Daybreak Zero

^{THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 1 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.}

“Mid-day from Crypto Incoming, Ms. O’Grainne. Hey there, Leo,” Patrick said.

Heather looked up from her lunch. “Hey, you have to stop bringing me more work than I can do before the next batch comes in.”

“Oh, sure, you say that, but if I stopped bringing it, you’d be extra mad. Wouldn’t she, Leo? Your mom is a tough lady.”

“Don’t try to enlist my son in this, he’s too young to encounter bad influences.” Heather gave Patrick the usual allotment of meal tickets, and a hug. He hugged back, hard, collected her outgoing crypto, and was gone, The mail must go through! echoing as his moccasined feet slapped down the steps.

She pulled out her big yarn and card chart and began sorting through the implications of the messages. Dave Carlucci, FBI in San Diego, reported that Harrison Castro was making more blustery noises about his right to have vassals; Carlucci thought he’d finally found a Federal judge who would issue the order Heather had asked him to seek. The message ended with PS SAW YR DAD. STILL HAPPY, HEALTH GOOD, WANTS 2 HEAR EVTHING RE LEO ASAP. Heather decided to leave CASTLE CHALLENGES as an area to watch but didn’t move its priority up or down.

Sally Osterhaus, overflying a tribal area in Central Oregon, reported what looked like a performance area for a Daybreak play; her sketch would be run by Debbie or Larry ASAP. TRIBAL/DAYBREAK LINK, no change.

From Athens, Red Dog reported that General Phat, being held incommunicado, was healthy, in good spirits, and willing to discuss the issues she’d asked him to; that advanced the FIND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE path substantially. Nice to see some green spreading down a board dominated by red and yellow.

After the first five lines of the message from Carol May Kloster, Heather spoke aloud, and immediately added, “Leo, honey, do not make any of those your first word.”

She scribbled five notes, and leaned out the window; sure enough, Patrick was sitting on the park bench, reading Great Expectations for James Hendrix’s class. “Patrick!”

Heather would have sworn that somehow, from three storeys below, that kid managed to get to her desk before she did.

“Deliver as addressed—while they’re alone if you can, but don’t delay if you can’t. Make sure they see my OPEN ALONE IMMEDIATELY note. They won’t need to send a reply. Come right back; I’ll have another batch.” She handed him his coupons. He and Ntale’ll eat for weeks on this. Her feelings must have leaked through, because he went silently—but if anything, faster than ever before.

^{6 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 1:35 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.}

Patrick appeared beside Chris as if he’d blinked into existence, and handed Chris the note from Heather. Chris nodded, set down the page proof he’d been going over, handed Patrick three meal coupons as a tip, and carried the message into the bathroom.

“Yow,” Chris said, emerging. “Extra special executive meeting. We need the chiefs of production, advertising, editorial, and subscriptions in the conference room now.”

The Post-Times actually had only three full-time Pueblo employees, one of whom was Chris, who handled all those areas, and their production room was one big former auto garage.

Abel Marx looked up from his battle with the old press and laughed, a huge white grin splitting his dark face. “Man, that joke never gets old for me, either, Chris.”

“Middle-aged men are all brain damaged,” Cassie Cartland said, from behind her desk. “That’s why they’ll keep making the same tired joke over and over. Let me finish one thought…” Her fingers clattered over the keys like hail on a tin roof. With her freckles, bowl-cut brown hair, and nose and chin too prominent from sheer skinniness, Cassie looked like a kid on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She was almost seventeen, the daughter of the printer Chris had used for the Olympia Observer and for his first try at book publishing, and possibly had the best instinct he’d ever seen for what went into a news story. “Done. Just thought of a perfect closer and didn’t want to lose it. Do we want to use the big conference room since it’s the whole staff?”

“Wouldn’t that be another same tired joke, over and over?” Chris asked.

“Oh, my God, being a middle-aged old poop is catching,” Cassie said. “By the time I’m your age I’ll be as old as you are now.” In her ancient wooden swivel chair, she looked like a sixth-grader playing in Dad’s office. Abel set his compositor’s stool into the open space at the center of the room; he looked like a rhinoceros roosting on a mushroom. Chris sat on the only corner of his desk that was not buried in papers, and avoided thinking about what he might look like.

“Here’s the deal,” Chris said. “Over in that other job that you guys never talk about, there’s something I need to do, now, and I might be gone for months. Cassie, open my mail, take over correspondence for the paper, what you say or decide is good with me. Any messages relating to my other job’ll be sealed in separate envelopes; take those over to Heather that second, or send them via Patrick, but no other messenger. Drastically overpay Patrick or Heather will have your guts on a stick. For any personal correspondence, remember to respond with ‘Baby’ or ‘Dearest darlingest’ followed by their name, tell them I feel just the same way, and sign it ‘Your rampaging love-rhino.’”

“Yeah, right. If I see one like that I’ll suggest psychiatric help.”

“Abel, I wouldn’t begin to tell you how to do your job, because you’d stomp me into a grease spot.”

“And you don’t need to tell Cassie how to do hers, or I will stomp you into a grease spot.”

“Exactly,” Cassie said. “Headlines for the next issue are: World—Indian and Australian delegations arrive for Big Three summit in Buenos Aires. Nation One—Provi Congress passes Civil Discourse Act, President Weisbrod threatens veto. Nation Two—Post Raptural Church declares Natcon’s proposals ‘Satanic.’ Local—Larsen Weds Castro. Soon as you’re gone I’ll replace it all with celebrity gossip and beauty hints.”

“Glad to know you understand the business.”

“One thought, though. Should I write a few stories to sign your name to, so it’s at least less obvious that you’re gone? Everyone in Pueblo will know, of course, but would it be worth anything to cover for you away from here?”

“It might be. Be sure to put my name on anything about holiday decorating or fashion trends.”

“Of course.” She grinned at him and said, “Seriously, Chris, I’m scared shitless—without Daybreak I’d be hoping to edit my high school’s student news site right now, and you’re handing me the most important newspaper in America.”

Chris shrugged. “If anybody needs to look threatening, you’ve got Abel. If there’s a need for mature judgment, he’s got you.”

“I meant I was scared about how much I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

“Now I’m scared,” Abel said.

^{20 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2:10 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.}

Chris Manckiewicz arrived and took his place beside Quattro, Bambi, Larry, and Jason. “Sorry I was so slow, I needed to arrange cover.”

“You’re well within bounds,” Heather said. “All right. Let me begin with the awful news.” She detailed it quickly, sparing nothing: Ecco had been intercepted and murdered by people who were clearly waiting for him; Pauline Kloster had escaped and Carol May was recording everything Pauline could remember about Castle Earthstone. “It looks like Pale Bluff is now our last secure settlement on that frontier, which means we’ve quietly lost a whole tier of counties on our side of the Wabash in the last ten weeks. There are obviously far more people than we’d thought in the Lost Quarter, tightly organized into tribes and apparently into Castles as well, controlled by Daybreak. The best news, and it’s not that good, is that I’m now sure I can get the Temper government to mount military expeditions against the tribes next spring—but we’ll need ten times what we would have thought.”

Manckiewicz saw it first, as she’d expected. “That isn’t the worst. We must have a traitor in the ranks, fairly high up to have known what Ecco’s real mission was.”

“Pauline Kloster said Ecco was caught within five minutes of crossing the Wabash. And that he walked almost up to Terre Haute, seeing patrols all the way. They can’t possibly have the resources to patrol their border that thoroughly; they had to have known everything. That means high-level traitor.”

“That’s right. They knew everything,” Larry said quietly.

She looked around the room. “I’m not going to tell you who’s suspected, though I’m sure the absence of some people is a dead giveaway as to who’s suspected, but please don’t discuss that. Were you all able to secure complete cover so that you can just go straight from here to the airport? Anybody absolutely have to go get a piece of personal gear or send a note to someone so they won’t talk?”

“Covered it,” Jason said.

“That’s what I was late for,” Chris added.

“We keep most of our stuff in the Gooney,” Quattro said, “and we won’t be gone long, will we?”

“No, not you. Good, then. Quattro and Bambi, you’re going to take the DC-3 and haul these three guys to wherever they think they can do the best penetration from the northwest, moving toward Castle Earthstone—it’s in the Palestine-Warsaw area in Indiana. Work out mechanics of it all in flight, including figuring out where you can refuel in the middle of the night without being conspicuous. Leave now, before anything can leak. By dawn tomorrow, Larry, Chris, and Jason need to have landed somewhere north and west of Lafayette. Cross the Tippecanoe, go at least as far as Castle Earthstone, report on what you find.”

“What about the traitor?” Jason asked.

“I know none of you are it,” she said. “You all have solid verifiable alibis for the whole time when Ecco’s mission could have been betrayed. I’ll be doing things here to find the traitor, but in the light of what we’ve just learned about the Lost Quarter, I’ve got to know what’s going on, right now. I can’t wait to establish perfect security.”

“Why us?” Jason asked quietly. “I mean—well, I have a wife with a child coming, Chris is a very public figure, Larry just found his lost daughter—”

Heather grimaced. “Everyone will have some reason not to go. Out of the ones I can clear right away, Quattro and Bambi, you’re in because this mission has to move as far as it can by air. Larry, you’ve got the woodcraft; Jason, there has to be an ex-Daybreaker along to make sense out of whatever you find, you’ll be more use in a fight than Ysabel, and she still has seizures around Daybreak stuff. I’m assuming you don’t want me to send your pregnant wife.”

Jason nodded, satisfied.

“What am I along for?” Chris asked.

“So you can publish articles and maybe a book that will infuriate the absolute living piss out of all the civilized people and motivate them to rise up and slay and slay and slay till there’s nothing left of Daybreak. It’s war. The public has to want to win it. In less than three weeks we have a summit conference here to get the ball rolling for the restart election, and in fourteen months we’re going to elect a new batch of politicians. God love’em, politicians are all about deals, so the way I see it is, the only way to ensure no deals with the devil is to ensure there’s no devil. Now, go.”

^{ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 4 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.}

Deb Mensche arrived first, right at four. The directions had said not to come early. She slipped in and closed the door so quietly that Heather did not notice her before she looked up from breastfeeding Leo. She didn’t exactly jump, but Leo felt the difference and wailed. She helped him find his way back to the nipple. “That was spooky. You might as well be invisible.”

“Leo caught me.”

“Leo’s only been around a week. He’s harder to fool because he makes fewer assumptions.” Heather smiled at her. “Glad you’re here first. Come over here, there’s something I want to say softly in case the next people in might hear through the door.”

Deb put her ear to Heather’s mouth and Heather said, “Your mission will be a decoy, but you’re not supposed to know that. One of the two people I’m going to put in charge of briefing you might betray you to the other side. I don’t know which. Be super careful and—”

Deb squeezed QRT—stop sending—on Heather’s elbow, and went to the door, opening it an instant after Arnie knocked. As he was coming in, Leslie Antonowicz joined them, carrying a large load of books and papers.

“Well,” Heather said. “Thank you for being prompt.” In a few swift, brutal sentences, she sketched what had happened to Ecco and added that the encrypted station somewhere near Bloomington had been active not long after. That much was true—it had been Arnie’s direction-finding stations that had spotted it. “You’ll be going in another way,” she told Deb, “around Uniontown, Kentucky, a nice little town just above where the Wabash joins the Ohio.” She launched into a far more detailed than necessary description of Uniontown, all the while listening intently while she talked.

When she heard the first telltale cough-and-thud of the Gooney’s engine starting, she raised her voice, rising from her desk. “Now, listen closely, I can’t stress enough—”

She had put her lunch tray as close to the edge of the desk as possible, for just this moment, and now a little turn of one finger flipped it over. The crash of dishes was abrupt; Heather swore loudly, and from his crib, Leo woke screaming. It covered the DC-3 starting its run-up for takeoff; Leo, bless his sound little lungs, could easily have drowned out a missile launch and two rock concerts.

By the time Leo was calmed, the dishes retrieved, and the briefing resumed, Quattro, the DC-3, and the mission were far out of earshot. Heather slipped the note into Leslie’s hand as she went, telling her to come back for a different conference in ninety minutes.

“Well,” Heather said, as the door closed behind Debbie Mensche, leaving just Arnie for the next session, “my little man here seems to be back to sleep.” She kissed Leo and settled him back into the crib. Sorry about that, kid. Probably not the last time you’ll lose some sleep because your country needs you.

“As long as I’ve got you alone, Arnie, let me explain that I’m partly compartmentalizing the missions this time. You’ve got to be in both compartments because you’ve got the radio direction-finding info our agents need to plan their approach to Bloomington, but I’d like you to pretend you’re two people and don’t let them talk to each other.”

“I figured as much. Who’s next?”

“Do you know Roger Jackson?”

“Barely.”

“Young guy. Everything I know about him is that he has an abundance of woodcraft and fighting experience and a lack of permanent assignments and family. We’re going to send him in along old I-64, a long way from where Deb’s going in. James Hendrix did some work on remaining resources in that area, so he’ll be the other briefer. I wish we had more than one briefer who knew the direction-finding data; nothing personal, Arn, but we could be much better compartmentalized.”

“I’ve been wanting to beef up our DF operations. If Tarantina Highbotham starts doing those for us, down in the Virgin Islands, the long baseline would let us zero in much more closely on the intermittent stations inside the Lost Quarter.”

“Ask her to start on that ASAP.”

A knock at the door announced James Hendrix. Because he was so quiet and self-possessed, Heather didn’t feel as attached to James, and if one of them had to be the traitor, she preferred him to Arnie, her friend from long before Daybreak, or to warm, funny, adventurous Leslie.

Roger came in while Arnie and James were still looking for something to make small talk about. To keep things consistent with the way she’d behaved in briefing Deb, Heather put an enormous amount of detail into a very simple mission: Roger was to cross the Wabash on the I-64 bridge, just south of Grayville, scout thoroughly before going over, return at the first sign that he was being watched, and otherwise hurry to Bloomington overland, where he would find out as much as he could about that transmitter.

At the end, she told James she had more material to go over with him about possibly re-opening some old coal mines on the Western Slope; since he was, among other things, their paper maps wizard, with a phenomenal memory for anything he had seen once, it was a logical reason for him to stick around. She had been afraid Arnie wouldn’t go, but instead, he seemed eager, if anything, to leave.

Arnie didn’t ask one question. When did that ever happen before? But he and Ecco were friends. I don’t want him to have sent Steve to his doom.

Ten minutes after Arnie left, Leslie returned, her backpack loaded with papers and books; Dan Samson was almost at her heels, unclipping his stringy gray hair and wiping his face with a rag. “We raced,” Samson explained. “This psychotic child not only runs like a bunny, she’s rough with the elbows when you try to pass.”

Neither sweating nor breathing hard, Leslie shrugged. “Part of any game is using your fouls—especially when there’s no ref.”

Once again Heather laid it out: Ecco’s death, the need to penetrate the Lost Quarter and find out what was going on, and the too-elaborate discussion of everything, in the hope that if either Leslie or James were the traitor, a telltale detail might make it into an intercepted enemy message. For a long time after Leslie and James departed, she stood by the window, holding Leo, trying to think.

I don’t want it to be Arnie, but I don’t want it to be Leslie, either. I keep hoping for time to go fishing, hiking, or climbing with her; I bet before Daybreak she was one of those Rocky Mountain woman athletes that barely ever slept under a roof.

Heather drew and re-drew the diagram in her head; each of the three agents had been set up with two of her potential traitors. One agent should get through without being intercepted; the two people who had briefed that agent would be cleared, the one who had not condemned.

The sun was already low in the sky. Leo woke and announced mealtime, and Heather did her best to stop thinking, but after Leo went back to sleep, and she stretched out on her bed, she lay awake for a long time. Her thoughts were cold, dark, and sad.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:25 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.}

“Hey, I know I’m being a big sissy and all, but are you heading up to the 18th and Blake area?”

“We wish more people would be big sissies; it’s more fun to have company than to pick up bodies and run for medics when we find them in alleys.” Mandy, the watch sergeant, wore a not-quite-fitting steel-pot helmet. Wonder if she had that in the attic or picked it up from a museum? “Yeah, we’re headed that way, Doctor Yang, we’ll take you right to your door. Have they decided whether your place is going to be inside the walls yet?”

“Not yet,” Arnie said. “They really ought to settle on where the walls are going to be.”

“What I hear, arguments from all the retired officers here’s what holds it up. God knows why but a lotta ex-servicemen settled in Pueblo.” She pronounced it Pee Yeb Low, the way old natives were said to do; it was actually the first time Arnie had heard it that way. “So at every meeting there’s fifty guys who think they know the best way to lay out a defense.”

“Same at the national level,” Arnie said. “Everybody’s qualified to plan the train route and nobody’ll shovel coal.” He hadn’t actually found that to be the truth but he knew from past experience that ordinary people liked to hear it.

The lantern created a small pool of cheery light as they left the occupied streets.

Chatting with Mandy, he learned she’d been a kayaking guide, liked militia duty better than salvage work, approved of the new Pope’s move to Buenos Aires, and wanted to vote for General Phat. The warm chatter of the healthy young optimist distracted him, but not enough; most of his mind listened for a scrape or thud where there shouldn’t be one, told him he needed to strike at Aaron the moment he saw him, and knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t.

Oh, God. Ecco was my friend.

For tonight, he would not meet Aaron. From now on he would always walk with the watch—till he moved in closer to town, and he would, soon. He could…

Pauline said they blinded him with a hot screwdriver.

The empty city was so still. The watch would keep Aaron away for tonight. But Daybreak was there, always, in the dark voids of the windows, where nothing looked or saw.

^{THE NEXT DAY. I-57, JUST WEST OF THE FORMER GILLMAN, ILLINOIS. 5:35 AM CST. TUESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2025.}

“You wouldn’t think those guys would be able to sleep at all,” Bambi said quietly to Quattro. “Another shot of coffee?”

“Yeah, rank hath its privilege—but make sure we save enough to jumpstart the team.”

“We’re on our own thermos, Quatz. I’ve got a gallon of hot coffee in a thermos and a box of leftover wedding chow for them. They can have breakfast as soon as we dump them out.”

“So we’re going to deposit our friends there and run like bunnies.” Quattro sounded grumpy; probably the idea sat uneasy with his romantic view of himself.

“Yeah. Well, we all volunteered. How come you and I don’t just settle in to become the Duke and Duchess of California?”

“Because we’d have to fight a war with your crazy dad. Because we’re loyal Americans and we have a neurotic sense of duty. Because it’s more fun to fly.”

Sometimes Bambi thought she’d married him for that smile.

Morning twilight revealed the bare, dusty fields, wind-drifts of burned cars, burned-out buildings, and knocked-over water towers. On December 3 last year, one of the five biggest bombs in all of history had created a new, artificial bay in Lake Michigan, sending tornado-and-more force winds across the prairie.

“Gillman,” Quattro said. The place they were supposed to drop the team. “Highway looks totally clear—should we just land?”

“I think that’s all we can do.” She unstrapped, went back, and shook them awake.

I-57 ran straight north and south for more than two miles between two overpasses choked with dust dunes; Quattro touched down easily, taxied to lose speed, and came around to be ready to take off into the wind again. “All right, everybody out, and please remember that if you leave anything behind, you can reclaim it in Pueblo.”

Bambi opened the door and the three men shuffled off the plane. Larry looked like he was going fishing; Chris humped his pack with something between a sigh and a shrug; Jason looked around in all directions like a coked-up bush baby. They hurried away to be well clear of the stabilizers and the idling props.

While they checked to make sure they had everything, Bambi took a last look around for anything forgotten. She exchanged thumbs-ups with Larry, brought in the steps, closed the door, and buckled back into the copilot’s seat.

The engines roared; they raced along the empty highway and into the sky. Sunlight suddenly flared to their left. Quattro turned west. For the next hundred miles over the blown-flat, burned-black prairie, neither of them said anything.

^{THE NEXT DAY. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10:20 AM EST. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 27, 2025.}

Grayson laid the documents down carefully as he went through them. “Expedition from Pueblo.” He jammed his finger down on the long memo from Heather. “Direct espionage into the Lost Quarter, launched from an area we claim.” He pointed to Marprelate’s report from Pale Bluff. “Without our permission. They couldn’t have given us a more perfect reason to cancel the summit.”

“Except we’re not going to cancel it,” Cameron said, coolly.

“We have a chance to preserve everything we’ve worked for,” Reverend Whilmire said. “An almost providential chance, if you see what—”

“Oh, I understand you, Reverend.” Cam waved a hand as if trying to shake off a booger. “But I don’t care what you’ve worked for; what I am working for is the restoration of the Constitution. Full stop, period, that’s that. If you think Providence is doing this, then Providence can damned well be my enemy.” The Natcon looked from one face to the other. “The RRC in Pueblo is an agency of our government, charged among other things with researching conditions in the areas that have not yet called in. This mission is as legitimate as if I had ordered it. And it’s a tragedy that this man Ecco was killed, but among other things, we’re getting the fullest report yet, from Pauline Kloster, about what actual conditions are in the Lost Quarter—and General, you should note that it’s clear we need military expeditions up that way, soon, because what’s building up in the Lost Quarter can’t be allowed to build any longer. So my first order on this subject is that you begin preparations for one or more punitive raids across the Wabash or the Ohio; at the least, we need to trash this Castle Earthstone. The successes you had in the Youghiogheny make you my first choice for the job.”

He let that sink in for a moment; he was frustrating Whilmire, but this was a potential enhancement for Grayson’s political career. That’s right, Grayson, think about being able to run for president of the whole United States as a military victor, eh? Then, more softly, he said, “We will attend the summit in Pueblo and we will attend it in good faith. We will reach an agreement with the Weisbrod government and in 2026 there will be a restoration election in every part of the country that we control; in 2027 a fully Constitutional government will take power. That is what I’m sworn to achieve, and that is what I will achieve.” Listen close, Grayson, listen close, do you hear the chance to be president of the whole thing, instead of the reverend’s cat’s-paw?

“Subject to the Board’s approval and—”

“I reconstituted the Board, Reverend, I didn’t give it any legislative power this time around either, and the final decision is mine. Which you have heard.”

“Reverend Peet will hear about this.”

“No doubt. He not only reads the paper, he owns it. Nonetheless, I am still the NCCC, until General Grayson acquires the nerve to do anything about it, anyway.” If that’s really ambition and understanding dawning on that male-model face, they always said in interrogation class that the way to set the hook is to pull it away.

Grayson’s face went flat. “That isn’t funny.”

“It’s not a joke, General. You don’t want me as NCCC; you’ve made that clear enough. But you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and I’m a presidential appointee of the last universally acknowledged, fully recognized President of the United States, and your civilian superior. You can take your chance that if you help me put the country together, the people will follow you. I think that’s a smart bet. But perhaps you judge the road of Caesar, or Cromwell, or Napoleon to be less of a gamble.”

Grayson looked straight back at him, and Cameron thought, Now say it, now say yes, that’s the deal I want. Just inside yourself, for now.

Whilmire, perhaps afraid of what Grayson would say, jumped in again. “This is all beside the issue of attending the summit. We must not do anything to make the Olympia government appear legitimate.”

“And what does the Bible have to say about peacemakers?”

“Your constant sarcasm is—”

“One of the few pleasures I still have. The decision is made, gentlemen. General, if we walk into the Defense Planning Bureau and tell them we need to do raids in force into the Lost Quarter, especially into the Warsaw/ Palestine area, can they spec some list of options out for us in the next day or so?”

“It’ll make more of an impression if we go there ourselves,” Grayson said, with a half-suppressed grin. “Those guys could use a wake-up and shake-up anyway.”

“Good, let’s go.” Though Cameron was a slight, short man, set against Whilmire’s beefy lineman-type and Grayson’s tall, rangy, physique, when Cam walked between them, they parted like old-time supermarket doors, and then hurried after him, trailing their dignity behind them.

He was out in the corridor before they caught up with him. He was careful not to walk fast, because that might look as if he ran away from them, but by surprising them with that first step, and forcing them onto their back legs, he had gained enough of a head start to force them to conspicuously hurry after him. My ancestors were Confederate diplomats and the bodyguards of emperors, Cam thought. Back when yours were learning to wear shoes and not publicly lust after sheep.

After they caught up, Cam spoke softly. “I think Graham is sincerely trying to bring us together. We might yet manage real peace, maybe even reconciliation, if we’re smart enough. We won’t throw that out over a snit over authority.”

“But if we sacrifice—”

“I was including the other side in ‘we,’ Reverend. And if you were referring to sacrificing the un-Constitutional expedients that have been forced on me by circumstances, good riddance. We’re getting our Constitution back. I know that the general, at least, understands the words ‘uphold’ and ‘defend.’”

Grayson’s tone was polite, even deferential—a good sign. “Sir, I think you are unnecessarily antagonistic—”

“I’ll accept that I’m antagonistic. I’m not sure I’m as antagonistic as necessary, but I’m doing my best.” Nice fishie, swallow that hook hard. He hoped it wasn’t only in his imagination that Grayson had seen the advantages.

Of course he could also just shoot me, frame a PCG agent, declare war, and rule by decree. Petty harassment and pranking of guys who are already thinking of shooting me—Cameron emphatically finished the thought with—keeps them off balance, makes them look silly, reminds them of all the times they’ve chickened out before, and gives me some badly needed amusement. Funny how free you are once you just do the right thing; after that all they can do is kill you.

^{5 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:15 PM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2025.}

“Steve Ecco,” James said, holding the glass of blood-red wine up.

“Steve,” Leslie agreed, and clinked glasses with him. “And all the others going in after him. That’s what’s hard for me to imagine. Ecco going in was brave, but going in after what happened to him…” She extended her glass again.

James clinked it, and they drank deeply, more a passionate communion than a toast. “You know, I’m not used to being around brave people or adventurous people, even now after all we’ve been through here.” He broke off a piece of bread, warm from his oven, and handed it to her; they chewed slowly. “At these Monday night dinners, what did we talk about back before all our friends were going off to risk death?”

Leslie smiled and brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “The Heart of Leslie Antonowicz, also known as The Love Of My Life Of The Week. Ways I tried to get myself killed out in the boons, skiing and climbing and all that. Of course, nowadays the boons are much more dangerous—and given that condoms are extinct, so is catting around.”

James sat back, blinking, and said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Old man, you need to get out more. I know this widow—”

“No, I didn’t mean on the personal level. I meant we’ve got an AIDS epidemic coming. The drugs are gone and it’ll be a long generation before we can put the things that make them back together, and we’ve got famine, epidemics of other diseases, mass grief that we’re only starting to wake up and feel—very likely most of the HIV-positive people are going to convert to full-blown AIDS in the next few years. Then on top of that, condoms were plastic themselves, often wrapped in plastic, and anyway we’re not making any more of them—I mean, holy crap, we’ve got to make sure the next generation is careful, you know?”

“Sounds like an oncoming Jamesgram.” That was her nickname for his frequent one-page memos to Heather, about every possibility from lions on the Great Plains to cholera in Morgan City.

He made a face. “It was my memo about the situation east of the Wabash that gave her the idea of sending poor Ecco out to Pale Bluff, and I don’t know if it was decisive, but I sent a note about the implications of Debbie’s report and why we needed to get someone inside the Lost Quarter soon. Jamesgrams have consequences.”

“Are you feeling guilty?”

He thought for a moment. “No, I guess not. We had to try. I just feel sorry for Steve Ecco; what an awful way to go.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “One drunken night he tried to pick me up, and I heard the story and philosophy of his life. He died the way he thought he wanted to. Bet he didn’t like it as much as he thought he would, though. No background music. That’s the trouble with an adventurous life, sooner or later it really hurts, and there’s no pizza afterwards.”

“That seems kind of cold about a guy who’s dead.”

“Yeah. I’m not sure I wanted to say that, myself. Let’s get into that steak salad you said was going to curl my toes.”

“Only way I ever get to hear you make noises like that.”

“Dirty old man.”

The banter was forced, awkward, sounded silly to them both, but it was better than what they had been talking about, and almost ten years of Monday dinners together had at least given them a reliable script for avoiding awkward, emotionally difficult moments. Still, as James sliced the steak into thin strips, he seemed to feel his thumb pressing the handle more than usual, and looked at it with a strange fond tenderness. Seeing that, Leslie began a long, pointless story about someone trying to pick her up in Dell’s Brew, and James supplied ten times the commentary that seemed necessary.

^{2 DAYS LATER. UNIONTOWN, KENTUCKY CROSSING. 2:50 AM CST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2025.}

In the wee hours in Uniontown, the whoosh of the dark black river drowned out any other sound. The narrow streets—bent, tangled, and truncated by the town’s being pinned between the river and the mountains—showed no light; Uniontowners had learned to assume there were watchers across the river.

Debbie Mensche followed her guide for an hour along the trail downstream, until, at one bend, he stopped, let her catch up, and touched her elbow.

The shore-side edge of the triangular rock was about chest high to them; they climbed up onto it and crept a few feet forward on their bellies to look over the edge. Beyond the fast, noisy riffles in the river, the end of the dam reached toward them. Her guide yipped like a coyote; on the other side, at the tip of the dam, a man stood and waved his arms, twice, once, then three times, and finally once again.

With steps nailed and tied on to form a ladder, climbing into the big oak wasn’t difficult, even in the dark. The guide tugged on the line that led away across the river, and received an answering tug. He fitted the metal logging helmet over her head and fastened the chin strap; helped her into the harness; and rigged her to the overhead pulley. “Just let your legs trail, and keep them close together. They’ll catch you by the legs and guide you in. But even if you lose your grip and come in upside down and flailing, the guys on the other end know what to do, so try to remember you’re safe, okay?”

“’Kay.”

“Anything at all before you go?”

“No, nothing. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Come back sometime when we can show you our little town. Pack on good?”

“Yeah.”

“Harness is good,” he said, rechecking. “All right. Grab the handles, walk to the edge, and lift your feet up high. Stretch out again as soon as you clear the platform.”

Debbie walked forward to the platform edge; she could see a path had been cut through the branches, and beyond she could see the river, the dam, and the opposite shore. She took a good grip on the handles and bent her knees; at first she was pulling the line down, then pulling it tight, and finally her feet came up, leaving the edge. The forward lurch startled her, but she remembered to extend her legs and then she was…

Flying, she thought. Like a dream of being a bird. She swooped out through the opening in the tree, and the slope fell away below her; she was gliding down toward the riffles below, looking around at the vast dark river spanning the horizons, the thundering pale confusion where the Wabash poured into the Ohio, and the tree-covered hills.

The dam swooped up under her feet. A man ran with his arms around her calves for about twenty yards, soaking up her momentum, letting her weight settle onto him until he had brought her feet down to the dam. She felt a twinge of regret that the ride had not been longer.

She shook the man’s hand; talking seemed like an unnecessary risk, but she wanted him to know she was grateful.

The concrete of the path along the top of the dam gave way to the soft, damp dirt of the trail; she settled into the business of covering distance before sunrise.

^{THE SECOND NIGHT AFTER. OLYMPIA, NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 11:30 PM PST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2025.}

Allie, what were you thinking? Allison Sok Banh wished she’d had one good friend to ask her that sometime in the last few months, before she’d decided that running the Provisional Constitutional Government by combining the Chief of Staff and First Lady duties would be a good move. God, third straight night I’ll be up past midnight. And then I can pretend to sleep on a steam train all the way to Pueblo for the next few days. Graham, her husband and the president—God I wish those were three people instead of one—was safely in bed, leaving the detail work to her. And didn’t I always want the detail work, anyway? Wasn’t that where I got my success?

Also, traditionally, where the devil lives.

“You look tired.” Darcage stood before her, impeccably groomed as always.

“I am tired. How the hell did you get past security this time?”

“That would be telling.” He did have a warm smile; probably sold shit-loads of used cars, multilevel marketing vitamins, or Jesus before Daybreak. “You look like you can barely keep your eyelids up; you must feel your whole body is made out of warm, soft lead.” His hands were so nice on her neck. “You’re just a tired staffer, just a tired bureaucrat, just a tired ambitious person, just a tired wife, that’s all. Or is it all of those and more? Look at you, your face looks like it’s running down your skull into your neck.”

“You have a way with a compliment,” she said, leaning forward to let him work the knots out.

“‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’” Darcage said. “Man in general, man in particular, why so much stress? Couldn’t you at least find a species that would accept your hard work and your gift of yourself, and enjoy it, and not complain that it wasn’t what they wanted or that you still haven’t done enough? Consider how much Daybreak does for those of us in the tribes; I don’t think we could exist without it. Imagine how useful the tribes could be—”

She sat back. “Good try!” Angrily, she pushed his hands away from her neck, and shook her head to clear it. Maybe tonight she’d just call security and let them have Darcage; this wasn’t working out as she’d hoped it would.

She felt his hands back on her neck again, gripped them to stop him. If she screamed now he’d never get away, but did she want to? She was so—

“Tired, aren’t you? We don’t want you to do one bit more of work. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could work together? After all, we want to work with you, and you want to work with us, and we can do each other so much good.”

An hour later, she woke in the guttering light of the oil lamp, head on her desk, strangely refreshed from such a short nap; she was surprised at how much work she had finished; in fact, all that remained was to sign all the typewritten orders, initial all the annotated reports, drop them in the out basket, and go to bed. Funny how she’d fallen asleep just when she was almost done, but the rest had done her so much good.

^{LATE THE FOLLOWING DAY. FORT NORCROSS (JUST DOWNSTREAM ON THE OHIO OF WARSAW, KENTUCKY). ABOUT 10 PM EST. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2025.}

“Officially,” Lieutenant Seacrist told Dan Samson, “we’re just a monitoring station. Obviously we’re here because when they get that train running over the mountains to Lexington, Warsaw is going to be a major port on the Ohio.”

The palisade wall of Fort Norcross would have been easily recognizable to Daniel Boone except for the black-powder Gatling guns, the sewer-pipe mortars, and the currently retracted chain-net radio antenna that waited to be hoisted on its mast, which doubled as the flagpole. During the day, Samson had seen the flag that flew from it—the Cross and Eagle.

“In my experience,” Samson said, “an introduction about what you do officially and what you do obviously is a segue to the part about what you really do.”

“At any given time,” Seacrist said, “I have anywhere from five to thirty men patrolling and scouting on the other side. We need to stay deniable, but our business is intercepting their scouts, removing their food caches, burning the little patches of corn and beans they plant everywhere for supplies. You might say the war has already started here.”

“Where are your orders coming from?”

“Athens.” If Seacrist had stopped there, Samson would have had no opening to inquire further, but after a moment the lieutenant continued. “Program being run by a guy named Grayson, who I hope to vote for when we elect a president again. One-star general before Daybreak and now he’s the reason why we’re all Tempers here.” In the dark it was hard to see his facial features, and his voice was flat as he added, “I know you’ll tell them that in Pueblo. It’s part of your job.”

“Yep. Thanks for the loan of the kayak, and extra thanks for letting me know that I’m going into a war zone. And thanks for what you’re doing.”

“You can thank Grayson,” Seacrist said. “Your kayak’s tied up in the shadow of those willows.”

“I’m gone already.” He slung up his pack, slipped through the side gate of the fort with a handshake from the sentry, and pushed off in the kayak. Following the dim shadows of the trees out onto the river, he angled for the little cove downstream that pierced deep into an overgrown golf course. I like what you’re doing but I really like the old flag, he thought, and then, because all that was behind him, he put his back into his paddling.

^{13 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2 PM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025.}

Dr. MaryBeth Abrams was good company for the last three hours of freedom Heather expected this month: the ball game between the Pueblo Angels and the Fort Carson Rangers. Heather and MaryBeth were there because everyone was, because the club owner gave Heather free seats along the first base line, and because it was a fine early fall day.

“Besides,” MaryBeth said, “this way I can see that Leo is healthy as a moose, and sound confident the next time you imagine something and send Patrick after me.”

“I just don’t know very much about babies. Nobody gave me a manual, and when something’s new to me, I’d rather ask than guess.”

They watched the Angels work a double play. “Up to the level of college ball in the old days, do you think?” Heather asked.

“Small college. Still it’s a nice day for a game. Getting cold fast, though, this year, hope they get to finish the season; they’re saying there could be snow on the ground before October.”

Fort Carson brought in its strong reliever, and the game settled into a pitcher’s duel.

Heather said. “I was kind of having a thought.”

“I don’t cure those, I’m not that kind of doctor.”

“Just curious. Seems to me we’ve got gazillions of babies lately. Besides those kids that work for me, Jason and Beth, I know four other pregnancies are happening—”

“Oh yeah. Want to know when there’s a baby boom on, ask a small town doctor. And I can tell you, there is one on. All the common methods of birth control are gone, and people love to boink too much to give it up. But my guess is we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

An Angel almost stole third; Heather and MaryBeth enjoyed agreeing that the ump had robbed him.

“You think we’re in for even more of a baby boom?” Heather asked. “Why?”

“Remember all the uproar about estrogen-mimicking compounds in plastics? Lots of doctors were convinced that was what was behind the ‘infertility epidemic,’ that it wasn’t just late childbearing and prevalent chlamydia. I think maybe the Daybreak biotes have been purging the planet of the mock estrogens, along with tires, gasoline, condoms, and Barbies. I mean, in the last decade 1:20 was a normal babies-to-boinks ratio—”

“I don’t think Arnie has shown me that statistic yet.”

“Okay, in med school they call it the conception ratio, but then I would have had to explain what it is. Anyway, 1:20 means on the average, last ten years, boink twenty times, make one baby. But back in the 1930s, before they started making estrogen-mimicking stuff, 1:11 was normal. Estrogen-mimicking compounds seem to me like something the biotes would scarf right down, so what’s in the environment is being destroyed really fast, and since the plastic factories aren’t running, we’ve stopped making more. So sperm counts ought to be rebounding in all species, and fertility of eggs increasing, and sterility rates dropping, and so on. All that adds up to a real crowd of babies.”

“Wow,” Heather said. “More revolutions coming.”

“To everything there is a season, turn, turn, turn,” MaryBeth said, “and the world didn’t stop turning just because America decided to break apart, or you fell in love and ended up a mom. It’s amazing, the number of things the world keeps right on turning through.”

The last inning was quick and dull. MaryBeth asked, “Want to get a beer at Dell’s Brew?”

Heather checked the time. “I don’t have time before meeting the trains. We’re going to make the Provis and Tempers sit down and listen to sense, so that by the time all those babies you’re promising show up, we’ll have a country for them.”

^{40 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 3:15 PM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2025.}

“At least it’s a nice day to watch them come in,” Heather remarked. The two steam trains each flew American flags from the locomotive and the caboose; between, there were two big steam locomotives, coal car, a sleeper for the VIPs, a passenger car outfitted as an office, and the “fort car,” a boxcar armored with steel plates bolted to its inner walls, loopholed for the guns of the guards. “But with fifty-eight working full-gauge locomotives on the continent, should two of them be hauling politicians? We really need coal. They’re pretty well certain this is going to be a cold, early winter.”

“Maybe we could burn politicians,” Leslie suggested.

“Too wet to burn well.”

“Let’s burn them anyway,” Leslie said, taking a step forward. She turned to the officer beside her and said, “May I borrow your field glasses?” Leslie gazed at the distant locomotives; for Heather, they were just two tiny three-car trains in the sea of sagebrush, crawling along the track that shone in the afternoon sun, trailing their big plumes of gray-blue smoke.

“What are you seeing, Leslie?”

“Oh, man. You’re going to want to burn them both, Heather. Remember how much time we put into making sure they’d fly the real American flag from their locomotives?”

“Yeah, you mean they’re not?”

“Oh, they are. That’s what I was trying to make out. It’s what they’re flying from their cabooses.”

“Damn. I better look for myself.”

Heather peered through the antique field glasses, thinking, oddly, that when these were made, they might have been tested on that locomotive—both were well over a hundred years old.

The lead train, from Athens, flew the fifty-star, thirteen-stripe flag from the locomotive, but from the caboose, it flew the same design with a blotch on the stripes—the Army eagle, superimposed on a cross. The train behind it, from Olympia, flew the correct American flag from its locomotive—but the nineteen-star, double circle flag waved from its caboose.

“You know, if you’d put one’s stripes with the other’s stars, it would all be fine,” Leslie said.

“Do you suppose they both decided to be offensive, independently, or that one of them started it?” Heather asked.

Positioning both the office-cars directly behind equally placed podiums took a long time. Leo began fussing, so Leslie held him and soothed him, since Heather needed a hand free to shake with. Peering at Heather over Leslie’s shoulder, he looked immensely weary and irritated. “Yeah, I know, kid,” Heather whispered. “I’m not thrilled with either of my old friends, either.”

But when Cameron Nguyen-Peters and Graham Weisbrod emerged from their trains, they appeared not to see each other’s offensive flags at all; rather, they shook hands cordially enough, introduced their grimacing, stone-faced staffs, and then both insisted on visiting with Leo and looking Heather over to tell her she was doing well. For a few minutes, she let herself remember that the Temper Natcon and the Provi President had both been pretty good guys, and even friends with each other.

I just hope they remember, because I think their staffs are here to make them forget.

Afterward, walking back, Leslie said, “I did a little mixing with their staffs. Learned some things. It was General Grayson’s wife, and her loony father the reverend, that broke out the Temper flag and had them put it on the caboose; I don’t know if Cam even knew they’d done it, it was just the last few miles. Allie Sok Banh was the one who decided to retaliate with the Provi flag. Everyone’s mad at their own people, but they all keep saying it’s their own affair and they’re not about to apologize to the other side.”

Leo, back in Heather’s papoose pack, belched and fussed; Heather ran a finger down his soft little cheek. “You were right, Leslie. We ought to be testing whether they’re really too wet to burn.”