Plague

And she slid her hand under his shirt, fingers stroking his bare flesh.
    Then he pulled away, fast.
    “Sorry, I . . .” He hesitated, his wallowing brain arguing against a body that was suddenly aflame.
    Sam stood up very suddenly and walked away.
    Taylor laughed gaily at his back. “Come see me when you get tired of mooning over the ice princess, Sam.”
    He walked into a sudden, stiff breeze. And any other time, in any other condition, he might have noticed that the wind never blew in the FAYZ.

Chapter Two
72 HOURS, 4 MINUTES

    IT WAS AMAZING what decent food could do for a starving girl’s looks.
    Diana looked at herself in the big mirror. She was wearing clean panties and a clean bra. Skinny, very skinny. Her legs were knobby, with knees and feet looking weirdly big. She could count every rib. Her belly was concave. Her periods had stopped and her breasts were smaller than they’d been since she was twelve. Her collarbones looked like clothes hangers. Her face was almost unrecognizable. She looked like a heroin addict.
    But her hair was starting to look better, darker. The rusty color and the brittleness that came from starvation, they were disappearing.
    Her eyes were no longer dead, empty shadows sunk into her skull.
    Now her eyes sparkled in the soft lamplight. She looked alive.
    Her gums weren’t bleeding as much. They were pink, not red, not so swollen. Maybe her teeth wouldn’t fall out after all.
    Starvation. It had driven her to eat human flesh. She was a cannibal.
    Starvation had deprived her of her humanity.
    “Not quite,” Diana said to her reflection. “Not quite.”
    When she had seen that Caine would destroy the helicopter with Sanjit and his brothers and sisters she had sacrificed her own life. She had toppled from the cliff to force Caine to make the choice: save Diana or kill the children.
    Surely that act of self-sacrifice balanced out the fact that she had bitten and chewed and swallowed a cooked chunk of Panda’s chest.
    Surely she was redeemed? At least a little?
    Please? Please, if there is a God watching, please see that I have redeemed myself.
    But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. She had to do more. For as long as she lived she would have to do more.
    Starting with Caine.
    He had shown just a glimmer of humanity, saving her and letting his intended victims go free. It wasn’t much. But it was something. And if she could find a way to change him . . .
    A sound. Very slight. Just a scrape of foot on rug.
    “I know you’re there, Bug,” Diana said calmly, not looking back. Not giving the little creep the satisfaction. “What do you think Caine would do to you if I told him you were spying on me in my underwear?”
    No answer from Bug.
    “Aren’t you a little young to be a pervert?”
    “Caine won’t kill me,” a disembodied voice said. “He needs me.”
    Diana crossed to the California king–sized bed. She slipped on the robe she’d chosen from among the many in the closet. They belonged to the woman whose bedroom this had been. A famous actress with very expensive taste who was only one size bigger than Diana.
    And her shoes fit almost perfectly. Close to seventy pairs of designer shoes. Diana slipped her feet into a pair of fleece-lined slippers.
    “All I have to do to get rid of you, Bug, is to tell Caine your powers are increasing. I’ll tell him you’re becoming a four bar. How do you think he’ll react to having a four bar sharing this island with him?”
    Bug faded slowly into view. He was a snotty little brat of a kid. He’d just turned ten.
    For a moment Diana felt something like compassion for him: Bug was a damaged, messed-up little creep. Like all of them, he was scared and lonely and maybe even haunted by some of the things he’d done.
    Or not. Bug had never shown any evidence of a conscience.
    “If you want to see naked girls, Bug, why don’t you creep up on Penny?”
    “She’s not pretty,” Bug said. “Her legs are all . . .” He twisted his fingers around to demonstrate. “And she smells bad.”
    Penny was eating better, like Diana. But she was getting worse. She had fallen from one hundred feet onto water and rocks. Caine had levitated her back up the cliff. But her legs were broken in a dozen places.
    Diana had done what she could to set the breaks, made splints out of duct tape and boards, but Penny was in constant agony. She would never walk again. Her legs would never heal.
    She lived now in one of the bathrooms so that