I nod, hating that he’s seeing me this weak. Finn’s eyes shutter, and he releases me. “Go. Fall apart when we’re safe.”
Dustin catches me as I stumble away, and we lean against each other as we follow Collin and Finn toward the edge of the cliff. For a moment, staring off the cliff, I wonder where the hell we're going. Finn looks at Collin. "Take point. Dustin behind you, then Nurrin. I'll bring up the rear."
Collin glances at me then nods, scooping a bag off the pebbly, hard ground. Then he steps forward. The path—if it can be called that, and really, it shouldn't—is so narrow, I'm not sure how he finds footing on it.
I have no idea how Dustin will. He hesitates for a moment, and from behind me comes Finn’s voice, sharp in my ear. “You go down, or stay here, but get the fuck out of the way, dude.”
I turn to glare at him, but he’s staring at Dustin, his expression bleak. Dustin grinds his teeth audibly behind me and follows my brother down the cliff side.
“Take this,” Finn says, handing me the bag. It takes me a moment to adjust to the weight of it, and I can feel Finn’s gaze on me, avid and assessing. I straighten and turn away, stepping onto the path.
And ignore the half smirk that turns Finn’s lips.
Chapter 10
The Hole
“What is this place?” I ask, my awe apparent in my voice. Finn steps past me, his body brushing against my arm. I step away, quickly, moving to Dustin.
“I call it the Hole. My parents set it up a few years after the fall. It was always a safe place for us to fall back.”
It’s the most revealing thing Finn has ever said, and I look at Collin—he doesn’t seem surprised. He doesn’t seem even startled by the electricity pumping through the cave; the comfortable, if dusty looking furniture; and the little kitchen in the back, open cabinets stocked with MREs and canned goods.
He’s been here before. Finn has shared this with him, and Collin never mentioned it. Anger flares in me, and I turn to Dustin, kneeling in front of him on the couch and yanking at his boot. He screams, the noise filling the Hole, echoing around us. Finn whips around, his eyes wide and furious as he slams the butt of his pistol against Dustin’s temple.
I gape at him, and all the anger in me bubbles up. His gaze swings to me, unrepentant. “Take care of him, while he can’t bring every infect in miles to us.”
He throws me a first aid kit, and I catch it, even in my daze. Collin crouches next to me and helps me wrestle Dustin’s boot off his swollen foot. I prod it, but the truth is I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
“Just wrap it tight,” Collin says, and I latch on to his instructions. As I wind the bandage around Dustin’s foot, Collin shoves a pillow under his head—I guess neither of the boys wants to move him. Can’t blame them much. Dustin is solid.
“What the fuck are we doing?” I demand in a harsh whisper. He gives me a curious look, and I glance over at Finn. “He’s not stable, Collin. He’s violent.”
“He saved our lives,” Collin answers.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“You didn’t need to know, and Finn asked me not to.” Collin’s voice is reasonable and calm, and I want to scream and shake him. I’m anything but reasonable and calm.
“Ren, I know how you feel about Finn. I get it—you hate him. But can you just put that aside for a few days? We’re not in normal circumstances, and you sniping at him every few minutes isn’t going to help any of us.” Collin says.
I stare at him, seeing the exhaustion and fear in his eyes I hadn’t noticed before. I reach for him, squeeze his hand. “Go sleep,” I tell him, and he shakes his head.
“She’s right. You haven’t had more than thirty minutes in almost two days. Go. I’ll take first watch,” Finn says from behind me, and I force myself not to react, schooling my expression to impassivity. Collin looks between us, uncertain, and then he nods.
The silence that fills the Hole after Collin collapses is almost deafening. Finn moves around, comfortable in his own space, unpacking bags and setting out weapons. I feel, suddenly, the itchy sensation of dried sweat, and I’m anxious to get out of my restrictive clothing.
“Is there somewhere I can change?” I ask, and Finn pauses, looking at me, one eyebrow arched in question. Something flickers in his gaze, shut down too quickly for me to follow.
“The back—past the kitchen is a tunnel. Change there. Should be some water to rinse, if you want.”
I start to say thanks, but he’s already turned away. Asshat.
I strip quickly, in almost complete darkness, and shiver—it's cool back here, surprisingly so. I dip my hands into the chilly water and scrub the dust of the day from my skin. It’s not enough to get rid of the dirty feeling, but it helps a little. I shiver and dress quickly in a long pair of sweats and a loose shirt, leaving my bra and zom gear in a pile on the stone. Then I pad back out into the main area of the cave and scoop up my knives and guns. The latter go on the table with Finn and Collin’s for cleaning, and then I go to stand near Finn. He’s at the entrance of the cave, staring into the night.
“Thanks,” I say, abruptly, and his gaze darts to me. “For getting Collin out.”
He gives me a thin-lipped smile. “Not for yourself?”
I look away, into the night, and ask the question that’s been at the back of my mind all day. “What were you doing in the orchards?”
Finn is so quiet and still, I look over and check on him—seeing him startles me.
“Collin and I have always had a plan, in case of a major breach. Getting you was part of the plan.”
I nod and look back into the darkness. “What happens next?”
“You go to bed.”
His voice is different, subtly shut off, and I push myself to my feet. I don’t particularly want to be sitting here having a conversation with Finn O’Malley anyway.
As I turn away, his voice stops me. “What you did back there—Nurrin, that was stupid.”
“You could say thank you.”
He moves, catching my bare ankle in a vice-like grip. “I won’t thank you for putting yourself in danger.” Finn’s voice is low, a soft accent rounding his words. His thumb moves over my ankle, and my pulse jumps—I wonder if he’s even aware of the caress and what game he’s playing if he is.
“Why do you call me that?” I demand, instead. His finger stills, and he releases me, rising in one smooth, almost inhuman move. He crowds me, and I step back until I bump into the side of the cave wall. His presence is choking the air in my lungs, consuming everything around me, and I want to shove him away, but the look in his dark eyes stops me—there’s something there I’ve never seen before. Something I don’t want to think about. I tilt my chin up, glaring, and Finn smiles, a faint twitch of his lips.
And steps away from me. “Ren is the name of a little girl avoiding who she is. What she was born to. Nurrin—that’s the name of a woman who risks her life because she’s got more courage than sense and was born to epic times and deeds.”
I gape at him as he turns away, and I know he’s aware of me staring, questions burning on the tip of my tongue. But he doesn’t turn back to me, and his voice is remote and disdainful as he says, “Get some sleep, Nurrin. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”
I retreat to the couch, cuddling into Dustin and pulling a blanket up over us. He curls around me, an arm snaking over my waist, and I smile, kissing his hair.
When I look up, I’m stunned to find Finn staring at us, his eyes furious and hot. Before I can say anything—before I can draw breath—he turns away, watching for dangers in the night.
Chapter 11
Conversations and Threats
I’m awakened by voices and heat. Dustin has kicked the blanket off sometime in the night, but the heat rolling off him is more than enough to make me sweat. I ease away from him enough to give me breathing room.
“We can wait it out, Collin. It’s safer here than anywhere, you know that.”
; There’s a long moment of silence, and then, “Do you really think Ren’ll go for that?” Collin’s voice is quiet, and Finn doesn’t answer. I peek up over the couch and see them—Finn sitting at the small table, his back to me as they clean the guns. Light is streaming into the cave, and I can smell coffee.
“She’ll do what she’s told. But it’ll go down easier if you’re the one telling,” Finn says lazily, and all my anger sparks again. “Also, she’s listening to us.”
Heat floods my cheeks as I stand, dusting off my gritty palms. Collin raises, coming to give me a quick hug. “Do you want some coffee?”
“I’d like to know what I’m being told to do. What am I supposed to listen to.?” I snap, aiming the words at Finn’s head.
Collin has the grace to flush, but all Finn says is, “Eavesdropping is a bad habit—and the sign of a morally corrupt character.”
“You’d do it in a heartbeat.”
He finally glances at me, and for some reason, all I can see is the expression in his eyes when he watched me on the couch last night. “It’s said imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” he says silkily.
“Imitate this,” I snap and flip him off. A smile twitches his lips before he turns back to the weapons on the table in front of him. That quickly, I’m dismissed.
I follow my nose to the coffee on the counter, pouring a cup and pulling myself onto the solid rock ledge before sipping it. Thick, hot, black as night—just the way I love it. “So, what were you talking about?”
Finn and Collin exchange one of those wordless glances that bugs the shit out of me, and I look away.
And scream.
The boys bolt into action, guns immediately leveled at the cave entry, Collin planted in front of me, scanning for an infect. I slide down, pushing past him, and stumble-run to the entrance of the cave. Finn catches me as I lean over the lip—and I’m glad. The site makes me nauseated. He pulls me away, but not before I see the gorge yawing below us, the sides of the canyon stained with blood and infection, the broken bits of infects who have fallen over the cliff.
“What was that?” he hisses, shaking me.
“Finn,” Collin snaps, and Finn releases me abruptly. I sag against the wall, struggling not to throw up.
“She doesn’t know, man. She has no idea what the hell is going on—you need to lighten up,” Collin says, his voice tight and angry. I’ve never heard him this angry with Finn before, and it cheers me up a little. Until he turns on me. “And you need to get your shit together, Ren. That stunt yesterday? Forget what Finn’ll do to you, you try that again, I’ll kick your ass myself. Screams like that in the Wide Open will get us killed.”
“There was infect out there,” I protest, and he rolls his eyes.
“We’re here for a reason, Ren. They can’t get us here.”
Suddenly, the previous day, the stress of everything slams into me. Collin yelling at me never fails to make me emotional. I turn away, compressing my lips and blinking furiously. I won’t let him see me cry. Him or Finn fucking O’Malley. I hunch my shoulders when he reaches for me, pulling out of his reach. Silence fills the cave, making it seem smaller than it truly is, and I want to bolt—want to run the three mile track in Hellspawn, anything that will let me work out some of this emotion.
Even punching Finn a few times would help, but I think he hits back.
That settles the last of my emotions, and I finally turn around and face Collin. I continue to ignore Finn—it’s probably the best option available to me.
“Dustin’s got an infection,” I say.
Chapter 12
Infection
They wake him up.
Despite my protest that it’s probably just dirt in the gash on his arm, Finn shakes him awake. Dustin blinks blearily, a sleepy smile on his lips. Finn says, his voice flatly unemotional, “You have a live infection. Strip down for examination and possible quarantine.”
“Quarantine?” I demand, amused. “Where are you going to stick him? He was with Collin in that car for almost twelve hours. If he’s going into Q, Collin would too.”
I don’t say that I slept next Dustin, or that putting them into Q would leave Finn and me alone together and we’d end up killing each other, and wouldn’t the infects just love that. I think he gets it, though, because his lips do that twitchy thing again that makes me think he’s going to smile, but he doesn’t.
Heaven forbid Finn O’Malley show a human emotion other than anger.
“I wasn’t bit,” Dustin groans, putting a hand up to block the sun streaming into his eyes. I take an involuntary step forward, and Collin catches me. He’s not taking any chances, not until they’ve satisfied their suspicions.
Dustin looks at me, and I bite my lip. “Just do it, Dustin. Please?”
He pushes himself upright, and I see the large bruise on his temple from where Finn hit him last night. Finn approaches him and takes a quick blood sample to run against markers of ERI-Milan infection.
It was an experiment the army played with at first—that eventually spilled into the private sector. Sanelos Pharmaceuticals created an emotion inhibitor to keep soldiers even keeled on the battlefield and during deployment. But Sanelos saw a civilian market. Kids were too emotional, too high strung. Prone to random acts of violence and suicide. The emotional response inhibitor was the magic pill—pop one and settle your ass down. Soccer moms around the country swore by it; the government used it to calm the violent and criminally insane; the military gave it to the soldiers with a touch of PTSD—it was the wonder drug that gave people back their lives, albeit without much in the way of emotion.
Because it wasn’t just violence—the ERI pill killed all emotion. And kill wasn’t the right word—it muted them, diverted the chemical reaction to keep the subject calm. It was the perfect solution, until it wasn’t.
The first case of ERI mutation was in Emilie Milan, a little fourteen-year-old ballet dancer. She’d been on ERI for ten years—one of the first poster children for the drug—when she was killed in a car accident on the way to a ballet recital. When she woke up, high on adrenaline, and attacked the morgue attendant, it was the first sign ERI wasn’t the savior everyone thought it was.
That was the day I was born. Something about the long use of ERI mutated in Emilie, and it spread when she bit the morgue worker. ERI-Milan spread like wildfire, the infection working through the dead and bringing them back with a violent hunger.
Within days, thousands were dead—and coming back. Hoards of infects were racing through towns and cities. And on Third Day, as it collided with the military—one of the largest users of ERI—it changed the response in the soldiers. There was something about the pack of people that changed the virus, mutating it. If ERI-Milan was the beginning, the horde colliding with the army outside of Atlanta—that was the end.
“He’s not bitten,” Finn announces, and I twitch, jerked from my thoughts. “Get dressed, Dustin.”
“I told you that,” I can’t help but snipe, and Collin gives me a quiet, quelling stare. I shrug. I wait, my back turned as Dustin struggles to redress. Finally, I hear the soft rasp of his jeans, and I turn back to him, going to sit next to him on the couch. His arm comes around me, and I snuggle into his side, ignoring the surprise in Collin’s eyes. “So he’s not infected with ERI-Milan. He still has a blood infection.”
Finn walks out of the back tunnel carrying a syringe. His eyes find me, and his expression tightens then goes savagely blank. The vial of blood is gone, but he carries a test strip. I snatch it from him as he injects Dustin, checking it quickly. None of the markers are there—absolutely no sign of ERI-Milan. A sigh of relief slips from me, and Dustin squeezes me closer.
“This will help—but I can’t promise it’ll fix everything,” Finn says.
“Then why don’t we take him to Haven 7? It’s not far. They’ll have a doctor for Dustin, and it’s safe there.”
Collin and Finn exchange a glance, and I feel my brother nod. Finn’s gaze swin
gs to me. “Why do you presume that Haven 7 will be safe?”
“Havens are built to be safe.”
“Hellspawn wasn’t, yesterday.”
The quietly spoken words hit me like a hammer, and I inhale sharply. Dustin glares. “Dude. Chill. She’s going on the same assumption we’ve had most of our lives.”
“She needs to change her assumptions,” Finn says ruthlessly. “The Havens are falling, Nurrin. Hellspawn was just the latest in a list of nine to fall this year.”
I’m glad I’m sitting—I’d fall if I weren’t. As it is, I feel like the cave is spinning, and bile churns in my gut. Finn is watching me, and Dustin is cursing at my side. Collin looks so sad and tired. Why is Finn still watching me—like my reaction matters right now? I close my eyes and force out the question, “Nine—how many dead?”
“There were a handful of survivors from three of the Havens. Twenty total.”
I jerk away from Dustin, stumbling to the back of the cave. It’s not solitude, but it’s as close as I can get. I fall to my knees, the numbers spinning through my head.
After the initial wave, when the infection spread like wildfire, the governments swept in, putting people behind fences. With only a fraction of the population still left alive—less than one percent of the population survived the first six months—they divided us into segments and set up Havens. For nine to fall in six months—the sheer number of lives lost makes me sick, and I gag, throwing up.
A hand is on my back, and I push against Collin, tears burning in my eyes. “How long has this been going on?”
He doesn’t answer for a long time. “About a year. The first few reports, we thought were flukes. Aggressive infects.”
“And now?”
He shrugs. “Finn explains it better. Come back out.” I stare at him, and he gives an aggravated sigh. “He’s not as awful as you want to think. And he got us out of Hellspawn before it fell.”
The World Without a Future (The World Without End) Page 3