“Are you speaking hypothetically for the sake of conversation,” she asked, “or do you actually want to know?”
“I actually want to know,” Nick nodded.
“Then make a right turn up here.”
Nick squinted.
“Um … do you mean left? There’s no road to the right.”
“Yes there is,” Vivian said. “It’s not paved, but if my little Rabbit can handle it, your big Hummer certainly can.”
Nick slowed down and peered into the periphery of his headlights.
“It’s a HumVee,” he corrected distractedly. “The civilian models are called Hummers.”
“I hate to break it to you, Nick,” Vivian muttered, “but you are a civilian model.” She pointed into the darkness off the side of the road.
“Here. Pull off at the break in the guard rail.”
Nick reluctantly turned the wheel and coaxed the behemoth off the shoulder of the paved road. Its broad wheelbase was wider than the two narrow strips of packed dirt that ran down the hillside, and its studded tires flattened the tall grass that bordered the path all the way to the white sand below. He parked on the beach and silenced the brutish engine.
“You’d rather be here than the Banyan Terrace?” he asked skeptically. “What is this place?”
Nick leaned toward the windshield and looked at the colossal hulks of industrial steel and concrete that loomed out of the darkness. The Hummer was now parked just below the mainland end of the Skyshine Causeway Bridge, the titanic elevated thoroughfare that linked Stillwater to its island neighbor. A broad black swatch of humming asphalt soared above them in a graceful arc that traversed the bay and touched down on the end of Songbird Key. From this vantage point, the lights of the distant luxury condominiums and premium hotels of the key were putting on a better show than the architecturally blotted heavens above.
“This used to be a construction access road years ago when they were building the bridge,” Vivian said quietly. “Sometimes I come down here to be alone. The tourists never come this far down the beach.”
“I can see why,” Nick said disgustedly. “Is there some kinda sewage plant nearby or something?”
Vivian looked through the intense white beams of the Hummer’s headlights and into the gently rolling surf of the bay. The salty water was as lumpy and pink as her Banyan Terrace daiquiri, but instead of strawberries it was garnished with clusters of dead, rotting fish. Nick looked at Vivian and spoke soulfully.
“How can you possibly be happy in a place like this, Vivian?”
“It’s not usually like this,” Vivian defended. “This freak red tide just rolled in a few days ago.”
Nick shook his head.
“No, I mean here in Stillwater. How can you actually be happy living in this bogus little corner of Heaven’s waiting room?”
Vivian frowned and stared into the filthy surf.
“Oh, I’m far from happy here,” she said mournfully. “Some days I can barely get out of bed knowing that it’s just going to mean facing another identical, humiliating day in this dead-end town.”
“Well then why won’t you team up with me, Vivian?” Nick asked. “If you just accept my offer to become a promo model you could get out of this place and never look back.”
Vivian sighed gloomily.
“Thanks for the offer, really, but … I can’t be a model.”
“Don’t kick your own ass like that! You can be a model, Vivian!” Nick said forcefully. “You just need to start believing in yourself and put your assets to work for you. I’ve known it since the moment I saw you.”
“Oh, get real, Nick,” Vivian snapped, tugging on her copper bangs. “You wouldn’t have even given me a second look if it wasn’t for a potentially lucrative genetic quirk in my sixteenth chromosome. Believe it or not, my head holds more valuable assets than red hair.”
“I never said that it didn’t,” Nick said smoothly. “But you’re so intent on getting everyone to bow down before your big brain that you totally shut out every other good thing that you’ve got going for you. And there’s a lot of them. I mean, look at these beautiful assets right here.”
Nick leaned over and gestured to Vivian’s bosom like a spokesmodel on The Price is Right romanticizing a blender. Vivian crossed her arms over her chest and started to voice a syllable of indignity, which Nick silenced with a manicured finger over her lips.
“Don’t get all embarrassed; I’m just speaking professionally,” he said pleasantly.
“You’re obviously unhappy with the size of the twins, but let me tell ya, reedy girls like you are the hottest thing right now. The days of the double-D melons are history. Even Pamela Anderson just got her implants taken out a few months ago. Don’t you see? You’re sitting here thinking you’re soooo ugly while one of the most successful models in the world is trying to make herself look more like you. ” Vivian rolled her eyes and took a breath, but Nick interrupted her before she could protest.
“And of course there’s the asset that gets you fired up so easily,” he said, tucking a stray lock of red hair over Vivian’s ear. “You know the redhead Spice Girl? The alleged ‘Ginger Spice’? You know that hot chick from Will & Grace? Both out of a bottle. How can you not believe that you’re beautiful when top-shelf hotties are doing dye jobs just to look more like you do straight from the factory? You can cry about your looks all day and night, but your physical assets aren’t what’s holding you back, Vivian.”
“So, in your expert opinion,” Vivian glowered, “what, pray tell, is holding me back?”
Nick leaned over the drivetrain wall and tapped his fingertip on her forehead.
“You think your big brain is so great, but it’s the one and only thing you’ve got working against you,” he said. “Seriously, Vivian, how are you supposed to convince anybody else that you’re beautiful if you can’t even convince yourself? For some reason you think that something terrible is going to happen if you let down your hair just one time. If you would just believe in yourself long enough to take a chance, this could be the last night that you ever spend in Stillwater. You and me and this HumVee could be heading out across the country in search of extreme fun and adventure tomorrow morning. Don’t let your big brain talk you out of it.” Nick stretched his arm over the wall and gently took Vivian’s hand.
“Nobody in this town can see that you’re platinum level, Vivian,” he said softly.
“Not even you.”
Vivian felt the warmth of Nick’s hand running through her slender fingers as she gazed into his hazy face, letting his words absorb slowly into her tipsy brain. Her immediate instinct was to dismiss everything that he had said as nonsense-but what if he was right? Promotional modeling wasn’t exactly her dream career, but neither was Boltzmann’s Market. At least modeling would be a fresh start. She was being offered a real opportunity to change her life, and the only apparent thing keeping her from taking it was her own self-doubt. After all, she reasoned, she had been failing to get out of Stillwater by using her brain for her entire life. Maybe it was time to use, as Nick said, all of the assets at her disposal.
“Okay,” she said nervously. “I’ll try it. I’ll join your agency and tour the country with you. I’ll be your partner.”
A smile passed over Nick’s face that was so glitteringly perfect it could have easily stood twenty stories high on a Times Square toothpaste ad. His enthusiasm pounded off of his body in glowing waves, evaporating Vivian’s skepticism and pushing the corners of her mouth into a reluctant grin.
“You see? Nothing but good things happen when you just believe in yourself!” Nick cheered. “We’re gonna be the new platinum team, baby! Platinum! You’ve made the right choice teaming up with me, Vivian Gray! C’mere and sign the papers!”
He twisted in his seat and leaned toward Vivian, closing his dazzling green eyes and putting his lips into a pucker so beautiful that it seemed sinful to describe it with a word as ridiculous as “pucker.” Before he could reach Viv
ian’s smudged pink lips, however, his ribcage bumped up against the impervious barrier of the drivetrain. The leather-covered steel pressed numbly into his side as he craned his neck and continued to lean over, thrusting his inviting, pouty lips toward Vivian. Vivian looked at the uncompleted kiss hanging in the air in front of her and rolled her eyes.
“Ah, what the heck,” she smiled.
She twisted in her seat and leaned over the barrier, stretching her long neck to plant her lips upon Nick’s in a small, clumsy little kiss. A tingling warmth began to spread across her cheeks, and almost before the kiss had started, it was over. Vivian dropped back into her seat and bit her lip shyly. A feeling of guilty apprehension trickled through her brain. Her body, for once, told her brain where to stick it.
“See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Nick smiled.
“No, the kiss was okay,” Vivian admitted reluctantly. “I’m not keen on the hump though.”
“Oh, come on, I wasn’t even going to try to go there on the first date,” Nick said defensively.
Vivian shook her head and tapped her fingers on the hump of the drivetrain.
“The hump,” she clarified.
“Oh, right, right, the hump,” Nick said, running his fingers through his hair. “Well, there’s not a lot I can do about that.”
“No, I guess not,” Vivian agreed.
The words seemed to tremble out of her mouth as something of a relief.
“Luckily there’s plenty of room for both of us on your side!” Nick grinned.
“Don’t move a muscle, partner. I’ll be right over!”
Before Vivian could argue, Nick threw open the driver’s-side door and practically leapt into the powdery sand. As soon as the seal of the door was broken, a fetid, overpowering stench of rotting cabbage and decaying fish rolled off the churning bay and into the car. Nick took a reeling step backward and covered his nose before slamming the door and prancing around the back of the vehicle.
Vivian’s heart pounded anxiously in her chest; her mind was racing a mile a minute. What just happened? Yes, she was excited for the opportunity to get out of Stillwater, but this was very unlike her-she didn’t kiss boys in cars-she could barely remember the last time she kissed boys at all, yet she couldn’t say that she didn’t enjoy the kiss, and she certainly couldn’t say that she wouldn’t like another. What was she going to do?
She caught a glimpse of Nick in the rearview mirror and turned to face it, seeing her own reflection. She angled the glass toward her nervous face and gave herself a long, hard look. The two ugly chopsticks stuck out of her messy librarian’s bun perpendicular to each other, like two street signs bolted together at a crossroads. Vivian recognized that she was at a sort of crossroads herself. One road led an intellectual introvert back to a wasted life in Stillwater, the other led a physical extrovert on to a life of adventure.
In one decisive movement, she grasped the chopsticks with both hands and unsheathed them like a pair of swords, dropping a wrinkled cascade of fiery red hair around her head. She shook it out, took a deep breath, and spoke to herself reassuringly in the mirror.
“Nothing terrible is going to happen if you let down your hair just one time.” She bent over to stuff the chopsticks into her purse, but before she could reach it the Hummer was blasted with a flash of hot white light. Two seconds later Vivian was knocked unconscious by seven tons of steel rising to meet her forehead.
“Menopause pills?” Sherri raged. “Shit! If you tell anyone about this, I swear to God you’ll be dead in a-”
“Hot flash?”
Before Sherri could wallop Bobby in his smart mouth, the bouncer swung open the door of the sub, flooding the cabin with a blast of barroom noise and fresh air. Sherri had been leaning against the door, and when it suddenly went missing, she tumbled out of the sub backward, landing on her head on the hard wooden boardwalk outside. She drunkenly rolled over and scrambled to her feet, but the tail of her leather trench coat had flipped over her head in the commotion, forming a thick, black veil.
At the sight of a girl coming out of the sub with her clothing in disarray, the gathering of frat boys began their ceremonial round of catcalls and dog barking. Sherri wrestled herself out of her narrow coat and threw it on the ground in a crumpled heap. Freed of her leather hood, she shot a chillingly empty glare at the room that silenced every last brother.
Bobby started to exit the sub in a more traditional fashion, only to be stopped short by a wall of teeth. Trent briskly shoved him back into the sub and slid into Sherri’s vacated spot on the bench.
“Oh no you don’t,” Bobby said. “I don’t care how much you want to bet, I’m not letting you go down on me.”
“No no, the T don’t swing that way,” Trent chattered, glancing back over his shoulder. “Hey, no shit now, did that pretty little kitty with the itty bitty titties just make a withdrawal from your sperm bank?” His eyes flitted around the cabin as if looking for some evidence of the dirty deed.
“A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell,” Bobby smirked. “You draw your own conclusions.”
He made another move for the door. Trent pushed him back down, took another glance outside, and whispered.
“Do you think she’d do me next?”
Before Bobby could bring himself to answer, the bar was bathed in a fiery blast of light. The Bikini Martini was well distanced from ground zero, but the flash was still hot enough to make the fraternity brothers release their bellowing screams one last time.
Blinded by the flash, Sherri staggered backward toward the sub, flailing her bare, sizzling arms. Her wrist connected hard with the open steel door, catching its interior handle on her bracelets and sending a shot of scraping agony rocketing through every pain receptor left between her forearm and her alcohol-soaked brain. The chunky heel of her boot caught the edge of the hatchway and she tumbled inside with Trent and Bobby, the meager weight of her body slamming the watertight door behind her.
“Hey! Toy freak!” Richard Stokes bellowed. “Quit dickin’ around down there!
Hiding out in the sewer ain’t gonna save you now!”
At that moment, a shaft of sparking blue light blasted through the manhole. A few brief, chaotic seconds later, a thunderous shockwave rolled through the street above, buckling the tunnel with its force and knocking the terrified and unprepared Erik unconscious on his back in the shallow, dirty water.
CHAPTER FOUR
Consciousness trickled into Vivian’s body, giving her a dull physical awareness of being crushed. She slowly peeled open her dry eyelids and found herself crumpled in an upside-down heap on the floor of the Fusion Fuel Hummer. She righted herself with a groan, pushing her narrow rear end back into the passenger seat. The strain on her compressed lungs immediately lifted, and her groggy head began to clear. Her glasses had fallen off, but even without them Vivian could tell that something was very wrong with the Hummer’s interior. It wasn’t demolished, or even crushed, yet its angles had somehow turned disquietingly obtuse. Every surface seemed to be unified in a shallow twist, as if a massive pair of hands had grabbed the vehicle by its bumpers and cranked them in opposite directions. The thick windows were white and opaque with spidery fracture lines, and tiny shafts of sparkling pink light sliced through the interior at wild angles like swords stabbed through a magician’s basket. Vivian snatched her glasses off the floor and placed them on her nose, splitting the interior of the vehicle into disorienting slices. She blinked twice and realized that her left lens was cracked from top to bottom.
“Oh my God,” she thought. “What happened?” Her head throbbed as she tried to recall. She could remember that she was on a date with Nick, and that they had come to her secret hiding place, but after that it went fuzzy. She remembered an empty daiquiri glass the size of a small birdbath.
“Nick?” she croaked. “Nick, are you there?”
She pulled on the door handle, but the door didn’t open. She tried shoving and pounding it with her narrow shoulder. F
inally she leaned back against the drivetrain hump and kicked both heels squarely into the orange leather trim. A seal of fused automotive paint gave way, throwing open the door and filling the cabin with a cloud of reeking pink fog.
Vivian gagged and squinted against the vapor’s sting as she staggered to her feet in the sand. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in the middle of a surreal, nightmarish parody of the beach she once knew. The single thought in her head fell involuntarily from her trembling lips-four words, in a barely audible whisper.
“This is not good.”
For as far as she could see, tentacles of black smoke twisted from the ruined city of Stillwater into the churning gray sky, forming a charcoal cloud that touched every point of the horizon. Large, powdery flakes of ash fluttered gracefully from the doomsday cloud, gathering like snow in the battered Hummer’s crevices. Vivian took a few awkward steps in the sand, too overwhelmed to realize that the heel had broken off one of her shoes. She turned and ran her eyes along the first mainland span of the Skyshine Causeway bridge overhead. A hundred feet from shore it terminated against the empty sky in a claw of smashed concrete and twisted steel. She followed its broken trajectory through the fog and into an empty void where Songbird Key should have been.
“What in the …”
Songbird Key was gone, replaced by a bank of dense pink fog that rolled off the sizzling pink water of the bay. The acrid, cabbagey odor of red tide, airborne in millions of gallons of vaporized seawater, burned Vivian’s nasal passages.
“How could this happen?” she mumbled. “How … how can this be?” Her knees started to go weak, and she turned and hobbled back to the Hummer. It had been thrown against the concrete hulk of a bridge abutment and was damaged almost beyond recognition. The tires were nothing more than oozing strips of rubber hanging from four misshapen rims. Its warped frame was marred with streaks of smoldering steel sizzling through peeling orange logos. Vivian didn’t know what was going on, but two things had become abundantly clear.
The Oblivion Society Page 15
