Chapter Text
Alone. Tommy was alone. Well actually no, that’s a complete and total lie. Tommy wasn’t alone and he hadn’t ever truly been alone in this miserable and desolate world. Not since he met Tubbo and Ranboo. Tommy has always had them by his side, even before this whole shit storm started.
Tommy had been friends with Tubbo since forever, they had lived close to each other throughout their entire lives, and they went to school together. They basically did everything together. However, that all changed when Ranboo came. Ranboo had moved from America a few years ago and moved in right beside Tubbo. How dare he. He had the audacity to move in right beside Tommy’s best friend and then he stole him. He replaced Tommy.
Ranboo didn’t actually, it only sort of felt like it when he first got here and Tubbo was spending a lot of time with him.
Tommy felt jealous but it’s not like Tommy would ever admit it to anyone. Then after a bit of arguments and some harsh words, they all talked it out and came to an agreement. The three of them, Tommy, Tubbo, and Ranboo, they decided that nothing could ever drive them apart.
A strong tug of Tommy’s hood of his red and white hoodie breaks him out of his thoughts.
“Hey man! What was that for?” Tommy shouted angrily as he spun around.
“Dude, were you not paying attention to where you’re going?? There’s literal a cliff in front of you! What are you thinking about?” said Tubbo with his hand outstretched, pointing behind Tommy.
Tommy followed Tubbo’s arm and glanced behind him. Sure, enough there was a large as fuck cliff. Looking back at Tubbo, he saw the disapproving look on his face and the concerned one on Ranboo’s who was standing behind Tubbo, partially hidden.
He shrugged before saying “okay so I might have not been watching where I was going but I’m fine. I was just thinking about how we met each other.”
Tubbo’s face softens for a moment before he responds with “well maybe think less and watch where you’re going, dickhead. I really don’t want to have to haul your body up from wherever you managed to fall to.” as he shakes his head.
“You need to be more careful, Tommy. Okay?” said Ranboo as he reached up to grab the straps of his backpack.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be more careful. But let’s keep moving, we don’t need to be out here longer than we need to. Not with all the zombies crawling around.” said Tommy as he looked around the group.
There behind Tubbo, who was standing directly in front of him, was the remains of what Tommy was sure was an old apartment building. Or it could have been an office building, he wasn’t sure. The piles of rubble all looked the same nowadays. Anything worthwhile that once might have been lying in the dust would be long gone, raided, and taken by the few other survivors.
Turning and looking back over the edge of the cliff, he surveyed what was laid out beneath them. Other than half collapsed buildings and, of course, the cliff, they seemed to be safe. There didn’t seem to be any zombies directly in sight but that’s because they mostly hide in dark places and come out at night. They are what you would call nocturnal because they don’t seem to like any kind of light, which is weird considering they don’t have any thoughts or feelings since they’re dead. But whatever, Tommy didn’t really want to think about them too specifically. He only cared about avoiding them and in the off chance that he did encounter one, he cared about how much damaged he could inflict with his baseball bat and if that would create enough time to run.
The zombies were something straight out of a horror movie that were once popular before the days of, what in the beginning people called the Out-Break. No one really knows how zombies came into existing, the government tried to trace it back to its roots, but no one was fast enough to find it before it had spread to a lot of the major cities. Once it had spread there, for some reason, the only acceptable plan of action the governments could come up with was bombing the city centres. That’s right, those crazy sons of bitches bombed most of the major cities across the globe. It was a dumb idea considering what the remaining zombies did. Those crazy stupid zombies left the city and went into the countryside, where the people who were uninfected had fled to, and went and infected almost all of them. What bright and genius idea by the governments of the world. But they paid for it in the end. The governments don’t exist anymore. Their hope and attempt of saving humanity eventually were eventually its destruction.
“Let’s keep heading back towards the base, it's getting dark, and we don’t need to be out in the open. God knows what could happen to us.” said Tubbo, walking to the left where there was a path leading down the cliff and in the direction of the trio’s base.
The walk to their base wasn’t far, they had a tendency to never go too far away from it, rarely going out for long periods unless they were desperate for supplies. It didn’t look like much from the outside, Tommy supposed, it was one of the few standing buildings in the area. He thinks he remembers Ranboo or Tubbo saying when they found it that it was a small warehouse or apartment building, they kept arguing about what it was, so it's been dubbed the Ware-Partment. In Tommy’s mind it’s a stupid name and when he tried telling them that he got a backpack thrown at him so he’s not going down that road again. It is a 3-story building built mostly out of concrete, which is entirely helpful for them considering that zombies can’t break through the stuff. Other than that, it looks like an average, every day, run off the mill Ware-Partment. There is a trick though, to getting in. You have to go around the back and underneath the third window from the left (there's 6 in total), there is an iron door that looks like it has been rusted shut for ages. From afar it doesn’t look like it will budge but once you get up close, you can tell that the hinges have been oiled and are kept in the best of conditions.
“Come on Tommy don’t just stand there looking at it. If you don’t get your ass inside, I’m locking you out there”. A voice broke through and Tommy realized that he had stopped moving and was just standing there, staring at the door.
“Oh, piss off” he replied at he stepped over the threshold, shutting the iron door behind him with a bang before locking it.
Just from looking at it from the inside, you wouldn’t be able to tell that 3 teenage boys lived here, well at least not from the first floor. No, they kept the first floor clear of all their things for 2 reasons. The first being that if somehow ant zombies did actually manage to get in, the boys would have time to react and enact their escape plan, which Tommy had proudly come up with. And the second being that if any other survivors made it here, they would have a harder time stealing any of their resources. The first floor was basically a booby trap, it was rigged with different traps all over the floor, designed and built by Tubbo. The second and third floors were where all of their stuff and supplies were. Tommy followed closely behind Ranboo as they climbed the stairs, wanting to drop off his backpack which seemed to get heavy as time went on.
Once they reach the top of the stairs, they all broke off to go into their separate corners, Tubbo went to the left where all that could be seen was different mechanical objects and projects, Ranboo went straight ahead where there was some posters taped to the greyish-blue walls that spanned the entire second floor and other media things that he had found while searching through an old mall. That left Tommy to go to the right, where Ranboo and Tubbo would call into the underneath of the couch because just like underneath a couch, Tommy’s corner was filled with the most random and useless shit to ever exist. At least that’s what they thought, Tommy thought that each object would have their time to shine and perhaps even save them in case of emergency. Take his flare gun for example, no one would ever think to use it since the noise that it makes when it’s fired attracts the zombies. But Tommy was sure that someday it would be their saving grace. Scattered among the randomness, were things that actually were important. There was a baseball bat, a couple of the very few remaining cases of Coke (the drink), the all-knowing and lifesaving Walkie Talkie, and a few packages of food and batteries that were sitting on the desk that was tucked in the corner. Plopping down at his desk, Tommy shrugged off his backpack before dumping its contents onto the surface of the desk and climbing into bed.
All that could be heard throughout the building was the sound of shuffling and breathing, everyone was settling into their routine for after a day of scavenging. Oh yeah, today was a good day and tomorrow is going to be an even better one, thought Tommy before he drifted off to sleep.