“Ew!” Officer Elliott squeals as he walks over and lifts one perfectly polished hard-sole shoe, firmly placing it over the governor’s ribs. “Hoyt, did you have to shoot him in the neck? That’s so nasty!” With a disgusted grimace and a shove, Elliott rolls Beauregard Steele’s gasping body into the hole that was dug for me.
Or was it?
I did notice that it was a little bit wider than usual.
Another man in all-black civilian clothes, like a bodyguard, steps out of the tank and tells the riot cops to stand down. As soon as they holster their weapons, the crowd erupts in cheers. I walk on my knees over to Mac. I can’t help him up because my hands are still fucking cuffed behind my back, but he groans and sits up on his own, pulling his mask off in the process.
“You okay, old man?”
He nods and glares at Hoyt, who’s now getting a shoulder massage from Elliott.
“You’re jealous that he got the kill and not you, aren’t you?” I tease.
Mac’s jaw grinds, and his eyes narrow as they cut back to me. “Who knew those two clowns would have their own fucking plan?”
I chuckle. “Evidently, my girl had one, too. She damn near blew your head off, man.”
“You mean, that girl?”
I follow Mac’s smirk over my shoulder and find the riot cops helping Rain climb onto the hood of Hoyt’s cruiser. She’s wearing that fucking red lipstick again, and she has a red skirt or dress or some shit on under her spray-painted, blood-splattered hoodie.
I pull my lip between my teeth and stare as she hops down, the wind ruffling her hair and blowing her skirt up before she lands with a graceful thud just a few feet away from me.
She’s here.
She’s right fucking here.
I barely register the click of my handcuffs before I’m on my knees with my face buried in my girl’s belly and my arms wrapped around her thighs.
“Don’t look at me like that, little missy,” Mac’s deep voice grumbles behind me. “I wasn’t gonna kill him.”
I laugh. I fucking laugh until I damn near cry as Rain’s fingers comb through my hair and her body sinks into my lap and her swollen, red eyes stare through mine.
“Did you get tear-gassed?” I ask, swiping my thumbs over her wet cheeks.
“No, I’m just really happy,” she sobs, her red lips splitting into a smile that I’ve wanted to put on her face since the moment I fucking met her.
I let myself watch her smile for a whole second, maybe two, just long enough for me to take a picture of it with my mind. Then, I kiss that fucking grin right off her face.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice tells me that I need to be careful. Stay vigilant. That my story doesn’t end like this. That I don’t get to be happy. That my world doesn’t work that way.
But I tell that voice to shut the fuck up.
It’s a new world now.
And in this world, we can be whatever the fuck we want to be.
Even happy.
Epilogue
One Year Later
Rain
I slide the car seat into the red vinyl booth and sit down next to it while Wes goes up to the front to order. Lily smiles back at me as I rock her gently, cooing and kicking her feet under her blanket. She’s so incredibly beautiful. Soft brown hair like her daddy—only hers is fuzzier and sticks straight up. She has giant blue eyes, like mine, but hers sparkle with the kind of pure, innocent joy that only someone who didn’t live through April 23 can know.
By the time Lily arrived, the world was safe again. Orderly. Militant. After Governor Steele was assassinated, we went from zero laws to martial law in the span of about a week. It turns out that all over the country, members of the military were gearing up for a government takeover. Officer MacArthur and Governor Steele’s bodyguard, Jenkins, were in the Green Berets together and had already been in talks with Army officials about organizing a coup in Georgia when Wes suggested that they do it at his execution.
It’s kind of hilarious that Officer Hoyt beat them to it.
Georgia was the first state to fall, but after that, the other forty-nine toppled like dominoes. Within a few days, the military completely seized power. Existing laws were reinstated, mandatory curfews were enforced, and the released prisoners were put to work—rebuilding businesses, clearing the roads, cleaning up the graffiti, and burying the dead. It’s still weird to see tanks driving down the street every night at 8 p.m. and generals giving press conferences instead of men in ten-thousand-dollar suits, but if it means my daughter and I can go to the grocery store without getting raped, robbed, killed, or kidnapped, I’ll take it.
Once the state governments started being overthrown, the president read the writing on the wall and just … disappeared. Rumor has it that he flew off to Tim Hollis’s private island along with a bunch of the other “one-percenters” and is living quite comfortably in the tropics.
Burger Palace didn’t survive though. After Lamar’s footage of what happened at Plaza Park made the national news, boycotts and vandalism spread across the country. Here’s your sponsor, Fuck your sponsor, Not my sponsor, or some other variation was spray-painted over every image of King Burger from California to Connecticut.
After the Burger Palace in Franklin Springs shut down, Mr. and Mrs. Renshaw bought it for cents on the dollar and turned it into a mom-and-pop barbeque joint. They’d actually liked cooking for all the runaways at the mall and decided to try their hand at the service industry. It’s the only restaurant in town, so
