The Oblivion Society
Page 52
Vivian was flying.
Although her slapdash physiology still lacked the muscle power to become airborne by its own devices, the broad sails of her wings were well-suited for a short, graceful glide across the heavens. With tiny adjustments in the pitch of her bony limbs, Vivian sent herself swooping in a wide, smooth circle around the crumbling buildings of the old farm. She could see Erik and Sherri far below her, staring back at her angelic silhouette from the yard, their faces punctuated with tiny black dots representing their gaping mouths.
The slapping flap of her shredded white clothing was like a drum circle of seraphim heralding her arrival to the skies as she swiftly sailed over the peaked roof of the farmhouse. The air rushing down her long neck and whipping across the sensitive sheaths of her wings sent an unexplainable feeling of sizzling blue euphoria through her body. She had done it. She had put it all together. And for once, she had actually come out on top. For the first time in her life, Vivian Gray had actually, truly succeeded at something. And it felt good.
The white dust trickled from between the strands of her oily red hair as she approached the broad, mossy roof of the slouching red barn. With a grand flap of her wings, she flung herself over its eaves, dropping to her feet in a landing so gracefully light that it barely even disturbed her swollen ankle.
Perhaps it was the sudden rush of oxygen, or victory, or a combination of both, but as Vivian stood on the peak of that crumbling barn, she felt as if she was standing on top of the world. She gave the squeaky iron weathervane a playful spin and took two long, momentum-building steps toward the edge of the tarpapered roof in preparation for launch.
But before she could return to the air, a rotten, wet crackling thundered from beneath her feet. Without warning, she dropped like a stone through a collapsing ring of decayed shingles and into the darkness of the barn.
The tips of her wings hadn’t even cleared the hole when her aching feet hit a tall, sloping haystack leaning up against the sagging wall. Her startled knees crumpled upon impact, sending her rolling head over heels down the heap’s gentle grade until her backside landed with a dusty slap on the dirt floor. Bits of broken straw and hay stuck to her hair and clothes as her head wobbled in a slow, dizzy orbit of her neck. Five seconds later her reeling vision was filled with the beaming, chattering faces of Erik and Sherri.
“Holy shitbombs! You blew the ever-living fuck out of that windmill!” Sherri cheered. “Please, Powderpuff, please tell me that you actually killed Trent.” Vivian nodded distractedly and Sherri stomped her heavy feet in delight.
“Fuckin’ A! You’re officially my best friend,” she gushed. “You’re so fucking bad-ass!”
Erik dropped into the soft hay by Vivian’s side and grasped her hand.
“You flew! Vivian, you actually flew! ” he cheered. “That was incredible! You were amazing!”
He planted a congratulatory kiss on her smiling lips, but she just continued to stare in a goofy, dreamlike trance past his glowing face.
“Vivian?” Erik asked. “Viv, are you okay? What is it?” His puzzled eyes met Sherri’s, then they both turned to see what it was that had Vivian so captivated.
A single beam of bright white sunlight sliced through the fresh hole in the roof, landing on the gleaming yellow fenders of a fully restored 1953 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. An assembly of tall red tool chests and the rusted-out bodies of parts cars looked on from the shadows as if waiting anxiously for their humble gift to be accepted. Vivian smiled knowingly.
“That’s the kind of car you drive to paradise.”
Several euphoric hours later, the pristine, spotless chrome of the classic Cadillac’s grinning front grille was melodically whistling through the brisk Pennsylvania mountain air. The V-8 hummed an elegant, rolling bass note as Vivian used the glossy, two-tone steering wheel to guide it through the curves and past a large, reflective green sign.
Liberty Valley - 1 mile
Vivian’s clean, vivacious red hair danced joyfully in the breeze under the wide brim of a straw cowboy hat. Just as she had suspected, the repaired electric generator had yielded a round of much-deserved long, hot showers to herself and her friends, peeling weeks of apocalyptic filth from their bodies and out of their souls. The farmhouse had been equally hospitable with clothing, offering up rural fashion choices for every sex, style, and freakish mutation.
A long, slender pair of bib overalls seemed designed for the task of covering Vivian’s freshly shaven legs, crossing its denim straps in a comfortable “X” between her wings. Underneath the overalls, a modified sweater hung over her mutated limbs, its accommodating slashes tied off in two sassy knots beneath them.
Erik sat in the passenger seat, his smooth, angular face looking clean and sharp atop a secondhand tweed suit with patches on the elbows. The thick brown waves of his hair caught the wind and the light like a shimmering field of barley, hypnotically rippling in the open air of the convertible.
The back of Vivian’s seat was reclined flat to make room for her wings, but the wide bench of the back seat still left plenty of room for Sherri to sprawl out. Her narrow shoulders had been returned to their natural environment: tucked into the sleeves of a black leather jacket, this one clumsily embroidered with the words
“Classic Caddy Club.” Beneath the jacket, the immodestly buttoned neckline of a red flannel shirt displayed the dark purple orbs of her bruised cleavage like a trophy of heroism. A clinging pair of cut-off “Daisy Dukes” completed the ensemble, spilling her shapely bronze legs into the tops of her battered black combat boots. Sherri leaned on the back of Vivian’s seat and twisted her sizzling platinum-blond hair around her tanned fingers. Seemingly lost in her own world, she pouted her tiny pink lips provocatively into the rearview mirror with a coy flap of her frilly butterfly wings. Vivian glanced into the mirror and Sherri’s pink eyes immediately dropped to the floor as she blushed.
“It feels good to finally be clean and feminine again, eh Sherri?”
“Hey, I’m not that clean,” Sherri smirked guiltily. “I scrubbed myself raw, and I still smell like the ass end of a cabbage.”
“Me too,” Vivian agreed. “We all do, and we should be thankful for it.”
“This is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘thankful’ that I wasn’t previously aware of,” Erik said skeptically.
“That cabbage smell is what separates us from the zombies,” Vivian explained.
“By process of elimination, it has to be. It all makes sense now. That pink fog that we breathed back in Stillwater was vaporized bay water. It must have been infused with red tide bacteria.”
“So what?” Sherri asked.
“The newspaper said the bacteria was resistant to radiation,” Vivian explained.
“What if it made us resistant to radiation once it got into our bodies?”
“But what about the rat and Twiki?” Erik asked. “What about Trent? They all breathed the fog too. How could that possibly be the antidote?”
“It’s the Smilex factor,” Vivian said. “I don’t think the vapor could absorb into human tissue on its own. It needed Fusion Fuel to serve as a catalyst.”
“Fusion Fuel?” Erik said incredulously. “The energy drink? Are you saying that all that ‘Load and lock’ marketing hype was actually true? ”
“Apparently so,” Vivian shrugged. “That would also explain how an overdose of estrogen tablets could turn Sherri from a skinny waif into a voluptuous little powderpuff.”
Sherri’s cotton-candy pink eyes flashed.
“I am not a powderpuff,” she said coldly. “I am an individual.”
“All right, all right,” Vivian smiled. “Save it for the people in Liberty Valley.” Sherri leaned back in her seat and frowned.
“But what if there is no Liberty Valley?” she grumbled. “Or what if all we find there is more saber-dicked zombies?”
The gentle hum of the Cadillac’s whitewall tires changed in pitch as they bumped onto the pavement of an over
pass bridge spanning between two rolling mountain peaks. Tons of smooth, white concrete held aloft a long, straight shelf of slightly rusted green steel and unblemished blacktop. Six seconds later, the wheels returned to their original pitch on the other side of the undamaged bridge.
“I have a feeling that everything is going to be okay from now on,” Vivian promised.
The truth was, Vivian didn’t know what they would find in Liberty Valley. But it didn’t matter. She knew that everything would, indeed, be okay from now on. The purr of the Cadillac’s engine intensified as it pulled the antique car toward the final rise before the road dipped into the valley ahead. A large wooden sign slid silently up the shoulder. It was cheerily painted in patriotic hues of red, white, and blue, spelling out its message in tall, serif letters.
Welcome to Liberty Valley - An Historic Past, A Bright Future
Vivian glanced at Erik to find him smiling back into her eyes with a look of unflinching optimism on his face. He put his left hand on her thigh and gave it an excited squeeze. Vivian put her hand on top of his and smiled hopefully as the Cadillac’s glittering chrome bumper crested the top of the hill.
About the Author
Marcus Alexander Hart is the author of Caster’s Blog: A Geek Love Story, the tale of one improbable year told as an online journal; and Walkin’ on Sunshine, a quantum physics sex farce. He is perhaps best known for his dual role as editor and movie critic for the comedy website misinformer.com.
In addition to writing, Marcus is also an award-winning digital animator. His resume includes over ten published video-game titles, including Scan Command: Jurassic Park and American Idol. His short film A Narrow Martian of Error has been screened in festivals around the world.
To find out more about Marcus, visit his website at MarcusAlexanderHart.com.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN