by John Barnes
“That seems kind of cold about a guy who’s dead.”
“Yeah. I’m not sure I wanted to say that, myself. Let’s get into that steak salad you said was going to curl my toes.”
“Only way I ever get to hear you make noises like that.”
“Dirty old man.”
The banter was forced, awkward, sounded silly to them both, but it was better than what they had been talking about, and almost ten years of Monday dinners together had at least given them a reliable script for avoiding awkward, emotionally difficult moments. Still, as James sliced the steak into thin strips, he seemed to feel his thumb pressing the handle more than usual, and looked at it with a strange fond tenderness. Seeing that, Leslie began a long, pointless story about someone trying to pick her up in Dell’s Brew, and James supplied ten times the commentary that seemed necessary.
2 DAYS LATER. UNIONTOWN, KENTUCKY CROSSING. 2:50 AM CST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025.
In the wee hours in Uniontown, the whoosh of the dark black river drowned out any other sound. The narrow streets—bent, tangled, and truncated by the town’s being pinned between the river and the mountains—showed no light; Uniontowners had learned to assume there were watchers across the river.
Debbie Mensche followed her guide for an hour along the trail downstream, until, at one bend, he stopped, let her catch up, and touched her elbow.
The shore-side edge of the triangular rock was about chest high to them; they climbed up onto it and crept a few feet forward on their bellies to look over the edge. Beyond the fast, noisy riffles in the river, the end of the dam reached toward them. Her guide yipped like a coyote; on the other side, at the tip of the dam, a man stood and waved his arms, twice, once, then three times, and finally once again.
With steps nailed and tied on to form a ladder, climbing into the big oak wasn’t difficult, even in the dark. The guide tugged on the line that led away across the river, and received an answering tug. He fitted the metal logging helmet over her head and fastened the chin strap; helped her into the harness; and rigged her to the overhead pulley. “Just let your legs trail, and keep them close together. They’ll catch you by the legs and guide you in. But even if you lose your grip and come in upside down and flailing, the guys on the other end know what to do, so try to remember you’re safe, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“Anything at all before you go?”
“No, nothing. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Come back sometime when we can show you our little town. Pack on good?”
“Yeah.”
“Harness is good,” he said, rechecking. “All right. Grab the handles, walk to the edge, and lift your feet up high. Stretch out again as soon as you clear the platform.”
Debbie walked forward to the platform edge; she could see a path had been cut through the branches, and beyond she could see the river, the dam, and the opposite shore. She took a good grip on the handles and bent her knees; at first she was pulling the line down, then pulling it tight, and finally her feet came up, leaving the edge. The forward lurch startled her, but she remembered to extend her legs and then she was…
Flying, she thought. Like a dream of being a bird. She swooped out through the opening in the tree, and the slope fell away below her; she was gliding down toward the riffles below, looking around at the vast dark river spanning the horizons, the thundering pale confusion where the Wabash poured into the Ohio, and the tree-covered hills.
The dam swooped up under her feet. A man ran with his arms around her calves for about twenty yards, soaking up her momentum, letting her weight settle onto him until he had brought her feet down to the dam. She felt a twinge of regret that the ride had not been longer.
She shook the man’s hand; talking seemed like an unnecessary risk, but she wanted him to know she was grateful.
The concrete of the path along the top of the dam gave way to the soft, damp dirt of the trail; she settled into the business of covering distance before sunrise.
THE SECOND NIGHT AFTER. OLYMPIA, NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 11:30 PM PST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025.
Allie, what were you thinking? Allison Sok Banh wished she’d had one good friend to ask her that sometime in the last few months, before she’d decided that running the Provisional Constitutional Government by combining the Chief of Staff and First Lady duties would be a good move. God, third straight night I’ll be up past midnight. And then I can pretend to sleep on a steam train all the way to Pueblo for the next few days. Graham, her husband and the president—God I wish those were three people instead of one—was safely in bed, leaving the detail work to her. And didn’t I always want the detail work, anyway? Wasn’t that where I got my success?
Also, traditionally, where the devil lives.
“You look tired.” Darcage stood before her, impeccably groomed as always.
“I am tired. How the hell did you get past security this time?”
“That would be telling.” He did have a warm smile; probably sold shit-loads of used cars, multilevel marketing vitamins, or Jesus before Daybreak. “You look like you can barely keep your eyelids up; you must feel your whole body is made out of warm, soft lead.” His hands were so nice on her neck. “You’re just a tired staffer, just a tired bureaucrat, just a tired ambitious person, just a tired wife, that’s all. Or is it all of those and more? Look at you, your face looks like it’s running down your skull into your neck.”
“You have a way with a compliment,” she said, leaning forward to let him work the knots out.
“‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’” Darcage said. “Man in general, man in particular, why so much stress? Couldn’t you at least find a species that would accept your hard work and your gift of yourself, and enjoy it, and not complain that it wasn’t what they wanted or that you still haven’t done enough? Consider how much Daybreak does for those of us in the tribes; I don’t think we could exist without it. Imagine how useful the tribes could be—”
She sat back. “Good try!” Angrily, she pushed his hands away from her neck, and shook her head to clear it. Maybe tonight she’d just call security and let them have Darcage; this wasn’t working out as she’d hoped it would.
She felt his hands back on her neck again, gripped them to stop him. If she screamed now he’d never get away, but did she want to? She was so—
“Tired, aren’t you? We don’t want you to do one bit more of work. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could work together? After all, we want to work with you, and you want to work with us, and we can do each other so much good.”
An hour later, she woke in the guttering light of the oil lamp, head on her desk, strangely refreshed from such a short nap; she was surprised at how much work she had finished; in fact, all that remained was to sign all the typewritten orders, initial all the annotated reports, drop them in the out basket, and go to bed. Funny how she’d fallen asleep just when she was almost done, but the rest had done her so much good.
LATE THE FOLLOWING DAY. FORT NORCROSS (JUST DOWNSTREAM ON THE OHIO OF WARSAW, KENTUCKY). ABOUT 10 PM EST. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2025.
“ Officially,” Lieutenant Seacrist told Dan Samson, “we’re just a monitoring station. Obviously we’re here because when they get that train running over the mountains to Lexington, Warsaw is going to be a major port on the Ohio.”
The palisade wall of Fort Norcross would have been easily recognizable to Daniel Boone except for the black-powder Gatling guns, the sewer-pipe mortars, and the currently retracted chain-net radio antenna that waited to be hoisted on its mast, which doubled as the flagpole. During the day, Samson had seen the flag that flew from it—the Cross and Eagle.
“In my experience,” Samson said, “an introduction about what you do officially and what you do obviously is a segue to the part about what you really do.”
“At any given time,” Seacrist said, “I have anywhere from five to thirty men patrolling and scouting on the other side. We need to stay deniable,
but our business is intercepting their scouts, removing their food caches, burning the little patches of corn and beans they plant everywhere for supplies. You might say the war has already started here.”
“Where are your orders coming from?”
“Athens.” If Seacrist had stopped there, Samson would have had no opening to inquire further, but after a moment the lieutenant continued. “Program being run by a guy named Grayson, who I hope to vote for when we elect a president again. One-star general before Daybreak and now he’s the reason why we’re all Tempers here.” In the dark it was hard to see his facial features, and his voice was flat as he added, “I know you’ll tell them that in Pueblo. It’s part of your job.”
“Yep. Thanks for the loan of the kayak, and extra thanks for letting me know that I’m going into a war zone. And thanks for what you’re doing.”
“You can thank Grayson,” Seacrist said. “Your kayak’s tied up in the shadow of those willows.”
“I’m gone already.” He slung up his pack, slipped through the side gate of the fort with a handshake from the sentry, and pushed off in the kayak. Following the dim shadows of the trees out onto the river, he angled for the little cove downstream that pierced deep into an overgrown golf course. I like what you’re doing but I really like the old flag, he thought, and then, because all that was behind him, he put his back into his paddling.
13 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2 PM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025.
Dr. MaryBeth Abrams was good company for the last three hours of freedom Heather expected this month: the ball game between the Pueblo Angels and the Fort Carson Rangers. Heather and MaryBeth were there because everyone was, because the club owner gave Heather free seats along the first base line, and because it was a fine early fall day.
“Besides,” MaryBeth said, “this way I can see that Leo is healthy as a moose, and sound confident the next time you imagine something and send Patrick after me.”
“I just don’t know very much about babies. Nobody gave me a manual, and when something’s new to me, I’d rather ask than guess.”
They watched the Angels work a double play. “Up to the level of college ball in the old days, do you think?” Heather asked.
“Small college. Still it’s a nice day for a game. Getting cold fast, though, this year, hope they get to finish the season; they’re saying there could be snow on the ground before October.”
Fort Carson brought in its strong reliever, and the game settled into a pitcher’s duel.
Heather said. “I was kind of having a thought.”
“I don’t cure those, I’m not that kind of doctor.”
“Just curious. Seems to me we’ve got gazillions of babies lately. Besides those kids that work for me, Jason and Beth, I know four other pregnancies are happening—”
“Oh yeah. Want to know when there’s a baby boom on, ask a small town doctor. And I can tell you, there is one on. All the common methods of birth control are gone, and people love to boink too much to give it up. But my guess is we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
An Angel almost stole third; Heather and MaryBeth enjoyed agreeing that the ump had robbed him.
“You think we’re in for even more of a baby boom?” Heather asked. “Why?”
“Remember all the uproar about estrogen-mimicking compounds in plastics? Lots of doctors were convinced that was what was behind the ‘infertility epidemic,’ that it wasn’t just late childbearing and prevalent chlamydia. I think maybe the Daybreak biotes have been purging the planet of the mock estrogens, along with tires, gasoline, condoms, and Barbies. I mean, in the last decade 1:20 was a normal babies-to-boinks ratio—”
“I don’t think Arnie has shown me that statistic yet.”
“Okay, in med school they call it the conception ratio, but then I would have had to explain what it is. Anyway, 1:20 means on the average, last ten years, boink twenty times, make one baby. But back in the 1930s, before they started making estrogen-mimicking stuff, 1:11 was normal. Estrogen-mimicking compounds seem to me like something the biotes would scarf right down, so what’s in the environment is being destroyed really fast, and since the plastic factories aren’t running, we’ve stopped making more. So sperm counts ought to be rebounding in all species, and fertility of eggs increasing, and sterility rates dropping, and so on. All that adds up to a real crowd of babies.”
“Wow,” Heather said. “More revolutions coming.”
“To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn,” MaryBeth said, “and the world didn’t stop turning just because America decided to break apart, or you fell in love and ended up a mom. It’s amazing, the number of things the world keeps right on turning through.”
The last inning was quick and dull. MaryBeth asked, “Want to get a beer at Dell’s Brew?”
Heather checked the time. “I don’t have time before meeting the trains. We’re going to make the Provis and Tempers sit down and listen to sense, so that by the time all those babies you’re promising show up, we’ll have a country for them.”
40 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 3:15 PM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025.
“At least it’s a nice day to watch them come in,” Heather remarked. The two steam trains each flew American flags from the locomotive and the caboose; between, there were two big steam locomotives, coal car, a sleeper for the VIPs, a passenger car outfitted as an office, and the “fort car,” a boxcar armored with steel plates bolted to its inner walls, loopholed for the guns of the guards. “But with fifty-eight working full-gauge locomotives on the continent, should two of them be hauling politicians? We really need coal. They’re pretty well certain this is going to be a cold, early winter.”
“Maybe we could burn politicians,” Leslie suggested.
“Too wet to burn well.”
“Let’s burn them anyway,” Leslie said, taking a step forward. She turned to the officer beside her and said, “May I borrow your field glasses?” Leslie gazed at the distant locomotives; for Heather, they were just two tiny three-car trains in the sea of sagebrush, crawling along the track that shone in the afternoon sun, trailing their big plumes of gray-blue smoke.
“What are you seeing, Leslie?”
“Oh, man. You’re going to want to burn them both, Heather. Remember how much time we put into making sure they’d fly the real American flag from their locomotives?”
“Yeah, you mean they’re not?”
“Oh, they are. That’s what I was trying to make out. It’s what they’re flying from their cabooses.”
“Damn. I better look for myself.”
Heather peered through the antique field glasses, thinking, oddly, that when these were made, they might have been tested on that locomotive—both were well over a hundred years old.
The lead train, from Athens, flew the fifty-star, thirteen-stripe flag from the locomotive, but from the caboose, it flew the same design with a blotch on the stripes—the Army eagle, superimposed on a cross. The train behind it, from Olympia, flew the correct American flag from its locomotive—but the nineteen-star, double circle flag waved from its caboose.
“You know, if you’d put one’s stripes with the other’s stars, it would all be fine,” Leslie said.
“Do you suppose they both decided to be offensive, independently, or that one of them started it?” Heather asked.
Positioning both the office-cars directly behind equally placed podiums took a long time. Leo began fussing, so Leslie held him and soothed him, since Heather needed a hand free to shake with. Peering at Heather over Leslie’s shoulder, he looked immensely weary and irritated. “Yeah, I know, kid,” Heather whispered. “I’m not thrilled with either of my old friends, either.”
But when Cameron Nguyen-Peters and Graham Weisbrod emerged from their trains, they appeared not to see each other’s offensive flags at all; rather, they shook hands cordially enough, introduced their grimacing, stone-faced staffs, and then both insisted on visiting with Leo and looking Heather over to tell her she wa
s doing well. For a few minutes, she let herself remember that the Temper Natcon and the Provi President had both been pretty good guys, and even friends with each other.
I just hope they remember, because I think their staffs are here to make them forget.
Afterward, walking back, Leslie said, “I did a little mixing with their staffs. Learned some things. It was General Grayson’s wife, and her loony father the reverend, that broke out the Temper flag and had them put it on the caboose; I don’t know if Cam even knew they’d done it, it was just the last few miles. Allie Sok Banh was the one who decided to retaliate with the Provi flag. Everyone’s mad at their own people, but they all keep saying it’s their own affair and they’re not about to apologize to the other side.”
Leo, back in Heather’s papoose pack, belched and fussed; Heather ran a finger down his soft little cheek. “You were right, Leslie. We ought to be testing whether they’re really too wet to burn.”
TEN:
WITH COINS ON EITHER EYE
LATER THAT MORNING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:30 AM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2025.
Heather had deliberately been the last to enter; letting the Provi and Temper delegations settle in first, with just her staff to guide them to their chairs and the coffee, might give them a chance to mix informally. No such thing had happened.
Well, thanks to paranoia and a good staff, Heather had plans out to Z and beyond; time for B. “Just to remind everyone,” she said, “this is the first session of the first day and the real purpose is to make sure your chairs are comfy and that we take some photographs of Graham and Cam smiling at each other. Anything beyond that is gravy.” Hunh. No smiles. Allie is making a point of not looking at me, the generals are looking at each other like gunfighters waiting to draw, and Reverend Whilmire could be a mannequin if he had enough expression. “But in the interests of saving time, and not creating barriers, let’s just see if we can agree on this: We will hold a national election on the first Tuesday in November of 2026, to put the United States entirely back in the hands of a regularly elected, fully Constitutional government. In January 2027, we’ll swear in the new government, no matter who or what it is, at some location that is not Olympia and not Athens, and both sides will turn over all authority to it.