The Last President (28 page)

So I'as just back from my second stay at Corsicana, and busting my ass to finish a GED and get something else going because I'as through with the street kid crap and the stuck in a small town forever crap and the everybody knows you're just a piece of crap crap and all the crap in general, and working for this guy Stan Krauss, a horse breeder, 'cause I loved horses, and Daybreak hit and Mister Krauss thought he was gonna be a big old rich guy, and I started working full time for him, 'cause I thought so, too, I mean, engines stop working, people're gonna want horses, right?

So I'as doing okay, had a steady job, Krauss's horse ranch was the most successful business in Grinder's Hole, Texas, orders backed up five years in advance. There I was coming up in the world for the first time even if the world was going down, and then in the spring last year all these bush hippies started coming around by Mister Krauss's place and giving us all this, like, threatening shit, like telling us we needed to free the horses for the wolves to eat, because horses were bred by people to make Mother Earth dirty. I think. Ain't sure I ever got it straight, 'cause they shouted most of it, along with some threats. Well, but you know, that Mister Krauss, he was old school Texas-German, if you know the type, he just told'em to get the fuck off his land.

So one day I'as out chasing Redstone, who was the biggest pain in the ass you ever saw in a stallion and stallions are
born
to be pains in the ass, when I heard noise a long way off, and I came back and there was Mister Krauss and Mrs. Krauss and the other three guys that helped on the place, all dead in the yard, and the buildings burning, and the tribals that did it just a dust cloud going over the hill.

I got all the horses out of the barn—the Daybreakers were just gonna let'em burn alive—and I'as standing in that yard with the horses around me, and me crying like a little kid and talking to Krauss's body like I was right out of my mind, and Redstone stuck his nose in my back, and he's standing there like he's saying “I'm sorry.”

So I found a saddle that'd fit him, and him and me got the other horses into a string, and we headed into Grinder's Hole to get the town militia and some help. Got there, and . . . well, there wasn't no help. Shit, there wasn't no Grinder's Hole. The tribals had left some bodies and some burning buildings and taken off north.

So I went south, 'cause I had an idea how to turn those horses into some wealth. The government in Austin was gonna be starting the Texas Independent Cavalry, which a lot of guys wanted to be in 'cause it was like a big deal, but it was bring your own horse, so I figured some guys that wanted to join would want to trade for a horse, and sure enough they did, and pretty soon I had me a big account in the Bank of Texas and the only horse I had left was Redstone, which I'as the only one he'd let ride him.

And I don't know if I'as drunk or 'cause all us rich guys were doing it, but Redstone and me signed up, and damn if I wasn't pretty good at being cavalry, made corporal before we even left Fort Norcross and sergeant by the time we'as at Pale Bluff.

So yesterday the general told us to ride hard and hit'em before the main force of tribals got there. But they got there before us, and unlike your usual Daybreaker hippie dumbshits, these ones had some tricks. Right alongside the other TexICs, we rode in from the creek side. Redstone jumped that breastwork like he had wings. I pulled out two pistols like Buffalo Fuckin' Bill to get it started.

But there'as more of'em around me than I could count, mostly with spears, and one asshole with a two-handed ax brung down Redstone with one hard chop to the face, and the rest drug me off and was beating me, and that was the last I knew for a while.

So I woke up and I'as in a pile of tied up TexICs and they told us we better scream and holler when they put us up on the wall 'cause we'as gonna be human shields. So I made up my mind to keep my mouth shut, but it didn't matter 'cause next thing I know Goncalves and his Rangers come busting into the building where they had us, and a couple of'em cut us loose and found us guns and knives to help out with, I thought us TexICs were hot shit, but the President's Own Rangers're something else, man, something else.

So it seemed like we'as in that building for a million years, we took charge after charge, and a few'd die, and then a few more, and finally one Daybreaker charge got inside. I shot till I had nothing to shoot, I remember running out of ammo, and then it was hatchet work, and then, boom, something on the back of my head, right where I wear my braid, which I think maybe saved my skull and my life.

And that's me.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ABOVE LAFAYETTE, WABASH.
12:00 PM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026.

Nancy Teirson saw her landing field was overrun with Daybreakers and did not begin a descent. She flew on over the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds, observing guns flaring in the thin open space between the thick double line of people encircling what had been about a third of the army's encampment. Obviously there was a lot of shit on what remained of the fan.

Staying high, she put the Acro Sport into a several-mile-wide counterclockwise circle to observe, and to give General Grayson a chance to heliograph to her. There was a garrison, a fuel depot, and a radio transmitter back at Terre Haute; she could report the bad news from there. Meanwhile, she needed to make sure she saw as much of it as she could.

The hasty tribal fortifications at the Tippecanoe battlefield were empty, but scattered bodies were everywhere.

She climbed up into the fierce cold, almost to the Acro Sport's 18,000-foot ceiling, for a better look from a distance. No more big tribal forces moving along the Tippecanoe River, so obviously they had arrived. Circling back over the main battle at the fairgrounds, she estimated 23,000 tribals by a radial count and 27,500 by an area count.

The forces she had been tracking before had totaled no more than 8,000. Had all these others come down the Wabash?

Descending to a much warmer 6,000 feet over the camp, she looked for interruptions in the Daybreaker lines, but found none: the army was surrounded.

As she flew a slow circuit, looking for anything unusual or any clue she could take back with her, a heliograph flashed below:

SORTIE 9 QEO 15
BRK

QSE 30
BRK

They're going to try to break out in 9 minutes, they expect to have the runway clear in 15, and they want me to land in 30? Grayson must have—no.
Not Grayson.
He'd never give an order that dumb. He's dead or unconscious, and some real idiot is in command down there.

She clamped the stick between her knees, got the sun on the positioning spot, sighted the headquarters signal tower down the scope of her own heliograph, and sent,

DO NOT SORTIE
BRK

QCI 3X
BRK

QSP RECCE B4 QRF TH
BRK

Surely they'd understand
do not sortie
, whether or not they grasped the Q codes for
I will circle three times
and
I will relay reconnaissance information before returning to Terre Haute.

They flashed back

QSL

which meant only “signal received.”

Well, whatever they do, I'm not landing here. One good look and back to Terre Haute.
She moved the stick gently forward, slowly descending for a last pass across the fairgrounds. On the western side of the fairgrounds, she saw flashes and puffs of smoke from both sides of the line.

Tribals using guns.

Has to be the Castle Earthstone heretics, which means—what's that?

She turned sharply to the east, flying straight across the camp, toward the strange object on the other side, near where her landing field had been. The thing was perhaps twenty feet across, like a giant quiver of arrows—no, an array of spears or harpoons—
rotating and tilting toward her
—

She hauled back and to the right on the stick and opened the throttle wide, avoiding flying over it, trying to climb away. A blue-black cloud appeared where the spear-things had been. She kept climbing, wishing the Acro Sport had a lot more engine.

Multiple thudding booms sounded behind her, audible even over the roaring engine. For an instant, she could hope she had been out of range.

The plane jerked and bucked. With a bang, her prop blades flew up and away, carrying off a piece of the upper wing; she leaned forward to see a long piece of wire wrapped around the shaft, one of those spears dangling from it.

Her leg felt funny, but the engine was shrieking with no load to balance it, so she first unlocked the throttle cutoff and slapped it in. In the abrupt silence she looked around, trying to put the plane into as long a glide as she could, hoping to make it back into the besieged army at the fairgrounds. She couldn't seem to work the rudder, and as she gently eased the stick back, instead of leveling off, the plane pulled hard right.

A strange ripping noise made her look; a spear, stuck through both right wings, was pulling loose in the wind, taking fabric, struts, and wires with it, leaving big flapping shreds. Her right side now had far more drag than lift. She compensated with the stick as well as she could, but the rudder pedals—

Something
hurt
. She looked down. A spear was sticking out of the cockpit floor and into her left calf muscle.

The shaft must be trailing down between the landing gear.

A crash was probably more immediately dangerous than blood loss. Nancy pushed on the barbed head, then pulled on the shaft, trying to back it out of her calf. With the torn wing it was already a hard fight to keep the Acro Sport in a straight glide toward the fairgrounds. It was trying so hard to tumble and dive. One hand on the stick and the other pawing at the spearhead, she plunged into a rising cloud of rocks and arrows.

She was still holding it mostly level when, seventy yards short of the fairground fence, the spear butt hit dirt. The spear ripped through her calf muscle, freeing her in a rush of blood. Screaming, she hauled back on the stick, willing the tail wheel to touch first. For a half second it felt almost like merely her hardest landing ever.

But the tail did not come down. The saggy, deflated tires grabbed pavement. Nancy jammed her face between her knees, hands clutching her seat belt.

With a sound like dry sticks crushed in a garbage truck, the Acro Sport flipped over its nose, landing on its upper wing and rudder, crushing and dragging them against the fuselage. When the plane stopped sliding, she was hanging from the belt by her waist. She poked her head downward into the light.

Through a drizzle of spattering blood, she peered between the cockpit edge and the crushed upper wing. Her seat belt buckle was jammed. She fumbled for her knife, concentrating on getting out of the plane.

She found the hilt and undid the snap on the sheath just as she smelled the biodiesel, silently praying
not like this not like this anything but this.
She was sawing on the belt when, through the narrow aperture, she saw a blazing torch laid onto the fuel-drenched fabric of the upper wing.

She sawed as hard as she could, crying
please not like this
as she did, but the belt did not give way before the whole Acro Sport flashed over into a blazing roar.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. RUINS OF LAFAYETTE. 12:15 PM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026.

“She's dead,” Chris said, flatly. “And the plane is already burned beyond repair. Lieutenant Marprelate, there is no reason—”

“I'm in command here,” Marprelate said. His voice was terrifyingly calm and reasonable. “American forces depend on air power. We can't lose air superiority.”

Jenny looked at the flame towering twenty feet over the heads of the Daybreaker mob, and at Marprelate's little band of thirty volunteers. She thought,
Half of them look like psychos trying to die, and probably are, and the other half look too scared to back out, and I
know
they are.
Forcing her voice to stay level, low, and calm, she tried once more.

“We don't
have
air power,” she said. “We used to have an airplane and a pilot. They're both gone. You'll be taking these men into a pointless—”

“Return to headquarters and have a situation report waiting for me when we return. And we
will
return, with the airfield secured. Go now. If you're part of this force, that's an order, and if you're not, I don't want to waste time arresting you, but I will, and chain you too.”

Jenny and Chris caught each other's eyes, and walked away.

Chris said, “Those men could stop the whole thing, just say they don't volunteer after all, anymore, because it's fucking crazy. But they're going right out there with him to die. What makes anyone
do
that?”

“Let's run. If we go up on the roof we can at least get a good view of what happens and I think we'll need to see.” She sprinted and Chris chugged and puffed after her. Twenty years and sixty pounds was a big difference. He didn't catch up until he was following her up the ladder from the second floor through the roof access.

Once he stood beside her on the flat roof, she said, quietly, “Jeff said once that some men want to die with honor, and other men will die just to be around them. He was big on honor. Probably, so are these guys. I just wish Marprelate was—”

Chris said, “Here they go.”

The platoon waited behind three iron-pipe cannon, which sat behind an old flatbed trailer covered on its far side by a chain-link and barbed-wire gate. At Marprelate's whistle, men dragged the gate aside.

Daybreakers rushed the emerging gap; the iron pipes erupted in a point-blank volley of “Edison shot”—electrical parts from hardware store bins, crushed into juice cans with a perchlorate mix, so that the rotted plastic exploded and burned and the copper and aluminum fragments formed shrapnel. The smoke blew off to reveal ground covered with blood and shattered bodies, almost a third of the way to the downed plane.

Marprelate's scant platoon of volunteers jogged forward, slipping on patches of blood. A few downed Daybreakers were still reaching upward with knives and hatchets; the soldiers clubbed them with rifle butts.

As they reached the tip of that little peninsula of murder sticking into the tribal sea, Marprelate barked orders. Because the volunteers were drawn from a dozen different units and had never worked together, their execution of Street Firing was ragged and slow, but they did put out three volleys, pushing the enemy farther back.

“Reload.” Sergeant Patel, on Jenny's other side, spoke it like a prayer. Chris and Jenny turned.

“Marprelate sent me here to guard you because I tried to talk him out of it too.” His gaze remained on Marprelate's men, who had drawn hatchets and were charging into the panicked tribals in front of them. “I wish they had reloaded. The enemy was hesitating. Newberrys load quick, wouldn't've taken more than a couple seconds and they might not get—aw, shit.”

Tribals were pouring into the space behind Marprelate's party. Patel shook his head. “It's gonna be all hatchets and bayonets from now on. And everybody along the line back here's gonna have to shoot too low to do any good, for fear of hitting them.”

All around the little surrounded party, Daybreaker spirit sticks rose high, rattles and whistles sounded, and the crowd pulsed like an amoeba engulfing food. Army snipers from building roofs and windows brought down spirit-stick bearers and silenced booming war-drums, but there were more every second.

Then dozens of spirit sticks rose all at once, drums pounded to a crescendo, and the knot of tribals yanked closed around the surrounded soldiers.

Their first volley was a single disciplined roar, and the attackers staggered back. But instead of trying to break through back to the gate, Marprelate's men surged a couple of yards closer to the burning plane.

Again the sticks rose, the drums thundered, and the tribals leapt in. This time the answering volley was feeble and scattered, and did not even slow the tribals closing around them under the big puffs of blue-black smoke. A few more shots cracked like the last popcorn in a kettle. Hatchets, pikes, and poleaxes rose above the crowd and plunged into the center, too fast to follow.

The tribals ululated exultantly, then fled back toward the still-blazing plane. On the suddenly bare, crumbling pavement, Marprelate's force was now a pile of still bodies at the center of a ring of tribal dead and wounded. A lone young man stood holding Marprelate's severed head aloft, upside down by the beard, singing “Give Gaia Her Rights.” Then he fell backwards, hit by a sniper, and Marprelate's head bounced a few feet from him on the pavement.

But it was mere revenge; as the crew slid the gate closed, the war-drums were already thundering again.

Chris turned to Jenny. “Your army now, General.”

“I told you, I am not—”

Very softly, Patel said, “Don't let
them
hear you.”

She turned to follow his gaze; a little knot of lieutenants and sergeants, the unit commanders she had appointed, were emerging from the opened skylight onto the roof, looking like ashamed children expecting to be spanked. Shoulders drooped, weapons dangled in loose grips, and sooty cheeks had been tracked by tears like snails.

Looking down, Chris murmured, “Remember, two years ago, most of these guys weren't ready to manage a shift at McDonald's. Some of them just made sergeant a month ago. Now they're commanding battalions.”

She forced herself to look back at the approaching men and women with a level, expressionless gaze.
I will pretend that I am reading an order to them very clearly, an order from Jeff, the one he'd give if he could, and I see it in my mind's eye. Aaaand . . . I read it, aaaand I say . . .

“Thank you for coming. We don't have much time. When I send you back to your units, if you're up on the line, give the bastards three good volleys if they're close, or some sustained sniping if they're farther back. We're still far ahead on firepower and both your men and the tribals need reminding.

“Then keep the enemy well back for the next hour.” To her surprise, her voice stayed even and controlled. “As I said before, don't spare the shot. Keep sending runners for ammunition till you are up to full stock.”

“If your unit is
not
on the line, then appoint company and platoon commanders as you need to, let them pick their XOs, and get ready to go up on the line. Clean and maintain all weapons. Distribute ammunition, food, and water. Make them eat a meal. Be ready to move up to the line and take over from a unit there within an hour and a half. Units on the line, same drill as soon as you're relieved.” Jenny felt as if the person Jeff had always wanted to be had taken over her spirit.

“Now, before you go, we're going to figure out who's going where. Walk with me around the roof. This is my XO, Sergeant-now-brevet-Major Patel, and most of you know Chris, my intelligence staff. Chris, get out the notepad.”

In a quick circuit of the roof, she assigned everyone to advance or retreat to straighten and contract the line, pressuring them to volunteer and to keep their mouths shut about difficulties or objections.

Back at the access ladder, Jenny halted them all with a glare. “What kind of example are you setting your men? Stand up straight, hold those weapons like they're yours, and when you give orders make them sound like orders. Dismissed!”

The men and women climbing back down through the skylight were still frightened, worried, unsure, even traumatized, but they moved like people who intended to do their duty.

“You were saying, General?” Chris said, smiling slightly.

“You know, right now they'd hang any man I told them to. What if I turned out not to have a sense of humor?” She saw the speculation in his eyes that she might mean it, and scolded herself for enjoying it.

9 HOURS LATER. RUINS OF LAFAYETTE. 10 PM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026.

“We're six hours into blackout, ma'am.” Adele was a heavyset young woman who had probably been ignored by everyone back before because she was quiet, but there was no problem with her assertiveness now. “If I set up a radio we're risking destroying irreplaceable parts at best, and a fire or an explosion at worst, and anyway chances are no one is on the air to hear us right now. Plus all the parts will have been out of sealed containers and the nanospawn'll start up on them. I'll do it if you order me but you're going to have to order me.”

Jenny nodded. “Then I'm ordering it. We'll get you a couple more oil lamps so you have light to work by.”

“Don't need the lamps. They'd just be one more thing to burn if the radio blows up. Just give me a clear table and have someone ready to run the antenna out.” Adele hoisted the metal file box onto the table and began unpacking parts. From the corner, Chris said, “I'll have the encryption all rechecked in a couple more minutes.”

Jenny nodded. “Great, and thanks, both of you. And remember, some folks on the west and south sides of the line did think there was a flash in the sky late this afternoon. Good chance the moon bomb already went off, probably over Pueblo. We weren't monitoring for an all clear at the time.”

“We
were
a little busy,” Chris muttered. The tribals, having exhausted the possibilities of their crude firearms once the army had re-discovered taking cover, had fallen back on massed charges. It was no more effective than it had been before, but it still had to be coped with and it was still nerve-wracking. For the last hour things had been quiet, and after a quick meeting to assign responsibilities for the night, they were catching up on everything that went into running an army under siege, and preparing a breakout for the next day.

Chris reminded himself that he was alive, behind the lines, and might even get some food and sleep soon.
And thank god or some such person, Jenny banished Reverend Daddy to the supply office, where he's useful, which means I didn't have to add murder of clergy to my sins. I don't think he has any idea how much she's not his little girl anymore. That's going to be—

“Hey, can I get a message to Heather O'Grainne into that queue?” Larry Mensche said from the door. “I want to tell her I quit.”

Chris looked up in shock. “You're alive.”

A minute later the two old friends were bear-hugging, pounding each other's backs, and Jenny was explaining to Adele, “It's a beefy old guy thing, I think.” Behind Larry's back, Chris shot her the finger.

Larry asked, “Has it been bad in here?”

Chris nodded. “Yeah. Out there?”

“Bad too. Really it's a good thing I
can't
just teleport to Pueblo and collect a pension because I'd do it in a heartbeat, or worse yet I'd think about it, not do it, and curse myself for being an idiot. Anyway, I'm here. Have any other scouts made it in?”

“They have now,” Freddie Pranger said. He appeared to be unhurt but looked exhausted; the two young men following him were Roger Jackson, who was hobbling on crutches with a splinted leg, and a man with strange facial tattoos and a bandage wrapped around his head, wearing the grimy and bloody remains of a TexIC uniform, who introduced himself as Dave McWaine. “Got two that should see a doctor soon, and with stories to tell, so if it's okay, Larry, I'd like these guys to report first.”

Patel leaned in through the door. “Ma'am, I've got medics for these men and food for everyone on the way; I'm having the cooks make up some of the emergency coffee because I think you'll be up for the night.”

Adele looked up from the radio setup and said, “Ma'am, there
was
an EMP strike over Pueblo this afternoon, so they're broadcasting an all clear. We can send out reports as you like, at least till the nanos eat the radio.”

Jenny looked around the room, stretched, and yawned. “Gawww,” she groaned. “All right, thank you, Major Patel, perfect on everything. Make sure there's a cup for the radio operator.” She turned back to the scouts. “You've all heard that General Grayson and the senior leadership were assassinated, and I'm commanding because I'm the one who will?”

They nodded.

“All right. Chris, that message did include a request for a real general and some actual officers ASAP, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“All right, then.” She shook her head and rolled her neck; her hair had long since escaped from its ties. Chris couldn't help noticing, in the yellow flicker of the oil lamps, that she was still strikingly beautiful despite her evident exhaustion, and a glance around the room showed that even Roger, broken leg and all, seemed to take an interest.
God, if I get the chance to write that next book, it'll make a great scene but no one will believe it; some future historian will say that men could not notice a thing like that at a time like this. Some future historian who has never seen Jenny or is not a straight man, anyway.

Jenny seemed to summon full alertness by an act of will and said, “Let's hear everyone's reports, starting with—Roger, correct?—since I want him to get to the medics quick. I'm just glad to see we have some scouts left. What did you see and what's out there?”