Page 33 of My Undead Love Life

My grip tightened around the handle of my axe.

Oxi moved first. His cane sword came up as he stepped into the corridor, boots crunching softly against grit and mostly frozen blood.

I followed immediately behind him.

The dark tunnel stretched away in both directions. There were no signs of whatever had spent hours scratching at the door a couple of days ago. The emptiness somehow unsettled me more than finding a corpse would have.

Corpses were normal. This…wasn’t.

“Clear,” Oxi stated. The word echoed faintly down the tunnel.

I didn't answer.

The quiet felt wrong. We had spent three days trapped in a closet listening to the zombies pass. And now they were all just gone?

I slowly turned back toward the door, and my stomach tightened at what I saw.

Deep gashes marred the metal surface, carving long furrows through the paint and steel. The claw marks overlapped each other, cutting so deeply in places that bare metal gleamed beneath the torn paint. Some of them reached nearly halfway through the outer layer of steel.

I stared at them in shock.

“Jesus,” Oxi breathed.

The marks were jagged and uneven, clear evidence of repeated attempts to tear through the door. The animal had almost broken through.

My gaze followed one particularly deep gouge running almost the entire length of the door. The metal around it had curled outward.

My stomach sank.

It was nothing short of a miracle that the door had held. If whatever made those marks had stayed another few hours…there wasn't a doubt in my mind that it would've broken through.

And then, we'd have been trapped inside that tiny closet with nowhere left to run.

I glanced over my shoulder toward the darkness of the tunnel. The closet felt less like a hiding place and more like a tomb standing out here. If we stayed any longer, we'd join the skeletal remains of the two we’d found there.

“Let's go,” Oxi said quietly.

I nodded. Whatever was waiting for us outside wasn't nearly as dangerous as staying put.

Oxi jerked his chin toward the doorway. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”

The service closet door opened wider.

Luck stepped out first, pistol already in hand with a shovel in the other.

Spencer followed a second later, her hand resting on her katana. The moment she saw the blood, she paused. Her brown eyes flicked across the dark stains coating the concrete. Then, to the claw marks and shredded metal around the doorframe. The color drained from her face, but she stepped carefully over the mess without saying a word.

The stench of rot lingered everywhere. It was the unmistakable smell of a smaller horde that had recently passed through. If you could call what passed through a smaller horde. The tunnels felt abandoned, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe it.

Spencer's gaze drifted beyond us into the darkness stretching down the tracks the way we’d come from. “What if he's alive? What if he got away?” Hope and grief melted into her tone. “What if he escaped after we left?”

My chest tightened. The process of grief was fucked up, and I hated watching her go through it. Even though I’d only known her for a few days…I wanted to protect her from that pain.

Luck looked down briefly. “Spencer⁠—”

“What if he found another way out?” she pushed. “Keith's smart. He’s a survivor for a reason.” The conviction in her voice hurt to hear because I wanted it to be true, too. For her sake and his. “He always finds a way,” she whispered.

Luck finally stepped closer to her. “Don't do that to yourself.”