Trapped by Rose Francis

uncharacteristically tender, and she quickly declined, shaking her head vigorously as she discarded her clothes and slipped into the water.
    She tried not to look back at the burning body of the Morph in the distance.
    When she was finished, Steven toweled her like before, but didn’t leave her to put on her clothes in private this time, joining her as she stepped back into the vehicle.
    She wasn’t sure what to do with herself so she sat there with the towel wrapped around her.
    She definitely wasn’t changing in front of him—even though he’d already touched, quite intimately, every part of her she was trying to hide.
    “Do you guys have any estimates of survivors?” she asked him, towel and body pulled tight, legs firmly together.
    She was glad he was sitting opposite her, even though his eyes had sort of glazed over at her question.
    “Has the world been infected?” she asked when he still didn’t answer.
    She started preparing to ask another question when he finally opened his mouth, then went on to answer almost every question that had come to her mind over the past few weeks:
    “About two months ago, Patient Zero—a voluntary lab rat for the intended viral weapon—got a doctor. His infection lasted only about ten minutes, but that was all the time it took for the now-infected doctor to go on and infect others. It took a while before people knew what was happening or what to do about it, and in that time, a few more doctors got infected, as well as other military personnel. Amongst them, a few super-soldiers. The super-soldiers were responsible for bringing the virus out into the public. By the time you guys got word of the outbreak, the military had spent a week trying to track them down, but they didn’t find all of them. What they found was the aftermath of their presence. Turns out after decades of zombie movies and video games, most people don’t actually have what it takes to destroy what looks like another person face to face. That’s part of the problem—the bodies start to become contagious within an hour, but the person’s physical appearance doesn’t start changing for a while—they don’t look non-human until twenty-four hours have passed. Before then, the infected person looks the same as anyone who has come down with a really bad flu. So it spread fast . Luckily, so far, it’s contained in North America. But chances are that Central and South aren’t far behind.
    “All planes were stopped from leaving here by day three, so I don’t think it’s reached Europe, Africa, Asia etc. unless some asshole with a private jet has taken someone infected with him. Anyway, I’ll get the updates when we get to the base—my intelligence on the matter is over two weeks old. In the meantime, some of us got a chance to go out and bring back our loved ones while taking out as many of the Morphs as possible. Not all of us, however—only those of us who are immune.”
    Serena felt her brow wrinkling. Did he mean...?
    “Anyway, once we get to the base, it’ll probably be all over between you and me,” he said. “But you’ll be safe there. And I’ll be relatively safe, even out there, but who knows what could happen.”
    Serena couldn’t resist interrupting this time. “Wait, how are you safe while out there? It’s like you’d be going to war again!”
    He nodded his head. “True, I’m not safe from wayward bullets, I admit. But the Morphs can’t get me.” He paused. “Like I said, I am immune. There aren’t many of us who are. And the government didn’t want to risk sending super soldiers who aren’t immune out there in case they get turned. Turned super-soldiers—even regular soldiers—are among the deadliest if they survive a few nights, and they found that out the hard way.”
    “How many of you—immune—are there?”
    “They’re not completely sure, but at last count it was five—and that’s just out of a section of the military population; I have no doubt there are a