Page 15 of My Undead Love Life

The man with the axe glanced back sharply. “What are you two doing?”

“She’s trying to kill both of us!” the blond shouted back.

“I’m trying to go back for my boyfriend!” I screamed.

The cane-sword wielder cursed quietly beneath his breath. “We don’t have time for this.”

“I know that!” the blond guy barked before finally slowing enough to lower me back onto my feet. “Just—don’t bolt in the opposite direction, okay? You’ll fuck up everything your man was trying to do for you before…you know.”

The words hit me like a knife shoved straight through my chest. My stomach twisted violently.

Keith wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. But he had bought us time to escape. I didn’t want to throw his effort away.

The second my boots hit the concrete, my legs nearly buckled beneath me. Exhaustion and grief crashed into me so hard I swayed sideways into the wall for support. My entire body trembled violently now that I wasn’t being carried anymore.

But I stayed upright.

Barely.

“And for the record, your boyfriend sacrificing himself for all of us so we could get you to safety makes your safety our problem,” the fire axe man grumbled.

The tunnel spun slightly around me, but I forced myself to focus. “I can keep up,” I snapped hoarsely, wiping tears furiously from my face with the back of my sleeve.

My voice sounded broken even to me.

The blond stranger studied me for half a second. Sweat dampened strands of pale hair stuck to his forehead, and streaks of blackened blood covered one side of his jacket. His chest rose and fell hard from exertion, but despite everything happening around us, his expression softened slightly.

“Didn’t say you couldn’t,” he replied between breaths. “Just don’t want to drop you.”

It took every ounce of strength I had not to turn around and run back toward the subway car.

Every instinct screamed at me to go find Keith. But the army of undead moaning somewhere behind us was a solid deterrent. The horrifying sounds echoed endlessly through the tunnel now—dragging footsteps, snapping jaws, snarls, and guttural shrieks bouncing off concrete walls.

The horde was hunting us. It was following the trail of noise we’d left behind—the noise I hadn’t stopped making.

“Fuck,” one of the guys cursed suddenly.

His sharp voice snapped me out of my spiraling thoughts.

“What?” the blond man asked, tightening his grip on the shovel in his hand.

The dark-haired man slowed slightly ahead of us, axe resting across his shoulder while he listened. The sunlight from the cracked ceiling above cast jagged shadows across his face, obscuring most of his features except cold, focused golden eyes.

“I hear more up ahead,” the man with the cane sword announced gravely.

My stomach dropped.

Faint groans echoed somewhere deeper in the tunnel ahead of us. It was a different group than the horde behind us, and both hordes were getting closer.

We were getting boxed in.

It was dark, and my vision was blurred from the tears that wouldn’t stop coming, but I noticed something on the wall a few feet away.

“Service closet,” I blurted, pointing toward a rusted metal door on the subway wall to our left. Half the faded lettering had peeled away from age and grime. “Over there!”

“This could be a bad idea,” the axe wielder grunted immediately, already moving toward it anyway. “But it’s also our only option.”

The undead groans behind and in front of us grew louder.