Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2)

by Grace Hamilton

  Stryker had indicated the third floor, so Nathan pounded upward as best he could in the dark. There was just enough light to see where he was, and there were luminescent strips along each stair’s edge to mitigate against the situation he now found himself in.

  Hurrah for health and safety.

  The third-floor landing door was swinging open as Nathan crested the steps. He took the MP4 by the muzzle and prepared to club whoever was coming out to greet him, swinging just far enough to make Stryker raise his hands with thinking he was about to have his brains dashed out.

  “Geez, Nate! Enough with hitting me in the head!”

  “Shut up. Where are they?”

  “This way.” Stryker led Nathan back into the corridor from which he’d just emerged. They passed several doors with frosty windows behind which flashlights were flickering.

  “How many people up here?”

  “Not many patients, and even less staff, but there is one small problem,” Stryker whispered as they reached an intersection. “Look.”

  Nathan peered around the wall. In the gloom running down the corridor, he could see that three cops were in positions outside one door. One was trying his radio. One of the others was turning on his flashlight and waving it around, while the third was covering the corridor with his machine pistol.

  “They arrived just after lights went out. Must be standing orders for the situation. Guess they figured you’d try to spring them.”

  “Dammit. Is there another way in?”

  “Nope, this is it.”

  Nathan looked at his watch. All the time was running out on them and he was no nearer to his objective.

  Nathan looked down at his black boots, black combat pants, vest, and cop MP4. Could the plan formulating in his mind work? Could he get close enough to them in the dark before they realized we wasn’t a cop?

  There was only one way to find out.

  He turned on the MP4’s Maglite, held the gun out in front of him, and for the second time in half an hour, he elected to bluff it out with the enemy. Only this time there was no Carlton maneuver to fall back on. This was pure Nathan Desperation.

  “Hey! New orders, ladies. Radio’s been taken out with the power. I’ve just come from Brant; intruders in the Greenhouse. I saw them running to the accommodation block on Michigan—he wants us over there now.”

  The three cops turned and were momentarily blinded by Nathan’s gun light, each one holding their hands up to their eyes.

  “What about the Tolley woman and her brats? Orders were to secure this corridor if there was an attack. Why would Brant change his own orders?”

  It was the space taken up with asking Nathan the question that gave him the opportunity he needed, and the blinding light from his gun that put them on the back foot.

  In the confined space of the corridor, the MP4 spat bullets with the sound of a jackhammer busting old paving slabs. The bullets tore along the floor deliberately—Nathan didn’t want to kill unless he had to—and all three cops’ boots, shins, and knees exploded with a fury of bone and blood.

  “I ain’t gonna kill ya, but I will if you touch your guns, boys. I just want my wife and my kids. What’s it to be?”

  All three cops were groaning, moaning, and bleeding now, but they threw their guns away. “Roll onto your fronts, boys, and assume the position. Stryker! Cuff ’em now.”

  Stryker jogged past Nathan and cuffed the cops in turn, his feet slipping in the blood as Nathan covered them. “You’re in the hospital, boys. If I see a doc, I’ll send him your way.”

  Nathan pushed through the door into the four-bedded bay they’d guarded. A nurse was standing in front of the bed with her hands spread wide, protecting Tony.

  “Dad?” the boy asked.

  Nonplussed, the nurse dropped her hands as Nathan spoke up. “Men outside need first aid, ma’am; please go help them.”

  The nurse nodded and dashed beyond him into the corridor as Stryker came in, still trying to wipe the cops’ blood from his shoes.

  Cyndi had been behind a curtain, but now she walked out into the beam of Nathan’s gun light. She was holding Brandon in her arms.

  There didn’t need to be words, and she came to Nathan and put an arm around him. They kissed deeply, everything else forgotten—however briefly.

  “Love’s young dream,” said Stryker bitterly.

  “What happened? Brant said you’d been taken by a protection gang and he was trying to negotiate your release.”

  “Brant lies. Come on. We gotta get out of here before they find a way to turn the lights back on, or Harmsworth comes back with his men.”

  Tony climbed off the bed and grabbed a robe. “I don’t have a jacket, Dad. I can’t go outside without one.”

  Nathan patted his equipment bag. “It’s okay, son. We got this all figured out, but let’s get going. We have to meet Freeson and the others outside.”

  “Others?” Cyndi asked, picking her coat up from the back of a chair and, after passing Brandon to Tony, putting it on as they walked.

  “Lucy and Donie. Brant took them. There’s a lot to catch you up on; just get onto the notion that this isn’t just your last night in the Greenhouse… it’s your last night in Detroit.”

  Nathan gave Cyndi the edited highlights of the last week as they want past the injured cops and the nurse tending to them, down the corridor and on to the stairs.

  Cyndi just listened, not asking questions, and all the responses Nathan got were sighs and incredulous gasps. She only said two words in the time spent between Tony’s bed and the ground floor. “Dog sleds?”

  They sped up going across the concourse and headed for the doors that led to the pedestrianized zone. Nathan took the lead with the MP4 and light. He passed pistols to both Stryker and Cyndi as they went through the doors and out into the glass-covered street. They felt no appreciable change in temperature, but the shiver that the raging storm outside the glass sent through Nathan’s body froze him to the core. Everything was working out exactly as he’d planned for the most part, but the storm was going to screw with their getaway in a big way.

  He crouched down by a hydroponics unit and passed a winter jacket from the bag to Tony, along with an extra blanket for Brandon to Cyndi. At last, everything that he had brought in the bag had been used, so he discarded it. He turned on the walky-talky. “Free, you there? Come back?”

  “We’re here. Waiting by the door for you and the keycards.”

  “Okay, buddy, see you in two.” He stood up. “We’re heading for the doors, and Stryker has keycards that are going to get us out. When we do get out, it’s a full-on blizzard, and we need to move fast but stick together. I’ll go first. Tony, you watch my back and you do not let me get away from you. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Cyndi, you follow Tony, and Stryker, you’re at the back. Freeson and Syd will lead Lucy and Donie; we’re heading for the sleds, and then the Humvee. We’re getting out of here and we’re getting out of here now.”

  Nathan stepped out from behind the hydroponics unit and began to take their first steps towards the main entrance of the Greenhouse one hundred yards away.

  “Hello, Nathan,” said a voice he recognized, though it was also one that he’d wholly not wanted to hear. He froze, his gun ready.

  “No, behind you, Nathan, behind you. And please turn around very slowly with your gun down, or I’ll put a bullet through your wife and your baby. Kinda a two for the price of one deal.”

  14

  Danny.

  Close up, just a handful of yards away now. There was an agelessness about him. He had neither the freshness of youth nor the maturity of age, but the body of a man who didn’t yet know how to hold itself. Gangly yet wiry. A solid threat, but also an insubstantial ghost. He moved like Jack Frost, all clockwork and mantis limbs, taller even than Nathan and holding a Beretta directly at Brandon’s head where it lay over Cyndi’s heart.

  Nathan had already dropped the muzzle of the MP4
perpendicular to the ground and taken his finger off the trigger, raising his hand.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Nathan. I’ve seen a lot of your work. You’re resourceful. I like that. It’s going to be a shame to have to kill you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “That’s not the way it works, man. If you had the drop on me now, what would you do? Pat me on the head and tell me I was a naughty boy, or end me like a sick dog?”

  Nathan said nothing.

  “Your silence tells me everything I need to know. Now. Pressing matters. Where is she? If you want your family to live on after you die, Nathan, tell me where she is.”

  “I don’t…”

  Danny moved the gun and shot Stryker in the shin.

  The leg burst open, stippling Tony’s face with dots of blood. Tony instinctively wiped at his face, and dry retched. Stryker went down screaming, clutching at the wound, blood seeping through his fingers. “She’s meeting us at the main entrance. I have keycards!” Stryker wailed. “I have keycards!”

  Stryker used one blood-slathered hand to reach into his pocket and bring out both cards. He threw them, bloody fingerprints and all, down at Danny’s feet.

  Danny picked up the cards and pocketed them, keeping Nathan in his sights the whole time. Then he took the MP4 from Nathan’s shoulder and threw it into the nearest hydroponics unit before doing the same with Nathan’s pistol from his holster and with Stryker’s dropped pistol. Nathan noted that, whatever Cyndi had done with her gun, it wasn’t in plain sight. Perhaps she’d dropped it already in the commotion, or… the little warmth of hope that spread through Nathan was the world at this point. They had a chance.

  Maybe.

  “Well, let’s keep that appointment, shall we? Cyndi, you help Stryker there. He’s gonna have trouble walking, I reckon.”

  Cyndi helped Stryker to his feet and he put an arm across her shoulder. He could just about put weight on the injured leg; though the blood still ran freely, they could at least move as a unit.

  Danny motioned them towards the doors at the far end of the concourse. The snow whirled crazily around the Greenhouse, piling up on the roof and appearing in a whirlpool of flakes, obscuring all of Detroit beyond it at the wide, glassy expanse of the main entrance.

  The gloom created by Nathan’s killing of the power grid made it difficult for Nathan to see what was happening in the pool of shadows near the main door, but there were people there already. Some with their hands raised, which he saw only as flashlights played crazily around them. He reached out and took Tony’s hand, pulling him close. “Don’t worry. We’ll be okay.”

  Danny scoffed as they walked. “Don’t lie to the boy, Nathan. Don’t make the last thing you say to him give him false optimism. That’s the worst thing you could do.”

  Danny bent his head to get closer to Tony. “Hey, kid, your daddy’s gonna die. Real soon. I just haven’t decided exactly how I’m going to do it. Did he tell you I crucified one of his friends just for giggles? I bet he didn’t.”

  “Leave him alone, please.” Nathan felt the anger boiling in him as they approached the entrance, but he kept his voice calm and his manner level. He knew Danny was trying to rile him, trying get him to act out in front of Tony. What better way to see him die than through getting him enraged, beyond angry, and losing control? What better way to make your point than to have everyone see him put down like a dog?

  “I don’t want to leave him alone,” Danny responded. “Want me to tell him what I have planned for his mom? She’s going in the harem with all your other bitches, Nathan.”

  Oh, but you won’t be an active participant, Nathan almost said without thinking, having to clamp the words in the middle of his throat to stop them from escaping.

  “Makin’ babies for the cause. Like that idea, Cyndi? Like that idea a lot?”

  Cyndi said nothing. Her face had become set, and she just walked on with Stryker.

  “Your mom told you about the birdies and the bees yet, son? She told you about how babies are made yet?”

  Nathan squeezed Tony’s hand and the boy looked up at him. They locked eyes, and suddenly they were anywhere else except there.

  “Maybe I’ll let you watch her making another one. Instructional kind of thing.”

  Nathan bit into his tongue. He could taste blood in his mouth.

  Just words. Just words. Just words.

  But oh, the sweet thought of squeezing the life out of Danny and watching the lights go out, eye to eye.

  I’m not a killer. I don’t want to be a killer. But I will make an exception for you.

  Nathan could see the entrance clearly now. But it was not what he’d been expecting to see, and the rush of optimism washing over him made him shake.

  “Oh,” Danny said simply.

  It was not Freeson and the others with their hands up, being held at bay by Danny’s gang.

  It was Tasha, Frank, and five others—mainly women who were standing with their hands up—while they were covered with weapons by Syd, Lucy, and Donie. Freeson was checking their captives for concealed weapons. He looked up at Nathan, saw that he was coved by Danny, and shrugged.

  “Let them go! Now!” Danny bellowed to Freeson and the others as Tasha looked around, the shame on her face clear for all of them to see.

  Freeson shook his head. “Listen, sonny, we’re not letting anyone go while you’ve got guns pointed at my best friend and his family. So, why don’t you just put your gun down and come over here and join the rest of the losers?”

  Danny’s whole frame shook and he put his pistol against Nathan’s forehead. “You want me to paint your best friend’s brains all over the ground?”

  “You could,” Freeson said, “but then I’d kill you before you squeezed the trigger the second time. I’m all about saving as many as I can.”

  “Do as you’re told, Danny. You lost.” It was Syd, stepping up and out of the shadows. Nathan had recognized her silhouette against the raging storm, but Danny, it appeared, had not.

  As Syd spoke, the muzzle of the pistol against Nathan’s temple vibrated like a wasp in a jar. He just hoped it wasn’t enough to cause Danny’s finger to squeeze the trigger.

  “Syd? Syd B4?”

  “That’s me,” she replied. “A year older, less hair, and two inches taller—just me. Here. Pointing a gun at your people.”

  “Come nearer. Let me see you.”

  “Don’t move, Syd,” Lucy interjected, moving closer to the teenager.

  “Why don’t you come closer, Danny? Why don’t you come to me? That’s what you used to do willingly enough. Couldn’t keep you away… most nights.”

  Syd was making a credible stab at appearing strong, but Nathan was near enough to see the tremor in her knee, and hear a slight waver in her voice.

  “I’m not going to let you kill my friends, Danny.”

  “And how do you propose to stop me, Syd? You couldn’t stop me then, and you can’t stop me now.”

  “What a short memory you have. Not the only thing that’s shorter, hmmm?” Syd asked, her voice wavering just a little more.

  Three things happened at once.

  Danny took the gun away from Nathan’s temple and fired at Syd.

  Cyndi shot at Danny, hitting him in the shoulder blade and punching a hole through the top of his shoulder that sent the bullet ricocheting into Nathan’s bicep, where it lodged with a screaming agony.

  And, it seemed that the whole front of the main entrance exploded, throwing everyone in all directions.

  Nathan just had time to push Tony and Cyndi into the nearest hydroponics stand as Danny’s Mack truck burst onto the concourse, pushing a destroyed Humvee before it and bringing raging snow and fire along with it.

  The whole trailer, being pulled by the tractor unit, was on fire. Not just smoking, but ablaze. It had gotten that near to the entrance of the Greenhouse without stopping or being seen only because it had come down the slope so fast, with the lights off, and had been ob
scured by the blizzard.

  The truck, air brakes hissing, billowing black smoke and terrifying flames, careened across the concourse, bursting through hydroponic trays as it went. Cyndi still had the gun and was firing into the dark and smoke. It took a second for Nathan to realize that Danny could no longer be seen. The last Nathan had seen of Danny had been him running towards the smoke, dodging Cyndi’s bullets.

  Freeson and Lucy had been pushed out of the way of the truck, and Donie lay across them in the mess of glass, ironwork, and fresh snow like a bodyguard who’d just save the president.

  Danny’s gang, unarmed thanks to Freeson, had dived in the other direction, and were now running out into the night, just visible beneath the smoke in the air. The pain in Nathan’s arm lit up his head as Cyndi reached up, applying pressure to the ragged wound. Nathan could still move the arm, but it hurt like hell.

  Tony backed against Cyndi, hugging Brandon to his chest.

  Cyndi pressed harder. “Needs dressing, Nathan. And it looks like the slug is still in there.”

  Wincing, knowing there was no time for surgery, Nathan pushed Cyndi’s hands aside and dug into the wound with his index finger. The piece of lead that had gone through Danny’s shoulder and torn into his bicep was less than an inch below the surface. He hooked his finger underneath it and hoiked it out with a yell.

  “Just bandage it. Please.”

  Cyndi opened the zipper on her anorak and began tearing a long strip from the bottom of her cotton blouse.

  The door to the Mack cab opened then and Horace jumped down, followed by Rose.

  “Hello, pretty boy. Welcome to de revolution.”

  Cyndi began dressing Nathan’s arm as he watched the area beyond the burning trailer, where people were running onto the concourse, armed with what they had found—shotguns, machetes, hoes, and scythes. A rag-tag army with snow on their shoulders and fire in their bellies. They pelted across the concrete to the sidewalk, flashlights swinging as they yelled their triumph to the glass roof.