling and groaning that just wouldn't stop- who's to say Phil won't send him back there if Wil isn't there to stop him? And worse, what if he simply doesn't come back? And then one day his face stares back at him half rotten and devoid of emotion, brown eyes turned hazy and skin collapsed-
Something must have shown in his expression because Techno sets his book down with a sigh.
“If he's not back by tomorrow morning we just head to the checkpoint, okay?”
“You think we can see the Needle from here?” He asks, hopeful despite himself.
“No,” comes the deadpan reply, “I don't think we can see the Horizons for Homeless Children Vesnum Office Tower from here, but I do think that Wilbur's smart enough to find his way there.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Techno,” comes a familiar voice from behind them, a hint of laughter in it, “But just call it the Needle.”
“Wilbur!” He cries out, tripping over his feet to run at him. “You're back!”
The man in question laughs, dropping his supply bag to catch him in a tight hug. “Aww, did you miss me, Tommy?” he croons, messing up his hair with one hand.
“Fuck you, bitch, of course not.” he mumbles into his jacket.
“Sorry to break up this touching moment but the child had a point. Why were you gone for so long?”
Wilbur's expression hardens. “I just ran into some zombies, had to wait out in a trench for them to leave.”
“Didn't you have your bat with you?” Comes to cold reply.
“Not everyone can beat zombies to a pulp like it's nothing, Technoblade.”
Abruptly, Techno stands, flicking his faded pink braid over one shoulder. “I don't kill!”
Tommy flinches slightly, thinking again of the way the bodies had piled in the streets those first days, and of the zombies crawling into Pogtopia, water splashing where they walked. They don't kill, but sometimes Tommy wishes they could do something more than run.
“Neither do I.” Wilbur answers, pointedly looking at the bat laying at his feet.
Techno looks like he's about to say something, when someone clears their throat.
“Boys!” Phil stands in the doorway, droplets of water on his face, wet hair pushed back.
Wilbur puts his hands up in mock surrender. “We were just wondering if we have eyes on the Needle from here.”
“Vesnum Office Tower.” Techno grumbles, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“Needle.” Wilbur corrects him, shooting Tommy a grin.
He can't help the smile pulling at his lips. He'd come up with that name and from thereon Wil had refused to call it anything else. The Needle or whatever name it actually had – Tommy refused to learn it – was their designated checkpoint. If one of them got lost or disappeared, the rest would make their way there and wait for him. As long as it took.
“Come on, settle.” Phil says sternly, but his eyes remain kind. “I think we've all had a long day. I'll take first watch.”
Techno gives a jerky nod and Wilbur picks up his things, sprawling down on one of the beds. Tommy is content to give his place by the door over to Phil, who smiles at him in that good-natured but sad way of his that makes Tommy think there's too much he doesn't know, and let his gaze wander through the cellar. It's grey walls cage them in, shadows casting deep into the room. Underneath him he can feel the cold creep through thin blankets.
The base grows darker by the minute and the silence begins to stretch deafeningly loud in it's nature. He can't find it in himself to try and sleep, mind still reeling. Wil had been two hours late. Two hours in a trench, listening to the groans and moans of the undead. What if they'd found him? What if he'd been bitten?
Phil begins fiddling with his bucket hat, a faded thing of grey and olive green. Then there's an old looking pocket knife in his hand and with one flick of his wrist it snaps open. Tommy finds himself mesmerized by the dance of a shiny blade across deft fingers. The man's eyes crinkle with laughter as they so often do. Tommy has seen him with his knife many times before, always a new trick playing in his hands. He stills again, reaching up to tuck away the knife, closed loosely into itself, somewhere in his hat.
Techno makes an affronted noise from where he lays. “You know that's dangerous!”
“Relax, Techno,” Wilbur drawls out lazily. “If the old man wants to stab himself in the face just let him...”
And there's a sharpness behind those words as always, and sometimes Tommy finds himself really not liking him all that much.
Then there's a crash from outside. In an instant, Phil is holding his baseball bat. From somewhere outside, a dull groan sounds. Tommy feels a shiver ghost over his spine. Another, this time almost a shout. When you can't see the flesh rotting on their bones and the skin peeling itself where it hangs they sound almost human.
Something is pawing at their walls upstairs. Maybe it's already in. Maybe it's only a matter of time. His heart is racing. He can't breathe.
They sit in silence, baited breaths, for what seems like an eternity before Phil lets the bat drop and Techno slumps back against the covers. Tommy holds back his tears.
It's gone. He reminds himself. It can't hurt you here. But the fear that has settled onto his bones won't subside.
He doesn't say a word but Wilbur sits down beside him with his guitar. Soft yet rhythmic tones begin to fade out into the cold. Tommy closes his eyes, letting himself drift off into Wilbur's shoulder.
“I think this time I'm dying...”