She wasn’t going to wait for us to unload the Moby Dick. The gunshot frightened her, and she took off, and then I watched her eyes go down to the water in the glen. She’d smelled it. She was going there for a drink, and God help anything that stood in her way.
She drove forward, and in that minute, Micaiah and I were staring down a carpet of seething, horned fury, coming right at us. Hundreds and hundreds of cattle. Thousands of hooves. Megatons of moving meat.
The earth-cracking noise of their hooves on the pavement eclipsed any other bullets, any other shouts of alarm, everything else.
It was a stampede. And stampedes mean death.
Puff Daddy ignited on instinct and took off running down the freeway, away from them, as did Mick. Micaiah clung to his horse, face pale. Neither of our ponies was fast—Mick didn’t have the heart for it, and Puff swayed with too much bulk.
Snorting, hot breath, the rage of wet stink from the cattle stifled us as we fled on working legs and pounding hooves.
We needed off the highway. Right then. Or die.
Puff and Mick streaked in a full sprint, shoes striking sparks. I had to direct the escape, but I had to be careful or Puff might freak out completely. A subtle pull on the reins, leaning in the saddle, and Puff knew I needed him to go right. He followed my lead, driving Mick nearer to the concrete wall.
That boy, however green, did the exact thing I needed, like he could read my mind. Or like we’d been rehearsing a suicidal circus act.
He unhooked his left foot from the stirrup, lifted himself on his right, and then offered me his hand.
My shakti focused me. I didn’t pause a second. I caught his hand in a steel grip, stepped off Puff Daddy and hurled myself onto Mick for a minute, until I yanked both Micaiah and myself off the saddle and over the concrete wall.
It was ten meters down to the bottom of the glen.
A fall like that could shatter a leg or kill you outright. But then I hit a tree branch, heavy with buds, and another one, and another, until I threw my arm around cottonwood limb, but I was going too fast.
The limb was jerked out of my arms. I fell, again, crashing through more branches. I landed on my belly in a carpet of dry leaves, several seasons worth, cushioning that last plummet.
Micaiah lay next to me, mouth open, but I couldn’t hear his groan, or anything else.
The stampede and gunfire drowned out everything else. The ground shook, and for a second I thought it was from the cattle on the highway, but then I realized it was from horses in front of us.
Women on horseback galloped through the glen. They were dressed in the same half-army, half-cowgirl outfits I’d seen before on the air pirates. June Mai’s soldier girls. So Denver wasn’t deserted after all.
Ironic, but the Moby Dick had prolly led the soldiers right to us.
The troop drove their horses under the bridge, wheeled around, then splashed through the river and charged away. They hadn’t seen us, but were they there for the cattle, or were they there for Micaiah?
The boy carefully raised his head and glanced around. He turned to me. “What now?”
Yeah, that certainly was the question.
(iii)
Before I could answer, I had to say a prayer for Mick and Puff Daddy. Our little circus trick had helped us over the edge of the highway, but it might’ve meant the death of them and maybe half of our headcount.
If we were down that much money, Micaiah might be our only way to save the ranch. Six million dollars. He’d said he could match what we’d get in Hays if we got fair-market prices for our beef.
“We have to get you to safety,” I said. “Then I have to go back and help my sisters.” But what could I do? I wasn’t even armed. Not even a pistol.
Micaiah didn’t argue. We picked ourselves up and crossed the river, jumping from rock to rock to rock to avoid the freezing water. A culvert on the other side took us under another highway.
We paused at the mouth of the tunnel for a minute. Heavy machinegun fire mixed with the explosion of grenades. It sounded like a war on the freeway.
Across the street from us sat an old strip-mall complex, mostly split concrete and yellow-weeded dirt.
We ran through an intersection and across the blasted earth of the parking lot toward a huge building. Glass doors leaned empty—no windows, just tall concrete walls.
I recognized the building as an old Costco. So close to I-70, it would be picked clean.
We could speed through it, come out the other side, and then sweep around to get back to our people.
The broken glass of the doors scratched beneath our boots. Darkness swallowed us. From our vantage point, we couldn’t see much of the highway, but we could still hear the remnants of the stampede. And of course, more weapons’ fire.
“Should we—”
Micaiah silenced me with a raised hand.
There, in the intersection, five of June Mai’s soldiers sat tall on horseback. Fully armed. Scanning around, searching.
We moved further into the darkness. Only dust remained on the floor and some drywall litter. Our shifting feet seemed horribly loud. They weren’t, but keyed up, on the run, it sure seemed like the outlaws would hear us.
It got so midnight dark in there that Micaiah finally took my hand. I was glad he did. Not for any romantic reason, but so we’d stay together. My other hand reached and searched so I wouldn’t bang into a shelf or box left behind. Finally, we found a wall.
We stopped and waited. Sweat dripped from my nose while we listened. Nothing.
I led Micaiah down the wall. It hooked around into more blackness. We pushed through doors into the rear automotive garage. The bay doors were gone, leaving an open mouth, facing north. I blinked sight back into my eyes and let out a breath.
Micaiah stood at the opening, already looking for more outlaws.
“So do we stay here?” he asked in a whisper. “Or do we try and make a run for it? Maybe circle around to get back to your sisters and the cattle. Or maybe the Moby Dick might come looking for us and we can hitch a ride with Sketchy. I hope your people weren’t captured.”
“Not likely,” I said. “Wren would die before she ever surrendered. And you saw how Pilate and Petal were in a fight. I just hope the rest of our crew is okay.”
Horses clopped in the distance, women yelled, but their calls faded away, going south. It was prolly the five soldiers we saw out front.
We seemed safe for a minute.
“So what do we do?” he asked.
I did a quick check of my knowledge of local geography and recalled all the planning we’d done. We’d wanted to get across Denver then head north in the valley between the hogsback and the foothills of the Rockies. The way would take us up through the ghost towns of Golden, Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins. Rivers ran down from the mountains, so there would be water, and it was pretty remote, so we thought we wouldn’t come across any more outlaws.
“We should head for Golden,” I said. “If we try and find our people now, we’re just as likely to get caught by June Mai’s soldiers. If Sharlotte and the others survived, Golden is the most logical rendezvous point.”
“If I gave myself up to the soldiers, maybe they would let you go. I mean, that was the plan.” His eyes dropped. His chest rose and fell rapidly. He was scared, and not just a little.
“That was Pilate’s evil plan,” I whispered back. “Not mine.”
“What’s your plan?” he asked, and he wasn’t teasing, not then.
“Can you really pay us six million dollars to get you to Nevada?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Then you are my plan.” I said it wrong, like in a romantic way, and I blushed as much as he did, though he didn’t turn away. In fact, he got closer.
I stopped him with a hand. Now my own breath was coming fast. “But you’re keeping stuff from us. If I bet on you, I need all our cards on the table.”
He stiffened and retreated. “You know about the Tree of the Know
ledge of Good and Evil from the Book of Genesis, right?”
I nodded. Didn’t anticipate Bible study at a time like that.
“Who I am, the fruit I bear, it’s the apple, Cavatica. If you know the truth about me, if you eat the apple, you will know things, and that knowledge is poisonous.” He swallowed hard. “I won’t murder you and your family by telling you the truth. I know it sounds crazy, I know it does, but you’ll have to trust me.”
He raised his eyes, and I looked into them. I wasn’t shy, and I wasn’t hateful, and I wasn’t even lustful for him. No, a great compassion welled up in my chest. I did trust him.
“So you’re telling me you’re the apple and not the snake,” I whispered. “What about the Tree of Life?”
He closed his eyes. “It’s all about the Tree of Life. We have to protect it.”
“What if I don’t care about staying in Eden?” I asked. “What if I want to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?”
“I can’t do that to you. I can’t be the Satan that kills you.”
A frown weighed down my face. “All right, Micaiah, okay, but what’s gonna happen between you and Sharlotte once we get you to safety? Are you going to tell her the truth?”
“Yes.” He said. “But Cavatica, me and Sharlotte, you understand how it is, right?” His eyes said everything else. I closed mine ’cause I couldn’t bear to hear what his next words might be. They’d either break my heart or Sharlotte’s or maybe both at once.
I moved far away to the other side of the bay. “Let’s go. So we run north for a bit, then in Arvada, we can cut over west. We can salvage food, though it won’t be easy. This place has been picked over. But Mama taught me a thing or two about finding food tucked away in trash.”
My mind shook me back and forth, going over every one of a million scenarios in great bloody detail. All of our headcount dead in the stampede or stolen by June Mai Angel to feed her troops. All of my family and the crew dead. Or maybe Wren, Pilate, and Petal had defeated the outlaws and were worried sick about me and Micaiah. They’d have to track us.
At every bit of leftover wood, I carved “AW” with the “A” and the “W” sharing the “A’s” right-side line. It was our brand and Mama’s initials, Abigail Weller, and if Wren were searching for our spoor, she’d see it. Only, what if she were dead?
Or Sharlotte, what if she’d died in the attack?
I’d be left alone with her boy—such a danger to my uncertain heart.
(iv)
That night, Micaiah and I found a suburban ranch-style house, a packrat’s nest of paper, so much paper, and a variety of other crapjack not worth a dime. Mama said a hoarder’s nest held goodies if you could scrape off the litter. Most salvage monkeys kept right on going to cleaner, easier pickings.
Mama, though, Mama knew.
We shoved our way through the front door and crawled over stacks of old newspapers and magazines. Plastic crap covered the floor where the paper grew thin. Several old sleds, a rack of bins full of junk-drawer leavings, and stacks of old CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, and some old-school VHS tapes.
Digging through the mess, the hoarder’s nest revealed its treasures. Candles. A tray of canned peaches and several can openers to open them. Spam, which was awful, but it was protein, sealed tight in tin.
I didn’t want the candles to give us away, so we made a little space in the basement amid all the trash, and found sleeping bags that weren’t too gross. They’d keep us warm at any rate.
I found myself all chatty with him, nervous. Me. Him. Alone.
“We can’t go looking for them,” I blabbered, “’cause if we go looking for them, June Mai’s soldiers are already looking for us, or our people, or our cows, and I guess we knew we’d run into outlaws, but then we thought they’d all be in Burlington, attacking my home. Dang, but won’t Howerter be upset if he comes to collect on his loan and all that’s left is a smoking hole in the earth. Not that I want my home destroyed, no, and I wouldn’t think it would come to that. But I don’t know. I keep praying for my family and our team and I just hope we’re all going to be okay.”
I went on and on while I opened cans of peaches and spam and got our dinner ready. I had iodine tablets in my emergency wallet, and I used them to clean brackish water I found in a ditch behind the house. The candles flickered in our little nest, making it more romantic than I had really wanted, making me even more nervous.
I finally stopped talking and sighed. “I’m sorry. I sound like Sketchy. I’m just afraid of losing my family.”
“I understand,” he said quietly. “Not that I’ve ever had a family. Not really.”
I leapt on this little bit of information. “You have your Mom and your aunts, right?”
“They grew up fighting,” he said. “And my father …” He shook his head. “He’s a real jackerdan. I never, ever, ever, want to see him again.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “Having a daddy in this world nowadays is rare, and to hate him so much, it’s kind of ironic. Kind of sad. But let me tell you, sometimes family doesn’t seem like it’s worth the trouble. It’s like—”
He watched me closely. His intense stare stopped me in my tracks.
“It’s like what?” he asked eagerly.
“You know …” I said, trying to get him to stop staring at me like I had the answers to the universe. I set peaches in front of him and a slice of Spam on a sheet of paper with grids and graphs on it. Some kind of financial report from before the Yellowstone Knockout.
“I don’t know,” he said. “What’s a family like?”
“Well, you have people who’ve seen you at your worst, and they can tease you forever about it. Like what Wren does. And then you have people who’ve seen you at your youngest, and they’ll never let you forget they changed your diapers. Like Sharlotte. So in all that history, there is so much ammunition, that if you wanted to, you could blast the people you’re supposed to love all to pieces.”
I flashed back to the bombs I’d dropped on Wren after she told me our Mama was dead in Ms. Justice’s office.
“So the history makes it hard to love them?” Micaiah asked, leaving his food untouched.
“And it makes them easier to love. Like one Christmas, Wren got this really fancy saddle, and she never hugged anyone, but she hugged Mama. Mama’s face nearly cracked from her smile. Wren was impossible to please, but Mama knew Wren enough to know she loved horses and riding fast and nice things, and that saddle was nice, new in fact. A new saddle, not salvaged, it was quite a present.”
Soon after, Wren got in trouble for not cleaning her room. Sharlotte beat her, and Christmas turned into another fight. Love and hate, hate and love, that was at the heart of a family. Sharlotte had prolly been jealous of Wren’s new saddle, and took it out on her while trying to mother her. Which is why sisters raising sisters isn’t such a good idea.
Sharlotte kept a tally on Mama’s love all right, who got what, and how much. What kind of damage had my school tuition caused Sharlotte?
I grinned at Micaiah. He was Sharlotte’s present. I’d only used him a little, so he was in fact a hand-me-down, but us Weller girls were used to salvage. Made me grin more.
He raised an eyebrow at me. “What?”
I shrugged and ate a peach. It was sweet and good and a little cold. Just right. “You gonna eat?”
“Yes, but I can’t believe you found canned peaches.” He picked one up. “Peaches. Such a treat.”
“I was vegan for a while in Cleveland,” I said. “You get used to the phytonutrients.”
“Nice word.”
I felt comfortable enough to joke. “For white trash. I know, I know. I don’t talk like it, but I’m pretty educated, and I know about the benefits of proper nutrition.”
“Yeah, but food is more than that,” he said quietly. He stared at the peach in his hand before slowly placing it in his mouth, like it was communion. Eyes closed, he chewed it carefully. When he opened his eyes, they were pud
dled with tears. “Growing up, they would give me peaches out of a can. Like these. It was better than the other food, much better, so sweet, so sweet. I was always so little, always growing so fast, and always so hungry.” His voice went away. The tears trickled down his cheeks, catching the candlelight. He dropped his head.
I ain’t never seen a boy my age cry. Heck, I’d rarely seen boys at all. I didn’t know how to react.
I needed to comfort him, but any kind of touch seemed to be tempting fate. I wasn’t sure what might happen if I felt his skin again.
Risking it, I leaned forward and put my hand on his bare arm. “It’s okay to cry in front of me. I don’t think it’s girly ’strogen.”
He laughed at that. “No, I’m certainly a boy. Viable. How could I ever forget it? And I want to feel my feelings. You have no idea how important my feelings are to me.”
“And I won’t have an idea for a long time, huh?” I asked. “The apple.”
“From the Tree of Knowledge,” he said, a smile on his lips, a tender expression in his eyes, and tears on his cheeks. He covered my hand with his own.
The electricity of his touch zinged through every part of me. I wanted more. I needed more. The shock of the desire sent me to my feet. I fought to clear my throat. “I’m going to go out and scout around for a minute. I want to see if I can see anything, you know, from the roof. I have to go.”
Before he could stop me, I escaped up the steps. I left my coat and gear below and went out in my dress and boots. The night, thank goodness, wasn’t frigid, but it was far from warm. I was sweating so much, so churned up inside, I was grateful for the chill.
Okay, it was clear—I couldn’t touch him or let him touch me. No way. However, I’d kept my chastity. I hadn’t gone for him. But he was putting out signals, and I know for a rich, viable boy, dating sisters or a whole gaggle of girls at the same time might be fine with him, but not for me, not for Sharlotte, not for any good Catholic girl.
I climbed a fence and boosted myself onto the roof, which still had most of its shingles, but not all of them.
Clouds filled up the sky and I smelled the wet smell again. Snow was on its way. Once again, I went through worrying over the cattle drive, my family, our crew.
Dandelion Iron Book One Page 20
