I’m not falling for that. Marty remained stoic.
Vin scowled one more time and rolled his eyes. “Fine. Can you guard them? While I go get the first aid kit?”
Marty nodded. “Without your gun.”
“Shit.” Vin dropped his weapon and headed for the back of the van. “Get over here now.”
Marty complied and pointed his shotgun at Janice and Emily, who continued to cry, but now a softer sob. Janice held her, eyes closed, silent tears running down her cheeks.
While Marty guarded Janice and Emily, Jocelyn retreated with the others to the front of the hardware store, navigating around headless draugar bodies.
“We need to discuss our options,” Vin said, “now that Janice and Emily are infected.” Jocelyn grabbed Alexander’s hand before she knew what she was doing. She found it gave her a sense of assurance and humanity, and it gratified her that he did not let go.
“You can’t know that for sure,” Jocelyn pointed out.
“She was bitten. Ask your new boyfriend.” Vin looked at Alexander, who suddenly released her hand. “You said it was 100% transmissible saliva to blood.”
“That was just speculation if the zombies had sores in their mouths,” Alexander said.
“Oh, so now it’s just speculation.” Vin sneered. “You are so full of it.”
“I think his speculation is right, though,” Jocelyn interjected. “How else do you explain the rapid spread of the illness?”
Vin scowled. “Because they ate their brains. It seems to me that if someone dies, and a zombie eats their brains, they come back to life, right away, as a zombie. ‘Course they must only eat part of their brains.”
Alexander nodded. “I think that’s right. They need to have part of their brain to survive, but only a small part seems to be enough.”
Vin raised his voice as he asked, “Is that more of your bullshit speculation?”
“People,” Jize interjected. “We are all just speculating. And we’re all smart.”
Alexander laughed derisively.
“Dammit Alexander!” Jocelyn said. “I have a fucking PhD.” Jocelyn crossed her arms, shivering in the morning breeze.
“And I have an engineering degree,” Vin said. “And you can’t be a world-renowned concert pianist without being smart. Not that that should matter, you asshole. You’ve pieced more of this together, I’ll give you that. But you know nothing for sure any more than we do . . . Now, getting back to the subject at hand. I think we’ll all agree the chance that Janice and Emily are infected is high. Right?”
Chastened, Alexander gave a quiet “yeah.” Jize said “yes” with an air of confidence. Jocelyn nodded when Vin looked at her.
“We need Marty in on this,” Jocelyn said.
“He’s guarding us,” Vin said.
“He can guard us from here,” Jize said.
Vin nodded. “You have a point. Alexander, you want to go get him?”
Alexander gave him an inquisitive look. “Why do I have to be your errand boy?”
Vin sighed. “I’ll guard Jocelyn and Jize with my shotgun.”
Alexander nodded. “Okay, but I think you’re being over-cautious.”
“Save it for when you get the sheriff here,” Vin said. Alexander walked away.
“Man, that guy’s insufferable,” Vin said. “He really thinks he’s smarter than the rest of us.”
“Not any more than you,” Jocelyn said.
“Me?!”
“You both think you’re better than everyone else.”
Vin looked at her askance. “No, just better than you. And the rest of you.”
“Now you’re the asshole.”
“Oh, come off it, Miss I’ve-got-a-spiffy-sword-so-I’m-so-special.” He said that last string of words in a high pitch. “Look, snowflake, you think you’re better than the rest of us, too.”
“Well, I’m certainly better than you.”
Vin leaned against the wall outside the hardware store.
“See, this is what I’m talking about. You’re such a—” He stopped and pursed his lips. Marty and Alexander arrived.
“Well,” Marty said. “What’re we gonna do?”
“We will not kill them,” Jize said.
“No one’s suggesting that, piano-player,” Vin said.
“No, but we are all thinking about it,” Jize said. “I was.”
“But what if they turn into zombies? Suddenly, without warning?” Jocelyn asked.
“I don’t think that will happen just yet,” Alexander said. “Remember the woman I told you about at the top of Beaver Mountain? She’d said she’d been sick for about a week, muttered something about not being able to miss a week’s pay. I’m thinking this has a long incubation period for someone with infected blood but not infected brain.”
“Okay, what do we do about it?” Marty asked.
“We go on to Colorado Springs as planned,” Alexander declared. “Let the military take care of them.”
“If they’re there,” Vin said.
“If they’re not,” Alexander said, “we’ll worry about that when we get there. We’ll monitor them closely, but we must take our chances. We will not kill them, and we will not abandon them.”
“Abandoning them would kill them,” Jize said.
No one spoke. It was clear they all agreed.
Jocelyn suddenly got a crazy idea. But it just might work. “Or,” she said, then paused.
“Yes?” said Alexander after a short while.
Jocelyn shrugged. “I could give them some of my blood.”
“And infect them for sure?” Vin asked.
“Wait, Jocelyn may be right,” Marty said. “It could give them Jocelyn’s healing powers. That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
A cold gust of wind blew. Jocelyn shivered again as she nodded.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think it will work,” Alexander said.
“Finally, Alexander makes sense,” Vin said.
“Why not, Alexander?” Marty asked.
“So, if you transfuse from Jocelyn, Jocelyn’s white blood cells would enter Emily. They would recognize her as ‘non-self’ and attack her. They call this graft-versus-host disease, and it is always fatal. The opposite, host-versus-graft disease, is why people who receive organ transplants are on immunosuppressive therapy for the rest of their lives. This is to suppress their immune system, so it doesn’t recognize the new organ as ‘non-self’ and attack or reject it. Well, at best it’s risky. We don’t know what’s in Jocelyn’s blood. And she may still be a carrier, in which case we’d be giving Emily another exposure to the pathogen.”
“But if I have nanobots, or bacteria, or whatever it is, in me,” Jocelyn said. “Wouldn’t they just go into her? No one dies from mixing in a little blood from
