THAT EVENING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 7:30 PM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.
Allie had always
wondered how she’d handle a serious defeat, because she’d never had
one. Uncle Sam used to say I was his trifecta
niece because even if I didn’t win, I always finished in the money.
Wonder what he’d say now?
Sam and a big part of
the family had chartered a wooden sailboat just after Daybreak and
set off to the south, heading for “somewhere warm where the food
won’t run out.” They had not been heard from since. Perhaps they’d
been caught by the fringes of the big storm (but they should have
been well south by then); perhaps they’d had a fire at sea from the
EMP of the superbomb (but they should have found landfall by then);
maybe they’d run into those first-wave pirates, the ones out of
Florida and Bermuda, who had badly disrupted the southward exodus?
(But they’d been well-enough armed and they should have been a
match for anything roaming around.) In any case, she hadn’t heard
from them since waving good-bye from the dock, and since her name
was on the radio and in the Post-Times
often enough, they should have been able to find her. Maybe they
didn’t want to. You are a big success girl but
you are not a wise girl or a patient girl and people do not like
you, Papa had said.
Her thoughts went
round and round; if she just had a friend to talk to, a friend who
would have her back no matter what.
Sitting on the bed
and looking out the window, she was amazed at how dark it was
outside. She’d eaten nothing since breakfast, had moved only from
armchair to bed to desk within her small room since she’d stormed
out on Graham. That dick less sycophant
McIntyre stayed. Why didn’t I—
There was a soft
knock at the door. “Come in,” she said, expecting Graham Weisbrod,
expecting a fight—
Not expecting that
pudgy, balding little man who had taken over Arnie Yang’s job. His
name was—some piece of obscure oldies trivia, they used to play
trivia in the bars in college—“Mister Hendrix,” she
said.
“Yes. May I come in
and close the door? This room is secure, and there’s something
vital we need to discuss.”
“Oh, sure,” she said.
“Sit down. I’m amazed that anyone discusses anything with
me.”
“Don’t be.” He turned
up the oil lamp on the side table. The orange light bathed both
their faces and etched the shadows into high contrast. “You’re
still one of the most powerful and important people on the
continent. We would have to talk to you even if Heather didn’t like
you and worry about you.”
“You’re blunt. Is
that why Heather sent you instead of coming herself?”
“She said it would
get too personal if she did.”
“Close enough. All
right, obviously you have a message to deliver and you’re supposed
to take back an answer. I’d better hear the message.”
Hendrix nodded, and
said, “We found a note from you in Arnie Yang’s pocket. It was, um,
intimate, though not explicit. Now, we have no great concern with
whether it was a love affair or just the two of you sharing
loneliness, but there seemed to be a strong Daybreaker element in
the note—”
“Why do you think it
was from me? I don’t remember ever writing him a
note—”
“Your personal
stationery and handwriting—”
“Do you have it with
you?”
“I do. We have a
copy, by the way—”
“I’m not going to
destroy evidence in front of you. Give me some credit.” She held
out her hand, looked at the note, and felt as if she’d been kicked
in the belly. Darcage. During one of those
blackouts he induces, he must have told me to write
this.
Allie had read the
RRC’s top-secret, unredacted report on Arnie. She knew Hendrix
would believe her if she—
The whole universe
rolled down a stony slope, bouncing and spinning from stone to
stone, and she fell onto her side on the bed. Hendrix was bellowing
for a doctor, and then she felt strong hands pushing her out of the
fetal position, soothing her, a warm voice. “Mom?”
“Wish I was, I could
help you better.”
Allie looked up; it
was Heather’s doctor, maybe the RRC’s doctor or Pueblo’s, they were
pretty scarce and the world was pretty small. She was sitting next
to Allie on the bed, smoothing her hair and face; it felt good.
“Was that a Daybreaker seizure?”
“If it wasn’t, you’re
a hell of an actor. You’ll want to sleep for a while, maybe, unless
there’s something you want to say while you can.”
“Doctor—”
“Abrams. You can call
me MaryBeth as long as you remember I’m the doctor, not your
mom.”
“No problem
remembering that, Doctor, I need a
doctor. Can I sit up and have some water?”
Hendrix fetched her a
glass. After drinking it all, Allie took a deep breath, and
another. “Do I remember right, if I don’t sleep, I get about an
hour where it’s easier to talk about Daybreak without having a
seizure?”
“It seems to work
that way,” MaryBeth said. “We don’t know why. But it might still
hit you again. It’s not a guaranteed immunity.”
“All right,” Allie
said. “Let’s try. I want to finish this. Got a pencil, Mister
Hendrix?”
“Ready when you
are.”
“My contact calls
himself Mister—Mister—Mister Darcage, I have to not say Mister, say
Darcage, just this skinny good-looking guy in dreads, and . .
.”
She blurted the whole
story into Hendrix’s notepad, weeping and sometimes feeling another
seizure creeping toward her. So now I know
what Ysabel Roth went through. And why. “Can I have
something to eat? Uh, maybe a lot?”
As she finished
eating, Heather turned up with a hug, and said she didn’t want to
lose Allie, too. It was a while before Graham came in; her husband
had insisted on being alone with her, and she hadn’t let the rest
of them go until they promised to do things the way she wanted
to.
When she was finally
alone with him, Graham just held her; she felt like he might do
this forever, and that would be okay with her. “I was so worried,”
he whispered.
My husband loves me, my friends love me, thousands of good
people depend on me, and I am going to hurt Daybreak
so—
Not again.
The seizure was fully
as bad as the first. As she came out of it, Graham and Dr. Abrams
and Heather all looked worried sick, but Allie said, “Let me just
sleep and heal,” enjoying the post-seizure luxury of thinking,
Daybreak, you have no idea what a big fight
you picked, and of looking up at people she could trust,
till she drifted off.