After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  “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 possi
bility 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 many 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?”

  “Yes!”

  “Come out, now—this floor is going up! Dammit, Syd, we gotta go!”

  No reply.

  Feeling more like the raging father of a teen rebel than a rescuer, Nathan stomped towards the door and pushed it open.

  “What do I do? Tell me what to do.”

  Syd was standing with both her arms outstretched, holding her pistol police-style. In front of her, on his knees, was Stryker, his hands up and with tears running freely down his cheeks.

  Covered in smears of dirt, Stryker’s face came up and his streaming eyes focused on Nathan.

  “Tell her to do it, buddy. Tell her to blow me away. Please.”

  11

  Behind Nathan, there was a roar of flame, and then a crash as a huge metal beam fell through from above, bringing debris and flames along with it. Nathan felt the gust of it washing over him and, as he looked, he could see it was the supporting structure of one of the wind turbines from the roof—four floors above them.

  Four. Floors.

  It must have fallen as the roof below it had given way and sent it spearing down like a javelin thrown by a giant. It was embedded in the floor now, still mainly upright. And if that had been all, then it might not have been so bad, but it had brought down a huge amount of burning material which was already, even as Nathan watched, eating into furniture, rugs, and bookcases.

  Stryker’s apartment would be an inferno in a minute.

  Nathan stepped into Lucy’s bedroom and clubbed Stryker across the temple with the butt of his gun. Stryker went down like a felled tree. Nathan bent to pick up Stryker’s prone body. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You’re going to save him?” Syd asked incredulously.

  “You can shoot him later. But I’m not leaving him here to burn. For now, let’s go. Did you get the stuff?”

  Syd bent down and picked up a jewelry box.

  Nathan took hold of the unconscious Stryker’s wrist and arm. With a heaving yell, he hefted Stryker’s slim fame onto his shoulders and settled him in a fireman’s lift.

  “Run!” he yelled, and with that, he followed Syd out of the apartment.

  The corridor was nearly all smoke now. Nathan took the deepest breath he could manage and dove into the black. He could just about see the back of Syd’s t-shirt ahead of him and he focused on that as he jogged. Stryker stank of gasoline; his shirt was wet with it. Nathan couldn’t tell if his friend had only been handling the fuel, or if he had doused himself in hopes of being set alight by the fire, but either way, if the flames got anywhere near him, they were both going up like a Roman candle.

  Syd pushed through the stairwell doors and they were out into the relative clarity brought by the emergency lighting. There was a lot less smoke here, but Nathan didn’t stop to breathe and carried straight on to the stairs.

  They got three levels before he needed to rest. He thudded against the wall, breathing like a man who had almost drowned at sea. Syd bent over, as well, hands on her knees. Box still under her arm. “Did… you… get…. the plans?”

  Nathan nodded and watched as huge gobbets of melted plastic from above dripped down from the conflagration. Some of the plastic was burning bright with orange flame. The rest of the building would be alight very soon.

  Nathan hefted Stryker into a more comfortable position on his shoulders and began to thump down the stairs again, as quickly and safely as they could.

  “What happened up there?”

  “I went to get the box from Lucy’s room, and there he was, kneeling next to a gas can. He was about to set himself on fire, I think. Had a Zippo and everything. I kicked the lighter away, and once I got the box, I told him to follow me out, but he wouldn’t. Told me to shoot him. If you hadn’t come in when you did…”

  “We need him for information if nothing else.”

  “Then, can I shoot him?”

  Nathan didn’t answer because Stryker was stirring groggily on his shoulder. Nathan heard him say into his spine, “Let me… die.”

  This time, Syd hit Stryker and he stopped moving.

  Nathan rolled Stryker off the sled and onto the floor of the wolf enclosure building back at the Detroit Zoo. Although Stryker was now awake, bruised severely from the two pistol whippings he’d suffered, he was bound hand and foot by leather strappings Nathan had appropriated from the sleds.

  Stryker was also crying softly, as if he had totally withdrawn into himself and was completely unaware of his surroundings.

  When they’d gotten out of the Masonic Temple, the whole top of the building had been ablaze. There’d been people streaming from the exits, carrying what belongings they could manage. The numbers and the panic had provided Nathan and Syd with all the cover they’d needed to move away from the building amid the general exodus. Nathan had overheard a conversation between two people he’d vaguely recognized as a husband and wife, one of them saying, “First the terrorist attack by the people pretending to be Detroit PD and now this. The building is cursed! I tell you, it’s cursed!”

  So that appeared to be the cover story being spread around by Brant and his cronies, that
it had been terrorists who’d attacked the residents to distract everyone while they kidnapped Lucy and Donie, but failed to take Syd. It was just another level of fake fear that Brant was spreading to keep the people of the outer city dependent and reliant on the Greenhousers.

  Nathan had momentarily considered stopping, dumping Stryker’s unconscious body in the snow, and telling the now ex-residents of the Masonic that they were being played, in exactly the way Stryker had played him, but at the last second he’d stopped himself. The less information on his whereabouts that might get back to Brant, the better.

  The sledding back to the zoo had been as uneventful as their journey to the Masonic, with Stryker lashed to the slats and pulled by Nathan’s team as if he added nothing substantial to the weight of the sled as it skimmed over the snow.

  “Wat I tell you ’bout him, pretty boy? He bad medicine!” Rose looked down at the bound and wholly miserable Stryker.

  “I know, I know,” Nathan said wearily, walking back to close the doors of the barn on the cold of the night.

  Syd unhitched the teams and helped John give them their feed, but not before John looked greedily into the ebony, gold-trimmed jewelry box and nodded appreciatively. “Sold, to the man with the box of gold and trinkets.”

  Nathan tapped John on the shoulder. “And I’ll have my deposit back if you don’t mind.”

  John reached into his pocket and gave Nathan back his wedding ring. Nathan screwed it gratefully back onto his finger and kissed it before joining Rose and Stryker.

  “Why man cry? He feeling remorse? Don’t believe it.”

  “That’s how we found him. He wanted us to let him die. He’d covered himself in gas and was about to set it alight when we found him.”

  “I got matches if you want finish the job,” Rose said with a cackling laugh.

  Nathan cut the bonds around Stryker’s ankles and pulled him to his feet without any resistance. He pushed him without speaking towards the room at the back of the barn that John had appropriated as his sleeping quarters and kitchen. An oil heater was warming the room effectively, with fresh coffee and salmon frying on the camping stove.