Two hours later the land they paddled through was still urban, though empty and dead. The green scum smelled like fresh horse manure when the paddles turned it over. Chris, in the bow of the lead canoe, saw a headless corpse still wearing a bra and panties; a swollen hair-covered lump that must have been a dead horse or cow; and scattered human bones, including two small skulls, around the black smear where a rubber raft had rotted.
“Kids trying to get out of the city that way?” Jason asked.
“Or kids looting somebody’s abandoned raft, killed by something bigger and meaner than them,” Chris said. “Or maybe feral dogs got them and it just happened to be near a raft. The amount of really sad shit that happened is just plain impossible to imagine.”
Apart from the green slime, nothing lived; the trees that leaned over the canal had no leaves, the clay and stone banks eroded without plants growing on them, no fish jumped in the water, no bird flew overhead, nothing scuttled in the dead brush. Skeletons of humans and dogs lay on the banks; probably for a while the bodies had swarmed with beetles and worms, but now those were gone.
By noon they were well into suburban areas. Jogging trails and little decorative shopping malls bordered the canal at intervals between long stretches of factory yards and common dumps. Hearing booming and thundering ahead around a bend, Larry had them pull over and tie up; Jason drew the short straw. He came back to report an old landfill seething with fires and explosions. “Probably the biotes that infected it are methanogenic,” Jason said. “And lightning or something started the rising gas burning.”
Not wanting to give up the canoes, they walked along the bank opposite the landfill, towing the canoes on long ropes. “‘I got a mule, her name is Sal,’” Jason said. “Except I don’t. I got me.”
“But we can probably do better than fifteen miles today,” Larry said, “and right now, every mile is looking like a blessing.”
After relaunching the canoes, they paddled till twilight. The sun crawled down behind them, turning from mucus-yellow to gory red again; they slept under the beached, overturned canoes that night, taking turns sitting watches.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:30 AM MST. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025.
“Yes, even in Pueblo,” James said, looking at the crowd of excited people jumping and waving as the Gooney Express came in low to verify the FUEL CLEAN, NO NANOSWARM white flag with the blue slash. One bunch of young, clean-scrubbed kids of both genders had been singing praise songs while waiting to see Reverend Whilmire, but much the larger component of the crowd was young women in their best clothes, and old men in veterans’ organization caps, clutching small Cross and Eagle flags and whooping it up for General Grayson. Nobody was cheering for Cameron. “Maybe one in ten of our people are Post Raptural. What’s it like up in Olympia?”
“About the same,” Allie Sok Banh said. “But we’ve been putting some more pressure on the Pus Rupturals, telling them to be less overtly political or they can kiss the tax exemptions and parade permits good-bye.
Norm McIntyre added, “Plus twice we’ve raided the Piss Wrapper Church of Olympia for arms caches.”
“Did you find any?”
“Yes and no. So many of those assholes pack all the time that if you raid their services you’ll always find personal weapons. But we didn’t find any arsenals under the altar. Yet.”
“We’re a little more laissez-faire here,” James said, noncommittally.
Allie shrugged. “Typical Heather. More important to follow the rules than to win, and even after Daybreak she won’t admit an idea can be dangerous.”
“Oh, I’ll admit an idea can be dangerous,” James said. “Though having spent a good part of this summer teaching in our night school here, I’ve also noticed that ideas aren’t terribly dangerous to very many people.”
The Gooney rumbled to a stop. Reverend Whilmire emerged first, waving as the crowd cheered; the cheering became overwhelming when Grayson came down the stairs, holding hands with his wife, Jenny. “You know,” Allie said, “if I were a spiteful, jealous person I might be annoyed that you and I didn’t make anything like that kind of splash when we arrived.”
“It’s not obvious yet that we’re going to run for president,” Graham Weisbrod said. “Perhaps we should put out word?”
Allie gave her husband a broad grin. “On five minutes’ notice the whole country can know.”
“Let’s talk soon.”
As Allie resumed watching the Athens team coming out, she was leaning back against Graham with a happy little smile. James thought he was probably meant to see that.
Whilmire and Grayson each gave a short speech to their cheering crowd. Meanwhile, Quattro shut down the Gooney, and came down the steps with Cam and a couple of aides. The party headed over to join the Olympia delegation and James. “Leo was fussing, so Heather deputized me. I’m supposed to deliver you—”
Cheering from the runway, heavily laced with “Praise the Lord!” drowned out James for a moment. It didn’t last long, but immediately after, even louder whooping covered Grayson’s short speech.
When they could hear again, Cameron said, apologetically, “This might take some time. Were they like this when you came in last night?”
Graham raised an eyebrow, and smirked. “It was terrifying, Cam. There were thousands of them out there chanting for ‘a precisely calculated, carefully designed, culturally nuanced mixture of incremental reform and necessary innovation.’ Must’ve taken them ages to learn to chant that whole phrase in unison.”
Cam’s small, wincing smile was about as close to an outright guffaw as he would ever manage. “Trust a bureaucrat to ask a dumb question, and get a flip answer from a professor.”
“Touché. It’s going to be a different world, isn’t it? Look at the way Grayson speaks, all that arm pumping and flying hands, like an old-time whistle-stop orator.” His hand closed around Allie’s. “I guess I’ll have to learn to do that too.”
When the reverend and the general had been torn from their adoring publics, James directed the TNG and PCG delegations to the row of carriages and buggies to be taken to Johanna’s What There Is, which Heather had reserved for a special breakfast. Once there, James moved quietly to a corner and concentrated on his plate, which might be the last chance to get food in for the rest of the day, given how busy life was about to become. Johanna paused beside him with a tray of eggs and trout, murmuring, “All clear upstairs as vetted by Heather.”
James finished the last bite just as Cameron announced, “You know, I don’t really feel the need to go to our rooms first. I slept like a brick on the plane and I feel pretty fresh. We had discussed holding the opening meeting this afternoon, if everyone was feeling up to it, but I was just thinking, why don’t we do it now and have time for some real work this afternoon?”
“Well,” Heather said, “it would take some time to move you all over there in buggies and carriages—”
“Isn’t there a meeting room here? I thought there was, the last time I was here.”
“This seems like a great idea to me,” Graham said. “I was wondering what I would be doing with myself till this afternoon.” He appeared to be completely unaware of Allie trying to hit his instep with her heel, except that his foot kept dodging just enough so that if she were going to hit her target, she would have to make it clearly deliberate.
In less than five minutes Heather had reached a deal to keep Johanna’s What There Is through the lunch hour if necessary, and they were all trooping upstairs to the meeting room that she, Johanna, and a couple of trusted agents had spent the morning creating. Last in the procession came Johanna and two slightly awkward waiters—Roger Jackson and Debbie Mensche—carrying coffee and water urns.