Directive 51 (28 page)

Traffic roared by at the speed limit. Trooper Davis appreciated the peaceful order of it all. He waited in a median pullout, not eagerly, for the first aggressive speeder to zip by. His days usually contained many moments worse than this.

He was thinking about the coffee in his thermos when the minivan in the southbound left lane had a messy blowout—the tire totally grenaded, dropping the minivan onto the rim at that corner, and he held his breath while the driver fought it across the right lane; luckily the red Camaro in the right lane behind it was alert and the pavement was dry, so the minivan made it over onto the shoulder—

Shit. Looks like the Camaro blew a tire, too, in the hard braking.
The guy behind him, less alert, missed the Camaro by a hair, and only by swinging into the left lane. That sudden change triggered a wave of brake lights. Davis flipped on his bubble and siren and turned up onto the left shoulder to go sort all this out. At least his lights would make people slow down and wake up.

Passing the now-forming traffic jam, he saw half a dozen more blowouts.
Crap. That Daybreak stuff they were warning us about at the shift briefing.

Closer to the front of the jam, he found a couple of fender benders. Davis called it in; didn’t look like anyone was hurt, and no air bags had fired, spacing had been good, speeds not excessive, and pavement dry. Nonetheless, this was going to be a major mess. Just behind the original blowout situation, three collided cars in a rough Z stretched most of the way across both lanes; everything in front of them had either made it to a shoulder or was finding a way through and rolling on.

Davis decided that would do for a starting point. He braked, left the flashing lights on to tell drivers behind him that there was an officer on the scene, and walked up to the Z-form collision.

The drivers were two lady office workers in sensible little hybrids, and a sad, frustrated-looking sales type in a cheap washable suit and an obvious by-the-weeker used Kia. Their paperwork was all in order, even the sales-guy’s insurance; the bar code on his license authorized a breathalyzer, but Davis didn’t see any reason to do that. They all had grenaded, torn-off flats; Sales Loser’s tire had blown after his car had stopped.

They agreed to move their cars over to the left, so Davis pulled the patrol car across the lane to block traffic for them, and set up a choke point to keep things slow as he worked out the jam.

He grabbed his electronic pad and headed up the snarl of traffic on foot, talking to dispatch on handset as he went.

At least a third of the cars in the jam had flat tires. An odd stench, not like cow or pig or chicken, but definitely like some kind of manure, hung in the air.
Yeah, this has to be that Daybreak thing.
From a low rise he saw that he already had a two-mile jam, at least, on his hands, and called in to the dispatcher, asking for another couple of cars “and a Daybreak specialist if there is such a thing.”

With a sigh, he got back to work, moving everyone with a burst tire to one shoulder or the other, clearing a lane for the trapped but functional cars. He flagged down a couple frantic idiots who were trying to zigzag between shoulder and lane to get past, and gave them their well-earned tickets. He noted a plate number on one asshole who shot him the finger and zipped on by, calling it in for an intercept up the road.

The farther along he went, the more tires were blown, at least twenty so far in this quarter mile of stopped cars. He sent up a prayer of thanks; if this had been an icy morning, he’d be looking at real wrecks, deployed air bags, injuries, maybe even some deaths and fires, instead of merely the worst fall day he’d ever had.

He saw the shreds of tire on the front driver side of the next car and leaned over the window. “When this guy right in front of you pulls forward, you can pull forward into the space he’s in, and then left, over there, onto the shoulder. It’s that Daybreak thing from the news last night. The best thing for everyone to do is sit tight, off the road, till we get whatever it is cleaned off.”

“Sure thing, Officer.” The fiftyish woman wore a plain cloth coat and slacks; she looked like an office worker, probably taking the two grandkids in the back to day care.
While her daughter works a shift at 7-Eleven or McDonald’s, bet you anything, and not a man in sight anywhere around the place. Oh, well, not my business.

The car ahead pulled forward. Nice Office Lady turned to go left onto the shoulder. With a sound like somebody’d fired a 9mm inside a trash can, something stung his lower leg. He looked down to see the remains of the other passenger-side tire from her sedan, smeared across the pavement and wrapped partly around his leg.

“Oh, no,” she said quietly. “I only have one spare.”

Davis flexed his ankle; it had stung but apparently done no other harm. “Yeah. I don’t know how soon they’ll be able to get help out here and it might just be to evacuate; I’d pack anything you don’t want to leave in your car, if you can.”

“My god,” she said, “What’s that awful smell?”

He bent to shine his flashlight at the damp mess of her tire. It looked wet or greasy, as if it had been splashed with black oil or partly melted. The reek of raw shit nearly knocked him out. “The Daybreak bug,” he told her. “Be real careful pulling over.”

Her other rear tire blew as she parked it; they exchanged helpless shrugs.

As Davis walked on up the line the thuds and bangs sounded like a distant war starting; with a loud report, one tire just behind him flung goopcovered shards across his calves, and he jumped.
I wonder if it’s getting worse because it’s warming up.
The stench of rotting tires was like putting your head up a sick goat’s ass.

The smell grew stronger, the bangs and thuds more frequent, and some of the drivers were angrier with him, and some more resigned. When the sun came up at eight, and the temperature started to rise rapidly, the remaining tires started to blow in great volleys, and the reek became strong enough so that many of the stranded motorists were throwing up on the roadside.

He had a moment of hope when the dispatcher called to tell him a Daybreak specialist was coming out, but then the rest of the explanation came: “He’s a microbiologist from Wright State. He’s walking out to you—it’s about six miles—and he’ll be taking samples of the rotting tires.”

“Is there anything he can do?”

“As far as we know, he’ll just take samples and start walking back. Might be a day or more before he even gets to his lab, and the power just went off up there, so he might not even be able to study the Daybreak bugs when he gets them there.”

“Great. Well, there aren’t too many cars that can move anymore, so I guess it doesn’t matter if you get me traffic-control backups, or not.”

“They’re all stranded with flat tires. Right now we’re trying to find some way of evacuating, but tell anyone who can walk home they should start, and not waste daylight. Nobody’s going to come into the city today from the north—all those routes are under quarantine. The microbiologist will look for you by your car, so be there in an hour or so.”

It was in perfect keeping with Trooper Davis’s day that when he returned to his cruiser, it rested on four soggy, stinking piles of black goo.
Can’t cry in front of the civilians,
he reminded himself, and leaned against the cruiser, drinking the coffee from his thermos while it was still hot. All he had left, emotionally, was a small shrug, and an unvoiced
Well, shit
.

Feeling better for the coffee, and unable to remain passive for long, he started his long walk up the highway, looking for anyone in trouble he might be able to help. He found plenty of people in trouble.

Jason had been walking along 64 for about forty minutes, ever since the bus’s front tires both burst while the guy was trying to slow on a downgrade, and he’d slid sideways into a disabled semi in a runaway lane. That had scared the piss out of Jason, the three old Indian ladies, and the two servicemen on leave—all the passengers on the bus—but it had not been at all as bad as it seemed; the bus had not rolled, and the bump against the semi trailer had been at less than ten miles an hour, just a sort of steel-to-steel kiss really. So after all the fear, there they were, off the road, bus upright, able to take their stuff off, and the bus driver had had a working phone, so he’d called for someone to come and pick everyone up with a van from Taos, not far away.

Except he’d conspicuously not mentioned Jason, and the moment he’d gotten off the phone he’d said, “So you, get lost. You’re not riding with us.”

“What?” Jason couldn’t believe this. “I paid for my ticket like anyone else.”

“Yeah, but you got long hair and a beard and you look like a fuckin’ hippie, kid. And everything was fine all the way from Lubbock, till you got on my bus, and now my tires are gone and they smell like moldy cheese. That might be a coincidence and it might not. So I’m splitting the difference. They said to be alert for Daybreakers, and maybe you are and maybe you ain’t. You look like a hippie and you got on the bus at one weird time. But I’m not turning you in—unless you decide to act like a shithead—but I’m not giving you no ride, either. Argue and go talk to the sheriff, or start walkin’—don’t be around here when the van gets here.”

One of the servicemen, an Army sergeant, had tried to intervene on Jason’s behalf, but Jason could see that all this was going to do was strand two of them, or maybe three if his buddy backed him, so Jason said it didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to ride with people who treated him like shit, and walked off with his pack on his shoulder.

64 was usually pretty empty but tonight it was really-o truly-o empty, like a walk through a pine-scented void with brilliant stars. The crescent moon shed just enough light to silver the east-facing rock cliffs of the mountains and reveal the rest as dark lumpy shadows. It was cold and quiet, a perfect chance to think and reflect, if he’d had enough energy to form an actual thought. He kept putting one foot in front of the other; no sense freezing or giving up when it was mostly downhill anyway.

When he finally heard a truck behind him, Jason didn’t believe it at first, but as the headlights flashed around the bends up the mountain from him, he stuck out his thumb. A second miracle happened; the truck slowed and pulled over into a turnout. Jason ran to the passenger side.

The truck driver, a plump, balding man with aviator glasses, did not look friendly or welcoming.

“How’d you end up out here tonight?”

Jason answered without thinking, “The bus got two flats, and the driver threw me off for looking like a hippie.”

“Hunh. I saw the bus back there a ways. You’ve been walking a while.”

“Yeah.” Jason thought for a second. “I don’t know how to prove I’m not a Daybreaker except, you know, I’m carrying a laptop computer, and they’re supposed to be all anti-tech.”

“That’s a start. What were you traveling for?”

“Following a bunch of coustajam concerts.” It was lame but the only thing he could think of offhand. “I had this idea that I’d pick up enough advertising money by covering them on the net.”

“How’d it work out?”

“Complete flop. I’m living on money my dad sends, and I was planning to go home to Connecticut after the last three big concerts, work for him to pay off all the money he sent, and then go back to college and finish it.”

The man was smiling slightly. “So you’re actually just a classic spoiled rich kid and not a crazy hippie asshole who tried to destroy our country?”

“That’s about it.”

“Well, come on aboard. You and me are gonna wipe down all my tires with hospital disinfectant, which is what the truck is loaded with, and we’ll do that once an hour till you get to—where you going?”

“Tres Piedras. It’s not far.”

“Well, you can help me wipe here, and then just before I let you off, and keep me awake in between.”

Sloshing and scrubbing with the foul-smelling disinfectant, on the dark road, trying to keep up with the speed the driver was working, it occurred to Jason that he’d had worse times. When they climbed into the cab, there was even coffee from the autocafé and the pleasure of sun coming up behind them with the high mountains all around.

I’m really not a bad spy.
Jason and the driver traded the little stories that strangers do to stay awake; his cover story gave him a chance to talk about his family. He was surprised that he worried about them and missed them, and hardly had to do any acting at all.

On the first ring, Chris Manckiewicz rolled out of bed, grabbed his phone from the nightstand, saw it was Norcross’s campaign, and achieved enough coherence to accept the call. Press conference in ten minutes, meeting room downstairs, blah blah blah, could he be there?

Also, probably in less than an hour they’d be clearing for a flight to DC—total change of plans—if Chris could come to the press conference with his bags packed, would he like to do an exclusive in the air?

“I’m packed.” He never went to bed without having packed his whole grip and laid out clothes for the next day. “And I’ll be in the press room before your candidate is.”

He even had time to comb his hair, brush his teeth, and message 247NN to open a channel.

“Okay, the Internet connection cannot possibly be down here at SRI,” Cicolina said into the phone. “We created the Internet right here back in 1969. We had Internet when it had two terminals worldwide. And we built it to never go down, ever.”

“I know that, sir, I’m sorry, I’m just reporting—” There was a squawk and a hiss, and when Cicolina tried to call back, there was no dial tone.