“The ‘Vivors”

The auction of recently gathered discoveries from the Cool Lands was in full swing. As one of only two buildings left in New Holly with power (the other being the pump house) and as it still retained three of its original four walls, the Buildhall was the gathering spot for all non-rad ‘Vivors for every sort of occasion. It had seen imploring speeches on the need for better cleanliness, and frequent requests for volunteers to man the Barricade. But this morning’s gathering was special: a group of Finders had just returned with a couple dozen scrounged rarities, none of them hot, all of them up for sale, or more likely, barter.

“Ya got a great bargain there, Jeremiah,” intoned “Big” Bill Nelson, the once-portly but now skin-fold-covered auctioneer, as a dusty denim-clad fellow picked up his item: a pair of work boots only one size smaller than his own.

“Now this next find,” Big Bill continued, “this ‘un’s a beaut!”

Big Bill stood on a platform made of overturned post office mail boxes covered with six sheets of corrugated tin. So that everyone in the crowd could see better, he held aloft the item: a license plate from 2022, the last year plates were issued. The following year, there was no government to speak of to do the issuing. After that, there was no need for them at all.

As he loudly explained what the plate was, for those who’d never seen one, the rest of the collection lay spread out across the front of the makeshift stage like some long-gone pirate’s booty:

A collection of steak knives, still in their stained cardboard display carton;

A bag of (mostly) dry cat food;

Two cans of tuna, probably from the same site;

A black plastic-and-aluminum swivel office chair, missing only one of its five wheels;

A set of cloth kitchen curtains with a parade of happy roosters, without the curtain rod;

A tiny toy compass, next to a trio of slightly used paperback romance novels, not far from a leather belt with a garish cowboy buckle, and a dozen other odds and ends, stretching to the edge of the stage.

In the pre-Bang years, these items would have been average items in an average home. But to the survivors of the Fall, and the ensuing Great Revenge, and then the horrible Wasting, these were not just household items, but the icons of a past age of stable splendor.

The steak knives, though pitted and rusty, spoke of an era where food was so thick, you needed something sharp to cut through it, though none of the ‘Vivors had seen an actual steak in more than a dozen years.

The cat food reminded the people that once back in the pre-Bang, pets—actual non-feral pets!—would live in a person’s home and share food with them, and not try to take a chunk out of them in the dark when they slept. The cans of tuna were, of course, almost useless without a can opener, none of which had been seen for years. An industrious owner could, however, use a hatchet or even one of the steak knives to rip open the lid, and would probably do just that even before the auction ended.

To the ‘Vivors, the swivel office chair seemed almost like a throne, the possible centerpiece of some vast empire that might have stretched across the Great Water to the far end of the Flat Earth. The lack of a wheel mattered little to the ‘Vivors: there weren’t many flat surfaces left in New Holly anyway.

While the locals ooh’ed an ahh’ed over the collection, across town near the Barricade, an even more rare site came into view of one of the four posted guards. Off to the Farthest, out where the big cats had reclaimed the land and usually ate whatever wasn’t fast enough or well-armed enough to escape their predation, came a long, billowing dust trail.

Daniel, one of the four that had drawn guard duty and would miss the auction, peered through a pair of thick glasses with one good lens, and tried to make out what it was. To Daniel, it seemed like a dust devil on its side. As it got closer, he heard something that he hadn’t heard in ages: the rumble of a V-8 engine.

He leaned over and tapped fellow draftee Jacob on the shoulder, which failed to rouse him from his slumber. “Jacob!” Daniel implored, trying to shake some consciousness into him. “Listen!”

The rumble accomplished what Daniel’s shaking couldn’t. Jacob opened one eye, then the other, then slowly staggered to his feet and joined Daniel in staring uncomprehendingly at the approaching devil. “Wot in da hell…”

The dust trail was being kicked up by an absolutely show-room condition 1965 Mustang convertible, decked out in a powder blue paint job and a white leather interior. Not a stain lay on its pristine surface, and oddly, not a speck of dust clung to it, neither inside nor out.

A single white leather-gloved female hand casually grasped the steering wheel, guiding the Mustang down the dusty cracked pavement with flippant disregard for the occasional pothole and the incessant carpet of branches and stones. The debris bounced and skipped away from the tires as if they were happy to clear the road for the only operational vehicle for a thousand miles.

The driver rested her right hand absently over the top of the passenger seat, occupied by a matching white leather makeup case, a thin garment bag and small clutch purse. On the passenger floor was a matching shoe case that couldn’t have held more than two pairs, if that. In between, where the shifter should have been, sat an out of place black rectangular box, shiny and coldly efficient, with a thick black cable that connected to some port under the dash.

The driver wore a powder blue chiffon house dress with matching pearl necklace and white high heels, an outfit that would have been right at home in a 1950s Maytag ad proclaiming the splendor of its newest fully automatic washer and dryer set. On her face she wore a fashionable pair of winged white sunglasses. On her head was a white pillbox hat, pinned in place around her perfectly coiffed blonde hair.

The strangest of this completely impossible ensemble was the passenger in the back seat. Not a person, nothing so discernably alive as such, but a small artificial Christmas tree, less than three feet tall. It was trimmed with cute little red bows and strung with tiny lights that would have glowed a warm red and green, if they’d been powered.

She arrived at the Barricade in a spray of gravel and billowing dust, causing Daniel and Jacob and the other two now-woken guards to cough and try to wave away the dust.

Daniel began his prepared speech, one he hadn’t needed to give in over a year.

“You can’t—hack! You can’t—cough! You can’t enter New Holly unless you’ve been approved by the…”

The lady lowered her winged sunglasses and revealed a set of ice-blue eyes that bore through Daniel’s own eyes and right into his soul. She flashed a brilliant white smile that filled all four guards with a sense of desire and longing they’d not felt in their desperation-filled memories.

She didn’t ask them a thing. She didn’t say a single word. The command from that look did it all for her, and they clambered over themselves to move the blocking metal barriers out of the way. The Mustang rolled into the compound, its rumbling engine sending shivers up the spines of the four dumbfounded guards.

Back at the Buildhall, the bidding for the tuna fish had reached a crescendo, as it wavered between two passionate bidders.

“One full encounter!” barked Ruth, offering a promise of a lengthy physical evening with Rufus, the Finder.

“Ten full encounters!” roared Miriam, an older and more world-weary woman than Ruth.

“I’ll take the one encounter,” Rufus replied. Just to be clear, he added, “With Ruth.” He shot a partially apologetic smile at the elderly woman. “Sorry, Miriam.”

Miriam smiled a sad, gap-tooth smiled and shrugged her bony shoulders. “S’okay.”

Before Big Bill could move on to the next item, the rumble of the Mustang halted the proceedings. The Chiffon Lady wheeled the car into the plaza, stopped, and touched the shiny black box. The car shifted into park and the rumbling quieted, though it didn’t quiet completely. She grabbed the small clutch bag with her right hand, climbed smartly out of the car, then closed the door with a satisfying thunk. She strolled through the stunned crowd as if she were a ‘Vivor, just like them.

For their part, no one in the crowd challenged her, nor did they speak. A few stared at her like she was an apparition, or maybe a Goddess. A few others looked at Big Bill for guidance, who stammered in genuine consternation.

“Uh, excuse me, uh, lady, but uh, you have to be a ‘Vivor to bid on the, uh…”

His voice trailed off as the Chiffon Lady strolled casually down the length of the stage, appraising each item in turn. She picked up the toy compass and smiled her brilliant white smile as she noted that the tiny indicator pointed neither north nor south, but somewhere in between.

She stopped at the side of a burly fellow who was planted in front of the cowboy buckle and belt as if it were already his. She pulled down her winged sunglasses just a fraction of an inch and stared up into his bleary eyes, affected by too much sun out in the Wastes. He swallowed hard, then backed up from the stage, allowing her to pass.

The Chiffon Lady walked slowly to the very end of the stage, where a small chain lay on a once-white handkerchief. She delicately picked up the chain, and it unwound slowly to reveal at its end a shiny heart-shaped pendant, engraved with a pattern of flowers and petals.

She turned around with the chain and pendant in her left hand like she’d just caught a long extinct trout, and spoke for the first time. “Who found this?”

Another Finder, Bartholomew, raised a shaky hand. “Uh, that’d be me, miss.”

She smiled, and strode purposefully up to the lanky Finder. Barely a foot from him, she paused. “I need this,” she said. She reached into the clutch bag and withdrew a single item, and pressed it into his hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Bartholomew gazed wide-eyed upon a silky pair of white panties. He nodded quickly, tears in his eyes.

The Chiffon Lady strode back to the Mustang, leaned into the back seat, and with deliberate grace, draped the pendant around the Christmas tree. Slowly, the way fireflies used to gain brightness on a summer afternoon, the tree’s lights began to glow, an impossibly satisfying red and green.

In seconds, the Chiffon Lady was back behind the wheel and heading off through the Barricade. About a hundred yards out, the convertible made a sharp turn to the West.

The crowd of ‘Vivors murmured at the Lady’s sudden arrival and equally quick departure. One tall fellow with a thick brown beard hefted a backpack across his wide shoulders.

“That woman's headin' to the Heartland,” he said with deep regret. “She’s fixin’ to restore things t’ the way they was.” He shook his head sadly, then walked over to a rusty steel shed and pulled out a trail bike almost as decrepit as the shed that shadowed it.

“Where you off to, Gabe?” one woman in a men’s plaid shirt asked.

He bit his lip. “I need to make sure she don’t succeed.”

With a chorus of squeaks and groans, some from the bike, some from Gabe, he rode after her already fading dust trail.