John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

The Temper infantry had three surviving officers, all lieutenants; Streen allocated Quentin to the ground floor, and the other two to the axmen and pikemen on the north and south porches. “Major, if you would assign your two officers for the attic and second-floor commands, and if you and I declare ourselves HQ?”

“Works for me. Nice to have the US Army all back together again.”

“Isn’t it, though? Makes me feel like Custer.”

“I’d rather feel like Anthony Wayne. He won.”

A lookout shouted, “Colonel! Drums and singing!”

Arnie and Trish crouched to the right of their assigned window and listened; the melody was instantly recognizable— All we are saying, is give Gaia her rights.

Streen squatted beside him. “Any insight into that?”

“All the tribes use it,” Arnie said. “It’s almost certainly the pump-up before the big wave. Probably they’ll go to rhythmic shouting just as they start the charge.”

“So when they start to shout in rhythm, they’re coming? Is that a semiotics thing?”

Arnie shrugged. “It’s probably hardwired in the nervous system. Build up the feelings on long phrases with tones, release them on short atonal grunts.”

The singing had grown louder. The front door opened. “Sir.” A young soldier leaned in.

“Yes?”

“Flames from the control bunker. Nobody answering our calls there. Too much smoke to see what’s happening.”

“Thank you,” the colonel said. The young soldier slipped back out. “Quentin, double the rifles on the windows that can see the control bunker,” the colonel said. “Draw from whatever reserves we have. Don’t change anything else. Pass word up to the other floors to do the same. That’s where the main shock’ll be coming from. Tell them that.”

Quentin began giving orders.

Streen turned back to Arnie. “I’m guessing you’ve lost everyone and everything in that control bunker, but if there’s anything important enough we could try a sortie—”

“Colonel,” Arnie said, “with the windmills wrecked, it’s already the end of WTRC, and the only thing in the bunker we couldn’t replace was Pahludin, Bates, Greene, and Portarles. Don’t worry about saving anything but lives.”

Streen grinned. “One clear objective. Are you sure you’re really an administrator, Doctor Yang?”

“I have constant doubts.”

The colonel squeezed Arnie’s shoulder in friendly encouragement and moved on.

Outside, the singing faded into a chant backed up by drums—

—louder, faster, blending into booming drums and crashing metal.

“I’m going above,” Streen said. “Quentin, on my command or one minute after you hear second floor open up, throw the shutters open and give them everything you can from the ground-floor windows. On no account leave a window or door unguarded.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This’ll be it, people.” Streen bounded up the stairs, the Provi Ranger major at his heels; the spotted and black uniforms made them look like a Dalmatian and a Lab racing after a Frisbee. They’re enjoying this, Arnie thought, enviously.

The chant grew louder still, less words than grunts of rage. The shutters above creaked and groaned; volleys of rifle fire roared, a few seconds apart. Quentin clicked his stopwatch.

Streen bellowed, “Lower floor go!”

The men on the porch swung the steel shutters outward in a screech and boom. Arnie rolled to the middle of the window, awkwardly and slower than the soldier and Ranger coming from the other side. The soldier beside him broke out the glass, knocking the shards out with his rifle butt. Trish, Arnie, the soldier, and the Ranger laid their rifles onto the sill and sighted.

The silhouettes in the dingy moonlight became distinct over the barrel of Arnie’s rifle—light and dark smears of faces, hats of all kinds, baggy shirts, pantaloons. “Hold, hold, hold,” Quentin’s voice chopped through the din of the onrushing shouting Daybreakers, as level and even as if advising a taxi to turn right at the next corner. “Choose a target and aim. Fire on my command.”

Arnie kept his sight on a tall man with a bushy beard who was waving a hatchet over his head.

“Fire,” Quentin said.

Arnie held his breath, tightened his finger, felt the rifle shove his shoulder. As the dense smoke blew away on the night breeze, he saw the man doubled over, probably hit in the guts.

“Choose, aim, and fire at will,” Quentin said. “Work fast, people.”

As the curtains of smoke opened and closed in front of him, Arnie chose a young woman who was swinging something burning on a rope over her head, aimed, squeezed, saw her fall backwards. Chamber and the first from the mag. The next hole in the smoke revealed a man waving a spirit stick—a prime target because every tribal who could see it would be running to follow him. Arnie shot, missed, shot again. As the smoke cleared, he was thinking, One left, chamber it, fire. Spirit Stick Man fell almost at the porch; as Arnie reloaded, the pike and axmen were driving back the followers.

Existence settled into counting rounds, searching, aiming, shooting, and reloading.

Feet on the porch.

“Rifles stay down, axes and pikes away from windows, shotguns now ,” Quentin said. Arnie felt feet standing between him and Trish. A great booming roar shook the room. “Rifles, axes, and pikes stay where you are. Shotguns, second barrel, now .” Another boom.

“Axes and pikes advance. Rifles and shotguns support with fire and be careful .”

Arnie rolled up into a kneeling position; his back leg brushed Trish’s. The porch was an incoherent struggle of flesh, uniformed backs closest to them, hats, plumes, and headdresses beyond. A shaggy man without a shirt, wielding a chain and a small hatchet, rammed between two uniforms; Arnie and Trish beside him shot simultaneously, and the man fell backward, hit in the face and chest.

A tribal rammed through the press, jabbing with a spear. Trish stiffened against Arnie; he felt a gurgle as he planted the muzzle in the tribal’s face and pulled the trigger.

The huge, heavy slug folded the man’s head inward like a rock dropped onto a pillow, and a mess flew out behind him.

While Arnie’s hands chambered another round, he took one instant to look to his right. Trish was pinned backwards by the spear through her neck to the floor, as if she were stretching her knees in yoga. Her goggle/ glasses lay in the pooling blood around her head; it was the first time he’d seen her without them.

Back at the window, a space opened between two uniformed backs, revealing a woman wielding two sickles; Arnie shot her squarely in the chest. A pike, swung like a ball bat, swept her body from the porch.

“Rifles, on your feet, advance behind the pikes and axes,” Streen ordered. Arnie stood up and stepped through the window, careful of the bodies lying there; a Daybreaker stirred at his feet, and as if it had been a venomous snake, Arnie slammed down his rifle butt on the back of her head.

He moved forward a step behind the soldiers with pikes; stray, unaimed arrows and rocks clattered on the porch roof.

The pikemen danced momentarily backward and forward on the edge of the porch. Streen cried, “Pikes, open for rifles, now .” Half the pikemen stepped back and to the side; suddenly it was as if a door had opened for Arnie, and even before Streen bellowed, “Rifles to the front and fire at will,” he was there.

The Daybreakers had fallen back just far enough to form a clear space, littered with bodies, between themselves and the pikemen. They were no longer chanting, and the front row was held in place only by the struggling, oscillating, confused mob behind them.