“But I went to the Greenhouse, and Saber got lost. Maybe if I’d stayed, she wouldn’t have got lost in the fire.” Tony’s eyes were big and brokenhearted, and suddenly Nathan saw all of himself in the boy. The one who takes it all on, who doesn’t know whether or not he does the right thing or how. The shame over possibly doing the wrong thing, when there were other options he felt he should have tried harder to take. Tony was absolutely his father’s son, alright.
Nathan knew there were no words to take away his feelings about doing the wrong things for the right reasons—it would take time to heal, and while that was happening, he and Tony would just have to wait. There was nothing he could say. It wouldn’t matter how many times he told the boy that it wasn’t his fault; it would still feel like it did. Nathan was the same. Only time moved him on.
Only time would heal them both.
So, instead of speaking, he just hugged his boy tight and kissed the top of his head. To Nathan, it seemed that Tony instinctively knew what he was transmitting in the hug—that his daddy understood how he was feeling, but wasn’t going to just combat it with platitudes and try to blithely fix it. Nathan would just be there to hug him when he needed it, and trust Tony to deal with his feelings until he was in a better place. Perhaps one day Tony would even hear Nathan’s voice in his head when his father was long gone, telling him things, making him focus on what was important, giving him the strength to cut through the crap to what gave meaning to your life. Your family, your friends, and trying to do right by them.
Despite the fact that there was no easy fix, Nathan loved that an unspoken bond had been strengthened between father and son.
“So, how about these dogs, sport? Which one’s your favorite, mmm?”
Tony smiled, raised his hand, and pointed at the lead malamute of their team. A hulking gentle giant of a dog with a patch over one eye, like a pirate, with four gray legs ending in white socks.
“What’s he called?” Nathan asked, knowing full well that the dogs hadn’t been given names, or if they had, John hadn’t passed them on. They were workers, not pets. It didn’t do to get too close to them, John had said.
“I don’t know. What do you think we should call him, Dad?”
“Your shout, sport. Call him what you like.”
Tony thought for a moment. “He’s fast, and he’s strong, and he could run all day, but he’s also really smart. I’ve seen him in the team, like he knows what command you’re gonna make before you even make it. He’s sharp and true.”
“So, what’re you gonna call him?”
“How about… Rapier?”
It couldn’t have been a more perfect tribute to Saber, to name another dog after a sword, and one matching that kind of blade so brilliantly, too. The boy was becoming a man. Maybe a few years too early, but there it was in him. A strength and a core to the boy. It was growing before Nathan’s eyes, and he felt incredibly proud.
Nathan’s thoughts drifted from Tony. He could at least look back on his own time in Detroit as a period when he’d been growing and learning to be the person he was now. Changed in many ways, but still, at the root of it all, sure that Cyndi and the boys must be the lodestone he hove towards. It felt very primal, that notion, out here under a black, dark sky, the snow in all directions, the breath streaming from his mouth and the campfire burning.
This was how it had been for men and woman for hundreds of thousands of years. Just them and the elements. Just them living a hair’s breadth from survival or doom. The Big Winter had turned back the clock significantly; yes, they had some tech and weapons, and could scavenge much of what they needed, but now the world was a harsher, darker, and weirder place. Humanity had been made soft by its appliances and niceties, its comforts and its labor-saving devices. Nathan was closer now to that time when pioneers left the east to head west for land, farming, gold, or for whatever reason they needed to make a new life. There was no safety net now. Like back then, all Nathan had was his wits, his skills, and the binds he shared with those around him. How it would pan out, he had no idea, but for the first time in a long while, Nathan left the feeling of grief over losing his former world behind. It didn’t do to dwell on things he could no longer change; there was only today and tomorrow. Good riddance to yesterday.
Going onwards was all that mattered.
“Rapier…”
“Do you like it, Daddy? Is it good?”
“Son, it couldn’t be better, and neither could you.”
It wasn’t the road signs that told them they’d made it from Detroit to the southern edge of Chicago. It was the fires in the distance.
Through binoculars, again donated by Rose, Nathan could, even at this far distance, still see that the downtown skyscrapers were on fire.
It must have been a recent burning because the familiar shape of the Sears Tower, black and blocky, was raging hard. This was a fresh fire. Unlike Windsor, as seen from the Masonic Temple in Detroit, this was not low-level burning or ashes steaming and belching old fire out, waiting for the snow to extinguish it. This was what seemed to be a deliberate act by people who were intent on destruction. The Sears tower was the tallest of the burning structures in sight, but the other towers nearby were burning, too. Nathan passed the glasses to Freeson, who looked on and whistled through his teeth.
Nathan took back the binoculars and looking intently through them again. As he watched, a ball of fire burst from a tower and a huge billow of black smoke powered into the air like the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.
“They been fighting a month.”
Nathan started at the voice he didn’t recognize and turned.
Lucy had already raised her rifle, and Freeson and Cyndi, still holding Brandon in one crook of her arm, did the same now with their pistols.
The man before them was tall, dark-haired, and had a broad face, suggesting Native American heritage. A hook for a nose; brown eyes that were soulful and intense. His face was lined deeply from obvious exposure to living much of his life outside, and he was perhaps fifty, but could have been either forty or sixty just as easily. He wore a red and black checked sheepskin-lined jacket, thick brown boots, and jeans. On his head, a white Stetson rested, and in his hands was a set crossbow that was pointing at the earth.
“You move quietly,” Nathan said, trying to keep all edges of provocation from his voice until this unknown quality turned out to be anything other than friendly.
“It pays to. But you can put down your guns. I’m not black hat.”
Nathan, who hadn’t raised a gun, took a step towards the man. There was an earnestness and authenticity to the interloper’s voice which didn’t give off any sparks of threat. “Nathan,” he offered as he held out his hand, after taking the mitten off.
The man looked from the guns to the hand. And smiled.
He took Nathan’s hand and gripped it hard.
“You can call me Elm.”
Lucy, Cyndi, and Free relaxed their weapons.
“Who’s been fighting, and why are they fighting?”
Elm smirked, the skin around his eyes crinkling. “You must be new around here, son. Don’cha know there’s a war on?”
17
“Why does anyone fight?” Elm asked as the fire crackled and the whiskey flowed.
They’d followed Elm back to his place on the outskirts of Brookdale, a small half-horse town where he ran what had once been a hardware store, but now had a weathered sign hanging on the outside wall with words scrawled in red paint: ‘Trading Post.’
Elm had told them he’d been left the last guy standing in the town but had been doing okay. Some of the people who knew about his place would come from Chicago to trade food for whatever he’d been able to find or salvage from the towns around there. Up until a few weeks before, he’d also taken his truck into Chicago when the weather allowed for such a trip, just to look through abandoned houses for booty.
That was until his truck had stopped working.
Now he cou
ldn’t even get it to start. But it was just as well—because of the war.
“It’s a territory thing,” Elm continued. “There are three main groups who decided to stay in the city and see if they could make a go of it. As usual with this kinda thing, ego gets in the way; no one wants to compromise, too many guns, no one wants to lose face.”
“And they’re setting fire to buildings?” Nathan was incredulous. As if things weren’t bad enough, when everyone needed to be working together, things like property and territory should be shared and worked on together, not fought over.
“Yup. And executing people in the street. All sorts. Never have I been so glad to not live in the big city.”
Elm leant forward and put another log on the fire. “I guess they’ll either all kill each other or one group will beat the others, and then we’ll get back to scratching out a living.”
Nathan shook his head, thinking of how Detroit had been reformed into one dominant grouping who had the largest slice of the pie for themselves, with have-nots on the other side of the coin, and it had only been armed insurrection on the part of Rose and her crew that had brought Brant down.
If he went back to Detroit in five years, would Rose be the new Brant? Jealously guarding what she had for the few? Would the situation require another rebellion? Was this the pattern for all cities and concentrations of people from now on—a lawless battle for supremacy?
Last guy to die gets to keep the prizes.
It made Nathan sick to his stomach to think of how quickly things had fallen apart and come to this. It made Cyndi’s prepping all the more vital. The skills she’d learned and the ways she could apply them now in this screwed up world had made it natural for Brant and the others to want to entice her to Detroit. It wouldn’t do well, he thought, to spread it around that Cyndi was so useful. He could be sure people would come for her again if they could.
Before Elm left them to sleep, he gave Cyndi a Lakota Cradleboard for Brandon. Two laths of pine carved intricately with representations of prairie animals, and a hooded hide carrying enclosure into which Brandon could be placed for Cyndi to carry the baby on her front or back, keeping both hands free. It was a beautiful object.
“Got no use for it myself these days; figured I could pass it on to someone who does. You can’t carry the baby in the crook of your arm forever now, can you?”
Cyndi’s eyes sparkled with gratitude. “Thank you. It’s beautiful. I’ll cherish it.”
“Don’t cherish it. Use it. It’s not an ornament,” he laughed, and he sounded to Nathan exactly like Cyndi had when she’d told him that pregnancy wasn’t an illness.
Cyndi took the ribbing with the usual grace Nathan associated with his wife. She was all quality.
They bedded down on the comfortable furniture in Elm’s living room as the fire burned lower. The dogs were penned outside, and the sleds stowed in the garage alongside Elm’s broken-down Dodge. It was a red ’95 Dodge Ram, and Nathan promised Elm he’d take a look at it in the morning if he wanted him to.
“I’d appreciate that, fella,” he said as he got up to leave the room, but then he turned, looking down at Nathan, his family, and his friends. “You sure are a long way from home, ain’tcha?”
“We are that,” Nathan agreed.
“Well, I suggest you keep going as soon as you can, my young friend. There ain’t nothing here, but death and graves.”
The Ram needed a new fuel line and the thermostat was fritzed.
“You’re lucky it’s so cold now,” Nathan told Elm, wiping his hands on a rag as he pulled his head out from under the hood. “You run it too long like that and your engine destroys itself. You can’t run it until we get you some new parts.”
Elm bit on his thumbnail in thought, but finally answered. “There’s a Dodge dealership and shop in Pinkersville, about six miles up I-90. Should have what we need there?”
“I would think so.”
“How about you take me out on your sled and we’ll have a looksee?”
And so, an hour later, Nathan was shouting, “Hike! Hike!” to the dogs while Elm sat in the sled with his crossbow across his lap.
Cyndi had spoken to Nathan quietly before they’d left, while Elm had been showing Freeson and Lucy his crossbow skills in the yard.
“You’ve got your pistol?”
Nathan had patted his shoulder holster. “Of course. Wouldn’t be seen dead without it.”
Cyndi had whacked Nathan on the shoulder in response. “Don’t even joke about it. Like Elm says, there’s a war going on, and although we’re miles outside the city, we don’t know who or what you might run into.”
“Straight out and straight back. Promise. Then a few hours to work on his Dodge and then one more night and we’re out of here. The dogs need a rest anyway, and this is as good a place as any.” Nathan had kissed Cyndi then and her stiffness had drained away. “Okay, but be careful. Please.”
“And bring Elm back in one piece.”
Nathan had raised an eyebrow.
“Have you not seen his back room?” Cyndi had asked, pointing across the kitchen to a door set deep in the wall. There’d been a tribal blanket hanging across it, and a tomahawk hanging on leather straps hanging from the door handle.
“No, I haven’t seen the back room, and judging by the axe there, neither should you.”
Cyndi had sighed, but nodded in acknowledgement of the point. “I went in there by mistake, still getting oriented to the house. But, Nathan, come and look.”
Nathan had been able to see Elm through the window in the yard, firing his crossbow into a far tree, then reloading the weapon and handing it to Lucy for her to have a go. Lucy had fired and the bolt had slammed into the tree, leading to Lucy whooping and Freeson applauding.
“Come on, see for yourself.” Cyndi had pulled Nathan away from the window, towards the door. The tomahawk had swung and chinked against the doorframe as Cyndi opened the door.
Inside the door was a room, perhaps six feet wide, but eight long. Lined with jars and boxes. The smell of the room had insinuated itself in Nathan’s nose as the images assimilated. It was rich and redolent of dried vegetables and tobaccos, sweet with the smell of cured meats and smoked fish. The glass jars were filled with all manner of dried matter, curled and gnarled. Barks and leaves, grasses, seeds, and fungi. Nathan had scratched at his head. “Ingredients? Food? A pantry from a weird horror movie?”
“No,” Cyndi had said, hardly able to disguise the excitement in her voice. “A pharmacy.”
The sled zipped across the powder, staying off the roads. The dogs, fully rested now, were more than happy to get going; they’d yelped and barked with joy as Tony had helped Nathan put the team back together.
Elm was impressed with the speed they were making across country, too. Although they were still some miles from Chicago as they left Brookdale, the night had given way to a sky that lay stained with smoke from the city’s burning buildings. Nathan had spent a disturbed night’s sleep without much shut-eye, and on occasion had thought he’d heard the thump of explosions way off in the distance. As it had not disturbed anyone else in the room, he hadn’t been sure. He’d half-hoped the sound would wake the snoring Freeson, but it hadn’t, so Nathan had just nudged him with a foot and he’d rolled over.
But aside from the smoke, the air was crisp, and the dogs seemed not to be feeling the cold at all, happily pulling the sled to Nathan’s commands as directed by Elm’s occasional shouted direction.
They crossed the highway several times on their winding route, but didn’t stay on it. At their first traversing of the highway, there had been two freshly burnt-out cars. Still steaming. The fighting, if that was what had caused these vehicles to be destroyed, was possibly getting closer—and Nathan didn’t want to risk running into anyone hostile.
They crested a rise and found Pinkersville laid out below them. Nathan used the glasses to check the deserted streets for signs of life. He offered the binoculars to Elm next, but th
e older man shook his head and only looked through narrowed eyes down onto the town.
“I don’t need your lenses to tell me the town is clear. Come on.”
They tied up the dogs and the sled, and then walked the last half mile on foot, trudging through the virgin snow. Elm almost loped like a wolf, his legs longer than Nathan’s, and the mechanic had to hurry to keep up.
“You and your wife, you didn’t have to sneak about this morning, you know—all you had to do was ask to look at my stock. I ain’t got nothing to hide,” Elm said out of the blue as they came into the fringes of the town. It was a ghost place of burnt-out homesteads, gutted stores, and broken glass crunching beneath snow. It had been abandoned for some time. The wind whistled along the streets with a mournful wail and made the moment less awkward than it might have been. But Nathan hadn’t expected Elm to choose now to confront him, however softly, about his and Cyndi’s trespass.
“We didn’t mean anything by it. My wife went in there by mistake, and she just wanted to show me is all.”
Remembering he didn’t want to give too much away about Cyndi’s interests and skills, he added simply, “She just thought it was cool. Back in Detroit, we stayed in a place that had a room full of stuffed animals—you know all that taxidermy bit—it’s just fascinating what people collect, you know?”
Elm snorted. “Your wife moves like a cat, she is bright with intelligence, and I saw the way she cared for the baby last night, and how she is alert. She has more than a passing interest in that room. I figure she knows exactly what is in it. Am I right?”
Nathan didn’t see any point in lying—Elm was of course pretty much spot-on, and so it didn’t matter what Nathan might not want to give away about Cyndi. Her abilities seeped out through every action she engaged in. “She has some knowledge, yeah. Herbs and things. She has to…”
“Your son is asthmatic; I would assume she learned as much as she could to make sure, if the medicine he takes runs out, she’d have a backup ready to go.”
Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2) Page 18