V3751-3

Barely twenty feet below the ridge, water laps at the side of the hill. Something loud splashes into the water, a tree maybe. In the distance he can hear soft cries and moans from other survivors, and a scream, once, quickly silenced.

Closer, Josh whimpers in his sleep, a tiny clenched fist waving briefly in the air. Sarah shifts him in her arms and holds him a little tighter, whispers a little louder.

"Swim."

In the morning he offers another survivor -- a man wearing a business suit and sunglasses and carrying a briefcase, its leather side scratched and dusted with dirt -- his father's wedding ring for a bottle of water.

He has thoughts of drinking a third, and giving Sarah and Josh a third each, but Josh is crying when he gets back and before he knows it, he's reading the instructions on the side of a half-full tub of formula that he'd found in Josh's baby bag. His wrist aches when he shakes the baby bottle, and he looks at Sarah nervously, not sure if he's doing it right.

She stares out over the lapping water and doesn't seem to notice.

For all of her frozenness, Sarah refuses to let Josh go. Every time he tries to slide Josh out of her arms, she locks her elbows and tightens her fingers, her arms steeling.

He doesn't fight her very hard. She's quiet now, her whispering finally silent, and he doesn't want her to start again. Squatting, he feeds Josh as best as he can from the side, the kid squirming and fussing and knocking the nipple away a good dozen or more times before finally latching on and sucking down the cold milk like it's the best he's ever had.

He means to pull the bottle away before Josh can empty it completely but it's hypnotic, watching the little bubbles form in the milk, watching the level get lower and lower and lower, and by the time he's managed to blink and focus again, the bottle's dry.

"I think you need to burp him," he tells Sarah, sitting directly in front of her blank stare and looking for a connection. "Sarah, you've gotta --"

She reacts slowly, shifting Josh so that he's leaning against her shoulder, her hand coming up and patting his back. Josh fidgets and burps and fidgets and burps.

Leo sighs.

He needs to find food and water for him and Sarah, he knows, but he's tired. Really, absolutely, completely tired. He can't remember the last time he slept but he thinks maybe it was in West Virginia.

He thinks maybe they're in West Virginia now. Maybe.

Lying down beside her, he hooks his arm around Sarah's thigh and closes his eyes.

When he opens his eyes again, the sun is high overhead and his head feels too large for his body, his throat and mouth sandpaper dry. Hunger gnaws at his belly, and his right side is numb from the hard, rocky ground.

There's a woman sitting on Sarah's other side. She has one hand under Sarah's chin and she's tipping Sarah's head back, holding a can of soda to her mouth. When she sees him looking, she says, "shock."

He sits up slowly. "Her parents," he says, like that will explain everything, and maybe it does because the woman nods.

"The water," she agrees, and tips Sarah's head back a little more.

The woman gives him the rest of the soda once Sarah's gotten at least half down, and he drains it in about five seconds flat.

"Thanks," he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. It does little to ease his thirst, but his stomach feels a little better to have something sloshing around inside of it.

"There's a path on the other side of the upper ridge," she says. "A few houses are still standing over there."

He blinks. "You live --"

"No," she says. She gets up slowly, awkwardly, and for the first time he realises how old she is. His grandmother, eighty and forgetful, would look young next to this woman. "Good luck."

He wants to ask how someone as old as her could manage to climb up here, and thinks better of it at the last moment. "Good luck," he echoes as she shuffles away.

He wants his mom, and his dad, and a plate of waffles, a chocolate milkshake, a pizza, and his bed.

He wants his life, pre-Wolf-Biederman, back again.

Sarah fights him only a little when he unhooks the snugli from around her back and shoulders, and not at all when he takes Josh out of her arms. It feels strange to have a baby strapped across the front of his chest, like a backpack put on the wrong way, and Josh cries loudly as Leo adjusts the straps.

He slings the baby bag over Sarah's shoulder, and takes her by the hand and drags her along the ridge until her body gets the message and she starts walking willingly.

It's slow going, even though the crest is heaps easier than the climb they'd done up the side of the hill when he'd abandoned the motorbike, and Josh cries the whole time. They pass a couple of other survivors but nobody stops or talks to them, and he's strangely happy and crushed by that.

He follows the sunset, one foot in front of the other, and thinks of home.

The old woman was right, and they reach the first of the still standing houses just as it starts to get dark. A small handful of people are already outside the first house, all of them men -- Mr Briefcase Man included -- and he thinks about joining them but Sarah's hand is heavy in his and somehow he doesn't think the men would like Josh's crying.

He walks them on.

The next house is lower on the hill and he's about to walk down to it when he realises the back half of the house is gone, washed away, and the half that's left is swaying gently in the mud.

The third house looks whole, but there's a couple sitting on the front step and they shake their heads when he approaches. "No," the woman says.

He looks for another house and can't see one in the rapidly increasing darkness. "Please," he says.

The woman shakes her head again, and looks away.

Josh's incessant whimpering kicks up a notch, and he pats the back of the snugli absently. The man stirs on the step, revealing the shotgun he has on his lap.

"The garage," he says, pointing around the side of the house.

He takes three big steps to the right and looks around and sees the garage a little way down. He looks back at the man. "Thank you," he says, taking Sarah's hand again.

The man looks away.

The garage is dark and smells dank. There's no power, but there is a Volvo parked inside, stealing up most of the room. It's unlocked and when he opens the door, the interior light turns on. He pushes Sarah into the back seat and fumbles around in the glovebox, hoping.

The torch he finds is a penlight, its light thin and weak but good enough to quickly explore. He finds three twinkies in the map pocket on the drivers side door, and a six-pack of untouched water bottles in the trunk. It's more than he could have hoped for, and he inhales a twinkie and a full bottle of water without breathing.

He changes Josh's diaper and fixes him another bottle of formula, feeding him and feeling ridiculously grateful, now, for all those stupid Sex Ed videos Mrs McNally had made them watch on teenage mothers and fathers in ninth. Josh falls asleep while he's burping him. Sarah nibbles at her twinkie.

He stashes the rest of the water bottles in the baby bag, along with the remaining twinkie and the torch, and locks the car doors, rolling up the windows. He turns off the interior car light.

Tomorrow, he thinks in the dark. Tomorrow the water will have started going down -- maybe even enough for them to get down off this hill and start on their way to Missouri -- and he'll be able to take Sarah and Josh to the caves and his parents and everything will be like it was supposed to be, when he got word from the White House that his request had been granted. Tomorrow.

They sleep.

II.

The first two weeks aren't easy.

They live out of the Martinez' Volvo for lack of anywhere else to go. It's not the most comfortable place, and after awhile he thinks he can identify every individual spring under the upholstery blindfolded, but it's better than the rocky hill crest. There's no air-conditioning or radio -- Mr Martinez never offered him the keys, and he didn't ask -- but the front seats recline, and the windows roll up and down. If he thinks about it, he's probably camped in worse places with his Dad.

He walks back to the crest every couple of days to see how much the waters have receded and it's never as much as he's hoping for. The hills and valleys here have formed natural basins above the highway and the water trickles out achingly slowly when compared with the speed at which they first flooded. He thinks about taking Sarah with him, the first time, but she's still zombie!Sarah at the time and it's easier to leave her in the car with Josh. When he sees the basins, when he sees the bloated, dead bodies that have started floating to the surface, he's glad he didn't even try. He throws up what little there is in his stomach, and then cries, for awhile, for his mom and his dad.

Mrs Martinez never warms up to them, never allows him to step even onto the front porch of the house, but after about a week, she gives Sarah a couple of towels that can be cut into diapers for Josh. Mr Martinez is nicer and talks to him every now and then. Mostly it's to give him news from the radio -- the caves survived, millions are dead or homeless, and the armed forces have been deployed to help keep the peace and distribute emergency supplies in neighbouring states -- but he also learns of how the Martinez' neighbours had fled when the President gave his final godspeed, and how the Martinez' themselves had decided to stay. He has a daughter from his first marriage in college in LA, Mr Martinez tells him one time, as well as the three younger ones he has with Mrs Martinez inside the house, and he prays every day that his daughter is okay.

In addition to the water and twinkies he found in their car, Mr Martinez gives him fresh batteries for the penlight, and a couple cans of food and a jug of water every couple of days. It's the worst diet he's ever been on and he's grateful for every scrap of it. He doesn't know what he would have done without their help.

The Army finally airdrops a pallet of supplies towards the end of the first fortnight and, while some of the other twenty or so survivors on this hill claim most of them, he and Mr Martinez are able to carry away enough for their families to survive on for another week or so. He and Sarah haven't been eating that much anyway -- for them, it might last even longer.

Sarah turns seventeen the day after the airdrop. When he kisses her cheek and hands her a tin of peaches, she smiles at him, her first real expression since the comet hit.

"Happy birthday," he says, quietly, as he rocks Josh to sleep in his arms.

Smiling, she curls up beside him in the backseat, and rests her head on his shoulder. "Thanks, Leo," she says.

He closes his eyes so she won't see him cry.

III.

They argue -- really argue -- for the first time almost exactly one month after Biederman.

"We can't stay here," he says. "My parents --"

"I'm not leaving, Leo."

"Sarah --"

"No!" Grabbing Josh's dirty diaper, she turns and stalks away.

He looks down at where Josh is lying on the ground, his little legs and arms kicking and waving, and picks him up. Josh hits him in the nose and giggles.

"Thanks," he mutters.

Josh blows him a raspberry.

He follows her down to the water's edge. It's a bit of a trek now, at least fifty feet down the side of the hill, and the ground is muddy. When he finds her, she's finished scrubbing Josh's diaper and is simply sitting on a large rock, staring out over the basin.

Standing behind her, he shifts Josh on his hip and wishes he'd thought to bring the snugli. Out of habit, he scans the water for floaters, and sees only a few Army tin boats on the far side of the valley.

"We can't stay here," he says, fast, before she can say no again. "Most everyone else has already let the Army get them out, and there's no electricity here, no running water, no heat, and I hate sleeping in that fucking car."

He bites his lip and resists the urge to look over his shoulder and see if anyone heard him swear.

On the rock, Sarah curls her arms around her legs and rests her chin on her knees.

"Sarah, please -- I want to get out of here. I want to go --" home, he almost says, before remembering at the last moment how entirely impossible that is, "I want to see my mom and dad and Janie and --"

"I won't leave them."

The words are quiet, barely loud enough to get above the distant roar of the boat engines, but they cut him off nonetheless and he blinks. On his hip, Josh headbutts his shoulder and giggles.

"Who?" It can't be the Martinez' -- even after four weeks, they've never gotten more than a little friendly with them -- and everyone else here has already gone.

"They're good swimmers," she says, slowly. "I know you probably don't think that, but they are, okay? My dad -- he taught me how to swim when I was five," her words are getting faster now, tripping over themselves, "and my mom taught me how to dive in fourth, and they always -- they always -- they're good swimmers! They are!"

Horrified, he stares at her back. "Sarah --"

Defiantly, she says, "they are! And they'll want to find us and if we leave here they might never -- I won't go, Leo. I won't! Not until..."

They're dead, he thinks, he knows. When they left Mr and Mrs Hotchner on that section of the highway, they were only six miles out from the beach. Even if they could have survived the initial blast of ocean, there's no way --

A flash of memory of that first night, sitting on the crest up above. Swim, she'd whispered into the darkness, over and over and over and over again, swim.

Across the basin, the Army guys are pulling something out of water and into their boat and he doesn't need to be any closer to know what that something is.

"Sarah --" he says again, helplessly.

"They are," she whispers.

He has no one to talk to and for the millionth time since Biederman hit, he wishes his parents were here. They'd know what to say to Sarah to make her realise how impossible it is what she's saying, and they'd tell her she has to leave, and she'd listen to them, damnit. She'd have to.

(He tries not to remember the night the Army had come to collect them for the evacuation and how she hadn't listened then. It'd be different now, he knows -- her parents hadn't been dead, then.)

A couple of the Army guys boat in with a fresh supply of food and water, and he's surprised by the size of the pallet they're leaving. There's only him and the Martinez' on this hill now -- what's being left could feed them for at least six months, if not a year.

"That's the idea, kid," Lieutenant Peters tells him as he crosses off items from a checklist. "We've got bigger fish to fry than keeping you lot in TP every two days. If there's an emergency, y'all can radio for assistance, but apart from that we're leaving you be. Unless you want out, that is."

"Sarah -- my wife -- she won't leave," he says, frustrated.

"Tell her to," Peters says, simply.

"She won't listen!" He can hear the whine in his voice, and feel tears pricking at his eyes, and he waits for Peters to say, okay, kid, no problem, we'll make her go -- we're the Army! but he doesn't.

"Look," says Peters, "kid. What's your name?"

He blinks fast to get rid of his tears. "Leo."

"Leo what?"

"Biederman."

Peters double-takes and rocks back a half-step. "Like the comet?" he asks, in a tone nowhere near as steady as he'd used a moment ago.

Leo nods. "Yeah," he agrees warily, "like the comet."

"Right. Right. Okay. Yeah." Peters chews his lip for a moment, staring at him, and Leo forces himself to stand up a little straighter. Peters sighs. "Okay, look -- you got three choices, okay? You either stay here, or you leave and we drop you off in one of the refugee centres in Illinois or West Tennessee. You could get yourselves all dry and clean and safe past the water lines -- maybe even settle yourselves down some place west of the Mississippi."

That's two, and they're both out of the question. He won't stay, and Sarah won't leave. He looks at Peters curiously. "What's number three?"

The Army relocates him and Sarah and Josh that afternoon to what's left of Charlottesville, Virginia.

The city has been pretty much wiped clean by the ocean, but it's not a basin like the valleys and hills behind them had formed so, while the ground is muddy and soft, the water's already drained away. As they truck in, he can see people and tents in every direction, and he doesn't know how many people used to live here, pre-Biederman, but there must be at least a couple hundred men and women and children in every direction now.

The Army takes them to a huge tent and leaves them there. Inside, there's a row of tables with people taking names and filling out forms, and he lines up with Sarah and Josh under a sign that says, Registration.

Josh is fussing in his snugli, but Sarah looks happy enough with their compromise -- they've stayed on the highway route they left her parents on, and are technically even closer to where they left them, even if they're not on that damned hill anymore -- as they shuffle forwards in the queue.

When they get to the head of the line, a woman in Army fatigues grabs a blank form and says, "name?"

"Leo," he answers. "And Sarah and Josh. Joshua."

"Family name?"

"Bie--" He snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head. "Hotchner," he corrects, remembering Peters reaction to his name. "We're married -- I have a marriage certificate if --" He fumbles with the baby bag for it.

The woman waves absently. "Previous residence?"

"Virginia Beach," says Sarah, cutting in. "My parents -- Chuck and Vicky. Have they --"

The woman tears off the bottom of the form she'd been filling in, and hands it to him. "Requisitions are the next tent over. Don't lose your registration number. Missing persons who can be logged with the Salvation Army." She looks around them. "Next!"

Taking Sarah's arm, he leads her and Josh out of the queue. Their registration number is V3751-3, and he tells himself to memorise it. V3751-3, V3751-3, V3751-3.

In the next tent another Army woman gives them a large duffel bag. In quick succession, she fills it with a four-man tent, a set of clothes each for him and Sarah and Josh, three towels, a tube of toothpaste and two toothbrushes, a bag of diapers, four blankets and two pillows. She stamps their registration ticket and makes a note of their number, and then spreads a small map out.

"We're here," she says, crossing a point on the map. "Showers are here, the first aid station is here, kitchens are here -- meals are three times a day, oh-eight-hundred, thirteen-hundred and eighteen-hundred. You can camp in any of these four locations -- here, here, here and here. Don't lose your registration number."

Sarah looks at the map. "The Salvation Army --"

The woman circles a spot on the map and hands it to Sarah. "Here." She looks around them. "Next!"

He juggles the full duffel bag and heads outside. Beside him, Sarah scans the map intently, turning in small circles. "Leo," she says. "Where --"

Staring at the mess of tents and people surrounding them, he shakes his head. Too much, he thinks. Too many. For the last four weeks, he's counted the number of people he's seen and spoken with on one hand. Here it's like there's people everywhere. In the distance, behind some of the tents, he can even see the wooden frames of a new building going up. Closer, across the way, a group of children Janie's age are playing with a football. He gapes soundlessly.

Sliding the baby bag off his shoulder, Sarah slings it around her neck and grabs his hand. "C'mon," she says, smiling. "This way."

It's his turn to follow her.

IV.

Living in New Charlottesville is like nothing he could have ever imagined.

He gets a job on their third day in. The Army runs the town, pretty much, but there's still plenty of work for everyone else. For a small amount of cash, and a nice amount of food and clothing and services vouchers, he spends his day trekking through the mud, searching for scrap metal. It's one of the more horrible jobs available and he got it partly because he had a tetanus booster shot last year, and mainly because he doesn't freak out as much as some of the others. Scrap metal isn't the only thing he finds buried in the mud some days.

Sarah spends every day at the Salvation Army tent, scouring the lists of lost and found for her parents, and eventually they give her a job to do. She sits at one of the tables up front and takes down the names and last known positions of the missing while Josh plays with a couple of other kids in a playpen behind her. He doesn't know how she can handle it, hearing everyone else's disaster story's day after day after day, but she seems happy enough there, surrounded by people who are as determined as her to believe in miracles, so he doesn't say too much.

He tries sending a message to his parents through the Army, telling them that he and Sarah and Josh are alive and safe, but he never receives a response. Sarah tries as well through her work and likewise hears nothing. The lines of communication aren't always reliable out here, though, so their silence probably doesn't mean anything. He hopes.

The city grows a little more every day, with survivors who don't want to leave Virginia being relocated here by the Army, and with the previous inhabitants who made it out in time gradually making the journey back, but it's a slow build and the total population hovers around the five thousand mark for several weeks before finally inching towards five-one. Sarah meets a fair amount of people through her work with the Salvation Army, while his circle consists mostly of those he scraps with and those he neighbours near. He's not sure either of them have made any good friends yet, but they're not lonely, here, nor alone, and they have each other.

It's enough, for now.

He's walking home from work one Friday evening when Henrique -- who lives in the tent next to him and Sarah, and nearly always is happy for a quick chat -- flags him down. Detouring, he pulls up a seat next to him on the back of his truck, and takes the fresh water bottle he's passed with a murmured thanks.

Henrique has a little portable radio and they both listen in silence to the President's weekly update. It's the same old news, for the most part -- body counts and hero shout-outs, rationing and restrictions and calls for charity -- and when it's over, Henrique flicks the radio off, and they sit quietly for a long moment.

"Still working scrap?" Henrique asks.

He nods and tries not to make a face. He hates it, but it's steady work and it pays. There's not a lot else out here for a seventeen year old who never graduated high school, and at least his boss is good about not making him work the old highway. He doesn't think he could handle digging out the cars still full of bodies.

"You know how to hammer a nail?"

Henrique's a carpenter -- he used to have his own business and everything pre-Biederman -- and now he makes his living working on the new buildings that are slowly going up around town. It's good work -- maybe the best there is around here, where every building in the original town was completely washed away -- and it'll be a long time before there's a lack of demand for his services.

"I can learn," he answers slowly, not entirely sure what it is Henrique's asking. "I took shop in tenth grade."

Henrique grins and claps him on the back. "Tomorrow morning then, Hotch. Dawn."

"Dawn," he echoes.

In the morning, his first nail bends nine different ways when he tries to hammer it in.

Henrique gives him a job anyway.

"Sarah! Josh! I'm home!"

Opening the closet door, he unfastens his tool-belt and hangs it on the hook Sarah made him place on the back of the door. It's a little cool inside, so he leaves his jacket on.

"Sarah!"

From the other room, a voice calls back, "in here, Mr H!" and he follows it down the hall and into the kitchen.

Josh is in his highchair, playing with the remains of his lunch, and when he sees Leo walk through the kitchen door, he shouts, "Dad-dad!" and throws a handful of carrot mush towards him.

Smiling, he steps around the mush and ruffles Josh's hair. "Hey, kiddo," he says. Kelly Vin, from down the road, is at the kitchen sink, and he nods to her too. "Hey, Kelly -- Sarah gone out?"

Kelly nods, and tosses him the dishrag. "Mrs H said she needed to check on something at her work before the broadcast."

Of course she did. Bending down, he wipes up the dropped mush. "She say what time she'd be back?"

Kelly glances at her watch. "Should be any time now -- she left about an hour ago."

"Josh been okay for you?"

"Sure." Kelly smiles as she walks around to the dining table and picks up her backpack. "Are you okay if I head out, Mr H? I'm meeting my boyfriend at the rec tent for the broadcast."

He nods, and fumbles for his wallet. "Go," he says, handing her a ten, "have fun."

Stuffing the money into her pocket, Kelly nods, and smiles, and waves to Josh. "Will do; bye!" She takes off down the hall.

"Bye," he calls after her.

From his highchair, Josh shouts, "bye-bye!" and throws another handful of carrot mush onto the floor.

He cleans up Josh, and the meter radius surrounding Josh, and then bundles him into his jacket and shoes. Sarah's not back yet, but he knows which way she'll walk home and it's time to start making their way over to the rec tent anyway. They'll meet up on the way, he thinks.

Josh walks the first block on his own, his stubby little two-year-old legs working hard to cover the distance, but after that it's, "up-up! Dad-dad, up-up!" and Leo swings him up onto his shoulders. Josh fists his fingers into Leo's hair and laughs, high and loud.

They don't meet Sarah on the road, so he detours by the Salvation Army office when he gets into the town proper and finds her sitting at her desk, sorting through faxes.

"Mam-mam!" squeals Josh, and it takes all Leo's reflexes to grab the kid before he launches himself off his shoulders.

Looking up, Sarah smiles at them both. "Hey, baby," she says, as Josh toddles over to her. She leans down and kisses the top of his head and ruffles his hair, before looking up at Leo. "Hey."

Nice try, he thinks, hiding a smile. He looks pointedly at her and her desk, until she has the good sense to at least look guilty.

"I know, I know!" she says, shuffling the papers into a pile. "But I totally had a good reason."

He raises an eyebrow. "Totally good like yesterday's excuse? Or the day before that's? Or the day --"

She sticks her tongue out at him, and at that he does grin.

"Nice," he says. To Josh, he stage-whispers, "I think we need to have that maternity leave conversation with Mommy again," and Sarah laughs.

"Two against one -- no fair!"

"Three against one," he corrects, smiling. He nods at her papers. "You good to go?"

"Almost," she says. "Why don't you take this --" she hands him one of the faxes, "-- and this --" she rests her hand on Josh's head, "-- while I go to the bathroom, and I'll meet you out front."

"Deal." Bending down, he scoops up Josh and flips him over one shoulder, fireman-style. "C'mon, kiddo."

Laughing, Josh kicks the back of his head.

Josh sings a song of his own creation to himself while they wait for Sarah outside, and Leo takes a moment to scan the fax Sarah gave him. It's from his parents, and he skims through the content quickly to get to the good part.

"Hey," says Sarah, walking over. She leans up and kisses him. "You see their news?"

He nods, and picks up Josh again, putting him on his shoulders. "Guess I really will need to finish that third bedroom now," he says, smiling.

She nods. "Unless you want to give them our room, that'd probably be for the best. Somehow I don't think they'd enjoy sleeping in the tent in the backyard. Janie, maybe, but not your parents."

He smirks. "We did."

For a year, almost, until Henrique had managed to teach him enough to build the beginnings of their own house. Sarah had been two months pregnant by the time it was ready for them to move in, and they'd christened their first night there with her throwing up on their bedroom floor. He's added a family room and a bedroom for Josh and the new baby since then, to the original kitchen, bathroom and master bedroom, and the third bedroom and an internal laundry is about all he has left to do.

"I don't think 'enjoy' is the first word that comes to mind when I remember our tent," she says wryly. "Cramped, muddy, cold..."

"Picky, hard to please, annoying," he lists teasingly, elbowing her, and she sticks out her tongue again, elbowing him back.

Across the street, the Li's call out a hello, and Sarah waves back. A few steps later, it's the same thing with the Khan's and Chesterfield's and Johnson's.

They can hear the rec tent before they see it, an easy thousand or so people milling around the park and chatting happily. They find Henrique and Lissa sitting on the back of Henrique's truck towards the outer limits of the park, and Leo helps Sarah up so that she can sit down and rest her feet.

"God, you weigh a lot," he grunts under his breath, and Sarah swats him on the arm.

"Bite me."

Leaving her with Lissa, he walks over to where Henrique's leaning against the other side of the truck. Josh is still on his shoulders, happily drumming his heels on his chest.

"You get that frame up this morning, okay?" Henrique asks, handing him a water.

Leo nods, and holds up the bottle so Josh can sip at it first. His hair gets drenched pretty quickly, and he wipes water off his forehead absently. "Yeah. Should be able to finish the sidings tomorrow, no problem."

"Good, good."

They discuss work briefly, comparing notes on the half a dozen houses they're building concurrently, and how Henrique's new apprentice is working out, and when Leo mentions his parent's upcoming visit, Henrique offers to give him a hand on the weekend to finish up the last rooms. Leo accepts gratefully, and promises in return to help with Henrique's garage construction the weekend after that, assuming Sarah hasn't gone into labour by then.

From across the park, a loud feedback whine suddenly arcs across the speakers, and most everyone exclaims a little. When the echo has faded, a voice booms out, "one, two -- testing -- okay, folks, it looks like we're getting some picture down here. We should be starting shortly."

Some people go back to chatting but it's a quieter hum now, and a lot of people start inching closer and closer to the projection screen strung up above the rec tent. Walking back around to the tail of the truck, Leo hops up next to Sarah and lets Josh clamber down from his shoulders. The kid wriggles his way in between them and leans against Sarah's belly, cuddling up.

Smiling, Leo wraps his arm around Sarah's shoulder and watches as the President's image gradually flickers to life on the projection screen, the beginnings of a new Washington DC slowly forming behind him.

"My fellow Americans," the President says. "Hope -- remains."

The End