After the Shift: The Complete Series Page 6

  “We need to get out, man. Get somewhere warmer. Safer. If these guys will come killing for a bag of groceries and a box of bullets, how they gonna respond to us fighting them back like this?”

  Nathan’s fists clenched. Free’s logic was sound, but to leave… to take his family on the road?

  “Maybe he’s right.”

  “He’s not.”

  Cyndi sat up in the bed and turned on the bedside light. They’d both lain there in silence for an hour as the storm boomed on outside, rattling the windows, piling snow up the window panes, and whistling around the eaves.

  They’d both known before they’d gotten into bed that their chances of sleeping were less than zero, but they’d silently agreed to try anyway. With the storm still blowing, they were safe from the scavengers for now, and so they needed to rest. But Free’s intervention had thrown Nathan hard, and he could tell that it had resonated with Cyndi, too.

  “Think about it, Nate. Come on. There are people outside willing to kill us for the little that we have. At least if we were on the road, we wouldn’t be such sitting ducks.”

  Nathan sat up alongside her, running his fingers through his hair and then thumping his temples with the heels of his hands as he tried to come to terms with the situation. “Cyndi, where would we go? Tony’s asthma means we need to be near somewhere we can get medication. You’re pregnant, baby, and we need to be near a doctor. I know Albany’s the nearest now, but at least we know where a doctor is. Tell me—where should we go that’s not going to be overrun with scavengers, or where the infrastructure is there to support us and our family!”

  She met his eyes. “Stryker.”

  The mention of Nathan’s old school friend had him blinking. It was a name out of left field that he hadn’t considered for an age.

  “He was always going on about how Detroit was doing well in the cold winters. Even before the shifted poles. You know he did. You kept telling me how his emails were just so boring, going on about the subject. Well, maybe… maybe Detroit is an option.”

  Stryker had turned from being a solid buddy in high school to an itinerant trucker, drifter, actor, and stuntman—never settling anywhere for long until he’d wound up in Detroit ten years ago. It had always been one of Nathan’s great regrets, that he’d never helped him with whatever mess had made him drop out of school and run as fast as he could from Glens Falls, so it had been a huge relief when the man had gotten back in touch with tales of a new life, a new relationship, and a sense that Detroit had streets that were, if not paved with gold, certainly filled with a golden hope for Stryker’s future.

  He’d gotten himself involved with some construction company that had been working with the city to future-proof the city against the worsening winters that were rolling across North America, even before the catastrophic changes in the Earth’s rotation and axis had hit. There was still no sense from anyone what had caused the shift, but this was one city that had been preparing for anything, so that at least Detroit sounded now to be somewhere worth considering. And it was near enough to New York State that it be possible to get there, and might offer some refuge.

  Nathan wasn’t particularly surprised he hadn’t considered the notion before, even as much as it made sense now that Cyndi brought it up. His ties to his daddy, and his daddy’s business and the home in which he’d grown up, were as strong as ever. But sometimes there was a time when logic had to trump emotions…

  And Nathan was about to relay that thought to Cyndi when there was a furious banging at the bedroom door, and Freeson shouting as he pounded his fist on the wood.

  “Nate! Cyndi! It’s Tony! Come now!”

  5

  On the floor of the family room, Tony gasped for breath in Cyndi’s arms, his body shaking and his chest wracked with jagged gulps for air. A wheeze colder than the air blowing in through the open door from the white valley beyond iced Nathan’s heart into a stilled chunk of frozen blood. Nathan kicked the door shut and paced.

  This was the worst asthma attack Nathan had seen for ages in his son, and because he could do nothing to help as Cyndi tried to get Tony to stop panicking enough to accept the inhaler to his blue lips, he rounded on what he saw as the cause of the attack.

  “Get that damn dog out of here!” Nathan all but screamed at Syd, who had been woken by the commotion and come down from the spare bedroom with Saber to see what all the fuss was about.

  Saber stood her ground next to her mistress, her head cocked with concern for the wheezing boy, eyes glittering in the dying firelight. Syd ran her fingers through the fur over the dog’s thick neck.

  “How do you know it was Saber?”

  “Because Tony was all over her all night!”

  “In that case, don’t you think it would have happened sooner?”

  Nathan wasn’t in the mood for logic. “Get that dog out of here.” His eyes flicked to the Winchester propped up in the corner and he stalked towards it. Syd followed his gaze and the threat.

  “You won’t shoot the people who attacked your home, but you’ll shoot my dog? Mister, you’ve got your priorities the wrong way around!”

  The wheeze from his son burned in his ears like coals from the fire. Nathan’s head was a rage of fear for his son and a wild cast to find something to pin the blame on. The dog was the obvious perpetrator of his son’s condition. He took two steps towards the Winchester, but was surprised by two things before he made a third. One was Freeson putting his hand on his shirt, gripping it and stopping his momentum, saying, “Concentrate on your son, man, and we’ll fix everything else when he’s okay.” The other was Tony’s voice coming out from between wrenching breaths. “Dad… Dad…”

  Tony’s voice was cut off as Cyndi pushed the inhaler to his lips and got him to suck in a dose of Salbutamol.

  . Nathan bored holes through Freeson’s body, but the mechanic held his position.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” Nathan spat at the mechanic, and with that he turned back to his son. Tony was taking another suck on the inhaler but at the same time was reaching out both his hands towards his father.

  Nathan stepped across the room, eyeing Syd and the dog with full-on contempt as he knelt by his son, taking his hands in his own, swallowing them up in his palms. Tony’s hands were frozen, the little fingers feeling as brittle as icicles. The boy’s eyes were big and full of pleading.

  “Dad… Dad… it wasn’t Saber… please…”

  Cyndi stroked her son’s hair as his breathing started to become a little freer.

  “Don’t speak, son, just try to relax…”

  “No… Dad… please…”

  A fit of coughing broke the boy’s face into a hollow, red-cheeked grimace of pain and bulging eyes, spittle flecking at the corners of his mouth.

  Nathan all but got up again, ready to deck Freeson and throw the girl and the dog out into the night, but the boy shook his chill hands free of Nathan’s palms and held on to his wrists. His eyes implored Nathan to stay while his chest expanded and deflated with internal agonies. Tony had no words, but he was shaking his head.

  As Tony’s breath drained of panic, he pulled Nathan closer and hissed up into his ear, “It… it… wasn’t the dog… I went outside… without… without my coat or… scarf over my mouth… stupid… I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry…”

  The words hit Nathan like a felled tree. Since the Big Winter, Cyndi had impressed on the boy that breathing in the cold air without a scarf over his chin and lips would increase his chances of an attack. Winters had been worsening across the eastern seaboard for some time before the catastrophic and unexplained shift in polar locations had plunged America and Europe into a new Ice Age. To hear that his boy had gone outside without any protection was difficult to absorb, almost as difficult as the regret he was feeling now for blaming anyone and everyone without any evidence.

  Freeson put a hand on Nathan’s shoulder and squeezed. Syd’s footsteps thumped up the stairs, calling Saber to follow her. The door sl
amming upstairs shook the house like the storm had.

  “I’m… sorry… Dad…”

  Tony pulled Nathan in so that he was caught in a hug between his mother and his father.

  Nathan put his boy to bed when the attack had subsided and his own anger had dissipated. Conscious of not wanting to interrogate the boy too hard, he’d nevertheless been concerned that Tony had tried to leave the house. As the boy lay back on the bed, Nathan had stroked his hair and asked, “Tony, you know if you do stuff like that, you’re going to drive me and your mom crazy, yes?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I read in Grampa’s ’stronomy book today how the stars used to look, before the Big Winter.”

  Nathan immediately thought to put his dad’s library up into the attic space, and regretted it a moment later. You don’t fix a problem by hiding it.

  “There’ll be a hundred chances to see the stars when the world comes to its senses and summer comes.”

  “What if there isn’t a next summer, Dad?” the boy asked earnestly. “The world’s on its side now—that’s why the stars moved. You know we have hundreds more stars in the sky now—thousands more even—all up from the southern hemisphere. Before I was born, I’d have had to go to Oz-stralia to see them.”

  Nathan smiled. Tony was so bright and excitable, and his attitude infectious. He couldn’t help joining in.

  “Well, think of how much cheaper it is to see those Oz-stralian stars now, huh? The world falling over has saved me a fortune.”

  Tony giggled. “When I saw the storm was over and the sky was nearly clear, I wanted to go see what they looked like. The dust in the sky usually makes it impossible to see anything clearly. I was so excited, I forgot my coat and scarf.”

  Tony was old enough now to be reasoned out of a position rather than have it addressed with punitive action. And besides that, Nathan found it very difficult to be angry with the boy for very long. He was a kid who could drive you crazy and melt your heart at the same time.

  “Just… don’t do it again, okay?”

  Tony nodded. “But can we take Gramps’ telescope out one night? Please?”

  “Sure. But only if you go to sleep now.”

  With little boy energy, Tony immediately rolled over, closed his eyes, and, pulling the blanket up around his ears, began to pretend snore. Nathan smiled and kissed his son in response, heading back downstairs and wondering what he’d done right to be so blessed.

  Tony had taken so much in stride, even with the changes in the world—kids were good at that—but Nathan knew the strain of not seeing his friends, most of whom had moved away, and not going to school, having the daily grind of the cold… well, it had all been transferred into an inquisitiveness to understand that might put his son in danger.

  Might? Nathan had shaken his head at the thought as he’d rejoined the others. There was no might about it.

  “It was the door slamming back in the breeze that woke me up,” explained Freeson now that Syd had retreated to the guest room with Saber, but he, Cyndi, and now Nathan realized they were too wired to sleep.

  They sat by the fire, rebuilt with fresh logs. Cyndi huddled on the sofa and Freeson rubbed at the toes of his healing foot. Free’s face wasn’t difficult to read in the firelight. His hooded eyes and tight mouth were set like concrete in his grizzled features. “I thought maybe the Ski-Doo assholes had come back. I looked out the window and saw Tony stumbling back in. Guess he’d already started his attack.”

  “Thank you for calling us,” Cyndi said.

  Nathan was still smarting because he’d gotten it all so wrong with Syd, Saber, and Tony.

  The room was warm, the storm over, and yet Nathan didn’t feel like resting. There was no point in going into work tomorrow, not with the scavengers still in the vicinity and perhaps looking for a rematch. And then there was Syd—what should they do about Syd?

  After she’d said she was going to leave with the dog in the morning, and Freeson’s left-field bombshell about also wanting to leave had exploded.

  Freeson was an odd fish at the best of times, but you didn’t have to look at him long to know there was more below the surface than you might be comfortable asking about.

  Freeson had been edgy and on a hair trigger since the crash that had killed his wife two years earlier. Marie, Freeson’s wife, had been driving their renovated 1968 Dodge Charger on a trip they were taking up to Silver Bay on Lake George. Marie’s sister, Grace, lived there with Tom, her oncologist husband, in a house that could have swallowed up five of Nathan’s and still left room for Freeson’s apartment. Marie had misjudged a bend in the icy conditions and T-boned the car into a knot of trees on Lake Shore Drive. Freeson had been thrown clear, snapping his hip in the process. Marie had been killed outright.

  The tragedy had been compounded by Free’s guilt over feeling like he should have been driving, given the weather, but had made Marie get behind the wheel instead.

  He hadn’t wanted to go and be made to feel “inadequate” by Grace and Tom’s moneyed success and high-roller lifestyle. He hadn’t seen why he should drive himself towards his own misery. Marie, a patient and uncomplicated perfume counter worker, had just agreed, knowing full well that Freeson would be calm enough by the time they got to Silver Bay. The irony that it had been Marie who had driven Freeson to his misery was not lost on him.

  All he’d been left with was a limp, an insular aspect that bordered on the stand-offish, and an edgy, nervous, quick-to-anger temperament that made him sleep light and wear his regrets like a mask when he was awake. He was also prone to making snap decisions, flying off the handle, and generally being an ornery old goat thirty years before he should have been.

  Nathan knew he had to tread carefully with Free. So he’d tried gently persuading the mechanic to change his mind, but Freeson was set. Everything was conspiring to make Freeson want to leave, and possibly having Syd tag along “in a totally non-creepy way, she’s young enough to be my daughter”—and a big-ass dog to boot—seemed like a good enough reason to head for warmer climes. Syd, once she’d been satisfied by Cyndi of Free’s honorable intentions, hadn’t been against the idea. And the way Syd had dived into the cab of the Dodge with only a few sniffs from Saber told Nathan she made friends easily enough, as long as that dog approved.

  Perhaps, now much later, with the scavengers repulsed and Tony’s asthma attack over, Nathan would be able to talk Freeson into staying. He slid onto the sofa next to Cyndi and she snaked an arm behind him and snuggled into his chest. “You still set on going, Free?” he asked.

  Freeson nodded. “No offense, Nate, but it’s time. I’m not cut out for this. Those guys will be back.”

  Trying to keep the irritation out of his voice, Nate replied, “And you’d be okay about leaving us to it?”

  Nathan immediately regretted playing the emotional blackmail card. Freeson had done right by him in staying this long when business had dwindled so much in the Big Winter.

  “You could always come, too.”

  “We don’t want to.”

  “We?” Cyndi lifted her head and fixed Nathan with a hard stare.

  “Okay, I know I said it was worth thinking about… but… what with everything, and how Tony reacted to the cold tonight… I realize I don’t want to go. I don’t want to risk him, you, or give up on everything here. Our home. My business.”

  Freeson shook his head. “Man. What business? When was the last time we got a call to fix something? Pull somebody out of a snowdrift, sure, but to fix something? People don’t fix their cars anymore; they just go and dig a new one out of the snow!”

  Nathan lowered his gaze to the fire.

  “You know the town is dying, man. We stick around, we’re going to die, too.”

  Nathan could hear the lucidity in the argument, but he still fought against it. “We’ve got food enough for two more winters here. We’ve got guns, and if we don’t use the truck much, we have gas.”

  “And in Detroit, we’d have safety in numb
ers, and friends,” Cyndi reminded Nathan unhelpfully.

  Freeson’s eyes centered on Nathan’s. “Detroit?”

  Cyndi explained about Stryker and the work the Motor City’s government had been doing to fortify the city against the worsening winters. Freeson’s face lit up for the first time all night and he sprang up and across the room and lifted a bottle of whiskey from the dresser. With a sense of celebration, he poured himself a glass, drank from it, and swallowed it down before it occurred to him that it wasn’t his whiskey he was drinking. “Sorry, man,” he said sheepishly.

  Nathan shook his head. “It’s okay. Pour me one while you’re at it.”

  Freeson got two more glasses down and began to unscrew the cap on the bottle once again.

  Cyndi got up from the sofa, the sudden lack of weight and warmth against Nathan’s chest making him feel momentarily sad. That tactile closeness he felt with his wife was one of his greatest pleasures. She was never one who shied away from public displays of affection, and he was all the more grateful for it.

  “No thank you, Free,” Cyndi said as a shiver of her absence passed across Nathan’s chest. “I’m gonna hit the hay. I’ll check on the kids before I turn in. You two talk.”

  “Kids?” Nathan and Freeson said almost together.

  “Yeah, kids. You don’t think Syd’s as old as she makes herself out to be, do you?”

  “I…” Nathan began.

  “Ummmm…” Freeson finished.

  “If she’s older than fifteen, I’ll eat both your hats, boys. She’s a kid acting and dressing older. I did it myself when I was the same age. That’s a teenage girl for you.”

  As Nathan thought about it, he couldn’t believe he’d missed it. Cyndi was right. He’d been so taken in by the bold, hard-nosed survivor with the shoot first and ask questions later attitude, and the steely spine, that he had barely considered her age. She’d told him nineteen and he’d accepted it without question.