The Final Day

EPILOGUE

“May the peace of the Lord be with all of you on this most blessed of days of renewal and beginnings. I hereby declare the academic semester to be open.”

There was a scattering of applause as Reverend Black, newly appointed president of the college, stepped away from the lectern of restored Graham Chapel of Gaither Hall, the name having been changed in memory of an honored couple who had resided in Montreat for most of their lives and actually been married in the chapel in a long-ago age.

There was the traditional closing hymn, the school song, led by the choir, and as they finished, the congregation started to leave. But then a lone voice from the choir began to sing a song that struck John to the very core for all its symbolism. The lone female voice echoed in the restored chapel.

“Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh so mellow.”

All stood frozen in place, and more than a few began to weep. John looked over at Makala, remembering the first time he had brought her to this chapel. A student up on the stage, unaware that she had an audience, had started to sing that song from The Fantasticks. It had become something of a theme of the time they had been through, a song of remembrance and loss.

Young Jennie was nestled in against her mother, having fallen asleep through most of the service, but was now stirring, looking up sleepy eyed at her father and smiling.

He put his arm protectively around Makala’s shoulder and walked with her out of the chapel into what was proving to be a glorious early May morning, the date symbolically chosen since it was exactly three years ago that the Day had struck them all. And now, phoenixlike, the school was again stirring to life.

Following old tradition, John gathered with the other faculty at the base of the stairs to shake hands with the students leaving and heading to class. Mixed in were members of the community. Maury was still a bit ungainly with crutches as Forrest helped him down the steps. Maury’s leg wound had become infected; Makala had struggled with it for over a month before finally conceding it had gone gangrenous and amputating it.

As he was helped down the steps by Forrest, who had become a dedicated friend to Maury during his long months of recovery, the two together reminded John of old photographs of Civil War veterans minus a limb helping each other along, sharing a bond that someone who had not been through their fiery trial could never understand.

Most of the students who shook John’s hand were “the survivors” as they called themselves, their features hard, wiry, hands gnarled from an early spring of putting in crops. Most had already put in several hours of labor in the fields before returning to campus. Until the harvest was in, there would be but three hours of class a day near noontime and then back out later in the day to resume work.

His daughter Elizabeth was mixed in with the crowd. Now the mother of two, she was not attending classes but had come for the ceremony honoring all those who had fallen with the reading of the names of all students, staff, and faculty who had given the last full measure of devotion. As “Lee Robinson, killed in action, Gettysburg,” was read off, John saw her lean in closer to her husband, Seth, Lee’s son, who bowed his head as she held him close. For John, the fact that his comrade’s son was registered in his class filled him with happiness and poignant memories as well. In a long-ago time, Lee would visit his class as a Civil War reenactor to talk about the equipment, uniform, and life of the troops. Seth, even as a ten-year-old, would proudly attend wearing a uniform handmade by his loving mother. He looked so much like his father and would forever be a reminder of one of the closest of friends.

John saw a man coming down the stairs who but a few years ago must have been full of the vigor of life, but on this day looked broken. He had arrived on campus only the day before. He was one of several dozen parents who across the months since the onset of a relative semblance of peace had made the journey to discover the fate of a son or daughter sent to this quiet, peaceful campus before the coming of the Day.

“We want you to stay with us for several days,” John said as he grasped the man’s hand. “There is so much to share with you about Grace, to tell you all that she meant to us, all that she did.”

John’s voice filled up. He had once thought of himself as being so stoic, able to contain his emotions, only letting them release when alone. Perhaps it was Jennifer that broke that in him. He had lost Jennifer; this man had lost Grace.

Grace’s father smiled but offered no reply either way. “I think I’ll go and sit with my girl for a while,” he whispered and then continued on. John watched the man walk down across the front lawn of the campus for the long trek to the military cemetery at the edge of town. John had taken him there the day before and was touched to see that someone was still thoughtfully putting flowers on her grave, suspecting it was Kevin, who had taken her loss in such a way that it was obvious that he had been deeply in love with her.

“You’ll be late, Professor,” Makala announced, and John looked over at her, smiled, kissed her lightly, bent over to kiss Jennie, who stretched up to him with chubby arms for a “smoochie” and laughed as he mussed her hair, blond like her mother’s.

He left his family and started on the short walk to his classroom. Then, as he so often used to, he stepped into a tiny octagon-shaped building just ten feet across, three of its eight sides open to face on to the bubbling creek that flowed down through the middle of the campus. It was the campus “Prayer Porch,” a favorite place where he used to often come to sit, to listen to the creek tumbling by, at times to pray, at times to just soak up a moment of peace and solitude before the start of a class.

The walls were covered in graffiti, without exception all of them touching, a brief quote of scripture, a “Thank you, God,” a heart with initials in it, but so many now “RIP, my love,” “I miss you, sweetheart,” and “I’ll see you in heaven.”

Several hundred names were written on the walls in long, orderly rows, the names of all those from the college who had died in the war.

Too many, far too many.

He sat in silence, looking at them. As years would pass, as it did with all wars, the pain would lessen, the aura and legends would grow as was so with nearly all wars, and memory of the names would drift into history.

The issues of this war were still in doubt. The day of the reopening of the school had been chosen because of all that was symbolized by this day in May, three years to the day since the start of the war.

Some things that John had said to the man who this day would be sworn in as a duly elected president must have stuck, and though John did not remember it, the new president did. That there was a final day and what John had learned was to be the theme of his inaugural address to be delivered at the hallowed resting place of Gettysburg. That the war had reached its final day. Perhaps it was just rhetoric. Half the country was still occupied by foreign powers.

As for those who once ruled from Bluemont, some had indeed met their fate at the hands of angry mobs that eventually stormed the facility while their “Praetorian Guard” had shown the wisdom of standing aside, in the same way the original Praetorians would do at times with an unpopular emperor when a mob stormed the imperial compound.

Many, though, had managed to disappear, John musing that such was often the case with people like that, a few cropping up as far away as South America and Africa, though one such nation thinking it would be a friendly gesture publicly hanged several of them.

Within Site R, there had actually been a standoff for several weeks between the guards and dwellers in what was actually known as Section Alpha and the troops under Colonel Bentley. The guards of that section finally agreed to disarm and for those within to face the same fate as the rest of the dwellers of Site R.

As for those elsewhere in the facility, it was a profound moral question for the nation as to what should be done with them. The majority favored just driving them out into the snow where more than a few waited just beyond the fence that encircled the compound to loot them at best or deliver far worse punishment. Many, therefore, still resided there after Bob, citing the example of Lincoln, appealed that to take vengeance on them was not in the spirit of what the country should again aspire to and that it was accepted that the statement against “attainder of blood” meant that no person could be punished for the crime of another family member.

The consensus was growing to let each of them take two to four weeks’ worth of rations and find transport back to wherever they originally lived, though many now pleaded there was no place for them to go, that their spouses and parents were dead or had fled from Bluemont and disappeared.

Upon the revelation that Bluemont had indeed planned to loft an EMP over the southeastern United States, nearly every officer in the military had refused to accept further orders and within days declared that their oath was to the Constitution; as such, they would follow legal orders from a higher commander who had not been tainted by direct association with Bluemont and waited for such a person to be chosen. It was finally agreed that an admiral aboard one of the surviving carriers, who had ordered his SEAL team to seize the nuclear-tipped weapon at Wallops Island and was clearly untainted by any direct association with Bluemont, would serve as chief of all military operations until a new president was in place.

Bob’s appeal for the beginning of a convention to reestablish a federal government had gotten off to a rocky start, ironically nearly identical to an argument when the original Constitutional Convention was held. Why were certain delegates sent rather than others? Who had the power to choose the delegates or even issue such a call for a meeting? Some states, particularly high food-production states, had experienced far fewer casualties than small urbanized states, such as New Jersey, which was all but depopulated, as was Rhode Island. There was also the question of whether delegates of states west of the Mississippi would be admitted. Texas, which was fighting what was nearly a full-scale war against Chinese and Mexican incursions, flat out said it was quit with the Union and wanted to proclaim that its boundaries should be what they had been when it was an independent republic, which had once included most of the southwest clear to California and parts of Colorado and Utah.

A smart compromise had actually been suggested by a history professor out of Purdue who specialized in the pre–Civil War South, suggesting that the thirteen original states should send the original number of delegates, and once a quorum was convened, delegates from states, in order of their admission into the original Union, would be greeted once the Constitution was reaffirmed. The idea, of course, was immediately seized on by those within the original states. It was seen as a way out of an impasse that threatened to cripple Bob’s hopes before they were even remotely attempted.

And therefore, this day—what Bob at his inauguration as president called the Final Day—marked the beginning of a restored United States of America. Henceforth, this day in May would be observed with the same reverence as July 4, but also as a day of reflection as December 7 and September 11 were once observed.

The ringing of the campus bell stirred John from his musings. It was time.

He stood up, leaning over the railing. A blossom in the thicket of rhododendron that all but engulfed the small building was beginning to bloom. He gently plucked it free, held it for a moment, and then let it drop into the stream.

“Jennifer, sleep in peace, my little angel,” he whispered.

He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out Rabs, flame scorched but still intact. The house next to where he had buried Jennifer and her grandmother was gone. There was no longer a windowsill for Rabs to rest upon and keep watch. But here, he realized, was a sacred place as well, where the names of so many others who had been lost were engraved. His gaze lingered on Grace’s name, recognizing Kevin’s handwriting. Picking up a pencil from the small table in the room, he wrote Jennifer’s name beneath Grace’s and placed Rabs on the table.

“Keep watch over all of them now, my little friend,” he whispered, patting Rabs affectionately, eyes clouding with tears as he finally let go of the pain. All on this campus knew who Rabs was, and all would keep watch over him as well, and he would remain in the chapel as days, months, and eventually years slipped by.

John left the peaceful chapel, entered Belk Hall, and climbed the three flights of steps to the third floor to what he had once considered to be his classroom.

Of the thirty-five seats in the room, only a dozen were filled. He paused for a brief instant, taking that in, and he could not help but think that so much had been lost. Could they ever truly hope to recover?

One of the students, face creased by an ugly wound from the battle with the Posse, instinctively stood up and came to attention, the others following his lead. The man, for he was a man who was not even twenty yet, his childhood from a world that used to say, “Twenty-five is the new eighteen,” had been robbed of adolescence forever. Would there ever again be a childhood for this generation? He looked at the old-style mechanical clock on the classroom wall. It was noon. Three hundred and fifty miles away, a friend of his—some hailing him as a George Washington reborn, others denouncing him as nothing better than a dictator—was being sworn in as president of the United States.

But then again, had not the same been said of Washington in his day, the legend not yet formed and ahead yet more wars, strife, a civil war that came close to forever rendering the Union apart, and from there global wars and finally the war of this generation?

Such had it been, and whether with hope or fear, such it would always be. There had been a chance to have prevented it all, but all the voices who had warned of its coming had been ignored, the mute testament of that folly the fact that two out of every three chairs in this room were empty. So many ghosts he could see hovering about those chairs—not just Grace, who, at least for a while, would be remembered, until, like all heroes, memory would fade even for her. So many others already half-forgotten. Their memories for him the ultimate price of the folly of letting those who let the nightmare unfold so easily take power and wield it while with honeyed words dripped lies of assurance and reassurance that they would all be taken care of. Forgotten the prophetic words that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

He realized that he had been standing before the class for several minutes gazing at the room in silence. Several were in tears as they looked upon him, and he felt his throat tighten.

“Stand at ease and be seated, please,”

He looked around the room, smiled, and then as he once used to do at the start of every class, John Matherson asked a question:

“Now, where did we leave off?”