by Ryan Schow
Voices down the hall were loud and sounded scared as the gunfire persisted.
The two women slipped out a side door and ran down a short hallway leading to the president’s dining room. Beyond that was the Oval Office dining room. Kennicot ducked into the freshly designed powder room across the hall from the president’s dining room. Marley followed her in, but the woman pushed past Marley, heading right back out.
“No lights,” she said. Kennicot burst into the dining room where light from outside flooded the room. “Shut the door.”
Marley shut the door and turned the manual lock, hoping they could forestall whatever forces might try to get inside. Across the room, the president hesitated before undressing.
“Maybe we can get out through the Rose Garden,” Kennicot said. She was holding the clothes like she didn’t want to be in them.
“You can’t be seen, Madam President,” Marley warned. “The safest way to escape is for you to not be you.”
“I know, I just…I can’t be seen, the way…I’m the President of the—”
Marley rushed across the room and slapped her face. “Change, dammit. NOW!”
Gunfire now rattled through the nearby halls, filling her with a nearly paralyzing fear. Kennicot stood there, holding her face where Marley had slapped her. Marley looked at her in utter disbelief. She had just struck the POTUS! Was there a law behind that? Would the woman want her charged with battery when all this was over?
Not if you save her, Marley told herself.
“You change, or I change you,” Marley said. Kennicot still stood there. “Or I leave you here alone with no answers, no security detail, totally vulnerable.”
Kennicot frowned, then she started pulling out her hair extensions. She dropped the pieces of hair on the floor all around her. With each small clip, the woman’s gorgeous mane thinned out until it looked nothing like the healthy head of hair everyone knew so well. Kennicot then peeled off her fake eyelashes and removed the contacts from her eyes.
“You can’t afford not to see,” Marley said.
“I can see just fine,” she muttered. “These are color contacts.”
“Your eyes aren’t really blue?”
The president frowned. Marley held up her hands in surrender, then returned to the door where she made sure it was still locked. The deafening crash of gunfire endured, albeit farther away from them than before.
“Hurry up,” Marley said. The POTUS had picked up a linen napkin from one of the tables and was looking at it. “It’s only your life, ma’am.”
If she didn’t take off her makeup, Kennicot would be recognized, which would put them both in a tremendous amount of danger.
“The only person who has ever seen me without makeup was my husband, rest his soul. Other than my makeup staff, you will be the second person in nearly four decades to see the real me.”
“Spare me the pageantry, ma’am.” The woman looked at Marley with slight panic in her expression. This might have been the first true emotion Marley had ever seen from her. “Do you want to die looking good or live looking like you do when you wake up?”
Kennicot started wiping off her makeup until it was all clean. She then started to undress. Unzipping herself from the side, she shrugged out of her dress, ripping the fabric in the process. Setting the dress aside, she looked up at Marley, almost like this was the first time the president had actually seen her.
As meek as Althea Kennicot seemed in real life, the woman said, “If you breathe a single word of this, if you tell anyone what you’re about to see, I’ll have you killed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Marley said. “You just need to not look like you.”
Kennicot pulled two jelly inserts from her bra, tossed them aside. She then unfastened a black girdle and dropped it on the floor, letting her gut spill out. The panty hose came off, revealing an altered pair of Robin’s egg blue granny panties and some bone-white legs. From the butt of her special underwear, she pulled out another set of jelly inserts then tossed them aside.
Flabby boobs, flabby butt, floppy gut. This was not what Marley expected from such a put-together woman. She averted her stare, working hard to keep her jaw from dropping. It was all she could do.
“You little twenty-year-olds are so perfect with your fit bodies and your flawless skin. One day you’ll be doing what I’m doing, you just wait.”
Marley looked back at the woman, holding her expression as neutral as she could as this otherwise priggish woman revealed what might be her darkest secrets.
Kennicot stared at her, hating every single minute of this. “I wasn’t always in this bad of shape, but the office…” she said, unable to finish her sentence. She just shook her head, then tried to squeeze into the emergency jeans.
“I have good genes,” Marley said sparing the woman the indignity of further explanation, “so I’m not judging.”
Kennicot barely managed to get her buttons closed, pushing a fish-belly white gut over the edge of the waistband. “It’s because you have good genes that you’re judging,” Kennicot said knowingly.
“No, it’s because the White House is under attack and you’re worried about your looks. Do you know how shallow and unpresidential you sound right now?”
Ignoring her, the president pulled on a larger sweatshirt, hiding some of her midsection bulk. She then took out a hairband and fashioned her hair into a thin ponytail. The face Marley saw looking back at her was less than flawless. There were age spots, a smattering of freckles, and pale skin that was previously hidden by an expensive bronzer and a team of makeup artists.
“Happy now?” Kennicot asked with disdain. “I look like everyone else.”
More explosions rocked the White House. Was D.C. itself being attacked? Were they being bombed?
“Who’s doing this?” Marley asked.
“This feels like an EMP,” Kennicot said. “At least it started with an EMP. Now it sounds like the White House is under siege. Or maybe it’s not an EMP. Maybe they just crippled our tech, or targeted us with something like the CHAMP missile. I don’t know.”
“What’s a CHAMP missile?” Marley asked.
“It stands for Counter-electronics High-power Microwave Advanced Missile Project. Boeing successfully tested an electromagnetic-pulse-driven device mounted within a missile. Instead of setting off a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere, these weapons launch a missile capable of targeting specific sites for an isolated EMP deployment. They can launch these subsonic missiles from hundreds of miles away.”
“If that jumbo jet headed our way falls out of the sky, that’ll turn the CHAMP theory on its head.”
“I know,” Kennicot said. “I’m just hoping it doesn’t. The fallout of an EMP attack would devastate America.”
“If those planes are going down, then people will be dying, Madam President. This is the time to start thinking like a wartime president.”
“Don’t tell me how to think!”
Marley frowned at the woman, her cheeks growing hot. Outside the White House, the ever-threatening sounds of gunfire continued. The ruckus sounded like it was heading their way, putting her heart through its paces. If security wasn’t so tight, if this wasn’t the White House, she would have the knife Walker gave her as a means of self-defense. But security being what it was—unless she wanted to beat someone to death with Kennicot’s bra inserts or her rubber butt cheeks—she was going to have to use her fists.
More gunfire broke out just down the hallway, closer to the press center. Someone started to scream. The woman’s voice was quickly cut off by a three-round burst of gunfire.
Is Isaiah out there? Marley wondered. Is he safe? Are we safe?
Someone tried to open the locked door, but after a frenetic twisting on the knob and a shaking of the door, the would-be intruder ran off. Marley let out a breath.
“Are they gone?” Kennicot asked.
“I think it was someone trying to find a place to hide,” Marley said, her voice drowned out by the sound
s of another explosion.
Marley hurried to the window where she saw another plane in the distance, this one bearing down upon them from a different angle. It looked like it was powerless and drifting in too low.
“This isn’t a targeted EMP attack,” Marley said. “All these planes look…wrong.”
The president joined her at the window. There was no way this was confined to the White House and its surrounding grounds.
Kennicot quickly shed her necklace, her rings, and her earrings, almost like the act of hiding would save her from her fears or from the stark new reality they faced.
“I think I’m ready to go,” Kennicot said, breathless.
Back in the Oval, the steady sounds of chaos were broken up by the clash of agitated male voices.
“She’s not here!” one called out to the other.
“Find her!”
Fear shot through Marley as she turned and looked at Kennicot. Marley didn’t even recognize the woman. But she recognized her fear. Sadly, at that moment, she sat in judgement of the president. Althea Kennicot was not a worthy leader. Marley suspected that Althea was only in office so that a woman could be seated as president. During the elections, the opposing party couldn’t stop speaking about Kennicot’s gender advantage, but Marley tried to separate and insulate herself from partisan politics, especially identity politics. Now, it was right in her face, the fallacies of identity politics never more clear.
Contrary to her beliefs during the last election, for as long as she could remember, Marley wanted a woman in office. To bring the level of gender equality all the way up into the Executive Office was a milestone she’d wanted forever. But there was a difference between having a woman in office and having the right woman in office. Off the top of her head, she thought of two or three Senators—all smart and incredibly talented women—who would not be standing there looking inept or wondering what to do. And they certainly wouldn’t be worrying about their stupid makeup.
Kennicot brushed past Marley, listened to the door, then opened it slowly and peeked out. There was no one there so they snuck into the powder room across the hall. When Marley shut the door, it was to a darkness so complete, she couldn’t even see her own hand in front of her face.
“How are we going to get out?” Kennicot whispered.
Why was Kennicot asking her this? Couldn’t this woman think for herself?
“You’re the damned President of the United States,” Marley growled. “Quit asking me for help and start thinking like a world leader.”
The woman huffed behind her. “I need to see about my detail,” Kennicot said, her voice pinched with anger.
“Your security service detail is dead, Althea,” Marley hissed. “It’s you and me until it’s not.”
“If we can get back to the Oval, we can slip out into the Rose Garden, maybe see what’s going on,” Kennicot said, almost like she was grasping at straws.
“If not, we’ll have to go through the press center—”
“I don’t want to see those cockroaches,” Kennicot interrupted. “Maybe a few of them are dead, or blown up, which would be fine, but what if they aren’t?”
“One can hope they are, Madam President,” Marley said under her breath. It was a rare moment of spoken truth for her. She worked so hard to keep her political opinions to herself, but the hatred she felt for the partisan press began to feel like a festering sore that hadn’t closed for years.
The echoing sounds of gunfire started to die down, and it had been a few minutes since the last explosion. Marley took the moment of silence to speak. “Who is attacking us, Madam President?” She thought she heard the woman quietly crying. “Althea.”
The woman gave a quick sniff, then cleared her throat. “I…I don’t know. I mean, we have enemies, but…how are they even in the White House? What happened to my many layers of protection?”
The gunfire started back up, the sounds of bullets eating up ornate wood in the Oval Office next door. A moment later, one of the shooters stitched a line across the locked powder-room door, the bullets blasting holes in the wood just above their heads.
Both women scrambled back as a man kicked in the door. The first kick rattled the wall around them; the second one cracked the door frame, allowing the door itself to fly open.
A haze of daylight from across the hall silhouetted the gunman. Marley and Kennicot cowered in the shadows, not sure what to do, where to go, or how to respond.
“Where is she?” the man screamed at Marley.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Marley said with sheer terror in her voice. She was about to die.
He aimed the gun at her. “You know exactly who I’m talking about!”
“I…I’m not sure,” Marley replied, her fear getting the best of her. “She ran, just like the rest of us.”
“What about you?” the man asked Kennicot. He didn’t seem to recognize her, even though, ironically, he seemed to be asking about her specifically.
“Who are you looking for?” Kennicot asked, scared.
“President Kennicot,” the man roared. He turned the gun on the president and said, “Speak, woman!”
“I…I just came to…I just came to tour the White House,” Kennicot lied. “Then people started shooting. I didn’t see the president.”
She was shaking, crying, so scared. Was this an act? Was her fear real? Marley wasn’t sure, but she decided to take a note out of the woman’s book.
The man stepped in and grabbed Marley by the hair, dragging her out of the powder room. She screamed and fought the man, but he swung her body into the wall then kicked her in the gut a couple of times after she fell. Marley had been in a fight or two in her life, but never with a man, and never at gunpoint.
“I know you know where she is!” he roared.
Laying sideways on the floor, she curled inside herself, unable to breathe, so scared she was shaking. Tears leaked from her eyes, and a little snot boiled in her nostrils. She heard the shooter pull the slide on his gun.
“Please,” she cried. “I don’t know anything.”
She saw the man’s knees as he knelt down before her. He pulled her head back, pressed the barrel of his gun to her temple. Up the hall, she saw someone beating the crap out of Isaiah. Were these her last minutes on earth?
“I don’t know where she is,” Marley said, trying not to sob even though she’d never been so scared in her life.
The man grabbed her face and gave her a shake. She was no longer able to suppress the fear lying naked in her expression. She might have even peed herself a little. The man seemed oblivious to her plight, for he was clearly on a mission.
Lowering his ugly white face to hers, he said, “If only I had fifteen minutes to spare, you’d be run through and satiated.”
He then leaned in and kissed her face hard.
“Knock it off!” a familiar voice yelled.
The man roughly shoved her face away, then stood and said, “She knows where Kennicot is.”
Blinking back tears, Marley turned and found herself looking up at Killian. He was carrying a tactical weapon, an automatic rifle of some sort.
Her worst fears were suddenly confirmed. He was one of them. Then again, hadn’t that been confirmed when Savannah gave her the Irishman’s name?
He licked his lower lip and grinned. He saw it. It was right there in her eyes—the awareness, the hatred. He now knew that she’d heard his conversation that morning.
Shrugging, he said, “It was fun while it lasted, right babe?”
Her fear became outrage, but she knew her life hung in the balance. She truly believed that what she did or said next would determine if she lived or died. Be smart, Marley. In that moment, she was so pissed off at having fallen for this jerk, her mouth got the best of her.
“Have fun in Wardensville, you cocksucker,” she hissed. It all sounded good in theory, but she new she was a mess, just lying there bawling, beat up, defeated.
He laughed and s
aid, “You sneaky little twat.” Then, to the other man—the one who had all but promised to violate her if he had the time—Killian said, “Drag her ass out of here and stuff it in a bus with the others.”
“She’s with an older woman,” the man said.
“How old?” Killian asked.
Instead of giving the Irishman an answer, the gunman went and dragged Kennicot out into the hallway by the wrist. The woman started screaming when she saw Killian standing there with a gun. The shrieking was murder on Marley’s overly-sensitive ears.
“Who are you?” Killian asked the woman.
Kennicot just sat there crying, unable to speak. That’s when Marley realized she wasn’t pretending. She was really that scared.
Pathetic.
“Oh, for the love of Jesus,” Killian said. “Get them both on the bus. And shut that one up, even if you have to silence her with a bullet!”
The man said, “Get up,” just as Killian headed back to where he’d come from.
Marley got to her feet, her eyes on the hallway Killian had gone down. “You prick!” Marley screamed.
“Save your energy for later,” her armed captor said. To prove his point, he slapped the back of her head so hard she felt herself wobble for a few steps. He then gave her a hearty laugh and said, “You’re going to need all the strength you can summon where you’re headed.”
Chapter Three
Marley McDaniel
The brute with the gun walked Marley and Kennicot through the White House. They stepped over dead bodies and broken décor, and when it was warranted, the two women opened their palms to show the treasonous militia they were not armed. These militia were not patriots, though. Rather they were traitors in black clothes, balaclavas, and tactical gear, half of them barking orders to the captured like it was Nazi freaking Germany, circa 1942. One staffer tried to run, but one of the armed fiends opened fire, putting three rounds into the man’s back.
In front of Marley and Kennicot, a handful of these mutants were dragging staffers, members of Congress and the Senate, and Kennicot’s own cabinet members outside where they were pitched onto the manicured White House lawn facing Pennsylvania Avenue and Lexington Park beyond that.
