The Last President (7 page)

Abby and Richard were yelling to their squads as Highbotham spoke quietly. “Squads Nine, Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen, form up. Make sure you're reloaded. Stay down till the rockets go over, then we're going to rush them. Be ready.” She stretched out prone. Her hands busied themselves reloading her revolver. She had just pushed the last paper cartridge in, topped it with a percussion cap, and swung the cylinder back into place when three roars of thunder overlapped scant yards above them, the white glare lighting the beach like an old-time flashbulb.

“Now!”

She felt more than saw two dozen CAM kids jump up and race forward with her. The tail flames of the three rockets shot out beyond them, wobbling and spiraling like footballs through the 200 yards.

In less than two seconds, one rocket augured into the sand about 20 feet short, exploding in a big burst that sprayed the raiders with grit and gravel but hurt them very little. The second bent upward, tumbled, and sailed out over the water.

The third hit a jackpot. Before the Daybreakers had recovered from the blinding explosion and spray of gravel, the lucky rocket's short fuse set off its 15 pounds of crude dynamite less than 10 feet off the ground, directly above the main body of Daybreakers. The rocket had flown only a fifth of its normal range, so the dynamite set off most of the fuel—a saltpeter/tallow/powdered-aluminum slurry—in a fireball 50 feet across, which flared and went black in the time of one gasp. The reeling, groping figures emerged from it with clothes and hair on fire where blazing tallow clung to them.

“Follow me!” Highbotham and her reserve squads raced down the beach. Some of the Daybreakers dove into the water, extinguishing the flames, but exposing themselves to bullets and bolts when they stood. Others ran screaming, to be run down and chopped, stabbed, or clubbed, as the islanders drove all the way to the water's edge in that first charge.

It was victory for the moment, but the additional three longboats were now close enough for a bowman in the lead one to launch inaccurate, wobbly arrows onto the shore. Abby's voice carried on the wind behind them.
“Everybody down!”

“Down!” Highbotham echoed, and dove onto the sand. All around her she could hear the kids doing the same. Three more rockets roared over them. The beach and sea were briefly brighter than day.

One splashed to extinction without detonating. One burst early, scattering blobs of burning tallow onto the water. The last lost a fin, looped once, and fizzled into brief pathetic fire as it fell harmlessly into the sea. The Daybreakers cheered, rowing as hard as they could, much closer, now, because the rockets had taken up time when snipers might have been working.

“Crossbowmen and riflemen,” Highbotham said, “pick
one
target—a helmsman or a bowman—and on my count of three, take
one
real good shot. Squads Nine and Eleven, as soon as those shots are fired, move back into a line fifty yards back. Twelve and Thirteen, fifty yards behind the first line. Backwards leapfrog, like in drills; we've
got
to give the rocketeers time to reload. All right, on—”

A
boom!
shockingly loud and close.

Highbotham looked and laughed, a little madly. “Belay all that! Pick targets and fire at will, we're winning.”

Cuppa Joe
, under full sail in the light land breeze, was sailing into Punnett Bay; a shot from her bow chaser had capsized the longboat nearest shore. The cannon boomed again, making a big splash in front of the next boat, which then veered when a crossbow bolt struck the steersman in the face, knocking him backwards into the sea. Another shot from
Cuppa Joe
holed the boat, sinking it in seconds.

The last boat was pulling south, either running away or trying for a flank attack.
Cuppa Joe
fired again, capsizing it.

As heads bobbed up in the bay, crossbowmen began picking them off.
We really should talk about taking prisoners, soon.

Morse blinked from the stern of
Cuppa Joe
; it wasn't encrypted, so Highbotham and everyone read it together.
TOWN MILITIA ARRIVING. CJ PROCEEDING COAKLEY. GOOD HUNTING.

Highbotham walked slowly back up the beach. The sounds from the landward side were no longer of battle but of rout. The absence of chanting and drums, and the rhythm of volley fire, told her that the Daybreakers who had overstayed were trapped between the fence and the town militia.

As she arrived at Abby's rocket station, she heard no more volleys, just wailing from the few Daybreakers left alive. A few of those could be rehabilitated in their seizure-recovery phases, according to the latest Jamesgram; the Christiansted town council had voted to try it the next time they had prisoners. Scattered distant shots meant pursuit continued.

Highbotham couldn't hear waves hissing down the shore, and some people's mouths were moving without her being able to understand them;
ear protection for everyone, one more thing to think about soon.
Right now she just needed to report to Murcheson, who commanded overall island defense, and “get everyone to bed, Abby, as soon as you can.”

Abby looked up from where they were swabbing out rocket tubes. “Right, Captain. Richard's already taken a party to go bring the little kids back.”

“Good job on the rockets,” Highbotham said. “Good job on everything.”

Abby nodded; in the moonlight her hair was almost phosphorescent, and her face was streaked ghostly white and black from the soot of her rocket launching. “We can do everything here now. You'll want to get the land side squared away, and then get down to C-sted for the commanders' meeting.”

“Yeah. Tired.”

“Well, we were fighting for nearly four hours, Captain. That's false dawn over east.” Abby took a deep drink from her water bottle.

That reminded Highbotham to drink from her own. “I'm kind of disturbed that none of our kids gives any of the enemy a chance to surrender.”

Abby shook her head. “You spent too many years hanging out with the boys, Captain. This is a woman kind of fight—if you're going to kill each other,
kill
each other, no good-sport bullshit like it's a football game or a deer hunt.” Among the smears of soot on her face, a toothy grin glinted in the dim light. “Besides, you haven't seen yourself yet, but you've been wiping that cutlass on your pants, and your shirt's got so much black-powder smoke and blood on it, you look like something straight out of hell. At least wash up before you try to teach the kids about the Geneva Conventions.”

As she walked back to the main house, Highbotham noticed Jebby Surdyke holding her hand. “I waan learn dat Ge-ne-va Con-vic-tion,” she said, “if you waan me a learn.”

Highbotham smiled. “Later, honey, but you'll learn it, I promise. It's part of that civilization thing we're working on bringing back. And speaking of civilization, we all need some breakfast and cleanup. Shouldn't you be with Squad Nine?”

“They don gimme no squad so I go wid yah.” Jebby's hand closed on hers a little tighter.

Highbotham thought,
Well, I'm not going to scold a first-rate bodyguard for not following procedure. Some parts of civilization can wait.

3 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. ABOUT 6:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 2026.

When James Hendrix heard the knock at the door, he had just pulled two trays of muffins from the oven.
Patrick and Ntale, of course.
Lately Patrick had been teasing him every day with
Don't shoot, it's me, oh wait, where's your gun?
so this time he carefully took his pistol from its rack by the door, pointed to the side to avoid accidents, and opened the door.

Patrick grinned at seeing the pistol. “Hey, Ms. O'Grainne was right, Mister Hendrix, we're finally getting you trained.”

James racked the pistol again. “Enter, my young trainer.”

“Lock that door,” Ntale said, following her brother in. “If tribals barge in here and kill us all, no more muffins.”

“Excellent point,” James said.
Back before I was always a little intimidated by how fast kids picked up new technology; now it's the same thing with security.
“Nothing new this time,” he said, apologetically, “just oat-and-corn muffins with some dried apple again, and some leftover elk stew.”

Patrick, tall for fifteen and seeming to be mostly head and feet, laughed. “Mister Hendrix, it's
hot breakfast
.”

“
And
help on the homework,” Ntale added.

While the brother and sister ate, James scanned through the overnight dispatches; the excuse for Patrick and Ntale to come here every morning was to deliver the first package of received radio messages from Incoming Crypto.
Besides, nothing is better for a cook's ego than a teenage appetite,
he thought, watching the food vanish into the kids.

First item on the top priority list: the moon gun had fired again. Word would already be going out everywhere to prepare for an EMP sometime Monday, and normally it would have been no more than a small nuisance to think about, but Captain Highbotham's note made him stop and think; there weren't any big stationary radio stations anymore. What the hell had they shot at?

Red Dog, in Athens, reported that Jenny Whilmire Grayson was clearly siding with her husband and against her father, and people had overheard her quarreling with Reverend Whilmire in public. James rated that a plus; if the Army won its struggle with the Church, Constitutional restoration became easier.

White Fang in Manbrookstat had details about the Commandant's deal granting away everything from Cape Cod to Niagara to Halifax to the Irish. The Commandant's handpicked judge had refused habeas corpus for a jailed opposition newspaper editor.
Not good.

Bambi and Quattro wanted his thoughts about their scheme to hand over taxing authority to a legislature,
not easy when you're already a Duke and a Duchess and most Californians would be happy to make you the King and Queen.

Blue Heeler said he saw no prospect of avoiding the Provi government in Olympia declaring a deliberate policy of genocide against the tribes. Allie Sok Banh had left all idea of restraint behind after fighting off Daybreak's assault on her mind just a few months ago, and since she was First Lady, Chief of Staff, Secretary of State, and almost any other job she wanted, only her opinion really mattered. President Weisbrod was too weak and tired, and General Norm McIntyre too afraid, to restrain her.

Five pieces moved,
James thought.
The Commandant moves for more power, the Duke and Duchess move for less, Allie Sok Banh moves for vengeance, Jenny Grayson moves for independence, and Daybreak moves, but I don't know why. It's a big, complicated board.

He looked up to see the last of breakfast disappearing into his brother-and-sister messengers. “So,” he said, “how's that
Hamlet
thing doing, Patrick?”

“I just wish I could figure out why that guy does anything.”

“You have all the evidence anyone else does.”

“Anyone else doesn't have to be graded by Mrs. Thrammer. And how can there be so much evidence and no conclusion, anyway?”

“Get used to that question,” James said. “Expect to be asking it forever.”

3 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO. 6:30 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2026.

In Pueblo, the lockdown against the impending EMP had begun at 8:00 Sunday night and would continue until 2:00 this afternoon. For most people in the still-civilized parts of the Earth a lockdown was a chance to sleep in, with nothing to do but wait to hear that the EMP had fallen somewhere else before disconnecting all the protective grounds, taking the precious surviving gear out of its metal boxes, and resuming work. For a few people the lockdown meant a tense fire watch, but probably their concern was unnecessary: Pueblo went on and off the air briefly, at low power, much less than had ever been known to draw the moon gun's fire before.

So this should have been sort of a nuclear-electronic snow day,
Heather thought.
Too bad Leo's not verbal yet, so he missed the memo, and still expects his feeding on time.

Heather poked up the fire, and her little room underneath her office was cozy as she dragged her rocking chair over to the west window, perfect for watching the sunlight creep down the Wet Mountains.

She had been rocking for a few minutes, humming something silly to Leo, watching the stars fade and the sky creep from black to indigo, when the snow on the far-off mountains turned for an instant to burning silver, and the twilight-muted red, yellow, and brown bricks of Pueblo flashed in a second of full color.

Heather was already on her feet before she realized she'd heard crackling and smelled ozone. She set Leo down in his crib, grabbed the bucket, and poured sand over the glowing-red ground wire that connected her old metal filing cabinet to a water pipe. Watching to see that the wire didn't smolder or flare, standing well back in case of a residual charge, she pulled her sweater down and picked up the wailing Leo. “Brekkers is interrupted, buddy, we gotta—”

A knock. “Ms. O'Grainne, sorry, but we're evacuating—”

“On my way.”

She pulled on her boots, coat, and hat, put another blanket around Leo. In the stairwell, the ozone odor was strong, but without much smoke—yet, anyway.

Outside, the sun was still not quite above the horizon; the last upper edge of the crescent moon was a parenthesis enclosing the mountains. The first whispers of the east dawn wind were crisply chilly. She squeezed her tube of documents under her arm, freeing a hand to tuck Leo's blanket.

“This is
really
bad news.” Ruth Odawa, her Chief of Cryptography, was standing beside her. “They've never targeted Pueblo before; they always just aimed at radio sources, and we were careful to stay fairly quiet. So now the moon gun knows we're important.”

Lyndon Phat joined them. “Wow, it's cold out here this—”

“People, listen up!” Kendall, the area's Emergency Action Coordinator, was a stocky African-American woman who had been an MP at Fort Carson back before. “Mister Mendoza from the railroad says they've got a locomotive spot-welded into place on the main narrow gauge track, and they need a lot of hands on ropes and levers—”

Gunshot.

Phat said, “Down,” and guided Heather onto the hard-packed snow, her body sheltering Leo.

Two more shots. A man shouted, “Mother Earth! Mother
Earth
!
Mother
—”

Another shot.

Yells and shrieks. She clutched Leo close and stayed down, trying to look around, but seeing only hurrying feet and huddled backs.

An eternity later, Phat helped her to her feet. “Captain Kendall wants us to go to a safe house under guard,” General Phat said. “She is perturbed because I tackled the shooter.”

Heather smothered her exasperated scream into a croak. “Has it occurred to you that that was probably an
assassin
, and
you
are the most assassinatable person here, and you ran
toward
him?”

“I thought of that just after I took him down.”

“May I quote you on that?”

They turned and saw Cassie Cartland, the editor of the
Pueblo Post-Times
. Her brown hair had grown out from a practical pixie to an expedient shag in the last year, so that now she looked her actual age—seventeen—rather than several years younger. When Chris Manckiewicz had gone with Mensche on the long traverse of the Lost Quarter last fall, she'd taken over and run the
Post-Times
well enough so that on his return, he'd just left Cassie in charge. “Any tips for your fans about how to take down terrorists bare-handed, General Phat?”

“It was an act of complete irresponsible idiocy.”

She grinned. “Just let me get that down and read it back.”

Heather said, “Wow, the world has changed. Back before, nobody running for president would have dared to say anything like that.”

“Also,” Phat said, “an ugly runt, to quote my ex-wife, has a chance of winning a presidential election. You can quote that too, Cassie—on one condition. I want a news story that says ‘General urges common sense in walling city,' and run it alongside a map I'll lay out for you. It's a disgrace we don't have a city wall yet, and City Council is a bunch of whistleheads who need to get their job done. Quote me on that too, or the deal is off. Clear?”

“Clear.” She shook her head and brought her pencil back to her pad. “Now, what do you all see as the role of Pueblo under the Restored Republic, and do you think there will be more job opportunities locally?”

5 DAYS LATER. MOSCOW, IDAHO. 2:30 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2026.

Darcage heard footsteps. The door opened, sudden bright light hurting his eyes. Guards unbound him from his bunk, dragged him from the train, shoved him along the broken pavement of the platform. Big hands grabbed his arms and dragged him onto his back in the bed of a wagon.

As he rode through the streets, he pressed his bound hands awkwardly against his face to block the sunlight, sobbing to recover his breath, until his eyes adjusted; as soon as he could bear it he stared into the deep blue sky and let himself feel sun on his face, sucking in the freezing air. It had been so long.

When the wagon halted, they flung him headlong off the tailgate, catching him with his face barely off the pavement, laughing at his wince.

He was pushed up a flight of stairs and through a building door. Inside, they yanked him by the arms up three more flights of stairs and through several doors till, without pity or apology, they dropped him onto the floor near the rostrum of a college lecture hall.

She
was there.

Beautiful and elegant as ever, Allie Sok Banh wore a handmade linen suit that must have taken someone two weeks to sew. “Take the gag off. Turn him to face the room.”

The people chained to the seats were leaders, counselors, and shamans among the tribes of the Hells Canyon area. Darcage had met most of them when he carried messages to them from the Guardian on the Moon. If anyone had been going to rescue him, it would have been ordered by one of these—

“I am so glad you are all here,” Allie said from the podium. “I only wish the rest of your tribes were, as well.” She barked a forced laugh through bared teeth. “When I invited you to negotiate, I was lying. We do lie to terrorists, criminals, and traitors, but here's the truth: you are here to witness that the United States does not negotiate with criminals or terrorists, regardless of what silly stories you make up about yourselves. The United States and the Constitution are real. Mother Gaia and the tribes are made up. We're here to show you that.”

“Now, Mister Darcage here, as you know, was my controller during the time when Daybreak invaded my mind. I am paying him back for that,
personally
—when someone attempts to seize my personality, that is
personal
.”

She held out her hand. A guard put a pistol into it. She walked to Darcage and held it a handsbreadth from his head, pointed directly into his left eye. “Darcage, you will say, ‘Daybreak is a lie,' before I count down from five. Five.” She paused, drew a breath, and with curious gentleness, brushed the muzzle of the gun against his eyelids, making him blink, before pulling it back a bare inch. “Three-
one
!” The hammer slapped closed.

The inside of his head rang with a high-pitched whistle, drowning out every other sound. Everything in his vision had a bright blinding rainbow-hued halo. His mouth opened so far it hurt his jaw, and his vocal cords were in dry agony as he forced all his air back and forth through them with all his strength. The world rolled madly.

He woke with his face chafed and sore from weeping, thinking,
She fast counted, then dry-fired.

He had probably only been out for a minute or two. Allison Sok Banh was explaining, “—no use to us; he does not exhibit the brief lucid post-seizure period that less thoroughly indoctrinated Daybreakers do, so we cannot free him from Daybreak. We will try to induce a Daybreak seizure in all of you. If you emerge like Darcage here, without enough of your old self for our doctors to work with, we will hold a short, fair trial and hang you. We'll do the same if you successfully resist going into a seizure. But if you emerge able to communicate, we will attempt rehabilitation.”

Somewhere out in the seats, someone asked, “And our proposals—”

“You may take this as our answer.”

Darcage's mind retreated toward the gentle, cool press of linoleum against his face, crossing over into the schoolroom smell of remembered childhood, and down into deep unconsciousness.

THE NEXT DAY. CASTLE LARSEN (NEAR THE FORMER JENNER, CALIFORNIA). 3:30 PM PACIFIC TIME. SUNDAY, JANUARY 18, 2026.

Five days before their coronation as Duke and Duchess of California—a consolidation of fiefs and titles for their hypothetical future children to inherit—the Countess of the South Coast and the Earl of the Russian River were walking together on the rammed-earth fortress wall of Castle Larsen,
laying some awe and majesty on the locals
, as Quattro called it. “What I don't get is the way they act like they
like
it,” he said. “Before Daybreak I'd ride my bicycle down to Sandy's place for a hamburger and ice cream, and she'd be, like, ‘What'll it be, Quattro?' all friendly but nothing special. Now she yells at her help to set up the private room for the Earl, and you can tell she's getting off on how grand that is, and once they Duke me, she'll probably roll out a literal red carpet with a bunch of guys in tights blowing horns.” He stopped to watch a Newberry Dieselplane taxi down the runway, turn around, and taxi back; his technicians were testing ND-3, the third one built. “Nowadays I can't even test-fly my own new airplanes.”

“Quattro, they'd rather bet their families' lives on the Earl of the Russian River, or better yet the Duke of California, than on that rich surfer dude up the road, you know?”

“Yeah, I do know. I just hate having to be the most responsible man in California when there are airplanes to fly and adventures to have.”

“Me too. But Heather needs a loyal Duck and a trustworthy Doochess to get the country glued back together, and like it or not, that's us. Now keep laying on the awe.”

She guided him away from the side of the parapet that faced the airfield; no sense rubbing his nose in his frustrations. From the sea side, they watched the Russian River pour down between the snow-covered, deep green banks. The chilly wet long winter had been good for grass, but the extra rain had brought down huge loads of mud.

Quattro looked out over the new land forming in the sea. “With the grass and brush to secure all this silt, Goat Rock Beach will end up as a lea, but there'll be another beach beyond it, and people will love that too. This is going to be a good place.”

“As far as I'm concerned it already is.”

“Yeah.” He pulled his cloak closer around him. “Bambi, it's so beautiful here, and I'm so proud of what we've been able to do.” His arm extended toward the fields of snow-spattered deep green, then swung out to encompass the docks along the river, the many smoking chimneys in Jenner, and back to the awe-inspiring ocean and coast. “If anything happens to me—”

Against the spitting wind, Bambi shielded her face on his chest. “Morbid morbid morbid.”

A big slow wave curled in, breaking over the new sandbars. Sea lions hurried out of the way.

He sighed, and folded his arm back over Bambi. “You're right, I'm being morbid. And I've got no reason to. Just, right this second, I'm not feeling lucky.”

15 HOURS LATER. SAVANNAH, GEORGIA. 11:15 AM EASTERN TIME. MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2026.

“Back before, I hated to admit I knew what a sailboat
was
.
Ferengi
was like Pop incarnate—a Hudson River schooner,
much too
authentic of a replica,” Whorf said, “every bit as much heavy physical labor as the original. It was what you'd expect from a super-achieving overcompensating Nerd of Color. I mean, good god, he named his kids Deanna, Geordie, Whorf, and Uhura, even if Mom made him compromise about how he spelled a couple of them so it wouldn't be so obvious.”

Whorf was splitting a fish-and-okra pizza, the only thing on the menu, with Ihor Reshetnyk, the other scholar-sailor who had joined the ship in Manbrookstat. Not to be outpaced, Whorf took a large piece and took another couple of bites before continuing. “It embarrassed the shit out of a five-A like me, the most humiliating—”

“Whoa up, homie.” Ihor was working on his American slang. “What is a five-A?”

“From a TV series a few years ago. Affluent artistic achiever African-American. Snobby black teenager who pretends not to know pop culture, talks a lot about being authentic, into jazz and the Harlem Renaissance and Spike Lee and all that. Looking back it was strictly a pose to piss off Pop.” He took another bite of the hot, chewy pizza. “I'm horrified at how good this is.”

“
And
we don't have to wash dishes!” Ihor tore off another slice. “Sailing wasn't no hobby with my whole family, we
all
followed the sea. That's how you say it, like Conrad?”