Chapter Text
In the beginning
The virus tore through Phil's body like fire. His veins lit with agony and burnt until the nerves could only send weak signals of numbness snaking up his spine. He lay shivering on his garden shed floor, not to keep himself safe, but as a precaution to humanity. If he turned, it would end with him wasting away on this very floor, never to infect another with this curse of withering.
It wasn't supposed to be this bad. Well, the virus was always bad, even before now it was weeks spent sweating into bed sheets with fever and worry, waiting for you or the fever to break. But something changed. The virus got quicker, moving through the body in a matter of hours and spreading across whole cities in a matter of days. That's when those that died from it started walking again. Zombies overtook the country in just under a week.
The undead population went from zero to thousands practically overnight. It was hard to notice if you were in danger until it was too late. Phil didn't realize he was screwed until he was bent over his sink throwing up what looked like chunks of his own throat. It wasn't rare to survive on your first time getting it, but Phil wasn't skipping precautions. He would stay in this shed until he could breathe without wheezing and still had the constitution to open the lock.
Phil had laid in one spot for long enough that the concrete underneath him was starting to hold heat and warm his back. Compared to the wracking shivers and whole body coughs, it was nice. He basked in it as the last vestiges of the evening sun slipped under the horizon.
Night settled over his neighborhood like a blanket. He should be cold. He's not, the concrete is keeping him warm. A bit too warm, he could feel the skin of his back grow slick with sweat, not a big deal, he turned over onto his front.
The heat followed him.
He shot up from his sitting position, forgetting his dizziness, and tried furiously to wipe his back of whatever was burning it. In a moment of weakness he stripped off his shirt and dragged his back against the rough floor to find some relief. When he stood, he saw two stripes of blood staining the floor.
Phil contorted himself to feel for the lines of his shoulder blades and was met with firm, lumpy protrusions that distended the top of his back. The skin holding them back split with a sickening tear as the protrusions unfolded.
Phil caught his reflection in a watering can and gagged at the sight. Bloody, fledgling wings were fighting their way out of his back. They were barely out, the slide of feathers against his wounds seemed never ending as his wings grew taller and taller. He was crying, screaming in agony while he begged for someone to save him.
Eventually the pain subsided to a dull ache. Phil lay on the blood-slick floor and wept until he passed out. His wings hung over him like a dark cloud raining blood and plasma on his unconscious body. The night passed in silence.
The morning sun slid over Phil’s body slowly, bringing warmth and light into the stained shed. Phil woke to the weight of new appendages perched on his back and clothes irrevocably stained in blood. The cough that had haunted him the night before was gone entirely, he couldn’t even feel the burn that the bile had left at the back of his throat. He was alive, not zombified.
The first order of business was getting inside the house. Sure he was living but there were undead outside, and the shed had been soaked in enough blood to draw a target on the door.
Standing was the biggest hurdle to getting to safety. The wings were huge, easily two meters tall while folded, and while they didn’t weigh more than him, Phil had to re-calibrate his balance to account for them. He ended up in a hunched posture that forced him to walk on his toes and left his primary feathers tickling the back of his knees. After standing by the door straining to hear any signs of the undead Phil burst out of the shed and made as much as a run for his house as he could.
The journey wasn’t as deadly as he may have planned for, the zombies in the area didn’t seem too concerned about the sounds he made, instead favoring the shed’s blood soaked floors. Phil made it inside his flat and barricaded the door until his hands stopped shaking.
He took stock of his pantry and rifled through every inch of his house to find bottled water, the results were not heartening. Phil estimated his stash as giving him 3 good weeks or 4 bad ones, after which he would be at the mercy of what he could scrounge from his neighbors or their abandoned houses. Phil would not accept that.
He spent the next three weeks preparing for his departure. He taught himself how to build a water purifier and how to fight. He tore apart razors to hammer the blades into a baseball bat. He lured zombies to the bloody shed and practiced killing them. He sharpened the axe he found in his neighbors garage while studying a map he’d lifted from a glove box.
The wings stayed. He only truly got used to the weight of them after two weeks, and even then he sometimes forgot to pull them in under door frames. He had sacrificed some water bottles to clean them after researching wing care while his phone was still operational and after his first preening, he let himself process how cool they were. He spent every morning and evening stretching and flapping them, learning how they twisted and tensed, the last functional google search he did told him he may even be able to fly given their size and he used that fact to push him out the door when his three weeks ended.
He hiked up a nearby trail while testing how to hold his wings over different slopes. By the end of his hike he was racing up inclines and gliding down declines with no difficulty, whooping and laughing the whole way. Once he reached the summit he was quiet, letting the sea winds cool his nerves. Phil knew the physics of what he was about to do, he understood the updrafts and angles he had to hit and how to soar mathematically, but he only had one chance to perform.
Phil said a prayer to gods he didn't believe in. No reason for him not to try. He stood at the edge.
He jumped.
He flew.
-
Techno was fucking done with this whole apocalypse thing. Sure, he didn't have to talk to anyone and could let his anger out in a very gratifying way on a daily basis, but he hasn't had a proper shower since this shit started. Who knows, maybe he was just salty that his super cool zombie power was fucking pink hair. Pink. Hair.
It wasn't just pink hair, when Techno first got the virus, he woke up in a daze lying in a pool of blood and teeth. Once he found a mirror he discovered the fangs and tusks that sat in the front of his mouth, along with the pointed ears. Oh and the pink roots in his hair. Fucking zombie powers.
Despite the stupidity of his genetic addition, he couldn't bring himself to go bald. And as the hair quickly got long enough to bother him he left them there, slowly snipping the remaining brown off but leaving the pink. Dumb or not it was still his zombie power and he thought it was cool.
Techno was currently living in his dorm room. Say what you will but there had been plentiful supplies and minimal human interaction up until this point. He used to break into labs during the day, studying the virus with every tool he had available to him, but when the power shut off that quickly became analog light microscopes with no resolution. He had learned enough by then, it was amazing how much work he could get done when he wasn't being bothered by other students or teachers telling him to take breaks.
He searched for past papers on the virus and found tons in his supervisor's office.The virus had the same basic structure as any other. Capsule, some proteins, and genetic information in the middle. It started in birds, but moved to livestock and various wild animals soon enough. Its high mutation rate concerned scientists, but even when human cases started popping up, they seemed to end up with a short sickness and minimal spreading.
But then something changed. The virus started killing. It presented an issue but still not a public concern. It killed too fast to spread properly, and by last year, the only samples left were thought to be contained in laboratories. But then it mutated again. And again.
Survivability took a nosedive, and worse, it seemed there was no true way to vaccinate against it. If you survived the virus once you would get something, pink hair for example. But if you then got it a second time you were more susceptible, it carved paths through your body and took advantage of them the next time around. The virus started causing hysteria after a local politician dropped dead in the middle of her speech; she had only been infected less than an hour before. It got worse.
Suddenly the bodies could infect people even after death. Then it left the body intact while it ravaged the brain. Out of nowhere, there were people on the streets that were functionally dead but upright and shambling around. The UK population was halved overnight, then again, then again. The world as Techno knew it ended in less than a week.
The virus had stayed blood-borne, to Techno’s relief, but he still never left his dorm without a heavy duty gas mask on. He practically donned three layers every time he needed to look out the window. He wasn't scared of the zombies, he was scared of what they brought. Because Techno had been infected once already, and he wouldn't make it out the next time.
Techno had been very careful in the first few weeks of the apocalypse, only leaving his room to break into one of the many abandoned ones to look for food, and his caution paid off. But as less and less supplies could be found in surrounding dorms Techno got desperate. He took a fire axe and a poncho to avoid blood splatter and ventured out onto campus.
His first few trips to and from his old lab were easy, he encountered maybe one zombie a day, if that, and took them down easily. He learned as much as he could about them by trapping them in operating theaters and observing their behavior for hours on end. Techno watched as his pet zombie, Micheal, grew new arms and legs and other protrusions like a tumor until it just stopped moving.
The virus mutated their bodies and wasted skin, muscle, and brain to grow more, eventually a zombie died of hunger if it didn't eat something. He stripped Micheal of his skin and observed the construction of the new protrusions, they were just extra limbs the virus had grown wherever it could fit. He did more experiments. He came away smarter. The remaining students dwindled. He could see the hope leaving their faces as time passed until eventually, he was alone.
Maybe that was a mistake, maybe staying in an area that was surrounded by forests was a bad idea, maybe it was the blood covered poncho he continued to wear around even after learning zombies relied on scent more than anything else, but after three months of doing relatively well, Techno got cocky. That cockiness ended with his axe discarded behind him and a zombie's nails embedded in his arm.
He's not sure how he got home after that. But waking up in that puddle of blood gave him more than just a shitty hairdo, it gave him a sense of fear. And Technoblade didn't know how to fear anything normally.
So Techno stayed in his dorm, running down his supplies and pretending to consider his next move. His panic rose as his water stash dwindled but he continued to delude himself into thinking there were supplies on the other floors; he just didn't want to get them yet. It lasted him two months before he went to grab water and only found one half full bottle.
Techno wasn't proud of it, but he sat there and cried like a baby until the sun fell on his face in the morning. He laid in his kitchen and for the first time since he was bit, he considered his options.
The university was a few kilometers away from the city center, it would be suicide to go anywhere near there so Techno discarded that idea fast. But if he wanted to find food and water his best bet was a mall or something like it, he would have to be careful going around them, they were highly populated and probably crawling with zombies. He thought hard for any place that would get him food but less zombies and then it hit him.
The museum was less than an hour's walk away. It had tons of gift shops and cafes inside but it was so boring that nobody went there. Even better, the major outbreak happened on a Sunday, the museum would have been practically empty. He knew he would encounter other people there, he couldn't have been the first to think of this. Techno mentally prepared himself for human interaction and prayed they hadn't taken all of the good stuff.
Techno could not believe he was the first to think of this.
Getting to the museum had been a breeze, it was actually kind of peaceful, autumn was just starting and the colourful leaves brought his stress levels right down. He only encountered two zombies on his way there and both were easily dispatched with a wide arc of his axe. Getting into the museum had been harder but eventually he found a ring of keys under the front desk and tested them all until one let him into the cafe and gift shop.
Sweet, glorious water waited for him. The stock room was filled with branded water bottles and bags of candy and nuts. Techno strolled around the gift shop while downing three bottles and poked at the novelty toys until he came across a plastic replica of the crown jewels.
Techno had always had a certain attraction to shiny things, but after his infection it had gotten worse. He hoarded keys, coins, whatever jewellery he could find, just to keep it all in a pile in his room. He had brought some of the nicer stuff with him today, a few rings and bracelets hung from his hands, but he thought the impulse would be trivial to ignore if he wanted to.
It was not trivial to ignore the impulse.
He found a map and followed it to the room that displayed all of the jewels the royal family had owned. Techno wasted no time finding the shiniest one in the room and cracking the glass case open to get it. There was no alarm, no signal to distract him from what he was doing, nothing to tell him to get out of this weirdly pristine building.
He tried on crowns and necklaces and capes before settling on the nicest ones, a heavy golden crown studded with intricate designs, a necklace of emeralds and rubies, and a thick red cape trimmed in white fur. He walked out of that room feeling better than he had in five months. So good that the rolling steps did not register to him until he was almost back at the main hall.
Something was following him. It would’ve smelled him from miles away, soap and a washcloth could only do so much, and the clicking of his boot heels probably didn't help. He broke into a frantic run, pushing his hair out from his face and trying to locate his pursuer. The steps seemed to be coming from everywhere, echoing off the stone archways, Techno weaved through rooms and corridors, but the sound only seemed to come closer.
Eventually he was cornered in a room filled with more royal regalia. The steps were close enough to locate, and Techno had maybe a minute before they were upon him. His axe was gone, discarded as a distraction in an attempt to get the creature off his tail. He wasn't sure if a zombie or a person was after him, but he was scared to death either way.
The footsteps neared. They sounded squishy. Zombie it is then. Techno searched the room wildly and found no other exits. He only found tapestries and coronation instruments. Fuck. He was going to die here.
His eye caught on something golden. A sword. It looked heavy, far too heavy to do any damage. But the information plaque told him it was sharpened regularly and that's all he needed to smash in the glass separating him from the only sharp object in the room. The sword was unwieldy, Techno could barely unsheathe it but he just barely managed to have it out and pointed by the time the zombie walked into the room.
Walked was the wrong verb. Rolled would be more accurate for the creature that Techno found himself in front of. It was almost 6 feet tall and was covered from all sides in legs. Techno couldn't even see where its head would have been before it rolled towards him. It was fast, crossing the length of the room in seconds, Techno just barely dove out of the way before scrambling out of the room. The zombie followed.
Techno wondered frantically how it hadn't locked up yet. Even if a zombie is fed the amount of extra limbs it grows eventually becomes so large that it just can't move anymore. This one must have at least twenty extra legs and it could still get around, how? Techno’s thinking was interrupted by the zombie closing in on his hiding spot.
The zombie rushed towards him, Techno sidestepped and brought the heavy blade down on as many limbs as he could aim for, they split apart like tooth picks and dropped to the ground. Techno yanked the blade back up and ran it through what he thought was the middle of the zombie. The wound he made leaked congealed blood and rotted skin all over the floor, Techno took the chance to run.
As he ran for the museum entrance, he heard the slimy footsteps start up again then stop. Techno peeked behind him and saw the zombie stuck on the side Techno had cut, its limbs waved wildly but never got close to tipping the monster back onto its remaining feet.
Techno laughed. The exhilaration flooded his body with endorphins and made him feel amazing. His steps got easier, he ran faster, the sword got lighter in his grip and he snatched up the sheath on his way out.
Techno emerged into the midday sun with his crown, sword, and smile on display. The abandoned streets had never looked so inviting, Techno couldn't wait to explore them. He pulled out one of the water bottles and a snickers he had lifted from the shop and made wild plans for the future. If he cleared out the rest of the museum he could live there pretty comfortably. He had the keys and the power to do it. He could probably use a bag and some bandaids for that cut on his arm.
Techno had a cut on his arm. Shallow, barely two inches long, about halfway up his forearm. He probably got it when dodging away from the zombie. He was infected again.
This realization came with two things, the familiar burn of sickness pulling up his spine and the ground rushing up to meet him as he toppled over on the marble steps of the museum.
-
Tommy had considered running when he heard the thump across the street, but it hadn't come with the usual smell the undead bring and if a person had just died Tommy had about an hour before they were in danger of turning to loot their corpse. So he scrambled out from under the porch he had been using as a home and sprinted across the street.
Tommy laughed at the sight of a pink haired idiot wearing royal jewellery and a cape. He nearly pissed himself when he saw the sword he had been carrying. This dumbass had died stealing the crown jewels, fucking ridiculous.
“You’ve got some nerve big man, walking into a death trap just to get your hands on some nice jewels, Jerry’s been haunting that place since the beginning” Tommy chattered to the unconscious idiot while he ran through his pockets. A bag of skittles, a bottle of water, and a flashlight. Not a great haul but better than nothing. Tommy sat next to Pink idiot’s body and continued to yap. It was good for his mental health.
“Like come on man. You've made it five months, god knows how, and you decide the best course of option is thievery of our grand nations treasury? You are a wrong’un.” Tommy laughed at his own joke, being far too loud for someone in an apocalypse.
“Why’d you even take the sword? I saw you walk in there, you had an axe, a nice one too, what kind of fool would take a sword over an axe. You probably don't even know how to use it” Tommy gulped down the last of the water and started in on the skittles.
“It's somewhat comforting to know that idiots exist in all timelines. Gives me hope for my fellow classmates” Tommy cackled, nearly choking on his skittles. “Those poor fucks don't know their hands from their feet. Not me, I’m the smartest man ever.”
It felt good to let loose, Tommy had been huddling alone under a pub's foundation for weeks after his last hiding spot was found by some randos. They had encouraged him to stick with them and stay ‘safe’. Right. He took as many supplies as he could carry and disappeared that night. The supplies had lasted him for a good while, but he had been getting hungry lately and chewing the gum he had taken was only so satiating.
The skittles and water left him fuller than he had been in weeks, the dull ache in his stomach eased to a manageable pain and his hands shook a little less as he checked Pink idiot’s pockets once again. Tommy came across the cut that had supposedly killed the idiot and poked at it until he got bored of tempting fate. He estimated he had twenty minutes until Pink idiot would rise from the grave, so he began to pick every other useful thing off Pink idiot's corpse.
He reached for the sword first, it may be impractical but it was cool and Tommy was a cool man, so this made perfect sense. He struggled to pull it off Pink idiots belt and struggled even more to lift it and after nearly stabbing himself in the foot he elected to leave it there. The crown was next, it was also heavy and too wide for Tommy to wear so he discarded it with the sword. He pulled at every piece of jewellery and cloth he could see but quickly realized nothing would be easily removed.
The day got colder as the sun dipped behind the horizon and Tommy shivered. He had less than 10 minutes now, he was sure, but the cape was so soft and thick enough to block out the cold nights, Tommy couldn't leave without it.
He dragged the sword to rest over Pink idiot’s knees. If he did turn he would have a hard time getting up. Then he felt around for the clasp on the cape, it was nestled right under Pink idiot's chin and Tommy would have to turn him over to get to it. It took precious minutes but eventually Pink idiot was on his back and the sword was back over his legs. As Tommy fumbled with the heavy clasp he looked over Pink idiot’s face.
His ears were long and pointed and gave his long (pink) hair something to tangle around. He wore a bulky gas mask that was firmly strapped to his head and covered the lower half of his face. His eyebrows, eyelashes, and even the hair on his arms were pink, which led Tommy to believe the pink was a mutation and not dedicated hair care. He had just gotten the cape undone when Pink idiot started stirring from sleep.
Tommy was up and gone by the time Pink idiot lifted his head. He watched as Pink idiot patted around his body and started rocking around. He looked discoordinated enough for Tommy to classify him as a zombie, so he hunkered down and waited for Pink idiot to get up and start creeping around.
He didn't.
Pink idiot started by re-clasping the cape around his shoulders and re-holstering the sword. It seemed so light when Pink idiot was holding it, he would lift it with one arm and swing it around like it was a feather. He gently dusted off the crown with his cape and settled it back onto his head, then he turned around and Tommy realized his fatal mistake.
One: Pink idiot was not a zombie, and this was a big problem because
Two: Pink idiot could see him, because unlike zombies, Pink idiot had working eyes. And Tommy had just stolen his stuff. He didn’t know if Pink idiot knew that but he wasn't taking any chances.
Tommy took off. He wasn't in any condition to fight Pink idiot by any means, but he could run and he could run fast. He careened across the street and weaved through alleyways until his lungs hurt and he was sure that Pink idiot didn't follow. Just to be safe, Tommy emptied a trash can and hid inside it.
He couldn't hear Pink idiots footsteps, and after ten minutes of dry heaving from the smell of old trash he dove out of the trash can. The alleyway was clear. Pink idiot was gone.
Tommy retraced his steps back to his pub, pausing every few minutes to check for signs of Pink idiot. He knew logically that since Pink idiot was human, Tommy could most likely reason with him. But Tommy wasn't sure that Pink idiot was fully human. Maybe the virus got worse again? Undead that could see seemed pretty on brand for the state of events lately, everything got worse all the time, why not this.
Either way he made it back to the pub with no signs of danger, there weren't even zombies out on the streets to worry about. Just the overwhelming threat of Pink idiot and his ridiculous sword.
Tommy pulled up the baseboard that led to his hideout and was just wiggling under it when he felt a hand on his heel. Suddenly he was upside down, looking up at a red eyed, pink haired, fuming man. Pink idiot held him up with one hand and shook him lightly. The flashlight fell out of his pocket and hit the ground and the skittle wrappers fluttered down next to it.
“Can we talk about this! Can we talk about this please!” Tommy squealed as Pink idiot put a hand on the pummel of his sword, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry I thought you were dead, I wouldn't have taken your shit if I knew. Please let me down!”
Tommy kept his eyes screwed shut as he waited for a response. Seconds passed in silence, then Tommy felt himself being lowered gently onto the ground. As soon as Tommy felt the sweet, sweet ground touch his shoulders he scrambled out of Pink idiot's grasp and shot to his feet.
Attempting to look intimidating to a two meter tall hulking man dressed in royal attire and carrying a fucking sword was a losing game but Tommy tried anyway. He balled his fists and puffed up his chest as much as he could before speaking.
“What the fuck man? Who are you, John Wick?” Tommy cringed as his voice cracked but never took his eyes off of Pink idiot’s. Pink idiot just chuckled in response. Then, slowly as if trying not to scare an animal, he reached behind his cape and pulled out some water bottles and bags of candy and tossed them to Tommy’s feet. As quick as Pink idiot appeared he left, turning on his heel and walking out into the descending night.
The water and food Pink idiot left behind weighed against Tommy's ankles and Tommy didn't waste a moment stashing them deep in his den. He drank one immediately and sat in the dirt, absorbing the day's events. His chest hadn't eased from the frantic sprint he did and he still had mysterious stains on his pants from the garbage can he hid in.
Who the fuck was that? Tommy got settled in his little corner of the den and tried to quantify the situation as objectively as he could. On the negative side, a pink haired, mute, decked out psychopath chased him through alleys and was dumb enough to go back into a building that almost killed him. The water and food definitely weren't in his stupid robe before so he must've gone back in.
On the plus side, Tommy couldn't hear the rolling thumps of Jerry making his nightly patrol so Pink idiot was strong. Also, Pink idiot had gotten him more supplies in an hour than he's been able to gather by himself in a month. And Pink idiot hadn't killed him, so he must have some humanity left in him.
Tommy had gathered his belongings in his pockets and a jacket left in the pub above before he could rethink his decision and ran off in the direction of Pink idiot's clunking footsteps.