Just got back from a scouting run with Four and - oh, joy - Eight.  The truth is, I don't really mind Eight so much as I mind the idea of her.  I mean, she's alright most times, but there's just this underlying creep factor that I can't get past.  But once I was finished dreading running with her and got down to the actual run, it wasn't so bad.  Almost normal, at the beginning.  Just three mates on a run.  I even saw a deer! 

At first, I thought how beautiful it was and how it had been so long since I'd just found something beautiful.  But then I thought too bad we don't have a gun because fresh venison would be freaking awesome.  But then, because I know just enough sciency stuff to make trouble and far from enough to be useful, I thought what if the zombie virus is like Creutzfeld-Jakob 2.0 and you can get it from prions?  I know prions thrive in deer and antelope and moose and such, so maybe venison wouldn't be much of a treat after all.  I don't want to have fresh meat if it means turning into the undead. 

Then I saw the fireflies.  They were beautiful, too, but they got me thinking about mosquitoes.  If you can get zombified by cutting yourself of a zombie-gut-encrusted pitchfork, which I hear you can, then can you get zombified from a mosquito that bites a zombie or a soon-to-be-zombie?  (I think of the bitten-but-not-zombies-yet as "zombies in waiting.") 

So I had already jacked up my paranoia to ten before we found the big pile of dead zombies and loaded guns.  So I'm guessing the guys in blue uniforms are with Pandora and still experimenting and fouling things up, as appears to be their custom because we found a mutant zombie hoarde: they can run!  And let me tell you: that sucks.  And who know?  My paranoia scale goes to eleven!

On the up side, I found a phial of VS72.  I'll be passing that off to Max as soon as I get a chance.  Could be nothing, could be the crowning glory for Operation 5.Theta.W.