Receeding Tides (mcyt)

Chapter 1

Three years after the Waves...

Tommy sat with a lighter in his hand struggling to keep the flame alive. He sat on his assigned cot that smelled like death and oozed with mites and bugs. The damn thing creaked with every little movement Tommy made, and it had been used by enough people to leave a permanent human-shaped indent in the middle. At times, Tommy could even feel the rusting springs under the mattress.

The air inside the building was filtered only for Ash, so moisture dampened the air and everything else around him. Tommy's drenched hair clung to his forehead. It hadn't touched water that wasn't sweat in well over a year. Regardless, he was grateful the Ash got caught in the screens above him and weren't trapped inside his lungs. He gently blew out the miniature flickering flame in his hand and sang the ending of happy birthday silently to himself in his head.

Happy birthday, dear Tommy... Happy birthday to me...

Without the light, Tommy's world was pitch black. He had nothing to do but sleep. There was no one to celebrate his birthday with, but that was okay. He was used to it. No one probably even remembered it was his birthday anyways. Barely anyone still celebrated birthdays. They were a pointless waste of resources.

In the three years since the waves, Tommy hadn't heard from Tubbo at all, and Wilbur and Philza had gone well off the radar. In the beginning, it worried Tommy, but he realised he had to be selfish if he wanted to survive. He couldn't afford to care about others. Especially about those who may not even be alive. And by the Luck of the Irish, Tommy was still alive.

He was definitely lonely, but that was okay, he was used to it. Life during the apocalypse wasn't too social anyways. The solitude became tolerable after a year. Tommy was accustomed to not having his parents or his friends or his dogs with him anymore. At times, the silence was too loud, but he got used to it. He had to.

When the apocalypse began, his family fought their asses off to survive and keep each other alive too. Then one day, his parents just never came back leaving Tommy alone with his dogs. Eventually, his four-legged friends passed too, and when they did, Tommy ran as far from his home for as long he could. Mere hours later, it was ransacked for whatever he left behind. Tommy wasn't going to lie to himself, it hurt to see his home raided by strangers, but he knew sentimental memories weren't going to do him any good. He had with him only a schoolbag of supplies and his green bandana from Tubbo. Both were stolen within a week.

After running through Ashy air and abandoned neighborhoods for days, Tommy stumbled upon a shelter south of his house. Exhausted beyond his own comprehension, he collapsed at the doorway, and the people already there immediately accepted the limp but alive boy.

Since then, people everywhere had grown desperate and violent for the most basic of things. A blanket, a bottle of water. People couldn't care less about age, gender, former titles. There was no problem stealing from the vulnerable. Some people, a lot of people lately, went to sleep only to have a knife in their backs the following morning. And the clothes stripped from their bodies by survivors. It wouldn't be long before it was Tommy's turn under the knife.

As unfortunate as every death was, there was some good. Every death left more food and water for those still alive, and the bodies served as rather effective repellent against other survivors and wild, sometimes mutated, animals.

Twice, Tommy had tried to hide things like food in his pillow case or an extra mask clenched in his fist, but both times he found them gone before he remembered to check on them. He counted himself lucky he hadn't been killed for the sandwich he'd stashed when he first arrived.

His job was to wash the clothes and bedsheets of the deceased. There was always something to wash. No new day started without a fresh body. After a single year, he'd become unbothered by the everlasting stench of death and decay.