The Road - Ending
Well the first part of "The Road" generated way more response than I expected. (I didn't expect much, man, I was just piddling around.) A few people said they wanted a sequel, but when I thought about it, I had no idea how to end it. Then I said to myself, Self, you can write both kinds of ending, right?
Self responded saying, sure, whatev.
So. Here's a choose-your-own-adventure ending for "The Road." Happy or sad, you choose. Hell, read both!
Warnings for political themes, some gore, and character death.
Alfred spent three weeks in the burn ward at the largest hospital in Fredericton, New Brunswick, before he was airlifted to London. The news that there were survivors spread like wildfire across the airwaves and the Internet; every radio, every television, every news site in hundreds of nations remarked with a sort of conceit that damn it if those Americans just wouldn't be kept down.
Survivors--human ones--began to straggle out of Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico into Mexico. More began to appear in the most southern reaches of Canada, people who had trekked miles and miles just to get out of their own country. Hundreds, then a thousand, dirty and disheveled Americans who had their injured relatives or friends or neighbors in the back of their SUVs, which were dented and muddy and hobbled. The country was just too big for a single nuclear blitz to destroy everyone.
After Alfred was brought to London, the survivors totaled two thousand. Canada was the first to declare itself a sanctuary to any surviving Americans--guaranteeing them shelter, food, health care. The rest of the world hesitated momentarily, arguing with itself. America had brought this on itself, some argued. They were probably getting ready to break out the nuclear weapons themselves. This was their comeuppance for their decades of pompous imperialism. This was only a fitting punishment.
There were others, millions of others, who disagreed. Who sends us food, they argued. Whose money is it that so often drives thousands of charities worldwide? Where could you go to have all the opportunity in the world, where could you begin with such a blank slate, where else would let you dare to become the absolute best you could? Whose people are so charitable, or at least sentimental, that they would give the money they fought so hard to get away to those less fortunate?
It was all background noise to Alfred. Every new survivor found seemed to just give him more heart. The burns were vicious and he would have the image of the Led Zeppelin's naked angel ironed to his chest for a very long time; but the bandages and gauze covered it up. While he was in New Brunswick the shock persisted, and he spoke very little and then only in complete nonsense. But he let Matthew hold him, and Arthur hold him, and Kiku sit and politely stroke his hair.
In London he came back to his senses. His certain brand of ornery showed through the exhaustion and the consistent pain. Coffee, he wanted coffee in the morning, and McDonald's every day once he was able to chew on his own again. Arthur caught him multiple times trying to get out of bed, "just to see if I can walk," he said. Testing the limits, trying always to overreach them.
Kiku stayed for a few days in London and then flew home to Japan, to try to convince his government to aid the United States. Arthur stayed up the road from the hospital, and spent his days with Alfred, leaving all the bickering up to his own Parliament. Alfred smiled sometimes, and laughed, and no matter how fake the American smile was supposed to be it wasn't now, not with him. Arthur had to smile back, feeling the normalcy restoring itself bit by bit between them.
One month after coming to London, Alfred got out of bed and Arthur helped him into a borrowed suit. He combed Alfred's hair and washed his face, since Alfred hadn't gotten all the movement back in his arms just yet.
"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Arthur asked him, wetting the comb in the sink and parting Alfred's blonde hair. Alfred stayed obligingly still, though Arthur knew he was secretly brimming with impatience. That was just how the boy was. "You can wait, you know. You could even do it from your bed, if you're desperate."
"I'm desperate," Alfred said. "I'm not that desperate."
Arthur straightened his tie, and Alfred looked young and handsome again, even with the bandages wrapped around his head and showing past his sleeves and around his neck, with the cotton taped over one startlingly blue eye and with his lips still cracked. He looked like a war hero this time, rather than a refugee.
"And anyways, you can just stand and hold me up," Alfred said matter-of-factly, and Arthur harrumphed.
"What makes you think I'll do that, brat?" he said, but it was fond.
"Because," Alfred said, letting Arthur button his coat, "you always hold me up, Iggy."
He was smiling a bit when Arthur looked up at him, and was still smiling when Arthur looked down to hide the sudden, foolish tears in his eyes.
They flew to Paris. There were protestors outside the convention center--that was no surprise. The British government officials ushered them both inside, along with the British Prime Minister, Himself. Everyone else had already arrived.
The nations sat in the rows of tiered seats, Nations seated with their leaders, with their Prime Ministers and presidents--a spectrum of the People Themselves, condensed to sit beside their leaders. They'd never really done this before, having a meeting of the Nations and the Leaders simultaneously. People and government liked to stay separate.
Today, though, Arthur looked out over the room and saw the various weathered faces of leaders alongside the much, much older but much smoother faces of their peoples. Everyone was here. It was not just the European Union, the United Nations, or NATO. It was everyone.
Alfred used one crutch to cushion his sprained ankle as he made his way up onto the dais. The room was dead silent, watching, seeing for the first time this--a survivor, the survivor, America. Still there, still alive, still coherent.
Alfred adjusted the microphone even though it hurt his burned hands to do it. A show of obstinence, Arthur knew, that's all it was. And then Alfred began to speak and Arthur was surprised, because he didn't expect an apology.
"I'll keep this short," Alfred said, and his voice echoed. "Over the years America's done a lot of stuff. Some of it good, some of it bad. I can admit that some of the stuff we did didn't turn out to be all that great, even if we had good intentions. So I apologize. America apologizes for being...pushy, hypocritical, paranoid..." He shrugged a little and it made him wince. "Having the hell bombed out of you changes a person's perspective. Changes millions of people's perspective.
"I heard some of the rumors. We weren't going to use our nuclear weapons. We honestly thought it wasn't worth it. It wouldn't have made sense, from a tactical perspective. We'd just be worse off with all you guys than before. And I--the people--we think it's wrong. I don't know what you think about us but really, there's not that many of us who think that nuking another country is okay. We did it once and that oughta have been proof enough that it's bad.
"I'm here today to ask you all for help, really. There is nothing left in my own land that a couple thousand survivors can use to rebuild. We need outside help. I don't know how we could ever hope to repay that kind of charity. It'd take--a long time. And I know these things are usually motivated by politics, but I'm going to beg, just this one time...don't let it be that. Look at me. If you see this, and you see my people suffering, and you can't find it in your heart to at least feel sympathy...well.
"Just...just one more thing. Whatever the government does the people usually feel different. You guys are in the business, you should know. Yeah, my government was destroyed. But so were millions of innocent people who never had a thing against any of you guys, who never asked to have my troops on your turf or my companies in your economy. There are still innocent people out there, hard as it is to believe. So...so I just want to ask you to help."
And then he was finished. Silence hung thick and pregnant over the room, and Arthur looked at Alfred, who stood mute and disheartened at the podium, alone where everyone else was not.
Then Kiku stood up, his Prime Minister sitting beside him with his hands clasped on the table.
"Japan has decided that it would be cowardly of us not to aid the United States," Kiku said, and his voice rang loud and clear across the room, which stirred as though waking. "After our efforts to wipe out nuclear weapons across the globe we feel it would only be a step backwards not to declare our dedication to recovery."
A smile had started its way across Alfred's face, slow and bright and touched. Then Germany stood up.
"Germany also declares its intent to aid the US," he rumbled. "Within reason, but nonetheless, it would be cowardly not to."
Arthur looked sideways at his Prime Minister, who was massaging his temples.
"Italy also promises aid," North Italy chimed in, bouncing to his feet. South Italy also stood, less willingly. And then the room was beginning to shift, and more and more were getting up.
"Lithuania will do what we can!"
"Spain will help."
"France will also aid the United States."
More and more until almost the whole room was standing--though there were poorer nations, and more stubborn nations, still seated. Finally, finally, Arthur got the nod and leapt to his feet.
"Great Britain will aid its closest ally, of course," he said. Alfred was grinning, swallowing hard.
"Um...thanks," he said awkwardly. "All of you. Thank you. It's--there's no way," he added, "that the United States can't get back on its feet, not with almost the whole world trying to save it."
And when the meeting broke and Alfred was hobbling down from the dais, Arthur was there to pull him into a hug.
"I did all right?" Alfred murmured, and Arthur grinned into Alfred's shoulder.
"You did all right," he agreed. Then he had to let Alfred go, because the other nations wanted to see him, and all Arthur could do was stand back and watch. France stroked Alfred's hair gently; Italy gave him a giant hug; Lithuania kissed his cheek shyly. Kiku approached looking mildly pleased and Alfred hugged him, and Arthur was shocked to see Kiku actually return the hug, patting Alfred's back and holding him tight.
It would take years. Decades, maybe. Little Americas would form in Canada, Mexico, Britain. Charities would bring green plants to spread across the wasted land. New animals, new raccoons, opossum, deer, wolves, bears, coyotes, alligators, panthers. Donations of cattle and crops. Volunteers trained to clean up the bodies, the nuclear fallout. Eventually sunlight would split through the ash clouds. Exiled Americans would begin to move back in very slowly, cautiously, cultivating their own food in the dirt. If all went well they would have their own elections again one day, and out of the first or second or third generation of victims there would be Alfred's new boss. They would rebuild Washington DC, reimagine the monuments, and create new ones in memoriam of the millions destroyed. There would be mental scars, a trace of unease on the soul of the people. But if Arthur had learned anything over the course of a nation's lifetime, it was that things always eventually went back to normal.
One day he'd take a plane to the new Washington, and he'd meet a grinning and eager Alfred in the wan sunlight, and whatever they did next wouldn't matter...the point was that Alfred was still there at all, smiling and the same.
----------
NOT HAPPY ENDING DON'T LOOK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BAWWWWWW
Death came slow and agonizing to a nation.
Arthur had never seen it happen to someone until then. Some days he could only sit beside Alfred's bed and wonder, was it like this when the Roman Empire dissolved? Was it like this when Ancient Greece gave way to modern times? Or was theirs a peaceful aging, a slow and gentle slope?
Alfred's lungs were full of fine ash that he coughed up until his throat tore. The burns would not heal, could not heal. The image of Led Zeppelin's naked angel was emblazoned onto his chest like a British mark of God, marking Alfred as the Next. Like a death tag. Every time they changed his bandages Arthur saw it, white somehow amid black-red flesh, leaping for the sky.
They'd strapped him to the bed, because he kept trying to get up. He wanted to go back so desperately, he wanted to be amongst his own people. He would ask Arthur to get him his toy soldiers, the tin ones Arthur had given him all those centuries ago--ones Arthur was sure Alfred had gotten rid of after the Revolution. He wanted McDonald's, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Dominoes', anything so inherently American...anything, anything he could taste or feel that would tell him he still existed, that would comfort him. But he couldn't eat, couldn't chew. They fed him by drip, and it was torture to him. Arthur knew it and couldn't do anything.
More Americans who hadn't died in the attacks themselves died afterwards, Arthur suspected, of starvation or overexposure or radiation. It was possible they were killing each other, too, to survive. To get each other's food and gasoline, whatever it took. But it just tormented Alfred.
He wanted Bob Dylan music, he wanted to watch game shows, he wanted to see a bald eagle. Anything. Arthur found a lone American flag in a tourist shop, and brought it to him. He laid it over Alfred and then sat and thought how very like a dead soldier his son looked that way. Alfred wriggled his cracked, burned fingers, sliding the cloth in them, throat choked with that simple joy.
Apple pie, he would beg. Chocolate chip cookies. Barbeque. Fireworks. Football. All while turning his cheek gently into the folds of his flag, tears sliding weakly down over his face. Arthur just sat and watched, too stunned to be upset just yet. This image of Alfred was just so wrong to him.
He was too weak to leave Fredericton--Arthur had wanted to bring him to London. It was months, that Arthur stayed, taking turns with Matthew to watch over Alfred. No one else came and it made Arthur sick with rage. Yes, they were all home trying to get their governments to agree to aid America, even Kiku, but Arthur was desperately afraid that Alfred would die overnight and then they'd all be bloody sorry, wouldn't they, for not coming...
Months became a year. A year and a half. And then the final resolution.
There is nothing we can do. There is no way to restore land hit with that magnitude of radiation to its former state. We will give aid to any survivors who make it into Canada or Mexico, or even to Cuba, but we will not actively look. It is not in our best interests to tempt the one who did this in the first place into bombing us, too. There is no longer a United States of America.
That was all Arthur heard, in all different languages, on the radios and televisions. The United States of America was no longer formally recognized as its own sovereign nation, and as soon as the land was habitable again Arthur could bet there would be countries breaking up the land, piecemeal, into their own territories.
Great Britain and Japan were two of the last to give up. And then Arthur was sitting in the hospital room looking at the body of a no-longer-nation, his former ally, his son.
Prussia had survived, not as Prussia, but he was still there because his people still felt themselves to be quintessentially East German. So he survived on their national spirit, and Arthur thought, if there are enough survivors, if they still feel they are American, he may yet live...
The difference was that the East Germans had land, a place to live. The surviving Americans scattered, disjointed, into Canadian and Mexican communities. Some managed to make it to Europe, to Britain mostly. They didn't clump into communities like Chinatown or Little Havana--there simply weren't enough of them. And slowly, slowly, they became people rather than Americans.
Arthur watched it happening, watched Alfred's ribs begin to show, his face to go gaunt and indistinct. He watched the little bits of Alfred scattered throughout the world evaporate. McDonald's closed, Starbucks closed. Ford and GM cars began to vanish. American music simply died. The protest groups strewn worldwide, who had so fervently campaigned to give the United States aid, lost steam and disintegrated. American charities like the March of Dimes and Pennies for Peace ceased.
Alfred didn't speak anymore. He didn't ask for things that no longer existed.
He'd been in the hospital for two years when he suddenly became lucid again. Arthur was tucking the worn American flag beside him, and Matthew was standing by the bed, when Alfred finally spoke. It'd been months since he'd said anything at all.
"For God's sake," Arthur had said, "there's no compassion out there anymore."
"No gods, no kings," Alfred said very quietly. They both looked at him, but he was staring emptily at the ceiling. Something twinged in Arthur's chest.
"Good night, anyways, Alfred," he said, and leaned over, kissing the forehead gently and tasting salt. Matthew lifted Alfred's arm and hugged it carefully--they didn't tie Alfred down anymore, he was too weak to get up.
Arthur dreamed that night of the Revolution. Of Alfred proclaiming loudly and clearly that he was going to be free.
When he went up to the hospital the next morning, the body in the bed wasn't America anymore. Arthur backed up and made sure he had the right room, but it wasn't a mistake. The body in the bed was blonde and gaunt and burned and there was a folded American flag on the table beside him with a pair of cracked glasses on top. But it wasn't America. It was just another dead American boy.
Arthur stared for a while. Then he unfurled the flag and spread it over the body, and then sat down, numb. It felt nothing like the finality of losing a nation. It felt like he'd finally lost his son after a long, hard struggle.
When Matthew found him, he had his face buried in his hands. Matthew just stood and looked at the shape of the body under the flag, and then looked down.
"He was um," he said, "he was supposed to die some other way. Something more...grand."
Arthur raised his head, fighting to control himself. "Things," he said hoarsely, "don't ever work that way."
DDDDDD: I made myself cry writing that. Aaaugh ((cut))
Self responded saying, sure, whatev.
So. Here's a choose-your-own-adventure ending for "The Road." Happy or sad, you choose. Hell, read both!
Warnings for political themes, some gore, and character death.
Alfred spent three weeks in the burn ward at the largest hospital in Fredericton, New Brunswick, before he was airlifted to London. The news that there were survivors spread like wildfire across the airwaves and the Internet; every radio, every television, every news site in hundreds of nations remarked with a sort of conceit that damn it if those Americans just wouldn't be kept down.
Survivors--human ones--began to straggle out of Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico into Mexico. More began to appear in the most southern reaches of Canada, people who had trekked miles and miles just to get out of their own country. Hundreds, then a thousand, dirty and disheveled Americans who had their injured relatives or friends or neighbors in the back of their SUVs, which were dented and muddy and hobbled. The country was just too big for a single nuclear blitz to destroy everyone.
After Alfred was brought to London, the survivors totaled two thousand. Canada was the first to declare itself a sanctuary to any surviving Americans--guaranteeing them shelter, food, health care. The rest of the world hesitated momentarily, arguing with itself. America had brought this on itself, some argued. They were probably getting ready to break out the nuclear weapons themselves. This was their comeuppance for their decades of pompous imperialism. This was only a fitting punishment.
There were others, millions of others, who disagreed. Who sends us food, they argued. Whose money is it that so often drives thousands of charities worldwide? Where could you go to have all the opportunity in the world, where could you begin with such a blank slate, where else would let you dare to become the absolute best you could? Whose people are so charitable, or at least sentimental, that they would give the money they fought so hard to get away to those less fortunate?
It was all background noise to Alfred. Every new survivor found seemed to just give him more heart. The burns were vicious and he would have the image of the Led Zeppelin's naked angel ironed to his chest for a very long time; but the bandages and gauze covered it up. While he was in New Brunswick the shock persisted, and he spoke very little and then only in complete nonsense. But he let Matthew hold him, and Arthur hold him, and Kiku sit and politely stroke his hair.
In London he came back to his senses. His certain brand of ornery showed through the exhaustion and the consistent pain. Coffee, he wanted coffee in the morning, and McDonald's every day once he was able to chew on his own again. Arthur caught him multiple times trying to get out of bed, "just to see if I can walk," he said. Testing the limits, trying always to overreach them.
Kiku stayed for a few days in London and then flew home to Japan, to try to convince his government to aid the United States. Arthur stayed up the road from the hospital, and spent his days with Alfred, leaving all the bickering up to his own Parliament. Alfred smiled sometimes, and laughed, and no matter how fake the American smile was supposed to be it wasn't now, not with him. Arthur had to smile back, feeling the normalcy restoring itself bit by bit between them.
One month after coming to London, Alfred got out of bed and Arthur helped him into a borrowed suit. He combed Alfred's hair and washed his face, since Alfred hadn't gotten all the movement back in his arms just yet.
"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Arthur asked him, wetting the comb in the sink and parting Alfred's blonde hair. Alfred stayed obligingly still, though Arthur knew he was secretly brimming with impatience. That was just how the boy was. "You can wait, you know. You could even do it from your bed, if you're desperate."
"I'm desperate," Alfred said. "I'm not that desperate."
Arthur straightened his tie, and Alfred looked young and handsome again, even with the bandages wrapped around his head and showing past his sleeves and around his neck, with the cotton taped over one startlingly blue eye and with his lips still cracked. He looked like a war hero this time, rather than a refugee.
"And anyways, you can just stand and hold me up," Alfred said matter-of-factly, and Arthur harrumphed.
"What makes you think I'll do that, brat?" he said, but it was fond.
"Because," Alfred said, letting Arthur button his coat, "you always hold me up, Iggy."
He was smiling a bit when Arthur looked up at him, and was still smiling when Arthur looked down to hide the sudden, foolish tears in his eyes.
They flew to Paris. There were protestors outside the convention center--that was no surprise. The British government officials ushered them both inside, along with the British Prime Minister, Himself. Everyone else had already arrived.
The nations sat in the rows of tiered seats, Nations seated with their leaders, with their Prime Ministers and presidents--a spectrum of the People Themselves, condensed to sit beside their leaders. They'd never really done this before, having a meeting of the Nations and the Leaders simultaneously. People and government liked to stay separate.
Today, though, Arthur looked out over the room and saw the various weathered faces of leaders alongside the much, much older but much smoother faces of their peoples. Everyone was here. It was not just the European Union, the United Nations, or NATO. It was everyone.
Alfred used one crutch to cushion his sprained ankle as he made his way up onto the dais. The room was dead silent, watching, seeing for the first time this--a survivor, the survivor, America. Still there, still alive, still coherent.
Alfred adjusted the microphone even though it hurt his burned hands to do it. A show of obstinence, Arthur knew, that's all it was. And then Alfred began to speak and Arthur was surprised, because he didn't expect an apology.
"I'll keep this short," Alfred said, and his voice echoed. "Over the years America's done a lot of stuff. Some of it good, some of it bad. I can admit that some of the stuff we did didn't turn out to be all that great, even if we had good intentions. So I apologize. America apologizes for being...pushy, hypocritical, paranoid..." He shrugged a little and it made him wince. "Having the hell bombed out of you changes a person's perspective. Changes millions of people's perspective.
"I heard some of the rumors. We weren't going to use our nuclear weapons. We honestly thought it wasn't worth it. It wouldn't have made sense, from a tactical perspective. We'd just be worse off with all you guys than before. And I--the people--we think it's wrong. I don't know what you think about us but really, there's not that many of us who think that nuking another country is okay. We did it once and that oughta have been proof enough that it's bad.
"I'm here today to ask you all for help, really. There is nothing left in my own land that a couple thousand survivors can use to rebuild. We need outside help. I don't know how we could ever hope to repay that kind of charity. It'd take--a long time. And I know these things are usually motivated by politics, but I'm going to beg, just this one time...don't let it be that. Look at me. If you see this, and you see my people suffering, and you can't find it in your heart to at least feel sympathy...well.
"Just...just one more thing. Whatever the government does the people usually feel different. You guys are in the business, you should know. Yeah, my government was destroyed. But so were millions of innocent people who never had a thing against any of you guys, who never asked to have my troops on your turf or my companies in your economy. There are still innocent people out there, hard as it is to believe. So...so I just want to ask you to help."
And then he was finished. Silence hung thick and pregnant over the room, and Arthur looked at Alfred, who stood mute and disheartened at the podium, alone where everyone else was not.
Then Kiku stood up, his Prime Minister sitting beside him with his hands clasped on the table.
"Japan has decided that it would be cowardly of us not to aid the United States," Kiku said, and his voice rang loud and clear across the room, which stirred as though waking. "After our efforts to wipe out nuclear weapons across the globe we feel it would only be a step backwards not to declare our dedication to recovery."
A smile had started its way across Alfred's face, slow and bright and touched. Then Germany stood up.
"Germany also declares its intent to aid the US," he rumbled. "Within reason, but nonetheless, it would be cowardly not to."
Arthur looked sideways at his Prime Minister, who was massaging his temples.
"Italy also promises aid," North Italy chimed in, bouncing to his feet. South Italy also stood, less willingly. And then the room was beginning to shift, and more and more were getting up.
"Lithuania will do what we can!"
"Spain will help."
"France will also aid the United States."
More and more until almost the whole room was standing--though there were poorer nations, and more stubborn nations, still seated. Finally, finally, Arthur got the nod and leapt to his feet.
"Great Britain will aid its closest ally, of course," he said. Alfred was grinning, swallowing hard.
"Um...thanks," he said awkwardly. "All of you. Thank you. It's--there's no way," he added, "that the United States can't get back on its feet, not with almost the whole world trying to save it."
And when the meeting broke and Alfred was hobbling down from the dais, Arthur was there to pull him into a hug.
"I did all right?" Alfred murmured, and Arthur grinned into Alfred's shoulder.
"You did all right," he agreed. Then he had to let Alfred go, because the other nations wanted to see him, and all Arthur could do was stand back and watch. France stroked Alfred's hair gently; Italy gave him a giant hug; Lithuania kissed his cheek shyly. Kiku approached looking mildly pleased and Alfred hugged him, and Arthur was shocked to see Kiku actually return the hug, patting Alfred's back and holding him tight.
It would take years. Decades, maybe. Little Americas would form in Canada, Mexico, Britain. Charities would bring green plants to spread across the wasted land. New animals, new raccoons, opossum, deer, wolves, bears, coyotes, alligators, panthers. Donations of cattle and crops. Volunteers trained to clean up the bodies, the nuclear fallout. Eventually sunlight would split through the ash clouds. Exiled Americans would begin to move back in very slowly, cautiously, cultivating their own food in the dirt. If all went well they would have their own elections again one day, and out of the first or second or third generation of victims there would be Alfred's new boss. They would rebuild Washington DC, reimagine the monuments, and create new ones in memoriam of the millions destroyed. There would be mental scars, a trace of unease on the soul of the people. But if Arthur had learned anything over the course of a nation's lifetime, it was that things always eventually went back to normal.
One day he'd take a plane to the new Washington, and he'd meet a grinning and eager Alfred in the wan sunlight, and whatever they did next wouldn't matter...the point was that Alfred was still there at all, smiling and the same.
----------
NOT HAPPY ENDING DON'T LOOK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BAWWWWWW
Death came slow and agonizing to a nation.
Arthur had never seen it happen to someone until then. Some days he could only sit beside Alfred's bed and wonder, was it like this when the Roman Empire dissolved? Was it like this when Ancient Greece gave way to modern times? Or was theirs a peaceful aging, a slow and gentle slope?
Alfred's lungs were full of fine ash that he coughed up until his throat tore. The burns would not heal, could not heal. The image of Led Zeppelin's naked angel was emblazoned onto his chest like a British mark of God, marking Alfred as the Next. Like a death tag. Every time they changed his bandages Arthur saw it, white somehow amid black-red flesh, leaping for the sky.
They'd strapped him to the bed, because he kept trying to get up. He wanted to go back so desperately, he wanted to be amongst his own people. He would ask Arthur to get him his toy soldiers, the tin ones Arthur had given him all those centuries ago--ones Arthur was sure Alfred had gotten rid of after the Revolution. He wanted McDonald's, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Dominoes', anything so inherently American...anything, anything he could taste or feel that would tell him he still existed, that would comfort him. But he couldn't eat, couldn't chew. They fed him by drip, and it was torture to him. Arthur knew it and couldn't do anything.
More Americans who hadn't died in the attacks themselves died afterwards, Arthur suspected, of starvation or overexposure or radiation. It was possible they were killing each other, too, to survive. To get each other's food and gasoline, whatever it took. But it just tormented Alfred.
He wanted Bob Dylan music, he wanted to watch game shows, he wanted to see a bald eagle. Anything. Arthur found a lone American flag in a tourist shop, and brought it to him. He laid it over Alfred and then sat and thought how very like a dead soldier his son looked that way. Alfred wriggled his cracked, burned fingers, sliding the cloth in them, throat choked with that simple joy.
Apple pie, he would beg. Chocolate chip cookies. Barbeque. Fireworks. Football. All while turning his cheek gently into the folds of his flag, tears sliding weakly down over his face. Arthur just sat and watched, too stunned to be upset just yet. This image of Alfred was just so wrong to him.
He was too weak to leave Fredericton--Arthur had wanted to bring him to London. It was months, that Arthur stayed, taking turns with Matthew to watch over Alfred. No one else came and it made Arthur sick with rage. Yes, they were all home trying to get their governments to agree to aid America, even Kiku, but Arthur was desperately afraid that Alfred would die overnight and then they'd all be bloody sorry, wouldn't they, for not coming...
Months became a year. A year and a half. And then the final resolution.
There is nothing we can do. There is no way to restore land hit with that magnitude of radiation to its former state. We will give aid to any survivors who make it into Canada or Mexico, or even to Cuba, but we will not actively look. It is not in our best interests to tempt the one who did this in the first place into bombing us, too. There is no longer a United States of America.
That was all Arthur heard, in all different languages, on the radios and televisions. The United States of America was no longer formally recognized as its own sovereign nation, and as soon as the land was habitable again Arthur could bet there would be countries breaking up the land, piecemeal, into their own territories.
Great Britain and Japan were two of the last to give up. And then Arthur was sitting in the hospital room looking at the body of a no-longer-nation, his former ally, his son.
Prussia had survived, not as Prussia, but he was still there because his people still felt themselves to be quintessentially East German. So he survived on their national spirit, and Arthur thought, if there are enough survivors, if they still feel they are American, he may yet live...
The difference was that the East Germans had land, a place to live. The surviving Americans scattered, disjointed, into Canadian and Mexican communities. Some managed to make it to Europe, to Britain mostly. They didn't clump into communities like Chinatown or Little Havana--there simply weren't enough of them. And slowly, slowly, they became people rather than Americans.
Arthur watched it happening, watched Alfred's ribs begin to show, his face to go gaunt and indistinct. He watched the little bits of Alfred scattered throughout the world evaporate. McDonald's closed, Starbucks closed. Ford and GM cars began to vanish. American music simply died. The protest groups strewn worldwide, who had so fervently campaigned to give the United States aid, lost steam and disintegrated. American charities like the March of Dimes and Pennies for Peace ceased.
Alfred didn't speak anymore. He didn't ask for things that no longer existed.
He'd been in the hospital for two years when he suddenly became lucid again. Arthur was tucking the worn American flag beside him, and Matthew was standing by the bed, when Alfred finally spoke. It'd been months since he'd said anything at all.
"For God's sake," Arthur had said, "there's no compassion out there anymore."
"No gods, no kings," Alfred said very quietly. They both looked at him, but he was staring emptily at the ceiling. Something twinged in Arthur's chest.
"Good night, anyways, Alfred," he said, and leaned over, kissing the forehead gently and tasting salt. Matthew lifted Alfred's arm and hugged it carefully--they didn't tie Alfred down anymore, he was too weak to get up.
Arthur dreamed that night of the Revolution. Of Alfred proclaiming loudly and clearly that he was going to be free.
When he went up to the hospital the next morning, the body in the bed wasn't America anymore. Arthur backed up and made sure he had the right room, but it wasn't a mistake. The body in the bed was blonde and gaunt and burned and there was a folded American flag on the table beside him with a pair of cracked glasses on top. But it wasn't America. It was just another dead American boy.
Arthur stared for a while. Then he unfurled the flag and spread it over the body, and then sat down, numb. It felt nothing like the finality of losing a nation. It felt like he'd finally lost his son after a long, hard struggle.
When Matthew found him, he had his face buried in his hands. Matthew just stood and looked at the shape of the body under the flag, and then looked down.
"He was um," he said, "he was supposed to die some other way. Something more...grand."
Arthur raised his head, fighting to control himself. "Things," he said hoarsely, "don't ever work that way."
DDDDDD: I made myself cry writing that. Aaaugh ((cut))