by John Barnes
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:40 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.
If I’m not being stabbed in the back, Cameron Nguyen-Peters thought, then Grayson did that perfectly; we told them just enough to make sure they’ll accomplish the mission, and to cover Grayson and me if things go to shit. And the only catch is that if Grayson is backstabbing me, I’ve just given away every advantage I had. Well, they always say that if you want someone to be trustworthy, you have to start off trusting—
An explosion tore through the downstairs, shaking the building, throwing him to his hands and knees; the coffee in its fine cup flew across his immaculate desk. Plaster spattered on the back of his suitcoat.
Gunshots downstairs, and shouting. He didn’t recognize any of the voices. Probably the intruders were killing any of his surviving, wounded loyalists.
The shaking of the building frame must have jammed the window, because it wouldn’t budge when he yanked at it. He kicked it in the center as hard as he could—it was bulletproof but secured with just a few screws in case of something like this—and it fell away. He stepped over the windowsill, out on the fire escape.
A man had been waiting for him by the window, and as Grayson turned, he was facing into the muzzle of a Newberry Standard carbine.
“You don’t want to do this,” Cam said, softly.
“Shut up.”
“Grayson can’t afford any connection to killing me; do you want to be one of the few living witnesses? Do you think he won’t dispose of you, like he’s disposing of me?”
“He said not to talk to you because you’re a slick liar.”
“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” Careful not to move his head, with only the light from the oil lamps in the office behind him, Cam studied every detail of the man, trying to make his gaze friendly and sympathetic. No anger. No pity. He’ll pull the trigger if he sees either.
Pudgy, out of shape, lines too deep in his face, slumping like he wanted his ass out of here, the man wore a long untucked homespun shirt; his belly bulged over too-small Levi’s. Of course. Grayson couldn’t have gotten a regular soldier for this job.
“Do you love your country?” Cameron asked him.
“What kind of a question is that? Would I be here doing this if I didn’t?”
“I was appointed by the last serving president of the United States,” Cameron said quietly, “and I appointed Grayson to his present job.”
“Who says he has anything to do with this?” Something defensive in the man’s tone.
This was going the wrong way. Try something else. “If he didn’t, I’m very glad to hear it. Someone sent you. Loyal American citizens don’t come armed to attack their government unless someone has been telling them stories.”
“What makes you think Grayson… I mean—”
“He was usually honest with me up till now. But if you’re going to kill me, can’t you tell me what it’s about?”
The man’s eyes rolled up and away, slightly, toward his low, broad-brimmed hat. He’s thinking about that, he’s thinking—
“Hold it!” the man shouted, not at Cam. Cam did not turn around, but felt another man behind him on the fire escape.
All my life I’ve depended on finding the smart one and talking to him, but sometimes the smart one can’t—
“We ain’t spoza talk to’im.” The voice behind him was expressionless. “He said he’d get us talkin’ and we wouldn’t do it.”
“Maybe—”
“Aw, bullshit, Parker. Think think think, talk talk talk, all the time and you never wanna do nothing.”
On the last syllable, the world roared, and Cam felt an immense shove high on his back. Falling forward, trying to catch the fire escape’s railing, he barely formed the thought Don’t.
As he clung for a moment to the railing, a fragmentary image of the ground below was the last thing that ever crossed from Cam’s optic nerve into his brain. Then Parker shot him in the head. The world disappeared into an unbearable bright light and roaring sound.
Denny kicked the reeling body hard, and it tumbled over the railing, off the fire escape, thudding to the pavement below. “Hey Parker, hey motherfucker, we got the fucking Natcon! We’re fucking famous. See, when it’s time to do it, you gotta do it. Motherfucker! Famous!”
Parker looked down at the gun in his hand as if it had just appeared there. He wanted to say something, or have a thought, but nothing came. He descended the fire escape slowly, as if in a drunken stagger, with Denny beside him, slapping his back, slugging his shoulder. “Got him, hey, we got him. Motherfucking famous, Parker, we’re motherfucking famous.”
General Grayson was waiting for them at the bottom, with three regular soldiers that Parker hadn’t seen before now. Grayson had been crouched by the Natcon’s body; now he stood up, an expression of horror on his face.
Now is when we’re supposed to point our weapons at him and he’ll back away, and then—but he didn’t say there’d be other soldiers. Parker felt more than thought, So this is what it felt like for the Natcon, and tried to make his mouth open to say, Please! I’ll never tell anybody! and tried to frame the thought that they had to talk, that Denny must not point that gun.
But beside him, he felt Denny’s gun swinging up, just like in practice. Then the general’s pistol was up, and firing.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:40 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.
“Four larks and a wren,” Larry Mensche said, loudly—but not nearly as loudly as the wild laughter from the guards. “Fuck you,” one of the guards said. “We even knew that would be your fucking password, but we ain’t none of those guards. You got the wrong guards. You stayin’ where you stayin’.”
On the surface of his mind, Chris thought, I am deranged by this. I am mad. I cannot comprehend the failure of the plot. What do I do?
Deeper down, he thought, Thank God you couldn’t be in broadcast news without getting some actor training.
Chris drew a deep breath and tightened his vocal cords. Make’em jump. Sound like a gut-shot cougar. He screamed, “Four larks and a wren, four larks and a wren, four larks and a wren.”
The guards roared with laughter. So far so good. He wailed it, sobbed it, chanted it, and kept it coming. “Four larks and a wren, four larks and a wren.”
“All fucking right,” one of them yelled, “that’s enough, you know it ain’t gonna work, you poor stupid bastard, cut it out.”
He stepped up his volume and energy, driving his voice till his throat was raw and his ears rang from his own volume. “Four larks and a wren, four larks and a wren, four larks and—”
The guard burst in, shouting, “Shut up!” and reached for Chris’s collar.
Chris reached over the man’s arm, gripped the little finger, and yanked back, turning the arm over and extending it. His left hand, fingers compressed into a spear-hand, jabbed along the man’s extended arm and over the shoulder to strike his throat with crushing force. Chris grabbed an ear, pivoted forward so that he went up the man’s still-extended arm like a swing dancer coming back in, and slammed his right fist into the man’s already-crushed larynx.
He felt his opponent’s body go limp. Ecco, Samson, thanks. Chris pulled the pistol from the guard’s holster.
This wasn’t any weapon he knew, but it didn’t matter; the next guard through the door was still unsnapping his holster when Chris swung the gun by its barrel backhanded into the man’s chin. He followed him down as he fell over, and used the gun like a hammer on the man’s forehead, twice.
Chris backed away on the opening side of the door, and lunged forward when it opened and the third and final man came through. With the gun jabbed against the man’s temple, Chris screamed “Open all the doors now!” like a movie psycho.
The man raised his hands above his head. “The keys are in my pocket, you’ll have to—”
The man was staring at the gun and never saw Chris’s foot sweep; with a startled cry, he fe
ll backward, and Chris raised the gun high and brought it down with all his force on the top of his head, and then on the face.
With the keys from the guard’s pocket, Chris unlocked Larry’s cell, and Jason’s. Behind them, a door clicked open; General Phat came in with his hands up. “Don’t shoot, the irony would be too much for anyone. I thought with all the action going on, it was time to use the screwdriver Cam had smuggled to me last week as a just-in-case,” he said. “I need to grab something and then we need to be on the road west, now.”
Outside, torches and lanterns, whooping and shouting, filled the campus a few hundred yards away. “Wish we knew if that was a good thing or a bad thing,” Larry said.
“If it were a good thing, Cam would already be with us,” Phat said. “That’s either his failed diversion, or he lost his gamble. We’ll have to say our prayers for him while we run.”
“One more thing to check,” Larry said. “Chris, hand me that gun you took off the guard.”
Gingerly, Chris did. “I didn’t feel any safety and I wasn’t sure I could figure out—”
“Yeah. It’s a Newberry .65, bastard child of a horse pistol and a modern automatic.” Larry pointed it into the air and pulled the trigger; it dry-fired. He pulled out the magazine. “Not loaded. So they weren’t supposed to kill us, so Grayson doesn’t expect to hear gunshots.” He darted into the main guard room, rifled the desk, found eight full magazines. “Works just like the Newberry Standard rifle,” he said. “Bigger slug because it’s a smoothbore. Accurate to about arm’s-length compared to anything you’re used to. Massive stopping power if you do manage to hit anything. Let’s go.”
As they hastened along the dark road, Larry said, “Cam said you had the plan.”
“Such as it is,” Phat said. “We’re going to cross this bridge and follow the maintenance road onto the abandoned golf course, out onto a big flat stretch of fairway. Once we are there, I’ll use this gadget in the jar to call in help. Meanwhile, for a bigger challenge, you will be laying but not lighting a triangle of three fires, about a hundred yards apart.”
“Has it been cold enough to send all the snakes to ground?” Chris asked.
“Not being a snake, I wouldn’t know. I’d avoid sticking your hands down holes or under bushes.”
“Also,” Larry said, “our gear is gone; I don’t suppose you have anything we can light a fire with, assuming you do want them lit eventually?”
General Phat chuckled. “This is the first time since I was twenty-one that I’ve been glad I smoke.”
ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 1:15 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.
Jenny had never looked more beautiful than she did in candlelight; she had been waiting in his favorite nightie to give him a hero’s welcome, and he’d accepted enthusiastically.
Now he sat cross-legged and upright on the bed, catching his breath. Jenny lay gasping like a trophy marlin. Pity that the only men I actually killed were those pathetic stooges, he thought. I would have liked to see old stone-faced Cam-boy beg for his life… .
The thought of Cam screaming, the real memory of his slack dead face, Jenny’s spill of blonde curls across the pillow, and the sheen of sweat on her big breasts, started him again. He sprang onto Jenny, pinned her, pushed her legs apart.
She squirmed and cried out; this was past the point of her pleasure. He knew she was sore, and he knew too that she would not only forgive him but come to treasure the memory, as she had their wedding night and the other triumphant nights when he had been like this. Teenage-boy bragging resounded in his mind: she’ll walk funny for a week, she won’t be able to sit down—
Her cries of pain and fear brought him to another climax. She curled away from him. “No more, please, baby. I hurt.”
Instantly remorseful, he brought her ointment, stroked her hair, soothed her while she cried about how scary he was. She clung to him; he rubbed her back. If ever he had really made anything his own—
Pounding, then shouting, at the door.
He rolled from the bed, yanked on sweater and pants, put his boots over his trousers, and threw the door open. Reverend Whilmire and Reverend Peet stood there, escorted by four soldiers with rifles.
Whilmire said, “We have an emergency. The Pueblo spies and General Phat are gone, two of their guards are dead, and the medic doesn’t think the third one will regain consciousness. Did you know anything about their escape plan?”
“Only that Shorty Phat was supposed to be the guy that knew it, and if we kept them all locked up it wasn’t going to matter.” Grayson grabbed his coat from the rack; it was freezing outside. “Are any troops in motion yet?”
“We told the sergeant that brought us the news to alert the officer of the watch. He sent back that he’s bringing Second Battalion to Terrell Hall, and he’s also activated the lockdown plan, so there will be troops at the airport and railway station—and on every bridge, ford, and road—in a few minutes.”
“How long ago?” Grayson was solving the problem already; airport locked up, trains locked up, guarding the roads would slow them down, moonless night so horses couldn’t move much faster than a healthy man could walk. “How long ago?” he demanded, again.
“Sir, the message from the officer of the watch came back eighteen minutes ago, sir,” the sergeant of the escorting soldiers said. “And the situation at the facility was discovered about ten minutes before that.”
Grayson nodded. They have at least forty minutes’ head start, but not an hour. The Pueblo spies and Phat had to be within a couple of miles; call it three by the time he had his troops—a long head start, but if they were hiding somewhere to await pickup, maybe.
“Two of you men come with me,” he said. “I’ve got to go to Terrell Hall and take command. Reverend Whilmire, go wake up the Board, drag them into a meeting, no matter what the actual numbers are it’s a quorum, and vote in a temporary declaration of martial law. To expire in two weeks—if we haven’t salvaged things by then we’ve lost anyway.”
“I’d only slow everyone down,” the Reverend Peet said. “I’m going home to bed to let younger people cope with this. Reverend Whilmire, you have my proxy.”
Most useful thing I’ve ever heard Peet say, Grayson thought. “Mine too,” he said. “Good luck.”
As he ran, the sergeant and one soldier at his heels, he thought, Ask me for anything but time. Supposedly Napoleon said that. For the first time, I really understand him. He ran down the road, faster and faster as his eyes adjusted to the starlight, everything forgotten but the need to be there now, now, now.
IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 1:35 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.
Abner Peet had waved off the offer of a soldier to see him home safely. Whilmire and Grayson, he thought, without real disapproval, had certainly fallen for their own act. It was true, of course, that there were dangerous, violent people afoot in the capital tonight, but it seemed to have slipped the general’s mind, and Whilmire’s, that they were the dangerous, violent people, and the enemy were hunted fugitives.
There might be material for a sermon in that idea, though of course he could not use that particular example. The tendency to become obsessed with… well, of course, it was all in the Bible, just as everything else was, motes and beams, and—
“I came as soon as I knew you needed me,” Naomi said, falling into step beside him.
And that was why I sent the soldiers with Whilmire, Peet thought, things making sense at last. “It’s a frightening night,” Peet agreed.
“What are you afraid of, Abner?”
He was startled that she called him by his first name, but it seemed more comforting and familiar than presumptuous. She asked again what he was afraid of.
After a moment he said, “That it will all come back. That I’ll wake up and the Rapture won’t have happened, the cities will be full of crime and evil, all the good work we’ve done will be undone.”
“Is there someone out there trying
to do that tonight, Abner? Our scouts heard shooting and explosions and saw fires, and we didn’t know what it was, so I came in to find you and see if we could help.”
“We thought we had caught some of the worst of them, we thought… we thought we had them locked up—”
Her breath hissed in. “What were they doing? What has happened?”
As he explained it to her, he had the strangest sensation that he was surrounded by a crowd of warm, dirty bodies, all listening intently, but when he finished telling her everything (should I really have told them about who killed the Natcon and why?) they didn’t seem to be there anymore. There was only Naomi, resting her hand on his arm and saying, very gently, “You have done the right thing, you’re helping to bring about the final triumph, you have served your Lord well.”
He felt lost but happy; bewildered but safe. He drank in the frosty air that reminded him that Thanksgiving was only two days away, and Christmas just around the corner after that, and in the glow, something made him ask, “Are you an angel?”
But there was no answer. He opened his eyes fully; he was standing in a windswept deserted street, and except for the stars and a few flickers of distant flames, in the deepest darkness. The shouts far away had nothing to do with him, he knew, so he went home to sleep.
3 HOURS LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 4:45 AM EST. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2025.
General Phat took the radio from his ear and sat up straight. “Jason, is your stick still burning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Time to light the fires; they’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”
Jason pulled the smoldering stick from the little heel-dug trench where he’d kept it under wet leaves, leapt to his feet, and waved it overhead, shaking off the ash, bringing the embers to a bright red glow. On his third swing, flames showed again; a few more swings and it was blazing. By then Larry and Chris, at the two other fire points, were showing bright flames too.