John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

This lousy south wall looked out across the former Jackson Street, and beyond it, a two-block-wide swath of deliberately burned and leveled houses. A simple, gateless, eight-foot palisade with a catwalk four feet above the ground on the back side was adequate against opponents with rocks, spears, and bows. Their bows weren’t accurate enough at the distance, so Jawarah stood up, mostly thinking about the poker game tonight and the bets he had down with Jimmy for—

A man and a woman ran headlong into the cleared space from the narrow slot between a wrecked ranch house and its garage, straight for Jawarah.

The gray-bearded man wore a slouch hat, camo pants, deerskin shirt, and knee-high moc-boots. The younger woman was in baggy knee-length dirty red homemade pants, a belted gray tunic that hung to mid-thigh, and a baseball cap. They were running away from something—and nothing out there was friendly.

Jawarah yanked the alarm bell’s rope, clanging three times, moved five yards east, and pushed the flip-step over the side of the palisade. Clutching his over-and-under .45 black-powder rifle, he descended, shouting, “This way!”

They turned toward him. As Jawarah ran out to meet them, the man shouted, “Federal Agent Larry Mensche, they’re right behind us.”

“Follow me!” Jawarah ran back toward his flip-step; the girl, who was running barefoot, saw it, put on a burst of speed, and got there first.

An arrow passed over Jawarah’s head. “Over the wall!” he yelled at Mensche. He turned and knelt for a better firing position.

At least forty men and women dressed in a mixture of thrift-store gypsy, low-budget pirate, old hippie, and fake Indian were charging across the cleared space with spears, clubs, knives, and axes. The nearest waved a spirit wand, a stick with a bunch of sacred crap glued to it. Per orders, Jawarah aimed at the man’s chest and fired the top barrel.

The tribal pitched forward. Jawarah shot the woman who lunged to pick the spirit wand up. I don’t think she even looked at her buddy, he thought, she wanted to save that damned stick.

An arrow sailed by him; he needed to reload and this was no place for it. He rolled backward and stretched out prone, pulling out his coil-spring crossbow and sending a piece of old welding rod into the oncoming crowd.

Then he heard the most wonderful sound—the slow thudding of one of the black-powder machine guns on the wall, followed by the resonant claps of black-powder rifles firing from the palisade behind him. Staying low, he crawled backwards.

One screaming woman, red hair trailing behind her, wildly swinging a hatchet two-handed, fixed her gaze on him. He threw his small ax awkwardly from his prone position. It cut her shin, and as she bent to grab at the wound, someone above shot her in her exposed back; she sprawled, struggling.

Jawarah’s back foot touched the palisade. A voice from above—his buddy, Jimmy: “Wait…” Two quick shots, then Jimmy shouted, “Now.”

Jawarah scrambled up the flip-step, careful of the sharp glass pieces on top of the palisade, and down onto the catwalk.

“Thanks.”

“Had to, you owe me $3.86 from last night’s game.”

“Yeah, right. Are those Feds okay?”

“Yeah, the cap sent’em straight to the post office—something urgent for the radio. Looks like it’s a big deal.”

Another arrow sailed over the wall.

“Those guys think so too.” Jawarah reloaded. A spear bounced off the palisade between him and Jimmy. He leaned out and pointed down to shoot a tribal who was boarding the flip-step. Jimmy yanked the flip-step in; Jawarah shot at, but missed, another tribal who looked like she was rallying the others.

Normally the tribals broke and ran as soon as they were driven back from the wall, but this particular bunch of hippies from hell weren’t retreating; if anything they seemed to be forming up a more organized assault in the wrecked houses across the no-man’s-land. But for the moment the open space was clear, and Jawarah rolled over and reloaded. He had dropped that awkward, silly crossbow out there, so at least he wouldn’t be responsible for it until the battle was over.

A figure sprinted between two wrecked cars. Jawarah fired, and the body fell and lay motionless.

“You’re hot tonight,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah, I was just thinking how dull it was. Be careful what you wish for.”

Trails of smoke from the houses beyond the cleared area suggested that these tribals were putting together a fire rush, a banzai-style charge with thrown torches and slung balls of burning fabric carried by the less-skilled fighters. The cap had been tough about keeping flammable stuff away from the palisade, so fire rushes had never worked here; no tribals had tried one in the last month. Must be a tribe that doesn’t know us.

Looked like a long night, but he’d been about to go off shift, so it would all be overtime at the militia rate—more fun and more lucrative than poker, and if it went long enough, he’d get comp time and escape from putting out the second planting of potatoes tomorrow.

They’d be bringing free meals out to the wall, too. Life could be a lot worse.

Jawarah peered over the wall, looking for another good shot, muttering like a crapshooter who has bet ten the hard way:

“What do you mean, I need my sleep!” Heather was looking around at her office staff as if she had never seen them prior to turning over this singularly ugly rock. “Larry Mensche comes running out of the woods, with a whole tribe at his back and radios that he’s carrying information too sensitive to send by any code. Followed by a battalion-strength battle , and tribals laying siege to Pullman—and you ‘decided I needed my sleep’!”

She’d been aware of doors opening and closing around the office while she’d been delivering her tirade, but she hadn’t seen MaryBeth Abrams come in. MaryBeth was a big lady—she’d played field hockey for Howard—and the only other woman in Pueblo tall enough to look Heather in the eye. She did, now, and strode up to her. “Your staff,” she said, “is trying to protect you and your child. You are two weeks from due.”

Heather looked down at her immense belly. “Wow, thanks, I needed to be reminded.”

“Well, you are acting like you need to be reminded. Heather, your people are good and they are handling it . They were trying to tell you that a relief force is already on the train from Fort Lewis, with two squadrons of cavalry and half the President’s Own Rangers. Your people are taking care of things, and you cannot put yourself in charge of every little thing right now, and that goes double when you’re in the delivery room!”

Rocked back by MaryBeth’s vehemence, Heather said, “I’m sorry, I worry about my agents. Larry’s been missing a while.”

Elyse, the youngest member of the staff, said, “To finish out the report, Ms. O’Grainne, he still had his daughter Debbie with him, she’s fine, and he said that if you don’t swear her in right away, he quits.”

“Well, if he’s blackmailing me, it’s definitely Larry, not an imposter. And Pullman is okay?”

“The local commander says they could lift the siege themselves but they’re trying to keep the tribes hanging around long enough for the cavalry and Rangers to catch them,” Elyse said.

“You see? You have good people,” Dr. Abrams said. “That would be plain as an ax in the head to anyone who wasn’t pigheaded, impossible, and you.”