Hot and Haunted Read Free Page B

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, mostly because she’d been lost a few times and always managed to find her way back to the church. Downtown Pittsburgh was bordered by water on two sides. That made it easier even when every other familiar landmark had been destroyed
    Her calves ached. She started to sweat. Her lower back hurt from where the edge of the backpack bumped her repeatedly. Lira concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, her boots gripping the crumbling sidewalk, her fingers grabbing for support on the piles of debris as she climbed over the barriers everywhere. She moved as swiftly and quietly as she could, but she’d never be graceful.
    She wasn’t expecting to run into a crowd when she turned the corner. Only self-preservation kept her from gasping aloud. She froze, one foot just over the ridge of concrete sidewalk that had buckled upward, one hand on the corner of a building that had somehow remained standing.
    She’d seen bunches of them before, usually when they were attacking, but she’d never witnessed anything quite like this. Ten, no, twelve . . . no, she counted a few more hidden in the shadows. More than twenty Resurrected stood huddled around a streetlamp. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. They all stared up at the sky with their torn and broken mouths hanging open. Moonlight glinted off the eyeballs of those who still had them. She could see crusted black goo around the remains of their nostrils, and she fought a shudder.
    This wasn’t the street she was looking for—the one she needed was several past this one—but she’d already tried two alternate routes tonight and been blocked. She needed to get the things on this list, tonight and not tomorrow or the day after. Heather’s baby was due any second. They all needed medical supplies.
    It was up to her, and by God, Lira was determined to do it.
    She continued to watch them, the huddling group. They muttered and murmured in unison, low growls that rose and fell like a hum. Like a buzzing swarm.