Page 185 of My Undead Love Life

One year later…

A year ago, I didn’t think I’d make it back home to the Oasis.

But I had.

We all had.

My gaze drifted toward the five pairs of boots kicked off beside the front door. They were piled together in complete disregard for the rack Mad had built specifically to prevent that from happening. His sat neatly beneath it. Keith’s were beside his. Mine were half on top of Luck’s, and one of Oxi’s had somehow ended up near the stove.

Our weapons rested within arm’s reach of the door—always.

My katana.

Mad’s fire axe.

Luck’s shovel and pistol.

Oxi’s cane sword.

Keith’s M-4 and the faded strip of red fabric still tied around the stock.

We kept them close out of habit more than immediate fear now, and I was grateful for the change.

The Oasis had grown stronger over the past year. New walls surrounded sections of the perimeter. Watch platforms had been added higher in the trees. Mad had helped organize proper patrol rotations, escape routes, fire protocols, and training sessions that everyone happily complied with, and the drills saved us during another infected mountain lion attack.

Keith had expanded the medicinal garden and trained nearly anyone willing to listen to basic plant identification and wound care. Oxi helped with perimeter security and managed disputes with a talent for making people regret lying before he even proved they had. Luck mainly helped in building anything anyone needed help with. I trained with Akiko, hunted with Tori, and helped wherever I could.

The world was still dangerous. The infected were still changing, but the Oasis remained standing.

The treehouse shifted gently around me in the night wind, the wood creaking in a rhythm I knew very well.

It was my home.

It had been smaller when Keith and I first built it, something simple tucked into the trees near my parents’ place. One main room with our bed, a tiny wood stove, and enough space for the two of us to live close.

Then Mad, Oxi, and Luck moved in.

Mad took one look at the original support beams and nearly had an aneurysm, which...fair.

He and my dad spent weeks reinforcing the structure, adding new beams, extending the platform, and building an extra room. Micah had been so pissed off at us once he found out we had used less-than-ideal support beams without him realizing. We insulated the walls properly, replaced warped boards, added storage beneath the floor, and created a second route down in case the main ladder became unusable.

And most importantly, we fixed the sleeping situation. Two queen mattresses were pushed together in the bedroom, covered in mismatched blankets, scavenged pillows, hand-sewn quilts, and pieces of our lives from before. My old comforter from the farmhouse stretched across one side. Keith’s favorite blanket remained near the head of the bed. Luck had claimed a ridiculous pink pillow that a child of a drifter had traded him for three chocolate bars. Oxi insisted he hated it, but he slept on it whenever Luck wasn’t looking. I found that adorable. Mad denied having a preferred blanket even though he always reached for the heavy gray one first.

The treehouse wasn’t perfect. It was crowded and lived in, but it was ours.

I smiled as I pulled my sweater over my head and tossed it toward the growing pile of clothes in the corner. It landed on top with a soft thump.

“We really need to do laundry,” I pointed out.

“We really don’t,” Luck replied immediately from the bed. He lay sprawled across the middle of the mattresses wearing nothing but his pants and a grin. His blond hair was still damp from the snow he’d shaken out of it when we returned from patrol. “This is a carefully constructed system, slayer.”

I stared at the heap. “That’s not a system. That’s a disaster.”

“It’s an intentional disaster.”

“It’s beginning to block the window,” I told him.

“Natural insulation.”