The clock over Bay 4 flickered from 02:13 PM to 02:14 PM with a heavy mechanical clunk.
It was the daytime mirror of the dead-of-night audit minute.
Marcus Cole threw the air-brake lever forward, venting a sharp hiss of pneumatic steam as Bus #04 rolled through the shattered chain-link gates of Transit Terminal 9.
The depot was a colossal corrugated-steel barn that spanned three city blocks in the industrial heart of District 8.
Under the soot-blackened steel rafters sat forty forty-foot municipal transit buses. Each coach had been modified over the past four hours by off-duty transit mechanics. Heavy quarter-inch steel expanded mesh was welded over every passenger window, reinforced steel angle-iron snow-bumpers were bolted to the chassis, and dual auxiliary hundred-gallon diesel fuel tanks were strapped into the rear luggage bays.
Forty night-shift drivers in heavy navy-blue coats were bustling around the diesel pumps, hauling fuel hoses, checking tire pressures, and loading crates of emergency canned goods.
Standing on an overturned oil drum by the central dispatch booth was Stationmaster Hobbs.
Hobbs was sixty-two years old, with grease under his fingernails and three transit service bars pinned to his lapel. He had driven the overnight loop through the docks for twenty-five years before taking over the terminal yard.
