John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“Well, if you can love’em after tonight, you are really a dog lover,” Larry said.

As the first stars came out, they moved along the grassy trace of a dirt farm road running east, surrounded by dense bushes, and slowed to a brisk walk; the sounds of the dogs and shouting had faded into the background. The grimy moon rose, revealing big dense bundles of berries on the bushes around them; Chris reached out, grabbed a handful, tasted one, and said, “Elderberry. This must have been a jam farm. They’re ripe.”

“Try not to get your hands sticky,” Larry said, “but that’s dinner. Put a few handfuls in your knapsacks and we’ll just eat as we go.”

The berries were tart and strong-tasting, with gritty little seeds that got between your teeth. They tramped on in the hazy moonlight, through the thick dew-soaked grass, headed east, deeper into the Lost Quarter.

Robert knew that Karl was dead before the old bastard hit the ground; half his face had been torn off and a spray of blood from his back soaked the grass around him. Robert felt for a pulse on the bloody neck just to be sure.

Major Carter, the garrison commander, jumped up on a chair, and yelled that he was in charge now. Robert was about to say, “The fuck you are,” and Carter had made eye contact, when Carter’s head suddenly went all lopsided and bloody and he fell down.

It looks like they are shooting everyone who acts like he’s in charge, Robert thought. He moved into the center of a crowd of frightened, weeping slaves, and said, softly, “Now everyone just stay back and let the fighters fight. You all come with me but stay all bunched up, and we’re just going to walk into the fort. Get everyone else to come with us if you can.”

Most of the slaves were inside or headed there when the soldiers from the failed ambush came back shouting that they needed the dogs. Robert was waiting for them at the main entrance, with the crowd of slaves between himself and the enemy guns. “All right, form up here, out of sight of their position. They’re shooting at anyone they see giving orders. Lord Karl is dead. Who’s the highest ranking of you left alive?”

Captain Nathanson apparently was—he’d been about fifth in command of the whole force, and Carter’s XO for the garrison here while the main force was away, so Robert said, “All right, then. Form your men up for the pursuit, Major Nathanson; you have my permission to take as many dogs as you need, and just leave me eight guards back here. Don’t keep going too long if you lose the trail, because we don’t know how many other attackers there might be, and this could be a trick. Good luck, Major.”

Nathanson saluted and started yelling orders; Robert turned to the nearest overseer. “Bernstein. Have the slaves put things in order for a normal day tomorrow, make it dead clear that that is what there will be, and lock down for the night. Tell the others you’re now my chief steward.”

Nathanson came back to him and snapped a crisp salute. “The Castle is secured, we’ve got the dogs, and the men are ready to start pursuit.”

“Good. Use your judgment from here on; just don’t be away too long, Major.”

“It’s captain, sir.”

“Carter is dead and you are in command.”

“Yes, Lord Robert.” Nathanson turned back to his men; Robert figured that deal was locked down. Double locked down if Bernstein figures out that chief steward isn’t a bad job either.

Warsaw, Indiana, was “the kind of pretty little town that sooner or later is used in a nostalgic movie,” Chris Manckiewicz said.

“Not anymore,” Larry said. “Wonder how long before someone figures out a way to reinvent movies? And I bet there are still paper copies of some of the old scripts around, especially the classics; you think anyone will make The Wizard of Oz , Saving Private Ryan , or Wish on an Emerald again? But when they do, they’re going to have way more than enough places to shoot historicals, for a long time.”

The three men were sharing the last of the venison jerky and the elderberries in the corner of a wrecked hardware store. “Isn’t it weird how many little towns are named after the great cities of Europe?” Jason asked. “Like every state around here has to have a London, a Paris, a Berlin, a Warsaw, and so on? I wonder if there’s anywhere named Pinetree Junction in Europe.”

“There’s not really much Europe,” Chris pointed out. “The North Sea bomb took care of everything between Stockholm and Naples, and Edinburgh and Moscow. There’s northwest Scotland and some of Wales and Cornwall, most of Ireland, some northern Scandinavia, and Spain and Portugal. I’m not sure that counts as Europe. It’s sort of the Lost Quarter of the Old World.”

“I wonder if that’s exactly what it is,” Jason said. “I don’t know how Daybreak could move people into it, but I bet it’s crawling with tribes, like the Lost Quarter here.”

The other two were staring at him; he shrugged, a little defensively. “Look, this is what Heather sent me along for, to have someone with some idea about the way Daybreak works. I mean, it isn’t just about breaking human civilization, it’s about making sure it never comes back. And to do that they keep hitting us with another wallop from another angle, so we never really adapt to what they’ve done before they’re doing something else. They took away most of electricity, plastics, and petroleum, and while we were still figuring out how we’d rebuild the tech, they knocked us down again with the huge bombs. Then while we were figuring out a decentralized way to reorganize civilization, the moon gun started knocking out radio. And we know they had their fingers deep in the whole Castle movement to break up the authority of the Federal government, and now we’re realizing the tribes are there to wipe out any civilization rebuilding—”

“You think the tribes were always part of the plan? They didn’t just happen?”

Jason nodded. “Remember the plan was always to be the last generation. The tribes were recruited from low-level Daybreakers, plus disoriented people, while the country was in chaos. They turned them into slaves and armies, and now they’re killing the slaves to build up the armies, and then hurling the armies at civilization—like that huge attack at Mota Elliptica. Take down the tech and kill as many people as you can doing it.

“That’s what Castle Earthstone is about. They’re gearing up for one big drive out of the Lost Quarter—and a pile of bodies and no civilization after. That’s why they don’t care if most of the slaves don’t make it to spring; now that they’ve served their purpose, it’s better if they die.”

“That implies,” Chris said, squirming for a better position, “that Castle Earthstone was always planned, probably years before October 28th, 2024. Is that too crazy?”

Larry sat still for the space of a breath, looking up into the air, as he did when he thought hard. “Just suppose Arnie Yang is right and Daybreak is one giant, malign intelligence, a mind much larger than our own, one that uses human beings in the way we use the cells in our body, bent on human self-annihilation and nothing else. You’d see things like Daybreak creating the Daybreak poets to infiltrate coustajam music so younger refugees would be already prepared to join the tribes, and to write the Play of Daybreak , and a hundred other things.”

“Now I know what’s been bothering me.” Chris looked stunned. “If we could hop on a plane back to Pueblo this second—”