'No, I'm on assignment.' Her eyelids felt glued together. It really was cloth in her mouth. She shook her head a bit as she pulled her eyes open and t...ied to spit whatever it was out. A painted nymph stared back at her instead of the trees she expected. She shut her eyes again and shook some more.The picture of the nymph came into focus when she opened her eyes again. It wasn't the pine trees she expected. A cheery smell of soft, fresh linen did not fit in an evergreen forest. Neither did the. Every big decision I made had to be analyzed and reanalyzed for days. I fucking hated it. My evil side wanted to have no strings attached sex with Lucy, but in order to do that, I had to be more than a car length from her bedroom door.I wasn’t concentrating on any one thing. Because I didn’t want to make a bad decision, I recognized that I was afraid to make one at all. I was content to just roll with it. Usually when that happens, something comes along to upend the apple cart. Then what. You see, with each pulse and each person affected, it gets stronger. This can spread to the county, the tri-state area, the entire southeast, the country, the world. Unaffected people will be frightened, and someone will decide that we all need to be destroyed to prevent the spread, and fearful people will listen. This must be contained. Do you understand?”There was silence as people thought. Finally, one of the few men present asked, “So, we’re like ... carriers? Like of a disease?”“Not like a. She'd learned of it from Collette, who knew because her brother was going with them.She'd already determined that the trombone player she'd hooked up with for oral sex at a prior year's camp was not in attendance this year. She had mixed feelings about that, as she did about most things in her love life these days.Patty doubted Bobby's virginity would survive a week at the beach with Julie. Since the trombone player had been from another city, the chance to also get laid with no lasting.