Marisol and Rachel had already fled the Audrey. Both climbed out of the pit on shaky legs. Sharlotte and I followed.
The loader’s backhoe towered over us. It had smashed Audrey into the pit, but dang it, Rachel had been too close. What had she been thinking?
Sharlotte, Marisol, and Rachel ran for the shelter of the loader’s metal, but I paused, pondering how I’d get the Marilyn and the Audrey out of the tiger hole trap, until machine gun bullets chewed up the dirt around me. I fled across the street and into the rat’s maze of a mall, partially destroyed, completely tore up, but not salvaged.
The mall had been converted into houses for the town. I ran through a nursery, stepping on a baby doll as I went. All the pink, from the comforter on the crib to a needle-point picture on the wall, had been blackened by the war and trouble.
Maybe I hadn’t stepped on a baby doll, but an actual baby. Didn’t stop to look. Didn’t really want to know.
“Cavvy!” a familiar voice called.
Dutch. He’d taken shelter there. He waved me over, leading me into a basement shop so dark it looked like a place where light went to die.
Gray dust covered his face. His fancy fringed leather jacket had blackened from the snow melting off him. His backpack of ammo was slung over his shoulder still, and he seemed okay. But what was he doing down here?
And could I trust him?
He stood in the darkness, waiting to lead me on. But lead me where?
Then I heard the stomping combat boots behind me. Regios, coming for us.
I fled down through a cracked concrete hallway, and we disappeared into the dark, but not before I glanced behind me. My boots had tracked in a trail of mud. They’d bring those soldier girls right to us. I turned and saw them.
Six Regios were crouched in the baby’s room, AZ3s close to their chests, their white camouflage not hiding a thing. It made them glow. I slipped off Eryn Lopez’s pink down coat. In my black wool sweater and skirt, I’d blend in better with the shadows.
Dutch pulled me over behind a big dresser. We were in someone’s bedroom, a woman’s, and her perfume must’ve fallen ’cause I could smell its sweet lingering.
Adrenaline sharpened my senses.
My eyes scooped up every bit of light from outside, and I knew we could see out but them Regios couldn’t see in. I was close enough to Dutch to feel his heat and to smell him, that man smell. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it.
“What’s the plan?” I asked in a hiss.
“We wait, little sister,” Dutch whispered. “They’ll come. They saw our footy-prints. And when they all crowd in, we blow the crapperjack out of them.”
“What were you doing down here?” I asked. “How come you weren’t out there, helping our people?”
Dutch sighed. “Dammit, Cavvy, you’re going to have to trust me at some point. Did you choose to walk your Stanley into that hole? No. In battle, things happen. I got pinned down, and I ran in here to get away.”
“Shhh, we don’t want them to hear us,” I whispered.
“Yes, we do,” Dutch said. The little light reflected off his grin. “We want them to hear us whispering, planning. They’ll think we’re scared, so scared, and they’ll get overconfident. When they come in, you stay low and take ’em out on the right. I’ll stand and give them a nice target and take ’em out on the left. See? I can play the self-sacrifice game. So, when are you going to trust me?”
“When you do something trustworthy,” I said.
“Shush now,” Dutch said abruptly. He pulled me down behind the dresser. Our boots scratched in the glass below us. It seemed so loud.
Dutch turned my head to a mirror hanging on the wall. A woman’s dressing mirror. The top half had survived the bombing, and in its reflection, we saw the doorway. We saw the Regios.
One was at the entrance to the basement room. She was coming in, slowly, and I knew we’d have to wait, wait until they all crept into the darkness. Then we’d start shooting.
More killing.
Thou shalt not kill.
If that’s true, God, why did you give me a trigger finger and limited choices?
Us or them.
Pilate’s ten-second boot camp.
It was us or them.
A second Regio crept behind the first. They were spread out. Well-trained, but then, of course they were. Wasn’t like the Regios had learned bridge or Canasta or Texas hold ’em. Their only skill sets were combat and murder. Born, bred, and trained for one purpose: to follow their imperatives.
A third Regio entered.
The first had passed us. My heart hammered insanely in my ears. My breath came quick, and to me it seemed so loud. So, I tried not to breathe. Then my heart got louder.
It was like I could feel the blood pulsing through my veins.
Sweat dripped from my nose. I wanted to shoot her, right in the back, but we had to wait. Had to wait.
It was a long room, longer than I first thought. Back in the day, it would’ve been a ski shop, prolly, selling warm clothes to the rich so they could zoom down the slopes on plastic. From what I heard, it had been hundreds of dollars a pop to ski down through the snow. It sounded like throwing money away on just a few minutes’ fun.
Focus. Had to focus. Had to keep my breathing quiet. Had to stay perfectly still.
It was awful. It was pressure and tension crushing down on me like I was under an ocean of fear and hate.
Finally, the fifth one stepped into the room. Then the sixth. It was time.
Dutch knew it, too. He stood up. “Remember, Cavvy, always, always, always ...”
I didn’t let him finish. Crouched, I triggered my rifle. The recoil bashed the stock into my shoulder, but in the muzzle flash, I saw the surprise of that first Regio, near the mirror, turning. Too late.
My bullets took her down. Used too many bullets. Dang. My empty shell casings rained in a tinkle onto the floor.
Dutch fired. The noise of the gunfire left my ears ringing and damaged, so loud. Those rifles and all that noise, so loud in an enclosed space. It sounded like the Devil screaming obscenities in my ear.
The second Regio fired at me and concrete bits flecked onto my cheek.
I changed my aim and took her down as well, using the rest of my clip. More music of shell casings.
Dutch’s AZ3 pounded and pounded and pounded.
My MG21 clicked empty.
“Gotta reload!” I hollered.
“Gotcha covered.” Dutch maneuvered around me, to protect me with his body. I was pinned between him and the dresser. I ejected the old clip and slammed in a new one.
Memories of Mama and our battle with Queenie came to me, but then the adrenaline winged them away.
I pulled the action, chambered a round, and I was ready. “Loaded!”
Dutch rolled across the floor. He had his Colt Terminators out, and he came up in a crouch. I swept the doorway with rounds and took out another Regio. I turned, and the last of the Regios was near the mirror, her white suit so bright in the darkness.
I fired and hit her in the leg, then the side, then the shoulder. She didn’t drop. She aimed at me.
I was fixing to shoot her through the skull when my gun jammed. It happens, even with fine assault rifles.
In the dark, I felt for the empty shell blocking the action even though I knew it was too late. The last Regio had me in her gunsights. “The chalkdrive. Where is it?”
“Wrong question, wrong answer,” Dutch laughed. “Cavvy, baby, always get ’em right between the eyes.”
He fired, and the last of the Regios dropped to her knees. A red hole marked her forehead.
She slumped over.
Our fight was over for the moment. Too bad my mind had come apart, jarred loose by the raging turmoil inside.
(iii)
Like before, the shakes took me. My ears screamed, and I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel. All I wanted in the world was to clear the jam, but I couldn’t see.
I gritted
my teeth and cursed, “Goddamn thing.”
Dutch came over. “Come on, Cavvy,” he said gently.
“I have to fix it. My jackering gun jammed, and I have to jackering fix it. Goddammit.” My muddied mind was insanely set on clearing the jam, but it did allow one memory through: Mama, during our fight with Queenie, and what she had said: If you keep jacking up, we’re all gonna die.
“I ain’t jacking things up,” I growled. “I did my part. Killed three. And I would’ve gotten that last one, but I got unlucky.”
I was out of my mind, surely.
Dutch gently eased the MG21 out of my hands. “It’s okay, Cavatica. We got ’em. You did great. It’s okay now.”
I blinked, tried to think. But my ears, the ringing, the fight, the guns, waiting for those last two Regios to get into the room so we could ambush them ...
I couldn’t stop shaking, and I couldn’t stop my racing mind and, I felt like I was teetering on the edge of sanity.
Dutch grabbed me and held me, stroked my hair.
I was hyperventilating, and yet I couldn’t get a breath in through the shakes and the horror.
“It’s okay, Cavatica, it’ll be okay. I’m with you. We’re alive. And if I know Wren, she’s killed all the rest and is prolly eating a can of beans right about now. You Wellers are tough, toughest sisters in the Juniper. It’s okay. It’s okay. We got ’em all.”
On and on he went until my heart slowed, my mind came to a rest, and I could step away from him. I’d lost it completely.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t want you see me like that.”
“How old are you?” Dutch asked in a low voice, full of compassion.
“Seventeen. Just turned.” My hands started to shake again. I made fists to stop them.
“Girlfriend, you’re seventeen years old, and you just ambushed a squad of highly-trained super soldiers. You shake, you cry, you do what you need to do. And don’t you apologize. Sometimes this world gives us too much to swallow. Sometimes it gives us no choice but to choke on all the crapperjack. You survived. That’s the important thing. You survived. And I did, too.” Dutch walked out into the middle of the room. Gunpowder hung like a mist in the basement room. The smell of it brought back a million memories.
I felt a grin crack my face. “Always get ’em right between the eyes, eh, Dutch?”
“That’s right, baby,” Dutch said, laughing. “That’s exactly right.”
I grabbed my dumb pink coat, but before I left, I opened a drawer in the dresser. The woman’s brassieres were there in a pile. I grabbed two, one for me, and one for my sister.
Dang wool sweater was killing me, and I prayed they’d work. In the end, they did just fine.
Dutch and I walked out of the basement room, and the air was silent.
Finally, I had enough light to fix the jam on my rifle. Like I’d thought, the empty had failed to eject. I used my Betty knife to pry it out, and the action snapped closed. I chambered another round, and I was ready for the next battle.
But there was no more war that evening.
Edger was tied to the backhoe. Around her stood Sharlotte, Wren, Rachel, and Marisol.
Dutch and I walked out of the mall to join them.
Wren’s face was wan. “She doesn’t have Pilate. Never did. Goddammit.”
I shut my eyes in a wince.
My heart crumbled into dry snow.
Chapter Six
Fiesta time for the poor in need
I have a party of five up my sleeve
Play the music loud and never stop
We’re all just balloons bound to pop
—Al Stainback and the New Developments
(i)
THE SNOW HAD STOPPED for a minute, but the clouds promised more, a lot more. Night was coming down, bringing a curtain of mute cold. And our main modes of transportation lay trapped in a pit.
Edger watched me approach with hate on her face. The Regios had the neurochemicals that gave them emotions. I loved that she could hate me ’cause it made our victory all that much sweeter.
Only it wasn’t a victory. We’d escaped with our lives, but lost Pilate and Micaiah in the process.
Wren paced, cursed, threw her fists at heaven.
Sharlotte held Marisol, who cried into her belly—releasing tension after the fight, no doubt. My big sister had wiped her face clean of the blood from the gash in her scalp. She spoke in a calm voice. “We managed to pin Edger down, stun her with a 40mm grenade. It should’ve killed her.”
We knew why it didn’t. Edger had been dosed with the Gulo Delta, like Wren.
I walked up to Edger and studied her face. Her nose was bigger, her lips bigger, and her cheek bones stretched her skin. A thin beard covered her huge jawbones. Micaiah had warned us the Gulo Gamma had brought on mutations. The ARK’s tests on the Gulo Delta hadn’t shown those results, but then there hadn’t been any long-term studies.
Edger was changing, as was Wren. But how much time did we have with my sister before she turned completely? And what would she turn into?
Praetor Gianna Edger glared at me.
Wren took to yelling. “Killed the rest of those skanks but had to blow up their Humvee and troop carrier to do it. And Edger here, we got her tied her up. At first, we thought she might be lying about Pilate and Micaiah, but she’s not. She was sent to look for us. Dammit. Goddammit.”
I asked Edger, “So do you have any idea where Pilate and Micaiah are?”
“No,” she said, gritting her teeth.
I continued my questioning. “And that killdeer trap, with the zeppelin. You caught our scent, chasing us, and led us into a trap. Only we beat you, destroyed your tank, put you on the run.”
“Yes.”
I smiled, then grew pensive. “And Aspen? The ARK did this, didn’t they?”
Edger started breathing hard, pulling at her ropes. “We will do anything to retrieve the chalkdrive. We will burn the Juniper until it is a true wasteland. We will level cities. We will murder children. We will follow our imperatives.”
“They fought back, didn’t they?” I asked. “The people in Aspen fought back.”
I didn’t expect an answer.
I could put the pieces together. The ARK would’ve started rounding up folks, to question them, and when these hard Juniper women fought back, the ARK brought the wrath of Satan down. Burned out their town. Murdered their children. Like what Edger had said.
“Do you have the cure?” Edger asked. “If you tell me you have the chalkdrive, I will tell you what happened to Aspen.”
“Micaiah and Pilate have the chalkdrive,” I lied. “Looks like our plan worked. We were the decoy, and you followed us. Poor, pitiful you.”
Edger went white. She believed me. Ha.
Then she fell into a caterwauling rant, spit flecking her thick lips. “You will lose, Cavatica Weller. You will die. When we do not report back, the ARK will know you are planning to cross Independence Pass. You will be found. You will be killed.”
Unhinged, full of a violence I’d not seen before, Edger threw her weight against the ropes. The nylon cord holding her was old. It snapped.
She took two steps toward me, reaching for my throat.
Gunfire.
Two holes opened in her skull—twin holes right between her eyes.
She made a gurgling noise and fell flat on her face.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” Dutch muttered.
“Well,” Wren answered, “she was so interested in my bullets back at the Scheutz ranch, I figured she needed a Winchester 9mm as a keepsake.”
Wren and Dutch slapped hands and said in unison, “Always, always, always, get ’em right between the eyes.”
At the sound of the pistols, Marisol yelped, and now she cried harder as Sharlotte held her. Poor girl, to witness such bloodshed, to be thrust into our war, now an orphan. Another orphan girl in the Juniper. Throw a rock. You’re bound to hit one.
I bent down and felt for a pulse. No
, Gianna Edger was dead and going cold. I thought once we’d finished her off, I’d feel a sense of accomplishment. But I didn’t. It felt like nothing much at all.
’Cause she was just one piece of a vast machinery of treachery and murder. Tibbs Hoyt would replace her as easily as I could replace a bad hose on a steam engine.
It was a blow, not finding our boys, but the snow slacked off, and we were left in silence even as the last bit of light faded into night.
(ii)
There was no help for it. We couldn’t wrestle our Stanleys out of the tiger pit in the darkness, and I could hardly think. We’d been running hard to get our boys, and we still had more running to do. I’d gotten what I wanted: we were the hunted again, not the hunters, and like Edger had said, the ARK was coming.
We retreated into the mall-turned-apartments and made a camp inside the pink baby’s room. No dead babies there; I’d stepped on a doll. Not sure why, but I gently lifted the ragged cloth and chipped plastic baby and held it close to my chest while Sharlotte built a fire in a little julie-rigged fireplace. The Aspen women had built a chimney, so we were warm at least. Around us was bare concrete where there wasn’t baby gear: a bassinet, a changing table, cloth diapers strewn about, more dolls, stuffed animals, and pink quilts.
Our spirits were low. Rachel wasn’t crying, but she looked like someone had struck her hard. Every so often, Marisol would collapse into sobbing. Sharlotte held her. Wren’s jaws were so tight she might turn one of her teeth into a diamond from the pressure. We were all sitting. My gunslinger sister wasn’t. Instead, she paced like a caged animal awaiting a lethal injection.
It was Dutch who finally brought up our situation. He hadn’t been privy to our plans before. “So, since we didn’t find your boys, I reckon we are going to turn around and head back to I-70. Maybe they went west with this cure our friend Edger mentioned. Maybe they tried to cross the Rockies up near Steamboat Springs.”
Wren froze at the mention of the cure, and I thought she might spill the beans about my lie, but she kept her mouth closed. And continued to pace.
“Sorry, Dutch,” I said, hugging the doll against the chalkdrive on my chest. “We’re heading over Independence Pass to Leadville. Then we’ll drop down to I-70. What’s done is done. We’ll pray for Pilate and Micaiah.”
Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) Page 7
