Joe and Freckle stood on the side of the highway, the engine of the truck exposed as Joe dug around inside it.
"Wrench," Joe said. Freckle handed him a wrench. "Screwdriver," he said, and Freckle handed him a screwdriver. "Clamp," he said, and Freckle handed him a clamp.
"Well, it's just as I thought." Joe stood back from the engine, his face and hands covered in soot and oil. "I have no idea how to fix a car."
Freckle picked up his notebook from where it was lying in the grass. "What do we do now, then?"
Joe thought for a moment, then walked back out to the road. He looked at a dirty sign listing what was at the next exit. "There's a Walmart up ahead. We'll walk there, stockpile as many supplies as we can, and then set off again on foot."
"We're gonna WALK?"
Joe shrugged defensively. "What else are we gonna do?"
Freckle wrinkled his nose, knowing Joe was right.
They took their stuff out of the truck and walked along the side of the highway, taking the next exit and coming upon an abandoned shopping mall. All shopping malls in the apocalypse were abandoned, but this one seemed more abandoned than the others they'd seen. Windows were shattered, store signs were broken, there was graffiti everywhere, most of it vulgar. There were two cars that had been smashed into each other and left there, their shattered metal and glass strewn across the asphalt like glitter.
Freckle tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Do you think this place was abandoned before the apocalypse?" he'd written.
"No...the sign on the highway didn't look old or faded. I think a group of people came through here and did this."
Freckle frowned, scanning the landscape a second time.
"They were probably anarchists," Joe said. "But it's quiet now, so it looks like they're gone, and we might as well take a look in case they left anything useful behind."
They approached the front doors of the Walmart, which had been shattered, of course. The inside was lit in small little pools of light from the skylights in the roof, but it was far from being fully lit up. Joe took out his lighter and they entered together.
The store shelves near the entrance were stripped. They moved further inside, tentatively going through what might've once been the kitchen wares aisle. Everything was gone except for a single yellow toaster.
"I feel like we should take this with us, just because it might be the only thing in the store," Joe said with a lowered voice. "What do you think, Freckle? Do we need a toaster?"
Joe turned around. Freckle was gone.
"Freckle?" Joe raised his voice a little more. "Where did you go?"
In the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a shadow pass over the skylight. He whipped around. The aisle was still empty.
Dread settled at the bottom of his stomach.
He tip-toed from aisle to aisle, scanning each of them for Freckle. He thought he heard a whispering sound and he stopped, listening, but the sound stopped too. He lifted his lighter up high, trying to get it to shine into all the dark corners of the aisles, but had little luck. There could be small, disgusting animals hiding in any one of the corners.
In the next aisle, there was a large cardboard box on one of the shelves, its top flaps shut but not sealed. Joe tentatively crept toward it, angling the lighter so it might illuminate the dark insides. He thought he saw something inside, but he couldn't make out what it was. "It might be something good, something that the previous looters passed over," he reasoned to himself. Although his insides were screaming at him to run, he stood over the box and opened the flaps.
At first it looked like a collection of broken limbs. Then a scabby face turned towards him, snarled, and jumped out of the box, latching onto Joe like a wild animal. It screamed and clawed and bit. Joe shrieked and tried to pry it off of himself, stumbling backwards. Both of them careened into an empty shelf and came toppling down apart from one another.
Joe shot back to his feet again, quickly glancing at his arms where the zombie had drawn blood. "Please don't be infected, please don't be infected," he muttered to himself while clumsily scrambling down the aisle.
"Infected!" He heard a distinctly prepubescent voice say. He heard it spit on the floor. "I ain't infected! I thought you were, you disgusting smelling hobo!"
Joe stopped, turned, and saw that the zombified creature was actually not a zombie at all, just a scabby little child. She looked to be about nine.
"...You're not a zombie? Joe asked, just to make sure.
"No! I'll never die."
Joe got up, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Hey! Where do you think you're going?"
"I have to find my friend."
"You mean the zombie?"
"Yeah."
"He ran off that way, towards our zombie trap."
"Zombie trap?" Joe said worriedly. "Our?" He said, even more worriedly.
The girl looked up towards the roof. "It's okay guys. He's not a zombie. You can come out now."
Children of all shapes and sizes emerged like cockroaches from a drain; they popped out of corners and jumped down from shelves and a few even climbed out of the refrigerator at the other end of the aisle. They scuttled up to Joe, quickly surrounding him with their dirty little faces tilted up in curiosity.
"Did you bring any food?" Their hands grabbed at his backpack.
"Are you from the government?"
"Do you have any games on your phone?"
"How did you get my phone?" Joe yelped, snatching it from the little thieving hands of an eight-year-old.
"Have you ever killed a zombie?"
"Have you seen Jacy? She's supposed to be back soon."
"Slow down! Please! Give me some space!" Joe tried to ward off the mob of children, to no avail. "Have you seen my friend Freckle? He's a zombie, he came in here with me."
"Yeah!" An eleven-year-old girl offered. "We just caught him in the zombie trap!"