The Last President Read online

  The doctor said, “We have to do this?”

  “That’s what the orders are from RRC,” Carlucci said.

  Bambi added, “Which we all follow.”

  “And me a Catholic,” the doctor muttered. “All right, just hold him down while I do this.” He injected something into Signor’s neck.

  “What’s that?” Bambi asked.

  “Wood alcohol, angel dust, and some meth, he probably won’t wake up but the facial contractions’ll make him look like he died crazy and terrified, and the convulsions will add some bruises and broken bones for anyone who looks at the body.” He pulled an old-style straight razor from his bag, lifted Signor’s head by the hair, and slashed across the man’s face. “Roll him over. Don’t lose your grip.”

  As Carlucci held Signor’s kicking legs and Bambi braced his shoulders, the doctor slashed, over and over, forehand and backhand across the torso, letting blood fly wherever it did, before cutting deeply across the femoral artery on each side. He finished by removing Signor’s right thumb. “You’ll want to get your clothes into cold water quick, you can probably get most of that off if you do.”

  Bambi shrugged. “The laundry staff and the maids are the only ones I feel sorry for.”

  Carlucci looked around; blood had splashed up to the ceiling on all the walls, dripped from limbs of the Christmas tree, pooled on the still-wrapped presents. He avoided looking down at his clothes.

  “We’ll have your clothes clean and dry in a couple hours,” Bambi said. “We’ve got wood-fired dryers now. And meanwhile we can loan you something. But before you clean up”—she handed him a steel tenderizing mallet—“please pound on that thumb with this, and leave both on the floor beside him.”

  She pulled an artist’s brush from her back pocket, dipped it in the still-warm puddle of blood around Signor’s thighs, and wrote ECCO on the wall. “That should explain the thumb so the maids will remember it.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. FACILITY 1 (HIGH SECURITY PERMANENT PRISON). PUEBLO, COLORADO. 8:45 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.

  James Hendrix would have been happy to leave Interrogation Subject 162 alone on Christmas morning; in fact he had planned to. But yesterday, his line of questioning had sent 162 into the severe convulsions that characterized a struggle between Daybreak and its host, and often, a subject who slept it off awoke amenable.

  But since Hendrix had a busy social and professional life, rather than wait around for 162 to wake up, he had simply scheduled this wakeup call for him. Hendrix’s assistant, Izzy Underhill, had no family or friends to be with, so she had come over to have “orphan breakfast” with James, plus Patrick and Ntale, the brother and sister messengers he had befriended. Either all my friends are co-workers or all my co-workers end up as my friends, James thought. Well, probably there will be nothing new here, and it’s painful for 162, and it’s Christmas, so let’s get it over with.

  When he opened the door slot to check, the man was curled in a fetal position, with a woven straw pad and a blanket under him, and two blankets thrown over the concrete bench that was the only furniture in the cell. It was less uncomfortable than it looked, perhaps, but it seemed like the very image of misery. James set the lantern onto a shelf, crouched next to the huddled figure, and spoke loudly. “Tell us how Daybreak will react to an attack on the camps along the Ohio.”

  The man shot to a sitting position, wiping saliva from his face, and yelled incoherently.

  “Bad dream?” James said, almost sympathetically. “Tell us how Daybreak will react to an attack on the camps on the Ohio River, and we will see about getting you a pillow.”

  “A pillow would be nice,” 162 agreed. “I don’t know what it will let me tell. The situation is that Daybreak is on a cusp, a balance, a tipping point to use that old inaccurate term. Daybreak is pushing the tribes it controls very hard and they are starving and dying of overwork, and it is driving them down into those camps. As soon as they can cross over, they will be after your surviving towns and cities in Kentucky like a hungry Rottweiler on a litter of kittens, and they won’t stop until they are stopped; left to themselves, the tribal hordes will go all the way to the Gulf. If all you do is stop them from moving, they will wander away from the river to forage, and Daybreak will just gather the survivors back up over the winter, to try again next year. But if they are actually defeated and beaten, Daybreak does not have the people or resources to create more. Remember it is not even a parasite, it is a carrion eater, and the Lost Quarter is a corpse that it has already fed on more than once once once—” 162 finished in a long scream, flailing and thrashing on the bench, and James and Izzy had all they could do to restrain him.

  On their way out, Izzy said, “We didn’t learn anything new, did we? That’s the same thing he said last time.”

  “We have to keep asking because we never know when Daybreak might fail for a few seconds and let him tell the truth. Or remember, he was one of our best minds, and he’s still in there trying to get out, and he might find a way to suggest something to us. Thanks for working on Christmas morning. Do you have anywhere to be for the rest of the day?”

  “Jason and Beth are having me over for lunch. We all tend to get pretty quiet around holidays, you know, because Daybreak took us away from our families back before, sometimes way back before, and we missed our last few chances to talk to our parents or our siblings or whatever. It makes holidays really sad.” She brushed her flyaway brown hair away from her face. “Also makes me sad that I have two fresh bruises from his thrashing. I never hurt anybody when I was having Daybreak seizures, at least as I recall, but then I’m a little bitty girl and he’s a good-sized man. I hate to be a wimp, but if you think you’re going to cause a seizure, maybe you should have Jason as your assistant?”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. Well, I just wanted to make sure you had somewhere to be.”

  “That’s nice of you, and I do. Merry Christmas, James.”

  “Merry Christmas, Izzy.” He hurried on to his next stop; Incoming Crypto at the Main Post Office, where he was expecting some good news.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. RECONSTRUCTION RESEARCH CENTER (IN THE FORMER PUEBLO COUNTY COURTHOUSE), PUEBLO, COLORADO. 9:15 AM MOUNTAIN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.

  General Lyndon Phat stood and reached for the stack of wood by the fireplace. “I can’t tell if it’s really cold or I’m just old.”

  “It’s really cold,” Heather O’Grainne said. “And as president, you will only be allowed to be old enough to seem strong, reassuring, and paternal.”

  Phat gazed at her over his reading glasses, which perched on his nose like a last pathetic fence against the avalanche of his gray unibrow. He was short and square-built, with gray hair surrounding a monk’s spot, and his deeply creased face recorded a lifetime of worry. He wore a blanket draped around his shoulders; a thick sweater; baggy sweatpants; and multiple pairs of wool socks that wilted into bundles of color around his ankles. He had been leafing through a hundred-year-old Atlas of North American Resources.

  A guard knocked at the door. “It’s James Hendrix, Ms. O’Grainne. He’s waiting at the ground floor door.”

  “Send him up,” Heather said. “And for the third time, put him on the list of people who are allowed immediate entrance, and tell your sergeant that if they ever make James stand in the snow waiting again, I will have the sergeant’s guts on a stick.”

  “I’ll tell him exactly that, ma’am. I’ll get Mister Hendrix right now.”

  From his crib, Leo whimpered, testing what wasn’t right with the world. Heather strode to the crib, leaned down, and put on the joyful excited tone she usually reserved for creamed spinach. “Guess what? We’re going to have a visit from Uncle James! And he’s going to tell us that our friends killed some bad guys!”

  “Your confidence warms my heart,” James said, coming in and shucking off his tent-like coat. He stil
l looked every pudgy inch the government documents librarian he had been back before. “And we did kill some bad guys. Good morning, Leo.”

  Leo emitted the short “ah!” noise that he reserved for people he especially liked, and waved his hands until James leaned down and extended a finger to grasp. “You been keeping them in line, fella?”

  “Ah!”

  “Good. I’ll take it from here.”

  Leo gurgled and settled; he’d be deep asleep in a minute. Heather wasn’t sure what was so reassuring about James, but Leo wasn’t the only one who felt it.

  James drew up another armchair and pulled off sweaters, draping them over the back. “Nice and warm in here. Leo’s getting big.”

  “They do that, or so MaryBeth Abrams tells me, along with reminding me that I’m not the first woman ever to have one. You have a charming knack for liking the boss’s baby, James.”

  “I wouldn’t have lasted twenty-three years in the Civil Service if I didn’t.” He sat, crossing his legs, hands wrapped around one knee. “Operation Monkey Flush turned one, killed three, and recovered two kids who were being used as cover props. The cell is shut down and there’s no evidence that there were any more.

  “Bambi reports they took the thumb off one of the ones they killed, as a memorial for Steve Ecco, and bagged Harrison Castro’s assassin in boiling feathers, same way Castro died.”

  Phat folded his arms. “This is terrorism.”

  “It is. Terrorism exists to scare the shit out of people. And since people can’t be scared of things they don’t know about, Bambi and Carlucci made sure they left abundant evidence for the cleanup staff to gossip about. Chris Manckiewicz will run the story as the main headline in the next issue of the Post-Times, piously deploring out-of-control Feds going too far and Castle freeholders wreaking private vengeance with Federal help, and so on.”

  “But,” Phat pointed out, “everyone knows Daybreak doesn’t care about individual agents, and anyway we’re much more afraid of Daybreak than it is of us, if it’s even able to feel fear.”

  James nodded impatiently. “Sure, sure. Daybreak destroyed the modern world and killed more than seven billion people, this is—”

  “That was back before, when it controlled less than one in two thousand people worldwide. In less than two years it’s thrown us a century or more back in tech, it controls at least 5 percent of the surviving global population, probably more like 10 percent in this country—of course we’re afraid of it. We’re losing and it means to put an end to us forever.”

  “Which is why it’s so important not to say that in public.”

  “There’s something wrong with democracy?” Phat’s voice was louder and harsher than Heather would have expected.

  In the suspended instant of complete silence, Heather realized this was more than just another little clash; since Phat had arrived three weeks ago, he and Hendrix had bickered at least daily, but this felt different. Say something, she thought. The silence stretched another second before she ventured, “General, I wonder if the problem isn’t that it’s been a long time since any American general had to think about losing big, and it doesn’t come natural to you. James pointed out the other day that if people get the idea that Daybreak is winning—and it is—they’ll want to do what losers do: cut a deal. But Daybreak isn’t a devil we can let anyone deal with, and there are only three ways to prevent deals with the devil. One is to make sure people know it’s the devil; one is to make the devil too angry to deal.”

  Phat waited. “That’s two.”

  Hendrix said, softly, “Heather’s favorite has always been to make sure there’s no devil.”

  “So this restored Constitutional government you’re talking about is going to kill or forcibly convert a few million people for what they believe. That’s bringing back American democracy?” Phat looked from one to the other. “I had the impression you were liberals, back before.”

  Heather shrugged. “I was a Fed with a liberal mentor. I hardly ever even voted.”

  James nodded. “On the other hand, I was pretty much a socialist. If you haven’t noticed, Pueblo is a socialist society; almost everyone eats most meals in a common mess hall that you get into with a ration coupon. Going to Doctor MaryBeth is free, but if she says you’re not sick, you’re SOL. Hardly anyone has paid a dime of rent or mortgage since Daybreak day. I teach, and I get paid in firewood and food by the town government, and nobody charges my students anything. Frankly I don’t want private business to come back too much or too far.”

  “But government terrorism—”

  “Dead Daybreakers are a public good like clean water, education, health care, or good roads, and should be publicly provided,” James said. “Wiping Daybreak out of the minds of everyone everywhere would be the best thing humanity did since we got rid of smallpox. I’m just more willing than some other people to face the fact that when you’re trying to fight an idea to the death, you have to fight it with what’s known to work: a cycle of public atrocity leading to reprisal atrocity till there are no neutrals left, and then be better at atrocity than the other side is.”

  “Peace through genocide.”

  “It’s been known to work. Most nicer ways have not. You’re a pretty good amateur historian, General. We’re back a century, going on two centuries, in technology, and back a lot further in our basic situation. It wasn’t us, but Daybreak, that put us back on humanity’s ancient rhythm.”

  “The ancient rhythm,” Phat repeated, and then, as if it had illuminated everything, “the ancient rhythm. Yeah. I see your point, James.” He stared into the fire as if hoping some god would speak to him.

  “I have a feeling that ancient rhythm is some kind of war-history-geek, boy-code expression,” Heather said. “And to spill the secret to you old poops, I’m not actually a boy. Maybe someone could explain it?”

  James started to speak but Phat answered first. “James means this is war the way the Romans, Mongols, or Goths knew it. Here we are, sitting out the winter like Caesar or Alaric, because in the ancient rhythm, wars start in the spring, when there’s time to fight—after crops are planted, roads are dry, and ships can sail.”

  James nodded. “Around the time my father was born, a presidential candidate said, ‘People always cite George Washington’s wisdom and forget that his light was a candle and his transportation was a horse.’ The man who said that is much less relevant to us today, but as for George—”

  “Our light is a candle and our transportation is a horse,” Heather said.

  Phat nodded. “History is real information again, instead of a strange set of stories to fascinate old poops.”

  James rose. “That reminds me, I must go where I can be called an old poop repeatedly for a couple of hours. Leslie’s due at my place in an hour.” He stood and began laboriously climbing back into his sweaters, explaining from far inside one, “I’m afraid I have more Christmases to get to than I have Christmas to get to them in.”

  As Phat and Heather watched from her window, James scuffed homeward through the snow. “The ancient rhythm,” Phat said. “You know, that’s the whole story right there. The twentieth century freed one big chunk of the human race from the natural world. We could have fresh fruit in January, start wars in October, cross the ocean in February; we could let the authorities handle crimes instead of having blood feuds, and govern by popularity instead of ruling by bloodline, and make our wars about diplomacy and economics. We got detached. It was great while it lasted, but now we’re back in the ancient rhythm up to our necks.”

  “Temporarily,” Heather said. “I want Leo to grow up to complain about taxes, the electric bill, and his student loans. I want him worrying about who will go to the prom with him, not how he can earn another scar on his triceps. But James is right, too, that it’s an ancient war and we have to win the ancient way.”

  Phat grimaced. “But how do we escape
the ancient rhythm once we’ve won?” He peered out the window again. “For a guy that old and heavy, James sure moves like a happy kid.”

  “He always does whenever he’s going to see Leslie.”

  “Now there’s an ancient rhythm. Old man with young girlfriend.”

  Heather snorted. “We can all tell that’s what he wishes it was. But although Leslie likes sex, loves her dog, and in her own weird way, is devoted to James, as for combining them, the dog has a better chance than James.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ATHENS, TEMPORARY NATIONAL GOVERNMENT DISTRICT (FORMERLY ATHENS, GEORGIA). 11:45 AM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2025.

  Jenny Whilmire Grayson placed the tray of broiled venison steak, brown gravy, and fresh biscuits on the end of the long table that was not occupied by maps and toy soldiers. “Oh, my little boy is playing army on Christmas morning.”

  “Well, since someone was busy using up all the hot water—”

  “It’s Christmas, baby, for once you’re getting a girl that’s all the way clean. Think about this.” She gave him That Smile, waited to see him react, then shucked the robe and pulled the towel from her head in one grand swoop, tousling her blonde mane. “If you’re quick, dinner won’t get cold.”

  “If I’m quick I might hurt you—”

  “I know.” She smiled in anticipation.

  He dropped his own robe and yanked his sweaters off. “Nobody home but us,” she whispered. As he shoved her hard against the wall, she was already screaming.

  When they were done, for now, she was sore, her face was streaked with tears, and she ran her hands over her body, looking for bruised places; his chest was heaving, and his face was red as much from shame as exertion.

  She lifted his chin, looked into his eyes, and said, “I invited you, baby. I invited you.”

  He drew a deep breath, and found another subject. “If nobody’s home, who got the dinner?”

  “I had Luther set it by the fire and go catch the cable car, so he could spend the rest of the day with his family.”