Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2)
Page 4
“Are you crazy?”
“Hear me out, Cyndi. Please.”
Cyndi was feeding Brandon from a bottle and had him wrapped in a shawl in the crook of her arm. The baby didn’t drink greedily—his sucking was listless and weak—but at least he was swallowing something.
“I’m not saying we throw in with him completely, but he wants your skills. He wants you on that committee. He knows that you’re invaluable to the Greenhousers.”
“Nathan, I can’t believe what you’re saying. Brant put a bounty on my head to get Stryker to trick us into coming here! He then reneged on letting Stryker into their cozy, hermetically-sealed elite world because I wouldn’t play ball. And now, because we have a problem with a two-person gang, one of whom got shot in the leg, you and Stryker think I should go to Brant and roll over? Should I let him tickle my tummy at the same time? Just for good measure?”
Cyndi paced, a curl of anger on her lip, shaking her head and, Nathan thought, getting close to stamping her feet.
“I don’t want to join their stinking elite, Nathan. It goes against everything I stand for. To go in there and help them while everyone in the outer city scratches out an existence on the edge of starvation. Is that who you think I am, Nathan?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then stop the crazy talk. I’ll only work on Brant’s committee if they start to give their resources to everyone, to spread their wealth around and stop using the people in the outer city like serfs to their kingdom.”
“You sound like Robin Hood.”
“Better that than being the Sherriff of Nottingham, Nate.”
Nathan had gone back to their apartment to put Stryker’s idea to Cyndi, that maybe a bit of give-and-take with Brant and the other Greenhousers might get them some leverage. So far, it hadn’t gone well.
Cyndi had been up and feeding Brandon already, which had initially made Nathan hopeful that she would hear him out with less irritation than if he’d gone in and woken the pale-faced child from a sleep. But no, if anything, Cyndi had been more willing to raise her voice and give Nathan both barrels because avoiding waking the baby wasn’t an issue.
“Will you at least think about it? Please. Right now, we’re defending this building with people who’re more used to growing root ginger or mending socks. They’re good people, but if that gang comes back with twenty others, in numbers like some of the other gangs we’ve seen since we got there, we’re going to be royally screwed.”
Cyndi considered this for a moment, but didn’t look convinced. “I’ll think about it, but my gut instincts tell me no. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror, knowing what was going on out here while I was holed up in there. You know I’d have to take Brandon and Tony with me, don’t you? And I’d be worried sick if you were still out here. Not knowing how you were doing.”
“I’ll press my nose up against the window and wave at you, like a monkey in the zoo. How does that sound?”
Cyndi snorted as Brandon fed, and then she turned to the window, silhouetted against the clouds and the fizzing snowflakes. “I’ll think about it. But that’s all I’ll do for now.”
Nathan, Freeson and Syd walked along Michigan Avenue towards the largest of the Greenhouse Zones. In the center of the city, in the streets around the Campus Martius Park, as the Big Winter had worsened over the years, Detroit had decided to adapt instead of die.
Girders had been raised down the center of streets. Panels of aviation-strength glass had been bolted between them, to a height of nearly thirty feet. The roads had been pedestrianized, and open gardens of the campus had been turned into areas for growing produce and tending farm animals. The Greenhouse itself, as it had become to be known, abutted several of the towers around Campus Martius Park—surrounding several, so their lower floors were inside the new climate-controlled zones.
Outside this Greenhouse, those not lucky enough to be invited into the hermetically-sealed worlds had struggled to find survivable purchase. As the winters had worsened exponentially, inside the glass had come to amount to a whole different world. The mirror image of Trash Town in some ways, sure—offering a covered area where people could trade and commune—but the Greenhouse was permanent, warm, and safe.
Nathan had only been allowed inside once before, to visit Cyndi in the hospital. The change from outside to inside had brought home to him the vast differences in quality of life, and done so almost immediately. It had been too warm in the pedestrianized street to keep his jacket on, and sweat had broken out on his brow. Nathan hadn’t felt that warm in a month of Sundays… a year of them, even, it seemed.
“How the other half live,” Cyndi had commented as she’d held their blanket-swaddled baby up so that Nathan could meet his new son for the first time.
Even though it was inside the Greenhouse, and warm, the hospital still had the feeling of being a makeshift affair. It was housed on the four floors of the Chase Tower. Equipment had been looted from surrounding hospitals and medical centers, displaying yet another example of how the people outside of the Greenhouse were being left to fend for themselves. The hospital’s medical services were available to them, but the cost in tithe was high, and one thing was universally true… if you couldn’t work because of illness, then you couldn’t generate tithe to give to the Greenhousers. It wasn’t a problem Nathan had faced up to yet. Their position in the Masonic Temple wasn’t precarious enough for that—but if Tasha and her gang came back in force, then that might all change.
Nathan wanted to get out of Detroit at the earliest opportunity he could, but until Brandon was able to travel, that was impossible.
As they approached through the snow, they saw a group of four black Humvees used by Detroit PD parked across the road at the entrance to the Greenhouse Zone on Michigan Avenue. Armed officers were on duty in their winter combat uniforms and parka hoods, fringed with fur and pulled up against the cold. Arctic camouflage across their bodies, guns unslung from their shoulders and at the ready.
Nearby, two braziers burned fiercely with wood liberated from houses in the surrounding buildings. “I wonder what they’ll burn when all the wood runs out,” Syd said, pulling her puffy anorak more tightly around her as they approached the Humvees. “Don’t stand still too long in one spot, is all I’m saying.”
“Okay, that’s near enough. Papers?” The lead officer had peeled away from the hottest brazier, his Beretta drawn but by his side.
Nathan reached into his pocket. “We’re still waiting for them. Still on probation. But I have Stryker Wilson’s authority to approach here. Signed and dated.”
The officer’s expression, hidden deep in the hood, was difficult to see, but what was revealed was an African American with quick eyes who flashed good teeth as he spoke. “I know Stryker. Why didn’t he come himself?”
“He didn’t want to leave the Masonic unguarded. We had some trouble with a gang.”
“Not our problem,” the officer said. “Local disputes, you deal with yourself; that’s how it goes. We don’t have the resources to come out and fight every petty little war.”
Nathan felt anger rising within him, but tried not to let it show on his face. “Usually I’d agree with you, but we need to speak to Brant.”
The officer looked up. “Mr. Brant doesn’t just see anyone who rolls in off the street. He’s a busy man. A very busy man. I don’t think we can help you today, sir, so perhaps you’d like to be on your way now?”
From the corner of his eye Nathan could see that Freeson’s feet and legs were getting agitated. He’d already told his friend that he would deal with all the talking. Now, Syd, who’d wanted to come along because she was the only one who hadn’t seen inside the Greenhouse Zones yet, reached across and rubbed Freeson’s arm. Like Nathan, she could see the mechanic was taking the bull from the officer hard.
“Just get word to him that Nathan Tolley is here. He might want to break off and talk. Especially because I’m bringing a message from my wife.”
Officers were walking away from the Humvees towards a group of approaching men and women. There were about twenty of them moving in a ragged line. They were following a tall and rangy boy-man who walked like he owned the city. Nathan recognized someone who was the king of his own domain, and wouldn’t think twice about transmitting that notion to anyone in the vicinity. He had an AK-47 over his shoulder and a thick, well-stuffed rucksack on his back. The people behind him were similarly attired and armed.
“Wait here,” the officer said, and with that he went over to meet the guy with the AK-47. As the officer approached, AK-47 pulled down his hood, revealing a close-cropped blond head, mirrored shades, and cheeks hollowed below razor bones. His attitude screamed charisma, and his smile at the nearest officer reminded Nathan of an alligator waiting for a fish to swim into his mouth.
Nathan heard the rush of breath and the groan of misery escaping Syd’s lips before he felt her crash into his side, blossoming a flower of pain up from his cracked ribs. Syd was hugging Nathan hard and pushing her head into his arm, keeping his body between her and the crowd being met by Detroit PD.
“Hey,” Nathan hissed, trying to mitigate the pain in his side.
Syd’s voice was a harsh whisper when it replied, and it was full of panic. “Get me out of here, Nate; get me out of here now.”
4
Nathan felt Syd stiffen all the way to her legs. She was about to run. And running was going to alert the people she was trying to avoid having see her. “Wait,” Nathan whispered sharply. “Just wait.”
Syd buried her head in his shoulder and he felt he could almost hear her heart hammering against him through both their winter coats.
Nathan was still wondering how he would extricate his pistol from inside his jacket if he needed it when the police waved AK-47 and his motley crew through the airlock and into the Greenhouse, without any checks or concerns.
These people had been expected.
“It’s okay; they’ve gone.”
Syd looked up from Nathan’s chest, her eyes filled with disbelief as the glass airlock hissed shut and the police turned their attention back to their Humvees and braziers.
“Who was that?” Nathan asked, his words whipping away on the breeze.
Syd shook her head. Her eyes bulged and she began to back away. “I can’t go in there. I’m going back to the Masonic.” She turned and started trudging away from them without a word of explanation.
Nathan could only guess at exactly why Syd had behaved the way she had. The group of murderous thugs who’d killed the delightfully dotty Marty and his wonderfully resolute and kind wife Betty at the truck stop back east had been searching specifically for Syd. And the way she’d reacted just now told him that there was a good chance the people she’d seen going into the Greenhouse were of the same tribe. That they’d made it into the Greenhouse without any trouble gave Nathan a further feeling of unease.
Nathan looked after her as Syd moved away through the bitter snows—not willing to give up his mission just yet. “Go with her, Free, and I’ll wait here to see if I can get in.”
Freeson nodded and went after the girl, jogging to catch up.
Nathan shook his head. The whole situation was a mess, and he hadn’t even been able to get into the Greenhouse yet.
Nathan, after an hour of foot-stamping chill and negotiating on the periphery of the police braziers, had eventually gotten into the Greenhouse warmth through the airlock, and was now being taken to Brant’s office. It was on the second floor of Chase Tower, below where the hospital now sat in the repurposed building. The walk under glass had been pleasant, and fragrant with the smells of farming and food. There were ranks of hydroponic units being tended by workers, two enclosures of free-range chickens, and some goats being milked by hand. In the technological surroundings of the girdered and glassed enclosures, it all gave Nathan the sense of stepping back in time a hundred years. If it hadn’t been for the concrete below his feet and the skyscrapers lancing up through the snow- and ice-smeared ceilings, he might have really thought he had gone back in time. The sound of scraping up above caught his attention as one of the cops led him forward. There were a gang of workers up topside, scraping away ice as best they could to maintain the light levels within the Greenhouse. He could also glimpse a high-up radio communication mast, and rows of meaty-looking wind turbines up there being attended to, as well. The turbines provided as much electricity as was needed to drive the hydroponic water pumps and illuminate the fluorescent sunlights they used to provided extra solar sustenance for the plants that needed it. The hydroponic units themselves stretched far into the distance along the street, and people—some of them in shirtsleeves!—tended them or walked around as if they were out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. The people here really did have it better than those outside.
Although bartering was now the primary unit of commerce in Detroit, those who were given immediate access to goods and the Greenhouse fell into two distinct camps. Those with skills that were needed, and those who had gold or diamonds to use in buying their way in.
“Brant reckons there will be an end to this one day, and everything will get back to how it was. He thinks gold and diamonds won’t lose their value, and he and his cronies’ll be well set when the Big Winter is over,” Stryker had said early in their stay in the city. That had been before Brandon had been born, back when Nathan had been at his rawest over the situation and their fool’s errand of coming to Detroit. Far as he could tell, this was yet another reason to do as little business with Brant as possible.
Nathan was kept waiting outside Brant’s office, and sat with his fingers drumming on his knees. The second level of Chase Tower was just about level with the glass roof. He watched the workers at their scraping and brushing, being reminded of the people who’d worked the tarmac apron at a snowbound La Guardia when he’d landed there in the middle of winter what felt like several lifetimes ago. That time, as he’d looked through the window, apron staff in their Hi-Viz jackets had been working snow plows or pushing brushes, working like ants between the gigantic fuselages of the aircrafts. Nathan wondered now if the world would ever go back to being anything like that memory. Just guys doing their jobs, getting their wages, kissing their wives, and cracking a beer and watching a game.
Could it ever really happen, or was it as crazy an idea as collecting gold and diamonds in case the weather changed?
He didn’t know.
“Mr. Tolley?”
Nathan looked away from the window and its vision of a world that had died many moons before. Brant was wiping his hands on a towel. His tie was undone and hung loose down his shirtfront. His bald head shone under the fluorescent light. “I understand you want to make me an offer.”
“If you’re willing to listen, yes.”
“Well, that depends on what you have to say. Come on in.”
Harvey Brant was just the kind of man who would believe his own publicity. He was a stocky, bald headed, bull-shouldered man who, in a previous life, had been a car salesman and a minor politician, in that order. He still had the false bonhomie of a salesman who was more interested in how much you’d pay him for a wheezing Oldsmobile than whether it would meet your needs. Stryker had told Nathan that Brant had dragged the city into building the Greenhouse Zones through sheer force of will, but what had looked on the outside to be an expedition of altruism and sound civic planning had always been more about building a personal fiefdom—as the really canny people had left Detroit for the south as the Big Winter had geared up to maximum force.
Simply, Brant had seen an opportunity and he’d taken it. He was just the kind of man who didn’t need to be the sharpest chisel in the woodshed as long as he had the muscle to implement his demands, along with people around him who had the smarts to make the systems work. Brant’s office displ
ayed a slew of papers and maps. His desk was covered in them, and directories and policy folders had been flipped open, examined, and then discarded. The seat behind the desk was leather and commanding, but the chair he pointed to in front of the desk for Nathan to sit on was small and meager. There were papers and an open box file open upon it. “Ah, just put those over on the sofa, would you?”
Nathan picked up the papers and the box, and did as he’d been asked.
“Let me get right to the point, Mr. Brant,” Nathan said as he sat down. “There has been some movement with my wife in terms of her willingness to work for your committee.”
Brant was closing folders and stuffing papers into boxes. He looked all the more the used car salesman here—out front with the guy who wanted to buy the car, he’d have been all smooth professionalism and hale fellow, well met, while back in the office he’d have been a mess. Nathan supposed he had to give Brant some credit for allowing him in to see this, or perhaps Brant had no self-awareness at all. “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m surprised she’s not here to tell me that herself, I must say.”
“My newborn son, Brandon, he can’t be left alone, and I have to say she didn’t trust that she wouldn’t just be kept here against her will if she came with me.”
Brant stopped working with the papers and looked up. “I don’t know whether to say your candor does you credit or to feel insulted.”
“Well, since you used Stryker Wilson to bring us here under false pretenses…”
“That’s unfair, Mr. Tolley. There is a life for you here among the Greenhousers; we need people with skills and practical knowledge. True, we have enough mechanics—got ’em coming out of our ears, and I know my way around an engine, too, if needs be—but your wife’s prepper background and impressive skillset make her an invaluable addition.”
“I remember Stryker sold her well to you.”