Terrence just stared at his daughter. She looked peaceful and that pained him. It was that moment of losing his child that he fully understood why someone would take their own life. To escape a pain that was too hard to even fathom.
Deana had told him she never knew what hit her, he prayed that was the case.
He wasn’t ready for someone to come, he especially wasn’t ready when that person was Macy.
From the second she walked in, all he could think was, My God, she is so strong.
She presented strength. She whimpered once upon seeing Kira, then sniffed in hard, holding back the tears.
“Is she gone?” Mylena asked. “Is my sister dead?”
“Yes, baby, she is,” Macy answered. “She’s in a better place.”
“But she’s not with us.” Mylena said.
“No. No. No,” June, Terrence’s mother cried out painfully. “Not this baby. Not her. Oh my God.”
“Mama,” Macy whispered. “It’s okay. Look around. She really is in a better place than all of us.”
June covered her mouth, shook her head and nearly buckled to the floor. She was crushed and Terrence could see that.
He felt like a failure for being unable to save his daughter. His entire family was suffering in all ways imaginable, while he was facing the easy way out of pain.
He was dying, and with the pain his body felt both physically and emotionally, that death couldn’t come soon enough.
TWENTY-NINE – From the Grave
Kit wrestled with her inner reaction and how she should feel about her father’s sudden appearance. She wasn’t expecting it. Why would she? Her entire family believed he was dead. While, she was very glad that he was alive, she was angry because of all he put them through. Then again, the pain of his death in a way prepared her for more emotional hardships.
The first thing she thought was Deana, her sister lived in the same area, surely she knew her father was still alive.
“She didn’t. She couldn’t,” Dennis said. “The only one who knew was Sandra. I attempted to have Deana evacuated, but she didn’t go.”
“When they attempted to get her, did they tell her why?” Kit asked.
“More than likely.”
“Then she went to the hospital. She had to.”
“I tried to get your mother and Jillie evacuated, but when my men showed up they weren’t there. None of them.”
Kit looked oddly at them. “Where did they go?”
Dennis lifted his hands and shrugged “It was right after you all left. There was no news of anything yet. I don’t know where they would go at eleven at night.”
“You had to know for months,” Kit said. “I mean that was the reason behind giving me the book, right?”
“I gave all of you a copy of that book. As soon as I suspected it was on the horizon, I wanted to plant the seed. I should have told you, but I didn’t. I figured you kids would have read it long before that and called me. Only one person did.”
“Who?”
“Your mother. I didn’t confirm, or deny. She was always smart about that stuff. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, Kit.”
“What? Your death?”
He had explained the ‘why’ of his death, but she supposed it was more than just a matter of offensive psychological warfare and she was right.
“Everything. The war, my fake death. No one expected this war to expand onto American soil. It was localized, it was strategic. There were waves of attacks that no one knew about. When we saw the way it was escalating, we thought news of my death might make them underestimate us. There was reliable Intel that the full scale attack was coming. So we moved into the evacuation plan. We were very offensive in this war and it backfired. By the time we got what we could into the air, we were launching defensively. They had taken out so many of our silos.”
“Daddy, I am having a hard time believing that as Secretary of Defense you let it get to this point.”
“Kit, I believed, we all believed this would be a ship for ship, base for base, limited civilian exchange. We watched them move thousands of warheads. Our Intel was wrong and we learned it too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we received the actual information that they had launched, we tried to confirm. We could not get a confirmation. So we took out several military installations and four cities. They hadn’t launched. When they did, they hit our bases, our silos and two dozen of our cities. More were coming. We barely got our missiles in the air, and most of them were just intercepting the incoming. Then more came again.”
“Jesus.” Kit covered her mouth. “We fired first. We started it.”
“We did. Now, our coasts are reduced to rubble and a lot of our mid west was hit with a biological weapon that we still can’t get a grip on. You were supposed to arrive in New Mexico, when that didn’t happen, the first safe day I could, I headed north. My plan was to get you, your brothers and Zeke and bring you back to New Mexico to the facility.”
“You said, ‘was’. What changed?”
“Because we need to think of the American People, in three days the President will be signing a conditional surrender.”
Kit had to catch her breath. “So those rumors were true.”
“It was a loss for us and theirs was a pyrrhic victory at best. The U.S. is at Mexico and Canada’s mercy for help, thank God they are reaching out. All of us hit, all countries, are relying on the help of those who were smart enough not to push a button. After that surrender a lot of that aid will be arriving, some has already arrived. Following the conditional surrender the country will be occupied for a period of five years.”
“How will that work?” Kit asked confused.
“I don’t know. We assume and hope that it will go the same way, it did in World War II when we occupied Japan and Germany. They rebuild, they move us to a sovereign state, I suppose. I don’t know, I really don’t. I should, but I’m dead to them all. The president doesn’t want me to reveal myself because many of the heads of state will be charged as war criminals. Me being one of them.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“What is?”
“This was a nuclear war. Jesus, this isn’t a game. You talk surrender, asylum, I think you’re talking because you don’t know. You aren’t seeing what’s out there. There’s no bouncing back.”
“We can’t think that way. We’re picking up the pieces now.”
“No, it’s a bandaid. It will only stick for so long.” Kit asked. “I have seen the people that are pouring in from Colorado Springs and that’s only one city. I can’t imagine what else is out there.”
“We need to be positive.”
“It’s hard to be positive when there aren’t enough healthy people left in the world to help.” She closed her eyes and took a breath when the word ‘healthy’ slipped from her lips. She immediately thought of her brothers. “Do Mark and Regis know this?” she asked.
“I told them all this today. They have a lot on their minds. I’m going to get them as close to Spokane as possible. There is transport bringing some political heads to Canada for asylum. I’m sending them on the first one.”
“I’m going with them. I need to find Jillie.”
“I understand that,” Dennis held up his hand. “I really do. I can’t, or let me be clear, I won’t authorize you to go on that run. In order for you to do that, you’d have to be outside and exposed for days. It’s to dangerous. Your children need you to not get sick. Maybe the next one, if the levels drops.”