A Hard Rain: Book Two Of The Shift Trilogy

Chapter 16

"Why do you insist on calling me at these hours?"

"I do not know. Because I get worried."

Rita was trying to catch up on her work. She was cozy, curled up with a laptop on the couch, reading an article on p-branes when the phone rang. She never got away from him.

"Worried? Worried about what?"

"The universe. What if it keeps expanding? What if there is not enough rest mass to stop the expansion and it just keeps spreading out until the force gravity becomes meaningless, the laws of physics break down and the whole entire universe dies a slow cold death where the stars die and nothing is left but the mist of what was once matter? Did you know that the rate of expansion is increasing?"

"You're kidding me, right? You called me at one in the morning because you're worried the universe keeps expanding?" Rita scratched her jaw and reigned in any angry comments. She knew she had to be patient with Jamil.

"But I knew you were awake."

"Really. How did you know that?"

"She told me you were still up."

"Who?"

"Gaia, silly."

Linthicum Heights, Maryland

January 2013

The row of mid-twentieth century aluminum siding and brick homes which lined the middle class neighborhood of Linthicum Heights looked ominously serene. The lawns had reverted to their natural state with the grass having grown several feet over the snow patches; there were signs of homes broken into as well. But the houses on residential street still stood, which surprised Rita. Looking at the map, they were close to BWI Airport. From her experience in Charlottesville and from eyewitness accounts elsewhere, she knew that most airports had been turned into infernos when the Shift hit. Planes on approach and taking off instantly lost all power, becoming falling bricks filled with jet fuel. Apparently, this neighborhood lucked out, not that it helped the former residents of this once quaint neighborhood.

In the fog of the melee, while mortars and machine gun fire rocked all around them, their mission commander Captain Chris Jung lost control of his bike. He flipped over and landed head first onto the asphalt. Unfortunately, Chris wasn't wearing his helmet. Lieutenant Baraka promptly took command. They hurriedly stowed his bike in a jumble of trash by the side of the road, dumped the gear from the Burley Bee child trailer, and stuffed the rather bulky frame of Chris into the carrier that was originally designed to carry only two small kids. Having been reinforced to carry crates of food, ammo and medicine, the Burley Bee trailer was more versatile than she figured. She had to admit, she laughed when she first saw the Vicious Rabbits with their bike-mounted cavalry and the child trailers during the Obsidian War. But after Neko, Juan and Ezra saw how the bicycle mounted cavalry put the child trailers into action and how effective the cavalry was in an urban environment, the Monticellans tried to replicate what the Vicious Rabbits had done with their own cavalry, though they still preferred horses over bikes.

While trying to flee the scene, mortar fire threw the cavalry into disarray while ferals scurried about, some peeling out in old vehicles, others on beat up bicycles, everyone else running in all directions. None of them paid any attention to the small party of strangers. Rita had assumed the mortars were coming from the Abercrombies and that the ferals were unfortunate souls caught up in the crossfire between two foreign powers.