The double glass doors of Starlight Mart Number 04 banged wide against the brick facade.
Footsteps pounded across the rain-slicked asphalt of Old Ferry Road. Out of the store’s warm emerald glow came fifty people, their work coats flapping in the wet wind, their flashlights cutting bright yellow cones through the gray harbor fog.
Leading the charge was eighteen-year-old Sammy Chen.
He was running at a dead sprint. In his right hand, he clutched a heavy three-cell Maglite like a club.
In his left was a fresh carton of receipt rolls and a yellow grease pencil. Behind him ran Stationmaster Hobbs, swinging his brass railroad lantern, followed by Dr. Beatrice Hahn, Nurse Patel, transit driver Rosa Delgado, and two dozen relief clerks in blue aprons.
“Julian!” Sammy yelled, his breath tearing in his throat as his sneakers skidded across the broken curb. “We’re with you!”
“Stationmaster Hobbs got forty people off the backup bus! We’ve got pipe wrenches, road flares, and the crowbars from Aisle Three!”
Stationmaster Hobbs reached the edge of the chasm, his weathered face dark under his conductor’s cap. “We aren’t letting you go into that pit by yourselves, son. Local Number Four doesn’t leave its shop steward without backup. An injury to one is an injury to all.”
