At least that’s what I told myself. Now, I realized how much I’d missed having people around. How much I’d missed that for most of my life, having grown up in the quiet of properness.
Sure, there were scandals and parties, especially on Charlie’s end, but wealth and privilege bought a lot of silence. I didn’t get in trouble a lot, because who my father was going to become was drilled into me. And then, after my first suicide attempt, I was homeschooled, which solved a lot of potential publicity problems for them.
The last time I’d tried to kill myself had been the most serious. One minute, I was recovering from slashing my wrists and the next, I was being considered for Charlie’s wife. It meant I’d have to be groomed. It meant that the medicine the doctors gave me would be too heavy for me to fight anything.
“At some point, we’re going to pull this all together,” my father told me during the most serious sit-down we’d had to date. “You’re not only securing your own future, but ours as well. There’s no more elections—the president and I will stay in office indefinitely, and you and Charlie will be groomed to be the next in line. But you’re going to have to do things differently, Jessa.”
“Things we sent you to school for,” my mother had chimed in. Indeed, I’d gone to very prestigious boarding schools, I’d been Debbed, presented to formal society. I’d learned to dance, to know the right forks and spoons to use. I’d known the art of conversation from a very young age. And still, something in me rebelled. But when I’d come home to find Charlie waiting for me, looking more handsome than I’d remembered, and more welcoming too, something changed. I wanted to please him. Maybe because the world had gone so insane and this was something I could control.
And now...look where I was. Why was another story, one I’d hold on to for as long as I could. If I didn’t keep that leverage, where would I end up? I didn’t want to keep it from Mathias, but his loyalty was to Defiance as much as it was to me. I could only hope that when I told him, he’d understand.
“I know it sounds crazy, but where we were, there were still formal dinners happening. It didn’t matter that most of the world was in complete turmoil. The government had to get back to functioning as normally as possible. People counted on that. Looked up to us,” I said, like I was repeating some kind of campaign memo.
If Charlie doesn’t go back, what will happen?
I stared at Mathias’s mouth, wanting to ignore the question. “His father’s sick. Charlie was due to take office from my father in less than two years, if everything went according to plan, and then my father would take over the presidency.”
He didn’t push to ask about the plan and that was good, because I wouldn’t tell him. “Do you regret anything you’ve done since the Chaos?” I asked instead.
Both men watched me calmly. Finally, Mathias signed and Bishop looked at him before translating. There’s no time for regrets now. Only a time for living as much and as hard as you can.
“I saw how it was through military channels, although I’m sure I was shielded from the worst of it.” D.C. had also known that the meteors were preparing to strike the earth. I was already in the underground bunker, and had been for a week, once the Chaos hit.
So the government knew this was about to happen? Mathias asked through Bishop, and I nodded.
“I guess they figured why scare everyone. Nothing we could’ve done,” I said.
Never had to battle with no bulletproof vest
Mathias
Except die with our family.
Bish didn’t translate that last part.
“I hated knowing,” she told us, her voice desperate like she knew she’d be judged for what her family and the people around her did. “Waiting was the worst, I thought, until the storms started. What did you do, right after the storms?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d survived it. Sometimes I dreamed about it, or what happened next, once I was in the military. But Bish answered her.
“Ran wild,” he said. “There were riots. It was fucking nuts.”
“Were you scared?”
Bish translated my signs. Wasn’t time to be.
She drew her knees up to her chest. “Did people try to hurt you?”
All the time. We killed a lot of people along the way.
“When you were in the military?”
Bish flicked a glance my way before answering, “No.”
My fingers had moved although I hadn’t wanted them to. I watched her face, waiting to see any kind of disgust or fear but there was none. Just more questions, the most inevitable one being, “Why?”
There were too many ways to answer that, too many reasons. Fear. Survival. Because we didn’t know the delicate balance between fear and survival.
I wasn’t sure we knew that still, so I just said, Because we had to.
That, I knew for sure.
There was a lot of blood on our consciences, some on our souls, and none of it would wash off. As Bish would always say, We didn’t want it to anyway.
“Do you like it?”
No.
“Yes.”
She looked between us, maybe realizing that our true answer lay somewhere in between. “Have you changed?”
Some would say we’ve gotten worse.
“What would you say?”
I stared at her and shook my head.
“I didn’t think so. We all do things when we’re unsure or scared or threatened. I don’t think you can judge right or wrong emotions. That’s what they taught me at the hospital—feelings are never right or wrong, they simply are.” She paused. “My father used to say I was born in the wrong era, that I would’ve been the kid who ran to the Haight for peace and love.” She smiled, like that discussion between her and her father had good memories and then she quickly sobered. “Things were better when I was young. There was time for me to grow out of things. When I didn’t...”
She looked sad and lost and yeah, I knew how that felt post-Chaos. But not with my parents, so I felt even worse for her.
“Our mom was an artist,” Bish said, and I looked down at the tattoos that covered my arms and hands and thought about her and Dad teaching me what they jokingly referred to as the old ways. They might’ve had a light tone talking about it, but I knew that they took it as seriously as I still did.
“Just like you,” she said to me and pointed to my tattoos and yeah, that felt nice. But I knew she’d ask next where my parents were and I didn’t want to talk about that.
Bish knew too, which is why he changed the subject. “Do you know how the rest of the world did? Because we were privy to some things when we were in the military, but it was nearly impossible to get a clear picture.”
Not like we could turn on the TV, I added. Our news was spotty, mainly passed along between law enforcement and distilled locally, or culled from CBs and ham radios. Add to that lots of rumor and speculation and that was how most news traveled these days
“We don’t know much, but parts of Europe are okay—better than the Midwest or here, even. Everyone got hit with storms. It just depended on how well you were prepared. And it looks like this place was a doomsday prepper’s best friend for life.”