Cincinnati Apocalypse Part 3

"That explains the camouflage uniforms, I guess."

Attired again, Willow gave her friend from days past an arch look. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Riley returned.

"I guess we all have a lot of explaining to do."

"Not me," Kennedy said.

"Or me," Riley's wife agreed.

Riley introduced his wife, Michelle, to the lesbians, and Willow introduced Kennedy to Riley and both herself and Kennedy to Michelle, explaining, "She's a Slayer."

"Another one?" Riley asked.

"The world's full of them these days," Willow remarked. "I guess you and I have a lot of explaining to do," Willow told Riley.

"Ladies first," the ex-commando said.

Ahead, a waterfall roared as the great canoe rode the clanking chain up Splash Mountain's final, longest, steepest incline, and the passengers cringed, gritted their teeth, closed their eyes, gripped the bars that ran alongside the inner walls of their vehicle, and waited, with bated breath, for the moment at which their conveyance would tip, plummeting headlong down the 85-foot-long plume.

Sitting in front of Buffy and Nathan, Dawn held the front of her tank top, just over her nipples, between the thumbs and curled forefingers of each hand, awaiting her cue.

The hollowed-out log canoe clanked its way to the top of the sloped track, having left the winding waterway that it had followed through the mostly dark, cavernous interior of the artificial mountain. Then, as it settled back into the plummeting channel of water with a slap and a splash, a chorus of screams, half joyous and half terrified, shattered the expectant stillness. Flashbulbs exploded, and Dawn lifted her top, exposing her small, teenage breasts to the cameras hidden over the attraction's exit.

The log in which she and her fellow passengers rode streaked downward, blurring the boulders and plants and spraying water they passed and the crowds milling and strolling and standing around the gigantic theme park below.