Read Online Order of the Dead by Guy James - Free Book Online Page A

we wouldn’t want Corks
worrying about us being worried about him.”
    “That would just make him more stressed,”
Alan agreed.
    Dismissing her worry and filing it
away for later, Senna put down the bowl in which she was mixing dried potato
flakes and honey. It made that sound that glass likes to make when it settles on
a counter. She’d been listening to the footfalls of Alan’s nervous pacing,
framed within the crackling of the fire. His presence, as always, was comforting.
    Smiling, she walked over to him, put
her hands on his shoulders and squeezed, pressing downward at the same time, making
him stop in place. She kissed his mouth, then gave his bottom lip a playful tug
with her teeth.
    Pressing her body against his, she
moaned as the longing grew deep in her belly. She kissed him again, and he
kissed her back. Then she broke away and walked backward, beckoning for him to
follow. Powerless to resist the lilt of her body and the sudden playfulness of
her mood, he followed.
    She took his calloused hand in her own
and led him to the bug bite couch in the living room. She lay down on it and
pulled him on top of her, and he threw the frayed couch cushion that was above her
head to the floor.
    “You need to de-stress, relax a
little…let the rest of the tension out,” Senna whispered. “Let me help you…some
more.”
    Alan looked at her. She had a coquettish
grin on her face and her head was cocked slightly, at an angle that was
undeniably jaunty.
    He began to take his glasses off, but then
she put her hands on his, stopping him.
    “No,” she said, biting her lip and
grinning, “keep them on. You know how I like that. Keep them on…for me. The way
they glint in the firelight…makes you look just a bit…evil.”
    He did know she liked the black-framed
glasses, so he let his hand drop away from the frames and put his arms around
her. She moaned, then wrapped her legs around him and squeezed. Alan leaned
into her with more of his weight, and she moaned again, her mouth staying slightly
open. He bent down and kissed her deeply. They began to move rhythmically, and
then she was tearing at his clothes and he was reciprocating, her want igniting
his own.
    Moments later, they’d succeeded in
getting most of each other’s clothes off. A button had been freed of its
stitching on Alan’s shirt in the struggle, and was now lying beside the
fireplace, inches from the flame-licked timbers.
    The exposed flesh of their lean and
suntanned bodies was glimmering in the light of the flames, and beads of
perspiration were gathering in their usual, strategic places. She pulled him
down on top of her, making sure her nails were grazing his skin, and loving the
feeling of their toned, sweaty bodies mingling.
    Their movements became more sporadic,
and in their give-and-take locomotive of pleasure, you could see the
desperation with which they lived in the post-apocalyptic world. Their bodies were
infused with an awareness that this might very well be the last time, so let’s
fuck each other’s brains out, shall we?
    Framed in waning firelight, they gave
in to an unabashed and unbridled lust.

16
    Alan and Senna were lying on the bug bite couch. The couch was draped in brown,
unfinished leather, like a relic from another time, which it was. It creaked
beneath them, showing its age and entirely unashamed of doing so.
    There were several scatters of bug
bites in the leather—on one of the side cushions and the arm opposite it and
the back—that gave it a noble authenticity Alan loved. It still smelled faintly
of leather, especially in the places where it was stretched and cracked, and
there were many such places.
    Uninfected leather, Alan thought,
beautiful, natural, clean leather. Then he thought of what animals were left
that could be used to make leather, only one obvious one really, and his
expression soured. You could always hope that the stories of wildlife refuges
untouched by the virus were true, but then you wouldn’t be in