A Hard Rain: Book Two Of The Shift Trilogy

Chapter 11

Fredericksburg, Virginia

Fredericksburg Union

January 2013

Chris had visited Fredericksburg on a number of occasions since the close of the Obsidian War. On the heels of the devastating defeat at the hands of Rochelle, Monticello and Culpeper at the end of the war, the remaining Obsidian Corp security specialists limped home to find they were no longer in charge. While they were off trying to amass more territory, the peasants in Fredericksburg, who had been treated rather poorly under Obsidian Corp., organized into a union led by Dave Richardson, a one-time student radical who later became a distributor for a pharmaceutical company. The Fredericksburg Union, led by Dave Richardson, joined the Orange Pact shortly thereafter. Chris had come over the past few years to aid the Fredericksburg Union in hunting down bandit groups who conducted hit and run attacks from their lairs in Woodbridge and Dale City.

Upon arriving into town, Dave Richardson greeted Chris, Rita and the bike mounted cavalry and led them through the old, once scenic, downtown. Fredericksburg was the absolute end of civilization or the absolute beginning, depending from where one was coming. Being on the eastern edge with the wilderness at their backs, the town's infrastructure took a backseat to maintaining some semblance of order, an extraordinarily thin mist of order at that. For instance, each home and business had to provide its own electricity. Even in the middle of town, it was dark at night unlike more settled towns like Orange or Culpeper. The port, where the large seafaring vessels were anchored on the Potomac River, was located fifteen miles east of town at Fairview Beach, while in Fredericksburg proper, a number of smaller fishing boats were anchored in the middle of town on the Rappahannock. Even in the dead of winter, Chris could smell the haul of dredged oysters and the catch of crabs co-mingling with horse dung and diesel.

Chris remembered going to visit the historic downtown in the real world. Back then, the streets were lined with antique and souvenir stores along with coffeehouses and bistros. Walking down the frozen cobblestone streets at night, they bore only a passing resemblance to the innocent storefronts they had once been. It had devolved since then, now pregnant with the trappings of a rowdy port city, underscored the seedy caricature of itself. The coffeehouse and gelato store where he once enjoyed an affogato had become a brothel, so too had the souvenir and antique store across the street. In fact, as Chris looked around, he realized he, his cavalry and the collection of sailors, fishermen and merchants were almost outnumbered by hookers walking out from the brothels to greet the men. Although it was below freezing, women, some tragically little older than girls, came outside to proposition his randy cavalry company.

Some of the prostitutes were dressed scantily, shivering in the cold, but some of the others were dressed rather prim for prostitutes. In fact, they seemed out of place in this world as several were dressed in business skirts and jackets complete with heels, briefcases and pantyhose, albeit torn and soiled. The brothels understood the post-Shift male psyche, the desire for more than just easy sex. A fair number of survivors had worked in the city and were accustomed to seeing beautiful women dressed in professional attire. Seeing women wearing clothing raided from Talbots brought them back to the world that once was even if momentarily.

"Howdy, big boy. Come on in. It's warm inside," a woman catcalled in his general direction.

Some of the young men in his cavalry stopped to make small talk with the girls. Men, they were hardly that. Most were no older than eighteen, and they were more animal than human in the presence of freezing women offering to give various parts of their anatomy a test ride. Their libido didn't allow them to appreciate the tragedy of fortune of the pathetic scene before them. Hell, despite his own moral compunctions, Chris noticed his other brain was waking up blithely unaware of how horrible it really was. Men really are dogs. It made him that much more fearful for his girl Rhiannon and the world she was going to grow up in.