I’m not sure why Daniels and Nolita were staying up, but they sat awfully close to one another. Nolita had packed a thin army blanket with her, and they shared the one blanket between the two of them. It was wrapped over their shoulders like a shawl, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

They’d been doing that kind of stuff all day. Every time I saw them interact, they were touching or whispering something to each other. It was gross.

And I say that not just because I had feelings of revulsion for Daniels. Something about flirting during the apocalypse felt disgusting. It felt wrong to fall in love when people were dying all around you.

That’s part of the reason I’d refused to feel anything for Lazlo for so long. That and because of how things had turned out. We’d been separated, the way I’d always known we would, and one or both of us would probably end up dead soon.

When I thought of him now, I tried not to feel anything. The best way to do that would be not to think about him at all, but I hadn’t mastered that yet.

“How much longer until we hit Canada, do you think?” I asked.

“A week.” Boden shrugged. “It depends on how fast we go. Maybe a week longer until we’re far enough north for the zombies to stop following.”

He sat cross-legged with his hands held out toward the fire, warming them. I was leaning back, stretching my legs out, and with my arms propped beside me. It put too much pressure on my abdomen when I sat up normally. When I put my hand over my shirt, the incision felt swollen and warm.

“You think the zombies are following us?” I asked.

“They definitely are,” Daniels said. “That’s what I was saying at the quarantine. They’re following people wherever they go.”

“They won’t find us here, will they?” Nolita asked, her Southern accent sounding alarmed.

“Eventually.” Boden put his hands down and rested his elbows on his knees. “Hopefully not tonight, but we’re pretty well boarded up if they do.”

“What do you suppose happened to the people that were staying here?” Nolita looked around, admiring how closed off the lodge was. “Why do you think they left?”

“Probably for the same reason we left the quarantine,” Boden said. “The zombies surrounded the place. Given enough time, they would’ve gotten in. It’s better to run while you still have the chance to.”

“Maybe they did get in,” I said and motioned to the dried blood on the fireplace. “And there aren’t any bodies because they’re all zombies now.”

“One thing’s for sure,” Boden said sadly. “Zombies will always find a way in.”

“How much do we really know about them?” I asked, turning my attention to Daniels. “You’re the resident expert. What do you actually know about them?”

“I spent more time studying the virus itself than the actual zombies.” Daniels attempted to shy away from the question. “Anything I say about their behavior is sheer speculation.”

“But it’s your speculation that caused us to the leave the quarantine,” Boden said.

“No, a brutal zombie attack did that,” Daniels corrected him.

Boden’s expression hardened. “You’re arguing semantics. You’re the one who said that the zombies weren’t going to stop coming, that there were too many of us together making our scent too strong.”

“Yes, that is what I believe,” Daniels said. “But I can’t say that it’s an absolute fact. I can’t say much for certain about the zombies.”

“Well, what do you believe then?” I asked.

“They’re attracted to us, possibly by our pheromones, possibly by something else that we don’t even know about.” Daniels stared off as he spoke. “They’re getting smarter, and they communicate in some way more than sounds.”

Nolita gazed up at him, her face aglow from the fire, and she had an expression of pure unabashed reverence and love. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it, but Daniels didn’t seem to notice. He was too lost in thought.

“They do talk to each other,” Boden said. “We’ve heard their death groans and howls.”

Daniels shook his head “The death groans are just sounds. I think they make them unconsciously. The howls they do to alert the others when they’ve found food, but they have to have another way to communicate with such a vast group and to organize in the way that they are.”

“To say that they do something unconsciously suggests that they do things consciously, that they have a consciousness.” I rubbed my forehead, trying not to think about the implications. 

“Maybe not individually, but they seem to have a collective consciousness,” Daniels explained. “A hive mind, like bees or ants.”

“How?” I asked. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” Daniels shook his head again. “But I don’t fully understand how any of this is possible. Even in a particle form, the virus would communicate with itself.”

“What do you mean?” Boden leaned forward, listening intently to Daniels.

“I would isolate individual viruses and keep them in separate petri dishes,” Daniels said. “In one dish, I would expose them to human blood, and the virus would immediately rush to it and infect it.

“When I put the virus under the microscope, they would be moving towards the infected blood, going towards where the virus was already invading,” Daniels went on.

“How do you know the virus wasn’t just drawn to the blood?” I asked.

“They were, when they were close enough to it,” Daniels said. “But since it was only a drop of blood, it had to be in the same dish for the virus to notice.  If I had uninfected blood near the virus but not in the same dish, when I looked at the virus under a microscope, I saw no change in its reaction. The virus simply moved aimlessly around the dish.”

“So you’re saying the virus can communicate with itself?” I asked. “And that form of communication can span a distance far greater than the scent of blood or any other clue we’re giving off?”

“That’s what I think, yes,” Daniels nodded.

“When a zombie finds us, everything infected with the virus knows about it,” Boden summarized. “And the larger the colony of zombies, the louder the virus gets, attracting more zombies, and so on.”