Page 172 of My Undead Love Life

We took positions at the windows, weapons ready, bodies tense, and eyes burning with exhaustion none of us could afford to give in to.

Spencer stayed beside me, her shoulder pressed to mine. The heat from what we’d almost done still lingered between us, buried now beneath fear and gunpowder and the cold draft slipping through the boards.

I wanted to finish kissing her. Instead, I watched the tree line.

We didn’t get second chances in the apocalypse. We weren’t safe here. If the world wanted to stop us from taking her home, I’d make damn sure it bled for it.

28

SPENCER

We packed up and stepped outside at daybreak. The sky was a dull, colorless gray, caught somewhere between night and morning. The storm had moved on, but it had left the world smothered beneath fresh snow.

The infected leopard and wolf corpses still lay in the yard. Snow had collected along their fur and filled the ruined places in their bodies. From a distance, they almost looked peaceful.

Keith and Luck had checked both bodies again before we left, confirming the bullets had destroyed their brains. Mad had stood watch while Oxi and I sprayed ourselves with the scent-disrupting compound Sofia had given us. The sharp mixture of pine, vinegar, and chemicals coated the outside of my clothes, doing nothing to cover the old smell of blood trapped inside my nose from the house.

I lingered on the porch. Leaving the farmhouse hurt more than I expected. I had told myself I had already grieved it. That the actual loss had happened years ago when we abandoned the property and moved everyone to the Oasis. But standing here, with my hand resting against the splintered doorframe, I knew I had been lying to myself.

This had been my childhood home.

Keith stood nearest the bottom of the porch steps. He was looking at the farmhouse with a sad expression. Mad had moved a few yards into the yard, but he turned back to look at me. Oxi and Luck stood near the damaged fence line, both watching me quietly.

“Mom, Dad, and Tori would hate seeing it like this,” I murmured.

Keith’s blue eyes softened. “Yeah. They would.”

My gaze shifted toward the pasture. Snow stretched over it in uneven drifts, marred by the tracks we had made the night before and dark streaks of old blood. The barn sagged inward, part of the roof collapsed, and several wall panels were torn away. The doors Dad had built himself were gone entirely.

“It seems like it was a beautiful home to grow up in,” Mad said.

“It was.”

“Are you ready?” he asked.

I pressed my palm flat against the doorframe one last time. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

We crossed the pasture in a tight formation.

Mad and Luck moved ahead, no more than ten feet in front of us. Mad checked the route against his map while Luck scanned the left side of the tree line, shovel in one hand and pistol accessible on his hip. Keith stayed on my right, his M-4 slung across his chest. Oxi walked on my left, cane sword concealed again, but his hand resting on the handle.

The farmhouse disappeared slowly behind us. We made it out of the pasture and into the woods, following the route toward the Oasis. Out here, everything was quieter than in the city, but it hadn’t always been this quiet. Before the outbreak, the woods around the farmhouse had been loud even in winter.

Ever since the insects died off, the silence had changed. There were no hums or chirring sounds in the warmer months. No clouds of gnats hovering over puddles. No mosquitoes, which should have felt like a blessing, except their absence had dragged so many other things away with them. The bird populations had thinned. Small animals had become rarer. Even spiders were gone. I had once hated walking face-first into their webs during summer. I could barely remember how the strands felt clinging to my skin.

The virus hadn’t only killed people. It stripped the world down, one species at a time.

Snow covered everything in our path, dulling our footsteps as we moved. The trees rose around us like bare bones, their branches woven together overhead.

We kept our weapons ready and scanned every shadow between the trees. None of us had slept. We had sat awake after the animal attack in the ruined farmhouse until dawn, watching the windows and waiting for another predator to emerge from the woods.

The lack of sleep pulled at my eyes. My muscles felt heavy. My thoughts moved a little slower than they should have. But stopping wasn’t an option. Not when we were this close.

“Only a few more hours,” Mad called from ahead. He slowed enough to check the spot I had circled on his map. His thumb traced the route between the farmhouse and the Oasis before he folded the paper again. “If we keep this pace, we might reach it sooner.”

“Fantastic!” Luck whooped.

“How’s your toe?” Keith asked.