Page 31 of My Undead Love Life

Zombies groaned once again, the sound carrying faintly through the metal door.

Luck exhaled slowly beside me. “Relax for once. Get to know each other a little more.”

“I know more about you than I’d like to,” Oxi replied flatly.

“Not for us.” The sleeping bags rustled softly as Luck nudged my shoulder with his. “Spencer, why do you wield a katana?”

“Really?” My brows shot up.

“Really,” he answered.

“I use a katana because of Akiko. She’s a survivor who joined us, and she brought an extra one to the Oasis,” I whispered. “I didn't have a weapon yet, so she started teaching me how to use it. She made me practice with a heavy stick first before giving it to me.”

“That’s cool. You close with her?”

“Yeah. She was brutal about teaching me, too. If my stance was wrong, she’d make me hold it until my thighs shook. If I got confident too soon, she’d knock the stick right out of my hand and tell me the undead didn’t care about confidence.”

Luck let out a quiet laugh.

“After that, every day after chores, she'd train with me,” I continued. “It took two months until I was comfortable enough to take out a zombie with it.”

Luck let out an impressed whistle. “You sound dedicated.”

“I had to learn to use something. She was—is—an amazing friend. She’s still there,” I murmured.

The Oasis was full of people who were still there, and I was trapped in a closet underground with strangers and grief and some animal with claws beyond the door mixed with the zombies.

I forced myself to speak again before that thought could drag me under. “Why the shovel?”

“Fair question.” Metal shifted softly as he tapped the handle beside him. “I was a junior groundskeeper before all this. At my local cemetery.”

“Seriously?”

Something about a cemetery and the zombie apocalypse gave me chills.

“Seriously.” A grin seemed to enter his voice. “The shovel was the closest thing I had to a weapon when everything started going to shit. By the time I realized how fucked we all were, I already knew how to swing it.”

“That’s impressive,” I murmured.

“What’s more impressive is that he fell into a reservoir swinging the shovel the first time I fought with him, and his lucky ass barely missed a bite from behind because of it,” Mad chuckled.

“Lucky bastard,” Oxi chimed in condescendingly.

“You see what I deal with?” Luck gasped.

“We literally can't see anything,” Oxi replied.

“True.” Luck leaned over me and nudged Mad. “Tell her about your axe.”

Mad shifted, careful not to brush against me too much. “I was at the fire station when everything went down. The fire axe was already in my hands. I've trusted it ever since.”

“You trust that thing more than people,” Oxi muttered.

“It's earned it. People haven’t.”

“That's sad,” Luck murmured.

“That's experience,” Mad stated.