In her dream, Chloe was talking to Melina, who told her about the "snake people" that lived in the mountains near Volterra. People vanished in Volterra; according to Melina, the Snake People took them. "Foreigners, usually," Mellna informed her nonchalantly. "They go to Volterra and are never seen again."

She and Vincent and Melina and Tonio wandered in the countryside. Vincent collapsed, and Chloe and the others carried him in search of a hospital. Soon the ground was smothered with dead snakes. The same virus that had taken Vincent had afflicted them.

Mellina and Tonio were snatched away. Chloe dropped Vincent and waded away until she ran into Felix and Alec. Felix wrapped a scaly hand around her.

"We'll save her for later," he said to Alec, a forked tongue flickering out of his mouth, his red eyes lit with malice.

Chloe opened her eyes. The smoke from the stove stung her eyes and the rank smell of fish assaulted her.

She pushed herself up by her elbows to a sitting position.

"Fish?" Felix asked, proudly holding a charred fish body up to her face. His red eyes flickered disconcertingly in the dimly lit room.

Chloe squinted past him. Piled on the floor was a great mound of cooked fish. Way too much fish for the three of them.

"Uh-" she grunted, feeling a little nauseated from the overwhelming stink.

"That's all the food you have," Alec accused, brooding from a corner behind the stove.

Chloe's head pounded. She tried to climb down from the table, but her legs dragged sluggishly under her and refused to support her when she tried to place her feet on the floor and stand. She settled for sitting at the edge of the table.

"Whose house is this?" she asked.

"No one's," Felix answered, sounding briskly cheerful. "There are houses like this all over Italy. The families emigrated decades ago and never came back." He plopped the charred fish beside her, along with her refilled thermos.

The echo of her dream - "they are never seen again"- made her shiver. These two guys she accompanied -that she begged to accompany - could be anybody. She had not cared the other day. Vincent was gone and she was alone and the prospect of being alone scared her more than imminent death. They could have been the incarnation of Jack the Ripper and she would have gone with them. Now she wondered if, in her desperation, she made an unwise decision.

She took the fish and bit off a small bite. Felix had cooked the fish for far too long; it was dry and chalky and hard to chew, but she smiled anyway, hoping to appeal to his goodwill.

"Are you going to have any?" she asked. She sounded a bit frantic.

"We already ate while you were sleeping," Alec cut in shortly. "We should save the rest."

Chloe's wide eyes roved to the pile. "There's plenty. Unless there's a refrigerator or something, the fish won't last that long anyway, so we might as well splurge."

The guys stared back at her as if that never occurred to them. Finally Felix's face relaxed into a sheepish smile.

"I guess you can tell we don't do much fishing," he said, before he knealt down and claimed a few fish. Chloe waited for him to bite in before she resumed her meal.

"Me neither," Chloe said. "I've lived in New York City my whole life before this trip."

"New York?" he echoed between bites. He seemed as put off by the taste of the fish as he was, and did a poor job of disguising it.

"Yup. Not Manhattan, though. My family's from Queens. I went to college at Columbia - that's where I met Vincent - and I've applied to medical schools around the area. Vincent suggested that we do a little traveling before I start."

"You picked a hell of a time to travel," Felix observed.

Chloe's smile fell. "Yeah." That reminder of Vincent's death caused a piercing pain in her heart. She distracted herself from her grief by reminding herself of her task: to learn more about her traveling companions. "What about you? Where are you from? You're not Italians, are you?"

Felix glanced toward Alec. Alec glared at her, but remained in his sulky I'm- not-taking-part-in-this stance. Felix shook off that brief hesitation and answered.

"I'm from Scotland, he's from England."

"Oh," Chloe was both pleased and surprised. "You don't have the accents."

"We travel a lot." Felix grew more uneasy as he explained. "Our family - our parents - were diplomats of sorts."

"Oh," she said again, this time more subdued. Felix's use of the word "were" stood out starkly. Perhaps the only reason for their reticence about their background was their family's and fellow villagers' deaths from the virus. Hadn't Felix told her there was nothing left in Volterra?

She wondered about her own family. Her parents, her brother and his wife and kids. The last time she checked the news, the United States seemed relatively safe from the plague, but that could have changed in the past day or two. A thought surfaced that they must be terribly worried that they had not heard from her. In the fog of the chaos from the virus and from Vincent's death, she forgot to call them.

"I should call my family," she said aloud, lunging off the table. Her legs felt steadier, but in her rush, she tripped and would have smashed her face to the floor if Felix had not caught her.

He propped her back against the table, allowing her to regain her balance, then whipped around. "Alec."

"What?" Alec's tone implied he was not welcoming his inclusion to their acquainting session.

"Last I checked, you had the phone."

Alec shifted his arm, retrieving his phone from his pocket and tossed it towards Felix. Felix intercepted it and placed it in Chloe's hand.

"Do you want me to go out with you?" he asked, his red eyes meeting hers.

"Is it necessary?" Chloe asked. She would rather go out alone, but they knew the area better than her. The other side of her two-pronged question asked if she was allowed to leave if she chose to do so: if she was a companion or a prisoner.

Felix glanced towards Alec for confirmation, and, receiving none, decided for himself. "No. Just stay by the house. If there's any trouble, scream and we'll hear."

"Okay." All seemed reasonable enough. "Thanks, Felix."

A hazy sunset shone through the cool mist. Chloe breathed in, forcing her lungs to expand as much as they could. It was such a relief to breathe fully.

A chill that resided deep within her returned. However stifling the house was, at least it was warm. Chloe would not stay out here much longer. She would allow just enough time to breathe and make her calls, then go back inside.

She dialed her parents, then her brother. Neither answered the phone so she left messsages on their voicemail. She told them she was fine and she had not gotten the virus, but she could not say much more than that. She said nothing about the inhuman strangers she was with. Tears streamed down her cheeks when she related Vincent's death, but she managed to summon a stoic, practical tone when she told them the quarantine order would not allow her to return home for some time.

The guys left the door open while she was outside. Chloe was glad: the house had a chance to air out its fish odor. She hoped, in her rational or irrational sense, that they overheard some of her phone conversation. Then they would know she had people who cared about her and waited for her return home. If they had any plans to harm her in the future, they would have to take that into account, right? From what Chloe gleaned from them, they were not unfeeling, remorseless creatures. Felix seemed to care about her well-being. However, she knew that if their survival came down to it, they would kill her.

Chloe could not strike out on her own. As a bona fide city girl, she utterly lacked the outdoor skills she needed to eke out an existence, even in the time to trek to the nearest town or civilian camp. She needed those strangers, who, despite their admitted ineptitude of fishing and like skills, seemed to possess a knowledge of the mountains.

She flicked the phone to the news sites, searching for the latest news. The American stations reported sporadic outbreaks in many of the cities, but declared to have it under control. That did little to reassure Chloe of her family's safety. Europe was suffering from great casualties, particularly along the Mediterranean nations. Like with New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, pundits were stating that Italy, which lost the greatest number of people, would never be the same.

Chloe powered off the phone and ducked back inside.

She blinked, adjusting to the darkness. The fire in the stove had dwindled to embers.

Felix zipped over to her, moving with a grace Chloe's eyes had trouble processing. He took her hand and escorted her to the table.

"Here's your phone back," she offered, placing the phone back in Felix's large palm.

"All right." Felix held up the phone over Chloe's head, wordlessly asking Alec if he wanted it. It was too dark for Chloe to discern his facial expression, but she was able to see his shadowed head shake back and forth. Sighing, Felix slipped the phone into his own pocket.

"Do you need help to get more firewood?" Chloe asked.

"Is it that cold out?" Felix asked matter-of-factly.

"It's supposed to drop to the low forties," Chloe answered, then struggled with a metric translation. "I mean . . ."

"No, I'll get it." Whether Felix was referring to the firewood or to his understanding of the Fahrenheit scale, Chloe could not tell. Perhaps both. "Where are you going?" he snapped.

Chloe whirled around. Alec had finally left his corner and soundlessly swung the door open.

Alec's tone was just as sharp. "Out." He let the door whump shut behind him.

Felix's jaw jutted out in the protest he could not finish. He rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand, then quickly recomposed himself.

"So, firewood," he said, his metamorphasis into the congenial host in place. "Right this way."