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refine it, then trial, then refine, and that process will take years.”
    “But it’s a start…”
    “True,” Jim said. “But it leaves us with another problem, one that’s much more fundamental.”
    “How so?” Sabrina asked, then threw Jim a questioning glance as Mary shook her head and walked a few steps away. “What’s the deal?”
    “She doesn’t agree with me, but the logic can’t be denied. If we create this shot that we then give everyone at birth and it makes them immune to zombies, that shot becomes our new currency. Whoever owns it will own the world.”
    “What do you mean? I don’t get it.”
    “Think about it! What is more precious, more valuable than life itself? If you control the source of life, or at least the source of preventing infection, you can ask anything for it and people will pay it. What wouldn’t you pay for immunity to walkers?”
    Sabrina stepped to one side and sat down in a chair. Everything was coming at her so fast, and Jim was right. The implications for misuse of the immunity would be staggering. Whatever group or individual owned or controlled it would control everything. And who could resist the lure of ultimate power?
    “So we have an antibody, but we can’t tell anyone about it, because it might lead to a new dark age or something,” Sabrina said.
    “I just don’t see that happening,” Mary said as she leaned on a workbench. “People are good at heart. They won’t withhold the immunity. It wouldn’t make sense. Sure, maybe one or two people would try, but everyone else could get it from someone else who had it.”
    Jim shook his head. “If it fell into the wrong hands? What if Dagger had it? What if it was Gardner. Or worse, Warner? Some people are good at heart, but for the most part, given the right conditions, humans are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.”
    “So what can we do?” Sabrina didn’t know how to process the raging emotions she felt. Excitement and sickening horror and joy and disgust all warred within her, but she found depression and ennui beginning to win the battle.
    “There’s hope,” Jim said as he took his seat once more. “We’ve still got millions of journals to go through and trials to administer and knockout mice to breed and who knows, we may come up with something. I have an idea though.”
    “It’s crazy! You’re talking about the end of humanity!” Mary shook her head again and stormed off to her desk.
    “What’s she on about?” Sabrina asked.
    “She doesn’t like my idea.”
    “Why not, Jim? What is it?”
    “I want to use genetic modifications—gene therapy—to fundamentally alter our DNA so that our children and our children’s children and everyone else forever are immune to the prion.”
    “Whoa. But that would mean—”
    “And that’s why Mary’s pissed. She doesn’t believe we’ll be human anymore if we do that.”
    “Do we need to worry about it right now?” Sabrina gazed at her husband. “Can you just concentrate on one for now and work on that idea on the side?”
    Jim smiled. “That’s exactly what I’d planned.”
    “How long until we have something to work with on the antibodies?”
    “At least four or five years, what with the limited personnel and equipment we have. And we’ll need human test subjects too. Volunteers, of course. But we’re a long way from even that stage.”
    “But it’s something, isn’t it?”
    “You’re damn right. And that’s something more than we’ve had for a long, long time.”

     
    Bunker Four
Eastern Iowa
Z-Day + 23 years (Present Day)
     
    Logan looked through the hardened glass at the prisoner and wondered again why Davies hadn’t just ordered him killed. After the first year or two, anyway. The man was beyond broken at this point. It was debatable whether or not he even was a man any longer. There was no more they could do to him, no more tortures they could devise that wouldn’t also curb his usefulness. Sure, he’d been an