Page 1 of Chaos

PROLOGUE|Our boogeyman

LAVINIA HOPE

(AKA, “the White House Woman”)

Acting President of the United States of America

Just after Carl

bled out in Yorke’s arms

on the highway bound for it

Thornewood

ICLIMB OUTof a black sedan and face the line of people waiting for me. “What happened here?”

A couple of them shift sullenly on their feet, avoiding my gaze, but no one answers.

Ottilie Spicer, aid to the previous Vice President and my newly appointed aid, climbs out behind me. She’s the kind of woman who looks stupid until she opens her mouth. Big doe-like eyes and a snub nose, but I’m learning that she misses nothing.

She walks with me toward the waiting line of people. The car door closes behind us with a thump that echoes off all eight lanes of the American Legion Bridge, the Potomac River below, and the steep tree-lined banks of Virginia on the other side.

Nothing says end-of-the-world like standing in the middle of what was once one of the busiest stretches of highways in our nation’s capital. Traffickless, this bridge stretches like a runway in either direction. The trees on either side have fully leafed, blocking out the expensive houses of Great Falls and the Palisades.

Quiet.

But for the sound of the river rushing over stones below us.

Almost tranquil.

Only the odd radio tower mars the swash of cold blue sky—except for the column of black smoke rising from the exploded truck in the center of the bridge and the crumbled glass that crackles beneath my flats as we approach the tangled vehicle, evidence of how a convoy of people escaped the city.

Strength lies in being able to draw a boundary and hold it, but my boundary broke today.

And worse, we lost the leader of our troops.

They’re going to wonder if we’re strong enough to hold this city, if I’m strong enough to hold the White House.

A few members of my army trade constipated looks as they walk with me, their sooty, ashy, bloody faces contorting. They’re not real soldiers, hardened by the war, nothing like the brave men and women I served in the nation’s air force beside. They’re a motley crew of random humans who happened to survive.

An ex social media personality twitches visibly when I look directly at him. A woman slinks away, her head turtling into her shoulders. She was a career coach, I think.

Ottilie presses her palm against her tablet in a silent entreaty for me to be gentle, her head tilted at an appropriately somber angle as she takes in the wreckage before us, reminding me that if these sad, confused people can’t believe in me, they’ll find someone else to believe in.

“Please fill me in,” I say softly. They require a gentle touch. I step around a crumpled wheel rim. The smoldering truck on its side blocks three full lanes like a beetle, and this close, the black smoke plume blocks out the sun.

“It was that new man—Carl,” says the skulking woman with her head turtled down.

Emboldened, another soldier clears her throat. “He knew ’em.”

“Carl?” I glance at Ottilie.

“He was a drug addict,” she says, “who came in with a gunshot wound a couple weeks back.”

Means nothing to me.

“You remember,” Ottilie says.

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