"Everyone can see that you're setting up that boy of yours to be your successor." Ken said, "Your own son is okay with that?"
"He'll play seat-warmer for a while. He'll officially be the first successor, but he's really just finishing the training I began. When Jeremy is ready, he'll take the throne; this marriage is meant to cement that future."
"You're banking on the rumor about my genetics."
"That your sons, and their sons, turn out to be just like you and your daughters carry that trait to give to the sons they bear? You got it."
Ken chuckled. "Your descendants will not go hungry."
There was not more to say after that. Ken knew the real reason that I had him come to me: to fulfill the other favor I won from him all those years ago, which was to prevent my reanimation after I died.
One thing I knew for certain is that everyone alive at the time of the apocalypse who survived that would, inevitably, become a zed when they died unless they somehow got around being a normal man or woman. (Ken, for example, would not because he's a corpse-eating mutant freak.) What I came to suspect is that those born after that wouldn't automatically turn into zeds, but it was useful to keep up the practice anyway just in case so I did not ever tell anyone this suspicion other than Ken.
"Well, at least you can enjoy one more wedding before the end."
"Yeah." I said to the big snow-white man with no hair and sunken yellow eyes, "Just one more."
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