John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

They’d been able to shake the fitful and sporadic pursuit within a mile or two each time. Apparently word was out that three men traveling together were supposed to be caught, but without Castle Earthstone soldiers standing over them, most tribes didn’t see it as a high priority, especially not if it involved going into centers of larger towns, where the tribes seemed to fear disease, feral dog packs, or perhaps ghosts.

“So,” Chris said, “on the map, anyway, the short way around the lake from here is the north shore. Shall we keep going that way? I’d rather camp here than run into a tribe close to dark.”

Larry said, “Let’s see if we can break into that lighthouse and get a long view.”

The sign in front said ROTARY LIGHT HOUSE. “But I don’t see how it could rotate,” Jason said.

Larry laughed. “There used to be a service club—sort of like a fraternity for grownups that did good things—called the Rotary Club, and my old man was in it. God, I wish I had him here to hear you say that.”

Someone had been there before them; the broken door lay on the pavement. From the top of the tower, about three storeys high, they could see that mud stretched to the eastern horizon, broken up by ponds where the water had been deeper. Grass was coming in around the edge, and big flocks of ducks and geese were on the ponds.

In the open country south of the drained lake, leaves were the thousands of colors of an eastern forest in fall; brush was spreading out of the small woods, fencerows, and creek bottoms into the long grass. Jason said, “This is sort of what we Daybreak people were trying for. The fields are back to meadows, really, already, and there’s going to be prairie grass, and bushes, and then the trees will grow tall enough to choke out the undergrowth, and you’ll have the old forest back.”

“It would look real pretty,” Chris observed, “if we didn’t know it was a graveyard for tens of millions of people.”

They walked around to the southwest side of the tower, and saw a great ravine where the maps had shown none, stretching to the horizon.

“Well,” Larry said, “that certainly explains where the water went. I guess we should be good scientistificalable explorers and all, and go take a look.”

“Scientistificalable?” Jason asked.

“Add more syllables, gain more authority. First rule of bureaucratic prose.”

“You know, they could have done this with one big bomb on Daybreak day,” Chris said. “Just loaded it into a pleasure boat, sunk it next to the dam, blown it off. Nobody would have been searching or stopping them.”

“This accomplished more of what they were trying to do,” Larry said. “Look how they did it—a tunnel five or ten feet below the lake bottom, so that the water running through would erode the embankment and cut a really deep hole in a hurry. All those graves. Four whipping posts. Shovels and picks just left here when they were done. The point of it was to work a few hundred people to death, besides making it much harder to restore that lake, which means nobody can reopen this canal for a long, long time.”

“Was the canal open before?” Jason asked.

“No. But we’re back to 1800s tech, and that’s what this was. Now if we want the canal, we’ll have to do all that pick and shovel work all over again.” Larry looked over the field where so many bodies had already come to the surface from their shallow graves. “Part of making sure the Lost Quarter stays lost.”

“But why?” Jason asked. “I mean, couldn’t they do the same thing with half the killing?”

“Once you’ve beaten starving people to make them dig a tunnel they’ll drown in, you’re committed .” Chris looked out to the west, across the field of human bones and the muddy gouge through the flat land, to the setting sun, huge and bloody with the soot of so many burned cities. “It’s just the small, personal version of the big picture. Anyway, it’ll be dark soon. We’d better camp for the night, and I’d rather not do it here.”

“Let’s head back to the lighthouse,” Larry said. “It has a roof and it’s easy to defend. But when you’re doing sentry duty and have to look this way, no brooding , okay? Keep telling yourself it’s just mud in the moonlight, and that’s all it is.”

It was so good to be home and running things again. Allison Sok Banh loved the feel of her familiar desk chair, loved the idea that she was working late at night, loved it all. Tonight it had been easy for her to tuck Graham in and avoid his perpetually attempted conversation about the relationship. He’d passed out at the moment of mattress touchdown.

Allie had Lyle throw an extra bucket of coal into the fire under the hot water tank. From the locked steel box at the back of her bedroom closet, she took pre-Daybreak lavender Castile soap and Wild Turkey, plus Kona that Lisa Fanchion had given her in appreciation of the tax exemption on coffee.

Her scalding shower was at least five times as long as the ration, and in no way “cool and comfortable” as Graham Weisbrod’s housekeeping directive had specified, but more along the lines of “sinfully decadent.”

So bizarre. Before, she’d never really understood that Graham was serious about this good-gov shit. Allie’s family had “dove ourselves neck-deep in politics as soon as we ditched the boat and got the vote,” she remembered Uncle Sam saying, literally while he was teaching her to work the cash register. “Before you buy a business, buy the cop and the judge so you can keep it, Allie.”

Snug in her thick terry bathrobe, she drizzled the scarce and wonderful bourbon into the pot of Kona, poured a cup, and settled in to work. The drink burned down her throat like hot, slick ebony inlaid with gold; she drew the fumes from the cup into her nose, sighed, and reached for the first memo.

“So the summit was aborted,” Mr. Darcage said. “And you got to see your ex, and, I should guess, impress him. How fortunate all around.”

She put her feet down abruptly, crossing her legs under the desk and tugging at her robe. Who the fuck lets him in? Lyle? Gotta know! “Ever think about knocking or maybe showing up in regular hours?”

“My employers would be delighted if you’d meet with me openly and regularly; the tribes crave recognition.” He stepped out of the dim shadows in the corner of the office; in the flaring lamplight he seemed more gaunt, his face more lined, almost ancient, but his precisely geometric beard and hair were black as pitch. His eyes bulged slightly, his lips were too thick, and there was a patch of old acne scarring along one sideburn.

“That’s not what I meant. And you know it.” She held her robe closed with one hand, as if afraid it might pop open; her other hand reached under her desk, seeking the pistol—

The space was empty.

Darcage set the pistol down on the desk in front of her. “I don’t want you to keep loaded guns around.”

“I do many things you don’t want me to.”

“You think you do things I don’t want you to. You don’t ask , often enough, what I want you to do.” He gestured toward the gun lying on the desk. “That’s why I had to unload the gun for you. I shouldn’t have to do that. I shouldn’t have to do that for you.”

His repetition was annoying her, and she said, “I get it.”

“Of course you do.”

“Why did you come here and why am I not throwing you out?” she asked, as much to herself as to him. He sat with one leg running along the edge of her desk, curled against the other, a supported flamingo, and leaned slightly forward, but did not speak. I could suddenly bite his nose and it would serve him right. I wonder if he’s trying to see down my robe. She resisted the urge to look down or yank it closed; can’t let him know he’s bothering me . Come on, talk, asshole. This silent act is creeping me out. “You work hard at telling me what I don’t want.”