Daybreak Zero (47 page)

IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 12:15 PM EST. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025.

I really should not be trying to make up excuses as if I’d disappointed Mama, when the person I’m worried about is young enough to be my daughter.
Grayson was frequently subject to little, odd thoughts about how weird life was; the only times they didn’t show up were during sex, combat, or sleep.
My three favorite things,
he thought,
which is another weird little observation in its own right.

At the front door, he paused a moment to straighten his tunic and finger-comb his hair before going in decisively. “I’ve got time for a long lunch, and we should talk.”

Jenny came out of the back room smiling. “Baby, how’d the conference go?”

“Well, I either won more than I thought I could, or gave away the store, or nothing’s settled yet. I don’t know quite what I feel.”

She held him by both elbows and beamed her most hypnotic, dazzling smile at him. “Suppose I tell you right away that no matter what happened or what you said, you’re still my guy, one hundred percent and no take-backs. Then after that come in to lunch—Luther outdid himself—tell me all about it while we eat, and we’ll figure out the next move together.” She turned and led him into the dining room, her hips swaying just a little more—or was that just his imagination? Definitely, the tight short white dress was his favorite and she knew that.

Over the soup, which was as good as promised, he told her what had happened. “I guess I was so ready for him to deny everything, or confront me or be defensive, that I just stood there and listened while he explained his offer. On the other hand . . .”

She was half-smirking, but it seemed like it was a joke to share, not a joke on him. “Baby,” she said, “on the other hand, you are a smart man and you realized at once that he was offering you an awesome, amazing deal which you might have to be crazy to turn down. I mean, it’s true, right, that you can reconquer Indiana and part of Ohio? And make a good show of it?”

“Well—”

“I’m not modest about who I am, don’t you be modest about who you are. Modesty should be reserved for when there are people to see it.” Her eyes twinkled but he could feel how strongly she meant it.

“All right,” he said. “Straight truth, I want to do the numbers, but I’m quite sure that if we grab an intact bridge somewhere near Terre Haute on, say, April first, and if Cam can spare me the right brigades, add in the Provi rangers and scouts, who are excellent, and some of their regular infantry, who are tolerable, with some Texas and New Mexico cavalry, and a few of the RRC’s planes . . . then, yeah. Drive to the Miami/Maumee line for sure, probably all the way to the Scioto/Cuyahoga. Big smashing victories every week, or even more often, all summer long. If a ghost writer comes along—”

“Of course I will, darling, and no, I don’t mind camping out all summer.” Her smile had something sharklike about it. “Two years ago I was editor of the
Phoenix
, at Sarah Lawrence. Now, I want you to imagine just how good you have to be to get that job when you’re the conservative Southern daughter of a fundamentalist minister and everybody you’re competing with keeps calling you ‘Barbie,’ sometimes to your face. I am
that
good, baby. Haven’t you noticed those speeches go over pretty well?”

“Why can’t you do something about your father’s sermons?”

The big whoop was not her usual polite lady-laugh at all. “Oh, baby, I have asked him that question
plenty
of times, and he still won’t let me help. Now, let’s get back to our problem here. You do want what Cam has to give you. You know he has shaded the truth and cheated you in the past, but then, you know you’re not really friends either.”

“He’s not a bad man.”

“He’s not. He’s a confused man pursuing an outdated ideal that nobody else even thinks about. But for the moment, he’s going the same direction you are. So go with him. Help him, even, if he asks you to. Let him feel how smart and right he was to give you that command. And then one day, he’ll want to go one direction, and you’ll want to go the other.” Her deep blue eyes leveled into his, open and staring like a fish’s, but her mouth smiled like she tasted something good. “That’s when he goes his way, and you go straight ahead as hard as you can and run the fucking weird little gook over and leave him dead in the road.” Her smile softened. “You’ll know when the time comes. And speaking of the time—”

“I’ve got about an hour—”

“That’s plenty, baby. I love that little twinge I see in you whenever I talk a teensy bit vulgar or act a little psychobitchy. Want to teach me who’s boss, before I get too big for my tight little silk pants?”

Afterward, lying beside him, she ran her smooth thigh over his muscular, hairy one. “Now let’s talk it through; you have twenty minutes before you have to dress.”

So as they stroked and kissed, they plotted out their lives, and how they would sell the whole thing to her father, and to Cameron Nguyen-Peters, and to the country. Just before he reluctantly got up and dressed, he had another of his weird little thoughts:
I am going to be far more successful but there is no way I can ever be happier than I am right now.

40 MINUTES LATER. ATHENS, TNG DISTRICT. 2:30 PM EST. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2025.

“Cam, can we do five very private minutes?” Grayson said, leaning into his office.

“Always.” The Natcon got up and closed the door, and they sat in the chairs in the corner that faced into the soundproofing. “I take it you have a decision?”

“I’m in. Even as far as letting Shorty Phat out to run loose, though we sure can’t have that known to anyone in the Post Raptural Church, and I really can’t have it known to Reverend Whilmire.”

“Understood. Drive the frontier to the Miami/Maumee. Whatever you say you need, I’ll find it for you. Wreck the tribes for good. Take all the credit. Run for president, and may the best man win—or rather, may the people have the vision to see the best man, and the will to support him. And I won’t be sad if it’s you.”

Grayson rose, they shook hands, and the deal was done.

Ten minutes later, as Cam went out for a stroll and a stretch to clear his head, Colonel Billy Ray Salazar happened to be crossing the quadrangle in front of the First Church of the United Christian States. Cam asked him politely how the fishing had been lately, Salazar stopped to tell him, and in the middle of a long story about a monster catfish that had broken the line at the last minute, Cam was able to say, very quickly and softly, “We’re blown, and we’re going to have to go ahead anyway. Usual protocol for emergency conference. Let our absent friends know.”

Salazar went right on talking about fish; only the slightest twitch, once, of his cheek indicated to Cam that he had heard.

2 DAYS LATER. MOUTH OF CHESAPEAKE BAY. 2 PM EST. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2025.

As
Martin Fierro
made its way south, the weather continued fair but cold. The three passengers had an after-lunch habit of bundling up in borrowed sweaters and having a last cup of hot tea in a sunny spot out of the wind; it was as secure a place as they could find for private discussions.

Today, without preamble, Chris said, “Since morning we’ve been headed northwest.”

Larry nodded. “I woke up when I heard them bringing the ship about, looked out the porthole. We were passing Sea Gull Island as we turned north into Chesapeake Bay.”

Jason stared at him. “How did you—”

Larry grinned. “When I was assigned to Bureau headquarters and still married, my wife and I, every chance we got, used to love to spend the weekend driving around the bay in a big circle. So this morning, well, you really can’t mistake the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel for anything else. After the turn this morning,
Martin Fierro
ran parallel to it for several miles before it found an open channel. I was surprised at how much was still standing after the DC bomb, but the Bridge-Tunnel was made to stand hurricanes, and even something as huge as the Washington nuke, at this distance, was just a big wave, a strong wind, a small earthquake, and I guess some fires if there was anything to burn. Probably the tunnels flooded when the ground shock wave cracked them, and I saw some trestles that had fallen over, so you couldn’t cross the bay on it, but most of it is still there, and not hard to recognize.”

Chris looked around for Argentine crew again, before asking, “So what do you suppose they are doing? There’s no resettlement, nothing to trade with, probably not even a surviving dock.”

“Well,” Larry said, “since early morning, Roberto’s been hauling up water samples and logging them every half hour. I’m guessing that’s meant to look like he’s just taking soundings. And a couple of times they’ve sent a dinghy out, which came back with a wet bag of something—bottom samples, or maybe they’re going out to a shore just over the horizon. And fish coming up off the trawling lines are going into jars of alcohol, not to the kitchen as they usually would. So my guess is that they’re doing a biological survey for someone back in Argentina, along with maybe a certain amount of mapping.”

“Why would they do that?” Jason asked, quietly.

Larry shrugged. “I’m the president of Argentina, okay? Now, here I am, the head of one of less than a dozen nations that came through Daybreak sort of functional. Not only am I located on a whole collapsed, disorganized continent I can overrun in the next generation or two, there’s an even bigger continent to the north with huge depopulated areas and the rest in political chaos. Not that I wish them ill, but you know . . . maybe if I knew more about the devastation, I could help them better. Plus I should be keeping an eye on what kind of craziness they might do after what’s happened. So why not know something about one of the biggest and best bays in the world for harbors and fishing, since the
yanquis
aren’t using it right now? Especially since who knows what things might be like in ten years, or a generation?

“In fact, speaking as El Presidente, despite the Commandant’s sharp little eyes, I’d be looking over New York Harbor too. In fact it’s just possible the Commandant pulled a dirty trick on me and found a way to force one of my ships to carry American spies.

“Am I planning an invasion? No. Right now I couldn’t invade Uruguay. Am I thinking of seizing parts of the old United States? Not anytime soon. Do I think I’ll have to fight the
norteamericanos
? I hope not; peaceful trade would do us all so much more good. But do I need to know everything I can? Oh, yes. Very much yes.” Larry shrugged. “We’d be doing similar stuff if the situations were reversed.”

“If you’re right,” Chris added, “they’re also checking out Cape Cod and the Long Island Sound. Not that they are extra-special wicked or anything but just in case, you know? That’s how this stuff has been done since Sumer.”

They stayed out in the sun on the deck as long as they comfortably could. Their cabin door had barely closed before they heard quiet orders and scrambling feet, and felt the ship swing round to another tack.

THE NEXT DAY. NEAR FORT STEWART, GEORGIA. 1 AM EST. SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2025.

These streets were abandoned but far from empty. To the north, Fort Stewart had shrunken away, retreating into a real fort. To the south, the Hinesville city government had given up any enforcement or patrols. What flourished between was everything authority disapproved and people wanted.

Grayson felt ridiculous in his Hawaiian shirt, blue jeans, broad-brimmed hat, and Castle Newberry sunglasses. Jenny had carefully picked out an outfit to conceal his identity while signaling
rich
. Apparently it had worked; on his way to the bar, half a dozen hookers and a dozen moonshine and pot touts tried to entice him, but none had begun with, “Hey, General Grayson.”

This swath of unauthorized bars, drug houses, and brothels was strictly off-limits to soldiers.
I wish the MPs
would
grab me, because I hate this.
It had to be done for his career, for the Army he loved, for the country. It had the approval of the one living person he really loved, and for that matter it even had the blessing of clergy. Nonetheless, he felt vaguely sick.

He found the Bug Out Tavern, went in the front door, and gave a password to the man at the improvised bar. The man gestured toward the back; in the dark hallway Grayson saw candlelight playing from under the crack of one door. He knocked, repeated the password, and was admitted.

As he moved to the front of the table, he thought,
Nazis in Toyland
. They were men who loved to strike the pose and wear the clothes, but couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job. They were dressed in scraps of camo, almost all with bare chests impractical for combat, and looked like some comic-book designer’s concept of a postapocalyptic bad-ass gang. But Grayson saw the bad balance on the standing ones, the unfocused gazes, the flab and bloodshot eyes and shallow breathing, the way their weight was back as if they were already half out the door; these were not men to have at your back, or anywhere upwind.

Yet their eyes shone with hunger to hear what he had to say;
before Daybreak, they’ d’ve been mom’s-basement right wingers and 7-Eleven clerk soldiers of fortune. Still hanging around the Army, still no use—till now.

He cleared his throat, and began. He laid it on thick; he’d never have been so prolix with an actual elite unit, let alone with the sort of dirty-dozen-fighting-for-honor-and-redemption that these poor posers wanted to be. Three of them were fresh out of the stockade, on paroles he had arranged. Two were deserters. Two needed their paper records destroyed. Parker, the closest thing to a leader they had, had been on his way to a general discharge for the good of the service when Daybreak had rendered men with training too valuable to let go; he’d rewarded the decision to keep him by making corporal—twice, so far, tied with the number times he’d lost it.

But at least Parker’s eyes focused on Grayson, and not on his shoes or on some hazy movie in his forehead, and he asked some questions that indicated he’d been listening.
I guess every outfit has a top guy,
Grayson thought.

Walking back, he walked fast; people in his path stepped aside.
I know thousands of real soldiers, but I don’t know one I could look in the eye and ask for what I’m asking for.

A voice in the shadowy street, close to him, asked him for something—money, probably, or a drink—and he lashed out, but his fist found only air and darkness.