Free Daybreak Zero by John Barnes

evening, and which creek to fish tomorrow, the two men were quiet, until finally Karl said, “I know you hardly ever talk without being asked, and I know you’re thinking, Robert, so what’s on your mind?”
    One thing Robert liked about Karl: most people thought because you didn’t talk, you didn’t think, but Karl knew Robert thought all the time. Robert asked, “Who do you talk to late at night over that hidden radio?”
    “Daybreak,” Karl said. “I am Daybreak, and I talk to the rest of Daybreak.”
    “And what is Daybreak really?”
    “That’s like asking who God, or you or I, or anything that took a long, long time to grow is really, or what made it the way it is.”
    “But it wasn’t just a back-to-nature club? And it’s not all gone now that the plaztatic world is down?”
    “No more than the Catholics are just a wine-and-bread club that folded up after the crucifixion. We knew all along Daybreak couldn’t be a one-time thing. Too damn many asshats out there who want their plaztatic TVs and Wal-Marts and cars and stuff back, too many bastards that think they’re more important than the Earth so they get to crap all over it, too many shitheads that want to be warm in the winter and fill the world with little shitheads that grow up and want houses too. So Daybreak’s not more than half over, even now. Maybe half of what was planned before Daybreak day has not even activated yet.”
    “That’s how a couple thousand slaves turned up in early spring to build all this stuff, and as soon as it was built a battalion of soldiers showed up to move in?”
    “That’s how. Castle Earthstone was made for a purpose, Robert, and that purpose is still ahead of us. For right now we drill the soldiers, build the castle, and work the slaves.”
    “I kind of like drilling slaves, too.”
    “Me too, and I love hunting and fishing and living in a world that’s going to be clean and free. But this place has a purpose. That’s how I knew to go loot those warehouses the week before the Chicago bomb went off.”
    “A couple dozen slaves died in the storm coming back, though. I guess even Daybreak doesn’t know everything.”
    “Daybreak knows everything we need to know, Robert. The slaves mostly gave their lives over to Daybreak a long time ago. They’re here to help Daybreak root out the last stems and shoots of the Big System. Then they’ll die, mostly. The soldiers too. Good, clean, Daybreak people are here to kill the Big System and its servants, then die. We needed supplies for the people coming, because Daybreak needed them to stay alive. After that, when we didn’t need as many slaves, they died.”
    “Is that why we kill the babies?”
    “Unhhunh. And that’s why we neither of us and none of the soldiers gets a bitch all to himself; nobody can get too worked up about whether any particular little pink monkey is his little bundle of Gaia-raping evil. We’re going to be the last generation, Robert. But we’re going to have a grand time while we do it.” He tossed him another cold beer. Spraddled on the couch, in his long red T-shirt, suspenders holding up his baggy pants, Karl looked more like Santa Claus than ever. “Now, cold beer, hot lunch, straightening out the soldiers and the construction, and then more shooting, fucking, and fishing. Daybreak doesn’t need us just yet.”
    “Karl, I don’t know enough yet to take over if you die.”
    “We’ll talk more, later today, tomorrow, in a month I’ll have you all briefed. No need to rush unless there’s something important right now.”
    Robert thought, taking his time, sipping his beer and watching Karl sip his. “So, Karl, why’d you take me along on Daybreak day?”
    “Well, I like to talk and you like to listen. That’s a flaw in our whole species, always figuring crap out and sharing it and making more of our stupid selves, just because we’re too scared to be really alone and quiet.”
    “Alone and quiet.” Robert held his bottle