"Come on," I insisted weakly.

"No. Lulu, let go." Somehow, she caught wind of the loony direction things had taken and cracked a smile.

"What's so funny?" I said, grinning back against my will. That opened the floodgates, and we were both wracked with weeping laughter, expelling the suffocating fear like bad air. After a few minutes, it died down, and we sat on the nubby orange couch to catch our breaths.

Mum got ahold of herself first. "Honey, I swear I'm not crazy. This is real. I wish it weren't, but it is."

Those words came as a cold soaking, though less utterly oppressive than before. "Okay," I said, wiping tears off my face. Then I frowned and shook my head. "Mum, I'm still confused. When did this happen? How long has it been going on?"

"I don't know, but it's all over the country, so it wasn't just overnight."

"All over the country!" Disbelief cushioned the blow. Part of me was still absolutely confident that this would all turn out to be a load of crap.

"That's what the people on the radio said: 'All population centers nationwide.' It's martial law, honey!"

"Well, what are we supposed to do? You said women carry it. Does that mean we're quarantined or something? Is there an inoculation we're supposed to get?"

"No, they just want us locked up."

"Are you kidding? What about men?"

"They said men can catch it from women, but I think it's all the same thing once you're infected. I'm sorry, baby; I couldn't make sense of it either. It didn't sound like they had a whole lot of information themselves."

"They must have said what to do. What if we come down with it? What are the symptoms?"

"They didn't say anything about that. Just that we're to stay indoors and keep listening to the radio."