John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

You come to me as hunters, but I will make you hunters of men, he misquoted to himself. It did not seem funny.

Counting rows, Jason guessed that about three thousand blanket-wrapped slaves and just over a hundred guards passed by, southward, along the edge of the lake, with no sound except when a guard cursed or hit a slave. After the slaves, a loose formation of about three hundred tribal soldiers passed by, followed by twenty rulers or chiefs or whatever they called themselves, another group of a hundred soldiers, and ten minutes later, a rearguard of about fifty soldiers, weapons at ready, moving as if they expected trouble.

Jason timed off an hour by his watch before emerging to look at their tracks.

Their trail bent around the lake, away from the house where Chris and Larry were; no one had turned off where Jason’s faint tracks came in. Didn’t see them or didn’t care, I guess, and the fire probably wasn’t putting out any smoke you could see through the falling snow. Taking a roundabout way, wading briefly along the icy canal, he finally reached the little house just as the sun was setting. The snow was still falling.

They banked the fire and spread his clothes and moccasins before it. When Larry awakened Jason for his watch, his clothes were dry but no longer warm.

It was still snowing heavily. They’d found kids’ sleds hanging in the attic space, and each of them pulled a sled-load of canned goods. Their muscles were already aching by the time they had tossed the sleds in and loaded and launched the canoes, paddling along the lakeshore to the canal entrance; slush an inch thick floated on the lake’s surface, and on the canal.

All that day, they paddled to each successive lock dam, unloaded and portaged the canoes, sledded their packs and supplies down to the canoes, and resumed paddling; Jason guessed they were spending twice as much time portaging as paddling, but in the empty, dead country around them, they didn’t want to abandon the supplies that only the canoes could carry.

It was still snowing as it began to get dark, less than twenty miles beyond Oneida Lake. At the public access where they stopped, Larry said, “Now that we know whole armies of Daybreakers might come by, I don’t think we can risk a fire tonight.”

They pulled the two canoes almost face-to-face on a ground cloth, threw a camo tarp and some loose brush over the top, and crawled under to wolf down a can of beans and a can of salmon each; huddled as closely as they could, they went to sleep.

Dawn crept under the canoes, and the men fidgeted, waking each other. The sun was an orange disk through the morning fog. They knocked snow off a picnic table, and risking a small fire in a grill, they fried Spam, heated canned potatoes and green beans, and warmed water from the hand pump to mix with condensed tomato soup.

“I hate to admit how good this is,” Jason said.

Larry rose from the table. “That well water is probably cleaner than anything we’ve seen in a while, and this fire will last a while; let’s dump our old containers, and boil enough water to refill them with clean, hot water, and then, unless you all want to do a little yoga or maybe linger over the sports page, I think there’s not much to do but get going.”

When they pushed off and paddled eastward the fog on the canal was so thick that they could not see the banks twenty feet away. Later that morning, the fog turned suddenly golden as the sun broke through. Not long after they slipped out of the rapidly dispersing fog. In front of them, dead trees clawed at the sky beyond the crooked silhouettes of burned buildings, and three naked bodies dangled by their necks from a pedestrian bridge, on which someone had painted

When Jeffrey Grayson stepped out onto his porch to inspect the day, it was a fine Georgia autumn, fit to make a man glad he lived here. Now if the Friday meeting of the Council were canceled, he could walk in the gardens with Jenny, take a long lunch outside, and spend the afternoon in bed. So when he had bathed, shaved, and put on his uniform, he still hung around for an extra moment, talking to Jenny, giving a cancellation one last chance to reach him, and just enjoying being with her. And maybe Reverend Whilmire had a point about the power of prayer, because just as Grayson put some extra time and effort into kissing Jenny at the door, a loud knock made them both jump.

Grayson tugged his uniform straight, and Jenny brushed his hair tenderly with her hand. When he opened the door, the messenger saluted and held out a note.

Grayson returned the salute, watched the man go, and tore open and read the note while standing in the open doorway. “Your father needs to confer with Reverend Peet, and Cameron Nguyen-Peters wants to get some more reports in before the Council meeting. Postponed till Monday!” He closed the door softly behind him and whooped like a loon.

Jenny winked, said, “Find something to kill five minutes,” and darted into their bedroom.

She emerged in a tight white dress with pink pumps. “Baby, I’m ready to take a walk in the gardens,” she said. “Harness up the trap.”

Grayson was proud that he’d learned to drive a one-horse trap just for fun, well before Daybreak, and Ironside had been his harness-horse for a couple of years before. It had always seemed so satisfying, more so once Jenny had entered his life. As they rolled through the brilliant green of the fields with Ironside’s hooves clopping away, Grayson thought any man who saw him with this carriage and this girl must be dying of envy.

They had gone more than a mile, about halfway to the former State Botanical Garden of Georgia, when he thought to ask, “Jenny-baby, how did you know this was what I most wanted to do in the whole world?”

“You were hanging around the house instead of charging off to your meeting, honey, it’s a beautiful day, and mornings like this are your favorite lead-in to afternoons in bed.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re perfect, Jenny?”

“You, almost every day. Keep it that way, ’kay, baby?” She moved to put her leg against his. “Well, I’m glad everyone is busy figuring things out among themselves, so you don’t have to be caught in the middle.”

“You mean between your father and Cam? They don’t like each other but they’ll both keep their bargains.”

“Daddy has been known to re-interpret what the original bargain was, and that weird little man has too. I wish you were a teensy bit more suspicious of him.”

“I don’t like him much either,” Grayson said, “but at the moment, he’s a stepping stone to the presidency, and I don’t see any reason to stomp on him.”

“Just watch that that stone doesn’t turn under you.” Workers on the roadside waved and yelled; Jenny turned to return the wave in a big, enthusiastic, cheerleader style. She sat back down and said, “Baby, you have to learn that you always at least give them a nod and a wave.”

“You were saying, about Cam—”

“I just can’t see what that weird little man really wants.”

“He’s probably the most honorable, principled guy I know,” Grayson said. “If he’s sure he’s right, you can’t change him or buy him or scare him, all you can do is kill him.”

“Are you afraid you might have to kill him?”

“I won’t want to. He’s been pretty straight with me even though we don’t agree. And our interests overlap. He wants there to be a president again—and a Congress and a Supreme Court and I suppose a Department of Transportation—and I want to be that president.”