“Some would say the cold would slow an infection: those people are idiots.”

Isabel laughed, the only source of humour besides from the lingering of the old comedy bar twenty or so miles away. Neimar wasn’t at all in the funniest, but knowing that laughing would make him feel better, she had her act on point.

They lay on the outskirts of Elyo, tucked away in a small square held together by heaps of rusty metal. Their beds, parallel to one another, left room for a desk between them, and slightly further up, was Isabel’s workbench.

Isabel and Neimar had both worked in the same shop for a long time before the apocalypse. Both mechanics, or fixer-uppers, as Neimar liked to call it. But after the apocalypse had started, Neimar never wanted to see a workbench again.

He was both mentally and physically broken. He had lost his mother to the apocalypse and been bitten all within a span of a month.

But Isabel couldn’t ditch him. Regardless of how much he slowed her down, they were best friends: something that had truly been put to the test.

Isabel was sat at her workbench. She slid her signature silver magnifying goggles on, the ones she had gotten for her fifteenth birthday, and got to work.

“How long do you think it’ll be before we see people?” Neimar asked, resting on his bed, where his leg trembled unnaturally with the bite troubling his knee.

“I don’t know,” Isabel replied, her hands fixed on whatever she was creating, with metal wires poking from her hands, which caused Neimar to look up. “Could be a week. A month.” He heard her audibly sigh. “A year.”

“Glad to know you’re staying positive.”

“Yeah, I know, I know, glass half full,” Isabel ranted on, the metal wires being twisted into place by what looked like pliers.

“Glass half what?” Neimar tilted his head.

“You know, glass half full? Half empty? Positive, negat—“ she turned around to see Neimar’s dumbfounded face and huffed. “Whatever, never mind.”

Isabel got back to work. After a while, the loud snoring of Neimar indicated he had finally fallen asleep, which gave Isabel a breath of fresh air, considering the bite on his leg had somehow given him mad insomnia.

—

“C’mon, only another ten minutes,” Isabel panted, out of breath. Neimar’s leg shook uncontrollably as he steadied himself on a large rock.

“Ten minutes?!” He cried until he thought his eyes deceived him. “Wait— Iz— am I hallucinating?”

Isabel’s eyes widened. “What? Are you okay? Do you feel nauseous? Feel like… turning into something… other than human?”

Neimar snorted. “No, not that type of hallucination. Look behind you.”

Isabel did so. In front of her around two hundred feet away was a fully functioning town. A literal civilisation. Around ten or so people were huddled around a house that was covered in debris and rubble, perhaps an explosion. Others were huddled amongst a small tent while little boys ran around playing tag behind cream white brick houses.

Things were looking up.