"It's amazing how much noise people make. Just all the noise of civilization. Sometimes it was nice, the quiet. The world was a mess anyway, before Captain Trips hit - that's what they called the plague. But then..."

Nadine purses her lips, her mind going back to the trek out of New England with Joe. The haunted feeling places, dead towns and roads, the great silence and solitude of it. The destruction.

"Empty parks in the middle of the day. Corner stores with no local high schoolers hanging around outside. Abandoned playgrounds. I never looked inside anywhere but stores, for preserved food and first aide supplies...except once. I found this little boy in front of a house, he was feverish and had an infected animal bite of some kind. But he wasn't sick, not from the flu, he was like me. Immune for some reason. I had to check, he needed care and clothes and..." She shakes her head, taking a deep breath. "There were more kids inside. They hadn't been immune."

She'd avoided seeing that, until then. She'd known, of course, that all her own students were already gone. The ones she'd been teaching and every one that had ever passed through her class. The little girl down the street. The kids she'd always pass by to pop into the market. But she hadn't seen it until she'd gone into Joe's house.

"I found somewhere else to take care of him."