Stryker turned out to be the only one who’d been hurt by the blast coming from his apartment, and it was his pride that smarted more than the cuts and bumps from the blown open mahogany doors which had pole-axed the back of his head.
“Don’t move, Stry; let me check you out.” Nathan bent to look at the blood welling from two deep cuts in Stryker’s blond hair. The wounds were long, but not deep. Given that Nathan knew head wounds bled like bitches, and often looked worse than they actually were, he didn’t find them too worrisome.
Stryker pushed Nathan’s hands away. “I’m fine, man. No need to fuss yourself…”
Stryker tried to get up then, but his heel slipped from underneath him in the wet mud and his head crashed back onto the floor, knocking himself completely unconscious this time.
Nathan surveyed the corridor—his friends, his family, and finally Stryker, prostate, covered in mud and crap, a puddle of blood leaking from the back of his head and his stupid shirt ruffling in the cold breeze from all the windows the explosion had blown out in his destroyed apartment.
Welcome to the rest of your lives?
“I don’t think so,” Nathan said to no one and everyone.
25
Stryker had been trying to make methane gas from human, animal, and vegetable waste. His cheap and ancient Chinese-made, 1000-watt inverter for converting the DC current from the Masonic Temple’s roof-based wind farm batteries into AC had blown a switch on the circuit board. That electrical fire had fritzed out a burst of flame from the casing, which had blown open the plastic tank of methane. A tank that had been far too near any electrical equipment to be safe—especially given the ancient Chinese inverter. The resultant detonation had torn apart the apartment on a gust of flame and billowing brisance.
The blast had wrecked all of Stryker’s rudimentary hydroponic frames, too, twisting and snapping the plastic trays, and torching the vast majority of his crop of vegetables, grains, and fruits.
As the shell-shocked and aching party had helped the still dazed Stryker try to clear up the mess, Freeson and Nathan had done their best with the broken windows, stapling plastic sheeting to the frames, which then bulged in from the wind outside the tenth floor like the fat bellies of sails on a pirate ship.
Stryker had a spare inverter, but the wires coming from the roof batteries weren’t transmitting any current. “Dammit,” he said. “Happens sometimes. Just have to go up and fix it.”
Stryker’s overcompensating sense of blind optimism took over. He began filling a rucksack with tools.
“You’re going up to the roof?” Nathan asked incredulously. “You’ve just been blown up, man. It can wait.”
Everyone was pooped. They were sitting on Stryker’s singed furniture, looking like refugees from a war zone. Tony lay sleeping on Cyndi’s lap, Saber sprawled over Syd’s. Lucy, who hadn’t said a word since they’d gotten out of the corridor, had her head on Freeson’s shoulder. The tech twins were trying to see if they could get any signal from the base station, but as Dave had said, “We’re on the wrong side of the building for line of sight, and there’s no cell signal.”
Not being able to get a connection to the internet seemed to have upset him more than being caught in an explosion.
Stryker pulled the zip closed on his rucksack.
“We need power or we’re just gonna have to huddle together for warmth and eat raw vegetables, and no one wants to see that happen. Need to run a new line.”
Stryker picked up a roll of wire and walked towards the doors, which were still hanging on their hinges. His steps were unsteady and, for a moment, Nathan had the very real image of Stryker becoming unbalanced on the roof, falling past the plastic-covered window frames in the apartment and hurtling to his death. Vivid as could be, the scene popped right into the center of his imagination.
Dammit.
However angry he was with Stryker right now—and there would be a reckoning, for sure—he wasn’t going to let his friend go up to the roof alone in this state.
Family and friends first.
The afternoon was falling towards twilight.
The roof wind farm above the sixteenth floor of the Masonic Temple could be accessed from one of the two turrets above the façade. The bitterness of the cutting wind and the thrumming of the two dozen turbines were the dominant sensations once they were out in the open.
Windsor, Detroit’s Siamese twin across the Detroit River in Canada, was even now, in the failing light, alight with fires. It was a broken cityscape of destroyed, burned-out buildings and vast tracks of snow.
The river, like the Great Lakes at either end of it, was the frozen passage between them. Cargo vessels had been locked into the ice, some raised tail high in the crush of ice, their rusting hulls red and ochre in the darkening light. Nathan could see the lights of a few cars moving down on the waterfront, but nothing else seemed to be moving in Windsor until a gust of flame blew out of a window in a tall building, and the boom of its detonation rolled across the ice to Detroit.
“Guess I’m not the only one trying to make methane.” Stryker shrugged as they tramped through the snow on the roof.
Detroit looked less burned out than Windsor, but as their journey in earlier that day had shown them, it was not immune to what had ravaged so many cities they’d seen. Electric lights glowed in many windows across the snowy scene, casting up blue-yellow reflections of the surface of winter. A police siren warped and whooped in on the wind as Nathan and Stryker made their way across the roof to the turbine feeding the batteries meant to provide power to Stryker’s level, six floors below.
Nathan had been to Detroit just once before. He’d driven there with his daddy to pick up a 1995 Ford F-150 with a custom FlareSide SuperCab. They’d been hired by his daddy’s friend to bring it back to Glens Falls. They’d gone in the Dodge and Nathan had driven it back while his old man drove the Ford. The city then had been dirty and noisy, sure, but it had been alive. Alive with the smells of good food, music blaring from shop fronts, bars sending out gales of laughter, and others blasting out savage hip-hop or barroom rawk. Now the city below them was like a Shadow Detroit. One cast by the light of a dying sun onto barren land. The city, with its burning twin, was a bruise on the earth.
Deep and painful to look at.
They got to the turbine and, instead of getting his tools from his bag, Stryker faced Nathan, putting down the wire and the rucksack. He sighed, and then spoke. “There’s nothing wrong with the wire. Sorry, man.”
Nathan’s confusion coursed ahead of his sudden anger. Nonplussed, he stared at his friend, feeling the vertigo of the huge dome of sky and long drop below him. “Then why have you brought me up here on this fool’s errand, Stry? I’m freezing my nuts off…”
Stryker looked at his feet and said something that was whipped away in the wind.
Nathan moved closer. “What?”
Stryker looked up. “I might have been… less than truthful. I’m sorry.”
Nathan bunched his fists, but didn’t punch Stryker—he’d save that for later, once the explanation landed. “We’ve already seen the city, Stry, and it’s nothing like you told us, nothing like the pictures. I came up here to stop you falling off the roof by accident, but now that you’ve brought it up, if you don’t give me a damn good explanation right now, I’ll throw you off, myself. Now get to it.”
Stryker pushed his hands into his pockets, struggling to make eye contact. When he did, his eyes were watery and his gaze was weak. “We got the ambition, dude. The place is burning with it. Some of the conversions have been made. There are covered-in areas, and we’ve got the wind farms up and running. Power, we got coming out of our ears.”
“Hospital?” Nathan’s only thought now was the safety of Cyndi, his unborn child, and Tony.
“Sure, yeah… it might not be the best, but it’s still operating. There are doctors and there are nurses, but…”
“There’s always a but, isn’t there?” Nathan nails were dig
ging into his palms. If it hadn’t been for the gloves, he’d have drawn blood for sure.
“Supplies and drugs are difficult to get… we’ve been pretty much abandoned by the federal government now… So, we’re not getting information, and there have been raids.”
Images of Ski-Doos, burning diners, and carved out foreheads leapt to the front of Nathan’s mind. “Raids…?”
“Yeah… look…”
“Raids, as in scavengers? Gangs? We met some of them out on the road.” Had he lifted his family from the frying pan only to drop them into the fire? Or, rather, from the refrigerator only to lock them into the freezer?
“No… not gangs. This is… official…”
All the times Nathan had thought Cyndi was being all Paranoid Conspiracy Prepper with her insistence that they not rely on the future governments to look after the population, and here it was turning out to be legit advice. “The government? Stealing your hospital supplies? What craziness is infecting this place, Stry? We trusted you! We believed you!”
Stryker held up his hands. “They’re calling themselves the government. They could be anyone. Anyone with a tank can be the government these days.”
“They’ve got tanks?”
Stryker shook his head, “No, you doofus. That’s just a figure of speech, but you know what I mean. Official looking guys show up, wave around official looking ID, and waltz off with what they want. That’s why the cops set up the roadblocks. We got wise to it now.”
Nathan had to hold onto the gantry to stop his still shaky legs from collapsing beneath him. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but at the same time, he was kicking himself for letting himself be persuaded into this position. He should have seen it coming. Relying on Stryker was like relying on a politician not to tell lies when his lips moved.
Nathan felt himself being swallowed up in the incredulity of the situation. All this way, all this hurt. For this?
“Why?! Why did you lie to me?” he demanded, his head hot with rage.
“Not technically lying.”
“Technically? Technically?” And that’s when Nathan grabbed Stryker by the front of his jacket. He thumped Stryker back against the turbine gantry. “Come on, you jerk, why did you make me bring my family here? Technically, I’m not going to throw you off the roof. Think of it as a flying lesson.”
Stryker’s mouth moved quickly, getting his words out in a rush. “We need men like you, Nate. I’m terrible at this stuff. Yeah, sure, I try my best, but look how I screwed up today. I almost blew us up. We need men like you, but more than that…”
Nathan relaxed his grip on Stryker just enough to stop the neck of the anorak from choking him.
The pictures sparked in Nathan’s brain again. Tony coughing, his lips blue, the last of the asthma meds keeping him alive until they could find another stock. Cyndi, his hand on her belly, feeling the kick of the uncertain future. The burning cities, Owen’s scavengers, and the Reynolds with their tales of the extinction event.
A world toppling off its axis, spinning down like a child’s top to a cold death and taking everyone on Earth with it.
“More than what?” He was shaking Stryker now, and if his eyes had been marbles, they would have rattled around his skull like roulette balls. “Tell me! Tell me!”
Stryker’s eyes stopped spinning and they fixed Nathan with a stare so chilling that it cut through him deeper and colder than the wind coming off the frozen lake, carrying its cargo of burning and the smell of desolation.
“More than you… we need… Cyndi.”
And that’s what finally drove Nathan to hit him.
End of Freezing Point
After The Shift Book One
Freezing Point, September 13 2018
Killing Frost, November 8 2018
Black Ice, January 10 2019
PS: If you love apocalyptic fiction then keep reading for exclusive extracts from Killing Frost and Dark Retreat.
About Grace Hamilton
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ABOUT GRACE
Grace Hamilton is the prepper pen-name for a bad-ass, survivalist momma-bear of four kids, and wife to a wonderful husband. After being stuck in a mountain cabin for six days following a flash flood, she decided she never wanted to feel so powerless or have to send her kids to bed hungry again. Now she lives the prepper lifestyle and knows that if SHTF or TEOTWAWKI happens, she’ll be ready to help protect and provide for her family.
Combine this survivalist mentality with a vivid imagination (as well as a slightly unhealthy day dreaming habit) and you get a prepper fiction author. Grace spends her days thinking about the worst possible survival situations that a person could be thrown into, then throwing her characters into these nightmares while trying to figure out "What SHOULD you do in this situation?"
It’s her wish that through her characters, you will get to experience what life will be like and essentially learn from their mistakes and experiences, so that you too can survive!
BLURB
Nathan and his family are on the run from a catastrophic polar shift—but the bitter cold is the least of their worries.
Nathan was led to believe that Detroit would be the proverbial promised land, but when his family arrives they find a city struggling just to survive in the frigid conditions. Nathan’s old friend Stryker has made a safe haven in the ancient Masonic Temple, but it soon becomes clear that the comfortable life within its walls is unsustainable. Resources are running out fast, and with a new baby to feed and another son in need of medicine, Nathan and Cyndi face a difficult choice: dig in with the dangerously naïve Stryker, or head west to Wyoming.
As Nathan debates this fateful decision, he learns the horrifying secret behind Stryker’s success. In his heart, he knows he’s unwilling to pay such a price for his family’s safety, but leaving the city is no easy matter when even the walls have eyes. Now, his family, Syd, and their friends will have to use all of their skills to help each other escape and survive whatever comes next, or die trying.
Get your copy of Killing Frost
Available November 8 2018
www.GraceHamiltonBooks.com
EXCERPT
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 their 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 a 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 mome
nts before, three faces were hovering in the grey 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 levelling his shotgun at Stryker’s waist.
Freezing Point (After the Shift Book 1) Page 25
