After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  “Is that all your own idea, son?”

  Tony stopped, and looked up at Nathan. “Not really. I didn’t understand it at first, but now I think I do.”

  “Where did you hear it, Tony?”

  “It’s what Mom said about you when you were trapped in the silo. She said you were the center that held us all together.”

  The wagons were burned up beyond all recognition, and the carcasses of the oxen were starting to bloat and swell. The Black Hawk was silent and frosted with the latest snowfall. Out here in Wyoming, it was still recognizably winter, but the snows were light, the skies often free of clouds, and no huge ice storms had rolled across the landscape for many weeks.

  Nathan avoided dwelling on the spot where Cyndi had fallen. The bodies of Stryker and the others had been dragged to the side of the road and burned in a pyre. No attempt had been made to bury their remains. It felt fitting that they had been left to carrion feeders. They deserved no more.

  Nathan pulled down the burned, black sideboards of the wagon he’d traveled in with Cyndi, Tommy, and the boys and let it fall to the tarmac. The wagon was a skeleton of burnt spars on the bones of spoked wheels. Everything was black, everything destroyed. Nathan had no idea if he’d find what he was looking for, but he had to try.

  When they’d left Glans Falls, Cyndi had made him leave the majority of his tools behind; they just hadn’t had the space for them in the Airstream trailer they’d left their home in to head out on the trip to Detroit.

  But she had allowed him a small metal tool kit with a lockable lid. Over the months since they’d begun traveling, this had become the place where they’d kept not just the tools Nathan’s daddy had bequeathed him, but also an impromptu jewelry box, and stored drawings that Tony had made when they’d had a chance to stop and rest and enjoy each other’s company—diamond-like moments in the slog of the survival imperative. It was that box which Nathan was searching for now. Not for the tools, or the jewelry, or even Tony’s drawings.

  For something else entirely.

  As he shifted wood, burnt canvas, charred blankets, and the burnt remains of food tins, Nathan saw the soot-colored metal box beneath the detritus, and the remains of his life. The life before he had been set adrift on the raging waters between the terrible icebergs of the Big Winter.

  Nathan pulled the box across the ashes and the cinders. Hoping against hope that Cyndi had thought to use the box for another valuable object one last time.

  Nathan flicked the latch, pulled over the metal gullwing lid… and there it was. A little singed by the heat transferred through the steel of the box, but it was there, dog-eared and bookmarked.

  It was Elm’s ledger. Cyndi had put it in the toolbox with their other valuable items – and Nathan knew this was probably the most valuable item in America right now. Nathan picked up the leatherbound book and slipped it inside his coat. Then he closed the lid of the toolbox and picked it up, too.

  “Come on, son,” he said to Tony. “We’ve got a long way to go still, but Casper will get closer with every step.”

  THE END

  End of Killing Frost

  After The Shift Book Two

  Blurb

  Losses pile up like the snowdrifts of a never-ending winter in this post-apocalyptic series conclusion.

  Nathan Tolley’s wife is gone, leaving him adrift in a vast ocean of bitter white that promises nothing but heartache and despair. Yet, his weary band of travelers continue to look to him to secure their safety. But Nate’s no leader. Every decision he’s made on their dangerous cross-country journey has taken them from bad to worse. First Detroit. Then Chicago. Now, Wyoming, which proves the deadliest of all.

  As circumstances continue to deteriorate like the weather, Nate turns their sights south, but the past is about to catch up to them in ways none of them will see coming. And in order to embrace an uncertain future, sacrifices must be made.

  Survival of the fittest gets real—fast.

  And, this time, it’s personal.

  1

  “You can move back or I can shoot your face off. It’s entirely up to you, my friend.”

  The business end of the Remington Model 887 Nitro Mag pump-action shotgun was indeed pointed at Nathan’s face, and it was being held in the hands of a petite, blonde-haired woman wearing a denim coat, a black Stetson jammed onto the back of her head. Her face was set, her sighting eye squinted, and the hood of the silver 2004 Cadillac SRX V8 across which she was leaning glinted in the weak Wyoming sunlight. Behind her, men backed her up with their own weapons at the ready.

  Nathan had walked up from the horse-drawn wagon after they’d hit across the roadblock across the I-25 on their approach to Casper—four cars across the highway, placed end to end on each side of the interstate, and so he’d approached from just beyond them.

  The grass on the central reservations was almost free of snow, and the air smelled damp and rotten, like fall, even though the first spring Nathan had experienced in the last four years had come in the middle of these summer months. The crust of the Earth had slid off its axis, the Arctic was now in the middle of the Atlantic, and America was one-third winter wasteland, one-third Siberian tundra, and one-third earthquakes and volcanoes. With that amount of natural confusion, spring could turn up any time it liked as far as Nathan was concerned.

  Nathan had already raised his hands, and he spoke calmly. “I’m Nathan Tolley. We have two kids, six adults including me, and a dog. We were hoping to come into Casper.”

  “For what reason?” The woman’s voice and the barrel of the Remington didn’t waver. Behind her, men in checks and denim, shotguns over their shoulders, were looking out past the woman at Nathan. One plopped a brown spatter of tobacco juice onto the blacktop.

  Nathan kept his voice level. “To stay. If you’ll have us.”

  The woman didn’t move, and Nathan dared not lower his hands. He was dog-tired, feeling like he hadn’t slept in half a lifetime, and his heart was broken.

  The only thing that had kept him going since the death of his wife, Cyndi, had been the thought of getting his family and friends to the safety of Casper. A town they had heard, from sources on what was left of the internet, was doing okay. It was on the edge of the new Arctic Circle. The prairies were cold and wet, but they would nurture hardy crops and sustain livestock in a way that the landscape east of Casper wouldn’t.

  And with Nathan and the others pretty much out of food, it felt like they were almost out of luck.

  The woman still didn’t lower her gun. “We’re not authorized to let anyone through. You’ll have to make an application.”

  Tobacco Juice snorted as he walked up closer to the woman and gave a wry smile. Nathan got the impression that making an application wasn’t going to get them past the roadblock, however good it was, but he plowed on anyway. “Look, we heard Casper is a good place. We just want to come in and help. We’re ready to work—I’m a mechanic, a good one, and we have another. We also have two tech wizards and a woman who makes the best Bloody Marys outside New York.”

  Nathan’s attempt at humor didn’t have the desired effect. It didn’t take the tension out of the situation one bit.

  Tobacco Juice spat again, then leaned in and whispered in the ear of the woman with the shotgun. Nathan couldn’t hear what was being said, but the woman lifted her elbows from the Cadillac hood. She kept the gun trained on Nathan’s chest.

  “You got a medic in that wagon?”

  “No,” Nathan replied, playing his ace, “but I do have the next best thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “That will be in my application.”

  Tobacco Juice’s face hardened. “You play games with us, mister, and we’ll just shoot you all now.”

  “I’m not playing games. I have the next best thing, but I’m not going to tell you what it is until I get certain guarantees.”

  “Which are?”

  “That I’ll be given a fair hearing by whoever it is I
need to talk to in order to get my family and my friends into Casper.”

  Tobacco Juice whispered to the woman, who at last lowered her shotgun, allowing Nathan to relax a hair. Since the coming of the Big Winter, there had been a lot of guns pointed at him, but he wasn’t getting used to it. Even though he was wearing a Kevlar vest below his North Face jacket, he didn’t feel any safer.

  “Okay, you can come in,” Tobacco Juice said. “But the rest stay here until we get the go-ahead to let you all in.”

  Nathan nodded, and with that, he turned and walked back to the wagon.

  Tony clung to Nathan, coughing into his coat. “Don’t go, Daddy, I don’t like it.”

  Since Cyndi’s death, Tony, Nathan’s eleven-year-old, hadn’t exactly descended into any traumatic well of sadness, but Nathan had noticed the boy wasn’t as confident as he had been. And now Nathan heading off without him into the unknown was sending even his diminished level of confidence spiraling down.

  To lose one parent could be seen as tragic, but to lose another…

  “It’s gonna be fine, son. I’ll just go in, talk to whoever is in charge, and then I’m sure they’re going to let us through. I’ll be back by the morning. Maybe even sooner.”

  Tony relaxed his arms and looked up at Nathan with Cyndi’s blue eyes. “If you’re sure?”

  “I am.”

  Nathan squeezed his son, ruffled his hair, and left him to scratch at Rapier’s, their malamute sled dog’s, ears, joining Freeson, Lucy, and Tommy at the wagon.

  Free and Lucy were as unlikely a couple as it was possible to imagine. Free, a gnarled and grumpy, mid-thirties mechanic from New York State, and Lucy Arneston, just a squeak under forty, a millionaire socialite and Bloody Mary expert with a nice line in waspish putdowns and a fine eye when out hunting deer, had been thrown together in adversity and had stuck.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” Free asked, eyeing the roadblock and huddle of Casper residents.

  “I don’t see what choice we have. They’re not going to trust us if we don’t trust them.”

  Free shrugged. Lucy crossed her arms across her mink coat and sighed.

  Tommy, his immoveable US Marines baseball cap permanently reversed no matter what the weather, was someone Nathan could only describe as a Texan who’d fixed a redneck mask over his Native American body, sucked in his cheeks. “You sure you want to go alone? I could follow cross-country, keep my head down…”

  Nathan held up his hand, “Tommy, no. Come on. You heard what I said about trust. They’re just scared of strangers is all. If they wanted us dead, they could have killed us all where we stand. If I were running Casper, these would be the hoops I’d make people jump through to get in, too. I’ll be okay.”

  By the sour look on Tommy’s face, Nathan could see that he wasn’t convinced. “We’re nearly out of food and getting low on ammo.”

  Nathan didn’t have time to argue this out. They needed to get into Casper stat, and if that meant going in alone, then he would. “Where else are we going to get to if we don’t at least try?”

  Tommy shrugged. “Just don’t let them use you like a doormat.”

  “I won’t.”

  The chilly silence that descended between the men was cut through by Brandon. Nathan’s baby son, as if amplifying everyone’s hunger, started to cry from within the wagon. Lucy, who’d willingly become his de facto nanny since Cyndi’s passing, pulled the canvas aside and climbed up to see to him. The wails hung in the air with a grim finality, causing Nathan to set any other concerns aside.

  Dave and Donie, the two twenty-one-year-old techno whizzes, jumped down from the wagon once she climbed in. Dave was a clean-cut African American, Donie an edgy punk-goth with crazy red hair (which she’d recently colored after a score at a half-looted drug store). Now, she reached into her biker jacket, all zips and studs, pulling out a compact digital walkie-talkie. “It’s got about three-quarters’ charge and should reach from here to Casper. The land is flat enough.”

  “Say the word and we’ll come running,” Dave added. Not a natural warrior, the boy had been through a torrid time in Detroit, and he was growing into a hard-muscled, canny combatant who Nathan could rely on to have his back.

  Nodding, Nathan pocketed the walkie-talkie, feeling it settle against his side just below the hard edge of the Kevlar vest. “Right. Let’s do it,” Nathan said, setting his jaw.

  The Cadillac was rolled back as Nathan approached; Shotgun introduced herself as Mary Woolston, and Tobacco Juice as Cal Temper.

  “Hope you’ve got your walking legs on,” Mary said as they set off along the blacktop of I-25 heading west into the city.

  To the south, the dark blue face of Casper Mountain rose like a wall into the blustery, cloud-scudded sky. Even though the wind was bitter and the prairie bleak, it was still an improvement over the conditions of Big Winter that Nathan had experienced in the preceding months. This weather was near tropical compared to what he’d been used to, and it grew the first shoots of optimism in his thinking.

  What he didn’t expect, as they came into the Casper suburb of Evansville three hours later, was another roadblock, and it seemed Mary and Cal didn’t expect it, either. The highway was obstructed next to a huge, modern-build ‘Ev’ry-1-Welcome’ Inn. Behind the barrier, a porcupine back of rifles, shotguns, and pistols sprouted over the hoods and trunks.

  “What the hell is Blaine playing at? Wait here,” Cal said over his shoulder as he approached the cars.

  “I don’t understand,” Nathan said to Mary. “What’s happening here?”

  “As soon as we know, you’ll know,” Mary said under her breath. There was a sudden tenseness in her voice, which led Nathan to conclude that the new roadblock wasn’t just unexpected, but presented a particular new threat to Mary as much it did to him.

  Nathan’s eyes moved down to the entrance hall of the inn. There were bullet holes in the glass, and scattered window shards on the floor, which suggested they were recent. Beyond the doors, he could see a smear of blood on the marble and red footprints leading into the gloom of the building, stopping at a thick puddle of crimson. There were no bodies he could see, but unless someone had sacrificed a bull to the gods of spring in that entranceway, there was someone beyond it who was very dead, or close to it.

  “I think we’re a tad exposed here,” Nathan whispered to Mary, and she nodded imperceptibly. In the corner of his eye, he saw her index finger moving into the trigger guard of the shotgun resting on her shoulder.

  “Are you carrying?” she asked, still at the level of a soft whisper.

  “I have a knife in my boot. I thought it would be a good idea to trust you guys if you were gonna trust me.”

  “Well, I have a fair idea we might have to shoot our way out of here. Be prepared to duck and run. Blaine has been promising something like this for a while; I guess when I thought he didn’t have the stones to carry it out, I was wrong.”

  This situation had gone south far too quickly for Nathan’s sensibilities to have caught up just yet. There was a surreal, dreamlike nature to the scene—the cars across the highway, and the forest of guns which were not necessarily pointing at them yet, but ready to be dropped into position if the mood took the guys on the other side of the roadblock. “Internal problems? Rival factions? Civil war?” Nathan whispered wearily.

  “You from the United Nations?”

  “No,” Nathan said with a deepening sadness. “I’ve just seen it all before, and recently. Here. New York, Detroit, and Chicago. Everything’s falling apart.”

  Mary nodded. “And Blaine is the kinda guy who would bring the wrecking ball. He’s wanted more power and influence since day one. I guess he got tired of waiting.”

  Cal had reached the cars now; spitting tobacco juice onto the tarmac, he kept his rifle high on his shoulder, ready, but clearly trying not to show any obvious signs of threat.

  The wind was still present, and it whipped some of the words spoken away from Nathan’s ea
rs, but he got the gist of what was going down.

  “There’s been a change, Cal,” said a gruff voice behind a beat-up, gray 1999 Ford Taurus LX wagon. A huge, middle-aged man with hands like river dredgers and a wild-bearded face surrounded by a riot of blond curls came out into the open.

  “What do you mean a change, Blaine? We went up to the roadblock last night and everything was settled.” Cal didn’t move his gun off his shoulder, but Nathan could see the straightening in the man’s back. The screw was tightening on the anxiety in the air. Nathan didn’t need to be a fortune teller to divine the chilling of the already cold atmosphere.

  “We had a reorganization, Cal, that’s all.” Blaine’s hands moved into the pockets of his parka. It was a natural move that wasn’t in and of itself threatening, but Nathan could see that everyone else behind the cars was armed. Why would this Blaine character come out without a weapon? It didn’t make sense.

  Nathan got his answer as Blaine’s pocket exploded and Cal went down, dropping his shotgun in a fashion that sent it clattering to the tarmac. Cal groaned, his hands clawing at the blood pumping from his opened thigh.

  Mary cursed, and Nathan started to back away, hands raised. Blaine kicked Cal’s shotgun away to the curb and pulled a snub-nosed Colt from the pocket of his parka, pointing it back and forth between Mary and Nathan.

  “Put your gun down, Mary. I don’t want to have to shoot you. And you, Mister I-Don’t-Recognize-You, keep your hands where I can see them.” Blaine called over his shoulder, “Baxter! Reed! Check them over.”

  Baxter and Reed turned out to be a joyless, fat-thin double-act with stony faces and a putrid line in bad breath. Fat, who Nathan decided was Baxter, frisked him, pulling out the walkie-talkie and finding the bowie knife in his boot, holding both items up for Blaine to see.