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“What’s going on?” Chava asked suspiciously.
“Just finishing a group prayer,” Jackson lied. “A family that prays together, stays together.”
“What about Governor Cooper’s offer?” Lisa wanted to know. “Are you still gonna run for vice-president?”
“What?” Lorena’s shocked look reminded Jackson how busy he has been. Since he assumed Cooper wasn’t going to survive, he hadn’t given it any thought.
“Right on, dad!”
At least David liked the idea, since he rarely called him dad. Monique looked at him like some alien bug.
“Cooper offered me the VP slot,” Jackson sadly informed them. “But Palin unconstitutionally ordered the Air Force to steal everyone’s planes, which left Cooper stranded at Ground Zero. In effect, Palin indirectly killed Governor Cooper, along with a million others that we were flying out of harm’s way. And, if I didn’t have the foresight to bury sheds under the garage, she would have killed us as well.”
“So you’re not going to be vice-president?” Lisa asked, totally bummed out.
“Sorry. I also resigned as chair of the Democratic Party so they wouldn’t be leaderless if I didn’t make it.”
“Ah shit,” David suddenly remembered. “What about Governor Naples?”
“What about her?” his father wanted to know.
“Well, I sort of promised to get her. She’s in one of your asteroid shelters in the Grand Canyon, along with thousands of state workers, police, and national guard. The Arizona Air Guard are in Fairbanks, so I prepared a dozen of our heloplanes to go after Naples. I told them I’d go first to discover how dangerous it was to fly. By the time we get there, the heloplanes should be ready to leave our base in Chugwater.”
Talk about buzz kill. He spent countless hours conferring with Naples and her staff on preparing for the Worst Case Scenario, which was why she was suppose to be at Arizona’s alternate headquarters safely in Montana. He quickly worked through several emotional responses like denial until he found something constructive to do.
“Dad, they’re 400 miles away. How bad will it be?”
“Well, the heat and the pressure wave won’t be too bad with them inside your hangers within the canyon. The earthquake probably threw them pretty bad, causing internal bleeding, but there’s no way regolith is going to collapse your roofs. They could be buried, though. Not just from regolith, but the canyon walls could have collapsed around them.”
That certainly left them no choice.
Jackson felt so weary. His exhaustion kept finding new depths. Will this day never end? This was the longest day of his life.
“Is that the Sun?” Jackson asked, pointing east.
Everyone looked because, really, how do you mistake the fucking Sun?
“Well, you don’t see that everyday,” Lisa quipped, which melted her father’s heart as if she just woke from a long coma. His little girl was back, baby!
Sure enough, the clouds of dust, gas, and smoke to the east were getting much brighter compared to those to the north or south. As one, they checked their watches. Jackson was amazed to find it was exactly 24 hours ago that he and Cooper started their epic battle. It seemed so long ago. Whatever they talked about felt trivial now.
He was now dead, of course. Stupid fuck went to Butler’s instead of staying with them in his underground shed.
Crap. Now he needed another candidate. Maybe Naples would consider running. She was a natural politician, dynamic and polished, although short for a president. Hillary Clinton wasn’t exactly an Amazon, but nobody perceived her as short. Could Naples even win the nomination or the general election with his full backing? She probably didn’t even want to run.
Of course, he himself could run for president. He certainly had the money and organization. But the idea was laughable. Running for president is an 80 hour-a-week job, he was months too late, and he was planning to rebuild the Southwest, buy hundreds of large companies, dominate entire industries, force thousands of foreign financial institutions to pay what they owed him, as well as start a dozen clean energy cities to employ millions of Democratic voters. And no one can do two 80 hour-a-week jobs at the same time. Not even Henry Fucking Jackson. Which left Governor Naples, if she was even alive. Well, time to find out.
“Hey, everyone. Let’s go rescue our governor!”
A shout went up as they rushed back to the heloplane.
One long day finally ended, but another just began.
THE END
The paperback version is available direct from the author at www.BrentReilly.com. He welcomes feedback. You can also find the author at Twitter.com and Facebook.
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