A Hard Rain: Book Two Of The Shift Trilogy

Chapter 2

                                                                          Charlottesville, Virginia

Greater Monticello

December 2012

Fog kissed the tops of the snow-covered trees that hugged Highway 20. Rita Luevano loped as fast as she could whilebeing mindful to plant her feet on the parts of the highway that weren't covered in ice. Strands of her thick black hair escaped from her ponytail and clung to her frozen cheeks. With the temperature falling rapidly, she regretted wearing a light Old Navy hoodie and Lycra running tights. As she ran, Rita could only hear the crunching of her feet upon the freshly fallen snow and the rhythmic pant of her breathing. She looked behind her to see Neko Lemay just a few yards back. Rita grinned inwardly. She had turned forty this past year, but despite having officially hit middle age, Rita was giving her twenty-four-year-old running companion and personal bodyguard a run for her money.

True, Neko was wearing heavy boots and lugging an HK MP5 sub machine gun along with a backup pistol and knife while Rita wore a well-worn pair of running shoes and carried nothing more than a compact Smith and Wesson revolver model 642 holstered in the small of her back, but Neko was in excellent condition. So, being able to even keep up with Neko was a good sign that she wasn't over the hill yet. That being said, it was particularly difficult running on the rapidly deteriorating highway, especially considering that having only one eye reduced her depth perception considerably.

"Come on, chica! You're letting an old woman show you up."

"Whatever, Rev. You try being five-three, lugging a sub machine gun and outrun an Amazon with something to prove."

Rita laughed despite being out of breath. "Always with the excuses, girlfriend. Come on. Let's see you outrun the one-eyed witch of UU."

The spritely redhead was half a foot shorter, but she didn't let that stop her from being one of Monticello's fiercest fighters and the commander of the Thomas Jefferson Martyrs Brigade, Greater Monticello's elite fighting force. Originally from Washington State, Neko was competing in the National Archery Finals in Charlottesville when the Shift hit. Fellow competitor and local resident Ezra Rothstein introduced the visiting archery troupe to Rita's congregation as they fled to Monticello.

The snow was beginning to pick up. They made their way onto the road that led to an unyielding climb up to the estate of Monticello itself, and jogged past the remains of the makeshift barrier hastily erected in the first months after the Shift to protect the fledging community from the hordes of refugees seeking food. A flood of memories rushed just underneath Rita's layer of conscious thought as they passed the defunct barrier.

Rita remembered how scared she was facing off against the Blue Ridge Militia. She hadn't been in so much as a fist fight since her early days of sobriety and that was way back in her early twenties. Who was she to lead these people against an armed militia? She was a Unitarian reverend after all; Unitarians weren't known for opening a can of Whupass. Well, at least back before the Shift, they weren't. The events since then sort of changed the lone surviving Unitarian Universalist Church—UU for short—in several ways.

The event that Rita credited for transforming Monticello, her church as a whole and herself was the seminal battle against the Blue Ridge Militia. When the Blue Ridge Militia attacked her people and broke through the gates of Monticello, it was Neko, Ezra and the archers, who jokingly referred to themselves as the Thomas Jefferson Martyrs Brigade, who stood against them. The archers proved crucial in the defense of Rita's ad hoc community comprised of over-educated (and utterly useless) suburbanites, college students, and migrant farmers. The archers were the only ones who knew how to shoot. They fought the wave of over-zealous militia back and vanquished them in what later became known as the Battle of Monticellan Independence. That battle united the people of Monticello and gave them a sense of identity. But it also came at a steep cost for Rita, for she lost her left eye and a few teeth in that engagement.