After the Shift: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Ski-Doos had been Danny’s gang’s vehicles of choice when they’d met them months ago. Back when fuel had been a little more plentiful, and many people still on the move. It made sense that Danny and his people had answered Brant’s call to come to Detroit. The lure of a slice of the action keeping the outer city fearful and oppressed had made them come here on Ski-Doos, maybe bringing the supply-stuffed Mack with them.

  Perhaps there had been more in the warehouse Freeson hadn’t seen, in fact, and maybe they’d been kept fully fueled for emergencies. Couple that with the crates of weapons they’d taken back there, and it would be an obvious place for Danny to make for.

  If Danny did the obvious.

  That was something Nathan couldn’t be at all sure of.

  Nathan encouraged the dogs on. Not having to steer with his hands made going by sled easier on his arm, but it was still throbbing like hell. His grip was solid in his right hand, but occasionally the fingers on his left would slip off the bar.

  The storm had blown through the city now, mostly leaving virgin snow for him to skim across as the dogs pushed on. The sky was still glowering and angry, of course, but the snowfall, without the gale to energize the flakes, was now just a steady curtain that fell silently around him, truncating the acoustics of the night.

  Before he’d left the Greenhouse to run to where they had stationed the dogs for the getaway that had never needed to happen, Horace had pressed an AK-47 into Nathan’s hands, along with a cluster of taped magazines, and he also slipped a walky-talky into the pocket of Nathan’s anorak.

  Nathan still hadn’t heard Horace speak, but he’d thanked the enormous man all the same and shaken his hand. Rose and her people were still mopping up the last of the cops and security in the Greenhouse, and as none of his people were in a position to go, Nathan had told Cyndi to look after the kids and he would be back as soon as he could.

  Cyndi had kissed him, saying, “Bring Syd back, please. It’s not the way this should end.”

  Nathan had hefted the gun onto his shoulder with a grimace of pain and put the extra magazines into his pocket. “It won’t. I will get Syd back. I promise.”

  The streets down to the river were dark and silent, and the dogs seemed to pick up the atmosphere, running without making any noise at all. Nathan had grown used to their yelps and growls, but now as they skimmed on, the lack of doggy sounds allowed him to listen out for what he could hear above the shooshing of the sleds on the fresh snow.

  The street he was on had started to bend around and run parallel with the ice on the river. Nathan got the clearest view yet of Winsor across the ice—a few fires still burned there, and smoke showed a darker black against the night clouds as it rose up in shimmering columns.

  The street had chain link fencing on both sides and had narrowed to one car’s width. The buildings on Nathan’s right were, like nearly all the building on this side of town, factory units, business offices, and shipping establishments. All of the windows that were intact—and there weren’t many—were dark, and every building, if Danny had gotten there first or had managed to meet up with any of his people, would make for a great place for an ambush. Nathan suddenly felt very exposed, and an easy target on the sled. He whoa’ed the dogs to a halt, the breath from their panting mouths making a foggy cloud around them. He didn’t have time to unhitch them so he just tied a strap from the sled to the fence, and then, keeping himself low as he could with his AK-47 out in front of him, its safety off, he crouch-ran towards the dock. The air stung his cheeks and bit into his neck where it was exposed. His ears burned. He dared not put up his hood, either, as it would obscure too much of his vision, and so ice was forming in the sweat of his hair and across his eyebrows. He felt the skin of his cheek stiffening with it.

  The building where Freeson had followed Danny to was the third bonded warehouse in front of a wide expanse of snow. There was a concrete jetty angled down, spearing into the ice. It must have been used for unloading cargo from boats that couldn’t get right up to the dock, or for launching pilot boats when the river wasn’t frozen over.

  It wasn’t until Nathan was almost upon them that he saw the muddled footprints in the surface of the fresh snowfall. They led him into an alleyway between two of the warehouses. Nathan was no tracker, but he could see that someone was being dragged by another, and that at some point at the end of the alley there had been a scuffle, and as Nathan looked at the churned-up snow, he could also see that dots of blood had fallen alongside the tracks.

  With his shoulder wound from where Cyndi had shot him, there was a very good chance that the blood was Danny’s—and Nathan didn’t want to think about it being Syd’s. Especially as, after the area of scuffle, the evidence of resistance stopped, the tracks only showing two feet digging into the fresh snowfall, dragging two tram lines along.

  Nathan tried to walk in the snow as quietly as he could, but each footstep, however circumspect, sent a ploof of sound out of the alley, over the docking apron and across the river ice.

  Walking as gently as he could, to keep the sounds from his feet to a minimum, he emerged from the alley and started to move along the front wall of the warehouse.

  He reached the blue warehouse door and saw that it was closed. There was a body-shaped indentation in the snow beside it, and a few more dots of blood seeping into the crystals. The snow was disturbed in front of the warehouse door in a wide arc, showing that the door had been opened outwards, recently, and once the body—unconscious, he hoped—of Syd had been dragged inside, the door had been pulled closed.

  Nathan’s heart was taking up residence in his throat as he placed his ear against the wood. Glad that it wasn’t made of metal because it was so cold, he felt his flesh would have stuck to it, but even so, his numb ear was made to burn even more by the surface of the door.

  The rest of the dock was deserted as far as he could see along the buildings. Snow-humped crates, dead machinery, and the rusting ghosts of cranes added to an air of empty desolation that pressed down on Nathan with a heavy anxiety.

  He couldn’t hear any movement within the warehouse—no voices, or any other sounds. The area at the front of the warehouse was dark and deeply shadowed. If there had been any light from the moon or stars, it would have been easily hidden by the clouds moving above, trailing streamers of snow.

  Those flurries were reducing by the second now. Visibly, the air was clearing. The baby-step patter of flakes hitting the snow, already fallen and sculpted by the wind, was lessening, as well. Soon, the air would be clear.

  It was possible that Danny had already been in the warehouse for some time. It was difficult to gauge from the tracks. He could be in there now, holed up, defended, or worse… doing whatever travesty of things he wanted to do to the unconscious Syd.

  There was nothing else for it. Nathan didn’t have time to look for another entrance to the warehouse. This was the door Danny had used, and he was going to have to open it, ready or not.

  He placed a hand on the handle and pushed it down.

  Danny had been waiting on the other side of the door. As the handle came down, the Ski-Doo engine roared to life and the machine gunned forward, smashing open the door and splitting it down the middle as he burst out into the air.

  Nathan had just enough time to dive out of the way as the Ski-Doo launched itself at him. He raised his gun to fire at the machine but saw there were two people seated. Danny up front, driving it forward, and Syd behind him, her head lolling backwards. She was unconscious astride the Ski-Doo, her arms tied around Danny’s waist. The red machine skidded away, bursts of snow and ice forming a cloud behind it and dumping a ton of wet snow where Nathan lay.

  Speeding away, the Ski-Doo churned up the snow like a winter buzz saw and chewed its way down to the ice.

  Nathan knew he only had seconds before there was no way to be able to catch Danny against his huge head start. He got up and ran through the warehouse door, slinging the AK-47 across his back as he moved. Inside, we
ak light came from an oil lantern settled on a packing crate. As Freeson had said, there was another Ski-Doo poking out from under a tarp. Nathan ran to it, glad to no longer be trudging through snow, and threw back the tarp and reached down to the starter cable.

  The handle had been sliced off. Danny had sabotaged anyone’s ability to start the engine.

  Most of the cable was still intact, but the winding spring had taken it right inside the mechanism. Even if he’d had time to get the Ski-Doo’s toolkit from under the saddle and fix the spare emergency pull-cord, he’d still have had to take the housing apart to get the old cable out.

  There was no time to go back to the sled, and even then, the dogs couldn’t match the speed of a Ski-Doo.

  Then Nathan remembered the jetty out front.

  The pain in his bicep was crippling.

  Pulling and heaving the weight of the Ski-Doo across the floor of the warehouse, even if it had been over less than twenty yards, had required an explosion of effort that had all but torn out his lungs. It had also sent warm blood from the bullet wound cascading down the skin inside his shirt.

  The Ski-Doo was a dead weight, but Nathan yanked at the handlebars and the faring. Digging his boots down in the snow to his knees and bending over, and then with an arching back, he turned the machine around until it was facing the iced river from the top of the thirty yards of the jetty’s slope. The incline was gentle, around thirty degrees, but if he got the Ski-Doo going, a clutch-start was not impossible. Insanely hard, yes, but not impossible. He’d tried the same maneuver out on Royal Bluff many years before when a friend’s Ski-Doo had snapped its starter cable and there’d been no tool kit with a spare. Admittedly, there had been more of an incline, and somebody’s life hadn’t hung in the balance if he didn’t get the machine going, but there was a chance here and now, and Nathan felt he had no choice but to take it.

  He let loose the brake and took a last look out over the ice.

  Danny was a black speck in the gloom against the slightly less dark expanse of white ice. Nathan kicked forward and began to push. The incline was just enough for him to build momentum. Soon, his legs were skipping in a blur alongside the Ski-Doo. Fifteen yards from the ice, Nathan Cossacked into the saddle and stamped on the gear lever.

  The engine crunched, juddered, growled, and then burst into throaty life. Before the skis at the front of the machine hit the snow-covered ice, Nathan was driving forward, building up speed and tearing a path over the snow towards the rapidly diminishing speck that was Danny and Syd.

  The snow had stopped falling from the fast-moving sky. There was even a break in the clouds, which allowed the moonlight in—not exactly streaming down because of the obfuscating volcanic dust, but enough to edge the frozen ripples on the ice in silver.

  Nathan stood in the saddle, his knees bent. The snowbound ice covering the river had looked smooth from a distance, but once Nathan was out on it, there were bumps and ridges enough to snap a ski to one side momentarily or tear the handlebars from his grasp. His knees bounced and compensated, but his bicep burned as he gripped the handles, and his broken ribs felt like they were splintering apart.

  But his speed across the ice was tremendous when the surface was without obstacle. The Ski-Doo crested or burst through all manner of small drifts and wind-hollowed sculptures on the snowy ice.

  Ahead, Windsor loomed up smoky and black, this being the closest he’d been to the city since arriving in Detroit. It was all labyrinthine streets and unwelcome buildings. If Danny got there with enough of a head start, Nathan might not be able to catch up with him at all. It suddenly occurred to Nathan, on the occasions he’d observed Windsor in the distance from the roof of the Masonic, far along the waterfront… he had sometimes seen cars moving, their headlights beaming through the dark. Was it possible Danny had made contact with people on the other side of the river? Was he making his way towards them in a desperate attempt to escape Detroit?

  Danny could possibly have laid low for a few days, even without supplies, so he must have known Nathan and the others knew of the warehouse. He’d taken the gamble to get there and make his way across the river precisely because he had something more stable and safe waiting for him on the other side.

  Perhaps—and this was the worst thought of all—Danny might not have anything in the way of collateral to bargain against with the gangs on the other side of the river, and that’s why he had taken Syd… not just as revenge for the impromptu surgery she’d carried out on him back in New York, but because it amused him to take her and trade her for his escape. Perhaps Danny would see some kind of twisted and satisfying irony in the idea.

  Nathan hated himself for even suggesting the idea to himself, but it was all the more plausible, the more he thought about it—otherwise, why would Danny be risking so much to get across to Windsor?

  He turned the throttle all the way around. The engine screamed and protested, but he was determined to squeeze every last scintilla of power out of it that he could.

  Syd didn’t weigh much, but it was enough to slow Danny’s Ski-Doo just so much that Nathan could make progress on him across the ice. The black dot grew in his squinting eyes, moonlight picking out the fleeing gangster and his captive as a fluctuating twist of light. Nathan powered on, arrow-straight. Not going around humps of drifted snow or heaps of ice crunched up by the internal tectonics of frozen water. Several times, Nathan felt the Ski-Doo become airborne, its engine and track released to buzz-scream freely in the air before it crashed down with a hissing thud to thrust on, plowing ahead, blind to the dangers he might be heading towards.

  The shots burst the ice in front of Nathan’s Ski-Doo as the rapidly increasing in size Danny pointed back with his machine pistol and fired one-handed back at his pursuer.

  There was nothing Nathan could do to return fire. Even if he could have controlled his Ski-Doo with his shot arm while he fired with the other, he would be in danger of hitting Syd, who was being used as a human shield.

  Nathan knew he would have to catch Danny and find some way of stopping him without getting shot in the process. The thought of how near impossible that would be tried to suck some of the motivation to continue out of him, but he didn’t let it. Yet, if Nathan died, how would it help Syd? How would it help his family?

  Ever since he’d left Glens Falls, Nathan had had to continually make decisions that worked for some of his party, but not for others.

  Had he always made the right decisions?

  Sending Cyndi and his children into the Greenhouse had not helped others. It had put everyone else in danger. Trusting Stryker, and coming to Detroit in the first place, had put everyone in danger.

  Was following Danny into the night to rescue one person, one girl, the right decision now?

  What would happen to Cyndi if he failed? Was he giving away his two sons’ chances of growing up to even become teenagers by chasing down and rescuing another?

  The image of Syd on top of the Masonic, her feet up on the ledge, her arms spread, ready to swan dive to oblivion, almost filled his vision then. What would happen if he risked all to save her now and, a month or a year down the line, she was in a place so bad again that she’d be wanting to find another roof from which to leap?

  Family First.

  Dad. Not now.

  Family First, son.

  He knew exactly what his daddy would have told him if he’d been there with him now—exactly what the old man would have said. “You’ve done your best, boy, but sometimes you have to accept when you can do no more. You’ve done right by Syd, you know you have—and you’ve tried. But what about Cyndi? Tony? What about the grandson I’ll never meet? Nathan. Son. What about them?”

  The whole sky became a weight under which Nathan felt himself being crushed. More bullets spat back, one crashing into the faring protecting his knees, hitting God knew which piece of metal so that it was sent sparking and zinging up past his ears.

  Another burst, this time chewing up the snow to t
he side of Nathan’s Ski-Doo. An arc of icy crystals sprayed upward. He felt them pattering against his coat. Danny was getting more accurate, better versed in ranging from a hurtling Ski-Doo. Then again, perhaps Danny was getting better acclimatized, or maybe it was because Nathan was gaining and presenting himself as a larger target.

  Whatever the reason, sooner rather than later, Nathan would be an unmissable target, and all this would have been in vain.

  “I’m sorry, Syd. I’m so sorry.”

  Nathan made the decision.

  Family First.

  He let go of the accelerator and the Ski-Doo began to slow to a halt.

  16

  Three weeks later, on the trail west to Wyoming, pushing three teams of dogs through a gentle snowfall rather than a howling blizzard, Nathan looked over his clan, blessed to feel he’d helped keep so many of them alive so far.

  Donie was a natural with the dogs and preferred to go with them, while Dave—still recovering from his ordeal mentally if not physically—sat wrapped in blankets and furs among their supplies on their sled.

  Lucy was in a similar position on Freeson’s sled, wrapped up like a squaw, holding a hunting rifle at the ready in case they were to come across any deer or birds for shooting.

  And then there was Nathan’s own sled, with Cyndi wrapped up with Brandon, the baby seemingly thriving now. He would take milk and formula, and soon there would be solid food for him. Tony was positioned at the prow of the sled in furs and looking forward, as resolute as the figurehead of a galleon.