5200 words, which is fine, because it doesn’t need more. Tomorrow I edit, maybe tighten it up a bit. I didn’t entirely want to write it, but you know how that sort of thing goes.
I had high hopes for… Betty, I think her name was. She was as good at keeping track of dangers as I was; maybe even better. To look at her, you’d think the Plague never got within twenty feet. Even outside she had this mask arrangement that let her breathe without fogging up her glasses (I don’t wear any, thank God, so I never had to worry about that). “It took me forever to figure it out,” she admitted during one of our talks. “It’s still not perfect.”
“It’s never perfect,” I admitted. “But what choice do we have? Especially now that people are starting to get stupid about everything.”
That got her started, which was the idea. I was by now starting to think that she could be a prospect for this thing of ours, but I had to be sure that Betty wasn’t infected. Either by the Plague, or… the first stages of mouthy infection. Either would be a real shame.