The elevated concrete ramps of the District 4 Viaduct groaned under fifty tons of armored bus convoy.
Marcus Cole leaned his heavy chest against the steering wheel of Bus #04, his steel-toed boots feathering the air-brake treadle. Behind his rear bumper trailed Coach 18, Coach 22, and two stainless-steel coroner’s panel vans from the Municipal Morgue.
The five-vehicle convoy climbed west into the freezing drizzle, rising sixty feet above the flooded switchyards and rust-eaten coal trestles of the industrial district border.
Below the viaduct deck, thousands of abandoned freight train cars sat submerged up to their wheel axles in black runoff. A thick, bubbling froth of white Clause-Pulp floated on the surface of the stagnant floodwaters, digesting the wooden railroad ties and turning the ballast stone into gray sludge.
Down in the center aisle of Bus #04, bolted to heavy floor-anchors with four ratcheted nylon straps, sat Mobile Register Annex #04-B.
The emerald-and-gold neon sign buzzed with a steady sixty-cycle hum, illuminating the faces of Elena Rostova, Lin Mei, and Dr. Victor Corvo. Chained to the cash drawer by his left wrist, Julian Vance stood behind the rolling checkstand, his hand resting on the keys of the Casio register.
Every time the heavy bus hit a concrete expansion joint, the three-foot steel chain clinked against Julian’s cuff.
