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For the first few months, Quackity’s only thought was about finding somewhere safe. Then the closest thing to safe went up in flames. After that, he got to thinking that the day he got a bulldozer would be the day he actually makes something out of this stupid fucking apocalypse. The idea of opening a trading post that is larger than life, well-stocked, and marked at a too-high price (but hey, Quackity’s a nice guy, he’ll give them a discount and make them a deal ) is just that; a good idea . But Quackity’s a guy with a lot of ideas and no power to really back it up. Not since his business partner bit the dust, at least. He meets the next best thing to a bulldozer about a year into the apocalypse: Foolish Gamers.
Quackity will admit he is not the strongest guy in the world. That was true before half the world became zombies, and he’s sure it’ll be true even if him and one guy all the way over in Hermitcraft of all places are the last two in the world. But one thing he’s always been is tenacious. He had to be, even before the undead came, and now (so long as they aren’t actively in his face) he just sees them as an opportunity. That’s what Schlatt would do. Or maybe he wouldn’t have been able to handle the heat of the apocalypse and instead do what quite a few people Quackity knew did, which is lose their fucking minds and decide dying would be better than surviving. Quackity will never know for sure, and honestly that’s probably for the best. If Schlatt were still alive by the time people started eating each other, Quackity’s chances of survival would have plummeted. On his own, Quackity’s odds aren’t so hot either. Which is why when he saw a man built like a tank and calmly evaluating the situation of about ten zombies in the road, Quackity did the only thing he could to keep him there; he tripped and screamed.
It was a risk, obviously, but Quackity thinks most of life is a gamble. He just has to make sure his chips are well-placed. The man’s head whips towards the scream, as do the starving faces of the undead that make Quackity’s heart race just a little (deafeningly so). He may be an opportunity-seeker, but he’s also a human being with lots of flesh and soft bits that these motherfuckers are more than happy to sink their teeth into. What Quackity’s gambling is that the man will see that too, and do everything in his power to save Quackity’s life. The one thing Quackity’s noticed during the past year is peoples surprising capacity for kindness in the wake of something so impossible and unknown. There’s two kinds of idiots in the apocalypse; the ones who will hurt others and the ones who will help others. Even before Foolish helps him, Quackity knows exactly which one of those idiots he is. The horror on his face as he hesitates for just a moment is palpable, and within seconds he has his gun out and is racing toward the mini-horde shambling toward Quackity’s fallen form. He gets up now, finally, because he doesn’t want Foolish to think he’s useless. He wants Foolish to think he’s just useless enough .
Ten bullets are shot by Foolish’s gun and about 7 zombies are felled. Foolish yells, “Hey, are you okay?” And Quackity watches as one of the shambling undead walks up behind Foolish and brings him to the ground. Quackity unloads about 7 bullets to kill the three remaining around him (and hey, his aim is getting better at least) while he lets Foolish face the possibility of death for about ten extra seconds. Then, he grabs the hatchet on his waist and rams it into the head of Foolish’s certain death. The man fish mouths for a few seconds, and Quackity takes the opportunity to put his hand out. Like an instinct, Foolish takes it and Quackity pulls him up.
“You alright, man?” Quackity asks, probably coming off a little too calm considering the both of them just had a near-death experience, but he prides himself in his ability to go from the worst experiences of his life to a state of complete calm. He met a therapist once, at the almost-home that wasn’t quite meant to be, who told him that was a concerning quality. She amended it with the fact that it would probably help him survive, so Quackity thinks he’s doing just fine.
“That was- fuck, that was probably the closest I’ve been to actually, like, dying,” Foolish shakes out his hands like he can get the stench of death off of them. A year into the apocalypse and this guy hasn’t had a near-death experience? Oh, Quackity has gotta poach this guy. “Decided I’m not a fan.”
“Well, hey, neither am I. Got that in common.” Foolish gives him a little laugh but it comes out strangled. Quackity didn’t expect the encounter to shake him up that much, but it’s definitely playing to his favor. “I’m Quackity.”
“Um, Foolish,” the guy says, and Quackity narrowed his eyes but the guy quickly amended, “No, fuck, my name is- my parents had problems, okay, my name is Foolish.” And Quackity’s narrowed eyes turned into a quirked little smile.
“I think problems is being a little too forgiving.”
“Well, they’re dead now, so I don’t think I’m allowed to be too mean to them.”
“Fair enough,” Quackity replies. He doesn’t know if the guy is just kind of odd, or if it’s adrenaline from the near-death experience. “Look, I really appreciate you helping out before. I’m not the best with a gun, so resource-collecting has been, uh-”
“A bit of a bitch?” Foolish finishes for him.
“A bit of a bitch,” Quackity agrees with a smile.
“Well, hey, thanks for, y’know, saving me too. That zombie came out of nowhere,” Foolish says with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah,” Quackity agrees, even if he knew it was there the whole time. “Guess it’s good to remember your mortality, huh?” Foolish gives him a confused little smile at that, then looks off into the distance with a sigh.
“Man, I don’t even want to get gas now. I want to lay down for ten years and hopefully this mess’ll be sorted by the time I wake up.”
“Next best thing?” Quackity starts, seeing his opportunity. “I have a place nearby. You can rest there for tonight, and I’ll bring you back tomorrow.” For the first time since their interaction started, Foolish looks suspicious. Quackity’s almost happy for the guy that he got a semblance of a brain cell during their incredibly suspicious encounter.
“What’s in it for you?” Foolish asks.
“It doesn’t have to be a transaction,” Quackity lies. “I could just be a nice guy helping out someone who saved his life,” Foolish seems like a statue now in his distrust. “If it makes you feel better, I need help moving wood. And you definitely look like a guy who can move wood.”
“Um, what?”
“Over there?” Quackity points toward the woods right off the interstate. He spent like three hours this morning trying to move logs from one place to another, and pathetically he was only able to get about one per hour. They’re fucking heavy and farther away from his pick-up truck than he would like. It worked out in his favor, though, because otherwise he wouldn’t have met Foolish. “Bunch of trees fell during the last storm. I wanna nab ‘em.”
“Oh!” Foolish laughs, shaking his head. “Yeah, I can help with that! I did construction before, um, all this.” Jackpot.
“Construction, yeah?” Sam did construction too. That’s what made him so damn valuable to Quackity’s plan. He was valuable to Quackity in other ways, too, but if he focuses on the business-end of things, he doesn’t have to think about his last friend left in the apocalypse getting himself and his poor fucking boyfriend killed. “Hey, let me run something by you…”
There are a lot of things Quackity believes in now that the dead walk the earth. One of them is, obviously, zombies. Another is the idea of an afterlife. Quackity doesn’t claim to understand how zombies work or how they’re created, even. He’ll leave that shit to be explained in a decade by people like Tubbo. He does, however, have an understanding that people stay now. They’re dead, but they stay to become a beast of what they once were. So there must be somewhere afterward, if this is what happens when they stay. Actually, if Tubbo were here he would say something about how that’s a silly line of thinking, Quackity, and here’s all the scientific explanations for why you’re a dumbass. But Quackity squeezes the cross on his necklace and tucks it under his shirt like a comfort. He and God are probably not on the best terms, but he thinks he can make a deal at the gates of Heaven that will get him the red carpet.
But as he stumbles upon a nearby restaurant—he hadn’t planned on expanding this far out, but it would be easier to set up borders than to get Foolish to build a restaurant from scratch, wouldn’t it?—and is accosted by something in the form of a guy yelling, “I’m bones, I’m bones!” he thinks he’ll have to reevaluate his beliefs even further. Said guy made of bones (“all 200 of them, approximately speaking of course!”) was actually made of… sludge? Grime? Quackity can’t be assed to know the exact qualifications of what makes this guy a… guy?
“Look, Quackity from Las Nevadas,” the odd slime says, apparently knowing Quackity’s name despite the fact that Quackity has no fucking clue who this clown is. “I’ve been watching you for a while now!”
“You’ve been watching me? Fucking- what, stalking me?”
“Those words do mean something similar to the same thing!” Oh, so he’s a smartass.
“Why are you watching me? Better yet, why are you watching me from a restaurant five miles away? Don’t think you’re getting a very good view.”
“I don’t just watch you, Quackity from Las Nevadas. I watch people. I watch humans, in all their forms. Of which I am also!” He interrupts in a panic. “I am just a human who loves watching other humans! And sometimes those humans eat each other's faces off. I don’t see the appeal.”
“Those aren’t-” Quackity sighs, putting a hand to his forehead. “Those are zombies, man. They aren’t human anymore.”
“Why not?”
“What- they’re killing people! They’re eating people!”
“Humans have done that for centuries, Quackity from Las Nevadas. What makes them different?” He tilts his head, looking at Quackity with wide, genuinely curious eyes. “They’re as hungry as you are.” Quackity is taking back the smartass comment. He thinks this guy might be the most genuine motherfucker he’s ever met in his life. It’s incredibly confusing.
“I don’t think I’m that hungry.” He says it like a joke, but the two of them stare at each other in the wake of Quackity’s lie. He wonders if the guy knows. There’s nothing in the world that will satiate his hunger. But he thinks Las Nevadas will get pretty damn close. “What’s your name, pal?” The guy smiles.
“Are names important, Quackity from Las Nevadas?”
“Important enough. Mostly just makes it easier to refer to the people you want to keep around.”
“Do you want to keep me around?”
“Don’t you want to stick around?” Quackity turns the question back around. He doesn’t understand this guy or who he is or what he is. But he was watching Quackity, and he’s still watching Quackity, with curiosity that begs to be sated. There’s nothing easier to use than curiosity.
“My name is whatever’s easiest, I guess! I don’t think I’ve ever had to think about it before.”
“How about I just call you Slime?”
“Or Guy! Because I am such a human guy!” Quackity smiles.
“I think Slime works just fine.”
When Slime told him that there was a guy living on the perimeter of Quackity’s land, he wasn’t really inclined to believe him. For all Quackity knew, said “guy” was just a pretty big squirrel. He’s not sure what Slime’s actual definition of a human guy is. Imagine his surprise when he finds a familiar face bundled up in a pretty fucking cozy log cabin.
“Why are you here?” Purpled asks, as if he’s not the one intruding on Quackity’s territory. To be fair, territory is sort of a loose term right now, and he doesn’t want to make an enemy of Purpled quite yet. An ally would be good, actually. His only two are a jacked builder who killed ten people before the apocalypse even began and now feels really, really bad about it, and an inhuman odd-ball who finds the beauty in every human, zombies included. A smart kid with blood on his hands who doesn’t really mind that he has blood on his hands would be a valuable asset.
“I live nearby,” Quackity answers vaguely. “A friend of mine saw you. I wanted to make sure you were a friendly face.”
“And?”
“Friendlier than a lot of people I’ve seen,” Quackity answers. His run-in with Technoblade is why his depth perception is shit. “But definitely not a friend. Yet.” It’s a threat as much as it’s a hopeful statement. He didn’t know Purpled well when they were both in L’manburg, but he knew him well enough he knows that when the set, bored look on his face pinches a bit, it means he’s nervous.
“Look, I won’t hurt you. I don’t really give a shit about whatever you’re building,” so he knows already. Now what, but where . Where is far more dangerous. “But I’m more comfortable alone, alright? You leave me be, I’ll leave you be.” That would have been a good deal if Quackity saw him as a complete and total threat. But Purpled is alone and Quackity needs more allies. Las Nevadas can’t be built by three people alone.
“Sounds good to me,” Quackity lies. “If you ever need anything, though, you know where to find me. It’s rough out here, you know. And trust me, Purpled, I know what it’s like to lose everything.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t really all that invested in L’manburg anyway, so,” Purpled shrugs. “Have fun with your L’manburg 2.0. I’ll be fine right here.” The idea that his trade-post is anything like L’manburg makes him frown. Wilbur may have laid some of the framework down for Quackity’s idea, but it’s Quackity’s idea.
“It’s called Las Nevadas.”
“Whatever.”
And that’s how Quackity finds himself standing in front of Purpled’s cabin with a gallon of gasoline and a match to pair with it. Slime has been watching the kid for a couple weeks now, so Quackity knows that Purpled won’t be here tonight. He goes to pick off any too-close zombies on Tuesdays, or whatever approximation of a Tuesday this is. So Quackity pours the gallon all around the perimeter of the house, shakes a bit inside for good measure, and lights the motherfucker up.
He gets his karma about two minutes later, when something silently lurches at him on his way back to Las Nevadas. It grips his arms down and sets its sight and teeth to his throat, and for a moment it was all for nothing. Quackity burned down Purpled’s house for nothing. He took in Foolish and Slime for nothing. He lived through knowing Schlatt and Wilbur for nothing. Sam died for absolutely fucking nothing . But the zombie falls over to its side, groaning and angry.
“Sorry about that, zombie from the Outside!” Slime tells the dead, wretched thing kindly. “But you’re hurting my good friend, here.” Slime reaches a hand toward Quackity, and without much hesitation Quackity takes it.
“Thank you,” he says. “How did you-”
“I was following Purpled, just like you asked. He saw the fire and started running. And while I followed, I found you.”
Quackity takes Slime by the shoulders and asks, “Did Purpled see me?”
“No. The fire mattered more to him,” Quackity lets out a deep sigh. “And you mattered more to me.” Quackity gives him a smile. It goes against everything he’s been trying to teach his new friend- his citizen. But it’s nice to be cared about.
“Thanks, Slime.” The zombie latches a hand onto Slime’s ankle, and Quackity whacks it in the skull with his hatchet. Something in Quackity hates how natural it was to protect Slime. He should be more wary about how close they're getting. But when Slime looks at the dead undead with a sort of sad curiosity, Quackity lets himself feel fond and confused by how Slime finds a love for even these nasty, ugly things.
Two days later, Purpled shows up at Quackity’s doorstep with nothing but the clothes on his back and a gun in his hand. “That offer still on the table?” Purpled asks. Quackity grins.
Finding Purpled felt like a one in a million chance. Someone from L’manburg, hundreds and hundreds of miles away? It was kind of insane. But four months later, when Las Nevadas isn’t quite a country yet but is a fairly lucrative trading post, Fundy shows up. This guy has absolutely no one. Wilbur is dead, Tommy is (dead?) gone, Tubbo and Niki and everyone else ran with their tails tucked between their legs, and Fundy was left alone at the center of it all.
“Wilbur died, and I just sort of… stayed for a little while. Everyone else ran, but I stayed.” He looks so sad. Quackity remembers a million years ago when that would have made him sad too, to know his friend was in so much pain. Now, Quackity sinks his claws in like a reflex.
“I thought you were dead,” Quackity lies, trying to put as much emotion as he can into it. “I thought- God, I figured the blast got you and Tommy both. I know you two tried to stop him.”
“I don’t know what happened to Tommy,” Fundy says with a shrug. That breaks Quackity’s heart a little. He was hoping for better news. But God forbid Wilbur go anywhere Tommy didn’t follow. “But I survived it. I survived WIlbur. He actually-” he cuts himself off with an embarrassed look.
“He actually?” Quackity prompts impatiently. He tries to make it come off as kind. In Fundy’s state, he doesn’t think the guy really knows the difference.
“The blast didn’t- I mean it killed Wilbur, obviously. But it didn’t get his head. I watched him sort of just… shamble away a few nights later. Couldn’t bring myself to shoot him.” Jesus. Quackity had sort of figured Wilbur would be too fucked up to even be a walking corpse. Apparently even his dead body is fucking dedicated. “Felt so fucking stupid. I knew he was dead, I just- it was Wilbur.”
“Hey,” Quackity puts a hand on Fundy’s shoulder and gives him a smile. “No one can blame you for that. It’s fucking awful having to kill someone you love.” He remembers shooting Sam point-blank in the face and the way the blood splashed into Quackity’s mouth. He didn’t stop tasting the blood for hours. Days. Sometimes, he tastes it even now. “I’m really glad you found me, Fundy.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah, man! Look, L’manburg was… doomed to fail,” Fundy looks down. “It’s not anyone's fault.” And if either of them really believed that, they would have tried to rebuild. No one would have run so far from the body of Wilbur Soot that they hadn’t even taken the time to check he wouldn’t come back. Fundy stayed, but he stayed to rot alongside Wilbur. “I’m making something here. It’s just a trading post right now, but I want to build places for people to say. I just need more people for that, and more resources, and more of, well, everything. I’ve got some guys here, actually another familiar face if you’ll believe it. And I want you here too.”
“Are you sure, Quackity?” Fundy asks nervously. “I don’t- I don’t want to follow another L’manburg. It cost me too much.” Quackity squeezes Fundy’s shoulder, both a comfort and a threat.
“This isn’t L’manburg. And I’m not Wilbur. At the end of the day, Las Nevadas is just about… not being alone anymore.” Fundy’s eyes shine at the idea, and Quackity smiles. Gotcha .
The five of them sit around a table staring at each other, wariness in everyone except for Slime who doesn’t seem to understand that he should be. Quackity does not sit, actually, he stands and looms over these motherfuckers with an anger he hasn’t felt in a long, long fucking time. That Slime seems to respond to, but he does so with a concerned frown and nothing else. Quackity doesn’t want fucking concern. He wants answers .
“Who did it?” He asks the group. It’s a simple question, he thinks, so he doesn’t know why he’s had to ask ten fucking times.
“Have you considered that maybe none of us did it?” Foolish suggests and shrinks a little at the glare he gets for it. “I mean- I get that we’re the only ones who have the keys to the gate, and no one else was actually in Las Nevadas at the time, and the zombies were corralled in a specific area, and- okay, yeah, it was definitely one of us.”
“Thank you, Foolish, for that play-by-play,” Quackity gripes. Foolish puts his hands up in surrender. “Anyone else have something to add to make this meeting longer than it fucking needs to be?”
“If it helps, Slime lost his keys earlier,” Purpled says with a shrug. Quackity turns a sharp look toward Slime, though he has a hard time keeping it quite as sharp as it was before. The guy in question looks confused by the insinuation.
“Did I?” He asks Purpled, sounding like he genuinely doesn’t remember. That’s the thing about Slime. He’s too genuine for Quackity to get as mad as he would at anyone else in the world. If he knew he did it, he would’ve told Quackity straight up. The fact that he doesn’t know if he did it is concerning, though.
“You did,” Purpled answers easily. “Remember? We talked about it on the bridge?”
“We did talk about my keys on the bridge!” Slime says with a grin, and Quackity groans. Of course it was fucking Slime. He gave him a set of keys because he trusted him, and Quackity wasn’t always at the guy’s side to let him in and out, but it is definitely proving to be more trouble than it’s worth.
“Slime,” Quackity says, tired. “You have to be more careful.”
“You have to be more careful?” Fundy asks, sounding annoyed. The guy’s two settings are annoyed and sad and it’s starting to grate on Quackity’s fucking nerves. “Five seconds ago you were ready to kick whoever did it out of the country!”
“Look, he didn’t mean to-”
“You can’t just play fucking favorites!” Fundy yells, shocking everyone in the room except Purpled who just looks mildly curious. As annoyed as Fundy gets, he never quite reaches disrespectful. Quackity would call this disrespectful. In a more even tone, Fundy grits out, “This country is all of our responsibility, and if you have one guy that keeps fucking it up but you’re too fucking blinded by friendship-”
“Fundy,” Quackity interrupts, tone not reaching anger but definitely insinuating that Fundy should shut the fuck up. And he does. “This is my country. And Slime is a resident in that country, as well as a founder. He was here before you. Sometimes we make mistakes. And Slime won’t make this mistake again. Will you, Slime?”
“No I won’t! Whatever mistake that was!” It doesn’t give Quackity a lot of hope, but Fundy just rolls his eyes. The storm is quelled, but Fundy is glaring at Slime in a way that Quackity doesn’t like.
“Great. Fundy, can you help Slime take care of the leftover zombies?” It’s a punishment, they both know it is, and Fundy scoffs.
Before a fight can break out, Purpled interrupts, “Can I help Slime?” It’s a shock to their system more than Fundy’s outburst was. Purpled doesn’t really do shit unless directly prompted, and even then it’s a fucking battle to get him to do it right. He likes to sit and watch everyone else do the work. It reminds Quackity sometimes that as resourceful as he is and as much blood is on his hands, at the end of the day he’s just an annoying teenager. “Oh my God, I just think he’s slightly less annoying than the rest of you assholes.” That’s fair enough. Quackity feels similarly.
“Fine. Purpled and Slime, you’re on zombie duty. Foolish and Fundy, take note of any infrastructure that got damaged and get a move-on. I’ll man the booth for the rest of the day. Everyone alright with that?” There are no more outbursts, and Quackity breathes easy.
Quackity used to feel like the world was wide and unknowable. Not infinite, but something like it for someone who would never see every inch of it. When Fundy runs into his office sounding angry and confused and rambling about L’manburg, and two minutes later Quackity is at Fundy’s post with only a door separating him and one Tommy Innit, he’s starting to think that idea is a fucking joke.
“Holy shit,” Quackity breathes, laughing with a real joy that he barely recognizes in himself anymore. “Tommy, how the Hell are you?”
“Offended, actually, hurt and offended because apparently you could give Fundy a job here, apparently you could even give someone like Purpled a fucking job, but looks like I missed the fucking memo you had a job fair for troubled L’manburg residents.”
“Trust me, Tommy, you would’ve been my first choice,” Quackity lies. He wouldn’t hate for Tommy to be here, to work here, but he doesn’t think he would’ve been able to look Tommy in the eyes and lead him astray the exact same way Wilbur did. Maybe it’s a bit of favoritism, but no one ever said Quackity was exactly the most moral of businessmen. “I kind of thought you were dead.”
“Oh, that’s so fucking embarrassing for you, Big Q, because for me to die every single zombie in the entire world would have to congregate to one place and face me head-on, so you best keep that in mind before making these silly little claims.” He’s exactly the fucking same. Quackity doesn’t know how he lost everything, lost L’manburg, lost Wilbur, and is exactly the fucking same. But he is. Quackity is so Goddamn grateful.
“Well, hey, man, I’m glad! Trust me, I’m more than fucking glad. You looking for a place to stay? You and- I mean, I figure if you’re here Tubbo can’t be too far behind,” and Quackity’s heart drops at the way Tommy’s face goes stormy at mention of Tubbo. If there’s one person Quackity thought could get through all of this bullshit, it was that kid.
“He’s not here right now,” Tommy says bitterly, and Quackity breathes a little easier at the right now . “He’s all- I dunno, he met some fucking loser and the two of them are on the coast right now, but the coast is so fucking cold , Quackity, and my bones are so weak compared to the rest of me, which is so strong and would never break or ache as easily as the puny bones inside of my body.”
“So you’re alone?” Tommy hunches in on himself a bit, and Quackity frowns in sympathy. If there’s one thing he knows about Tommy, it’s that the kid fucking hates being alone. He nearly retraced Wilbur’s footsteps with how little he wanted to be alone. But Wilbur is buried under a pile of rubble, and Tommy is standing in front of Quackity looking a little worse-for-wear, but definitely still the bright-eyed kid he knew two years ago. He would happily offer Tommy a place here. Maybe not at the toll-booth, because he definitely doesn’t trust the kid not to piss off half their clients, but he thinks he could find somewhere for Tommy to thrive.
“Not exactly,” Tommy mutters, looking off to the side with a bit of wariness. “I didn’t even- well, I didn’t know shit about this place, actually, but he heard about it and was gonna have a fucking coronary if we didn’t see it for ourselves.”
“He?” Quackity prompts. He knows a lot of people, he knows quite a few enemies , that he’s made over the past few years. He doesn’t think Tommy would take someone who wants his downfall here on purpose , but considering in the past twenty seconds the brights of the kid's eyes have dimmed and he looks nervous in a way that Quackity doesn’t like on Tommy, he thinks maybe Tommy didn’t have much of a choice.
“Just- can I come in, Big Q?” Tommy asks. “Don’t wanna get bit ‘cause you’re being a bitch.” Quackity rarely sees zombies anymore—though he feels he can hear them near-constantly, like a symphony of fear and possibility playing in his mind—and he’s wary now; wary of Tommy and of all the people who could hurt him. But despite it all, Quackity misses Tommy, and he definitely doesn’t want to turn him away. There’s no one left alive that Quackity thinks could send this place tumbling. Well, Technoblade is, but Quackity doesn’t think Technoblade would think of a plan this convoluted. He would just throw bombs over Quackity’s walls and be done with it. So Quackity slides open the door and greets Tommy with a smile. It wavers when Quackity sees the ghost standing next to him. There’s no fucking way. Quackity saw his body with his own eyes, Fundy confirmed that he was dead, and Quackity even had a few times where he mourned this stupid fucker. Now he’s stood in front of Quackity’s country with a face that can only be described as smug.
“Can we come in?” Wilbur Soot echoes Tommy’s words. Quackity has the hysterical thought that he can smell dynamite, but he thinks he might just be reliving the fall of L’manburg for the 100th time. He might just already be mourning Las Nevadas from the spark in Wilbur’s eyes.
“Las Nevadas has a very strict ruling on zombies,” Quackity answers with an ease he does not feel. Wilbur laughs. His eyes fall to the hatchet on Quackity’s waist, and no matter how many times that stupid fucking hatchet has saved his life, Quackity wishes he had left it because nothing in the world is worth Wilbur looking that fucking pleased. Quackity wants to sink it into his head.
“And old friends?” Wilbur asks. Quackity thinks calling he and Wilbur old friends is being very, very generous, but he looks at Tommy who still stands in the shadow of Wilbur’s eclipse even after all this time, and he steps out of the way to let them through.
“Welcome to Las Nevadas.”
The day Connor comes, Quackity thinks he might just leave it all behind to not have to face the sight of Schlatt’s best friend. But he knows what a hysterical, ridiculous thought that is, and welcomes Connor to Las Nevadas with not-so-welcome arms. It takes about ten minutes for Connor to actually recognize him. He fucking resents that.
“Small world!” Connor says with a laugh. “I haven’t seen you since, uh… Oh God, since Schlatt’s funeral, huh?”
“Yeah,” Quackity says evenly. He ignores the way Slime is openly watching their conversation. “About five years, now.”
“Man, crazy to think he died before all this, right? Like, everyone I know is dead, but Schlatt’s the only one who just didn’t survive before . It makes me sad, actually,” Connor admits. “I mean, happy he doesn’t have to deal with this shit. But if he’d just held on for a little while. I dunno.” Quackity thinks if Schlatt had held on, he would have died about ten minutes after the apocalypse began. Maybe twenty minutes if he used Quackity as a meatshield. He wasn’t exactly a runner. But neither was Quackity, so what the fuck does he know?
“I get what you mean,” Quackity agrees even though he doesn’t, not at all, because Schlatt was shit when people weren’t eating each other, so who the Hell knows how he would have been when they were? “Hey, y’know, I’ve got this place up and running now, food and lodging and all that. Go up to the guy at the front desk and say I said to give you the old friend discount, alright?” Connor smiles, and Quackity watches him walk toward Fundy with a little pep in his step. The old friend discount is something he special-made when Wilbur came. Upcharge the fucker until they decide it’s not worth it to stay.
“Who was that, Quackity?” Slime asks. He’s getting better about not interrupting conversations. Quackity almost misses when he would.
“Some guy I knew before all this,” Quackity answers vaguely. “He was a friend of, uh. He was a friend of a friend.”
“Then why don’t you want him to stay? Was he a bad friend?”
“He was the best friend Schlatt ever had.” He doesn’t know if he’s correcting Slime or telling him the reason Connor can’t stay. Either way, no more questions are asked. Connor leaves ten minutes later with an awkward smile and a, “Maybe next time”. Quackity continues to survive.
The night it all ends, Quackity thinks he should have seen it coming. In a way, he did see it coming. He knew someone was gonna fuck him over, he’s always known someone was gonna fuck him over, and he pushed the idea aside because he made this place. No Schlatt to die and no Wilbur to blow it all to bits; there was just Quackity and the country he made from fucking scratch. But Purpled requests to see him and Slime about a matter concerning whatever the fuck Wilbur is doing across the river, and Quackity is just bored enough to entertain it.
He hears something odd. It sounds like groaning, like dead men pawing at the earth, but he looks around and there’s no one. Just him and Slime walking through the streets of Las Nevadas to the little cabin Purpled made for himself right on the outskirts. In Quackity’s opinion, It doesn’t have the right aesthetic to fit the rest of Las Nevadas, but he figured he would let the kid have his little playhouse. He burned the last one to a crisp, what’s the harm of letting him keep one that Quackity has technical control over? What a fucking moron he was.
It takes ten minutes to walk to Purpled’s. It takes three minutes to exchange pleasantries. It takes one minute to realize the sound of hungry, groaning zombies is louder in Purpled’s home than anywhere else. Quackity doesn’t even get to ask why before Purpled has a gun to Slime’s head.
“What the fuck is this?” Quackity demands but doesn’t move a Goddamn muscle. If he doesn’t move, Slime doesn’t die, and if Slime doesn’t die, Quackity can still get out of this with one thing he fucking cares about. No matter how little he was supposed to.
“I was waiting, actually,” Purpled begins his explanation, and Quackity hates how much it already sounds like a stupid fucking villain monologue. “I wanted to wait until this country was everything you wanted it to be, then I was gonna burn it to the ground. Eye for an eye and all that.” Quackity was never completely sure if Purpled knew, though he suspected he did, and now he wishes he hadn’t been so fucking obvious about it. “But then I realized you don’t give a shit about this country. You don’t give a shit about the trade-posts. It’s power to you. Power and control and all that other crap. And I can respect that, Quackity, I really can. But it’s not, y’know, a good enough revenge. I rebuilt my cabin. You could rebuild your country. You know what you can’t replace?” And his hold on Slime gets a little tighter. Quackity’s heartbeat picks up.
“Purpled, stop, okay, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing-”
“I know exactly what the fuck I’m doing. One Quackity is bad enough, but the little Quackity 2.0 you’ve been making him? God knows I don’t wanna be around when that happens. So you can keep your stupid country. You can keep your stupid land. But that legacy you keep talking about? That ends now, actually.” And he kicks aside a rug to reveal a hole; a dark, petrifying hole with wails of hunger that put Quackity to shame.
“You’re the motherfucker,” Quackity realizes. “You left the gate open. You let the zombies in!”
“And me and Slime brought ‘em right here.”
“I’m so sorry, Quackity,” Slime says, face so much more sorry than scared and that’s as terrifying as the pit of zombies. “He told me it would help, that it’d be- it’d be something to protect us!”
“And it will,” Purpled says with a smile. Quackity doesn’t even get a second to speak before Purpled has thrown Slime in the hole, and there isn’t a second of hesitance before Quackity jumps right in with him. Quackity wasn’t meant to give a shit. Neither was slime for that matter. But he fights against the hungry hands grabbing at his clothes, he endures the teeth ripping through his skin, and he screams Slime’s name. He feels one grip in the darkness that is different from the rest. Desperate and firm as the hold the monsters keep as they chew through his exposed skin, but the squeeze he gets is friendly in a way that he’ll remember for the rest of his very, very short life.
“Thank you for showing me what it’s like to be human,” Quackity hears through his own screams and the groans around them. “Maybe I almost was.” The last thing Quackity will ever think is, You were more than I ever was.