Page 45 of My Undead Love Life

I stumbled into the mall. The air inside was colder than outside, somehow. It wrapped around me, stale and dusty, with none of the movement the wind had carried in the lot.

My eyes struggled with the dimness after the pale glare of outside, and for a few seconds, everything was just shapes and shadows. Storefronts yawned open around us. Mannequins stood in the distance like pale, headless people.

Oxi came in rough, one shoulder first, teeth bared against whatever pain the movement caused. Luck grabbed him by the arm and helped haul him the rest of the way in.

Oxi rolled onto his side, cursed under his breath, and shoved himself up with his cane sword still somehow in his hand. “Thanks.”

Mad came last. He barely fit through the opening, shoulders scraping brick as he forced himself inside.

The horde’s groans swelled behind him, loud enough now that they seemed to push through the wall with him.

Once he was in, he turned immediately and dragged a heavy metal slab that had been leaning against the wall next to the hole across it. The metal screamed against the tile with a horrible grinding shriek that made me cover my ear with my free hand and wince.

Mad braced his boots and shoved again. His biceps bulged as he shoved the metal. The sharp crack of the seal echoed through the mall as he pushed it into place.

The four of us stood there, breathing hard.

My chest rose and fell too quickly. Dust clung to the inside of my nose and coated my tongue.

Luck bent forward with one hand on his knee, shovel hanging from the other. Oxi leaned against the wall near the sealed hole, jaw tight, eyes shutting for one second. Mad stayed facing the slab, axe lifted, listening.

Outside, the first of the dead began to reach the doors of the mall. Thank God the metal safety gates were in place. They covered the front of the mall in a heavy grid, pulled down behind the broken glass doors. Rust crawled over the bars in uneven patches, and a few sections were bent inward, but they held.

The mall had a better chance of surviving this horde because of them. It had survived until now, after all.

But I had never seen a horde of that size before. I didn’t know it was possible to get that big. The thought made my skin feel too tight. A few hundred became a thousand. A thousand became millions…

Hands slapped against the standing glass in some places, and some shoved against the entrance until the safety gates rattled in their hands, metal clanging against metal.

My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my throat.

“It should hold,” Mad stated.

Luck rubbed a hand over his face. “Well…that’s comforting.”

He looked toward the entrance, then at the safety gates, then back into the darkness behind us. “Definitely love being trapped in the mall with the world’s worst horde outside,” he added under his breath.

“Could be worse,” Oxi said.

Luck stared at him. “How?”

Oxi turned slowly, scanning the dark interior of the mall. “Something inside could have heard us.”

My stomach sank. The mall behind us felt too large, but the horde kept hitting the front gates.

Bang!

Groan.

Bang!

Groan.

Bang!

“Let’s hope nothing did,” Mad said. “If we’re lucky, only stragglers made it in.”

His gaze moved over the corridor, measuring the dark corners, the open stores, and the floors above us. The mall rose higher than I expected with a second level circling overhead with glass railings filmed in dust.