Page 50 of My Undead Love Life

It even had beds.

Actual beds.

Luck, Mad, and I had dragged up the two king-sized mattresses we’d slept in the first night here like lunatics because apparently the end of the world hadn’t killed our ability to be stubborn about comfort.

It was great, minus the fact that we had to use fucking buckets to shit in again. We didn’t use them up here, obviously. We used the first or second floor for that in enclosed rooms.

Spencer especially had been mortified by our plan.

My lips twitched as I thought about her. She reminded me of snowfire with her red hair with white streaks throughout it. There was something bright about her that didn’t fit into the apocalypse.

Her boyfriend had sacrificed himself for her, trusting us to keep her safe. It was a hell of a gamble. A desperate one. But he’d saved all of our lives, so the man was a hero, and we’d make damn sure to keep his girl safe.

Moans and groans of the undead echoed through the icy air, and I could hear them like a symphony even from the rooftop of this fucking mall. Thousands of zombies were around us, dragging together into one massive horde.

Dark gray clouds rolled across the sky, a telltale sign that snow would come soon. Winters here were brutal. Bitter enough to crack our skin if we were out too long. If the snow came before the horde cleared, we’d be stuck here even longer. Maybe weeks or even months. If that happened, the roads and paths would vanish under ice, and the dead would freeze into place around the mall like a nightmare waiting to thaw.

Frozen zombies didn’t move as well, but we couldn’t even weave between them; they were so tightly packed together. It would make it impossible to leave.

I flexed my fingers around the hilt of my cane sword and stared out over the parking lot below. The horde had packed itself into the streets, between abandoned cars, around streetlights, against the glass and metal safety gates of the mall. Bodies shifted in the gray light, heads turning at strange angles, mouths open, and hands scraping for something or someone to infect.

Some of them looked up sometimes, but they were smart enough to know they couldn’t reach me. I hated that the most.

The access door creaked open behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Luck stepping onto the roof with his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Mad’s with Spencer. They’ve cooked something on some heated gas stove thing they were able to get to work,” he told me, shivering dramatically as the wind shoved at his blond hair. “Fuck, it’s cold.”

“Yeah, it is.” I stepped back off the edge and walked over to him. My joints felt stiff from standing still too long, and the cold had worked its way through my clothes until it sat against my bones. “I can’t believe they found something to cook on. We needed a warm meal.”

“Right? Don’t know why you’re torturing yourself up here,” Luck mumbled, already turning toward the door.

“I was clearing my mind.” I rolled my eyes as we walked back into the building and shut the door behind us. The second it closed, the wind cut off, but the cold stayed. It clung to the concrete stairwell and the metal railing.

“Hey,” Luck said as we started down. “What do you think of Spencer?”

“Mad seems protective of her,” I muttered.

“He is, isn’t he?” Luck’s multi-colored eyes widened with interest. “Ever since we started doing our nightly checks with her.”

“Being naked is a vulnerable thing,” I replied with a shrug, though my grip tightened slightly on the railing. “She’s trusting him on a pretty personal level, you know. He takes that seriously. Especially since she’s the reason we’re all alive anyway.”

“True.” Luck hummed as we found the hatch opening set above the store we camped out in. It had a ladder, and it was tucked inside a service closet at the top of the stairs by the roof access.

It was another reason Mad wanted us to make base here.

“I wish we could help her somehow,” Luck muttered, opening the hatch and climbing down.

I watched his boots disappear into the dim light below. “Me too, but there’s not much we can do except keep her alive.”

Keeping someone alive sounded simple, until you were doing it in a world that had turned into shit like this one.

“Hey, it’s about time,” Mad said as Luck climbed down.

I made sure the hatch was shut before I descended. The ladder was cold under my hands, the metal biting into my palms as I climbed down into the jewelry store.

Dusty display cases filled the space, their glass smeared and cloudy. Some still held jewelry that no one cared about anymore. Necklaces and rings were arranged on velvet pads. Old security mirrors hung in the corners, reflecting warped pieces of us back at ourselves.