Daybreak Zero

^{THE NEXT DAY. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 2 PM PST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.}

“’Bout eight o’clock behind us,” Ryan muttered to Larry. He fiddled with the harness on Mortimer, the most placid mule. “At least two.”

They’d been shadowed most of the day. Bambi must still be alive and negotiable-for; if she were already dead and war under way, they’d have shot Larry, Ryan, and Micah from cover and then taken their mules and gear.

The ground was dry, the afternoon was warm, and the little creek running through the meadow ahead of them was inviting. “Let’s let’em graze and drink a little,” Larry said. “We’ve got plenty of daylight left.” Give the other side time to decide to show themselves.

They unburdened the mules, tied them where they could reach the creek, and sat down to a late lunch on a big, comfortable, sun-warmed rock. They had just finished when the woman stepped out of the trees, her hands up.

“I make it three of them covering her,” Micah said, softly, looking down at the ground.

“Four,” Ryan said, behind his hand. “Bet you missed the one in the tall grass behind that stump. Mister Mensche, what do you want to do?”

Mensche shrugged. “I’m going to walk forward and talk to her. If they start shooting, shoot back and run. Count me dead unless I catch up with you. If any of the hidden ones move suddenly, give me a long whistle. Anyone acts like they’re about to use a weapon, shoot, but I think it’s going to be all talk for a while.” He stood slowly, raising his hands over his head, and walked toward the woman.

In my FBI days, I was assigned four different hostage negotiations and two ransom turnovers. Carlucci said he gave them to me because I moved slow and looked trustworthy. Hope I haven’t lost my touch.

When he and the woman were a few yards apart, Larry said, “My side won’t fire if you lower your hands.”

“Neither will mine if you do.”

They relaxed. Larry said, “I’m a Federal investigating agent; you can call me Agent Mensche, Mister Mensche, or Larry—any of those is fine. I’m here to inquire into the disappearance of a mailplane and its pilot, Bambi Castro.”

“I’m Helen Chelseasdaughter, it’s polite among our people always to use both names, and the Blue Morning People sent me to guide you to the place where we will negotiate. We are a people who think long before acting; there will be no quick response.”

“Then I won’t expect one, Helen Chelseasdaughter. Is it far? Our mules are tired.”

“About an hour’s walk,” Helen Chelseasdaughter said. “May I signal the people with me to come out of cover and join your party, Agent Mensche?”

“That will be fine, Helen Chelseasdaughter.”

She raised her arms and waved twice; six tribals broke cover quietly, with hands over their heads. At Larry’s signal, Ryan and Micah set their weapons down.

As the Daybreakers and Larry’s party continued up the road, no one seemed to have anything to say.

^{ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 6 PM PST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.}

Wow, their weed sucks, Larry thought, taking the required fourth hit off the peace pipe. The council fire had been built in the trail ride center’s fire pit; Larry, Helen Chelseasdaughter, and Michael Amandasson were sitting in a row on what must have been the performer’s bench, and three hundred or so members of the Blue Morning People were facing them from the bleachers. I feel the strangest desire to start talking like a crusty old character to the little buckaroos.

The deal was done; now the tribe was having fun holding ceremonies. Larry was getting good at emphasizing the quality and wonders of the four hundred blankets, two hundred steel hatchets, three hundred pairs of new moccasins, and five hundred sweaters, every time his turn came up—the tribals always applauded. The peace pipes out there must’ve been being passed along pretty regularly.

When there was only about an hour of daylight left, Larry said he needed to see the plane and Bambi. Michael Amandasson led Mensche to the guarded guest cabin.

Bambi said hi and jumped up and hugged him, giving him cover to compose himself from the shock: the other prisoner in the cabin was his own daughter, Debbie.

When they let go of each other, he had his game face on again. He asked Bambi the basics (was she unhurt? could she fly the plane home if they fueled it? was she sure she had room for a takeoff from US 95?) while he rested his hand on her arm, squeezing in Morse:

Larry had learned squeeze code back in the ’90s when he’d just been starting with the Bureau, and later taught it to Debbie back when she thought that her dad being in the FBI was cool and she’d been preparing to be rescued by her dashing dad from terrorists or a serial killer. Whenever he or Debbie hugged, they’d squeeze and tap didit, didahdidit dididah didididah, dididah—i luv u.

After Daybreak, as the most experienced intelligence/law enforcement agent Heather had recruited, Larry had taught it to everyone.

Thirty years and this was the first time he’d ever used it. Just goes to show there’s no such thing as unnecessary training.

It was lousy tradecraft, but he decided he’d have to be human. “And what are they holding you for?” He reached forward, as if brushing the hair from Debbie’s eyes.

From the door, Michael Amandasson said, “She’s no concern of yours. She’s a slave.”

Mensche turned, letting his hand fall onto Debbie’s. “She is not a slave. She’s on American soil and we have the Thirteenth Amendment.”

“That doesn’t apply to the Blue Morning People. Come with me now, Agent Mensche.”

Mensche fixed his gaze on the tribal’s face as if contemplating arresting him, and kept holding Debbie’s hand, squeezing i luv u.u 2 dad.

As he walked to the barn to inspect the Stearman (he barely knew enough to identify it as an airplane, but Bambi would have plenty of time tomorrow) and then to the visitor center to use Bambi’s radio to call for the ransom, he managed to sound politely interested as Michael Amandasson explained to him, in elaborate detail, that by interfering in a tribal custom like slavery, Mensche and the whole Federal government were being racist, sexist, culturist, and extremely judgmental. He even smiled now and then.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:13 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025}.

“The EMP hit right at noon today,” Arnie said. “So, yes, it could have been just a coincidence—maybe forty-five different tribes, everywhere from the Ouachitas to Big Bend and the Sangre de Cristos to Texarkana, all started moving at once, because they all happened to have working radios and we pissed them off, and then the moon gun happened to wait a long time to fire, so the moon gun just happened to be a perfect distraction by pure chance at the exact moment when all the tribes just happened to wander into Mota Elliptica simultaneously.”

“Why are you throwing all the sarcasm at me, Arnie?” Heather said. “I just asked if it could be a coincidence.” She poured him a shot of whiskey and pushed it over to him.

They sat in her office above her living quarters, in the old Pueblo Courthouse. He’d only come in with the rest of the survivors from Mota Elliptica that afternoon. She said, “Streen gave me his action report; no matter how much he blames himself, no one could have kept the tribals from wrecking it.”

“It was bad,” Arnie said, taking the whiskey in one quick gulp.

“Chris tells me the Post-Times will call it the Battle of Mota Elliptica. He says that way maybe people will get that we’re at war. I don’t want a panic—”

“But it might be time for one,” Arnie said. “Uh, look. I’m not at my best explaining stuff right now. But I’ve gotta make you see it, Heather, really, we’re sunk if you don’t. How many times have I been wrong about anything this big?”

“Arnie, I understand it was rough; Colonel Streen is shaken up and I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.”

Arnie winced. Rough. Bad. And she thinks Streen is just shaken up? She can’t have any idea what it was like… . Christ, why am I trying?

As dawn came up on the morning after the attack, Streen’s forces had relieved the three other isolated buildings still holding out, but at the other four working stations, a few bodies lay near the doorways, plumed with arrows and lances, and the rest were burned and smothered inside, curled against walls with hands over their faces. The four radio techs inside the control bunker had apparently been forced back into the flames at spearpoint.

Besides Trish, twenty-two other engineers and technicians were confirmed dead, though a couple might yet find their way in, out of seven missing. Streen’s final count on his military forces was sixty-four dead—thirty-eight of his own TNG infantry, eleven of the President’s Own Rangers, and thirteen of the Texans (eleven of those, along with one of the Rangers, in a single, too-clever ambush). They were missing three infantrymen, a Ranger, and a TexIC; an actual majority of the survivors were wounded.

“Try to tell me one more time,” Heather said. “Slowly, don’t yell, don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“Sorry,” Arnie said.

“Quentin told me he thought the scientist that was killed next to you was, uh, important to you.” She poured him another shot, his fourth since they’d begun the informal debriefing. “Here,” she said, patting her immense belly. “Drink for those who can’t.”

Arnie took it in one gulp, again, and said, “Yeah. I’m crying. I didn’t even notice I was. But I’m crying.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

Arnie looked down, wiping his face and keening. She let him cry, until finally, wiping his face, he said, “Trish Eliot was great… my number two on the job, my best friend there, maybe she’d’ve been more if there’d been time.” And the only person brave enough for me to tell her the whole truth, and to believe me. “Yeah, she was killed right beside me, and that was pretty awful.” Pretty awful is all the more description I can think of?

Heather waited for him find his voice again. Usually you could count on Heather to listen.

After a while, she said, “Arnie, there’s more evidence than you know about. Captain Highbotham’s observatory at Christiansted was attacked this morning—tribals came ashore in small boats from a big sailing yacht, and Highbotham and a party rowed out to the yacht and captured it while the local militia beat the raiders on the beach. Practically a pirate battle, but she won. And yes, it does look like the moon gun and the tribes are either talking to each other, or talking to some common superior. For one thing, we think they might have launched another EMP bomb while Christiansted was tied up in the battle, and Big Island, Cooke Castle, and Oaxaca were all under cloud cover. USS Bush, in the Indian Ocean, thinks they detected a flash, but it was daylight and low on the horizon. I guess we’ll know in three days. So… all right, Arnie, the moon gun isn’t just a leftover robot, because there’s way too much strategy happening and it understands way too much. And it’s not being run by some human overlord somewhere, because like you say, the communications pattern doesn’t fit. All right.”

Trish believed me because she was my friend. Heather’s my friend too. I just have to find a way to make it real clear. “So look, here’s the thing, put it all together, boss, use that cop brain. How old is Daybreak and how completely integrated? The moon gun and the tribes work together. Encrypted radio all over the Lost Quarter. They’re plugged in to each other and they always intended to be that way, and that took preparation way in advance. Well, how far in advance? Daybreak themes were there in coustajam music back when that was niche-stuff on YouTube. And if we’re right about how the moon gun got there, it must’ve been designed all the way back in the days of Google-One, Facebook, and Twitter. I can’t prove more than ten years, but I’m gut-certain Daybreak started before the turn of the century.”

“Why do we care how old it is? Isn’t this just Professor Yang getting caught up in a research project?”

“No,” Arnie said. “The whole world keeps pushing me to find the magic bullet, but until we understand how it got here, and how big and complex and sophisticated it is, we don’t even know if there can be any kind of bullet, magic or otherwise. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a tornado, a giant shark, a serial killer, or a forest fire, and you’re all insisting I tell you what caliber bullet to use.”

“You’re becoming angry again,” she said, softly. “And before Daybreak, you were always ‘don’t ask me what to do, let me just study.’”

“And if I’d been able to study then, we might know what to do today.” His own voice sounded pathetic to him, now. “People want an answer, and they want me to guarantee it’s true. They don’t want the answer that’s true.”

“Yeah. All right. You had me with your point that I wish we’d let you research it back then. Tell me the rest of your idea.” She leaned forward, hands resting on her knees, listening intently or resting her back or both.

Arnie nodded. “Look how fast the tribes happened. They weren’t even in our maybe-trouble file back in March; first we heard of them was right after the war scare and Open Signals Day, at the end of April, when Larry Mensche came in with that report, and then all of a sudden Springfield, Steubenville, Augusta, and Kettle Valley were all trashed between May 10th and May 12th. Maybe a tenth, maybe more, of the surviving population is in tribes, you see? Daybreak had the moon gun ready to go, physically, and it had the tribes ready to go, as a cultural idea with organizers and bards and everything.”

“Bards?”

“Something I got out of interrogations. When Daybreak had Jason, for at least three years before 10-28-24, he was fantasizing intensely about being a wandering poet for tribal people and wandering between Castles—and none of that existed then, but in less than half a year, it all did. You see? Daybreak prepared him for a world that Daybreak had designed.”

Heather tented her hands and leaned back. “Do we have to decide anything tonight?”

“No, but soon. Look, if I’m right, Daybreak is so far ahead of us—”

“All right, Arn, you’ve given me the reality.” She was nodding, but she looked tired and sick. “Let me give you the politics, and then let’s see if we can drag the reality and the politics anywhere near each other, and find a way to accommodate them both. I realize it’s true, but you’re telling me the worst possible news, because if Daybreak is really everywhere, if we’re falling right into its plan, and we don’t even know what that plan is, if we have to doubt every move we make… oh, man, Arn. Not an easy sell either to Graham or to Cam.”

“But if I’m right, and this is true, then we’ve got to study this thing, understand what it’s capable of—”

Heather sighed. “Politically, Arnie, I need a program, some definite number of steps that will definitely defeat Daybreak, so I can get the resources for the study you need to do.”

“But you need the study to know what to do, to make sure we’re not falling right into Daybreak’s plan!”

“I know, I know, I know.” She waved her hand at him in the invisible yo-yo gesture that meant Calm down and shut up. “Arn, we’ve got to find a way for you to investigate this, I agree. But right now as far as they’re concerned, I’m the dumb bitch that wrecked one of our last big surviving generating stations to prove that the other side didn’t like us, and you’re my pet head-in-the-clouds Doctor Doofus. Olympia and Athens are looking for an excuse to cut us off and start back down the warpath with each other.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe I can’t dismiss you. So find me something somewhere. A few good pieces of evidence that we haven’t seen before. A real clear analogy. One good completely counterintuitive thing to try that works. Whatever. Just remember, Arn, the people in Athens and Olympia are much dumber and less patient than I am. It has to be so simple that even an old cop like me can explain it to frightened, imagination-free bureaucrats like them. I know it’s probably impossible but you’ll have to do it anyway. And soon—because if you’re right, we might already be too late. Want another shot before I throw you out and get my motherly sleep?”

“I want ten of them, but I better not.” He rose, wiped his face, and said, “Trish was the best, Heather. You don’t know what you lost.”

“None of us ever do.”

He followed her gaze to Lenny’s picture; she looked back at him soon enough to see the moment when he realized she was looking at the father of her child, the husband she’d lost in the first month of the Daybreak crisis, and he said, softly, “Sorry. I guess we’re all pretty clueless.”

“It makes us human, and if you’re right, that’s what this is all about—staying human. The world will never be able to add up how much we all lost, will it?” She looked at him steadily. “But I am sorry you never had any time together, and that in this new world, we never even have the simple time to grieve.”

He nodded his thanks for her sympathy, not trusting himself to speak, because he could hear the rest of the message as clearly as if she’d said it aloud: But we all know there’s nothing anyone can do.

^{ABOUT 20 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.}

Arnie walked alone; he’d taken an isolated house farther away from downtown, to give himself some privacy and space.

A scraping sound. He spun, cross-drawing his knives from his hip sheaths, hoping all the sai katas he’d studied—

“I’ll come out if you put away the knives. I mean you no harm.” The voice was behind him.

He leapt forward and pivoted. “If you mean me no harm, it won’t matter that I keep my knives out. Show yourself.”

The tall, thin man emerged from the shadows. The blanket covering the top and sides of his head, his long curly beard, and his large round eyes made him look like a cheap religious painting. Bare feet gripped the warm summer street above pirate-style pants—a big piece of a sheet wrapped at the waist, cut up to the crotch front and back, and sewed up the inside seam.

Jeez, Arnie thought. With a zillion Wal-Marts out there to loot, he couldn’t just find some all-cotton basketball shorts?

“My name is Aaron,” the man said. “Last fall, you were looking for me with every weapon and tool that plaztatic civilization still had.”

“What are you here for?”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Well, talk.” Arnie’s heart was pounding. This guy at least looked like Ysabel’s description of Aaron, who even now was the single most wanted Daybreaker. “Talk,” Arnie repeated. “If that’s what you came to do.”

“Oh, that’s what I came to do, Doctor Yang. Doctor, from the Latin doceo. Taught, educated, having mastered the documents, learned the doctrine, having been indoctrinated.”

“You sound like you used to teach English.”

“I do, don’t I? After I go, will you look up all the missing English teachers to see if you can find a match?”

“Just an observation.” Arnie shifted his weight.

“If people would confine themselves to observations, everything would be fine. It’s their insistence on taking action that condemns the species.”

“You’re one of us.”

“I intend to be among the last of us, actually.” Aaron advanced to just out of arms’ reach. “So you want to see into the soul of Daybreak. Here I am. What do you want to know?”

“How do you communicate with Daybreak?” Arnie asked.

“That’s a rather blunt question.”

“I’m blunt, and I don’t believe you’ll actually tell me the truth about anything. I might as well shoot for the moon.”

“Nowadays, the moon shoots for you. I don’t share my colleagues’ optimism that if you understand Daybreak, you’ll join it. I think there are plenty of unredeemable people.”

“And you don’t have any trouble with killing them.”

Aaron stared at him, head cocked to the side. “So you are a statistical semiotician, an occupation that could have explained immense amounts about culture and society and all that, but in practice was used to refine methods of selling politicians and soap—not very well because no one could get funding for the basic science to underlie it.”

Arnie brought his knives up slightly; he felt like his bowels were trying to pass a frozen cannonball. Aaron’s words were—

“You could have told everyone about Daybreak before it happened, but it was the same old thing, wasn’t it? Give us the payoff from your research, first, and then we’ll pay you to do it. That was where you were last year, eh? You knew Daybreak was coming but they wouldn’t let you really study it unless you told them the answers before you studied it.” Aaron clicked his tongue. “Very tough on Doctor Arnie Yang, they don’t want the doctor, the know-er, the one who makes know-ledge, they want the doctus, the guy who already knows. Give us your results, better yet tell us we’re already right, and then we’ll pay you to do the research.” Aaron was standing close enough now for Arnie to just step forward and strike, his huge dark eyes holding Arnie’s. “And even now, eh?” Aaron said. “Even now, they want you to just tell them what to shoot. They don’t want you to understand Daybreak, do they?”

“How old is Daybreak?”

“Everyone I know, before they were in Daybreak, was in something that eventually flowed into Daybreak,” Aaron said. “You might say Daybreak is older than itself; whatever parts became the core of Daybreak were there before anyone spoke the word ‘Daybreak.’ At first it had many different names: the Coming, the Dawn, the Morning Glory, one goofy guy I knew said, ‘It’s Morning on Earth’ constantly. So I surely heard the word ‘Daybreak’ in that context at least a hundred times before I knew it would be the name of anything, let alone the thing it would be the name of.” Aaron cocked his head to the side, peering at Arnie. “Insightful, but very academic, Doctor Yang. Shouldn’t you ask about our troop dispositions? No wonder no one likes that incorrigibly academic Doctor Yang—”

“If you expect me to be ashamed of my education, you’ve—”

“Oh, but it’s not about education. It’s about understanding. All thinking beings surely want to be understood, don’t they? Consciously or not?” Aaron stepped backward. The shadows closed around him like a slamming door. Arnie was alone in the moonlit street.

Later, at home, he closed and bolted the heavy shutters, checked every bolt and lock multiple times, and stretched out so that his writing pad rested on his stomach and faced the candle. At the top of the page he wrote, Recent contact with an active long-term Daybreaker has provided evidence of the urgency of a full, in-depth, from-the-ground-up study of Daybreak. After ten sentences he realized he couldn’t remember the conversation nearly as well as the eyes, the rhythm, the too-empty street. The creaking of the old house, and the fantastical candlelight shadows, should have terrified him, he thought, just before he fell asleep.

^{THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9 AM MST. THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2025.}

Arnie’s “interview room” was a corner second-floor office space over a boarded-up computer store in downtown Pueblo. He had furnished it with wool and cotton blankets thrown over metal folding chairs, facing in a semicircle toward an old writing desk, and a side table with pitchers of water and some bread and cheese for snacks.

He sat down at the writing desk and opened his notepad, just as if he hadn’t been gone for more than six weeks. “Well, it’s been a while since we’ve met as a group. I’ve got some new questions; let’s see if they call up any new answers.”

Jason Nemarec, his wife Beth, and Izzy Underhill (who was actually Ysabel Roth, but was still at some risk of being assassinated because of her prominence on Daybreak day) were Arnie’s only “domesticated” ex-Daybreakers—people who had been fully part of Daybreak and were now reliably working for the RRC. The best estimate now was that on October 28, 2024, at least sixty thousand Daybreakers had participated in some act of sabotage within the United States; perhaps a million sympathizers, posers, and dupes had been involved peripherally during the year before.

Most Daybreakers were now dead, like most of everyone else; most of the living ones were in the tribes, but there must still be covert Daybreaker spies and saboteurs, as well as ex-Daybreakers, afraid to expose themselves to arrest or mob violence, hiding out the way Beth and Jason had for months in the little town of Antonito, far from anyone who might recognize them. It was a legitimate fear; every Daybreaker captured in those first months, despite the pleas of Federal intelligence and law enforcement, had been killed by mobs or summarily executed by local authorities. Trying to protect captured Daybreakers long enough to interrogate them simply got police and soldiers killed with them; shortly, most officials began handing Daybreakers over to mobs, or killing them themselves, as a matter of personal safety.

Izzy was petite, bony, and big-jawed, with long straight brown hair and deep sad eyes. “I’m so sorry to hear about what happened down at Mota Elliptica. It must have been terrible,” she said.

Arnie nodded, thinking, Don’t cry. “We lost good people. We did learn a lot about Daybreak.” He looked down at his notes. “Everyone ready?”

They all nodded.

“Then,” Arnie said, “do you feel like you joined Daybreak after it already existed, or do you feel like you helped create it?”

“Joined,” Beth said, simultaneously with Jason’s “Helped create,” and they both laughed.

“I’m not seeing the joke,” Arnie said.

“We heard about it on the same day from a guy named Terrel,” Beth said. “Ysabel was in a long time before we were, so—”

Ysabel screamed and fell from her chair, lying on the floor with her back arched and arms flailing. They had all seen this before; whatever part of Daybreak clung to individual minds, it still protected Daybreak. They cleared the chairs away, and surrounded her with pillows.

Beth said, “Well, Arnie, you sure hit a button that time.”

Arnie said, “Yeah, I guess so. How are you two doing?”

“Little bit of a headache,” Jason said, “but that could be all the screaming and the exercise.”

Beth nodded. “I’m okay. I can feel Daybreak not liking me but… I don’t know, maybe I just have more natural resistance. It was deep into Ysabel, here. Real deep. So fuckin’ much more Daybreak in her than we got in us, you know?”

“Keep telling me, I’m learning.”

She shrugged. “We used to kid around and call it Daydar, you know, like gaydar? One Daybreaker tends to know another one real fast and easy, and know how deep in they are and how long they’ve been. Some of those real long-timers it’s like they’re all Daybreak, ain’t much of them left, it’s like you’re talking to Daybreak direct without them there at all.”

“And we used to laugh at coustajam hippies,” Jason added. “People who liked the music, the vegetables, the clothes, and some of the words, but didn’t have a clue what it meant. You got so you knew the second you met someone.”

“Can someone who wasn’t a Daybreaker have Daydar?”

Beth looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, most straight people have some gaydar, don’t they?”

Izzy sighed and turned over on her side. Arnie made sure she was covered with a blanket. “She’ll want to sleep it off, and sometimes the easiest time to talk is right when she’s just coming out. I can sit here and wait for her, if you both have things to do.”

“I think I better stay,” Beth said. “She’s kind of… she gets scared when it’s just you there when she wakes up. She told us. Don’t get your feelings hurt or nothing, I’m just saying.”

Arnie nodded. “Okay.” Not sure what else to say, he added, “I’m sorry I’m scary.”

Beth shrugged. “Not scary so much… just, it’s your job, Arnie, you got to push us, hurt us even, to find out about Daybreak—maybe you’ll feel real bad after, but you’ll hurt us.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly, again.

“It’s okay,” Jason said. “Better that it’s you; at least we can tell you don’t like having to hurt us.”

Arnie nodded. Wow. Daydar. And how Daybreak came into existence or how people get infected is a third-rail question. More stuff to try on Aaron. Get one definite thing out of him, and Heather will be able to go straight to everyone for funds, people, and time—they’ll all have to listen.

^{THE NEXT DAY. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 3:45 PM PST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.}

The shadows were getting longer, stretching eastward, but sunset was still hours away. Bambi and Debbie had spent the day holding hands or leaning against each other, squeeze-coding, catching up on everything. Bambi found Debbie’s enthusiasm for tonight’s raid frightening. But then if I’d been chained for three months between bouts of scutwork and rape—

The door opened. Debbie slumped like a collapsing sandbag. Michael Amandasson ordered, “Slave, come with me.”

Debbie wailed, “Please don’t tie me up with the horses again, I’ll try to be better!”

“We’re not going to do that—”

“Please, not in the kennel with the dogs!”

Michael Amandasson laughed. “You’re coming to my private cabin. I have a one-fourth share in the ransom and I’m gonna celebrate.”

Debbie stood up, snuffling, wiping her face, catching her balance on Bambi Castro’s shoulder. Bambi covered Debbie’s hand with her own, gave her a brief consoling hug, and squeezed QSL QTH—I have received your position.

^{ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:12 PM MST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.}

After they had sparred with fists and feet, taken wooden knives away from each other, slammed each other into the mats, and tried to hit each other with sticks, Mr. Samson (“Call me sensei and I’ll kick your butt, call me Master and I’ll make you shine my shoes”) seemed satisfied. “Well, yeah, you definitely have enough prior training for my advanced class. What do you think, Steve?”

Steve Ecco, a short, muscular man, perhaps thirty years old, with sandy blond hair and a Wyatt Earp mustache, nodded. “Good with me too. Where’d you learn?”

Arnie Yang explained, “Well, Dad pushed me to do all this martial arts stuff, so I did, like I did classical guitar, AP math, Junior Achievement, and all the rest. I was a total GOAT.”

Ecco raised an eyebrow. “The only goats we had in Oklahoma were next to the doublewides of the goat-ropers.”

Arnie laughed. “Yeah, different cultures. Grossly Overachieving Asian Teenager. One of those Asian kids who was pushed and pushed and pushed. I hated it in high school—if you’re an Asian kid who does martial arts, every moron in the world is yelling ‘hee-yah!’ and jumping at you. But when I got to college, I learned the stress relief value of beating on your fellow human beings, and just kind of stayed with it after college. Nowadays it almost seems easier to practice than not.”

Samson nodded. “Good answer. We get too many people here, even now, who want to be either a crime-fighting macho superhero who rips human hearts out with his bare hands, or a Jedi Peacenik Levitation Master who just floats bad people away in harmony with their spiritual nature.”

“I’ve met a few of both kinds, myself. I hope I’m old enough to be over the romanticism of violence. You know, less than a week ago I shot some people, and a good friend was killed beside me. I know I have a Ph.D. and I use big words, but I hope you can overlook those character defects.”

“You’ll do fine here,” Samson said. He was tall, stout but not fat, with thick, straight, iron-gray hair, an eagle-beak of a nose, crooked teeth, and a receding chin, so that he looked like a large muskrat who had borrowed a Senate candidate’s toupee.

“Be nice to have another guy in the class who knows something,” Ecco added. “The advanced class’ll be coming in in a couple minutes, get some water now if you’re gonna need it.”

After a brisk workout and some fussing with people’s grips in jujitsu, Samson called Jason up for sparring. As they stepped into striking range, Samson sped up and kept coming, swinging slowly and carefully but pushing Jason steadily back until his foot crossed the painted line. “Okay, I ran you out of bounds. In a big room I’d have you cornered, and be beating on you or waiting for my friends to bring around a weapon. What did you do?”

“He didn’t get off the line.” It sounded more like lann, delivered in a flat twang of complete boredom.

“Steve, I didn’t ask you,” Samson said, not taking his eyes off Jason.

“Just wanted to save time.” Sounded more like tamm, Arnie thought. Now that was weird. He’d have thought he had as little prejudice as any coastal American could, but something about Steve’s flat, hard-edged delivery was like a sanding wheel skipping over a brick wall. Probably meant to be. He wants to fight—

“I guess I could’ve moved to the side,” Jason said.

“You guessed right,” Samson said.

“Let us show you,” Ecco said. “Doctor Yang, you and me are the demo team here.” Arnie stood, and Ecco said, “All right, touch is as good as a strike, take it easy, this is a demo, not a match. Now come after me, Doctor Yang—”

“In here I better be Arnie.”

“Arnie, then. First time I’ll just go back or forward, one straight track, you come at me any way you like.”

Ecco was fast and proficient, but since Arnie could just keep alternating flanks, he quickly drove him out of bounds.

“Now,” Ecco said, “This time I move off the line. See what you can do.”

Arnie had barely kicked once before he was surrounded by a blur of Ecco’s hands, feet, elbows, and everything else; he was able to stay in the space, and use his hands and forearms to block most of the fast-but-gently-controlled jabs, crosses, spear-hands, and thrust-kicks, but that was all, and in a real fight he’d have been knocked flat.

“Ya-me!” Ecco said, the call to end action. They bowed. “Y’all see, everyone? Arnie’s good, but I’m real good. But if I stay on that line, he can beat my ass into the ground.”

Hah. Now I get it. Steve Ecco needs to establish a pecking order, when a new guy comes in with skills. Well, no prob. He’s definitely a bigger pecker than I am.

After practice, Samson and Ecco stopped him. “Going to come back?” Ecco asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it. That was fun. And I have to get good enough to not look so lame out there.”

“Good answer,” Ecco said. “I don’t suppose that besides being a pretty good fighter and a damned good sport, the Perfessor happens to drink beer?”

“I do. I also listen to country music, and if I had the nerve, I’d chase waitresses.”

“Well, then, let’s stop by Dell’s Brew, pour you some courage, and work on some technique.”

“You talked me into it.” Arnie had planned to walk home the long way by himself, in hopes that Aaron would reappear, so that he could try out his carefully written, memorized questions. But the international association of lonely sad guys is obviously holding a chapter meeting, and I wouldn’t miss that. He felt happier and less lonely than he had in a long time.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 8 PM PST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.}

The sun had already set and the twilight was dimming rapidly; Helen Chelseasdaughter asked, “Will they have light enough to unload all the cargo and still take off again? I don’t want children to see technology.”

“Their last radio message was that they were delayed but plan to complete on schedule. I’m guessing—there.” He’d heard the sputtering, farting roar of the DC-3’s motors, running rough due to crappy biofuel and lye-spray getting through the air cleaners. “Here they come. If you don’t want the kids to see—”

“Children out of here, now!” Helen Chelseasdaughter shouted. Two young women urged a dozen children to come with them over the hill. One stubborn girl and two boys threw tantrums, insisting on seeing the airplane, and were dragged off.

Bambi said, “It’s close to dark. I’d like to take off as soon as the other plane is off the road. Would it be all right for me to taxi over there”—she pointed north of the gate—“out of his way but ready to go as soon as he lands and you see the ransom?”

The gray-haired tribal nodded. “Yes, I want all the machines gone as soon as possible.”

Bambi reached out and clasped Larry’s hand in a centurion handshake, babbling something meaningless about her gratitude. She squeeze-coded d still w m in cabin.

Larry thought, I would like to know what that son of a bitch is doing—actually no; I’d rather just assume, and deal with it accordingly.

The engine thunder loudened and deepened. A brilliant, moving star rose above the hill to the south, then dipped below the horizon again; the Gooney was coming around for its approach.

Micah came back from spinning the prop on the Stearman. The biplane made a slow turn across the gravel before it taxied out the gate, Bambi waving from the cockpit. The plane headed north, down the hill, to turn around and be ready for takeoff as soon as the DC-3 was out of its way.

Michael Amandasson had still not emerged from his hut. “Typical,” a younger woman behind Larry muttered. “He won’t be done with the slave till it’s time to claim his share.”

Susan Marthasdaughter sent a runner for Michael. The tribals were all staring at the southern sky, at the eerie, blazing glow of an arc spotlight, the first electric light they had seen since November, reaching up into the sky from beyond the crest of the hill as the DC-3 touched down and coasted up.

Micah caught Larry’s eye and jerked a thumb toward the path where the runner had gone; Larry nodded. Micah vanished into the dark.

Ryan moved behind Susan Marthasdaughter; Larry stepped quietly to his left, closing distance with Helen Chelseasdaughter.

As the DC-3 crested the hill, the brilliant beam swooped from the purple sky and down US 95 onto Bambi’s bright yellow Stearman. She revved up and began her run up the road as the ninety-year-old airliner, painted in Quattro’s black and yellow personal colors, wheeled about through the gate.

Bambi roared up the road into her takeoff; the DC-3 in the parking lot thundered and rumbled. No one could hear anything else.

Inside his shirt, Mensche drew the razor-sharp commando knife. His left hand gently drew Helen Chelseasdaughter’s elbow down and backwards; as she turned to see what he was doing, his left hand grasped her hair and yanked her head back. His right hand lashed out with the knife in a rising forehand, opening her larynx, and then back through a carotid, cutting to the bone over the collarbone and down the sternum, slipping back upward through her diaphragm into her heart. She tumbled dead at his feet.

Mensche glimpsed people recoiling from where Ryan stood over Susan Marthasdaughter’s body. Mensche spun, slashed the young woman behind him across her shocked expression, and swept her feet. He drove an elbow into the face of the man beside her; under the space that opened, he jammed his blade deep into the man’s guts, ripping it free as he shoved the tribal backward into the people behind him.

The girl on the ground had her mouth open, screaming, and Mensche stamped on her neck as he turned to slash again, cutting at reaching hands, pivoting, kicking, and slashing to get working room.

Against the plane’s lights, Mensche’s targets were silhouettes. He struck again and again, flowing from attack to attack in all directions, trying to start and spread panic, whirling to strike blindly, knowing everyone within his reach was an enemy. The fingers of his empty hand formed a tiger claw; wherever it caught, he struck next to it with the knife, kicking and stamping as he turned to clear a big space around himself. His stiff fingers at eye and throat level, and his blade at gut and groin level, swung around with his torso, hurting whoever they found into screams.

A flare burst. Larry dove prone. The slow heavy thudding of a black-powder Gatling gun drowned out even the engines. Some rounds whizzed over his head; others hit the crowd with wet smacks and thuds.

The engines cut and the Gatling died away in an irregular spasm of bangs.

“You are the prisoners of the President’s Own Rangers. Lie on the ground, face down, extend your arms in front of you. Don’t move.”

Larry complied; a few shots indicated that some Blue Morning People hadn’t been quick enough. “Now,” the voice said, “Agent Larry Mensche, please stand up.” Larry stood up carefully; the beam of a reflector lantern swept across his face. “Glad you’re okay, Larry,” Quattro Larsen said. “Pick your people out of this.”

“Ryan, stand up,” Mensche said, “and Micah, stay down.” The lantern beam picked out Ryan, and Mensche said, “You’d better come over here and join me. Micah, stand up if you’re out there.”

From the surrounding dark, Micah said, “Still back here. I’m going to walk forward real slow, okay?” He emerged into the glare. All around them, the wounded sobbed and gasped; the Rangers sorted them out in a quick, brutal triage—the dead would be left where they were, for some other tribe to find; the wounded would be asked, once, if they wanted rehabilitation, and killed on the spot if they said no; those able to walk would carry those who could not in a forced march to Ontario, to be sorted into “rehabilitation” and “execution” groups.

“Sir? What do we do if we ask and they spaz attack on us?”

“According to the RRC Field Guide, that’s a yes, but tie them up tight,” the captain said. “And if they say yes, and then start shouting Daybreaker shit, shoot’em.”

“Seems pretty rough,” Ryan said.

Larry’s shrug was a bare twitch of the shoulder. “Orders from Pueblo. Letting the tribes know we mean business, and this Daybreaker shit is not going to be tolerated.”

“What do they do in rehab?”

“I don’t know, but I hope it hurts. Anyway, we’ve got one prisoner to liberate,” Mensche said. “Let’s go get her. Also, Quattro, let the Rangers know there are some young kids in a cabin over that way.”

On the path, they passed the runner that Micah had killed. “I got her coming back,” Micah said, “she just ran neck first onto my knife.”

He was trembling, Mensche realized, and said, “Was she the first person you ever killed?”

“Yeah.” The young man croaked it out.

“She’d have starved or died of disease before spring; it’s gonna be way worse for the tribals this winter.”

“Yeah, but I still killed her.”

“Yeah,” Mensche said. “I’d never even fired my weapon at a human being, before Daybreak. Like Stalin said, one is murder, and there’s some number where it’s just a statistic.”

The cabin door stood open; the reflector lamp’s flickering yellow-orange beam revealed Michael Amandasson, hanged naked in a bedsheet from a rafter. His leg was still warm to the touch, his ankle supple, blood was only beginning to pool in his feet; she must have done it after the runner told them the plane was coming in—

Mensche borrowed the lantern and swept the beam around the cabin, then out on the narrow, railed porch. Off one end, he found a bare footprint in the mud; five feet farther on was a black patch of turned-over leaf mold. Not far beyond that, on the narrow trail leading uphill out of the camp, a branch was freshly broken on a fir.

“She’s my daughter,” he said. “I think I’m entitled to ask her, Debbie, what the fuck? You know?”

Quattro Larsen said, “Yeah, I understand.” He clasped his friend’s hand and squeeze-coded WTF?

Larry’s hand moved to Quattro’s arm as he squeeze-coded:

Larry sighed, not entirely acting, and added aloud, “This might take a few weeks, I imagine.”

“You have to do what you have to do,” Quattro said. “Thanks for rescuing Bambi, and if you need a ride, the Gooney Express always has a free seat for an old buddy.”

“’Preciate it. Give my regards and apologies to Heather.”

^{20 MINUTES LATER. BETWEEN US ROUTE 95 AND HELLS CANYON NATIONAL PARK, IN IDAHO. 8:38 PM PST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.}

Mensche had hunted and photographed wildlife as his main hobbies for decades before Daybreak, had good night vision, and had a career FBI agent’s knack for following people; he could have followed a trail marked half as prominently. In a saddle of the ridge, Debbie had laid a seven-foot arrow in dead sticks on an old recreation trail.

He laughed out loud. “Deb, I’m the one that taught you woodcraft.”

Just behind him, she said, “Yeah, but I’m in a silly mood.”

He turned and hugged her. They could still hear occasional gunshots, far behind them. She asked, “Are the Rangers shooting all of them?”

“Just the ones who refuse rehab, or try to escape.”

“You smell like blood.”

“It’s from Helen what’s-her-face.”

“Good, Dad. I’m glad. She had it coming if any of them did. But actually I’m sorry they aren’t just shooting them all. There’s not going to be any rehab that works. There’s a place up the trail where we can sit if you want.”

“Sure.”

At the base of a low rock cliff, she guided him to a bench by one of the old raised metal firebox grills. He said, “There’s something you want me to do or see.”

“There is,” she said. “It’s important and I realized this was the way to do it.”

“Good enough,” he said, “I’m sure you’re right.”

“You’re not my same old dad.”

“It’s not your same old world.”

“Yeah.” She reached out and threaded her hand into the crook of his elbow, the way she had when she’d been little and he’d been her hero. He just waited. Being here, in the starlight, with just Debbie, is about as good as life has been in a long time.

“So the runner came to let Michael know the plane was landing. I knew you wouldn’t be in an outfit that paid ransoms, and besides Bambi had squeeze-coded me that you were gonna beat the shit out of the Blue Morning People. So at first I thought, I want a special moment here for just Michael and me.”

“No one would have begrudged you that. We wouldn’t even have filed an incident report.”

She leaned back in a stretch, extending her feet and wriggling them. “I knew that. But the whole reason I became a frontier scout for the People of Gaia’s Dawn was that I needed to escape in a way that would make a difference. I mean I knew right away I didn’t want to be a tribal—it’s dirty, nasty, and ugly enough now. Eating bark and twigs all winter, once the canned and dry food are gone—gah.”

“How’d you end up there in the first place?”

“A couple of nutty witch-wannabes in the group I broke out of Coffee Creek with ran into some would-be bush hippies, and I was hoping to find the guys with the good drugs. So I was one of the Seventy-Nine Founders of the People of Gaia’s Dawn. I hope you guys clean out all the tribes; I wish you’d just shot all the Blue Mornings.”

“Some of us favor that.”

“See, I knew I could count on my dad! And that brings me to the thing that I don’t think you’ll believe till I show you.”

“How about if I just believe you?”

She hugged him, very hard, and he felt hot tears on his cheeks.

After a minute, she whispered, “There’s still a reason why we need to do things my way, check me out and see if you agree, ’kay?”

“I’m listening.”

She sat still. Larry heard only the wind in the pines, and the soft scurry of something small moving through pine needle duff.

Finally she said, “I volunteered as a scout so it’d be easy to escape when the time came, once I figured out what I could take along as proof of what was really going on. And then of all the stupid things the lame-weenie Blue Mornings ambushed me. I must’ve been the only slave they ever took, which is why they were so hard to escape from—it was like being a miser’s last dollar.”

“Bad luck happens to the best.”

“‘Along with everybody else.’ I used to hate it when you’d say that to me about my driving and my partying. But here’s the thing. If the tribes were just a bunch of thieving-ass bush hippies with their heads full of prison-paganism and dumbass crystal-worship, I’d figure, hey, they’re just plain old social scum like I used to be. But they’re something a whole lot worse, and if we just went back to Pueblo, and I told my story, nobody’d believe me without investigating, and there’s no time to put an expedition together, let alone find a way for them to see what they need to see. But if you come along and I show you, they’ll take your word for it without any ‘further investigation’ or ‘more research needed’ or any of that bullshit which there ain’t time for. I just don’t want our side to lose three months we don’t have. That’s what it is.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Whatever ‘that bad’ means to you, it’s worse.” She stood. “We can make it to a Gaia’s Dawn scout post by midmorning tomorrow if we walk through the night.”

“All right. Lead me.”

Shortly after moonrise, she said, “Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for taking my word.”

The moon rose higher. With more light, they made better time, half-sprinting over rises that were almost as bright as day, then plunging into hollows that, from above, brimmed with darkness, but down in them, the stars seemed to shine especially bright.

^{ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:30 AM MST. SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2025.}

Arnie felt slightly silly about feeling as good as he did. He’d had a few beers. Samson and Ecco had accepted and welcomed him into the beerand-hanging-out circle of, as they dubbed themselves, Jedi Rednecks, and introduced him to the few other serious martial artists in the circle. It was so friendly and comfortable. Nobody asked him to judiciously frame an exact thought; it was warm and fun and there hadn’t been much just-let-your-hair-down in his life lately, or at all, ever, really.

Arnie had always liked country music (initially because it annoyed the crap out of his sophisticated parents). And it was so flattering that they wanted him to help teach the beginner classes.

The dark, empty street seemed so much friendlier, till Aaron fell silently into step beside him.

“I just came from martial arts practice and the bar. Maybe I’m not real controlled; startling me might be a good way to get stabbed.”

“Oh, Doctor Yang. Going slumming with the working class, I see. Looking for some bovine blonde in a cowboy hat—a cowgirl, or some might say a cow-girl—to fill the wide open spaces of your heart?”

“That’s none of your damned business.” Arnie was stalling as he tried to bring his list of questions to the forefront through the beery fog.

“Well, I can hardly fault you for enjoying respect, friendship—and who knows, maybe love—where you can find it, considering how things have been going with your friends and supporters.” Their feet beat out a soft rhythm for a block before Aaron spoke again. “So you are interested in how long Daybreak has existed, Doctor Yang? How long has God existed?”

“For those who believe in him, I suppose forever.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Do your questions just keep getting more personal?”

Aaron tugged the blanket tighter around himself, and muttered, “Poor Tom’s a-cold, eh? The king and the fool. It’s the fool’s job to ask hard questions, that’s all. Not really personal at all, you know. At all. But if you don’t believe God exists, you do believe the concept or the image or the idea of God exists, don’t you?”

“I see where you’re going,” Arnie said. Gah. Sophomore solipsism. “So for believers, their idea of God is the creator of the universe, so there has always been God, whereas unbelievers would just say God came into being sometime after people came into existence. What the fuck’s it got to do with Daybreak?”

“You know, better than anyone, Doctor Yang, Doctus of the Doctrine and the Doxology where all Documents are Docked into the Docket, Doctor, that worrying about whether information is relevant is the surest way to prevent learning anything. Aren’t all your troubles caused by everyone wanting something relevant right now instead of waiting for you to look into something interesting? How can you start complaining that something is interesting but—”

The voice had become softer and softer, and after a moment Arnie said, “Not relevant?” and turned to find he had said it to the empty street. And that means I wasn’t watching him, either, for at least a full minute. Oh, man, no more walking by myself when I’ve been drinking, and I need to get Heather in on this.

That thought seemed to bring back the happiness from the evening at Dell’s Brew. Once I tell Heather what we have, we’re going to be able to move so fast. I’m going to crack this Daybreak thing.

The last couple of blocks to his house, he walked with his hands in his pockets, hugging himself with his elbows, surprised by how well things were going and how many friends he had. The world after Daybreak was really, honestly, not so bad at all, at least not for Arnie. Interesting how it’s not relevant.

^{THE FOLLOWING DAWN. HELLS CANYON. 5:20 AM PST. SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2025.}

The cliff fell almost vertically away from their feet. It was still night below but the river reflected the indigo of the dawn sky. Before them, a great fan of mighty razor-edged ridges rose directly up from the water into a high palisade veined with dark rock and darker crevices, sawing into the dark cloudless sky.

“There’s a path on both sides that connects to a bunch of rocks that you can cross on, if you’re lucky and the water’s low,” Debbie explained.

“Cold as hell down there, I bet.”

“Yeah. And dark. But if we start climbing down now, when we get there it’ll be light enough and warm enough.”

“Is that what you want to do, Deb?”

“Naw, I want to spend three weeks in pre-Daybreak Vegas with a no-limit credit card.”

He laughed. “Damn straight. I’d join you, just for the casino hot dogs.”

Debbie grinned. “On the other hand, I think what we ought to do is very carefully climb down to this place I know: a nice sheltered spot under a rock overhang, about half a mile and three hundred feet down from here, right by that hidden trail. Since we haven’t heard a trace of pursuit, I think we could chance a fire. On my way out of camp I liberated some beef jerky and a box of Jiffy, so if you’ve got a mess kit—”

“Happens I do.”

“Cornbread and soggy warm jerky for breakfast, get all the way warm, maybe a nap, how’s that sound? You bearing up okay?”

“Better than okay, I think. Let’s go.” He stretched. “If I’m too old for this stuff, I’m still too young to admit it.”

Descending a steep spot wet with spray from the spring, he slid for an instant. She caught his arm, he found his balance, and he smiled his thanks. Her surprised smile in response felt like warm lotion on his heart.