John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“That’s because you’re not always clear about what you do want. Don’t you want to make things run smoothly? Don’t you want all the good relations you can possibly get?”

I know what I don’t want: to be caught in just my bathrobe, here in the middle of the night, with contraband bribes on my desk and what’s obviously a Daybreaker agent alone with me. “What did you have in mind?”

The silence lay in the room like a dead cow on the floor, too big to go around, impossible to climb over without admitting that there was something in your way. The lamplight from her desk lamp flickered and danced. Little kid campfire trick, Allie thought, wishing she could disdain it. Shine light up on a face from underneath and it looks scary.

“Don’t worry about seeing Doctor Yang again; he is on the right side and more attuned to your needs than you might think. In fact, he’d like to hear from you; why don’t you write him a letter?”

The light flickered slightly. She looked up. He wasn’t there. Her coffee was now too cool, anyway, the Wild Turkey wasted, the Kona wasted, and she felt sad and lonely. Maybe she’d go down to the main bedroom and curl up with Graham tonight; he always liked it when she did.

She poured her pitcher of Turkey and Kona down the sink, rinsed everything thoroughly, blew out the lamp, and took the back stairs passage down to the main presidential suite.

Darcage had not concealed that Daybreak was more interested in Arnie than they were in her. It bothered her; she didn’t like being second to anybody.

Larry handed Jason a GPO brochure-map from the 1990s, Scenic Waterways of Ohio and Indiana . “Look up Wapakoneta.”

“I know that town name for some reason.”

“Yeah, you do, but it’s not the reason I’m interested in.”

“Just look up ,” Chris said, pointing to the landmark sign forty yards down the road. It was like ten thousand other historic-landmark signs that appeared outside almost every small town in the Midwest, except that this one said:

“I’d forgotten that, Larry. Probably hadn’t thought about it since fifth-grade American history. Crap,” Chris said, an odd, desperate strain in his voice. “I remember when the moon was a good thing. My dad watched the landing on TV when he was a little kid, I guess along with everybody, and… I don’t know, I guess you had to be in that generation, but to a lot of people, it meant a lot. Now… we look up at the moon, and we’re scared .”

Larry sighed. “Yeah, but what I wanted Jason to read was this.” He pointed at the old map-guide.

Jason read aloud. “ The Auglaize River is canoeable from Wapakoneta, a small town pronounced Wop Ock Kuh Net Uh. (Many Ohioans shorten it to Wapak, pronounced Woppock.) The Wapakoneta Canoe Trek Company, just downstream of the Hamilton Street Dam, has canoes and kayaks for rent from mid-June to mid-October. May not be accessible in low-water years. Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s rained like a real booger for an hour or two almost every day since we landed. And, okay, Larry, I see where you’re going with your idea. It says, The Auglaize River flows north to the Maumee at Defiance, down which canoes can continue nearly to Toledo. ”

“Unh-hunh, and Toledo’s a port on Lake Erie, and there are Provi garrisons on the western side of Lake Erie—Put-in-Bay, Kelleys Island, Port Clinton, and Sandusky.”

“You’re figuring that if we can get canoes—”

“ Never walk when you can ride , son, stay in gummint service and you’ll learn that’s a rule.” Larry grinned. “Along with always patronize anybody with less time-in-grade than you have . Anyway, that’s my thought. And looking up ahead, at least it looks like the town hasn’t been burned.”

In the warm midday sun, intact roofs peeked through the bright red and orange leaves. Larry said, “This road’s as good as any for going into the town, I guess. That little thumbnail map seems to show Hamilton Street, and the Auglaize River, right in the middle of town.”

A mile farther on, a sign pointed off to Auglaize Street. “You don’t suppose they put Auglaize Street anywhere near the Auglaize River?” Larry said. “It leads into town, anyway.”

Half an hour later, after passing a number of intact but empty houses, Jason said, “Weird. The tribals usually burn towns on general principles. But I haven’t seen a burned house, or any sign of fighting, or even any human remains.”

“But if this place were well-defended,” Chris said, “you’d think we’d have met a patrol or run into a sentry by now.”

Beyond an overgrown cemetery, a wide, placid stream, perhaps a hundred feet across, appeared below them.

“All right, found the river,” Larry said.

In town, most of the big old twentieth-century frame houses and little nondescript brick storefronts still had all their glass; where they did not, they were boarded up. No doors were broken down. Larry said, “This feels like we walked into a Ray Bradbury story.”

“Who are you?” a voice asked.

They formed up into a triangle with their backs together.

“I’m waiting,” the voice said.

Larry shrugged slightly. “We are Federal agents reconnoitering this area for the Reconstruction Research Center.”

“Please wait here and be comfortable. You are among friends. I must alert other people. It may be fifteen minutes before anyone else contacts you.”

“We can wait that long,” Larry said, slipping his pack off and sitting on it.

There was no answer; apparently the mysterious voice’s owner had gone off on his errand—her errand?

“What do you think?” Chris asked, his voice barely a murmur, pointing his face down into the ground between his feet to hide his lips.

Jason muttered, “I think that was a kid’s voice, reading from a card.”

“I’m trying not to think,” Larry said. “Whatever’s here, it’s not like anything else we’ve found. Did you both notice, no cars? Not even the muck from the rotted tires?”

“Yeah, and the boarded windows that must have gotten broke,” Chris said, “they’ve swept up the glass around them.”

Jason looked around. “They’re not tribals. No downed wires, no wrecked refugee carts, so many things that just aren’t here.”

Larry nodded. “So often what’s not there is what police work depends on.”

“News reporting too,” Chris said. “Congratulations, Padwan Jason, you have achieved the level of consciousness in which old poops pat you on the head.”

Jason grinned. “My head lives to be patted, oh master. So who is here? The tribe of the Extremely Tidy People?”

“Close, but not quite,” a deeper voice said, seemingly from nowhere.

Larry said, “You’re not as invisible as the first person was. Part of your shadow is visible just beyond the corner of the laundromat. Does that mean we get six more weeks of winter?”

High-pitched laughter broke out all around them.

The deeper voice joined it. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s much point in keeping this up. Are you guys from Pueblo?”

“That’s where we started from but it was a while ago,” Larry said. “I’m Federal Agent Larry Mensche, mission commander; we’ll be reporting back to RRC eventually. My younger teammate here is Jason Nemarec, and the big bear of a guy is Chris Manckiewicz, who you might remember from when there was net and television—”