Page 53 of My Undead Love Life

“You know, I just realized I never asked where you were when all this started.” I glanced at him.

His shoulders drew inward beneath his coat as we continued walking. “I was working at my local cemetery.” He ran a hand through his blond hair with a sigh.

“That’s why you have the shovel,” I murmured, remembering how he said he had it when it started.

He nodded. “It was the best weapon I could find that I already knew how to handle.”

“Did the dead rise?” I blurted the question I’d been curious about from the start.

Luck stared at me.

I pressed my lips together. “Sorry. That was probably insensitive.”

“No.” A reluctant smile tugged at his mouth. “It was the first thing I wondered, too. But no, none of the people already buried came crawling out of the ground. Visitors and some of the staff were randomly infected. They started attacking everyone.”

“That sounds terrifying.”

“It was.” He bit his lower lip and looked ahead. “I survived through sheer luck and my ability to hide. I locked myself in one of the equipment sheds until it got quiet enough for me to leave.”

I hated thinking of Luck scared and hiding when the apocalypse started.

“My house was about a mile away from the cemetery,” he continued. “When I finally made it there, the front door was wide open. There was no blood or bodies. Nothing there told me why the door was left open, but I found the old handgun Dad kept for emergencies.” He touched the holstered gun at his side. “I waited for my family for a full week. I kept thinking they’d walk through the door and tell me where they’d been, but the suburbs started getting overrun. Eventually, I had to leave.”

“Did you ever see them again?”

Anguish filled his eyes as he softly shook his head. “No. I assume the worst.” His fingers tightened on the handle of his shovel. “I knew little about shooting at first, but I learned. Found a few books with instructions. I kept the shovel because it reminds me of what I did before the world ended. It’s a source of comfort for me, as dumb as that sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb, Luck.” I wanted to hug him, but I wasn’t sure how he would react. Instead, I wrapped my hand around his arm and squeezed gently through the thick layers of his coat. “We all want to remember who we were before this.”

Something like solidarity filled his eyes as he smiled down at me. “Yeah. You’re right.”

“Do you mind me asking about your family?”

“Not at all.” We started walking again. “I don’t get to talk about them much anymore. It’s nice, even if it hurts.”

“I’d like to hear about them. If you don’t mind. Were they as easy-going as you are?”

“Not at all. I was the youngest of three. My parents and siblings more than outshone me.” He chuckled, but it lacked happiness. “Dad was a lawyer, and we were never close. Mom was a teacher, and she was the only one who really understood me. My sister was a nurse, and my brother was a doctor.”

“That must have been a lot to live up to.”

“It was impossible to live up to.” His mouth twisted. “Everyone except Mom looked at me like I was the family disappointment. I was the outcast, and I guess they weren’t completely wrong.”

“I doubt that,” I whispered. “You’re pretty special.”

Luck glanced at me, and a faint flush spread across his cheeks. “Thanks, but I was only a junior groundskeeper.”

“Why did you decide to become a groundskeeper?”

“Junior groundskeeper,” he corrected weakly as we stopped outside the jewelry store.

I raised an eyebrow. “Deflecting the question?”

He sighed and leaned against the wall beside the security gate. “I wanted to make death meaningful somehow. I thought the people buried there deserved respect, even if nobody visited them anymore. I maintained the grounds, cleaned the headstones, and made sure nothing was forgotten.” He looked down at his boots. “I don’t know. It sounds dumb when I say it aloud.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb.” I stepped closer and looked into his green and blue eyes.

He went still when I entered his space. “It doesn’t?”