John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

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:

no idea

d marked trail on purpose

must want me 2 follow

tell h 2 impt not 2 follow

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