Page 109 of My Undead Love Life

There was zero visibility out here, and in a zombie apocalypse, it made an already horrible situation even worse. The snow came at us sideways, thick and relentless, turning the city into a blank, violent blur. Buildings appeared only when we were nearly on top of them. Cars became dark humps under drifts. The road disappeared beneath our boots until we were walking by trust and Mad’s memory alone.

Still, staying in the firehouse would have been worse.

The cold settled deep in my chest like it wanted to freeze me from the inside out. I couldn’t stop shivering. My legs had gone numb from the knees down. My fingers ached inside my gloves, and every breath scraped my throat raw.

“Warehouse should be up ahead,” Mad called over the wind, his voice rough but steady. “It’s a block away. Maybe less.”

“Can’t see shit,” Luck muttered, head down as he pushed forward with his shovel braced against the ground like a walking stick.

Oxi said nothing. He hadn’t since we left. I stayed close to him, our shoulders brushing every few steps. I didn’t trust the storm, and I didn’t trust him not to disappear into it. Not on purpose, maybe. But grief did strange things to people. One wrong step, one moment of not caring whether he kept moving, and the whiteout could take him.

I grabbed his sleeve as soon as the thought popped into my head. He didn’t look at me, but his hand found mine and held on.

“There!” I pointed when a dark shape finally emerged through the blur of snow.

It was a warehouse. Big, boxy, and already half-buried in snow along the lower walls. The building looked abandoned, but in this world, abandoned didn’t mean empty. It only meant no one living had claimed it dramatically enough to be noticed.

“We need to hurry before we get frostbite,” Mad urged.

We pushed harder. By the time we reached the side door, my legs were burning, and my lungs were raw from the cold air. Jan was breathing harshly behind me, and Frank had an arm around her waist, half-supporting her. Mad tried the handle, but it was locked. He pulled out the same key he’d used to get into the fire station, shoved it in, and turned. It worked.

Luck blinked through the snow. “Seriously?”

“We had master keys to every industrial building in the city,” Mad explained over the storm.

The door burst inward, and darkness greeted us.

“Inside, now.”

We stumbled in, dragging cold and snow with us as Mad forced the door shut and locked it behind us, muffling the storm to a distant, howling roar. A heavy silence rushed in to replace it.

I pulled my scarf down, sucking in a breath of stale, dusty air. It tasted like old cardboard, metal, and mildew.

Frank bent over, hands on his knees, coughing. Jan leaned against the wall, eyes closed, snow melting in her dark hair. I noticed that they were both on the upper end of middle age.

“Clear it,” Mad ordered.

No one argued.

The warehouse felt massive. There were empty crates everywhere, probably from having been looted already. A few appeared untouched, stacked beneath rusted shelving that climbed high toward the ceiling. The shelves cast long, crooked shadows across the concrete floors. Old plastic wrapping fluttered from a pallet when a draft slipped through somewhere unseen.

Our footsteps echoed, and every sound carried. We moved as one methodical unit.

Mad made Frank and Jan stay close to the entrance while the four of us pushed forward. I didn’t like leaving them behind us, but they were unarmed and exhausted, and one terrified stranger swinging blindly in the dark would only make everything worse.

The first zombie came from behind a stack of pallets. It was slow and rotting, one foot dragging uselessly behind it.

I stepped in before it could get close, my blade cutting clean through its neck. The sound was gross and final.

“Left,” Luck muttered.

Another.

Then, another.

We took turns taking them down aside from Oxi. He moved with us, but barely. His cane sword stayed in his hand, yet he looked hollow, his eyes focused somewhere far beyond the warehouse. When a zombie got too close to him, Mad killed it before it could touch him.

Oxi didn’t even react.