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  She had no answer for that. They’d gone over this already. In the dark, twisting in the roughness of his sheets on his bone-achingly hard mattress, Anthony had told her he loved her. She believed him. They were the words she’d spent her lifetime waiting to hear from a man like him, ever since she’d been a little girl pretending to be a princess.

  She believed him, but she couldn’t let him. Not with the world the way it was. Not with her the way she was, immune to whatever it was that infected the living and Resurrected them from the dead. The others who’d taken shelter in the basement would have no way of knowing if they were also immune until they were exposed, and that was a risk they’d all agreed nobody could take. She’d had the spores spewed in her face dozens of times and had not yet fallen ill, but she expected every day to wake up in a murderous rage, to need someone to put her down like a rabid dog. Would he be able to do that if he loved her?

  Lira didn’t think so.

  She had no answer for him that would feel honest, so she kissed him instead. But when he tried to pull her closer, Lira pushed his hands away from her hips and backed up the stairs. When Anthony opened his mouth to speak, she shook her head.

  “No. I can’t give you what you want, Anthony. I’m sorry.”

  “You think you’re protecting me,” he told her. “But you’re not.”

  Now he’d made her angry. “I’m doing the best I can! You think this is what I want? Nobody wants this. So stop trying to make all of this into some lovey-dovey romantic thing between us, okay? It is what it is. A way to survive. When we don’t have to worry about just getting through one more day, then you can talk to me about hearts and flowers.”

  He waited until she’d rounded the next landing before he called after her.

  “Come back to me,” he said. “At least promise me you’ll do that.”

  But, of course, she couldn’t give him that any more than she could give him the other thing he wanted, and so Lira left him behind without making a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep.

  Chapter Two

  SHE CROUCHED, HANDS up to fend off the thing bending over her, the thing that used to be her boss. Jim had never been the best boss, but this was beyond abuse, this was crazy. Attacking her because she forgot to cc him on a memo? His face was red, spittle flying; he slapped her face with the sheaf of papers in his hand. It was a story about the freak tornado that wrecked the city a few days ago, the one that tore through downtown and left behind all those weird flowers the news reports were saying caused a massive influx of respiratory disorders.

  Jim slapped her again. His fingers dug into her. Screaming, he called her terrible names, when suddenly his mouth yawned open wide, his eyes rolled back, and his face . . . exploded. Darkness shot out of his eyes and nose and mouth, and she breathed it in. All of it, she breathed it in.

  That’s how it spread. First came the storm, then the flowers that spread the seeds of infection. People turned violent just before the seeds, which had taken root inside them, exploded out of their faces, infecting others even as it killed the hosts, then somehow brought them back from the dead. Lira had gotten a lungful of the spores, not just that first time with Jim but half a dozen times since, and had never gotten sick. Had never died and come back. For whatever reason, maybe the residual effects of childhood asthma she thought she’d outgrown, she was immune.

  When Lira got outside, the dead were still everywhere. Bodies in various stages of decay littered the street. A good number of them had been killed by the rage-driven infected. People had simply taken after each other with whatever weapons they could find, including fists and teeth. When they died and came back, those violent tendencies were even worse.

  A larger number of the corpses had been killed by the soldiers first dispatched to the streets of downtown Pittsburgh in the aftermath of the tornados that had swept much of the city into rubble. When the riots began, some of the people now lying dead on the streets had been shot. A lot had been burned. Fire seemed the only sure way to keep the bodies from getting up again. The Army had come through with tanks and jeeps, guns and flamethrowers. They’d finally dropped a bomb, which had been stupid since the Resurrected could manage to stagger around with broken limbs and faces sheared away, while the uninfected couldn’t do much to defend themselves in the same condition. Plus, it had destroyed streets and buildings, ruining whatever might’ve been salvaged from inside. For that reason alone, Lira gave the U.S. government a giant “fuck you.”

  Now she picked her way carefully through a scattered blockage of concrete chunks. She had a small LED flashlight, but it was better to use the moonlight. The Resurrected didn’t sleep, so far as she could tell, but they didn’t seem to see in the dark any better than a living person.

  She’d have gone on foot even if the streets were clear because though a car or truck would’ve carried a lot more supplies, it would’ve been impossible to gas up and would attract too much attention. A motorcycle or scooter could navigate the debris, but she wouldn’t be able to carry much more on one of them than on her back, and if she fell off and hurt herself, there’d be nobody with her to help. No, on foot was better even though that meant it took longer, and she could only carry a few things back at a time.

  In her old life, Lira had bought herself a gym membership every January with high hopes, only to discover that by March, self-discipline had left her. She’d preferred to curl up on the couch and read a book than run on a treadmill. She’d favored flowery skirts and pretty shoes and paid someone to mow her lawn because once when she’d tried to herself, she’d run over a nest of baby bunnies, traumatizing her into being incapable of even touching the mower again. She’d scooped up spiders in paper cups and released them outside. She’d never held a gun.

  She’d discovered she preferred a knife, anyway.

  Guns were loud and had to be reloaded; you had the advantage of distance, but her accuracy, while much improved, was not good enough to fell a charging Resurrected determined to tear off her face. She’d picked up a hunting knife with a six-inch blade off the street in those early days after the storms ripped the city apart. Using it was personal and intimate, you had to be close enough for them to grab you, which was a terrible risk. Using it was also a lot like dancing. She’d always been good at dancing.

  She danced now, slicing at the fingers of a shambling man wearing what looked like a velour track suit. One of his legs had bent the wrong way, but that hadn’t stopped him from lurching out from behind an overturned car to grab at her. Half his body was charred, his hair gone, the eye an empty socket. The stench was horrific. He swiped at her again, tilting his head to get a good look at her with his remaining eye, and Lira shoved her knife into it.

  The man didn’t scream—they did scream, sometimes, though she was sure it wasn’t pain but rage that always fueled them. His hands batted at the goo dripping down his cheek, a sight the moonlight clearly showed her even though she’d have preferred the blessed cover of shadow. He lunged at her again, but Lira had plenty of time to get out of the way. She dodged him, dancing behind him. This time, her blade sunk into the back of his neck, all the way to the hilt. With a guttural cry, the man stumbled forward. He ended up on his knees.

  Lira pulled the knife free. The man slumped onto his face and lay still. He was dead—well, he’d been dead before she stabbed him. The question was, would he end up getting back on his feet?

  She didn’t waste time waiting to see. Instead, Lira slashed his Achilles tendons, which would make it a helluva lot harder for him to walk. She used the same slashing motion on his wrists. Cutting off his hands entirely would’ve been better, but she didn’t have time to saw through the bone. At least this way, he couldn’t grab anything. She’d have burned him, but the light and smell would attract others.

  The address on the paper the rabbi had given her was smudged, and she had no GPS to guide her, but she’d looked over her map carefully before setting out. She’d lost her fear of getting lost some time ago, mo