Authors: John Barnes
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6 PM MST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025.
Still someone else’s turn,
Heather thought. She looked over her big chart and thought,
Four days of talking and I’ve added about two cards to this, and haven’t moved a line. Abundant noise and heat and not one trace of light or motion.
Well, maybe that would change tomorrow. Maybe both sides would realize that Harrison Castro’s little theft of their thunder was a way to show them all how irrelevant they were—
and irrelevant is the one thing that none of them can stand to be. I hope.
She saw Graham Weisbrod coming across the courthouse lawn; good, it looked like Allie wouldn’t be along tonight, either. The big chart, still unchanged, slid back into place, and she picked up Leo, locked the office door behind herself, and went downstairs to meet Graham at her living quarters. A night of old times’ conversation, baby-inspecting, and nostalgic laughter was probably what was really needed, right now, anyway.
THE NEXT DAY. SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 3:30 PM PST. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025.
Pat O’Grainne had lived a long time, and it kept feeling longer, especially with this silly ceremony to get through.
The one thing you can say for being in a wheelchair, it’s easy on your feet and the small of your back. All I have to do is not fall asleep. Though I wish I could. Heather is so gonna not like this, and I ain’t wild about it myself.
The crowd stirred down below. A horn group that sounded like an underrehearsed high school band played something or other. Guys in capes and plumed hats (
what’s he doing, swearing in the Castle Castro Musketeers?
) went clumping down the aisle to the silly music, followed by Harrison Castro and a bunch of his officers.
At least their uniforms were plain black, with red berets; they merely looked like ninja Boy Scouts.
Please, God, let this be short.
No such luck. A bunch of guys stood up and talked about how Harrison Castro was the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, the man, and the shit; how historic this, that, and the other was; and the long and short of it was that everyone thought Castro was a good guy and this was a big fucking day.
Oh, for a tall glass of cold beer. This is only the introduction.
The main event was four more drummy, stompy, horn-infested parades to bring the freeholders of Irvine, Laguna, Newport, and Castle Rand down the aisle. They lined them up in front of the dais where Castro stood, dressed up like he was going to a science fiction convention as a space mercenary.
Finally the four freeholders were sworn in as Knights Deputies, which was what Castro was calling his feudal branch office managers. He was also declaring himself the Earl of San Diego and Leader of the League of Southern California Castles.
The first time Pat had heard the term, he’d thought,
Leading the League in what, balls or errors?
No matter how many funny suits Castro put on, what he was, was a cross between an old-fashioned asshat contractor and a high-income biker. The old-style contractors Pat had worked for too often in his younger days had shouted constantly about how nobody was going to tell them what to do and that they were free and independent men, while mostly living off government contracts and lecturing actual shovel-jockeys about hard work. The alpha bikers had been dentists, lawyers, or accountants with enough money to buy the really awesome toys; they had been generous with drinks and advice, the gist of which was that if you were as smart as they were, you’d be them, so obviously what you needed was a stiff drink and some bracing advice.
Heather had asked Pat to send her everything he could remember about this ceremony, so he did his best to concentrate on Harrison Castro’s speech, the longest explanation Pat had ever heard for why smart rich people deserved to be rich because they were so smart, and were obviously smart because they were so rich. That night in his room, he used up half his candle ration for the week, and there were nine handwritten coded pages. It was cold, so he burned his scratchwork, and as the room warmed up, finally fell asleep, thinking about how all the movies had lied about what the life of a spy was like.
15 HOURS LATER. BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA. 9:35 AM EST. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2025.
Roger put in his next-to-last magazine. Counting the one in the chamber he was down to nine rounds—eight, saving one for himself.
More than twenty tribals on the ground floor below him.
They could come up two staircases, one at each end of the concrete hallway, but he could cover both of those from his improvised fort at the central desk on the floor. They could set the building on fire and make him come down one staircase, but on his way down he’d have another chance to take one or two with him.
When it comes to getting shot at the end of the game, everybody wants to be in the back row.
Angry shouting: “All right, follow me!”
Roger set himself.
Just like rifle range.
The man lunged from the right stairwell.
Point and squeeze.
He fell over.
Another clean head shot. They’d be so proud of me back in Pueblo.
He got the next one from the right staircase, then another from the left. He was down to one in the chamber, one in the magazine, one magazine to go. He fumbled the last magazine out of his pocket.
It was empty. He must have absentmindedly tucked it back into his pocket sometime in the last three hours of being chased around the U of I campus. It seemed really unfair that he had just lost count.
The two rounds left were what he had. In a few minutes there’d be another rush. He’d take one more with him, and then, remembering Ecco, he’d use the last round to take the fast dark exit.
Since it was almost over, he might as well go comfortably. He stood, stretched his legs, and treated himself to a long, luxurious piss into a drinking fountain drain. He could hear them arguing and squabbling below about who would rush him next.
The big room he’d had his back to was a chem lab; he smashed the window in its door with a chair. Downstairs, they yelped and whined “What’s he doing?” at each other.
Wish I had the ammunition to invite them up to find out.
The supply closet was familiar territory; a year ago he’d been finishing his first year as a ChemE major.
Except for some strong caustics, the dry chemicals had been in plastic jars that had rotted. He swept the heaped-together powders, and the goopy remnants of the jars, into a dustpan, carried the pan down the hall, and emptied it just out of sight of one stairwell entrance. He went back and got more, putting that at the other end of the hall, dragging one body out of the way as if it were furniture. He wiped his hands on his pants, noticing he didn’t care that the man was dead but hated how grimy his skin and clothes were.
Funny, before Daybreak the only corpse I’d seen was at Grandpa’s funeral.
Next he took the dry chemicals stored in glass, which were generally the most reactive, and poured them onto the tops of his piles. They were still arguing about whether they should rush him, and what it might mean that he was moving around up there.
Back in the supply closet, he set aside the strong acids. The rest of the liquids in glass were mostly complex organics, which had turned to something like cheese, but a few flammable solvents seemed all right; these he carried, bottles and all, to add to his piles.
Sudden scuffling downstairs. Shouting. Screaming.
Two shots.
RRC agents or maybe TNG troops; Daybreakers had no working guns. Roger froze and listened.
“Hey, don’t shoot.” A grinning Dan Samson burst from the stairwell. “Roger! I didn’t know Heather had sent you too! I surprised’em a little,” the big man said. “If we go now, I think we can shoot our way out—”
“Need ammo,” Roger whispered. “I have two.”
“Seven,” Samson said quietly.
“Let’s set off the surprise I’ve been fixing up and see if we can get out with just hatchets. What are they
doing
down there?”
“Trying to figure out what to do because you killed the big boss and two little bosses, and they’re afraid to go home and say they didn’t get us, and even more afraid to come up the stairs. Let’s try your idea. I’ve always loved surprises.”
A few seconds later, they hurled one jug of nitric acid to the far end of the hall; the mess of powder there foamed, fumed, burst into flames, and poured out dense blue smoke. They charged down their own stairwell, staying well separated, and at the first landing, threw the big bottles of hydrochloric and sulfuric acid up behind themselves, through the propped-open doors and into the piles of chemicals. There was a low, pulsing boom and more dark smoke gouted into the stairwell.
Holding their breaths, they plunged down the stairs. At the double doors Samson plowed into a Daybreaker sentry coming in, pinned her to the wall with the door, and chopped her forehead, twisting the blade to wrench it free.
Roger yanked the other door open and charged into the now-terrified group, slashing and thumping with his hatchet, and Samson was on them a moment later.
The surviving Daybreakers fled. “This way,” Samson said. They climbed through a broken window onto a low fire escape, dropped to the ground, and ran.
“Those were some pretty shitty soldiers,” Roger gasped, as they ducked between two buildings. Behind them, the chemistry building was pouring dense blue smoke from its lower floor.
“Those weren’t soldiers. They were slaves. Their leadership was three sorta-soldiers from Castle Earthstone. More afraid of their bosses than they were of us.” In the chemistry building, a window belched orange flame. “What did you do back there?”
“I have no idea. Where to from here?”
“Well, not back to
that
building. South, I think. Let’s go.”
17 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 12:30 AM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2025.
“This is pretty senseless of me,” Allie said. She cupped her wineglass like a baby bird in her hand, looking at the two empty bottles as if they had just appeared from nowhere. “I’m just the tiddliest bit drunk, I’m going to have a hangover tomorrow for the conference when I really need to be patient with Graham, and I’m feeling
so
totally extremely indiscreet.” She touched the long red lacquered nail of her index finger to her nose and said, “Numb, numb, numb. Can’t feel a thing. Also num, num, num, dinner here was amazing, Arnie. I think in the new post-Daybreak world, if Olympia is the new Washington, it’s gotta be that Pueblo is the new New York. Better restaurants, smarter people, I mean what else could it be?”
“Well, Johanna’s What There Is is
the
place in Pueblo.”
“Yeah, and back in the day you’d have taken me to
the
place in New York, if I’d’ve even looked at you when you were teaching at that fancy school—”
“Columbia.”
“I know, Arn, just having fun with you.” She sighed and drank some more.
Watching Allie drink always excited him—many things about her did. She used to tease him that it reminded him of the only way he’d been able to score in college. Actually, he liked the way her deliberate sips always became deep gulps—not so much her lack of control, as her losing it.
He’d been staring.
Cover that.
“Where did you get red nail polish? I thought cosmetics were all gone—”
“The most expensive stuff was all natural ingredients packaged in glass. I just let it be known to some salvage crew heads that good things might happen if anyone brought me unopened nail polish, in glass bottles. One enterprising young man found some. So I have about a fifteen-year supply of nail polish—and he’s now a section head with a comfy desk job.
And
my source for a lot of good stuff. At least
some
things still work the way they always have.”
When they’d been dating, Arnie had worried that Allie’s liking for gifts and favors, normal in a political appointee, might screw him up with Civil Service rules if they got married.
She was smiling in the way that always sent his heart into his throat. “Arnie, babe, honestly, you think some simple favors would matter enough for Chris Manckiewicz to even print it, and risk losing nine states of subscribers?”
Too drunk to argue, Arnie sat back. “I’m just so glad to see you again.”
“I’m glad to see you again too. I didn’t realize how much I missed you.” She started a sip that turned into draining the glass. “Oops. Naughty.” She extended her glass to refill; her deep red nails reflected little stars of candle flames until he poured in the red wine, which colored the light around it so that her nails glowed like blood rubies.
40 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2:15 AM MST. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2025.
The watch was on the other side of town and Arnie was exhausted. He could just run, just this once, and it would be okay.
Less than two blocks from his house, Aaron was jogging beside him. “It must be nice to have a chance to visit with an old friend.”
Arnie tried to pretend the Daybreaker wasn’t there, wasn’t close enough for him to smell the man’s infrequently-if-ever washed body and clothes, wasn’t already causing the sort of fuzziness in his mind that he had now filled two notebooks trying to understand and analyze after the fact.
“Sometimes,” Aaron said, as if Arnie had answered him, “there is a harmless pleasure in learning something about a former lover.” Arnie picked up the pace but Aaron matched him. “Allie spends many nights sitting up alone, while the president sleeps the sleep of an old, tired man.”
Arnie ran faster still; Aaron matched him.
“Doctor Yang, you are thinking, ‘How would Aaron know?’ and the answer is that we have mutual friends.”
Only a block to go. Arnie flung himself toward his front door. Aaron was at his heels. In a final, gasping burst, Arnie leapt and whirled, put his back to his front door, drew his knives.
Dark, empty street.
He waited.
Nothing.
Finally he unlocked his door, went inside, locked it behind him, lit an oil lamp.
“She doesn’t sleep with Graham anymore. Not that it’s my business, of course, but it’s interesting,” Aaron said. He was leaning back in Arnie’s leather armchair, legs crossed comfortably, bouncing one leg over his other knee. “Doctor, doctor, doctus, docta, doctum, dock ta dock ta dock.”
Arnie wanted to speak, to shout, to scream and leap to the attack. Instead he was captivated by the way Aaron’s foot moved in the lamplight, up down, up down. . . .
Aaron said, “Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely . . . time. So things have been happening. Do you know where Larry, Chris, and Jason are? Are they coming back across the Wabash?”
Arnie felt his head nodding. It was a tiny victory; he knew from having sneaked a look at Heather’s notes, on her desk, that Heather had actually instructed them to get out any way that seemed good. It wasn’t quite a lie to nod, and it wasn’t the truth either, but Arnie hoped, deep inside, it would turn out to be a lie.
More questions, as Arnie cooked a meal for Aaron.
Later, writing in his notepad, Arnie scribbled a whole page of
I must never come home without the watch.
I must never come home without the watch.
I must never come home without the watch.
On and on, like Bart Simpson having a bad day, unable to think of another sentence. He took a deep breath and made himself write
I must remember—
Something about Allie.
Something hurt; he looked down to see the broken pencil, and some blood where the splinters had gone into his middle finger.
He fell asleep lying across the still-made bed, his notebook dropping to the floor beside him.