One of Jenny’s friends had found a bag of plastic soldiers, unspoiled by biotes, under a pile of cotton fabric in a wrecked Hobby Lobby, and knowing that now that they were uncovered they would rot within a week or so, had buried them upside down in wet sand and poured molten solder into them, creating lumpy, ungainly “solder soldiers.” They had made Grayson laugh when he’d unwrapped them.
“You’ve been shoving them around on that map all morning.”
“It’s a way to think. The guys standing at attention represent my reserves; firing from one knee, front line infantry. Bazookas stand for artillery, bayoneters for cavalry. Daybreakers are grenade throwers.”
Now that she could read it, she saw how grim the layout on the map was. “And if it all depends on stopping eleven attacks all at once, with only one army—”
“That’s our biggest advantage, that it won’t be all at once—the only good news that Heather O’Grainne’s intel operation had for us. The tribals’re planning to hit first along the upper Ohio, where it’s a shorter distance to better looting, and then unroll the attacks down the Ohio and up the Wabash—the Wabash hordes are farthest away from their own supplies, and will have to travel a long way through country that’s already been looted and burned over, so they’ll start last.”
“Why don’t they go in random order? You’d never be able to catch them—”
“If it were me, I might. I think it’s because of their non-command non-structure; ‘go after these guys do’ is a real easy rule. And it does mean that to some extent they support each other, and maybe it’s so the first one to get past me can focus on blocking me while the others get in.
“But anyway, assuming Heather got the truth out of them, the plan is, I match their schedule, hitting them with spoiling attacks down the Ohio and up the Wabash.” His arm swept over the map in a crooked L shape. “They’ll be most vulnerable just before they’re ready to attack—greatest troop concentrations and smallest remaining supplies. If I beat them to every punch, it can be eleven massacres instead of eleven battles, but they only need to be lucky once, and I have to be lucky eleven times. Luckier than Braddock, at least.”
“If you need to be very, very lucky, then we’re in good shape, because you are.” Jenny rubbed her hair with a towel again, pretending to dry it while making sure she was disheveled the way he liked; the motion stretched her just enough to slightly open her bathrobe. Jeff’s arrogance is his armor, and I can’t let there be a hole in his armor. “This time be gentle, ’kay, baby?”
AN HOUR LATER. PUEBLO, COLORADO. 3:35 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.
The Christmas tree in the corner of Heather’s living quarters hypnotized Leo; he gurgled happily whenever she put him close to it.
I’ll need to get rid of that fire hazard before the New Year, even though Leo loves it.
While she waited for James, she redid her master chart, the layout of file cards, slips of paper, thumbtacks, and string by which she tracked her efforts to—
Leo had gotten a body width closer to the tree by rolling onto his back, the first time he’d ever done that, and was now grabbing for the ornaments just out of his reach. Heather propelled all six-feet-one of herself around the table to her son, who fortunately had not yet acquired or ingested anything. “So,” she said, “you’ve got a new trick, turning over. Wait till I tell MaryBeth. She’ll get such a kick out of telling me that you’re a normal kid and I worry too much.”
“Ah!”
She moved him farther from the tree, and returned to her chart.
A knock. “Heather, it’s James, they’ve apparently decided I can be trusted to climb stairs by myself.”
“You must feel practically human.” She opened the door.
James unloaded a bulging pack onto her table. “Eggnog, made with the last of my pre-Daybreak Jack Daniel’s, and I wrapped the jar so it’s still warm. Also quiche, trout bisque, and some appalling Mesa County wine, pre-Daybreak, that someone must have given me as a joke.”
“James, this is why you’re perfect.”
They sat and enjoyed the warmth and the company, as the sun sank into the mountains, just visible from this high window, in a spectacular burst of reds and golds. “I can almost forget,” Heather said, “that those colors are the dust of billions of people, thousands of cities, all of civilization—”
“Eggnog,” James said. “Warm eggnog.”
They clinked cups. “Merry Christmas. And that’s not a rebuttal, oh chief advisor.”
“There’s truth in warm eggnog, too, and the colors are beautiful, however they got there.”
Sunset was a streak of vivid purple with a deep red egg half nested in it, behind the black teeth of the mountains, when they heard the group of people singing “Adeste Fidelis.” “That hymn must have accompanied some bleak Christmases since the Romans first sang it,” Heather said.
“It’s not nearly that old,” James said. “They were still writing hymns in Latin down almost to 1900, because Latin sings better than English.”
“How did you—don’t tell me the government had a pamphlet on that?”
“You bet. Recreating historic holidays, a teacher’s guide, 1950s booklet from the Park Service’s history guides series. ‘Adeste Fidelis’ would be okay for a grade-school production of Christmas at Valley Forge, but not much earlier, and even for Christmas at the Lincoln White House, only snooty Episcopalians would know it. If you want common soldiers singing it, go to the Bulge or Chosin.”
“I was visualizing Roman Britain, brave old legionaries and half-trained boys surrounded by Saxons, you know. Anyway, it sounds brave against the darkness.”
“‘Brave against the darkness’ probably counts more than archival-librarian accuracy.”
She nodded and they sat quietly until she asked, “James, are we expecting too much, too soon, for putting the country back together? There’s so much to do in this next year.”
He squatted by the fire, surprisingly agile, held his hands to the warmth, and seemed to listen to some voice. At last he said, “Right now, a few million loyal Americans—not Daybreakers, I mean good people who do their jobs and who we need—have just begun noticing that a restored United States might not be so good for them.”
Taken aback, Heather blurted, “Who wouldn’t it be good for, besides Daybreak? Why not?” She could hear indignation in her own voice and wasn’t sure she intended it.
James spread his hands. “Lots of people. The guy who created a business out of property that was just lying around, who has never paid taxes, and doesn’t want to start. The teacher who teaches what she likes, how she likes. The farmer who has access to all the land he can plow.
“Right now, if people put resources back into productive use, good enough, and we let them keep it; the real owner is almost certainly dead and if not, unable to get back to the property. But what if the roads and the courts re-open, and people can come back and prove they’re the old owners? Then add in that once it’s set back up, there’ll be taxes again. And that old folk figure of evil, The Book-Smart Man From Washington That Don’t Know Shit, will begin to reappear at the doors of hardworking people.”