Chapter Text
The world. Still just as empty as you remembered. You'd been alone for a while now, a few years you'd think, maybe 5. You lost track after a while, just sort of living life as it came by. This whole thing started by you thinking everyone in your house just disappeared, left without you. You realized after a little bit that it wasn't what happened. You found out the horrible way that after this sort of shot meant to keep everyone alive for much longer actually did the opposite. To everyone but you.
So you were left alone, you wandered. By now it felt like you'd lost your mind, saying everything in your head out loud, so you could at least hear something. You ended up in New York 2 years ago, seeing all the buildings starting to grow plants was... Weird. You didn't think any structure would be growing Vines and moss by now, let alone New York of all places. You were definitely found wrong there, it was sort of fun watching the plants grow over the past 2 years, gave you something to do.
Animals had also started venturing into the abandoned city, it was a good change in the silence you'd fallen into. You even got close to the deer and squirrels.
At the moment you were walking through one of the most overgrown parts of New York you'd seen by now, the vines climbed the side of the buildings at least 20 feet up and moss was spotted around up much of that. It had a weird comfort of seeing it, it looked just like old images you saw of cities taken over by plants. You were sure to see more of this soon, you thought.
You walked to what you assume used to be a restaurant, pulling out a knife and cutting at the vines that locked the door shut, and started talking out loud to yourself.
"This'll be fun. I think. I mean it looks like a cool restaurant, you looked to the side, the restaurants windows covered. It did not actually look cool.
"yeah. Cool looking. Looks like... Vines! On the menu today! Maybe it'll be the road work ahead one."
Quietly laughing, you opened the door, hearing a jingle. Man did that bring a bunch of memories back. You brushed it off and jogged to the front, rang the bell thing they had. Leaning against the counter you looked around, this place seemed to have the same vibe as those little pit stops you see in more rural areas. It was much quieter than it should've been though. It made you uncomfortable.
Deciding it had been enough time you hopped the counter, knocking the stuff on the side to the floor. You ended up on the floor too, you'd just tripped yourself.
"The service here sucks." You said after a couple seconds, hoping anything watching you would laugh along too. You didn't think anything was watching anyway, but you can always be sure.
You felt like you could sleep, but you needed to up and move. Quickly, you sat up and crawled to where you assumed the kitchen was. You assumed right, and it smelled horrible. Someone had to have died here, come on.
"Knives knives knives, spoons, but is there any food that's actually good?" Clanking and scraping attacked your ears as you moved things, grabbing different knives you liked so you could add it to the knife room. "Hopefully this place was bad and used canned shit. That would make my and the microwaves day..... How that thing still works is a mystery to me. I'm sure someone out there knows why it still works! if only they could tell me."
Reaching the end of the line you decided to grade the cleanliness of this place and went back through, you learned if a restaurant was less clean there's a better chance of them using cans or non perishable foods. You liked the mystery of it too, it was like a game. It took up time and kept you entertained!
"Let's see.... Ovens... Check! Kinda greasy, kinda dusty too, somehow. How is the inside of an oven dusty, it's supposed to be shut tight right? Wouldn't that stop a lot of dust. So put 'not very good ovens on the list."
You enjoyed using the knowledge Gordon Ramsay gave you from his shows. Wait...
"GORDON RAMSAY!!! NOO!!!!" You gripped your hands to the side of your head and dropped to your knees, all dramatically.
Upon the realization that Gordon Ramsay was dead like everyone else, you decided to skip the rest of the kitchen and just head straight to the freezers and fridges to look for food. On the way you took note of how this place actually had a microwave. Hopefully their salads weren't being put in there. Every Gordon Ramsay reference your mind made had you feeling slightly worse. It wasn't super new, realizing someone big was also gone, but it always hit you the same.
"Alright. This one's for you Gordon." You wiped fake tears from your face before bursting open the doors to see...
A normal fridge. Nothing horrifying or exciting. That was exactly what you wanted right now, to be met with more silence, more quiet. An upside! There was at least honey in here, and at least a single can of soup. You'd read all the details on the nutrition labels later, but for now you would stuff them into your bag and continue the investigation.
"Let's go! Kinda nasty freezer check! Let's mark this place down! This one's gonna be nice to clean I can tell. Well I can't really, but it'll be satisfying! There's a lot of random tins, I'm not sure I wanna know what's in there. Maybe this is what died, not even a person. Reminded of Gordon Ramsay again, you frowned and pulled out a map of New York.
You marked this place with a red marker, that you know means to return. You never said the reason but you always knew when you'd return to any location with the red mark. You also marked it with orange, which means it's a restaurant. You had colors for many places. Black for 'dont return here, red for 'do return here', purple for electronics stores, orange for restaurants, blue for sporty areas, yellow for more shop filled areas, green for apartments or homes, and pink for unpredictable areas (you also liked to call them the exciting areas). Most areas with black were also pink.
"Let's blow this joint, guys." The map returned to it's spot in your bag and you gave it a pat before slipping on invisible sunglasses and taking long strides out the door.
You never realized how stuffy it was in the restaurant. It felt amazing to take a breath outside of that place. It really did smell horrible. There's probably a good few reasons for that. You moved away from the restaurant to take a good look at it, you wanted to remember what it looked like for when you eventually returned. You wanted to head home for now though, listen to music on the many different things you had. You had a vinyl record player. Who just has that in New York, you didn't know but you were pretty glad they did, they had sorne pretty cool bands too. You wanted to listen to music desperately, so you planned to run. Seeing a cool skateboard you stopped in your tracks, almost falling flat on your face.
"Well hello there! How did I not see you before... Oh wait nevermind, I was definitely just way too focused on the plants. That makes sense. Who would just leave this out here though. There's nobody nearby, who just loses this on the streets of New York..? Whatever, mine now." The skateboard seemed uninterested in your commentary as you held it under your arm.
You looked back at the area you just came from, upset you didn't get to explore more, before setting the board on the ground and setting off.
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The wheels came to a stop as you placed your foot down, a weird squeak-screech noise coming from it. Maybe all the years of no use. You looked around wearily, looking for anything that could see where you're going. It felt like your home was a secret you needed to keep, but it wasn't. Even if it was what would you have to hide it from? Nothing. Something inside you just kept saying you had to look around whenever you stopped and eventually you just stopped caring about suppressing it. Seeing that everything was clear you picked up the board and ran into an alleyway in-between what you think is an arcade pizza place and bakery with a home on the second floor. Rummaging through your bag you walked to the back doors of the bakery, it was barred up with this silly looking padlock you found in one of the unstable areas. The arcade was locked up with a similar one too, you were just in the bakery mood today.
"Found you, you beauty! You said, holding a key that looked just as silly as the padlock up to the sun like it was going to save your life.
The lock opened easily, which was not surprising. the key was made for it. Quickly, you slid into the bakery before closing the door and relocking it, except from the inside this time. Putting the key back into your bag you moved further into the building, your bag now only hanging loosely from your hand. Your feet felt heavy and your eyes felt the same. A good sleep to some music would be awesome. Making your way to the stairs you moved through your bag once more, this time simply checking you had everything you wanted.
"Everything's there, I think. I'm okay, it's okay. Everyone's okay." You yawned and turned towards the door besides the stairs.
The basement doors always felt ominous, today was no different. There was a feeling of something new this time. Today was really throwing you off, everything's felt new. You didn't like it, but what else could you do. Brushing off that feeling you swung the door open and shuffled in and down the stairs.
The walls were painted with your own hands, a white background with designs, characters, and silly things you remembered from the past. It made you feel better to see, a comfort in an uncomfortable place. The wood floors matched pretty well covered in drops of paint you ignored and never cleaned up, no matter how messy it could look it felt like home.
You dropped your bag on a stool by the stairs, a loud clang coming from it. Ah, the knives. You were so caught up in the almost normal you forgot the knives.
"How could I! Gordon Ramsay look what you've made me do."
You made it a point to collect random things from your adventures, it just so happened you got so many knives you have a room dedicated for them now. It wasn't your favorite use of a room but it felt cool. Grabbing the knives from the bag you quickly walked through the basement coming to a smaller-than-normal door with a label that let you know exactly what it was on it.
"I've got more knives for you, knife room! I hope they fit in well! They're pretty cool ones this time." They all looked the same, another lie.
The door got stuck a little, you've just gotta turn it until you hear a click then you can open it. It's just like lockpicking.
Once it opened you hurried in, already looking for a place to put the new knives. You were at least glad the knife room was kinda small, so it's not like you'd use this room for anything else. Finding a nice spot in-between the few knives that look exactly the same and the other knives that look exactly the same. You really dreaded the day you'd have to start hanging knives on the walls. Or just sticking the knives in there like some freaky countryman.
With the knives In their new home you felt satisfied enough to leave the shiny room, which you did with little complications! The door that's weird to open is weird to close, you still needed to do that stupid maneuver.
Heading back to what you called the living room, you happily slid over to the record player you definitely didn't steal. You had a little bookshelf beside it with all the records you found and liked. It was mostly just everything you found, you weren't going to pass up any music in this world. Your favorite was this Queen record you found, it was Queens greatest hits. Which the greatest hits might not hold your favorite Queen songs but it still had really awesome songs. It's Queen, of course there's awesome songs on it.
Carefully you put it on the player, and moved the thing that you didn't know the name of onto the record and started playing your music. Holding your hands up like if you touched it you'd break it, you backed up towards the couch. You knew that as soon as you sat down you were going to fall asleep, but you didn't mind.
"This sleeps gonna be awesome." Were your last words after you sat down.
You fell asleep to Bohemian Rhapsody, could you ask for anything more than this.
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Suddenly, a loud crash woke you up. As far as you know, that wasn't normal in your home. Slowly, you stood up. Your eyes were still blurry and you were still riddled with sleep side effects, but you made a move to the stairs.
"....The music.... It's not playing... It's been longer than like 20 minutes. That narrows it down..." You were slowly waking up.
Another loud crash sounded when you opened the basement door. It was definitely coming from outside. At least that's good to know.
You realized you forgot the door key. You didn't want to go and get it so you just opened the window and crawled out, with a bit of knocking things over. You hoped that whatever was making the loud noises didn't hear. If it was even a creature, at that.
You stopped and waited for a second, hoping another sound would come from the noisy thing.
Another sound did come, and not even a minute later. The smart half of your brain suddenly kicked in.
"Itsnoneofyourbusiness itsnoneofyourbusiness Itsnoneofyourbusiness.... Don't be like white people in horror movies....... Damnit." You moved silently, heading to the back of the arcade instead of the bakery, as it had more cover.
You were hoping it would just be an animal being ridiculously stupid, and that's definitely what you were expecting too. The crash was followed by an unfamiliar noise, the sort of thing you'd expect to come from a tuba or other large brass instrument, but it was weirder than that at the same time, like an auto tuned tuba being operated by someone who doesn't know how to play the tuba.
What you did not expect to see was what looked like a very large and spiky rock. No wait... That's not what it was.
"Oh my god, what the fuck" you whispered as you ducked more behind the building that was currently blocking you from the thing on the road.
It was laying on the road, so that's why you would think it's a large, green, spiky rock but you've never seen a rock that looks like that and by this point you're pretty sure you've seen all kinds of rocks. A second point that changed your mind from rock completely was that it moved. It was moving. Rocks don't move. You'd say that whatever it was looked like a turtle, but turtles are not that large the last time you checked. The biggest turtle you knew existed was the Archelon and those guys were extinct, and also sea turtles. So a normal turtle? Totally off the table. Rock? Also totally off the table. Everything you could have come up with was thrown off the table. The table was thrown out the window!
"Okay okay okay. This isn't my business, this isn't my business. Not my circus, not my monkeys." You tried to convince yourself to walk away, that this was something you didn't want to deal with.
You couldn't help but stay though, it was totally new, even to the world before you became the last person on earth. You were in new territory and it was so cool.
You learned further out, to get a better view of whatever it was. You didn't think turtles could stand like that either. Every instinct in your body was telling you to run as whatever this held its head and looked around.
If you were to die from the shot that killed everyone else you'd want it to be now. Your curiosity got the better of you and the turtle saw you. You made eye contact. A note, it had normal eyes too. It was weird. This situation was weird and now? You were screwed. Utterly screwed.
You started at the turtle and he stared at you for what felt like forever before you slid back behind the building. You didn't know if you should run, stay hidden, or go inside somewhere quick. You quickly shut up your mind, if you needed to really listen at any point it would be now. If whatever that was decides to sneak up on you what would you do? It is definitely stronger than you, you'd lose in a fight instantly.
Shoving your fear down you stood tall, preparing for what you would see when you looked around the corner again. You felt like you should've run but you wanted to be brave. You carefully grabbed the wall before the corner and leaned over, prepared to see the turtle thing still looking over from the road. What you didn't expect was the turtle basically directly in front of you, close enough you could reach out with one arm and touch it.
The feeling of dread that overcame you was something you could attribute to the feeling you'd expect a mouse to have when a lion is standing behind it and it knows.
You looked up at the turtles face. It looked extremely confused and shocked. Even worse, it now leaned down to your level. It didn't seem like a threat but you were certainly terrified. It spoke, but you couldn't understand it. You're pretty sure it's just a different language type of situation but you did not want to deal with this at all. On that thought you finally listened to your instincts and absolutely booked it down the alley. Where you were going you didn't know but hopefully it didn't either. You could hear it shout something out as you ran away, but you weren't going to stop and see it's reaction. No way were you going to get yourself captured or something. You could think about what just happened when you stopped and were safe.
You were going to run until your muscles ached. You could promise that.