After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  In saving Freeson, Nathan might condemn his family to their deaths.

  Nathan’s head wound throbbed with the jagged thoughts leaping up from the brain beneath. He’d taken little notice of the wound since they’d acquired the tractor, and as he thought about what they should do, he felt a trickle of liquid running down his face. He touched his cheek, and his trembling fingers came away smeared with the pus and blood that had seeped out from under the wound pad. Whatever happened, Nathan’s bullet tear was infected, and he didn’t have a lot of time before he was going to need some serious antibiotics therapy if he wanted to avoid a system-wide infection. An infection that might lead, untreated, to septicemia or worse.

  Nathan looked questioningly from Donie to Dave. Their faces and shrugging shoulders told him they were feeling the weight of the same dilemma. There were no easy solutions to this, and things were coming to a head in more ways than one. The cruel laughter needling across the parking lot was reaching some kind of a crescendo even as they tried to formulate a plan.

  Nathan forced himself to look back at Freeson and the trio. Freeson was being punched in the guts by Mustache, and the mechanic vomited noisily down his front, his arms straining at his bonds.

  Seeing the mess, Redhead pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster inside his ski jacket and pointed it at Freeson’s face.

  “How about some target practice?”

  17

  Nathan was halfway to his feet before Donie yanked him back into the brush. “You can’t! You know you can’t,” she hissed into his ear.

  “You gotta let them do what they want, or your family is dead,” Dave spat into Nathan’s other ear. “You understand? Dead!”

  Nathan knew they were right, and realized he had to let Freeson go if there was any chance of getting his family back. Nathan let the tension dissipate from his muscles and stopped struggling against the kids’ hands.

  “I’m sorry, Free,” he said quietly, and then he closed his eyes, waiting for the shooting to start.

  But the gun didn’t fire, and all Nathan heard from behind his closed eyes was a harsh slap across bare skin. This was followed by a girlish yelp of pain and a commanding voice that shouted, “It’s a gas station, you redheaded moron! What the heck are you thinking?”

  “Sorry… sorry, yeah, Owen. Sorry.”

  “You better be, you nitwit. I burned Robbie to a crisp for backchat. You wanna go the same way? ’Cause, you fat piece of crap, I got plenty more gas to roast you in your own juices. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, Owen. Sorry, Owen. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Well, now’s the time to start!”

  Nathan’s eyes had come fully open now, and the scene around Freeson appeared as intense in vision as it had in sound. Owen—the bald and tattooed monster—had apparently slapped Redhead hard on the cheek. He was still rubbing at the spot furiously. His gun had fallen to the concrete.

  As Nathan looked at the gun, though, something caught his eye, glinting from way beyond it. The Airstream’s doors were open; boxes and cartons had been removed from it and littered the ground in front of it. But also, waiting to be opened or rolled away, there were Donie and Dave’s flight cases. And from where Owen, Mustache, and Redhead were surrounding Freeson, their line of sight didn’t allow them to see the flight cases. Anyone might be able to get up to them and…

  A plan started to formulate in the fuzzy reaches of Nathan’s brain. As Owen, Mustache, and Redhead beat up on Freeson a little more, he told Donie and Dave the skeleton bones of it—he’d need to put flesh on the plan’s bones with some more information, but he had the start of something.

  If he could put it into action before Freeson was punched to death, they might be able to save the mechanic, too.

  Nathan ran fast and low towards the rear of the diner in the encroaching night. A chain link fence enclosed a small compound filled with snow-covered engine parts, body panels, dead catering refrigerators, and an upended stove. Gas-rings the size of a ship’s portholes across its face.

  The gate on the compound’s fence wasn’t locked, but it was on a squeaky latch. Nathan tried hard to operate it without transmitting his presence to anyone who might be in the back of the building.

  The snow in the compound was undisturbed, and that at least told Nathan the gang hadn’t been interested in the piled-up junk there. Nathan wished he could cover the ground without leaving footprints, but that was a non-starter, no matter the fact that if anyone did come out, they would see immediately that he’d been casing the diner.

  There was a blank-faced green door set into the wall, and Nathan could just make out its color as the darkness completed its arrival. The sky was ashen, but free of clouds, and the last streaks of sunlight were spreading orange flares on the underside of the ash layer.

  It was coming up on full dark now, and if Nathan’s plan was going to come to fruition, the confusion it caused would be well exacerbated by the dark. But first he had to get inside the building.

  The door had no handle on the outside—just a hole in which a key could be inserted and the door pulled open when the mechanism caught. Nathan prayed that, like the chain link gate, security wasn’t a top priority for Betty. She had more than enough to worry about with making sure Marty stayed happy and healthy.

  Nathan leaned the shotgun against the wall and pulled a small tool pack from inside his coat. The wallet-sized fold of leather always sat in his inside pocket in case of fiddly work needing to done out on the road, and it could come in handy now. He selected a small flathead screwdriver and inserted it into the keyhole, hoping against hope that he’d be right about Betty and her priorities.

  The screwdriver wedged its way into the hole, and it gave Nathan just enough purchase to be able to move the door.

  The door came open a sliver on a breath of warm air from the heated guts of the diner.

  Nathan’s memory of the internal geography of the diner told him that unless someone was at the back of the building, past the store cupboard and the four free-standing stainless steel refrigerators, nobody out front would be able to see this door opening.

  Nathan pulled the door a sliver further and peered inside. The lights were off in the kitchen, but there was enough illumination coming in from the restaurant to give him a view of the space beyond the door. The breeze outside the building was cold, and he could feel it moving past his ear into the kitchen. He would need to get in now if the gang members inside weren’t going to be alerted by an attendant drop in temperature.

  From what he could see, no one was near the door, and so he opened it just enough to get him, the shotgun, and his bulky anorak inside. He slid into the diner’s warmth and gently shut the door behind himself.

  Harsh voices were coming from the diner beyond the counter. There was laughter, as well, and indistinct words, and Nathan was surprised to hear that the majority of the voices were female.

  Dropping into a crouch, Nathan snicked the door fully shut and moved across the tan tiled floor, settling against the cool metal of one of the stainless steel refrigerators. The chill steel felt good against the side of his head with the wound, drawing the heat of infection momentarily away. But as he pressed into the metal, he also felt another trickle of liquid pop from beneath the pad and run along his cheekbone.

  Nathan moved forward. A woman with a broad Bronx accent was saying, “You’re a skinny kid. That’ll be good for us. You’ll be able to get into places we can’t. You don’t wanna be like that asshole, Syd. She screwed Danny good, but you’re not like that are you, boy? You’re not like that skinny Goth.”

  Nathan’s heart skipped several beats as he heard Tony answer, “I just wanna be with my mom and dad. Let me be with my mom!”

  “Your mom and Miss Hoiti-Toiti are gonna be fine, kid,” Bronx said. “Your dad and any other guys we meet, not so much. And the Goth? When we get her back to Danny in New York, she’s gonna wish even her grandmother hadn’t been born, not just her.”

  There wa
s another round of harsh laughter.

  “I… don’t… don’t… understand.”

  “Sydney’s been a bad, bad girl. That’s why we came after her. Your mom and the stuck-up bitch? Well, Owen and Danny have plans for them.”

  “Plans?”

  “Yeah. You see your momma’s fat belly, kid?”

  “The baby?”

  “Outstanding. Owen’s gonna make her make some more.”

  Another staccato round of laughter twisted Nathan’s guts up as tight as a cross-threaded bolt.

  “Ladies make babies, kid. Men, they’re just trouble. You join up with us and we’ll take care of you better than any daddy will. Or you’ll end up like Mr. Punchbag over there at the gas pumps, and you don’t want that, do you?”

  Tony’s only reply was a hacking cough and the wheeze that could be the start of an asthma attack.

  “Leave him alone, you bitch!”

  Cyndi’s voice.

  The only reply Nathan heard was the whip crack of a slap, a crash of furniture, and a yelp of pain from Cyndi.

  “You gonna leave me to talk to your boy,” Bronx said, “or I can slit his throat now. Which one will it be?”

  Tony’s coughing had stopped, and although his voice was feathery with fear, he managed to say, “If you leave my mom alone, I’ll listen… but you gotta stop hitting her… please.”

  Although hot agony burned through him at the fact that he couldn’t do anything to help them, at least Nathan could work out why the Seven-Ones had taken his family and the others rather than killing them on the spot. Women they could breed, a kid who they could train, and then Freeson, to use as an example and leverage to get the women to do what they wanted them to do. The unbelievably fast and complete breakdown of social norms and morality writ large in this one location. Nathan churned and ground his teeth.

  No longer would he be the reluctant and indecisive man of engines and other displacement activities. Nathan was all that stood between his family and their doom.

  “Hello.”

  The shock of the nearby voice hit Nathan so hard, the shotgun almost slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. He snapped his head around.

  It was Marty. He was shuffling forward with his hand outstretched in greeting, his 11th Airborne cap turned around in the style of a fifteen-year-old. His belt had been loosened and his trousers were hanging gangsta-style from his ample hips, and Nathan saw with a glance down that the laces had been removed from his white sneakers. Perhaps saddest of all, a chain made from yellow toilet paper had been hung around his neck in the rapper way. The Seven-Ones had clearly been playing with the old man, humiliating him in front of his wife and the others. Nathan could imagine the cruel laughter of the scumbag gang members defiling the old man because of his mental state and trusting nature.

  Nathan couldn’t risk Marty saying anything more, so he raised his finger to his lips and took the old man’s hand. Using the refrigerator as cover, he stood up and whispered to him, “Marty, please, please be quiet—can you do that for me?”

  Marty nodded with serious eyes and then winked. “I like games,” he said quietly.

  “Hey, old man!” Bronx shouted from the other side of the counter.

  “His name is Marty,” Betty said.

  “Whatever. Old man. You got the bourbon?”

  Nathan looked down at Marty’s other hand. There it was, gripping the neck of a bottle.

  “If you don’t come here with that bourbon now, I’m gonna kick your missus’ teeth out of her head.”

  Nathan winced as he heard Betty’s muffled yelp of indignation.

  Bronx went on, “And as these teeth are all her own, I guess that’s gonna hurt a whole lot more than I was expectin’.”

  Nathan moved behind Marty and gently maneuvered the truckstop owner to the edge of the refrigerator, and then he whispered, “Go give them the bourbon, Marty. We’re going to get you out of here real soon.”

  “But I don’t want to go!” Marty said, a note of panic in his voice.

  Nathan waited for the rush of Seven-Ones to come headlong into the kitchen, but when Bronx spoke again, it was clear she thought the panic in his voice to be an emotion she’d drawn out of Marty through the threats she’d made to Betty’s teeth.

  “I don’t care what you want to do, you smelly old fart. Get that drink over hear or that’ll be all she wrote!”

  Marty looked back at Nathan, tears balancing on the lids of his eyes. He held up the bourbon bottle towards the counter, but the confusion danced across his face. Looking at Nathan, offering the bottle.

  “Screw it, if I have to come and get it, I’m going to punch your face inside out!”

  There was a long moment of silence, and then Nathan heard the door to the side of the counter open, and then the door into the kitchen. Footsteps moved towards the back of the kitchen, and Nathan could do nothing but raise his shotgun and wait.

  18

  Nathan watched the color drain from Cyndi’s face like liquid rushing from a broken spigot in a barrel. He’d heard the rush of breath escaping his wife’s mouth and nostrils as she’d reached Marty and saw her husband standing there, pointing the shotgun at her. Seeing it was her, he lowered the business end of the shotgun as Cyndi’s eyes bulged like a bullfrog’s throat pouch. Luckily, Cyndi had the presence of mind to catch herself before the words backing up in her brain could catch up with her mouth.

  “I… got the bourbon…” Marty said, his eyes flicking between Cyndi, Nathan, and the space beyond the counter.

  Marty began raising his free hand to point at Nathan, and it seemed that luck was draining from the tableaux like the color from Cyndi’s cheeks, but his wife was suddenly on fire. She caught Marty’s wrist before he could finish his point, and said, “Don’t worry, Marty, we’ll shut the store room door in a little while. Let’s get back to Betty.”

  “Okay,” Marty said with the trusting voice of a child. “Let’s go back to Betty. Betty! I got the bottle.”

  Nathan hadn’t breathed for nearly a minute, so that his lungs ached and his head swam. Cyndi hadn’t dared a look back at him. Watching her go without grabbing her and dragging her out of the back of the diner had taken a supreme effort, but he kept himself still.

  The matter in hand, the part of the plan he needed to enact before he could put the rest of it into action, came back to the forefront of his thinking. It wasn’t enough to hear the voices. He had to find out where everyone was…

  Nathan moved back three steps, to where there was a thin gap between two refrigerators. He kept low enough to get a look across the far counter, out across the three rows of red vinyl booths. Bronx was a tall blonde-haired woman with a severe face and razor thin lips. She was watching as Cyndi led Marty back towards the kitchen door.

  She had them covered with a crossbow.

  The sight of the weapon dried what little spit had been left in Nathan’s mouth. Behind Bronx were two other hard-faced women. A short, bubble-afroed black woman in a pink anorak worn below a jutting chin with a pursed mouth like a cat’s butt. She held the muzzle of an AR-15 like a ski pole, its butt against the floor. Behind Assmouth was a beanpole-thin woman who looked consumptive and ill. As if to underline that assessment, she coughed hard enough to put Tony to shame. She was holding a SIG Sauer loosely in the hand she’d brought up to her mouth to inadequately cover the cough.

  Looking out of the window at the front of the diner, keeping watch, was a man whose thick mat of hair on the back of his head was the only feature Nathan could see. He had an AK-47 slung across his shoulders, and he was waving through the glass to Owen, who was walking back alone from his Freeson-as-a-punching-bag session.

  Nathan’s sensibilities keened at the idea of Freeson being left in the hands of Mustache and Redhead. He could only hope the fact that they were still with him meant he was still alive. Still, Nathan knew, from the state of Freeson before he’d made his wide run to the back of the diner, that the mechanic didn’t have much ti
me. The extra half an hour since he’d seen him might have finished him off already.

  Mustache and Redhead might just be burying him in the snow, it suddenly occurred to him.

  Focus. Where is everybody?

  Syd, Betty, and Lucy were in a booth on the opposite side of the diner, furthest from the exit. Syd’s eye had a blackening bruise and Betty was gently sobbing. Lucy sat impassively and imperiously—staring into the middle distance with defocused eyes. She didn’t even look up as Cyndi came back through the kitchen door with Marty to rejoin them in the booth.

  Bronx snatched the bottle from Marty’s hand and pushed him into a seat next to Tony, who had until now been sitting on his own in the next booth down from the women. It was there that Bronx had been working on him to join the Seven-Ones of his own free will rather than force. Tony looked brow-beaten and drained of color. The sight made Nathan’s heart ache.

  Owen came into the diner, the fists swinging by his side stained with fresh blood, his knuckles red with it. He walked down the aisle and picked up a handful of napkins from a dispenser to clean his caked hands of Freeson’s blood.

  Bronx had been taking thick slugs from the bottle of bourbon, and in deference to Owen, she stopped short of draining it and passed it to him. Owen took a long gulp and passed it back.

  “Fightin’ and drinkin’ always put me in the mood for sexin’,” he announced to the room.

  Nathan’s hands tightened on the shotgun.

  Still, he didn’t have enough of an advantage to attack. Assmouth or Bronx would zero in on him before he got a chance to take down either, and he wasn’t even sure he had the skill to take any of them down in one shot before Blackhair unhooked his AK-47 or Consumpta felled him with the SIG.