Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  She didn’t try and stuff the words into my ears, but spoke in a comforting, even voice, inviting me into her life.

  Suddenly, I loved Jenny Bell Scheutz. “What about June Mai Angel?” I asked.

  Her grin turned mischievous. “Well, the Juniper can create friendships out of rainstorms. Or so the saying goes. We can talk more about that later. First, we have to go tell everyone you’re awake. Sharlotte will be relieved.”

  She held out a glass of water, a prompt for me to take the pain pill. I did. My mouth soured at the chalky coating.

  “Your mother was funny. She was so sure the electricity would start up again in the Juniper,” Jenny Bell said. “From what I understand, that’s not going to happen any time soon.”

  “Prolly not,” I said.

  Near the start of the Sino-American War, the Chinese nuked Yellowstone. We didn’t need to worry much about radiation since the Chinese used a hydrogen bomb and most of the particles were consumed in the blast. The attack, however, caused a flood basalt and an electromagnetic field. Ionized molten iron coming out of the Yellowstone throat disrupted all electrical current and wiped clean hard drives. No one knew how long it would last, only that the Deccan Traps in India, another example of a flood basalt, had erupted for a million years.

  We sat quietly, and I spoke to fill the silence. “You know, GE even looked into the problem, and they thought they could create suitable shielding, but they haven’t yet. Maggie Jankowksi even looked at it.”

  Ms. Jankowksi had invented the Eterna battery, and I had a little of the hero worship for her.

  “Well, like I said, it’s like living in the nineteenth century out here.” Jenny Bell stood, stopped, and cocked her head to listen.

  At first I didn’t hear anything, and then internal combustion engines, a lot of them, and something bigger, roaring closer.

  “Do you hear that?” she asked, wonder in her voice.

  I nodded even as my throat went dry as dust.

  “Those are engines.” Her eyes went wide. “Like old-school engines, diesel, not gas, but who on earth has that kind of money?”

  I knew, but didn’t say.

  “Stay here,” Jenny Bell said sharply. Her simple, easy style was gone, and what was left was hard. Had to be hard as stone to live way out here.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I wheezed, trying to suck in breath through my fear.

  She left without another word.

  The Regios had found us. No Wren. No Pilate. And who knew if Petal was in any shape to shoot?

  And where was Micaiah? They were coming for him.

  (iii)

  I got out of bed, too full of adrenaline and Vicodin to feel my gunshot wounds. At the window, I watched as dozens of black ATVs rolled into the front yard of Scheutz ranch. Four black Humvees followed, and dozens of troops piled out. All the women carried AZ3 rifles. All wore sagebrush camouflage uniforms. All looked furious and focused.

  At least fifty soldiers closed ranks in the yard. Jenny Bell and Sharlotte rushed over to talk to them, but those soldiers weren’t there to chat. A blink later, my sister and our host had their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

  Floorboards creaked outside the door, which sent my heart rate spiking and stole the air from my lungs.

  I expected one of the three remaining Vixx sisters to come barreling in, but no, Micaiah, pale and sweaty, stepped into the room. I covered my chest, feeling naked, and with how thin the nightgown was, well, that wasn’t much of a stretch.

  He rushed over. “The guns. The ammunition. You have to help me hide Pilate’s quad cannon and Petal’s Mauser. They are going to search the place, and those weapons might implicate us in the battle that destroyed those other units. Sharlotte is going to hide the AZ3s, or at least try.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “And yeah, I have to hide, too. I can’t run, not yet. They’d find me, and I can’t ... can’t ...” he blinked sweat out of his eyes. His boy smell, fueled by fear and running, came off him strong.

  The truth was easy to see. If he gave himself up, they’d leave us alone. But he couldn’t. Why, I didn’t know. But I’d chosen to believe him. He was on some kind of quest, and I was going to help him, though a stupidly rich boy like that shouldn’t need anyone’s help.

  No time for me to tell him I knew he was Tibbs Hoyt’s son.

  “Follow me,” I said. We hurried out of my yellow room and into the gloomy room next door. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust. A shape lay in the bed, tall and lean. Pilate. Next to the bed, Petal slept in an overstuffed lazy boy filling the corner. She was a wispy, ghostly woman, pale, with frizzy, mousy-brown hair and a face like a teenage girl, though the years and the Sino had cut wrinkles across her skin.

  She didn’t wake up, even though Micaiah and I weren’t being quiet. We knew why. Her drug, Skye6, kept her under.

  Micaiah opened the closet and grabbed Petal’s sniper rifle and a Mossberg & Sons G203 quad cannon, otherwise known as a Beijing Homewrecker. Pilate’s gun—part shotgun and part grenade launcher.

  I took the sniper rifle from him while he shouldered on Pilate’s bandolier of ammunition. We sped out into the hallway.

  I was back in the thick of it, fighting, running, trying to breathe. My heartbeat thudded in my ears. The Vicodin dizzied my head a little, but mostly the pill squelched the pain.

  “Basement or attic,” Micaiah whispered.

  “Attic,” I said. Going down the steps seemed like tempting fate.

  We climbed the stairs to the very top of the house, into the attic, which overflowed with furniture, boxes, antique this and that. A hutch and mirror set towered over the very back of the room. A mothball stench fogged up the dusty air that tickled my nose. There seemed to be a hundred places to hide and none at all. Once the Regios busted into the house, they’d search and search well for their quarry.

  Then I saw it. A string dangled down from a trapdoor in the ceiling. It would be cramped up in the crawlspace, but better than nothing. And if we could move the hutch under the trapdoor, they might not notice.

  He watched where my eyes went. He ran for the string, pulled it down, and a ladder unfolded itself down to the floor. He clambered up, and I handed him up the rifle, the Beijing Homewrecker, and the bandolier. I folded the ladder halfway and let it ease up a little. Micaiah kept it open to watch me.

  I took hold of the hutch—it was big, and I was hurt, but I had to move it.

  I threw my weight against it. Nothing happened.

  “Hurry, Cavvy.”

  I tried again, and the huge piece of furniture scratched across the floor, but came to a halt. The thing teetered.

  If it crashed, the whole house would hear it. I struggled to keep it upright.

  “Careful,” Micaiah hissed from the attic.

  Panic fueled me. I mustered every bit of shakti I had and shoved it again. Screeching, scratching, the hutch moved under the ladder. It would have to be good enough.

  But what if someone saw the ripped-up floor? I stacked boxes to cover the scratches and said a prayer.

  “Go, Cavvy. Get back to your room.”

  The spring-loaded ladder folded the rest of the way into the ceiling.

  I was out of time, but Micaiah’s hiding place didn’t seem secure. If they found him, what would happen to him? To us?

  Please, God, please help us.

  I tiptoed down the steps and back into the yellow room.

  Nausea struck me all at once. I seriously came close to barfing up my guts on the floor.

  Back in bed, I wanted to check my wounds, to see if I was bleeding again, but I didn’t have the chance.

  Three Regios threw open the door and stormed into my room, AZ3s lowered.

  “Anyone else in the house?” one roared the question.

  “Next door,” I squeaked. Sweat dripped down my face. I knew I looked flushed, but I hoped they’d blame it on a fever.

  Another Regio spun. “Stay here.”

  I w
asn’t sure if she was talking to me or the other two, but all three of us stayed while she bashed into the room next door.

  The house shook from tromping boots and slamming doors. Heavy footfalls sounded in the room above me in the attic. Furniture or boxes scraped across the floor. I prayed with all my might that they didn’t see the scratches in the floor or the trapdoor above the hutch.

  “What do y’all want?” I asked the two soldiers. Shaved heads, dead eyes, they held rifles across their chests and stood stiffly by the door. They stared straight ahead. Might as well have been statues.

  Time ticked by. I couldn’t stop sweating. The house shook from yells and stomping, but so far, there hadn’t been any gunfire.

  A Regio stuck her head in the room. “Two suspects in the room next door. We couldn’t wake the man. We have the woman. The Praetor wants you to bring this girl downstairs.” She motioned at me.

  The two guards took me, none too gently, out of the room. My nightgown ripped treacherously. I was driven down the steps and into the parlor with my sister, the rest of our team, Jenny Bell, and her many daughters.

  Jenny Bell’s ranch house had become a prison, complete with armed guards and a warden.

  Chapter Two

  We take security at the ARK very seriously. How could we not? The financial ramifications of our work are nothing compared to our work preserving the genetic diversity necessary for humanity to continue to evolve.

  —Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt

  President and CEO of the

  American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative

  January 1, 2058

  (i)

  IN THE SCHEUTZ’S PARLOR, sofas lined one wall and dining room chairs lined the other, leaving an open aisle between the two sides. The Regios shoved me into one of the chairs.

  Across from me, Sharlotte gave me a long stare, and I returned it. She had my same straw-colored hair, a round face like our mother, but with Wren’s exotic dark eyes, which they both got from Daddy. All of Sharlotte’s pretty languished in her dark-lashed, nighttime eyes.

  We didn’t dare speak. Regios and their guns surrounded us. They watched their leader as she paced back and forth in an angry silence. Dark-skinned, shaved head, the woman walked on thick legs, sturdy and strong. Eyes the color of wet pine searched our faces—the twelve of us from the Weller party and the eight of the Scheutz family.

  Nikki Breeze and Tenisha Keys, two of our employees, sat close together, hands brushing. I’d learned they were gillian, as in same sex love. They took comfort being close to one another, but subtly ’cause of the New Morality. Sweat painted their dark faces.

  Not sure how I felt about them and that gillian love. I’d heard enough sermons on that kind of sinfulness to make me wonder.

  The Regios had left Pilate in his bed, but Petal sat crumpled on a couch. Her eyes were sunken blue jewels lost in the ink around her eyes. She looked pale and as fragile as ever, though she was our last warrior still standing.

  Finally, the woman in charge spoke. “I am Praetor Gianna Edger. I am looking for a boy.”

  That word, praetor, seemed familiar. I couldn’t place it though, and I couldn’t Google it either. My tablet was long gone and would’ve been destroyed by the Yellowstone electromagnetic field anyway.

  “We told you,” Sharlotte said. “Not a lot of boys out here on account of the Sterility Epidemic. We ain’t seen none. Any males this far into the Juniper are either killed by the Psycho Princess or sold by June Mai Angel.”

  All of that was true. The medical community couldn’t figure out the problem, but only one out of ten births resulted in a boy. Of those males born, ninety percent were sterile. Worldwide. The first cases of the Sterility Epidemic were reported after the Yellowstone Knockout, but both geophysicists and geneticists agreed that the one hadn’t caused the other.

  Edger shifted her gaze to Jenny Bell. Jenny Bell echoed my sister, “We told you, the closest boys are in Sterling.”

  “This boy.” Edger thrust a picture into Jenny Bell’s face.

  “We’ve not seen him. We’ve not seen any boys out here.”

  “Pass the picture around,” Edger said. “I will interview you all alone, youngest to oldest. Who here is the youngest?”

  A couple of Jenny Bell’s daughters raised their hands, trembling. One was single digits; one was middle school age. Who was the next oldest?

  Maybe Crete, otherwise known as Lucretia Macaby, who sat trembling. Tears stained her face. From my conversation with Jenny Bell, I figured the Scheutz’s were in the dark about Micaiah. But Crete knew. And she looked about to crack right there and spill her guts all over her shoes.

  If she did that, I knew what would happen, they’d torture us until I told them about the crawl space above the attic, half hidden by the hutch.

  “I’m fifteen,” one of the Scheutz girls said.

  “I’m seventeen,” another said. She glanced over at the oldest sister, who looked remarkably like Pilate. Couldn’t say I was surprised.

  “I’m sixteen,” Crete said. She started sobbing, eyes closed, shoulders shuddering.

  “Me, too,” I threw in. Dang, but I couldn’t remember Crete’s birthday.

  Edger’s dark eyes reached into me. I didn’t know if it would be better to bow before that gaze or to meet it.

  I met it and didn’t look away. Maybe it was the Vicodin, or maybe I channeled Wren, but I was going to show her we had nothing to hide.

  Only we did. We had everything to hide. And somehow, she knew it.

  “Legate Baxter, get birthdays,” Edger said, turned, and stalked up the stairs.

  Baxter marched over to Crete. “When were you born?”

  I ripped Crete apart with my eyes. I needed to talk to Edger first. She needed to know we were going to keep Micaiah a secret.

  “November 17, 2041,” Crete whispered.

  No, Crete had a summer birthday. I never remembered eating a cupcake in her honor during our time in elementary school. Good, I was glad she was lying ’cause she’d have to do a lot more of it.

  Baxter pounded over to me. Legate. Praetor. Both words itched at my brain.

  “You?”

  “October 7, 2041,” I said. The truth.

  That settled it. I’d be the first of the Wellers to be interrogated. Aunt Bea would go last. She was a large Mexican woman, not like Aunt Bea in that old black and white video, but big and wide, smiling with gaps in her teeth. She served as our cook, and I’d grown up eating her homemade tortillas and green chili.

  She gave a laugh when she said her birthday. “Do you also want to know how much I weigh?”

  A few of us let out a whispery snicker. Baxter frowned like she was close to hauling poor Aunt Bea out to a firing squad. They had the guns for it.

  “Are you really fifty-five, Bea? I thought you were my age,” Dolly Day Cornpone chirped. She was forty, but life had aged her cruelly. She’d been running cattle for a decade or more, and you could see every bad night on her wrinkled face. She liked to drink and didn’t much care for baths, so she was stinky and boozy and had a big mouth.

  Crete might cave, but I also had my doubts about Dolly Day. She’d given us trouble before.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This’ll go quick. We don’t know a thing.” The picture of Micaiah came to me, and I gave it a long look, and it was Micah Hoyt all right, a color photograph of him in a city somewhere. I lifted up the picture. “If we did see someone as good-looking as this guy, I’m sure we’d have remembered it.”

  More nervous chuckles.

  “No talking,” Baxter snapped. “Absolutely no talking.”

  “Will you shoot us?” I asked. “I’ve already been shot, you know. June Mai Angel and her soldiers attacked us to get our cattle, and I took two bullets getting away from them. So did Pilate upstairs. And how come you’re only interrogating us girls? You sexist?” Wren wasn’t around, so someone needed to be a smart aleck.

  Baxter slapped me. She did a good job of it. My
head rocked back; my cheek stung, but prolly didn’t sting as much as it would’ve ’cause of the Vicodin in my belly.

  “No. Talking.” She emphasized each word.

  “Good thing we ain’t seen the boy,” I said back. “Seems to me you wouldn’t leave anyone alive here if we had.”

  She slapped me again, harder. Stars exploded, shaking my vision. Then she hit me a third time.

  I leaned forward and forced tears out of my eyes. I let them fall on the picture.

  I’ll give you my tears, Micaiah. I’ll give you my blood if it comes to that. For your quest. For you. No matter what.

  I handed the picture on down the line. Sharlotte caught my eye, and we both nodded, but only slightly, secretively. I’d given us all a basic story. June Mai shot us up. We didn’t know about any boy. And even if we did, we had to keep him a secret or we’d be killed.

  My sister and I were risking our lives to protect the boy we both loved. It filled me with an odd combination of pride and guilt. We were going to save him, but then what?

  How could I tell Sharlotte that Micaiah wanted me and not her? Then again, I’d made it clear if he couldn’t be completely honest with me, I couldn’t be with him. Not romantically. But that was going to be a hard promise to keep.

  I did love him. Loved him deep.

  The first three Scheutz girls were interviewed first. Then came my turn.

  (ii)

  The Regios herded me up the stairs to the attic. They’d cleared a space, found a desk, and put me in front of it in an old folding chair. The trapdoor looked horribly exposed under the hutch. So far, they hadn’t moved the boxes, or they’d have seen the scratches. Dang.

  Two soldiers stood by the top of the staircase with their rifles over their chests. Edger sat behind the desk on an office chair. On the top of the desk rested a black-handled Betty knife and 9 mm Smith & Wesson full automatic pistol with an extended clip. Lots of bullets in there.