Episode 2.3

Joe pulled off the highway and into a campsite, his headlights casting long shadows on the trees. They'd driven for the rest of the day, siphoning gas from abandoned and broken-down cars on the side of the highway, listening to static and the occasional distorted voice on the radio, and raiding an abandoned store for food--just normal road trip things, Joe thought, because he'd never been on a road trip before.

Joe hopped out of the car. "I don't know about you, but I'm starving." He rummaged around behind the seats and pulled out the can of ravioli they'd taken from the store. "I actually literally don't know if you're hungry or not. Do you eat?"

"Sometimes. I like to eat meat because it curbs my bloodlust a bit."

"Oh nice. This has meat in it, do you want some?"

Freckle nodded.

"Alright." Joe looked at the ravioli can in his hands for a moment, doing nothing. "We don't have a can opener," he said.

Freckle frowned. "Pocket knife?" he wrote.

Joe grabbed his backpack and dug around in it. He took out a rather small pocket knife. "This'll have to do," he said, then tried to puncture the can with it. It wouldn't budge. He put the can down on a rock to brace it, then tried again, putting all of his weight down onto that tiny pocket knife. It still wouldn't budge. It wouldn't even bend.

Freckle tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Let me try," he'd written. Joe sighed and stepped back from the rock. Freckle took the knife, lifted it up above the can, and brought it down, finally puncturing the can with a burst of tomato sauce.

"Nice!" Joe exclaimed. Freckle cut the rest of the top off and handed the can to Joe. He looked down at it again. "We don't have any forks, either. Or bowls." He narrowed his eyes. "Do we have to cook this?" Freckle shrugged. "We should cook it. I don't want to get salmonella if I can avoid it."

They set the can down and gathered firewood. Joe used the lighter he got from the convenience store, and soon they had a nice campfire going. He put a rock in the middle of it and placed the ravioli can on top.

The sun finally set, and darkness fully encroached on their campsite. The flickering light of the campfire was the only illumination they had. It cast a small pool of orange light to fight back the dark, casting strange shadows on the men's faces.

"So, are you from Fort Lauderdale?" Joe asked. "Since that's where I found you…"

Freckle glanced away, unsure if he wanted to do small talk right now. He picked up his notebook and wrote.

"Ah...I can't read that from over here. The firelight's too dim."

Freckle got up and moved next to Joe. "Yeah I'm from Fort Lauderdale," he'd written.

"Cool, cool. Me too. Although I grew up in Orlando. That's where my family lives. Moved to Miami to go to school, then Fort Lauderdale 'cuz it was a little cheaper to live there. I worked from home so it didn't matter where I lived."

"What did you do?"

"Information technology. Pretty boring, most of the time. What did you do?"

"I was a chef."

"Oh cool, where?"

"Accardo's."

"Oh! I went there once! That place is so good! Expensive, though."

"I think it's worth it."

"Oh definitely." Joe glanced down at the can of ravioli and his stomach growled. "Yeah I'd give anything to have some of that food right now."

Freckle didn't write anything. He just stared at the ravioli too.

"Got any family?" Joe asked.

Freckle looked away.

"Oh, s-sorry. It's okay if you don't want to talk about it."

The fire crackled as a log settled further into it.

Freckle took a deep breath, then wrote for a long time. "When you're first bitten," he scrawled, "The fungus takes over completely. You don't think about anything other than biting other people and spreading the fungus to them. Over time though, that feeling fades, and the fungus kind of goes dormant. The desire to eat people fades away and only comes back when you smell human scent. Unfortunately, this means that newly-bitten zombies will wander around aimlessly, and when they come to, they're miles away from where they started, with no idea how they got there, or how to get back." Freckle paused, staring into the fire. "I wasn't with my wife and son when I got bitten. When I came to, I managed to get back to our house, but they were both gone. I don't know where they are. They weren't bitten as far as I know, so I hope they survived."

"Oh..." Joe said. "I didn't know zombies went through that. That sounds terrible."

Freckle nodded, looking away.

"I don't have a great relationship with my family," Joe said suddenly. "S'why I went to a cheapo college to get a boring job to get a crappy apartment. Had to get away." He shook his head. "Sorry--sorry, I felt I should share, since you did."

"It's fine."

"Thanks."

"We're going to have to drive through Orlando, you know."

"Oh...you're right. We'll be driving right by where my parents live--or where they used to live, probably." Joe pursed his lips. "They're probably long gone. They probably got out when all this started happening, because they weren't holed up inside sleeping like I was. Dead to the world."

"That makes two of us," Freckle scribbled, grinning a little bit. Joe chuckled.

They took the ravioli off of the fire shortly after. Joe remembered that he packed a spoon for Colonel Crunchies, so he used that to eat half the can, then passed it off to Freckle, who just used his fingers. They let the fire burn down, and as they did, they talked about things like their favorite movies, and their old pets, and their school years.