"Those pills? Roofies, sedatives, tranquilizers. Who knows? He's got access to the pharmacy and he already thinks he's some kind of drug kingpin."

So Jason had been planning to drug me and force himself on me. I can't even imagine what someone like him would have done to me if he'd had me locked up in some jail cell.

"Thank you, Ian," I said. "Thank you so much."

"You're okay," he said. "You're safe. For now. I was able to pull some strings and get your arrest warrants cleared. But we're going to have to be careful."

I tried to calm down. I still couldn't stop shaking. I couldn't keep my thoughts straight. All I could think about was wanting Ian to just pull over and hold me in his arms while I cried. I knew I shouldn't want that, it was wrong, but I couldn't help it. I took a deep breath and tried to get myself under control. We were passing back into town. Ian slowed to avoid the empty, abandoned cars that were strewn all over the roadside.

"What's happening?" I asked. "They took you away, Ian. And now you're . . . What are you? What's going on?"

Ian drew a deep breath, gave me a look of what I tried not to interpret as despair, then stared at the road. "Everything's falling to pieces," he said. "That's what's happening." He shook his head. "We're inside what's now an officially designated quarantine zone. All of Muldoon and the surrounding areas. About forty miles across. They've got the National Guard patrolling the borders. I swear to God the perimeter looks like Iraq. Hesco barriers, concertina wire, the whole thing. And I guess we're not the only zone. There's supposed to be four more quarantine zones throughout the west, all in remote, rural areas, like us." He shook his head. "I can't believe how fast they set this thing up since the pathogen broke out. I guess no one really understands how to cure it, or how it works, except that it's a kind of venereal disease and somehow it drives people mad with a kind of carnal desire. Basically, an STD that acts as an aphrodisiac."

Ian glanced at me. I couldn't believe it, but he blushed a little. He cleared his throat.

"Officially," he said, "the federal government's supposed to lift the quarantines when everyone living inside tests negative for a full twelve months. The pathogen's supposed to be contained inside the zones. But, unofficially, word is they're dumping infected people in from the outside. And I've sure seen a lot of infected people around who I don't know. Can't all be outsiders stuck here from the fair."

I couldn't really believe that everything had changed so fast just because an aggressive disease was spreading. I was finding it hard to comprehend that I wasn't still living in the same old Muldoon, and that everything about our lives had changed, probably forever.

"What happened when they took you away?" I looked at Ian's black combat uniform warily. He still hadn't told me everything. "What are you now, exactly . . . ?"