Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  “Yeah. Unofficially, just between us—will this set up a country you want to run for president of?”

  “Unofficially, hell yes.”

  “And have I completely messed up your relationship with your father-in-law? I got pretty carried away there.”

  “Jenny has always been able to handle him. Doubt my qualifications for the presidency all you want, but never doubt she’ll make a hell of a first lady.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of doubting it. I guess we’re ready, then, so we’ll go in and agree to—”

  The door opened. Whilmire came in, looking tired and old, with Jenny holding his arm in a grip midway between support and arrest. “We don’t live in the same universe, Mister Nguyen-Peters, but I am serious when I say I shall pray for you. And for myself. And I think even for the general here. I don’t believe I will have anything of value to add for the rest of the conference; I’ll talk with you sometime after I consult with the Church leadership.” He pressed his daughter’s hand down off his arm, and closed the door with no noise, but firmly enough to send a shudder through the floor.

  “You have a free hand,” Jenny said. “He won’t like whatever you do but he can’t stand to be left out of a deal. And you’re welcome.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 AM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.

  “No you are not! You are not restoring the United States! You are giving everything away to a usurper!” Now that only McIntyre was present, Allie was screaming at Graham. I guess Norm must be used to this by now.

  Graham was wondering if she’d slap him this time. If she does I’ll make Norm testify and leave her here, in jail. Let Allie try to work one of her deals with Heather. The thought strengthened him, and she seemed to feel that. She sat back in her chair, rubbing her face. “This is so wrong.”

  McIntyre, as he usually did, appeared to be checking the paint for spots.

  Graham said, “The Tempers need our legitimacy. We need their effectiveness. The restoration government will need both. First we put the United States back together so it won’t come apart again; then whoever—”

  “You aren’t listening to me at all, are you?” Allie stared as if she had never seen him before. “For whole lifetimes everyone who was serious about really doing public policy well in this country has had a never-shrinking heartbreak list: all the things we couldn’t do because of the anti-intellectual, anti-government, anti-competence forces that came out of the churches, and business, and the army, the people who insisted we had to have a backward, non-functioning, nineteenth-century government. So they finally threw their big hissy fit and went off to Delusion City to play soldiers of God, we finally put together an expert, policy-oriented, smart government, with the full blessing of the Constitution. We totally shut down those people, the ones who think because they take an oath to the Constitution, they own it, and it says what they want it to. We have a complete set of social programs, Graham—”

  “On paper,” he said. “They only start once there’s money—”

  “But we have them. And a national civil discourse law, and real environmental planning, and conduct of private business regulations—”

  “All of that,” he said, “is a provisional Congress and Cabinet giving shadow orders to phantom agencies. Mostly about ghost problems, things that mattered before Daybreak. What the Provisional Constitutional Government has been doing, I am ashamed to say, is not just all about the words, it’s only about the words.”

  “We got everything passed that Roger Pendano ever wanted to do, in three months.”

  “But Roger wanted to do it. No one is actually doing any of the things the Congress keeps voting in; for some of the new agencies, we haven’t even provided for office staff. Meanwhile we have famines, troops going home on their own because they haven’t been paid, nutball Daybreakers smashing in from all sides—”

  “So why aren’t we controlling some of those war expenses, by making an alliance with tribes that have the power to do us some good, instead of with the Jesusoids and the Army people instead?”

  Graham blinked. “Allie, are you seriously proposing allying with the tribes? After all they’ve done, after what happened to Arnie, after what the RRC has established—”

  “It’s politics, Graham, you make alliances where you can find allies. We share so many values with the tribes—”

  “Name one.”

  “A concern for the Earth—”

  “Have you looked at the sky lately? Where do you think all the soot came from? The tribes are Daybreakers, Allie, they’re how Daybreak continued itself. It means to kill us. Bless his heart and rest his soul, Arnie Yang went too far and fell into it, but he warned us while he was falling and he was right. There are things you can’t cut a deal with and problems that aren’t matters of policy.”

  “You are throwing away everything we have worked for,” she said, now very quietly, rose to her feet, and opened the door. “You won’t need me this afternoon. I am going to take a nap.”

  In the silence after she left, Norman McIntyre said, “Mister President, I think you’d better get the deal nailed down while she’s still gone and sulking. And it’s none of my business but I don’t think you should take her back.”

  “I have to take her back to Olympia,” Graham said. “I can’t very well just abandon her here—”

  “Not what I meant.”

  “I know, but it was what I was ready to answer.”

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11:30 AM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.

  As soon as they were seated, Cameron Nguyen-Peters said, “We found that your text was fine as is. I’ll send it out at the same time you send your version out. I suggest as a general principle that the restoration government should not have its hands tied. It’s going to be the legitimate Constitutional government. We’ve just been caretakers. The caretaker should not bind the real government.”

  “I absolutely agree with that principle,” Graham said.

  “Good,” Cameron said. “I’ll ask my staff to prepare a list of all the decisions we’ve made since the TNG was formed; we’ll send the list to the restoration governments so they can ratify, nullify, or whatever.”

  “I’ll do the same for the PCG’s actions. What’s that leave from your list?”

  Cameron looked down at his notepad and read aloud.

  “Mechanics for the election

  What to do about the New States—which overlaps

  the election issue

  merging the armed forces

  hard line against the Castles, no recognition and no special position.

  “Also we wanted to propose a joint military expedition into the Lost Quarter, which might overlap most of the other issues. We want to at least take down Castle Earthstone, and General Grayson has suggested that if the TNG and PCG cooperate fully, we could do a great deal more.”

  Graham grinned. “Almost exactly my list, except for that last bit—which I like a lot.”

  In the next few minutes, they delegated every complex issue to joint committees and resolved every simple one. Election procedure and military merger went to joint committees to be set up in Pueblo in the next month. The New States of New England, Chesapeake, and Allegheny, never having assembled governments, were void; the PCG would cease trying to organize them. The New States of Superior and Wabash, having now functioned for some time, would exist until the restoration government took power, would have electoral votes based on their seats in the Provi legislature, and would then be admitted, or not, at the discretion of the restoration government. Any former state could secede by majority vote from a New State until the restoration Congress provided otherwise. Regular, pre-Daybreak Army units, which mostly answered to Temper civilian control, would cooperate with New State governments in exactly the way they cooperated with older, pre-existing state governments.

  Both governments agreed to accord no special legal status to any Castle, and that no government communications were to refer
to any of the titles the freeholders gave themselves, “except internal reports for law enforcement,” Weisbrod added. “General Grayson, if I may suggest, why don’t you draft a list of options for dealing with Castle Earthstone, and with the Lost Quarter in general, and forward it to General McIntyre for comments? Assume you’ve got any resources we are not obviously using for immediate defense. Give Cameron and me some cheap options in case we have to be misers, but also give us a couple of Cadillac plans, the biggest and best things you think are within our grasp.”

  “I’ll do that immediately, sir,” Grayson said.

  Weisbrod smiled. “Now, if there’s nothing left on either list, should we, maybe, think about a declaration of principles at the end of the joint communiqué? Something to guide any future courts or our successors in what our thinking was?”

  “The principle we’re after,” Cameron Nguyen-Peters said, “is to trust to the common sense of the people who are going to be elected, which also means to the common sense of the people electing them.”

  McIntyre sighed. “I’d like that principle better if it didn’t sound like a complete abdication of responsibility.”

  Graham Weisbrod peered at the general over his glasses; of the people in the room, only Heather knew he couldn’t see a thing that way, that it was purely an intimidation trick Graham had picked up decades ago. Graham waited two beats. “Well, General McIntyre, it’s appropriate to abdicate responsibility when you’ve made a mess and there’s someone else around who can clean it up better than you. As for the mess, look at my government, or at Cam’s. As for cleaning up, there are thousands of small towns, dozens of military units, tens of thousands of small businesses, community organizations, you name it, that are doing the cleanup right now. I assume we’ve both read the news from Wapakoneta in the Post-Times?”

  Fussing with exact words took a couple of hours, but the president and the NCCC seemed to enjoy it, and insisted on continuing over a late lunch. Long before dark, they were shaking hands for the camera. Sure hope we’ve got film that lasts now, Heather thought, because whoever publishes the history books is going to want that picture.

  THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 7:30 PM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.

  Allie had always wondered how she’d handle a serious defeat, because she’d never had one. Uncle Sam used to say I was his trifecta niece because even if I didn’t win, I always finished in the money. Wonder what he’d say now?

  Sam and a big part of the family had chartered a wooden sailboat just after Daybreak and set off to the south, heading for “somewhere warm where the food won’t run out.” They had not been heard from since. Perhaps they’d been caught by the fringes of the big storm (but they should have been well south by then); perhaps they’d had a fire at sea from the EMP of the superbomb (but they should have found landfall by then); maybe they’d run into those first-wave pirates, the ones out of Florida and Bermuda, who had badly disrupted the southward exodus? (But they’d been well-enough armed and they should have been a match for anything roaming around.) In any case, she hadn’t heard from them since waving good-bye from the dock, and since her name was on the radio and in the Post-Times often enough, they should have been able to find her. Maybe they didn’t want to. You are a big success girl but you are not a wise girl or a patient girl and people do not like you, Papa had said.

  Her thoughts went round and round; if she just had a friend to talk to, a friend who would have her back no matter what.

  Sitting on the bed and looking out the window, she was amazed at how dark it was outside. She’d eaten nothing since breakfast, had moved only from armchair to bed to desk within her small room since she’d stormed out on Graham. That dick less sycophant McIntyre stayed. Why didn’t I—

  There was a soft knock at the door. “Come in,” she said, expecting Graham Weisbrod, expecting a fight—

  Not expecting that pudgy, balding little man who had taken over Arnie Yang’s job. His name was—some piece of obscure oldies trivia, they used to play trivia in the bars in college—“Mister Hendrix,” she said.

  “Yes. May I come in and close the door? This room is secure, and there’s something vital we need to discuss.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “Sit down. I’m amazed that anyone discusses anything with me.”

  “Don’t be.” He turned up the oil lamp on the side table. The orange light bathed both their faces and etched the shadows into high contrast. “You’re still one of the most powerful and important people on the continent. We would have to talk to you even if Heather didn’t like you and worry about you.”

  “You’re blunt. Is that why Heather sent you instead of coming herself?”

  “She said it would get too personal if she did.”

  “Close enough. All right, obviously you have a message to deliver and you’re supposed to take back an answer. I’d better hear the message.”

  Hendrix nodded, and said, “We found a note from you in Arnie Yang’s pocket. It was, um, intimate, though not explicit. Now, we have no great concern with whether it was a love affair or just the two of you sharing loneliness, but there seemed to be a strong Daybreaker element in the note—”

  “Why do you think it was from me? I don’t remember ever writing him a note—”

  “Your personal stationery and handwriting—”

  “Do you have it with you?”

  “I do. We have a copy, by the way—”

  “I’m not going to destroy evidence in front of you. Give me some credit.” She held out her hand, looked at the note, and felt as if she’d been kicked in the belly. Darcage. During one of those blackouts he induces, he must have told me to write this.

  Allie had read the RRC’s top-secret, unredacted report on Arnie. She knew Hendrix would believe her if she—

  The whole universe rolled down a stony slope, bouncing and spinning from stone to stone, and she fell onto her side on the bed. Hendrix was bellowing for a doctor, and then she felt strong hands pushing her out of the fetal position, soothing her, a warm voice. “Mom?”

  “Wish I was, I could help you better.”

  Allie looked up; it was Heather’s doctor, maybe the RRC’s doctor or Pueblo’s, they were pretty scarce and the world was pretty small. She was sitting next to Allie on the bed, smoothing her hair and face; it felt good. “Was that a Daybreaker seizure?”

  “If it wasn’t, you’re a hell of an actor. You’ll want to sleep for a while, maybe, unless there’s something you want to say while you can.”

  “Doctor—”

  “Abrams. You can call me MaryBeth as long as you remember I’m the doctor, not your mom.”

  “No problem remembering that, Doctor, I need a doctor. Can I sit up and have some water?”

  Hendrix fetched her a glass. After drinking it all, Allie took a deep breath, and another. “Do I remember right, if I don’t sleep, I get about an hour where it’s easier to talk about Daybreak without having a seizure?”

  “It seems to work that way,” MaryBeth said. “We don’t know why. But it might still hit you again. It’s not a guaranteed immunity.”

  “All right,” Allie said. “Let’s try. I want to finish this. Got a pencil, Mister Hendrix?”

  “Ready when you are.”

  “My contact calls himself Mister—Mister—Mister Darcage, I have to not say Mister, say Darcage, just this skinny good-looking guy in dreads, and…”

  She blurted the whole story into Hendrix’s notepad, weeping and sometimes feeling another seizure creeping toward her. So now I know what Ysabel Roth went through. And why. “Can I have something to eat? Uh, maybe a lot?”

  As she finished eating, Heather turned up with a hug, and said she didn’t want to lose Allie, too. It was a while before Graham came in; her husband had insisted on being alone with her, and she hadn’t let the rest of them go until they promised to do things the way she wanted to.

  When she was finally alone with him, Graham just held her; she felt like he might do this forever, a
nd that would be okay with her. “I was so worried,” he whispered.

  My husband loves me, my friends love me, thousands of good people depend on me, and I am going to hurt Daybreak so—

  Not again.

  The seizure was fully as bad as the first. As she came out of it, Graham and Dr. Abrams and Heather all looked worried sick, but Allie said, “Let me just sleep and heal,” enjoying the post-seizure luxury of thinking, Daybreak, you have no idea what a big fight you picked, and of looking up at people she could trust, till she drifted off.

  2 DAYS LATER. REPTON, ALABAMA. MONDAY, OCTOBER 20. ABOUT 1 PM CST.

  Before Daybreak, Repton, Alabama, had been a cluster of houses in the woods where a few hundred working people could afford land to build on. Since then the town had prospered due to the accidents of a hobby printer, who had established a small local paper; three fast-thinking local farmers, who had used refugee labor to put in vine cuttings of sweet potatoes over as much land as they could reach; and an alert local militia commander, who had been able to control and channel the refugee stream on US 84. Now it was almost three thousand people, mostly still in tent-roofed cabins, but eating, building, and gradually becoming a community.

  On Monday afternoon, the old church bell rang, the signal for news to be announced at the old gas station that served as a makeshift newspaper office. The Repton Vindicator’s editor stood up on a crate to read the announcement that the government in Athens and the one in Olympia had both declared that whatever was elected in 2026 would be the real government, and enjoining everyone to accept it. She had wondered how people would react to it; the wild cheering answered that, and supplied her with a local angle for her Wednesday headline—