The World Without End [Box Set]

by Nazarea Andrews

  "I believed it," she shouts.

  "You trusted me enough to get in the truck. I swore to get you to your brother, Nurrin. I will. Don't doubt me now."

  "You fucked her today!" she says, her voice shrill. "And then you killed her, fed her to the damn horde. How can you expect me to keep trusting you?"

  Frustration boils in me, but I shake my head. Lean my head back. "You have to decide that, Ren. You can decide I did it because that's what it took to get you out of 18. Or you can decide I'm a monster. Eventually, you have to quit hiding behind your anger and make a decision." I throw the empty needle aside and slide into the driver's seat. "Now. Are you coming with me?"

  Chapter 3

  Discoveries

  It’s pitch black when we reach the Hole. I park the truck and lean over to shake Nurrin’s shoulder a little. She blinks sleepily, and it’s a struggle to force myself back to my side of the vehicle.

  "We’re here," I say. She nods and yawns.

  There aren’t any infects around—strangely, I haven’t seen any in hours. But I’m not into taking unnecessary chances. "Got your stuff?" She nods, shrugging her bag onto her back.

  "Can we go down in the dark?"

  I hand her a flare stick. "Crack that when we get out. And move quick—we’re alone for now, but you know how that goes."

  She nods, and eagerness slips across her face.

  "Ready?" I ask, grabbing my knife.

  We scramble out of the truck in perfect synchronization. She’s at the side of the canyon, the pink flare sparkling at her side, and I nod at her. "Go." She doesn’t wait or argue—apparently we have made progress since leaving. She edges down the cliff face as I glance around.

  My blood runs cold as I take in the empty cliff.

  Something is wrong.

  I push aside the sensation, the stomach curdling fear, and follow Nurrin down the canyon.

  Nurrin’s pack is in the entry, and I step over it and her burning flare. Toss it and mine out over the cliff. They flare brilliant and bleeding as they plummet to the canyon floor. Behind me, Nurrin is moving around the little cave, lighting candles and calling Dustin’s name.

  I can taste the stale air. No one is here. No one has been here. Blood is on the ground, pooling on the low couch. It smells old and coppery. I close my eyes and face the open canyon, into the midnight sky, and listen as she gets more and more panicked. Until, finally, she’s at my side, and I know how upset she is.

  Nurrin doesn’t cry. Not in front of me. She never has, not in the years I have known her brother. But tears are standing in her big eyes now, and her expression is furious and disbelieving. I draw her into my arms without thinking, and stare into the night as she buries her face in my chest and says, her voice muffled, "They aren’t here. Collin is gone."

  The End.

  The Horde Without End

  The World Without End, Book 2

  Part 1. The Beauty of Breaking

  We live without guarantees, in a time when loss is the norm. We are not given the

  luxury of falling apart.

  -President Buchman, addressing Haven 1.

  There is a world of strength waiting to be discovered in her moments of weakness.

  -Finn O’Malley

  Chapter 1.

  Broken Pieces

  She hasn’t cried. She doesn’t cry for me— but I know how fragile she is.

  I want to break her. I want to push her hard enough to see her shatter. I want to see the shards of her on the ground.

  How fucking beautiful would she be, when she put herself back together? She would. Nurrin is too stubborn to do anything but survive.

  Nurrin is a first, born to a world of death. She is innocent of the life before the change. She has never known anything but Hale Halls, razor wire, and walls. She has never known she could be anything but a survivor.

  I watch the sun rising over the canyon. In another world, people might have exclaimed over the beauty, stared at it in wonder.

  To me, the red-washed sky means only one thing: it’s almost time to leave.

  I glance over my shoulder. She retreated to the sleeping area a few hours ago, after we fought over leaving immediately. I think there is a part of her that hopes Collin will come back. A supply run wouldn’t be completely unjustified.

  My lips twist.

  Collin wouldn’t leave the Hole, not unless he had to. Not when he knew that it’s the only place I would take Nurrin. He’s gone because something is wrong.

  Chapter 2.

  Making Plans

  She’s awake—I know she is, because as soon as I leave the cave entrance, she’s poking her head out of the bedroom. Her eyes are suspiciously red, but she doesn’t look as breakable as a few hours ago.

  She does look tired.

  “What are we doing?” she asks, her voice raspy.

  “Do you think you’re up to travel?” I ask, letting disbelief and disgust tint my tone.

  Nurrin doesn’t answer. She steps past me, her curling blonde hair brushing my arm as she snatches her gun and long knife from the table. I spent a few mindless hours cleaning everything last night. I catch her wrist as she pulls back, the one holding her knife, and Nurrin hisses slightly, a furious noise. “Don’t play games, O’Malley,” she says quietly. “I’m going to find my brother.”

  “I won’t go out there if you aren’t at a hundred percent. Do you understand that? I won’t take you out there on some ill-advised suicide mission.”

  Anger flashes in her eyes, and she jerks free of my grasp. “What the hell do you think this is going to be? We have no clues to where he is—we’re going out there with nothing to go on.

  Ill-advised is the least of what we’re doing.”

  I laugh, and she wheels on me, her eyes wild. “You know something. What the fuck are you not telling me? Do you know where they are?”

  “You trusted me, yesterday,” I say quietly. Her eyes narrow, and she snorts. I want to laugh, but I swallow it and stare at her. “I’ll find Collin. We were partners long enough that I have some ideas.”

  That’s a lie, but her shoulders drop and her eyes brighten, a little. She’s hesitant to trust me—but she wants to.

  Hope. It’s a wretched bitch.

  “Collin wouldn’t leave unless he had to. And he had the bike—we might be able to track him.”

  “Where would he go?” she asks.

  Always the fucking questions. Even though they are warranted—justified—they irritate me. “Get your gear. I’m going to pack what food we have left.”

  Worry flashes in her eyes. “Why? Won’t we come back?”

  I look at her and blank my expression. It’s not going to help to give her anything to pounce on. I can’t face her questions right now—even if I had the inclination, we don’t have the time.

  “No questions, Nurrin,” I say sharply. She gives me that annoyed look, but it’s a step up from the hopeless fear that’s been in her eyes since she realized Collin was gone.

  She mutters a curse under her breath, and

  I smirk as she goes to do what I say. The amusement fades as I stare at the scratch on the table. It’s cryptic. Three hurried gouges slashed in half by a fourth. An i, with a diagonal slash over it.

  I had it covered with weapons, and she was too crazed with worry and fear to think to look—but I know the way Collin’s mind works, and the protocol of Wall Walkers.

  And Collin isn’t so fucking stupid to leave without some kind of breadcrumbs.

  The problem is that it’s just a breadcrumb.

  I push aside the niggling fear that Collin is running from a live infection, that taking Ren after him is putting her in danger.

  It doesn’t matter—she’d never tolerate being left behind. And if I did, it would just mean both of them would be missing, because she would bolt as soon as I was gone.

  Doesn’t mean I’ll take her out without some kind of ground rules. I manage a grin.

  She’ll be pissed.


  “Nurrin,” I yell, “get your ass out here.”

  “Fuck off, O’Malley,” she grumbles without any real heat. She comes back out, and I take a quick look. She’s changed into leather zom gear. It conforms to her ass, follows the curves of her pert breasts.

  Shit.

  The girl has to be carrying five different weapons, her brother and boyfriend are missing, and fucking her is still a bad idea.

  So why can’t I get her out of my system? I had hoped Lissel—I hiss and shove that thought aside. “Can you fit anything else in your bag?” She nods and brings it to the table. I shift so the marks are hidden and push some MREs to her. Her nose wrinkles, but she obediently loads them into her bag.

  In minutes, we’re done—it’s almost disturbing how well we work together now.

  “Weapons?” I ask shortly.

  She huffs, but rattles them off. I nod and pass her a few hand grenades. “I’m driving, so I’ll need to you cover us. Can you handle that?”

  She gives me a flat stare. I arch my eyebrows, and she pockets the grenades.

  There is something undeniably sexy about seeing Nurrin shove grenades into her leather pockets while a garrote is wrapped around one wrist and throwing stars hang from her waist. She catches my eye and gives me a grimace. “What?”

  “You seem more together than I expected,” I say. “I’m wondering how much is an act. Are you going to fall apart out there?”

  Anger flickers in her eyes—that’s fine. I don’t care what she uses to keep from falling apart, to keep herself together and moving forward. As long as she does.

  “I want my brother. I’ll hold together for as long as it takes to find him,” she says flatly. “He could be dead, Nurrin,” I say. Pain spasms across her face, and I should look away—no one should see something that intensely private. I don’t. I watch her, fascinated.

  “He could be. But he’s not. Collin has survived twenty years—no zombie will kill him. Now get your shit and let’s go.”

  “You know what the rules are—out there you obey without questions.”

  She snorts. “Fuck your rules, O’Malley. My brother is out there—you can help me find him, or you can get the hell out of my way. Those are my rules.”

  “That’s a good way to get yourself dead,” I shoot back.

  Nurrin’s expression goes blank. “Do you really think I care?”

  She turns away before I can respond, but the question does its job—it tells me exactly how depressed she is, just how far she’s fallen.

  Nurrin isn’t suicidal—she’s too much of a survivor for that maudlin shit—but she is hopeless, and that could be worse.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  Chapter 3.

  Topside

  The cliff is swarmed with infects. All the ones near the Canyon when she started screaming last night are still here. A handful have fallen over the edge—I watched them tumble to the rocky bottom of the cliff during the night, but I can hear the screams and the quick darting steps as they circle the truck. Once, I hear the rattle of metal and a furious shriek— one apparently wandered too close to the razor wire.

  Ren is pressed against my back, her entire body shaking with the need to fight. I draw my sword carefully and glance at her. She gives me a tight smile, and I nod once.

  And we explode off the path.

  The first zom screams as it sees us, and I feel the wind whistle past my face as Nurrin takes the cliff top, a throwing star embedding in the infect’s throat, slicing deep. I jerk its head forward, onto the blade, and it goes limp as the razor edge slices into its spinal column.

  Then the other infects are too close to think, and I’m twisting through them, leading with my sword. I can hear her shouting and cursing as she slams her blade into one infect after another. I hear it, and distantly I care—but really, the only thing that matters in this moment is killing and making sure we don’t end up shoved off the damn cliff.

  I whip around, my sword slicing through a rotten neck, and smile as gore sprays. “Truck,” I shout. Ren growls behind me, a sound laced with annoyance more than anger.

  She sounds nothing like the dead—too full of life. I glance at her, unable to resist. A zom screams, and I smirk, twisting away from Ren to slam my knife under its chin, burying it to the hilt in rotten brain matter. I shake the viscous matter from my hand and whistle sharply. Draw their attention from Ren. I bring my sword in front of me as they focus on me, away from Ren. She makes a face, annoyed, and I force my expression to go flat. She doesn’t have to like it—I don’t actually expect her to like it—I just need her to work with me and get the truck started.

  Watching us, she makes her way to the waiting truck. I shout as she opens the door, and the nearest zom screams, lunging at me. I slide under the attack, slicing up. And stop thinking.

  The only time I can turn off my brain is when I’m fighting the infects, because it doesn’t take anything more than cut and slice and stay the fuck out of range of their teeth. That is easy—they don’t demand anything, answers I refuse to give.

  This is simple.

  I give myself over to the ease of it all and fight my way through the infects. I’m vaguely aware that she turns on the truck, that I could fight my way to it—that I’m supposed to—but I’m more focused on the fight. Until there is nothing left to kill, and I stand, panting, in a circle of the dead.

  For a long minute, I just stare, slowly coming back to myself. Then the door to the truck cranks open. Ren pops out, standing on the step rail, a tiny thing dwarfed by the massive truck, bristling weapons. She gives me an arch look. “You feel better?”

  Always with the fucking questions. I shake my blade, bend to wipe it off on the only clean scrap of cloth I can find on the dead. Sheath it and stalk over to where she’s leaning out of the truck. Give her a flat smile.

  “Let me guess,” she says dryly, “you’re driving.”

  At least the girl can learn.

  Chapter 4.

  Roadside Revelations

  We’re driving for maybe five minutes— long enough that the canyon has vanished behind us and Nurrin has begun to get twitchy—when she finally asks. I’m surprised it took her this long.

  “Where are we going? They could be anywhere.”

  I deliberately keep my gaze ahead. “I know where he was heading.”

  On her side of the truck, Nurrin is a trembling ball of outrage. I don’t need to look at her to know she’s glaring, or that hope has sparked in her eyes, however briefly.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Collin carved a message in the table. He’s headed to Haven 9.”

  “Why there?” she demands, her voice going shrill.

  “Because it’s close. I’d guess that Dustin’s infection spread and he had no choice—there’s no sign that there was a breach, but he’d get out of here, if it meant saving Dustin’s life or buying him a little more time while they wait for our return.”

  “Why wouldn’t he just say that? Why make it so fucking difficult?”

  I slide a glance at her. She’s staring out the window, fury etched on her face.

  She won’t like this.

  “Because his sister is a First. And because I’m his partner—we both have enemies, and he can be used as leverage against either of us.”

  “He was alone there, Finn,” she says. I hear her hesitation, though, and flash her a quick smile—she isn’t asking about why I would have enemies. Not now, anyway.

  “Doesn’t matter—Collin is smart. He found a way to tell me what I needed to know.”

  “Then why did you say that, about him being dead? If you know where he was going?” I stare out the windshield, at the dust that is sweeping the canyon edge. It’s hot and dry and carries the hint of smoke and decay.

  Everything smells of decay, these days.

  “Because it’s a long way from here to Haven 9. And there are a lot of obstacles between us and him. Because the Wide Open is full of the dead, and we
both know they’re changing—and Collin was traveling with a live infection—even if he could get to 9, they could have thrown him and Dustin into Q.”

  She flinches, and I try to get a grip on my temper. Being angry with her won’t do anything, and I can’t afford to fight with her—right now, nothing matters but finding Collin.

  “You didn’t tell me what you were planning, when we left 18.”

  My grip tightens a little on the steering wheel, and she sighs. “Are you going to keep me in the dark this time, too? Because if you feel the burning need to fuck and murder an Alderman, I’d like a little warning this time.”

  I snort, banking my anger. She’s furious, and cool indifference is the only way to handle Nurrin’s anger.

  “She wasn’t supposed to die,” I say. Not that this time will actually make it through her thick skull. I’m tired of repeating the same shit to her.

  “What was she supposed to do? Jump to safey? You were dragging her into a horde, with no recourse to get home.”

  I bristle. “Haven 18 will fall. If it hasn’t already, it will within the month. I was getting her out of a sinking ship. Is that so fucking wrong?”

  “You killed her.”

  I nod. “But I gave her a clean death—she was dead as soon as she drew a knife on me.”

  She shudders. “She was dead as soon as you decided to fuck her.”

  Ah. That is the crux of it. The real issue she has with me killing Lissel.

  “Sex doesn’t mean anything, Nurrin. It’s a biological need, and she met it. Doesn’t mean I give a fuck about her or it.”

  “She loved you,” she protests, shrilly.

  I laugh at that. Because it’s the classic mistake, and I’m not surprised that she’s making it. Disappointed, but not surprised. “She didn’t love me, Nurrin. She didn’t fucking know me.”

  She looks at me, and I can feel the sympathy and pity coming off her in waves. It infuriates me, but I keep my grip on the steering wheel light as I twist to avoid a stack of freshly killed infects.