And then the survivors go home, laughing and elated and mourning for their dead. They take off their armor, and they clean their weapons, and maybe one of them nicks his thumb on the edge of an arm guard or wipes his eyes with a hand that got a little too close to a leaking zombie. Live viral particles hit the bloodstream, the cascade kicks off, and amplification begins. In an average-sized human adult, full conversion happens inside of an hour and the whole thing starts again, without warning, without reprieve. The question “Johnny, is that you?” went from horror movie cliché to real-world crisis damn fast when people started facing the infected hand-to-hand.

The closest call I’ve ever had came when a zombie managed to spit a mouthful of blood in my face. If I hadn’t been wearing safety goggles over my sunglasses, I’d be dead. Shaun’s come closer than I have; I try not to ask anymore. I don’t really want to know.

My armor and pants were clean. I removed them and tossed them onto the plastic sheeting, performing the same check on my sweatshirt and thermal pants before stripping them off and adding them to the pile. A quick examination of my arms and legs revealed no unexpected smears or streaks of blood. I already knew I wasn’t wounded; I’d cleared two blood tests since the field. If I’d been so much as scratched, I’d have started amplification before we had hit Watsonville. My socks, bra, and underwear joined the rest. They hadn’t been exposed to the outside air. That didn’t matter; they went into a hazard zone. They were getting sterilized. There are a lot of folks who advocate for sterilization outside the home. They get shouted down by the people who want to keep it internal, since field sterilization—or even “front-yard chemical shower” sterilization—leaves the risk of recontamination before you reach a secure zone. So far, the groups have been able to keep things deadlocked and we’ve been able to keep doing our self-examinations in relative peace.

I stepped off the plastic sheet, folded it around my clothes, scooped it up, and carried it to the bedroom door, which I opened long enough to toss the whole bundle into the hamper. It would go through an industrial-grade bleaching guaranteed to neutralize any viral bodies clinging to the fabric, and the clothes would be ready to wear again by morning.

Even that brief blast of white light was enough to make my eyes burn. I scrubbed at them with the back of my hand as I turned toward the bathroom. Shaun’s door was still closed. I called, “Showering now!” A thump on the wall answered me.

Shaun and I share a private bathroom with its own fully modernized and airtight shower system. Another little requirement of the household insurance—since we leave safe zones all the time in order to do our jobs, we have to be able to prove we’ve been properly sterilized, and that means logged computer verification of our sterilizations. The bathroom started life as the closets of our respective bedrooms. Personally, I consider this a much better use of the space.

The bathroom lights switched to UV when my door opened. I walked over and pressed my hand to the shower’s keypad, saying, “Georgia Carolyn Mason.”

“Accessing travel records,” the shower replied. We don’t screw with the shower the way we screw with the house system. House security is kept at an absolute minimum, but the shower is governmentally required for journalist use, and we could get in serious trouble if the records don’t match up. The fines for posing a contamination risk are more than I could afford in six years of freelancing.

The shower door unsealed. “You have been exposed to a Level 4 hazard zone. Please enter the stall for decontamination and sterilization.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, and stepped in. The door shut behind me, locking with an audible hiss as the air lock seal engaged.

A stinging compound of antiseptic and bleach squirted from the bottommost nozzle on the wall, coating me with icy spray. I held my breath and closed my eyes, counting the seconds before it would stop. They can only legally bathe you in bleach for half a minute unless you’ve been in a Level 2 zone. At that point, they can keep dunking you until they’re sure the viral blocks are clean. Everyone knows it doesn’t do any good beyond the first thirty seconds, but that doesn’t stop people from being afraid.

Travel in a Level 1 zone means they’re not legally obligated to do anything but shoot you.

The bleach stopped. The upper nozzle came on, spraying out water almost hot enough to burn. I cringed but turned my face toward it, reaching for the soap.

“Clean,” I said, once the shampoo was out of my hair. I keep it short for a variety of reasons. Most have to do with making myself harder to grab, but showering faster is also a definite motivation. If I wanted it to get any longer, I’d have to start using conditioner and a variety of other hair-care chemicals to make up for the damage the bleach does every day. My one true concession to vanity is dyeing it back to the color nature gave me every few weeks. I look terrible blonde.

“Acknowledged,” said the shower, and the water turned off, replaced by jets of air from all four sides. The one good part of our shower system. I was dry in a matter of minutes, leaving only a little residual dampness in my hair. The door unsealed, and I stepped out into the bathroom, grabbing for my bottle of lotion.

Bleach and human skin aren’t good buddies. The solution: acid-based lotion, usually formulated around some sort of citrus, to help repair the damage the bleaching does. Professional swimmers did it pre-Rising, and everybody does it now. It also helps to lend a standardized scent tag to people who have scrubbed themselves recently. My lotion was as close to scentless as possible, and it still carried a faint, irritating hint of lemon, like floor cleanser.

I worked the lotion into my skin and retreated to my own room, shouting, “Shaun, it’s all yours!” I got the door closed as his was opening, spilling white light into the room. That’s not uncommon. We’re pretty good about our timing.