Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  The woman’s last threat filled my head—they were going to put their guerilla warfare sniper attacks on hold for a full frontal assault.

  (iii)

  I didn’t stop until I found Pilate and the rest of our crew around the chuck wagon, already planning. Our headcount appreciated the break, but they were restless. Ripples of anxiety washed over them like a bad wind. I spied Bluto butting around another bull, and calves suckled at their mothers a little too vigorously.

  Bob D huffed and foamed. Again I stepped from the stirrups, but this time I kept upright and ran into the middle of the group.

  “Talked with the Psycho Princess, only they call themselves Madelines, and they’re creepy nuts. This woman was in a prom dress or something, all pink and taffeta, and she said if we don’t give up Pilate, they’ll hit us at midnight. Something about the Goddess, or whatever.” Even saying the name of their strange god made my skin crawl. “And they have Micaiah.” My voice broke on his name.

  “You talked to the Psycho Princess?” Pilate asked in awe.

  “No, you don’t get it. There ain’t no one Psycho Princess. They’re all brainwashed to be Madelines.”

  Wren guffawed. “Vixxes and now Madelines. What the hell? Are these skanks immortal like Micaiah’s aunts?”

  “Did she tell you they have Micaiah?” Pilate asked.

  I nodded. “But before I could find out if he was alive or dead, I threw dirt in her eyes and ran.”

  “Did that old trick actually work?” Pilate asked.

  I nearly screamed in frustration. “Darn it, Pilate, obviously. Tonight they’re coming, and I don’t know how many girls they have, but it’s bound to be a fight.”

  “Thank God,” Wren burst out. “I’ve been so jackerin’ bored!”

  The crew collapsed into panic. Crete burst into tears. That girl, always crying.

  “They want you, Pilate,” I said. “They think if they kill you, it will usher in a new age for the Juniper. They also think they can have babies without men once all the men are gone. Like I said, they ain’t right.” I pulled the note from my coat and handed it to him.

  Pilate read it and smirked. “If only Dr. Anna Colton of Princeton University were here to do a case study. I’m sure she would find this fascinating. You know, the ARK has successfully created an embryo using the eggs from two women. Not that the New Morality people like that very much.”

  Through sheer force of will, I calmed myself. If I started yelling at Pilate, I would only join the chorus of hysteria around me.

  The cows began a low cry, getting louder. We had to get ourselves under control or the noise and consternation would send the cows running. Cattle might be dumb, but they have feelings, and they could sense our fear. I heard Betty Butter caterwaul, getting herself into a tizzy.

  “All you, quiet,” I said in a low voice. “No need to lose our heads. We have to come up with a plan.”

  “Easy. Give up Pilate.” Wren puckered her lips and made kissing noises at him.

  “I do like women in dresses,” Pilate said.

  I knew they were kidding, but I still had to say, “We are not doing that.”

  “Cavvy is right,” Bea said. “It’s not like we’re not armed. It’s a shame, though, the Moby isn’t due back until tomorrow. We could really use her for air support.”

  Ironic that Aunt Bea, this simple rancher and cook, could use military terms so easily. She had no official military training.

  Pilate shook his head. “Well, if the old dirt-in-the-eye trick can work, maybe we should circle the wagons. Where’s Clint Eastwood when you need him?”

  “What about the headcount?” I asked. “If we put them in the middle of a gunfight they’ll stampede for sure.”

  “Every cow is cash,” Dolly Day added. “And I know you don’t want my input, since I’m just hired help, but dammit, I ain’t no soldier. I can shoot a gun, sure, but you want us to die for you in a gunfight and all because we got boys with us. Boys are bad luck. We’d have been a whole lot safer if it was just girls.”

  She sounded like the Madelines, wanting a world of only women. But as she talked, I got an idea; a plan, thank God.

  “This is what we’re going to do,” I said quietly, all eyes firmly fixed on me. People want leadership, even when it comes from an unlikely source.

  I told them my plan which confirmed me as a truly unlikely leader. But they listened.

  I hadn’t seen Petal when I rode up, but she crouched in the shade of the chuck wagon, hunkered down in her blue dress. She paled listening to my plan, and her broken-mirror eyes filled with tears. She knew I needed her to fight, and we both knew what it would take for her to pull a trigger again.

  Pilate walked away. Just up and walked away. No sneers, no snorts of dismissal—his despair had silenced him. He wasn’t about to say I was too young, or that I needed to be kept safe, or any of that. The reality was, however young and useless in a fight, I was the leader.

  Wren liked my plan. Not sure if that was a good thing or not, but she was enough to sway the vote.

  The sun crept down the sky as we prepared. The night was going to be moonless, but light didn’t matter. Even with a moon, my desperate plan would’ve made that night dark and dirty.

  Chapter Ten

  We live in the real world. Ethics are fine in theory. In practice, our own sense of morality must be flexible, or we risk being righteous yet ineffectual.

  —Dr. Ravan Singh, PhD

  Executive Director of Research and Development of the American Reproduction Knowledge Initiative

  July 2, 2057

  (i)

  THE SUNSET CAME AND went.

  Bonfires threw a flickering light on the little fortress we’d made—a triangle formed by the Chevy Workhorse II, the trailer with only the barest supplies left inside, and the Ford Excelsior. I’d opened the boilers and vents on the Ford and dismantled the piping as if the AIS in the bed had malfunctioned terribly. The steam engine was just fine, but I made a big production of working on it in case anyone was watching.

  Pilate stood next to a bonfire to complete the picture.

  While I labored, I kept thinking about the first time I saw a killdeer bird. It was on a cattle drive into Hayes. Aunt Bea and Nikki Breeze rode with us, but it was years before Tenisha or Crete joined our operation. I was little, maybe six or seven, and excited about the travel, but scared ’cause even a run into Hayes was fraught with danger.

  The weather had turned soggy-wet that spring. Standing puddles shimmered on the remnants of I-70 as we pushed our headcount east. We’d stopped, and I’d gotten off my little pony when I saw a brownish bird, belly bright white, with stick-like legs and a sharp black beak. The bird hopped around on the swampy side of the highway, its wing slightly bent.

  “Mama,” I remember saying, “we need to save that little bird. He’s in trouble.”

  Mama tsked. “That little ol’ killdeer is trying to trick us. His nest is around here somewhere, and he thinks we’ll go after him instead of his chicks. Don’t worry, baby, that bird is just fine.”

  In school, I read about a variety of other plovers in biology class, but I never forgot that first killdeer. Killdeers are named after the sound of their call, and if those birds could be that smart, well, people could be even smarter.

  My plan was simple. Send most of our people with as much gear as they could carry to the east, as if we’d given up on the cattle drive. In the meantime, Pilate, Petal, and I would be the killdeer, acting like we had a broken truck. Pilate, since he was their main target, would waltz around to show he was with us and not the other group. Petal and I would shoot from the triangle of trucks.

  Wren rode off with Nikki Breeze and Tenisha Keys. Once the shooting started, they’d gallop in from the flank, and we’d catch the Madelines in a crossfire. The odds were against us, but then that had always been the case.

  My plan had at least three variables that remained a mystery. Were the Vixxes still watching us? Was Micaiah
alive? I couldn’t think too hard on that or my breath would go feathery. We all agreed that if Micaiah was with the Psycho Madelines, he was prolly dead, which meant the Vixxes were no longer watching us or them.

  The third variable—could Petal shoot without her drugs? I was betting she could. Pilate doubted it. Wren didn’t care—the less Petal shot, the more skanks for my sister to kill. If we were being watched, Wren would outmaneuver them, so they wouldn’t suspect that her, Nikki, and Tenisha were coming back to save the day.

  We made stacks of AZ3s inside the fortress. Easier and faster to grab a fresh rifle than to reload. Petal uncased her Mickey Mauser, which is what she called her sniper rifle. Actually, it was a Mauser Trip 6 Redux loaded with .338 Ostrobothnia magnums. On the top was a Zeiss Real 18 scope, but she hardly looked through it. She set it up on its bipod on the bed of the Ford then walked away to sit on the ground and clutch her knees to her chest. She didn’t look like a feared sniper—more like a little girl, frightened and in trouble.

  Pilate paced back and forth in front of the bonfires, two MG21s, from our June Mai Angel battles, hung on their straps over each shoulder. His black duster, black cowboy hat, and long dark hair inked him in shadows. In chalk-white hands, he gripped his Beijing Homewrecker, a four-barreled snubby weapon that could shoot shotgun shells or lob grenades, depending on Pilates’s mood. He kept track of his ammo using the names of the gospel writers. Four barrels, four books, help us, Lord Jesus.

  The stink of the cottonwood bonfires hung in the air around us. All our faces shined with sweat from the heat. Dang Juniper weather decided to go summer on us when we could’ve used a chill.

  I glanced at the glow-in-the-dark dials of my Moto Moto watch. Ten minutes until the attack. We debated if they would wait until midnight, but I knew they would. ’Cause of the Goddess or whatever.

  Pilate paced, I paced, and Petal rocked herself back and forth in the dirt. A syringe of Skye6 lumped the front left pocket of my jeans. Wordlessly, Pilate had given it to me. After what he’d told me, he couldn’t trust himself to dose her. So if anyone was going to help her relapse, it would be me.

  But could I?

  Petal whispered rhymes to herself.

  Mary had a little gun,

  And her bullets were full of woe.

  And everywhere that Mary went,

  Her rifle was sure to go.

  It followed her to heaven one day,

  but Jesus slammed the door.

  She died there at Saint Peter’s gates

  ’Cause God didn’t love her no more.

  I’d heard her break apart nursery rhymes before, when she was shooting, and I knew it was the first part of her relapse. I remembered her words. No more shooting. No more drugs. No more rhymes. Like they were all tied up together.

  She whispered more rhymes, barely moving her thin, chapped lips she’d chewed to bleeding. It was abundantly clear—Petal wouldn’t be able to fight if she wasn’t on Skye6. If I gave her the drug, it would calm her and make her forget her vows to do no harm. She would kill people as easily as a butcher slaughtering hogs.

  If I didn’t give her the drug, one less gun might mean defeat. Pilate would be killed, we’d be stolen, and if by some miracle Micaiah was alive, he wouldn’t be alive for long.

  So I had to choose—Petal’s sobriety or our lives. It might’ve been Petal’s one chance to get clean, and if I gave her the drug, it might be the end of her.

  My teeth clenched. I couldn’t do it, but I had to. I had to.

  A few minutes before midnight, I knelt down and showed her the syringe full of Skye6.

  She glanced at it, then looked into my eyes. The firelight painted her sweaty face a hellish crimson.

  “Give it to me,” she whispered. “You’re worth more than me. Pilate is, too. I’m a broken Miss Muffet, and I can’t tough it, and I deserve the spider’s bite.”

  Was she worth more than me? She’d fought in the Sino so I could be free. What had I ever done? Every battle I’d ever fought, when it came down to the kill shot, I’d chickened out.

  What did Petal deserve? She didn’t deserve a life of addiction, the spider’s bite.

  “No.” I stood, shaking. I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing, but I wouldn’t give Petal the syringe. “You stay there. If you can avoid the fight, do it. If not, do the best you can.”

  I left to spy through Mickey Mauser’s scope, but it didn’t have any sort of low-light assistance. I couldn’t see a thing. The firelight also messed me up further, but I kept my eyes to the glass until I got dizzy, nauseated from the tension, from the heat of the fire.

  Another time-check. It was after midnight. Where were they?

  I heard the whistle, like in any war video you ever saw. It was the aerodynamics of a sleek object slicing through the wind and traveling fast enough to cause audible friction.

  Some kind of mortar, heading right for us.

  No time to run. No time to regret my plan.

  When you’re a killdeer, sometimes the fox does ignore your chicks. Sometimes the jaws clamp around your throat before you can fly away.

  The rocket hit the Ford Excelsior, and that fine piece of American engineering went up in an explosion that seemed to split the earth in two. I was knocked flat. A gash in my forehead flooded my eyes with blood. I wiped away the gore to see what had happened to Petal.

  She’d been right there on the ground next to the Ford.

  Then ... she was gone.

  (ii)

  Women on horses came in fast. The riders wore big voluminous gowns from thrift stores or the backs of closets. Costume jewelry gleamed, or maybe the diamonds were the real thing. Didn’t matter.

  I coughed, dazed, blinked at the blood and sweat stinging my eyes. I stumbled toward the Mauser lying on the ground. My feet tangled under me, and I tripped. A rifle stock swooshed centimeters from my skull, wielded by a Madeline on horseback. She wore a blue dress with puffy short-sleeves, a tiara clinging to her curls.

  Pilate yelled, “Matthew!”

  The pony shrieked. Caught in the blast radius of the weapon, the horse stumbled and plummeted into the dirt right in front of me. The rider flew from her horse, both dead. The fog of gunpowder, the odor of blood, and the strong stench of the horse all hit my nose. The stink of battle.

  I pawed my way over the dead horse and removed the MG21 from the nerveless, ring-laden fingers of the woman Pilate had killed. I heard him scream, “Mark!” This time one of his 20 mm grenades exploded, sending more dust and dirt into the air to mingle with the smoke from our fires, scattered now from the explosions and fighting.

  Another Madeline jumped her horse over me, heading straight for Pilate. Her skirts billowed in the wind.

  He saw her. “Luke!” A shotgun blast tore her from the saddle.

  I listened for any sign of Breeze and Keys, or Wren’s pistols and her war cries—nothing but the pounding hooves of horses, Pilate’s gospel gun thunder, women hollering, the crackle of the fire, the roaring rattle of machine guns.

  “John!”

  Pilate’s last grenade took out two women and their horses. I gulped, sickened. Those poor animals, they shouldn’t have to die just ’cause we humans were always so bloodthirsty and violent.

  Pilate had the two MG21s out, one in each hand, throwing lead. The firelight showed him one minute, the smoke hiding him the next. The assault rifles thundered, reaching like extensions of his arms.

  “Fall back and regroup!” This from the Madelines. Still no sign of Wren or our other people. Had the Madelines gotten to them? If not, what were they waiting for?

  Pilate threw down the MG21s, both empty now, and ran back into our homemade fortress. He grabbed me and threw me toward the chuck wagon. I hit my head against the trailer. He slumped down and snapped open the action of his Beijing Homewrecker. He slid in two shotgun shells and two grenades then snapped it closed.

  I wasn’t good in a fight, but I could help him arm up. The Madelines would come for us a
gain, and we only had seconds. Or if they used whatever artillery they had, we’d be killed for sure.

  I got him two AZ3s, and he frowned. “I hate those new guns. Love me an MG21 almost as much as I love tapioca pudding. Your mom made good pudding.”

  “I think Petal might be dead.” I said it quick, but it still hurt to say.

  “I doubt that.” Pilate smirked. “She’s too much of a pain in the ass to just up and die on me. She’s almost as bad as you Wellers. Jesus jackering Christ, is my friend-picker jacked up.”

  Bad cursing, but I knew he didn’t mean it. He was just high on the adrenaline and trying to distance himself from his sorrow so he could reload.

  I ignored his outburst and finished what I had to say. Before we were both killed. “If she’s dead, she died clean. I didn’t give her the Skye6.”

  Pilate laughed out loud. “Well, good for her. Bad for us. Now, are you going to help fight or just sit on your butt? Goddamn. Some people’s kids. At least I’m around to see one of your ideas fail. You were batting a thousand there, daughter of mine.”

  I winced at his words. Winced again when a bullet struck the trailer with a ringing chang sound that made my teeth ache. So close. It had been so close.

  Pilate stood in a flash, grabbed me again, threw me again, this time into the trailer. I tumbled across the steel bottom until I hit the tents. They’d been too heavy for our people to take them. Neofiber chairs stood stacked against the walls next to twenty-liter jugs of water, and cans of food, sacks of rice, other provisions that had been left behind.

  Pilate slammed the door. All light left us. I heard Pilate stacking the tents, the chairs, up against the walls. I knew what he was thinking. The aluminum sides of the trailer wouldn’t stop the bullets.

  They didn’t.

  A choking growl of a heavy machine gun ripped holes across the trailer. The metal folded like paper against the onslaught. They weren’t hitting us with assault rifles anymore. Now they were using some kind of belt-fed beast of a machine gun.

  Holes punched in above us. Firelight flickered in the openings.