Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  “I wonder if that’s exactly what it is,” Jason said. “I don’t know how Daybreak could move people into it, but I bet it’s crawling with tribes, like the Lost Quarter here.”

  The other two were staring at him; he shrugged, a little defensively. “Look, this is what Heather sent me along for, to have someone with some idea about the way Daybreak works. I mean, it isn’t just about breaking human civilization, it’s about making sure it never comes back. And to do that they keep hitting us with another wallop from another angle, so we never really adapt to what they’ve done before they’re doing something else. They took away most of electricity, plastics, and petroleum, and while we were still figuring out how we’d rebuild the tech, they knocked us down again with the huge bombs. Then while we were figuring out a decentralized way to reorganize civilization, the moon gun started knocking out radio. And we know they had their fingers deep in the whole Castle movement to break up the authority of the Federal government, and now we’re realizing the tribes are there to wipe out any civilization rebuilding—”

  “You think the tribes were always part of the plan? They didn’t just happen?”

  Jason nodded. “Remember the plan was always to be the last generation. The tribes were recruited from low-level Daybreakers, plus disoriented people, while the country was in chaos. They turned them into slaves and armies, and now they’re killing the slaves to build up the armies, and then hurling the armies at civilization—like that huge attack at Mota Elliptica. Take down the tech and kill as many people as you can doing it.

  “That’s what Castle Earthstone is about. They’re gearing up for one big drive out of the Lost Quarter—and a pile of bodies and no civilization after. That’s why they don’t care if most of the slaves don’t make it to spring; now that they’ve served their purpose, it’s better if they die.”

  “That implies,” Chris said, squirming for a better position, “that Castle Earthstone was always planned, probably years before October 28th, 2024. Is that too crazy?”

  Larry sat still for the space of a breath, looking up into the air, as he did when he thought hard. “Just suppose Arnie Yang is right and Daybreak is one giant, malign intelligence, a mind much larger than our own, one that uses human beings in the way we use the cells in our body, bent on human self-annihilation and nothing else. You’d see things like Daybreak creating the Daybreak poets to infiltrate coustajam music so younger refugees would be already prepared to join the tribes, and to write the Play of Daybreak, and a hundred other things.”

  “Now I know what’s been bothering me.” Chris looked stunned. “If we could hop on a plane back to Pueblo this second—”

  “A big juicy steak, a long hot bath, and sleeping next to Beth,” Jason said.

  “Yeah, but… what would we tell Heather about Castle Earthstone? That it’s roughly a battalion-strength fort equipped to fight at about a Roman or medieval level. Nothing behind it, really, just this one big fort in what used to be north central Indiana. But wouldn’t that be what Daybreak wanted us to say? While it prepared for something really big?”

  “Like how big?” Jason asked.

  “That’s its pattern. Big blows from unexpected directions. In the past six weeks there’ve been massive attacks at Castle Castro, Mota Elliptica, and Pullman; and Grayson’s Youghiogheny campaign won, but it took a fifth of the existing army to go a hundred miles into the Lost Quarter, and they took a beating going in and out. Apparently even in sparse, resource-poor areas, Daybreak can put together regiment- or even brigade-sized attacks. And the Lost Quarter has far more resources, and probably people, than any area we’ve been attacked from so far.”

  Larry’s head bobbed emphatically. “That’s got to be it. Oh, shit, you’re right. We aren’t the brilliant scouts we thought. We sure as hell didn’t walk up the Tippecanoe Valley without being spotted; they stayed hidden from us, not vice versa. We have been fed, gentlemen.”

  “Fed?” Jason asked.

  “Intel slang. Sometimes when you identify a spy, you leave him in place and use him to feed disinformation to the enemy,” Chris said. “Yeah. If we got away, we were supposed to report that the Lost Quarter is empty, to help hide whatever they’re brewing for next spring.”

  Larry leaned back, chewed on his jerky, thought some more, took a sip of water, and finally said, “Well, hunh.”

  “Larry, from you ‘well, hunh’ means what other people mean when they scream, ‘We’re all gonna die!’” Chris observed. “Could you maybe share a thought or two with us?”

  “Sorry, yeah, look, check me out on this. Suppose we do what they’ll expect and go south or west. We see nothing that we haven’t already seen, and go home and tell people there’s nothing big here. Or since Daybreak knows we’re coming, we get caught. Daybreak wins either way.

  “So I’m thinking, not back the way we came. Head east, then north, right through the Lost Quarter, then out through the Provi bases on Lake Erie. Daybreak won’t know where to look for us, and whatever we’re not supposed to see is going to be up that way.”

  “And we’ll run into way more trouble and walk a couple hundred extra miles,” Chris observed.

  “Yep,” Larry said. “And we can put at least three miles, maybe five, into it before dark.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6 PM MST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025.

  Still someone else’s turn, Heather thought. She looked over her big chart and thought, Four days of talking and I’ve added about two cards to this, and haven’t moved a line. Abundant noise and heat and not one trace of light or motion.

  Well, maybe that would change tomorrow. Maybe both sides would realize that Harrison Castro’s little theft of their thunder was a way to show them all how irrelevant they were—and irrelevant is the one thing that none of them can stand to be. I hope.

  She saw Graham Weisbrod coming across the courthouse lawn; good, it looked like Allie wouldn’t be along tonight, either. The big chart, still unchanged, slid back into place, and she picked up Leo, locked the office door behind herself, and went downstairs to meet Graham at her living quarters. A night of old times’ conversation, baby-inspecting, and nostalgic laughter was probably what was really needed, right now, anyway.

  THE NEXT DAY. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 3:30 PM PST. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025.

  Pat O’Grainne had lived a long time, and it kept feeling longer, especially with this silly ceremony to get through. The one thing you can say for being in a wheelchair, it’s easy on your feet and the small of your back. All I have to do is not fall asleep. Though I wish I could. Heather is so gonna not like this, and I ain’t wild about it myself.

  The crowd stirred down below. A horn group that sounded like an underrehearsed high school band played something or other. Guys in capes and plumed hats (what’s he doing, swearing in the Castle Castro Musketeers? ) went clumping down the aisle to the silly music, followed by Harrison Castro and a bunch of his officers.

  At least their uniforms were plain black, with red berets; they merely looked like ninja Boy Scouts.

  Please, God, let this be short.

  No such luck. A bunch of guys stood up and talked about how Harrison Castro was the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, the man, and the shit; how historic this, that, and the other was; and the long and short of it was that everyone thought Castro was a good guy and this was a big fucking day.

  Oh, for a tall glass of cold beer. This is only the introduction.

  The main event was four more drummy, stompy, horn-infested parades to bring the freeholders of Irvine, Laguna, Newport, and Castle Rand down the aisle. They lined them up in front of the dais where Castro stood, dressed up like he was going to a science fiction convention as a space mercenary.

  Finally the four freeholders were sworn in as Knights Deputies, which was what Castro was calling his feudal branch office managers. He was also declaring himself the Earl of San Diego and Leader of the League of Southern California Castles.

  The first
time Pat had heard the term, he’d thought, Leading the League in what, balls or errors? No matter how many funny suits Castro put on, what he was, was a cross between an old-fashioned asshat contractor and a high-income biker. The old-style contractors Pat had worked for too often in his younger days had shouted constantly about how nobody was going to tell them what to do and that they were free and independent men, while mostly living off government contracts and lecturing actual shovel-jockeys about hard work. The alpha bikers had been dentists, lawyers, or accountants with enough money to buy the really awesome toys; they had been generous with drinks and advice, the gist of which was that if you were as smart as they were, you’d be them, so obviously what you needed was a stiff drink and some bracing advice.

  Heather had asked Pat to send her everything he could remember about this ceremony, so he did his best to concentrate on Harrison Castro’s speech, the longest explanation Pat had ever heard for why smart rich people deserved to be rich because they were so smart, and were obviously smart because they were so rich. That night in his room, he used up half his candle ration for the week, and there were nine handwritten coded pages. It was cold, so he burned his scratchwork, and as the room warmed up, finally fell asleep, thinking about how all the movies had lied about what the life of a spy was like.

  15 HOURS LATER. BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA. 9:35 AM EST. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2025.

  Roger put in his next-to-last magazine. Counting the one in the chamber he was down to nine rounds—eight, saving one for himself.

  More than twenty tribals on the ground floor below him.

  They could come up two staircases, one at each end of the concrete hallway, but he could cover both of those from his improvised fort at the central desk on the floor. They could set the building on fire and make him come down one staircase, but on his way down he’d have another chance to take one or two with him. When it comes to getting shot at the end of the game, everybody wants to be in the back row.

  Angry shouting: “All right, follow me!”

  Roger set himself. Just like rifle range.

  The man lunged from the right stairwell. Point and squeeze. He fell over. Another clean head shot. They’d be so proud of me back in Pueblo.

  He got the next one from the right staircase, then another from the left. He was down to one in the chamber, one in the magazine, one magazine to go. He fumbled the last magazine out of his pocket.

  It was empty. He must have absentmindedly tucked it back into his pocket sometime in the last three hours of being chased around the U of I campus. It seemed really unfair that he had just lost count.

  The two rounds left were what he had. In a few minutes there’d be another rush. He’d take one more with him, and then, remembering Ecco, he’d use the last round to take the fast dark exit.

  Since it was almost over, he might as well go comfortably. He stood, stretched his legs, and treated himself to a long, luxurious piss into a drinking fountain drain. He could hear them arguing and squabbling below about who would rush him next.

  The big room he’d had his back to was a chem lab; he smashed the window in its door with a chair. Downstairs, they yelped and whined “What’s he doing?” at each other. Wish I had the ammunition to invite them up to find out.

  The supply closet was familiar territory; a year ago he’d been finishing his first year as a ChemE major.

  Except for some strong caustics, the dry chemicals had been in plastic jars that had rotted. He swept the heaped-together powders, and the goopy remnants of the jars, into a dustpan, carried the pan down the hall, and emptied it just out of sight of one stairwell entrance. He went back and got more, putting that at the other end of the hall, dragging one body out of the way as if it were furniture. He wiped his hands on his pants, noticing he didn’t care that the man was dead but hated how grimy his skin and clothes were. Funny, before Daybreak the only corpse I’d seen was at Grandpa’s funeral.

  Next he took the dry chemicals stored in glass, which were generally the most reactive, and poured them onto the tops of his piles. They were still arguing about whether they should rush him, and what it might mean that he was moving around up there.

  Back in the supply closet, he set aside the strong acids. The rest of the liquids in glass were mostly complex organics, which had turned to something like cheese, but a few flammable solvents seemed all right; these he carried, bottles and all, to add to his piles.

  Sudden scuffling downstairs. Shouting. Screaming.

  Two shots.

  RRC agents or maybe TNG troops; Daybreakers had no working guns. Roger froze and listened.

  “Hey, don’t shoot.” A grinning Dan Samson burst from the stairwell. “Roger! I didn’t know Heather had sent you too! I surprised’em a little,” the big man said. “If we go now, I think we can shoot our way out—”

  “Need ammo,” Roger whispered. “I have two.”

  “Seven,” Samson said quietly.

  “Let’s set off the surprise I’ve been fixing up and see if we can get out with just hatchets. What are they doing down there?”

  “Trying to figure out what to do because you killed the big boss and two little bosses, and they’re afraid to go home and say they didn’t get us, and even more afraid to come up the stairs. Let’s try your idea. I’ve always loved surprises.”

  A few seconds later, they hurled one jug of nitric acid to the far end of the hall; the mess of powder there foamed, fumed, burst into flames, and poured out dense blue smoke. They charged down their own stairwell, staying well separated, and at the first landing, threw the big bottles of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid up behind themselves, through the propped-open doors and into the piles of chemicals. There was a low, pulsing boom and more dark smoke gouted into the stairwell.

  Holding their breaths, they plunged down the stairs. At the double doors Samson plowed into a Daybreaker sentry coming in, pinned her to the wall with the door, and chopped her forehead, twisting the blade to wrench it free.

  Roger yanked the other door open and charged into the now-terrified group, slashing and thumping with his hatchet, and Samson was on them a moment later.

  The surviving Daybreakers fled. “This way,” Samson said. They climbed through a broken window onto a low fire escape, dropped to the ground, and ran.

  “Those were some pretty shitty soldiers,” Roger gasped, as they ducked between two buildings. Behind them, the chemistry building was pouring dense blue smoke from its lower floor.

  “Those weren’t soldiers. They were slaves. Their leadership was three sorta-soldiers from Castle Earthstone. More afraid of their bosses than they were of us.” In the chemistry building, a window belched orange flame. “What did you do back there?”

  “I have no idea. Where to from here?”

  “Well, not back to that building. South, I think. Let’s go.”

  17 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:30 AM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2025.

  “This is pretty senseless of me,” Allie said. She cupped her wineglass like a baby bird in her hand, looking at the two empty bottles as if they had just appeared from nowhere. “I’m just the tiddliest bit drunk, I’m going to have a hangover tomorrow for the conference when I really need to be patient with Graham, and I’m feeling so totally extremely indiscreet.” She touched the long red lacquered nail of her index finger to her nose and said, “Numb, numb, numb. Can’t feel a thing. Also num, num, num, dinner here was amazing, Arnie. I think in the new post-Daybreak world, if Olympia is the new Washington, it’s gotta be that Pueblo is the new New York. Better restaurants, smarter people, I mean what else could it be?”

  “Well, Johanna’s What There Is is the place in Pueblo.”

  “Yeah, and back in the day you’d have taken me to the place in New York, if I’d’ve even looked at you when you were teaching at that fancy school—”

  “Columbia.”

  “I know, Arn, just having fun with you.” She sighed and drank some more.

  Watching Allie drink alwa
ys excited him—many things about her did. She used to tease him that it reminded him of the only way he’d been able to score in college. Actually, he liked the way her deliberate sips always became deep gulps—not so much her lack of control, as her losing it.

  He’d been staring. Cover that. “Where did you get red nail polish? I thought cosmetics were all gone—”

  “The most expensive stuff was all natural ingredients packaged in glass. I just let it be known to some salvage crew heads that good things might happen if anyone brought me unopened nail polish, in glass bottles. One enterprising young man found some. So I have about a fifteen-year supply of nail polish—and he’s now a section head with a comfy desk job. And my source for a lot of good stuff. At least some things still work the way they always have.”

  When they’d been dating, Arnie had worried that Allie’s liking for gifts and favors, normal in a political appointee, might screw him up with Civil Service rules if they got married.

  She was smiling in the way that always sent his heart into his throat. “Arnie, babe, honestly, you think some simple favors would matter enough for Chris Manckiewicz to even print it, and risk losing nine states of subscribers?”

  Too drunk to argue, Arnie sat back. “I’m just so glad to see you again.”

  “I’m glad to see you again too. I didn’t realize how much I missed you.” She started a sip that turned into draining the glass. “Oops. Naughty.” She extended her glass to refill; her deep red nails reflected little stars of candle flames until he poured in the red wine, which colored the light around it so that her nails glowed like blood rubies.

  40 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2:15 AM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2025.

  The watch was on the other side of town and Arnie was exhausted. He could just run, just this once, and it would be okay.