Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  ABOUT 2 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9 AM MST. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2025.

  As James was laying out the copies of all the available Castle charters, at the request of the Olympia delegation, his knack for invisibility seemed to be holding: they weren’t waiting for him to leave to start the argument.

  “Graham,” Allie said, “this has to be your dumbest ever. You should have said no when Cameron proposed it. Didn’t it even occur to you that the TNG is militarily far superior to us, and if we ally with the California Castles, maybe even support some Castles in Temper territory, we can balance—”

  Norm McIntyre shook his head. “No, no, no. Too high a price. The TNG is right on this one, and it’s more important for us than it is for them. The only thing we’ve got over the Tempers is a better claim on the Constitution, and the Constitution says the United States has no hereditary nobility, period. No recognition for the Castles.”

  “But in six months when we need the help of the Castles—,” Allie began.

  “If that’s ever the case, it will be time for us to go out of business,” McIntyre said. “If we cut a deal with the Castles… what’s next, recognizing the tribes?”

  “That was just brainstorming an idea!”

  “Okay, we’re settled,” Graham said. “Allie, I note your objections, I’m just overriding them.” He picked up the paper. “Read fast. If there’s some trap in here, we need to see it in within two minutes.”

  “Maybe I can propose a compromise?” Allie said. “Let’s say we need another day or two to go over our exact response. That way if we need something to trade, we have it. Then instead of just agreeing, we can make giving them what they want a big favor. I mean, isn’t that more practical, doing the same thing we were going to do anyway, but getting something for doing it?”

  Reluctantly, Graham nodded. “All right, we’ll do it your way.”

  As they filed out, James was still laying down papers. He waited till they closed the door before shaking his head. Not that it mattered, but this was the third straight time they’d asked for research on a subject, and then argued it out and decided without ever consulting the materials he’d brought them. James smirked at himself; it had actually hurt his feelings that the invisible man was being treated like he wasn’t there.

  THE NEXT DAY. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 6:20 AM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025.

  The long, deep sunrise shadows reached out from the blood-red sun. Jason, watching from thirty feet up in a tree, had been seeing the first torches, lamps, and cookfires inside the main compound of Castle Earthstone for about an hour and a half.

  More than forty skulls decorated the gates and walls. The just-rising sun revealed a person tied face-on to a post in front of the main gate; more light revealed a welted back.

  A guard came out and threw water over the prisoner, untied the wrists, and let the body fall to the ground. He kicked the body to turn it over—turn her over, they saw—and she cried out and moved; he yanked her to her feet by her hair and pushed her toward the gate.

  For the next few hours, they circled Castle Earthstone, slowly working their way from one vantage to another. Patrols were slow, apathetic, and rare; workers in the fields were few, far between, and seemingly dazed. The corn and bean fields were tended but not well-tended.

  In a clearing in the creek bottom, they found the burial ground. Bodies were half-out of shallow graves; animals had been at them. One large heap of dirt, tunneled by foxes or raccoons, was littered with tiny bones. “Where they put the newborns,” Larry said.

  Jason said, “That’s what the plan always was, all the Daybreak poets worried about how to keep people from breeding back. Did you notice how many women are pregnant and how few kids there are? We used to say that our goal was not just to be the best generation but the last. So… Mother Earth needs our help. Babies are the enemy.”

  “It explains why a place this big doesn’t have more crops growing,” Chris said. “They’re not planning to keep all their slaves alive through the winter.”

  When they took a break, creeping back to share some venison jerky and dried apricots, Chris asked Jason, “Doesn’t it seem weird that the slaves they’re killing off are mostly women? Weren’t these guys supposed to be goddess-worshipping feminists?”

  “That was the warm-up in the Daybreak sales pitch to women,” Jason said, thinking how much that sounded like his father or brother. “Some women love the idea of being all Earth-mothery, I am woman, I give birth to the world, I am the mother the world needs—I used to riff on phrases like that all the time for my Daybreak poems. But if human beings are a blight on the face of Mother Gaia, and getting rid of them is the paramount goal, you’ve got to get rid of women.

  “Men breed too,” Chris pointed out.

  “A hundred men and one woman can turn out about one baby per year. A hundred women and one man can turn out about a hundred babies per year. If you want to get rid of people, you get rid of mothers,” Jason said. “But that wasn’t what we said to them, not at first. Our first message was, ‘You are Woman and the world depends on you.’” He wasn’t looking up from his food, lost in thinking about home and his pregnant wife. “That’s what got Beth into it; she was from a dirty-ass pack of urban white trash scum that was trying to pretend they were ghetto gangstas because for them it was an upgrade. Daybreak was the first time anyone said they wanted her for something besides her boobs. A lot of women didn’t see where it was going till too late. A lot of men, too.” He seemed to be a thousand miles inside himself.

  “Why don’t they rebel?” Chris asked.

  “Some do. Beth and I walked into Pueblo and volunteered. I don’t know why more ex-Daybreakers don’t.”

  “But why don’t they rebel here?”

  Jason shrugged. “Why do you think there’s a whipping post and a boneyard?”

  ELEVEN:

  DANCED UPON THE HEAPS OF SHRUNKEN DEAD

  ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 5:30 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025.

  Larry, Chris, and Jason waited for sunset in a cluster of trees, near a ditch to give them a covered retreat. Slaves and soldiers emerged from the main gate, followed by the technicians and the favored slaves, and then the lord and his “palace staff.”

  “If we’d known they were going to do this,” Chris said, “we could’ve spared all that effort counting them.”

  “At least they’re confirming our count,” Larry pointed out. They had spent much of the afternoon observing and counting, figuring out that there were quarters for about four hundred soldiers, though less than fifty seemed to be present; fifteen or so in the lord’s entourage; about twenty pump-and-windmill mechanics, overseers, and attractive women, in the hut Larry had dubbed the tech-and-trollop shack; and between eight and nine hundred emaciated, sickly slaves.

  The whole population seemed to be gathering in a semicircle between the main wall and the outer gateway. Slaves ran to set up front-row chairs for the lord and his staff. Everyone else sat on the ground.

  The bass drum beat faster, and other drums joined in. Slaves danced into the center area. This uncostumed daylight version was danced more than acted, but it was very recognizably The Play of Daybreak. Whenever the coincidence of wind and volume enabled them to hear a phrase, Larry or Jason or both would nod at the familiar words.

  “Look at the way the audience is swaying to the drum,” Chris breathed. “Like a rock concert with hypnosis.”

  Jason said, “Most of them spent years being hypnotized via the screen every night, sinking deeper and deeper into Daybreak, and now they—”

  Jason didn’t know what moved beside him, but weeks of nerves and months of Samson’s training made him draw his short hatchet and chop sideways across the motion, splitting the hand holding the knife between the wrist bones before he knew what it was. He snatched back the hatchet, slapped the knife away with the flat of the blade, and backhanded up the arm and shoulder, using the handle running along the arm to guide him t
ill the blade found the neck and bit deep into the carotid and windpipe. One out.

  Jason kept his hatchet high behind his head, clearing into his turn with a cloud-hand.

  Larry was yanking his commando knife back from a man’s throat. Two women had jumped onto Chris, one with arms wrapped around his throat in a half-nelson strangle, the other tangling his arms. They were pulling him over backward as he struggled to his feet.

  Jason swung as Chris bucked forward, and struck the upper woman on the crown of her head, sinking his hatchet deep. Chris’s freed hands clawed back for the eyes of the woman tackling him.

  She shrieked as Larry’s knife slashed into her thigh and cut upward, bringing a gush of arterial blood. She fell dying, but the entire crowd was now staring toward them. Jason and Chris whirled to plunge into the ditch.

  Larry grabbed them by their collars. “No! This way!”

  They ran for a clump of trees and bushes about sixty yards off. Behind them, Jason heard thrashing sounds—they must’ve been set to ambush us in the ditch, glad Larry spotted them, run, run, come on, run.

  Larry dove headfirst among the bushes in a tsugari roll, and Jason followed; Chris plunged forward and prone, covering his face with his outturned hands. Things hissed and thudded among the low branches. Something spun and clattered down to the ground, hissing like a furious goose. Larry grabbed it, rose to his knees to throw it, and fell back prone.

  Jason felt the boom in the ground, through his chest. Leaves and twigs showered his back. Beth, babe, if it’s a boy we’re naming him Larry.

  “Up, run.” Larry jumped to his feet and they ran up a slope, across an open field, and around behind a lean-to shed. “Chris, right side, prone firing. Jason, same thing, left side.” Larry rolled away from the shed and took cover behind a low hummock.

  Back toward Castle Earthstone, horns blew and people shouted. Jason sighted around the side of the lean-to. The soldiers from the ditch were running back to join the main group by Castle Earthstone.

  “They’re organizing pursuit,” Larry said, softly. “Now, see the lord there?”

  “Looks like Santa Claus throwing a tantrum,” Chris observed.

  “He does. It’s a long shot, but these big heavy bullets tend to fly straight and hit hard even far away. On three we’re all taking a shot at Lord Santa there. If you see him react to the shots but he’s not hit, take another shot at him as quick as you can. If you see him hit, look over the crowd and shoot anyone you see giving orders and being listened to. Keep shooting till your magazine’s empty and your last round is chambered. There’s a long line of trees along an old railroad embankment about a hundred and twenty yards behind me. As soon as your magazine is empty with your last round chambered, get back behind the embankment. Switch magazines there. If you’re the only one that gets there, make something up; otherwise wait till we’re all there. Got all that?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, sighting about five feet above Lord Santa’s head, and hoping his guess was right for the long shot.

  “Yep,” Chris said.

  “On three. One, two, thr—” Crack.

  Black-powder forms a gray, dirty cloud that obscures the shooter’s sight and gives away his position. In the long breath while the white blur with its burnt-sulfur stench cleared away, Jason considered the importance of the project at Pueblo trying to make a biote-immune smokeless powder.

  The smoke cleared. The big, white-bearded man was on his back on the ground with a dozen people bent over him. Hit.

  Larry’s rifle cracked, and Chris was working his lever; belatedly Jason worked his own and looked around. A young man with a yellow beard and dreads had jumped up on one of the seats in the elite section of the audience and was pointing toward Jason. Should’ve kept your mouth shut, dude. Jason pulled the trigger, worked the lever.

  One of the soldiers was facing away from Jason and shouting to a group of people; Jason fired again, and this time the wind carried the smoke away quickly enough for him to see the man diving for the ground.

  His sights found a woman leading a group with hoes and axes out of the crowd; he shot lower so that if he missed her he might hit someone behind. That was his four shots: one from the chamber and three from his four-shot magazine. One left. He worked the lever, rolled up, and dashed for the embankment.

  Jason caught up with Chris as the older, big man was just clearing the rusty tracks.

  Larry was there waiting. “Change magazines. They’re acting pretty confused down there. We need to get some distance before they think about using dogs. Best hope we have is to wade in that creek for a mile or two.”

  Staying low, they ran down the hill. The sun was just setting, and there was plenty of light for them as they waded and splashed along the winding creek between the willows. Every hundred yards or so, Larry stopped them and they stood silently, listening; they had gone about a mile when they first heard the baying of the hounds.

  “I used to like dogs,” Chris said. “I always put ‘dog-lover’ in my personal ads and dating-site profiles.”

  “Well, if you can love’em after tonight, you are really a dog lover,” Larry said.

  As the first stars came out, they moved along the grassy trace of a dirt farm road running east, surrounded by dense bushes, and slowed to a brisk walk; the sounds of the dogs and shouting had faded into the background. The grimy moon rose, revealing big dense bundles of berries on the bushes around them; Chris reached out, grabbed a handful, tasted one, and said, “Elderberry. This must have been a jam farm. They’re ripe.”

  “Try not to get your hands sticky,” Larry said, “but that’s dinner. Put a few handfuls in your knapsacks and we’ll just eat as we go.”

  The berries were tart and strong-tasting, with gritty little seeds that got between your teeth. They tramped on in the hazy moonlight, through the thick dew-soaked grass, headed east, deeper into the Lost Quarter.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 6 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025.

  Robert knew that Karl was dead before the old bastard hit the ground; half his face had been torn off and a spray of blood from his back soaked the grass around him. Robert felt for a pulse on the bloody neck just to be sure.

  Major Carter, the garrison commander, jumped up on a chair, and yelled that he was in charge now. Robert was about to say, “The fuck you are,” and Carter had made eye contact, when Carter’s head suddenly went all lopsided and bloody and he fell down.

  It looks like they are shooting everyone who acts like he’s in charge, Robert thought. He moved into the center of a crowd of frightened, weeping slaves, and said, softly, “Now everyone just stay back and let the fighters fight. You all come with me but stay all bunched up, and we’re just going to walk into the fort. Get everyone else to come with us if you can.”

  Most of the slaves were inside or headed there when the soldiers from the failed ambush came back shouting that they needed the dogs. Robert was waiting for them at the main entrance, with the crowd of slaves between himself and the enemy guns. “All right, form up here, out of sight of their position. They’re shooting at anyone they see giving orders. Lord Karl is dead. Who’s the highest ranking of you left alive?”

  Captain Nathanson apparently was—he’d been about fifth in command of the whole force, and Carter’s XO for the garrison here while the main force was away, so Robert said, “All right, then. Form your men up for the pursuit, Major Nathanson; you have my permission to take as many dogs as you need, and just leave me eight guards back here. Don’t keep going too long if you lose the trail, because we don’t know how many other attackers there might be, and this could be a trick. Good luck, Major.”

  Nathanson saluted and started yelling orders; Robert turned to the nearest overseer. “Bernstein. Have the slaves put things in order for a normal day tomorrow, make it dead clear that that is what there will be, and lock down for the night. Tell the others you’re now my chief steward.”

  Nathanson came back to him and snapped a
crisp salute. “The Castle is secured, we’ve got the dogs, and the men are ready to start pursuit.”

  “Good. Use your judgment from here on; just don’t be away too long, Major.”

  “It’s captain, sir.”

  “Carter is dead and you are in command.”

  “Yes, Lord Robert.” Nathanson turned back to his men; Robert figured that deal was locked down. Double locked down if Bernstein figures out that chief steward isn’t a bad job either.

  THE NEXT DAY. WARSAW, INDIANA. 6 PM EST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025.

  Warsaw, Indiana, was “the kind of pretty little town that sooner or later is used in a nostalgic movie,” Chris Manckiewicz said.

  “Not anymore,” Larry said. “Wonder how long before someone figures out a way to reinvent movies? And I bet there are still paper copies of some of the old scripts around, especially the classics; you think anyone will make The Wizard of Oz, Saving Private Ryan, or Wish on an Emerald again? But when they do, they’re going to have way more than enough places to shoot historicals, for a long time.”

  The three men were sharing the last of the venison jerky and the elderberries in the corner of a wrecked hardware store. “Isn’t it weird how many little towns are named after the great cities of Europe?” Jason asked. “Like every state around here has to have a London, a Paris, a Berlin, a Warsaw, and so on? I wonder if there’s anywhere named Pinetree Junction in Europe.”

  “There’s not really much Europe,” Chris pointed out. “The North Sea bomb took care of everything between Stockholm and Naples, and Edinburgh and Moscow. There’s northwest Scotland and some of Wales and Cornwall, most of Ireland, some northern Scandinavia, and Spain and Portugal. I’m not sure that counts as Europe. It’s sort of the Lost Quarter of the Old World.”