John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

Roger set himself. Just like rifle range.

The man lunged from the right stairwell. Point and squeeze. He fell over. Another clean head shot. They’d be so proud of me back in Pueblo.

He got the next one from the right staircase, then another from the left. He was down to one in the chamber, one in the magazine, one magazine to go. He fumbled the last magazine out of his pocket.

It was empty. He must have absentmindedly tucked it back into his pocket sometime in the last three hours of being chased around the U of I campus. It seemed really unfair that he had just lost count.

The two rounds left were what he had. In a few minutes there’d be another rush. He’d take one more with him, and then, remembering Ecco, he’d use the last round to take the fast dark exit.

Since it was almost over, he might as well go comfortably. He stood, stretched his legs, and treated himself to a long, luxurious piss into a drinking fountain drain. He could hear them arguing and squabbling below about who would rush him next.

The big room he’d had his back to was a chem lab; he smashed the window in its door with a chair. Downstairs, they yelped and whined “What’s he doing?” at each other. Wish I had the ammunition to invite them up to find out.

The supply closet was familiar territory; a year ago he’d been finishing his first year as a ChemE major.

Except for some strong caustics, the dry chemicals had been in plastic jars that had rotted. He swept the heaped-together powders, and the goopy remnants of the jars, into a dustpan, carried the pan down the hall, and emptied it just out of sight of one stairwell entrance. He went back and got more, putting that at the other end of the hall, dragging one body out of the way as if it were furniture. He wiped his hands on his pants, noticing he didn’t care that the man was dead but hated how grimy his skin and clothes were. Funny, before Daybreak the only corpse I’d seen was at Grandpa’s funeral.

Next he took the dry chemicals stored in glass, which were generally the most reactive, and poured them onto the tops of his piles. They were still arguing about whether they should rush him, and what it might mean that he was moving around up there.

Back in the supply closet, he set aside the strong acids. The rest of the liquids in glass were mostly complex organics, which had turned to something like cheese, but a few flammable solvents seemed all right; these he carried, bottles and all, to add to his piles.

Sudden scuffling downstairs. Shouting. Screaming.

Two shots.

RRC agents or maybe TNG troops; Daybreakers had no working guns. Roger froze and listened.

“Hey, don’t shoot.” A grinning Dan Samson burst from the stairwell. “Roger! I didn’t know Heather had sent you too! I surprised’em a little,” the big man said. “If we go now, I think we can shoot our way out—”

“Need ammo,” Roger whispered. “I have two.”

“Seven,” Samson said quietly.

“Let’s set off the surprise I’ve been fixing up and see if we can get out with just hatchets. What are they doing down there?”

“Trying to figure out what to do because you killed the big boss and two little bosses, and they’re afraid to go home and say they didn’t get us, and even more afraid to come up the stairs. Let’s try your idea. I’ve always loved surprises.”

A few seconds later, they hurled one jug of nitric acid to the far end of the hall; the mess of powder there foamed, fumed, burst into flames, and poured out dense blue smoke. They charged down their own stairwell, staying well separated, and at the first landing, threw the big bottles of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid up behind themselves, through the propped-open doors and into the piles of chemicals. There was a low, pulsing boom and more dark smoke gouted into the stairwell.

Holding their breaths, they plunged down the stairs. At the double doors Samson plowed into a Daybreaker sentry coming in, pinned her to the wall with the door, and chopped her forehead, twisting the blade to wrench it free.

Roger yanked the other door open and charged into the now-terrified group, slashing and thumping with his hatchet, and Samson was on them a moment later.

The surviving Daybreakers fled. “This way,” Samson said. They climbed through a broken window onto a low fire escape, dropped to the ground, and ran.

“Those were some pretty shitty soldiers,” Roger gasped, as they ducked between two buildings. Behind them, the chemistry building was pouring dense blue smoke from its lower floor.

“Those weren’t soldiers. They were slaves. Their leadership was three sorta-soldiers from Castle Earthstone. More afraid of their bosses than they were of us.” In the chemistry building, a window belched orange flame. “What did you do back there?”

“I have no idea. Where to from here?”

“Well, not back to that building. South, I think. Let’s go.”

“This is pretty senseless of me,” Allie said. She cupped her wineglass like a baby bird in her hand, looking at the two empty bottles as if they had just appeared from nowhere. “I’m just the tiddliest bit drunk, I’m going to have a hangover tomorrow for the conference when I really need to be patient with Graham, and I’m feeling so totally extremely indiscreet.” She touched the long red lacquered nail of her index finger to her nose and said, “Numb, numb, numb. Can’t feel a thing. Also num, num, num, dinner here was amazing, Arnie. I think in the new post-Daybreak world, if Olympia is the new Washington, it’s gotta be that Pueblo is the new New York. Better restaurants, smarter people, I mean what else could it be?”

“Well, Johanna’s What There Is is the place in Pueblo.”

“Yeah, and back in the day you’d have taken me to the place in New York, if I’d’ve even looked at you when you were teaching at that fancy school—”

“Columbia.”

“I know, Arn, just having fun with you.” She sighed and drank some more.

Watching Allie drink always excited him—many things about her did. She used to tease him that it reminded him of the only way he’d been able to score in college. Actually, he liked the way her deliberate sips always became deep gulps—not so much her lack of control, as her losing it.

He’d been staring. Cover that. “Where did you get red nail polish? I thought cosmetics were all gone—”

“The most expensive stuff was all natural ingredients packaged in glass. I just let it be known to some salvage crew heads that good things might happen if anyone brought me unopened nail polish, in glass bottles. One enterprising young man found some. So I have about a fifteen-year supply of nail polish—and he’s now a section head with a comfy desk job. And my source for a lot of good stuff. At least some things still work the way they always have.”

When they’d been dating, Arnie had worried that Allie’s liking for gifts and favors, normal in a political appointee, might screw him up with Civil Service rules if they got married.

She was smiling in the way that always sent his heart into his throat. “Arnie, babe, honestly, you think some simple favors would matter enough for Chris Manckiewicz to even print it, and risk losing nine states of subscribers?”

Too drunk to argue, Arnie sat back. “I’m just so glad to see you again.”

“I’m glad to see you again too. I didn’t realize how much I missed you.” She started a sip that turned into draining the glass. “Oops. Naughty.” She extended her glass to refill; her deep red nails reflected little stars of candle flames until he poured in the red wine, which colored the light around it so that her nails glowed like blood rubies.