John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

The watch was on the other side of town and Arnie was exhausted. He could just run, just this once, and it would be okay.

Less than two blocks from his house, Aaron was jogging beside him. “It must be nice to have a chance to visit with an old friend.”

Arnie tried to pretend the Daybreaker wasn’t there, wasn’t close enough for him to smell the man’s infrequently-if-ever washed body and clothes, wasn’t already causing the sort of fuzziness in his mind that he had now filled two notebooks trying to understand and analyze after the fact.

“Sometimes,” Aaron said, as if Arnie had answered him, “there is a harmless pleasure in learning something about a former lover.” Arnie picked up the pace but Aaron matched him. “Allie spends many nights sitting up alone, while the president sleeps the sleep of an old, tired man.”

Arnie ran faster still; Aaron matched him.

“Doctor Yang, you are thinking, ‘How would Aaron know?’ and the answer is that we have mutual friends.”

Only a block to go. Arnie flung himself toward his front door. Aaron was at his heels. In a final, gasping burst, Arnie leapt and whirled, put his back to his front door, drew his knives.

Dark, empty street.

He waited.

Nothing.

Finally he unlocked his door, went inside, locked it behind him, lit an oil lamp.

“She doesn’t sleep with Graham anymore. Not that it’s my business, of course, but it’s interesting,” Aaron said. He was leaning back in Arnie’s leather armchair, legs crossed comfortably, bouncing one leg over his other knee. “Doctor, doctor, doctus, docta, doctum, dock ta dock ta dock.”

Arnie wanted to speak, to shout, to scream and leap to the attack. Instead he was captivated by the way Aaron’s foot moved in the lamplight, up down, up down… .

Aaron said, “Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely… time. So things have been happening. Do you know where Larry, Chris, and Jason are? Are they coming back across the Wabash?”

Arnie felt his head nodding. It was a tiny victory; he knew from having sneaked a look at Heather’s notes, on her desk, that Heather had actually instructed them to get out any way that seemed good. It wasn’t quite a lie to nod, and it wasn’t the truth either, but Arnie hoped, deep inside, it would turn out to be a lie.

More questions, as Arnie cooked a meal for Aaron.

Later, writing in his notepad, Arnie scribbled a whole page of I must never come home without the watch.

I must never come home without the watch.

I must never come home without the watch.

On and on, like Bart Simpson having a bad day, unable to think of another sentence. He took a deep breath and made himself write

I must remember—

Something about Allie.

Something hurt; he looked down to see the broken pencil, and some blood where the splinters had gone into his middle finger.

He fell asleep lying across the still-made bed, his notebook dropping to the floor beside him.

“Hi, boys, what’s new?”

Roger sat up from his nap like he’d been electrocuted; Samson, sitting guard, slowly turned his head. “Deb, you could sure scare the shit out of someone that way.”

“That’s why I did it.” Debbie Mensche was grinning. “You guys headed to Bloomington, too?”

“No need,” Samson said. “We were there two days ago and nearly got killed.”

“And we got our missions done,” Roger said. “Or mission, actually. We each had one but it was the same one, and they didn’t tell us about each other. When we met up we found out we were compartmentalized, but we’d been sent on the same job, to check out the encrypted radio station in Bloomington.”

“Well, we’re three for three—that’s the mission they sent me on, and I didn’t know anything about you all.” That’s only a slight modification of the truth, Debbie thought. “So I guess we’re done and we can go home. How did you all do?”

Dan said, “I ran the whole way here, chased and shot at all the time. By the time I shook off my pursuers long enough to go into Bloomington for a look, Roger was already there.”

Roger nodded. “Luckily they didn’t notice me, so I could take my time picking through what was left of that radio station—troops from Castle Earthstone smashed all the gear with clubs and axes, killed the techs and their slaves, and set the building on fire. So all I learned was that there had been a station here, which we already knew, and we were too late to learn anything more.”

“At first I thought none of it made any sense at all,” Samson said. “But the thing is, just destroying the radio station—and that’s weird enough in its own right, it was their own people, why didn’t they just call them back in?—anyway, to shoot everyone and smash it up like that, it wouldn’t have taken even a platoon to do it, but they sent a whole battalion. And that reminds me a lot of the way they used so many more people than they had to to catch poor old Steve. So I don’t think that wrecking the radio station was the main mission; I think they were here to be the trap for us, and for some reason we don’t know, capturing our scouts and agents is insanely important to them compared to almost anything else.”

“Well, that would explain all the running and shooting I had to do on my way in,” Debbie said. “So you had the same experience, Dan, but Roger—”

“Didn’t see a single tribal till I saw fifty of them running at me when I came out of the burned-out radio station,” Roger said.

Debbie nodded, obviously thinking. “Has either of you reported in yet? Did they issue you a radio?”

Both men shook their heads.

“Do you think the other side has any radio detectors—this side of the moon, I mean?”

“No idea. Why?” Samson asked.

“Because I’ve got a disassembled radio in my pack and there’s a message I need to send to Heather.”

“Can it wait till tonight? I’d like to get further away and better hidden from the old trouble before I invite any new.”

“Fair enough. I’ll transmit tonight, then—but we’ll have to stop early enough so I have light to work by. Meanwhile, I’m thinking, the trail and road system in Hoosier National Forest would take us all the way down to the Ohio, and the last tribals I saw were headed back north on the roads. Let’s get into some woods where there’s plenty of cover and we have way better skills than they do.”

For the first hour they were in what had been farm country with many trees along streambanks, orchards in odd corners of land, and fencerows; just one summer without planting or harvest was already making it thick with low brush and tall weeds. Twice, they spotted patrols far off, but evaded them without trouble.

Two miles into the forest, when they stopped for a water break, Roger said, “I don’t suppose you can tell me how far we have to go.”

Deb looked up in the air while playing with her fingers. “Right around a hundred and five miles walking, and call it two swimming. A hundred seven, give or take.” The men were staring at her; she shrugged. “Family knack. I used to use it to keep track of stolen cars in Portland and hidden marijuana patches up in the hills. Dad’s the real freak. He’d’ve told you to the yard .”