Daybreak Zero

^{3 DAYS LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 2:30 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2025.}

Jeffrey Grayson was not a man to feel normal sneaking around. When he was out in public, he liked to be seen, and he seldom did anything he didn’t want people to see.

But this was important, and he had no other choice. His office was one door from Cameron Nguyen-Peters’s office, so he couldn’t very well have one of Phat’s guards reporting to him there. He couldn’t plausibly slip over to the guards’ break room for a conversation while visiting Phat in prison, because he couldn’t plausibly visit Phat: the two had openly loathed each other for more than a decade before Daybreak. Besides, Grayson saw no reason to provoke Phat into repeating that story that he’d always feared.

So Jeffrey Grayson had cultivated a habit of going for a run in mid-afternoon, occasionally mentioning that that was when solar-heated water for a shower was apt to be at its most available, and letting people figure that an older man with a hot young wife is motivated to stay in shape. On his off days, Porter Perkins, the guard, would sometimes be fishing off a bridge in Dudley Park, along Grayson’s usual route. Whether Perkins was at the bridge or not, Grayson always stopped to bend over, hands on his knees, and breathe hard.

Today, Perkins, without moving his eyes from the North Oconee below, said, “They talk sometimes while they play chess. Low voices and heads down so you can’t read their lips or hear them too good. But they forget that the table’s by the wall, and the wall is thin. So I’ve been hearing some back and forth, and it sounds like that Phat one might be catching a flight, late November.”

“Where to?”

“The place where the other one has a long-distance affair going. And it sounds like there’s a price; if he rides now, he’s gotta run later.”

Grayson stood, braced his hands on the stone railing, and pushed down into a hamstring stretch he didn’t need any more than he needed breathing time. Face toward the stones, he asked, “So any idea what the one that isn’t Phat is getting out of all this?”

“Probably he just thinks it’s a Nguyen-win situation,” Perkins said.

Grayson never timed himself, but he suspected that the anger pushing him through the remaining hills probably fueled a personal best. There had not been enough sun that morning, either, so the shower was first lukewarm, then suddenly cold, excusing his furious scream.

^{THE NEXT DAY. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 10:45 AM EST. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025.}

Cam and Grayson always forced themselves to finish their Thursday morning meeting by looking through the graphs in the last folder, “ongoing statistics.” The intel clerks added new data points as they came in and drew connecting lines on the master graphs; the analysts traced them, worked out a fitted curve with adding machines and slide rules, and drew the curve on their tracings. Cam and Grayson turned to the graphs for a sobering dose of reality.

This week, only three bad things were decreasing: uncontrolled wide-area fires, dam bursts, and bridge collapses. Cam grimaced. “Even that’s not good news—we’re just running out of unburned urban areas, standing dams, and functioning bridges.”

“I’m afraid so. The only upward trend in a good category is that the food-supply-to-demand ratio is trending up—because dead people don’t eat.” General Grayson tapped the last graph. “That’s the hard one to face.”

The graph showed the size, frequency, and damage from tribal raids; the size of the military response; and the estimated damage to the tribes. For the eighth week in a row, the tribes had raided more, with bigger forces, and done more damage. Responding armed forces were bigger but winning less. “If the RRC has the tribes figured out, their goal is a high death toll on both sides—and how do you beat that? By the time our troops get there, the tribals have already gotten most of what they want, and nothing in the world can deter them, if Pueblo is right.”

Grayson forced himself to say, “There’s a Pueblo issue we should consider.”

“Yes?”

“It’s my belief… sir. Um. I have ample evidence that you are planning to assist General Phat in escaping to Pueblo, and you’re working with the top leadership at the RRC to do that.”

Cam had no expression. “Obviously there would be no point in my lying to you about it now. Would you like to know why I am doing it?”

Grayson’s lips compressed and he looked down. “I do know why you’re doing it. I understand that you are trying to get the United States back together, Cameron, one nation indivisible, all of that. I understand that I’m not the ideal candidate.”

“That was a pretty good rally when you came into Pueblo, and not a bad one when you left, the last time.”

Grayson shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m sure you know the welcome rally at the airport was orchestrated by the Post Raptural Church. They even cheered for Reverend Whilmire, and he’s painfully dull.”

“I suppose a son-in-law would know. But the send-off at the train station was real enough.”

“Oh, it was real. Just most of them were there to cheer for you and Graham Weisbrod, for promising to bring their country back. They were cheering for me too, but mainly because I wasn’t being in the way.” He gripped his own elbows, like a small boy stubbornly insisting on his feelings when the whole adult world is telling him he feels something else. “I understand why Phat is better for your purposes than I am. You need a president who isn’t a regional candidate, someone who gets votes all over. And… well, it’s childish, but I feel like you promised me, and on that basis I helped you…” After a moment, he said, “I really do feel screwed.”

Cameron said, “I probably did screw you—for the good of the country, but I’m sure that doesn’t make it feel better. Technically I never promised you anything, but of course I let you feel that you had a deal, and that wasn’t fair or honest. So you may not trust me for this, but I do have an offer I hope you’ll take, all the cards on the table this time.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“You’re already going to command the first real offensive against the tribals in the spring. Graham Weisbrod and I have discussed the list of options you gave him. Your biggest ‘Cadillac plan’ is doable, but rather than a punitive expedition to trash Castle Earthstone and a march out to the south, ripping up the tribes as you go, what if you just roll right on in that area, reconquering and occupying it?”

“How big an area? And you mean you’ll give me everything in the high-end plan?”

“I would like you to smash the tribes so hard that by autumn our new frontier with them is at the Miami—or at the Scioto, if you get enough breaks. For the summer of the election year, you’d be in the news constantly, and if you succeed, you’ll reduce the Lost Quarter tribes from urgent menace to persistent nuisance.”

“Well.” Grayson was taken aback, startled by the scale of the offer. “You’re offering me the best command a man running for president could have. Do we even have the resources to do all that in one fighting season?”

“If you think we can do it, and you need more than was in your original plan to march from the Tippecanoe to the Ohio, I’ll get you the men and guns and money, from our forces, from twisting Graham Weisbrod’s arm, from the state armies and the Castles if we have to. Put all your planning staff on the problem. Figure out whether it’s doable by October 1st, 2026. Plan on a short, wet fighting season, because all the soot in the air is predicted to make next winter even colder, damper, and earlier than this coming one. Remember spring will be late too. If it can’t be done in one fighting season, take two—but one is better.”

“And you’re willing to take the chance I might be elected president? You know if I am, your career here is over.”

“Ending my career is my job. We’ve already had a Natcon for about ten times as long as we ever should. Yes, I’m giving you a big, important chance—if you smash the tribes, you are going to be a hero in Superior and Wabash. For that matter all the Provi states have had major tribal raids.” Cameron Nguyen-Peters moved his hands across the table, palms down, as if laying out cards. “Don’t misunderstand me, I’ll personally vote for Phat—I’d like a secular, moderate conservative with good national security credentials. But a conservative Christian is acceptable too, and so for that matter would be a foaming liberal, just as long as our first restoration president will follow the Constitution—all of it—and get substantial support from every region. We can’t afford anyone who creates even the appearance of shutting out a side or a region.”

“So you’re offering me a great chance to win the presidency, but you want me to win it across the whole country, and you are not offering me an in-the-bag deal.”

“That’s right, General. But I was never offering an in-the-bag deal anyway—it wasn’t mine to offer. I am sorry that it sounded like I was, and I admit I should have made sure you understood that I can position you but you have to win the election yourself.”

“Why do you care, if you’re voting for Phat?”

“He might not win. General Grayson, I know you, I’ve seen you, I know your abilities, if you’re the president the country can survive and thrive. I’m worried about who or what else might be a candidate with the backing of the churches. I’d rather you had that Christian-right slot, because I can live with you winning—but not with most of the other likely Christian-right candidates.”

“What do you get out of offering me this big chance, other than buying me off again?”

Cam shrugged. “I didn’t think I bought you before; you’re not for sale. Look, the military and political advantage is that retaking those areas would give the Temper Army a short, fast overland connection to the Provi bases and fleets on Lake Erie. That way, the next year, in the spring of 2027, the new president will be poised to take back the Lost Quarter. You know how serious I am about reuniting the country.”

“But you think Phat’s a better candidate than I am.”

“To unify the country, sure. I want him to do that, and you to win the war. As for who would be a better president, let the voters figure it out. They may well come your way if you put an end to the tribal problem. Can you see yourself in that role?”

“I can, of course. You know me well enough.” Grayson stood. “It’s a pretty handsome offer—if I can trust you after the last time. I’m going to have to go home, talk to Jenny, maybe pray; I’ll let you know whether I’m in or out. If I’m out—”

“You’ll move fast, and probably do something big. It’s the way you are, and that’s why I’m offering you this campaign command if you want it.” Cameron stuck his hand out and Grayson shook it, more in respect than in contract. Cam’s faint smile twitched momentarily into being. “General, you will not be the only man praying tonight.”

^{IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:15 PM EST. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025.}

I really should not be trying to make up excuses as if I’d disappointed Mama, when the person I’m worried about is young enough to be my daughter. Grayson was frequently subject to little, odd thoughts about how weird life was; the only times they didn’t show up were during sex, combat, or sleep. My three favorite things, he thought, which is another weird little observation in its own right.

At the front door, he paused a moment to straighten his tunic and finger-comb his hair before going in decisively. “I’ve got time for a long lunch, and we should talk.”

Jenny came out of the back room smiling. “Baby, how’d the conference go?”

“Well, I either won more than I thought I could, or gave away the store, or nothing’s settled yet. I don’t know quite what I feel.”

She held him by both elbows and beamed her most hypnotic, dazzling smile at him. “Suppose I tell you right away that no matter what happened or what you said, you’re still my guy, one hundred percent and no take-backs. Then after that come in to lunch—Luther outdid himself—tell me all about it while we eat, and we’ll figure out the next move together.” She turned and led him into the dining room, her hips swaying just a little more—or was that just his imagination? Definitely, the tight short white dress was his favorite and she knew that.

Over the soup, which was as good as promised, he told her what had happened. “I guess I was so ready for him to deny everything, or confront me or be defensive, that I just stood there and listened while he explained his offer. On the other hand…”

She was half-smirking, but it seemed like it was a joke to share, not a joke on him. “Baby,” she said, “on the other hand, you are a smart man and you realized at once that he was offering you an awesome, amazing deal which you might have to be crazy to turn down. I mean, it’s true, right, that you can reconquer Indiana and part of Ohio? And make a good show of it?”

“Well—”

“I’m not modest about who I am, don’t you be modest about who you are. Modesty should be reserved for when there are people to see it.” Her eyes twinkled but he could feel how strongly she meant it.

“All right,” he said. “Straight truth, I want to do the numbers, but I’m quite sure that if we grab an intact bridge somewhere near Terre Haute on, say, April first, and if Cam can spare me the right brigades, add in the Provi rangers and scouts, who are excellent, and some of their regular infantry, who are tolerable, with some Texas and New Mexico cavalry, and a few of the RRC’s planes… then, yeah. Drive to the Miami/Maumee line for sure, probably all the way to the Scioto/Cuyahoga. Big smashing victories every week, or even more often, all summer long. If a ghost writer comes along—”

“Of course I will, darling, and no, I don’t mind camping out all summer.” Her smile had something sharklike about it. “Two years ago I was editor of the Phoenix, at Sarah Lawrence. Now, I want you to imagine just how good you have to be to get that job when you’re the conservative Southern daughter of a fundamentalist minister and everybody you’re competing with keeps calling you ‘Barbie,’ sometimes to your face. I am that good, baby. Haven’t you noticed those speeches go over pretty well?”

“Why can’t you do something about your father’s sermons?”

The big whoop was not her usual polite lady-laugh at all. “Oh, baby, I have asked him that question plenty of times, and he still won’t let me help. Now, let’s get back to our problem here. You do want what Cam has to give you. You know he has shaded the truth and cheated you in the past, but then, you know you’re not really friends either.”

“He’s not a bad man.”

“He’s not. He’s a confused man pursuing an outdated ideal that nobody else even thinks about. But for the moment, he’s going the same direction you are. So go with him. Help him, even, if he asks you to. Let him feel how smart and right he was to give you that command. And then one day, he’ll want to go one direction, and you’ll want to go the other.” Her deep blue eyes leveled into his, open and staring like a fish’s, but her mouth smiled like she tasted something good. “That’s when he goes his way, and you go straight ahead as hard as you can and run the fucking weird little gook over and leave him dead in the road.” Her smile softened. “You’ll know when the time comes. And speaking of the time—”

“I’ve got about an hour—”

“That’s plenty, baby. I love that little twinge I see in you whenever I talk a teensy bit vulgar or act a little psychobitchy. Want to teach me who’s boss, before I get too big for my tight little silk pants?”

Afterward, lying beside him, she ran her smooth thigh over his muscular, hairy one. “Now let’s talk it through; you have twenty minutes before you have to dress.”

So as they stroked and kissed, they plotted out their lives, and how they would sell the whole thing to her father, and to Cameron Nguyen-Peters, and to the country. Just before he reluctantly got up and dressed, he had another of his weird little thoughts: I am going to be far more successful but there is no way I can ever be happier than I am right now.

^{40 MINUTES LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 2:30 PM EST. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025.}

“Cam, can we do five very private minutes?” Grayson said, leaning into his office.

“Always.” The Natcon got up and closed the door, and they sat in the chairs in the corner that faced into the soundproofing. “I take it you have a decision?”

“I’m in. Even as far as letting Shorty Phat out to run loose, though we sure can’t have that known to anyone in the Post Raptural Church, and I really can’t have it known to Reverend Whilmire.”

“Understood. Drive the frontier to the Miami/Maumee. Whatever you say you need, I’ll find it for you. Wreck the tribes for good. Take all the credit. Run for president, and may the best man win—or rather, may the people have the vision to see the best man, and the will to support him. And I won’t be sad if it’s you.”

Grayson rose, they shook hands, and the deal was done.

Ten minutes later, as Cam went out for a stroll and a stretch to clear his head, Colonel Billy Ray Salazar happened to be crossing the quadrangle in front of the First Church of the United Christian States. Cam asked him politely how the fishing had been lately, Salazar stopped to tell him, and in the middle of a long story about a monster catfish that had broken the line at the last minute, Cam was able to say, very quickly and softly, “We’re blown, and we’re going to have to go ahead anyway. Usual protocol for emergency conference. Let our absent friends know.”

Salazar went right on talking about fish; only the slightest twitch, once, of his cheek indicated to Cam that he had heard.

^{2 DAYS LATER. MOUTH OF CHESAPEAKE BAY. 2 PM EST. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2025.}

As Martin Fierro made its way south, the weather continued fair but cold. The three passengers had an after-lunch habit of bundling up in borrowed sweaters and having a last cup of hot tea in a sunny spot out of the wind; it was as secure a place as they could find for private discussions.

Today, without preamble, Chris said, “Since morning we’ve been headed northwest.”

Larry nodded. “I woke up when I heard them bringing the ship about, looked out the porthole. We were passing Sea Gull Island as we turned north into Chesapeake Bay.”

Jason stared at him. “How did you—”

Larry grinned. “When I was assigned to Bureau headquarters and still married, my wife and I, every chance we got, used to love to spend the weekend driving around the bay in a big circle. So this morning, well, you really can’t mistake the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel for anything else. After the turn this morning, Martin Fierro ran parallel to it for several miles before it found an open channel. I was surprised at how much was still standing after the DC bomb, but the Bridge-Tunnel was made to stand hurricanes, and even something as huge as the Washington nuke, at this distance, was just a big wave, a strong wind, a small earthquake, and I guess some fires if there was anything to burn. Probably the tunnels flooded when the ground shock wave cracked them, and I saw some trestles that had fallen over, so you couldn’t cross the bay on it, but most of it is still there, and not hard to recognize.”

Chris looked around for Argentine crew again, before asking, “So what do you suppose they are doing? There’s no resettlement, nothing to trade with, probably not even a surviving dock.”

“Well,” Larry said, “since early morning, Roberto’s been hauling up water samples and logging them every half hour. I’m guessing that’s meant to look like he’s just taking soundings. And a couple of times they’ve sent a dinghy out, which came back with a wet bag of something—bottom samples, or maybe they’re going out to a shore just over the horizon. And fish coming up off the trawling lines are going into jars of alcohol, not to the kitchen as they usually would. So my guess is that they’re doing a biological survey for someone back in Argentina, along with maybe a certain amount of mapping.”

“Why would they do that?” Jason asked, quietly.

Larry shrugged. “I’m the president of Argentina, okay? Now, here I am, the head of one of less than a dozen nations that came through Daybreak sort of functional. Not only am I located on a whole collapsed, disorganized continent I can overrun in the next generation or two, there’s an even bigger continent to the north with huge depopulated areas and the rest in political chaos. Not that I wish them ill, but you know… maybe if I knew more about the devastation, I could help them better. Plus I should be keeping an eye on what kind of craziness they might do after what’s happened. So why not know something about one of the biggest and best bays in the world for harbors and fishing, since the yanquis aren’t using it right now? Especially since who knows what things might be like in ten years, or a generation?

“In fact, speaking as El Presidente, despite the Commandant’s sharp little eyes, I’d be looking over New York Harbor too. In fact it’s just possible the Commandant pulled a dirty trick on me and found a way to force one of my ships to carry American spies.

“Am I planning an invasion? No. Right now I couldn’t invade Uruguay. Am I thinking of seizing parts of the old United States? Not anytime soon. Do I think I’ll have to fight the norteamericanos? I hope not; peaceful trade would do us all so much more good. But do I need to know everything I can? Oh, yes. Very much yes.” Larry shrugged. “We’d be doing similar stuff if the situations were reversed.”

“If you’re right,” Chris added, “they’re also checking out Cape Cod and the Long Island Sound. Not that they are extra-special wicked or anything but just in case, you know? That’s how this stuff has been done since Sumer.”

They stayed out in the sun on the deck as long as they comfortably could. Their cabin door had barely closed before they heard quiet orders and scrambling feet, and felt the ship swing round to another tack.

^{THE NEXT DAY. NEAR FORT STEWART, GEORGIA. 1 AM EST. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2025.}

These streets were abandoned but far from empty. To the north, Fort Stewart had shrunken away, retreating into a real fort. To the south, the Hinesville city government had given up any enforcement or patrols. What flourished between was everything authority disapproved and people wanted.

Grayson felt ridiculous in his Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, broad-brimmed hat, and Castle Newberry sunglasses. Jenny had carefully picked out an outfit to conceal his identity while signaling rich. Apparently it had worked; on his way to the bar, half a dozen hookers and a dozen moonshine and pot touts tried to entice him, but none had begun with, “Hey, General Grayson.”

This swath of unauthorized bars, drug houses, and brothels was strictly off-limits to soldiers. I wish the MPs would grab me, because I hate this. It had to be done for his career, for the Army he loved, for the country. It had the approval of the one living person he really loved, and for that matter it even had the blessing of clergy. Nonetheless, he felt vaguely sick.

He found the Bug Out Tavern, went in the front door, and gave a password to the man at the improvised bar. The man gestured toward the back; in the dark hallway Grayson saw candlelight playing from under the crack of one door. He knocked, repeated the password, and was admitted.

As he moved to the front of the table, he thought, Nazis in Toyland. They were men who loved to strike the pose and wear the clothes, but couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job. They were dressed in scraps of camo, almost all with bare chests impractical for combat, and looked like some comic-book designer’s concept of a postapocalyptic bad-ass gang. But Grayson saw the bad balance on the standing ones, the unfocused gazes, the flab and bloodshot eyes and shallow breathing, the way their weight was back as if they were already half out the door; these were not men to have at your back, or anywhere upwind.

Yet their eyes shone with hunger to hear what he had to say; before Daybreak, they’ d’ve been mom’s-basement right wingers and 7-Eleven clerk soldiers of fortune. Still hanging around the Army, still no use—till now.

He cleared his throat, and began. He laid it on thick; he’d never have been so prolix with an actual elite unit, let alone with the sort of dirty-dozen-fighting-for-honor-and-redemption that these poor posers wanted to be. Three of them were fresh out of the stockade, on paroles he had arranged. Two were deserters. Two needed their paper records destroyed. Parker, the closest thing to a leader they had, had been on his way to a general discharge for the good of the service when Daybreak had rendered men with training too valuable to let go; he’d rewarded the decision to keep him by making corporal—twice, so far, tied with the number times he’d lost it.

But at least Parker’s eyes focused on Grayson, and not on his shoes or on some hazy movie in his forehead, and he asked some questions that indicated he’d been listening. I guess every outfit has a top guy, Grayson thought.

Walking back, he walked fast; people in his path stepped aside. I know thousands of real soldiers, but I don’t know one I could look in the eye and ask for what I’m asking for.

A voice in the shadowy street, close to him, asked him for something—money, probably, or a drink—and he lashed out, but his fist found only air and darkness.

^{8 DAYS LATER. SAVANNAH, GEORGIA. 9 AM EST. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2025.}

The captain of Martin Fierro, a quiet Norwegian with excellent English, was sometimes talkative. Gradually they had learned that he had been trying to find some ship going to Norway to search for his family. They had heard the story of his jury-rigging sails when the engines died on his Polish freighter, and how he had limped into Buenos Aires just a week before the failed nuclear attack. Almost every conversation with him ended with his saying that he took ships where they were supposed to go, trained his officers, and hoped for some strong reason to live.

“The thing I always liked about Savannah,” he said, “was the no-nonsense. They were a great port city but not just because they were sitting in the right place like Buenos Aires or New York. The most modern freight-handling system on this continent and always upgrading, eh?”

“Used to move a lot of freight real fast,” the pilot said, never taking his eyes from the channel.

“But you see they built it all downriver from the city, because it’s faster to unload to rail as soon as you can, so the piers and the docks up in the city, they were for smaller ships and museum pieces and pleasure boats, you see? They kept those in good shape too. And when Daybreak came and everything stopped and rotted where it was, the big modern ships at the big modern facilities just stayed there along the south bank—but they had an open channel up to decent docks in the old city. This will be a big city before Manbrookstat is one again. This and Morgan City, they’re your new America, you know.”

“If the country even looks outward at all,” Larry said.

“I’m a seaman; a country is its ports.”

“How was Daybreak down here?” Jason asked.

The pilot shrugged. “Bad—but we lived. Things were a lot worse, other places. Down here, people coped. ’f they’ad friends or relatives to walk to, they did. Some rioting and shooting from people who I guess didn’ave nothin’ better to do. Lotta rationing, people boarding up their houses and moving to shelters, the Army and Guard ran the place till’bout July. Lost a lotta old people and everyone who depended on modern medicine, and there’s people calling this the Year of No Babies, so many things carried off the little ones. But between us and the military and the Lord, we got through and it’s looking better. Maybe three-quarters of the people that were here on Daybreak day ain’t back yet, ’cause they need hands out on the farms.”

Around the bend, the old city spread out before them. The pilot asked if they’d ever been to Savannah before; only Chris had. “But only as a cameraman for the news, so I never saw anything.”

“Well, people from elsewhere tell me it’s real pretty,” the pilot said. “I’ve never been anywhere else, really, so to me it all looks kind of regular.”

The walk through a functioning city made them all feel like hapless hicks. Savannah had been a rich and beautiful town for 150 years and more before Daybreak, and it had reverted, painfully but effectively, to a real human place. “Like Put-in-Bay,” Jason said, after a while.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Or Pale Bluff, or Grant’s Pass. One of those places that’s just managed to hang on as a good place. I guess that’s what it’s all about.”

Larry nodded. “Good, then it’s worth it.” He seemed distant; when he spotted the telegraph office, he all but ran to it. Shrugging, Chris and Jason sat down on a park bench to wait for him.

Twice in the half hour while they waited, men in a tan uniform asked them what they were doing, and having established that they weren’t local, took down their names and the fact that they would be leaving town soon. The second time, the man said, apropos of nothing, “You’re not in Olympia, here, you know.”

When he was completely out of earshot, Jason said, “I don’t think I like local law enforcement.”

“I’m not even sure those are cops,” Chris said. “But I’m pretty sure they’re not the Welcome Wagon.”

Larry came back looking grim. “I’m sure you both guessed,” he said, looking down at the ground and speaking very softly, “that there was a secret part of this mission that might or might not be activated?”

They nodded slightly, in unison.

“It’s activated. I’ve been advised to tell you nothing more than to follow me if things suddenly go off plan. They don’t want you to know too much. Your lives could depend on that, if things go wrong. Just stay loose and ready to jump.”

“Right on,” Jason said.

“You bet,” Chris added.

“Okay, now the public, non-coded telegram I have here apparently is our pass onto the train, if we just present it to the FedRail desk in the railroad station. Let’s see how that part goes.”

Finding it was easy. Just south of downtown, Savannah had had a railroad museum before Daybreak, and like the one in Golden, Colorado, having so much old steam-train gear in one place had made this area a center of development. “You must rate,” the clerk said, smiling at them. “First class all the way with all the extras. The train leaves at 3 p.m., none too sharp, but it’ll help us if you’re here waiting, and when it goes it goes, so be here at three unless you want your packs to go to Athens without you. Got your ration cards and chapel passes?”

“A ration card sounds like a good idea,” Larry said, “if we can write you a purchase order on the RRC’s account. How’s the food in the mess halls?”

The clerk had obviously heard that question before. “We don’t have public mess halls here anymore. We got over socialism quick. The thing is if you don’t have a ration card, no one can sell you any food in any form, restaurant or grocery or anything. You don’t legally need a chapel pass if you stay less than twenty-four hours, but it helps to have one if a militiaman stops you on the street, and you have to have one to buy printed matter like newspapers or books. And yeah, I’ll take a draft on Pueblo; it’s easier to process than the farmers that come in and give me okra.”

“Well, then, whatever number of ration coupons we need for our meals today, and three chapel passes.”

“You going to eat on the train? Honestly it’s better’n anything local, so you should make that your supper.”

“Thanks, yes, we’ll do that.”

The clerk scribbled on a carbon pad, speaking quickly and without expression, going through a well-rehearsed routine. “Ration coupons coming up. You show it to the waiter or clerk going in, and then they take it from you at the end. Don’t let them grab it before you’ve got your food and paid for it. A lot of them lie and threaten to turn you in for not giving them one. If they do trick you that way, the going price to let you go is four times the price of a ration coupon.

“Now about those chapel passes, you can buy one, good for three days, from the reverend, every time you attend a service, as long as they have the LICENSED NON CULT plate up on the pulpit.

“Don’t pay a door cover, ever, that’s how the cults trick people into coming to service and not getting a chapel pass for it—the Jews and those little African churches are famous for that, everyone says, but in my experience it’s the Mormons who pull that trick every time.

“The Steam Train Chapel, down to the other end of the station there on the right, has a service every half hour, and it’s quick. The reverend there’ll give you a pass that’s as good as any, and his prices aren’t bad.” The clerk winked. “He’s also my brother-in-law.”

The service was a sung doxology, a reading of three Bible verses, a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, singing one verse of “God Bless America,” and a two-minute message in which the preacher urged them all to realize that all the missing good people, especially their friends and relatives, were Raptured, this was the Tribulation, and therefore they needed to get to a “real Christian” church, by which he apparently meant a Post Raptural Church, to be fully slain in the spirit and rebaptized. Then they sang one verse of “Stand Up for Jesus” and the reverend pronounced them blessed.

They purposely maneuvered to be last in line for their coupons, hoping to get a chance to talk alone with the reverend.

“We’re out of Pueblo and just back from a scientific expedition to the Lost Quarter,” Larry explained, “so we don’t really know how things work down here.”

“Well, we know that a terrorist, a Satanist, a Muslim, or a possessed man is not going to be able to bear to hear the word of the Lord,” the man said, pleasantly, as if explaining how an athlete’s foot cream worked. “That’s plain as day in Matthew 18:18, Hebrews 13:15, and Psalm 22. So we bring them in here and I give’em some Bible and hymns and see if they can say the Lord’s Prayer. Like screening them for evil, like they used to screen for metal and stuff at airports. But all that does is make sure you ain’t consciously with Satan right this second. If you’re going to come out of the Tribulation on the right side—and there’s only six years left—you really need to go to a real church.”

“And the people who live here, they go to chapel twice a week, to have the passes?

“Lots go daily. And it’s not just for the passes. With Tribulation on, a man just can’t be too careful.”

They met friendly people everywhere, happy to talk about life in Savannah. The restaurant meals were good but almost identical: fried or grilled fish, cornbread, and greens. One place had a side of two eggs available at an outrageous price, and the other didn’t but expected to the next day.

Polite militiamen stopped them on the street three times, and each time the chapel pass extracted them instantly—though the last of the militiamen, who didn’t look a day over sixteen, with red hair and more freckles than it should be possible to grow on one person, shook his head when he saw where the chapel pass came from. “Next time you hit town,” he said, “go over to the Lord’s Table Chapel—it used to be a house, they just converted it—by Forsyth Park. Your pass’ll cost you half what this one did, and you’ll get a real whole hour service with serious spirit-infused, Bible-based preaching, and you get communion at no extra charge.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Larry said. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to that preacher, would you?”

“You mean the way Ed at the railway station is brothers with that clerk Steve? No, sir. But Reverend Earl at the Lord’s Table Chapel is my girlfriend’s dad, and I have seen him at work, and I believe in my heart that you’ll get a better deal there.”

After looking all day, Chris finally found a newspaper just as they were returning to the railroad station; an elderly African-American lady, who had three chapel passes, all from today, pinned on the front of her dress, was selling papers from a crate on the sidewalk. After carefully inspecting his chapel pass, she sold Chris a current Athens Weekly Insight and a three-week-old Pueblo Post-Times. She gave them to him wrapped in a paper bag, the way he remembered his father buying pornography.

On the train, opening the papers, he found that a third of the material in the Post-Times’s back page, and half a dozen stories in the Weekly Insight, had been painted over with black ink. Jason and Larry had a fine old time teasing him about not having seen that coming.

The conductor came by to announce dinner in the dining car; they pulled out their ration cards, and he laughed. “Steve pulled that one on you, too, didn’t he? The ration cards are a local Savannah thing. You don’t need’em to eat here.”

Chris thought he might burst with smugness as Jason and Larry took turns grumbling all through dinner. It wasn’t bad, for the third helping of fried fish, cornbread, and greens in a day. The few lights of Savannah had vanished behind them, and the old steam train was chugging along, zigzagging from one still-usable track to another. He settled back to read the parts of his paper that he was allowed to see. At least for breakfast in Athens, there probably won’t be fish, and if their paper is censored here, it’s got to be freer there.