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.”