"Do you think we'll survive this?" Nick had asked. It was quite out of the blue, and although Mattie wanted to comfort him, she really hadn't ever been the type to sugarcoat things. Especially when he asked if things would just blow over and return to normal. As if they could. Well, maybe they would eventually. Maybe the infection could be combated. Even so, she doubted that they would live to see the day that a social collapse of this magnitude would be reversed. 

But she didn't want to say that to Nick. He was probably feeling crushed enough right now what with his sister dying and his mother dead. There wasn't any way of knowing for sure whether a "Maybe two hundred years down the road" would drive him over the edge and earn her several holes in her chest. (She doubted this would happen, but the probability was somewhere above zero.) 

So instead she sighed and said, "We're going to just have to take things one day at a time."