Daybreak Zero

^{THE NEXT DAY. BUFFALO, NEW YORK. 3 AM EST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.}

Kelleys Dancer crept through the dark; even under black sails, with the moon not yet up, and no lights on shore as they approached, they couldn’t be sure they weren’t being watched.

And then once we’re on the canal, it will be worse, Larry thought. Painting the canoes black won’t help much there.

They sat murmuring together in the bow, while Rosie took the helm.

“I’m thinking your problem won’t be rapids, but mud,” Barbara said. “The water from all those broken dams is long gone. But Stone sent us to investigate the Canadian shore, ’cause they wanted us to find out if pure-fusion fallout behaved like they thought it would. Well, it did—the Geiger counter hardly made a noise, so there wasn’t much lasting contamination, but practically everything was dead except grass and bugs. No plants or trees to hold the soil; upstate New York was on that same wind path, so lots of streams and small lakes will be silted up.”

Kelleys Dancer crept slowly south and east, aided by the slow current in eastern Lake Erie that pulled toward Niagara. After a while Barbara took the helm and Rosie went forward and began sounding with a bob on a line. Whenever they tacked, he’d scramble to adjust the triangular foresail.

At quarter of four, off to starboard, a dim, low urban skyline appeared, with a small knob that had to be the lighthouse, their landmark. The sun would follow less than an hour behind the moon; they needed to move.

The last they heard of Rosie and Barbara was a whispered “Good luck” as Chris and Jason climbed into their black canoe and followed Larry, paddling slowly across the dark harbor. Behind them, they could hear the creak and thump of Kelleys Dancer tacking to head back to the western end of the lake.

The canal entrance loomed in front of them like a concrete-scabbed wound. Paddles came up dripping scum, black at first, but as the sun came up the color of a bloody bruise, climbed, and turned the gold color of old chicken fat, the slime was a deep blue-green, in long yarns and strands.

Two hours later the land they paddled through was still urban, though empty and dead. The green scum smelled like fresh horse manure when the paddles turned it over. Chris, in the bow of the lead canoe, saw a headless corpse still wearing a bra and panties; a swollen hair-covered lump that must have been a dead horse or cow; and scattered human bones, including two small skulls, around the black smear where a rubber raft had rotted.

“Kids trying to get out of the city that way?” Jason asked.

“Or kids looting somebody’s abandoned raft, killed by something bigger and meaner than them,” Chris said. “Or maybe feral dogs got them and it just happened to be near a raft. The amount of really sad shit that happened is just plain impossible to imagine.”

Apart from the green slime, nothing lived; the trees that leaned over the canal had no leaves, the clay and stone banks eroded without plants growing on them, no fish jumped in the water, no bird flew overhead, nothing scuttled in the dead brush. Skeletons of humans and dogs lay on the banks; probably for a while the bodies had swarmed with beetles and worms, but now those were gone.

By noon they were well into suburban areas. Jogging trails and little decorative shopping malls bordered the canal at intervals between long stretches of factory yards and common dumps. Hearing booming and thundering ahead around a bend, Larry had them pull over and tie up; Jason drew the short straw. He came back to report an old landfill seething with fires and explosions. “Probably the biotes that infected it are methanogenic,” Jason said. “And lightning or something started the rising gas burning.”

Not wanting to give up the canoes, they walked along the bank opposite the landfill, towing the canoes on long ropes. “‘I got a mule, her name is Sal,’” Jason said. “Except I don’t. I got me.”

“But we can probably do better than fifteen miles today,” Larry said, “and right now, every mile is looking like a blessing.”

After relaunching the canoes, they paddled till twilight. The sun crawled down behind them, turning from mucus-yellow to gory red again; they slept under the beached, overturned canoes that night, taking turns sitting watches.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:30 AM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.}

“Yes, even in Pueblo,” James said, looking at the crowd of excited people jumping and waving as the Gooney Express came in low to verify the FUEL CLEAN, NO NANOSWARM white flag with the blue slash. One bunch of young, clean-scrubbed kids of both genders had been singing praise songs while waiting to see Reverend Whilmire, but much the larger component of the crowd was young women in their best clothes, and old men in veterans’ organization caps, clutching small Cross and Eagle flags and whooping it up for General Grayson. Nobody was cheering for Cameron. “Maybe one in ten of our people are Post Raptural. What’s it like up in Olympia?”

“About the same,” Allie Sok Banh said. “But we’ve been putting some more pressure on the Pus Rupturals, telling them to be less overtly political or they can kiss the tax exemptions and parade permits good-bye.

Norm McIntyre added, “Plus twice we’ve raided the Piss Wrapper Church of Olympia for arms caches.”

“Did you find any?”

“Yes and no. So many of those assholes pack all the time that if you raid their services you’ll always find personal weapons. But we didn’t find any arsenals under the altar. Yet.”

“We’re a little more laissez-faire here,” James said, noncommittally.

Allie shrugged. “Typical Heather. More important to follow the rules than to win, and even after Daybreak she won’t admit an idea can be dangerous.”

“Oh, I’ll admit an idea can be dangerous,” James said. “Though having spent a good part of this summer teaching in our night school here, I’ve also noticed that ideas aren’t terribly dangerous to very many people.”

The Gooney rumbled to a stop. Reverend Whilmire emerged first, waving as the crowd cheered; the cheering became overwhelming when Grayson came down the stairs, holding hands with his wife, Jenny. “You know,” Allie said, “if I were a spiteful, jealous person I might be annoyed that you and I didn’t make anything like that kind of splash when we arrived.”

“It’s not obvious yet that we’re going to run for president,” Graham Weisbrod said. “Perhaps we should put out word?”

Allie gave her husband a broad grin. “On five minutes’ notice the whole country can know.”

“Let’s talk soon.”

As Allie resumed watching the Athens team coming out, she was leaning back against Graham with a happy little smile. James thought he was probably meant to see that.

Whilmire and Grayson each gave a short speech to their cheering crowd. Meanwhile, Quattro shut down the Gooney, and came down the steps with Cam and a couple of aides. The party headed over to join the Olympia delegation and James. “Leo was fussing, so Heather deputized me. I’m supposed to deliver you—”

Cheering from the runway, heavily laced with “Praise the Lord!” drowned out James for a moment. It didn’t last long, but immediately after, even louder whooping covered Grayson’s short speech.

When they could hear again, Cameron said, apologetically, “This might take some time. Were they like this when you came in last night?”

Graham raised an eyebrow, and smirked. “It was terrifying, Cam. There were thousands of them out there chanting for ‘a precisely calculated, carefully designed, culturally nuanced mixture of incremental reform and necessary innovation.’ Must’ve taken them ages to learn to chant that whole phrase in unison.”

Cam’s small, wincing smile was about as close to an outright guffaw as he would ever manage. “Trust a bureaucrat to ask a dumb question, and get a flip answer from a professor.”

“Touché. It’s going to be a different world, isn’t it? Look at the way Grayson speaks, all that arm pumping and flying hands, like an old-time whistle-stop orator.” His hand closed around Allie’s. “I guess I’ll have to learn to do that too.”

When the reverend and the general had been torn from their adoring publics, James directed the TNG and PCG delegations to the row of carriages and buggies to be taken to Johanna’s What There Is, which Heather had reserved for a special breakfast. Once there, James moved quietly to a corner and concentrated on his plate, which might be the last chance to get food in for the rest of the day, given how busy life was about to become. Johanna paused beside him with a tray of eggs and trout, murmuring, “All clear upstairs as vetted by Heather.”

James finished the last bite just as Cameron announced, “You know, I don’t really feel the need to go to our rooms first. I slept like a brick on the plane and I feel pretty fresh. We had discussed holding the opening meeting this afternoon, if everyone was feeling up to it, but I was just thinking, why don’t we do it now and have time for some real work this afternoon?”

“Well,” Heather said, “it would take some time to move you all over there in buggies and carriages—”

“Isn’t there a meeting room here? I thought there was, the last time I was here.”

“This seems like a great idea to me,” Graham said. “I was wondering what I would be doing with myself till this afternoon.” He appeared to be completely unaware of Allie trying to hit his instep with her heel, except that his foot kept dodging just enough so that if she were going to hit her target, she would have to make it clearly deliberate.

In less than five minutes Heather had reached a deal to keep Johanna’s What There Is through the lunch hour if necessary, and they were all trooping upstairs to the meeting room that she, Johanna, and a couple of trusted agents had spent the morning creating. Last in the procession came Johanna and two slightly awkward waiters—Roger Jackson and Debbie Mensche—carrying coffee and water urns.

As soon as everyone was seated, and the transcriptionist signaled ready, Heather said, “All right, here we go. For the record: I am Heather O’Grainne and I am convening the Third Intergovernmental Summit of 2025, with Graham Weisbrod, President of the Provisional Constitutional Government, and Cameron Nguyen-Peters, National Constitutional Continuity Coordinator of the Temporary National Government, and—”

She rattled through the list, alternating between the governments and laddering down in order of rank, finishing with “… invited guest Jenny Whilmire Grayson. We will commence with opening statements. Call it, Mister President.” The coin was in the air.

“Heads.”

“Heads. Graham, when you’re ready.”

Wonder if she bothered with a two-headed coin or just figured no one else would get a look? James thought, idly.

Graham Weisbrod pulled out a short, typed document and spread it before him, adjusting his reading glasses. Okay, definitely, he cut Allie out of the game to do this, James thought, because she looks like she’s trying not to let anyone know she just felt a snake go up her pant leg.

Weisbrod’s grandfatherly smile had been famous in the media for more than a decade before Daybreak; somehow, seeing it now, James had a flash of the old sense of security. Weisbrod said, “Please keep in mind that this is preliminary and that large parts of it are intended to start discussion about details and implementation; this is merely the beginning of overworking our staffs.” He raised the paper and said, “The Provisional Constitutional Government proposes to issue an overall order stipulating that all Federal employees are to accept, support, and obey the government to be elected in 2026. By all, I mean all. All the military forces down to privates, every postal carrier and every clerk filling out forms. Accept means if you believe the restored Constitutional government’s not legitimate, you quit your job before you say so. Support means you do everything in your power to make the restored Constitutional government succeed even if its policies are exactly what you don’t want. Obey means just that.” He looked around the room. “Of course, the truth is, we’re just telling people to do what they’re supposed to do anyway: obey the 2026 restoration government. Fundamentally what it says is that whether either side likes the election results in 2026 or not, what’s elected is what there is. No option for either of us to stay in business and try to negotiate a deal we like better. Vote the new government in, hand off to it, and be done with it.”

Cameron Nguyen-Peters nodded. “I believe I understand your proposal in broad outline, and of course we’ll want to go over the text of your order. May I ask what you’re hoping we’ll do in return?”

“Nothing,” Weisbrod said. “This isn’t a negotiating position. It’s the right thing to do, so I’m doing it unilaterally.”

“Oh.” Cam was genuinely smiling. “I thought that might be the case. In that case, we’ll need to issue a similar order, also unilaterally, so that we’re all in good faith here. If you don’t mind I’d like to look over the exact text of your order; perhaps we could order exactly the same one.”

Grayson sat bolt upright. “Sir, this really requires discussion.”

Allison Sok Banh’s expression was very like the general’s, but prettier. “Shouldn’t the staff explore some proposals—”

“Oh, exactly,” Cam said. “If you’ve got copies of your text, Graham, maybe we should adjourn for twenty minutes or so to read it?”

“Right here,” Graham said. “And I have copies for my side as well. Heather, do we have any kind of separate conference rooms available?”

James, from his corner, thought that the biggest problem in moving to separate caucuses might be maneuvering everyone around all the dropped jaws on the floor.

^{IMMEDIATELY AFTER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 AM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.}

The door had barely closed before Whilmire asked, “Did you even intend to consult with us?” in a tone suitable for asking a waiter what’s in the food while hoping not to learn anything.

“We agreed,” Cam said, “that you would always be informed. And so you are. You know what’s being said as soon as it’s said. As for the policy Graham Weisbrod announced, if it’s as advertised, it simply declares that we are going to do our duty, as bound by our oaths—that is my oath and the general’s, Reverend. As a gesture to allay some very legitimate public concerns about whether the Constitution is going to stand, considering the recent unrest about that very issue, it seems wise. Now let’s use our time and make sure it says what Graham Weisbrod says it says.”

“Just when what’s always been the best part of the country has the freedom to be the way it should be, you go running to bring these people back.” Whilmire stared at Cameron Nguyen-Peters as if he were a specimen in a pathology lab.

“Those people are as American as you or I,” Cam said, “and the Constitution says what it says. We work for the American people, not the church-approved people, and we took our oath to the Constitution, not to Jesus. Or to Reverend Peet—since some people confuse the two. For example, the Constitution allows me to say things that piss you off, such as, for example, that there has not been any Rapture, there never was going to be, there never will be, and that what you’re running is an exceedingly cruel con game on people who have lost loved ones.”

There was a stunned silence.

“Well,” Cam said, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I found that rather refreshing. Reverend, if your Post Raptural Church intends to gerrymander the nation so that your followers are a majority in the rump that’s left, you will not only have a fight from those of us loyal to the nation as a whole, you will have an even bigger fight from those of us who might be trapped in the rump. The United States is going back together, without provisos or take-backs. The president elected in 2026 will be the president of the whole thing. Now let’s look and make sure that Graham Weisbrod is committed to that too, and that he’s not pulling a fast one.”

The silence dragged on until Whilmire said, “I’ll pray for you.”

“Let me know how that works out.” Cameron sat still for a long moment. “And the document?”

Grayson took his copy, put it on the table in front of him, and adjusted his reading glasses. “I’m no lawyer but I’ll do my best.” He pointedly did not look up at his father-in-law.

Whilmire pretended that the paper was not there, and said, “I need to pray—”

“Daddy,” Jenny said, “maybe you and I should have a little talk outside. While the Natcon and the general see what they can figure out about that document, I mean. Why don’t you and I have a chat?”

She led her father out by the arm. As soon as the door closed, Grayson, not looking up, murmured, “She’ll get us the time to work but we better use it.”

Cam nodded, and brought his concentration to the pages before him. A few minutes later, he said, “I see nothing wrong on the first reading.”

“If I were teaching a class on writing orders,” Grayson said, “I’d use this as a model, and it says exactly what he said it does.”

“One more time through?”

“We should.”

At the third time through, they agreed that there was no question: it unambiguously ordered every Federal office and officer to accept, support, and obey the government elected in 2026. “And actually,” Grayson said, “those last three paragraphs boil down to No barracks lawyering, no attempts at barracks lawyering, and you know damn well what I mean by ‘ barracks lawyering’ so don’t even think about it. They make it better.”

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

“Unofficially, hell yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Name one.”

“A concern for the Earth—”

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

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

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

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

“Not what I meant.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cameron looked down at his notepad and read aloud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Your personal stationery and handwriting—”

“Do you have it with you?”

“I do. We have a copy, by the way—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Doctor—”

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

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

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

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

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

“Ready when you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

Not again.

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

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

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

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

She used her ham set to relay the story to the Athens Weekly Insight. An hour later they called back to tell her that the story would be used and that she would be mailed fifty dollars of TNG scrip. At least I can use that to pay taxes. If they ever get their act together enough to collect them, out here.

^{THE NEXT DAY. ON THE TRAIN TO ATHENS. 10:30 AM CST. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2025.}

Across the hill and prairie country of eastern Nebraska, the train sometimes sped up to fifty miles an hour, when the tracks were clear and in good shape, but it spent much of its time standing still since coal and water were still mostly loaded in by awkward jury-rigs. In 1880, anybody with money and reason could cross the country in about a week, Cam thought. I guess we’re at about 1870, when in a really urgent case we could get a train across the country, now and then, as a stunt. In the still, frosty hour after dawn, plumes of smoke rose everywhere, from thousands of stoves and fireplaces. With the big machines and the banks gone, refugees coached by Amish extension agents were reopening small farms.

Grayson’s drive up the Yough Valley was about our finest hour, Cam thought. I won’t even complain if it makes the son-of-a-bitch president. I’ve worked for worse presidents.

A thin blanket of snow covered the land in front of him; good for the winter wheat, and thank all the gods that WTRC and the Post-Times had screamed since May that winter would start early, go deep, and leave late, so that the winter wheat was already planted. This next year would still be tight, but by next fall they should be past the risk of famine. Jeez, a year ago the Ag Department guy had to explain winter wheat to me; I just knew I liked Wheat Thins with smoked gouda while I watched the Series.

At the knock on the compartment door, Cameron rose from his desk to shake Whilmire’s hand and join him at the table. A staffer carrying breakfast had followed the reverend in. While the two men ate silently, the sun pierced the overcast, sharpening the colors of the rolling brown land with its smears of snow and a few leaves still clinging to the trees.

“It might have looked this way a hundred fifty years ago,” Whilmire said, “with a big slow steam train crossing it. And on Sunday you hear church bells everywhere; we’ve got missions all over. Daybreak was hard, and we’ll miss all the good people that left in the Rapture, but it’s good to see a cleaner, more traditional world coming back.”

“With, I hope, a traditional United States re-established next year,” Cam said. “You said you wanted to talk about that at breakfast.”

“Last night I received a long message from Reverend Peet. We know you won’t come along with us on Biblical prophecy, of course, and you know, to the Church, that is very nearly as serious as that old Jewish professor not thinking we were in a war. So, frankly, Cameron, much as I like you personally, you and your administration will have to go in 2026. As far as we can tell you’re backing General Grayson, is that correct?”

“Just now he’s the most credible conservative candidate—”

“And my most credible son-in-law. I don’t know if he’s told you the offer we made him: we’ll back him if he promises you won’t be any part of his government.”

Poor Grayson. He was so embarrassed when he made himself sit down and tell me. “I was going to retire and start a second career anyway. I already have applications in to either pitch for the Angels or fly for NASA.”

“That’s funny.” Whilmire’s voice and expression were flat. “We need a government to fit our Bible-based culture, a strong military ready for Armageddon—which will be very soon—and because one big part of the country will be ex-Provi, we have to have someone who’s not afraid to say what Weisbrod really is.”

“Oh, is it official that Graham Weisbrod is the Antichrist?”

Whilmire shook his head. “Absolutely not. The preachers who have been pushing that are Bible-ignorant and don’t know crap about prophecy. Weisbrod doesn’t meet most of the criteria in Revelations. I meant we need to call him out as a secular humanist, socialist, anti-Christian—”

“He’s Jewish, for God’s—”

“Exactly. And he has an outspoken atheist in his cabinet. And General McIntyre.”

“Norman McIntyre is the highest-ranking surviving American officer and a decorated combat vet, and—”

“And he should never have been allowed to be either. The only reason he was allowed to defile an American uniform is that Obama allowed perverts—”

“Defile? So now the uniform is like the cross or the flag?” Cam’s tone apparently froze Whilmire. “This doesn’t sound conciliatory; it’s more like your manifesto before another armed uprising.”

“Armed uprising? Those were merely vigorous demonstrations. When there’s an armed uprising, you’ll know the difference.” Whilmire let that hang in the air before ostentatiously switching to a smooth, flattering tone. “You know why you can never be a real ally to us. But it doesn’t matter what you call the people’s protests, really it doesn’t, because Reverend Peet prayed on it, and we’re committed to a peaceful election—which we will win, no matter what it takes. Reverend Peet believes a peaceful, uncorrupt, trouble-free election is the only way to guarantee the special position for the Post Raptural Church. We have to have a legitimate Constitutional government in place to amend the Constitution.”

“So, you’ll back Grayson because you think he’ll play ball with you,” Cameron said. “I’ll back him because he’s conservative and after working with him I know he’ll do a decent job, maybe out of pure ambition, but he won’t let himself be a bad president. But what really matters is what the people think, and to give them their chance to think, and make this a real election with real debate, next week I’m going to void all orders against blasphemy, obscenity, sedition, and disrespect for the armed forces and the flag.”

“We want you to go ahead with that.” Whilmire leaned forward, his red scalp showing through his iron-gray curly hair. His finger stabbed at Cam like a feinting copperhead. “Of course we’ll protest, we can’t be seen endorsing it, but it’s what we want. Let Weisbrod run against God, and the flag, and the Bible, and the Army—and remind people about how things were before Daybreak and the Rapture. It will pull them together for the Tribulation, and clobber Weisbrod at the polls.” He grinned at Cam’s discomfiture. “Besides, Weisbrod has already given us the presidency, and you’ve ratified it. Before Daybreak, the United States had about twenty-five conservative states, about fifteen liberal states, and about ten toss-ups. Now out of thirty-two states that are still calling in, twenty-three are conservative. And Graham Weisbrod has combined three liberal states into the New State of Superior, and three toss-up states into the New State of Wabash.” He leaned forward, his face almost in Cam’s, relishing the moment. “So here’s the précis: You, out. Grayson, in. Reunification, on. New States, definitely. Your opinions, irrelevant.”

After the door closed behind Whilmire, Cam reached into his bag and dug out the paperback Thucydides that he’d started reading at Lyndon Phat’s suggestion, but he found he had no better ideas than Pericles had. After a while a soldier came in to tell him that they had received a report of tribal activity in the area, so they were shuttering the windows and manning the turrets.

^{3 DAYS LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 2 PM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025.}

Lyndon Phat’s face was bent down into the chessboard to make it hard to read his lips, and he barely murmured, “So no more than a month at most. I’ll miss these chess games.”

“I’m hoping to come with you.”

“If we both make it out, we’ll both be busy. Neither history nor Heather will let us sit on the sidelines.” Phat sighed. “Yes, the answer to your question is yes. Find a way, and I’ll go along, and I’ll run for the office. I don’t see how I can possibly be the popular guy that you say I am, out there. Not considering how I screwed the pooch when I had the chance. But if I am, I’ll run, and if I win, I’ll do my damnedest.” He finally moved his rook, still staring down at the board. “The minute you said Graham wasn’t fit to be president because he didn’t agree with us, I should have stuck to my oath like glue and said, like hell, he’s the only lawful successor.”

“That was my mistake. You just went along with it.”

“And Norm’s mistake too—he should’ve kept his job and made you do the right thing, not gone off to jail with Weisbrod. The only person whose mistake it wasn’t was Grayson. He doesn’t have either the brains or the balls to make a real mistake.”

“He did all right up in the Yough.”

“Grayson’ll do all right most of the time. Hell, nearly every time, he’ll do fine. He’s got talent, charisma, energy, and medium-good humility about his own limitations. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, he’ll do a good-to-exceptional job. He knows that the best way to succeed is to help others succeed and he has the smarts to see how to help them. Many people who have served with him adore the man.”

“I hear a big hanging but waiting to crash down.”

Phat shrugged. “It’s the thing that there’s bad blood about, between us. It was a long time ago. I found out, back when we were both absolute nobodies, that Grayson’s only got two problems. One, his definition of ‘success’ is much too close to his definition of ‘what Grayson wants,’ regardless of whether it’s what it would be good for him to have. Two, although he knows what the best way to succeed is, and usually does it that way—which is why there are so many people who’ve had a good experience with him—well, he knows what the best way to succeed is, but if he can’t succeed the best way, he’s willing to succeed in ways that are… not the best. Which is why there’s also some human wreckage, here and there, near his trail.”

“You don’t want to tell me what it was, I guess.”

“I promised people I respected that I would not talk about it. I shouldn’t have. But not talking about it got to be a habit. I guess if I start to think he might make it to president, I’ll have to talk about it, because there’s a level where you can’t have a man with a…” His hand waved as if seeking the word in the air in front of his face. “Moral crack? Defect of the soul? Can you call it a character flaw if it only comes out a few times in decades, under the worst kind of pressure?” Giving up on the question, he said, “Well, whatever you call it, an officer shouldn’t have it and a president can’t. There’s a Buddhist proverb I like—or at least the guy I heard it from, when I was little, was Buddhist. ‘If you want something bad for you in the worst way, that’s exactly how you’ll get it.’”

“So… uh, if we’re talking flaws here, why should two guys like us, who already made huge mistakes—”

“A mistake is not what I’m talking about. Mistakes happen to everybody. And there’s no reason it shouldn’t be us; Graham has made about as many mistakes, about as big. The voters can decide which mistakes they like better. But Grayson has a rotten core to him, and the one thing a big job always finds is the core. And what he does when that happens won’t be a mistake; he’ll mean to do it, no matter what it does to everyone else, or even to himself. So here’s to honest blundering.” He raised his wineglass; Cam tapped his against it. “By the way, you’re in check.”

^{1 HOUR LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 4:30 PM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025.}

Crossing the lawn to Terrell Hall, Cam saw Billy Ray Salazar, and waved; the colonel waved back and came over, loudly saying, “Sir, just wanted to thank you for the weekend, I think it’s the best thing you’ve reinvented.”

Cameron said, “You’re welcome. Headed up to the lake for some fishing?”

By now his hand was in Salazar’s hand, and as they shook, without moving his lips, Salazar asked, “Anything to tell our mutual friend?” In a normal conversational tone he said, “Yeah, well, it’s protein. They’re biting. I have a smokehouse by the fishing cabin, too, so I’m laying in tons for the winter. You wait till January and you’ll wish you’d gone with me.”

“I already do,” Cameron said, adding softly, “the Red Queen is in,” before letting his volume come up for, “and I don’t even fish, but it must be great to be out in the quiet.”

“It is, and you don’t have to fish, sir. I’ve got a spare bed and you’re welcome anytime.” And softly, “I’ll communicate that. Are you taking advice?”

Murmuring at his shoes, as if too socially awkward to accept a friendly invitation (not a hard thing for him to fake), Cam said, “I already know it’s dangerous, if it fails everything will unravel, and the longer I delay the worse it’ll get.”

“That’s all the advice I had. I’ll be on the line to our friend early tomorrow,” Salazar said quietly. “Really. I wish you’d reconsider, and I’m inviting you because I like your company. Though if it means you’ll come, I promise to do some career-booster upsuckage too.”

Cam shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Well, have a good weekend in town then, sir.”

Walking away, Salazar noted that they’d managed to hit the center of a big open space, more than enough protection because the other side didn’t have any surviving long-range directional mikes.

As he saddled up, he thought, I could set up and transmit tonight, then sleep in tomorrow. I haven’t seen any reports that anyone has even noticed a sporadic beep-radio transmission from outside town yet, let alone put direction finding on it. But this would be a hell of a time for a first. Stay on the path, even when no one is watching.

^{5 DAYS LATER. SYLVAN BEACH, ON ONE IDA LAKE, NEW YORK. 10 AM EST. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2025.}

The big cache of canned goods came to them at the end of a real run of good luck. They had paddled and poled for a few days, then spent three tiring days walking along the bank, two men each towing a canoe, the third man keeping the lines clear, pushing the canoes out from the bank with a pole, doing much of the observing, and staying alert against attack. They had not expected to be able to keep the canoes all the way to Oneida Lake; once they reached the western lake port of Brewerton, though, a makeshift sail on each canoe had been enough to carry them all the way across the lake to Sylvan Beach before 3 p.m., traveling farther in half a day than they had just done in three.

A big cache of canned goods in an empty, clean house with a woodstove was an opportunity to enjoy warmth and food, and a chance to mend, clean, and thoroughly dry everything; they decided to lay over for at least a day.

When they rose, at least half a foot of fresh snow covered the ground. More was still coming down—big, wet, soft flakes that stuck to everything and turned to slush at a breath. They had stashed the canoes under a pier and carried everything up into the house, and the previous occupants had left behind a large pile of firewood, some oil candles, and three big cans of olive oil that burned in a smudgy and dirty way in oil candles with cloth wicks.

Everything was clean and fixed up by early afternoon. They decided to eat another couple of big meals here and sleep warm for one more night, especially since the coming descent of the Mohawk was likely to be rough.

Larry had reports to write, Chris had his diary and his articles, but for Jason, the shelves held no paper books or magazines, no musical instruments, not even a Parcheesi set. One large cabinet drooled a brown jelly that had probably once contained millions of songs, movies, books, games, and so forth, but now it was too gooey even to make decent modeling clay.

Jason pulled on his coat and went to look for a bookstore or library somewhere. Snow was falling thick and fast; the gray half-light swallowed up the house behind him in less than two blocks. He turned right as he came into the business district, five blocks from the house by his careful count. Four blocks later, he found a senior center, and broke in at the back door.

The building was lighted only by high windows, but he could make out the mummified remains in chairs around the big tables, on cots along the walls, or on rotted blankets. Massive-dose radiation sickness is horrible but quick. Lumpy fans of crusted gunk lay by the mouths and anuses of most of the mummies. No animals had survived to come in here, and the windows were unbroken, so the dead lay where they had died; only the first few had been lined up in a storage room, covered with sheets.

Two mummies in a corner were holding hands with a cup beside them; the sitting one must have been bringing water for the lying one. He hoped they’d both lost consciousness at the same time.

A back room with immense windows and the remains of several couches and armchairs contained shelves of military history; the old-fashioned kind of chick books, where it was always just the turn of the century, everybody hooked up constantly, and everyone was always about to have a great career; bios of forgotten actors, singers, and athletes; and some of the classics. Jason pocketed half a dozen paperbacks, figuring Chris and Larry might want to read and the added weight wouldn’t be much if they did manage to keep the canoes all the way down the Mohawk.

Shadows passed by the window. Silently Jason took one long step backwards into the arched doorway of an open bathroom, letting the darkness hide him. Huddled human forms, hugging themselves and stumbling, wrapped in blankets over multiple sweaters and hoodies, passed by the window in rows six abreast, with an armed guard every eighth row; the guards wore heavy red wool coats and earflap hats, and carried steel yardsticks, which they sometimes swung full force against the backs of the stumbling slaves. For more than twenty minutes, he watched an army of wraiths in rags go by, herded by these frightening parodies of hunters.

You come to me as hunters, but I will make you hunters of men, he misquoted to himself. It did not seem funny.

Counting rows, Jason guessed that about three thousand blanket-wrapped slaves and just over a hundred guards passed by, southward, along the edge of the lake, with no sound except when a guard cursed or hit a slave. After the slaves, a loose formation of about three hundred tribal soldiers passed by, followed by twenty rulers or chiefs or whatever they called themselves, another group of a hundred soldiers, and ten minutes later, a rearguard of about fifty soldiers, weapons at ready, moving as if they expected trouble.

Jason timed off an hour by his watch before emerging to look at their tracks.

Their trail bent around the lake, away from the house where Chris and Larry were; no one had turned off where Jason’s faint tracks came in. Didn’t see them or didn’t care, I guess, and the fire probably wasn’t putting out any smoke you could see through the falling snow. Taking a roundabout way, wading briefly along the icy canal, he finally reached the little house just as the sun was setting. The snow was still falling.

They banked the fire and spread his clothes and moccasins before it. When Larry awakened Jason for his watch, his clothes were dry but no longer warm.

^{THE NEXT DAY. SYLVAN BEACH, ON ONE IDA LAKE, NEW YORK. 7 AM EST. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025.}

It was still snowing heavily. They’d found kids’ sleds hanging in the attic space, and each of them pulled a sled-load of canned goods. Their muscles were already aching by the time they had tossed the sleds in and loaded and launched the canoes, paddling along the lakeshore to the canal entrance; slush an inch thick floated on the lake’s surface, and on the canal.

All that day, they paddled to each successive lock dam, unloaded and portaged the canoes, sledded their packs and supplies down to the canoes, and resumed paddling; Jason guessed they were spending twice as much time portaging as paddling, but in the empty, dead country around them, they didn’t want to abandon the supplies that only the canoes could carry.

It was still snowing as it began to get dark, less than twenty miles beyond Oneida Lake. At the public access where they stopped, Larry said, “Now that we know whole armies of Daybreakers might come by, I don’t think we can risk a fire tonight.”

They pulled the two canoes almost face-to-face on a ground cloth, threw a camo tarp and some loose brush over the top, and crawled under to wolf down a can of beans and a can of salmon each; huddled as closely as they could, they went to sleep.

^{THE NEXT DAY. A LITTLE WEST OF DEERFIELD, NEW YORK. 6:50 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

Dawn crept under the canoes, and the men fidgeted, waking each other. The sun was an orange disk through the morning fog. They knocked snow off a picnic table, and risking a small fire in a grill, they fried Spam, heated canned potatoes and green beans, and warmed water from the hand pump to mix with condensed tomato soup.

“I hate to admit how good this is,” Jason said.

Larry rose from the table. “That well water is probably cleaner than anything we’ve seen in a while, and this fire will last a while; let’s dump our old containers, and boil enough water to refill them with clean, hot water, and then, unless you all want to do a little yoga or maybe linger over the sports page, I think there’s not much to do but get going.”

When they pushed off and paddled eastward the fog on the canal was so thick that they could not see the banks twenty feet away. Later that morning, the fog turned suddenly golden as the sun broke through. Not long after they slipped out of the rapidly dispersing fog. In front of them, dead trees clawed at the sky beyond the crooked silhouettes of burned buildings, and three naked bodies dangled by their necks from a pedestrian bridge, on which someone had painted

^{ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 8:45 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

When Jeffrey Grayson stepped out onto his porch to inspect the day, it was a fine Georgia autumn, fit to make a man glad he lived here. Now if the Friday meeting of the Council were canceled, he could walk in the gardens with Jenny, take a long lunch outside, and spend the afternoon in bed. So when he had bathed, shaved, and put on his uniform, he still hung around for an extra moment, talking to Jenny, giving a cancellation one last chance to reach him, and just enjoying being with her. And maybe Reverend Whilmire had a point about the power of prayer, because just as Grayson put some extra time and effort into kissing Jenny at the door, a loud knock made them both jump.

Grayson tugged his uniform straight, and Jenny brushed his hair tenderly with her hand. When he opened the door, the messenger saluted and held out a note.

Grayson returned the salute, watched the man go, and tore open and read the note while standing in the open doorway. “Your father needs to confer with Reverend Peet, and Cameron Nguyen-Peters wants to get some more reports in before the Council meeting. Postponed till Monday!” He closed the door softly behind him and whooped like a loon.

Jenny winked, said, “Find something to kill five minutes,” and darted into their bedroom.

She emerged in a tight white dress with pink pumps. “Baby, I’m ready to take a walk in the gardens,” she said. “Harness up the trap.”

Grayson was proud that he’d learned to drive a one-horse trap just for fun, well before Daybreak, and Ironside had been his harness-horse for a couple of years before. It had always seemed so satisfying, more so once Jenny had entered his life. As they rolled through the brilliant green of the fields with Ironside’s hooves clopping away, Grayson thought any man who saw him with this carriage and this girl must be dying of envy.

They had gone more than a mile, about halfway to the former State Botanical Garden of Georgia, when he thought to ask, “Jenny-baby, how did you know this was what I most wanted to do in the whole world?”

“You were hanging around the house instead of charging off to your meeting, honey, it’s a beautiful day, and mornings like this are your favorite lead-in to afternoons in bed.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re perfect, Jenny?”

“You, almost every day. Keep it that way, ’kay, baby?” She moved to put her leg against his. “Well, I’m glad everyone is busy figuring things out among themselves, so you don’t have to be caught in the middle.”

“You mean between your father and Cam? They don’t like each other but they’ll both keep their bargains.”

“Daddy has been known to re-interpret what the original bargain was, and that weird little man has too. I wish you were a teensy bit more suspicious of him.”

“I don’t like him much either,” Grayson said, “but at the moment, he’s a stepping stone to the presidency, and I don’t see any reason to stomp on him.”

“Just watch that that stone doesn’t turn under you.” Workers on the roadside waved and yelled; Jenny turned to return the wave in a big, enthusiastic, cheerleader style. She sat back down and said, “Baby, you have to learn that you always at least give them a nod and a wave.”

“You were saying, about Cam—”

“I just can’t see what that weird little man really wants.”

“He’s probably the most honorable, principled guy I know,” Grayson said. “If he’s sure he’s right, you can’t change him or buy him or scare him, all you can do is kill him.”

“Are you afraid you might have to kill him?”

“I won’t want to. He’s been pretty straight with me even though we don’t agree. And our interests overlap. He wants there to be a president again—and a Congress and a Supreme Court and I suppose a Department of Transportation—and I want to be that president.”

“So as long as you’re his best candidate for president, you’re on the same side. What if he found a better one?”

“He’s got a lot of personal loyalty,” Grayson said.

“Aww, baby, didn’t mean to upset you.” She snaked a hand up his back, under his collar, rubbing his neck. “But you know, you do always tell me you don’t have a personal relationship with him, not really. Respect and cooperation is great, but he’s not, you know, family, or your BFF, or anything like that. I just think maybe you should watch him, a little. Now—let’s enjoy the day. Happy Halloween!”

Another great thing about life after Daybreak, Grayson thought, is that you can accept a long tender kiss while driving, because the horse knows enough to keep you on the road. They walked in the Botanical Garden like the first people on Earth, and if thoughts about Cam sometimes crept in among the shadows, they slipped away whenever he paid attention to anything else. With Jenny around, that was nearly always.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

Whilmire said, “No, at this point my sense of the public is that we cannot step up and guide the nation directly. The non-Christians, and even the well-meaning Christians in the other churches, won’t be ready for that till after the big war. We’re still early in Tribulation—it’s only the first year of the seven. So far neither the Whore of Babylon nor the Antichrist has clearly emerged, and that would be the earliest time we could make a really bold move. So we’re stuck with what we’re stuck with.”

The Reverend Arthur Peet nodded somberly. He had known Whilmire for most of both of their lives, and he knew the way the man’s mind diced and dissected the world into manageable slices. “So where should we throw our weight?”

“We’re just waiting for the right time, allies, and pretext to give Nguyen-Peters the boot. He counts for nothing. Weisbrod has zero following in TNG territory—Democrat-liberal-Jew professor? Forget him and his Dragon Lady wife. The fringy types in the little splinter churches are nuts and they scare people, which helps us look moderate to people who think moderation is a virtue. The Army has no leader except Grayson or Phat, and we’ve got Phat locked up physically and Grayson politically. So I say, for the moment, don’t do something. Stand there. But be ready to jump when the time comes.”

Peet nodded. “Very much my own thinking. Tribes? Castles?”

“We need the Castles economically, but they’re no big problem; we just gradually convert freeholders; ramp up some of that kingship and lordship material if you want to play for them. As for the tribes, the big drive that the Natcon and the general want to do up in the Lost Quarter will take them off the table next spring. Preach so you tie them to the Canaanites, that’s our promised land, that kind of thing.”

“What’s your assessment of your son-in-law?”

“He’ll be ready to step in as soon as it’s time, if Jenny has anything to do with it. I have much more faith in her than in him. He’ll come along as long as we feed his ambition and vanity.”

Peet shrugged. “Human tools are imperfect. The Lord Himself only hired twelve guys and one was a dud. So no real change?”

“Everything’s the same as last week but more so,” Whilmire said. “But it was pretty good last week.”

“Indeed.” Peet rose and stretched. “I think I’ll take a walk.”

As Whilmire descended the steps of the former UGA chapel, the sunshine was pure gold, and it hadn’t been windy or stormy enough down here yet to take the fall colors from the trees. Real time off was impossible, but at least he could work at a table outside at some café or tea house. So many people were waving, smiling, and calling out “Praise the Lord” to him that he thought he was maybe catching one tiny little glimpse of what heaven might be like.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

“Happy Halloween, General Phat.”

“Sorry, I’m not stocked up with candy, and I haven’t had the time to get into costume. How’s it going, Cameron?”

“Meh. Right now the Church and the Army are each hoping the other one will get sick of me first, eliminate me, and leave the more patient one with clean hands. Wish we were—” He saw Phat’s hard headshake, and the long piece of toilet paper he held up, scrawled with pencil:

“—ah, excuse me,” Cam said, coughing loudly. He took a strip of the toilet paper to eat. Phat followed suit. “Let’s start on the wine, it’s the best thing in my trick-or-treat basket.” He washed down the blob of paper with a swallow of wine, watching as Phat did the same. “God, the wine tastes good. And I brought bread and other stuff. I was going to say, wish we were free of all this politics crap, it’s a nice day and it would be great to parole you, go hang in the sunlight, and just cry into my beer, or my wine, for a while. It’s going to be a relief when they retire me.”

“Planning to go peaceably?”

“How else? It’s still America. But I’m still the only legitimate authority, and it’s my duty to hand off to the Constitutional government, not just whatever people in my neighborhood have the most guns, the biggest crowd in the street, or the Holy Zap from Reverend Peet. After I say no, whether it’s peaceable or not depends on them, I guess.”

They ate the rest of the toilet paper with the bread, thickly spread with butter. When they had finished, and enjoyed some wine-without-paper, Cameron thought, Well, they already know we talk politics. And we’re not going to fool them about what we think. But let’s encourage them to think we’re all talk and no action. “I wish I could tell you that you’re safe, but if they come for me, I suppose they might come for you.”

Phat leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Look, the bravest American of his generation said, ‘A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.’ But down through history, smart soldiers have refused to be the last casualty on the losing side. And you and I are the last of our breed. Whatever the people to come are like, they won’t be us. It’s not the country, or the army, that we grew up to run. Have you noticed most of them call it the forces? when I was a kid, adults called it the service. You see? Different world, Cam, just plain different, and our world is fading away.”

“You think I should just step down and let whatever happen?”

“I’d never tell a man to run out on what he believed in. What I’m saying is all we can do is give the next version of our country the best start we can, then get out of their way, and try not to let whatever they make of it break our hearts.”

^{30 MINUTES LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 11:45 AM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

Reverend Arthur Peet liked to walk the path in Dudley Park along the North Oconee alone. Most days, he was completely alone on the trail.

Though the paving on the path was slowly coming apart as biotes ate the binding tars. It felt like gummy gravel under his feet. The river was ceaselessly changing and always the same; the fall colors gorgeous; before Daybreak he hadn’t realized how much mental energy went into shutting out other people’s engines, motors, yakking, and music.

On these walks, whenever he thought of something positive and uplifting, Naomi seemed to appear. Here she was again. Sometimes she would just walk with him for half a mile or more before speaking, or not speak at all, but today the scrawny girl with ash-blonde dreadlocks spoke almost at once. “Do you really think you should call it Tribulation?”

Peet shrugged. “It’s the English word for it, and everyone in any Bible-believing church knows what it means.”

“I suppose so. But how can you feel Tribulated on such a nice fall day? The colors so bright, the smells and sounds so sharp, and all you have to do is just walk along and listen to your feet swish, swish, swish in the leaves, swish swish swish…” She whirled, holding up her ankle-length hippie-girl skirt, dancing up and down the path in front of him. “You know I love our conversations. It’s so interesting to meet someone with a different take on Daybreak.”

“I’m glad I can help,” Peet said.

“I’m glad you can help too.” Naomi was back at his side. “And I hope I help you.”

“Certainly you help clarify my thoughts.”

“Here’s a thought I’ve been working with,” she said. “Just a thought. I know that traditionally the idea is that during the Rapture, people vanished because they were good.”

“Not necessarily good, as the world knows it, but Christian and believing and trying to be good,” Peet said, gently. “Real saints are always messier and always falling out of their sanctity, unlike plaster ones.”

“Organic all-natural free-range saints instead of plaztatic saints?”

He laughed. “I would use that in a sermon if ‘plaztatic’ didn’t have such a Daybreak connotation.”

“Oh, honestly—you! Should’ve been an English professor!” She had a provoking half-grin.

He clapped his hand to his chest. “Stabbed through the heart.”

She put her hand gently on his arm. “Anyway, my point was, what if the idea is backwards? It’s not that the people were good and therefore they were taken away; having been taken away, they became good.”

The idea made him feel strangely queasy, as if he’d just swallowed something he shouldn’t. “How so? I’m not following.”

“Notice how quiet and lovely it is here? Notice how soft both our voices can be and yet we understand each other perfectly? Notice how much of the natural music there is in the air, and how much the world is better since Daybreak?”

“Except,” he said, “almost everyone is dead.”

“Except or because?”

Before he could ask what she meant, she had disappeared.

Three small boys came around a bend in the trail. They carried cane poles, slingshots, and sharpened sticks; probably they’d be contributing to their families’ dinners tonight. Swift and silent, they darted around him and were gone into the brush on the other side.

Good or dead, Peet mused. Or good and dead. Or the only good one’s a dead one. He was sorry Naomi had left so quickly. He’d have liked to talk more. He sat down on a rock and watched the river roll by. When a bird’s cry startled him, he sat up with a sense of well-rested contentment. According to his watch, it was past time for lunch.

^{1 HOUR LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 1:50 PM EST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

Whilmire recognized that his chief was not going to be swayed from this. A lifetime as an executive assistant and leader’s gofer had trained him to surrender gracefully. “Does this change imply any new course, politically?”

Peet looked up across his spectacles. “It’s not a change, just a re-emphasis. I don’t believe politics has anything to do with it. We need to say publicly that the new world of the Tribulation is a better place to raise and instruct Christians, and thus by their departure, the Christian loved ones who have gone to heaven before us have paved our way to a planet that will become more and more beautiful during Christ’s thousand-year reign, which we agree will start in six years. Yes, the idea partakes a little of Stewardship Christianity, but honestly, Reverend Whilmire, did you never go walking in the woods yourself? And let’s be honest here too; the tribals have souls as much as we do, and the tribes have been sliding into a weird, crude paganism. We can leave their souls to perish—or we can meet them on common ground, about mutually important concerns, and perhaps get the access to win them for Christ. I have not seen an asterisk next to any of Christ’s promises, with a note at the bottom of the page saying except former Daybreakers. So we will shape our message to the situation; so did Saint Paul and for that matter so did Jesus.”

This one’s going to be a tough sell to Grayson, Whilmire thought, walking back to his quarters. But the old man is right. Grayson may thrash around some, but he’ll slither over to our side soon enough.