Page 118 of Chaos

We just keep getting sucked back in, like we’re swirling down a drain but don’t have the strength to quit.

We’re in the front of the pack, not point, but third in the convoy.

When the brake lights flash ahead of us, and something settles in my spine like resignation.

The motion ahead tells me, it’s not a threat, it’s not an army with pointed guns, it’s not an ambush.

It’s something else.

I climb out, gun up just in case, and find Kelly.

Beaten, almost broken, blood trickling from her lips, her red hair spilling across cracked and rutted asphalt. She’s wearing her civvies, flannel and jeans.

“Tell me she said no,” she whispers through dry lips.

“Who?” I ask. “Rey?”

Her pale fingers touch my hand. “She said no, didn’t she?”

“About what?”

“She said … no?” she whispers. “It’s the woman.”

“What woman?”

“From the White House.”

And her eyes flutter closed.

29 |Mr. Oink-Oink is on fire

FRANKIE

THE BLURRY FEEL OF THE LIGHTcoming through the windows is worse now, and that acrid smell I thought was mob-sprung fear, is now clearly smoke. Its curling gray blue along the ceiling, swirling like a pack of irritable spirits above us.

There’s no fire department to call, no truck to come with sirens blazing, no bottomless well of water to come from a tap.

If Thornewood is on fire, we need to get everyone out. But out where? There are enemies at the gate.

I want Auden with me now, along with Beast and Shane and Yorke. I hate being apart.

When we get to the lobby, soldiers surge from the halls, their boots and shifting straps and helmets and kevlar sounding like thunder as they run outside to take their places along the walls.

“The timing isn’t right.”

Shasta makes aclearly, Frankiesort of face, but doesn’t speak.

“The fire? The fight about Ephie? Duane looked smug. And now the horn? An enemy at the gates. All while half our army is gone. Any chance the look-out is confused? The one that sounded the alarm?” I ask. “Could it be our army? Coming back?”

“They’d have expected that. They saw something that caused them to sound the alarm. It’s something else.” Shasta’s grip on my arm tightens, and my stomach pitches forward.

That familiar fear comes in, eating at the edges of my vision like black tendrils mixing with the smoke swirling over our heads.

Just like in the cellar. We’re trapped. There’s no escape.

There’s a wash of fear, followed almost immediately by a rush of ice water settling over me.

I tap the gun on my right hip.

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