The Last President

^{FBI HEADQUARTERS, WEST COAST (FORMERLY AN OFFICE BUILDING IN CHULA VISTA, CALIFORNIA, JUST SOUTH OF SAN DIEGO). 5:45 AM PACIFIC TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.}

Dave Carlucci checked both black-powder four-shot Newberry revolvers and holstered them. His heavy fighting knife slid easily in its scabbard. His broom-handle-and-chain flail had tight eyebolts and no cracks. He turned to Arlene, his wife—

Outside the office door, Bolton said, “Horses are saddled.”

“Yeah. In a sec.” Carlucci kissed Arlene; they held each other a little longer as they always did when rough stuff was impending. “Back before sunset, I think. They’ll feed us at the Castle.”

“You be careful and come back. And we’ve got a couple Christmas treats for this evening, so take it easy on the desserts up there.” She kissed him again, retying the laces that ran through the upper two buttonholes of his coat. The ruddy light from the lantern on the desk, throttled back to conserve precious vegetable oil, touched her face with gold between pitch-black shadows.

One more hug. I’m getting too old to look forward to action; damn, it’s nice to be held. “You take care too,” he whispered. Carlucci turned toward the door, speaking too loudly to Bolton. “Okay, Terry, let’s do this.”

Their four deputies were already mounted, vapor rising from the shuddering horses. Carlucci swung up into his saddle, and they set off at a comfortable walk, with Bichsler, riding point, holding the lantern up to reveal frozen puddles and slick spots.

“This is one long ride for something they’re better equipped to do themselves,” Bolton said, as they turned the horses north. “And having to keep a lantern out—”

“And I’d rather be at home on Christmas morning, too, Terry, but we’re the Feds, and it’s a Federal bust.” Carlucci shrugged. “Besides, the lantern isn’t giving anything away to the tribals; FBI riders are out all the time, anyway, dark and ice be damned.”

“No shit,” Bichsler muttered from the point.

Bolton sighed. “It’s a dark, cold Christmas morning away from my kids. And I’ll never again swing through the McDonald’s drive-up and get a great big hot cup of coffee on the way.”

Carlucci thought, That sigh was too sincere. Every little thing Terry Bolton notices that isn’t here anymore, Tupperware to movies to McDonald’s, all those little things are just wearing him down. His added thought, Nothing I can do about it, made him sad, so he was too bluff and hearty when he finally spoke. “One short nasty job, Terry, and then you can go back to being your usual sunny, jolly self.”

Montez, riding drag, snorted.

They clopped along at a steady walk; except for their lantern, the only light was the stars and the distant beacon on Castle Castro.

It had been too damp to desiccate bodies and not cold enough to freeze them; Chula Vista and National City smelled like spoiled hamburger. Maybe now that Bambi’s the freeholder at Castle Castro, we’ll be able to do something about all the unburied bodies. She’ll be more cooperative than her father was, anyway.

Pre-dawn glowed bruise-purple. Bichsler doused the lantern. A light sea breeze chilled them but dragged away the smell. The horses moved more confidently.

Bolton shivered. “I didn’t even own a coat before Daybreak.”

“Well, the scientists in Pueblo say there’s more carbon dioxide in the air than any time recorded, so once the soot settles, you’ll forget frozen-dead palm trees and complain about San Diego being like Baja used to be.”

“Lying in a lawn chair on the beach with a chilled beer?” Bolton said. “Let’s skip to that part right now.”

They rode on through the dark, wet cold. At least there was no sleet. This Christmas sucks ass, but giving birth in a stable in the winter probably really sucked too.

Bad analogy. If we were in that story, we’d be working for Herod.

Half an hour later, dawn greased the tops of the old office buildings and hotels, the abandoned Navy ships across the bay, and the few remaining power poles. This close to the Castle, the streets were cleared of rubble and cars, and every standing storefront was walled up.

Four men in Castle Castro uniforms appeared around a corner. The leader waved. “Mister Carlucci!”

“Hey, Donald.”

“Miss Castro said to come out and meet you. She didn’t say what it’d be about, so I figure I’m not supposed to ask.”

They swung north to follow the line of sealed buildings linked by the Castle’s outer wall.

Bolton said, “This wall must’ve been some work.”

“Yeah, ’specially without no power tools, but I’m real glad it’s there. Last summer when the Awakening Dolphins attacked, we had to crowd up in the keep for three weeks, and we lost lots of garden beds we could be eating from now. I like having some room inside the walls if we need it, ’specially since we’re up to eight thousand people now.”

The guards on the towers at the big gate waved them through z-form barriers wide enough for a pre-Daybreak semi.

Fishing boats were pulled up for the holiday on the beaches of the old luxury hotels, which had been mostly torn down for materials to build the walls. Just for today, no one tended the vegetable beds on the old lawns. Picks and shovels were stacked by the parking lots; tomorrow would be soon enough to resume breaking them up.

Across the hills just north of the harbor, behind what remained of the chain-link fence that had marked Harrison Castro’s estate, back before, the inner wall reared up yards higher than the outer wall. Wheelbarrows, piles of blocks, and stacked tools waited beside its remaining gaps.

“You built the outer wall first?”

“Mister Castro said the outer wall was what would really matter ’cause if it held we could stand a siege. This wall’s just a backup. Miss Castro says she can’t plan nothing better than her dad could so we’re staying on his plan.”

Carlucci said, “‘Miss Castro’? not ‘Countess Castro’ or ‘Mrs. Larsen’?”

“Just habit. I drove the limo that brought her here the day she was born. Most people in the Castle call her ‘the Countess’ now.”

Bambi Castro did not look very Countess-like in thick-soled moccasins, a black baggy sweater, and jeans, with her long black hair pinned up close. She looked more like what she had been fourteen months before, a young Fed, the liaison from an obscure agency, when Carlucci had welcomed her to his office. Now she was welcoming him to her fief, which was about a third of pre-Daybreak California.

They shook hands with Quattro; Bambi greeted them with quick, hard hugs. “This will not get any easier with delay,” she said. “Donald, you and your party stay here. If we come this way running, cover us.”

“In your own house?” Donald muttered.

“Maybe. It’s bad.”

“Is this about Mister Castro’s murder?”

“It is.”

“Then go get’em, Miss Castro.”

She nodded her thanks. To Carlucci, she said, “Officially it’s your murder bust.”

Carlucci said, “I have warrants from Judge Thanh. We’re as legal as we’re going to get.”

Nathan Signor’s apartment was in the senior department heads wing. Terry Bolton, Montez, and two of Bambi’s men took a ram and went around to the back entrance; with no radio or phone to coordinate, they had to rely on synchronized watches.

After they had gone, Carlucci said, “It’s good that they’ll have to be silent, so Bolton can’t crack the same bad joke over and over just before going into action, like he usually does. Four minutes. Let’s go.”

At the main door to Signor’s apartment, Carlucci took the knob side, and raised his arm over his head, eyes fixed on his watch. Quattro tried to take the hinge side, but Bambi shoved him aside and took it herself. The second hand swept up to the twelve; Carlucci dropped his arm, and drew his pistol. The ram smashed against the lock.

Frightened shrieks—besides Nathan, his wife Ingrid and daughters Molly and Nellie were inside. The ram hit again and the door swung wide. Carlucci shoved through, Bambi just behind him. Bolton’s ram was booming on the back door.

Nathan Signor was standing just inside. Carlucci backhanded him with the flail, knocking Signor to his hands and knees, brought it around to scissor the man’s neck, and pressed Signor’s face to the floor, making him lie flat. “Nathan Signor, you are under—”

Signor shrieked and curled into a ball, even against the force of the flail on his neck. Carlucci held against it with a foot planted on Signor’s back, until Bichsler could wrap the man’s neck in a choke collar. Bambi reached under, felt around and pulled out a knife. “This doesn’t look like a real Daybreak seizure to me.”

They cuffed Signor’s hands behind him and rolled him onto his belly. He kicked, sending some still-wrapped packages flying and threatening to knock over a candleholder; they bound his feet to his wrists.

Other deputies had been hog-tying Ingrid and the two girls; they lay along the wall.

“Friendly coming in,” Terry Bolton said.

“We hear you,” Carlucci responded.

Bolton emerged from the back. “Books and papers behind the headboard. We’ll search the kids’ room next—”

Quattro raised Ingrid’s head to try to look her in the face. “If you can assure us that the kids didn’t know—hunh.” She had bucked hard against him, and he pushed her back down. “Daybreak seizure, this one’s real.”

Bambi rolled Molly over; the girl was kicking like a poisoned grasshopper, indifferent to the agony it must be causing in her wrists and shoulders. “The kids are having them too. Catellano, get the doc.”

A few minutes later, the girls had been drugged and carried out. “I suppose they won’t get to say goodbye, then,” Bolton said, sadly.

Carlucci said, “Yeah, I don’t see any way we can let them. Terry, you don’t have to see what—”

“I can deal with it.”

“I know you can. If I needed you to, I’d order you to. But I don’t need you to. And somebody has to go through those papers you found behind the headboard.” When Bolton had gone into the back bedroom, Carlucci said, very softly, “All right, let’s get this over with.”

The doctor said Nathan Signor had a broken collarbone and cracked teeth. “Also, even though he was faking it before, this is one of the worst cases of Daybreak seizure I’ve ever—”

“Sorry,” Ingrid gasped.

Carlucci squatted beside her. “Talk to us. You had a Daybreak seizure. You’ll be free to talk, freer anyway, for a few minutes now.”

“Sorry. Sorry. Nate was… Nate was…”

“It’s okay, just let it out,” Carlucci said, wiping the tears and mucus from her raw red face.

“I’m not even his wife, never met him till the mission. Mollie and Nellie are not our kids, ’ot ’r kids. Don’t pun pun pun—” Her neck spasmed, yanking her head far back, in a fresh seizure.

“Dad hired Signor the January before Daybreak,” Bambi said. “As an HVAC engineer. So he had go-anywhere keys and people looked right at him without seeing him, the way they do anyone in a service uniform. That’s how Daybreak could slip someone in to attack Daddy twice, even with the whole Castle on alert.” She stared at something far beyond the walls of the room. “Crap. Ingrid did preschool supervision. I guess we’ll have to review the Jamesgram about blocking Daybreak in young children. And their girls—”

“Not ours. Mollie and Nellie were fosters,” Ingrid said. She gasped. “Real parents are named Green, they… were… in… Reno. Violent abuse don’t… send. The. Girls. Back.” She drew a deep breath, and her face cleared for a moment. “It it it wants to give me another seizure, but it can’t quite yet-et. Those girls liked me, they thought I’d be their mom, and Nate made me fee, feed, feed, fee fi fo fum, feed them to Daybreak ache ache. Our whole affinity group’s records are behind that bed and we’re all there were were were—”

Her back arched in a savage, almost audible jerk; then she went limp.

“All right,” Bambi said. “Officially she’s a POW, since she was trying to resist Daybreak. Sedate her, doctor, and let’s get her out of here.”

“I’ll go arrange getting her and the kids into the Gooney Express,” Quattro said. He would fly them to their main holding and interrogation area at Castle Larsen, his home base far to the north. “Tell Terry maybe they can be a family if the doctors can get them all cured.”

“I heard.” Bolton was in the doorway with a couple of rag dolls and a teddy bear. “The kids might want these.”

“Thanks, Terry!” Quattro sounded too appreciative, but he bundled up the toys and hurried off, obviously intent on getting into the air and away from this.

When he had gone, Carlucci asked Bolton, “How many were in the affinity group?”

“Just five—the Signors, a guard that was killed in the fighting last June, and another married couple—a kitchen helper and a gardener. Round’em up?”

“Do that.”

Bolton dashed out, at least as fast as Quattro had.

Now it was just Carlucci, Bambi, and the doctor. Carlucci said, “All right. We need to start,” and silently prayed If we’re doing the wrong thing, please remember You didn’t make me smart enough to think of the right thing.

The doctor said, “We have to do this?”

“That’s what the orders are from RRC,” Carlucci said.

Bambi added, “Which we all follow.”

“And me a Catholic,” the doctor muttered. “All right, just hold him down while I do this.” He injected something into Signor’s neck.

“What’s that?” Bambi asked.

“Wood alcohol, angel dust, and some meth, he probably won’t wake up but the facial contractions’ll make him look like he died crazy and terrified, and the convulsions will add some bruises and broken bones for anyone who looks at the body.” He pulled an old-style straight razor from his bag, lifted Signor’s head by the hair, and slashed across the man’s face. “Roll him over. Don’t lose your grip.”

As Carlucci held Signor’s kicking legs and Bambi braced his shoulders, the doctor slashed, over and over, forehand and backhand across the torso, letting blood fly wherever it did, before cutting deeply across the femoral artery on each side. He finished by removing Signor’s right thumb. “You’ll want to get your clothes into cold water quick, you can probably get most of that off if you do.”

Bambi shrugged. “The laundry staff and the maids are the only ones I feel sorry for.”

Carlucci looked around; blood had splashed up to the ceiling on all the walls, dripped from limbs of the Christmas tree, pooled on the still-wrapped presents. He avoided looking down at his clothes.

“We’ll have your clothes clean and dry in a couple hours,” Bambi said. “We’ve got wood-fired dryers now. And meanwhile we can loan you something. But before you clean up”—she handed him a steel tenderizing mallet—“please pound on that thumb with this, and leave both on the floor beside him.”

She pulled an artist’s brush from her back pocket, dipped it in the still-warm puddle of blood around Signor’s thighs, and wrote ECCO on the wall. “That should explain the thumb so the maids will remember it.”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. FACILITY 1 (HIGH SECURITY PERMANENT PRISON). PUEBLO, COLORADO. 8:45 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.}

James Hendrix would have been happy to leave Interrogation Subject 162 alone on Christmas morning; in fact he had planned to. But yesterday, his line of questioning had sent 162 into the severe convulsions that characterized a struggle between Daybreak and its host, and often, a subject who slept it off awoke amenable.

But since Hendrix had a busy social and professional life, rather than wait around for 162 to wake up, he had simply scheduled this wakeup call for him. Hendrix’s assistant, Izzy Underhill, had no family or friends to be with, so she had come over to have “orphan breakfast” with James, plus Patrick and Ntale, the brother and sister messengers he had befriended. Either all my friends are co-workers or all my co-workers end up as my friends, James thought. Well, probably there will be nothing new here, and it’s painful for 162, and it’s Christmas, so let’s get it over with.

When he opened the door slot to check, the man was curled in a fetal position, with a woven straw pad and a blanket under him, and two blankets thrown over the concrete bench that was the only furniture in the cell. It was less uncomfortable than it looked, perhaps, but it seemed like the very image of misery. James set the lantern onto a shelf, crouched next to the huddled figure, and spoke loudly. “Tell us how Daybreak will react to an attack on the camps along the Ohio.”

The man shot to a sitting position, wiping saliva from his face, and yelled incoherently.

“Bad dream?” James said, almost sympathetically. “Tell us how Daybreak will react to an attack on the camps on the Ohio River, and we will see about getting you a pillow.”

“A pillow would be nice,” 162 agreed. “I don’t know what it will let me tell. The situation is that Daybreak is on a cusp, a balance, a tipping point to use that old inaccurate term. Daybreak is pushing the tribes it controls very hard and they are starving and dying of overwork, and it is driving them down into those camps. As soon as they can cross over, they will be after your surviving towns and cities in Kentucky like a hungry Rottweiler on a litter of kittens, and they won’t stop until they are stopped; left to themselves, the tribal hordes will go all the way to the Gulf. If all you do is stop them from moving, they will wander away from the river to forage, and Daybreak will just gather the survivors back up over the winter, to try again next year. But if they are actually defeated and beaten, Daybreak does not have the people or resources to create more. Remember it is not even a parasite, it is a carrion eater, and the Lost Quarter is a corpse that it has already fed on more than once once once—” 162 finished in a long scream, flailing and thrashing on the bench, and James and Izzy had all they could do to restrain him.

On their way out, Izzy said, “We didn’t learn anything new, did we? That’s the same thing he said last time.”

“We have to keep asking because we never know when Daybreak might fail for a few seconds and let him tell the truth. Or remember, he was one of our best minds, and he’s still in there trying to get out, and he might find a way to suggest something to us. Thanks for working on Christmas morning. Do you have anywhere to be for the rest of the day?”

“Jason and Beth are having me over for lunch. We all tend to get pretty quiet around holidays, you know, because Daybreak took us away from our families back before, sometimes way back before, and we missed our last few chances to talk to our parents or our siblings or whatever. It makes holidays really sad.” She brushed her flyaway brown hair away from her face. “Also makes me sad that I have two fresh bruises from his thrashing. I never hurt anybody when I was having Daybreak seizures, at least as I recall, but then I’m a little bitty girl and he’s a good-sized man. I hate to be a wimp, but if you think you’re going to cause a seizure, maybe you should have Jason as your assistant?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Well, I just wanted to make sure you had somewhere to be.”

“That’s nice of you, and I do. Merry Christmas, James.”

“Merry Christmas, Izzy.” He hurried on to his next stop; Incoming Crypto at the Main Post Office, where he was expecting some good news.

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. RECONSTRUCTION RESEARCH CENTER (IN THE FORMER PUEBLO COUNTY COURTHOUSE), PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:15 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.}

General Lyndon Phat stood and reached for the stack of wood by the fireplace. “I can’t tell if it’s really cold or I’m just old.”

“It’s really cold,” Heather O’Grainne said. “And as president, you will only be allowed to be old enough to seem strong, reassuring, and paternal.”

Phat gazed at her over his reading glasses, which perched on his nose like a last pathetic fence against the avalanche of his gray unibrow. He was short and square-built, with gray hair surrounding a monk’s spot, and his deeply creased face recorded a lifetime of worry. He wore a blanket draped around his shoulders; a thick sweater; baggy sweatpants; and multiple pairs of wool socks that wilted into bundles of color around his ankles. He had been leafing through a hundred-year-old Atlas of North American Resources.

A guard knocked at the door. “It’s James Hendrix, Ms. O’Grainne. He’s waiting at the ground floor door.”

“Send him up,” Heather said. “And for the third time, put him on the list of people who are allowed immediate entrance, and tell your sergeant that if they ever make James stand in the snow waiting again, I will have the sergeant’s guts on a stick.”

“I’ll tell him exactly that, ma’am. I’ll get Mister Hendrix right now.”

From his crib, Leo whimpered, testing what wasn’t right with the world. Heather strode to the crib, leaned down, and put on the joyful excited tone she usually reserved for creamed spinach. “Guess what? We’re going to have a visit from Uncle James! And he’s going to tell us that our friends killed some bad guys!”

“Your confidence warms my heart,” James said, coming in and shucking off his tent-like coat. He still looked every pudgy inch the government documents librarian he had been back before. “And we did kill some bad guys. Good morning, Leo.”

Leo emitted the short “ah!” noise that he reserved for people he especially liked, and waved his hands until James leaned down and extended a finger to grasp. “You been keeping them in line, fella?”

“Ah!”

“Good. I’ll take it from here.”

Leo gurgled and settled; he’d be deep asleep in a minute. Heather wasn’t sure what was so reassuring about James, but Leo wasn’t the only one who felt it.

James drew up another armchair and pulled off sweaters, draping them over the back. “Nice and warm in here. Leo’s getting big.”

“They do that, or so MaryBeth Abrams tells me, along with reminding me that I’m not the first woman ever to have one. You have a charming knack for liking the boss’s baby, James.”

“I wouldn’t have lasted twenty-three years in the Civil Service if I didn’t.” He sat, crossing his legs, hands wrapped around one knee. “Operation Monkey Flush turned one, killed three, and recovered two kids who were being used as cover props. The cell is shut down and there’s no evidence that there were any more.

“Bambi reports they took the thumb off one of the ones they killed, as a memorial for Steve Ecco, and bagged Harrison Castro’s assassin in boiling feathers, same way Castro died.”

Phat folded his arms. “This is terrorism.”

“It is. Terrorism exists to scare the shit out of people. And since people can’t be scared of things they don’t know about, Bambi and Carlucci made sure they left abundant evidence for the cleanup staff to gossip about. Chris Manckiewicz will run the story as the main headline in the next issue of the Post-Times, piously deploring out-of-control Feds going too far and Castle freeholders wreaking private vengeance with Federal help, and so on.”

“But,” Phat pointed out, “everyone knows Daybreak doesn’t care about individual agents, and anyway we’re much more afraid of Daybreak than it is of us, if it’s even able to feel fear.”

James nodded impatiently. “Sure, sure. Daybreak destroyed the modern world and killed more than seven billion people, this is—”

“That was back before, when it controlled less than one in two thousand people worldwide. In less than two years it’s thrown us a century or more back in tech, it controls at least 5 percent of the surviving global population, probably more like 10 percent in this country—of course we’re afraid of it. We’re losing and it means to put an end to us forever.”

“Which is why it’s so important not to say that in public.”

“There’s something wrong with democracy?” Phat’s voice was louder and harsher than Heather would have expected.

In the suspended instant of complete silence, Heather realized this was more than just another little clash; since Phat had arrived three weeks ago, he and Hendrix had bickered at least daily, but this felt different. Say something, she thought. The silence stretched another second before she ventured, “General, I wonder if the problem isn’t that it’s been a long time since any American general had to think about losing big, and it doesn’t come natural to you. James pointed out the other day that if people get the idea that Daybreak is winning—and it is—they’ll want to do what losers do: cut a deal. But Daybreak isn’t a devil we can let anyone deal with, and there are only three ways to prevent deals with the devil. One is to make sure people know it’s the devil; one is to make the devil too angry to deal.”

Phat waited. “That’s two.”

Hendrix said, softly, “Heather’s favorite has always been to make sure there’s no devil.”

“So this restored Constitutional government you’re talking about is going to kill or forcibly convert a few million people for what they believe. That’s bringing back American democracy?” Phat looked from one to the other. “I had the impression you were liberals, back before.”

Heather shrugged. “I was a Fed with a liberal mentor. I hardly ever even voted.”

James nodded. “On the other hand, I was pretty much a socialist. If you haven’t noticed, Pueblo is a socialist society; almost everyone eats most meals in a common mess hall that you get into with a ration coupon. Going to Doctor MaryBeth is free, but if she says you’re not sick, you’re SOL. Hardly anyone has paid a dime of rent or mortgage since Daybreak day. I teach, and I get paid in firewood and food by the town government, and nobody charges my students anything. Frankly I don’t want private business to come back too much or too far.”

“But government terrorism—”

“Dead Daybreakers are a public good like clean water, education, health care, or good roads, and should be publicly provided,” James said. “Wiping Daybreak out of the minds of everyone everywhere would be the best thing humanity did since we got rid of smallpox. I’m just more willing than some other people to face the fact that when you’re trying to fight an idea to the death, you have to fight it with what’s known to work: a cycle of public atrocity leading to reprisal atrocity till there are no neutrals left, and then be better at atrocity than the other side is.”

“Peace through genocide.”

“It’s been known to work. Most nicer ways have not. You’re a pretty good amateur historian, General. We’re back a century, going on two centuries, in technology, and back a lot further in our basic situation. It wasn’t us, but Daybreak, that put us back on humanity’s ancient rhythm.”

“The ancient rhythm,” Phat repeated, and then, as if it had illuminated everything, “the ancient rhythm. Yeah. I see your point, James.” He stared into the fire as if hoping some god would speak to him.

“I have a feeling that ancient rhythm is some kind of war-history-geek, boy-code expression,” Heather said. “And to spill the secret to you old poops, I’m not actually a boy. Maybe someone could explain it?”

James started to speak but Phat answered first. “James means this is war the way the Romans, Mongols, or Goths knew it. Here we are, sitting out the winter like Caesar or Alaric, because in the ancient rhythm, wars start in the spring, when there’s time to fight—after crops are planted, roads are dry, and ships can sail.”

James nodded. “Around the time my father was born, a presidential candidate said, ‘People always cite George Washington’s wisdom and forget that his light was a candle and his transportation was a horse.’ The man who said that is much less relevant to us today, but as for George—”

“Our light is a candle and our transportation is a horse,” Heather said.

Phat nodded. “History is real information again, instead of a strange set of stories to fascinate old poops.”

James rose. “That reminds me, I must go where I can be called an old poop repeatedly for a couple of hours. Leslie’s due at my place in an hour.” He stood and began laboriously climbing back into his sweaters, explaining from far inside one, “I’m afraid I have more Christmases to get to than I have Christmas to get to them in.”

As Phat and Heather watched from her window, James scuffed homeward through the snow. “The ancient rhythm,” Phat said. “You know, that’s the whole story right there. The twentieth century freed one big chunk of the human race from the natural world. We could have fresh fruit in January, start wars in October, cross the ocean in February; we could let the authorities handle crimes instead of having blood feuds, and govern by popularity instead of ruling by bloodline, and make our wars about diplomacy and economics. We got detached. It was great while it lasted, but now we’re back in the ancient rhythm up to our necks.”

“Temporarily,” Heather said. “I want Leo to grow up to complain about taxes, the electric bill, and his student loans. I want him worrying about who will go to the prom with him, not how he can earn another scar on his triceps. But James is right, too, that it’s an ancient war and we have to win the ancient way.”

Phat grimaced. “But how do we escape the ancient rhythm once we’ve won?” He peered out the window again. “For a guy that old and heavy, James sure moves like a happy kid.”

“He always does whenever he’s going to see Leslie.”

“Now there’s an ancient rhythm. Old man with young girlfriend.”

Heather snorted. “We can all tell that’s what he wishes it was. But although Leslie likes sex, loves her dog, and in her own weird way, is devoted to James, as for combining them, the dog has a better chance than James.”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TEMPORARY NATIONAL GOVERNMENT DISTRICT (FORMERLY ATHENS, GEORGIA). 11:45 AM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.}

Jenny Whilmire Grayson placed the tray of broiled venison steak, brown gravy, and fresh biscuits on the end of the long table that was not occupied by maps and toy soldiers. “Oh, my little boy is playing army on Christmas morning.”

“Well, since someone was busy using up all the hot water—”

“It’s Christmas, baby, for once you’re getting a girl that’s all the way clean. Think about this.” She gave him That Smile, waited to see him react, then shucked the robe and pulled the towel from her head in one grand swoop, tousling her blonde mane. “If you’re quick, dinner won’t get cold.”

“If I’m quick I might hurt you—”

“I know.” She smiled in anticipation.

He dropped his own robe and yanked his sweaters off. “Nobody home but us,” she whispered. As he shoved her hard against the wall, she was already screaming.

When they were done, for now, she was sore, her face was streaked with tears, and she ran her hands over her body, looking for bruised places; his chest was heaving, and his face was red as much from shame as exertion.

She lifted his chin, looked into his eyes, and said, “I invited you, baby. I invited you.”

He drew a deep breath, and found another subject. “If nobody’s home, who got the dinner?”

“I had Luther set it by the fire and go catch the cable car, so he could spend the rest of the day with his family.”

Grayson nodded. “You’re probably the main reason we haven’t been poisoned yet.”

“Luther’s patient. Long before he poisons you, Maelene’ll’ve dumped you out an upstairs window. You’ve got to learn she’s not a private and the house does not need to pass inspection. Let’s eat this while it’s still hot.” She pulled her robe back on, wincing more than it really hurt, and ate standing up though she didn’t have to, because she knew he liked to see that.

As always, Luther had done brilliantly. They ate quickly, enjoying the rare combination of hot, fresh, and plenty. Even the most likely next president and first lady can’t count on a good Christmas dinner, Jenny thought. Not this year. Not since back before. Did I ever enjoy any food this much, back before?

Grayson laughed suddenly. “You realize that neither of us took off any of all the socks we’re wearing?”

“Baby, brutality can be fun, in the right mood, but bare toes on this floor is too brutal. If you find some nice girl with a cold feet fetish, you go right ahead.” Before loading seconds onto her plate, she paused to bind up her hair, and noticed she had captured his gaze. “Caught you staring, baby. Now that I’ve taken care of your needs, how about some respect for your little Barbie doll’s mind?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call yourself that.”

She shrugged. “I know I’m not, and so does anybody that counts—here, or in Olympia or Pueblo or anywhere else. That act is over.”

“I never liked that act, and good riddance to it. If I’m going to be a monster I’d rather be a real monster and attack a real woman.” Something on the map caught his attention and he leaned across the table to look at it from another angle. He needed information about that state forest south of Bloomington—hadn’t the RRC sent some scouts through there last summer? Maybe—

Jenny said, “Jeff, why are you putting so much thought into beating up some starving, sickly hippies?”

He glanced up, smiling. “There’s never enough time before to think and plan, and no time at all once it starts. Sorry I got distracted.”

“Baby, I don’t believe for one second that bush hippies on a map could pull your attention away from these.” She sat up straight and pulled her shoulders back. Her pouty spoiled-bimbo routine, just because it was so fake, almost always made him smile and often seemed to get him talking, but today he just looked sad, and she was instantly sorry she’d tried it. “Come on, Jeff. You’ve been pesty for rough sex for several days, and staring out the window, and quiet for hours at a time. That means you’re worried; I’ve had ten months to learn to read your tells. Now what is eating at you so bad?”

He gestured to the map. “Now that RRC agents are penetrating north of the Ohio and east of the Wabash, they’re finding things worse than we thought. The tribal ‘armies’ aren’t really armies—more like mass foot-powered kamikazes. Designed to smash their way through civilization, destroy everything they can’t use right away, and die. It’s amazing how big and fast a force can be if you’re not planning to supply it, or get any of it back.

“They’ve got it timed so that they’ll hit peak strength just as the ground is dry enough to move, and in each camp if they don’t start to move on schedule, they’ll start to starve within days. So they will move on schedule. And once they’re moving… well, an enemy whose purpose is only to kill as many of you as they can before they die—”

“You spent your career in the Middle East, Jeff—”

“And back then I had the greatest military power in history on instant call. It looks different from General Braddock’s position.”

“Have I met him?”

“Not likely. George Washington’s CO in the French and Indian War. Talented, bright, brave, and unlucky. The Indians trapped his force on a road in the forest. Outgunned, outnumbered, no reinforcements, cut off, four horses killed under him, and he held his force together in a fighting retreat before a sniper nailed him. Terrible reputation, though, thanks to historians who never walked that ground. If you remember the Yough—”

“I remember, baby—I wrote your memoirs. And we won.”

“We got the Amish farmers out. That was our objective, so technically we won, but a few more victories like that and we won’t have an army. Exact same kind of country, and very close to, where Braddock went on that expedition. That’s why I was thinking of it.” He gestured at the toy soldiers who pinned down the map. “On this campaign down the Ohio and up the Wabash we have to win eleven times in a row—and win bigger at less cost than we ever did in the Yough. And conditions aren’t any better than they were for Braddock, and I’m not the combat commander he was. Which means I have to be a lot luckier.”

“Eleven times?”

Grayson shrugged. “There are eleven of those—I don’t like to call them armies. ‘Hordes’—I guess that’s the word—waiting for spring and dry ground to cross the Ohio and the Wabash. If even one of them gets past us and penetrates any distance into civilization, they’ll move faster than we do; living on looting, they have no supply train, and they’ll be killing refugees, not rescuing them. So our slow, overburdened army will have to chase after the invading horde, and meanwhile other hordes will be breaking out at other points. Everything depends on stopping them before they can start.” He looked down at the toy soldiers on the map. “Isn’t it strange how toy soldiers haven’t gotten new equipment since World War Two, more than 80 years ago?”

One of Jenny’s friends had found a bag of plastic soldiers, unspoiled by biotes, under a pile of cotton fabric in a wrecked Hobby Lobby, and knowing that now that they were uncovered they would rot within a week or so, had buried them upside down in wet sand and poured molten solder into them, creating lumpy, ungainly “solder soldiers.” They had made Grayson laugh when he’d unwrapped them.

“You’ve been shoving them around on that map all morning.”

“It’s a way to think. The guys standing at attention represent my reserves; firing from one knee, front line infantry. Bazookas stand for artillery, bayoneters for cavalry. Daybreakers are grenade throwers.”

Now that she could read it, she saw how grim the layout on the map was. “And if it all depends on stopping eleven attacks all at once, with only one army—”

“That’s our biggest advantage, that it won’t be all at once—the only good news that Heather O’Grainne’s intel operation had for us. The tribals’re planning to hit first along the upper Ohio, where it’s a shorter distance to better looting, and then unroll the attacks down the Ohio and up the Wabash—the Wabash hordes are farthest away from their own supplies, and will have to travel a long way through country that’s already been looted and burned over, so they’ll start last.”

“Why don’t they go in random order? You’d never be able to catch them—”

“If it were me, I might. I think it’s because of their non-command non-structure; ‘go after these guys do’ is a real easy rule. And it does mean that to some extent they support each other, and maybe it’s so the first one to get past me can focus on blocking me while the others get in.

“But anyway, assuming Heather got the truth out of them, the plan is, I match their schedule, hitting them with spoiling attacks down the Ohio and up the Wabash.” His arm swept over the map in a crooked L shape. “They’ll be most vulnerable just before they’re ready to attack—greatest troop concentrations and smallest remaining supplies. If I beat them to every punch, it can be eleven massacres instead of eleven battles, but they only need to be lucky once, and I have to be lucky eleven times. Luckier than Braddock, at least.”

“If you need to be very, very lucky, then we’re in good shape, because you are.” Jenny rubbed her hair with a towel again, pretending to dry it while making sure she was disheveled the way he liked; the motion stretched her just enough to slightly open her bathrobe. Jeff’s arrogance is his armor, and I can’t let there be a hole in his armor. “This time be gentle, ’kay, baby?”

^{AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 3:35 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.}

The Christmas tree in the corner of Heather’s living quarters hypnotized Leo; he gurgled happily whenever she put him close to it.

I’ll need to get rid of that fire hazard before the New Year, even though Leo loves it.

While she waited for James, she redid her master chart, the layout of file cards, slips of paper, thumbtacks, and string by which she tracked her efforts to—

Leo had gotten a body width closer to the tree by rolling onto his back, the first time he’d ever done that, and was now grabbing for the ornaments just out of his reach. Heather propelled all six-feet-one of herself around the table to her son, who fortunately had not yet acquired or ingested anything. “So,” she said, “you’ve got a new trick, turning over. Wait till I tell MaryBeth. She’ll get such a kick out of telling me that you’re a normal kid and I worry too much.”

“Ah!”

She moved him farther from the tree, and returned to her chart.

A knock. “Heather, it’s James, they’ve apparently decided I can be trusted to climb stairs by myself.”

“You must feel practically human.” She opened the door.

James unloaded a bulging pack onto her table. “Eggnog, made with the last of my pre-Daybreak Jack Daniel’s, and I wrapped the jar so it’s still warm. Also quiche, trout bisque, and some appalling Mesa County wine, pre-Daybreak, that someone must have given me as a joke.”

“James, this is why you’re perfect.”

They sat and enjoyed the warmth and the company, as the sun sank into the mountains, just visible from this high window, in a spectacular burst of reds and golds. “I can almost forget,” Heather said, “that those colors are the dust of billions of people, thousands of cities, all of civilization—”

“Eggnog,” James said. “Warm eggnog.”

They clinked cups. “Merry Christmas. And that’s not a rebuttal, oh chief advisor.”

“There’s truth in warm eggnog, too, and the colors are beautiful, however they got there.”

Sunset was a streak of vivid purple with a deep red egg half nested in it, behind the black teeth of the mountains, when they heard the group of people singing “Adeste Fidelis.” “That hymn must have accompanied some bleak Christmases since the Romans first sang it,” Heather said.

“It’s not nearly that old,” James said. “They were still writing hymns in Latin down almost to 1900, because Latin sings better than English.”

“How did you—don’t tell me the government had a pamphlet on that?”

“You bet. Recreating historic holidays, a teacher’s guide, 1950s booklet from the Park Service’s history guides series. ‘Adeste Fidelis’ would be okay for a grade-school production of Christmas at Valley Forge, but not much earlier, and even for Christmas at the Lincoln White House, only snooty Episcopalians would know it. If you want common soldiers singing it, go to the Bulge or Chosin.”

“I was visualizing Roman Britain, brave old legionaries and half-trained boys surrounded by Saxons, you know. Anyway, it sounds brave against the darkness.”

“‘Brave against the darkness’ probably counts more than archival-librarian accuracy.”

She nodded and they sat quietly until she asked, “James, are we expecting too much, too soon, for putting the country back together? There’s so much to do in this next year.”

He squatted by the fire, surprisingly agile, held his hands to the warmth, and seemed to listen to some voice. At last he said, “Right now, a few million loyal Americans—not Daybreakers, I mean good people who do their jobs and who we need—have just begun noticing that a restored United States might not be so good for them.”

Taken aback, Heather blurted, “Who wouldn’t it be good for, besides Daybreak? Why not?” She could hear indignation in her own voice and wasn’t sure she intended it.

James spread his hands. “Lots of people. The guy who created a business out of property that was just lying around, who has never paid taxes, and doesn’t want to start. The teacher who teaches what she likes, how she likes. The farmer who has access to all the land he can plow.

“Right now, if people put resources back into productive use, good enough, and we let them keep it; the real owner is almost certainly dead and if not, unable to get back to the property. But what if the roads and the courts re-open, and people can come back and prove they’re the old owners? Then add in that once it’s set back up, there’ll be taxes again. And that old folk figure of evil, The Book-Smart Man From Washington That Don’t Know Shit, will begin to reappear at the doors of hardworking people.”

“There’s no more Washington. There’s a lake where it was.”

“You know what I mean. And you can bet that if we do carry out our plan and get a Federal government going again, ‘Springfield’ will mean pretty much what ‘Washington’ used to, well within our lifetimes. We’d have some people losing things they’ve worked for, and many people remembering things they didn’t like. So some of them are catching on, right now, that the Restored Republic of the United States is a nice idea but it’s not necessarily the best thing for them.”

“But, James, who?”

“How many people with a spending problem sleep better at night because their debt is gone, with no one to extend more credit to them and nothing to buy with it? Why would they want to bring back the world of consolidation, bankruptcy, and foreclosure, especially if they have to work at it? How many people played dead, and got a fresh start, by just walking away from lovers or families in the chaos? How many people were in jobs they hated back then and have lucked into jobs they like, now?”

“Oh, there are some like that, I’m sure, but come on, James, what about an ex-desk jockey who’s shoveling mud? Won’t he—”

“Everybody doesn’t have to be better off for there to be a movement. Think how many big causes in history turned out to benefit nobody. And the benefits of the new world are not illusory, Heather. Re-creating the Federal government is going to be a net cost to a lot of people who won’t want to pay that bill.”

“Then should we just give up? Are we too late already?”

“I think we’re still in time, but only just. Right now, I think most people haven’t yet admitted how much they have to lose if the United States comes back.

“But if we give them a year or two, they’ll see all kinds of practical reasons to put off the Restored Republic for another year, or another decade, or their grandchildren’s generation. My advice as your consigliere is now.” He stirred the pot, the red glow bathing his bald spot and sagging cheeks, making him look a thousand years old. “All in the timing. Like the moment for this bisque, and the moment to just enjoy Christmas with company, and every other moment that matters. Hold out your bowl and no more gloomy talk till we’ve finished.”