Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2)

by Grace Hamilton

  “Yes, yes, he did. It pains me that she decided to stay in the outer city rather than take up residence here.”

  “She’s not one for elites, Mr. Brant. That’s kinda a line in the sand for her.”

  “Then I really don’t know why you’re here, Mr. Tolley, other than to say hello, and… goodbye.”

  Nathan held up his hand. “Mr. Brant, we have a problem, a problem that you might be able to help us with, and in return for that help, Cyndi will agree to work on your committee.”

  Brant raised an eyebrow and rubbed a hand across his bald pate. “Tell me about your problem. I’m better with problems than I am with keeping an office tidy.”

  “We had a run-in with a gang; they tried to screw us for protection…”

  “It’s a lawless city…”

  “Only because you keep your law here, protecting the Greenhouse.”

  “Resources are finite, Mr. Tolley.”

  “Is compassion?”

  “Are you insulting me again?”

  “If you help us with our problem…”

  “You mean kill your problem? Send my guys out to risk their lives for you,” Brant added, enjoying Nathan’s discomfort.

  Nathan dug in, “I’m just asking for help to get rid of them. Whatever you do with your own conscience is up to you.”

  “And in return? We get Cyndi?”

  “And my boys. They’ll need a place, Tony will need education, and both kids will need medication—as part of the deal…”

  “I’m sensing there’s something else…”

  “Yes. Yes, there is.”

  “He bought it? The whole damn thing?” Cyndi’s voice was incredulous.

  Nathan had gotten back to the Masonic Temple and immediately called a council. Everyone had come to their apartment. Hawaiian-shirted Stryker, laconic Freeson, slightly amused Lucy, concerned Syd, techno-whizzes Dave & Donie, and even Saber the dog.

  “Well, he seemed to; whether he’ll renege on the deal like he did with Stryker is still to be seen, but right now, he’s playing ball.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Freeson said.

  “I’m not used to agreeing with you, Free, but yeah, I don’t either.” Stryker and Freeson high-fived sarcastically and Saber barked, but Nathan was pretty sure the dog didn’t really understand the full nuances of the situation. Even if it was the perfect exclamation point.

  “Cyndi works on the committee, Tony goes to school, and Brandon gets whatever meds he needs. I stay outside with you guys—because I want to, not because he didn’t offer—he did offer, but I’m not leaving you out here to fend without me.”

  Cyndi’s smile suggested forgiveness to Nathan.

  “My hero,” she said, backing up the notion.

  “The Greenhousers will reduce the tithe for medications to everyone in the outer city by fifty percent. They’ll barter less strictly for any produce we bring to them. They have a surfeit of food right now, and although they recognize they’re in a strong position, they seem to know that if enough of us put our mind to it, we could probably take them down. I didn’t say that outright, but it’s a strong bargaining position. And I think they know that that unrest out here could be coming in there if they don’t change their policies—we just gave them the opportunity to do it and not look... weak, I guess.”

  “Nathan, the politician,” Lucy said, clapping her hands. “I’m impressed.”

  “There is, however, a downside.”

  All eyes fixed on Nathan. “Okay,” said Cyndi, tell us the worst.”

  “He’s not prepared to send out all his men to hunt down the gangs. He doesn’t want to leave the Greenhouse undefended. They have serious firepower back there, but they need it to protect their citadel. I understand where he’s coming from. So, there’s a compromise—seeing as we were getting so much in return, I didn’t think I could decline.”

  “What’s the deal?” Donie asked.

  Her partner, Dave, snorted. “I bet we’re not going to like it.”

  Nathan nodded. “They’ll send us five men. Good men, he says, and they’ll help us secure the Masonic, freeing us up to track down Tasha and anyone else with her. They’re happy to support us here, but Brant doesn’t want to put anyone’s life on the line. That’s our problem.”

  Freeson shook his head. “No. This needs cops, military, people with experience with this kind of thing; you get into a firefight with these people and you might get killed, Nate.”

  “So might I,” Stryker added.

  Cyndi glared at him like she wouldn’t mind too much if that did come to pass.

  Catching her look, Stryker said, “Well, thanks a million for that.”

  Nathan didn’t want this descending into another argument, so he raised his hands and stood up. The pain in his side suggested that perhaps the speed of the movement had been more than a little ambitious, but he tried to stop the worst of it transmitting to his face. “Okay, guys, let’s cool it, yeah? Look, Freeson, I hear what you’re saying, but I didn’t come all this way to see the people I care about made to suffer at the hands of this gang of scum. Brant is giving us men—good men, he said—to look after the Masonic while Stryker, Free, Dave, Donie, and me go out and deal with this threat, if we can. If we find a whole bunch of them, then we can go back to Brant for a re-up of men and firepower.” Nathan took Cyndi’s hand. “I can’t make you go and work for Brant’s committee, Cyndi, but I’m pleading with you to. This threat needs ending, and soon.”

  Nathan nodded towards Stryker. “Stry is right; if we give in to this gang, they will keep coming back for more, and because he took one down, they might just circumvent their protection scam and come here to confront us all. From what I saw of Tasha, she’s no fool. She’s not street scum; she’s got a brain, and anything she comes up with by way of an attack on us will be hard and fast and clever.”

  The people in the room had taken all of this in with uncomfortable expressions on their faces, but each one showed resignation to his logic in their eyes.

  “We’ll be okay,” Nathan continued, “and I have an idea of how we can track Tasha and her people down in the quickest and safest way possible.”

  Cyndi’s face looked set, and her shoulders had become stiff with tension, but after a second or so, she nodded her assent. “Okay, but the second Brant goes back on the deal, I’m outta there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nathan said. “That happens, I’ll be coming for you myself.”

  It was only after the meeting had broken up that Nathan noticed that Syd had left it far sooner than anyone else. She hadn’t spoken, and he’d been too focused on Cyndi to see she’d gone—even without Saber, who had padded into Tony’s room to lay with him while he slept.

  “Did you see Syd go?” he asked Cyndi as she heated some water to make up formula for Brandon’s next feed.

  Cyndi shook her head. “No, but she didn’t look happy the whole time. Not that that’s unusual, but you know what I mean.”

  Nathan hadn’t yet had a chance to quiz Syd about what had upset her so much outside of the Greenhouse. Now, he made his way from his apartment along the corridor to Stryker’s place, to see if Syd was there, but she wasn’t in the communal area or in her room.

  With just a few nibbles of anxiety gnawing at the edges of his concern, he headed over to Dave and Donie’s place. They were working on getting a Wi-Fi setup for the building with a bunch of salvaged hardware, with the help of a feed to a disused satellite dish on the roof of the Masonic. With this hodgepodge of gear, they thought they might be able to rig an uplink to the satellite they’d used to map their journey to Detroit.

  They hadn’t seen Syd, either, which meant that Nathan had three choices.

  Most obviously, he could go back to his apartment and try to speak to Syd in the morning. But that was a nix from the start as he remembered back to a conversation he’d overheard between Syd and Tony in the cab of his old Dodge on the road to Detroit. Syd had told him that, if they ran across the people w
ho were looking for her, she’d have to leave immediately, and she’d want Saber to stay with Tony since she could move faster without a dog to care for. The image of Saber with her head on Tony’s sleeping form a few minutes ago flashed across his mind, along with a flood of unwelcome worry.

  This couldn’t wait.

  So, the other two choices.

  Go down? Or go up?

  The glimpse he’d caught of Syd’s room in Stryker’s apartment had shown him that all of her stuff was still there, including her rucksack and gun. If those were there, then going down to see if she’d already lit out seemed the less likely option.

  So, he went up.

  The sentry lookouts on the floor beneath the roof hadn’t seen Syd, they said, but then, Syd could move fast and quiet when she wanted to, and if she wanted to be alone, then there was no reason she would make her presence known to the sentries.

  Nathan took himself up to the roof and emerged from one of the turrets into the night. There was a welcome lull in the breeze, but it was still bitter up here. He zipped his jacket up to the neck because the air temperature was still touching zero and his breath steamed around him in a cloud as he walked out onto the roof. He knew that Syd often came up here because she’d told him that, when things got to be too much with Stryker and Freeson’s “testosterone-offs” that she liked to come up here to reset and recuperate with the help of the view. Even the derelict city across the water, Detroit’s Canadian twin, Windsor, had a beauty all its own. The black silhouettes of the ruined buildings, the smudges of rising smoke from the still burning fires, all set against the dying embers of the day, looked like something from an impressionist’s sketchbook, and Nathan could feel the pull of the view on occasions himself. Living cheek by jowl in everyone’s pocket wasn’t the easiest of situations to put up with, and he’d spent a lot of time with these people cooped up in an old, aluminum-skinned Airstream trailer. The Masonic was a lot bigger than that had been, of course, but they all lived on the same corridor, and were in and out of each other’s lives all day, like shuttles skittering through the threads on a loom. Sometimes, even in the apocalypse, you needed to be away from people, if only for a little while.

  The roof was dotted with wind turbines thrumming in the breeze, their vibration on the air sounding like distant trucks, or a prop-engine plane crop dusting on a hot summer’s day.

  The roof itself, though, was thick with ice and snow, which crunched under Nathan’s feet as he moved away from the turret. The munch, munch, munch of his feet on the surface sounded like someone eating corn, and a couple of times he slithered on the rake of the panels holding up the snow.

  When he saw Syd, however, he stopped dead in his tracks. She was standing on the very edge of the low wall that surrounded the roof. The very edge. She wasn’t holding on to anything, and her hands were just by her side, hanging limply. Wind ruffled through her hair, and her jacket collar flapped with it. Her body swayed forward, and Nathan’s heart leapt into his throat. There was no way he was near enough to stop her if she fell, or jumped, and he was terrified to open his mouth in case the shock of knowing she was being watched made her lose her balance.

  Frozen to the spot, unable to move forward or back, he heard Syd speak; her voice was soft, controlled but clear. “I guess that’s you, Nate. I thought if anyone followed me up here, it would be you. You’re probably the only one who noticed I was gone.”

  Nathan still couldn’t find any words.

  “It’s okay, you don’t have to speak, but I’ll tell you one thing, Nathan. If you come any closer…” she leaned forward again, and involuntarily, Nathan raised his arm, causing the sharp pain to jump in his chest again from the broken rib. “If you do come any closer, I will jump. I will jump.”

  5

  Nathan stood rooted to the spot as the girl wavered again, knowing that even moving his feet to get a better purchase on the roof panels might spook her. “Syd, come on, please; whatever you saw at the Greenhouse, we can work it out.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “So that means you have to throw yourself off the roof.”

  “It’s a possibility, yeah,” she answered stiffly, but there were tears in her voice, and she’d begun to sob gently. “Why did you have to be so freaking smart and find me Nathan?”

  “I’m not smart, Syd, I’m just trying to hold the little that I still have together. And that includes you.”

  “And yet you saw how I reacted when those people turned up, and you still went into the Greenhouse and dealt with Brant! How can I trust you?”

  “You didn’t tell me what you saw!”

  “It was as much as I could tell you that I needed to get out of there! But no, Nathan’s on a mission and Nathan has his focus. I needed you to look out for me. And you didn’t.”

  “And that’s a reason to kill yourself?”

  “I’m tired of surviving, Nate. I’m tired. I’m sixteen years old and I feel like a thousand. I’ve seen things, bad things. I’ve done bad things. They’ve turned me into a person I hate. And just when I think that, yeah, maybe I’ve found a place and some people I can get back to being me with—this!”

  Nathan’s foot slipped on the snow, but the crunch of him steadying his foot sounded like a step.

  “Don’t move! I warned you, Nate. I warned you!”

  “It’s just my boot on the snow. It slipped. Look at me; I haven’t moved.”

  The girl, swaying on the ledge, risked a look over her shoulder and he opened his palms outwards. “See? I haven’t moved.”

  “Okay. You haven’t moved. Whoop-de-doo.”

  Syd turned back to the sky, the city, the river, and Windsor beyond the ice. She spread her arms wide as if she was readying her wings for flight.

  Nathan was too far away to reach for her, and if he started to crunch across the snow, the girl would begin her silent and terminal fall before he had gotten three steps. If he was going to stop her jumping—and right now he was convinced she was going to—he needed to think fast, and decisively.

  “I’m leaving Detroit,” he said.

  Syd dropped her hands. “What?”

  That had done part of the trick. He had a hook in her.

  “As soon as Brandon is able to travel, we’re leaving. Me, Cyndi, the baby, and Tony. I’m not staying in this place. There’s too much wrong with it. Too much badness here. We were brought here under false pretenses and that’s never gonna sit well with me.”

  “You’ve just sent your wife and kids into the Greenhouse! That doesn’t look like leaving to me!”

  “What will happen in there, Syd? My kids will be warm, well-fed, and they’ll grow stronger. Brandon will be in an environment where he’ll thrive, and when he’s strong enough for the journey, then we’re going. Stryker or not, committee and their Greenhouse and Brant or not. I swear to you, Syd, that’s my plan. Come with us. Don’t waste your life here. Don’t be foolish. You’ve got this far, and we can go further. I promise.”

  “Where will we go?”

  This was a great advance. Syd was considering what he’d said. Offering hope to the hopeless, that’s what leadership is about, Cyndi had told him once. To become a leader, it’s not about forcing people to do what you want, but about being able to offer a vision of hope. That’s what people responded to… genuine expressions about a future better than the now. He hoped Cyndi would be proud of him in this moment – but that would only happen if he managed to talk Syd the whole way down.

  “I don’t know the destination yet. Perhaps you could help me work that out, but there have to be places better than here. Have to be. Texas? Mexico? Brazil? Who knows? But you’ll never find out if you jump now, will you?”

  “I guess.”

  “Want to tell me about who it was you saw in that line of stragglers at the Greenhouse today?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” Baby steps, then. Baby steps, but the hooks were there. “You gonna come down?”

  Syd raised a foot so that
she was now balanced on one leg on the lip of the ledge—one good gust of wind to her back and she’d be plummeting down like an arrow. She opened her arms to give herself balance, with her face fixed ahead, seemingly bolted to the line on the horizon where the last dregs of the light of day were sitting golden below the heavy cloud cover. The sky there was all distant purple and deep blue.

  Syd raised her knee even further, and outstretched her arms, palms flat.

  “Forward or back, Nathan? Forward or back?”

  “Come back, please. Syd, please.”

  The moment lasted another age, where the world turned a thousand times and mountains rose and civilizations fell within it; it lasted that long. But eventually, with a deft jump and a lightness of landing, the girl came off the ledge. She leant forward, put her gloves on the edge, and looked over. “But by God, I would have made a pretty corpse.”

  Nathan took Syd back down to Dave and Donie’s apartment.

  It was quieter there, and they were nearer Syd’s age. It seemed more appropriate somehow. He didn’t speak to them about what had happened on the roof—that would be down to Syd, to relay that information if she wanted to.

  He only told them he was there on the pretense of finding out how they were doing with their network and satellite uplink. Dave had, at one point, had a satellite-enabled laptop, but it had been one of the casualties in the methane still explosion when they’d first come into the building. That uplink had been their only way of maintaining some connection with the wider world, and he totally understood why Dave and Donie were so keen to lash up something at the Masonic Temple. It wouldn’t be portable, but it would be a start. The chances of them going out into the city now and looting a satellite laptop would be astronomically low, after all.

  Syd was quiet as she sat and watched the three others talk. That wasn’t unusual for Syd, but Nathan couldn’t help flicking his eyes across to her from time to time.

  Keeping an eye on her, Nathan boiled a kettle and made coffee while Dave soldered wires and Donie wrote code on her laptop. “How far are you guys away from getting this to work?”