The Oblivion Society Read online

  “Satellite intelligence shows that the Chinese military just went on heightened alert, sir.”

  The admiral glared into the screen for a long moment, angrily cracking his knuckles.

  “Scramble my knights of the air,” he said dramatically. “I want nukes in the bellies of all my bombers, and I want those beautiful bastards ready to fly on my order. You got that?”

  “Um, yes sir,” the officer coughed, “but if you’ll recall what Private Babs just said, we don’t have any outgoing communications.”

  The admiral wrung his massive hands into fists.

  “Why, those filthy yellow bastards …”

  Kurchatov picked irritably at the filthy yellow upholstery foam crumbling from the worn arm of his desk chair. The clucking digital melody from Sakharov’s never-ending game of Tetris cut through his sanity like a bandsaw. He wrapped his fingers around the neck of his vodka bottle and, just for a second, imagined smashing it over the edge of the desk and letting fate take its course. His homicidal fantasy was interrupted by a crackling voice.

  “Radar Tracking Station 99, come in! Come in, Station 99! This is Moscow!” Kurchatov’s heart thumped against his ribcage as he leapt to his feet.

  “What the hell was that?!”

  Sakharov didn’t look up from his frenzied game. “The radio. Pick it up.” Kurchatov looked at the buzzing two-way radio set and felt very stupid. Right. The radio. It had been a while. He picked up the dusty microphone and wiped it on his shirt.

  “This is Station 99,” he said. “Go ahead, Moscow.”

  “We’re receiving reports that the Americans and Chinese are rattling their sabers. Are you picking up anything unusual up there?”

  Kurchatov glanced at his comrade, and Sakharov reluctantly minimized his game window to take a glance at the dish output. The screen flickered its usual, burned-in announcement.

  Radar Tracking Station 99

  0000 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles detected.

  0000.899 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles detected.

  Sakharov drew a sharp breath.

  “What is it, Station 99? What are you reading?”

  Kurchatov shook his head dismissively.

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s just another computer error.”

  “It’s not a computer error!” Sakharov gasped, grabbing the microphone. “It’s a nuclear attack!”

  The radio crackled tensely.

  “An attack?! Are you sure?! How many missiles?!”

  “Almost one!” Sakharov yelped.

  Kurchatov snatched the microphone from his panicked associate.

  “Disregard that, Moscow. It’s just an error with the-”

  “Thank you, Station 99. We’ll take it from here.” With that, the radio went dead.

  “But it’s a false alarm!” Kurchatov repeated. “Moscow? Do you read me? Hello?” He pounded the heavy microphone on the top of the computer bank in frustration. The threatening digits on the screen flickered and blinked before finally resolving themselves back into four harmless zeros. He crossed his arms and looked at Sakharov as his face burned red with unabashed contempt.

  Chairman Qian lowered his teacup as the standing yellow alert level suddenly raised itself to red. His gaze snapped to his second-in-command as if to ask the question his mouth couldn’t be bothered to form.

  “Russian high command has just armed their nuclear missiles, sir. There have been no launches, and no warplanes have taken flight.”

  The chairman rubbed his hands together hungrily. Russia. Now that was more like it! These days China could occupy Russia without even waking up the reserves. The junior officer continued.

  “Sir, all available intelligence suggests a unified Russo-American attack.” The chairman cringed. The Americans. It was always the Americans.

  “Put the nuclear deterrence on standby alert,” he grumbled. “Remind them both that they’re not dealing with terra cotta warriors over here.”

  As the circuits of the American armed forces’ communications network cleared their alerts and completed their reset sequences, computer screens and telephone consoles rapidly blinked back to life under Cheyenne Mountain. Admiral Teller broke from his frantic pacing and mental wargaming and rushed to a bank of reawakened monitors.

  “What’s happening?” he barked.

  “Everything just came back up, sir,” the husky officer said. “We’ve got phones, radar, satellite, everything! It must have been some kind of network glitch.” The admiral breathed a sigh of relief and gave the officer a hearty clap on the back.

  “Whew!” he laughed. “That was brown-trouser time for a second there, huh boys? Ha ha ha! Somebody get my wife on the phone-tell her it’s a real slow day at the office and I’m coming home early!”

  The younger officer didn’t return his superior’s joviality.

  “Um, sir. I think you should see this.”

  “What’s that, Junior?” the admiral chuckled.

  “While we were offline the Soviets and the Chinese both armed their warheads, sir.”

  The smile whipped from the admiral’s face like a window shade, revealing a countenance of betrayed rage.

  “Those Sun-Tzu-reading savages,” he seethed. “They knocked out our communications long enough to catch us with our pants down, and now those commie bastards are double-teaming us!”

  “Actually, sir,” the officer noted, “the Russians aren’t commies anymore.” The admiral scowled.

  “Dust off the missiles. Go to DEFCON 1,” he growled. “Oh, and somebody get the president on the line.”

  The wailing alarms fell silent over Camp Bravo, and the president and the intern slowly peeled their sweaty palms from their ears. The only sound that still hung in the air was the quiet, tinny chirp of a patriotic ringtone coming from the president’s pants. The intern clapped her hands to her face and started to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, I’m sorry!” she squealed. “I never should have come!

  You shouldn’t have either!”

  She turned to dart for the fence, but the president grabbed the back of her blue dress.

  “Wait! Don’t leave!” he shouted.

  His cell phone screeched for attention from his front pocket, vibrating provocatively against his already agitated manhood. He yanked the device from his pants and pitched it into the woods before turning back to the intern.

  “It’s alright, it’s okay, hon,” he continued. “Don’t you worry about anything. It was just a little alarm. Absolutely no harm done. You didn’t even blow our cover.” This reassurance downgraded the intern’s crying situation to a sniffle.

  “Well, sir, to be honest,” she said impishly, ” our cover is not what I came here to blow.”

  The president closed his eyes and grinned smugly as the intern lowered herself to her carpet-burned knees in the wet grass.

  “Hail to the chief, baby.”

  With a great, heaving surge of hot, explosive force, the long, white shaft of a single science rocket slipped from its pad at the Fimbulvetr Astronomical Institute and sailed harmlessly into the stratosphere.

  “Radar Station 99! Confirm your report! Are we under attack or not?” Kurchatov stared at the computer screen in a wide-eyed panic, his skepticism replaced with outright terror. The number of missiles detected was suddenly a solid 0001, and no amount of pounding on the computer would make it change its mind.

  “Station 99! Come in! What do you read?”

  “I … I think it’s a Chinese missile, sir! It’s headed straight for Moscow!”

  “It appears to be an American missile, sir. It’s headed straight for Beijing.”

  “It’s definitely a Russian missile, sir. It’s headed straight for Walt Disney World.”

  “Dear, sweet Jesus. ”

  Admiral Teller marched up to the command center’s enormous digital world map and watched the smooth arc of a missile slowly advancing into the sky. As the harsh light of the red alert sirens flashed across his
stony features, he took off his hat and saluted the American flag with a broad grin.

  “This is what we’ve waited for. This is it, boys. This is war! ” Shortly thereafter, the world came to an abrupt end.

  CHAPTER ONE

  EARLIER THAT DAY…

  The morning was hot, and moist, and thick, and it smelled like a foot. The sun’s brutal rays scorched through the hazy atmosphere like a blowtorch, scalding the earth and boiling translucent ripples into the heavy air. This weather was beyond oppressive. It was outright combative.

  In short, it was a typical summer day in Stillwater, Florida.

  Somewhere on Bayshore Boulevard, lost within a creeping armada of tourists’

  rental cars and retirees’ French-vanilla land yachts, was a rattling ‘83 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. Years of exposure to the salty seaside air had turned its formerly gray paint job into a Jackson Pollock of flaking orange rust. Age and ultraviolet radiation had reduced the vehicle’s convertible top to a useless, tattered mass of sun-bleached canvas and crumbling duct tape hanging mournfully over its trunk. The Rabbit’s radio droned cheerily through tinny speakers as its sombrero-clad driver melted into the upholstery.

  We’ve got two thousand films in each store, guaranteed in stock, all the time! So Blockbuster’s gonna party like it’s nineteen ninety-nine! The driver pulled off her thick, Buddy-Holly-style eyeglasses and ineffectually mopped her perspiring face with her perspiring palms. This girl was not unattractive, but at the same time she was not remarkable for her looks. Her face still retained the aura of youth, yet cosmetics companies had recently begun targeting her with

  “rejuvenating” formulas. If she had been a Hollywood actress, Vivian Gray would have been crossing the threshold between being typecast as “the nerdy eighteen-year-old high school student” and “the bitter thirty-two-year-old high-school teacher.”

  She shook her head and punched one of the factory radio’s dated push-buttons, yanking its tuning needle to the next station with an analog squeal.

  Hey, lose ten pounds in zero-zero-learn to help control when you dine! With Dexatrim you’re gonna party like it’s nineteen ninety-nine! Vivian scowled irritably. Enough already. This deluge of commercial parodies of The Artist Formerly Known as Prince’s “1999” had begun the moment Dick Clark dropped the ball in Times Square, and it hadn’t let up in the seven and a half months since. The ad executives of America had no doubt been salivating over this year’s arrival for their entire careers, and now they were joyfully blowing their collective, uninspired marketing wad.

  She punched the next preset button.

  So Kotex goes in your panties like it’s nineteen ninety-nine! Vivian winced, but before she could change the channel the offending commercial was stomped out of existence by a cacophony of brass and slide-whistles.

  ” We’re back and you’re in the middle of another Wacky Wednesday with the Mooker and the Foz Morning Zoo!”

  A doorbell rang, followed by the sound of a bugle, two gunshots, and a mewling cat.

  “Whoops! Bad news for Fluffy, but good news for you! That sound means we’re going to be kicking off another twelve-in-a-row megamix … (The word “megamix” echoed a dozen times, each iteration deeper and slower than the last.)

  “… of good-time oldies for the Gulf Coast! But first let’s check in with Art Anderson over in the WOSU News Center. Hey Artie boy, what’s big news in Stillwater?”

  “An oxymoron,” Vivian muttered.

  She scratched at the prickly contact rash that had developed across the center of her forehead. Her fair skin was no match for the coarse straw of the chain-restaurant novelty sombrero that was perched upon her head. But given the choice of spending her morning commute in a state of minor irritation or fatal sunstroke, Vivian reluctantly chose the lesser of two evils.

  A different voice chirped from the radio, speaking in a calm, rehearsed monotone that sounded uneasily out of place among its jabbering companions.

  “State health officials continue to urge those suffering from respiratory illness to avoid the beaches due to an unusually strong bloom of red tide. Researchers warn that this unknown algae produces a strain of potentially toxic bacteria. A temporary fishing ban has been instated in all Stillwater coastal areas until authorities can determine whether or not this bacteria poses a health threat.” With a struggle against the steering wheel that seemed more psychological than physical, Vivian eased her vehicle out of the creeping traffic and slowly crunched her way into a smoldering parking lot. As usual, the lot was populated with an assortment of barge-like seniormobiles, but today there was something different. A collection of tall, impossibly orange bottles lay scattered between the white and chrome street mausoleums like colored eggs on Easter Sunday. Some of them stood upright, and others rolled in slow, meandering arcs toward the storm drains. A few less-fortunate specimens had been reduced to nothing more than shards of glinting glass lying in pools of sticky orange nectar.

  Vivian rattled her car into the first available space, ground the shifter into first gear, and turned off the ignition. She didn’t bother to set the parking brake. Much like its roof, the Rabbit’s brake had long since rotted into uselessness. As soon as the roar of the motor fell away, Vivian’s ears were pummeled with an all-too-familiar melody. She instinctively punched at the radio, but it had silenced itself along with the engine.

  I keep dreamin’ of a beverage, forgive me if I go astray,

  but your body needs a boost, and your cells are all in disarray … Vivian cracked open the rusted door and stepped out of her car. As her sneakers touched the scorching pavement, she could almost feel their rubber soles liquefying like sticks of butter being shoved into a hot skillet. In the lapping flow of heat pouring off the blacktop, the rippling silhouette of her body looked elongated and distorted.

  In reality, the heat waves had nothing to do with it.

  Although Vivian was decently proportioned, she somehow appeared just slightly taller than she should have reasonably been. Her slender build could accurately be described as “reedy,” but it edged as close to “gangly” as it could possibly get without actually getting there.

  Your body needs a tune-up, vitamins are runnin’ everywhere. Time to maximize absorption, and make your food do its share … The blacktop seemed to throb beneath Vivian’s narrow feet, sending bass waves of vibration up her legs and into her chest cavity. She slammed the car door and turned to face her destination with a sense of stomach-knotting dread. She knew there was no turning back now. She had arrived.

  And she had a job to do.

  With a slouch of defeat, Vivian pulled on a powder-blue uniform vest and adjusted her nametag.

  My name is VIVIAN - How may I serve you?

  At the end of the parking lot sat a long, dreary fortress of weathered blue cement blocks that looked like a defunct prison, but without the charm. Across the front of the building, a series of pigeon-infested block letters spelled out the words

  “Boltzmann’s Market.”

  They say two thousand calories a day is plenty for a slammin’ time! So Fusion Fuel will load and lock you like it’s nineteen ninety-nine! Vivian covered her ears as the booming jingle continued to thunder remorselessly through her skull. It was “1999” again, but this time rendered in a palette of rough guitar and angsty vocals. The music was almost grunge, but grunge reduced to a sterile, soulless formula.

  This was marketing grunge.

  “Oh no,” Vivian groaned. “Not another one of these.” She peered through the lapping heat of the parking lot toward the store’s front entrance. Flanking the doors were two huge stacks of speakers, and between them sat a highly detailed AM General Hummer. The glossy military vehicle had an aggressively promotional orange-and-black custom paint job, making it look like a jack-o’-lantern designed for a combat air drop. Vivian hadn’t seen this particular setup before, but she knew exactly why it was there. If she was lucky, maybe she could make it to the front door before …

>   ” Hola, pretty señorita! Is it Cinco de Mayo already?!” The voice was deep and booming, and the force of it hitting her square in the back almost knocked the sombrero clean off of Vivian’s head. Her suddenly tensed shoulders drooped back to her sides as she turned and faced the orange-and-black-clad source of the thunderous voice.

  “It’s August eighteenth, ” she muttered indignantly.

  “So it is Cinco de Mayo!” the stranger grinned, breaking into song. “So we’re gonna have a fiesta like it’s nineteen ninety-nine!”

  Vivian groaned. This happened every time the soft-drink companies introduced some all-new variety of liquid sugar to push down the nation’s insatiable gullet. The beverage industry’s marketing departments assumed that Americans would unquestioningly drink whatever a pair of pretty faces standing next to an expensive car and an overblown sound system told them to.

  Unfortunately, they were absolutely right.

  Today’s mouthpiece for Big Beverage was fairly typical of the genre. He was a glimmering Adonis of a man, standing about six feet tall, with a leanly masculine, muscular build and unnaturally pure, spiky blond hair. He wore a complete “extreme sports” ensemble that was to extreme sports what his theme music was to grunge. All of the elements of his outfit were empirically “extreme,” but with a thick coating of corporate polish that negated the impact of the whole. Although he talked the talk of extreme sports, the salesmodel looked about as hardcore as a spa treatment.

  “So where’s the other one?” Vivian asked him.

  “The other what?”

  Vivian glanced around the empty parking lot.

  “Usually your kind comes in two-packs,” she shrugged. “You know, Ken and Barbie.”

  She tossed her sweaty sombrero into the back seat of her car, revealing a shock of fiercely red hair. Two ponytails the shape of cooking whisks dropped limply to the nape of her neck, and a curtain of long, uneven bangs cascaded over her glasses as if to say, “Closed. Please use next window.”

  “Whoa! Nice mane, Red!” the salesmodel beamed. “I think you’re just the kind of grrrrl I’ve been looking for!”