When the disease first struck, Carla assumed it was just some new flu being blown out of proportion, or at most just an isolated sickness. But it spread, and it spread fast, faster than anyone could have imagined. By the time she realized that it was more than a flu, it was in her neighborhood. She and her boyfriend barely had enough time to get out before chaos broke out in the area – living on the outskirts of Orlando, Florida during some terrible plague was not the safest place to be, just as it was dangerous being close to L.A, New York, Los Vegas, or any other city.

Her boyfriend, Zach, had wanted to find the smallest town on some back road where they could hide and wait out the virus, but Carla insisted they head to Texas to find her parents and fifteen-year-old sister. She never had the best relationship with her family, considered to be the black sheep of sorts, but she needed to find them, needed to make sure they were okay.

So she and Zack made the long journey to Houston, Texas to find her family, only to discover they were long gone. Now all she had to show for her efforts was a scarred rash on the junction of her shoulder and neck, and Zach was dead.

Idly, her fingers brushed against the scar left behind by the vicious rash.

Immunity was a hell of a thing, a game of chance really. One couldn't find out if they were immune until the virus took hold. If you were immune, you could beat it with some tender love and care from those around you, provided you had a place to rest for a few days and plenty of water. If you weren't immune, well, the virus killed you.

She'd been infected when an infected looter came at her, coughing up blood in her face whilst trying to snatch her find from her. Zach managed to shoot him, but she was already infected, and later he too had become infected. Todd and his little group found them hiding in a gas station, sick as dogs. That was when she learned of the immunity and that Todd, Jason, Tyler, and Lucy were immune, hence why they saw fit to try to help. While she gradually got better, Zach quickly got worse. Now he was dead, and his blood was on her hands.

It was all her fault, and she sure as hell did not want to watch another man die.

"What were we supposed to do?" Todd demanded. "Let him die?"

She threw up her arms, sick of repeating the same conversation whenever she hinted that she disagreed with him about bringing Brian back. "I don't know, shoot him? Spare him the pain of dying from the virus? I don't know, okay, but it was stupid to bring him here. We don't know a damn thing about him."

"We didn't know anything about you either, and you look more like a nut than he does," he countered.

Carla rolled her eyes, mildly insulted.

He was referring to the quarter sleeve tattoo of flowers on her right arm and the various others dotting her body, along with one ear pierced twice and the other three times. The man just had an issue with tattoos, piercings, and anything thing else considered to be a deviant act when it came to women. It was ridiculous.

Worrying on her lower lip as she sat beside her little brother, Lucy asked, "If he lives, why don't we just keep him locked up until we get to know him? I mean, it's going to take him a few days to get back on his feet."

"If he's immune," Tyler pointed out, munching on a bag of stale chips that they'd found before offering Lucy a few. "How long 'til we can tell?"

Todd shrugged. "It's been a few hours already, but there's no telling when he was infected without him telling us. Can't say for sure how he's doing, but last I checked he was still unconscious."

"And that's… good?" Lucy ventured.

Nodding, the man replied, "Better for him to be out cold than awake and puking blood."

"What about that wound on his leg?" Carla questioned. "You said it looked like he was shot. Does that make for a trustworthy guest?"

He arched a brow at her. "We've all been shot at, Carla. We just haven't been hit."

He had her there, and she sighed, looking out the window of the motel room. They'd all been shot at by someone at some point at least once. It was a simple fact of life now – at some point, someone was going to shoot at you.

Flopping down on one of the two beds, Lucy sighed and said, "Guys, we've been talking about the same thing since getting back. Can we not waste time going in circles, please? Let's just wait and see what happens, 'kay?"

Wait and see… that was always nice in theory.

But then, what else were they supposed to do? Todd had made up his mind and he was in charge, much to Carla's occasional dislike.

He was a good man, but he sometimes didn't get the fact that not everyone was like them – immune, decent people. He even had a bad habit of offering gas, food, and water to random people even when they had very little to spare. This new world required a thicker skin and the occasional "shoot first" attitude. For over a month she'd been traveling with them, and more than once his "help all and they'll owe favors" attitude had nearly gotten them into some serious shit.

The world had gone to hell, and they didn't need to resort to ruthless means all the time, but they couldn't go around trying to help every single person they came across.

One of these days he was going to let the wrong person get close to them. She just hoped this new guy, Brian, wasn't the one to condemn them.

As she stared out the window, Jason walked past it a moment before he walked in.

"How is he?" Carla asked, frustrated with the situation but curious, especially when there was still half-an-hour to go before Jason's shift of watching the new guy was over.

After picking up a bottle of water to drink, Jason replied tiredly, "Just came to. He looks like shit, but the fever's not getting any worse and seems to be breaking up, and that rash on his thigh isn't spreading. I changed the dressing on the gunshot wound of his – it was gettin' nasty, but doesn't look infected. That being said, we'll have to watch him like a hawk for the next twenty-four hours."

"When do you think he was infected?" Todd asked.

"I can't say," Jason admitted. "Everyone suffers the same symptoms, but the time-frame is different with just about everyone. You could keel over three days after exposure or two weeks after – all depends on your immune system. I treated couple once when I was working at the hospital not long after this all started. The wife died four days after exposure and the husband died sixteen days into it. Can never tell how long the infection's been in your system."

Carla, chewing on her fingernails, asked quietly, "Do you think he's immune?"

With a sigh, Jason nodded. "I told him he might be and he laughed in my face."

Tyler tossed the empty bag of chips to the floor and commented to Carla, "Guess you were right about his brother not knowing, huh?"

She nodded slightly.

Brian's laughter at such a claim pretty much confirmed it.

Yawning loudly, Jason looked to Todd and said, "Man, I'm dying here. It's your turn."

Toddy shook his head. "I've gotta walk the perimeter."

"The perimeter?" Jason repeated. "We're in the middle of nowhere. Who you think's gonna come around?"

He merely shrugged, glancing at him as he put his coat on. "Don't know, but better safe than sorry."

At that, Carla snorted. "Right. You bring the problem and leave him for us to deal with."

"Todd, someone's gotta stay with him," Jason insisted, sweeping his arm towards the door. "Guy seems immune, but I don't know for sure, and I won't until his fever breaks and goes down."

Grumbling under his breath, Todd looked to Lucy.

Lucy quickly shook her head, too skittish to keep an eye on a stranger.

Todd then looked to Lucy's brother, and a look of alarm formed on Tyler's face and Lucy put her arm around his shoulders in an attempt to keep Todd from snatching him if he decided to.

Carla gaped at Todd and stepped forward, shoving the man when he made a move for Tyler. "You are not sending him in there!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" she repeated incredulously. "For starters, he's thirteen!"

"Kid's gotta pitch in," Todd argued.

Carla glared at him.

He wouldn't get his hands dirty and helped too many people at their own risk, but he had no problem with making them do what he didn't want to do, even going so far as to make a boy who was just barely a teenager go and watch a man who was potentially dangerous. It was sickening, and she wasn't going to put Tyler in that situation.

Walking to the dresser, the young woman retrieved her dark purple sweater and slipped it on before making her way to the door after checking for the gun tucked under her belt behind her.

"Where are you going?" Todd demanded.

"To babysit your problem," she snapped, slamming the motel door behind her as she stepped into the cool night air.

Taking a deep breath, she rubbed at her tired eyes and made her way four doors down to the room Brian was being kept in. She didn't walk in right away, but rather took a moment to compose herself. Having not slept since her nap during their drive around noon and it now being nearly five in the morning, she was exhausted and that did nothing for her rattled temper. As much as she wished they hadn't picked up Brian, a complete stranger, she didn't want to be unnecessarily harsh just because she was tired.

Allowing a single yawn to pass her lips, she finally opened the door and stepped into the candle-lit room.

Sitting up against the headrest, cushioned by pillows, Brian looked and sounded like he'd been to hell and back. He was sickly pale, a thin sheen of sweat coated his skin, dampening the white sheets around him, and he was coughing so hard she thought he'd cough up a lung.

Knowing all too well how painful that kind of coughing could be, Carla sighed and walked over to the chair beside the bed, picking up a bottle of water that Brian hadn't already drank and unscrewed the lid before handing it to him.

He stared at her briefly with bloodshot blue eyes before taking it from her, mumbling his thanks under his breath before taking a handful of gulps of water.

"How you feeling?" she asked once he finished drinking.

"Like shit," he rasped, setting the water back on the nightstand. "Why'd you bring me here?"

"Didn't Jason tell you?"

"The guy said you all think I might be immune or something." Tearing the sheets from his waist, groaning in mild pain the actual caused, he indicated to the angry rash on his left thigh and demanded, "Does this look immune to you?"

Carla shrugged, looking at the rash spider webbing along his thigh before disappearing beneath his boxers. "No, but it doesn't look like it's getting any worse either. That's a good sign that you might be immune to all of this."

"A good sign," he repeated with a dry chuckled, shucking his fingers through his dirty hair. "Wow, haven't heard the rash be called that before."

Chewing on the inside of her cheek, Carla sighed and pulled back the neck of her sweater and strap of her tank top, revealing to him her scarred over rash. "How old would you say this is?"

Moving his eyes from her rash, to her grey eyes, then back to her rash, he licked his dry lips and replied defiantly, "Why do I care? You're infected and you're gonna die, just like me."

"Got it about four months ago," she stated as if he hadn't spoken, brushing her fingers along the forever marred hypersensitive skin. "This crazy infected guy tried to rob me and coughed so hard he spat blood on my face and in my eyes – instant infection. Let me tell you, lying on the floor of some gas station wasn't where I planned to kick the bucket, but my boyfriend and I couldn't very well ride somewhere more comfortable on his motorcycle when neither of us could hardly hold onto a water bottle, seeing that he got sick too. Todd and the others were driving through looking for gas and found us. Todd… he wanted to help us, told us we'd be fine all the way to some abandoned house he and his friends were taking us to, and six days into the infection – about the state you were in when we found you – I started getting better... but Zach didn't. A couple days later, all I had to show from the infection was a slight cough that quickly went away. Rash stayed, though. It kinda turns into a scar on those of us who develop an immunity to the virus." Dropping her hand back to her lap with a sigh, she added, "The others have it too in different places. It's the only sign of immunity that we know of."

Brian owned and shut his mouth a few times before firmly shaking his head. "No. No, word would have spread about it. People would've found out and told the CDC. Hell, the CDC would have been the ones to learn about it!"

"Paranoia breeds violence, Brian," Carla reasoned. "Jason said that one of his buddies in the hospital he worked in turned out to be immune, but people were so scared that he was shot the moment he showed his rash to someone with the claim he wasn't sick. Odds are the same thing happened elsewhere and a lot of people were probably too afraid to tell. But it's true – me and the others are evidence of that. You are evidence of that."

He nodded slowly, struggling to take it all in, and then asked, "If you're immune, why'd you want to kill me back there?"

She shrugged. "Guess I'm old fashioned – I don't trust strangers. Todd has a bad habit of trying to help everyone at our expense. Can't tell you how many times we've been robbed and shot at because of him. I'm not saying we need to be ruthless, we just can't be stupid and think everyone's decent and will be happy to repay us for our help."

"Gotta agree with you there," he rasped, coughing. Staring at his rash, realization dawned on him suddenly and his eyes widened. "Bobby! We've have to go get her!"

"Who's Bobby? Whoa, hey, take it easy!" she instructed sharply, pushing him back against the bed when he tried to get up, his feverish skin clammy beneath her hands.

"My girlfriend was infected and I threw her out of the car. I didn't know and I sent her out to die so she wouldn't infect by brother and Kate," he confessed brokenly, fighting against her as a burst of strength from him forced her to press her knees into the bed just to keep him down. "She was at a gas station outside Newel this afternoon – that's where she's heading! We've gotta go get her! She might be immune!"

Carla remembered them driving through Newel earlier in the evening before coming across a few gas stations, and her face fell though her grip on his shoulders remained strong. "We passed through Newel, Brian. It was a ghost town, same with the couple of gas stations we tried. There was no one around, infected or otherwise."

"No," he argued in denial. "I told her to get to Newel and find a bed. I told her to go there and that's where the fuck she went!"

"She wasn't there, Brian!" she shouted right back, grabbing his jaw tightly in her small hand. "Even if she were, you're in no condition to travel and wouldn't be for another few days, you got that? I'm sorry, but you can't."

The man before her ground his teeth, looking from her to the door and back again as he debated over his next move.

Carla's thoughts drifted to the gun tucked between her belt behind her, and she hoped he wouldn't make her use it. She really didn't want to hurt or kill him, but she wasn't going to let him hurt her.

Several tense seconds passed before Brian sighed heavily, coughing, and he fell back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling. "I kissed her," he muttered, scrubbing his hand down his face. "She knew she was infected and didn't tell me. I thought she was just playing hard to get after I left this guy and his sick daughter behind, so I grabbed her and kissed her. Didn't get why she was so upset 'til I saw the rash that night. Cut her lose the following morning before it got too hot out."

A lump formed in her throat, the circumstances for him becoming infected somewhat similar to her own. Who knew a kiss could be the equivalent of a death sentence?

Clicking his tongue a few times, he added firmly, "Moment I'm on my feet I'm going to go look for her. I owe her that much."

"If that's what you want, fine, you won't find me complaining. No offense, but… immune or not, you're a stranger. Strangers can get you killed these days," she explained with a small shrug. "I'd rather you be on your way sooner rather than later."

"You had a warmer disposition when you thought I was dead, you know that?"

A hint of a smile tugged at her lips, and she replied, "The dead can't earn or lose respect, so I give it to them anyways. The rest of us need to earn it, plain and simple. Todd seems to think that just by saving my life he's earned my full respect – he hasn't."

"That swell of a guy, huh?"

"He doesn't do good things out of the kindness of his heart, let's just put it that way. Hence why you should probably beat it sooner rather than later if you get better."

Cocking his head, coughing a bit, he asked, "Why's that?"

"Either you leave before he has a chance to corner you into paying him back for saving your life somehow, you turn him down when he does in which case you'll have an enemy when you leave, or you stay and owe him a favor of some kind – usually something pretty big."

"And what do you owe him?" he questioned, making her face darken.

"Something I sure as hell am not giving him," she replied tightly as she looked to one of the flickering candles. With a heavy sigh, she added, "You should probably try to get some rest. A lot of sleep will help you pull yourself together."

He snorted, tossing his head back with a mild thump as it hit the headboard, making him wince slightly. "You expect me to sleep with the jackhammer going off in my head?"

Picking up the small backpack that served as the first-aid kit belonging to Jason that lay next to the nightstand, Carla rooted through it for a moment until she found bottle of aspirin. She set it down on the nightstand then said, "That should help some, just don't go crazy. We don't have much in the way of pills."

He picked up the bottle, turning it over in his hand a few times before unscrewing the top. "Thanks," he said, taking two pills.

She merely shrugged in reply.

Reclining in her chair, propping her feet up on the side of the bed, she yawned, wishing she could move the gun behind her somewhere else so she'd be more comfortable but unwilling to let him see it at the moment. In an effort to get more comfortable, she nudged his leg in hopes he'd take the hint and move a little, but when he didn't she sighed and scooted her chair back some so that she'd have more room for her feet.

Arching a brow, he asked dryly after taking a drink, "I'm not in your way, am I?"

"Brian, I've gotta stay in here for over three hours, and I'm exhausted," she replied tiredly. "But just so you know, trying anything and I'll scream."

"Dually noted," he replied, clearly not thrilled about having company while he slept. Or it might have been because she was making him seem like an inconvenience. Either way, he didn't appear pleased that she was staying put with her feet on the bed.

Carla didn't rightly care what his feelings were about it. If he thought she was going to remain wide awake for even half-an-hour more he was nuts. She needed some serious sleep or she'd be a nightmare to deal with later in the day.

So, with one last yawn, she shut her eyes, though her ears remained honed on the man in the bed. She was a light sleep, something she was counting on. She just hoped he didn't get any bright ideas and force her to use her gun.

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