The room was big, perhaps forty feet long by the same again wide. The ceiling was high, and if there had been any furniture in the past, it had all been removed. The space was filled with cardboard boxes and crates.
Nathan looked at Freeson, and Freeson looked at Nathan. This was no accidental find of stuff; this was a concerted effort to store these boxes in a place where people would perhaps not think to look. Inside a derelict building.
There must have been two hundred or more of the containers. They hadn’t been there long, either; they weren’t dusty and there wasn’t any sense that the elements had gotten to them. When Nathan examined the window from which he’d pulled the drapes aside, he saw there were fresh marks of putty smeared around the edges of the glass. The room had been recently prepared for this influx of stuff.
“You first,” Freeson commented, hanging back and looking out into the street to see if their luck had run out and someone was coming to safeguard their storehouse with maximum prejudice.
Nathan pulled up the top of the nearest cardboard box. It was full of tins of corned beef. The next held dried milk and flour. The next, jellies and tinned fruit. The next, packets and packets of cigarettes.
“I don’t believe this,” Nathan breathed out as he approached the first crate they’d seen again. It was longer than it was wide, and he needed to use his knife to pry the lid up. Inside was a cache of A-15s, wrapped and oiled—and Nathan recognized this as the smell that had first told him that not everything in the room was as they might have expected.
They had found Aladdin’s cave.
But who did it belong to?
The tent over Trash Town was again illuminated by braziers and filled with the aromas of cooking and harsh alcohol. It was like a frontier outpost in a gold rush town, the outer city dwellers coming here for companionship as much as to trade. It was good to be inside and out of the cold, too. Stryker and Nathan had left the others with the Humvee a quarter of a mile away and walked in. The Humvee was police issue, and if they’d arrived in it, then mouths would have closed for sure. Especially the mouth they wanted to be open, their next call after the tenement.
Rose acknowledged them from across the stalled market and seemed genuinely pleased to see them. She was roaring with laughter at something a wizened, white-haired black guy had whispered in her hair, and her dreads whirled as her body shook. As Nathan reached the stall, a violin jig broke out a few yards away and people, their cheeks ruddy with cheap booze, began to dance, clap, whistle, and sing.
“An’ what is it that bring you two fine gentlemen back here to see me, ’n so soon. The inverter worked fine, boys. It was a goodly trade.”
“Is there somewhere we can go to talk, Rose?”
Almost immediately, the seriousness of Nathan’s enquiry piqued Rose’s interest. She led them to the back of the tent, past the crackling braziers, through a flap in the canvas, and out into the cold air.
“This way.”
She led them down an alley between two buildings and on to a wooden side door that was dark with age, dirt, and the attacking elements. She opened the door and took them inside to what they found was a warm and fragrant kitchen. It was gloomy in just candlelight, and bunches of herbs and dried flowers hung from the ceiling, swaying and crackling as Nathan walked thought them, a couple of heads taller than Rose.
“Rose, we need some… ah…”
Rose nodded to the huge black guy standing in the corner, who was seemingly as wide as he was tall. His face was an impassive mask, and he’d dressed like there weren’t enough clothes around to fit him, so that he’d started wearing the sails of a pirate galleon. “Pay no attention to m’boy, Horace. He jus’ making sure there ain’t no shenanigans going on. Sit down, boys; take de weight off. Now, what I can do for you?”
Nathan cleared his throat and, sitting down on a rickety wooden chair, tried not to look too hard at enormous Horace in case he broke his eyes trying to fit him all in at once, and continued. “We’re looking for someone.”
“Why ain’t’cha looking for me, pretty boy?” Rose giggled, showing far too many teeth. “Oh, I love it when your face does that!”
Nathan could feel himself blushing again, too. This kind of forwardness wasn’t something he was used to. “We’re looking for a specific person.”
“Spoily sport.” Rose grinned. “And who might that be?”
“We think her name is Natasha, or Tasha. Well, that’s at least the name she used when we ran into her.”
Rose’s face went excellent poker-player blank. “Lotta people with that name. What makes you think I know the pacific one? The pacific one you is looking for, that is?”
Nathan leaned forward in his chair. “Rose, you know everyone and everything around here, and you’re just getting ready to trade for the information, so shall we cut to the chase? Stryker.”
Stryker nodded and reached into the rucksack strung on his shoulder. He pulled out a small box. Nathan pointed at the container in Stryker’s hand. “9 millimeter hollow point. We have a thousand rounds ready to send your way. Five hundred now, and the rest if you point us in the direction of Tasha.”
Rose’s eyes sparkled in the candlelight.
“When we saw her, she was with two guys; Frank and…”
“Billy,” Rose finished the sentence for Nathan. “You killed little Billy.”
The temperature in the room dropped to match the winter outside. Horace unfolded his arms and cracked his knuckles. In the small kitchen, it sounded like a tree being felled.
Stryker grunted, and then spoke out. “They were forcing us to take them back to our place. They were gonna steal all of our stuff. What exactly do you think we should have done differently?”
“I is not the moral authority around here, Stryker, but I hear what goes on. Perhaps you should have dealt with Tasha, rather than killed one of her boys and wounded the other.”
Stryker set his chin forward, his eyes blazing. “We’re not afraid of her.”
“No reasons you should be…” Rose said.
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “I sense a ‘but’ coming.”
“Very good, pretty boy. As I said, you shouldn’t be scared of sweet little Natasha, but you should be terrified of the man she works for.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, beautiful, that I don’t want your ammunition and I don’t want no deal to give you no information. Just keep me and Trash Town out of this. Now, you both know where the door is, or would you like me to get Horace to remind you?”
Nathan and Stryker reached the Humvee and told the others what had happened. “Looks like we’re on our own, Nate,” Freeson said flatly, but then he smiled and clapped Nathan on the shoulder. “Nothing ever changes.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“What we don’t know is who this guy is that Rose says we should be terrified of,” Stryker said as they climbed into the relative warmth of the parked Humvee. Freeson started the engine, letting it idle so the blowers came on and breathed warm air over them. “And if he’s as bad as Rose suggests, maybe we’re building up a whole lot of trouble for ourselves. It’s been four days now, and Tasha and her cronies haven’t been back to the Masonic. Maybe what Rose said was all BS. Just to get us off Tasha’s trail. I wouldn’t put it past Rose to be Tasha’s boss, sending her out to try the protection scam on the outer city people. Probably pulls in a fair whack on top of what she makes from the market in Trash Town… hell, it’s probably where most of the things come from that she’s trading in Trash Town.”
“Makes sense,” Nathan agreed, “but we should find out one way or the other, and right now I can’t think of a way to get that done. I’m open to ideas.”
Dave was looking through the Humvee’s side window, back along the derelict streets. He paused, scratched at his head, and turned back to the others. “Okay, maybe we won’t be able to find Tasha easier ourselves, or whoever she’s working for, but maybe we can make them find us.�
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Nathan felt skeptical to the max, but tried not to show it. “How? It’s not like we can run up a flag saying ‘Come and get us!’”
“Oh yes we can,” Dave replied.
“Shoot.”
“That storehouse we found in the tenement—we already broke in. And you and Stry had been there already with Tasha. Suspects numero uno in fact. How about we advertise that we’ve found it, and we’re in the process of taking all of it for ourselves; that’d flush them out.”
“Maybe,” Nathan considered, “but again, it’s not like we can just send out invitations. So, what’s the plan?”
“How about we break out some of the choice items from the storehouse? Some guns and some of the more rare foodstuffs…”
“Yes?”
“And I go try to trade them in Trash Town. You, Free, and Stry hole up at the house and wait to see who comes back to check on their stuff.”
“Could work,” Nathan said, and Freeson nodded.
“Could get us all killed,” Stryker commented, that being the elephant in the room.
Nathan thought for a moment. Stryker had a point. If a large group came back to check on the stores, then a firefight would follow, though that would be the last thing they wanted. Maybe drawing them out in the first instance would give them enough information to combat their adversary at a later date. Perhaps they could follow them back to wherever they were holed up. Nathan hit upon a compromise. “How about we don’t set up inside the tenement?”
“I like the sound of this better,” Stryker said firmly.
“How about we set up across the street, on the roof maybe. See who comes looking. I reckon they’ll come to move the stuff, and that’s going to need a good few bodies, and a truck. If that happens, we’ll be able to follow them at a distance, back to where they’re staying, and perhaps giving that information to Brant—an easy take or kill—will persuade him to send us more men with better firepower.”
“A lot of ifs and a lot of buts,” Freeson said at last, before the silence after Nathan’s plan had become fully unbearable. “I’d be happier if we took a bunch of stuff from there for ourselves first—transfer it to the Humvee before Dave goes to Trash Town.”
Nathan nodded his enthusiasm. “Good call.”
Freeson scratched at his chin. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Don’t say shot,” Stryker said.
Three hours later, Dave took a duffle of AR-15s, a box of cigarettes, and three catering-size tins of freeze-dried coffee to Trash Town. While he did that, the others transferred bags of pistols, ammo, tinned beef, and painkillers into the Humvee and parked it four blocks away in a deserted street under a tarp, leaving Stryker on guard in a deserted apartment. It was as Nathan and Freeson holed up in the top floor of the building across the street that they got the answer to who Tasha and Frank were working with.
The first inkling that anyone was coming came with the rumble of a diesel engine, the scraping crunch of snow chains on tires, and the yellow cone of approaching headlights along the road, lighting up the darkness and the dead faces of the Detroit tenement blocks.
With Freeson ducked down below the window, Nathan dared to squint through the drapes covering the broken glass. The street three floors down was booming from a rumbling engine. The truck was a Mack eighteen-wheeler with a covered trailer. Up in the cab was a driver whose face was obscured by a parka hood, and then Tasha, and finally, to Nathan’s dismay, Dave.
Dave’s face looked strained with fear, and although Nathan couldn’t be sure, it looked like the twenty-one-year-old’s hands were tied behind his back in the cab. Tasha had her pistol out and was steadying it on the dash of the Mack, pointing it directly at Dave’s chest. She was saying something to the boy and he was shaking his head vigorously.
Dave’s plan had been that, if challenged, he’d say he’d traded the gear he’d brought to Trash Town away from guys who’d been offering it from the back of a Ford F-350. He’d tell them the people he’d traded with had had so much gear that he’d gotten it for two boxes of North Face parkas he’d looted from a warehouse in the Detroit suburbs.
It looked like his story hadn’t been believed at all, though—not even part of it.
The airbrakes hissed and the Mack came to a stop outside the tenement. The cab door opened immediately and Parka jumped down, followed by Dave, who Nathan could now confirm really did have his hands tied behind his back.
Dave said something Nathan couldn’t hear and Parka smashed the boy across the chops with his pistol. Dave fell to his knees in the snow, blood spilling from his mouth. The thick snow deadened the echoes, but sent those pin-sharp and terrible sounds up to Nathan. Freeson, who had joined Nathan at the gap between the drapes, sucked in his breath and winced.
Parka screamed, “Don’t screw with me, boy! Don’t screw with me!”
And then, putting a bullet in the chamber of his pistol before grabbing Dave by the lapel, he put the barrel of the gun against Dave’s temple and squeezed the trigger.
7
Dave said, “Oh God, I love you, Donie,” and squeezed his eyes shut, expecting swift death, his words traveling clearly through the still night air.
The gun clicked empty.
It had been a bluff.
Nathan’s heart crawled out of his mouth, retreating back down his throat into his chest. “That’s how easy it would be to end you, boy. Now, tell me again, why are you lying?”
“I swear, I’m not. They were just some guys! Just some guys I met. They wanted to get rid of the stuff and I had some coats they wanted! Dammit, man, why would I lie? You were going to blow my frickin’ brains out!”
“That boy has some cojones,” Freeson whispered from where he crouched next to Nathan at the darkened window of the mildew-steeped room. When Dave had been forced to the ground by the savage blow, the mechanic had grabbed Nathan’s shoulder in a reflex action, digging his nails in. If Nathan hadn’t been trying so hard not to give their position away, he would have gasped in pain; as it was, he’d been too focused on the plight of the boy he’d let walk blithely into his own possible destruction.
Nathan wished he’d taken the goods from the secret storehouse to the Trash Town tent himself, but he, Stryker, and Freeson were known associates. Dave had never been there in the months they’d been in Detroit, preferring instead to go on looting missions out in the affluent suburbs for computer gear and tech. The houses there had been abandoned early on in the crisis, and although laptops and other portable tech had been taken, there were plenty of desktop PCs, Wi-Fi hubs, and personal media servers that had been left around as rich pickings for his and Donie’s plans for the network and satellite link-up at the Masonic. And now, because Nathan had let Dave put himself in harm’s way without thinking how this plan might go wrong, they were where they were.
The idea had been that Tasha and her gang would come back and check on or possibly move the goods in the storehouse, and that much had been correctly prophesied, but it hadn’t occurred to Nathan that Dave might be taken and assaulted in this way.
These people would play hard ball, though, and they should’ve thought of that. Nathan had already been warned of it.
“You should be terrified.”
Rose’s word echoed through his head like a hot accusation. Yes. Nathan should have been, and now he was.
Tasha went around to the back of the truck’s trailer and opened the doors; fifteen or so people got out, all of them heavily dressed against the cold, their breath following them along their line like the smokestack on a steam train as they walked in a line up the tenement steps and up towards the building. One of those from the trailer lagged behind, walking with a pronounced limp, and Nathan recognized the coat he was wearing. It was Frank, the guy Stryker had shot in the leg. It had obviously only been a flesh wound, or he wouldn’t have been up and about now, and looking at the way he was walking, there was a good chance he’d received excellent medical attention at some point.
F
rank was the last into the building, talking animatedly to Tasha as she went up the final steps.
Dave was still on his knees with Parka, who stood behind the boy, watching his people go into the building. When everyone had passed, Parka pulled Dave to his feet by the hood of his jacket and pushed him with savage fury towards the tenement. As he did so, a gust of wind caught in his hood and blew it away from his head just enough for Nathan to see his face.
It was the boy/man who had caused such a strong reaction in Syd when she’s seen him going into the Greenhouse. The guy with the AK-47, who Captain Harmsworth had let in with just a cursory word and a nod-through, right into the same Greenhouse where he’d just sent his wife and children. The same Harmsworth who was supposedly guarding the Masonic from attack by the same people who’d moments before been threatening to blow Dave’s brains out all over the snow.
The sick cold in Nathan’s guts rose up in a rush of bitter bile. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let this happen? Why hadn’t he forced Syd to tell him everything she knew about the Parka, this boy/man?
The hand on his shoulder patted Nathan, catching his attention. “Nate, dude, it’s okay. We’ll get him out of there. They have no reason to harm him now. They believe him.”
But they both knew that might not be the case. Parka might only be going through this pretense because he was trying to do exactly what Nathan had been trying to do to him. Flush him out.
If Brant was at the center of this web, playing all ends towards the middle, he wouldn’t want to be seen getting his hands dirty by eliminating the threat that Nathan and the others presented. He’d already gotten what he wanted. Cyndi working for him in the Greenhouse. He only needed plausible deniability if Nathan’s piece was to be removed from the game. What better way to keep Cyndi on his side than to show unequivocal proof that her husband had been killed in a squalid gang fight?
Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2) Page 7