Zac killed his first person on his nineteenth birthday. He'd been in Korea for about a month and a half without killing anybody; letting somebody else do the dirty work. He'd never fired his gun and the first time he did it he killed someone and the guilt ripped him to shreds very quickly.
It happened in the middle of a battle. Usually his protectors were around him in the trenches, telling him when to get down, when to do this and that, but today something was different and somehow, for a period of about fifteen minutes, he was on his own. It scared the living daylights out of him and every moment that passed he was sure he was going to die, until he was pulled into the trenches again by his brother and forced onto the ground.
"What the hell are you doing? Stay here!"
"I�"
"Shut up!" The foreigner that had claimed his older brother held his foot on Zac's chest, hard enough to keep him down but not hard enough to seriously hurt him. They'd stayed like that for ages it seemed, until the battle was over and the retreat was sounded. Zac was shaking when they got back to their camp.
"Calm down, Zac," Isaac said, forcing some food in his brother's direction. Zac shook his head. "It was bound to happen sometime."
"I need to go home," Zac said, putting his head in his hands. "I'm of no use here. I'm burdening other people and I can't even fight�"
"Zac, you can't go home. Even if you do convince someone into letting you go home, as soon as the order is issued Smith will see it and will overturn it." Zac looked away. Isaac had listened to his story about Smith and everything that had happened to him while Isaac was here, and it was the one thing that reminded Zac that he still had a brother in this stranger. Isaac had immediately taken his side. Besides that and Isaac's stunt earlier that day in battle, Zac didn't know his brother.
"Ike?" Zac asked. Isaac looked at him expectantly. "Who are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly that. Who are you? I don't even know who you are anymore. You're not my brother." Ike snorted.
"Don't think about it, Zac," Isaac said. "I'm here to save your hide until you go home. That's all I am to you right now."
"Don't you mean until we go home?" Zac asked. Isaac shook his head.
"I'm staying here."
"What?" Zac asked, giving his brother a look. "Why would you stay here?"
"I've been here for two years already. This is the longest I've stayed in one place maybe my entire life. I belong here. This is my home now," Isaac said.
"You can't stay here! What about home, what about our family�what about the band?"
"The band is over, Zac, and you know that," Isaac said. "Don't say you don't. Hanson was barely making it through and you're so incredibly successful by yourself�stay by yourself. Even if I do go home, I won't join the band again. I haven't even thought about music in these past two years and I rather like it this way. I don't think I'll even go home."
"Then what the hell am I doing? I did everything with you in mind. I mouthed off to the President of the fucking United States for you, fighting for you, thinking that you were dying to get out of here. I wouldn't have done it I would have known. I wouldn't be here if I'd known!"
"Well it's your mistake. I never gave you any indication that I wanted you to get me out of here."
"You didn't give me anything at all! Two years and all I get from my brother is one letter saying 'I'm fine.' I knew you weren't fine. I know you wrote me from the hospital." Isaac froze.
"How did you know I was in the hospital?"
"You wrote the letter on hospital stationary. Taylor found it on the paper. Luckily he knows how to read Korean or I would have never known. How come you were in the hospital?"
"Look around you, Zac. We're in the middle of a fucking war. There are bullets flying everywhere you look. You're bound to get hit sometime, especially if you've been here as long as I have. You'll be in the hospital sometime before you leave, I can almost guarantee it."
Zac leaned back. "I don't want to go to the hospital, I don't want to get shot; I just want to go home." He sighed. "What's the date today?"
"I don't know," Isaac said. He turned to a group of new recruits in the center of the camp. "Hey, one of you, what's the date today?"
"October 22nd!" someone yelled. Zac huffed.
"Happy birthday to me," he muttered.
"Mom! Mom!! DIANA!! Where the fuck are you?" Madison yelled impatiently through the DC hotel suite. "I would like to get to the voting booth before they close, thank you!" Diana came running out of one of the bedrooms, her purse in her hand.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Madison opened the door to the hotel suite and ran to the nearest elevator, jamming her finger repeatedly into the button, waiting for the doors to open. Diana closed the door behind her and walked to the elevator, where Madison was impatiently waiting.
"Damn doors," she muttered, pressing the button again. "What took you so long anyway? Dad and Taylor are waiting in the car and the voting booths close in forty-five minutes. You know they're going to raise hell because none of us live here."
"I couldn't find my voter registration card. Did I tell Jess to watch the kids?"
"She'll figure it out," Madison said as the doors opened. The two went inside and Madison pressed the button for the ground floor. "We wouldn't have had to worry about this if we would have voted this morning like I wanted to."
"Well Jess didn't even wake up until eleven and she needed to be awake to watch the kids. Then Avery was having problems with her arm and it took two hours to get her some medication, then everyone was hungry and we said we'd vote after we ate and that never happened. We've been so busy we couldn't have possibly gone at any other time."
"Hopefully no one will figure out where we're going so we can vote in peace," Madison said. The doors opened again and they were at the ground floor. Madison and Diana rushed out into the lobby, where Taylor had just walked in to get them.
"It's about time!" he said, turning around. "Let's go!" The three ran out to the car where Walker was waiting. Taylor and Madison were crammed in the back while Diana sat in the front seat.
"When are you supposed to meet Davis, Madison?" Walker asked from behind the wheel.
"Seven-thirty. His place isn't all that far away from the voting place so I should be fine in terms of getting there on time, that is, if I don't get stopped by a camera crew. I swear they're following us around."
"They're just overly excited about the election, Madison," Diana said. "I'm sure by January they'll be leaving us well alone."
"I hope so," Madison said. "What time is it?"
"Six-twenty. Don't worry, we're almost there. We've got plenty of time." Madison looked out the window as they passed the Capitol building. Their hotel was smack dab in the middle of everything that was great in DC, although Madison had seen most of it so many times she wanted to puke if she saw it again. Before she met Zac she'd never in her life think she'd actually get to do the things she'd done. Travel the country, affecting everybody around her, meet the president and actually insult the president, and sway a nation to vote for a friend of hers. A friend of hers was going to be president, come the results of this election. Everything had changed since she met Zac and she never did give him credit for it.
Walker parked at the designated voting area and the four piled out of the car. There was a line, which Madison had been afraid of, but it wasn't extremely long and seemed to be moving quickly. "Great," Madison said anyway, standing at the end of the line. "There's a line."
"I told you we should have come this morning," Taylor told his parents.
"You should, but you didn't," Diana told him. "The line's moving." Taylor looked ahead of him and there was a large gap between him and the next person. He walked quickly to fill the gap. Madison was already up there, looking around.
It took about ten minutes to get to the front of the line. As Madison had predicted, they were none too happy that none of them lived in DC, and was even more pissed off to find that Madison lived in Ohio while the other three lived in Oklahoma. It was a good ten-minute delay and it was a quarter to seven when Madison got to vote.
She bit on one of her nails as she voted solely Democratic, her vote clearly going for Davis. She finished quickly and walked out of the voting booth, dropping her ballot into the ballot box and waiting for the rest of the family to join her. While she was waiting, a camera crew found her.
"Miss Ashton, can we speak with you?" Madison turned around and found her favorite reporter, Eve from CNN, standing in front of her with her cameraman.
"Of course! It'll have to be short, though, I'm meeting Davis in a half an hour," she said with a smile. The last thing she wanted was to talk to a news crew, but now that they'd caught up with her, she might as well be pleasant.
"We'll just ask a few questions," Eve explained. "Are you optimistic about this election?"
"Of course I am. I believe entirely that Davis is going to win this election," Madison said. "There is no doubt in my mind."
"Have you heard from Zac at all?" Madison nodded.
"Yeah, he's sent a few letters. He's doing just fine. He's actually stationed with his brother Isaac, so despite the horribleness, he's happy. He can't wait to come home."
"Do you know where he's stationed?"
"He doesn't want me to say," Madison said, a crinkle in her nose. "Sorry."
"That's all right. Do you have anything to say to President Smith these last couple of days he might be in office?"
"Well, I didn't really want to say anything, but oh well. I'll just have him know that no matter what happens over these next two months, I still know what kind of person he is. I still know how deceitful and manipulative he really is. Everyone knows that now. He's gone out of his way to make Zac and I unhappy and once he gets out of office, he will have absolutely no respect because he sent America's most beloved person to war on purpose."
"Madison, let's go!" Madison looked behind her and Taylor was waiting with his parents. She gave a smile to Eve and romped off to go with her pseudo-family to Davis's home.