Daybreak Zero

^{9 HOURS LATER. FBI TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS WEST, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 9:30 PM PST. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2025.}

“I wish to God that Terry Bolton would knock off the jokes about trick-or-treaters,” Dave Carlucci said to Arlene. “I also wish you’d take a less dangerous position.”

When Arlene had married him, he had already been with the FBI for two years; now, nineteen years later, she knew more than he did about how his mind worked. “Hon,” she said, “do you want to review everything we decided in the last week, or do you want to get ready?”

“You know I—”

“Terry cracks bad jokes, repetitively, when he’s waiting to go into action. You second-guess every previous decision. As for where I’m going to be, I’ll be as far inside the building as is possible, so my chances of getting hit by stray fire are zip, especially since the tribals have spears, slings, and bows and all the gunfire will be going out, not in. If they manage to get into the building it will only be because all of you are dead. I’m a lousy shot but I’ll shoot at them to keep them off my patients, who I wouldn’t leave behind anyway, because I’m a nurse, dammit, and you Feds are not the only people in the world who take your jobs seriously. If I end up dying, I’ll be one of the last to go, and everyone else will be gone too.”

“Annie and Paley—”

“She wants to be called Acey, remember? She’s been telling you for more than a year. They’re good shots, they’ll be high up, they’re smart enough to make something up if something goes wrong, they’ll be fine. Now, go worry about something else, or recheck everything one more time, or make up some new material for Terry.”

“Everything’s ready for our little trick-or-treaters,” Terry said. “Gosh, I hope we get lots of the little rascals.”

“Please,” Arlene added, quietly, to Carlucci, and despite himself, he smiled.

Shadows were short in the bright, overhead moonlight. Acey Carlucci retied her do-rag more tightly, to keep her black curly hair from escaping, and rechecked everything on her Newberry Standard by feel. She lay on a thick old truck cargo pad, under a heavy wool blanket against the chill, and waited, watching the alley directly across the street; the concrete facing, all the way up the first storey, made it a perfect sniper’s backdrop. When the dark silhouette moved across it, her hands found the right places on her rifle as her hands, eye, sight, and target aligned; her breath stopped, the rifle was perfectly still, she squeezed the trigger, and as the smoke cleared, she saw the man lying on the pavement. The next one rushed, low, but she didn’t hurry her shot, and he fell over at a broken angle, dragging himself by his hands.

Really, it wasn’t much different from deer or wild cattle; you pulled a trigger, they went over.

She focused on the alley. Off to the side she could hear Paley’s first shot, and then another. She glanced toward the street he was covering; just one down, crawling toward the shadows. Poor Paley, she thought, he’s an okay shot but it kills him that I’m better. She watched her assigned alley and waited for another target.

Paley thought, If I puke, I will never hear the end of it. Keep watching. Another one will pop out any second now. He breathed deep; the tribal he’d shot—twice because he didn’t go down the first time—was crawling toward the shadow, maybe for cover, maybe because he was hurt so bad that even the moonlight was too much for him?

Paley wished he could shoot again to put the man out of his misery, but the rules Dad had laid down were firm: no shooting the wounded who weren’t fighting and couldn’t escape—they were all wanted for interrogation.

Another figure in the moonlit street.

He didn’t let himself hesitate; if he did, he might never shoot again. He solved the abstract problem and pulled the trigger. The figure lay as if sprawled out to look at the stars.

He could feel his face was wet. I am so not the right guy for this.

Harrison Castro waited with three hundred of his best guard, weapons already drawn and ready, half a mile from the FBI “compound,” if you could dignify a decaying office building that way. They were formed up in long rows; he’d spent a while explaining that to the tribal war leaders. He had said that in this formation, they’d be able to keep up with the tribals and lay down covering fire during the final assault on FBI headquarters. Castro’s men, and a few women, handpicked and utterly loyal to him, waited in perfect stillness; he knew they would do exactly what he had ordered, when it was time. The waxing moon crept from the zenith toward the sea, silhouetting the strange mixture of hats and robes in the tribal crowd downhill from Castro’s men.

The plan was that a runner from the tribal war leaders was to bring the starting message to Castro. Two minutes after the messenger signaled that Castro had been alerted, and was ready, the massed tribals below would hit the FBI headquarters in a human wave with Castro’s men trotting at their heels. His guards would pick off defending snipers, overwhelm the doors with concentrated fire to clear the way for the final assault on the building, and then follow them in to help in mopping up.

Harrison Castro had formulated the plan, but that had not stopped the war leaders from each taking a turn explaining it to him at great length, again and again, while he held his tongue; he knew that explaining it to him was important to their self-esteem or some such woo-woo crap.

There was a small scattering of shots; the “handpicked elite” from the Awakening Dolphin Children must not have been as invisible in their rush as they’d thought they’d be. Castro waited, and sure enough, in a couple of minutes a message-runner appeared in the bright moonlight, headed for him.

“Get ready,” he said to his troops. “This is going to be it.”

They had been ready anyway; in the long breath as the runner approached, they became poised, taut with eagerness. Below, the tribals milled about with unfocused energy and nervous excitement, and the war leaders shoved and kicked at them, keeping them in place.

The runner approached. “Earl Castro, sir, our scouts report that our advance attackers have been intercepted, and we—”

The boom was terrifyingly loud as Castro shot the man in the chest at point-blank range. On that cue, the guards, already formed into rows for volley fire, fired their first volley; the second followed within a long breath, and the third. Backlit in the bright moonlight, with nowhere to go, the tribals were hit with a dozen volleys in less than a minute. At Castro’s command, his troops advanced down the hill, killing the seriously wounded, handcuffing or hog-tying everyone else, and marking those with treatable wounds so the medics could find them.

When Dave Carlucci heard the volleys roaring out up above, he blew his whistle; his small force moved to its second set of firing positions, and in less than a minute he began to hear the occasional claps of his snipers picking off fleeing tribals, ensuring that the few who ran away successfully would keep running for a long time, panicking many back into the arms of Castro’s troops, and leaving some dead or dying in the street.

At the sound of the bugle from Castro’s force, he blew his own whistle three times, and heard the calls back from everyone; they had ceased firing, they knew the forces now approaching were friendly. And there were twenty-two of them; everyone checked in. No losses on our side.

It was the first time Carlucci enjoyed shaking Castro’s hand; they agreed to talk the next day, and Castro made it a lunch invitation.

As Carlucci walked around his now-much-more-secure HQ, he looked in at the infirmary; Arlene had seventy tribals in there, mostly being tended and guarded by forces Castro had left behind. Carlucci waved at Arlene and was about to get out of the way when he realized who was working right next to him, applying pressure to stop a girl from bleeding to death through her shattered arm. “Paley!”

“Hey, Dad. Mom said I could help here, and I couldn’t sleep anyway, so here I am. Just trying to keep Avril alive. Least I could do, I guess, since I shot her.”

Carlucci paused and peered at his son; underneath his deep outdoor tan, the young man was pale, as if he’d been wounded himself. “That sounds like her real name, not her tribal one. Did you know her?”

“She was in my high school. I guess I’m glad I didn’t kill her.” He looked at his father, shyly, obviously trying not to sound defiant. “Dad, I think I want to be a doctor or a nurse or something in medicine. I feel like I could work here for a week without sleep if it would save Avril, or anyone else, but… when I was shooting—”

With his thumb, Carlucci smoothed the tears down his son’s cheeks. “You know, it’s a good thing we’re not all born killers, Paley. If it’s what you want to do with your life, we’ll find some way for you to do it. And to tell you the truth, I’ll be pretty happy if you’re always busier than me.” He wiped Paley’s tears again, and blotted with his handkerchief. “Now do what your mother tells you, because she’s the best and you’ll want to learn it right.”

^{THE NEXT DAY. CASTLE CASTRO (SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA). 12:15 PM PST. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2025.}

When they had finished the meal, Carlucci asked, “Aren’t you afraid of being killed?”

“Sure, isn’t everyone?” Castro looked surprised at the question. “But I’m in about as safe a place as I could be—after that guy sneaked in we did some serious purging, and I not only know how he got in, I know a few other ways he could have. Those are all plugged now, and my best people are going to be looking, all the time, for people who are trying to find new ones. Meanwhile, the tribes in the area just took another ass-kicking, and the Tempers and Provis are both promising to reinforce you. For the moment, we have them on the run.”

“And about the Constitutional issues?”

“You’re not going to disarm me, or even try, because you’re not crazy. And if you think I’m hard to deal with, wait’ll you try Bambi.”

“Actually, your daughter and I have always gotten along.”

Castro shrugged. “Ever tried to tell her no?”

“Uh, no, she’s always been right.”

“As long as you keep believing that, you’ll be fine.” He stood. “Dave, I really did just want to have lunch with you and work on developing a friendship. I know there wasn’t much business to do today, except to agree to be civil about whatever either of us has to do later on. You’re welcome for the help in smashing the tribes and, while I’m not going to comply with your court order, I will try not to rub your nose in my defiance any more than necessary. I need to run to another meeting, which I will not enjoy nearly as much as this, so before you go, I have to hurry up and cover just one more thing on my agenda.” He handed him a thick manila envelope. “This is everything, absolutely everything, from our investigation of that Daybreaker that broke in and threatened me. I’ll send you updates regularly. Keep it on file.”

“Life insurance?”

“Sort of. More like revenge insurance. I don’t think anyone will fuck with me successfully, but if they do, I want something or someone to be on their tail. You strike me as the type that doesn’t give up a pursuit, Mister Carlucci.”

Returning to his suite, Harrison Castro reflected that if Carlucci had asked, he’d probably have admitted the surprising truth: aside from his rage at having a bunch of mind-controlled bush hippies trying to order him around, aside from finally grasping that the tribes would always be more dangerous to him than the Federal government, aside from his unwillingness to see people he despised slaughter people he respected, there was an overriding consideration: he had discovered that he didn’t want to overthrow the Constitution, or put the Feds out of business, or anything else he’d been saying he wanted since… jeez, since the Clinton Administration. Pure case of being careful what you wish for.

He just needed to change his shirt before his meeting with his tech advisors; he knew his perfect valet would have everything laid out on the bed.

Inside his suite, he opened the bedroom door and found his valet lying on his back, blood pooling around him, his throat slashed open. He had half a moment to think not again and it can’t be as the bag of feathers went over his head, and he did manage to kick his opponent in the shin this time, and shoulder him against the wall, but neither made the man—the same one? Castro wondered, through the rising panic of not being able to get enough air—neither made him—let go.

Let go. Castro fought the man, his grip, the bag, everything, with all he had, but the man was forcing Castro’s hands behind his back. Castro twisted and turned, jumped and jerked, but nothing freed him. It was even more impossible to breathe in here than it had been last time, and he was swiftly running out of air. Tasting bitter shame, he tapped the man, signaling that he would talk.

The man grabbed his little fingers and pressed them the wrong way. Castro tried to gasp for air, involuntarily, and only pulled in a few feathers that set him trying to cough with air that he didn’t have. The terrible pressure on his wrists drove him forward, and then to the side, stumbling on something slick.

His bound hands were forced upward behind him, and the cuffs were tied to something.

He knew where he was, now, but it did him no good.

His bound hands were tied to the showerhead behind him. The man turned the shower on, all the way hot. Scalding water poured over and through the cloth bag, into the feathers, blocking his last fresh air; smothering, drowning, and cooking him in the water, steam, and feathers; turning his cough into wracking spasms. The feathers held the hot water against his scalp and face, burning the soft flesh deep red. After far too long the darkness of the bag merged into the darkness of his mind.

^{THE NEXT DAY. HERKIMER, NEW YORK. 4:30 PM EST. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2025.}

The little park where the Mohawk split off from the Erie Canal had a nice old log building. A small sign told them where to call to rent it; a bronze plaque said

Below that, in smaller letters, there was a list of wars, beginning with Vietnam and running up through Iran II. “Folks were patriotic out here,” Chris observed. “Looks like they didn’t get anyone from Grenada, Bosnia, or Guyana, though.”

“Maybe those were the vets that just weren’t joiners,” Larry said. “Wonder if the chimney’s clean enough to chance a fire?” He went to the fireplace and peered upward. “Fresh swept. Figures. Every vet’s group I was ever in, some super-responsible volunteer would do something or other perfectly. I don’t know his name but I can picture some quiet guy who just decided the vet’s lodge chimney would get swept every fall.” A shadow crossed his face. “We lost a few of those in every little town.”

Jason nodded. “Along with great scoutmasters and first-rate piano teachers and people who repainted their city halls or changed the flowers in the public gardens. And we also lost whole cities full of them. But if I let my Daybreak mind slip back into my head, I see them as fat self-satisfied slobs who needed to die for thinking that all that stuff they tried to do was important, when only our duty to the Earth really matters. In one of my poems I wrote

“For all I know they’re still quoting it, and the goal is to be quoting it when no one knows who Auden was, or what a car was.”

Chris shrugged. “You never know what words will live, if any. More than one writer has written the war cry of his deadliest enemy.”

“Was that a poem? Are you quoting something?”

“No, I’m just tired, which makes me melodramatic. Part of why I’d rather work on paper—later, when I’m not tired, I take squishy crap like that out and replace it with rock-hard bare-boned facts. Anyway, let’s start that fire and block off the windows while we still have light to do it.”

“Volunteering for fire duty: Chris Manckiewicz,” Larry said. “Jason, let’s find towels or something around to cover those windows with. Once Chris has his fire going, we’ll need to see how much smoke it sends up, but right now there’s enough wind to shred it before it goes too high.”

The sun had not quite set when they were snug inside. Hot Spam and beans, eaten at a table, tasted much better than the cold version under a canoe. Sweet potatoes cooked in the opened can was very nearly a real dessert. After dinner, Larry spread out the maps to show them the path. “From here on out it’s down the Mohawk, and the descent is steep. Busted dams, washed out levees, fallen bridges, God knows what. It won’t be rafting the Colorado, exactly, but it’s going to be a rougher ride than anything we’ve done so far.”

They all had another round of warm food, taking turns reading aloud from the copy of Nostromo that Jason had brought from the senior center. Jason and Larry sacked out close to the fire, and Chris took the first watch, scribbling in his pad, trying to explain just how dead and empty it was up here, wondering how many synonyms for “nothing,” “lost,” and “gone” there were, and if they’d be enough.