Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2)

by Grace Hamilton

“Yes!”

  “Come out, now—this floor is going up! Dammit, Syd, we gotta go!”

  No reply.

  Feeling more like the raging father of a teen rebel than a rescuer, Nathan stomped towards the door and pushed it open.

  “What do I do? Tell me what to do.”

  Syd was standing with both her arms outstretched, holding her pistol police-style. In front of her, on his knees, was Stryker, his hands up and with tears running freely down his cheeks.

  Covered in smears of dirt, Stryker’s face came up and his streaming eyes focused on Nathan.

  “Tell her to do it, buddy. Tell her to blow me away. Please.”

  11

  Behind Nathan, there was a roar of flame, and then a crash as a huge metal beam fell through from above, bringing debris and flames along with it. Nathan felt the gust of it washing over him and, as he looked, he could see it was the supporting structure of one of the wind turbines from the roof—four floors above them.

  Four. Floors.

  It must have fallen as the roof below it had given way and sent it spearing down like a javelin thrown by a giant. It was embedded in the floor now, still mainly upright. And if that had been all, then it might not have been so bad, but it had brought down a huge amount of burning material which was already, even as Nathan watched, eating into furniture, rugs, and bookcases.

  Stryker’s apartment would be an inferno in a minute.

  Nathan stepped into Lucy’s bedroom and clubbed Stryker across the temple with the butt of his gun. Stryker went down like a felled tree. Nathan bent to pick up Stryker’s prone body. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re going to save him?” Syd asked incredulously.

  “You can shoot him later. But I’m not leaving him here to burn. For now, let’s go. Did you get the stuff?”

  Syd bent down and picked up a jewelry box.

  Nathan took hold of the unconscious Stryker’s wrist and arm. With a heaving yell, he hefted Stryker’s slim fame onto his shoulders and settled him in a fireman’s lift.

  “Run!” he yelled, and with that, he followed Syd out of the apartment.

  The corridor was nearly all smoke now. Nathan took the deepest breath he could manage and dove into the black. He could just about see the back of Syd’s t-shirt ahead of him and he focused on that as he jogged. Stryker stank of gasoline; his shirt was wet with it. Nathan couldn’t tell if his friend had only been handling the fuel, or if he had doused himself in hopes of being set alight by the fire, but either way, if the flames got anywhere near him, they were both going up like a Roman candle.

  Syd pushed through the stairwell doors and they were out into the relative clarity brought by the emergency lighting. There was a lot less smoke here, but Nathan didn’t stop to breathe and carried straight on to the stairs.

  They got three levels before he needed to rest. He thudded against the wall, breathing like a man who had almost drowned at sea. Syd bent over, as well, hands on her knees. Box still under her arm. “Did… you… get…. the plans?”

  Nathan nodded and watched as huge gobbets of melted plastic from above dripped down from the conflagration. Some of the plastic was burning bright with orange flame. The rest of the building would be alight very soon.

  Nathan hefted Stryker into a more comfortable position on his shoulders and began to thump down the stairs again, as quickly and safely as they could.

  “What happened up there?”

  “I went to get the box from Lucy’s room, and there he was, kneeling next to a gas can. He was about to set himself on fire, I think. Had a Zippo and everything. I kicked the lighter away, and once I got the box, I told him to follow me out, but he wouldn’t. Told me to shoot him. If you hadn’t come in when you did…”

  “We need him for information if nothing else.”

  “Then, can I shoot him?”

  Nathan didn’t answer because Stryker was stirring groggily on his shoulder. Nathan heard him say into his spine, “Let me… die.”

  This time, Syd hit Stryker and he stopped moving.

  Nathan rolled Stryker off the sled and onto the floor of the wolf enclosure building back at the Detroit Zoo. Although Stryker was now awake, bruised severely from the two pistol whippings he’d suffered, he was bound hand and foot by leather strappings Nathan had appropriated from the sleds.

  Stryker was also crying softly, as if he had totally withdrawn into himself and was completely unaware of his surroundings.

  When they’d gotten out of the Masonic Temple, the whole top of the building had been ablaze. There’d been people streaming from the exits, carrying what belongings they could manage. The numbers and the panic had provided Nathan and Syd with all the cover they’d needed to move away from the building amid the general exodus. Nathan had overheard a conversation between two people he’d vaguely recognized as a husband and wife, one of them saying, “First the terrorist attack by the people pretending to be Detroit PD and now this. The building is cursed! I tell you, it’s cursed!”

  So that appeared to be the cover story being spread around by Brant and his cronies, that it had been terrorists who’d attacked the residents to distract everyone while they kidnapped Lucy and Donie, but failed to take Syd. It was just another level of fake fear that Brant was spreading to keep the people of the outer city dependent and reliant on the Greenhousers.

  Nathan had momentarily considered stopping, dumping Stryker’s unconscious body in the snow, and telling the now ex-residents of the Masonic that they were being played, in exactly the way Stryker had played him, but at the last second he’d stopped himself. The less information on his whereabouts that might get back to Brant, the better.

  The sledding back to the zoo had been as uneventful as their journey to the Masonic, with Stryker lashed to the slats and pulled by Nathan’s team as if he added nothing substantial to the weight of the sled as it skimmed over the snow.

  “Wat I tell you ’bout him, pretty boy? He bad medicine!” Rose looked down at the bound and wholly miserable Stryker.

  “I know, I know,” Nathan said wearily, walking back to close the doors of the barn on the cold of the night.

  Syd unhitched the teams and helped John give them their feed, but not before John looked greedily into the ebony, gold-trimmed jewelry box and nodded appreciatively. “Sold, to the man with the box of gold and trinkets.”

  Nathan tapped John on the shoulder. “And I’ll have my deposit back if you don’t mind.”

  John reached into his pocket and gave Nathan back his wedding ring. Nathan screwed it gratefully back onto his finger and kissed it before joining Rose and Stryker.

  “Why man cry? He feeling remorse? Don’t believe it.”

  “That’s how we found him. He wanted us to let him die. He’d covered himself in gas and was about to set it alight when we found him.”

  “I got matches if you want finish the job,” Rose said with a cackling laugh.

  Nathan cut the bonds around Stryker’s ankles and pulled him to his feet without any resistance. He pushed him without speaking towards the room at the back of the barn that John had appropriated as his sleeping quarters and kitchen. An oil heater was warming the room effectively, with fresh coffee and salmon frying on the camping stove.

  Nathan hadn’t drunk or eaten anything so welcome in his entire life, he reckoned. The taste of that burning building and the stench of destruction was all about him and Syd, but on the inside he was full and warm.

  Stryker had been sat on a chair, his arms tied behind it. He had refused all food and liquid. Just staring morosely at his feet—blond hair awry, clothes still stinking of gas.

  Nathan pulled his chair over to sit in front of Stryker.

  The man turned his head away as if the eye contact burned him like the flames at the Masonic might have.

  “Just get it over with, man. I know I don’t deserve to live. If you hadn’t found me, I’d be ash now. Ash blowing on the wind.”

  Nathan took a deep breath.
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  The man who he had been best buddies with when they’d been teens and in college was now a broken shell of his former self. He looked pretty much inside out at this point. Face a dark mass of hollows, topped by weeping eyes. His blond hair lay in straggles and rat-tails around his ears. His shirt—one of those stupid Hawaiian jobs that was Stryker’s preferred mode of dress—seemed curiously appropriate now. Wearing the lie of summer on his back while he’d told summery lies to Nathan and Cyndi. The material was raggedly torn and filthy with his sweat and dirt.

  Nathan sighed the deep breath out. “I don’t know why you did what you did, Stry. Why you led me here, and, it seems, played me with Brant the whole time, just to get Cyndi on-site and working in the Greenhouse. But you did… I don’t get it, but here we are.”

  “You should have left me.”

  “I could have. But in the same way that I wouldn’t let someone else throw their life away a few nights ago…”

  Syd’s cheeks reddened.

  “…I’m not going to let you do that now. You don’t seem like a man who’s got any more options, Stry. A man who’s willing to set himself on fire has suddenly become a man I can trust.”

  Stryker looked up, his tearful eyes confused.

  “Before I saw you up there, Stry, I wouldn’t have trusted you to tell me accurately how many feet I have, let alone anything important. The last few days have convinced me you’ve been a cuckoo in the nest, a backstabber and a spy.”

  Stryker’s eyes moved away again, filled with shame, but this time Nathan put his index finger under Stryker’s chin and lifted his head back up. “No, damn you. You look at me and you listen. Before, I couldn’t trust you—but a man willing to check himself out… at that moment, the only thing he has left is the truth that drove him there. What changed, Stry? What changed to make you remorseful? What has happened?”

  “She’s dead.”

  She? Dead?

  The two words hit Nathan like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. The bottom of his heart hinged open and all the love ran out. He grabbed Stryker by the lapel. “Cyndi’s dead? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Stryker’s face crimpled and the tears almost gushed from his eyes, sparking on his cheeks and dripping from the end of his nose. He shook his head. “No… as far as I know, she’s okay.”

  “Then who’s dead? Tell me or so help me God…”

  “Rachael. Rachael is dead.”

  The heat in Nathan’s head dispersed almost as immediately as it had arrived. “Who…? I don’t know…”

  “My wife,” was all Stryker could manage before his head dropped to his chest and sobs wracked his body like earthquakes that wouldn’t end.

  Nathan got up from the chair and paced. Wife? Stryker had never mentioned a wife before, and certainly not since they’d arrived in Detroit. If this was just another piece of Stryker’s BS—just another layer of lies….

  Nathan bit down on the words that wanted to burst out, all accusations and bile. Instead, he took a breath. Bunched a fist. Waited for Stryker to stop crying. Unwilling to offer the man who had betrayed him any comfort until he knew the score.

  Syd looked at her nails. John drank his coffee.

  Only Rose came from the shadows and knelt by Stryker, gently putting her hand against his head, wiping the tears from his eyes with the hem of her dress and kissing his forehead. “Man is safe. Man is safe. Rose is here. Rose is here,” she whispered in his ear and repeated softly like a cross between a mantra and a lullaby until Stryker’s shoulders stopped heaving and his breathing returned to something like normal. “Man hurtin’, Rose can see that. Rose can’t take away the pain, but she can be here. Rose is here.”

  Stryker leaned the side of his head against Rose’s shoulder and sniffled. Rose grabbed Nathan’s hand as he moved to pace past them, and she pulled him closer. “Sit down. Man need to confess.”

  Nathan’s head was a soup of emotions—still recovering from thinking, however fleetingly, that Stryker had been telling him that Cyndi was dead, and then moving to having to be expected to turn around and start to feel sorry for Stryker, the man who had sold him lock, stock, and family to Brant. It was nearly too much for Nathan. He didn’t feel he had charge left in his emotional batteries for the man who used to be his friend.

  But he sat at Rose’s insistence—her, he trusted. Rose squeezed Nathan’s hand tight by way of thanks. “Tell the man, Stry; tell him.”

  If anything, Stryker became more hollow and insubstantial as his head rocked on Rose’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Nate. Brant… had my wife. Holding her gained my cooperation to get you to come here. The deal wasn’t for me to go into the Greenhouse with her, but for her to be released when Cyndi went in. I couldn’t tell you about Rachael because then you’d know Brant had me by the throat.”

  Nathan wanted to have Stryker by the throat himself, but instead, he let him continue.

  “They needed someone with Cyndi’s prepper skills bad. They’re not growing enough; stocks are dwindling. When I told Brant about Cyndi and that we were in contact, that’s when he got Harmsworth to take Rachael. But when you guys got here and Cyndi refused to help, Brant went crazy—he knew that he had to get her to come there of her own free will, that she wouldn’t help without it being that way, and so he made me put you in contact with Tasha. All this is my fault, and I’m sorry, Nate. Truly. But my wife… the only thing I’ve ever gotten right in my life.”

  Nathan wanted to scream, What about my wife? What about my kids? And Rose must have sensed it, too, because she squeezed his hand again. “Rest easy, pretty boy. Let man ’splain.”

  “Rachael got out of the Greenhouse, but she was shot. One of Harmsworth’s men. She made it back to the Masonic to me and she died in my arms. Right there in my arms, Nate.”

  Stryker was a man who had lost all of his power, his agency, his honor, and all of his love. That’s why he looked so hollow to Nathan. There was nothing left of him.

  “And so I decided there was no point in going on. I knew Brant and Harmsworth had plans for the Masonic. They wanted everyone out—which is why Brant got Harmsworth’s men to shoot the place up and kill folks. Then blame it on terrorists. Spread the fear, get people on the move again. I guess he wanted the building for the next phase of the Greenhouse project. It’s good and solid, high, and already fixed up with power and plumbing. So, I figured… I figured…”

  “You’d go out with it?” Nathan asked, his voice almost a whisper. He hated and loved the bones of the man at the same time. He understood on some level how Stryker would have done anything for the woman he loved, even if that meant betraying his oldest friend. He got it. It didn’t excuse it, or make Nathan feel any better disposed towards Stryker, but at least now he understood it.

  “I… I’m sorry, Nate. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  And, in that moment, neither did Nathan.

  Nathan sat in the dog pen. The malamutes clustered around him, snuffling for treats or strokes or ear rubs. One lay down across his legs and pinned him into place. Its warm, heavy body wasn’t a burden across his thighs; it was a comfort. He stroked the dog’s head and rumpled her ears. Her fur was thick, gray and black. Her face a burglar’s mask and her snout like the coal nose of a snowman. Her paws were hefty as hands, too, and as he scratched at her ear, her hind leg moved in a succession of ghost scratches and canine ecstasy.

  Nathan had left John’s room without a word when Stryker had finished spilling his guts. Understanding didn’t do much to reduce his level of angry despair, and he wanted to have a chance to collect his thoughts before he decided on his exact course of action.

  The plan to get the schematics had been a success, and Horace had already taken them to Dave. He would be poring over them already, trying to see what chance they had of gaining entrance to the Greenhouse that way. The keycards that Nathan had wouldn’t be good for a way in; all the entrances above ground were guarded, and so even if they had a key to get in that wa
y, there would be too much heat generated by that means for them to get in and find their people and family without bringing the whole of the security operation down on them. So the tunnels under the city remained their best bet.

  Even with Stryker’s revelation, that part of Nathan’s future hadn’t changed, but he wondered how he could use it to his advantage, and a separate plan started to form in his mind also—one that would give Stryker an opportunity to pay back some of the hurt and distress he had caused with his actions and inaction.

  Maybe those keys could be used in another way altogether.

  Glad to be thinking a little clearer for a change, Nathan spread his strokes around the dogs that were still close to him, licking his hands and snuffling into his ears.

  “You sleeping out here?”

  Nathan looked up. It was Syd, looking as pale and concerned as he had ever seen her. “Mind if I sit with you? It’s hurting my eyes being in the same room as Stry.”

  “Be my guest,” Nathan said. “Pull up a dog and make yourself comfortable.”

  Syd sat down and two of the dogs broke away from Nathan to get some fresh fuss from new hands. “I half-hoped we might see Saber at the temple.”

  “I wish we had. I’m tired of us all being separated.”

  “I hope she wasn’t in there when it burned. She’s a smart dog, though; she’d have gotten out of there when she needed to. She’ll probably do fine hunting in the city, too. Better chance of surviving out there than me, that’s for sure.”

  Nathan could only agree, and then added, “Has Stryker said anything about Freeson?”

  Syd shook her head. “Nothing. Want me to go back and ask him?”

  “Let him deal with one crisis at a time.”

  “So, who do you think you’ll have to stop committing suicide next?”

  There’d been a twinkle in Syd’s voice and a curl in her lip to say that she wasn’t being entirely serious, and she laughed with genuine humor when Nathan answered, “At this rate, probably me.