Nate Kenyon - Day One

“My father used to run it,” Madison said. “Back when the news still meant something. I helped him some when I was a boy. She may look old, but she’ll do the trick. There’s some paper in the bins there, and ink, too, although I’m not sure it’s still good.”

Hawke ran his hand along the press’s cool iron bars, inspected the feeder’s teeth and the lines of letters still set to some early edition, frozen in time. He’d learned about these relics in school, enough to know something about how they worked. You could crank it by hand, pull the lever and send the pages through. Each page would need to be set by hand, which would take time. But there was an odd sort of poetry to using a machine like this. Back to the beginning, when the news business was first born. They could run copies here and use the boat to bring them to New Bedford. From there, they could reach most of New England, and get the word to Rick and any others out there willing to listen. They had to shut down the nation’s power sources, one at a time, isolate Doe and strangle her to death.

Hawke looked around at the faces in the basement. There were still humans left alive, still people willing to fight for survival if they could be convinced of the truth.

I want you to tell a story now, Weller had said. The biggest one of your life.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Bloodstone

The Reach

The Bone Factory

Sparrow Rock

StarCraft: Ghost: Spectres

Prime

Diablo III: The Order

NATE KENYON is the author of Bloodstone, a Bram Stoker Award finalist and winner of the P&E Horror Novel of the Year, The Reach, also a Bram Stoker Award finalist, The Bone Factory, Sparrow Rock, StarCraft: Ghost: Spectres, and Diablo III: The Order . He is a member of the Horror Writers Association and International Thriller Writers. He lives in the Boston area.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

DAY ONE. Copyright © 2013 by Macmillan Films. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

Cover illustration by Michael Heath

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Kenyon, Nate.

Day one: a novel / Nate Kenyon.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-250-01321-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-01337-8 (e-book)

1. Journalists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3611.E677D39 2013

813’.6—dc23

2013017075

e-ISBN 9781250013378

First Edition: October 2013