Hot and Haunted Read online

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “They’re being herded.”

  “What? By who?” Still following, Lira ducked with him into a small back office and shut the door. The office had a door to the outside.

  “The Army. They’re coming in, street by street. Tanks in places that can handle it, guys on foot in places that can’t. They’re pushing everyone and everything ahead of them toward the point.”

  Lira knew he meant the point of downtown Pittsburgh, where the two rivers met.

  “Why?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at her. “They’re wiping everything out.”

  This stopped her. “You mean another bomb?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just anything living. Or nonliving, I guess.”

  “There are still people here,” Lira said through numb lips. “I’m in a shelter with some, and I’m sure there are others. Is the Army rescuing them?”

  “No.”

  She sagged for a moment against the doorframe but wasn’t too surprised. “What are you, advance scout or something?”

  “Something like that.” He gave her a grim look. “Let’s just say I didn’t agree with the ‘scorched earth’ policy.”

  “You’re trying to warn people.” She eyed him. “How’s that working out for you?”

  Incredibly, he grinned. “Not so great.”

  “I’m Lira.” She held out a hand.

  “Mac.” He shook hers, his grip firm. “We need to get out of here.”

  The problem was, the back door to the alley was locked and wouldn’t budge. They’d closed the door leading from the store and shoved a desk and a filing cabinet in front of it though Lira wasn’t sure the things outside would try to get through a door if they didn’t have any reason to believe people were hiding behind it.

  “They’re not that smart,” she said in a low voice, ear pressed to the door, listening for any signs they were going to be attacked.

  Mac, busy searching through all the drawers for a key to the back door, looked up. “I’ve seen them focus on something and not let up until they got to it. Didn’t matter what you did; unless you took ’em down completely, they kept coming.”

  “That just makes them determined.” Lira turned to him. She’d taken her pack off to give her aching shoulders and back a rest. “Key?”

  “No.”

  “Can we break it open? Or wait it out?”

  Mac shook his head. “Depends. How long can you hold your breath?”

  “Not that long.” Lira thought. Not a bomb, he’d said. “Why? Gas?”

  He looked impressed. “Yes. It kills us. Knocks them out enough for the guys to douse and burn them. They’ve been making bonfires for days.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  He shrugged. “Ran.”

  “You’ll get caught,” she offered. “Get into trouble?”

  Mac looked at her. “What are they going to do to me? It’s the end of the fucking world. The Army out there, those guys? My buddies? Sure, they’re still taking orders for now, but who’s giving them?”

  Lira’s face went numb; she bit the inside of her cheek again just to make sure she could still feel. “The government . . .”

  Mac shook his head.

  “Everything? Gone?”

  “Enough of it’s gone,” Mac said, but before he could say more, something rapped on the inner-office door.

  Soft. Hesitant. It could’ve been an accident, but for the follow-up a few seconds later, a familiar one, one-two, one-two knock that every schoolkid knew to answer with a double rap: shave and a haircut, two bits. So much for them not being that smart.

  “Shit,” Mac breathed.

  They couldn’t get the back door open. No key, no way to break the lock. Lira looked at him as she shrugged back into her pack. She pointed to the steel shelves along the back wall, stocked with cleaning supplies.

  “Those will burn.”

  Mac looked at her, a slow smile breaking over his mouth. “You’re something.”

  “And I want to stay that way.” Lira grabbed a bundle of cleaning cloths and the handle of a broom tucked into a corner. After dousing them in cleaning fluid, she squared her shoulders at him, jerked her chin toward the door. “Got a light?”

  They fought.

  Knife and flame, fists and feet, Mac and Lira fought with whatever they could get their hands on. Broken fingers scrabbled at them; mouths bit. Monsters in the movies were afraid of fire, but not these. They came at Mac and Lira head-on, which only made it easier to shove the burning cloths down their throats or into their eyes, their rot-soft guts. There was no way to kill a hundred creatures hell-bent on destroying them, but all they had to do was make a path big enough to get through. They’d almost made it out the front doors of the pharmacy when one of the Resurrected hooked an arm through the loop of Lira’s pack and yanked her back.

  She was already exhausted and off-balance, and this took her right off her feet. Like a turtle on its back, she swam against the air, trying to fight off the snapping jaws in her face. It was too much, she thought, as she pushed as hard as she could against a chest gone concave with decay beneath a designer suit. This was all too much.

  Then the thing disappeared. Mac grabbed the front of her jacket and pulled her to her feet. “Run.”

  Could she run? What did she have left? Not much, not even the desire to live, really, but somehow Lira found a few more minutes of strength to follow him out the doors and into the street. She didn’t have the energy even to cry out at the sight of more of them, huddled masses of the Resurrected, with more in the distance. From far off, she thought she heard the sound of engines roaring, but she hadn’t heard anything like that in so long, it might’ve been the sound of blood rushing in her ears.

  Then all she knew was running.

  Chapter Three

  LIRA WOKE IN darkness so thick she couldn’t be sure she’d opened her eyes. She remembered running ahead of the swarm, Mac leading her down side streets and alleys with unerring efficiency. He took her into this building, up the broken stairs, and past barricades of furniture, into this apartment.

  She was on a bed.

  A soft bed, oh, God, compared to the thin mattresses in the synagogue basement, this was like lying on a cloud of marshmallows wrapped in cotton batting covered in memory foam. Soft, not scratchy sheets, faintly perfumed with fabric softener. Her hands traveled over her body—she was clean from what she remembered as the coldest shower she’d ever taken. She wore a cotton T-shirt and boxers, utter luxury.

  She sat up, aware of Mac’s steady breathing beside her. He’d brought her here and made sure she was taken care of. Somehow, they’d managed to escape the Resurrected and stay ahead of what he’d assured her was the slow but inexorable progress of the soldiers cleaning the streets one by one. She hadn’t asked him how he knew about this apartment, in one of the few buildings that hadn’t suffered too much damage. She’d seen the photos on the wall in the living room. This was his place.

  She hadn’t asked him, either, about the woman and little girl with him in the pictures. She could guess what had happened to them—what had happened to so many. Instead, Lira had let Mac feed her, give her a place to wash up, clothes, and a bed in which to sleep.

  Skin on skin. It had always worked for her, the release of orgasm washing away at least some of the terror and pain. Mac had given her a lot already. She could give him something, too.

  She rolled onto her side and pressed herself against his back, her hand on the flat, muscled plane of his belly. Mac had the body of a soldier, all lean and hard. She couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup by his face, which had been both dirty and constantly shadowed in their brief acquaintance, but that body . . .

  He was awake instantly at her touch; she could tell by the way he tensed. When her hand slipped lower into the waistband of his pajamas, he muttered something that sounded like a protest. She ignored it.

  He was already hard when she touched him,