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she was shot. I wasn’t in the room. I’m telling you, there’s no way I could have got the virus.”
    He sighed and looked down at his paper again. I was starting to wonder if he was even a doctor. He was dressed like anybody else, like me. I’d never met him before, which was unusual but not weird. It’s a big city, New York. I couldn’t know everybody.
    â€œI’m clean,” I told him.
    I knew why I’d been isolated, of course. I knew how important it was to stay clean. Maybe I’d never seen a zombie before, but that didn’t mean I was an idiot. If there’s even a chance that somebody’s infected, that’s a reason for everybody to worry. This disease takes a long time to incubate. You can have it for twenty years and never show a sign, and then one day—­it just happens. Out of nowhere. My mom was probably infected during the crisis, maybe she got a bite or she accidentally got some blood in her mouth. To listen to ­people like Brian talk, that kind of thing happened all the time. You could be infected and not know it. The only symptom is a bad headache a ­couple of days before you finally go, and sometimes ­people don’t even get that. I’m willing to bet my dad had no idea. That he didn’t know that for twenty years he’d been married to a woman who was a time bomb, ticking down her humanity, ticking down her time left.
    The only reason New York was so safe, so perfect, was because ­people had learned never, ever to trust someone who might have the virus. They’d learned what to do, how to fight back against this thing that nearly wiped out the human race. Proper hygiene and quarantine was the only weapon we had.
    So if there was even a chance I was infected, that was going to be a major problem. I thought I knew what would happen to Ike. The amount of blood on him, when I saw him in the ambulance—­there was no way he hadn’t been exposed. I remember feeling so sorry for him. He’d done this thing, this horrible fucked-­up thing that was the very definition of nobility and sacrifice. And they were probably going to have to . . . well, they could . . .
    I didn’t want to think about what they were going to do to him.
    Or my dad. My dad had been sleeping with my mom for twenty years. Sexual contact is one of the best ways to get this thing. It’s even more likely than a bite.
    I could feel it all piling up. I could feel my whole life being taken from me, piece by piece. My family. My best friend. But I was okay. I was clean. I knew it.
    â€œI’m clean,” I said again. “I mean, maybe she had it when she was pregnant with me. Maybe she had it even then. But it can’t cross the placenta, right? You can’t give it to your baby. They say that all the time on the radio. There were all those women who had abortions, and they wanted to stop that, so they ran a whole series of announcements about it. You can’t give it to your unborn baby.”
    The doctor, or whoever it was, nodded. That was true. Everyone knew it was true. I didn’t get it in the womb. I didn’t get it from her blood or a bite or anything else. I was clean, I would be fine, and even with all the fucked-­up things that had happened that day, at least I was safe. I had no idea how I would pick up the pieces of my life and move on, but I would. I was sure of it. I was going to walk out of that room.
    â€œWe’re good, right?” I asked. “I haven’t forgotten anything, have I? There’s no way I could have it. No way I could be infected.”
    He looked me right in the eye and there was something so sad in his expression, so piteous, that I wanted to scream. No, I was right. I was certain of it. I’d gone through the checklist a hundred times in my head and I was clean.
    â€œBreast milk,” he said.

 
    CHAPTER 7
    I ’m not sure why I didn’t fight