“Exactly,” Daniels said. “That’s why we needed to leave the quarantine. We’d attracted far too many zombies, and they’re strong and determined.”

“What happened when you exposed the virus to my blood?” I asked.

“Your blood?” Nolita looked confused and glanced between Daniels and me. “What’s special about your blood?”

“I’m immune to the virus,” I said, brushing her off. At this point, I didn’t care who knew about it. I just wanted to find out what Daniels knew. “So, what happened with my blood?”

“When I put your blood in a petri dish, the virus didn’t do anything,” Daniels said. “Normally, it rushed toward the blood. But with yours, it only interacted with your blood when it accidentally came in contact with it.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“It tried to attack your blood, the way I’d seen it do before,” Daniels said. “But when it engulfed your cells, the virus acted strangely. Instead of expanding and growing, latching onto things and mutating them, it moved erratically. Then it died.”

“It died?” I asked. “My blood actually kills the virus?”

“Well, viruses can’t die, not exactly,” Daniels said. “But it froze. It stopped moving or interacting with anything, so essentially, yes it died.”

“Holy shit,” Nolita said, looking a little stunned.

“Your blood like poison to them,” Daniels said, then exhaled deeply. “Unfortunately, I was never able to figure out why or how to harness that.”

“So you know that the zombies are strong and they can talk to each other,” Boden said. “But you have no idea how to stop them?”

“Essentially, yes,” Daniels nodded grimly.

18.

All those months, after everything they’d done to me, and they hadn’t learned a single thing. I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to swear and punch him. But I didn’t. I just balled up my fists and closed my eyes.

And not just because it would wake everyone and freak them out if I just started randomly beating the shit out of Daniels.

Because despite everything, I knew that I would’ve done the same thing as him. Maybe I would’ve given the patient more pain meds, but I would’ve tested for everything, tried anything to learn how to stop this.

In the end, it was the lack of a cure that frustrated and pissed me off, not everything I’d endured for it.

“But you’re sure they don’t like the cold?” Boden asked.

“Like most other things, when exposed to the cold, the virus slowed down considerably,” Daniels said. “At the right temperature, it stopped moving completely. The cold doesn’t kill them, but it can freeze them.”

“And unlike us, they don’t know how to bundle up or create fire,” Boden said.

“Right,” Daniels said. “If we can find someplace cold enough, and make it stable for us, we should be able to survive a long time.”

“Assuming we have enough food and supplies to last us,” Boden said.

“We have food, and we can hunt,” Nolita said. “We’ll just have to get more resourceful.”

Daniels smiled down at her, as if suddenly remembering she was there. “And I believe we can do that.”

“Speaking of which, there’s a kitchen here.” Nolita pulled away from Daniels and stood up. “I should see if there’s any food that they left behind.”

“I’ll go with you,” Daniels offered.

Using a stick they’d brought in for the fire, Nolita made a torch. Then she and Daniels went back into the kitchen to explore and hopefully bring back some food.

Boden and I were left in silence, which gradually began to feel awkward. I was never one for small talk, but I didn’t want go to sleep yet.

“So what’s your story?” I asked him.

“My story?” He shrugged. “I don’t have one.”

“I don’t know anything about you,” I said. “I don’t even know your first name.”

“It’s Charlie.” He smiled at that and extended his hand to me. “Charlie Boden.”

“Remy King,” I said and shook his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.” He leaned back, stretching his legs out in front of him. “I really don’t have a story, though.”

“How’d you end up the quarantine?” I asked.

“I was in the army,” Boden said. “This was back before the zombies. I didn’t have any money for college, and there were no jobs in the town I grew up in. So I joined the army, thinking I’d do a couple years in the Middle East, build a career, then come home and go to school, get a job, all that.”

“And then the virus happened,” I said.

“I’d finished basic training, but I hadn’t gone overseas,” Boden said. “And then instead of fighting an enemy, I was staying here, killing my fellow Americans.”

“So you were in it from the start?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He chewed the inside of his cheek and rubbed the back of his neck. “At first we started rounding up the zombies, trying to get them all together to test them. Then we were getting them in holding cells, exterminating them.

“This was before we really understood what was happening and what they were,” Boden said. “They were newly turned, and they still looked like people. They were women and children, and we were slaughtering them.

“I remember once very clearly thinking, ‘This must be how the Nazis felt.’”

“You can’t say that,” I said. “You can’t believe that. They massacred people for no reason. You were killing monsters.”

“I know.” But the way he said it, I wasn’t sure that he did. “We did what we had to do, and I still do what I have to do. I don’t regret it, and I don’t question it. There’s no other way to stop a zombie. You can’t reason with it or cure it. You just have to kill it.”

“That is true,” I said. “There’s nothing else you can do when it comes to zombies.”

“The thing is …” He paused, thinking. “How do we know that they’re not buried down there somewhere? The humanity in them, the people they used to be. How do we know they aren’t still in the heart of every zombie?”