You weren’t alive when the outbreak started. But you were raised in fear drilled into you by your parents, their friends, and the soldiers who monitored the quarantine zone you all lived in. Your parents tried to do right by you. They were never gentle or loving, but they gave you what you needed, bare minimum. Times are always hard in quarantine zones. You couldn’t blame them. At least they homeschooled you and never bothered sending you to one of those godawful military schools. You couldn’t bear the thought of becoming a dictator.

The scariest thing to you was being infected. Becoming one of those things. You hoped in your heart that, if something like that ever happened, your parents would love you and help you through it. Find a cure. Wait until you turn to lock you away where you couldn’t hurt anyone. Or, if it came down to it, putting you out of your misery.

But when that day finally came, and you rushed to your parents sobbing and begging for help, they did the opposite.

Your father was about to shoot you point-blank. But your mother, blessed with the tenderness of somebody taking a household spider outside, took your hand and led you far away from the main living complexes, out into a deep corner of the quarantine zone. She sat you down in the grass. She knocked you out, you don’t know how. When you woke up, you were alone. And that’s how you would stay.

Until Joel finds you, rummaging through military cargo he had been about to pilfer from. He is very wary around you, assessing what risk you may pose to him. But looking into your eyes and watching the way your emaciated frame searches only for food, he realizes you are not a danger to him at all.

It has been three months since you were bitten. You have not turned into one of those monsters. Joel, of course, is completely oblivious to the fact that you are even infected.

“You look hungry,” he observes gruffly, inspecting your build from afar. You’re young. Too young to be out here without anybody covering you or watching your back.