John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

The warmth of the water was pleasant; he’d grown up in the Rockies where running water is freezing cold all year. In the humid night, low fogs, some only a foot deep, drifted along the surface, cloaking him.

He kicked hard but kept his legs well under the water. Fogs rolled across him, darkening the river to a void except for the stars directly overhead; then a clear patch would roll by and he’d catch sight of his stars and his target trees.

When trees were on both sides of him, he turned over. His feet found the muck at the bottom of the shallow channel. His foot caught in something and pulled his head under for an instant, but he shook loose, waded a few more steps, and found a pebbly, rapidly rising surface. Trying not to splash, he waded with his pack held above his head until he was waist deep. At last he stepped from a patch of sloppy muck between the tangled roots of a cottonwood, and put both feet on a muddy bank. Checking the stars, he walked due east.

Something slammed the back of his head. As he stumbled, his head was pushed down and a rope wrapped in three quick turns around his neck.

There were so many of them.

He tried to lie down and make them kill him, but they just shoved a spar between his elbows and back, and pulled him to his feet.

“Stephen Ecco,” a voice said, behind him. “We were wondering if you’d ever find the courage to come over the river.”

Four big men lifted him by the spar on his back; the pain was bad enough if he went the way they pushed him, and agonizing when he didn’t cooperate. They ran him that way, hour after hour, as more tribals joined the group and took turns holding up the spar. At dawn, his feet felt like a bloody mess, but thrown onto his face in the dirt, he couldn’t really inspect them.

As his cheek pressed the damp dirt and he lay where he had been thrown, one thought drove him to keep testing his bonds, looking for any direction in which they might loosen: Someone had betrayed the mission. He had to escape and tell Heather.

They were trying to confuse him, but they couldn’t hide the Wabash or the sun; Steve Ecco knew he was going upstream near the river. Either they didn’t realize how many clues they’d let slip, or they didn’t care that much.

Now it was a party of at least twenty people; three of them, he’d pegged as “officers,” though he heard no titles used—a woman and two men who took turns deciding things and giving orders. Another seven he’d designated as “guards,” who followed the orders of the officers and gave orders to all of the rest. The numerous remainder must be slaves; they only received orders and spoke only when told to.

Well, if I do escape, I can report that much, anyway.

At dawn of the first day of his captivity, as gray light began to leak in around his blindfold, he was in a stretch where the road or trail was jammed with obstacles. He tried running headlong, hoping to hit something and get a concussion or a broken neck, or perhaps fall into water and drown. After he’d lost count of his collisions with trees and was staggering, hoping that the next tree or the one after might put him out, they unblindfolded him, braced him up, and forced the bar between his elbows and back again. For the next hour or more they left the blindfold off but again used the spar to push him onward, until the road was clear of felled trees and broken automobiles.

During that brief period of vision, in the brightening gray light, he saw a WELCOME TO PRAIRIETON sign, and another sign for Indiana 63. So he was just south of Terre Haute, close to the east side of the river; they were running him across the bend where the Illinois-Indiana state line begins to follow the Wabash.

Later, when the sun was full up, but still to his right, the road was mostly clear again, and shamefully, he agreed not to make them use the spar, so they re-blindfolded him. A while after that, they ran him down to the river and gave him a cup of water.

Lukewarm river water was wonderful. The next cup of water had been thoroughly dosed with whiskey; they followed that up with some lukewarm soup, probably beef vegetable out of a can, mixed with more whiskey, and then another draft of unspiked water.

When they shoved him into the bottom of the boat, lying on his back in the puddled water was only uncomfortable for a moment before exhaustion, whiskey, and the relief of the food and water sent him off to sleep. Twice he half-awakened when guards screamed at the slaves.

They dragged him out of the boat at about noon, to judge by the feel of the sun. As they pushed him to run again, he noted they were still going upstream, still on their side of the Wabash.

At that mountain man convention I went to they said a keelboat was lucky to make fifteen miles a day upstream, so since that was maybe a third of a day, they probably just hauled me through Terre Haute. Does that mean there are good guys in the wreckage, for me to look for if I escape? Or was it just too hard to run a blindfolded guy through a smashed ruin that size?

He ran for much of the afternoon, still north along the Wabash, very close to the border. This forced run had shredded his feet and ankles, and burned up his reserves; he’d need a long head start to get away from them, now.

With the sun still high in the sky, they stopped so a fresh party of officers, guards, and slaves could take over. It was a longer stop; the replacement party, while waiting for them, had built a fire, and heated food from cans. They gave him a big bowl of oatmeal laced with rum, more water, and some soup/whiskey mix as well. He fell asleep again, dimly aware that they were carrying him down to another boat.

Cameron Nguyen-Peters had chosen Terrell Hall on the former University of Georgia campus for his executive office building for what seemed like good, sensible administrative reasons: it was an administrative building with a few big and many small offices, old enough so that it had plenty of windows for natural light. If he had thought about the front entrance at all, it was only that the protruding, windowed bay over the covered stairs might be a good place for the eventual President of the United States to give a speech.

He had not thought at the time that the chapel, across the quad, faced it directly, so that the two buildings could also be seen as rival positions—let alone in enmity. But back then, the Post Raptural Church hadn’t existed yet, let alone demanded recognition as the First National Church of the United States.

“The best guess we’ve got,” Grayson said, his face tired and strained, “is that there are about seven thousand people in the quad at any one time. Most of them are from outside Athens and some of them walked three days to get here. There’s probably twelve thousand overall, but some of them are always off getting food or catching a nap. There are probably two thousand watchers around the other side of the building, so slipping out quietly is not an option.”

The chanting rose and fell in long, slow waves of a minute or more. “At least in the daytime they don’t need torches for light,” Cam observed, “so they don’t have them right there, to give them ideas.”

“If they want to burn the building in the daytime, they’ll find something.” Grayson shrugged. “And sir, I don’t agree with you about anything, but I don’t think you’re a coward. If you do what I’m suggesting, I know it won’t be because you’re giving in or because you’re afraid.” His small smile was almost a wince. “Though I seriously doubt that you care what I think of you.”