ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:25 PM MST. MONDAY, AUGUST 25, 2025.
“Hey, I know I’m
being a big sissy and all, but are you heading up to the 18th and
Blake area?”
“We wish more people would be big sissies; it’s more fun to
have company than to pick up bodies and run for medics when we find
them in alleys.” Mandy, the watch sergeant, wore a
not-quite-fitting steel-pot helmet. Wonder if
she had that in the attic or picked it up from a museum?
“Yeah, we’re headed that way, Doctor Yang, we’ll take you right to
your door. Have they decided whether your place is going to be
inside the walls yet?”
“Not yet,” Arnie
said. “They really ought to settle on where the walls are going to
be.”
“What I hear,
arguments from all the retired officers here’s what holds it up.
God knows why but a lotta ex-servicemen settled in Pueblo.” She
pronounced it Pee Yeb Low, the way old
natives were said to do; it was actually the first time Arnie had
heard it that way. “So at every meeting there’s fifty guys who
think they know the best way to lay out a defense.”
“Same at the national
level,” Arnie said. “Everybody’s qualified to plan the train route
and nobody’ll shovel coal.” He hadn’t actually found that to be the
truth but he knew from past experience that ordinary people liked
to hear it.
The lantern created a
small pool of cheery light as they left the occupied
streets.
Chatting with Mandy,
he learned she’d been a kayaking guide, liked militia duty better
than salvage work, approved of the new Pope’s move to Buenos Aires,
and wanted to vote for General Phat. The warm chatter of the
healthy young optimist distracted him, but not enough; most of his
mind listened for a scrape or thud where there shouldn’t be one,
told him he needed to strike at Aaron the moment he saw him, and
knew he couldn’t or wouldn’t.
Oh, God. Ecco was my friend.
For tonight, he would
not meet Aaron. From now on he would always walk with the
watch—till he moved in closer to town, and he would, soon. He could
. . .
Pauline said they blinded him with a hot
screwdriver.
The empty city was so
still. The watch would keep Aaron away for tonight. But Daybreak
was there, always, in the dark voids of the windows, where nothing
looked or saw.