After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  How far we have sunk, Nathan thought.

  “But killing you doesn’t help my cause, Ms. Nursy-Nurse. For my message to reach peak effectiveness, the calm ones need to be broken. The smart mouths need to silenced, and the plotters need to have all their hope extinguished, and by doing so, I can be assured of maximum cooperation and a minimum of fuss on our journey—on our long journey back to Detroit.”

  Price sighed like a professor at a lectern who had finished an often trotted-out lecture on his favorite theory. The very picture of a man resting on his laurels.

  The storm was building, and the roof space had begun rattling as the wind increased in strength. Nathan wondered if the turbines were ready for the onslaught—ready for the rush. It seemed weird, giving over part of his thinking to bits of machinery at this point in the proceedings, but it was strangely comforting. Nathan trusted machines; he could predict their behavior in a way that, when it came to someone as mercurial as Price, he could not. And right now, he needed comfort, because he knew what was coming.

  “I hope, in explaining my motivations, and why one of you needs to die a most heinous and terrifying, yet instructive, death, that I have in some way transmitted to you that there’s nothing personal in my actions. They are entirely logical, and dare I say, necessary, to keep the rest of you alive. In fact, this killing I am about to carry out is more of a mercy than you realize. Perhaps there is some small part of you that will thank me for this, when you have managed to process it over the coming weeks.”

  Price pointed the gun at Larry’s sweating, tearful face. Larry began to sob gently.

  “Oh Jesus Lord, please… please… don’t…” Larry said through trembling lips.

  The roof rattled and boomed in the wind, and Nathan felt his guts tightening. Free’s shoulders were shaking, and across from him on the bench, Tony buried his face in Brandon’s hair, determined not to look at what was to about to happen.

  But it didn’t happen.

  What did happen was that the roof space above Price’s men, over the space where they had been loitering for the last twenty minutes, gave way as a single shot was fired through the ceiling, and it collapsed under the mass of iron gym weights Tommy had been placing there.

  The iron rained down on the unsuspecting soldiers, cracking skulls and breaking collar bones. Behind it, Tommy jumped down firing an MP4 as he fell in a burst of wood, steel, and dust.

  Miriam was already up and had head-butted Price in the guts. Nathan took the cue to scream to Tony, “Get under the table!” as the boy had looked up wildly.

  Price had doubled over now, the Colt Government held limply in his hand. Nathan reached him before he had a chance to raise his head, so he kicked him in it. Price’s head snapped backward—teeth flew out to clatter onto a nearby metal-topped table.

  Price’s men were either brained or shot, and Free joined Tommy, picking up one of the soldier’s guns. Between them, they made sure that none of them would be getting up ever again.

  Price was on his hands and knees now, moving groggily as Nathan grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up onto his knees. “How did you find us? How did you find us!?”

  “I don’t care,” Larry said, and the Colt Government in his had fired twice, and Price’s forehead caved in under the onslaught of the bullets. Larry dropped the gun he’d scooped up back to the floor.

  “I never shot anyone before,” he said as he sank to his knees.

  It hadn’t been just the storm rattling the roof space above the bar. It had been Tommy setting his trap. “I was sure they were going to figure out I was up there,” the Texan said, shaking his head with disbelief. “I had to make a dozen trips to get the weights up there, and that roof creaks like a be-atch.”

  Miriam was going from person to person on the benches, giving them first aid where they needed it, some of Caleb’s people having taken a terrific beating from Price’s men.

  Nathan was huddled on one of the plush benches hugging his sons while Tommy told him what he’d been up to since Price’s team had stormed the facility.

  “I heard the gunfire and came out to look, but there was nothing I could do when I saw them dragging you all in here. I kept my head down, and out of their way. First thing you learn when there’s trouble is, don’t come out looking for it. If I was going to be any help at all, I had to keep out of the way.”

  “Tommy, you were outstanding, man—I can’t…” Nathan trailed off and just hugged his boys, and Tommy nodded like he understood. But at the same time as he felt relief, Nathan was frustrated by Larry’s killing of Price, and Larry himself seemed to have been deeply affected by the notion of killing. He was sitting alone in the far corner of the room, sobbing. Caleb had tried twice to get near enough to comfort him, but Miriam had told the bow-tied engineer to hang back and give the man some space.

  “He’s got some reconciling to do,” she’d said.

  Free and Lucy had returned from a trip down the ridge to make sure that there were no more of Price’s men, and they were now drinking coffee with Rosa, Tyrone, and Michael. Donie and Dave, his arm back in a sling, were resting their heads on each other’s shoulders, not saying much. Just listening.

  “So, I got the weights up there as quietly as I could, but there was no way I could be totally silent. All it would have taken was for Price’s men to move, and all I’d have had was a distraction to dive down through. Much better that the sky fell in on them.”

  Nathan nodded. Tommy’s eyes were alight with his own success. It had indeed been an audacious and risky plan, but to know that Tommy could have left them to Price, and just gotten himself away, but hadn’t, made Nathan feel all the more connected to him.

  “They’ve got two Toyota Land Cruisers, with trailers, and a ton of ammo, plus plenty of fuel and provisions for many days, weeks even,” Free said, joining them. “They got radios, satellite phones, and night vision gear, too. It’s a regular treasure trove.”

  “It’ll really help us defend this place,” Lucy commented, getting in early with her agenda. “Anyone comes for us again and we’ll be ready.”

  Tommy said nothing, but Nathan caught the imperceptible shake of his head as he drained his coffee.

  “Oh, they’ll come again,” Syd said. “Brant is insane, and he’s got the power he needs to keep hunting you. I know what it’s like to be hunted, and Danny had nothing on Brant.”

  Danny had been the gang leader Syd had all but castrated when he’d tried to rape her before leaving New York. His revenge had been personal, and vicious—but in many ways, crude and unfocused as well, reactive more than proactive. As Syd obviously understood, Brant was another kettle of fish altogether.

  “We took these guys out. We’ll take anyone else out, too,” Lucy insisted.

  Nathan kissed Brandon, who was sleeping quietly, and tucked him back into Tony’s arms. “I reckon he needs changing, Tony—you reckon you can handle that for me?”

  Tony nodded seriously, picking up his brother and going off to find diapers and wipes.

  With him gone, Nathan turned to the others. “Lucy, you’re not thinking.”

  Free’s eyes flashed at Nathan, and he held up his hand to his friend. “Hear me out before you jump down my throat, okay?”

  Free nodded, but his face was dark with thunder.

  “We’ve been idiots. I’ve been an idiot. In all this time, since the helicopter in Wyoming, and now Price and his men here, we haven’t asked ourselves one simple question.”

  Free looked at Lucy, but she shrugged. “What question?”

  “How did they find you?” Syd offered.

  Nathan nodded. “Yup, how did they find us? It’s not like we left a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow, is it?”

  “They must have made an educated guess,” Lucy said, but with an expression on her face that couldn’t have been less convinced if she’d tried. “They knew the general direction we were traveling. They must have known Casper was a possibility.”

  �
�I might have bought that, but here, Lucy? How did they know we were here?”

  Lucy was stumped, and Free was the guppy of no idea.

  “Do you know, Syd?” Nathan asked.

  Syd nodded. “Yes. I think so. I just tracked Price and his men where I could. It wasn’t hard; I stayed about three miles behind in my truck. They left a trail of garbage and campfires and tire tracks. I didn’t need to try hard. I knew they were coming for you, and my plan was to follow them, and get ahead of them when I could and come and warn you. My truck fritzed out two days ago and I had no choice but to stow away in one of their equipment trailers.”

  “Stow away?” Nathan whistled softly. This girl had cajones like grapefruit.

  “Yeah. It was cold, but they were complacent. Well, complacent up until they found me as they were parking down trail. That’s why they were already shooting when I came up the drive.”

  Nathan didn’t know whether to hit Syd or salute her, but the more pressing issue broke the surface of his admiration. “So, you tracked them. Okay, but how did they find us?”

  Syd shook her head and answered, “It’s easier if I show you.”

  Syd got up and approached Dave and Donie. Nathan couldn’t hear what she said to them, but they both nodded. Donie got up and jogged out of the bar.

  Dave’s face was a mask of shock, as if he’d just been told something that had completely blindsided him.

  Free had found his voice now—the guppy had swum away from his face. “Nathan, it doesn’t change anything. We should stay here; build the shelter and dig in. So what if Brant knows where we are?”

  “It matters to me, Free, and if you thought hard enough about how I don’t want to risk the lives of my friends, or the lives of my children any more than I have to, it might matter to you. We have to find a place where no one knows who we are, or where we’re from.”

  Free’s anger was about to bubble over, his knuckles whitened and his face drained of color. “No, Nathan. No!”

  But before Nathan had a chance to answer, the decision was taken away from all of them.

  11

  The second earthquake Nathan Tolley experienced made the first he had felt pale almost into insignificance.

  The room rocked, floor tiles splitting and popping up as the ground beneath the ridge bumped and bucked. Lights exploded as cracks snaked down walls. Meanwhile, the bar and the kitchen crashed and twisted as equipment slew from side to side like deck chairs on the Titanic.

  Nathan was thrown headlong into Lucy and they sprawled to the floor as, from above, just like what Tommy had brought on before, the ceiling tore open further and a constant stream of debris and insulating materials, wood, and aluminum burst out of the roof—a hole appearing that showed right up to the sky.

  “Get out! Everyone, get out!” Caleb began shouting as he and his people ran toward the door. Free picked up Lucy. The floor was still rumbling, and the building was in danger of falling down around their ears.

  Nathan got to his feet. Tony. Brandon. “I’ve got to find my sons!”

  Nathan sprinted for what was left of the door, stumbling left and then right as the floor rocked and plunged. The noise grumbling up from the earth beneath him was savage and primal, and complemented by the crashing destruction as the facility was taken by the throat by the tectonic giant and shaken to its very foundations.

  The corridor outside the bar had already been plunged into near darkness. Only one light in the ceiling was illuminated, and it was flickering like he was on a carnival ride. Electrics buzzed with live wires snaking down from the ceiling, sparking in pools of water that were evidence of broken plumbing.

  Sidestepping the growing puddles as best he could, Nathan just got past a bulging wall as a grinding crash bowed it out like a pregnant belly, plaster falling around him like dandruff and then collapsing it under its own weight. The crash brought down a huge supporting lintel, and the resulting billow of dust and grit washed over Nathan in a harsh cloud. Already damaged by the pneumonia, Nathan felt his throat closing and his lungs burning as he ran on, dodging raft after raft of falling wreckage.

  “Tony!” he screamed, the dust clogging his mouth, his eyes going dry and unfocused.

  Somewhere behind him, there was the whump of an explosion, and for just a couple of moments, Nathan’s vision was lit orange by flames. The corridor returned to semi-darkness soon after, but the warmth of the explosion followed him.

  The room he shared with Tony and Brandon branched off a corridor to the left. As Nathan reached the point of bifurcation, another explosion—this one much larger than the first—outdid the grumbling of the tortured earth and Nathan was blown off his feet.

  He crashed into a wall that seemed to be standing defiantly against the onslaught; he could feel the shaking, and now he could feel the heat. The building wasn’t just falling apart—it was burning down.

  “Tony!” he called hollowly, trying to get up on one elbow, but something was holding him down. He tried to shift his shoulders, but they were held fast. Had the wall fallen on him? Was he trapped and about to be crushed or burned?

  And where were his sons? Where were Tony and Brandon? Had he sent them to their deaths just before the earthquake hit?

  And now he was being held down and could do nothing but wait for the fall or the flames.

  “Don’t just lay there, Nathan! Get up!”

  Free. He must have followed him into the corridor instead of exiting the building with the others. Now, it was Free pulling at his shoulders that had, in his panic, felt like he’d been trapped and was unable to move. They had both been pulling in opposing directions.

  Nathan got up and tried to walk forward, but the corridor that led to his room collapsed completely on a gust of dust, cold air from the outside, and a rumbling grind from below.

  Suddenly, he and Free were outside. The defiant wall they both leaned against was the last thing standing in the vicinity. They were surrounded on all sides by the collapsed building, and the room where he’d sent his children was no more. It had gone down like a row of dominos. And as he looked up, he could see the eight turbines yawing like the tossed masts of a sailing ship floundering on rocks. The nearest, some thirty yards away, rocked and jounced, propeller sails rattling and shaking. As Nathan watched, the one where he and Syd had been captured after the stun grenades had been thrown in became unsteady. Nathan felt Free pulling him backward across rubble, away from the wobbling structure.

  With the turbine continuing to wave, there was a rending of metal as the torque of the nacelle moving too far off its intended anchor had the effect of tearing the whole three-hundred-foot structure from the ground. Like Gulliver lifting his body after he’d been tied down by the Lilliputians, the entire tower began to twist and pop. Wings made of fiberglass over wooden frames dropped like fall petals, and the tower came crashing down like a redwood falling with majestic slowness.

  If Nathan hadn’t been so concerned about his children, he might have mourned its passing, as first one, and then all seven of the other turbines, fell lazily down with tearing crashes and rippling metal. When the last of the giants had reached their final resting places, then and only then did the earthquake cease shaking the landscape. As if it had waited until its destruction was complete before allowing itself to rest with the knowledge of a job well done.

  Smoke rose from the rubble around them as small fires burned between the bricks and concrete. The debris field was total. There was nothing standing of the wind farm, its generators, or its buildings.

  And of Nathan’s sons, there was so sign at all.

  Nathan tottered like the next in line of the turbines to collapse. His legs were uprooted and his guts were rent, twisted like the collapsing tubes of steel. He fell like a marionette that had had its strings cut, and it was only Free’s solid form standing fast at his back that kept him sitting in an upright position.

  Nathan was in a world without words.

  There was no language to cover this, a
nd his thinking had completely shut down. Even the cold wind scything across the devastation was just a numb bluntness without chill. He was cocooned in sadness and desperation. There was a black ax hacking up from his heart now, and the tectonics of his body were shaking, crumbling, and bursting him apart.

  He took a huge breath, the taste of the dead building all over his tongue and in his throat, cloying and dry.

  “Nathan…” Free was saying, “come on, we’ve got to get away from here… these fires are spreading and we don’t know what’s going to catch fire next…”

  But Nathan was rooted in spot; the base of his spine had been bolted to the earth so tight that he might have become part of the bedrock. His arms were stiff with their own internal granite, and the slopes of his shoulders were ready to accept the snow of sadness that was littering down around them.

  “Give me a hand here!” Free shouted.

  Feet were coming across the rubble, causing trickles of broken material to shift and seesaw. Nathan heard the voices around him, but there were no words in there that he could recognize anymore. There was only one language now, and that was the language of horror.

  Hands lifted him under his arms and Tyrone’s huge hands encircled Nathan’s ankles, lifting him off the earth. The earth that had robbed him of his children, to add to the utter terror of losing his wife.

  Flashes of Tony’s face blipped across his thinking. That serious nod, taking Brandon in his arms and taking him away to be changed. Tony walking to the door of Caleb’s Bar and turning…

  Turning…

  Turning right. Not left.

  Tony hadn’t gone to the room. He’d gone to the car!

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Tony was shouting as Free, Tommy, and Tyrone lay Nathan on the ground away from the collapsed building.