Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  We lucked out one more way. Trying to get the bullet out of that poor tribal’s spine, we made a mess of it—we weren’t exactly what you’d call skilled surgeons and we didn’t have any anesthesia but whiskey. Between being drunk and in agony, he started crying for his mom, and yelling that he hated Daybreak and wanted his world back. That caused one of those seizures Daybreakers have, and we tried to hold him down but he thrashed so hard he knocked off a hemostat, and bled to death before we could put it back on.

  Meanwhile that runner was a thirteen-year-old girl, half out of her head from getting knocked down so hard, being held in the next room. When we went in to talk to her, she was sure we’d tortured that boy to death, and started babbling. We learned how they did their approaches to towns, that those first “representatives” were just there to estimate the population. If any town surrendered to their outrageous demands, great, they’d just take everyone as slaves, but more often they’d all go back to their tribal leaders or council or whatever it was called, and return in a massive surprise assault. The first group was supposed to be just a big enough force to make sure someone always came back.

  We also learned that the tribals’ main body allowed the “representatives” forty-eight hours to come back, since sometimes a town would extend hospitality and they’d need the time before they could leave without arousing suspicion.

  She also told us about what they did when they took over. Some little girls are sensitive about massacres. She was having seizures every few minutes, but she got it all out. Though she still has seizures, she’s sworn to the articles now, and one of us.

  By that time it was three hours till dawn. She’d told us where their main body was camped.

  Ruth had the key idea. We put together a team of our best bow hunters to go in first. The tribals were mostly city people, not many soldiers and probably no hunters, before Daybreak. It was nasty and grim, but their sentries died without making any sound, and then all of us rushed and killed the rest in their beds. Horrible, but better than the other way around.

  Ruth’s genius idea was that we cleaned up their campsite, carried all those corpses back here, and put the bodies all in one deep basement, and filled in with dry dirt.

  We’ve filled two more basements since. So far they always do things the same way. I’m guessing it’s—well, not exactly written out, of course, because they’re anti-literate, but it might as well be part of the Daybreaker Handbook, if there was one.

  So locally, they are too afraid of us to try again—we’re the place where everyone disappears without a trace.

  Chris asked, “That’s why you keep blackout, and why you don’t farm, too, right? You can’t let them have a way to count you. But in the long run, how are you going to keep eating?”

  Scott seemed very pleased with the question. “We have a plan for that too, and in fact—”

  “I wish you hadn’t told us so much,” Larry said. “What if one of us is captured?”

  “One of you won’t be captured unless all of us are,” the old man said. “Ruth’s got a whole worked-out plan.”

  “My plan,” Ruth said, “isn’t much more complicated than to get out while the getting is good; I worked out logistics in detail but the strategy is, run fast and be too tough for any tribe to take on. You brought me the last piece of the puzzle, just by telling us where you’re headed. Your plans fit beautifully with ours.”

  “See,” Scott said, “the three tribes around us are the Miami Morning-stars, which ought to be the name of a football team, over to the east and southeast; the Day’s Glorious Dawn People, due south; and the True Gaia People, who are north and west. You went right through the True Gaias and they didn’t mess with you because they’re pretty weak and disorganized, after taking some poundings from other tribes around them. Now, we’ve got more than enough canoes—there were three canoe liveries in this town before Daybreak. We just go down the Auglaize to Defiance, and then on down the Maumee. If we go that way we’d only have to run through the True Gaias, and although they’d have the numbers to stop us, they’ll probably be too disorganized.”

  “The Maumee should be fine,” Ruth added, “because it’s a wide river, hard to blockade, and it has enough current so we’d move faster in canoes than runners could alert the tribes, if any, in front of us. So that was always one of the main ways we were thinking of running, and if you’re going that way, we can be ready to go, lock, stock, and Wapak Scouts, at dawn tomorrow. We’ve furbed up enough canoes and kayaks to haul everybody, and had supplies packed to go for ages. Just tell us where the nearest base is up by the lake, or on the Maumee, and we’ll take you there.”

  “Port Clinton,” Larry said.

  “Then it’s a deal?”

  “Definitely. These last few weeks I’ve walked all I wanted to, and the idea of going the rest of the way by boat—”

  “You talked me into it,” Jason said, stretching. “I’m looking forward to getting back six inches of height.”

  “Dinner!” a soft voice said, just outside the door.

  “Coming,” Niskala said. “You’ll hear all about it later. Meanwhile, let’s just enjoy the night; it’s going to be one of the biggest things in the history of the Wapak Scouts. They were so sure you’d say yes, they’ve spent the afternoon putting our last council dinner together. Thanks for not disappointing them!”

  They followed him across the street; the sanctuary of the old church had been stripped of its pews and filled with big tables.

  The Wapak Scouts’ last feast before exile was one immense exercise in showing off. The entertainment afterward reminded Jason of his own days in the Boy Scouts—a number of silly skits, some recitations of amateur poetry that made Jason feel considerably better about his Daybreak bard phase, and group singing. He surprised himself by joining in and enjoying it. I suppose there’s a reason why they call it a “kumbaya experience.”

  THE NEXT MORNING. WAPAKONETA, OHIO. 5:30 AM EST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025.

  They rose in the dark. In the candlelit main room of the blacked-out church, the morning crew had laid out last night’s perishable and heavy leftovers. Everyone was urged to eat as much as they could stand and pack lunches into any spare space in their packs.

  “I don’t know if this is the most disciplined bunch of enthusiastic people, or the most enthusiastic bunch of disciplined people, I’ve ever seen,” Chris said, tucking in his third sliced venison and fried egg sandwich.

  “The real achievement,” Ruth Niskala said, beside him, “is that Scott and I and our officers will have enough time to eat. That is the proof of organization, discipline, and training. Scott always said any scoutmaster who knew his stuff could take ten boys anywhere, but a real scoutmaster could take ten boys anywhere and sleep in every morning.”

  “Everyone is so excited,” Chris said. In the last year he’d mastered writing with one hand and eating with the other; he was filling up his fourth pad of this trip with what he thought might become one of the most popular articles in the eventual Post-Times series and book.

  “Well, it’s a big, big event for the adults,” Ruth said. “Even more so for the kids—for some of them, Wapak’s the only home they’ve ever really had, and we’re as much family as they’ve got.”

  Shifts moved through; it took almost an hour to feed everyone. “We thought about leaving at first light,” Ruth said, “but it’s dark down on the river—it runs between built-up banks and levees for the first twenty miles or so—and the main thing is to just not have any accidents to slow us down, so we can be past the True Gaias before they even know we’re moving. If they have to chase us, with them running and us on the river, we’ve got them beat.” She stood. “I’m going to get some of that yellow sheet cake; it won’t travel, and it’s too good to waste.”

  Jason said, “Well, then, let me help you out with that.” He followed her.

  Just as the sun cleared the low line of trees to the west, Scott Niskala walked down the line of canoes and k
ayaks in a triple file extending from the low concrete dam down Hamilton Street for more than a block, making sure everyone knew the meetpoints for lunch and for putting in for the night, as well as the alternate points if there was trouble.

  Larry’s decades of outdoor vacations, and fighting experience, qualified him to be a stern man at the head of the main body. Jason’s long-ago family vacations and summers at camp qualified him to be a bow man toward the rear of the main body, where his strength might be needed. Chris’s total lack of experience qualified him to be a passenger somewhere well up in the middle, “like a sack of beans but less edible,” as he put it.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Jason said. “Consider the Donner Party. And these guys can cook.”

  Scott Niskala made a few hand signs over his head; the bank runners took off swiftly, getting a head start. Their job was to run with nothing but their fighting gear, two hundred yards ahead of the flotilla of canoes, on the roads and towpaths, and, as Scott put it, “to get into trouble before we’re all in trouble.” On each bank there were five runners; if they didn’t run into trouble, after an hour they were to switch off with bank runners from the forward canoes of the main body.

  The runners were just out of sight when Scott made the next gesture, and the first three kayaks of the avant-garde slipped into the water, struck their paddles as if synchronized, and moved out. Down the long column, everyone in turn picked up their canoe or kayak and advanced one boat-length.

  Row of three after row of three moved forward and into the water. The flotilla flowed into the Auglaize, separated enough to not offer easy targets, close enough to cover each other, orderly as ants, in silence except for the occasional soft splash of an awkward launch. When the last kayaks launched, only forty minutes had passed, and if there had been anyone to watch from the dam, the last trees would have closed around the rearguard kayaks as if nothing had ever been there.

  8 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 3:11 PM MST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025.

  Quattro Larsen looked exhausted. Heather asked, “Long flight?”

  “There was a big slow dust devil east of Garden City, and it threw some crap up high and it went right into my intakes. Ten minutes later all the needles for everything electrical are acting like windshield wipers, and that nano-detector gadget that the lab wanted me to try out is wailing like a banshee, and you know, the tradition is that banshees wail for the about-to-be-dead, and I thought this was gonna be one accurate banshee.

  “Nanoswarm were that close to shutting down the spark. The right side engine was going bang-miss-cough twice a minute. And it was sunny and warm for once, which meant headwinds, turbulence, and general-purpose gnarly air. But the Gooney kept chugging and farting right along. I’ll be here at least a week while we tear down, dunk all the parts in lye, and rebuild.”

  Heather nodded. “Well, I’m sorry for all the trouble, but I was trying to think up a cover for you to be here for a few days. I’ve got something that will need some discussion. Bambi’s due to show up in the Stearman, too, so you might get to see your wife, not to mention we’ll have Bambi here to tell us the right thing to do.”

  “That’s what I always do—the right thing, once Bambi tells me what it is.” He sat in the guest chair, next to the crib, and set his leather flying helmet on his knee. He pushed his barely controllable surfer’s mop of blond hair up and over his forehead, and flashed that big grin. “Hey, the little guy’s not so little anymore.”

  “Yep, growing into a big healthy moose of a kid. All right, now that you’re sitting down… have you ever thought about being the Earl of the Russian River?”

  “No, not for one second, and are you out of your mind?”

  “I’m as sane as ever, it’s the world that’s crazy. Here’s the deal. Our sources are showing that Harrison Castro is trying to take as much of southern California as he can out of the United States.”

  “He is my father-in-law, you know.”

  “No offense intended.”

  “None taken. I just meant you don’t have to tell me what he’s thinking about. He was talking about goofier shit than being an earl clear back when I was trying to lure Bambi into skipping out of high school and shacking up with me in my dorm room for a week.”

  “I never heard about that.”

  “Unfortunately, I wasn’t much of a lurer when I was twenty-one. My big seductive move was to send her a list of the Xbox games I had. Anyway, look, I know Harrison Castro, and I’m sure you’re right about his intentions.”

  “Unh-hunh. And how do you feel about them?”

  “Subthrilled. But you’re suggesting I might want to go into the earl business too?”

  “I want you to start a League of North Coast Castles. You’re in much better shape than any of the other freeholders in your neighborhood. Extend them some aid—or launder aid from us and present it as coming from you. Cut them a much better deal than Harrison Castro gave his poor hapless knucklehead vassals, so that every Castle in trouble will want to sign on with you, and Castro’s vassals feel like idiots and resent him.”

  “But you will be creating another league and I thought you didn’t want one.”

  “Two leagues in a struggle with each other is way better than one league in a struggle against the Federal government. Let alone against both Federal governments. And this is temporary. As soon as you can, you’ll sensibly return everything to Federal jurisdiction and put a big hole in the Castle system.”

  “Couldn’t I just do that right now and save everyone the trouble?”

  “Unfortunately right now, if the Castles collapsed, California would become a second Lost Quarter. I don’t like the Castles, they’re about as un-American an institution as there is, but we can’t throw them away until we’ve got a Federal government big and strong enough to do what needs doing. My long-run plan is to just surround the Castles with a free, successful society. Then over time, the dependents and the vassals will walk off, and the freeholders will end up as romantic old poops stumping around in empty fortresses and writing letters to the Post-Times about young people with no respect. I’m just asking you to be an earl for a short while, and you and I both know it’s a joke; the objective is to make it a joke to everyone.”

  “Do I get a funny hat?”

  She looked pointedly at the antique leather helmet on his knee. “Do you think I can stop you?”

  “This is practical. If I’m going to be Earl of the Russian River, I definitely want something big, and white, with a plume.”

  THIRTEEN:

  NO ISLAND SINGLY LAY

  TWO WEEKS LATER. THE HARBOR OF PUT-IN-BAY, ON SOUTH BASS ISLAND (FORMERLY IN OHIO, NOW ASSIGNED TO THE NEW STATE OF SUPERIOR). 11:15 AM EST. MONDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2025.

  “That’s Put-in-Bay,” Rosie said. He was a heavy, solidly muscled man with stark white hair and brick-red skin; he and his wife Barbara were the crew of Kelleys Dancer. “Sorry this took so long.”

  Although it was only a few air miles from Catawba Point to South Bass Island, the wind was light and variable that morning, and tacking Kelleys Dancer out of Sandusky Bay, around the point, and out to Put-in-Bay harbor itself had consumed the whole morning since dawn.

  Jason asked, “Hey, is that a lighthouse or something?”

  “Perry’s Monument,” Barbara said.

  “Perry who?”

  “Oh, man, you’d have had a hard time when I was teaching American history.” She sighed. “Oliver Hazard Perry. War of 1812. ‘We have met the enemy and they are ours.’”

  “They buried him there or something?”

  “No, he won the only naval battle of any size that ever happened on the lake.” She sighed. “I wonder if kids will learn more or less history now that history’s starting over. Hard to see how they could learn less, actually. There could well be a battle bigger than Perry’s next spring—over between Buffalo and Erie there’s getting to be a pirate problem, or maybe a tribals-in-boats problem, it’s hard to tell. At least we’ll have wo
rk, anyway.”

  “You’d be in the battle?”

  “I hope not, but we’ll probably guide them there,” Rosie said. “We know that area—actually we know the whole lake pretty well. Barb’n’me spent ten years after retirement as rental crew for old farts that cruised the lake; that’s where we got Kelleys Dancer, the owner died right after Daybreak once there wasn’t no fridge for his insulin.”

  Closer to Put-in-Bay, there was more and steadier wind. Rosie said, “I’m impressed that you’re going to Cooke Castle. Gotta be the last place in North America where they still use the right fork for each course. They might dip you all in bleach before they let you in the front door.”

  “They’re not that stuffy.” Barbara hugged her husband. “Just because the world has ended doesn’t mean people can’t wear a clean shirt now and then.”

  Gibraltar Island sheltered the eastern half of Put-in-Bay; it looked like a nineteenth-century millionaire’s estate or a twentieth-century college campus, and had been both. “They have electric power over here!” Chris said, realizing an electric winch was pulling them into their berth.

  “Some of the time, yeah, whenever they’re not wiping for nanos. Some engineers from OSU built them windmills you see over there south of town, and another guy from Tri-State U’s got a wave-power generator running.”

  They had been told that Dr. Fred Rhodes would meet them at the wharf; the squat, wide-shouldered black man waiting there wore an old Ohio State hoodie, homemade deerhide trousers, wingtips, and a black crusher. His full beard probably hadn’t been trimmed for many years before Daybreak, and reached beyond his lower ribs, about as far down as his dreads reached in the back. He pumped Larry’s hand eagerly, then Chris’s and Jason’s, and said, “Everyone is so excited; the first report on an overland traverse of the Lost Quarter.”