John Barnes - Daybreak Zero

“Life insurance?”

“Sort of. More like revenge insurance. I don’t think anyone will fuck with me successfully, but if they do, I want something or someone to be on their tail. You strike me as the type that doesn’t give up a pursuit, Mister Carlucci.”

Returning to his suite, Harrison Castro reflected that if Carlucci had asked, he’d probably have admitted the surprising truth: aside from his rage at having a bunch of mind-controlled bush hippies trying to order him around, aside from finally grasping that the tribes would always be more dangerous to him than the Federal government, aside from his unwillingness to see people he despised slaughter people he respected, there was an overriding consideration: he had discovered that he didn’t want to overthrow the Constitution, or put the Feds out of business, or anything else he’d been saying he wanted since… jeez, since the Clinton Administration. Pure case of being careful what you wish for.

He just needed to change his shirt before his meeting with his tech advisors; he knew his perfect valet would have everything laid out on the bed.

Inside his suite, he opened the bedroom door and found his valet lying on his back, blood pooling around him, his throat slashed open. He had half a moment to think not again and it can’t be as the bag of feathers went over his head, and he did manage to kick his opponent in the shin this time, and shoulder him against the wall, but neither made the man— the same one? Castro wondered, through the rising panic of not being able to get enough air—neither made him—let go.

Let go. Castro fought the man, his grip, the bag, everything, with all he had, but the man was forcing Castro’s hands behind his back. Castro twisted and turned, jumped and jerked, but nothing freed him. It was even more impossible to breathe in here than it had been last time, and he was swiftly running out of air. Tasting bitter shame, he tapped the man, signaling that he would talk.

The man grabbed his little fingers and pressed them the wrong way. Castro tried to gasp for air, involuntarily, and only pulled in a few feathers that set him trying to cough with air that he didn’t have. The terrible pressure on his wrists drove him forward, and then to the side, stumbling on something slick.

His bound hands were forced upward behind him, and the cuffs were tied to something.

He knew where he was, now, but it did him no good.

His bound hands were tied to the showerhead behind him. The man turned the shower on, all the way hot. Scalding water poured over and through the cloth bag, into the feathers, blocking his last fresh air; smothering, drowning, and cooking him in the water, steam, and feathers; turning his cough into wracking spasms. The feathers held the hot water against his scalp and face, burning the soft flesh deep red. After far too long the darkness of the bag merged into the darkness of his mind.

The little park where the Mohawk split off from the Erie Canal had a nice old log building. A small sign told them where to call to rent it; a bronze plaque said

Below that, in smaller letters, there was a list of wars, beginning with Vietnam and running up through Iran II. “Folks were patriotic out here,” Chris observed. “Looks like they didn’t get anyone from Grenada, Bosnia, or Guyana, though.”

“Maybe those were the vets that just weren’t joiners,” Larry said. “Wonder if the chimney’s clean enough to chance a fire?” He went to the fireplace and peered upward. “Fresh swept. Figures. Every vet’s group I was ever in, some super-responsible volunteer would do something or other perfectly. I don’t know his name but I can picture some quiet guy who just decided the vet’s lodge chimney would get swept every fall.” A shadow crossed his face. “We lost a few of those in every little town.”

Jason nodded. “Along with great scoutmasters and first-rate piano teachers and people who repainted their city halls or changed the flowers in the public gardens. And we also lost whole cities full of them. But if I let my Daybreak mind slip back into my head, I see them as fat self-satisfied slobs who needed to die for thinking that all that stuff they tried to do was important, when only our duty to the Earth really matters. In one of my poems I wrote

“For all I know they’re still quoting it, and the goal is to be quoting it when no one knows who Auden was, or what a car was.”

Chris shrugged. “You never know what words will live, if any. More than one writer has written the war cry of his deadliest enemy.”

“Was that a poem? Are you quoting something?”

“No, I’m just tired, which makes me melodramatic. Part of why I’d rather work on paper—later, when I’m not tired, I take squishy crap like that out and replace it with rock-hard bare-boned facts. Anyway, let’s start that fire and block off the windows while we still have light to do it.”

“Volunteering for fire duty: Chris Manckiewicz,” Larry said. “Jason, let’s find towels or something around to cover those windows with. Once Chris has his fire going, we’ll need to see how much smoke it sends up, but right now there’s enough wind to shred it before it goes too high.”

The sun had not quite set when they were snug inside. Hot Spam and beans, eaten at a table, tasted much better than the cold version under a canoe. Sweet potatoes cooked in the opened can was very nearly a real dessert. After dinner, Larry spread out the maps to show them the path. “From here on out it’s down the Mohawk, and the descent is steep. Busted dams, washed out levees, fallen bridges, God knows what. It won’t be rafting the Colorado, exactly, but it’s going to be a rougher ride than anything we’ve done so far.”

They all had another round of warm food, taking turns reading aloud from the copy of Nostromo that Jason had brought from the senior center. Jason and Larry sacked out close to the fire, and Chris took the first watch, scribbling in his pad, trying to explain just how dead and empty it was up here, wondering how many synonyms for “nothing,” “lost,” and “gone” there were, and if they’d be enough.

There was no hope of keeping it secret in the relaxed discipline of an extremely prolonged voyage. CVN-77, George HW Bush , the last remaining nuclear carrier in the Navy and on Earth, had always been like a floating small town, and now it was a floating small town with nanoswarm. Everyone knew that at least a day before it was official.

Yet until the captain made the announcement, in the crew’s hearts the great ship was not really walking dead, even though everyone knew that all the carriers which had come down with nanoswarm, no matter how hard their crews had worked to save them, had been dead in less than a month.

When he emerged and stood on the dais before the assembled crew, many were already crying. He braced himself and said the key word first, afraid he might not be able to say any more before breaking down himself: “Savannah. We’re going home to Savannah.”