Inferno Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

I wanted to say church might help, but her pretty, tragic words hushed me.

  How much of her pain was losing her leg? How much of it was Crete’s death? We had been the same age, Crete and me. I’d grow older. She wouldn’t.

  Shame on me, but I didn’t want to talk to Sharlotte about Lucretia Macaby.

  (ii)

  Using the tin can phone I’d julie-rigged, I called Micaiah down. We left the thrift store, and I pushed Sharlotte down the street in the wheelchair we’d salvaged. She wore a dress, but it didn’t suit her; it was far too baggy, and the flowery-print strained the eye.

  The sun smoked down into the western sky, ending the day, and we had about a half an hour before dark. Pilate promised he’d skip the homily, so I figured Mass would only be about twenty minutes.

  Micaiah, Pilate, and Wren all walked with rifles over their shoulders. It was ironic that we were so well-armed to go to church and listen to the words of a pacifist, crucified ’cause he said we should love each other.

  There were other, nicer churches, but Wren insisted we had to go to a consecrated place, which meant the Catholic church, a normal house that had been converted into a mission. If she’d been more reasonable, we could’ve just done it in the desert. But no.

  She jimmied the door open to get us inside. Micaiah stayed on the street. “I’m going to keep watch. I wouldn’t feel comfortable in there.”

  I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I understand, but I’m going to make a Christian out of you yet.”

  He grinned. “You’ll try.”

  “Weller girls don’t try,” I grinned back. “Weller girls do or die.”

  “That’s a common misquotation of ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade.’ It’s do and die.”

  I kissed him again. “Not for us. Not tonight.” I left him but turned around and caught him sizing me up with his soft blue eyes. “And don’t correct your girlfriend. You won’t win that game. I guarantee it.”

  Wren met me just inside the door. “Cavvy, come on. Church is starting.”

  I couldn’t help it. I hugged her. “I love you, Wren. You said you’d change. And this? This is quite a change.”

  She stiffened and eased me away. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just don’t tease me about it. I have my reasons.”

  I was sure she did.

  Wren led me around the corner into a living room redecorated as a chapel. A hardwood floor gleamed, polished to a shine. Pews lined up facing an altar. The sun had roasted the air inside, so even with the windows open, it was hot. The yellowed lace drapes seemed too lazy to move in the slight breeze blowing a stagnant smell off the fabric.

  Wren and I sat down, with me in the middle and Sharlotte to my left, her head down, hair so greasy, heart so broken.

  Pilate walked out of a little room in the back, the sacristy. He was in full vestments, and dang, I couldn’t take him seriously. I wanted to tease him for wearing a dress, but I didn’t want to take anything away from Wren.

  Pilate raised his hands and we all stood. Then he crossed himself and said, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  When he blessed us, we said, “And also with your spirit,” and it felt like a real Mass. Wren knew all the responses, every word, every gesture. I kept looking askance at her. Really? Did she believe now?

  I kept a hand on Sharlotte like I would a fussy baby. We stood, we sat, we kneeled. I did the readings, Pilate did the gospel, and he even sang in a bad voice, “Through Her, with Her, and in Her, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Mother, for ever and ever.”

  He’d changed the gender, but I hardly noticed. Wren didn’t seem to either. Father, Mother, isn’t it about the same at the end of the day? As long as we’re loved by a power greater than ourselves.

  Pilate had found some of the old Communion wafers, and he walked forward to give us the Eucharist. Wren took it and crossed herself. When it was my turn, I chewed the little round piece of bread. Taking Communion from my biological father, now that I knew who he was, made me cry. Couldn’t help it. Tears fell down my face and onto the floor.

  Then Sharlotte shattered the moment into pieces.

  When Pilate went to give Sharlotte Communion, she struck the wafer out of Pilate’s hand. “This don’t mean nothing. Pilate ain’t no priest, and this church is just some old house, and God don’t care, and I hope He’s dead in heaven, rotting on His throne. I hope that jackerdan is dead, ’cause if He isn’t, I’d kill Him for His sins. And never stop.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. No. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  “Sharlotte,” I whispered. “Don’t ruin this.” Too late for that. A bad energy filled the holy space of the little church.

  Pilate bent, picked up the host, and held it high above him, reverently.

  We all froze, watching, to see what he would do. In the heat of the day blistering the new night, with sweat on his face, he nodded, “Of course God is dead, Sharlotte.”

  My shock deepened, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I could feel Wren tense as well, but she didn’t yell or fight.

  Sharlotte slashed Pilate apart with her eyes.

  He continued. “Of course God is dead. This is all a sham, a sideshow, a piece of bad dinner theater two thousand years old and feeling every ridiculous minute of it.” He shouted into the church, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?”

  His voice rang out; a deep silence followed. “You see, we don’t get words from heaven. We don’t get any sort of comfort for our troubles. All we get is silence. But listen.”

  We did. Even Sharlotte. Didn’t hear a thing. Somehow, it got even quieter as we strained to hear something.

  Then Pilate’s voice. “Do you hear that?”

  “I don’t hear a goddamn thing,” Sharlotte muttered.

  “No, what do you hear?” Pilate asked again.

  “Nothing!” Sharlotte yelled.

  “Don’t be stupid! What do you hear?” Pilate yelled back at her. The holy host was lost in his fist.

  “The only thing I hear is you!” Sharlotte shouted.

  “Yes!” Pilate roared. “And you. We are here. You and I. And Wren, and Cavvy, and Micaiah outside. We are here. And I say unto thee, wherever two or more are gathered in Jesus’s name, He is here, among us. Here, we celebrate our voices in the silence. God is dead. There is silence. We speak. God is risen. ‘And He will rise again, in fulfillment of the scriptures.’ Like you will rise again, Sharlotte. Like Wren did. Even Rachel Vixx rose from the dead. We celebrate the life and the resurrection, not in some nonsensical afterlife, but here, now, today. Or all of this really does mean nothing. Will you make some noise with us, Sharlotte? Or did you die when we cut off your leg?”

  New tears streamed down my face.

  How could Pilate believe what he did? And could those beliefs reach my sister in her tomb?

  He kneeled down in front of my sister. “Eat with us. Be with us. Join us and be a voice in the silence. You don’t need a leg for that.” He opened his palm to reveal the crushed bit of bread.

  Sharlotte regarded the Communion wafer. For a second, I thought she might once again strike it to the floor. But when she reached, her hands trembled, and she took the host and put it to her lips. Sobs seized her. We all gathered around her, held her while she cried. Her teardrops pattered on the floor.

  And that was our Communion. We were bread for her and for one another, which is the whole point. We eat the Bread of Life so that we might be bread for others.

  Voices in the silence.

  Micaiah broke through the doors. Fear paled him. Behind him ran Rachel. Soot blackened every inch of her skin, hair, and clothes.

  Outside rose the rumble of war machines.

  A dozen ARK vehicles, including numerous M1 Acevedo tanks with long turrets, roared past the windows down Main Street. The tanks, named after a war hero from the Sino, possessed enough firepower to reduce the entire town to rubble.

&nb
sp; Chapter Twelve

  So much water

  In teardrops falling

  An ocean inside us

  Always calling

  — Pearl Cornell

  (i)

  WE ALL TURNED ON WREN.

  For one awful moment, I thought she might follow through on her promise to shoot Rachel.

  But then Wren motioned for us to follow her. She dashed into the sacristy and pushed aside a remnant of yellow shag carpet. Underneath was a trapdoor which led to a crawlspace below.

  We bustled down through the hole, helping Sharlotte. Wren came last and pulled the carpet into place so when she closed the door it would lay flat.

  Only Sharlotte’s wheelchair was left behind.

  Ribbons of dim light from the dying day illuminated the chipped concrete of the foundation, the dirt floor, the cobwebs. The dirt under our feet smelled musty, like a graveyard.

  Truck and tank engines grumbled outside. Doors slammed. Voices muttered in a muffle. Footsteps clacked into the church, echoing above us. Pilate hadn’t lit candles, or they would’ve smelled the lingering smoke. Shouldn’t have been any signs, but something bothered me. Something other than the wheelchair.

  I grabbed Sharlotte’s hand. Then I remembered the tears, Sharlotte’s tears, my tears, had dropped on the floor. If they saw our tears on the hardwood floor, they would know someone had been there. And what about the shouting? Had they heard Pilate and Sharlotte? What if they had sent soldiers on foot to recon the town in secret?

  I wanted to warn Pilate and Wren, but I couldn’t.

  The only thing I could do was hold Sharlotte’s hand tighter. And pray. Pray with all my might while we crouched in the gloom.

  Footsteps. A pause. More footsteps. It sounded like Hitler’s Stormtroopers marching around. Someone walked into the sacristy. Dust shook down from the trapdoor.

  An ARK soldier stood not two meters above us.

  From the front part of the church, a woman called out. “Bravo Four. Report.”

  Wren’s face curled in a snarl. Hiding was not in her nature. But I think she also knew we were pinned down. Those tanks could blast the house down and bury us.

  I looked at Pilate and saw he had a hand over his mouth. He was trying not to cough.

  If he coughed, we were dead.

  The soldier above shuffled a bit. Rachel’s back was to me. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew what she was feeling. Her shoulders, her whole body, trembled. Fear owned her, but she was fighting it to stay quiet.

  “Bravo Four. Report.”

  Pilate didn’t believe in an interventionist God, but I had to believe there was some loving force in the universe, and whatever that was, it loved me. Loved us all.

  I prayed to that force, pleading that the ARK soldiers wouldn’t see our teardrops on the floor. How horrible would that be? To be betrayed by our tears.

  I prayed Pilate wouldn’t cough. And I prayed Rachel didn’t snap and start screaming angrily at her terror or let it overwhelm her in loud sobs.

  Tina Machinegun hung off my shoulder. I didn’t sling it around ’cause going out in a blaze of glory wouldn’t mean much. So what if we killed a few Regios along the way?

  Something Wren said drifted through my mind ... something about ducking the ARK, and if we could hide while they passed by, they would lose our trail. This was our chance to lose them.

  As long as the soldier above us didn’t see our tears or hear Pilate’s cough.

  The ARK soldier shuffled again. She knew things weren’t right. She didn’t answer the command to report ’cause she was trying hard to sniff us out.

  Sharlotte and I locked eyes. She wasn’t that sullen, ghost of a woman she’d been. Wren had been right to push Pilate to say Mass. If we were all to die, at least I’d die with my sister restored, my family together and whole, even Rachel.

  Micaiah moved next to me, silently, and I relaxed into him.

  Rachel turned. Her lips trembled. Her eyes couldn’t be wider.

  I nodded at her. She nodded back.

  “Bravo Four. Report. Now.” The voice broke angrily to echo through the church.

  This was it. Guns in hand, Pilate and Wren stared at the ceiling. Pilate dropped his hand, grimaced, his chest moving. He was coughing as quietly as he possibly could. I couldn’t hear it. Could the Regio?

  My heart stopped.

  Not a second later...

  “Clear.” The soldier standing on the trapdoor moved off.

  We sat in the dark, shifted to get a little more comfortable, and Pilate swallowed the rest of his coughs.

  I thought we’d wait there for hours.

  Rachel moved over to us. Sweat streaked the soot on her cheeks.

  “Where have you been?” Wren asked in the quietist of voices.

  “Distraction. Evasion,” Rachel whispered. “I was able to fully integrate my new imperatives to be kind, become part of the family, and protect the family. Get Micah Hoyt and the chalkdrive out of the Juniper to collect the reward money and save the ranch.”

  Pilate smiled at her. “And who said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?” He took off his vestments and left them in a pile on the floor.

  “We can’t stay here.” Rachel had to stop, to swallow, to work her mouth and get through her anxiety. “I’ve been contemplating the various strategies the ARK command will use. Most likely, satellite images confirmed your location in Green River. They’ll search the city thoroughly, then leave sentries in this and other major cities. Some will look like soldiers, others like civilians, and they’ll wait for us to move through. They’ll be stationed in pairs or threes, so when they do pinpoint our location, one or more can run to posts stationed around the Juniper.”

  “Rachel’s right,” Wren said. “We have to make a run for it. If they find the canoes, they’ll know we’re here. But if we can get to the river and get away, good luck finding us in the dark on a river in the middle of nowhere.”

  The Green River was only about a half kilometer away, and there were plenty of houses and cover to get to it, but going out there, into the streets, felt like courting death. We wouldn’t make it. We couldn’t.

  Not with Sharlotte in her condition.

  Not with Wren. Who said exactly what I expected her to say. “I’ll draw their fire. You get to the canoes.”

  “No,” Sharlotte said. “The whole point of this is to sneak away. If they see even one of us, they’ll know we passed through. If they don’t see anyone, they won’t know jack.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Welcome back, Shar.”

  She squeezed me back. “I love you, Cavvy, but you can’t take me. I’d slow you down too much.”

  The evil thoughts were creeping back into her eyes. She’d climbed halfway out of her grave of despair, but she wasn’t all the way out yet.

  Turning my back on Pilate, not wanting to argue with him, I pressed my cheek to Sharlotte’s. “I won’t leave you, Sharlotte. We have to live in faith, not fear.” I drew back. “This is what we’re going to do. Rachel, Wren, and Pilate can scout ahead. Micaiah and I can push Sharlotte in the wheelchair. If we’re quiet and careful, we might be able to sneak past them.”

  “If they catch us, well, I’ll kill every last one of them skanks.” Wren grinned. “Me and Rachel don’t care none about bullets, do we, Rache?”

  Rachel shook her head quickly, but she had her lips pressed tightly together. She looked like she could run, but fight? Hardly. I had the idea that her fighting days were behind her. Quite a change since the last time we were together.

  Lights blazed through every crack, every window, every bit of the basement. Not just troops, but at least one zeppelin was using a searchlight to flush us out.

  I glanced at Wren.

  “That blimpy don’t change a thing,” she whispered. “Just have to be that much more careful.”

  (ii)

  Once the searchlight moved off the house, Wren and Rachel climbed out of the crawlspace. Their gear creaked
, their boots squeaked, and the backdoor opened and closed. Rachel had gone ahead, but Wren returned to fill the top of the trapdoor. She stuck a hand down and threw signals. Pilate could read them without a problem. He nodded at me, Sharlotte, and Micaiah.

  My heart hammered my lungs into my spine as the adrenaline hit—it all became crystal clear. I could smell the dusty dirt under us, the engines running hot, the cool of the river, and the odor of the night coming. It was like I could hear the tread of the boots tromping down Main Street.

  Wren took off running as quietly as she could, but I could hear her boots as well. Pilate went up first, then Micaiah, and they helped me with Sharlotte. Wren had brought the wheelchair from the other room, which the soldier must have thought was just another relic of a dying town laid to waste by history.

  Pilate picked up the wheelchair, Micaiah and I carried Sharlotte, and silently we opened the back door and stepped out. The sun was gone, but the sky clung to the last bit of fading light, painting the world in cornflower blues and black shadows. Except where the zeppelin’s searchlight glimmered. It had moved on east. For now.

  Wren was on the roof of a house on the way to the river. She waved her hands; we had to go quickly—now or never.

  Plopping Sharlotte into the wheelchair, we pushed her across the asphalt and into a little alley between the houses. Wren put up a hand. We froze.

  Pilate drew us up against the wall. An Acevedo tank crawled past on squealing treads. We waited, sweating, and my breath came in gasps. I had to remind myself I was with Pilate and Wren. If anyone could sneak a half kilometer across enemy territory, it was them.

  A second zeppelin searched the west side of town, moving slowly toward us. The magnesium searchlight sputtered and sparked, sending circles of light across the rooftops. Eyes in the sky to match the eyes on the ground.

  Wren threw more signals. Pilate dashed across the street. With Sharlotte in the wheelchair, Micaiah and I followed as fast as we could, until we hit a wooden fence of splintery planks, waist-high. Rachel helped Sharlotte over, and we gave her the wheelchair. Wren sped off to recon the next street. We piled over the fence. Splinters dug into my skin, old nails groaned in protest, but we made it. Coast was clear, so we kept moving.