The Horde Without End (The World Without End)

The World Without End, Book 2

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 Horde Without End by Nazarea Andrews

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

Summary: With her brother missing, Nurrin teams with Finn O’Malley to find

him in a world full of zombies and secrets.

978-0-9894799-6-7

1. Zombies. 2. New Adult. 3. Romance.

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 14207 Ridge Court Upatoi GA 31829.

www.nazareaandrews.com

Edited by Rachael Bateman

Cover design by The Illustrated Author

Cover art copyright©: Nazarea Andrews

Ebook Formatting by Ink in Motion

After The End:

Edge of the Falls

The University of Branton:

This Love

Beautiful Broken

Sweet Ruin

Fractured Perfection (Fall 2014)

The World Without End:

The World Without A Future

The Horde Without End

Book 3 (2015)

Beyond Neverland:

Girl Lost

Forever Found: A Novella (Fall 2014)

We live without guarantees, in a time when loss is the norm. We are not given the luxury of falling apart.

-President Buchman, addressing Haven 1

There is a world of strength waiting to be discovered in her moments of weakness.

-Finn O’Malley

She hasn’t cried. She doesn’t cry for me—but I know how fragile she is.

I want to break her. I want to push her hard enough to see her shatter. I want to see the shards of her on the ground.

How fucking beautiful would she be, when she put herself back together? She would. Nurrin is too stubborn to do anything but survive.

Nurrin is a first, born to a world of death. She is innocent of the life before the change. She has never known anything but Hale Halls, razor wire, and walls. She has never known she could be anything but a survivor.

I watch the sun rising over the canyon. In another world, people might have exclaimed over the beauty, stared at it in wonder.

To me, the red-washed sky means only one thing: it’s almost time to leave.

I glance over my shoulder. She retreated to the sleeping area a few hours ago, after we fought over leaving immediately. I think there is a part of her that hopes Collin will come back. A supply run wouldn’t be completely unjustified.

My lips twist.

Collin wouldn’t leave the Hole, not unless he had to. Not when he knew that it’s the only place I would take Nurrin. He’s gone because something is wrong.

She’s awake—I know she is, because as soon as I leave the cave entrance, she’s poking her head out of the bedroom. Her eyes are suspiciously red, but she doesn’t look as breakable as a few hours ago.

She does look tired.

“What are we doing?” she asks, her voice raspy.

“Do you think you’re up to travel?” I ask, letting disbelief and disgust tint my tone.

Nurrin doesn’t answer. She steps past me, her curling blonde hair brushing my arm as she snatches her gun and long knife from the table. I spent a few mindless hours cleaning everything last night. I catch her wrist as she pulls back, the one holding her knife, and Nurrin hisses slightly, a furious noise. “Don’t play games, O’Malley,” she says quietly. “I’m going to find my brother.”

“I won’t go out there if you aren’t at a hundred percent. Do you understand that? I won’t take you out there on some ill-advised suicide mission.”

Anger flashes in her eyes, and she jerks free of my grasp. “What the hell do you think this is going to be? We have no clues to where he is—we’re going out there with nothing to go on. Ill-advised is the least of what we’re doing.”

I laugh, and she wheels on me, her eyes wild. “You know something. What the fuck are you not telling me? Do you know where they are?”

“You trusted me, yesterday,” I say quietly. Her eyes narrow, and she snorts. I want to laugh, but I swallow it and stare at her. “I’ll find Collin. We were partners long enough that I have some ideas.”

That’s a lie, but her shoulders drop and her eyes brighten, a little. She’s hesitant to trust me—but she wants to.

Hope. It’s a wretched bitch.

“Collin wouldn’t leave unless he had to. And he had the bike—we might be able to track him.”

“Where would he go?” she asks.

Always the fucking questions. Even though they are warranted—justified—they irritate me. “Get your gear. I’m going to pack what food we have left.”

Worry flashes in her eyes. “Why? Won’t we come back?”

I look at her and blank my expression. It’s not going to help to give her anything to pounce on. I can’t face her questions right now—even if I had the inclination, we don’t have the
time.

“No questions, Nurrin,” I say sharply. She gives me that annoyed look, but it’s a step up from the hopeless fear that’s been in her eyes since she realized Collin was gone.

She mutters a curse under her breath, and I smirk as she goes to do what I say. The amusement fades as I stare at the scratch on the table. It’s cryptic. Three hurried gouges slashed in half by a fourth. An
i
, with a diagonal slash over it.

I had it covered with weapons, and she was too crazed with worry and fear to think to look—but I know the way Collin’s mind works, and the protocol of Wall Walkers.

And Collin isn’t so fucking stupid to leave without some kind of breadcrumbs.

The problem is that it’s
just
a breadcrumb.

I push aside the niggling fear that Collin is running from a live infection, that taking Ren after him is putting her in danger.

It doesn’t matter—she’d never tolerate being left behind. And if I did, it would just mean both of them would be missing, because she would bolt as soon as I was gone.

Doesn’t mean I’ll take her out without some kind of ground rules. I manage a grin. She’ll be pissed.

“Nurrin,” I yell, “get your ass out here.”

“Fuck off, O’Malley,” she grumbles without any real heat. She comes back out, and I take a quick look. She’s changed into leather zom gear. It conforms to her ass, follows the curves of her pert breasts.

Shit.

The girl has to be carrying five different weapons, her brother and boyfriend are missing, and fucking her is
still
a bad idea.

So why can’t I get her out of my system? I had hoped Lissel—I hiss and shove that thought aside. “Can you fit anything else in your bag?” She nods and brings it to the table. I shift so the marks are hidden and push some MREs to her. Her nose wrinkles, but she obediently loads them into her bag.

In minutes, we’re done—it’s almost disturbing how well we work together now.

“Weapons?” I ask shortly.

She huffs, but rattles them off. I nod and pass her a few hand grenades. “I’m driving, so I’ll need to you cover us. Can you handle that?”

She gives me a flat stare. I arch my eyebrows, and she pockets the grenades.

There is something undeniably sexy about seeing Nurrin shove grenades into her leather pockets while a garrote is wrapped around one wrist and throwing stars hang from her waist. She catches my eye and gives me a grimace. “What?”

“You seem more together than I expected,” I say. “I’m wondering how much is an act. Are you going to fall apart out there?”

Anger flickers in her eyes—that’s fine. I don’t care what she uses to keep from falling apart, to keep herself together and moving forward. As long as she does.

“I want my brother. I’ll hold together for as long as it takes to find him,” she says flatly.

“He could be dead, Nurrin,” I say. Pain spasms across her face, and I should look away—no one should see something that intensely private. I don’t. I watch her, fascinated.

“He could be. But he’s not. Collin has survived twenty years—no zombie will kill him. Now get your shit and let’s go.”

“You know what the rules are—out there you obey without questions.”

She snorts. “Fuck your rules, O’Malley. My brother is out there—you can help me find him, or you can get the hell out of my way. Those are
my
rules.”

“That’s a good way to get yourself dead,” I shoot back.

Nurrin’s expression goes blank. “Do you really think I care?”

She turns away before I can respond, but the question does its job—it tells me exactly how depressed she is, just how far she’s fallen.

Nurrin isn’t suicidal—she’s too much of a survivor for that maudlin shit—but she is hopeless, and that could be worse.

“Let’s go,” I say.

The cliff is swarmed with infects. All the ones near the Canyon when she started screaming last night are still here. A handful have fallen over the edge—I watched them tumble to the rocky bottom of the cliff during the night, but I can hear the screams and the quick darting steps as they circle the truck. Once, I hear the rattle of metal and a furious shriek—one apparently wandered too close to the razor wire.

Ren is pressed against my back, her entire body shaking with the need to fight. I draw my sword carefully and glance at her. She gives me a tight smile, and I nod once.

And we explode off the path.

The first zom screams as it sees us, and I feel the wind whistle past my face as Nurrin takes the cliff top, a throwing star embedding in the infect’s throat, slicing deep. I jerk its head forward, onto the blade, and it goes limp as the razor edge slices into its spinal column.

Then the other infects are too close to think, and I’m twisting through them, leading with my sword. I can hear her shouting and cursing as she slams her blade into one infect after another. I hear it, and distantly I care—but really, the only thing that matters in this moment is killing and making sure we don’t end up shoved off the damn cliff.

I whip around, my sword slicing through a rotten neck, and smile as gore sprays. “Truck,” I shout. Ren growls behind me, a sound laced with annoyance more than anger.

She sounds nothing like the dead—too full of life. I glance at her, unable to resist. A zom screams, and I smirk, twisting away from Ren to slam my knife under its chin, burying it to the hilt in rotten brain matter. I shake the viscous matter from my hand and whistle sharply. Draw their attention from Ren. I bring my sword in front of me as they focus on me, away from Ren. She makes a face, annoyed, and I force my expression to go flat. She doesn’t have to like it—I don’t actually expect her to like it—I just need her to work with me and get the truck started.

Watching us, she makes her way to the waiting truck. I shout as she opens the door, and the nearest zom screams, lunging at me. I slide under the attack, slicing up. And stop thinking.

The only time I can turn off my brain is when I’m fighting the infects, because it doesn’t take anything more than cut and slice and stay the fuck out of range of their teeth. That is easy—they don’t demand anything, answers I refuse to give.

This is simple.

I give myself over to the ease of it all and fight my way through the infects. I’m vaguely aware that she turns on the truck, that I could fight my way to it—that I’m supposed to—but I’m more focused on the fight. Until there is nothing left to kill, and I stand, panting, in a circle of the dead.

For a long minute, I just stare, slowly coming back to myself. Then the door to the truck cranks open. Ren pops out, standing on the step rail, a tiny thing dwarfed by the massive truck, bristling weapons. She gives me an arch look. “You feel better?”

Always with the fucking questions. I shake my blade, bend to wipe it off on the only clean scrap of cloth I can find on the dead. Sheath it and stalk over to where she’s leaning out of the truck. Give her a flat smile.

“Let me guess,” she says dryly, “you’re driving.”

At least the girl can learn.

We’re driving for maybe five minutes—long enough that the canyon has vanished behind us and Nurrin has begun to get twitchy—when she finally asks. I’m surprised it took her this long.