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them. Not that it would have done any good. They’d had twenty years to figure this out. If the first generation knew anything, it was how to deal with physical violence. They moved me to an even smaller room with a locked door, nobody touching me more than they absolutely needed to. They handcuffed me and strapped me to a rolling chair and just shoved me through the door and slammed it behind me. I could do nothing but shout that I was clean, that this was unnecessary.
    I was about eighty percent certain that the next time the door opened, someone would point a gun through it and shoot me in the back of the head.
    There’s no wiggle room, you see.
    There can’t be. The crisis taught them that. The year when ninety-­nine percent of the human race died, because they didn’t know how to do this. They had wasted far too much effort on mercy and compassion and other niceties. Things they couldn’t afford then. They still couldn’t.
    Zombies aren’t human. They are wild animals, and they have to be put down. And if someone is a positive—­if there’s even a chance he or she has the virus—­the person is no better than the zombies.
    Maybe a little better.
    The next time the door opened, it wasn’t so they could kill me. It was so the mayor could come in. He was carrying a folding chair, which he set up in front of me so we could talk. Someone else came in behind him, but I couldn’t see who it was—­that person stayed behind me the whole time. A buzzing sound started up, a weird electrical noise. And then something sharp and hot touched the back of my left hand.
    I tried to jerk my hand away but it was restrained perfectly, tied down just so. Like I said, they’d done this before.
    â€œWe feel just terrible about this,” the mayor told me. He was smiling, that warm uncle smile he has. The first generation all trust that smile for some reason. I always expected it to open up on rows of shark teeth. “You know we wouldn’t want it this way, not if we had a choice, right, Finn?”
    Behind me a needle dug again and again into the flesh of my hand. It hurt, a lot. I gritted my teeth and refused to scream. It wasn’t just defiance that kept me from making a noise. I wanted to convince the mayor I was still human. That this had all been a terrible mistake. I still thought, at that moment, that this could all be reversed. That if I could just explain things, I could be let go. Allowed to go back home and rejoin society.
    Yeah. Maybe I thought they could give me my mom back, too.
    â€œYou know we can’t take any chances now,” the mayor went on, when I didn’t say anything. “There are no tests we can run, no way to check for it.” At least, not without cutting open my brain. “You know. You’re a good kid, Finn. You’ve always made yourself useful. So you know the rules. You’re a positive now. I’m not saying you’ve got it. I want to assure you, I’ll be praying every day you don’t. But you might.”
    The hot needle buzzed and dug into my skin, over and over. Every time it hit a nerve or a vein I wanted to jump out of my bonds, out of my body if I had to. The pain only got worse the longer it went on.
    â€œIt can take twenty years for this thing to show up,” the mayor said, telling me nothing new. “It incubates, see.”
    Yeah. It grows in the dark part of your head like a fungus. All the while eating holes in your brain until it’s a sponge full of virus, as toxic and polluted as the lobster was. That was what had happened to my mom. For twenty years, ever since the crisis, she’d been dying inside. A little more every day.
    And maybe it had been happening to me, too.
    â€œYou’re nineteen now, Finn,” the mayor said. “Is that right? Nineteen?”
    I nodded. It was all I could give him. If I opened my mouth, my voice would have squeaked, from the pain in