Barracks district, even from five hundred yards away, brought Trent's certainty tumbling downhill faster than an idiot child who's found the rubber of a huge truck tire and decided to roll down their sloping front yard in it. Sure, it seems fine at first, maybe even fun, until the fractious little dolt realizes there's cross traffic about this time of day, and hey! this thing has no breaks!
He quickly scanned about for a cover position, spotted a dumpster on the side of the road, and made his way up to its side opposite Barracks. He was still two-hundred yards away, and could see groups of the Pusher's people walking along the northernmost street in the district. It was an appropriately named part of the city, filled with Quonset huts of the sort he'd always seen in older war movies.
"They live like soldiers here?"
"Hardly," said V beside him, peeking around the back side of the dumpster. "They're housed that way, but there's not much structure here." Trent took another look around himself, and snapped his fingers. "What's up, friend?"
"Help me open the lid," Trent said. They quickly flipped one side open, and Trent peered down inside. "Excellent! Okay, I've got a plan."
The bruisers pushed the wheeled dumpster along at V's direction, not questioning his authority. After all, he was unique, so that must've meant something, right? As mindless as many of the Pusher's people were, Trent could have kicked himself for not taking the time to be more thoughtful, more clever, in his approach to Scumville. Yes, these creatures were terrible, deadly and vicious things born of nightmares. But they were hardly geniuses.
V ordered the bruisers to stop by The Glass House and go take a break, to come back in twenty minutes. When they were out of eyesight, V wrapped on the door, and Trent clambered out, staring in awe up at The Glass House. "Um," he managed.
"I know, right?" The Glass House towered over them, its entire frame set into a black stone wall covered in a thin sheet of ice. The house itself was modeled on an old Victorian manor house, a looming structure constructed of angular sections of blackened glass. V took him by the shoulders, looking with piercing intensity into his eyes. "Now listen, Trent. Anyone passing through Glass House has to do so alone. I can't go with you. I can phase through the wall, meet you on the other side, but everyone must make this trip solo."
Trent looked to the porch and its front doors, a grand double door, inlaid with silver scroll work in a language he didn't recognize. He started up the steps, and when he stood before the doors, he felt a tremor of power rush through him from the house, a terrifying throb that sounded in his ears like the low growl of a wolf crouched and ready to strike. He shivered, steeled himself, and pulled open the right door.
A wall of pure black blocked all light just over the threshold. He stepped forward, and his world went dark.
Slowly, like a dimmer switch being adjusted up by mild degrees, the room materialized around him. Trent found himself standing in the middle of a large Skid Row apartment living room, surrounded by filthy mattresses and a coffee table layered in needles and blow. Scrawny, raggedy burn-outs lay on the mattresses, five people all strung out and asleep. The reek of vomit, sweat and urine assaulted his nostrils, pummeling him with great vigor.
Seated in a green leather armchair by an archway leading into a kitchen, Trent found a broad, olive-skinned man with a shaved head, camo muscle shirt and black jeans staring at him. This man had a single wide eye in the center of his forehead, and from his shoulder protruded curved blades of sharpened iron. His bare feet belonged on a horse, cloven hooves gleaming black.
"Welcome, Trenton Jones," said the man, his voice a warbling, watery southern drawl. "Come, find a spot and sit with me."
"Um, no thanks," Trent said, keeping himself calm, level of mind and action.
"You don't remember me? I'm sad," said the creature, barring its teeth in a frown. They had the rotted, blackened display of a chronic meth user. "Not that I'm really all that surprised. I don't look like I did when we met. It's me, Gerald Morov." Trent thought back, and it took him only a moment to recall Morov, his first dealer bust in Narcotics.
"I caught you red handed," Trent said, wagging his finger at the creature. "Me and my partner, we caught you in a buy sting. You went up for three years."
"Yes and no," said Morov, grunting as he stood up out of the chair. "Follow me." He headed into the kitchen, and Trent followed after. In the kitchen, he found that a makeshift meth lab had been set up, Morov leaning back against the fridge to his right. "Of course, if you hadn't taken me right to the precinct, you'd have found my car and the rest of my stash. That little bundle would've put me away for twelve to fifteen, easy. As it was I made parole in eighteen months."
"That's right. I remember that pissed me off, because I knew what kind of menace you were. But," Trent said, pulling his chin, thinking back. "You died, didn't you?"
"Me and five other folk," said Morov, pointing toward the living room. "We all got royally toasted on coke, then I thought it'd be a grand idea to do some cook here. I forgot to open the vents and the fumes killed us all. I managed to get out to the hallway, left those folks to rot. If you'd just been more thorough, checked for my car, they would've lived."
Trent blinked rapidly at him, shaking his head slightly but repeatedly. "No, no, I couldn't have known. I didn't know."
"Sure you did. You knew I lived in Queens, that I was coming down to the Bronx to deal. I moved too much scag to just be backpackin' it, so you should've done the math. But you were just in too much of a rush to make your first impression, be a star. Congrats, detective. Their deaths are on your head."
Trent felt his chest tighten, turning toward the living room as something moved out there. Seconds later, one of the grayish corpses shambled into the doorway, eyes milky white, reaching for him as it moaned wordlessly. He yelped and backpedaled away, reaching back for his gun. He drew it and pulled the trigger, but it didn't fire. The hammer didn't even move. "Not gonna help, Jones. They're already dead, remember," Molov asked snidely, flashing his horrid teeth in a wide smile.
Trent stared at the oncoming victim, soon joined by another, a woman with lank, weed-like hair. His heart cried out for them, these poor wretches whose lives had been cut short. The man who had first appeared in the doorway was now only five feet away, and something sparked in Trent's brain as his eyes fixed on the dried powder on the corpse's upper lip.
"Wait a minute," Trent said shakily. "Wait, no, this isn't my fault." He glowered at Molov, whose smile began to fade. "You were the one dealing that crap, cooking meth in a crowded apartment! I only arrested you in the first place because you were a fucking drug dealer! This is your mess!"
And just like that, the shambling corpses turned, now striding toward Molov. "Hey, guys, it's me," Molov said, smiling nervously. "It's the party man! Come on!" Trent heard something click to his left, spotted a door of black glass creaking open, and dove for it as the shamblers began tearing into Molov.
The door snapped shut behind him, leaving Trent looking out at a wide, concrete chamber with dozens of cheap metal folding chairs arranged in rows before him. Against the far wall were a few tables with doughnuts, coffee tureens, and paper cups and plates. A handful of the seats were occupied by what looked to him like wasteoids, but these ones wore dingy pants and sweatshirts, their eyes not sewn shut. They looked pathetic, bedraggled misfits tossed together in this place, no two sitting too close to their fellows.
The scent of strong, bitter coffee flowed through the air, along with murmurs from the seven creatures seated before him. Only one had a doughnut in hand, yet to be bitten into, the fellow sleepy-eyed, mouth slack. Trent looked to either side and saw that on his left stood a green chalkboard on casters, its chalk tray faded and chipped. On the board was written 'N.A. Meeting'.
"Um, hello?" No immediate response from the gathering, though they were all now finally looking at him. "Uh, I'm Trent," he said.
"Hi, Trent," the seven droned in unity, an eerie spectacle to witness.
"Right. Who are you folks," he asked. The doors at the opposite side of the room opened a few feet, and in strode a tall, red-headed woman in a long green skirt and a floral print blouse. For a wonder, she looked human, from her wide green eyes to her angular nose, to even having normal arms and legs.
"These are the ones, detective," the woman began, "who you promised to get help, then never followed up. I believe you know what happened when they didn't get continued support." The wastrels moaned and groaned, nodding mindlessly with the woman. She spoke in the kind of waspish tones he associated with the handful of social workers who frequently came complaining that he and other officers had been too rough with addicts who were in their caseload.
"Look, I'm sorry," Trent said, and he meant it. "I realize that I wasn't the best about that, but I've only ever got so much time to devote."
"Don't give me that," the woman snapped testily, crossing her arms angrily over her chest. "Your department has more than enough resources to-" she said, at which point Trent cut her off.
"My department," he said, jabbing a finger at her pointedly. "These folks did fall through the cracks, and I am sorry for that. But they weren't my burden alone. You can't pin it all on me." The woman's severe scowl softened, turning into a grin, and she headed back for the doors leading out. She pushed one open and motioned for Trent to go through.
The detective slowly passed by the junkies, who faded away one by one as he looked into their starry eyes. When he got to the door, the woman extended a hand to him. "A pleasure, detective." He shook her hand and passed once more into darkness over the threshold.
The brief moments of nothingness made him nervous and clammy, but soon a yellowish spotlight clicked on overhead, bathing him in a narrow cone of light. Another spotlight thumped on, and ahead of him, perhaps ten yards away, stood Claire in her own light. She wore a plain maroon blouse and Capri jeans, her feet clad in loose sandals, her favorite kind of outfit most days. Her shoulder length chestnut hair framed a rounded face he always thought of as cherubic, even when things had been falling apart between them.
"Claire," he choked out, reaching out of his cone of light for her, instantly pulling his hand back. The darkness between them felt like arctic waters, so frozen that it hurt to even brush against it.
"Trent," she replied, pushing her bangs back from her eyes. "I," she whispered.
"Don't say anything. I know I fucked up," Trent said, perhaps more forcefully than he needed to. Softening his tone, he said, "I'm sorry I ruined what we had, what we were. It was my fault. I own that. But you should go on and build a life for yourself. I want you to be happy again, Claire. That's all I ever wanted." She grabbed her right arm just above the elbow and rubbed awkwardly, casting her eyes down to one side.
"Thank you," she said, and the spotlight over her clicked off. Trent's circle of light expanded several yards, revealing a lone black glass door with silver inlaid script over the knob in English. It read simply, 'Frost'. Trent grasped the knob, turned it, and pushed the door open on the back porch of Glass House, revealing a snow-ladden yard which fronted a similarly blanketed street.
He stepped out into a light winter wind, the door clapping shut behind him. From his right, V said, "Welcome to Frost."