The tribal pitched forward. Jawarah shot the woman who lunged to pick the spirit wand up. I don’t think she even looked at her buddy, he thought, she wanted to save that damned stick.
An arrow sailed by him; he needed to reload and this was no place for it. He rolled backward and stretched out prone, pulling out his coil-spring crossbow and sending a piece of old welding rod into the oncoming crowd.
Then he heard the most wonderful sound—the slow thudding of one of the black-powder machine guns on the wall, followed by the resonant claps of black-powder rifles firing from the palisade behind him. Staying low, he crawled backwards.
One screaming woman, red hair trailing behind her, wildly swinging a hatchet two-handed, fixed her gaze on him. He threw his small ax awkwardly from his prone position. It cut her shin, and as she bent to grab at the wound, someone above shot her in her exposed back; she sprawled, struggling.
Jawarah’s back foot touched the palisade. A voice from above—his buddy, Jimmy: “Wait…” Two quick shots, then Jimmy shouted, “Now.”
Jawarah scrambled up the flip-step, careful of the sharp glass pieces on top of the palisade, and down onto the catwalk.
“Thanks.”
“Had to, you owe me $3.86 from last night’s game.”
“Yeah, right. Are those Feds okay?”
“Yeah, the cap sent’em straight to the post office—something urgent for the radio. Looks like it’s a big deal.”
Another arrow sailed over the wall.
“Those guys think so too.” Jawarah reloaded. A spear bounced off the palisade between him and Jimmy. He leaned out and pointed down to shoot a tribal who was boarding the flip-step. Jimmy yanked the flip-step in; Jawarah shot at, but missed, another tribal who looked like she was rallying the others.
Normally the tribals broke and ran as soon as they were driven back from the wall, but this particular bunch of hippies from hell weren’t retreating; if anything they seemed to be forming up a more organized assault in the wrecked houses across the no-man’s-land. But for the moment the open space was clear, and Jawarah rolled over and reloaded. He had dropped that awkward, silly crossbow out there, so at least he wouldn’t be responsible for it until the battle was over.
A figure sprinted between two wrecked cars. Jawarah fired, and the body fell and lay motionless.
“You’re hot tonight,” Jimmy said.
“Yeah, I was just thinking how dull it was. Be careful what you wish for.”
Trails of smoke from the houses beyond the cleared area suggested that these tribals were putting together a fire rush, a banzai-style charge with thrown torches and slung balls of burning fabric carried by the less-skilled fighters. The cap had been tough about keeping flammable stuff away from the palisade, so fire rushes had never worked here; no tribals had tried one in the last month. Must be a tribe that doesn’t know us.
Looked like a long night, but he’d been about to go off shift, so it would all be overtime at the militia rate—more fun and more lucrative than poker, and if it went long enough, he’d get comp time and escape from putting out the second planting of potatoes tomorrow.
They’d be bringing free meals out to the wall, too. Life could be a lot worse.
Jawarah peered over the wall, looking for another good shot, muttering like a crapshooter who has bet ten the hard way:
THE NEXT MORNING. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 6:15 AM MST. WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2025.
“What do you mean, I need my sleep!” Heather was looking around at her office staff as if she had never seen them prior to turning over this singularly ugly rock. “Larry Mensche comes running out of the woods, with a whole tribe at his back and radios that he’s carrying information too sensitive to send by any code. Followed by a battalion-strength battle, and tribals laying siege to Pullman—and you ‘decided I needed my sleep’!”
She’d been aware of doors opening and closing around the office while she’d been delivering her tirade, but she hadn’t seen MaryBeth Abrams come in. MaryBeth was a big lady—she’d played field hockey for Howard—and the only other woman in Pueblo tall enough to look Heather in the eye. She did, now, and strode up to her. “Your staff,” she said, “is trying to protect you and your child. You are two weeks from due.”
Heather looked down at her immense belly. “Wow, thanks, I needed to be reminded.”
“Well, you are acting like you need to be reminded. Heather, your people are good and they are handling it. They were trying to tell you that a relief force is already on the train from Fort Lewis, with two squadrons of cavalry and half the President’s Own Rangers. Your people are taking care of things, and you cannot put yourself in charge of every little thing right now, and that goes double when you’re in the delivery room!”
Rocked back by MaryBeth’s vehemence, Heather said, “I’m sorry, I worry about my agents. Larry’s been missing a while.”
Elyse, the youngest member of the staff, said, “To finish out the report, Ms. O’Grainne, he still had his daughter Debbie with him, she’s fine, and he said that if you don’t swear her in right away, he quits.”
“Well, if he’s blackmailing me, it’s definitely Larry, not an imposter. And Pullman is okay?”
“The local commander says they could lift the siege themselves but they’re trying to keep the tribes hanging around long enough for the cavalry and Rangers to catch them,” Elyse said.
“You see? You have good people,” Dr. Abrams said. “That would be plain as an ax in the head to anyone who wasn’t pigheaded, impossible, and you.”
Heather sighed, apologized, and soothed everyone’s feelings as best she could. When most of them had gone and she had settled down to her uncomfortable breakfast, she thought, Kid, get here soon. You’re missing all the excitement.
3 DAYS LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 11:42 AM MST. SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2025.
As Debbie Mensche told of her months with the Northwest tribes, Arnie Yang’s pencil raced through his notebook. When Debbie finished, Arnie said, “So at least four months ago, the inner circle of the Gaia’s Dawn tribe was taking orders from someone on the radio.” He looked around the room. “That would explain how the tribals from the Sangre de Cristos, Ouachitas, and Rio Grande all managed a coordinated attack on Mota Elliptica. Jeez. Orders from the moon.” He looked at his three “tame Daybreakers” and asked, “Beth, Jason, Izzy, any thoughts?”
Jason said, “Well, now I know why Daybreak encouraged me to write so much, uh, really bad poetry, and to dream about being a bard and traveling from tribe to tribe; The Play of Daybreak and other stuff like it must be part of how Daybreak keeps itself going without an Internet. And the parts Debbie could remember sound a whole lot like the Daybreak poetry I used to write—some of it might even be taken from my poems, I suppose. The tribe idea was definitely there in Daybreak for years before the big day; ‘millioners’ like me were totally all about it.”