And I hate him.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that. Like now, when he’s shadowed by fatigue and worry, when the lines of his tattoos are stark against his tense skin. It’s hard to remember how much I loathed him in Hellspawn. Why I did.
“You did well, in the fight,” I say abruptly. His gaze flicks up to mine, surprise in his eyes for a heartbeat before it’s chased away by disdain.
“I don’t need your sympathy or your pity, Nurrin.”
“You don’t need to be an ass,” I answer crisply. He smirks, a tiny twitch of the lips. “Do you think he’s there?” I nod at 9.
He shrugs, looking out over the Wide Open to where it waits. “Maybe. We’ll start in the morgue, see if they have Containment. Rule that out as quickly as possible.”
I nod, my chest tightening. “Will the Aldermen help us?” You. That is the subtext of my question, and he grins over at me, reading it clearly. It’s mocking, and I bristle, wanting to smack the look off his face.
I wish I had fought, earlier. Maybe it would have helped this unbearable tension.
“Always with the fucking questions.”
I shrug, and he slides into the driver seat. I notice that he ignores my question completely as he puts the ZTNK into gear, and we lurch down the road toward whatever 9 holds for us.
Chapter 11. Old Habits
The Walkers look the same. The Walls look the same. Even the stupid weapons and the stupid gates look the same.
But this time, flashing a cool smile and a name doesn’t earn Finn any special privileges. This time, the Walkers eye us with cautious distrust. Even when Finn clears the ZTNK and we pass our blood tests—and that will never get old, will it?—there is something cautious about them.
“What’s your business in 9?” one asks. He’s decorated—clearly their leader. I hide my smile at the way he stands there, his hands resting lightly on the hilt of his knives, his posture loose and unconcerned.
Two harmless Haven travelers, divested of their weapons, their blood tests clean.
That’s what he sees—all he sees. Finn dressed us well for this part, with his too-polished clothes and insistence that I dress up.
We’ve made an impression, all right.
They’re idiots, comfortable because they think we’re no threat. That, more than anything, convinces me that they have no idea who Finn is.
No one could know Finn O’Malley and think he’s anything less than a threat. He stands next to me, a relaxed stance. “Just a vacation with my fiancée. She’s never been far from our haven.”
“Why 9? Why now?” the leader asks.
“Her father had some business here, so we thought we’d deliver it for him. And my leave came now.”
His gaze sharpens on us, and I shake my head. Finn slipped that in on purpose. “Leave. Are you a Walker?”
“Of Haven 29,” Finn lies easily.
29 is to the east, along what used to be the Canadian border. It’s far enough away that they won’t bother to check our story. Finn would have an easy story ready. I wonder, idly, if anything ever catches him unaware.
There’s a brief discussion about our paperwork, which somehow got lost, and Finn loses his temper. It’s amazing how quickly and well he can act.
“You have a hostel, don’t you?” he finally demands.
The Walkers look disconcerted, and one says, “There’s an empty room in the barracks, if you’d like to stay there.”
Finn flicks a glance at me, and I make a face. A wealthy girl on her vacation wouldn’t want to stay with soldiers in a smelly barrack. She’d be furious, and I know that’s the part I have to play.
“I don’t care where we go,” I whine. “I just want to go to bed.”
There’s a beat of silence followed by a badly muffled laugh. My face flushes.
Finn’s eyes seem to laugh at me before he shuts the emotion down and turns back to the Walkers. “We’ll take it. Thank you.”
“What of your transport?” the captain asks lazily. “Leaving a ZTNK like that is asking for it to be stolen.”
For the first time, some of the idle disinterest slips from Finn, and I can see—they can see—the barely controlled violence simmering under the surface. “They are welcome to try,” he says softly, expressionless.
The walkers go still, staring at him, as if they aren’t really sure what to do. As if they suddenly realize the lamb is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and they let that into their Haven. A few exchange wild looks, and then Finn snaps his fingers at me and I snarl softly. His gaze darts to me. Without too much complaint, I go to his side, and we follow the Walker silently to the empty barrack that will be our home for the duration.
Chapter 12. Tiny Bed. Big Adjustments
The first thing I notice as we step into the room is that the bed is miniscule and narrow. An unfortunate looking mattress on a bare wire frame. A thing meant for utility and not comfort, and sure as hell not for sharing. I look away almost as quickly, my gaze colliding with Finn’s. His gray eyes are roiling with emotion, but when mine meet them, he goes utterly blank.
Useful skill, that.
I’m anxious after the Walker abandons us, pacing the narrow room and avoiding thinking about what we’ll do when night falls and exhaustion makes sleep unavoidable.
Then guilt slams into me. I’m worried about sleeping arrangements, while Collin is god knows where, enduring god knows what? How fucking petty can I get? I pause in my pacing, twisting to level a glare at Finn.
He meets it with a raised eyebrow. “What?”
“This is your fucking fault!” I snap.
“Do explain,” he drawls, his accent thickening a little—a sure sign he’s not as even tempered as he appears.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell them your name? Smooth things along a little?”
“Can’t.”
I snort, “Your name has opened doors from 8 to the fucking Stronghold. Why is it different here?”
He gives me a flat stare, and I laugh, a little hysterical. “Oh, forgive me. You won’t answer a question like that. How silly of me to forget.”
“Don’t do that,” he says, annoyed.
“What?”
“That sarcastic bitchiness. It’s annoying as fuck.” I gape at him. “And you’re better than that.”
I can’t help the bitter laugh that wells in me, the one that sounds a little hysterical and on the very edge of shattering. I cut if off as Finn looks at me.
“It doesn’t matter what happened in the other Havens, Nurrin. Here, my name will open no doors—I don’t know anyone here. We’ll get through this the way anyone would—by bribing our way and fighting like hell. Which we’re very good at.”
“We don’t have time, for that,” I snap shrilly.
“We also don’t have a choice,” he shoots back, his voice as bracing as a slap. “I don’t have the time to coddle you. You have to get your shit together, or Collin is as good as dead.”
The words are harsh and violent. They sting tears to my eyes, but they also jerk me up short. I shudder, knowing that he’s right. I don’t have the indulgence of wallowing and worry—not if there is even the slightest chance in hell of finding Collin alive. I take a deep breath, nod sharply to myself, and stare at him. Finn is watching me, his gray eyes caustic and demanding.
Exactly what I need him to be.
“What are we going to do?”
Something sparks in his eyes briefly—close to approval—before it’s gone. “We’ll listen to gossip, first. If that doesn’t yield anything—check Q and Containment. Appeal to the Warden holders. If Collin and Dustin were here, they’ll know, and they’re accessible, even to us. See if we can get into the morgue.”
I flinch, and he adds, “It’s better to eliminate that possibility than to have it dangling over us the entire time we’re in the Haven.”
“And for now?”
“We’ll rest. Get some sleep without the stress of the Wide Open and start fresh in the morning.
I’ll see if I can get some info from the Walkers—they might talk to me if they feel camaraderie.”
I almost laugh at the idea of Finn O’Malley having camaraderie with anyone other than himself, or possibly Collin. But I have a feeling he can fake it, if he has to. There is very little that O’Malley can’t do, if he has to.
“What will you do if Collin isn’t here?”
Finn’s eyes narrow a little. “You have yet to mention Dustin.”
I stare at him, working through the words, trying to process them. Then I flush. “I want to get them both back. Obviously.”
“It’s not obvious,” he says softly. “You want Collin back—from how often you’ve brought up Dustin, I wonder if you even remember he’s what started this.”
I flounder for something to say, but come up with nothing. Finn doesn’t push further than that, just turns to the little bed where our bags are and rummages through them until he comes up with a few knives and two guns. The backup to replace the weapons the Walkers confiscated.
“I want mine back,” I say when he extends one to me. He nods, as close to a promise as I’ll get, and I take the standard Glock, tucking it into the empty holster on my hip.
Chapter 13. Twisted Priorities
I can’t get Finn’s subtle accusation out of my head. It wasn’t an overt thing—Finn O’Malley doesn’t need that. But it’s a niggling presence in the back of my mind.
And it was there because it was the truth. I had forgotten Dustin.
Before Emilie Milan and the zombies and the horror show that life became—before I was born—people had different priorities. Life wasn’t easily mapped out. Family was defined by more than blood. People fought with family and walked away from them completely, finding friends who would take their place. And it was common place, a normal occurrence.
Now, blood is all that matters—the blood that is shared, and the blood that is spilled.
Maybe that’s why Dustin hasn’t been my first concern, or even my second. Looking back now, I struggle to find the feelings I had for him. There is the warmth of something familiar and comfortable, a friend that’s been a long standing fixture. But Dustin, for all that he’s been in my life for almost ten years, isn’t someone I’ve ever bled with or for. We had a safe life, a good life, in Hellspawn.
I haven’t worried about him, because I’ve never needed to. Because he isn’t my whole family and closest friend. He’s Dustin. The goofy boy from downstairs who laughed and teased, who grew into a surrogate protector, and someone whose kisses could melt me like butter.
He was comfortable and steady, and I could easily have been happy with him, if the Haven hadn’t fallen.
But it did.
And with the uncertainty I am now swimming in, there is no room for comfort—there is only the driving need to find Collin. It’s a need that cramps in my belly and makes my mouth dry, my hands shake. It’s a fear that that makes Finn at my side not only tolerable, but welcome.
Finn would move heaven and earth and face a horde alone to find Collin. Which means he is the only person I want helping me.
Chapter 14. Drifters
It’s funny that I became accustomed to Finn’s strange kind of influence so quickly. It was so effortless there in 18, it was easy to take it for granted. As natural as breathing, it was something that made doors open and annoyed me, but made things too easy, until it was gone.
There are no Aldermen scraping to meet us. There are no house calls from mysterious doctors in the middle of the night, no empty, dusty homes standing waiting for his return. There is no whispers of vice clubs and Undergrounds. We are met with closed doors and a few Walkers bored enough to entertain our questions.
By noon, I’m furious and more than a little scared. We know nothing more than we did yesterday.
“Calm down,” Finn says under his breath, steering me down a market street. The Haven natives watch us with thinly veiled curiosity.
“Too long,” I mutter, and his grip on my arm tightens a little. Not enough that I wince—just enough to get my attention and jerk me back to the necessity of keeping my calm.
“Talk to the women. I’ll see if the men will tell me anything.”
I shoot him a quick look—Finn isn’t usually comfortable with a divide and conquer strategy. Tiny lines of stress bracket his eyes and lips. I nod.
The women are standoffish. They eye me warily as I separate from Finn, and I watch as they appraise us. Appraise him. There are more than a few admiring stares as we collectively watch his leather clad backside retreat.
Even I have to admit it's a helluva nice ass.
"Is he attached?" A girl to my left asks. She's pretty, just shy of the unhealthy side of thin, with short cropped black hair and the outline of a gun at her left hip. She's got enough innocence mixed with don't fuck with me to make her interesting.
Finn would like her. As much as he likes anyone.
I want to claw her eyes out. Instead, I shrug lightly. "I think he needs information."
A few women turn to look at me, their gazes harsher than they had been on Finn. Of course. Women are our own worst critics.
"What kind of information?"
I hesitate—Finn built our cover story, and I should probably stick to it. But I know what hook to dangle to get these women to help me. I nod at Finn. "My brother is his partner. He disappeared about a week ago—left behind a code that pointed us here. He was with my boyfriend. We're trying to find them."
The girl frowns a little. "We don't get a lot of visitors to the Haven."
"Then these two would make an impression," I say with a thin smile. I'm struggling to hold my temper when what I want to do is smack her and demand answers. Not that she would even have them.
"I don't know much. My brother is a Walker and said two refugees arrived three days ago. They were sent to Containment. You might want to try there."
I give her what might be a friendly smile and turn away. "O'Malley," I yell. His head lifts from where he's been talking to a Walker. His eyebrow goes up, and I nod. He doesn't say anything to the Walker, just stalks to me and matches my step as we leave the market behind.
Chapter 15. Containment
When the zombies took over the Wide Open, Havens were thrown up across the country as fast as they could be fortified. There was no rhyme or reason to it—they were numbered as they went into operation, scattered across the Midwest and past the mountains. There were even a few built in Canada.
Mexico was a black hole of death and infection—no one, not even the Mexicans, fought for it. They retreated to our cities, and when the plague found them there, they fell back into our Havens.
The first time a refugee convoy dumped evac citizens, it was at Haven 3, on a deserted plain in Kansas. It was the perfect place for a Haven, surrounded by farm land, self-sufficient, with enough excess crops to send to neighboring Havens.
It would have been a good place. In a time when there were no good places.
Except that in the chaos of the evac dump, a contact infection slipped in. Those days, there were no blood tests. There was nothing but the knowledge that the infects were in the Wide Open and the walls needed to be secure.
They escorted everyone inside and settled them into their new homes, and for the first time in months, everyone let out the breath they had been holding. Here, they were safe.
Here, they would live.
Three weeks later, a second convoy arrived with an evac dump. The Haven walls were unmanned, and black smoke rose behind the walls. The stench of death filled the air for miles. The contact infection that was carried in by that poor evac victim had gone live, infecting her. She, in turn, had infected the Haven.
Despite the perfection of the location, 3 was abandoned.
Blood tests were developed. Quarantine for anyone showing all three signs or exposed to a live infection. Containment for people who weren’t infected, but were potentially a risk to the Haven, although some Havens skipped it in favor of Quarant
ine.
People bitch, quietly. It takes little provocation and absolutely no proof or justification to end up in Q or Containment, and spending three weeks in either is no one’s idea of a picnic.
But it is a necessary evil, a part of the world we live in.
We approach the squat, square building, and Finn glances at me. “You can wait outside.”
I don’t even bother dignifying that with a response, just roll my eyes and keep walking toward the building. The stench of unwashed bodies and human waste slaps me in the face, making my eyes water, when I open the door. Finn makes a disgusted noise and props the door open. There are three Walker recruits sitting on either side of a triangular desk, so each was facing an open air, barred cells. They look bored, only mildly interested to see us standing in their doorway.
“Fucking amateurs,” Finn mutters, low enough that I hear it but they can’t. I agree with him, privately.
They aren't watching the Contained, and the shatter proof glass to Q is thick with grime and the viscous slog of infection.
This isn't a holding place to prove you are clean. This is a death sentence. My stomach lurches unpleasantly, and I falter in the doorway. I don't want to go in. Don't want to find my brother here. Something in me rebels at the mere possibility of it.
Finn has no such inhibitions. He strides in, ignoring the recruits completely as he walks to the first cage.
"Oi! You can't be here," one of the recruits says, his voice sharply disbelieving.
Finn doesn't bother to look at him, surveying the holding cells impatiently. Which means it's my job to make nice with the men with guns. I give the back of Finn's head a dirty look and fix a smile on my face as I stroll to the Walkers. The first one glares at me. "What the hell does he think he's doing?"
"We're looking for my brother. He came this way a few days ago, and we thought Containment would be a good place to start."
Amusement in their eyes. “If your brother is here, he’s as good as dead.”
The World Without End (Book 2): The Horde Without End Page 4