Daybreak Zero (21 page)

EIGHT:

THE DOCTOR PUNCHED MY VEIN

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. THE FORMER RIVERSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH, IN THE FORMER MONTEZUMA, INDIANA. 11:45 PM EST. SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2025.

They unblindfolded Steve Ecco to walk him through the pileup of wrecked cars at one end of Reeder Park. He knew where he was because the memorial statue for the Second Iran War was so distinctive that Ecco had memorized it as a landmark, since it was less than a mile and a half from the still-intact US 36 bridge.

He smelled the river and the trees.
Oh, crap, crap, crap if I could just get loose and run at my old pace, if they didn’t have any guards on that bridge, I could be on my way home; plenty of woods on the other side, all I’d have to do is follow the highway and turn south of the burned-out zone—

The stylized cross on this big, new, glass-and-steel building meant it was a church. Big hands pushed him through the doorway, then toppled him from the top of the stairs down into the basement. He wasn’t able to swing his head into harm’s way this time either; all he got was a couple more bruises on his chest and shoulder.

The guard at the bottom kicked him on the tailbone, hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to do much damage. His legs were already numb, and they didn’t bother asking him to stand; they just jerked him to his feet and threw him onto an old mattress.

Two men came in. The older, heavyset one had a huge bushy white beard; the younger, slimmer one was the sort of nondescript guy that used to work at some store you went to now and then, whose appearance you couldn’t remember by the time you were back in the parking lot.

Bushy White Beard was addressed as “Lord Karl.” Apparently Steve was important enough for the lord and his number one henchman to deal with personally. He did his best to collect his thoughts while the two men had a late supper brought in, and ate it, leaving him tied, facedown, and hungry. He was also desperate to urinate, and the diarrhea from the bad food and tainted water of the last couple of days was worsening.

He was startled to realize he’d fallen asleep, and at first he couldn’t recognize what he was feeling; then he realized someone was cutting away the bonds on his wrists and elbows.

They flung his arms out to the sides, and flipped him over. Karl and his man stood over him, and Karl said, “Show him, Robert.”

The man bent, grabbed Ecco’s hand, and laid it on the floor, pinning it with his foot, grinding with agonizing force on flesh just beginning to revive from numbness. He grasped Ecco’s thumb with a pair of pliers, raised a hammer, and smashed the thumb with it, again and again; Ecco screamed at the first blow, struggling to pull his hand back, and a strong guard pinned his head to the floor, holding his face toward where Robert was smashing at his thumb, pulling his eyelids open, forcing Ecco to watch.

The battering went on until Robert said, “It’s about all fell off now.”

“Now,” Lord Karl said, as Ecco gasped and sobbed, “that was just to explain to you what kinds of things we do if people don’t answer questions. So you probably will want to establish a basis of trust, by telling us everything you can, as quickly as you can.”

He’d been ordered to spill everything, anyway, if he was tortured; Heather had specifically said,
You don’t know a thing that could really be of any use to the enemy. Trade everything about us to save your ass, Steve—no heroics if you’re captured. Spill your guts, right away.

They hadn’t even asked first.

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Karl said, “Tell us the name of everyone who works for the RRC, what they do, and describe everything about them you know. Everything. Start with that big fat O’Grainne bitch.”

He described Heather head to foot, told them what her office looked like, gave them directions for finding her window and door in the Pueblo Courthouse, dragged out everything he could remember about her. Every so often Karl would say, “Got that?” and a young woman’s voice would read back everything he had said, strangely verbatim, including the places where he stammered and babbled frantically. Her voice was flat, occasionally noting
prisoner gasped for breath
,
prisoner sobbed
, and, one time, reading back a passage when Karl had impatiently stamped on his ruined hand,
prisoner screamed here
.

After her last little reading, Lord Karl said, “I’m sleepy. Got the solder?”

They poured the hot, silvery liquid over the stump of his thumb, and let his hand go; he hurt his other hand and chest trying to clutch the burned, shredded flesh to himself, as if he could comfort it.

Lord Karl said, “Robert, let’s sleep in tomorrow; we’ll start again after breakfast. Ecco, you have nine more fingers, ten more toes, two more eyes and two more lips, and of course your dick and balls. Poor you. Poor poor poor you.”

THE SECOND NIGHT AFTER. THE FORMER RIVERSIDE BAPTIST CHURCH, IN THE FORMER MONTEZUMA, INDIANA. 6:30 AM EST. SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2025.

Steve Ecco was awakened by the girl who had been recording his words and repeating them verbatim. “Please, I know you’re in pain,” she said, “but they told me I can give you a drink of water for every two pages of shorthand I take.” She lifted his head, gently, and poured some into his mouth from a narrow-spouted garden watering can. “I can always say I misunderstood,” she said, “but you gotta help me average this out, they’ll want a lot of pages if I give you a lot of water.”

He looked around. By the light through the dirty windows it must still be early morning. On the other side of the solder, his phantom thumb was still screaming with pain. Before he could stop himself, he glanced sideways. Pieces of his thumb still lay beside the mattress.

“I’ll tell you anything you want,” he said, hating the way his voice felt in his throat.

He told her everything about everyone at Pueblo, knowing they would use the information, somehow, hating himself, but doing it, every throb of his thumb telling him he had no resistance left. Every so often she paused and gave him a drink of water; the clean, welcome taste brought him to tears.

Ecco had always hoped and dreamed of being the kind of man who would assess the situation and prepare to make a break for it. He forced himself to try; his hands were no longer tied and though his left hand could not bear the slightest pressure, and was probably infected—burns are dirty, crushing wounds are dirtier—his right was at least partly recovered. He sat up while he continued to talk, and felt at his feet; they’d pulled off—no,
cut
off, there was a dank, slimy band of leather around each ankle—what was left of his moccasins, and wound a short piece of chain through the remaining loops of leather. He could probably work free with just his right hand, but it might take time, and he was afraid; what if she yelled and brought in more guards? What if they came before he had escaped, but when he had undone enough so they noticed?

He stroked a finger over the chain and the leather band, willing himself to have the kind of nerve that the heroes in his favorite books did, and while he did that, he described Izzy Underhill in minute detail, knowing perfectly well that he might be helping them, if they took Pueblo, to find her and put her severed head on a stick so they could dance around it.

He tried to be inconspicuous about squeezing his feet together to give himself slack; then he felt a tug and saw that the shorthand girl’s left hand was holding the chain to help him slip one loop of it. He pushed through and kept talking, telling them about where Chris Manckiewicz hung out with his printer Abel and his reporter Cassie, and probably helping them figure out how to assassinate all of them if they wanted to.
(Crap, Manckiewicz is a big guy and brave as a lion, Abel Marx is a giant with a bad temper, but little Cassie Cartland is a five-foot-one seventeen-year-old; way to go, Ecco.)

He worked another loop free, again with the shorthand girl supplying the spare hand he needed, and earned more sips of water. Toward the end, Robert came in and sat watching him; he made himself not look down at the loosened but not yet untied chain by his feet. Robert moved closer and listened harder;
he’s just trying to make me afraid,
Ecco thought.
And I don’t know if he can make me any more afraid than—

A slave woman came in, carrying a hibachi of glowing charcoal. At Robert’s direction, she set it near enough Ecco’s feet so that he could feel its warmth. Robert dropped a handful of old screwdrivers blade-down into the charcoal.

Ecco babbled faster, terrified and weeping. The screwdrivers were glowing when Robert said, “Now tell us about your ex-wife and your three children. I know they’re in Santa Fe and your ex-wife is named Kyla, and you have two boys, Travis and Cooper, and a girl, Willow. Tell us what they look like. Tell us what would make them sure a message was from you. Tell us everything about them.”

Ecco felt a great surge of relief in his chest; he had just found out there was something he would not do. “No,” he said, and then repeated, “No.”

“We already know everything you are going to tell us. You won’t hurt them by telling. All you’ll do is show us that you cooperate one hundred percent.”

He dug his index finger against the ball of solder where his thumb had been, and relished the pain. “I won’t.”

“Last chance. I won’t ask you again. Tell us about your family.” Robert’s hand stroked up his thigh, as if they were lovers. “Can you feel how warm them screwdriver’s getting? Think about that here.” The squeeze was surprisingly light.

“I won’t tell you that,” Ecco said. Courage and strength seemed to surge into him. He knew now he would end horribly, but not badly.

Robert said, “I’ll do as much as I want whether you talk or not. Then you’ll talk, Mister Ecco, but only when I decide you should, after I’m done.”

Here we go. Just like the dentist’s office except I gotta hope for a chance to kick the dentist in the balls.

By the time Robert said, “Time for lunch,” Ecco said, “No. No. No,” because now it was all he would say.

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 1 PM EST. SUNDAY, AUGUST 17, 2025.

The radio tech gave Cameron Nguyen-Peters the thumbs-up and tapped the windup timer, which showed the standard hour. “Hey, Heather, it’s me. Okay to talk now?”

“More than okay!” Heather’s voice hissed and crackled; the encryption gadget didn’t work as well in daylight as it did at night. “So you know it’s a boy, Leonardo Plekhanov Junior, who I’m calling Leo, and he’s healthy as a moose, and the best baby ever born?”

“Absolutely. Arnie told us all last night, of course, when he sent it out on the secure channels. I didn’t call then because I thought you’d want to sleep.”

“I did,” Heather said. “But to tell the truth, now I’m bored. Tired, but bored. And Leo’s amazing and wonderful but not a great conversationalist just yet.”

“Well, he will be, if he takes after either parent. Tell me everything about him.” Cam leaned back and listened; Leo sounded like every other baby, but Heather sounded great.

In the secure radio room, the big, slowly rotating spindles of plywood cams, the beer-bottle capacitors, and the big spark coils looked like a 1920s mad-scientist’s lab.
A hundred years of progress to be back where we started.

Heather finally wound down and said, “All right, have I put you to sleep yet?”

“Not a bit. This is great.”

“Since when is a lifelong bachelor interested in babies?”

“Since I started taking an interest in the future, because that’s who’s going to live there.”

“Yeah, but even the best baby in the world only has so many little toes and eyes to describe.”

“Twelve, I believe—”

“
Twelve?
Oh, ten toes and two eyes. For one moment I was hoping I hadn’t miscounted. But yes, you’re right.”

“I’m an ex-baby myself.” He had been trying to think of a smooth transition to what he most wanted to say, but there wasn’t any, so he said, “Sorry to bring in business, but I wanted to thank you for the help from our mutual friend.”

“Business is a great thing to bring in, and I take it our friend let you know we’re secure here?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid they’ll notice if we talk too often. So I’m afraid I’m taking advantage of your big occasion—”

“Hey, like I said, I’m bored stiff here. And you just gave me an idea. I’ll send you a personal letter in the next mailbag—for sure they’ll open that—and start off about how much more we need to talk. Since they probably know we dated years ago, I think I’ll pretend I’ve got a crush on you, Cam. You play back. Talk about me enough to bore the people around you. That should give us an excuse to chat more often.”

“All right, great idea, as long as I’m not expected to be convincingly romantic.”

“I’ll just be so besotted I won’t notice your sheer ineptitude. Now what’s on your mind, Cam?”

“Bottom line, I’m losing out to Grayson and the reverends. He’s taking directions from his father-in-law, pulling competent officers out of posts near here, replacing them with people with the right religion, and rotating them out to our frontier with the Lost Quarter. Which I can’t really object to because we sure as hell need them out there, but it also means my coup insurance is disappearing. There’s forced prayer, strictly Post Raptural, at parades and reserve exercises now. The last editor at the
Weekly Insight
who wasn’t Post Raptural is not only gone, but was explicitly fired for being the wrong religion. And guys who’ve been Republican since Reagan are being thrown out of their party for not praying right. And I object, and object, and object, and—nothing. They just keep doing it.” Cam wasn’t just embarrassed, as he’d expected to be; he felt as humiliated as if he were admitting he’d spent his inheritance on whiskey and whores and had to ask his best friend to make his rent for him.

“Cam, I know all that. Besides our mutual friend I have plenty of other sources, open and not. Look, we’re completely on the same side here. We’ve got to find a way to either knock Grayson out of the game, if we can’t get a deal with him that will put America back together, or bring him back into it and playing under the same rules as the rest of you. So we’d be in this together, even if you weren’t a friend.”

Cam felt funny in his chest; it had been a long time since someone had just said they were his friend.
Fine dictator I make,
he thought sadly.
Worrying all the time about whether people like me.

There was still more to admit. “The truth is, I don’t know what will happen while I’m out of Athens.”

“Well, then bring Grayson along; he’s your deputy, he should be with you anyway. And if his followers pull a coup while you’re here, just stay. I’ve got ten jobs that you’d be perfect for.”

“Such as?”

“Well, babysitter for the world’s best baby comes to mind. He just made the most amazing face.”