John Barnes - The Last President

There had been a swelling noise in the huge crowd; Robert had been waiting for it. For weeks, ever since the tribal forces had come together at Castle Earthstone, his True Daybreak believers had been moving among the tribes, befriending where they could, not so much arguing as just presenting the idea over and over, pointing to the beauty of the Earth and asking, “Now that it is ours, why do you want to leave it so soon?”

His followers had been trained in the techniques for caring for people after a seizure, and for helping the victim to break free of Daybreak after a seizure. Slowly, a seizure at a time, the Castle Earthstone people had been pushing their newfound tribal friends through the process. Bernstein had guessed that they had about sixty percent of the tribal allies ready to convert; Robert figured that Bernstein had never quite recovered from being an accountant back before, and he figured that sixty percent was a SWAG for “more than half,” but good enough.

“Stand up and declare for True Daybreak!” he shouted. “Come with us! You can marry, have children, a family! You can grow the good food and work in the good Earth! You don’t have to die a dirty death out on the plains just because a few fucked up people made a mess of the Earth back before! The plaztatic world is dead, blessings be to Daybreak, and long live the Domain!”

Thousands of his True Daybreak people from Castle Earthstone, and tens of thousands of recent converts, leapt to their feet and shouted that real Daybreak was at hand. The remaining traditional Daybreakers shrieked, assaulted people near them, reached for weapons, but the preparations had been thorough; most of the True Daybreakers had brought a knife, a club, or a garotte, and most of the old tribals were unarmed, as they usually were for celebrations and ceremonies. Besides, another large part of the traditional Daybreak followers had been partly converted or were conflicted, and many thousands who might have fought for Daybreak instead fell into seizures. At Robert’s orders, his forces left the seizure cases alone for the moment; many would emerge ready to convert, and at the moment they were no more than a minor hazard underfoot.

In less than an hour, an army of 30,000 mixed tribals and Castle Earthstone True Daybreakers had become an army of 24,000 Castle Earthstone True Daybreakers. The bodies from the fighting lay in the streets, but since what was left of the town would burn tomorrow, they could just lie there, with the soldiers and the townspeople, something else to remind plaztatic America never to insult free people and despoil free Gaia again.

When the crowd had re-gathered at the fire, Robert had been amusing himself by tormenting Glad Ocean with his knife, and when he told her she was a sacrifice and ordered her to walk into the fire, to all appearances she did it willingly. A shout of joy went up as she fell forward into the coals.

“More fuel, do you think?” Bernstein asked, as it burned lower around the charred corpse.

“Naw. Let’s hope they get some sleep before they start walking back. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day, and then we’ve got a good month of walking to do, without the river doing most of the work this time. Meanwhile, though, life’s pretty sweet.”

He rose and stretched. “I think they were going to fix a special supper for us, and have some nice clean girls waiting, back at our main tent. Speaking of rewards we’ve earned, let’s go get ours.”

Pauline Kloster slipped into the corrugated iron shed without making a sound; only the brief dark moments as her body blocked the moonlight through the crevices revealed she was there. Then Carol May Kloster felt the warmth of her niece’s shoulder next to her own, and a soft exhalation into her ear. “Aunt Carol May, they’re gonna party all night, sleep it off, and then start walking home. They’re going back to Castle Earthstone and taking all these tribals with them. How are the little guys doing?”

“So far nobody that wakes up yelling, thank the lord. How’s it look like the party is going?”

“Right now? Just getting started. They’ve still got some prisoners they’re gonna do stuff to. I kinda hurried to get back so I wouldn’t have to see none-a-that. Aunt Carol May, I want to help them but I don’t see how I can.”

Carol May put her arms around Pauline and whispered, “No, you can’t, honey. Most of us would love to be more help, but sometimes we just can’t. We’ve got five little kids to try to sneak out with, and they’re gonna wake up scared and hungry and mad at us, ’specially when we have to say they can’t see Mama right now, and we can’t go find their teddy. It was just dumb luck we found them at the airport; probably Quattro was supposed to fly them but no one told him.”

“I was so upset when I saw him already taking off, I mean he didn’t know we were coming but we tried so hard to get there and missed him by just that much. Then… right when I thought how can we be so close and still miss it… that was terrible, wasn’t it?”

Carol May hugged her niece closer. “Yes, it was, try not to think about it, relax.”

“It looked like the whole inside just filled up, all at once, with white-hot fire. Why’d his plane blow up?”

“EMP, I’m pretty sure. Poor guy, I really liked him, and his wife is such a sweetheart, and they were only married less than a year ago. At least he couldn’t have suffered much.”

They sat in the dark and listened to the whooping, the shrieking, the occasional cries of pain and hoots of laughter, and the never-stopping drums. No one seemed to be coming back into the orchards, probably because there was no loot here, most of the trees were already burned, and nobody felt any need for privacy while copulating.

The noise went on while Carol May observed the moon moving a handsbreadth-at-arm’s-length across the sky, crossing one crack and then another; she watched that one more time, then spoke as softly as she could. “Pauline, honey, you still awake?”

“Yeah. Can’t sleep. I keep hoping they’ve killed the people they were playing with, but then I hear another scream.”

Carol May shuddered. “How’s the leg?”

“Not bad. Tired, and it gets sore when it’s tired, but it’s got some miles in it. Were you thinking of going now?”

“It’s going to take these tribals most of the night to fall down and go to sleep, I’m afraid, and then all day tomorrow before they’re even halfway started walking back to Castle Earthstone. So if we wait till tomorrow, and let it get light, we’ll have to stay under cover for most of the day and keep our little friends quiet. It was bad enough doing that all day today, and we had the help of all the noise from town, and the fires in the burning orchards, to help hide us. Tomorrow anyone who’s half curious or hears a funny sound is going to be able to walk right up to the shed and in through the door, and we won’t be able to fool them into thinking the place is already torched by burning a little junk right by the door.”

“Makes sense. Packs are still loaded, right?”

“Yep. I grabbed a pilot emergency radio kit at the airport, and that’s in my pack—”

“One of those radio in a jar things?”

“Yeah.”

“Man, Aunt Carol May, all I thought to bring was that applesauce and apple butter we’ve been eating,” Pauline said. “I didn’t even think where there might be anything useful.”

“Pauline, sweetheart, you can’t get more useful than food. Especially the kind where kids’ll eat it, and you got enough to get us a couple days down the road. And I’m glad it’s all applesauce and apple butter, because, honey, you know it’s the last thing that’s going to taste like home, ever. Aw, don’t cry on me, Pauline, please don’t cry or I’ll start. Come on, we need to wake these kids up quietly and be on our way.”