Daybreak Zero (28 page)

ELEVEN:

DANCED UPON THE HEAPS OF SHRUNKEN DEAD

ABOUT 3 HOURS LATER. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 5:30 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025.

Larry, Chris, and Jason waited for sunset in a cluster of trees, near a ditch to give them a covered retreat. Slaves and soldiers emerged from the main gate, followed by the technicians and the favored slaves, and then the lord and his “palace staff.”

“If we’d known they were going to do this,” Chris said, “we could’ve spared all that effort counting them.”

“At least they’re confirming our count,” Larry pointed out. They had spent much of the afternoon observing and counting, figuring out that there were quarters for about four hundred soldiers, though less than fifty seemed to be present; fifteen or so in the lord’s entourage; about twenty pump-and-windmill mechanics, overseers, and attractive women, in the hut Larry had dubbed the tech-and-trollop shack; and between eight and nine hundred emaciated, sickly slaves.

The whole population seemed to be gathering in a semicircle between the main wall and the outer gateway. Slaves ran to set up front-row chairs for the lord and his staff. Everyone else sat on the ground.

The bass drum beat faster, and other drums joined in. Slaves danced into the center area. This uncostumed daylight version was danced more than acted, but it was very recognizably
The Play of Daybreak
. Whenever the coincidence of wind and volume enabled them to hear a phrase, Larry or Jason or both would nod at the familiar words.

“Look at the way the audience is swaying to the drum,” Chris breathed. “Like a rock concert with hypnosis.”

Jason said, “Most of them spent years being hypnotized via the screen every night, sinking deeper and deeper into Daybreak, and now they—”

Jason didn’t know what moved beside him, but weeks of nerves and months of Samson’s training made him draw his short hatchet and chop sideways across the motion, splitting the hand holding the knife between the wrist bones before he knew what it was. He snatched back the hatchet, slapped the knife away with the flat of the blade, and backhanded up the arm and shoulder, using the handle running along the arm to guide him till the blade found the neck and bit deep into the carotid and windpipe.
One out.

Jason kept his hatchet high behind his head, clearing into his turn with a cloud-hand.

Larry was yanking his commando knife back from a man’s throat. Two women had jumped onto Chris, one with arms wrapped around his throat in a half-nelson strangle, the other tangling his arms. They were pulling him over backward as he struggled to his feet.

Jason swung as Chris bucked forward, and struck the upper woman on the crown of her head, sinking his hatchet deep. Chris’s freed hands clawed back for the eyes of the woman tackling him.

She shrieked as Larry’s knife slashed into her thigh and cut upward, bringing a gush of arterial blood. She fell dying, but the entire crowd was now staring toward them. Jason and Chris whirled to plunge into the ditch.

Larry grabbed them by their collars. “No! This way!”

They ran for a clump of trees and bushes about sixty yards off. Behind them, Jason heard thrashing sounds—
they must’ve been set to ambush us in the ditch, glad Larry spotted them, run, run, come on, run.

Larry dove headfirst among the bushes in a tsugari roll, and Jason followed; Chris plunged forward and prone, covering his face with his outturned hands. Things hissed and thudded among the low branches. Something spun and clattered down to the ground, hissing like a furious goose. Larry grabbed it, rose to his knees to throw it, and fell back prone.

Jason felt the boom in the ground, through his chest. Leaves and twigs showered his back.
Beth, babe, if it’s a boy we’re naming him Larry.

“Up, run.” Larry jumped to his feet and they ran up a slope, across an open field, and around behind a lean-to shed. “Chris, right side, prone firing. Jason, same thing, left side.” Larry rolled away from the shed and took cover behind a low hummock.

Back toward Castle Earthstone, horns blew and people shouted. Jason sighted around the side of the lean-to. The soldiers from the ditch were running back to join the main group by Castle Earthstone.

“They’re organizing pursuit,” Larry said, softly. “Now, see the lord there?”

“Looks like Santa Claus throwing a tantrum,” Chris observed.

“He does. It’s a long shot, but these big heavy bullets tend to fly straight and hit hard even far away. On three we’re all taking a shot at Lord Santa there. If you see him react to the shots but he’s not hit, take another shot at him as quick as you can. If you see him hit, look over the crowd and shoot anyone you see giving orders and being listened to. Keep shooting till your magazine’s empty and your last round is chambered. There’s a long line of trees along an old railroad embankment about a hundred and twenty yards behind me. As soon as your magazine is empty with your last round chambered, get back behind the embankment. Switch magazines there. If you’re the only one that gets there, make something up; otherwise wait till we’re all there. Got all that?”

“Yeah,” Jason said, sighting about five feet above Lord Santa’s head, and hoping his guess was right for the long shot.

“Yep,” Chris said.

“On three. One, two, thr—”
Crack.

Black-powder forms a gray, dirty cloud that obscures the shooter’s sight and gives away his position. In the long breath while the white blur with its burnt-sulfur stench cleared away, Jason considered the importance of the project at Pueblo trying to make a biote-immune smokeless powder.

The smoke cleared. The big, white-bearded man was on his back on the ground with a dozen people bent over him.
Hit.

Larry’s rifle cracked, and Chris was working his lever; belatedly Jason worked his own and looked around. A young man with a yellow beard and dreads had jumped up on one of the seats in the elite section of the audience and was pointing toward Jason.
Should’ve kept your mouth shut, dude.
Jason pulled the trigger, worked the lever.

One of the soldiers was facing away from Jason and shouting to a group of people; Jason fired again, and this time the wind carried the smoke away quickly enough for him to see the man diving for the ground.

His sights found a woman leading a group with hoes and axes out of the crowd; he shot lower so that if he missed her he might hit someone behind. That was his four shots: one from the chamber and three from his four-shot magazine. One left. He worked the lever, rolled up, and dashed for the embankment.

Jason caught up with Chris as the older, big man was just clearing the rusty tracks.

Larry was there waiting. “Change magazines. They’re acting pretty confused down there. We need to get some distance before they think about using dogs. Best hope we have is to wade in that creek for a mile or two.”

Staying low, they ran down the hill. The sun was just setting, and there was plenty of light for them as they waded and splashed along the winding creek between the willows. Every hundred yards or so, Larry stopped them and they stood silently, listening; they had gone about a mile when they first heard the baying of the hounds.

“I used to like dogs,” Chris said. “I always put ‘dog-lover’ in my personal ads and dating-site profiles.”

“Well, if you can love’em after tonight, you are
really
a dog lover,” Larry said.

As the first stars came out, they moved along the grassy trace of a dirt farm road running east, surrounded by dense bushes, and slowed to a brisk walk; the sounds of the dogs and shouting had faded into the background. The grimy moon rose, revealing big dense bundles of berries on the bushes around them; Chris reached out, grabbed a handful, tasted one, and said, “Elderberry. This must have been a jam farm. They’re ripe.”

“Try not to get your hands sticky,” Larry said, “but that’s dinner. Put a few handfuls in your knapsacks and we’ll just eat as we go.”

The berries were tart and strong-tasting, with gritty little seeds that got between your teeth. They tramped on in the hazy moonlight, through the thick dew-soaked grass, headed east, deeper into the Lost Quarter.

ABOUT THE SAME TIME. CASTLE EARTHSTONE. 6 PM EST. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2025.

Robert knew that Karl was dead before the old bastard hit the ground; half his face had been torn off and a spray of blood from his back soaked the grass around him. Robert felt for a pulse on the bloody neck just to be sure.

Major Carter, the garrison commander, jumped up on a chair, and yelled that he was in charge now. Robert was about to say, “The fuck you are,” and Carter had made eye contact, when Carter’s head suddenly went all lopsided and bloody and he fell down.

It looks like they are shooting everyone who acts like he’s in charge,
Robert thought. He moved into the center of a crowd of frightened, weeping slaves, and said, softly, “Now everyone just stay back and let the fighters fight. You all come with me but stay all bunched up, and we’re just going to walk into the fort. Get everyone else to come with us if you can.”

Most of the slaves were inside or headed there when the soldiers from the failed ambush came back shouting that they needed the dogs. Robert was waiting for them at the main entrance, with the crowd of slaves between himself and the enemy guns. “All right, form up here, out of sight of their position. They’re shooting at anyone they see giving orders. Lord Karl is dead. Who’s the highest ranking of you left alive?”

Captain Nathanson apparently was—he’d been about fifth in command of the whole force, and Carter’s XO for the garrison here while the main force was away, so Robert said, “All right, then. Form your men up for the pursuit, Major Nathanson; you have my permission to take as many dogs as you need, and just leave me eight guards back here. Don’t keep going too long if you lose the trail, because we don’t know how many other attackers there might be, and this could be a trick. Good luck, Major.”

Nathanson saluted and started yelling orders; Robert turned to the nearest overseer. “Bernstein. Have the slaves put things in order for a normal day tomorrow, make it dead clear that that is what there will be, and lock down for the night. Tell the others you’re now my chief steward.”

Nathanson came back to him and snapped a crisp salute. “The Castle is secured, we’ve got the dogs, and the men are ready to start pursuit.”

“Good. Use your judgment from here on; just don’t be away too long, Major.”

“It’s captain, sir.”

“Carter is dead and you are in command.”

“Yes, Lord Robert.” Nathanson turned back to his men; Robert figured that deal was locked down.
Double locked down if Bernstein figures out that chief steward isn’t a bad job either.

THE NEXT DAY. WARSAW, INDIANA. 6 PM EST. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025.

Warsaw, Indiana, was “the kind of pretty little town that sooner or later is used in a nostalgic movie,” Chris Manckiewicz said.

“Not anymore,” Larry said. “Wonder how long before someone figures out a way to reinvent movies? And I bet there are still paper copies of some of the old scripts around, especially the classics; you think anyone will make
The Wizard of Oz
,
Saving Private Ryan
, or
Wish on an Emerald
again? But when they do, they’re going to have way more than enough places to shoot historicals, for a long time.”

The three men were sharing the last of the venison jerky and the elderberries in the corner of a wrecked hardware store. “Isn’t it weird how many little towns are named after the great cities of Europe?” Jason asked. “Like every state around here has to have a London, a Paris, a Berlin, a Warsaw, and so on? I wonder if there’s anywhere named Pinetree Junction in Europe.”

“There’s not really much Europe,” Chris pointed out. “The North Sea bomb took care of everything between Stockholm and Naples, and Edinburgh and Moscow. There’s northwest Scotland and some of Wales and Cornwall, most of Ireland, some northern Scandinavia, and Spain and Portugal. I’m not sure that counts as Europe. It’s sort of the Lost Quarter of the Old World.”

“I wonder if that’s exactly what it is,” Jason said. “I don’t know how Daybreak
could
move people into it, but I bet it’s crawling with tribes, like the Lost Quarter here.”

The other two were staring at him; he shrugged, a little defensively. “Look, this is what Heather sent me along for, to have someone with some idea about the way Daybreak works. I mean, it isn’t just about breaking human civilization, it’s about making sure it never comes back. And to do that they keep hitting us with another wallop from another angle, so we never really adapt to what they’ve done before they’re doing something else. They took away most of electricity, plastics, and petroleum, and while we were still figuring out how we’d rebuild the tech, they knocked us down again with the huge bombs. Then while we were figuring out a decentralized way to reorganize civilization, the moon gun started knocking out radio. And we know they had their fingers deep in the whole Castle movement to break up the authority of the Federal government, and now we’re realizing the tribes are there to wipe out any civilization rebuilding—”

“You think the tribes were always part of the plan? They didn’t just happen?”

Jason nodded. “Remember the plan was always to be the last generation. The tribes were recruited from low-level Daybreakers, plus disoriented people, while the country was in chaos. They turned them into slaves and armies, and now they’re killing the slaves to build up the armies, and then hurling the armies at civilization—like that huge attack at Mota Elliptica. Take down the tech and kill as many people as you can doing it.

“That’s what Castle Earthstone is about. They’re gearing up for one big drive out of the Lost Quarter—and a pile of bodies and no civilization after. That’s why they don’t care if most of the slaves don’t make it to spring; now that they’ve served their purpose, it’s better if they die.”

“That implies,” Chris said, squirming for a better position, “that Castle Earthstone was always planned, probably years before October 28th, 2024. Is that too crazy?”

Larry sat still for the space of a breath, looking up into the air, as he did when he thought hard. “Just suppose Arnie Yang is right and Daybreak is one giant, malign intelligence, a mind much larger than our own, one that uses human beings in the way we use the cells in our body, bent on human self-annihilation and nothing else. You’d see things like Daybreak creating the Daybreak poets to infiltrate coustajam music so younger refugees would be already prepared to join the tribes, and to write the
Play of Daybreak
, and a hundred other things.”

“Now I know what’s been bothering me.” Chris looked stunned. “If we could hop on a plane back to Pueblo this second—”

“A big juicy steak, a long hot bath, and sleeping next to Beth,” Jason said.

“Yeah, but . . . what would we tell Heather about Castle Earthstone? That it’s roughly a battalion-strength fort equipped to fight at about a Roman or medieval level. Nothing behind it, really, just this one big fort in what used to be north central Indiana. But wouldn’t that be what Daybreak wanted us to say? While it prepared for something really big?”

“Like how big?” Jason asked.

“That’s its pattern. Big blows from unexpected directions. In the past six weeks there’ve been massive attacks at Castle Castro, Mota Elliptica, and Pullman;
and
Grayson’s Youghiogheny campaign won, but it took a fifth of the existing army to go a hundred miles into the Lost Quarter, and they took a beating going in and out. Apparently even in sparse, resource-poor areas, Daybreak can put together regiment- or even brigade-sized attacks. And the Lost Quarter has far more resources, and probably people, than any area we’ve been attacked from so far.”

Larry’s head bobbed emphatically. “That’s got to be it. Oh, shit, you’re right. We aren’t the brilliant scouts we thought. We sure as hell didn’t walk up the Tippecanoe Valley without being spotted; they stayed hidden from us, not vice versa. We have been
fed
, gentlemen.”

“Fed?” Jason asked.

“Intel slang. Sometimes when you identify a spy, you leave him in place and use him to feed disinformation to the enemy,” Chris said. “Yeah. If we got away, we were supposed to report that the Lost Quarter is empty, to help hide whatever they’re brewing for next spring.”

Larry leaned back, chewed on his jerky, thought some more, took a sip of water, and finally said, “Well, hunh.”

“Larry, from you ‘well, hunh’ means what other people mean when they scream, ‘We’re all gonna die!’” Chris observed. “Could you maybe share a thought or two with us?”

“Sorry, yeah, look, check me out on this. Suppose we do what they’ll expect and go south or west. We see nothing that we haven’t already seen, and go home and tell people there’s nothing big here. Or since Daybreak knows we’re coming, we get caught. Daybreak wins either way.

“So I’m thinking,
not
back the way we came. Head east, then north, right
through
the Lost Quarter, then out through the Provi bases on Lake Erie. Daybreak won’t know where to look for us, and whatever we’re not supposed to see is going to be up that way.”

“And we’ll run into way more trouble and walk a couple hundred extra miles,” Chris observed.

“Yep,” Larry said. “And we can put at least three miles, maybe five, into it before dark.”