GUNPLAY: three gripping suspense stories for thriller lovers by T.J. Brearton

Author:T.J. Brearton [Brearton, T.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Joffe Books Thrillers, Mystery, Suspense Short Stories
Published: 2015-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

THE END

CITY OF TWINS

Adriane had to be alert. Seven pounds of gold was not a load to bear lightly, and she had never been to East Detroit before. Flying over the Great Lakes had been nerve-wracking, to say the least, because each mile drew her closer to a huge unknown.

East Detroit had the unfortunate nickname “Dead City.” The water supply was so acid that people said it could eat through metal, and if there had still been crime statistics they wouldn’t have been pretty.

Now, that was all supposed to have changed, but Adriane remained skeptical.

The first thing she noticed was the mushrooms. Mycelium had been introduced in 55 as a way of eating up the toxic chemicals in the water and the abandoned homes of the dying city. Asbestos, lead, phosphorus; the place was filled with a who’s who of nasty chemicals. The fungi had become its primary residents and the city a giant science experiment. That had been almost twenty years ago.

There was green, too. The living roofs were flourishing. She piloted the gyrocopter towards a neighborhood of three and four-story buildings. Half were still in disrepair, others bloomed with solar-power systems; black tubes crisscrossing through plumages of green and yellow ochre. A trio of people working one of the roof systems looked up and shielded their eyes as they watched Adriane bring the copter down.

She landed in a street of cracked asphalt. The fungi poked up from every place it could. Stepping out of the copter, her boots squished into a carpet of morels. Right away, a blond man trotted over to her. The blades were winding down, and Adriane ducked away from the aircraft and headed over to him.

He smiled and held out his hand, “Adriane Roche?”

“That’s me.” She returned his smile but she felt fake. Even with the copter on the ground, the seven pounds of gold felt heavy. She slipped the copter ignition key into a small pack she always carried, and then slid her shoulders into the straps.

“Heath Pembroke,” he said. “Welcome to East Detroit.” His handshake was firm, his body springy and lithe. He seemed to embody the kind of new, clean energy that was supposedly revivifying the Dead City. It was like he’d been created in a laboratory.

Adriane found herself foolishly self-conscious of her own weight, the few extra pounds she felt she carried. Forty was a tough age, no matter the advances in diet and health that had been made. Her hair was frizzed out from the helmet she’d been wearing. She pawed at it. The jumpsuit beneath her windbreaker was wrinkled and a bit dirty. Some days, she rued her life in the sky. Others, she was glad if she never touched the ground.

She glanced down at the spongy copse of mushrooms she was standing in, and found new footing just nearby, on a slab of asphalt which was mostly intact. For just a second, she thought she saw something that looked like a pair of fingers poking out a crack in the busted road.

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