John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“You don’t want to tell me what it was, I guess.”

“I promised people I respected that I would not talk about it. I shouldn’t have. But not talking about it got to be a habit. I guess if I start to think he might make it to president, I’ll have to talk about it, because there’s a level where you can’t have a man with a…” His hand waved as if seeking the word in the air in front of his face. “Moral crack? Defect of the soul? Can you call it a character flaw if it only comes out a few times in decades, under the worst kind of pressure?” Giving up on the question, he said, “Well, whatever you call it, an officer shouldn’t have it and a president can’t. There’s a Buddhist proverb I like—or at least the guy I heard it from, when I was little, was Buddhist. ‘If you want something bad for you in the worst way, that’s exactly how you’ll get it.’”

“So… uh, if we’re talking flaws here, why should two guys like us, who already made huge mistakes—”

“A mistake is not what I’m talking about. Mistakes happen to everybody. And there’s no reason it shouldn’t be us; Graham has made about as many mistakes, about as big. The voters can decide which mistakes they like better. But Grayson has a rotten core to him, and the one thing a big job always finds is the core. And what he does when that happens won’t be a mistake; he’ll mean to do it, no matter what it does to everyone else, or even to himself. So here’s to honest blundering.” He raised his wineglass; Cam tapped his against it. “By the way, you’re in check.”

Crossing the lawn to Terrell Hall, Cam saw Billy Ray Salazar, and waved; the colonel waved back and came over, loudly saying, “Sir, just wanted to thank you for the weekend, I think it’s the best thing you’ve reinvented.”

Cameron said, “You’re welcome. Headed up to the lake for some fishing?”

By now his hand was in Salazar’s hand, and as they shook, without moving his lips, Salazar asked, “Anything to tell our mutual friend?” In a normal conversational tone he said, “Yeah, well, it’s protein. They’re biting. I have a smokehouse by the fishing cabin, too, so I’m laying in tons for the winter. You wait till January and you’ll wish you’d gone with me.”

“I already do,” Cameron said, adding softly, “the Red Queen is in,” before letting his volume come up for, “and I don’t even fish, but it must be great to be out in the quiet.”

“It is, and you don’t have to fish, sir. I’ve got a spare bed and you’re welcome anytime.” And softly, “I’ll communicate that. Are you taking advice?”

Murmuring at his shoes, as if too socially awkward to accept a friendly invitation (not a hard thing for him to fake), Cam said, “I already know it’s dangerous, if it fails everything will unravel, and the longer I delay the worse it’ll get.”

“That’s all the advice I had. I’ll be on the line to our friend early tomorrow,” Salazar said quietly. “Really. I wish you’d reconsider, and I’m inviting you because I like your company. Though if it means you’ll come, I promise to do some career-booster upsuckage too.”

Cam shook his head. “Not this time.”

“Well, have a good weekend in town then, sir.”

Walking away, Salazar noted that they’d managed to hit the center of a big open space, more than enough protection because the other side didn’t have any surviving long-range directional mikes.

As he saddled up, he thought, I could set up and transmit tonight, then sleep in tomorrow. I haven’t seen any reports that anyone has even noticed a sporadic beep-radio transmission from outside town yet, let alone put direction finding on it. But this would be a hell of a time for a first. Stay on the path, even when no one is watching.

The big cache of canned goods came to them at the end of a real run of good luck. They had paddled and poled for a few days, then spent three tiring days walking along the bank, two men each towing a canoe, the third man keeping the lines clear, pushing the canoes out from the bank with a pole, doing much of the observing, and staying alert against attack. They had not expected to be able to keep the canoes all the way to Oneida Lake; once they reached the western lake port of Brewerton, though, a makeshift sail on each canoe had been enough to carry them all the way across the lake to Sylvan Beach before 3 p.m., traveling farther in half a day than they had just done in three.

A big cache of canned goods in an empty, clean house with a woodstove was an opportunity to enjoy warmth and food, and a chance to mend, clean, and thoroughly dry everything; they decided to lay over for at least a day.

When they rose, at least half a foot of fresh snow covered the ground. More was still coming down—big, wet, soft flakes that stuck to everything and turned to slush at a breath. They had stashed the canoes under a pier and carried everything up into the house, and the previous occupants had left behind a large pile of firewood, some oil candles, and three big cans of olive oil that burned in a smudgy and dirty way in oil candles with cloth wicks.

Everything was clean and fixed up by early afternoon. They decided to eat another couple of big meals here and sleep warm for one more night, especially since the coming descent of the Mohawk was likely to be rough.

Larry had reports to write, Chris had his diary and his articles, but for Jason, the shelves held no paper books or magazines, no musical instruments, not even a Parcheesi set. One large cabinet drooled a brown jelly that had probably once contained millions of songs, movies, books, games, and so forth, but now it was too gooey even to make decent modeling clay.

Jason pulled on his coat and went to look for a bookstore or library somewhere. Snow was falling thick and fast; the gray half-light swallowed up the house behind him in less than two blocks. He turned right as he came into the business district, five blocks from the house by his careful count. Four blocks later, he found a senior center, and broke in at the back door.

The building was lighted only by high windows, but he could make out the mummified remains in chairs around the big tables, on cots along the walls, or on rotted blankets. Massive-dose radiation sickness is horrible but quick. Lumpy fans of crusted gunk lay by the mouths and anuses of most of the mummies. No animals had survived to come in here, and the windows were unbroken, so the dead lay where they had died; only the first few had been lined up in a storage room, covered with sheets.

Two mummies in a corner were holding hands with a cup beside them; the sitting one must have been bringing water for the lying one. He hoped they’d both lost consciousness at the same time.

A back room with immense windows and the remains of several couches and armchairs contained shelves of military history; the old-fashioned kind of chick books, where it was always just the turn of the century, everybody hooked up constantly, and everyone was always about to have a great career; bios of forgotten actors, singers, and athletes; and some of the classics. Jason pocketed half a dozen paperbacks, figuring Chris and Larry might want to read and the added weight wouldn’t be much if they did manage to keep the canoes all the way down the Mohawk.

Shadows passed by the window. Silently Jason took one long step backwards into the arched doorway of an open bathroom, letting the darkness hide him. Huddled human forms, hugging themselves and stumbling, wrapped in blankets over multiple sweaters and hoodies, passed by the window in rows six abreast, with an armed guard every eighth row; the guards wore heavy red wool coats and earflap hats, and carried steel yardsticks, which they sometimes swung full force against the backs of the stumbling slaves. For more than twenty minutes, he watched an army of wraiths in rags go by, herded by these frightening parodies of hunters.