The World Without End [Box Set]

by Nazarea Andrews

I try not to think about why, and nod briefly, striding away from our little circle of ground, trailed by Celeste and Murphy.

  HQ is surrounded by the lieutenants of every unit captain, and all of them look as unhappy as my escort. I roll my eyes at the grumpy cluster, and cut through them for the entrance of the tent.

  Two black-robed acolytes are stop me. “Surrender your weapons,” one says, and I go still and arch an eyebrow.

  “Are you fucking insane?”

  “High Priest’s orders,” he says. “Everyone surrenders their weapons before going in.”

  I laugh. “Then I’m going to assume O’Malley isn’t here yet.”

  A hush falls over the assembled lieutenants, and I feel someone moving at my back.

  “Why?” I ask, ignoring Finn.

  “Orders, ma’am.”

  I shrug. “Fine. Tell Omar I’ll miss his meeting.” I twist and the acolytes make a muffled protest, even as Finn moves, smoothly blocking them. His voice is low and even. “Touch her and I swear to god, yours will be the next corpse to feed the horde.”

  “The High Priest expects her.”

  “We’re in the Wide Open,” I snap, “in the fucking East. If your high priest wants me, he’ll get my guns too. I’m not so eager to see him that I’ll forfeit them.”

  “Nurrin, go inside,” Finn says, and the acolyte whose wrist he’s gripping makes a strangled protest. Finn doesn’t say anything, but the acolyte pales and I scoot past them and into the dark tent. Finn slips in after me.

  “Glad you could join us,” Omar says, his deep voice rumbling with annoyance.

  Finn ignores him and pushes me toward a spare stool at the war table. I drop onto it, and the other unit leaders give us a circle of space.

  Kenny is given the same consideration, where he sits in a corner of the tent.

  “There was a slight misunderstanding with your pet priests,” Finn says evenly, and Omar’s eyes darken, just for a moment.

  At his side, Lori makes a dismissive noise. “Tell us why we’re here, Priest.”

  He gives her a look of dark loathing, but when his gaze comes back to the assembled soldiers, the smooth expression is back.

  I suppress a shudder, but only just barely. I would never give that to Omar. He can terrify me in the privacy of my own mind, but that’s where it will stay.

  “We’ve reached the edge of Alabama. From here, we can turn north into Georgia and what is left of Atlanta, or we can go south to the human settlements our scouts say are along the eastern coast.”

  That’s what I knew was coming, what I’ve been expecting and dreading. Omar’s gaze flicks over me, and then away.

  “Why?” Finn asks, his voice cutting through the quiet of the tent. “Florida makes some sense—your intel says survivors are there. But what does Atlanta offer that would make the risk worth it?”

  “The CDC was based in Atlanta. And the plague-bringer was there when the bombs fell,” Omar says, emotionless.

  I feel the sudden fury that takes Finn, and I want to come off my stool, want to drag Omar to the ground and hold him there for Finn to beat the shit out of.

  A hand is on my shoulder, holding me still, and I realize I was tensing, moving without ever realizing it. Finn’s grip holds me back, carefully restraining. I ease back. “There’s nothing there. The CDC was destroyed along with the city, and Sylvia’s research, if there was any, is long lost to us. Walking the army into Atlanta would be as stupid now as it was twenty years ago.”

  Omar smiles, grimly. “I led the first forays into Atlanta after the bombs were dropped.”

  “How many did you lose?” Finn asks quietly.

  There is a shift in the room, Omar’s priests reacting to Finn’s argument.

  “I’ll go north,” a young man says. He can’t be even as old as I am, a child of the apocalypse, a stupid fucking Haven baby. And he has no idea what the hell he’s doing. Omar barely glances at him.

  His glittering dark eyes are still on Finn. “No. O’Malley and his unit will go north. He is in a unique position to know what to look for when it comes to Sylvia Cragen’s research, after all.”

  Finn is a live wire of tension behind me, and I sit quiet and still. The other shoe hasn’t dropped. But it will. It’s the Black fucking Priest. It always drops.

  His gaze drifts to me. Away to a unit leader we picked up in 1. He’s a good man. “You’ll accompany O’Malley. The rest of the army will go to the south, where you will meet us in two weeks.”

  Silence resounds through the tent, as loaded as a gun, and I expect O’Malley to argue. I expect him to fight the Priest on this. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything, just leans against a table and listens as Omar breaks down the plan for the two branches of the army, and my gaze is drawn to Kenny.

  He’s smirking—the little fucker. Watching me with laughter in his eyes as Omar rips me away from Finn.

  I’ve known since Collin died that I would lose him eventually. I expected it then, when his body was a small container of ash scattered to the wind, and he was free of his obligation to me. I expected it after I was bitten, and my life was tied irrevocably to the Order’s whims. I even expected it during the long months that led us to the East—any of the many times Finn could have slipped away and vanished into the Wide Open, and he didn’t.

  And now—now that I am beginning to believe that he won’t, that he means it when he says keeping me safe is his priority, now is when Omar will pull him away and I will be left here, in an army of people I don’t trust, with a forgotten president and a mad priest.

  And Finn is doing nothing to stop it.

  Chapter 13.

  The Disregard of Order

  It’s early—still black outside—when a hand covers my mouth, muffling my scream as another hand efficiently knocks aside the knife I bring up and at his rib.

  “Easy, Nurrin,” Finn says softly. I relax instantly, absorbing his weight as it presses me into the mattress. His hand releases mine, playing in my hair for a moment before he blinks and stares at me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What do you want me to do?” he counters, and I release a sigh, too tired and too annoyed to do anything more than that. Finn smirks. “You thought I’d leave you behind, didn’t you?”

  “The thought occurred, yes.” I bite down on all the reasons why it makes sense, and Finn laughs, a deep noise that shakes the bed and rubs against me in ways that are altogether too distracting.

  “Nurrin.”

  “You didn’t argue, O’Malley.”

  “I don’t argue with zealots,” he counters. “It wouldn’t make any difference. I am aware of the dangers of leaving you here while I go to Atlanta, and I wouldn’t leave you unprotected. I’m not looking to repeat history, Nurrin.”

  I flush. He doesn’t bring up the dead girl that he once loved, not often, but I’m not so stupid to think she isn’t here between us, weighing on him every time Omar makes an order.

  I shove the thought aside. I'm very good at ignoring shit I'm not ready to deal with, and I might be curious, but I don't think I'll ever be ready to deal with the girl he loved and lost.

  “What I want doesn’t matter,” I say.

  A smirk twitches at his lips and I have the absurd urge to lean up and lick it off his lips, to kiss him until neither of us can think straight.

  His gaze darkens, and his voice comes rough with warning. “Nurrin.”

  “What?” I murmur, shifting.

  It has been four months. Four months since my brother died, and I was bitten. Since we were drawn into this fucked up web and he pushed me away to protect me. Four fucking months since he’s touched me like this, but I see the hunger in his gaze sometimes, and I can feel it now, like a brand on my skin. And pressing against my hip, the hard arousal he can't deny.

  I lick my lips and his gaze traces the movement, a low noise spilling from him, low and silenced almost immediately, like he regrets having made it. “Nurrin,” he murmurs, and this
time it’s not a warning I hear.

  I move, and he meets me, his lips hard and hot and hungry. Almost too hard, pushing against me until I'm pressed into the pillow. His hands are brutal on my shoulders as he licks and nips at my lips, his tongue a velvety glide against mine, licking deep into my mouth, everywhere, every fucking where and I can't breathe, but who the fuck cares because Finn is here, his entire weight pushing me down and down and down, his hips resting in the cradle of my legs. I rub against him, the delicious friction making me writhe as his tongue fucks into my mouth, and I want to scream. His teeth nip at me, and I do, a low throaty noise with no power, but it makes him groan and thrust harder against me, hard enough that I can feel myself riding that edge of orgasm, stars dancing in my vision.

  “Nurrin,” he murmurs, and his lips cover my neck—open, wet kisses that are so soft, so sweet and dirty and—

  I scream as his hips push against mine, the orgasm a hard hot wave that crests over me and pulls everything away, a fucking tsunami that shatters everything that matters until there is only his body and sensation, and pleasure, cresting and cresting and cresting, never ending as he thrusts against me, grinding and forcing the pleasure higher until I'm whimpering, squirming away from him. He finally laughs, and kisses me, soft and quick, before rolling away to sit on the edge of the bed.

  I stare at his back, at the shoulders heaving under his thin shirt, and I can barely breathe, can barely wrap my head around—“What the fuck, Finn?” I demand, my voice shaky and weak.

  “You're welcome,” he drawls, and stands, adjusting his dick in his pants. “Try to stay out of trouble while I'm gone, would you? I'm leaving Tuck with you.”

  “Fuck you,” I snap, pushing myself up on my elbows and glaring at him. My bra is showing, but I refuse to tug my shirt into place—it's too much of a concession, a retreat, and I can't afford that right now. “You haven't touched me since the Outpost, and now you're going to get me off and leave for Atlanta? What the hell is that?”

  “I'm following my orders,” he says, evenly. “And I’m keeping you safe while I do. Don’t question that.”

  “Did Omar order you to fuck me?” I spit, and he glances back, fire in his gray eyes. I almost shiver. Almost back down. But I'm right, and we both know it.

  “Go,” I snap. “Follow the orders of the fucking mad priest, if you think it's that fucking important.”

  “You think I'm deserting you,” he says, watching me with curious eyes.

  “I don't think anything,” I spit. “I know it.”

  His eyes cloud, and I see something there that stops my anger cold. Because I've seen that look in his eyes before, when we lived in 8 and I did something especially asinine. Disdain. Disgust. Just the hint of impatience and anger.

  He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “I’ll see you soon, Nurrin. Try to stay alive.”

  Then he stalks out of the bus and leaves me in a heap of blankets and rapidly fading pleasure and more fucking questions than I could ever expect to answer.

  It takes me five minutes to make my decision, and I roll out of my bed, coming to my feet and nudging my sleeping Firsts. “Get up,” I whisper. “But quietly.”

  I’m a not surprised to find Tuck at the door to my bus, leaning against it and smoking a cigarette in the darkness. His eyes are lit by the fire pit, reflecting the flames and dancing in the darkness. He looks at me, and I wonder what it is about him that drew Finn.

  He’s quiet, patiently waiting for me to explain why the hell I’m standing in front of him in my pajamas and bare feet in the middle of the night, and for a moment, I flush, realizing just how young and vulnerable I must appear to him. Then I shove that aside, and nod at the bus. “Come inside. We have a lot of planning to do if we're going to pull this shit off.”

  Part 3. The End of the World

  *

  The world is broken. We can’t fix it.

  Nurrin Sanders~

  **

  We will find peace in the end of the Firsts.

  The Red Priestess~

  Chapter 1.

  Where It Began

  Emilie Milan, by all accounts, was a good kid, even if she was a little depressed. A little troubled, and a little violent, but a good kid. Sometimes, I lie in my bed or sit on the edge of the Wall, and I wonder what would have happened if her parents hadn’t been so quick to feed her a miracle drug. If they had taken the time to work through her shit, rather than just medicate it into submission.

  She hadn’t killed anyone. She hadn’t even hurt anyone—just the family dog, and granted, that was a fucked up little tidbit the talking heads liked to trot out. She was a depressed, violent child, born that way and maybe there was no option.

  There wasn’t for my uncle. And, I think, that’s why I know it wouldn’t have mattered. If it hadn’t been Emilie with the dog she sliced to pieces in the princess castle in her backyard, it would have been someone else. And it might not have been a dog.

  We saved the world, my fucked up family, for a few blissful years. We offered them a cure to all of the messy emotions that complicated things and made people so unpredictable. We turned mass murders into passive school teachers.

  And then we were stupid enough to believe it would stick.

  She knew it wouldn’t. She told everyone who would listen. Long before Emilie died and rose to attack her morgue attendant, Sylvia was telling the world that it wasn’t real—Synthrix was merely a rotten egg wrapped in golden tissue paper, and eventually the entire world would know it.

  She knew it—it’s why she sent me away when Uncle Keifer came to the house, why when he got sick, she was the one who went to him instead of Da. Because she knew that Synthrix was unstable and that the consequences were going to be devastating.

  The problem was that she realized it too late.

  She was right. But it wasn’t Uncle Keifer who started it—if it had been, it would have ended there, in our little piece of the world, a bloody end to a man whose sister loved him too much and too unconditionally.

  If there is any fault in this new world, in the creating of it, it is that. She loved too much. Uncle Keifer, and Da, who took her research and sold it to the world.

  And changed every fucking thing we knew.

  The rest of the world saw the story of Emilie, and even Sylvia Cragen and her psychotic brother, and they made their judgements based on the snapshots of a life they couldn’t know, and the world falling apart.

  I lived it, though. Even before the world ended, I lived the devastation of it all.

  It is easy to forget, when you look at the end of the world, that every story is very small, and begins so very simply.

  Chapter 2.

  The Forgotten Army

  Fort Benning was once one of the largest infantry bases in the world, and certainly the largest in the United States. It’s why ERI-Milan mutated so quickly and viciously—because the Army that was literally in the first horde’s backyard slammed into it, mutating it for the first time. After that, it was all downhill.

  I whistle sharply and Greer ambles out of the bus to stand at my side. I pulled him from his unit because he had been a medic at Ft Benning when the outbreak happened, and deserted as soon as the bombs hit in Atlanta.

  Can’t blame him too much for that, even if I can’t respect him very much.

  But he’s handy to have now.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, leaning back against the bus. The area is quiet, with the exception of a crow cawing from a nearby tree. It glares at us, beady eyes too shiny, and caws again.

  “You know the armory has been picked clean, right, boss?”

  I give him a bland stare and he sighs before he says, “The tanks are in Sand Hill and we can check the hospital for any research they might have. The scientists were always in and out of there.”

  I don’t think there’s anything there, but we’ll investigate because I believe strongly in leaving no stone unturned.

  “Take half the unit with L
ake, and get the tank. Check the armory—just to set my mind at ease. Anything you think we can use, bring it with us. Atlanta won’t be easy.”

  “Sir.” He snaps off a lazy salute, and whistles shrilly, pulling his half of the unit into action.

  I can feel the others at my back, all nerves and anticipation, and I wish again that Tuck was here. He was a damn good second, and one of the few people in this fucking army that I trusted.

  Which is why he isn’t here. Because there was no way I’d leave her with the Order without someone I trusted to guard her back. He’s not Collin but no one will ever be Collin, and I need to trust someone.

  “Move out. Weapons ready, and don’t fuck around—we’re less than a hundred and fifty miles from Atlanta. We stay on our guard. Shoot first, questions later.”

  It’s unspoken that there won’t be later—we shoot to kill, because there isn’t anything living this close to the hot zone.

  Fort Benning is a two part mission. Three, if we can find a tank, which I'm not betting on. Weapons and research are important, but what we really need are the hazmat suits that got dumped here when the dirty bombs went off and the FEMA declared it unsavable.

  It's what kept that first research team, led by Omar a decade after the change, alive and it's why we’re here today, what will keep us alive as we trek into Atlanta.

  The fucking CDC. It's the siren song Omar knew I couldn't ignore, and he's right.

  There's too much history for me to ignore it and even knowing there's not a damn thing there but dust and death, I'm going.

  My mother died there, fighting a disease she created, knowing it was an impossible fight.

  And I'm going back because I can't ignore that.

  The quiet is grating, and I can’t help but wonder where Ren is, and if she’s safe. She’d been so surprising, coming to life under me in the darkness of her bus. Hot and hungry so suddenly, after the amused cool attitude she’d given me since the bite.

  She’d been gorgeous, falling apart under my hands.

  I should never have fucked her. It’s been four months, and I still can’t get the taste of her off my lips. I wake up some nights, aching for the touch of her skin against mine. Every time I see her, I fight the urge to push her against a wall and fuck her until we both forget everything that happened before and everything that happened after, and all the fucked up reasons we shouldn’t be together anymore.