Empire (Empire 1)

“What are you doing?”

“Rewinding,” said Mark.

“This is all a tape?”

“It’s DVR, Mom,” he said, like she was kind of dim. “We’ve had this for two years now. You can rewind anything if you haven’t changed the channel in between.”

“But I want to hear what they’re saying.”

“Mom,” said Mark. “Why do we have to listen to them when we can see?”

And then he added, softly: “I think it was Dad.”

The moment he said it, she knew he was right. Dad in a suit. And that was Captain Coleman in the uniform. Somehow they were at the Tidal Basin with rifles and they were shooting at the terrorists only they hadn’t been able to get them all in time.

The video didn’t prove anything. Everything moved too fast and blurred too much. But she knew it was Reuben.

“Again,” said Mark.

“No,” said Cecily. “Let me hear them talk. I have to know what they’re saying.?

?

A lot of babble about unidentified early responders and then some idiot talking head saying that the range had been quite short and these must not be trained soldiers because those weren’t hard shots. Right, thought Cecily, not hard at the firing range, but damned hard when somebody was firing back at you and you were running from cover to cover.

Then the talking heads were interrupted by a bulletin from the reporter standing just outside the White House grounds.

The President was definitely in the room where the rocket exploded, along with the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Mark pushed another button and suddenly everything jumped on the screen. “What are you doing now?”

“Going live,” said Mark. “We were a minute behind because of the replay.”

“The President is confirmed dead,” said a man inside a briefing room that she recognized immediately—it was in the Sam Rayburn Building. Why would he be in the Rayburn?

Because the White House briefing room wasn’t available, of course. But . . .

There was Congressman LaMonte Nielson with his hand on the Bible. Raising his right hand. Why was he taking an oath of office?

“Apparently the Vice President was killed in a traffic incident only a few minutes before the rocket attack on the White House. I say ‘incident’ because it is hard to believe that this was an accident, a mere coincidence. By the time the President died, this country had no living Vice President. So the law of presidential succession is clear. After the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and—but here’s the new President of the United States, just sworn in. President LaMonte Nielson. Most Americans don’t even know his name, but he’s all we’ve got right now.”

His last words overlapped with Nielson’s. Looking straight at the camera—Cecily remembered how hard it had been for him to learn how to do that steady gaze at the lens—he said, “Fellow citizens, our enemies have done a terrible thing today, and good people have been murdered. They clearly intended to strike a blow to our hearts, and they succeeded. But we still have—we must keep our heads. Our Constitution still works.

“I’m not the man anybody picked to be President. But I’ll do my job, as will everyone else in government. Some emergency measures will be taken, but except as instructed by legal authorities, we urge you to go about your normal business. We do not know who did this. Do not jump to any conclusions. Do not show anger or hostility to anybody just because you think they might share the religion or the national origin or just look like whoever you guess might have done this. Let’s add no tragedies to the ones we already face today.

“I join the rest of our nation in mourning for our President and Vice President and the other great public servants whose lives were taken today in service to their country. God bless the United States of America.”

As the camera pulled back and the newspeople started judging the new President’s short speech, Cecily could see that he was already surrounded, not just by the Secret Service, but by troops in full battle gear.

“Mark,” she said softly, “don’t tell the other children that we think Dad might have been under fire. Not till we know something for sure.”

“Okay, Mom,” said Mark.

From his voice she knew he was no longer just shocked. He was crying.

“Stay here, please,” she said to him. “I’m going to get the other kids.”

A few minutes later they were gathered in the living room on their knees. None of the prayers she knew seemed adequate. She struggled to come up with the right words to add to the prayers the kids all knew. Ultimately, it all came down to the same thing that LaMonte Nielson—President Nielson—had said. God bless the United States of America.