"It makes me wonder about other cities, though," said Ellie thoughtfully. "It's hard to believe that in D.C. or Quantico or any military base they wouldn't have managed to save research scientists. I know that their primary work had a definite defense-offense spin, but the infected are the enemy now. Somewhere there's got to be people."
She wasn't sure if this was something she really believed, or something she'd like to believe. It was easy now -- with communications mostly ended for the public -- to imagine that things couldn't be as bad everywhere as they were in New York. Weren't the chances good that somewhere, somehow, people had seen what was happening and managed to get control?
In her heart Eloise knew that they weren't. Anyway, realism was often more comfortable to her than any degree of optimism. She leaned forward onto the windowsill to rest her head on folded arms, looking at Brennan with a sideways smile.
"I don't know, really," she told him. "I guess I was bound to be interested in one way or another. At school I was always involved with research of some kind -- overworked myself with it. I guess I was thinking of how I could be useful, apart from scavenging and that sort of thing, and... What I used to study seemed like something I could apply now. Maybe. What about you?"