The Future Without Hope (The World Without End Book 3) Read online

  The Future Without Hope

  Book 3 of The World Without End

  Nazarea Andrews

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction including brands or products.

  Copyright © 2014 by Nazarea Andrews

  The Future Without Hope by Nazarea Andrews

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by A&A Literary

  Summary: After being separated, Nurrin and Finn struggle to survive

  And find their way back to each other despite the zombies and Order.

  1. Zombies 2. Romance 3. New Adult 4. Post Apocalyptic

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  For information, address Nazarea Andrews @ [email protected]

  www.nazareaandrews.com

  Edited by Brianna Shrum

  Cover design by Mel Stevens of the Illustrated Author

  Cover art copyright©: Nazarea Andrews

  Separated from Finn, captive of the Order, Nurrin has no hope left. But she has survived twenty years of zombies--and she has the unshakable faith that Finn will find her.

  But Finn is a long way away. The Order's influence runs deeper than was ever suspected, and politics are shifting--and zombies may not be the most dangerous thing she's facing.

  Finn always thought the war stripped him of all he had to lose. But with Nurrin missing and doors closing in his face, he realizes there is always more for the world to take--and he will drag the remains of civilization down with him before he gives up on the only promise that matters.

  Mel,

  for indulging my love of zombies and gives me prettier presents than I could ever ask for.

  Part 1

  The Girl Without Hope

  Once you choose hope, anything is possible.

  Christopher Reeve-

  Hope is the one thing that will fuck you up, every time. It’s the thing that keeps humanity going when we should have died. In the end, it’s what will kill us.

  Finn O’Malley-

  Chapter 1. Pretty Lies

  EACH OF US HAS A MOMENT WHERE WE HIT ROCK BOTTOM. Where nothing makes sense, and going on—fighting to live—is just too much. Each of us have faced that kind of devastating loss.

  Before Emilie, and everything changed, life was easy. Not for everyone. There was disease and poverty, abuse and death and war. There was loss, in its way. But for so many, it was easy, and difficulties, when they came, faded just as quickly. Life was good.

  And then the dead rose, and Atlanta fell, and nothing—not a fucking thing—was the same.

  We tried. We tried to build our cities with the Haven walls, tried to keep our lives what they were with our false government in 1, and companies that tried to pretend life wasn’t shattered beyond repair.

  But it was. And when the dead are screaming, there is no pretending. When you have the very last thing you believe in stripped away, there is no way to look at our pretty falsehoods and see anything but the fucking lie that we’ve built out of the ashes of our dead.

  We all have that moment.

  And sitting here, in a noisy train, huddled in my brother’s arms—this is mine.

  Chapter 2. Old Wounds

  THERE ISN’T MUCH LIGHT—just what breaks in when the train rattles under a decrepit light the feds put up to keep the dead back.

  Idiots. Light doesn’t deter the dead. Only a bullet to the skull can do that with any certainty.

  That is an unassailable truth. There is one other—that there is no immunity. No cure. Everyone bitten turns. Everyone.

  That is a constant refrain in my head as I stare. Even when it’s too dark to see, I can—there are few things imprinted in my memory.

  Mother’s body, jerking as the zombies fed. The nameless sacrifice, screaming as her blood enraged the zombies. Finn shaking me on an empty beach.

  My brother, his leg bleeding and bitten.

  Some things you can’t unsee, you can’t forget. You can’t change, and that’s the bitch of it.

  “How did this happen?” I ask, my voice hoarse. I’ve screamed myself out by now. Screamed and sobbed until I gagged and retched, dry heaves that do nothing but make my stomach ache and my mouth burn with the aftertaste of bile.

  There’s nothing left—just a shell of myself, hollowed of emotion.

  His eyes go distant, remembering. “The Order found me. Both of us. Dustin is—”

  “I know,” I say, my brow furrowing, cutting Collin off, because time is precious and running out and we aren’t going to spend it talking about Dustin of all fucking things. “We found him. What happened after that?”

  The train rattles around us, wind shaking the metal we’re leaning on. Collin shifts, uncomfortably. “He babbled. In the fever, he talked. And the Lone Priest found out we knew you—and that you were a First. After that, it was just a good business decision to keep me contained. He checked in with a few of the Black Priests, but no one was stopping him. They’re desperate to find sacrifices.”

  “So they’re kidnapping our families now?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” he asks.

  I snort. “That isn’t because I knew they had you. It’s because I was too stupid to listen to Finn.”

  Collin’s grip on me, already tight, tightens more. “Where is he? Why isn’t he here?”

  “Because Kenny didn’t fucking invite him on a date,” I snap.

  Collin jerks back, the first time since I collapsed in his arms that he’s let go of me. “O’Malley let you go on a date?”

  There is a comical level of disbelief in his voice that makes a giggle bubble in my throat, completely inappropriately.

  I’ve always laughed at the wrong things, at the wrong times.

  “Finn doesn’t give a fuck what I do.” I poke him, annoyed. I remember something suddenly. “Do you know who his mother was?”

  “Of course,” Collin says absently, catching my hand as I poke him again. “Ren, what the hell happened between you two?”

  “Nothing,” I say, absurdly defensive. “Why are we fighting about Finn O’Malley right now?”

  “Because right now is all we’ve got, baby girl. And he’ll protect you when I’m gone.”

  Impossibly, tears burn in my eyes. How can I still have tears to shed? “Finn doesn’t care about me, Collin. When you’re gone, he’ll have no reason to stick around. I’ve already dragged him back to a place he hates. He’ll be happy to be rid of me.”

  Collin laughs, and I scramble away from him. I know my brother, and I know that laugh. It’s the one he uses when I’ve done or said something he thinks is fucking stupid. I crouch a half foot away from him, almost lost in the darkness of the train and glare.

  “Get back here, idiot,” he says, still laughing. I let him tug me back and he kisses the top of my hair. I lean against his side, even as he’s careful to position me away from his leg. “I always thought I would protect you from the Order. Turns out I’m what you need protection from. How is that for irony?”

  “Shut up, Collin. You would never hurt me.” I snap, trying to keep my fear off my face.

  Even as I say it, I know it’s not true, and I expect him to
call me out for the lie. Finn would. Finn never tolerated lies. Not from me, not from himself. I always knew just how much he hated me, and how much he wanted me, and how much he hated wanting me.

  What is the only thing that matters?

  I blink away his memory, his phantom. Stare at my brother. Ask the question I’ve been dreading. “What are we going to do, Collin?”

  Chapter 3. Cruel Truths

  “DO YOU HAVE A WEAPON?” He asks, and his voice is remarkably calm. Collected in ways mine isn’t. I shiver and shake my head. All the times he’s asked me what weapons I carry—all the times I’ve double and tripled checked my ammo and knives while he watched. All for this moment, when it matters and I’ve failed.

  I gesture at the dress.

  It’s been days—who knows how long—since I was taken from that empty restaurant. But no one has bothered to replace my dirty dress with anything. It’s filthy, and hangs around my legs in tatters. I’m trying hard to ignore the stains—vomit and blood and other things I can’t think about without losing my shit.

  His fingers tap lightly on my boot. “Give it here,” Collin says softly.

  I don’t argue. Just wrestle the damn thing off. I hiss, my toes stretching for the first time in god knows how long, and tears sting my eyes. Collin takes the boot, and scoots away from me. He makes a quiet noise as I rub my toes, and I twist to look at him. My hair is hanging in my eyes again—I’d do just about anything to pull it back.

  “This will work,” he says softly and my stomach drops. I don’t need to ask to know what he’s talking about. The spiked heel is sharp—not blade sharp, but it’ll do the job if I hit the right soft tissue.

  My stomach heaves, and I gag. There is something very wrong about thinking that in association with Collin. He isn’t a target.

  “Collin, I can’t,” I whisper. “I can’t kill you.”

  “You won’t have to,” he says, his voice full of false confidence. I know when my brother is lying to me, and I can read it in his voice now. “The Order needs you alive for the sacrifice. There aren’t so many Firsts left that they can let you die by my hands.”

  I shudder. He is so matter-of-fact about it—and I know he’s right. That those are my options. The Order or death at my brother’s hands. I just don’t want to face that reality yet.

  “Why did you never tell me who he was?”

  Collin doesn’t bother asking who—there is only one person I could mean. “Finn’s story is his own. It wasn’t my place to share it.”

  “Not even with me?” I ask, twisting my dirty skirt in my fingers.

  “Especially you,” he says, sharply. “You disliked him on sight, and you would have never accepted him if you knew his history—and you know what it’s like, to be blamed for something that you had no control over.”

  I flush, and look away. I do. It’s the curse of every First—even people who aren’t part of the Order blame the Firsts, a taint that we carry because of their vicious rhetoric. I grit my teeth. “You should have told me. Especially since you know he doesn’t tell me shit.”

  A smirk. “He doesn’t trust easily.”

  I laugh, a short, bitter noise. “The bastard doesn’t know what that word means.”

  Collin shrugs, a quiet motion of his shoulders, and pain squeezes his face closed for a moment. I glance at the bite on his leg. “Collin?”

  He squeezes my hand and shifts against the wall. “Need you to promise me something.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I snap, fear fueling my words. “I’m not making any fucking deathbed promises. We’re going to get out of this.”

  “Quit it,” Collin snarls, and that’s the brother who has done whatever it took to keep me alive, the one who was by turns stubborn and fierce and gentle. The one who wouldn’t tolerate my excuses in school or workouts, weapons practice or the orchard. “You know how this plays out, Ren. Don’t fucking lie to yourself. Because it will play out, and I need you alive when it does. Do you understand me? You do whatever the fuck it takes to stay alive. That’s what you do—what you’ve always done. You’re a survivor, sweetheart. And I need you to hold onto that.”

  My lips are numb, and I bite down on my bottom lip to still its quiver, and to keep from sobbing. It won’t change anything.

  If tears had the power to turn back the dead, the world would never have changed.

  “How long? How long do I have to survive?”

  A smile, cold and satisfied, tilts his lips up and he tugs me against him, settling me into the curve of his body and kissing my hair. “Until Finn gets here. He will come for you—he promised, didn’t he?”

  I glance at him, startled that Collin would know that. “He’d keep me alive. Get me to you.”

  What is the only thing that matters?

  Collin nods and leans his head back against the side of the train. I can see the strain of the bite, working across his face. It’s changing him, already. I swallow that thought and my tears, and lean against his side. “Then that’s how long—you stay alive until he comes for you.”

  Chapter 4. The Nature of Waiting

  WAITING IS THE WORST. It’s what takes all our time, chewing away at the hours. Collin sleeps, and it worries me, because the infection is burning through him and I can’t do a damn thing to stop it. I can’t do anything but wait for the Order to decide what to do with us, and for the infection to run its course.

  I try to cling to what he said because the waiting is killing me. We rattle though the fading night, and light pricks weakly at the gaps in the roof. Rusty gaps—a good fucking way to catch tetanus, but if it keeps me from being bitten, I’ll take it.

  Because even though it’s a truth I don’t want to face, there is no denying it. Not really.

  Collin will change, and Finn can’t protect me—not from my brother or from the Order.

  It’s easy to hear the conviction in my brother’s voice. But as the train rattles into the night, taking us farther from 1 and Finn, it’s hard to hold on to the belief. I lean against the train wall while Collin dozes, and I let the fear come. I’ve been too buried in that fucking drug cocktail Kenny gave me to feel it much before.

  But it’s a big ass world and there is nothing working in Finn’s favor. His influence and the strength of his name isn’t what it was, and the Order will close their doors to him, without Omar’s help.

  I know Finn. Even without knowing what happened between him and the Black Priest, I know he would rather die than ask Omar for help.

  The question is—will he let me die before he does?

  Part 2.

  The Rage of Loss.

  Death is our new world. And death breeds fear. With very little effort, fear can morph into rage.

  Sawyer Russell-

  Rage is my natural state of being.

  Finn O’Malley-

  Chapter 1. Promises Broken

  IT TOOK TWELVE HOURS TO DECIDE SOMETHING WAS WRONG.

  It took eighteen to decide I wanted nothing to do with it.

  Twenty-eight to realize I had no choice.

  Thirty-six to realize I might have fucked up too badly to fix it.

  I will protect you.

  It’s the only thing I ever told her that mattered. She focused on shit that means nothing—my name and my family, my war record and Kelsey. But in the end, the only thing that mattered was the promise I couldn’t be bothered to keep.

  Was it for the best? She was an emotional handicap, a memory. A way to redeem—

  Fuck.

  I can’t do that. Can’t put that shit on her. And I can’t break the only promise I’ve made in seven years because I don’t want to face her. I grit my teeth.

  After ERI-Milan, promises became temporal things. Mothers promised their children easy, painless deaths. Husbands promised to never turn. The government promised to keep us safe.

  Father promised we’d go home.

  No one keeps promises. Not those misguided ones made in love. Not the ones whispered to those clinging
to a fucking idiotic hope.

  Not the ones that were lies before they were told.

  Why should this promise matter? I swallow hard and stand, reaching for my weapons. The house on the edge of the wall is a memory—a relic of a life I left behind. It’s not my place anymore. It hasn’t been since before Kelsey died. This entire Haven is a memory and I feel like I’m a ghost walking the walls.

  Isn’t that how you should feel, when everyone is dead but you?

  Not everyone. Not Nurrin. I hook my katana over my shoulder, and leave the room.

  She isn’t dead. I refuse to believe that. She’s too stubborn to die—she’d still be arguing about it. A savage smile ticks up my lips and I leave the house of memories behind.

  Chapter 2. Closed Doors

  HERE’S THE THING ABOUT A WAR HERO—no one knows what the fuck to do with them in peace time.

  The real problem isn’t that doors were closed in my face—it’s that these fucking idiots in 1 thought we weren’t at war. How do you convince yourself of that, when the dead are screaming at the door? How do you live with your head that fucking deep in the sand?

  I don’t know why it surprised or annoyed me. 1 has always been very good at ignoring the obvious.

  After the third inquiry about a missing girl is met with a blank stare, I swallow my pride and go where I should have from the start.

  The white house was built for the Buchman family when ERI-Milan broke out and swept the nation. It wasn’t the White House—it didn’t even pretend to be. It was a two bedroom shotgun guard house that was appropriated from the warden and painted white to cover the graffiti. With a flag planted in the front yard, and the first family inside, it became the de facto headquarters for the new world government—or the American one.