Rosa threw back her head and gave a hearty laugh, one that seemed to dissipate the tension in Trash Town and make the whole situation a whole lot more reasonable.
They stayed for drinks with Rose once the deal was done. The hard liquor the Trash Towners were distilling in basements in the buildings around the settlement was raw and scratchy on the throat, but Nathan enjoyed the warmth. Their talk was of the bad feelings between the Trash Towners, and the security of Brant’s faction living in the comfort and warmth of their greenhouses. There was much resentment from those outside in the cold, forced to trade at vastly unfair rates for foodstuffs and meats grown under the glass.
“It is ever so with the rich,” Rose said bitterly, necking a slug of cloudy liquor from an old bottle. “Dey need us poor, bringing them stuff. Bad days in Detroit, pretty boys. Bad days, indeed.”
When the drinking and philosophizing was done, the crate had been stocked with packets of seeds and some sad-looking seed potatoes. With another playful squeeze of Nathan’s bicep, Rose sent the two of them on their way.
“I guess I better bring you every time I go trading with Rose,” Stryker said, with not a little bit of edge in his voice, as they walked away. Stryker had been working hard to build a level of status since he’d arrived in Detroit, but Nathan was already better at being popular and in demand—it came to him naturally. He’d been proving himself around the other apartments in the Masonic building, fixing up electrics and generators, working on the building’s heating systems. He’d stabilized the building’s ancient boiler by jury-rigging neat new heat-exchangers, and also fixed a problem with the emergency lighting in the internal fire escape stairwell. Nathan just saw it as being neighborly, but he could tell, in some respects, that Stryker thought he was trying to usurp him in some way. It couldn’t be further from the truth. As soon as they could, they were getting out of Detroit, and that was that.
“She was a character, yeah. I liked her.”
“Not as much as she liked you.”
They walked on in silence for a while. The afternoon twilight was thickening towards the first edge of night, and the deserted streets on the journey from Trash Town were deadened by the last deep fall of snow—the quietness pressing hard and uncomfortably against Nathan’s ears. Thoughts of how the city of Detroit must have been so different before the Big Winter punched him in the gut.
These streets would have been thronged with cars and people, and the yelling, music, and conversation—everyone trying to be heard, everyone trying to live their lives and do their do. Now it was like walking through the world’s largest cemetery, with gravestones as big as buildings.
Stryker’s feet crunched to a halt, snapping Nathan out of his thoughts. “Did you hear that?”
Nathan listened. Nothing but the snow-dead silence of the street greeted him. “No. What did you hear?”
“A click.”
Nathan listened again, but there was nothing. “What sort of click?”
“I’ve had to be around guns more than enough these last few years, Nathan; you get so know the sounds. We’re being watched, and I just heard someone take the safety off.”
Nathan looked up at the looming, snow-smeared buildings around them, their windows broken and the rooms beyond them dark. The sky was glutted with gray clouds. If they didn’t make it back to the Masonic Temple anytime soon, they were going to be out in the snowy wastes of Detroit in full dark. And that didn’t bear thinking about.
“You know, I thought my ears were good, but you, sir, have taken it to the next level.”
Nathan and Stryker spun around. In the windows of the building they’d passed only moments before, three faces were hovering in the gray gloom, their clothes dark and their faces covered in ski masks. They were all holding weapons. A shotgun, a pistol, and a semi-automatic rifle.
“I guess it’s the snow that does it, makes the silence more intense, and me just clicking off the safety on my pistol here was too loud under the circumstances.”
The voice was harsh and female. It came from the middle figure. “I mean, I was going to shout to you anyways… I was just, as you might say, making preparations in case you two decided to be heroes. So, gentlemen. What’s in the crate?” The woman moved her hand with the gun up in a harsh flick. “And would you please, for safety’s sake, and my sensibilities, please raise your hands. I wouldn’t want to shoot you in the face for nothing.”
The woman, after telling one of the figures in the widow, the one with the semi-automatic, to “Cover them,” ducked inside, and moments later emerged from a door at the top of some snow-covered steps. Behind her, another ski-masked, dark-suited man—by the way he walked—followed her gingerly down the steps.
“Is this a robbery?” Nathan asked as the woman reached the bottom of the steps and planted her feet firmly in the snow, raising her pistol as she did so.
“Well, that depends if you got anything worth stealing. But in reality, I hope not. Instead of stealing from you, I think I’d rather make a deal—how does that sound?”
Nathan couldn’t have gotten at his gun even if he’d wanted to since it was zipped inside his jacket. And the man in the ski mask was leveling his shotgun at Stryker’s waist.
“Your weapons, please,” the woman said, “and slowly please; my fingers are cold and they tend to shiver. We don’t want that shivering turning into a shooting, do we?”
Stryker and Nathan carefully handed their guns over. The woman relaxed a little. The ski-masked man didn’t.
“We know you,” the woman said to Stryker. “You’re one of those who live in the Masonic Temple.”
“Yeah? What of it?” Stryker replied, his voice holding remarkably strong under the circumstances.
“I just want you to know that we know where you live.”
“So?”
“So that we can find you and kill you, if you don’t do exactly what we say.”
2
The words hung frozen in the air like icicles. “What deal do you want to make?” Nathan asked.
The woman lowered her pistol, but her friend with the shotgun leveled his up. “A sensible man. I like sensible men. What’s in the crate?”
“None of your business,” Stryker spat.
Nathan turned to Stryker and made a face. “Let’s at least hear them out.”
The ski-masked woman nodded. “What he said, Stry.”
“Don’t make the situation worse. While we’re talking, we’re breathing,” Nathan added.
Stryker’s skin was reddening and the fingers of his gloved hands spasmed. He seemed far from convinced that this was an acceptable trade-off. “I know exactly what you people are. I’ve been in this city long enough to recognize vermin when I see them!”
“Rude,” the woman commented, her voice dripping with sarcasm, but Nathan thought he could detect a smile in the stretched fabric of the ski mask.
Stryker’s eyes burned into Nathan. “They’re parasites, Nate, pure and simple. If we give in to them now, then they’ll keep coming back for more.”
“Give in? What are you talking about?”
The woman raised her hand. “If I might contribute?”
Stryker near boiled over, but Nathan nodded even as he realized how stupid he looked, giving her permission to speak while his hands were raised and there was a shotgun pointing at his chest.
“You can put your hands down.”
Nathan and Stryker complied.
“That’s better,” the woman said. “Now, shall we all go inside? There’s no fire, but it is out of the wind.”
The man covered them and the woman led the way towards the tenement, up the steps, through warped green wooden doors, and into a grimly damp entrance hall. The building had been built in the early 20th century, and in that time, it might have looked opulent and stately, with checkerboard tiled floor, well-carved moldings, and an intricate plaster rose surrounding the central, dead light in the ceiling.
The place now stank of damp, though, a
nd the tiles were cracked, the paint peeling, with indecipherable graffiti covering the walls. If the tenement hadn’t been abandoned, Nathan was sure the residents it would have held now wouldn’t have been from the same social group as those it had been built for. It had the feel now of a sunken luxury liner that lay broken at the bottom of the Atlantic.
It was good, however, to be out of the wind. The woman continued down the hall and on through to an apartment door. Nathan, Stryker, and Shotgun followed. Although the rooms therein, like the hall, had seen better days, there was a coziness about the design that made Nathan think of old-time movies on black-and-white TV.
The furniture was old and rotting, the fireplace dark and cold. The windows had long ago been smashed, and ragged curtains wafted in them, but the worst of the wind was outside the building and kept at bay.
The woman took off her mask. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, blonde, with a strikingly angular face and green eyes. She looked fit and able, and unlike most people Nathan knew in the city, she also appeared to be well-fed.
“I’m Natasha Roker. My friends call me Tasha.”
“We’re not your friends,” Stryker said.
Nathan flashed another look at Stryker. This was not the time to play the hero. If they got out of this mess alive, then they could work out a way to deal with it, but right now it was best to play along until an opportunity arose for them to get away.
“No, but you could be our friends. In fact, we’d prefer you to be our friends,” Tasha said, perching on the side of an ancient couch from which upholstery springs emerged like snakes.
Nathan could see Stryker was about to smart-mouth again, and so he placed a hand on his shoulder. “Let me deal with this, yeah?”
Stryker opened his mouth, but Nathan squeezed the shoulder hard. “I’m not making Cyndi a widow today, and neither are you. Is that understood?”
Stryker’s lips pursed, but he nodded his acquiescence. Nathan turned back to Tasha. Behind her, her two friends had kept their ski masks on and stood poised for any eventuality. The three of them together, standing almost to attention with ski masks and weapons on show, looked like a tableaux formed to shoot a terrorist martyrdom video rather than a grubby bit of gangstering in a derelict Detroit street.
“So, you, Mr. Other Stry. Who are you?”
“Nathan Tolley. Been here coming on for three months. Came here from Glens Falls, New York with my wife, kids, and some friends.”
“Friends, eh?” Tasha signaled to the guy with the semi-automatic. “Go outside, Frank, and make sure their friends haven’t started looking for them. They may have agreed to a route they might take from Trash Town. We don’t want any unexpected visitors.”
Frank nodded and stalked from the room, his dark eyes looking on suspiciously in a just you try it, pal fashion as he brushed past Nathan.
“What do you do?” Tasha asked Nathan.
“Survive, mostly.”
“Don’t we all, Nathan, don’t we all? I mean, of course, by what means do you survive? What are your skills?”
Nathan saw no need to not cooperate yet, so told her. “Mechanical. I can fix just about anything if I turn my mind to it.”
“Well, that is useful to know.”
“If you have something for me to fix, and then that gets us out of here, then lead me to it.”
“Your willingness, Mr. Tolley, to oblige does you credit, and I’m sure at some point in our respective futures we’ll have reason to call on your services, but let us not forget the matter in hand.”
Her eyes became steely. “Open the crate.”
Tasha’s voice was calm and well-modulated, assertive, and definitely educated. She wasn’t some street kid who’d grown up with the gangs of Detroit. Her voice was accentless, too, as if she was from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Exhibiting eyes that were quick and intelligent, she was a force to be reckoned with, for sure.
Nathan bent down and took the lid off the crate.
“Billy,” Tasha said, and without needing to be told twice, Shotgun bent and rifled through the packs of seeds and seed potatoes. He ripped open a packet of beetroot seeds and poured them into his palm.
“Hey!” Stryker took a step forward and Tasha pointed her pistol at his head.
“I’d simmer down if I were you, Mr. Wilson, before either one of us does something we regret.”
“Those are just seeds, but they’re important. You know how scarce food is,” Nathan said, trying to placate the situation. It was not an easy job being the peacemaker around Stryker. “Please let us just leave with our seeds and we’ll leave you in peace. You know where we are, so you can contact us if you need any machinery worked on. I’ve said I’ll help.”
Nathan reached out to Billy for the half-emptied packet and cupped his other hand for the ski-masked gangster to pour the seeds from his hand into his own.
Billy looked up at Tasha and she nodded her assent. He passed the packet to Nathan and then dribbled the seeds he’d held into the mechanic’s upturned palm. Nathan poured the seeds back into the open packet, spilling only a couple. Stryker bent and picked them up, all the while glaring at Billy.
“So, are you going to tell us what you want?” Nathan asked as he put the packet back into the crate and put the lid back in place.
“Detroit is a dangerous place these days,” Tasha said. Stryker snorted, but said nothing. “There are gangs and there are individuals who pose a threat to the survival of the citizen who just wishes to go about his business.”
Nathan could see now what Stryker had said about Tasha and her crew being parasites. “Go on.”
“Well, I represent a group who don’t have what you might call practical skills. We’re not farmers, growers, menders, or mechanics. We have different skills. They’re more… defense oriented… if you get my drift?”
“Defense from who? You?”
“Let’s keep this civil, Mr. Tolley. You’ve been doing so well.”
“You want a cut of our produce, our skills, our technology, and in return, we won’t meet with an unfortunate accident. Is that what you mean?”
“I’m glad to see we’re on the same page.”
“I don’t think we are.”
“Perhaps not,” Tasha smiled, “but, Mr. Tolley, I’m sure you’ve already recognized the cover of the book.”
“Yes.”
“So, Billy, Frank and I will accompany you back to the Masonic Temple, and we’ll have a very good look at your setup, meet your… family… and perhaps break bread together. We’ll work out terms and draw up an agreement. How does that sound?”
“Like you’re running a protection racket.”
“I prefer to call it a symbiotic relationship. Shall we go?”
They left the tenement in full darkness.
The lid of cold night had been closed across the city with a finality that chilled Nathan more than the effects of the surrounding winter. He could smell smoke on the air, coming from the various burning areas of the city and its blackened twin, Windsor, set across the frozen river. As they moved from the derelict area of town, they began to pass open areas where huge plastic cloches had been set up, these being warmed by wind-powered generators and used to grow food. Other vacant city lots had been covered with plastic enclosures where pigs and chickens could be raised undercover, out of the worst of the winter. The smell of pig manure on the cold air told Nathan they were nearing the vast Masonic Temple, where Stryker’s apartment and hydroponic center rested. It was also where the assembly of what Stryker had laughably called the City Government met. What Stryker had neglected to tell them was that it was the City Government for those outside of the Greenhouse to the south of the city. It was a toothless government that had no real power, other than that of implementing the orders from the Greenhousers. That’s why gangs like Tasha’s were allowed to roam freely and terrorize and racketeer—there was no police force worthy of the name out here. They were too busy protecting the Greenhousers.
Stryker and Nathan walked ahead, still carrying the crate between them with Tasha, Billy, and Frank following along behind, weapons drawn. Although Nathan had been willing to at least discuss what Tasha wanted while they’d been back in the tenement, he was getting severely antsy now about letting this trio up into Stryker’s apartment to see what stores and stocks they had, not to mention bringing them around his wife and children. It was a meeting he absolutely didn’t want to see happen, but right now he could see zero ways of getting out of it.
The Masonic Temple was a huge sixteen-story art deco monster that punched up from the sidewalk like the fist of a giant. With turrets for fingers and hefty stonework for knuckles, it was both horrifically beautiful and impenetrably solid. It was a good place to live if you couldn’t get into the Greenhouse, and it had provided more than adequate shelter and warmth for Nathan and his family.
The roof was a porcupine of wind turbines and the windows glowing with yellow light across the top floors were fed by cables lashed over the roof and down the stone fascia. Nathan didn’t like to think of it as home in a permanent sense, but it was certainly not somewhere he wanted invaded by these three slimeballs.
“Well, look at that, pretty as a picture,” Tasha said, pointing up at the temple. “You know, boys, we might just go the whole hog and move in.”
Nathan’s spine stiffened at the words, and it made him tell his first lie. “Everyone’s welcome, but we have a no guns policy within the building; as long as you don’t mind that, you’re welcome to one of the unused apartments.”
Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2) Page 2
