John Barnes - Directive 51

Lenny was laughing by that time, and said, “Is it really so terribly obvious how insecure I am?”

“They’re detecting it with obsolete barometers in Maine, dude.”

He kissed her again. Well, at least he kisses like the question is settled.

Kai-Anne hadn’t slept very much that night; the back yard was warm enough with her sweatsuit and blankets, but she’d kept waking up to find Greg still gazing up at the sky. Then she’d rub his neck and shoulders, he’d say he loved her, she’d kiss his forehead like she was tucking Bryan in, and then he’d tell her to go back to sleep. She wasn’t sure how many times she did that before dawn; three or four maybe.

Just as the sun was coming up, he turned, hugged her, and said, “I think I can sleep now. Let’s go inside.”

“What do you think about while you’re watching the sky?” she asked, as they dragged their blankets and pillows back into the house.

“Same as always. That the stars are far away and don’t seem to be interested in us. That there’s got to be a better way than killing people. And that I’m glad I’ve got you and Harris, Chloe, and Bryan. Sometime after the sun comes up, it always makes enough sense for me to sleep.”

“Yeah. I guess I can see how that would work.”

They didn’t bother making the bed; they just stretched out and dragged the blankets, still damp from the yard, over themselves, and kept warm by holding each other.

The trucker had been working his satellite two-way connections, and Jason had been checking the Internet, and all the news was bad. “Buddy,” the trucker said, “I hate to tell a man what to do but if I was you I’d get a haircut and shave real soon.”

“Planning on it,” Jason said.

All over the countrythere were reports of vigilante actions;people discovered their cars were dead, their kitchens were not working, the food in their refrigerators was spoiling—in short, that everything was going wrong—and remembered the long-haired guy down the street who nagged them about recycling, or the girl in the long skirt at the coffeehouse who always gave them a little lecture about using sugar instead of organic honey in their morning latte. People like to have someone to be angry with when there are too many small annoyances in life, and the first day of Daybreak comprised myriad small annoyances for which the Daybreakers really were responsible. Most of the people they were catching were not Daybreakers, but punching out the sanctimonious Green neighbor, or humiliating the preachy coworker, were pleasures not to be missed on a day so full of irritation.

“Hey,” the trucker said, and turned up the volume.

The news from Tres Piedras was that the local people had thought they had found a nest of Daybreakers outside town, and the sheriff had declared that he didn’t have the resources to deal with the situation. There weren’t many details but a trucker driving through town had said he’d seen a mob with guns heading up the hill.

Jason knew he must look sick, but he hoped it would look like he was shocked at the news of violence rather than terrified for his friends and Beth. Kindly, the trucker said, “Buddy, if you want, you can stay in the truck—I’m going right through and we’ll go all the way to Phoenix if the tires hold. Or if you really have to be there, maybe we should let you out someplace where you can walk?”

“I know a trailhead on the highway near town,” Jason said, feeling his mouth moving as if it belonged to someone else. “You can drop me there, and I can walk in, no prob, there’s a trail right to the public park.” But I’ll take the one that goes uphill. Five and a half miles and it’s kind of a climb to the commune, but maybe I won’t be too late.

Tiff was shaking him. “Honey, you gotta wake up, I’m sorry, it’s Teddy.”

Zach sat up in bed. “What’s wrong?”

“His asthma’s worse than I’ve ever heard it, and the inhaler—” She held it out to him; the plastic cartridge had ruptured; it stank like sour milk. “All our crates of them, they’re all bursting and they all smell wrong—”

“That biote wasn’t one of mine,” he said, stupidly, feeling like Lord, Lord, if it can just not be my fault… He started getting dressed. “The Walgreens we have the prescription at is twenty-four-hour, phone them and—”

“No phone. Our landline is down, and on the cell the store’s line just comes back with a busy—”

Louder gasping from Teddy’s room. Tiff rushed back to him; Zach grabbed his wallet and keys.

In the freezing early mountain morning he thought, Please start, please please start, please still have your tires—

He blessed the old thing a thousand times in his head as it started on the first try, and drove carefully, not sure what might happen if he pushed it. At Walgreens, he bought five inhalers—the legal maximum—and they all looked all right. On his way home, he used the cell to tell Tiff to scour the medicine cabinet with Drano and rubbing alcohol.

Harold Cheiron, Zach’s across-the-street neighbor, was waiting in the driveway for him, not letting him pull in—and holding a deer rifle. Something moved in his rearview—Cheiron’s wife with a shotgun.

Then he saw that on either side of him were that couple from down the street—what were their names?—he with a bat, she with a pistol, all of them looking ready to use them.

Cheiron gestured for Zach to roll down the window. “So where are you coming back from?”

“My—my son Teddy, I had to go out and get asthma medicine for him, what’s this about? I have the medicine here—” He held up the Walgreens bag.

Cheiron advanced to the car window and looked at it. “I’ll give this to your wife. You wait here.”

Harold returned and brought Tiff, who was holding Teddy (breathing easily now), and leading Noah by the hand; he was fresh from sleep, dragging his stuffed dog with him.

“She was scrubbing down her medicine cabinet,” Harold said, “like trying to get rid of some kind of germs or something, and inside, they have boxes and boxes of inhalers, which have all rotted, and he’s got a neat little workshop down there where he was building some kind of electronic gadget, it looks like, probably a lot of them, to judge by all the parts he had and the little jigs and marked breadboards. And he came in at about four thirty yesterday morning. And their walls are practically papered with The Earth Is The Lord’s posters. Now, on Good Morning America , they said the things to watch out for were people who came and went at unusual hours yesterday, people whose hobbies seemed to include home laboratories, Green types, and people who seemed to be having troubles with weird germs. I vote that this family ought to go talk to the sheriff; any other votes?”

It was unanimous; Zach and Tiff didn’t get votes. Shortly they were all piled into the back of Cheiron’s panel truck, rolling slowly through the street. Cheiron’s wife drove; Cheiron sat, the shotgun held across his chest, in back with Zach and his family. “You’re lucky we like you around here, and you have kids we’d rather not hurt,” Cheiron said to them, apropos of nothing. “They’re asking people to go to the cops with suspected Daybreakers but there’s all kinds of stories about people taking the law into their own hands. Naturally since it’s mainstream media reporting, they’re worrying more about vigilantes getting out of hand than about what you Daybreak bastards have already done.”