Daybreak Zero (11 page)

ABOUT 20 MINUTES LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11 PM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2025.

Arnie walked alone; he’d taken an isolated house farther away from downtown, to give himself some privacy and space.

A scraping sound. He spun, cross-drawing his knives from his hip sheaths, hoping all the
sai
katas he’d studied—

“I’ll come out if you put away the knives. I mean you no harm.” The voice was behind him.

He leapt forward and pivoted. “If you mean me no harm, it won’t matter that I keep my knives out. Show yourself.”

The tall, thin man emerged from the shadows. The blanket covering the top and sides of his head, his long curly beard, and his large round eyes made him look like a cheap religious painting. Bare feet gripped the warm summer street above pirate-style pants—a big piece of a sheet wrapped at the waist, cut up to the crotch front and back, and sewed up the inside seam.

Jeez,
Arnie thought.
With a zillion Wal-Marts out there to loot, he couldn’t just find some all-cotton basketball shorts?

“My name is Aaron,” the man said. “Last fall, you were looking for me with every weapon and tool that plaztatic civilization still had.”

“What are you here for?”

“I’d like to talk to you.”

“Well, talk.” Arnie’s heart was pounding. This guy at least
looked
like Ysabel’s description of Aaron, who even now was the single most wanted Daybreaker. “Talk,” Arnie repeated. “If that’s what you came to do.”

“Oh, that’s what I came to do,
Doctor
Yang. Doctor, from the Latin
doceo
. Taught, educated, having mastered the documents, learned the doctrine, having been indoctrinated.”

“You sound like you used to teach English.”

“I do, don’t I? After I go, will you look up all the missing English teachers to see if you can find a match?”

“Just an observation.” Arnie shifted his weight.

“If people would
confine
themselves to observations, everything would be
fine
. It’s their insistence on taking action that condemns the species.”

“You’re one of us.”

“I intend to be among the last of us, actually.” Aaron advanced to just out of arms’ reach. “So you want to see into the soul of Daybreak. Here I am. What do you want to know?”

“How do you communicate with Daybreak?” Arnie asked.

“That’s a rather blunt question.”

“I’m blunt, and I don’t believe you’ll actually tell me the truth about anything. I might as well shoot for the moon.”

“Nowadays, the moon shoots for
you
. I don’t share my colleagues’ optimism that if you understand Daybreak, you’ll join it. I think there are plenty of unredeemable people.”

“And you don’t have any trouble with killing them.”

Aaron stared at him, head cocked to the side. “So you are a statistical semiotician, an occupation that could have explained immense amounts about culture and society and all that, but in practice was used to refine methods of selling politicians and soap—not very well because no one could get funding for the basic science to underlie it.”

Arnie brought his knives up slightly; he felt like his bowels were trying to pass a frozen cannonball. Aaron’s words were—

“You could have told everyone about Daybreak before it happened, but it was the same old thing, wasn’t it? Give us the payoff from your research, first, and then we’ll pay you to do it. That was where you were last year, eh? You knew Daybreak was coming but they wouldn’t let you really study it unless you told them the answers before you studied it.” Aaron clicked his tongue. “Very tough on
Doctor
Arnie Yang, they don’t want the doctor, the
know
-er, the one who makes
know
-ledge, they want the doctus, the guy who
already knows
. Give us your results, better yet tell us we’re already right, and
then
we’ll pay you to do the research.” Aaron was standing close enough now for Arnie to just step forward and strike, his huge dark eyes holding Arnie’s. “And even now, eh?” Aaron said. “Even now, they want you to just tell them what to shoot. They don’t want you to understand Daybreak, do they?”

“How old is Daybreak?”

“Everyone I know, before they were in Daybreak, was in something that eventually flowed into Daybreak,” Aaron said. “You might say Daybreak is older than itself; whatever parts became the core of Daybreak were there before anyone spoke the word ‘Daybreak.’ At first it had many different names: the Coming, the Dawn, the Morning Glory, one goofy guy I knew said, ‘It’s Morning on Earth’ constantly. So I surely heard the word ‘Daybreak’ in that context at least a hundred times before I knew it would be the name of anything, let alone the thing it would be the name of.” Aaron cocked his head to the side, peering at Arnie. “Insightful, but
very
academic,
Doctor
Yang. Shouldn’t you ask about our troop dispositions? No wonder no one likes that incorrigibly academic Doctor Yang—”

“If you expect me to be ashamed of my education, you’ve—”

“Oh, but it’s not about education. It’s about understanding. All thinking beings surely want to be understood, don’t they? Consciously or not?” Aaron stepped backward. The shadows closed around him like a slamming door. Arnie was alone in the moonlit street.

Later, at home, he closed and bolted the heavy shutters, checked every bolt and lock multiple times, and stretched out so that his writing pad rested on his stomach and faced the candle. At the top of the page he wrote,
Recent contact with an active long-term Daybreaker has provided evidence of the urgency of a full, in-depth, from-the-ground-up study of Daybreak.
After ten sentences he realized he couldn’t remember the conversation nearly as well as the eyes, the rhythm, the too-empty street. The creaking of the old house, and the fantastical candlelight shadows, should have terrified him, he thought, just before he fell asleep.

THE NEXT DAY. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9 AM MST. THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2025.

Arnie’s “interview room” was a corner second-floor office space over a boarded-up computer store in downtown Pueblo. He had furnished it with wool and cotton blankets thrown over metal folding chairs, facing in a semicircle toward an old writing desk, and a side table with pitchers of water and some bread and cheese for snacks.

He sat down at the writing desk and opened his notepad, just as if he hadn’t been gone for more than six weeks. “Well, it’s been a while since we’ve met as a group. I’ve got some new questions; let’s see if they call up any new answers.”

Jason Nemarec, his wife Beth, and Izzy Underhill (who was actually Ysabel Roth, but was still at some risk of being assassinated because of her prominence on Daybreak day) were Arnie’s only “domesticated” ex-Daybreakers—people who had been fully part of Daybreak and were now reliably working for the RRC. The best estimate now was that on October 28, 2024, at least sixty thousand Daybreakers had participated in some act of sabotage within the United States; perhaps a million sympathizers, posers, and dupes had been involved peripherally during the year before.

Most Daybreakers were now dead, like most of everyone else; most of the living ones were in the tribes, but there must still be covert Daybreaker spies and saboteurs, as well as ex-Daybreakers, afraid to expose themselves to arrest or mob violence, hiding out the way Beth and Jason had for months in the little town of Antonito, far from anyone who might recognize them. It was a legitimate fear; every Daybreaker captured in those first months, despite the pleas of Federal intelligence and law enforcement, had been killed by mobs or summarily executed by local authorities. Trying to protect captured Daybreakers long enough to interrogate them simply got police and soldiers killed with them; shortly, most officials began handing Daybreakers over to mobs, or killing them themselves, as a matter of personal safety.

Izzy was petite, bony, and big-jawed, with long straight brown hair and deep sad eyes. “I’m so sorry to hear about what happened down at Mota Elliptica. It must have been terrible,” she said.

Arnie nodded, thinking,
Don’t cry
. “We lost good people. We did learn a lot about Daybreak.” He looked down at his notes. “Everyone ready?”

They all nodded.

“Then,” Arnie said, “do you feel like you joined Daybreak after it already existed, or do you feel like you helped create it?”

“Joined,” Beth said, simultaneously with Jason’s “Helped create,” and they both laughed.

“I’m not seeing the joke,” Arnie said.

“We heard about it on the same day from a guy named Terrel,” Beth said. “Ysabel was in a long time before we were, so—”

Ysabel screamed and fell from her chair, lying on the floor with her back arched and arms flailing. They had all seen this before; whatever part of Daybreak clung to individual minds, it still protected Daybreak. They cleared the chairs away, and surrounded her with pillows.

Beth said, “Well, Arnie, you sure hit a button that time.”

Arnie said, “Yeah, I guess so. How are you two doing?”

“Little bit of a headache,” Jason said, “but that could be all the screaming and the exercise.”

Beth nodded. “I’m okay. I can feel Daybreak not liking me but . . . I don’t know, maybe I just have more natural resistance. It was deep into Ysabel, here. Real deep. So fuckin’ much more Daybreak in her than we got in us, you know?”

“Keep telling me, I’m learning.”

She shrugged. “We used to kid around and call it Daydar, you know, like gaydar? One Daybreaker tends to know another one real fast and easy, and know how deep in they are and how long they’ve been. Some of those real long-timers it’s like they’re all Daybreak, ain’t much of them left, it’s like you’re talking to Daybreak direct without them there at all.”

“And we used to laugh at coustajam hippies,” Jason added. “People who liked the music, the vegetables, the clothes, and some of the words, but didn’t have a clue what it meant. You got so you knew the second you met someone.”

“Can someone who wasn’t a Daybreaker have Daydar?”

Beth looked thoughtful for a moment. “Well, most straight people have some gaydar, don’t they?”

Izzy sighed and turned over on her side. Arnie made sure she was covered with a blanket. “She’ll want to sleep it off, and sometimes the easiest time to talk is right when she’s just coming out. I can sit here and wait for her, if you both have things to do.”

“I think I better stay,” Beth said. “She’s kind of . . . she gets scared when it’s just you there when she wakes up. She told us. Don’t get your feelings hurt or nothing, I’m just saying.”

Arnie nodded. “Okay.” Not sure what else to say, he added, “I’m sorry I’m scary.”

Beth shrugged. “Not scary so much . . . just, it’s your job, Arnie, you got to push us, hurt us even, to find out about Daybreak—maybe you’ll feel real bad after, but you’ll hurt us.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly, again.

“It’s okay,” Jason said. “Better that it’s you; at least we can tell you don’t
like
having to hurt us.”

Arnie nodded.
Wow. Daydar. And how Daybreak came into existence or how people get infected is a third-rail question. More stuff to try on Aaron. Get one definite thing out of him, and Heather will be able to go straight to everyone for funds, people, and time—they’ll all
have
to listen.

THE NEXT DAY. NEAR PINEHURST, IDAHO, ON US ROUTE 95. 3:45 PM PST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.

The shadows were getting longer, stretching eastward, but sunset was still hours away. Bambi and Debbie had spent the day holding hands or leaning against each other, squeeze-coding, catching up on everything. Bambi found Debbie’s enthusiasm for tonight’s raid frightening.
But then if I’d been chained for three months between bouts of scutwork and rape—

The door opened. Debbie slumped like a collapsing sandbag. Michael Amandasson ordered, “Slave, come with me.”

Debbie wailed, “Please don’t tie me up with the horses again, I’ll try to be better!”

“We’re not going to do that—”

“Please, not in the kennel with the dogs!”

Michael Amandasson laughed. “You’re coming to my private cabin. I have a one-fourth share in the ransom and I’m gonna celebrate.”

Debbie stood up, snuffling, wiping her face, catching her balance on Bambi Castro’s shoulder. Bambi covered Debbie’s hand with her own, gave her a brief consoling hug, and squeezed
QSL QTH
—
I have received your position
.

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:12 PM MST. FRIDAY, JULY 18, 2025.

After they had sparred with fists and feet, taken wooden knives away from each other, slammed each other into the mats, and tried to hit each other with sticks, Mr. Samson (“Call me sensei and I’ll kick your butt, call me Master and I’ll make you shine my shoes”) seemed satisfied. “Well, yeah, you definitely have enough prior training for my advanced class. What do you think, Steve?”

Steve Ecco, a short, muscular man, perhaps thirty years old, with sandy blond hair and a Wyatt Earp mustache, nodded. “Good with me too. Where’d you learn?”

Arnie Yang explained, “Well, Dad pushed me to do all this martial arts stuff, so I did, like I did classical guitar, AP math, Junior Achievement, and all the rest. I was a total GOAT.”

Ecco raised an eyebrow. “The only goats we had in Oklahoma were next to the doublewides of the goat-ropers.”

Arnie laughed. “Yeah, different cultures. Grossly Overachieving Asian Teenager. One of those Asian kids who was pushed and pushed and pushed. I hated it in high school—if you’re an Asian kid who does martial arts, every moron in the world is yelling ‘hee-yah!’ and jumping at you. But when I got to college, I learned the stress relief value of beating on your fellow human beings, and just kind of stayed with it after college. Nowadays it almost seems easier to practice than not.”

Samson nodded. “Good answer. We get too many people here, even now, who want to be either a crime-fighting macho superhero who rips human hearts out with his bare hands, or a Jedi Peacenik Levitation Master who just floats bad people away in harmony with their spiritual nature.”

“I’ve met a few of both kinds, myself. I hope I’m old enough to be over the romanticism of violence. You know, less than a week ago I shot some people, and a good friend was killed beside me. I know I have a Ph.D. and I use big words, but I hope you can overlook those character defects.”

“You’ll do fine here,” Samson said. He was tall, stout but not fat, with thick, straight, iron-gray hair, an eagle-beak of a nose, crooked teeth, and a receding chin, so that he looked like a large muskrat who had borrowed a Senate candidate’s toupee.

“Be nice to have another guy in the class who knows something,” Ecco added. “The advanced class’ll be coming in in a couple minutes, get some water now if you’re gonna need it.”

After a brisk workout and some fussing with people’s grips in jujitsu, Samson called Jason up for sparring. As they stepped into striking range, Samson sped up and kept coming, swinging slowly and carefully but pushing Jason steadily back until his foot crossed the painted line. “Okay, I ran you out of bounds. In a big room I’d have you cornered, and be beating on you or waiting for my friends to bring around a weapon. What did you do?”

“He didn’t get off the line.” It sounded more like
lann
, delivered in a flat twang of complete boredom.

“Steve, I didn’t ask you,” Samson said, not taking his eyes off Jason.

“Just wanted to save time.”
Sounded more like
tamm
,
Arnie thought. Now that was weird. He’d have thought he had as little prejudice as any coastal American could, but something about Steve’s flat, hard-edged delivery was like a sanding wheel skipping over a brick wall.
Probably meant to be. He wants to fight—

“I guess I could’ve moved to the side,” Jason said.

“You guessed right,” Samson said.

“Let us show you,” Ecco said. “Doctor Yang, you and me are the demo team here.” Arnie stood, and Ecco said, “All right, touch is as good as a strike, take it easy, this is a demo, not a match. Now come after me, Doctor Yang—”

“In here I better be Arnie.”

“Arnie, then. First time I’ll just go back or forward, one straight track, you come at me any way you like.”

Ecco was fast and proficient, but since Arnie could just keep alternating flanks, he quickly drove him out of bounds.

“Now,” Ecco said, “This time I move off the line. See what you can do.”

Arnie had barely kicked once before he was surrounded by a blur of Ecco’s hands, feet, elbows, and everything else; he was able to stay in the space, and use his hands and forearms to block most of the fast-but-gently-controlled jabs, crosses, spear-hands, and thrust-kicks, but that was all, and in a real fight he’d have been knocked flat.

“
Ya-me!
” Ecco said, the call to end action. They bowed. “Y’all see, everyone? Arnie’s good, but I’m
real
good. But if I stay on that line, he can beat my ass into the ground.”

Hah. Now I get it. Steve Ecco needs to establish a pecking order, when a new guy comes in with skills. Well, no prob. He’s definitely a bigger pecker than I am.

After practice, Samson and Ecco stopped him. “Going to come back?” Ecco asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it. That was fun. And I have to get good enough to not look so lame out there.”

“Good answer,” Ecco said. “I don’t suppose that besides being a pretty good fighter and a damned good sport, the Perfessor happens to drink beer?”

“I do. I also listen to country music, and if I had the nerve, I’d chase waitresses.”

“Well, then, let’s stop by Dell’s Brew, pour you some courage, and work on some technique.”

“You talked me into it.” Arnie had planned to walk home the long way by himself, in hopes that Aaron would reappear, so that he could try out his carefully written, memorized questions.
But the international association of lonely sad guys is obviously holding a chapter meeting, and I wouldn’t miss that.
He felt happier and less lonely than he had in a long time.