Page 43 of My Undead Love Life

“You shouldn’t have,” I murmured, lowering my gaze. “But you’re right.”

The words tasted awful on my tongue.

My chest tightened as they came out, squeezing around my ribs until it hurt to breathe. What I was doing wouldn’t bring Keith back. Standing in the parking lot would save no one.

It would only add more bodies to the horde.

I swallowed hard, but it did nothing for the ache in my throat. “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

Oxi’s green eyes pierced me. “Okay.”

Luck’s jaw worked once, and his gaze flicked over my face with the careful helplessness of someone who wanted to fix something broken but didn’t know how to.

Mad’s eyes stayed on me the longest. There was something in them I couldn’t figure out.

“We have to get inside the mall.” Mad turned toward the entrance, axe up. “Last time I was this way, the mall was the most secure area on this block.”

“Things change,” Oxi muttered darkly.

Luck jogged close to my side, gun in hand, his eyes cutting from the mall entrance to the spreading mass behind us. The horde had reached the third line of abandoned cars. “And if you’re wrong⁠—”

“We don’t have any other choice,” Mad snapped.

Luck’s mouth snapped shut.

“It’s the only option we have with a massive migrating horde this close,” Mad told us.

A low groan drifted through the air behind me. Far too close. The sound slid under my skin before I could react. It was not part of the horde’s further, rolling chorus. It was singular and close enough that I felt it at the back of my neck.

Before I could turn, a sickening squelch cut the sound off.

I spun around so fast my backpack shifted hard against my shoulder and nearly threw me off balance.

Oxi stood inches behind me, his cane sword buried through the skull of a mottled-faced zombie that had been reaching for my shoulder.

Its hand was still raised. Blackened blood ran slowly down Oxi’s blade.

It was thick and sluggish, clinging to the metal before dripping onto the asphalt with soft, ugly taps. The zombie’s mouth hung open around a sound it would never finish. Its skin was mottled green-gray beneath smears of dirt, one cheek torn down to the teeth. One cloudy eye stared past me. The other was gone.

My heart slammed violently in my chest. How had I been so busy trying not to look back at the horde that I had forgotten my immediate surroundings?

“Thank you,” I breathed.

“Thank me by moving!” Oxi snapped. He jerked the sword free with a wet scrape that made bile rise in my throat. The zombie’s skull shifted around the blade before releasing it, and Oxi stumbled half a step from the force of pulling it loose. His face twisted with disgust, but he did not look away from the body until it fell.

The corpse collapsed to the ground with a dull, lifeless thud.

Its head hit the asphalt last.

I flinched at the sound.

Oxi wiped the worst of the blood off his blade against the corpse’s shirt, his mouth pulled into a grim line.

“Fuck,” Mad muttered. “Two more right there.” He pointed toward an abandoned car a few yards away.

My eyes snagged on the shattered windshield and rust around the wheel wells. Shadows behind it shifted, and I noticed the two zombies watching us from behind the car.

They were not stumbling blindly toward us. They were crouched low near the passenger side, half-hidden by the vehicle. It looked like they had been waiting for one of us to drift too close.