The World Without a Future (The World Without End) by Nazarea Andrews Read Free Book Online Page A

of triumph and slide down into my seat, sitting sideways, facing him with two energy bars.
    “I’ve got peanut butter and chocolate, and tropical fruit,” I say, reading them. “You can pick, as long as you don’t want chocolate.”
    I grin at him—and freeze. His expression, which has been neutral for most of the morning, is cold, icy and remote, and I shiver involuntarily. It draws his gaze, which flicks over me with a touch of heat that defies the coldness in him.
    “Finn?” I ask, my voice cautious.
    His gaze goes back to the road, and his voice is deliberately easy. “Chocolate. I don’t eat tropical fruit shit.”
    I hesitate, and he holds out a hand, like he can snap his fingers and I’ll immediately cave.
    That they
are
his energy bars doesn’t really matter much. I open the chocolate bar, and the smell slams into me. My stomach rumbles alarmingly, and Finn laughs, a sound that tickles my belly and sends butterflies to flight.
    I break the bar and hand the smaller portion to him. Finn’s eyes narrow, and he gives me a disbelieving stare. I shrug. “I’m a girl.”
    He opens his mouth to answer when it happens. The pop is loud—deafening in the silence of the desert—and the Porsche spins, skidding under the blown tire. My seat belt snaps me back as Finn curses, fighting for control of the car. Dust explodes around us as we skid off the road, into the soft dirt of the desert, and I close my eyes as we come to a stop.
    “
Fuck!”
Finn snarls and explodes from the car. He’s moving fast, and I struggle to keep up.
    “Do we have a spare?” I demand, and he grunts, already half under the Porsche. I couldn’t imagine him out in the Wide Open without something as basic as a spare tire.
    A screech jerks my attention away from him as the tire slides out from under the car. I whip around and see them—four infects. Two large men, a girl who could have been my age when she turned, a little boy no older than eight. They move with an eerie beauty and grace, and aside from that initial scream, they are silent as they race toward us. I pull my snub-nosed revolver, line my sights and fire.
    The little boy falls, and the girl freezes, staring at his prone body. Something twists in her expression when she looks back up, a snarl on her lips. Finn emerges from the car, breathless, and I snatch his crossbow as he throws it up at me. “Hurry,” I urge and bring the weapon up, firing twice in rapid succession. The male in the lead squeals when the first bolt lodges in his shoulder, and then the second embeds in his eye, spinning him around and killing his cry as he goes down like a sack of bricks. His pack mates hesitate, hissing, and I take a deep breath, aiming.
    The scream the girl let out is so loud, and so unexpected, I jolt, firing inadvertently. It slams into her chest, and her scream gurgles off in a furious whine. Her eyes are full of hatred when she meets my gaze, a hungry, unthinking hatred that hits me like a hammer.
    "Focus, Ren," Finn orders from near my hip, and it jerks me from my paralysis. Putting the other two down is easy after that, though the female lands disturbingly close to Finn's boot-clad feet. I step over, straddling his legs as I watch the puffs of dust on the desert. There are a lot—more than I think I can handle, and they're getting closer.
    Drawn by the infect's angry scream.
    "Hurry, O'Malley," I snap, and he grunts. Then the zombies are here—close enough I can put them down. I keep count for the first eight. After that, there are too many, too close, and as fast as I fire, there are more. The world seems to slow when I empty my clip. I drop the gun next to Finn's boots and pull my knives as the zombies swarm me. I shove the blade into the first's eye and grab him, pulling his limp corpse close to shield me as I attack the others. For a few minutes, straddling Finn, embracing a corpse and killing the infects, I think I can do this. Then one lunges at me from atop the Porsche and