Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  “Well, then, whatever number of ration coupons we need for our meals today, and three chapel passes.”

  “You going to eat on the train? Honestly it’s better’n anything local, so you should make that your supper.”

  “Thanks, yes, we’ll do that.”

  The clerk scribbled on a carbon pad, speaking quickly and without expression, going through a well-rehearsed routine. “Ration coupons coming up. You show it to the waiter or clerk going in, and then they take it from you at the end. Don’t let them grab it before you’ve got your food and paid for it. A lot of them lie and threaten to turn you in for not giving them one. If they do trick you that way, the going price to let you go is four times the price of a ration coupon.

  “Now about those chapel passes, you can buy one, good for three days, from the reverend, every time you attend a service, as long as they have the LICENSED NON CULT plate up on the pulpit.

  “Don’t pay a door cover, ever, that’s how the cults trick people into coming to service and not getting a chapel pass for it—the Jews and those little African churches are famous for that, everyone says, but in my experience it’s the Mormons who pull that trick every time.

  “The Steam Train Chapel, down to the other end of the station there on the right, has a service every half hour, and it’s quick. The reverend there’ll give you a pass that’s as good as any, and his prices aren’t bad.” The clerk winked. “He’s also my brother-in-law.”

  The service was a sung doxology, a reading of three Bible verses, a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, singing one verse of “God Bless America,” and a two-minute message in which the preacher urged them all to realize that all the missing good people, especially their friends and relatives, were Raptured, this was the Tribulation, and therefore they needed to get to a “real Christian” church, by which he apparently meant a Post Raptural Church, to be fully slain in the spirit and rebaptized. Then they sang one verse of “Stand Up for Jesus” and the reverend pronounced them blessed.

  They purposely maneuvered to be last in line for their coupons, hoping to get a chance to talk alone with the reverend.

  “We’re out of Pueblo and just back from a scientific expedition to the Lost Quarter,” Larry explained, “so we don’t really know how things work down here.”

  “Well, we know that a terrorist, a Satanist, a Muslim, or a possessed man is not going to be able to bear to hear the word of the Lord,” the man said, pleasantly, as if explaining how an athlete’s foot cream worked. “That’s plain as day in Matthew 18:18, Hebrews 13:15, and Psalm 22. So we bring them in here and I give’em some Bible and hymns and see if they can say the Lord’s Prayer. Like screening them for evil, like they used to screen for metal and stuff at airports. But all that does is make sure you ain’t consciously with Satan right this second. If you’re going to come out of the Tribulation on the right side—and there’s only six years left—you really need to go to a real church.”

  “And the people who live here, they go to chapel twice a week, to have the passes?

  “Lots go daily. And it’s not just for the passes. With Tribulation on, a man just can’t be too careful.”

  They met friendly people everywhere, happy to talk about life in Savannah. The restaurant meals were good but almost identical: fried or grilled fish, cornbread, and greens. One place had a side of two eggs available at an outrageous price, and the other didn’t but expected to the next day.

  Polite militiamen stopped them on the street three times, and each time the chapel pass extracted them instantly—though the last of the militiamen, who didn’t look a day over sixteen, with red hair and more freckles than it should be possible to grow on one person, shook his head when he saw where the chapel pass came from. “Next time you hit town,” he said, “go over to the Lord’s Table Chapel—it used to be a house, they just converted it—by Forsyth Park. Your pass’ll cost you half what this one did, and you’ll get a real whole hour service with serious spirit-infused, Bible-based preaching, and you get communion at no extra charge.”

  “We’ll keep that in mind,” Larry said. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to that preacher, would you?”

  “You mean the way Ed at the railway station is brothers with that clerk Steve? No, sir. But Reverend Earl at the Lord’s Table Chapel is my girlfriend’s dad, and I have seen him at work, and I believe in my heart that you’ll get a better deal there.”

  After looking all day, Chris finally found a newspaper just as they were returning to the railroad station; an elderly African-American lady, who had three chapel passes, all from today, pinned on the front of her dress, was selling papers from a crate on the sidewalk. After carefully inspecting his chapel pass, she sold Chris a current Athens Weekly Insight and a three-week-old Pueblo Post-Times. She gave them to him wrapped in a paper bag, the way he remembered his father buying pornography.

  On the train, opening the papers, he found that a third of the material in the Post-Times’s back page, and half a dozen stories in the Weekly Insight, had been painted over with black ink. Jason and Larry had a fine old time teasing him about not having seen that coming.

  The conductor came by to announce dinner in the dining car; they pulled out their ration cards, and he laughed. “Steve pulled that one on you, too, didn’t he? The ration cards are a local Savannah thing. You don’t need’em to eat here.”

  Chris thought he might burst with smugness as Jason and Larry took turns grumbling all through dinner. It wasn’t bad, for the third helping of fried fish, cornbread, and greens in a day. The few lights of Savannah had vanished behind them, and the old steam train was chugging along, zigzagging from one still-usable track to another. He settled back to read the parts of his paper that he was allowed to see. At least for breakfast in Athens, there probably won’t be fish, and if their paper is censored here, it’s got to be freer there.

  EIGHTEEN:

  WHISPERED TO THE BRAID

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:30 PM EST. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2025.

  “I think some people are starting to wonder if we’re dating,” Cameron said, setting down the picnic basket.

  “Well, if we are, then I’m mad because you never take me anywhere.” Lyndon Phat looked down at the pieces of tissue paper that Cam dropped into his lap as he began to unpack the basket. “By the way, I appreciate the chance to eat something good, and your friendship flatters the hell out of me.”

  “Glad to hear it, because you’re about the only friend I’ve got locally.”

  Phat nodded, looking down. The first tissue contained the simplest message:

  Extraction party arrived Savannah 1 hr ago

  Will be here tonight

  The second tissue spelled out the planned extraction, told him to memorize it, and stressed that he might be the only member of the group who knew the plan.

  The third was a set of directions for—“And this is for later,” Cam said, handing him a paper bag; in it there was a baguette, and a glass jar of jam (or at least the thin outer layer next to the glass was jam; the instructions told Phat what to do with the thing in the inner jar).

  Their eyes met; the two men sighed silently, because they genuinely had enjoyed the conversations, and no matter what, this would be the last.

  THAT NIGHT. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 11 PM EST. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2025.

  They had pretended to sleep on the train, sharing a big couch in a private compartment, while Larry briefed them via squeeze code. The essential information boiled down to expect trouble; don’t resist the fake arrest; expect to get the rest of the script from Cameron Nguyen-Peters; and if anything went wrong, make as much noise as possible, improvise, free General Phat, and run.

  “That’s a lot of light up ahead for nowadays,” Jason said, quietly, as they neared the Athens station.

  Larry and Chris leaned across him to look where he pointed. “Orangey and flickering, so it’s torchlight,” Chris said. “Not good. I don’t think they’re holding a par
ade for us.”

  As the train neared the station, silhouettes swept by on both sides of the tracks, and the train whistle blasted over and over. The dark human shapes, backlit by torches, thickened into a wall of heads above bodies, faces flaring out of it in the flickering, uncertain light, like snapshots of angry ghosts.

  At the platform, backs covered with Rorschach camo blocked the view through the windows. “Soldiers standing three deep,” Jason said. “And the crowd sounds like bears.”

  Their conductor leaned in. “They said to ask you not to sit too close to the windows, and wait for someone to come to you.”

  Outside the praying and singing was growing louder, and some objects thudded against the side of the train car. “Is there a next station we could maybe go on to?” Chris asked.

  “It’s a spur line,” Larry said. “To get off it we would have to back up. Which can be pretty easily blocked.”

  So far, no gunfire had punctured the angry rumble of the mob outside, and what was hitting the train sounded like rocks or bottles, not shots. “I like the singing better than the shouting,” Chris said. “They don’t throw stuff when they sing.”

  Cameron Nguyen-Peters came in. “This is going to be a nuisance. We need to make a public display of arresting you all as spies. You will be going to a discreet high-security facility and the man you came to meet will be there. My assistants will bring along your bags separately.”

  He paused for a moment as the shouting and screaming outside rose to a crescendo and then quieted. “That’s our cue. General Grayson is speaking to the crowd. He can usually persuade the Post Raptural crowds to behave, at least for short periods of time. He’s defusing the situation for public peace, and he’ll do what it takes to protect you. He knows what your mission is and supposedly he’s down with it—but if he’s going to stab us in the back, it’ll be tonight, so stay alert and trust him only as much as you have to. For this ceremonial arrest, just try to look like the general has overwhelmed you by his sheer force of personality.”

  As they waited in the shadow to go onto the platform, while General Grayson prayed at length, Larry muttered, “Who’s the low-rent Madonna clone beside him?”

  “His wife,” Cam said. “Ten times smarter and fifty times more dangerous than he is, and don’t forget it.”

  The prayer finished with the Post Raptural coda—help us during this Tribulation to make Your chosen nation fully fit for Your return. There was wild cheering, but Grayson held his hands up for silence. “Now we are about to proceed with a difficult moment, my friends, and I am depending on each of you to be calm, reasonable, and fair. These men believe they are carrying out their duties in accord with their oaths, just as sincerely as I believe I am keeping my oath. I, and the other competent authorities, must have the freedom and time to investigate and reach an impartial conclusion that will stand the scrutiny of God and man. To do that, we must have quiet and order. So I’m going to ask you to return to your homes after you see these men taken into custody. Rest assured we are dealing with any danger they may pose to God and country—but we are doing so fairly and dispassionately. Now, will you please all join me in the Pledge of Allegiance?”

  It was no mere recital; the crowd seemed to speak in one passionate voice:

  I pledge allegiance to the Lord

  Of the United and Christian States of America,

  And to the Cross and Eagle which stands for His Presence,

  One nation under God, faithful to Christ,

  With liberty, justice, grace, and love for all.

  “I am going to find a way to crucify that son of a bitch,” Chris whispered.

  “Gotta let me help,” Larry whispered back.

  “He doesn’t believe it himself,” Cam pointed out.

  “I don’t care whether you’re a bear yourself, don’t feed the bears,” Jason said.

  When the three men moved forward into the light, the crowd fell into a deep silence. Grayson publicly ordered Cam to take them into custody for questioning. Cam declared he would hold them according to Grayson’s orders, and came forward to take Larry by the elbow.

  As they passed out of the light, Grayson was urging the crowd to go home. A few little bunches of them were striking up hymns or chants, but it didn’t seem to be contagious. A long flight of steps led down along the solid brick wall of the power plant, plunging into deeper darkness.

  “Why was he willing to do that?” Larry asked quietly.

  “Because it means I’ve been publicly seen taking orders from him, now,” Cam explained. “That’s worth a great deal to him. Look, time’s short, here goes. Two blocks from here, I am going to lead you into a dark area behind an old classroom building. I will appear to just be taking a shortcut across a lawn. You will silently turn away from me and follow the row of magnolias to the north; at the edge of campus there’s a dark patch where you can run across to a warehouse. North and west of the warehouse there’s an old bike trail. Follow it about half a mile to a frame house by the east bank of a creek—if you cross a bridge you’ve gone too far. In that house are men I’ve assigned to the job, loyal to me and the United States. Give them the password ‘Four larks and a wren.’

  “If by any chance you are arrested that’s the place you will be taken anyway, and the guards will free you as soon as the arresting party leaves and you can give them the password. They will release General Phat to you. He knows the extraction procedure, which is—”

  “Stop were you are,” a voice said from the shadows. Cameron walked on and was gone. Chris felt his arms pinned; beside him Larry and Jason struggled. Pistols cocked, and Chris felt the press of the muzzle at the back of his neck, pointed a little upward in the executioner’s angle.

  “Prisoners, hold still while we secure you.”

  Bags went over their heads instantly, bars slipped between their backs and elbows as neat as knitting, and choke ropes slipped over their necks like a period onto the end of a sentence. Chris recognized Grayson’s voice when he said, “Follow me to the secure facility. They’ll be held there till morning. No noise and forget this the moment we’re back.” Hands turned him around a few times and then guided him into a new direction; he sensed the others beside him. “Prisoners,” Grayson said, “if you pick up your feet and obey your handlers, you won’t get hurt on your way there.”

  Chris noticed that nothing had been said about after they were there.

  THAT NIGHT. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:20 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.

  Mama had taught Jeffrey Grayson to “get good stuff that’ll last.” He’d had his first pair of good Italian shoes at the age of twelve. His first car had been a mechanic-approved used BMW. Mama’s first personal assistant had still been with her on the day she retired, they had had two cooks—mother and daughter—in all their time in the big old stone house, and the gardener’s grandfather had worked at that house. You knew you could count on quality shoes, cars, and people.

  Unfortunately, what he was doing right now required low-quality disposable people, and they were behaving just like it. A squad of first rate MPs at the facility, and maybe a half dozen Rangers with him, and Grayson would have no worries.

  These dopey misfits were obviously enjoying the feeling of being Big Tough Bad Guys. Parker, the closest thing Grayson had to a reliable subordinate, had to remind Ethan twice to keep his finger out of the trigger guard; probably it scared the shit out of the prisoners to hear that.

  At the secure facility, it was worse. They didn’t even know how to straighten up and behave right—instead of saluting, standing at attention, and carrying out the orders quickly and crisply, they sort of waved their hands at their heads, looked around the room, and hunched and slumped as they put the prisoners into the rooms. They drawled like clerks at a 7-Eleven.

  As soon as the prisoners were shoved into their cells and locked in, Grayson pulled off his ski mask and said, “There is one more empty cell and we’re going to have one more prisoner. You all on guard, stay o
n guard. Arresting party, go get the last one and bring him in—as gently as possible, give him the chance to come with you voluntarily, and you are by no means to use violence; if he just walks past you, let him.”

  God I hope they remember what they are really supposed to do. But at least they took off quickly, ski masks pulled down, running in the right direction, and beyond that he’d just have to hope.

  “For the record,” he said, loudly, so that the men in the cells could hear him, “it was necessary to arrest this party because the Reconstruction Research Center at Pueblo has been penetrated by Daybreaker and other subversive elements, and we became aware that this purported scouting expedition was actually an attempted prison break by Lyndon Phat…”

  The speech went on, sounding more and more lengthy, flat, and phony to Grayson himself. He wanted to just cut it entirely and tell everyone he’d be back later, but he had to drive on through the excruciating, repetitive speech, because he had to be seen here, after giving orders for which he would have independent and even hostile witnesses. There must be no question of either what his orders had been, or that he had been here, when—

  Distant gunfire. It began as a few shots, then erupted into what sounded like a brief firefight that trailed off in ones and twos within a minute.

  “What is that?” Grayson demanded. Not staying for an answer, he ran into the night as the last shots punctuated his exit.