Take the All-Mart! - By J. I. Greco Page 0,19
long, thoughtful drag. “How? I’m not you, Rox. I just can’t go up to a guy and boom we’re doing it. I wouldn’t know... How would I even broach the subject? No... it’s not... proper. I should be wooed. I deserve to be wooed.”
“Life’s too short, girl.” Roxanne crossed her arms over her chest. “Sure, you can wait around for some evolutionary throwback of a guy to send you flowers and engraved notes, but the best guys aren’t always gonna be the aggressive ones. Sometimes you’ve got to do the hunting.”
“How about this new guy of yours? You have to hunt him?”
“Oh, no. He totally hunted. He’s a real man.”
“Lovely.”
“Hey, guys, you wanna shush? Looks like we’re starting.” That from Yolanda, standing next to Bernice. She jogged her head in Mother Superior’s direction. Mother Su was lowering her arms, her eyes closed, and drawing in a deep breath. Yolanda then gestured at Bernice’s joint. “Can I get a hit of that, Bernie? Smoked all mine on the trip out.”
Bernice handed it over. “Sure, but you owe me.”
“Pay ya back at the orgy first thing,” Yolanda said with a leer deep into Bernice’s cleavage as she took a drag.
“Hey,” said Lindsay-Joe, standing on the other side of Yolanda, putting her hands on her ample hips. “I thought I was first on your dancecard, Bernie.”
Yolanda handed the joint and holder back to Bernice, and Bernice smiled at them, saying: “You can’t both be first?”
Down the line, Mother Superior cleared her throat, grabbed her double-penis-helix medallion, and raised it high. “Oh great anomaly of the Wasteland, we greet you!”
The coven snapped to attention, raising their hands up, their palms flat to the sky.
“Here we go.” Bernice stuck the holder between her teeth and raised her hands.
Roxanne slowly raised her hands. “All this just to have an excuse for an orgy...”
Mother Superior’s voice boomed over the white-noise of the expansion front’s ceaseless churning. “Behold we bring you gifts to feed your mighty hunger!”
“Oww,” Roxanne exclaimed, her hand snapping down to clamp against her ear.
“What?” Bernice asked in a whisper around the cigarette holder.
“Nothing.” Roxanne cricked her neck, tapped on the antenna. “It’s just this RATpack thing. Forgot to take it out. Gave me a twinge. Feels fine now.”
Bernice looked at it. “It’s blinking all funny.”
“Funny? Funny how?
“Before it just blinked yellow, all slow.”
“Yeah, that’s standby.”
“But now... it’s all red. And fast.”
“Red? Shouldn’t be red... the other unit’s way too far out of range to re-establish contact.”
“Sure Mr. Hunter McRealMan didn’t follow you?” Bernice twisted to look back up the hill.
“I would have noticed the protocol chatter. Nah, must be fritzing out on me.” Roxanne eased it out of her ear, slipping it away in her satchel purse. She shrugged, lifted her arms to the sky again. “Surprised it worked this long.”
“Please, guys...” Yolanda glared over at them, but with a hint of a smile. “You’ll get us in trouble.”
“Oh, I’ll get you in trouble.” Bernice pinched Yolanda’s ass, making her burst out in an involuntary giggle as she slapped Bernice’s hand away.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Roxanne whispered at Bernice. “If you could just work up the courage to do that to a guy, you’d bag one, for sure.”
Bernice blushed and gulped, then turned towards the expansion front.
Down the line and out of earshot, Mother Superior continued the ritual, “Hear us, insignificant as we are, as we beseech thee —”
A rumble from somewhere deep inside the All-Mart stopped Mother Superior cold.
It was a sound they’d never heard before. A deep growling lion-bear-Gojira roar reverberating out from the expansion front through the valley, echoing off the distant mountains.
The coven immediately broke into a din of confused and worried voices, sisters asking each other what was going on.
Roxanne shot Bernice a playful grin. “I’m late one time.”
Bernice gave her back a worried look.
“Calm down, everyone,” Mother Superior ordered. “Just because something’s never happened before doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad thing. For all we know, this is perfectly natural, if unprecedented.” She turned back to Brenda. “Acolyte, fetch the Tome of Speculation!”
Brenda jammed Vampire Hunter D Vol. 3 under her armpit and leapt to her feet. “I’m on it, Mother Su!”
“That’s Mother Superior, acolyte!” Mother Superior called after Brenda, darting up the hill, then turned to address the rest of the coven, smiling reassuringly at the worried faces staring at her. “We’ll see what wisdom the Hallowed Ancestors have for us, all right?”
That calmed the coven. Or at least brought their frantic murmuring down to whispers.