“Hike!” Nathan cried out to the dogs, and they were away.
10
The Masonic Temple was burning.
“Whoa!” Nathan brought his sled to a halt and looked at the hell before him. There was smoke rising from the very top floor, five floors above where their apartments were situated. It was coming from only one broken window so far, but there were licks of orange flame flickering through the smoke, made all the more bright now that night had fallen.
The one time he’d want the weather to rage down like falling angels on Detroit, to work on the flames and keep them at bay, seemed to be the one time when the weather had decided it was going to kick back and watch the fun.
The sky was almost clear, and although it was very rare to see the stars because of the ash in the upper atmosphere, a blurry, near full moon spread wan moonlight over the apocalyptic scene.
“It never rains,” he said as Syd’s sled came in beside him, the dogs in both teams panting and welcoming the rest before they would set off again. Some chewed at the snow to slake thirst and others just pawed the ground, happy to get going again as soon as possible. “You have got to be joking me,” Syd said.
“I think someone is having a huge laugh at our expense, yeah. But right, if we’re doing this, let’s do it. Hike!”
The trip along Dave’s intricately penciled route through the maze of backstreets, rat runs, half-streets and waste ground had gone entirely to plan. The derelict buildings they’d whooshed between, throwing up arcs of snow and ice at a steady lick, had nearly all been silent and dark. The dogs’ eyesight was good, and the moon had provided just enough detail for Nathan to read the map without resorting to using his flashlight. They had caught a few shadows of people behind windows in the occasional building, sure, but hadn’t come across any vehicles at all, let alone any of Brant’s police.
They hadn’t seen the Masonic Temple as they’d approached because the walls and buildings around them had closed down all perspective. The smoke, Nathan had caught sight of in the sky ahead of time, but it could have been from any of a hundred different fires from buildings left to their own devices in the Big Winter—it could have been from Windsor across the water, even. Nathan was used to seeing columns of smoke rising constantly into the Detroit sky, but never in a million years would he have expected it to be coming from their destination. Never would he have thought that there was a race against time accompanying their trip across the city.
They skidded to a halt two streets away from the Masonic Temple. The building was a solid thing there on the air. Wide and stony, like a face set to be stubborn—but the flames licking out now showed in three windows on the south side of the building. The tinkling of falling glass suggested that the proverbial thoughts behind that face were all afire.
As fast as they could, Nathan and Syd unhooked the dogs from the sleds and, while Nathan covered their vehicles as best he could with snow, Syd took the eight dogs into an abandoned warehouse and tied them up inside. She’d also taken in bowls full of snow and paper-wrapped chopped salmon from John’s farm to feed the dogs and quiet them down.
Barely five minutes later, both of them were jogging towards the basement entrance of the Masonic. As they approached, they could hear voices shouting from within the building—there was mild panic, but such was the height of the flames, away from most of the occupied apartments, that the voices were of concern rather than terror. They were the sounds of people packing what they could and getting ready to get out.
The outer city didn’t even have its own police force, so it certainly didn’t have a fire department. The toothless and rubber-stamping outer city government that met once a month in the auditorium of the Masonic Temple, only sometimes attended by Brant or one of his deputies, didn’t have the resources or the powers to set up a fire department. When a building went up in flames, as they did on a regular basis in the broken city, the occupants knew they could only save what they could carry, and many had been through the process of having their places razed to the ground several times already.
Nathan wondered if the fire had been started deliberately, but there was also every chance it had just been a coincidence, especially when one considered the lash-up of electronics, old inverters, and makeshift cabling it had supported.
People were already coming out of the building through the front doors of the temple. If Brant or Harmsworth’s men were in the vicinity awaiting Nathan or any of his people to come back to the temple, there might be enough confusion in the street to give them some much needed cover or distraction.
It’s an ill wind…
It took Syd some little time to remember exactly where the place they were looking for was in relation to the temple. The last time she’d come out, she’d been in a blind panic, just trying to get away from Harmsworth and his band of killers, and so she hadn’t really looked back to see where she’d come from. Now, she eventually found what she’d sought as grated doors clanged dully beneath the heel of the boot she’d been shoving down into the frosting of ice and snow.
The basement doors were heavy, made of plate steel painted blue. There were several inches of snow on top of them and it made their hands cold and wet as they picked it away from the doors, letting it seep through their gloves. But Nathan felt the pressure of time running out as they chipped away at the ice on the doors; up above them, the flames grew stronger and more windows kept bursting out with smoke.
The basement was deserted, other than the machinery of the boiler. The fuel oil tanks were down here, and if eventually the fire reached them, before Nathan and Syd did after their trip up top, then it might be an impossible space to traverse.
“We don’t have any time. If you can’t find Lucy’s stuff, just get out. Don’t take any more risks than you have to,” Nathan said as they reached the basement door at the top of a short flight of steps which led into the service corridors just below the ground floor.
“I’m not planning to. But what do we tell John if we go back empty-handed?”
“We tell him to rejoice that we’re not toast, and then we’ll take it from there. Ready?” Nathan put his hand on the door.
“Ready.”
The service stairs at the back of the building were thankfully clear of both stored items and fleeing people. They were rarely used by anyone except Stryker.
Syd and Nathan went up three flights before they started to smell the smoke from above, and then something else struck Nathan which should have immediately raised his suspicion even before the two of them had begun their ascent.
Nathan paused on the steps heading to the fourth level.
Syd looked back, five steps beyond him. “What?”
Nathan pointed at the ceiling of the stairwell and along the walls.
Syd narrowed her eyes and looked nonplussed, “What? I don’t know what you’re pointing at.”
“The emergency lighting is on.”
“So?”
“So, these stairs are very rarely used, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the lights are fed by batteries in the basement, which are charged from the roof turbines.”
“Look, can we walk and talk? The place is burning down, Nate.”
Nathan joined her on the same step she’d stood on and drew his gun, gesturing that she start following him instead of leading the way. “The emergency lights are not on the automatic system anymore. I bypassed it when I was working on the boiler, fitting a new gauge—I cannibalized the emergency link to the light for the boiler. I always meant to get around to fixing it; never got a chance.”
Nathan began walking up the stairs again, his gun pointing up and ahead of him. “So now you have to turn the lights on manually, and I’m pretty sure I only told one person how to turn these lights on.”
Syd drew her gun. “You’re going to tell me it was Stryker, aren’t you?”
“Afraid I am.”
Syd flicked the safety off her SIG. “Perfect. Every shade of perfect.�
�
“Tell me about it.”
They continued as swiftly as they could without turning their progress into a headlong rush that would bring them upon danger before they had a chance to respond.
The smell of smoke was getting stronger from above, but it was still only a residual element at the moment. They could still breathe, and the air was mostly clear. It was just the smell of a campfire in the distance. Redolent of toasting marshmallows and singing boy scout songs along to the hooting of owls.
A Disney campfire—one that you’d be happy to stumble upon in the woods on a cold, hungry night.
But not this time. This, Nathan knew, was anything but. And he—
Nathan crashed onto his face as his feet slipped from underneath him just as they crested the landing for the eleventh floor.
In her panic at Nathan going down, Syd squeezed the trigger of her SIG and the boom of its firing in the confined space made Nathan’s ears ring. A bullet had buried itself in the ceiling above them and plaster rained down on them like snow.
“Nathan! Are you okay? Have you been shot?”
“Put the safety back on the gun. Now.”
Syd did as she was told even as Nathan rolled onto his side. “No, I haven’t been shot. My foot slipped on something.”
Nathan rubbed his finger along the edge of the offending stair on which his feet had slid away from him. The stair was wet with a liquid, and he didn’t need to hold the finger against his nose to recognize what had caused his feet to fly out from beneath him.
“Gasoline,” he said simply, and with that, he looked up the last nine floors to where the smoke was thickening, and then came the dull thud of an explosion, and the crash of something collapsing.
“Let’s go.”
The fire had been a deliberate act. For what reason, Nathan couldn’t guess, but as he pounded up the stairs, his gun held out in front of him, with the knowledge that the only person who knew how to turn the emergency lights on was Stryker, the two ends of the mystery began to tie themselves together into a blond-haired knot wearing a hideous Hawaiian shirt.
The increased smoke and the pace of the ascent caused both Nathan and Syd some difficulties with breathing, and from the fourteenth flood onwards, Nathan started to think he could sense heat from above. The hot breath of it had begun coming down the stairwell. There was sweat running from his hair now and soaking the collar of his shirt. He’d already dumped his gloves and puffer jacket two floors below as the heat of exertion had started to take its toll. Syd had removed her coat, too, and her face was glistening.
The service stairs opened onto floor sixteen in what was roughly the center of the main corridor. Nathan would have to go left to get to Dave and Donie’s apartment, and Syd would have to go right to reach her destination.
“We don’t have to split,” Nathan offered as they went through the door. In response, Syd pointed at the ceiling of the corridor, along which smoke was rolling at a depth of ten to twelve inches. There was no visible fire as yet that they could see, but it wouldn’t be long before the flames followed the smoke down another couple of levels. “We need to get this stuff and we need to split. I’ll grab what I can and meet you back here.”
Nathan nodded. “Good luck.”
And then Syd was gone, turning on her flashlight and sprinting away into the dark, her light’s thin yellow beam dancing along the walls.
Nathan turned on his flashlight and ran towards Dave and Donie’s apartment, which was fifty feet away into the thickening smoke.
By the time he reached the door of their set of rooms, he was already having to duck his head below shoulder height to avoid the pall roiling above him. The door was locked, but there was no time for niceties. Without a thought, Nathan shot out the lock and kicked the door open.
There was more smoke in the room than there’d been in the corridor. Flames were licking outside the window and had started to insinuate themselves in through the wooden frames around the glass. As the change in air pressure from Nathan kicking open the door took effect, the paned picture window, its frame alight, shattered with a blast of sound and a gush of cold air from outside.
It seemed that Donie had put up a fight before she’d been taken by Brant’s men—the place was a disaster area, even outside of the flames that had gotten in. Chairs and tables were overturned, and drawers from dressers and cupboards had been pulled out, their contents upended.
Nathan made a beeline for the place Dave had told him the Greenhouse schematics had been. The plans had been too big to put in a drawer, and so Dave had rolled them up, put them in a tube, and stood it behind the sofa at the end of the living area. Of course, the cardboard tube wasn’t there. How could it not be missing? Nathan thought ruefully. There’d been no way this would be as easy as just picking it up and running with it.
Another window smashed in with the heat and the hot dragon breath of flames seared across his cheeks. Nathan dived to the floor, half expecting to find his hair on fire, but the flames had only wafted against him with their heat rather than setting him alight.
Now that he was on the floor, however, his eyeline took in the area beneath the leather sofa. There beneath it was the cardboard tube containing the schematics. He reached out and pulled it to him. The plastic end’s lid had been popped off and someone had taken a cursory look inside, but not knowing the value of what the tube contained, they’d just discarded it without a thought and it had rolled or been kicked beneath the sofa.
Nathan got up and moved back towards the door. A creaking above him told him that something wasn’t right with the structure of the ceiling and, as he looked up, a darkening bulge erupted smoke like pus from a crusty wound—and flames consumed the area. Tiles, burning wood, and electrical cable that was burning and melting crashed down just as Nathan made it out of the apartment and back into the corridor.
He ran with the tube tucked underneath his arm and the gun still out in front of him. Now he had to run almost bent double to avoid the smoke above him, and the ceiling had begun radiating a sick heat, burning the back of his neck like the worst of sunburns.
He reached the doors to the service stairs and pushed at the door, ready, as if there was any question that he wouldn’t jumpstart his escape and head straight to the basement.
But Nathan stopped and looked back.
Suddenly overwhelmed by the doubt he had learned from his judgement calls going wrong—trusting Stryker, falling for the gang’s protection racket, giving up his wife and kids to the Greenhouse… Then, sending Dave into Trash Town without backup, and now, letting Syd—a sixteen-year-old girl—go off into a flaming building on her own to get Lucy’s valuables.
Are you crazy, Nathan Tolley? Are. You. Frickin’. Crazy!?!
Yes, it would seem he was.
Nathan stepped onto the landing and looked over the rail, down into the lower levels of the Masonic. “Syd!”
He waited for an answer. Nothing.
“Syd, are you on your way down? Can you hear me?” Apart from a few crackles and the thump of something heavy collapsing above him in the roof space, there was no answer. There was some possibility she was all the way down and wouldn’t be able to hear him, but it was a slim one.
Nathan yelled his frustration to the walls and thumped the rail over the stairwell with the heel of his hand.
No time for anything else. If I’m gonna be sure, I’m gonna have to go back.
Nathan dropped the tube over the railing and watched it fall. It fell arrow-straight all the way to the basement. It would be safer there than being carried under his arms into… who knew what?
Nathan went back through the doors, bent double to avoid smoke, which was so thick now that he couldn’t see the fixtures on the ceiling above him.
He started to make his way along the corridor, the irony of the difference in temperature inside the Masonic versus what was outside not lost on him. He’d spent so much time over the last few years freezing his unmentionables off that, in ma
ny ways, it was a luxury feeling sweat dripping into his eyes and not needing to wear seventeen layers over clothes and a grandfather’s long johns to boot, but the shear danger of the situation negated any wallowing in the heat, and the acrid sting of smoke in his throat and lungs enforced an urgency that he get back to the freezing conditions outside with the utmost expediency.
“Syd!” he called again, wiping at his eyes and covering his mouth with his hand to offer some sort of protection. “Syd! Dammit, Syd! Are you still up here?”
Still no reply, but as he reached the doors to Stryker’s apartment, a section of ceiling twenty yards further along the corridor collapsed in a gust of flame and sparks.
The revelation was clear. If he didn’t find Syd in the next couple of minutes and get her out of the building, neither of them was getting out. The dilemma was acute, too. Did he leave the girl to burn to make sure that the schematics got out of the building and thus save his family, or did he press on?
Another yell of blind frustration burst from his mouth and he pushed the door to Stryker’s apartment open.
Thankfully, there was no reoccurrence of the window blowing out, as had happened in Dave and Donie’s apartment. In fact, Stryker’s apartment looked relatively untouched so far. There was smoke rolling along the ceiling, but that was about it. The leaves of the plants in the hydroponic bays were wilting, and a few of them had been pushed over, offering more evidence of Brant’s men taking Lucy, perhaps, but there wasn’t the wholesale wrecking of the place that he’d seen in the other apartment.
“Syd!” Nathan shouted as hard as he could. If there was no answer now, he was going. This was as far as he could go. If there was no answer, then she must already be at the bottom of the stairwell.
“In here!”
What?
What?
The voice had come from a bedroom door at one end of the apartment. It was slightly ajar and, from memory, he thought it was the room Lucy and Freeson had shared.
“Syd? Is that you?”
Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2) Page 11
