cindy's nanomess

i'm using nano this year to write something i can later polish and try to submit for publication. (i like seeing my name in print. :D ) normally i just wouldn't post it, but i like knowing people are reading as i go, so i'm going to post it under flock. so if you want to read about (hopefully) the trials and tribulations of val brody as he tries to change his career path and gets involved with a guy and a girl, and more importantly you plan to comment once or twice, let me know. i'd like a small flock - that sounds like i'll be herding geese or something - so if you don't think you'll be able to keep up, or you won't have time or energy to read at all, that's totally fine, i get that it can be a lot of work to follow people's nanos. but if you want to read it and you'll comment occasionally, let me know. i don't expect anyone to comment on everything, but i do want to know what you think. and if you're just going to read and not give me any feedback, you can wait for it to come out in print. :D well, assuming it does....

i should mention that i can't promise a lot of smut, and i can't promise that what smut there is, is good.

(this was copied verbatim from my regular lj, in case anyone here isn't reading over there. and because sometimes i'm anal like that. :D )

aaaand we're done. :D i'm so pleased. i don't have a title but i have 51k words and isn't that what nanowrimo is all about? am i right?

this one's for crotalus_atrox, for being a vocal fan of the post-apocalypse. (you have to share the twins and the two guys from portland with wrenlet, tho. i hope you don't mind.)

i don't have a list of acknowledgements this year, but everyone who read, whether you commented or not, thank you. :> it was kind of a mess in places and it needs some judicious editing but i hope that overall you liked it.

"You wanna learn how to fill shotgun shells?" she asked Oscar. He was preparing to lie down. "Oh no, you're not taking a nap here. If Martha's going to feed us and let us stay here tonight, we're going to do something to help out. I just - oh, there it is." She'd probably been looking right at the little dot on the map that marked Columbus this whole time. She pushed the pin into the map and the wall behind it, tugged on Oscar's leash, and went into the kitchen.

The twins were setting things up on the trestle table - a jumbo size canister of salt, a couple open boxes of shotgun shells, an empty aluminum can. As Marya came in, Harrow twisted one of the shells open and dumped out the gunpowder inside, emptying it into the bowl before pouring salt into the shell.

( This isn't going to do it )

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"That's been happening a lot. It's why we put up the sign. You were lost, and now you've found. Come inside. You can bring Oscar." She turned and went back to the house. Marya grabbed Oscar's leash from the well between the front seats, snapped it on his collar, and let him clamber out of the van, and then they followed Martha into the house.

It was a big farmhouse with appropriately large rooms which looked even larger because they weren't very furnished. A couch, a couple of chairs, some side tables. There was a dining room table in what Marya assumed was the dining room - mostly by virtue of it being next to the kitchen - with some chairs spread around against the walls. There were some water glasses, a coffee mug, and a container of Morton's salt sitting at one end of the table. The dining room also had a built-in china cabinet with empty shelves behind its old glass doors and a small stack of books and a wooden mixing bowl on the countertop under the shelves. There was a map of the US pinned to the wall in the front room, with different colored pins stuck in it.

( Martha went into the kitchen but Marya wasn't sure if she was supposed to follow )

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Marya had very strange dreams in which both her grandma and Castro with the bike appeared. Her grandma told her to take a shower and shave her legs, or at least brush her hair and put on a clean shirt, because she'd never find a girlfriend sleeping in her van and peeing in the bushes. Castro just nattered on about bikes and pigeons and cycling around the rim of a volcano on Hawaii, and Marya woke up feeling as if she'd been taking notes so she wouldn't forget his travel advice. She was also vaguely embarrassed about how much she must stink, although she hadn't been roadtripping for that long and so wasn't that far away from her last shower. She did smell like the inside of the van, though, a little airless and overcrowded. She could not wait to get somewhere that had running water. She didn't even care if it was cold water, as long as she could clean herself with it.

( She kicked the sleeping bag off herself and stretched out along the bench seat before she sat up )

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She opened the bag of goldfish crackers and gave Oscar a handful. He was a messy eater but a grateful one. But Marya didn't have to sit in the passenger seat with all the cracker crumbs, so she didn't mind.

After she'd finished her dinner and Oscar had finished his dessert, she got the flashlight and walked him around the van one last time, then let him back in so she could pee herself. It wasn't any easier in the dark, and in fact it made her more nervous. The fact that she wouldn't be able to really see anyone or anything sneaking up behind - or in front of - her was worse than the thought that anyone driving by could get a glimpse of her with her jeans down around her ankles.

( She scrolled through the playlists on her iPod after she turned the van back on but before she went anywhere )

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"I guess I don't taste that good." Castro shrugged. "Eh, don't worry about it. At least he didn't bite me, right?"

"I guess." Marya looked at Oscar, who was looking at Castro. The second her dog started to growl, she was gone. She didn't care that Castro was the first relatively friendly person she'd seen since she left home, and she didn't care that so far he seemed to be mostly odd and harmless. Oscar was nervous around so few people that when he started acting weird, she had to pay attention.

Castro straightened up on his bike and looked like he was about to push off. "You see much of anything that way?" He pointed down the highway ahead of them, stretching out beyond the van's hood. "Cars, trucks, eighteen-wheelers."

( You came from the same direction I did. )

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"Someone's coming," she told him, leading him around the back of the van. "A guy on a bike. I wanna say hi."

As the guy on the bike got closer, Oscar got more excited. Not that Marya was surprised - people excited him, especially new and possibly interesting people - but it was a little encouraging. At least he wasn't lying down on the highway again, preparing to nap, or growling. Although Oscar didn't really growl at people he'd never met, so maybe that didn't mean anything.

( She couldn't figure out why someone would be biking along the highway )

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note: the little five (officially called the little 500) is a bike race held at indiana u every spring. the movie breaking away is about a group of townies who form a team.

She was sixty-five miles from Columbus, then forty, then twenty-two. The sky was overcast but there was some sun, and Oscar hung his head out the window and occasionally barked at something off the highway. Marya just hoped it wasn't going to rain, but the light was that kind of flat and the sky was that kind of gray, even with the intermittent breaks for sun. She felt alone enough in the world as it was - rain would make it worse.

( She hadn't been able to find a good, quick route to take her the long way around Columbus )

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Marya did not sleep particularly well, which was annoying but understandable. The bench seat wasn't very comfortable anyway, and because it also wasn't very wide she couldn't roll over. And the sleeping bag kept trying to slide off her. Oscar slept on undisturbed and Marya envied him, although she was glad she didn't have to sleep curled up into a ball on the front seat. Leaving the front row of seats in the van had been as brilliant an idea as taking out the back row. Otherwise she wasn't sure where she'd be able to sleep.

( She managed to get a few decent hours of sleep despite the cramped bed equivalent )

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Her watch must be busted, because 4:00 was way too early for so much sunset. she adjusted herself, leaned over to rub the top of Oscar's head, and got back on the highway. If she hauled ass she could get out of Pennsylvania before she had to stop to sleep.

Marya had forgotten how boring Pennsylvania was to drive through. A few years ago, shortly after her dad had moved to California, she and her friend Salina had driven cross-country to see him. Well, Marya was going to see him - Salina wanted to visit a boy she'd met in college, who was from San Diego and apparently single. The two girls had taken a little over a week to make the trip, stopping at weird tourist traps and scenic overlooks and pretty much any place that looked interesting, and switching driving duties when one or the other of them got tired. Marya had wanted to go to Graceland but Salina said it was too far out of their way, and Salina wanted to see the Grand Canyon but Marya claimed to be afraid of heights. Salina said that was silly. Marya said she'd been denied the chance to see Elvis' Rumpus Room, and anyway, all the tourists were destroying the canyon. They compromised and went to Vegas instead.

( Marya's dad couldn't understand how Las Vegas could be a compromise )

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note: the precious moments park and chapel does indeed exist. i have not been there, tho. it actually looks a little creepy, in a relentlessly cheerful and sunshiny twee kind of way.

Being the only person driving around town, or walking around the neighborhood, was eerie and unsettling and wrong. Being the only person on the highway, though, that was almost scary. Marya had gone out and about on Christmas Day and Easter, apparently the only two times of year that she could drive around and not see a single other person, but eventually you'd see someone else somewhere doing something. (If it was Christmas, you might see a hundred or so of them at the movie theater, waiting in line or waiting for the movie to start.) But there was always another vehicle on the highway. Even in the middle of the night you'd see long-haul truckers and state troopers and people who wanted to drive until they were almost asleep at the wheel, at which point they'd pull off the next exit and find a motel.

And during the day? There were always people on the highway.

( Now she was definitely convinced that the end of the world was at hand. )

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cross country map (more or less)

Marya woke up at 6:30 - an absurd early morning hour - for no reason she could see, other than sunlight coming in through the curtains, which she had apparently forgotten to close all the way the night before. But there was no sudden noise, no drop or increase in temperature, nothing strange in her dreams - she didn't normally remember them anyway - and Oscar hadn't so much as twitched. And she hadn't bothered to set her alarm. She blinked at the clock, thought about going back to sleep, remembered that she had to pack her van and start across the country, and rolled out of bed. Oscar went from fast asleep to wide awake in no time flat and jumped off the bed to follow her into the bathroom.

( After she was finished in the bathroom, she went into the kitchen )

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"This is weird," she said out loud to Oscar. Her neighborhood suddenly seemed a little creepier.

In the event of am emergency, Oscar would be useless as defense but at least she had the flashlight, which was hefty enough to use as a weapon in case something jumped out at her. Not that she had any idea what that something might be.... She figured the chances of running into another human being were slim to none, unless Annette and Phil were also out for a walk, and she really didn't want to think about what other random creatures might be wandering around her neighborhood. The strange cat that wasn't really a cat, from yesterday, was creepy enough, and it was just about cat-sized. Marya wasn't interested in the possibility of finding something larger.

( She walked down to Annette and Phil's house and was relieved to see what was probably candlelight inside. )

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