Bury Me In Smoke

By Megan Kennedy

The world is a hard, cold place, and that was before the living dead trampled it underfoot. This warrior would be one to know. He never did have an easy path, and this morning is no exception as he stares at the glittering ruins in the distance.

New Orleans. The city is now a crumbling maze, haunted by psychotic warlords leading bloodthirsty gangs. Even from the road, he can feel the presence of other survivors... scavengers, warriors, like him. His own brand of coldness has kept him alive this long, but there's no way in hell he can go on without ammo. His choices are Nola, or death.

But the Big Easy has her generous moments. A wayward woman crosses his path, the rarest prize a heart as black as his could hope for. But isn't it just his luck? This prize has fire in her belly-- and a bounty on her head.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Megan Kennedy
• Release date: Jun 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476323053

Megan Kennedy

Writing saved Megan Kennedy’s life, and now she can’t stop. She is a versatile writer and journalist with extensive experience in a variety of areas. She is a senior staff writer and photographer with legendary SLUG Magazine in Salt Lake City, Utah. Since 2011, she has contributed to the magazine’s print and online editions, as well as its Society of Professional Journalists Award-winning podcast, in the following areas: album reviews, band interviews, live show and event reviews, book reviews, opinion roundtable, heavy metal culture, geek culture, tattoo culture, and fine arts. Her fiction and poetry has been published in several locations over the years, both online and in print, including Dinosaur Bees, Phantom Kangaroo, Luna Station Quarterly, and Tales of the Zombie War. A full list of her publications can be found on her tumblr page: http://duskblood.tumblr.com/works

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Bury Me In Smoke

Megan Kennedy

Published by Megan Kennedy at Smashwords

Copyright © 2012 by Megan Kennedy

http://duskblood.tumblr.com

Cover by Abuse of Reason Art

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be given away or re-sold to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my appreciation to the friends and family who have loved and supported me as I pursue my creative dreams. Special thanks to Matt Brunk, Kate Lu, Jay Knioum and Roger Prows for their help getting this story and all its particulars polished and ready for the big wide world.

This story is dedicated to Chris Price,

for feeding-- but never trying to tame-- a tiger.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - All Roads Lead To Nola

Chapter 2 - A Race To Hell

Chapter 3 - Quads Just Want To Have Fun

Chapter 4 - Slept Like The Dead

Chapter 5 - The World Is A Vampire

Chapter 6 - Killing Fields

Chapter 7 - Reclamation

Bury Me In Smoke: Omerta

About The Author

Other Works by Megan Kennedy

Chapter One

All Roads Lead To Nola

The morning New Orleans glittered on the horizon, he had six shells left. Six shells, and the handle of his fireman's axe was two good decapitations away from losing its own head. He was desperate. Food hadn't been a problem yet; nor water, though the latter fact was sheer luck. Bloated corpses bobbed down rivers and streams, clogging lakes like morbid matchsticks, and most of the sink taps only coughed dust at him when he turned the handles. One brainless night, he'd thought it a grand idea to check out a dark, moldy basement for supplies and found himself wrestling with someone's infected grandma, no doubt locked down there and forgotten about when the panic started. The bitch sent him dropping into the concrete floor and his 9-mil went off. After he snapped her wrinkled neck, he saw the stray slug had dug a hole into the water heater, and it was like a light bulb went off in his dusty brain. He didn't hurt for water after that.

But now he was down to six shells  and his handgun was already empty.

New Orleans was a bad idea. The levies were still fine, from the looks, but that could change fast. His skin pricked up with the feeling, the knowing, of other predators lurking in its steel maze. Like dogs pissing on a tree, only men like him could smell the taint left by his kind. They hadn't abandoned the Big Easy yet, and they sure as shit wouldn't make it any kind of easy for him.

Six shells.

He cursed and started walking.

Once inside the city, his progress slowed to a ridiculous crawl. The streets were stuffed with overturned buses, abandoned SWAT trucks, burnt-out NOPD cruisers and, most of all, bodies. He discovered he didn't much like urban warfare, no sir, not compared to the free hunting of the country. The air was thick with soot and smoke from still-raging fires, and the smell of the collected dead baking in the Louisiana summer was enough to bring him to tears. Not to mention all this climbing and balancing, checking every window for hungry infected mouths, peeking around corner after corner after corner…twice he nearly wasted his endangered shells getting spooked in his peripheral, first from a blood-stained mannequin in some dress shop, and then again when he caught his reflection in the broken glass of a jukebox someone had tossed into the street. Yes sir, the city was something else, and bad news in any language.

Worse, all the scouting made him lose attention for other things. In all his attempts to even cut a path through the destruction that was New Orleans, he didn't notice the sun dipping into the west until her light was already sliced in half by the city's buildings. He'd never make it to a safe harbor before dark. He had six shells, and no choice but to sleep in this rat maze.

After crawling over the top  which, once, had been the side  of a stalled bus wedged in a narrow side street, he saw three interesting things. Firstly, someone had cleared the infected from this street recently; the sweet metal stench of blood rode the breeze like a lazy mosquito. Second, the highway patrol car riddled with bullet holes and crunched against a light post still had its shotgun in the rack, and quite possibly, its shell stash. Third, and most interesting, he could see humanoid movement in the shadows of the open-air diner on the corner.

Whatever the cruiser did or didn't have, he would never find out without whatever was in that diner seeing him. The light post was directly out front, and the car was wrapped around it like a piece of litter blown there by a careless wind. He was running out of time before dark fell, and six shells in hand after dark was out of the question.

He pulled his shotgun off his back and cocked it like a quiet whisper. With soft steps, he slipped along the diner's outer wall until reaching the closest of the five open archways looking out into the street. The sun was low now, her light golden and bold, but the harsh angles of the buildings across the street left the diner interior cowering in the shadows. He could hear loud, almost fearless rummaging. Did the infected dig and search? He decided he shouldn't put it past them. Fucked up is fucked up, his brother would have said, and logic does no more good for that situation than a banana does for a nymphomaniac.

He listened, until he was sure they weren't facing him, and then leaned one eye around the arch. The diner looked as if a small tornado had erupted inside, chairs and tables tossed in panic. Flies buzzed around bodies and rotten food. But where was the…

There, behind the counter. Hunched over; a woman. He couldn't tell what she was doing, if she was infected or worse, armed. But he was sure she was alone.

He stepped into the diner, poking his big black boots around broken dishes and dismembered limbs. He kept his eyes on her hunched back, her jerking arms, and her dirty hair. She moved well enough to be alive, and uninfected. Christ, she didn't even hear him coming. How did she survive this long? Even from halfway across the checkered floor, his twelve-gauge could have sheared her face 

I'd stop if I were you.

Startled, his heel came down hard on a teacup that, until that moment, had survived the apocalypse without a chip. It shattered elegantly, scattering porcelain across the checkered floor.

At this range, you're not in much position to be givin' orders, he said after a pause.

She half-turned, still crouched in the broken mess. Funny, I was thinking the same thing. For a moment he thought her sarcastic, mocking. But then she pointed, and he groaned as he saw two identical shotguns hiding in a dark hole of the counter, aimed at his knees. The tripwires wrapped around her wrist disappeared into the shadows, but he knew where they ended. His gun was still drooping at his side like a lazy, limp cock, aiming at the dirty tile floor.

Fuck, but he didn't see that coming.

I don't need any help, she said, stuffing the treasures she found in a dirty blue backpack. Just be on your way.

His face twisted in amusement. Help? Why would I help you?

You boys love any excuse to play hero, she said. For certain, now, he knew she wasn't southern. She'd come far to get here.

He said nothing. She didn't seem bothered by his presence, aside from the occasional glance his direction to make sure he hadn't gotten any ideas.

When she finished, she stood and swung the pack over her shoulders. With a flick of her wrist, she sent him a few steps backward and walked around the counter. She was short, and judging by the size of her clothes and the stretch marks along her arms, she hadn't been this thin and in shape for long. She wore a tank top and cargo pants, but if you asked him what color they were, he could only say: dust. Same with her hair, and in this dark, her eyes; it was like she'd been pulled from a pit in some nameless hellish desert instead of from between her mama's thighs.

But compared to the other uninfected women he'd seen these last weeks, she was a goddess. A goddess with blood under her nails.

She stared at him with the vaguest of frowns. She must have seen his eyes wandering. He felt a disused part of him sparking to life, hardening, begging. He licked his lips without thinking, lust blazing in his eyes. In an instant she dropped her hand  without the tripwires  to the buck knife on her belt and, with a great hop forward, pushed it into his neck like he was a hog she was ready to bleed for dinner. For the second time in as many minutes, his ego yelped.

The steel in her eyes was tainted, dark, and ugly. And while he still couldn't see their color, there was no mistaking the fire roaring somewhere far, far back, buried in a cave of her mind, where she hoped he couldn't see it. You've made it so far, mister… God knows how long following that I-10, and halfway through the city in one day…

He blinked. She had seen him this morning, coming into the city. She may have been following him all day. Christ, this kitten had claws.

She flicked her wrist softly; the blade was cold. Hate to see you throw all that work away for some pussy.

If she had been trying to spook him, to make him think he was in over his head, she had only served in flaring the lust boiling in the pit of his stomach. Her eyes watched, waited, her knife kissing the hot skin of his neck. A perfect drop of sweat caught the sun as it rolled down her tan collarbone, and he almost lost his mind.

God, but she was stoic. Her chest heaved and he knew the hunger in his face had gotten to her, but she didn't drop the knife, didn't move her glance, not for a nanosecond. Part of her was sincerely ready to slit his pretty throat if he didn't back out of that diner, right the fuck now.

He'd only have one shot. That knife was dancing across his jugular, begging for an introduction. At his side, his trigger-finger twitched.

But the city, cruel as she was, had her generous moments.

Before he could make his