At nightfall, Finn appears next to my unit's bus. It's a heavily armored thing, with metal grates over the glass of the windows, large enough for a gun to push through and fire, or even a knife to stab through the long slits, but not for an infect to breach. There's a collapsible staircase leading to the roof. A screen of razor wire circles the edge of the bus, with a metal crate coming down to protect the sharpshooters.
It's a rolling fortress, and it's covered in the black residue of infected blood and guts. We need to wash it down, but that won't happen here. I shove the thought aside, and push open the bus door. “What's going on?”
“Omar wants to push into the night,” Finn says.
“That's because Omar is a fucking idiot,” I say easily. “We stopping?” He grins at me, and I nod. “There's a lake about ten miles down. Good?”
Finn nods and drops off my steps, jogging across the road to where his own bus is. He salutes me as he swings back in and I tap Ethan on the shoulder. “Move out.”
He does, silent for a few minutes as we rumble down the road. We hit a particularly rough pothole and I slam into his shoulder. “Keep us upright, Ethan,” I say sharply.
“We should stay with the convoy,” he says.
I glance down at the First. He is the one who brought me the other Firsts, with his furious loyalty and sharp tongue. I don't know what I did to earn his loyalty—I actually don't think I did anything. Ethan isn't loyal to me, so much as he is loyal to the idea that I gave him.
That we are all more than just the labels we are given, bodies to be killed for the belief of another.
“We're staying with O'Malley. The convoy won't keep us safe; he will.”
“You need the medicine Omar has,” he argues.
There's a hiss of disbelief behind me, and then the bus goes very still, the kind of stillness that makes the hair on my arms rise.
“If you have a problem with my orders, Ethan, we can find you another unit. But my orders aren't up for debate or made by committee. So follow O'Malley and shut up.”
His cheeks go red, but he doesn't argue further.
The lake is right where I said it'd be. I grin as O'Malley's bus serves free of the convoy, throwing up a cloud of dust and grit in what remains of the parking lot. The black lot is broken by weeds and a sapling struggling to thrive in the remains of an old world. A bush edges one side, covered with tiny white flowers that warm the air.
Ethan mutters under his breath, but he swings the bus into the parking lot after Finn. The convoy rumbles on, and at my hip, my radio blares to life.
“What the hell are you doing?” Holly snarls across the line.
Finn drawls out, “The sun is falling. We won’t find a better place to break for the night, and I’m not pushing my unit into the night, in unknown territory. Call it what you like, but suicide isn’t my thing.”
“Ren, get your ass back in the convoy,” Holly snaps.
“I’m good,” I say. “But, hey. Y’all be safe out there.”
There’s a crackle on the radio and then I click it off and stretch. “Ok, we’re bunking in the bus tonight, so get outside, do what you need—Finn and I will set watch. Bring up some water to boil and I think we can make a stew out of that meat we grabbed from central caf, right, Kat?”
The First nods and I clap my hands. “Get to it, people.”
Finn’s unit is already moving, and I grin at him as I step out of the bus. “How mad do you think Omar will be?”
He glances at the convoy, which is slowing. The Priest is willing to sacrifice a lot—the whole fucking world, I think. But he’s not going to lose the fighter who leads his army.
“Pretty fucking pissed,” he says with a slow smile. I nod and open my mouth to ask about watch.
Pain roars through me and I scream, falling. I can feel myself convulsing, the tremors shaking my body until I’m nothing but a live wire of pain and twitching muscles. I hear him yelling my name, the startled shouts as my Firsts come running back to me, and the feel of gritty rocks digging into my face while I writhe.
And pain. So much fucking pain.
Then everything goes black.
Chapter 10.
Side Effects
When I come to, it feels like so many days that I woke up in the Outpost, with Finn sitting still and watchful at my side.
Back in Haven 8, I used to read all the time. And in books, when a girl woke up in the hospital or after some crazy trauma, she always had a minute. The guy was sleeping, or staring into space, or talking to the doctor.
Those girls had a second to wrap their heads around whatever had happened to them before they were pounced on with furious questions and angry concern.
Lucky bitches.
I’ve woken up in beds like this more times than I want to think about over the past four months. There were two weeks straight, where every morning was this, in a medical suite at the Outpost—a fancy, sterile cell.
And each time, I woke to the furious, intent stare of Finn O’Malley.
“What happened?”
I shake my head and try to swallow. He shoves a glass of water at me and waits impatiently while I force some of it down. It’s a little warm—they boiled it then. Good. Last thing I need is to catch some shit from the fucking drinking water.
“When did you take your last dose?” he asks, without preamble.
“Why do you always assume it’s that?” I ask, not looking at him, and he flips the light blanket off my feet. They’re pale and bare, and I need to trim my toenails. The barest hint of black veins are showing there. My heart stops in my chest.
No. This isn’t fucking happening. Not yet. I squeeze my hands in the blankets and Finn snarls my name. “How long?”
“Two weeks.”
He swears viciously, jerking from his seat and pacing the length of the bus and back. I watch silently and wonder where the hell our people are. I can hear them but it’s dark out, only a small lamp lighting the space between O’Malley and me as he finally resumes his seat and glares at me.
“You’re being reckless.”
“The med knocks me out. I can’t be weak out here—and you know that it makes me weak.”
“You can’t be dead out here,” he snaps, “And if you don’t take that shit, you will be.”
That’s the catch. The one Omar didn’t mention when we dosed Kenny in the Outpost and fed a bite of him to an infect. The cure he promised wasn’t really. It kept the virus from mutating once it was delivered—but if you stop taking a booster every week or so, it wears off, and the virus wakes up.
It doesn’t kill it. It can’t. ERI-Milan is too ingrained in our systems, a killer sleeping under our skin. The Order’s scientist found a way to sedate it, but not forever.
It’s how he leashes O’Malley.
Walking away from the Order would be easy, if we could. But I won’t. Not for long. I’ll die—not even die. I’ll turn, and Finn refuses to allow that to happen.
So we’re both here, dancing to the fucking mad priest’s tune.
Sometimes, I hate myself even more than I hate Omar, for being the leash that keeps Finn in line. It would be easy to—
“You’re doing it again,” he says and I blink, clearing my thoughts and looking at him.
I’m quiet, and he curses. “Get that thought out of your head. We both walk into the East; we both walk out. You don’t get to play the martyr.”
“You could walk out now,” I say softly.
He leans forward, and I see nothing but rage in his eyes. “I’m not letting you kill yourself to keep me out of the East. Collin would rise out of the fucking grave and kick my ass.”
“He’s dead. You made sure he’d never rise,” I snap, bitterly.
Finn flinches, a barely-there movement that tells me he’s not quite as over the death of my brother as he would have me believe.
I forget, sometimes, that Finn lost Collin too. He cared about my brother for reasons I don’t completely understand. For maybe th
e first time since Kelsey, he let himself care.
And now Collin is dead.
That, more even than Finn’s angry threats, is why I’m not letting the virus take me. Because he is Finn O’Malley, the son of the plague-bringer, and the war hero who lost everything. I won’t be the last thing that is taken from him.
“Nurrin,” he murmurs, and I blink, coming out of my thoughts. He’s staring, assessing me silently. I give him a weak smile, and his lips tighten. “You do something stupid that gets you killed, Nurrin, I swear to God, I’ll chain you in my basement just to kick your ass.”
I smirk. “Kinky bastard.”
That gets a rare flare of heat in his cool eyes, but he leans back. Away from me.
I swallow hard and nod at the darkness beyond our bus. “Where are they?”
“The ones not on watch are sleeping in the other bus. You needed space—even your pet agreed.”
“Ethan isn’t a pet,” I protest and he laughs. I flush. I knew exactly who he was talking about without him saying. Which speaks volumes—mostly that I’m lying to myself.
Ethan could never be described as a puppy. But a loyal, bloody thirsty pit bull? Yes. My very own pet attack dog.
“Tell the Firsts they can come back,” I say, shifting to sit up, and Finn pushes me flat.
“Calm down, Nurrin. You need rest, and one night of cramped quarters isn’t going to kill any of our people.”
I should argue. There are a thousand reasons why I should argue, and the most important one is that I want his hands on me, so much that sometimes it’s hard to fucking breathe. And I hate that I need any man that much. So I shove the desire aside and stare at the ceiling of the bus. It’s a tall ceiling, with dropped nets that store our extra gear. Weapons wink at me from there, more than we can possibly need.
A fucking rocket launcher is up there. If we ever get into a situation where we need a rocket launcher, I think it’s a safe bet that none of us will walk out of the East.
“What will you do when it’s over?” I ask, startling both of us.
Finn tenses, and I finally let myself look at him. I spend so much time fighting with him, and for him. Fighting is all we know with each other. Fighting each other and the world around us. Sometimes, I wish—
I cut the thought off and shove it deep in my mind, where it won’t reflect in my eyes, or trip me up unexpectedly.
Wishes aren’t for this world. They weren’t for the pre-change world either, but that didn’t stop maniacs from making them.
Sylvia Cragen wished her brother healthy, and broke the entire world in the process.
“When we get clear of the Order, I mean. After the war.”
“Does it matter?” he asks, curiously and I shrug.
“People dream, Finn. It’s what they do to keep themselves going. Even you.” I glance at him, and see the slow rush of color suffusing his cheeks. It’s similar to when he gets angry, but different, because it’s a slow crawl up his neck and into his cheeks.
Finn O’Malley can blush. The world really is fucking ending.
“What is the only thing that matters?” he asks, suddenly, and my gaze darts to him. He’s not looking at me. He’s staring at the gun on the bed next to me.
Its plain, a black standard issue Glock. Armor piercing rounds, built-in silencer. The same gun every Walker is issued. It’s the gun my brother carried until he was infected, and Finn reclaimed it from the Order.
It’s my last link to my family—a gun from my brother and my mother. The weapon that killed my father. My fucking family legacy.
“You’ll keep me safe,” I whisper, and he nods, blinking.
“That is true today, and tomorrow, and next week when we walk through the East. It will be true the day I walk you out of the East. It doesn’t end there, Nurrin.”
My breath stalls, caught on something thick in my throat, and he finally looks at me.
For a moment, I’m a world away, on my back in a bed and the entire world is Finn O’Malley, his hard body braced over mine as he moved inside me, and whispered my name like I was the only thing in the world. That tiny slice of eternity, I could believe it was true, could believe he wanted nothing more than me.
For this tiny moment, I can believe it again, staring at his gaze, so bright and full that I can’t hold it. I look away first, at the stupid pattern woven into the scratchy blanket he’s covered me with, at the guns resting next to me. He lets out a small sigh, almost unheard, and stands. And I get the most absurd feeling, that I have disappointed him somehow.
But he doesn’t say that. Instead he leans down and presses a finger against my shoulder, where a crescent scar mars the skin. “Get some sleep, Nurrin.”
I don’t ask him to stay.
I don’t have to.
Chapter 11.
The Ugly Truth
It takes us two weeks to cross the East. I lose three of my Firsts the first week, and spend a night in a black hole of alcohol and tears.
Finn loses four, and he doesn’t drink with me. Instead he sits in almost scary silence, watching from across a fire pit as I drink my way through a bottle of whiskey and cry, big silent tears that splash into the bottle and turn it salty.
When I give in to the siren song of oblivion, it’s him who picks me up and carries me to the bedroll we’ve lain out. It’s him who tucks me into it and pulls me against his chest, muffling my sobs in the warm steady beat of his heart. His hands who hold me in the darkness while I rage against the deaths I couldn’t stop.
I tried. I tried so fucking hard. I just wasn’t good enough and in the end, they died. Horribly.
When I cry myself out and fall into sleep, Finn slipped away. I know because it woke me and I stayed still and silent as I watched him go.
When he came back, he smelled of disinfectant and soap. He curled against me, and pulled me into him, and I felt the raised skin on his back, the flinch he almost contained. I wake up in bed alone, with two vials of ash on the bed next to my guns, and Finn’s shirt sliding down his back to obscure the new swirls of ink on his back.
I don’t ask, don’t push. Instead I string the vials on my chain with Collin’s and rise to get ready for the day.
We all mourn and remember in our own way.
It becomes obvious, with almost sickening speed, that Omar lied to us.
The priest lured us and his army here with a promise of a grand battle for the East. Claiming the territory we never should have conceded.
It’s why everyone followed him. There isn’t a person alive who lived through the rise of ERI-Milan who doesn’t wish we hadn’t given up the East. Who doesn’t wish that we could reclaim it.
That brought us back to the East. His promise that it was different, and winnable.
But as we sweep through, leaving a trail of dead, I realize something—we aren’t winning anything. We aren’t even fighting for it. We have a goal—he has a goal—and just like it was in the Outpost, we don’t know what it is.
I don’t think we will until it’s too late to save anyone.
Chapter 12.
Mad Ramblings
“He called all the unit captains in.”
I shift, tugging my boot off and groaning as my toes uncurl. They don’t fit very well but they do their job, and I’ve yet to get bitten in the foot, so I don’t bitch. But god, it feels good to take them off. Then I glance at Ethan. My second in command has changed since we first left the Outpost—then I could still see doubt and the occasional slice of fear in his eyes. Now his dark gaze is cool and remote. He doesn’t even look curious that I am being called before the Black Priest.
“We’ve reached the border of Georgia. We have to decide which way to turn the army,” I say. I motion and he heaves a sigh, turning his back while I grab a clean black tank top and pull it over my head. I strip off my bloody pants and replace them with leather, skin-tight pants. Thin plates of steel clank together as I tug them up. They aren’t terribly comfortable, but the plates are thin enough
to mold to my curves, and thick enough to keep an infect from breaking skin.
When he hears my wrist braces rattling together, Ethan turns and buckles them on to my extended arms. “What options are there?”
I have a few suspicions. But I don’t know, won’t know until after this meeting with Omar and the others. Which I’m late to. I slip my low boots on—not good for fighting, but this is an altogether different kind of conflict—and grab my gun holster, then shrug it over my shoulder and buckle it.
Ethan sighs, a put-upon noise that grates on my nerves. “You want me to stay behind, don’t you?”
“I want you to watch the Firsts,” I say evenly. “We’re in hostile territory. I don’t trust the army, and I don’t want the unit left without leadership. I’m not alone.”
“Because O’Malley,” he says, and I hear the bitterness he’s usually better at keeping to himself.
I nod. “Because O’Malley.”
His lips press together and I sigh, shifting on the balls of my feet. I’m late, and I can’t leave because this is important. Ethan is important. I let him become important when I forced Omar to free the Firsts, when I gave them my protection and used Finn to keep them safe.
“Don’t fight with me,” I say with a sigh. “Just do this. I’ll be back when it’s over. And I’ll know more.”
His eyes flash disapproval at me, and I swallow my irritation before pushing past him and stepping out of the van.
The Firsts are gathered in a loose circle and I can feel their irritation with me as Ethan steps out behind me.
“Celeste and Murphy, with the captain. The rest of you are off duty until she returns.”
I don’t argue, or point out that I don’t need babysitters—none of my people are about to let me walk through the main army without someone at my back, and Finn is conspicuously absent.
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