After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Tony, Saber, and Syd stayed in the reception area while the others scoped for rooms. All the doors had electronic locks, which were—of course—inoperative, but with judicious pry-barring they came open soon enough. The rooms hadn’t been emptied in the same way as the reception area. Dead flat-screen TVs hung silent on mounts, and beds were made as if the maids had just left—someone had wanted to do a good job on their last day, at least in this corridor.

  “You guys seen The Shining?” Freeson asked, prying open another door.

  Cyndi thumped Freeson’s arm and Nathan rolled his eyes.

  “What’ll it be, Mr. Torrence?” Freeson stood stock-still and mimed cleaning a glass like a bartender in a swanky ballroom bar.

  Nathan knew The Shining was a film that Cyndi had refused to even stay in the same room with when Freeson had come over in the past for a beer and movie night. It was a movie that had terrified her as a child, and Freeson invoking its memory in the cold, silent, dark motel wasn’t going down well with Nathan’s wife. She pushed past Free and into the room, swinging her flashlight as she ignored him.

  “It’s good to see you in a better mood, man,” he said as Freeson grinned, “but you know what she…”

  Nathan was cut off by Cyndi’s yell of horror. It echoed down the corridor and almost stopped his heart. Nathan, guts bunching, ran into the room behind her.

  Cyndi’s hand was over her mouth and she was staring at the bed with wide, terrified eyes.

  Without processing what lay ahead, Nathan instinctively moved in front of her to get between her and whatever it was that had caused her to yell.

  “Jeez,” Freeson said simply, coming in behind him.

  On the bed were two dead bodies.

  The room had never got above near freezing, and they hadn’t rotted much, but they showed sucked down eyes and hollow cheeks, and they were laying side by side like sleeping zombies about to wake. The bodies were holding hands, too. Dry, chicken leg fingers intertwined. They had, in life, been in their late fifties. A man and a woman, hair graying, clothes not cheap and not expensive. With a flicker of compassion, Nathan noted that there were wedding bands on both their left hands.

  The room wasn’t filled with the stench of rot or decay, either, but due to the cold, one of dead meat.

  On the bedside cabinet were a half empty bottle of whiskey and some empty pill bottles.

  Whoever they were, they obviously hadn’t thought that leaving the hotel, and heading wherever into the cold, was the best option for them, and they’d taken their pills with liquor and settled down to die.

  Nathan held Cyndi in his arms as she sobbed out her surprise while Freeson went back towards reception to make sure Saber, Tony, and Syd, who’d come running at the sound of Cyndi’s yell, didn’t come in and see the bodies.

  The next day dawned bright, the sky bluer than it had been for many weeks. Perhaps the currents of ash in the air were clearing, Nathan considered, or had the vagaries of the weather given this part of the state a window that wouldn’t last? Whatever the reason, the sun put a warmth in Nathan’s heart that felt welcome after the last few days.

  And the night had passed without incident.

  Because of the dead couple, they’d gone to a different wing of the motel, breaking into a large suite that offered enough beds and sofas for everyone to sleep comfortably. After the discovery in the first corridor, and Freeson’s gags about The Shining on top of them, everyone had thought staying in the same room was the best idea.

  They’d thus gotten food, lamps, and an oil heater from the Airstream, and made quite a cozy den for themselves in the suite.

  After breakfast, Tony wanted to take Saber out to play “snowballs” again, so Nathan went with him while the others enjoyed the warmth of the room and the comfort of their beds.

  Syd had turned out to be a heavy sleeper, and hadn’t stirred for breakfast or to see Tony go off with Saber. Asleep, Nathan thought she looked even younger than Cyndi’s estimate of fifteen years, and he was surprised to feel a pang of paternal concern for the girl. She’d obviously had things hard. Perhaps he should have been cutting her a break from the start.

  While Tony played with the dog, Nathan gave the Dodge’s engine the once-over, checking and adjusting the timing chain out of habit rather than necessity. It felt good to get his hands dirty again in an engine. His natural habitat and all that.

  “What’s up, Saber?”

  Nathan looked around from the raised hood.

  Tony was thirty yards away, across the expanse of white, snowball in his hand in mid-throw. Saber wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  Wiping his hands on a rag and putting his gloves back on, Nathan walked to where his son stood in a circle of disturbed snow and fresh paw prints. The boy was shielding his eyes against the sun and looking around the side of the building.

  As Nathan approached, he could see Saber standing frozen, her ears pricked, nose pointed away from the motel towards the treeline. “What’s she seen, Tony?”

  “Dunno, Dad. She was catching and chasing the snowballs great, and then she just stopped. Come on, girl! Saber! Play!”

  Tony threw the snowball he’d held and it landed to the right of the dog, but she didn’t move or take her gaze from the trees.

  Nathan couldn’t miss the sense of anxiety in the dog. It only began transmitting ever more sharply to him as the dog whimpered and lowered her tail. He didn’t need another signal.

  “Tony, go inside. Get Mom and the others to load up quickly.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just do it, son,” he muttered, and then he turned the boy away by the top of his head, nudging him back towards the motel’s entrance. Tony didn’t need a second bidding, and walked as quickly as his asthma would allow, kicking up snow as he went.

  Nathan struck out towards the treeline and Saber dutifully followed, still occasionally whimpering.

  Nothing moved in the trees, but the black branches intertwining ahead of them reminded Nathan uncomfortably of the dead hands on the bed.

  Ten yards from the trees, Nathan noticed two things that concerned him. Footprints in the fresh snow, and tracks that might have been made by pushing a heavy piece of machinery into the trees.

  He followed the tracks to the edge of the forest, but it was as dark and silent as the motel had been when they’d broken into it. Saber whined, spun twice, and put her tail between her legs.

  The area of snow here was messed up, as if there had been a lot of activity, as if someone had stopped here and worked on the machinery again before pushing it into the trees. Something sparkling in the snow caught Nathan’s eye. He bent down to pick up a flat piece of metal and brushed off the snow with his glove.

  It was a flat wrench, like the kind that came with the tool kit on a Ski-Doo.

  Nathan began to back away.

  8

  They didn’t sleep anywhere other than the Airstream for the next ten days. They’d covered nearly a hundred and twenty miles in the ten days following their motel stay, and Nathan had changed from being the reluctant leaver to the motivated driver. He’d so far vetoed any suggestion to repeat their time at a motel or venture into a house along the way.

  “There’s no evidence that those tracks could have been one of the assholes who attacked us at your place,” Freeson had said on the fifth or sixth time passing a motel or farmstead that might have afforded a welcome break from being crammed into the Airstream.

  Nathan didn’t look around at his friend as he gripped the wheel and feathered the gas pedal, not wanting to speed up out of anger and roll the snowplow over his wife. “It doesn’t matter. The trailer is easier to defend if we’re attacked. In a motel or a farm, especially one that’s been boarded up, we might not hear a Ski-Doo approaching. We didn’t back there, did we? We just slept like babies while they watched us from the trees.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t, it’s true, but I’m not taking any chances with the liv
es of my family.”

  There was a tautness to his voice that Nathan didn’t enjoy. He knew Freeson was just craving a stretch for his legs and sleep in a real bed—and, twelve days into their journey, it might be a fine luxury, but allowing it might also lead to their downfall. Especially if the scavengers were on their trail.

  “I don’t want you to take any risks with your family, Nate, but we’re all going a little bit stir-crazy. I know I am. And Cyndi told me last night she was thinking of murdering you in your sleep,” Freeson joshed.

  “It’s true,” Cyndi laughed, joining in.

  “Just think about it, yeah?” Freeson asked. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  Finally, it was Cyndi throwing up into the snow—as she jumped down from the truck to take her turn walking ahead, testing snowdrifts—that suggested to Nathan that he might be pushing everyone too hard. It happened an hour after they’d set off on their twelfth morning of travel, when Cyndi opened the door of the Dodge to go out and take over for Syd with the ski pole but disappeared from sight as if she’d fallen into a hole.

  Nathan leaned across the cab and looked down to where his wife was uncontrollably throwing up against the tire of the Dodge. The vomit steamed in the cold air like a witch’s stew, and the mess looked like she’d thrown up not just that morning’s breakfast, but everything she’d eaten over the last three days, too.

  Nathan jumped down beside her, rubbing her back as she wretched again. “You okay, honey?”

  Cyndi’s head came up. Her cheeks were covered in red blotches and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Of course I’m not fine, you doofus; I’m throwing up.”

  A snigger from the cab told Nathan that Freeson had at least found the exchange entertaining. “You know what I meant. Are you ill… or…”

  Cyndi nodded, struggling to catch her breath. “It’s morning sickness, yes. It’s not what Freeson cooked for breakfast.”

  “Hey!” came Freeson’s indignation from the cab.

  Cyndi wiped her mouth and then firmly took the ski pole from Syd’s hands. “I’ll be okay, Nate. But if the wind changes, your face might set like that.”

  True enough. Nathan could feel emotions and concern leaking through his expression. He’d been so intent on getting them as far away from the Dead Body Motel (as everyone seemed to be unhelpfully calling it now), that he suddenly felt like he’d lost sight of some specifics while dealing with only the big picture. Before the Big Winter, his life had been uncomplicated and pretty settled. Everything had changed now, and he didn’t like being wracked with doubts that were causing him to screw up and lose his grasp on the important stuff. “I’m just worried, baby,” he told her. “You know how tough things were for you last time, and now you’re ten years older…”

  Cyndi sighed, squeezing Nathan’s hand. “Nathan, when you’re in a hole, stop digging, yeah? Pre-eclampsia is an illness, sure, but pregnancy isn’t. My blood pressure is fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I use this every morning.” She reached into the crew cab and ferreted about under the seat. When she bobbed up, she held a battery-operated wrist cuff blood pressure machine. She plonked it down in Nathan’s palm. “You’ve been too wired to notice. I was sick yesterday, too.”

  “And the day before,” Syd said, climbing up into the truck. “I heard you in the trailer.”

  The comment made Nathan feel even lamer—why hadn’t he noticed if Syd had?

  He nodded after another moment passed, catching Cyndi’s eyes. “We’ll find somewhere to stop tonight, maybe stay a coupl’a days. Freeson, take a look at the maps; see what we can get to before nightfall.”

  The railroad station was boarded up in the same way as the Dead Body Motel had been. Before the Big Winter, it had served Rome, NY, and they’d had to travel north instead of west to get there, but Freeson had assured them they could get there before dark.

  On the road, before Nathan had made the decision to find a place where they could shelter, they hadn’t seen any traffic for days, and he was beginning to think they were the last people left in the state. The railroad station was just as deserted, and did nothing to shift him from that notion.

  Cyndi had suggested the railroad station because it had a frozen river nearby where they should be able to crack through the ice to replenish their water supplies. It was also easily defensible since there were no nearby buildings to hide approaching scavengers. On none of the stops over the last week had there been evidence of Ski-Doos or bandits, but Nathan was taking nothing for granted.

  Once they settled on a space inside the railroad station, they brought in lamps, oil heaters, and supplies, setting up temporary camp in a room behind the booking office that had been a staff/sleep-in area for night crews. A couple of windows up above the main concourse had been broken by the weather and a chilly breeze blew through the center of the building, but the crew room was secure and soon warmed up.

  There was a bed, two armchairs, a sofa, and a pool table, and once the room was warming, Freeson wasted no time in setting up the pool table and playing with Tony. Saber looked on, her bright eyes darting with the moving balls and her head cocking at the snicks and clicks as they cannoned off of each other.

  Nathan grinned to see Freeson letting Tony win.

  While Cyndi prepared food, Nathan took Syd outside across the deep snow covering the tracks, through some dense, white blanketed brush and down to the water’s edge. They broke the icy crust near the bank and began filling as many water carriers as they could before their hands turned blue and the breath burned in their throats.

  As they started to maneuver the latest barrels back towards the railroad station, Nathan thought he’d try again with Syd, asking, “You’ve still not told us everything, have you?”

  “Don’t start.”

  “I’m not. I just… look, I trust you, okay? There’s no doubt about that, but you’re still not leveling with us about everything, and if we’re going to travel together, we really need to be on the level, right?”

  Syd blew into her hands and then thumped them against her sides to keep the circulation moving. “I just don’t like being interrogated is all.”

  “I get that.”

  “Then stop interrogating me.” In a different mouth, the demand could have sounded harsh, but Nathan caught the curl of a smile on the corner of her lips, and he felt that he’d moved things along between them—if not to their end point, certainly in the right direction.

  “Okay, I won’t. You tell me what you’ve got to tell me when the time is right for you. Deal?”

  Syd clearly appreciated having the pressure to talk about her past lifted as the start of a curled lip turned into a full-blown grin and her face became the second sheet of ice Nathan had broken in the last half an hour.

  The wind was picking up and the sky roiled with heavy clouds as they got the last barrel back to the station. As the clouds opened with first a flurry and then a full-blown blizzard, Nathan felt relieved they’d made it back just in time.

  The blizzard lasted two straight nights and days. If Nathan and Syd hadn’t gone straight away for the water when they had, the party would have run out on the first morning.

  Cyndi had become proficient at using the gravity filter to purify the water of any pollutants before boiling and got them up and running with a clear and clean store of water pretty soon. The stock would last them the best part of a week before they’d have to get another load.

  Stuck in the crew room, with the storm blowing outside constantly, the pool table was a godsend to keep bored minds in order. Syd drew up a league table on a whiteboard attached to one wall that had previously been used for crew rosters. She’d found dry erase pens in a steel stationery cupboard she’d pried open.

  Nathan thought the place had less of an abandoned look now, and more of a moth-balled feel to it. As if railroad workers had been told that the present emergency wouldn’t last forever and that they could expect to be back at work sometime in t
he future.

  While the others played games at the pool table, Nathan found time to talk to Cyndi about the normal stuff of life—how Tony was doing, how she was feeling about the baby. “I feel fine Nate, truly. I’ve got more than enough to worry about with getting us to Detroit, rather than worrying about my passenger.”

  Nathan smiled, “We’ll have to stop calling him or her the passenger someday, maybe start thinking about some names.”

  Cyndi waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I don’t have time and energy to put into that.” But Nathan could see the twinkle in her eye that told him she had probably gotten the name thing sorted in her head already and had just been waiting for the right time to tell him what it would be.

  Man, I love you, he thought. And then, because it was worth saying out loud, he said, “Man, I love you.”

  And he did. From top to bottom and all routes out.

  Being snowed in at the railroad station allowed them all to rest, but it didn’t make the wider issues they were facing relax any. Cyndi was still having her morning sickness, but it was usually just the one bout. It came like clockwork every morning around nine, and Nathan found himself, if not exactly getting used to it, at least appreciating that it was part of a normal pregnancy, so that nothing could be said to be going wrong. Cyndi found that if she had a lighter breakfast and saved a bigger meal for lunchtime, then she wouldn’t suffer again.

  Syd had also seemed more comfortable in the group since her trip down to the river to get water. The longer they had stayed camped at the station, forced into living in the same room, the more she’d taken it upon herself to become a social secretary. She’d not only organized the pool league but had found a deck of cards for poker and blackjack in the evenings, and told half-remembered fantasy stories to Saber and Tony before bed. The three of them were turning into quite a team.