Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's Fear the Walking Dead. Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Spoilers up to 1x06: "The Good Man," but nothing really specific. This particular fic is meant to show Tobias post-season one and what might have happened a few weeks after the credits on season one rolled.
Warnings: Contains: adult language, angst, drama, emotional/mental trauma, disassociation, Tobias being a bit too lonely and stuck in his own head.
Last stands are for suckers (lets live instead)
"You can stay with us, Tobias. Until this is over."
"This doesn't end."
"I changed my mind," he whispered, peering cautiously through the open front door. Looking down the empty hall from the relative safety of the stoop. Hating himself a little bit for the way his stomach swooped like sick-up when no one answered. He let his forehead thunk-thunk against the wood-frame. Wondering what he thought he'd find when he'd made the decision to come here.
He'd had his chance.
Now he was alone.
On his own.
So, what else was new?
He'd learned early on that there were some people who were never meant to be parents. It didn't mean they were bad people. No, just, everything else. Doing more harm than good bringing a child they didn't want into the world. You grow up quick when you realize you were an accident, in every measure of the word. Where true parental love was more something for stories and movies than real life.
Still, at least his mom had tried - for a little while.
He'd brought up himself, save for his uncle. He'd scheduled his own doctor appointments, hair-cuts. Took out the garbage every week and canceled the subscription to the paper no one read anymore. He taught himself how to drive the rattly old Honda his uncle kept in the garage by doing circles around the neighborhood at night when no one was around to care. His uncle had been the only one that had really tried to make things work after his mom stopped caring. He was the only who'd told him to start talking to Mrs. Clark at school. The one who'd told him that the moment he turned nineteen he was sending him a plane ticket so that he could come live with him.
It had been part of the reason why he'd said no when Mrs. Clark had asked. She was nice and all, but she had her family. She didn't need another messed up son. Another responsibility. He knew how to take care of himself. Only-
He shook his head, tired with a headache building behind his eyes.
He'd stay here tonight.
Until he figured out what he was going to do next.
He figured that no matter where she was, Mrs. C probably wouldn't mind.
It had been almost a month. Funny how time kind of just flew by on you when you were trying to make your way through life from the ground up. Almost a month since the first reports. Since what happened at the school. Since he saw the military trucks coast through his neighborhood and set up a safe zone just a few blocks east. By the time they came back, marking houses and ushering out the neighbors that had lived through the night he was ready. He moved all his supplies up into the attic crawl space, unlocked the door and waited.
They didn't stay long. Just checked each room and rifled through the cabinets. Stealing the small box of food he'd forgotten on the counter and what was left of his mother's cigarettes before slamming the screen door and moving on to the next house. He figured if worse came to worse he could just head over to the safe zone they'd set up in the gated community a few streets over, but meanwhile – he figured it was better to take his chances at home. Alone.
And in the end, he'd been right.
He spent the next week quietly shoring up what he could and scavenging whatever the military and his neighbors had left behind. Trying to remember everything he'd read before the battery on his phone had died – things like emergency preparedness and how the people in other parts of the world had found ways to cope. He'd only just gotten the front windows boarded up when the military suddenly pulled out in the middle of the night, leaving an entire zone of frightened, confused people shouting into the night. Drawing attention. Rattling the fences, car engines revving and backfiring as more than a few people decided to flee.
He didn't know why the military left or where they'd gone, but he did know what happened next. In the panic someone must have turned. Died, gotten sick, or maybe something had gotten in when it shouldn't have, because the next five days had been a mess of blood and distant screams.
He'd seen them, the infected – the Internet had been calling them Biters, Rotters, even Walkers before he'd lost power – lurching aimlessly down the street from the safe zone. He'd watched, eyes pressed up against a gap in the curtains as they shambled past. First only one or two, but as the days passed, it turned into dozens, even hundreds. Carrying on and on until he lost count and the images of people, people he knew, people he'd greeted with a nod or an embarrassingly awkward 'hello' at the mailbox every week stumbled down the trash-littered blacktop. Red-stained and torn into.
So many people.
He'd wanted to stop watching.
To turn away and let the dead rest in peace.
But for some reason he hadn't been able to.
It felt wrong somehow.
Someone had to be accountable.
Someone had to know.
Had to have seen it.
He still didn't get it. Why go to all the trouble of making a safe zone and plunking everyone in it – get the power working and truck in supplies only to abandon everyone and everything in it? What changed? What was the endgame? The unanswered question itched at him. Burrowing deep in spite himself as he tried to work through it.
Mrs. C has always told him to trust his instincts but not to let his brain get carried away on him. Reminding him that it was just hormones and anxiety and if he wanted she could see about getting him referred to the walk-in down the street for a stress assessment. Urgh, anyway. But sometimes he wondered if that was even possible. Possible to separate the brain from the body or whatever. His brain was the reason he was alive. The reason why he rarely slept through the night, alert for the smallest sound even though he'd been sleeping cramped and safe in the crawl space since the night the military had left. How could you separate the brain and body when they were one unit? Mrs. C had never been able to give him a good answer and honestly he was leaning towards it being because there wasn't one.
But right or wrong, there was only really one thing he knew for sure.
And that was that things weren't getting better.
They were getting worse.
Because regardless of where the military had gone, on his way here, he'd found one of their Humvees left abandoned in the middle of the road. The body of the driver – open eyes milky and surprised - slumped over the wheel. Bullet hole shot neatly through the right of his temple, lax hand still curled around the emergency brake like he'd just put the thing into park before-
He'd been shaking when he'd reached over and managed to start the engine. So close he could already smell the faintest trace of expelled gunmetal and decay. Sweat had dripped off the end of his nose to plink-plink across the dusty dash. Fingers tensed like half-claws along the back of the headrest until he felt brave enough to click the radio on.
He went through every channel twice, but the only thing he could find was static.
He waited until he was sure nothing was going to come running down the hall at him before he tip-toed inside - closing the door behind him. His molars ground together as he looked around, wincing as he took in the damage. It looked like someone had gone through here and crashed the place. There were a few holes knocked into the wall – like someone had taken a hammer to it. The TV was on the floor with shattered screen. And most of the cupboards in the kitchen had been left wide open.
He picked his way through the house carefully, room by room – quickly taking stock. There were no cars in the garage. Places outlined in dust were the odd thing was missing – too small and normal to be anything of any real value, probably. Mrs. C had said something about going to the desert. Maybe they'd made it? Somebody had to. They couldn't all be-
It hadn't been until he reached the gates that he'd realized there had been more than one safe zone. And Mrs. C's house was right in the middle of it. He'd walked the perimeter of the fence before braving the gap in the front. Like someone had tried to drag it closed but hadn't quite made it. He'd called out reflexively, slapping his hand against his mouth as a hot flush of terror and private embarrassment hushed through him. Slapping him with the echoes as the smell of rotting garbage turned the air thick and close.
Only there was no one.
No one that answered.
No people.
No biters.
Just bodies littered across the street.
And somewhere, maybe close by, a dog barking weakly.
Otherwise, there was nothing.
Just- nothing.
The quiet had been strained – eerie and unbalanced as he'd hiked his backpack higher on his shoulders and did his best to be invisible. Silently counting down the numbers on the houses until he found it. And, yeah- it was weird how some things end up looking nothing like you expected them to. Mrs. C had always seemed so confident. Above average. Like she was on the better end of normal. Making him picture a big three story house with expensive things and a manicured front lawn. You always think that people older than you always have their shit together. That they have it made. But it seemed like that was just something people said to make people like him feel better. Because Mrs. C lived in a normal house on a normal block with the hint of some very normal looking weeds starting to make an appearance between the sedge-grass in the flower beds by the front door.
It was kind of depressing actually.
Either way it had been a good distraction.
Because after all that, after everything he'd been through to get here, he was still painfully alone.
And for the first time in a long time, he didn't want to be.
When all this had started he thought the trick was to make it like he always had, alone. But he'd been wrong. He'd never missed people so much until there was literally no one left to take a chance on. His uncle – before the lines had gone dead – told him to stay where he was, hunker down and not draw attention. That other people were dangerous. That they'd take what you had. Get you killed. To stay home and stay put and that he was coming for him. That he'd try. And they'd make it together. Only his uncle hadn't showed. Not the first week. Not the second. Not even the third. That was when he decided he couldn't wait anymore. That he couldn't do this. That he couldn't do this alone. He didn't want to.
He thought being alone would be easy.
After all, it wasn't like he hadn't had practice.
Only, he'd been wrong.
By the third week he'd felt half-possessed. Manic and suddenly desperate for assurance. For a sign that he wasn't alone out here. Wasn't the last person left alive in the entire god damned city. Fighting the sudden childish urge to scream at the top of his lungs at all hours of the day and especially the nights. So lonely for the sight of another human face that he almost would have settled for anyone – even someone who was going to rob him.
Almost.
Because the tricky thing about surviving was that you had to be surviving for something beyond the idea itself. For someone. Not just for yourself. You had to make the risk worth it. Otherwise, really, what was the point?
He left Mrs. C's house a couple hours after dawn the next day.
But before he went, he shook the glass off the framed picture that had fallen off the wall and shattered across the mantle in the front room. The one with Mrs. C and her two kids when they were younger and some guy with a wide, kind grin he didn't recognize. He looked at it for a long moment – internalizing the memories left behind – before folding it carefully into his pocket.
He took one last look around the empty house before he nodded and closed the door, popping the cheap lock on the other side like that might somehow keep the next desperate person away. Feeling the edges of the photo dig into the crease of his thigh like a reminder as he walked. Vaguely thinking about how much ground he could cover before nightfall.
He'd give it to her when he found them.
Just in case.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.