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are the only people I know who were married Before, and I think that’s because they got their flu shot on the same day.”
    Pearl stopped in her tracks. “Flu shot? What do you mean?”
    “Well, it’s my theory, anyway. Almost every survivor I’ve met says they got a flu shot the year of the Crisis. A lot of people don’t remember who made theirs, but the ones who do say they came from the Cederna company.”
    Pearl was blinking fast, like she was trying to collect her thoughts for questions but couldn’t think what to ask first.
    Carly answered the most obvious one without waiting for it to be asked. “We don’t think it was intentional. It seems like they didn’t know, and . . . well . . . even if they had figured out the shots were giving immunity, the Crisis happened so fast, it wouldn’t have made any difference.” Some of the big cities had been virtually wiped out in just a few days, from what Troy Cramer had said on the news.
    “Yeah, I suppose not.” But Pearl looked troubled.
    “Where are you from?” Carly asked to change the subject.
    “I’m originally from the Midwest, but was living in Los Angeles.”
    Carly winced. Some of the others had told her harrowing tales of getting out of the big cities when the Crisis struck. None of them had an easy time of it. “What brought you this way?”
    “I had an aunt who lived in Blanchard,” Pearl said. She pronounced aunt as ahhnt , the first person Carly ever met who did that. “I came here because I had to see if she . . . I had to know.”
    “Did you find out? One way or the other?”
    Pearl didn’t look at her. “Yeah. I found out.”
    Carly gave her a small sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry.” She considered saying something about how Pearl was at least fortunate in knowing what had become of her loved ones when so many others would never know, but thought the better of it.
    The residential street emptied onto the town common. There were a handful of children playing on the grass in front of a park bench where Mrs. Davis watched them. It was a task at which she excelled.
    “More kids than I expected,” Pearl said. “Who’s the lady watching them?”
    “That’s Mrs. Davis. She’s the Reverend’s wife.”
    “You have a preacher?”
    Carly nodded. “Church services on Sunday, too, if you’re interested.”
    Pearl hesitated. “I’m not really religious.”
    “I’m not either.” Carly shrugged. She was careful to appear casual, because she didn’t want Pearl to fear there was anything pushy about that aspect of their community. “Totally optional. Justin and I met the Davises on the road. The Reverend is the one who performed our wedding, actually. He and Mrs. Davis ended up down here, too, and we asked him to join the community.”
    “Did you and Justin have the baby before you came here?”
    Carly nodded. Dagny had been the reason why the isolated people of Colby thought it was “safe” to let their little band of travelers inside, but she didn’t want to say that.
    “She’s the only baby I’ve seen since the Crisis.”
    “She’s the first one,” Carly said. But she couldn’t be the only one. She couldn’t be. They wouldn’t have survived this long if there was no hope for the future. That was what Carly kept telling herself, hoping she’d soon be proven right. “Maybe the Infection messed with our bodies, sort of stunned our systems for a while. We’re all carriers, even if it doesn’t make us sick.”
    “Carriers?”
    “We learned that the hard way.” Carly licked her lips. “We’re all Infected, though it doesn’t make us sick. Like Typhoid Mary. We can Infect people who haven’t been exposed.”
    “I didn’t know there was anyone who hadn’t been exposed. How did they avoid it?”
    Carly rubbed her forehead, partly as a way to break off eye contact. Her throat had tightened and it was hard to keep her voice even. “The people here . . . they had isolated themselves. They sealed off the