Killing Frost (After the Shift Book 2) Read online

  After The Shift

  Freezing Point

  Killing Frost

  Black Ice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  RELAY PUBLISHING EDITION, NOVEMBER 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Relay Publishing Ltd.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United Kingdom by Relay Publishing. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.relaypub.com

  Blurb

  Nathan fights the elements in an epic race south to save his family. But first he must survive the journey…

  A civil war in the one place they thought safe sends Nathan and his friends and family back on the road to face desperate challenges as tornadoes, earthquakes, and bitter cold turn the trip into a perilous nightmare. Nathan is still reeling from the loss of his wife, Cyndi, but with people depending on him to bring them to safety, he has little time to dwell on his feelings. However, a sudden accident shows him how precarious their situation truly is—and even worse, Nathan learns that pneumonia is slowly overtaking him.

  With main roads becoming havens for robbers, the band of travelers crosses into Colorado to find unlikely salvation. An old mining town has been transformed into a prosperous settlement run by the friendly, forward-thinking Larson. Several members of Nathan’s group want to stay and build a future with Larson, but Nathan has misgivings. The people of this settlement seem almost too friendly, and there are an awful lot of children for the town’s size. Nathan works out a deal to get back on the road, but when his own children go missing, he must confront the dark mystery at the heart of the community, and face down a past that is rapidly catching up with him—or die trying.

  Thank You

  Thank you for purchasing ‘Killing Frost’

  (After The Shift Book Two)

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  End of Killing Frost

  About Grace Hamilton

  Sneak Peek Black Ice

  Also By Grace Hamilton

  Want More?

  1

  The plaster covering the wall six inches from Nathan’s ear exploded before he ever heard the shot. Stryker was dragging him down to the floor of the abandoned store when his legs hadn’t even gotten half a chance to throw him down. Everything happened in slow motion, and Nathan’s tired body slowed down the very reactions he needed to save himself.

  Stryker looked around the counter where they were hunkered down, his tortured breath making fast-formed clouds in the freezing air. “Did you see where it came from?”

  “No,” Nathan said, shaking his head and feeling inside his North Face jacket for the SIG-Sauer he wore in a shoulder holster. Never one to want to be armed arbitrarily, Nathan had nevertheless reluctantly agreed with his wife, Cyndi, that he would carry a pistol when he was out on bartering trips with Stryker.

  Two more shots rang out in the cold air. Footsteps ran by the store front and voices Nathan couldn’t make out shouted things that might have been warnings, or orders. It was difficult to tell. Then came silence.

  The trips out from Detroit’s grand Masonic Temple, where Nathan lived with Cyndi, Tony, his ten-year-old asthmatic son, and his now sickly baby, Brandon, had become ever more dangerous over the past few months—loosely, since Cyndi had given birth to Brandon. This time, it was clear enough that the shots fired hadn’t been meant for Nathan or Stryker, but they did indicate that the men could easily get caught up in the fights of rival gangs or those of the city’s so-called security force. “So-called,” Nathan thought bitterly, because the only security they seemed to be interested in was their own.

  Nathan hadn’t yet forgiven Stryker Wilson for selling him the con that Detroit, in reality, was. As the Big Winter had bitten hard, and Nathan had been persuaded against his better judgement to travel the icy landscape between his home in New York State and Michigan, the relief he’d felt at finally reaching his destination had been short-lived. Stryker, the blond-haired Walter Mitty of the Post-Apocalypse, had told Nathan and his family Detroit had been ahead of the curve in every respect when it came to holding out against the horror of the Earth tipping over on its axis (or at least the crust shifting – no one was really sure exactly what had happened) and the Mid-Atlantic effectively becoming the new North Pole. The whole of the eastern seaboard of North America had frozen in a sequence of rapidly worsening winters. Many people had lit off southwest to an uncertain future, while some people had gone to Detroit.

  But nothing had been what it had seemed.

  Stryker hadn’t told them the whole story. Sure, there were some glassed-in areas where the streets were warm and the living a little easier, but nowhere near enough to accommodate the ten thousand or so people who now called the mostly derelict city their home. In the Greenhouse Zone, as Stryker called it, a new elite class of haves was growing, but out on the streets, lawlessness was fomenting among the have-nots.

  In fact, the city, although frozen in physical reality, had the hot, sick feeling of a painful boil that was about to burst.

  The other thing that had made Nathan remain was Cyndi’s pregnancy and her needing to be near even the rudimentary medical facilities Detroit could offer. Brandon was a month old now—a sickly little wretch with whooping cough, who had refused the breast almost from the word go. Cyndi’s pregnancy being affected by the stress of the journey—the lack of adequate food and warmth—had taken its toll. Tony, the ramrod straight eldest, had struggled with his asthma, but they at least had access to some medication. But when Brandon was able to travel, Nathan was determined to travel south, however much Stryker and the City Government wanted him to stay.

  Nathan risked his head to move above the countertop. The street outside lay choked with snow and dead cars. The building opposite, with all its broken windows, showed the apartments inside were uninhabited. This was a dark and eerily silent quarter of the city usually, but it was one he and Stryker had to travel through to get to the market in Trash Town.

  “I think they’ve gone,” Nathan said, risking standing up. Stryker nodded and followed Nathan to where they’d dropped the small crate containing one of the spare Chinese power inverters that the two men were taking to Trash Town to barter with for what goods they could find.

  They’d busted their way into this long-looted store when they’d heard shooting a block or so away, but hadn’t managed to find cover before a ricochet or just a wild shot had tried to add some new ventilation to Nathan’s head.

  Nathan inched towards the doorway that led out to the sidewalk. A slicing wind had begun whipping up ice and flurry, plowing a line along the becalmed vehicles
. There was no shouting, though, and he could no longer hear any gunfire. If the gangs were still in the vicinity, then either one had triumphed or the other had managed to get away. Ammunition was so scarce in the city that gangs really had to have a beef with each other to waste it.

  Nathan stopped to pick up one of the rope handles on the end of the crate they’d been carrying and Stryker took the other. They’d made it ten steps along the icy sidewalk before Nathan realized he still had the pistol in his hand. He put it back in his holster and zipped up the jacket.

  “You’re too trusting, dude,” Stryker said, indicating that Nathan shouldn’t have put his weapon away.

  Nathan looked back at Stryker with eyes as cold as the street. “Ain’t that the truth?”

  Stryker looked down, but answered, “I guess I asked for that.”

  “I guess you did.”

  What Stryker hadn’t told Nathan or Cyndi before they’d begun their journey to Detroit was that the Greenhousers—the ones who lived in relative comfort in the city—offered bonuses and bounties to any of their outer city dwellers who could bring skilled and useful people to the city. Stryker’s messages and promises hadn’t been designed to get Nathan to the city per se, although good practical men were always needed, but to get Cyndi there. Her deep knowledge of prepper culture, tricks, tips, and survival processes made her someone who was invaluable to the Greenhousers and their Mayor Brant.

  That Cyndi had refused to cooperate with the City Government in any way while she was pregnant, and also now that she was dealing with a sickly child, had been only half the reason she was so resistant to Brant’s overtures. She had nearly lost her husband, her son, and her unborn son on the journey there—a journey that had turned out to be a sham—and she had made it very clear to the Greenhousers that she would not be fitting right into their little system like a cog. Not while she couldn’t trust them as far as she could throw them.

  Nathan smiled as he remembered the incandescent rage Cyndi had shown to Brant when the fat, officious little man, all political puff and false bonhomie, had visited them in Stryker’s apartment. Brant had been sent away with a mess of fleas in his ears, and hadn’t looked at all like a man who was used to being talked to like that.

  They had been told by Brant that they would have to reside with Stryker in the Masonic building, however unhappy that made them, or else they would be thrown out of the city—baby or no baby. Nathan’s smile disappeared smartly as he reviewed that particular aspect of the situation, and so he put his head down and marched.

  The walk to Trash Town took another half an hour, but they didn’t get caught up in any more gang fights along the way. The tension between Stryker and Nathan was still pervasive, and on occasion, corrosive. Although Nathan had known Stryker for over half of his life, and had cemented their friendship in school and college, Nathan had taken the traditional route in life by working with his daddy in the family-owned auto shop in Glens Falls, NY., while after college, Stryker had sent himself on an odyssey that had taken him into Hollywood, trucking, and many failed relationships, until he’d finally fetched up in Detroit, trying desperately to make himself more useful than he actually was. He’d shown this side of his character on the very first day Nathan, his family, and their friends had turned up—by blowing up his apartment before they’d even had a chance to get through the doors. Stryker hadn’t placed adequate safety systems around the lashed-up methane still he’d been prototyping, and the place had gone up in a gust of flame and flying soil.

  It had soon become clear to Nathan that Stryker was more mouth than he was trousers; he should have realized it from the start, and was kicking himself for not doing so. Stryker, although fun, had been a waster in youth, a maker of big plans that were never followed through. His life in Detroit was proving to be working out along similar lines. And even though, in normal circumstances, Nathan would have held a soft spot for his friend and might even have felt sorry for the desperation of his situation, he couldn’t now get the bitter taste of deception out of his mouth.

  They reached the corner of the city block and Trash Town was suddenly laid out before them. Groups of people huddled around burning braziers, gouts of black smoke billowing up around them. The streets here were narrow, and the canvas of an old circus tent had been cannibalized to provide a sheltered area that was roped across the street some fifteen feet and held in place by poles. The whole area could be taken down in minutes when a storm blew through the city, and the poles could be shaken to dislodge any buildup of ice or snow that accrued.

  Trash Town was so named because it was where anything looted, made, or grown in the non-Greenhoused areas of the city could be traded for other similar items. The bustle of commerce and community was balanced by a basic paranoia and fear of strangers, and it had taken Nathan some time to get his face well-known around the place and become accepted.

  Armed guards stood by the nearest brazier, warming their hands and their butts. Their shotguns were leveled down as Stryker and Nathan approached with their crate swinging between them. As soon as the head guard saw they were friendlies, though, Nathan and Stryker were waved through into the open maw of Trash Town.

  Inside the tented off area of the street, the air was warmer, and it smelled of cooking and damp bodies. Stalls were set up along one wall where pies and breads were up for barter, another selling water purification filters – the plumbing system in the city having long since broken down – but the snow that blew down from the fierce sky was contaminated with volcanic ash from the super volcano that had erupted on the subarctic coast of Alaska, making flight impossible and sending temperatures even lower. Beyond the filters were dried meats from unidentifiable sources—Nathan still hadn’t built up enough courage to try them. They were managing to grow enough vegetables in Stryker’s rebuilt hydroponic farm, and barter for other food, so it hadn’t been necessary. Those dried meats, after all, could have come from anywhere or anything. Meanwhile, other sellers were openly pushing hydroponically-grown marijuana and other mind-altering substances. Life in the city for the non-Greenhousers was tough and depressing, so a lot of people were self-medicating when they could. Nathan hadn’t partaken himself, but there was a distinct aroma of the drug around the Masonic Temple on occasion. Donie, Dave, and Stryker were all smoking the odd joint when they could get one, and didn’t seem to mind Nathan’s disapproval. He was satisfied that, out of some level of respect for his views, they never did it around the children.

  Once again, Nathan thought that Trash Town’s tent had the feeling of a Wild West outpost from some long-forgotten America. The flickering light from the braziers, the hubbub of conversation, and the rich aroma of food with an underlying atmosphere of mistrust all made Nathan feel like he and Stryker had walked into an old-style saloon. A piano hadn’t exactly stopped playing, and neither had all the eyes turned on them, but some faces were shifting in their direction, and greedy expressions showed in the firelight as their crate swung between them.

  A thin-faced woman with ratty dreads, a torn Barbour jacket, and white tribe markings across the brown cheeks of her face stepped from the crowd. “You bring it, Stryker?”

  Stryker pulled up on his rope handle, causing the Chinese inverter to clunk inside the crate. “Have I ever let you down, Rose?”

  “Let me count de ways,” Rose countered sarcastically as she pointed to a nearby stall. “You stay out de way of Brant’s men?”

  “Of course,” Stryker answered. Rose fixed him with an x-ray stare that even made Nathan shiver. When it appeared that she’d sucked everything out of Stryker’s soul with her eyes, she pointed at the crate next. “Bring it.”

  Stryker had told Nathan that Rose, one of the canniest traders in Trash Town, and its de facto leader, had made it known that she had a stock of seeds recovered from a market garden scavenging mission. She was willing to trade, and between the scarcity of good inverters and Stryker having a couple of spares, it was a good deal to make.

  The cra
te was hefted into the stall and Nathan released the clasps on the lid. The inverter, red and old, looked like it had seen better days.

  “This the best you have?” Rose asked with maximum suspicion in her voice.

  “I checked it over myself; it’s old but it does the job. You won’t find a better one today, or tomorrow.”

  “Who’s your friend?” Rose asked Stryker, ignoring Nathan completely. “I seen ‘im around, but I haven’t yet…had the pleasure.”

  “This is Nathan, Rose. He’s solid. And he knows his stuff. Trust me…”

  Rose almost choked laughing, and in that moment, Nathan decided that he liked her.

  Rose scrambled around on the floor and brought up a wire. “This from the windmill up on roof. Let’s see what your contraption do.”

  Nathan took the wire from her hand and plugged it into the inverter. The power light came on and the dial jumped. “DC your end; AC this end. It’ll work like a dream for you, and if it doesn’t, I’ll come over and fix it for free.”

  Rose gave a salacious smile and squeezed Nathan’s bicep. “That’s not all you can come over and fix if you want, honey.”

  Nathan felt his face reddening. And even in a broken world, with his family’s life in the balance against the hell of the Big Winter and being forced to live in Detroit, a city full of danger and threat around every corner, Nathan was glad he could still feel normal, human emotions—even if it was through a little bit of uncomfortable embarrassment. He’d been tempered and toughened in so many different ways over the last few months that just this simple thing made his heart leap with joy. He smiled at Rose. “If I wasn’t married, with a boy and a baby just born, I would take that as the highest compliment, ma’am. But right now, the only extra seeding I want to do is with your beetroot and bell peppers. If you get my drift?”