From beyond the fleshy walls of her makeshift cocoon, Vivian could hear Erik’s tired voice attempting to assuage his road-trip boredom.
“I spy, with my little eye, something in the car.”
“Is it in the front seat?” Bobby asked.
“Yes.”
Sherri’s pink eyes rolled up and down Vivian’s bundled wingspan.
“Is it leathery?”
“I’d say so,” Erik nodded.
Bobby looked at his sister’s dark, shrouded form.
“Is it black?”
“Well, it thinks it is,” Erik said.
“Is it Trent?” Sherri asked confidently.
“Yes! You got it!” Erik beamed.
The back seat exploded into a round of high fives and derisive laughter.
“Oh, now, y’all are just cold,” Trent sighed. “Why you gotta judge a brother by the color of his skin and not the content of his character?”
“You’re not a brother!” Bobby groaned. “And you’ve got no character!”
“Always gotta be surrounded by da haters,” Trent muttered.
He reached over and put a heavy hand on Vivian’s chilled thigh.
“Come on now, Vivi. I know at least you’re on my side here, girl,” he coaxed.
“Come out of that shell and help the T for a spell.”
Vivian’s reedy hand emerged from under her sheath of wings, grasped Trent’s hand, and threw it off of her lap.
“Leave me alone, Trent,” she grumbled, rustling her unnatural appendages. “I’m not coming out unless Commissioner Gordon calls for me.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Vivi,” Trent laughed. “You don’t have to be self-conscious about your body! You know the T doesn’t judge people by their physical appearance. It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Come on and show us that beautiful inside of yours, girl.”
Vivian could feel Trent’s warm fingertips touching her cold flesh. The sensation was indescribably weird, as if his hand had slipped under her skin and closed directly around the bones of her fingers. But as her arm shrank from his unwelcome touch, she realized that he wasn’t holding her hand at all. He had wrapped his fingers around the bony end of her left wing and was gently peeling it upward and away from her face. As soon as the tip of the wing breached the windshield’s protected air stream, the raging gale of their forward velocity thundered into its leathery pocket, blasting her wings apart like a pair of broken storm shutters.
With a fleshy slap, the full span of Vivian’s left wing filled up like a sail, pinning Trent against his seat. Only a muffled scream came from behind the billowing black flesh as Trent’s hands were ripped from the wheel and the Rabbit careened across the four abandoned lanes. As the car rapidly changed direction, Vivian’s right wing caught the blast of oncoming air, violently blowing it open and nearly throwing her over the back of her seat.
Amid a commotion of screams and curses, Bobby and Sherri clambered over each other and into a mess of uncoordinated aid. Bobby scrambled onto his knees on the seat, leaning over the side of the car and grabbing the extended edge of Vivian’s left wing in both hands. With a motion like he was trying to close a stubborn sliding door, he brutally thrust the bony limb back toward his sister. Vivian let out a wail of pain as a manhandled wing joint tried unsuccessfully to bend the wrong direction.
“Ouuuch!” Vivian howled. “Stop it-you’ll break my arm!”
“I’m not touching your arm!” Bobby screamed. “Come on, Vivian! Work with me here!”
“I can’t! I can’t bend it!” Vivian shrieked breathlessly. “For crying out loud, Trent! Let off the gas pedal!”
“Mmmgrrlllph!” came Trent’s reply.
Sherri’s palm shot forward and popped a painfully hyperextended wing joint into its proper place, allowing Trent’s scrambling hands to fold the flapping limb down against Vivian’s side. He grabbed the wheel with two shaky fists, pulling the car back onto the road.
Sherri lurched forward and held Vivian’s collapsed left wing in a bunch between the seats. To her right she noticed Erik sitting silently, his panicked face completely white. All four of his hands gently held strategic points on Vivian’s forgotten right wing, which was now neatly folded between the passenger seat and the inside of the door. Sherri raised a curious eyebrow at him and he guiltily shifted his eyes away from her.
“Damn, Vivi!” Trent muttered. “Control yourself, girl! Back up off the T until the vehicle has come to a complete stop, a’ight?”
“I … but I didn’t … you … you!” Vivian yelled, rubbing the fierce, stabbing pain of a dislocated elbow that wasn’t. “Just shut up, you idiot! Leave me alone. Everybody leave me alone!”
She belligerently slapped away all of the helping hands, grabbed her wings in her fists, and yanked them back around her trembling shoulders.
Bobby leaned forward and patted his sister’s knotted wing compassionately.
“Don’t worry, Viv,” he said. “It’s not that bad. You’re going to be okay.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” Vivian snapped. “You don’t look like something out of some freaky Japanese cartoon! Why is this happening to me?!”
“Don’t sweat it, Vivi. I’m sure it’s all just part of God’s master plan for you,” Trent said philosophically. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, yo.”
“Ha!” Sherri burst out incredulously. ” The Lord, he says!” She clasped her tiny hand around Erik’s mutant wrist, shaking his gnarled paw in the air for emphasis.
“When it was just Erik sporting the extra equipment, you’re all fire and brimstone and Hell on Earth, but as soon as we’ve got a pair of wings ripping out opposite a nice pair of tits, it’s suddenly the Lord’s work.”
“Well, I don’t know what else it could be, oh ye of questionable faith,” Trent expostulated. “It’s not alcohol that keeps us safe from doing the biological freakout, because Vivi was drinking, just like us.”
“I was drinking too,” Erik mentioned, grabbing his paw out of Sherri’s grasp and returning its dead weight to his lap.
“And it also has nothing to do with the soul,” Trent continued, “because when I look into those shimmering pools of green that are Vivi’s breathtaking eyes, all I can see is miles of perfect, unblemished human soul.”
“And also, I have a soul too,” Erik said through gritted teeth.
“So it’s got to be the Lord’s plan,” Trent concluded. “Ain’t no other way around it.”
“Ah, I hate to tear open your watertight argument,” Erik gibed, “but there are most certainly ways around it.”
“Like what?” Trent asked.
“Well, like that rotten pink vapor, for one thing. I’m sure that stuff was toxic! It must have contaminated Twiki and Vivian and me.”
“But what about the rest of us then?” Bobby frowned. “We were all in that shit too, and nothing’s happened to us.”
“Yet,” Sherri added.
“Wait, hold up. Maybe it’s because we were in that yellow submarine,” Trent said.
“That thing was as airtight as a dolphin’s derrière. Maybe the mutant juice wore off the fog before we got all up in it, yo.”
“Or maybe the miracle cure is frat-boy jizz,” Sherri conjectured.
“Ack. Jesus,” Bobby grimaced, mopping phantom goo from his arms. “If that’s the antidote, I’d rather have the extra limbs.”
“Aaaugh! Knock it off!” Sherri squeaked. “You’re getting your fat-boy body dandruff all over me!”
The top layer of Bobby’s sunburn had almost completely flaked off, revealing a new layer of pasty white flesh beneath. As Sherri furiously brushed Bobby’s freshly sloughed-off skin from her leg, twice as much of her own scorched thigh crumbled through the web of her fishnets and onto Bobby’s lap.
“Hey. Hey, wait a sec,” Bobby said thoughtfully. “I just realized-you, me, Trent-we all got sunburned!”
“No shit,” Sherri said, scraping her ragged arms. “I’m fucking molting
over here.”
“So listen,” Bobby said, “maybe whatever is causing the mutations got in through the skin. Since our skin was all scorched on the morning after, maybe that pink shit in the air couldn’t absorb through it and get into our bodies. Maybe the burn lasted long enough to protect us, even though we’re all fine now.”
“Whatever,” Trent muttered. “Speak for yourself, Heavy B.” He turned his collar away from the solid, beet-red blister that still encompassed the back of his neck and ran down his muscular arms.
“I ain’t fine at all, yo,” he continued. “This shit still burns like a son of a bitch. I need to get my aloe on, for real.”
Bobby shrugged and probed the neatly clotted cut on his forehead with a stubby forefinger.
“Well, I don’t know about Sherri, but fast healing has always been in my family’s blood,” he said proudly. “Hey! Maybe it has something to do with the blood, or the white blood cells or something. Sunburns make all the blood come to the surface of the skin, you know? That’s why they turn red. Maybe that’s what made Twiki and Erik and Viv different from us!”
“What difference does it make?” Sherri asked. “It’s not like you’re going to solve the puzzle and Pat Sajak is going to come out and give you the antidote and a fucking dinette set!”
“You’re right,” Vivian said darkly. “Figuring out the cause won’t help Erik and me at this point, but at least there’s still a chance we can prevent it from happening to the rest of you.”
” Prevent it from happening to the rest of us?” Sherri said with surprise. “Why?!
Am I the only one who thinks that this shit is dead sexy? I mean, look at this thing!” She grabbed Erik’s greasy black paw and thrust it between the two front seats and into the back of Trent’s sunburnt arm.
“Tell me that this isn’t totally bad-ass!”
“Aaah! Christ Almighty!” Trent recoiled, shoving the gnarled paw into the back seat with his palm. “Hands off the T-man, Evil E! I just told you that sunburn still stings like an S.O.B! Don’t go puttin’ your ugly-ass mouse mitts all up on me!” Erik grabbed his limp rat hand and vehemently thrust it back into his lap, but this time Sherri did not let go.
“Sooo, okay then, thank you,” he scowled. “Leggo my Eggo.” Sherri intertwined her tiny fingers with the bony claws and stroked the matted fur on the back of the forearm with fascination.
“Relax, Sievert. I’m not going to hurt you,” she said with an uncharacteristic smile. “I just think it’s kinda cool, that’s all.”
“Whoa!” Bobby gasped. “That’s the first time you’ve ever admitted to liking something that isn’t an addictive chemical!”
“Stuff it, fat-ass,” Sherri said threateningly. ” You’re still on my shit list.” As her slender hands moved suggestively up and down the long, hairy shaft lying across his lap, Erik’s groin clenched nervously.
“Hey! Hey there,” he warned, embarrassed. “Watch it, you.” Erik’s cheeks burned as Sherri’s fingers continued to slip nimbly through the thick black fur of his rodent limbs.
“Whoa! These things are getting really warm all of the sudden!” she grinned.
“God, I’m freezing! Gimme some of that heat!”
With a dramatic plunge, Sherri’s tiny head dropped into Erik’s lap, and she began nuzzling her frosty face into his warm pelt, inadvertently rubbing her peeling nose provocatively up and down the fly of his pants.
“Whoa, whoa! Knock it off!” Erik squeaked, pulling Sherri’s face out of his lap.
“If you want to snuggle up with something hairy and gross, I’ll switch seats with Trent!”
“To the contrary, Furry E,” Trent said. “The T is completely hairless. At least where it counts.”
Sherri shuddered.
“Don’t worry, Trent,” she said mockingly. “I’m sure you’ll hit puberty someday. ”
“Puberty is overrated, yo,” Trent grinned. “Believe me. I was the last guy in my class to go through the special time, and while the rest of the pack was all pushin’
out the shrubs, all the little girlies were up on Smooth T. Now I gots to bust out the lift-and-cut action to keep that baby-bottom feeling down under, but I can still give you the simulated stimulation of gettin’ jiggy with a late bloomer, girl.” Sherri shook her head with a nauseous moan.
“Trent, you are truly amazing,” she winced. “Just when I think that you can’t possibly get any more disgusting, you manage to vomit up a shitbomb like that.”
“Seriously!” Bobby agreed. “Dude, have any of your skanky lines ever worked on a woman, ever? ”
“The words aren’t as important as the moment,” Trent shrugged. “Sometimes even the oldest line in the book will tickle a lady’s fancy if the moment is just right, yo.”
“For example?” Vivian asked skeptically.
Just then, the tired Rabbit began to buck against the pavement, choking out a sputtering black haze of death from its tailpipe as the engine fell silent. When the vehicle had rolled to a complete stop, Trent turned to Vivian, putting his arm around her winged shoulders with a grin.
“I’m sorry, baby, we just ran out of gas. I guess we’ll just have to find a way to keep ourselves occupied until help shows up.”
Vivian looked at Trent, blinked once, and got out of the car.
“Hey, come on! Give me some credit!” Trent called. “At least I didn’t do ‘put out or get out’!”
Though unplanned, the chance to get out of the tiny convertible was more than welcomed by the five weary travelers. Trent had taken two cans of gasoline from the trunk and was refilling the exhausted fuel tank while Sherri stood nearby, conspicuously flicking the ash from her burning cigarette in his direction. Erik stood with his hands on his hips, squinting questionably at the face of another weathered billboard. The ubiquitous cartoon Mountie held an oversized gold coin between his thumb and forefinger, and a patch of faded lettering screamed, “Go loonie at North of the Border!”
“I don’t get it,” Erik said flatly.
On the other side of the road, Vivian took long, regal steps along the shoulder, stretching the weary tightness from her long-cramped legs. Outside of the confines of the car, her wings were allowed to hang naturally from her back, or at least as naturally as two sprawling black bat wings could hang from a young woman’s back. The mutant limbs folded neatly against themselves, the top of them standing about six inches over her shoulders and the bottom tips hovering near her waist. She turned slowly, scanning a lumpy gray sky resting on the black pillars of cities that were no more.
“I can’t believe we haven’t found civilization yet,” she said softly. “I thought we would have at least seen something by now.”
Bobby nodded.
“It’s hard to tell what’s beyond the tree line,” he said. “We might be able to actually find something if we could get a view of the whole area from the sky.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Vivian dully agreed.
“So why don’t you just fly around for a while and see if you can spot anything.”
“What … me? ” she laughed warily. “Bobby, what in the world makes you think that I can fly?”
“Well gee, Viv,” Bobby said sardonically, “because you’re the only one with a pilot’s license.”
“Get real, Bobby,” Vivian grumbled. “Just because I have these wing … like …
things, it doesn’t mean that I can magically fly. There’s more to it than that.”
“Oh, come on, Vivian,” Bobby said impatiently. “You haven’t even tried.”
“No,” Vivian said conclusively, “I have not.”
“Well, what are you waiting for-a magic feather?”
“No, I’m waiting for a fundamental shift in the laws of aerodynamics!” Vivian scowled. “It’s physically impossible! Humans aren’t biologically designed for flight!”
“Yeah, and humans don’t typically have wings either!”
“All right, all right!” Vivian snapped. “Fine! I’ll sh
ow you that I can’t do it!”
“That’s right, think positive,” Bobby said sarcastically.
Vivian bounced on the balls of her feet, squinting into the clouds and holding her arms out eagerly to her sides. If Bobby didn’t know better, he might have suspected she was about to try to steal second base.
“Flap,” she thought.
Nothing happened.
“Flap,” she grumbled, clenching her teeth. “Flap! Flap flap flap!”
“Come on, Viv,” Bobby moaned. “They’re not even moving.”
“I know they’re not moving!” Vivian snarled.
She grabbed the ends of the wings with her hands and yanked them out to arm’s length, flapping them furiously.
“And … flap! ”
The second she let go of them, the wings fell back into their relaxed fold, bouncing to a stop against her back like cheap costume wear.
“There! See?! I told you it wouldn’t work,” she said bitterly. “They’re not real wings. They don’t work. I can’t control them.”
Before she could say another word, a pair of large, muscular hands grasped her firmly around the waist from behind.
“All you need is a little thrust, and when a woman needs thrust, the T is just the man to-”
At the sound of Trent’s voice, Vivian’s shoulders instinctually tensed in revulsion. This was followed immediately by the sound of flesh hitting flesh … and flesh hitting pavement. She was thrown three stumbling steps forward, but she clumsily regained her balance and spun around. Six feet away from her, Trent lay on the ground, moaning and rubbing his abruptly bloodied face.
“Trent! What the …”
Suddenly realizing why her center of gravity was so awkwardly misplaced, Vivian looked over her shoulder and saw her entire six-foot wingspan stretched out behind her like two enormous sails. As if they had been caught at the scene of a crime, upon being seen, the wings guiltily dropped back into their folded position with a flutter.
“Trent, are you okay?” Vivian squeaked apologetically, leaning down at his side.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Trent whimpered, putting down his hands and trying to look indifferent. “Ain’t nothin’ but a thang.”
The Oblivion Society Page 30