Forests were good, Minho had learned in school. They masked human scent very well, and they often had an abundance of natural resources and, most importantly, water. They were also good places to take cover and, because they were full of trees, one could hide way up, where zombies couldn't reach.

However, they were also full of ing bugs.

"! Get away!" Minho hissed as he slapped at the stupid little dots that seemed intent on him dry. He swung at them with his club and ran forward, but they simply refused to die. It was horrible. Minho was panting for breath halfway up the small hill, and it was all because of those stupid bugs!

He trekked on, his food tied in his blanket and his blanket tied around his shoulders. He felt like a turtle. A very hungry turtle. Huffing, he made it over the ridge and smirked. He could see a stream from here, nice and calm. There, he'd no doubt find peace and tranquility and somewhere to eat his ing breakfast. He marched on.

Meanwhile, Taemin was running in circles around a tree.

He would've run back to his rock, but the zombie kept blocking off his path, so Taemin was doomed to run in circles until either he or the zombie broke down. Chances were, he'd collapse first. Still, it was worth a shot. He closed his eyes and yelled out as he ran, the world spinning around his head.

"SOMEONE HELP ME!" he screamed, and the zombie roared in response. There was a dull thwack, and the growling seemed farther and farther away. Taemin wondered if this was finally it, if this was the end of everything. He never got to say goodbye to his rock...

"Hey, a little help over here!" a voice shouted. Taemin figured that it was the tree talking, but rationally, he knew that trees couldn't talk. He opened his eyes slightly, trying to peek. On the grassy ground was some guy, tall with dark hair, wrestling with the zombie. Taemin screamed a little as he watched the two roll around and try to get their hands raround the other's throat.

Then, there was blood.

"IT SCRATCHED YOU!" Taemin shrieked, covering his mouth in shock as a large gash appeared on Minho's shoulder. The older boy groaned and reared back to avoid the thing snapping his jaws around his neck. This one was more monstrous than the last. Its face seemed to literally be falling off of its skull, and the voice was nothing but a series of dull roars.

"I CAN SEE THAT!" he shouted as he punched the zombie in the jaw. The flesh seemed to slosh around his fist, as if the thing's whole face was just a bag of water. He recoiled in disgust as the skin peeled away, revealing a bed of maggots.

"THAT'S SO GROSS! WASH YOUR HANDS! WASH YOUR HANDS!" Taemin squeaked fearfully, wringing his wrists in panic. Minho rolled his eyes, kicked the zombie to the side and grabbed his beam, which had rolled away in the struggle. Panting, he smashed the monster's skull. He smashed it again and again, watching the nose sink into the face like a nail into wood.

"Die! Stop moving, you er!" he roared as he turned the beam and started hitting the beastly thing with the blunt end. Finally, when the eyeballs were nothing but puddles of clear fluid and the bone stuck up in jagged ridges from the skin and the brain was like a halo around the head, Minho staggered back.

"... Are you okay?" a small voice asked. Minho tried to stand, but he felt the world spin as hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and now blood loss took over. He looked up at the face, watching it get blurry as he heard the river amplify behind him. He tried to get up one more time before the beam slipped from his hand and he collapsed to the side.

The last thing he saw was the monster's smashed head, half an eyeball still looking right at him.

~

"Oh God, my head," Minho groaned as his eyes opened slowly. He sat up and reach to scratch his arm, only to feel something soft around his arm. He patted it for a moment with his callouses hand, grumbling as his body ached. He turned his head and saw a bandage around his forearm. He looked down and saw that his lower body was in the stream, from his shins down.

And he was shirtless. Of course.

"Oh, you're awake!" a cheery voice chirped. Minho looked behind him an rubbed his face with a wet hand before seeing clearly who the owner of the voice was. It was a shirtless boy, who bounced over with a strip of fabric in his hand and bent over from the waist right next to Minho to soak the ran before squatting down and rubbing Minho's stomach with the wet fabric as if there was nothing to it. Minho flinched away.

"Who are you?" he grunted as he got up and looked around for his shirt. The other boy also stood up, dark-brown hair bouncing around his face. He was so happy. It was disgusting.

"I'm Taemin! Can we be friends?" he asked with juvenile glee. Minho groaned and found his shirt soaking on the bank of the stream. He picked it up and wrung it out, his shoes squeaking from being waterlogged and his socks feeling like sponges.

"We are not friends," he growled as Taemin followed him around, watching with creepy intent as Minho put his shirt back on. Minho sighed and started to move around, looking for the rest of his stuff. He heard a small tinkle of laughter as he picked up his parcel of food from a patch of grass and found his canteen full. He packed it away and tied everything around his neck, dragging his now-cleaned weapon up from next to a large boulder.

"Can we be friginings, then?" Taemin asked finally, his voice bright as if he'd spent a lot of time and effort to think up the question. He smiled with enthusiastic excitement, bouncing on the balls of his feet and smiling as if he were in preschool. Minho groaned as the kid merrily trailed him.

"What is a friginning?" he asked, turning and crossing his arms. Taemin showed every tooth in his grin and clapped his hands together, as if explaining a lesson to a baby or a kindergartener.

"The word 'friend' is spelled with 'fri' and 'end,' so the opposite of 'end' is 'beginning and 'fribeginning' sounds weird, so the official opposite of 'friend' is 'friginning!'" Taemin said proudly. After all, he'd figure it out himself. Minho sighed and rubbed his forehead.

"Okay, Taemin, how old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?" he asked, looking at Taemin with exasperation that was beyond normal exasperation. Taemin swung back and forth happily from heel to toe, hands clapping eagerly.

"I'm eighteen and thirteen months old!"

"Isn't that just nineteen?"

"Yep!"

"Right..." Minho sighed as he scratched his head and tried to figure out how to get rid of Taemin. Maybe if he threw a stick or something, the kid would get away. He tried to side step Taemin, but the kid matched him with a giant smile.

"Hey, can I tell you a secret?" Taemin asked, tilting his head. Minho stepped away, not knowing if the 'secret' would lead to Taemin trying to decapitate him or something. The younger boy smiled and looked at Minho with a smile like a mask.

"Fine, what's the s—"

"Your name is Pluffy!" Taemin said, the mask-smile being replace with a galling hole of a grin. Minho blinked as Taemin nearly collapsed giggling. He didn't know whether to leave or to beat Taemin up first. Pluffy? What was wrong with this kid? He couldn't at least game him 'Badass' or something else dignified?

"My name is Minho, and I'm 20, so you probably shouldn't be making fun of me," he said with clenched fists. Taemin only laughed harder, now pointing at Minho face with glee and clapping. He was even jumping up and down.

"PLUFFY MINHO!" he shouted out. Minho sighed and tried to walk past him, but he found Taemin clinging to his arm as he tried to leave. He looked down and saw Taemin, eyes barely visible, smiling sweetly up at Minho.

"Get off," Minho grunted. "Get off! Scram! Go find a shirt! You're weird!" He shook his arm and tried to fling the boy off, but Taemin was stuck to him like an annoying parasite. He sighed and watched the boy laugh, extremely pleased with himself.

"You're fun!" he announced happily, rubbing his cheek against Minho's arm before patting it. "I'll be right back!" he said, dashing off, and Minho tried to get back to the stream to maybe cross it or... But Taemin could jump over that thing too, right? No, it'd be safer if he just... No, he couldn't head back the way he came. Taemin was there too.

While he was stuck in this tough choice about how to get away from Taemin, the boy was happily digging into his hole for the food that he'd stashed away. He pulled out the waxy parcel, humming as he hugged it in his arms. He'd finally met another human! He cradled his treasured food as he skipped back to Minho.

"I'm coming with you!" he said happily when he got within earshot. Minho's jaw dropped and he tried his best to back away, but just ended up with his in the stream and his things flung to the opposite bank and Taemin's grinning face looming over him. Taemin bent down and fit himself nicely between Minho's legs, smiling as if this was totally normal.

"Taemin, there is no chance in Hell that I'm letting you come with me. I don't even know where I'm going, so you should probably just stay here and—" Minho was cut off by Taemin stuffing a chunk of stale bagel into his mouth and watching with interest as Minho choked it down.

"You ate my bagel! Now you owe me, so I say that you have to let me come along, and that's final!" Taemin said, a triumphant grin on his face. Minho coughed and swallowed the last few crumbs that had stuck to his throat before speaking.

"Actually, you owed me before for saving your life, so technically, we're even," Minho said, smirking as Taemin blinked to figure everything out. The boy opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, and finally opened it again.

"Well, I cleaned you up and washed out your wound, so you still owe me!" he argued back. Minho opened his mouth to protest, only to have another chunk of bagel stuffed in. He gagged on it, barely managing to chew and swallow without dying. He groaned as he tilted his head back, letting the last bit of it scale down his throat. Taemin would probably follow him anyway, and with so much weighing him down, he'd never shake the kid off.

Plus, he didn't want to turn crazy from loneliness.

"Fine," he said, looking back at Taemin, whose eyes were already alight with eagerness. The kid knew that he'd won, and that probably ticked Minho off the most. He rubbed his neck and groaned as Taemin leaned even closer, practically draping himself over Minho's body.

"Yes?" he asked, his voice lifting with anticipation. Minho gritted his teeth and looked away, feeling uncomfortable with Taemin's eyes so intently fixed on his face.

"We... We can travel together." He groaned and flopped onto his back at the sound of Taemin whooping and cheering. He jumped up and clapped a hand over Taemin's mouth, forcing the boy onto his back, Minho's body keeping them down and out of sight. "Shut up! Do you want to bring every zombie within a five mile radius to our location?" he hissed.

"Mmrf mmrf hmph!" Taemin argued back, and from the look in his eyes, it was a very compelling arguments Minho sighed and removed his hand from Taemin's lips, looking at the boy's determined face. "I won't do that!"

"Your screaming will have already told them where we are! We have to get going," Minho growled, getting up and rescuing his food and weapons. He slung the beam over his shoulder and looked back, only to see Taemin absentmindedly splashing around.

"Whee! The water's so cold!" the boy said joyously, completely distracted. Minho groaned and slung Taemin over his other shoulder, sloshing his way through the water. Taemin giggled as he watched Minho's heels.

"I'm going to try to throw off our scent, so just try to b—HOLY !" He jumped about a foot in the air and slammed Taemin onto his feet, staggering back with his hands on the seat of his pants. "Did you just grab my ?!"

"It looked so firm! I had to! I was testing to see if it was ripe, like with peaches!" Taemin said cheerfully, although in all honesty, he'd just wanted to be let down. Still, he couldn't deny that he'd wanted to see exactly how firm the two cheeks were. They were very firm. He had no other way to say it, really.

"Don't do that again," Minho growled, walking ahead. Taemin hummed and followed, cradling his food bundle and the picture in his pocket. For some reason, he felt a small amount of happiness being with Minho, like he'd felt when he'd gotten the picture. He liked happiness. He looked up at Minho and reached down, holding his hand without hesitation.

"Let's walk like this!" he said brightly, swinging their arms. He didn't care that Minho would probably be annoyed. He'd made a new friend in Minho, even if Minho insisted that they were only friginnings. Friends were allowed to hold hands, right?

"Taemin, you're very weird," Minho said finally. It was all he could really come up with. He looked at Taemin curiously, studying the boy's insouciant features and carefree smile. "Have we... Met?"

"Yep! You killed that zombie for me, remember?" Taemin asked as he looked up at Minho with admiration. Minho couldn't help but chuckle a little. Now that he was off of the high of killing and survival, he could find Taemin almost... Funny? Cute? Something along those lines.

"I meant before... Like, before the zombies even existed," he clarified, feeling Taemin tug a little on his hand. He raised an eyebrow with curiosity as Taemin's face shadowed over and the boy's eyes looked down.

"I don't like to think about those times, but I don't think we've ever met," he murmured. His voice was a little lower, and Minho felt a wave of confusion as Taemin grinned up at him again, happy and carefree.

"Are you okay?" he asked worriedly. It wasn't that he really particularly liked Taemin, okay? He was just... Well, he didn't want to be traveling with a crazy person! That was all there was to it, really. Still, Taemin seemed fine now, he just chalked it up to bad memories and let it go.

"Are you hungry?" Taemin asked, cheerily holding up he bundle of food. "You can have the rest of the bagel if you want! I wasn't gonna eat it until tomorrow anyway." He grinned and smiled. Minho shook his head.

"I don't want to eat carbs right now. I need quick energy and then long lasting energy, so I usually eat something sugary for breakfast and then bread for lunch," he said, absentmindedly fiddling with Taemin's fingers and noting the callouses.

"Do you kill a lot of zombies?" Taemin asked curiously, tilting his head. Minho shrugged and felt his grip tighten on his beam. Just the mention of zombies made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

"Yeah, I guess," he mumbled, looking down at his feet sloshing through the water. He heard Taemin humming and they walked in silence for a while as Minho gauged their surroundings. The trees of the forest were melting away into more urban lands. There were still trees, but they were in rows, a sign of a park or some other residential "wild-land." Artificial freedom.

"I think we're near buildings," he observed, and Taemin's head popped up eagerly. He let go of Minho's hand an peeled off to the right, towards the bank.

"Great! I need to pee!" he announced. Minho's eyes widened and he gave chase, but with so much to carry, he was no match for Taemin. The boy rustled ahead, and Minho could already imagine the sound of approaching monsters. He trudged through the trees, the dried leaves crunching under his wet feet.

"Taemin, you can't just... You're going to get killed!" he shouted, but he knew that Taemin was too far ahead to hear him. He saw the outlines of some small building in the distance, and he bee-lined for it. If he knew anything for certain, it was that the idiot was probably there.

He burst through the tree-line into a gas station. There were gas tanks, but they were no doubt empty from so many people trying to flee. Some even had holes in them, a result of people trying to steal the gasoline from inside. A few feet away were the service station and convenience store Siamese-twin building. A few feet on the other side was the bathroom. Sighing, Minho walked over to it and knocked on the single-stall door.

"Taemin, you in there?" he asked, his ears pricked for any unusual sounds and both of his hands around the charred beam. He was so paranoid, he knew, but the smell of the area was very strong, and a zombie would find them in two seconds.

"Yeah! Hey, guess what! I didn't have to pee after all, Minho! I had to poop instead!" he announced cheerfully. Minho sighed and rubbed his eyes, trying to forget that he ever even heard that.

"Yeah, well... I'll be inside the convenience store to look for something to eat. Don't forget to flush, okay?" He left before Taemin could answer, standing in front of the store's glass doors. He sighed and backed up a few steps, aiming his weapon and flinging it with all of his strength. Te glass shattered and fell away from the metal frame.

"21st century security," he muttered, picking up his beam and clearing away the bits of glass that clung to the doorframe despite the shattering. He stepped inside and sighed at the mostly-emptied shelves. Only rotting fruit and stale sandwiches were left, standing in the shut-off cooling areas.

This should've been expected, really, since the station would have been visited at least five hundred times since the panicking had set in. Still, Minho was a little upset over the rotten turn out. He walked over to the sandwiches, opening a plastic box and smelling the contents. It didn't smell rotten. He bit into it and found it full of just blue cheese and lettuce. He shrugged and ate it, packing away the rest.

"Let's see," he mumbled as he hopped behind the counter. He ran his hands under the section that the cash register rested on, looking for a safe of some sort. Nothing. He sighed and pulled away, kicking the thing forlornly. He tied his blanket bundle around his shoulders again and grabbed a few packs of gum, stuffing them in as well. He kept one on hand, popping in a few sugary slices at once and sliding the packet into his pocket.

"Minho! Minho! I found a really big bug in the bathroom and I squashed it with a piece of wood!" Taemin announced proudly as he came bouncing in. Minho turned to see Taemin holding out his wet hands that smelled like cheap soap.

"I'm so happy for you," Minho deadpanned before shoving a few strips of gum into Taemin's mouth to keep the kid awake. Taemin chilled down on the sweet candy without protest. It had sugar. That was all he needed to know.

"Yay! You found candy!" he said with a gummy grin. He continued chewing, blowing a few chunky bubbles as Minho struggled to not be amused. The older boy shook his he and clucked his tongue.

"Taemin, just hold this," he said, handing the kid his quilted parcel. Taemin saluted with one hand as he watched Minho turn to infiltrate the back room. Taemin shrugged and put his wax-paper bundle in with the rest of the food. Minho should mind the extra weight, right? Oh, look, shiny things.

By the time Minho came out of the back room with a few cans of Chef Boyardees (boy, this stuff is good...) and a few bags of gummy bears (probably hard as rocks, but oh well), Taemin had broken into the Slushy machine and was a blue liquid off of his fingers. Minho figured he'd better put the food away in the blanket before confronting Taemin.

"MINHO!" he heard, and he jumped before swinging around, club in hand. Taemin shoved a cup full of purple liquid in the boys face, his own mouth a bright blue color.

"What is that?" Minho asked, backing away as much as he could. Of course, Taemin advanced, purple liquid still in hand as he gulped down a cup of blue slosh. He looked so infinitely proud of himself.

"It's a melted Slushy! It's what you like, right? It's got a bunch of sugar in it, so you'll be all hyper, like me!" The last part was true, at least... Taemin was practically bouncing off the walls. Cautiously, Minho took the drink and sipped it, noticing a small shiver go through Taemin's body.

"Why don't you have a shirt?" he asked as a little afterthought, sort of enjoying the sweet drink. Taemin shrugged and swallowed a mouthful of his beverage (if it could even be called that.)

"I tore it up to make that bandage," he said nonchalantly before wandering back to the machine to get a free refill. Minho looked slowly at the bandage on his arm, noticing the scrubbed-white color of the fabric. Taemin's clothes had looked filthy the first time he'd seen the boy, standing on the side of the battle. He must have been scrubbing for a while to get it so clean. Plus, the weather wasn't getting any warmer. The boy must be freezing...

Suddenly, Minho felt a strange mix of guilt and gratitude. He out his sticky cup on the counter and walked over to Taemin, who was now making some sort of green sticky liquid. He wrapped his arms around Taemin's slim shoulders, hearing the boy's surprised squeak.

"Thanks for making that bandage for me and everything, Taemin."

"Are we friends now?"

"... Maybe."

A/N - Yeah... I had fun writing the Slushy scene <3 And friginnings <3 And Pluffy <3 This is just fun in general XD

More to come! Comments are love!