Page 6 of My Undead Love Life

“Oh, that’s bad,” someone muttered.

Keith broke the kiss, breathing hard. His forehead pressed against mine for the briefest second. His blue eyes were shining now, tears finally spilling freely down his face.

“Please,” he whispered to the strangers. “Get her home for me.”

Then, he shoved me out of the subway car.

“No!” I screamed as I stumbled back off the car and fell through the crack in the door.

Strong arms caught me before I could throw myself back toward him. One of the men wrapped both arms around my waist and hauled me away while I fought like a wild animal in his grip.

“Keith!”

He stood framed in the broken subway doorway with his rifle raised, surrounded by the streaking sunlight and crawling shadows. The undead surged toward him from both directions, their groans deafening now.

He smiled at me, holding his hand up in a wave. “Run, wildflower!”

“Keith!” I screamed, my voice tearing raw through my throat as it echoed down the subway tunnel. “Don’t you dare die on me!”

“I love you, Spencer!” he hollered back.

The deafening roar of his M-4 erupted through the tunnel.

The muzzle flashes strobed against the darkness behind us, brief bursts of light illuminating swarming bodies and spraying blood before plunging everything back into dark.

Zombies shrieked over the relentless gunfire.

“I love you, too!” I sobbed. My chest felt like it was being ripped open from the inside out. “I love you so much. Please, don’t leave me!”

“She’s going to get us killed,” the man with the fire axe hissed as he sprinted ahead of us, boots splashing through puddles of murky water and blood.

“Shut up, Mad.” The man holding me tightened his grip around my waist before suddenly throwing me over his shoulder. The motion knocked the breath from my lungs.

“Put me down!” I screamed, pounding uselessly against his back as he broke into a faster run. “Keith!”

“He’s buying us time!” the blond man holding me shouted. “Don’t waste his sacrifice!”

“I have to go back!” Panic clawed through me. My tears dripped onto the stranger’s jacket as the tunnel blurred beneath me. “Please—I can’t leave him!”

He didn’t slow. “You don’t have a choice.”

“No,” I whimpered, the word breaking apart as disbelief curled through my chest and anchored itself deep in my heart. “He can’t die.”

The stranger’s shoulder dug painfully into my stomach with every pounding step. Around us, the tunnel smelled like blood and decay. My ears rang endlessly from Keith’s rifle fire behind us, each burst making my pulse jump.

“Focus on survival right now,” the axe wielder snapped without looking back. “Cry later.”

“Mad,” the blond guy warned sharply.

“What?” he shot back, cleaving his axe through a zombie staggering into our path. Bone cracked loudly. “If she loses it, we all die.”

“He’s not wrong,” the other man muttered.

Another gunshot thundered behind us. Then another. Then several more in rapid succession.

Each one felt like a countdown.

I pushed hard enough on the stranger’s back to lift my head and catch glimpses of the subway car disappearing farther into the darkness behind us. Muzzle flashes still flickered near the doorway, where Keith stood his ground against the horde.