The Last President d-3

by John Barnes

  That first emergency landing had been on I-64, miles away. It seemed like such a big deal at the time that Graham Weisbrod was the true President of the United States, so my plane was Air Force One. Once they were safely on the ground, however, any pretensions Quattro might have had had deflated like the greased linen tires on the plane. Everyone, including the nominal President of the United States, had walked into Pale Bluff with Freddie Pranger, the Township Constable.

  Now look at what you did, Gooney, Quattro thought affectionately at his heavily modified DC-3. In a bit over a year, Pale Bluff had grown from a tiny town sleepwalking toward ghostliness, to the important crossroads where Weisbrod had given his Pale Bluff Address, to the most important town, industrial center, and military base on the Wabash frontier.

  What one opportune forced landing had wrought was visible on the ground below, now. The old orchard-market town of back before was the center spot of a bull’s-eye. Surrounding the old town in a broad circle, where there had been only open fields leading out to the orchards, were newly-built wood-and-scrap metal shacks and cabins, and a profusion of temporary shelters ranging from lean-tos to tents, and every other conceivable arrangement in which people might sleep between shifts of work. Most of the refugees pouring out of the Lost Quarter after the rise of the tribes last spring had kept right on going after a brief stay in Pale Bluff, but enough had stuck to triple the town’s population.

  The apple orchards, now dense as the spring green darkened to summer, were the next ring, which had a prominent notch in it: an old plot of aged, underproducing trees, surrounding a stretch of serviceable county road, had been sacrificed to create an airfield within the city wall, which outlined the whole bull’s-eye.

  Quattro leaned back and shouted to his passengers over the thump and thunder of the biodiesel engines. “I’m going to let Bambi land first; she’s got less fuel reserve and the Stearman isn’t as durable as this old pile of junk.” He put the Gooney into a wide circle around the airfield, and enjoyed watching the golden early morning light dance across the green orchards below. When he saw his wife’s plane roll to a stop and the ground crews running out to pull her in, he swung down lower by the tower, caught the go-ahead signal from the flagman, and came around to land.

  Like so many times before, Carol May Kloster was waiting for Quattro and Bambi, but this time she was joined by the town government and the local militia commander, there to meet the party of officers Quattro was delivering to them. It had been short notice; he had only radioed from Cape Girardeau, about 150 miles away, a couple of hours before, but apparently the radio operator had realized he needed to awaken Carol May, and she’d turned out the officials of the town.

  Quattro removed his leather flying helmet with a sweeping bow. “Gentlemen, and lady, I come not to replace your authority but to enhance it.” He tucked the helmet under his arm, where his plumed hat had been, and set the hat on his head. “I bring you two lieutenant colonels, four majors, and three captains, all experienced Army and Guard officers from Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, who volunteered literally overnight to come here and help you organize your defenses against the expected tribal attack.” He made all the introductions, secretly pleased that he’d managed to remember everyone’s name. “And aside from their sterling qualities as officers, these are also the winners of the Good Sport Award. While I was on the ground in Cape Girardeau, I got a radio relay from Bret Duquesne, whom some of you may know as the Freeholder of Castle Newberry—the place where all the nice guns come from, and currently the leading aircraft manufacturer in North America.

  “Bret had received a message from me and taken it upon himself to round up a cadre of officers for the Army of the Wabash, and he’ll be flying them direct to the army on the NSP-12, Newberry’s first experiment with an airliner of sorts. They should be arriving within a couple of hours.

  “I had been flying these officers to the Army of the Wabash, and in fact they will still be joining it, but when they heard that the Army of the Wabash was going to be all right, but Pale Bluff was still in terrible danger, they agreed to come here and give you a hand. I suppose if you don’t need any more officers—”

  The local militia colonel shook her head. “Don’t you dare take them away. Gentlemen and ladies, you are all very welcome here. If you’d like to follow me, we can start planning our defense.”

  As the officers walked away, Carol May said, “And those officers were willing to get up in the middle of the night, and get on a plane, just because of your request.”

  “I was surprised too,” Bambi said, “at first. Then I realized that the same charisma that had so gripped me completely into Quattro Larsen’s thrall was affecting other people just as strongly, and like a sort of Pied Piper in a silly hat—”

  “Aw, shit,” Quattro said. “It’s just that everybody out there wants to friggin’ do something. Nobody wants to just hang back and wait for the blow to fall. They were all just fine and in solid with the restore-the-Constitution stuff when it looked like we would just clean up the Lost Quarter, raise the Stars and Stripes over the ruins of Castle Earthstone, go home, vote, and have our nice old familiar United States all back together again.

  “Now they’re being reminded of the kind of thing that made my parents into libertarians, the stuff that made my old man start building Castle Larsen back in 2013. When minutes count, the national government will need to spend weeks negotiating and deciding; and because they always see the big picture—or that’s what the government types always call whatever they see—little details like a town facing a tribal horde get swept to the side as details. So even though a couple of years ago those officers couldn’t have imagined being invited to get out of bed and climb into the Duke of California’s airplane to go take a stand for civilization, nowadays—”

  “They’ve already believed a hundred other things just as crazy,” Bambi finished for him. “I’ll admit, ‘The Duke summons you to defend a friendly realm from a most desperate foe’ has more of a ring to it than ‘You have been assigned to maintain a full level of readiness in the Western Kansas Military District.’ If any of those officers ever saw Star Wars or The Three Musketeers, I mean, how could they not be on board with all that romance?”

  “Maybe so,” Quattro said, “but people are starting to realize that the real world today is romantic, and that no matter how much they miss back before, and would like to go back to filling out forms and voting on resolutions, that’s no longer their world. So a chance to get in some hard shots at Daybreak, and for it to be just plain personal instead of about all this abstract nation-and-Constitution stuff, well, that gets a lot of people pumped up.”

  Quattro had always enjoyed arguing with Bambi, but lately arguments were always about this subject and never seemed to go anywhere. Perhaps Carol May saw Bambi’s irritation, and decided to intervene before it turned into a public quarrel. She said, “Chris Manckiewicz, and General Phat, and James Hendrix all keep talking about how we’re slipping back in time, and I guess as we get more feudal, war gets more personal. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, or a bad thing, but it’s definitely a thing.”

  Quattro felt vaguely reprimanded, but before he could sort out why, Carol May added, “Nobody else is going to be coming in till late today at earliest. And you’ve been up all night flying and need some rest. Let’s go back to my place, and I’ll fill you full of pancakes and dump you into my guest bed.”

  Quattro had always liked walking through Pale Bluff in the morning; this wasn’t even the first time he’d done it while exhausted from a long flight overnight.

  Pale Bluff was the most irreplaceable link in the chain of airfields linking Athens and Olympia, but the town proper was a tight little jam of nineteenth-century gingerbread frame houses, interspersed with twentieth-century ranches and brick bungalows. It looked like a set from some historical drama back before, one of those gentle stories about life in a bygone day. Kids were trudging off to school, just as always. Adults wer
e carrying lunch buckets and toolboxes more often than briefcases, and no one had a phone at his ear or a screen in front of her face.

  Rounding the corner into the main part of town, they saw a militia company march by; they weren’t in uniform but their badges and insignia were all pinned in place, and “they march as if they’ve done it before,” Quattro observed.

  “Not by much,” Carol May said. “We sent every soldier we could spare with Grayson, and now we have to hope they make it home in time. These aren’t raw recruits, but they’re not seasoned troops either. More like half-baked recruits. And if the numbers Jenny Whilmire Grayson reported are anything like right, we just don’t have anything like enough. We really need the Army of the Wabash to get here before the tribals do, but since I don’t see how that’s going to happen, we’re counting on that handful of militia to hold the tribals off till the A-o-W gets here.”

  Quattro looked around again, still cheered by the bustling prosperity of the town, but also letting himself realize, “It’s hard to imagine we could lose all this.”

  “Harder to imagine when it’s always been home,” Carol May said. “Hope you can stand some of the usual apple butter on those pancakes.”

  “I relate well to apple butter,” Bambi said. “Always have. Lead on.”

  2 HOURS LATER. NEAR THE BRIDGE OVER WEA CREEK ON THE FORMER INDIANA HIGHWAY 25, JUST WEST OF THE FORMER LAFAYETTE. ABOUT 10 AM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2026.

  Jenny Whilmire Grayson looked around the camp; she felt like she had utterly emptied her soul. “So it’s there,” she said. “We guessed right.”

  “You guessed right, I said it made sense, and now Freddie’s confirmed it,” Chris Manckiewicz corrected her. “Lord Robert left the bridge standing at Attica because the last horde that was supposed to push us up toward Prophetstown could walk there, crash for the night, and have an easy way to the other bank. And they didn’t make any provision to blow it because they figured we would have a way to know what was happening at Prophetstown, but we probably wouldn’t have a way to know about Attica. If you’d fallen for that, Mrs. Grayson, we’d be twenty miles further behind them.”

  Freddie Pranger nodded. “I was never so happy as I was to see that bridge standing, after the two that were blown.” At dawn, the morning before, when the battered Army of the Wabash had abruptly wheeled to attack and destroy its tormenters, he had scouted for the two cavalry troops dispatched to find and secure the bridge. He had missed yesterday’s battle at the “small” cost of a very long round trip, and his exhaustion showed in the gray pallor and deep lines of his face.

  And the man’s not thirty-five yet, Jenny thought. The moment he finishes reporting, we’re throwing him into a wagon for a long nap. After a pause, Freddie added, “When I left the Montana cavalry, they were digging in on both ends of the bridge, and they had sharpshooters covering the river upstream and down. They will still be holding that bridge when the rest of the army gets there. So you’re in business as soon as you get moving.”

  “I have never doubted they’ll hold it as long as they have to.” Jenny looked around; everywhere, men who had staggered up from their first decent sleep and meals in days were packing up camp, however stiffly and slowly. “That getting moving part might be a while, but I truly don’t have the heart to push them.”

  Yesterday, worn-out by the desperate push to flank, surround, and subdue their besiegers, and even more by the brutal massacre afterward, they had barely marched three miles from the fairgrounds to this more-easily defended space where there was a long stretch of straight road in an open field for a plane to land, abundant water for cooking and cleaning, and plenty of decent grass for the horses to graze.

  But though they had staggered into this camp, they had staggered in victorious, with enough spirit to make a proper camp for the night. Most of the soldiers had filled their bellies and had their first real rest in a long time. Today would be a long march—seven hours on the road, they estimated—but at the end of it, they would cross the Wabash at Attica, and be able to make a beeline drive for Pale Bluff.

  That’ll be about a 170-mile beeline, Jenny thought. There will be a lot of tired bees at the end of that. It’s flat ground, mostly along the old interstates, but it’s still going to take ten days at the most optimistic. Lord Robert and his horde will be going the long way round because they have to stick close by the river for 210 miles, then drop most of their supplies and march about 40 overland. They have almost two days head start, and we don’t really know how fast they move along the river or overland… too many unknowns for anyone to come up with a number, as Chris keeps telling me. We don’t even know if it’s a close race, or we’ve already lost, or already won.

  A distant droning rumble alerted her, and then it was drowned out in cheers from the camp. What was approaching from the south looked to Jenny something like an Art Deco railroad diner car sandwiched between sections of a circus tent, one low and one high, joined by wooden trusses. Five propellers, one at each wingtip, one close to the body, and one on the nose, were pulling it through the air. Twin pipes stuck up from the middle of her fuselage, looking like—

  “Well, shit,” Chris said beside her, sounding somewhere between amused and amazed. “Those are the old raised exhaust pipes from some semi rig, but they look a lot like smokestacks. You almost expect it to have paddle wheels.”

  The ground crew were waiting and flagged the NSP-12 down. As it passed overhead, Jenny’s party could see that it had about half again the wingspan of the Gooney Express, “but since that’s doubled, on a biplane, figure maybe three times the wing area? Lots of lift but it probably needs all those props to fight drag,” Chris said. “I can’t wait to hear what Quattro thinks of it.”

  “Boys and airplanes,” Jenny said, “I’m just glad it got here. I’m guessing if we start walking now he’ll have finished his taxi and be climbing out by the time we get there.”

  Bret Duquesne was a handsome young man. When he stepped down from NSP-12 and shoved his flying helmet back off his head, letting his straw-blond forelock flop down between his deep blue eyes, Jenny thought, Definitely, back before, he could’ve done underwear ads.

  Introductions were quick; the NeoGoliath, as Bret had dubbed it, had flown here direct from Fort Benning and could loop back to Campbell before needing to refuel. This was “logistically marvelous, but since the design team didn’t think to provide the NeoGoliath with a restroom, urologically disastrous,” Bret said, returning from claiming a pilot’s privilege of being first at the latrine.

  “Where did they come up with the design?”

  “One of our machinists at Castle Newberry used to build R/C model planes. He had lived a few miles out of Newberry, back before, and it occurred to Dad to send a wagon and some guards to recover his whole model collection, as research material for later. Well, one of his proudest productions was a big honking model of the Farman Goliath, the first real airliner. Not the most aerodynamic or esthetic thing you’ve ever seen, but at least we knew that airframe would work if we built it out of canvas, wood, and wire. And we’d been working toward a high-powered pure diesel engine, something that wouldn’t attract nanospawn or have to be rebuilt after an EMP. The power part was fine, plenty of horsepower, but making that work took such a big engine block that we only wanted one per plane, and that was where someone thought, you know, quite a few early planes had chain-driven props. So the NeoGoliath has four chain-driven and one shaft-driven, and that big diesel can chug away, nice and slow, the way it wants to, without having to spin a high-speed shaft, and still give it plenty of thrust.”

  Jenny raised an eyebrow toward Chris to remind him of her earlier comment about boys and airplanes, but he appeared to be rapt with Bret’s explanation. Well, I guess that proves my point. Wish I had Bambi here for sympathy. To break up the conversation, she asked, “So you said this thing is EMP and nanospawn immune?”

  “Because it’s pure diesel,” Bret said. “No spark plugs or alternator
, no electricity at all. You just have to preheat the glow plugs, but you can do that in a campfire if you have to. In fact, you probably haven’t heard but we’ve been warned there’s a blackout in three days—mid-day till midnight on the tenth—and it’ll be our first chance to see how the NeoGoliath does. We expect it’ll be fine even if it’s right under the EMP bomb, ready to go without any repairs. Even the structural metal, like wires and struts, has been set up not to let big charges or currents form. Then if it rides out an EMP on the ground, we’ll actually try flying during one. So they haven’t got us grounded forever.

  “But I’ve got some news that’s a lot more urgent than the aircraft tech news—and not nearly as fun. We purposely flew along the Wabash as reconnaissance, and Lord Robert’s forces are already in Terre Haute.”

  The punch-in-the-gut feeling must have shown on Jenny’s face, because she could see how Bret Duquesne was reacting to it; that was annoying, as if he was regretting have stressed out the little lady, so she snapped at him. “And you couldn’t tell us that right away?”

  He winced. “I already admitted that I should have.”

  Chris Manckiewicz broke the awkwardness. “Look, it took us five days to walk here from Terre Haute, and that was with cavalry and air scouting, and a baggage train with wheels and horses and mules. How did a bunch of unorganized hippies on foot and rafts manage to do the same distance in three days?”

  “Probably less than two,” Bret said. “Major Southern here did a lot of coursework at Fort Lee, back before. Even while we were circling, and trying to figure out what had happened, he started scribbling and arguing things out, and then we did some more reconnaissance by tracking a couple of the rafts against the street grid along the bank. Southern’s answer is, we’ve all been working with the number 0.6 mph, which is about how fast the Wabash flows in normal times. But these aren’t normal times; thanks to all the fires and soot in the air and all the rest of it, we’ve had way over average snow and rainfall, and way more than usual erosion too. All the rivers on the continent are flooding or close to it.”