Lust Plague (Steamwork Chronicles) (11 page)

“No. This could be dangerous, and I want to help you. Why? Do you want to run?”

Damn him. How dare he ask such an excruciating question? But she didn’t have to answer. She sniffed, tried to pull his finger away from the collar, but he wouldn’t budge and instead gave it a jerk.

“Answer me, Kaysana. Do you want to run from me?”

“An entire city is fleeing in the other direction! There’s something out there that turns people into zombies! And you’re my only…friend.” She stared at the blond hairs on his forearm, frowned. “You’re damned big, and strong.” At that she was sure his dick pulsed against her bottom.
Hmph
. “I’d be stupid to want to get rid of you.”

He grunted. “Good. Glad to see you want to fuck me too. Now let’s go find out about this Emily.” He unclipped the leash, hauled himself to his feet, and dusted himself off.

She glared up at him. “I do not want…to fuck you.”

“No?” He angled up an eyebrow. “I doubt you’ll win that argument. Come.”

By the time she’d scrambled to her feet, he was already out the door, having rescued his shotgun and sword from a hat stand. He obviously expected her to fall in on his tail. Sighing, she followed.

Past Sten’s shoulder, his wolf lay midstreet, watching. The little bird sat fluffed up on top of one paw.

“I’m sure that’s Emily’s.” Slowly she approached Cadrach. “Here, boy. Let me look.”

When he lifted his lip in a snarl, she froze with her hand out.

“Cadrach, at ease!” Sten stepped past her, brushed her hand aside, and coaxed the bird. “Here, little one.” Cheeping, the canary stepped daintily onto his finger.

“May I?” With both hands, she cupped the trembling bird. “Aww. It’s scared.”

“Crazy bird. Seems to like Cadrach.”

Lips pursed, she made kissing sounds and stroked its feathers. Slowly the bird calmed. A red streak remained on the pad of her finger. “Blood.” She blinked.
What had happened to Emily?

“Not good, then. And neither’s he.”

“What?” She heard the sound of the shotgun being unslipped from the holster on Sten’s back.

A hundred yards away, a zombie staggered toward them. Beyond, above the roof of a whitewashed building, red smoke trickled into the sky. The zing of fear and alertness sent goose bumps racing along her arms. The bird pecked at her palm. She put her thumb on its head, patting to reassure it.

Tattered cloths hung from the zombie’s arms and body. The gargling sound of its breathing broke the silence of the deserted street.

“One isn’t a problem. But let’s get to the steam cycle. I want to find Emily if I can.” She blinked at Sten, placed the bird on her shoulder. “Not leaving her if I can help it. Understand?”

“Sure. Up you come.” With a hand in her armpit, he helped her to her feet. To her relief, his touch did no more than any man’s might have. “Any ideas on how to do that?”

She joined him in jogging to the steam cycle. Already waiting at the back door, the wolf looked up at her, tongue dangling across those large white teeth. “Um. Follow the red smoke? That’s a rescue marker.”
Where to sit?
Sitting in the backseat with the snarly damn wolf was just not happening again.

“Aah, I see it. You're showing your smart side today.” He wrenched open the driver’s door, slung the haversack over the headrest and onto the floor at the back. “Get in. Zomb at forty paces and closing, speeding up with the lurches too.”

“Shoot him?” When she looked pointedly at his shotgun, he shrugged and tapped the ammo on his belt.

“No. I kill when I have to.”

Why did I have to get lumped with a squeamish merc?

Then the hard filter of years of training dropped away. The zombie was once a father, a son. She understood and sympathized with Sten.
God, I can't function like this, can I? Feeling all the time? How does Sten?

The wolf looked at her, then the door. She opened it. He bounced in, straight onto the shiny, buttoned-down leather, circled once, and sat with tail wrapped about his paws. The canary launched itself from her shoulder to land on the opposite armrest.
Not much room
. She shuddered.

“Say, could I drive?”
Then you can sit in the back with your fluffy dog.

He paused, halfway into the front position. “No. Get…” He glanced at her face, then the zombie, and grabbed her hand. “I’ll drive. You navigate.” He pulled her over, slipped into the seat, then dragged her in and onto his lap.

The steam cycle grumbled slowly down the street, weaving in a wide arc around the zombie, who tangled his feet and fell.

A dead donkey lay on its side with a small cart still strapped to it by a harness. They swerved left at the end of the street and into a narrower one. A swarm of zombies hobbled toward them—footpath to footpath, an almost unbroken line.

“Hang on!” Sten accelerated, the front wheel lifted, then thumped down, stirring up swirling dust. Engine screaming, they headed for the far right of the zombie pack. With Sten’s arms either side, Kaysana could only grip a fistful of the trouser fabric over his thighs and do exactly what he’d said—hang on tight.

A gun would be nice. Shooting something would be even better.

Arms and black fingers stretched toward them. Heads turned. The growling and moans penetrated the cycle’s glass and metal. Dead eyes swiveled. Nothing seemed to register to the zombies except them—breathing, living bodies. The gap ahead narrowed between the footpath and a building wall. With a teeth-cracking
thud
, the cycle mounted the footpath. A zombie appeared, clawed at the glass, went under the wheel, shrieking.

Oh hell!

The cycle bumped, slewed, and tilted, then rumbled over the top. Blackened blood splatted the windshield, lower left. They zoomed through the thinning crowd of undead. The street ahead was bare. The cries dissipated. The blood dribbled down, tendrils spreading sideways with the buffeting of air like a spiderweb spun of darkness.

“Gods and angels above,” Kaysana gasped. She twisted and stared past the wolf. The zombies turned and stumbled to follow. “They’re coming. This has to be quick.”

“Yes.”

Shutting her eyes might scare away the gruesome visions of rotting, chewing zombie mouths…of mangled limbs and gore and dripping eye sockets, of skulls with monstrous holes and hair plastered down with seeping brains.
Ugh. No, not helping
. She opened her eyes.

“You okay?” Sten freed a hand from the wheel, clasped her arm.

“Sure.” She remembered to breathe. “Sure.”

They followed the smoke. Her heart slowed from the nightmare tumult that had thudded at her chest, and she discovered there were benefits to sitting up front. She’d never been this fragile before. What had happened to the no-nonsense, steel-riveted wall around her soul? But for once she had someone to lean on in a time of peril.

A man makes a good armchair, she thought. Warm. Solid. A sanctuary.

A mile later, while snuggling back into Sten, she discovered the dangers.

“Try to keep it down,” she mumbled. His erection was going up and down on a regular basis. “Can’t you control yourself?”

“Around you?” Sten laughed. The bass tone near her ear started up that harmonic vibration in her crotch, and she melted just the teensiest amount, felt dampness in her cleft. He turned the wheel carefully. His chin rested near her ear, warm breath drifting through her hair as he peered around her to drive. “You’re not going to last much longer, are you?”

He knew.

“I’m not going to answer that on the basis it might give you ideas.” But she squirmed on his lap.

He laughed silently. “We’d better go find this Miss Emily before your brain turns to mush again and I have to fuck you to get you to make sense.”

Cao. Shit. Damn
. The swear words didn’t change anything, but they did help her feel better.
Arrogant man.

Wind had torn the red smoke into a tattered veil. Sten steered into a wider street. “There’s the source.”

Ahead was one of the tallest buildings—four stories, and at the top, at the very edge, a gyrocopter lay on its side. A crumpled rotor blade stuck out into space. When Kaysana wound down her window, the canary zipped out, shot straight up to the roof, and vanished from view.

“I reckon she’s up there. I’ll get you the revolver from the haversack.”

Five headless and well-perforated corpses were strewn about the street—all of them near the building. Had the other zombies come from here?

“Those are gunshot wounds.” She peered up. “Someone’s been defending themselves.” Alive still? God, she prayed it was so.

He flipped open the door, nudged her off his lap.

The building’s four-story facade rose before her eyes. The walls sloped slightly inward like on many buildings here—designed to resist earthquakes—and every tier had a small ledge underscoring the windows and wrought-iron grates. The walls were off-white brick, and on a big square sign POLICE HEADQUARTERS was written in Spanish, Tibetan, and English. The high timber doors leading in were propped open as if waiting for them.

She reached back and undid the rear door of the steam cycle. Cadrach jumped out and trotted over to sniff a zombie. “Not much taste, has he?”

“He’ll do. Smelling doesn’t equal liking.”

“No, but it makes me uncomfortable.”

Sten unclipped his haversack and handed her a chunky, holstered revolver and belt. She put it around her waist, adjusted the fit, cinched the bronze buckle. “Let’s go.”

He reached up and unsheathed his shotgun. The haversack swung from one shoulder. “Yeah, let’s. So why are we standing here with our feet glued to the floor?”

“We aren’t.” She drew the revolver. With Sten at her shoulder, she strode to the short flight of steps and into the building. What could go wrong when she had this monolith of a man as an ally?

Inside the foyer, straight ahead and in front of the stairs, a timber desk was piled with paper, pens, and books. The floor was strewn with clothes, weapon belts, truncheons, and paper.

“Me first,” Sten muttered.

They picked their way through the debris, then went slowly round and round the stair flights, checking every new corner, trying every door, expecting a zombie at any moment. In the quiet of the deserted building, the scuff of their boots on the stairs sounded loud as a shovel carving earth. From above, light trickled into the stairwell. Dark niches remained where a zombie might cower.

No matter how much Kaysana stared, the shadows sprouted suspicious shapes. She shook her head. “I think my eyes are growing stalks.”

“Ah-huh, knew there was somethin’ odd about you,” whispered Sten out of the corner of his mouth.

At the top, a closed door was the last barrier between them and the roof.

The sign on the door: WARNING. BEWARE OF SPINNING GYROCOPTER BLADES.

The walls rippled, jellifying for a moment.

Sten pushed past her, brushing her arm. The minuscule touch of his skin on hers fragmented and sizzled. Bliss struck. She shuddered, rocked back into the wall. Seconds later her brain cells kicked in. The lust was back. Wet, throbbing cleft, nipples like bullet points…damn.

Mouth open to breathe, she
made
herself calm.
One. Two. Three.

Cool air coasted between her thighs. Kaysana looked down at the leather leaves of her skirt and grimaced. Her outfit revealed more than it concealed. She adjusted the mask. If anyone human was out there, she wanted to stay incognito wearing this getup.

After a swift twist of the handle, Sten wrenched open the door and rolled out. He sprang to his feet with the shotgun up, the barrel cruising in a semicircle, ready to blast enemies. Out there the sky was blue and cloudless. Framed by the doorway, a crumpled ball of paper tumbled past. The hairs on her arms went on alert. Cold raced down her spine.

Still…nothing happened. Cadrach brushed past and ran out onto the roof.

Trying to show nonchalance, she wandered out—pretending Sten wasn’t already getting under her skin, into her veins, and between her legs, as if she wasn’t eyeing him with a view to hauling him back into the stairwell so she could screw him fast and dirty.

Gun barrel pointing the way, she turned, scanning the flat roof. Four dead male zombies sprawled near the wrecked gyro. At one corner, a five-yard-high metal-braced tower had a weather cock spinning atop. Storage bins, not much else. Where was Emily?

“Go slow, Sten. Some might be only half-downed.” She hefted the revolver, ready to pop one into anything that moved, that shouldn't.

“Sure.” Heel, toe, heel, toe, he worked his way past the four zombie corpses. None stirred. “Brains are gone. They’re good and expired.”

Stepping as if on fractured glass, dirt crunching underfoot, she eyed the bolts at the base of the shiny new radiophony tower. There must be a radiophony transmitter. Worth knowing, if she could figure out how to use the newfangled thing. She sneaked a look to the left. Nothing lurked behind the storage bins.

“Who’s there?”

Woman's voice—Emily’s?

Cadrach loped toward the sound and whined.

On the far side of the wreck, they found Emily, naked, bound with her hands before her, and tied to the gyrocopter by her ankle. Metal creaked as a gust shook the gyro, making it teeter on the edge. The canary alternated between flying in frantic circles and landing on Emily. Two women lay dead a few yards away.

In Emily’s eyes dwelt the blandness of overwhelming fear. Next to her, a large bore shotgun was propped against the gyro’s metal skin. Her whole body shook in waves from her pigtails to her toes. “Tha-thank you for coming, ma’am, sir. I’m sorry.” She sniffled. “Sorry I couldn’t help them. Ammo’s gone.”

Cadrach lay near her, chin on paws, yellow eyes watching Emily’s every move. He wriggled close on his belly and licked her leg twice.

“You did good, girl.” Sten laid his gun down and brushed her temple. “We got your back now. Don’t look at them. Tell me, are you wounded anywhere?”

“No. Just them.”

Both women were from the
Art of War
—a pilot and an ensign. Not zombified, just plain dead people. Kaysana kept her face rigid, absorbing the pain, striving for control. Every time she lost someone, it hurt, but this… Bile flavored her mouth, screwed up her guts. She frowned a little. Sten was so good at comforting people. Instinctive almost, it seemed. Hugging was just plain foreign to her. She envied him.