Daybreak Zero

^{ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:30 PM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025.}

Heather ate dinner in the public mess hall because she didn’t want to appear elitist, and besides it was fast and she had unlimited meals there. Sometimes it was great—venison stroganoff; usually it was adequate—shepherd’s pie; just once, rebellion had threatened when it was rabbit, onion, and cabbage aspic.

With just Leo for company, she was finishing a pile of routine messages, and a plate of fish loaf and field green salad, at her usual table by herself, when Patrick materialized beside her. “Ms. O’Grainne, from crypto, marked OPEN NOW URGENT FAR. You said no matter what—”

“I did.” She paid him twice the usual meal coupons. “The second payment is for you to never admit you carried a message or found me tonight, no matter what. Not even if I ask you in front of others; if I do that it’s because I need you to alibi me.”

He stood taller. “No messages for Ms. O’Grainne since ten this morning.” He was gone.

She grabbed up her things and gathered up Leo. “FAR” meant Field Action Request, i.e. somebody out there had a situation that required immediate action. Just bad luck that I’m out in public and can’t rip it open right now.

At home, she checked the lock, put Leo in his crib with a gentle settledown kiss on the forehead, and opened the radiogram.

Debbie Mensche. Good, so she was alive and—

Oh, Christ.

The message read:

She knew what it meant but checked anyway. Black envelopes in her safe held materials for her eyes only. Black envelope number 19 held a piece of paper with three simple notes:

The Daybreakers had been waiting and ready for the two scouts Leslie Antonowicz had known about. The scout Leslie hadn’t known about had gone undetected.

^{25 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 7:55 PM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025.}

“Well,” Leslie said, “you can cook, and that’s something. Seriously, James, you can’t spend the rest of your life being my best buddy and nursing your crush on me. You’re way too nice a guy for that.” She spooned some of his elk-liver gravy onto the hot cornbread, and joined him at the table. “I can’t be your whole social life, dude, it’s not natural.”

“Who says I’m pining? We like each other’s company, right? That’s why we keep hanging out together. It was kind of painful, and obviously I wish you’d felt differently. I admit all that, but that was way back before Daybreak. I’ve been alone most of my life. I just like to have a few good friends, and let it go at that.”

“James—really. The city is crawling with widows, nice women your age who would be glad—”

“If I’d be glad. Look, Leslie, we’re calling each other by name a lot, and that usually means we’re pretending we’re not fighting. We’ve been having dinners together most Mondays, pretty much forever. That’s not my whole social life. I teach Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Friday nights I go to martial arts after the school meeting, and Saturday I have the RRC Board meeting. If I like to spend Saturday nights with a book and Sundays loafing around the house, well, that’s the only alone time I have for it anymore. I don’t spend my whole week pathetically waiting to cook for you on Monday night, and I don’t feel like I’m alone too much, in fact—or wait, is it just you want to do something different on Mondays? Without me, I mean?”

“See, James, this is how I can tell you’re lying, you should see how afraid you look right now. And the answer is no, I hope we have twenty more years of Monday dinners, especially if you keep making that mixed berry pie, but my point is, the way you reacted to—”

The knock was very loud.

When James opened the door, three big, muscular militiamen came in, without invitation, and a slim young officer came in behind. “Leslie Antonowicz, our orders are to take you with us, and not to let you communicate with other people. We’re required to cuff you, and you won’t be allowed to bring a purse or personal effects; Sergeant Mason will confiscate any of those and take them with him.”

James asked, “Don’t you have to read her rights?”

“Not for a national security case.”

“When can I say I’m innocent?” Leslie asked.

“As often as you want, but you’re not going to be seeing anyone who will do anything about it for a while.” The officer added, “We’re authorized to use force.”

Leslie stood still for a moment, then picked up her purse from the table and said, “Sergeant, this is all I was carrying.” James made a noise, but she said, “James, let’s not get your house trashed, let alone you arrested. I’ll come along. James, please feed Wonder, and get Heather and Arnie—”

“Ms. Antonowicz, we said no communication. Is Wonder your dog?”

“Yes.”

“Does he have food and water and somewhere out of the weather for tonight?”

“He’s in my house, but he’ll need to, you know, go, and he’ll be hungry—”

“Is he friendly?”

“Too friendly. He’ll want to be buddies with everyone.”

“Good. I’m supervising the search and seizure on your house. We’ll take care of Wonder this evening, and then, Mister Hendrix, if we can set you up—”

“I have a key,” he said, flushing furiously. “I’ll go over tomorrow morning and move Wonder here, or you can bring him here tonight—”

“We’ll bring him here tonight, then. It won’t be late.”

The care they were taking of Wonder made it all real, somehow. Leslie wiped her face angrily as the tears poured down, but they pushed her hands down to cuff them behind her.

James tried once more. “Can’t you say what this is about?”

“Specific orders not to. The order is direct from Heather O’Grainne.”

Leslie’s blood froze. Her eyes met James’s, and he looked as stunned as she felt. Before either of them could speak again, she was dragged out the door, not roughly, but with no possibility of resistance.

The guard held up the lantern just long enough for her to see that her room had a pitcher of water, a cup, a squat toilet, a cot, and a blanket, but no window. He left her in total darkness, sitting on the cot, crying. She had no idea how long it was before she felt for the cup and pitcher and found her way under the blanket, or how long she lay there, willing herself to sleep, and failing.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 8 PM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025.}

When Arnie walked into his home, Aaron was apparently asleep in his bed. Arnie grabbed a heavy paperweight, but before he was in reach, Aaron sat up. “Well, you are very fortunate that I am here to save you.”

Arnie kept his grip on the paperweight. Aaron rose from the bed, reached out, and took it from him. “Now then. Your information was invaluable. If you hadn’t kept digging until the pattern of dummy missions became clear, we might not have realized how important it would be to leave young Roger Jackson entirely alone. But you’ve done such an excellent job—such a very excellent job. Without your having realized that you had been excluded from the dispatching of Mister Samson on that dummy mission, those eager lads from Castle Earthstone might not have known to look for him and intercept him.”

Dan. Steve, and now Dan. Arnie’s knives flew from their sheathes in a cross-draw; Aaron, laughing, fell back on the bed, letting the blades whistle over his head, and kicked Arnie with both feet, full in the chest. He was flung backward, but he braced himself on the wall—

“Knives down. Knives down. Think about your position. You are already in very, very far with me. Think about what you did to Steve Ecco. As far as we know Samson is alive and will come back. Think of what he’ll say when he knows that it was you who betrayed your friend… think of what Allie will say when you are once again the sort of chump who throws away opportunities…”

Arnie thought for a long breath that he might continue the attack, press home his knives, shut Aaron up forever.

Aaron did not move, but he said, “Doctor Yang, you are about to become truly doctus, sir, you are indeed, because one of those questions that you have been trying to ask, and I have always evaded, is about to be answered. You are going to learn how Daybreak migrates from mind to mind, and reinforces itself, without the aid of those little plaztatic computer gizmos that some people seem to miss so very much. All your questions, about to be answered. Now put those silly knives away, you don’t want to miss this, it’s why you started to talk to me in the first place.”

I might need to boil the sheets. They stank, there were stains, and Arnie felt, more than he could see by lamplight, little things jumping from them. He had dragged them off the bed and stuffed them into a canvas duffle, and was trying to think what he’d tell the nice lady that did the wash when she came around. Could’ve been worse, he could’ve taken all his clothes off, his skin has to be even worse than his rags. Jesus, plenty of hot water in the tank from the solar collector; he could have taken a bath, even rinsed out his clothes, he didn’t even want to be clean.

I’m getting a bath as soon as I have clean sheets on the bed to fall into. And I don’t know how I’ll ever get rid of all the bugs that came off that…

It should have been funny. He’d been about to think lousy bastard when he realized how accurate it was.

He felt under his mattress, found his notebooks, heard the little whispers in his mind urge him to tear them up, give them to Aaron, throw them away, and had a thought; he pulled the current one out and scrawled down the page,

That last consumed the bottom half of the page in a huge child’s scrawl. He forced his hands to close the notebook and rammed it back into its hiding place.

He had just made his last neat hospital corner and was really looking forward to that shower when there was a knock at the door. He froze only for an instant; it wouldn’t be Aaron. He wouldn’t knock. He set the pen and ink in their standard spot on his desk.

At the door, two militiamen waited for him. Oh, God, I’m busted. My notebooks—

“Doctor Yang? Heather O’Grainne asked us to come and bring you. It’s urgent. I’m to take you to her right away. She said to bring a blank notepad. Her orders are that I’m not to answer any questions.”

He didn’t seem to be a prisoner, but then what was he?

In Heather’s office, he found her head down on the desk, as if she had been praying or crying. But she sat up, ran a hand across her face, thanked the militiamen, and waited for the door to close and their footsteps to go away.

“Arnie,” she said, “in a way, this is good news. We’ve got a captured Daybreaker who was in deep cover for you to interrogate. You need to start tonight, while the shock of arrest is still fresh.” He had a tenth of a second to hope it was Aaron, but Heather went on talking; Arnie missed most of it, in his horror at realizing why Aaron had been so suddenly informative, earlier tonight.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:15 PM MST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2025.}

Leslie was trying to talk to herself. Got to face things. I don’t know why I’m accused, but I’m accused of…

There was a glow on the floor, coming from beneath the door. It opened.

She felt better seeing that it was Arnie Yang—pleasant, sensible, dorkish, slightly sad Arnie, who you could always have a beer with, always so desperate for human company; not exactly her friend, but she trusted his honesty, and she couldn’t imagine him treating her, or anyone, harshly.

He squatted down so as not to stand over her. “Are you being welltreated?”

“I guess. It’s clean. Nobody hits me or yells at me.” Humiliatingly, she began to cry; it was such a relief that someone seemed to care. She wiped at her eyes. “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You know my job is to hear all about it.”

“I didn’t do anything, I didn’t tell anyone anything, I’m as loyal as you are.”

He sighed. “I can’t imagine how you could have done it, but the evidence Heather showed me—”

“That’s part of it, Doctor Yang, I can’t even imagine how there could be any evidence—”

“Were you so careful?”

“No, I mean I didn’t do anything, so—”

He raised his hands gently, and spoke quietly and kindly. “Leslie, a moment ago you were talking about the evidence.”

“How could it possibly—”

“Leslie, I really want to believe you. But you’ll have to put it all in my hands. I’m going to ask you about things going back a decade or more, and some of them won’t have any apparent connection to this situation. You know that you and I both want to clear you. If there is evidence anywhere that will clear you, if you tell me everything, hold nothing back, I can find my way to that evidence, Leslie. I couldn’t tell you why, but I believe somehow you’re innocent, and if you’ll help me, I can find the path to the truth. But you’ve got to cooperate; answer my questions, no matter how personal, even if I just ask you to ramble on. Withhold nothing, object to nothing, just give me what I ask for. Will you promise to help me try?”

She wiped her face with the little piece of toweling they’d given him. “With you all the way, Doctor Yang.”

“Arnie. If we weren’t before, we’re going to be friends.” He leaned forward and said, “Now, as much as you remember, had you ever heard the word ‘Daybreak’ in any kind of political or environmental context, any time before October 28th, 2024?”

^{THE NEXT MORNING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:04 AM MST. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025.}

This is not going to be easy. Heather looked down at the notes she had scrawled minutes ago, after her quick conference with Arnie. Leslie Antonowicz had been no more forthcoming this morning, refusing to answer any questions, saying only that she was innocent, which is kind of what you’d expect, isn’t it?

She looked up; both delegations were silent, either watching her or working over notes. Probably they both already know. It’s not like we’re hard to penetrate or anything. Her own sarcasm was bitter brass in her brain.

She drew a breath and began. “There’s something we need to cover before talking about anything else this morning. Last night an ongoing investigation discovered that one of the Reconstruction Research Center’s top analysts, Leslie Antonowicz, was working for Daybreak. At this point we don’t even know what that really means, whether she was actually in the pay of some Daybreak-related organization or whether she is a believing convert to the Daybreak system of ideas. Ms. Antonowicz is in detention at a secure location.

“My senior researcher, Doctor Arnold Yang, is interrogating her, and I hope within a few days we will know much more about what has been going on, for how long, and how much damage has been done. At this point, however, because she was on our Board, the librarian for our field reporting system, and a senior researcher, and therefore her routine access to information was at such a high level, we have to assume that no communications between RRC and anywhere else—including either the Temporary National Government or the Provisional Constitutional Government—have been secure, since the founding of the RRC. The responsibility for this is entirely mine. I urge that you immediately contact your home offices by your own most secure channels and begin appropriate investigations. I ask your patience while we investigate our own very serious situation. Thank you.”

General Grayson cleared his throat as if to say something, but Cam froze him with a glance, then pulled a file card from his pocket and read, “‘Whereas any agreement on the matters currently in negotiation is absolutely dependent on maintenance of full security, we believe the conference must be canceled for the time being, until RRC is able to show that security is re-established. We expect that this will take a period of weeks or months and therefore will return to the temporary capital at Athens in the TNG District. We regret this necessity and look forward to reconvening at the earliest feasible date.’”

He had that ready to go on his card; he knew.

Graham nodded, pulled out three cards (Heather could see they were in Allie’s all-caps printed scrawl), and selected the one he wanted; he read, “We will be happy to reconvene as soon as security issues are settled, but we do not believe this can be done at any early date, so we are returning to Olympia, where we will await the successful conclusion of the RRC’s investigations.”

And Allie had prepared Graham Weisbrod to go three different ways. Gah. There used to be high school marching bands that had better security than we do.

That afternoon, walking back with James from seeing off the PCG train to Olympia (just twenty minutes after the TNG train to Athens), Heather spotted a newsboy running up the street toward the riverfront. She flagged him down, paid him, and showed James the extra edition of the Pueblo Post-Times. Half the front page was headline:

“This might be the first issue, ever, that I don’t read,” she said. As they walked on they could hear the shouts of “Extra!” in the streets around them.

“I don’t suppose many people will be collecting those,” James said. “Not the way they did the PEACE headline a few months ago.”

After another block, Heather said, “I got all three of your notes about Leslie. James, we all know you’re her most loyal friend. There’s no reason for us to consider you a suspect, but it’s only common sense for us to keep you away from the investigation. And for God’s sake, James, it’s Arnie. Are you expecting him to torture her or something? He’s told me already that he really wants to believe she’s innocent, but she’s not cooperating at all. I know she’s important to you, but what else would you have us do? Now, of course you have to worry. She’s your friend and you don’t think she’s guilty. But I know that if she’s innocent, Arnie Yang will find that out. And I promise, no matter what, you’ll see her again.”

James nodded, said, “Thanks for understanding,” and walked away, hands in his pockets, head down, kicking at the dirt.

He’s thinking, and that’s not as good a thing as it usually is, Heather thought, turning toward her own office door. And I hope he doesn’t realize how likely it is that when he sees Leslie again, it’ll be to sit up with her the night before we hang her.

^{THE NEXT DAY. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 8:30 AM PST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025.}

The big thugly types at the main gate of Castle Castro held their black-powder carbines pointed down. Carlucci had left weapons and deputies at home; he carried three letters. The most important one was from Natalie Thanh, a Federal district judge. Finding that Article IV, Section 4, of the Constitution outlawed hereditary monarchy and any form of feudal aristocracy on American territory, she ordered the League of Southern Castles dissolved, voided all oaths of fealty to the League, and demanded the renunciation of all titles.

Carlucci had had to sell that one to Thanh himself, dusting off his law school education, sitting long nights by a flickering oil lamp, reading dusty law books rescued from basements and attics to put together the pieces of PacTel versus Oregon, Gregory versus Ashcroft, and Forsyth versus Hammond, but he’d made Thanh see it his way.

That letter was important, but the other two that Heather had secured for him, flown down to him by Bambi Castro, were what made it matter. Cameron Nguyen-Peters, NCCC of the Temporary National Government in Athens, Georgia, declared that he would use his emergency powers to enforce Judge Thanh’s decision “as consistent with constitutional restoration.” President Graham Weisbrod of the Provisional Constitutional Government ordered all Federal agents to enforce Judge Thanh’s order “without equivocation or delay.”

As on every other visit to Castle Castro, Carlucci couldn’t help noticing that Castro’s brawny, efficient, uniformed guards were much more impressive than anything Carlucci had across the bay, at what was nominally the FBI’s California HQ and actually around twenty people in a fortified office building.

Once Carlucci had convinced Judge Thanh that he was right, she had suggested that he arrest Harrison Castro under RICO and the 1903 Militia Act. And the cat should be ordered to wear a bell under the Cruelty to Mice Act.

“Okay, they’re answering.” Castro’s guard read the semaphore through his binoculars. “Permit entry, all other checkpoints pre-cleared.” He lowered the binoculars. “Well, there you go; do you still remember the way?”

“Yeah, I lived here for a few weeks last fall,” Carlucci said.

“Some of us hoped things would work out so that the Feds would work with us, and support what we’re trying to do here.”

“You never know what may come,” Carlucci said.

Between Daybreak and Christmas last year, Harrison Castro had admitted a few thousand selected refugees. About three thousand adults had sworn their allegiance to Castle Castro, and brought along maybe four hundred kids. Since then, Castle Castro had taken over about half the old San Diego waterfront, wrapped in concentric rings of zigzag walls. The walls themselves were mostly the rubble of wrecked and pulled-down buildings between chain link and boards, running across streets between intact buildings; the outer walls were more than a mile inland. Wonder if Castro got permission from all those property holders? He used to be very insistent that property rights were the whole basis of civilization… .

He hated the feeling of envy that hit him at times like this. Castle Castro had the most reliable food supply in the area, and electricity some of every day. Carlucci had two great teenage kids, Paley and Acey; like others at FBI West, they sometimes went hungry and sometimes were up all night when tribal attacks threatened, and school was a matter of reading when they weren’t working, which was rare. Castro had an actual K-12 high school in the main keep there, the only problem being it taught what Castro wanted it to.

Carlucci passed through the second line of walls and buildings; the guards came to attention as he passed. Probably standard courtesy for a visiting dignitary. He couldn’t help adding, mentally, From a “foreign power.”

The path wound past greenhouses, fishponds, and animal barns; standing a siege right now might have been awkward, but if the crops in the outside fields came in and filled up their food storage this year, and with the access to the sea and all those sailboats Castro had managed to pull together, Castle Castro would be, for all practical, short-run purposes, impregnable.

The central compound and keep had been built prior to Daybreak, back when Castro had merely been a billionaire nut enacting bizarre power fantasies. Inside its steel fences, a complex maze of roads led anyone who didn’t know the system around rather than toward the big house. Wrong routes ended in cul-de-sacs under the guns of blockhouses.

The man at the front door smiled and said, “Nice to see you again, Mister Carlucci.”

“How have you been, Donald?”

“Busy, safe, and well-fed,” the man said. “The boss is in the main office. I guess you still know your way.”

Before Carlucci could knock, Harrison Castro opened the door and said, “Dave. Welcome. Come right this way.”

The breakfast table on the balcony was set with fussy precision. “Since this is bound to involve being rude to each other,” Castro said, “I thought we might as well start off with something we’d enjoy.”

They made small talk while Carlucci let himself get reacquainted with eggs, bacon, and coffee. “One small piece of business I’d like to do before the main business,” Castro said. “Tribes are getting bigger and worse everywhere, and the beating we gave them here back in June doesn’t seem to have stuck. If you need to shelter at Castle Castro against any tribal attack, the door is open to everyone under your command or protection.”

“Of course I accept,” Carlucci said. Jeez, there could be a tribal attack up from Baja any time, and I’ve got Arlene and the kids, what else can I say but “yes”? “If you remember my number two guy, Terry Bolton, I was going to have him contact your folks for some liaison. We’ve got some ops going down in Baja and you’re right, something real bad is building up.”

“I remember Terry, and if he thinks it’s bad down there, he’s not the panicking kind; it’s bad. All right, well, I’m out of the pleasant stuff.” Castro had a sardonic smile. “I suppose you’re here to place me under arrest.”

Carlucci shrugged. “Not this time, anyway. That isn’t how the law works in this case. I’m here to serve a Federal District Court order and to deliver letters from the governments at Athens and Olympia. What you do after receiving those letters is what determines whether we’d ask the court for an arrest warrant. It’s one of those things like a restraining order where the activity isn’t illegal until you’ve been told to stop and haven’t complied. At least that’s what Judge Thanh thinks. Will you accept the papers now?”

“Sure, I’ll read anything, unless by accepting them I agree to them.”

“All you do is allow me to say you weren’t unaware of the order.”

“No harm in that I can see.” He extended a hand, took the three pieces of paper, and read them. “Shall I make a statement?”

“You could send a letter within a reasonable length of time, decline to respond but send an attorney to Judge Thanh during business hours, or tell me whatever you like. Or I suppose you could declare war and have me thrown out the window.”

“Well, definitely not the last alternative. I’ll just tell you, Dave, and I trust you to report it accurately enough. The court order and the letters cite the Constitution of the United States. It’s no longer in force. The United States of America is over, Carlucci. I wish a brave, decent, honorable man like you could see that. The Constitution was created so that the people who were worth shit could run the country, but it got bent around to all kinds of other shitty, worthless purposes. So now it’s gone, and good riddance, and though I wouldn’t have asked for Daybreak before it happened, now that it has, well, from now on you can deal with the Earl of San Diego.”

“We can’t address you by that title,” Carlucci said. “Article One, patents of nobility clause. Here’s the blunt word from a Federal court: You still live in the United States of America. Our Constitution doesn’t permit private armies, hereditary sovereignty, or titles of nobility.”

Castro rose. “Can I send you on your way with some food or something?”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 10:14 AM MST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2025.}

“Can you tell me what time it is?” Leslie asked.

“I can,” Arnie said, “and I will as soon as I see evidence of cooperation. It’s frightening, isn’t it, not to know whether it’s day or night after a while? But, you know, we need to know what is going on—”

“Doctor Yang—Arnie—I know you don’t believe me, but I’m innocent.”

“You’re right that I don’t believe you,” he said. He smiled as if it were their private joke. “Yet. But this is only our fifth session, and you are becoming more believable. That’s at least progress.”

“I always feel so safe after you leave but by the time you come back I’m scared out of my mind again.” She shifted uneasily in her chair; his gaze stayed on her face, and the corner of his mouth turned up as if something he hadn’t quite identified wasn’t quite right. He had been sitting and watching her quietly all that time, and she realized that it had been a long time since she’d spoken. “I… I should just answer every question, and try not to guess why you ask or what you’re looking for?”

“Same rules as every other time,” Arnie said, softly. “Are you in good enough shape to do that? Have you been sleeping?”

“Too much,” she said. “A chance to run or swim or climb something would be heavenly.”

Arnie’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

“What?” she asked.

“Bad joke. I was thinking if you had a head start, you’d probably get to do plenty of running, climbing, and swimming, at least until they caught you.”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed. “All right, let’s get to work. I know I’m innocent, anyway.”

He didn’t nod or smile, but he didn’t scowl either. “All right. Think back to conversations with friends and family since Daybreak. Remember times when you’ve said that Daybreak was sort of a blessing in disguise, or not all bad, or sometimes you were maybe secretly glad it happened. Tell me exactly what you said.”

“Do you need to know who I talked to?”

“No, not at all. I’m interested in what you said. All right, so when you have been thinking about the good things about Daybreak, across these last few months, what do you think of?”

“I’m not sure I remember.”

“What do you think you might have said? Just do what you’ve done before, try not to block anything, blurt out any old thing I ask about, just relax and let your mind open to me. Now what do you say when you’re explaining the good parts of Daybreak?”

Part of her wanted to object that she didn’t think she ever had, but it seemed that even before she objected, she was already telling him about the positive side of Daybreak, and that she was remembering thinking those things even before Daybreak. It was nice to be sitting here with a guy who understood; Arnie was smiling, listening intently. Just when she realized she was uncomfortable, he poured water for her. “Need a break? Hungry?”

Arnie would get her out of this. She clung to that.

^{THE SECOND NIGHT AFTER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11:30 PM MST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025.}

“Leslie.” The voice in the darkness was so soft she thought perhaps she was dreaming. She sat up. “Leslie,” the voice repeated, “come to the door so you can hear me better. Don’t make any noise.”

She rolled off her cot and crawled to the door, feeling ahead of her so she wouldn’t knock over the pitcher.

“I don’t know how long we’ve got,” the voice said. “I’ve got the guards timed, but if I hear them I’ll have to go that second—they vary the timing. If I disappear, don’t call out, just get back in your bunk and pretend to be asleep. I’ll always be back.”

“James?”

“Who else?”

Reasonable question. She lay prone to put her mouth and ear by the crack at the bottom of the door. “Can you do anything for me?”

“Working on it. Is Arnie still your interrogator?”

“He’s the only person I’ve seen since I was arrested.”

“Jesus, he’s got things just the way he planned. Leslie, there were three suspects. You were one; I was another. The third was Arnie.”

“Oh, God, James, you’re telling me Arnie Yang is working for Daybreak? We are so fucked, James, so totally fucked up the ass. What can you do? Do you have some evidence to prove I’m not guilty and Arnie is? Are you going to try to break me out?”

“Not right away. If they’re going to torture or kill you, or they hold a secret meeting without me, I have a way to know, and I have a way to break you out right then. Otherwise, though, I’m going to keep working on catching Arnie Yang. He says you’re refusing to talk.”

“I’ve been totally cooperating! I’m answering every question he asks me! He said it was my best chance!” Her rage shocked her.

“I bet he did. Tell me about what he does. He’s already got you framed so he doesn’t need to create more evidence. He could have had you executed by now. So he can’t be after information because he knows you don’t have any, and he can’t frame you any more than you are already framed. So what’s he spend all that time talking about?”

Even there, lying on the dark floor of her cell, and feeling like she owed James her life, Leslie couldn’t help noticing that James spoke in the same tone he did on the drunken lonely evenings when she told him too much about her love life. But he was right, he needed to know this, so she said, “Well, he always tells me to put myself into his hands and trust him, and he wants to talk about Daybreak ideas I had before Daybreak day…” She told James everything she could remember.

He said, “I think I’m recognizing the basic technique for implanting a false memory, but it’s been a long time since I read that circular. FBI thing, I think, about how not to be fooled by things like UFO abduction stories and Satanist conspiracy stories, and how not to lead witnesses into deceiving you. I’ll find it and be able to tell you for sure next time. Meanwhile I guess the main trick is to not believe any thought that might have been his suggestion. So if—gotta go.”

She rolled onto her cot silently, pulling the blanket over herself. She counted six long, slow breaths before a guard came in with a candle in one hand, and a tray holding a dubious meat patty, fried potatoes, onions, and zucchini in the other; as always, there were no utensils, just one wet and one dry cloth. Same thing four times in a row; probably another way to break down my time sense. She ate looking down at her plate, because she never knew when they were watching, or from what angle, and she was afraid they might see her smile. On the last bite, she blew out the candle, wiping her face in the dark.

3 DAYS LATER. NEAR THE RUINS OF ALTON, INDIANA. 6:45 PM EST. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025.

“How deep is that?” Roger asked.

“After it’s past your neck, it doesn’t make much difference,” Debbie pointed out. “Unless you can’t swim. Last chance to tell us.”

“I can swim. I just hate being wet and cold at the start of a thirty-mile hike in soggy moccasins.”

Samson looked up from where he was lashing the last of the 55-gallon drums together. “I agree. We’re going to do it, of course, but I agree; I hate it too.” Before them, the Ohio River was broad and olive-green.

The flow was faster and deeper than anyone had seen in at least 150 years. Dozens of dams on the Ohio and its tributaries had toppled. A cold early fall was drenching the Appalachians. The Allegheny basin’s forests, dying from fallout, were releasing their grip on thousands of mountain slopes, and the water they once slowed and absorbed poured unimpeded over bare earth, freighted with dead black mud.

Lashed together with hemp line, the empty drums made an awkward raft. They tied their packs on top of two closely bound drums, hoping something, somewhere, might stay sort of dry. Not wanting to lose the last of the daylight, they grabbed handholds on the lashing ropes and walked into the river, beginning to kick with their feet, at Samson’s direction, when it became too deep to wade.

Roger clamped his jaw and pressed his lips together; he’d drown before he let himself swallow what was in the river. How many unburied bodies must there be upstream? Pathogen soup, that’s what it is.

Roger kicked when told to, hung on otherwise, and did his best to keep his head out of the filth. Twice something, a tree branch perhaps, bumped at him; once a floating rag, perhaps a diaper or T-shirt, wrapped over his wrist, and he flung it away in a near panic.

After what felt like a century of cold misery, Samson said, “I’m kicking dirt. Don’t try to stand yet, but kick harder.”

A moment later, Roger felt bottom too, as they passed over a sandbar sheltering the inside of a bend. They entered a slow, steady-flowing channel, kicking the drum raft out of the current upstream of a sloping gravel bank. When they planted their feet and stood up, the water was only waist deep, and they walked their raft aground easily.

They cut their packs free, held them over their heads, and bore them ashore, mostly dry. Samson waded back in, and pushed the empty raft out past the bar. Holding on with one hand, chest-deep in the filthy water, he slashed the lashings with his knife, detaching the drums and setting them bobbing along in the current. Two minutes later, on a narrow gravel road just above the river, Debbie said, “Shit.”

“What?”

“Eaahh, I hate being wrong. Looks like we’ll only be traveling 103 miles since you asked me, including the river. Off by four. Damn, damn, damn.” She muttered about it off and on, until, an hour later, they made camp for the night, not completely out of danger, but safer than they had been in a long time.

^{2 DAYS LATER. SOUTH OF THE RUINS OF THE FORMER CELINA, OHIO (NEW STATE OF WABASH). 4:30 PM EST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2025.}

“The way Earth’s curvature works,” Larry said, “the horizon on flat ground or water is usually less than five miles off. So all we can say for sure is that it’s mud at least that far out.” From the burned and crumbled docks at Celina, a plain of drying mud, once Grand Lake St. Marys, stretched to the eastern horizon.

They’d been able to shake the fitful and sporadic pursuit within a mile or two each time. Apparently word was out that three men traveling together were supposed to be caught, but without Castle Earthstone soldiers standing over them, most tribes didn’t see it as a high priority, especially not if it involved going into centers of larger towns, where the tribes seemed to fear disease, feral dog packs, or perhaps ghosts.

“So,” Chris said, “on the map, anyway, the short way around the lake from here is the north shore. Shall we keep going that way? I’d rather camp here than run into a tribe close to dark.”

Larry said, “Let’s see if we can break into that lighthouse and get a long view.”

The sign in front said ROTARY LIGHT HOUSE. “But I don’t see how it could rotate,” Jason said.

Larry laughed. “There used to be a service club—sort of like a fraternity for grownups that did good things—called the Rotary Club, and my old man was in it. God, I wish I had him here to hear you say that.”

Someone had been there before them; the broken door lay on the pavement. From the top of the tower, about three storeys high, they could see that mud stretched to the eastern horizon, broken up by ponds where the water had been deeper. Grass was coming in around the edge, and big flocks of ducks and geese were on the ponds.

In the open country south of the drained lake, leaves were the thousands of colors of an eastern forest in fall; brush was spreading out of the small woods, fencerows, and creek bottoms into the long grass. Jason said, “This is sort of what we Daybreak people were trying for. The fields are back to meadows, really, already, and there’s going to be prairie grass, and bushes, and then the trees will grow tall enough to choke out the undergrowth, and you’ll have the old forest back.”

“It would look real pretty,” Chris observed, “if we didn’t know it was a graveyard for tens of millions of people.”

They walked around to the southwest side of the tower, and saw a great ravine where the maps had shown none, stretching to the horizon.

“Well,” Larry said, “that certainly explains where the water went. I guess we should be good scientistificalable explorers and all, and go take a look.”

“Scientistificalable?” Jason asked.

“Add more syllables, gain more authority. First rule of bureaucratic prose.”

^{ABOUT 20 MINUTES LATER. A MILE SOUTH, NEAR THE FORMER OUTLET TO BEAVER CREEK, ALONG US 127. 5:45 PM EST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2025.}

“You know, they could have done this with one big bomb on Daybreak day,” Chris said. “Just loaded it into a pleasure boat, sunk it next to the dam, blown it off. Nobody would have been searching or stopping them.”

“This accomplished more of what they were trying to do,” Larry said. “Look how they did it—a tunnel five or ten feet below the lake bottom, so that the water running through would erode the embankment and cut a really deep hole in a hurry. All those graves. Four whipping posts. Shovels and picks just left here when they were done. The point of it was to work a few hundred people to death, besides making it much harder to restore that lake, which means nobody can reopen this canal for a long, long time.”

“Was the canal open before?” Jason asked.

“No. But we’re back to 1800s tech, and that’s what this was. Now if we want the canal, we’ll have to do all that pick and shovel work all over again.” Larry looked over the field where so many bodies had already come to the surface from their shallow graves. “Part of making sure the Lost Quarter stays lost.”

“But why?” Jason asked. “I mean, couldn’t they do the same thing with half the killing?”

“Once you’ve beaten starving people to make them dig a tunnel they’ll drown in, you’re committed.” Chris looked out to the west, across the field of human bones and the muddy gouge through the flat land, to the setting sun, huge and bloody with the soot of so many burned cities. “It’s just the small, personal version of the big picture. Anyway, it’ll be dark soon. We’d better camp for the night, and I’d rather not do it here.”

“Let’s head back to the lighthouse,” Larry said. “It has a roof and it’s easy to defend. But when you’re doing sentry duty and have to look this way, no brooding, okay? Keep telling yourself it’s just mud in the moonlight, and that’s all it is.”

^{6 HOURS LATER. OLYMPIA, NEW DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. 11:30 PM PST. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2025.}

It was so good to be home and running things again. Allison Sok Banh loved the feel of her familiar desk chair, loved the idea that she was working late at night, loved it all. Tonight it had been easy for her to tuck Graham in and avoid his perpetually attempted conversation about the relationship. He’d passed out at the moment of mattress touchdown.

Allie had Lyle throw an extra bucket of coal into the fire under the hot water tank. From the locked steel box at the back of her bedroom closet, she took pre-Daybreak lavender Castile soap and Wild Turkey, plus Kona that Lisa Fanchion had given her in appreciation of the tax exemption on coffee.

Her scalding shower was at least five times as long as the ration, and in no way “cool and comfortable” as Graham Weisbrod’s housekeeping directive had specified, but more along the lines of “sinfully decadent.”

So bizarre. Before, she’d never really understood that Graham was serious about this good-gov shit. Allie’s family had “dove ourselves neck-deep in politics as soon as we ditched the boat and got the vote,” she remembered Uncle Sam saying, literally while he was teaching her to work the cash register. “Before you buy a business, buy the cop and the judge so you can keep it, Allie.”

Snug in her thick terry bathrobe, she drizzled the scarce and wonderful bourbon into the pot of Kona, poured a cup, and settled in to work. The drink burned down her throat like hot, slick ebony inlaid with gold; she drew the fumes from the cup into her nose, sighed, and reached for the first memo.

“So the summit was aborted,” Mr. Darcage said. “And you got to see your ex, and, I should guess, impress him. How fortunate all around.”

She put her feet down abruptly, crossing her legs under the desk and tugging at her robe. Who the fuck lets him in? Lyle? Gotta know! “Ever think about knocking or maybe showing up in regular hours?”

“My employers would be delighted if you’d meet with me openly and regularly; the tribes crave recognition.” He stepped out of the dim shadows in the corner of the office; in the flaring lamplight he seemed more gaunt, his face more lined, almost ancient, but his precisely geometric beard and hair were black as pitch. His eyes bulged slightly, his lips were too thick, and there was a patch of old acne scarring along one sideburn.

“That’s not what I meant. And you know it.” She held her robe closed with one hand, as if afraid it might pop open; her other hand reached under her desk, seeking the pistol—

The space was empty.

Darcage set the pistol down on the desk in front of her. “I don’t want you to keep loaded guns around.”

“I do many things you don’t want me to.”

“You think you do things I don’t want you to. You don’t ask, often enough, what I want you to do.” He gestured toward the gun lying on the desk. “That’s why I had to unload the gun for you. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to do that for you.”

His repetition was annoying her, and she said, “I get it.”

“Of course you do.”

“Why did you come here and why am I not throwing you out?” she asked, as much to herself as to him. He sat with one leg running along the edge of her desk, curled against the other, a supported flamingo, and leaned slightly forward, but did not speak. I could suddenly bite his nose and it would serve him right. I wonder if he’s trying to see down my robe. She resisted the urge to look down or yank it closed; can’t let him know he’s bothering me. Come on, talk, asshole. This silent act is creeping me out. “You work hard at telling me what I don’t want.”

“That’s because you’re not always clear about what you do want. Don’t you want to make things run smoothly? Don’t you want all the good relations you can possibly get?”

I know what I don’t want: to be caught in just my bathrobe, here in the middle of the night, with contraband bribes on my desk and what’s obviously a Daybreaker agent alone with me. “What did you have in mind?”

The silence lay in the room like a dead cow on the floor, too big to go around, impossible to climb over without admitting that there was something in your way. The lamplight from her desk lamp flickered and danced. Little kid campfire trick, Allie thought, wishing she could disdain it. Shine light up on a face from underneath and it looks scary.

“Don’t worry about seeing Doctor Yang again; he is on the right side and more attuned to your needs than you might think. In fact, he’d like to hear from you; why don’t you write him a letter?”

The light flickered slightly. She looked up. He wasn’t there. Her coffee was now too cool, anyway, the Wild Turkey wasted, the Kona wasted, and she felt sad and lonely. Maybe she’d go down to the main bedroom and curl up with Graham tonight; he always liked it when she did.

She poured her pitcher of Turkey and Kona down the sink, rinsed everything thoroughly, blew out the lamp, and took the back stairs passage down to the main presidential suite.

Darcage had not concealed that Daybreak was more interested in Arnie than they were in her. It bothered her; she didn’t like being second to anybody.

^{2 DAYS LATER. WAPAKONETA, OHIO. AROUND NOON EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025.}

Larry handed Jason a GPO brochure-map from the 1990s, Scenic Waterways of Ohio and Indiana. “Look up Wapakoneta.”

“I know that town name for some reason.”

“Yeah, you do, but it’s not the reason I’m interested in.”

“Just look up,” Chris said, pointing to the landmark sign forty yards down the road. It was like ten thousand other historic-landmark signs that appeared outside almost every small town in the Midwest, except that this one said:

“I’d forgotten that, Larry. Probably hadn’t thought about it since fifth-grade American history. Crap,” Chris said, an odd, desperate strain in his voice. “I remember when the moon was a good thing. My dad watched the landing on TV when he was a little kid, I guess along with everybody, and… I don’t know, I guess you had to be in that generation, but to a lot of people, it meant a lot. Now… we look up at the moon, and we’re scared.”

Larry sighed. “Yeah, but what I wanted Jason to read was this.” He pointed at the old map-guide.

Jason read aloud. “The Auglaize River is canoeable from Wapakoneta, a small town pronounced Wop Ock Kuh Net Uh. (Many Ohioans shorten it to Wapak, pronounced Woppock.) The Wapakoneta Canoe Trek Company, just downstream of the Hamilton Street Dam, has canoes and kayaks for rent from mid-June to mid-October. May not be accessible in low-water years. Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s rained like a real booger for an hour or two almost every day since we landed. And, okay, Larry, I see where you’re going with your idea. It says, The Auglaize River flows north to the Maumee at Defiance, down which canoes can continue nearly to Toledo.”

“Unh-hunh, and Toledo’s a port on Lake Erie, and there are Provi garrisons on the western side of Lake Erie—Put-in-Bay, Kelleys Island, Port Clinton, and Sandusky.”

“You’re figuring that if we can get canoes—”

“Never walk when you can ride, son, stay in gummint service and you’ll learn that’s a rule.” Larry grinned. “Along with always patronize anybody with less time-in-grade than you have. Anyway, that’s my thought. And looking up ahead, at least it looks like the town hasn’t been burned.”

In the warm midday sun, intact roofs peeked through the bright red and orange leaves. Larry said, “This road’s as good as any for going into the town, I guess. That little thumbnail map seems to show Hamilton Street, and the Auglaize River, right in the middle of town.”

A mile farther on, a sign pointed off to Auglaize Street. “You don’t suppose they put Auglaize Street anywhere near the Auglaize River?” Larry said. “It leads into town, anyway.”

Half an hour later, after passing a number of intact but empty houses, Jason said, “Weird. The tribals usually burn towns on general principles. But I haven’t seen a burned house, or any sign of fighting, or even any human remains.”

“But if this place were well-defended,” Chris said, “you’d think we’d have met a patrol or run into a sentry by now.”

Beyond an overgrown cemetery, a wide, placid stream, perhaps a hundred feet across, appeared below them.

“All right, found the river,” Larry said.

In town, most of the big old twentieth-century frame houses and little nondescript brick storefronts still had all their glass; where they did not, they were boarded up. No doors were broken down. Larry said, “This feels like we walked into a Ray Bradbury story.”

“Who are you?” a voice asked.

They formed up into a triangle with their backs together.

“I’m waiting,” the voice said.

Larry shrugged slightly. “We are Federal agents reconnoitering this area for the Reconstruction Research Center.”

“Please wait here and be comfortable. You are among friends. I must alert other people. It may be fifteen minutes before anyone else contacts you.”

“We can wait that long,” Larry said, slipping his pack off and sitting on it.

There was no answer; apparently the mysterious voice’s owner had gone off on his errand—her errand?

“What do you think?” Chris asked, his voice barely a murmur, pointing his face down into the ground between his feet to hide his lips.

Jason muttered, “I think that was a kid’s voice, reading from a card.”

“I’m trying not to think,” Larry said. “Whatever’s here, it’s not like anything else we’ve found. Did you both notice, no cars? Not even the muck from the rotted tires?”

“Yeah, and the boarded windows that must have gotten broke,” Chris said, “they’ve swept up the glass around them.”

Jason looked around. “They’re not tribals. No downed wires, no wrecked refugee carts, so many things that just aren’t here.”

Larry nodded. “So often what’s not there is what police work depends on.”

“News reporting too,” Chris said. “Congratulations, Padwan Jason, you have achieved the level of consciousness in which old poops pat you on the head.”

Jason grinned. “My head lives to be patted, oh master. So who is here? The tribe of the Extremely Tidy People?”

“Close, but not quite,” a deeper voice said, seemingly from nowhere.

Larry said, “You’re not as invisible as the first person was. Part of your shadow is visible just beyond the corner of the laundromat. Does that mean we get six more weeks of winter?”

High-pitched laughter broke out all around them.

The deeper voice joined it. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s much point in keeping this up. Are you guys from Pueblo?”

“That’s where we started from but it was a while ago,” Larry said. “I’m Federal Agent Larry Mensche, mission commander; we’ll be reporting back to RRC eventually. My younger teammate here is Jason Nemarec, and the big bear of a guy is Chris Manckiewicz, who you might remember from when there was net and television—”

“And radio,” the voice said. “We heard you on KP-1 and WTRC, Mister Manckiewicz. And if I’m not mistaken you’re also the narrator on Orphans Preferred and on A Hundred Circling Camps. You’re a celeb here.” A tall, rangy man walked out from the corner of the laundromat. “Although the biggest news this month, if not this year, is going to be that you caught me with my shadow showing, Mister Mensche.”

He might have been sixty, or eighty. His face was grooved, more eroded than sagging. His full head of hair was iron-gray flecked with white, he stood straight as any ex-soldier, and his muscles bulged and knotted over thick bones; he looked like the barely covered skeleton of a giant. His khaki pants and faded plaid shirt were neatly pressed. “My name is Scott Niskala. I’m the scoutmaster of Troop 17. Everyone, you can step out of cover.”

About twenty kids seemed to appear in a single motion. An instant later one tiny old lady in thick glasses stood beside Niskala. He said, “This, as you can probably guess, is Mrs. Niskala, who is—”

“—quite capable of introducing herself, thank you. Ruth Niskala. Scoutmaster of Troop 541. The outfit that shows the boys how to do things. We were thinking you might like to have a good meal and a good rest, and then maybe we can talk about what we might do for you.”

^{ABOUT 5 HOURS LATER. WAPAKONETA, OHIO. 6 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2025.}

The old stone church, headquarters for the Wapak Scouts, had a small library with wooden tables and chairs, where Larry, Chris, and Jason were treated to fresh biscuits and venison gravy. This was followed by hot baths (“There aren’t any regular scheduled baths right now so we have plenty of hot water for you”), and a long nap before dinner.

While they were napping, the Wapak Scouts insisted on cleaning and mending their clothing.

“Aw,” Larry tried to protest, “you don’t have to do this.”

Ruth Niskala said, very softly, “Let them do this. This is the day we’ve promised them for a long time, the proof of their faith, and the reason they’ve been good all year. Think of it as cookies for Santa. They need to do something for you.”

When they awoke an hour later, their freshly cleaned clothing was waiting for them. Scott Niskala guided them up the stairs, away from the main meeting hall. “They’re putting something together and they want it to be a surprise. And if you even try to tell the kids that they didn’t need to, I’ll knock you flat. Let’s go to my house across the way here.”

Except for the absence of electric lights in the gathering dusk, the room seemed as it might have been before Daybreak. “The first thing I’ve got to say is that there wasn’t any plan. We just made it up as it happened, and it kind of worked out.”

Larry Mensche said, “I don’t quite see why you weren’t just overrun by the nearest tribe; a few hundred crazy tribals could sweep through this town, burn everything, and slaughter everyone. Even if a hundred of them died doing it, Daybreak’d’ve counted that as a benefit—more burden lifted off Mother Earth. So how are you here?”

“Well,” Scott Niskala said, “that’s kind of a story, but it’s what I wanted to tell you about. Excuse an old man beginning at the very beginning, but it’ll be faster if I don’t try to edit. So to begin with, my father came from Finnish stock, and learned English mostly in school, from the Iron Country up in Minnesota. The Depression drove him out of his home…”

…and he bounced through crap jobs and work camps till 1942; then there was plenty of work for a healthy young man. In 1945 he got a slot in the Regular Army; in 1947, down in Georgia, he found himself a sweet farm girl who wanted to marry anything but a farmer, and in 1948, there I was.

My old man just assumed I’d follow him into the Army, so he trained me up as a good little soldier. I took to the hiking-camping-hunting, Daniel Boone kinda stuff, but my war was Vietnam, and when I got home it was the Hollow Army years. Sorta took the fun right out.

I did college, for the money, and majored in forestry, because it was outdoors. I did Forest Service, BLM, all that, but ended up managing state forests for Ohio. Along the way, when I was doing a stint at Ashley National Forest, I ran into Ruth here, who was a Mormon farm girl that went over the fence. Since we couldn’t have kids ourselves, it came kind of natural to foster.

We’d usually have four or five kids around the house; we adopted four of them in thirty years or so, when it seemed like the right thing to do, but mostly they just passed through, a year or two at a time, and then kept coming back to visit.

Eventually we retired here in Wapak. Ruth and I’d both been scoutmasters for so long, we just kind of went full-time with it. Our troops were closer to each other than they were to the national organizations, ’cause we agreed with each other more than we did with our nationals.

We were weird scoutmasters, I guess, or if you look at it my way, we were the only scoutmasters who didn’t get weird. We skipped out on all the urban crap, excuse the expression, where the kids just went to antidrug lectures and pep rallies and never out in the woods, because what’s the point of being a scout for that? And later on we didn’t let the council and the region ram Jesus into everything we did, either. We covered our asses, excuse the expression, with upper leadership, ’cause my troop turned out so many Eagles, and hers turned out so many Gold Awards.

Well, one thing we did, we found local business people to throw in money so all the County Orphanage kids could be scouts. Plenty of the hard-to-adopt kids end up living in those places, with no money for extracurriculars at school, or anything much else, so getting to be scouts was real big to them, and we had enough donors so our orphans could come on all the trips and camps.

We had our fosters, and most of’em’d keep coming after they moved home or moved on, and later on our old fosters brought their kids around. In just a few decades we had a real good bunch of dead-end kids with woods skills. By Daybreak all our assistant scoutmasters’d grown up in our troops, and we even had a few third-generation scouts.

Well, you might remember Ohio tried to evacuate right after the elections last year; this whole area was supposed to try to walk along I-75 down to Dayton to evacuate. Ruth said it sounded like something a couple interns might’ve thought up, looking at a map and counting beans. There couldn’t be enough food or shelter at Dayton, and besides the plan bet everything on good weather. Oh, we told them so, but people had been scared out of their minds since Daybreak day. So they didn’t listen to us; they bagged up what they could carry and left.

The room was dark and silent. Chris asked, “Was that the time of that first big storm?”

“Yeah. Three days after they left, freezing rain came down all one night and the morning after, then maybe four inches of snow with high winds the next afternoon. Once the weather cleared, I sent people south to take a look; they found lots of bodies in the highway ditch, especially kids and old people, all within thirty miles, but no survivors. Figure the ones who could kept walking or holed up too far from the road to hear the scouts calling.

“The last we heard of Columbus radio was on the twelfth, when they were begging the counties to send them help. Meanwhile the folks in town’d just abandoned the orphanage, so we took those kids in, and our five fosters stayed with us, and some other families just dropped their fosters on us before they walked out. Ruth and I had pritnear all the abandoned kids in Auglaize County, I think, plus around ten families who had stayed. We drew up articles and enrolled 164 Wapak Scouts, which is what we decided everyone would be.”

Ruth’s eyes flashed behind her glasses. “And we had to wreck the whole country to do one simple thing, let everyone be a scout! Look at what it took to get rid of the sexist barrier and the ageist barrier and all the rest! How old do you have to be, after all, before you’re too old to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, and all the rest of it? Or how does having two X chromosomes let you out of keeping yourself ‘mentally awake’? So, anyway, you are now at the home base of the Wapak Scouts, which is still one hundred fifty-seven people, about two-thirds of us under twenty. Our youngest is four, our oldest is Scotty here, and we’re still here.”

“You still haven’t told us how you’re still here,” Larry said. “There’re at least three tribes within a day’s walk; how come they haven’t wiped you out?”

It was too dark now to see Niskala’s features, but he sounded smug, or maybe amazed. “That started as an accident, and then just sort of developed.”

By February, we’d dragged all the cars into one common area for salvage, boarded up every broken window, picked up the downed wires, all that stuff you noticed. Originally we did it to keep the kids busy and not to have to look at all that wreckage. By then the big bombs had gone off, and we’d lived through the fires from that big EMP that took KP-1 off the air—that made us feel pretty smart about having picked up all those wires.

Because Ruth’s a thinker, the minute she heard about biotes, way back on October 29, she went to the hardware store here in town and made them put all the ammo into mason jars. We lost some ammo to spoilage but not much. There were some older guns, crude enough to be almost all wood and metal: the single-shot bolt-action rifles for the Rifle Shooting merit badge, a bunch of old deer rifles, my personal handguns. We had a couple kids who’d gotten their metalworking badge build replacement parts for the plastic over the winter.

Between some surviving food stocks from grocery stores, and rigging up a grinder for the corn and wheat from elevators nearby, and hunting and fishing, we were feeding everyone. We were pritnear on top of things.

So one day early in March, three guys who looked like a real shitty, pardon my French, imitation of American Indians came walking into town shouting that we all had to obey the high tribe of Booga-Booga. Harry Blenstein, commanding the town watch, sent a runner for me—I was ice fishing.

Meanwhile Harry got quite the tribal lecture. Now, he was a pretty serious Christian and I guess they laid on that Mother Gaia horseshit, sorry, French again, real thick, and well, they must’ve said something to set off his bad temper. He apparently told’em what he thought, and it must’ve offended’em, because one of them whacked Harry on the forehead with an ax—no warning at all.

Luckily, I’d been paranoid enough to insist there were always snipers covering any visitors coming into town. The two girls on duty for that, Hannah and Meg, did what they were supposed to do—pow-pow, two dead tribals, clean head shots, and the third got two steps before Meg had reloaded and hit him in the spine.

Harry’s backup, Jim, tied up that survivor, neat as you please, and started first aid.

The tribals weren’t stupid, not even really careless; we just lucked out. They had two men with bows watching from up there on the hillside, with a girl runner ready to go back to a main party a couple miles off. But by pure luck, we had hunters out there that day. Their two bowmen had set up right in front of our deer blind, so my hunters were already watching those creepy guys, and when they heard shooting start, they hit them from behind while they were still reaching for their bows.

More luck was that one of my hunters was a big, strong, fast kid, he’d been a running back for the Wapak Redskins—I mean the Warriors, they had to change that a while back—and he just chased their runner down, knocked her flat, gagged her, and dragged her back. If he hadn’t had the presence of mind to do that, I don’t know what would’ve happened.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Port Clinton,” Larry said.

“Then it’s a deal?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He is my father-in-law, you know.”

“No offense intended.”

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

“I never heard about that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do I get a funny hat?”

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

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