Page 146 of My Undead Love Life

“Not relevant,” Mad said.

“It feels relevant if it’s me.”

“It’s probably you,” Oxi said.

Luck nodded. “Yeah, okay, fair.”

The woman continued, as cheerful as ever, “I’m just lending you a helping hand. Take it or leave it.”

“We don’t know what’s down there,” Mad said quietly.

“No,” Keith agreed.

Oxi looked at the empty white fields around us. “We know what’s up here.”

My body shook hard enough that my teeth clicked together. I looked from Mad to Keith, then to Luck’s leg, then to Oxi’s pale face and windburned cheeks.

We were out of time.

“We take it,” I blurted.

The guys looked at me. I didn’t care. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe there was a woman under the ground with too much surveillance and a questionable sense of humor, and maybe we were about to walk into something worse than the storm.

But Luck was limping. My fingers were numb. Oxi looked as if he was getting hypothermia. Mad’s stubbornness could not build us a shelter out of thin air. And Keith had just come back to me. I was not losing him to the weather.

“We take it,” I repeated, louder this time.

The speaker crackled. “Oh, I like you.”

Oxi pointed vaguely toward the hidden voice. “We also like her.”

“I gathered.”

I flushed despite the cold.

Luck coughed. “Are we being perceived romantically by a bunker lady right now?”

Keith muttered, “Apparently.”

Mad looked at the storm, at the grass, and at each of us. His face was hard, but his eyes lingered on Luck’s leg and my trembling hand. Finally, he nodded. “We go down. Weapons ready. No one touches anything unless I say.”

“Comforting,” Luck mumbled. “Nothing says safe shelter like entering with weapons ready.”

A low mechanical rumble answered him. The impossible patch of green grass split open beneath the snow. The seam Mad had found widened with a smooth hydraulic hiss, and the square lifted upward from one side. Warm light spilled out from beneath it, cutting through the storm like a door had opened into another world.

Clean metal stairs led down into electric brightness.

My chest tightened.

The woman’s voice crackled again, far too cheerful for the end of the world. “Clock’s ticking.”

Keith’s hand tightened around mine. His eyes met mine, blue and bright above the scarf wrapped around his face. “You stay behind me,” he said.

Mad immediately said, “She stays in the middle.”

Oxi added, “She has a sword.”

Luck lifted his shovel. “And four overbearing boyfriends.”