Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4)

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Another woman was taken away, another woman taken down, passed around, and we sang for her, sang out thirteen bottles of beer on the wall. Thirteen women left in the DQ.

  Hours, songs, jokes, memories, and we laughed and laughed as the night hid the horror show outside. That was outside. Inside our DQ was music and laughter and hope ’cause we weren’t about to stop believin’.

  Each time the door opened, someone else volunteered to go ’cause they wanted to make sure I was last. If I had any chance to save them, I’d have to be the last one, waiting for a miracle.

  Finally, it was just me and LaTanya, sitting there. Two bottles of beer on the wall, two bottles of beer ...

  “How could you find the courage to sing?” I asked her. “And before, you were joking even after all your friends were dead. How can that be?”

  She shrugged and looked at me warmly. “I’m New Morality. I’m a Christian. Death isn’t the end, Cavatica. It’s only the beginning. My soul has been washed clean in the blood of Jesus, and I don’t have anything to fear.”

  I searched her face. She wasn’t kidding. She was still a true believer. She was like I had been for months, until I started breaking commandments like walnut shells and eating up all my sins.

  She then quoted from Matthew, the whole thing, from memory. “‘Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?’”

  Too bad Tibbs Hoyt hadn’t read his Bible more. Again, I thought of Rachel and the Christian story of hope and meaning.

  After a long silence, LaTanya asked, “Cavatica, are you Christian?”

  Was I? I didn’t know. But I let a big ol’ grin cover my face and misquoted some song I’d forgotten the name of. “I sure am tonight, ma’am.”

  She leaned over and gave me a big hug.

  “I’ll pray for you,” she whispered.

  “Not sure He’ll listen,” I whispered back. I was Pilate’s daughter, my daddy a rogue priest who killed people and quoted scripture doing it. Maybe God didn’t listen to prayers about people like him and people like me.

  “He will,” LaTanya promised. “He will deliver you, and you’ll come back with a cure.”

  The door opened.

  We both stood. One last hug.

  “Thanks, LaTanya,” I said. “Thanks for the songs.” No tears in my eyes, but she had enough in her eyes for the both of us.

  “Two little bottles of beer on the wall, two little bottles of beer ...” she sang in a choked voice.

  One last touch, one last time holding hands, and she was led out of the room, leaving me alone.

  “One woman on the wall,” I whispered. “One woman on the wall.”

  Never in my life had I been in an emptier room. Never before had I felt so alone.

  Minutes crawled like a dying girl begging for death.

  An hour went by.

  They would be coming for me at any minute.

  Then the back door opened. Outside it was inky with darkness, the dawn hours away.

  Alice grinned at me. “You come now, ’Teeca. We run. All the hogs are sleeping. Alice waited until you were alone. Clever Alice.”

  I grinned back at her. She dug out Eryn Lopez’s socks and cross-country boots and handed them over. I slipped them on. Damn boots. Thank God for ’em. And thank God for Alice.

  We snuck out into the cold, but I hadn’t gone two steps when I found myself flung over Alice’s shoulder one more time as she started running down a deserted Colfax, strewn with filth, trash, and lost salvage. The Vail Recreation District bag bounced along with me, strapped to Alice.

  I saw the bodies of two hogs Alice must’ve killed, but no one else.

  Didn’t see any of my friends from the DQ, didn’t know what happened to them, but then, I would come back for them. Oh yes, I would.

  Another imperative.

  I was determined. Then Alice pushed a strip of EMAT onto my skin and my head went blissfully floaty again.

  Another imperative? What other imperative? I only had one.

  (iii)

  I skated around on the ice covering my crippled little stick of a heart. Alice ran down Colfax with me on her shoulder. Not sure how she saw anything, it was closet-dark. Around us were just the shadows of houses, salvaged down to their foundations, and then we headed north past the old zoo. I thought about all the stories we’d heard about Denver being overrun with lions and tigers and exotic animals, but most likely they’d been killed by Outlaw Warlords or finally eaten by hogs in the last few months.

  Alice dripped sweat on me while she ran, and her stink became so powerful I thought I’d never smell anything ever again. She grunted with exhaustion, but she didn’t stop. Her growls got louder. I had trouble breathing, and my stomach was jounced up and down as she stormed along. Finally, I asked her to let me down so I could try running.

  In the darkness, the dirt road was just a bit lighter between two strips of white concrete.

  I tried to run on my own, but I couldn’t keep up with Alice. Her legs were longer, she wasn’t sick and didn’t have scabs covering her feet. And she wasn’t ice-skating on Skye6.

  She got upset, didn’t yell, but stormed around, waiting for me, as I limped up to her.

  “Weak. Alpha weak. Frail, puny, human girl, stupid. Damn Weller girl. Dizzymona stupid for not believing ’Teeca. Dizzymona smart, though, to want to make her a Gamma.”

  “How come you didn’t let that happen?” I asked.

  Alice grunted and spat a mouthful of mucus on weeds growing out of Colorado Boulevard. “First gas. Then training. Training might’ve made you forget. Training hard.” She shivered.

  Wasn’t training, it was brainwashing, and it must be something awful to make a Gamma shudder.

  Poor LaTanya. All those poor bottles of beer.

  Alice didn’t pause a minute before she flung me back across her shoulder. After that, our only break was for her to fill her Mountain Dew bottle and my Coke bottle with water from barrels along the side of the road that had caught and kept rainwater.

  More jostling, bouncing, shaking for me. More running for her. Tireless, but driven, driven by the growing madness in her head.

  By sunrise she was gone.

  Gone coco.

  (iv)

  Alice ran me all the way to I-70 and Peña, the road to the airport, where I’d been seven months before. Back during the cattle drive, we’d had a big planning meeting there. I’d suggested going west to the Rockies and up the hogback into Boulder. I figured it was seven months ago, figured it was early November, but I’d lost track of days. It felt right, though.

  Morning cracked open cold on the eastern sky, and Alice finally stopped. Breathing hard. She dropped me on the asphalt. She dropped the hockey bag and then huffed, puffed, wiped at the sweat covering her face.

  “We can rest, Alice. We can rest now. We made it through Denver. We made it through Dizzymona and her troops.”

  Alice growled and then came up to me, sniffed me, and then growled some more.

  No words. No thoughts. Just kill. Gone coco.

  I’d said I’d put her down. I’d said I’d find a cure for her. I couldn’t do either.

  Even if I had the guts to end Alice’s life, she wouldn’t sit still. And I couldn’t get to her revolvers. We’d waited too long.

  She snatched up her Mountain Dew bottle of water and sucked it down in long, thirsty gulps.

  “Alice?” She ignored me.

  She wasn’t Alice any more. She gazed down at me like a hound dog eyeing meat.

  “You brought me out here, Alice, ’cause you didn’t want to be a Gamma no more. Isn’t that right?”

  She didn’t respond. She woofed a bit, then grimaced, spit, and farted, loud and smelly, right in front of me.

  No, she was g
one. I was going to have to break my promise, trick her, and hopefully send her off running. Dawn was red in the sky, the cock was about to crow, and I had to deny a sister, a friend, for a third time.

  I stood up and pointed west, to downtown Denver, back to where the cathedral was on Colfax. Back to Dizzymona, looking to kill the one who had stolen their last meg from the DQ, the liar girl who had offered a fake cure.

  “You see that smoke? There’s food there. And a fight. You wanna fight?”

  Alice’s hands curled into fists the size of dogs. She smacked one into the other.

  “And you are Alice, you are mighty. You deserve your own command. How come they didn’t give you your own command? Those stupid skanks. Go back there and take it. Get a command, rally your soldiers, and come fight with me in Burlington. Come and be a Weller and fight with us. You understand? If I can, I’m going to make the ARK find a cure for you and the other Gammas and LaTanya. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything.”

  Alice didn’t respond. Too many words and she stopped caring after the first five or so. She drew her Remington shotguns and went off running, looking for a fight. Looking to kill ’cause that was all she was now, no thought, no Alice, just kill.

  I watched her run until I couldn’t see her any more. I wasn’t sure if she understood a word I’d said, and most likely, I’d sent her off to her death. The other Gammas would realize she’d gone coco and put her down. Even if they didn’t, she’d be killed for murdering the two hogs in the street and running off with me.

  I sighed, alone on that dirt freeway, sighed long and hard. I’d broken my promise to her. And I felt shamed by it. For a half-second. Then I didn’t feel anything except for a chill wind coming down out of an empty blue sky.

  “’Bye, Alice,” I whispered. Then, “’Bye, LaTanya.”

  I knelt, facing east. A quick inventory of the Vail Recreation District hockey bag was the next item on my agenda. I had two two-liter bottles of water, about a half-kilo of the sausage we’d been eating, pieces of tortillas, and that old X-Men comforter. Best of all, and I’m ashamed to say it, but I got weepy holding the remaining six strips of EMAT. Just Skye6 but that was okay. I wasn’t looking for antibiotics, only my chemical ice-skates.

  I had no idea how often Alice had dosed me, but I decided I’d use the EMAT at night, so I could sleep. And if the infection returned and took me? Well then, jacker it, jacker it all.

  The cross-country ski boots felt better, more broken in, but I knew that was wishful thinking on my part. I still had the pink down coat with the melted wrist, covering the wool sweater and the black skirt. I still had on my leggings, though they were full of holes and dotted with burrs.

  Shouldering on the bag, I walked. East. Toward Kansas. Toward Burlington. Toward June Mai Angel. Or as Alice called her, the Devil Angel. The woman whose followers had tried to kill me twice before.

  I came across an old highway sign lying half buried in cast-off plastic trash.

  Burlington, 166 miles.

  Almost like 666. The number of the beast.

  “I’m coming for ya, Satan,” I said wearily. “It’s only me and you, now, which is how you like it. But I got no soul left for you to take, so I’m thinking I have the upper hand.”

  Wind blasted across my back, pushing me with freezing fingers.

  I couldn’t wait for night, so I dosed myself with a strip of the Skye6 since I didn’t have a soul anyway. I floated alone in a stumble down I-70 all that day.

  Well, not alone. Me and the Devil.

  Looking for one last Juniper angel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dying is dying and dead is dead

  She wanted heaven but went crazy instead.

  —Pearl Cornell

  (i)

  THREE DAYS LATER.

  I stopped in Strasburg, at the travel complex where Micaiah’s zeppelin had been blown out of the sky. I paid my respects to Annabeth Burton, lying in her grave under scattered bits of plastic from the Taco Bell Express sign, now long gone.

  I trod over bullet casings from the fight and wandered over to the minivan where Micaiah and I had our first kiss. I laid out the X-Men comforter, climbed on top of it, then stuck my fingers into the bullet holes in the side of the minivan. It had been a miracle we’d not been killed.

  All the memories came back to me barbed with longing, with death, with regret, with sorrow.

  Memories of Wren saving us. Of Pilate and his gospel gun, of Petal and her rhymes:

  Mary had a little lamb,

  she also had a gun.

  She killed the moon,

  she killed the stars,

  she even killed the sun.

  Memories of Micaiah’s hot kisses and sizzling lips.

  Remembering was too hard, even the new stuff, like Alice—big, stupid, violent Alice—who’d gone coco, and I hadn’t had the guts to put her down. Instead, I’d tricked her by promising a cure when there prolly was no cure ... not for her, not for LaTanya or any of the other megs.

  “Sorry, Alice,” I whispered. “You goddamn hog. Sorry, LaTanya, but I never said yes to the promise. I nodded, but I never said yes.” As if that made it better.

  Normally I would’ve prayed before sleeping, but I had no prayers left in me.

  It wouldn’t do nothing for me anyway. I had a good week of travel, if I was lucky. I didn’t have enough food to make the trip, but I’d gone hungry before. And the wind was cold, but it prolly wouldn’t snow ’cause the Great Plains was mostly desert anyway.

  Instead of praying, I dosed myself with Skye6 and slept in the minivan. It was prayer, only better. I dreamed, but I didn’t want to remember the dreams. Only dead people were in them. Or people I’d lied to.

  Instead of breakfast, I said jack it and hit myself with the drugs and continued my stumble on wounded feet I couldn’t feel ’cause I couldn’t feel much of anything anymore.

  (ii)

  Three days later.

  No more Skye6. Still I walked. I clung to the numb, though every so often, the rage at the world would burn through; numb or hateful, it was still better than falling into the ice of my sorrow. My stick heart shivered, scared the ice would melt, and I’d have to feel.

  Dark clouds imprisoned the afternoon sky. They boiled black across the heavens, but I didn’t worry about them dropping anything. The Colorado sky was often like a nasty, little dog, showing teeth, barking and growling, but then running off east with its tail between its legs and not leaving even a dribble of pee behind.

  Then I got lucky. I found a windmill water pump that still worked. Someone had repaired it, even greased the gears. It was prolly June Mai’s girls, who’d needed water to cross back and forth on the plains, protecting her territory, killing hogs, fighting all the wars she liked to fight, over and over.

  June Mai might deliver the chalkdrive to the news media in Kansas, and the world might get the cure to the Sterility Epidemic, but she wouldn’t care about curing the Gammas. No, June Mai wanted media attention, and she’d get it with the chalkdrive. She wanted the world to know about the dirty deals America had made with her vets, sending them to the Juniper rather than paying for their health care. That mattered. Not the Gammas. They’d been warring with her, and I imagined she’d prefer to let them rot.

  I drank my fill from the metal tub under the windmill. I washed my feet and let them dry. The scabs and pus were gone, and new, tough, pink skin covered my toes, soles, and heels. My body healed. My body machine was easy to fix. Inside was a different story. I was diseased, and I knew it.

  I realized, for her whole life, Wren prolly felt the sores inside, festering, full of pus, fully infecting every centimeter of her soul. No wonder she drank and ran wild. It was awful.

  I missed the Skye6 like I missed my mama, but more so. Much more so.

  Mama was dead. Skye6 was still around in the world, only I didn’t have any.

  And I could feel the blisters starting again in those torture boots, which made me
laugh and laugh.

  I should cut off my own feet like I’d cut off Sharlotte’s leg.

  No food.

  Iffy on water.

  I shuffled now ’cause I couldn’t really walk. My right foot hurt more than my left, and I grumbled as I walked. Ow. Left foot. Ow. Left foot. Ow.

  Taking off my shoes, I walked barefoot for a while, trying to find the leftovers of the asphalt in the gravel or smooth dirt devoid of pebbles. Couldn’t find much softness anywhere on the dead strip of dirt of that ancient I-70 highway. My feet got chilly and tender, so I put the boots back on. More ow. More left foot okay and right foot ow.

  Hours and hours and hours of shuffling down the road, prolly not going more than one or two kilometers an hour.

  Days alone. Just me on the road, limping, starving.

  The weather showed me kindness. Nights were cold, but the autumn sun warmed the plains and warmed me, never getting too hot, but in the end, I took little comfort in the mild temperatures.

  Ran out of food. Kept walking.

  Ran out of water. Kept walking.

  Ruined my feet. Kept walking.

  Three days later.

  I collapsed into the weeds and sagebrush. I didn’t have the strength to get the X-Men comforter out of the hockey bag. I just lay in the dirt and watched stars milk up the sky.

  Before dawn, the weather changed on a dime, and a cutting wind came sweeping out of the north to razor my skin. Even hunkered down under the sagebrush, the wind found me, to chill me and to poke despair into my ear with fingers of ice.

  “I’ll just give up,” I said to the wind, but without any real faith I’d keep such a promise to quit. Too much of me was a Weller to stop now. My imperative was too incessant. Still, I liked saying the ridiculous words. “Yeah, I’ll just lie here, and if someone finds me, great, if not, well ... the world will have to go on without the cure to the Sterility Epidemic ... and without me. Who needs another Weller girl around, anyway? Who needs a Cavatica around anyway?”

  Or a ’Teeca. That’s what Alice had called me. Before she went coco.

  That’s what was happening to me. I was going coco, too.