A Hard Rain: Book Two Of The Shift Trilogy

Chapter 21

The wheels made contact with the ground about an hour after they were supposed to, which wasn't a surprise. Airline schedules were more like wishful thinking than reliable timetables. The indicator signal chimed and everyone immediately reached inside their pockets for their phones including Rita herself, who was sandwiched in the middle seat between two corpulent men. It always seemed as though she was assigned to a middle seat these days. If the folks over at MIT weren't so damned nervous and let her do her job instead of summoning her last minute every couple of weeks, she wouldn't have to endure the degrading conditions of modern air flight. The man to her left snored during the hour-long flight and the man to her right kept making eyes at her. It wouldn't be so annoying except that he had no sense of shame.

As the airplane taxied to the gate, one of the flight attendants announced. "Welcome to Baltimore Washington International Airport where the local time is four-thirty-seven. Use of cell phones and personal electronic devices is now permitted; however, please remain buckled in your seats until the captain has turned off the seat belts sign. We appreciate your flying with us on Conglomerate Airlines. We know you have a lot of choices with air carriers..."

"Yeah, right," the man to her right harrumphed. "Two major airlines left and each with different routes."

As annoying as the man was, she had to hand it to him. He was spot on. She powered on her phone, hoping beyond hope that she would be able to drive home and not to the office. No luck. An urgent text message from Helmut. She knew he was going to need her back at the office and sure enough...

"Come to the office ASAP. It is urgent."

"Shit," she cursed under her breath. She grabbed her purse, laptop and overcoat, from the overhead bin and waited while the passengers deplaned languidly down the aisle like sheep being corralled. She managed a quick voice text back to Helmut. "Okay, mi Coriño. I'll be there within an hour."

Laurel, Maryland

January 2013

Rita was getting concerned whether they were going to make it before dusk. They had set off early this morning; however, like everything in this world, it took twice as long as expected. They came across a feral band here and there, but fortunately they weren't hostile. Locals eyed them warily as they passed, brandishing their rifles defensively, but otherwise let them pass unmolested. She saw that many of the tribes, though not all, were distinguished along racial lines, a sad reminder of humanity's propensity to find differences among each other rather than similarities. Living among the allied communities of the Orange Pact where black, white, Hispanic and Asians lived together, racial identity dissolved. Even the Lambs of God fanatics were equal opportunists...so long as you were a devout Protestant variety of Christian. But here, where there was no civilization, the locals tended to fall back on their upbringing and their survival instincts they learned from the streets. Spiritual humanism was nowhere to be found here.

The sun was arcing over to towards the horizon when they finally turned off the highway onto a series of smaller streets that winded around with no apparent logic. Helmut started pedaling faster.

"Come on, guys. We're almost there!" beckoning excitedly like a kid coming home.

The gunny pursued him to ensure Helmut wasn't trying to break free while Rita tried to keep her tires from slipping on the ice patches. Helmut guided them past a Safeway and to the back entrance of an unremarkable office park with grass that sprouted over the snow-covered lawns. The triad of identical poo brown suburban office towers made a delta. At the foot of the lawn was a granite composite headstone identifying the decaying office park as "The Stubb Foundation" whose logo resembled a flower bud with a DNA strand inside it.