Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Sure enough, the Vixxes jogged toward us across the salt.

  Quick as a whip crack, Micaiah dragged me off Bob D. “What’re you doing?” I asked him, every part of me angry.

  He didn’t answer. He decked me. A real sucker punch. You go down when you get socked like that, caught unaware. And I did. From the hit. From the betrayal.

  I was so dazed and hurt, I didn’t fight him when he zip tied my hands behind my back. Prolly got the zip ties out of Bob D’s pack. The wire bracelet on my wrist bit into my skin.

  “What the hell, Johnson?” I started off mad, then got scared. My voice crumbled as I pleaded with him. “Micaiah, tell me what’s going on. How come you’re turning on me? Micaiah!”

  That one word. Micaiah. It had something to do with false prophets. I knew he was a liar. I just didn’t know how much of a Judas he was as well.

  He dragged me over to Bob D and pushed me on top. He lashed me to the saddle, pretty good, but then he’d learned all of his knots from me and Sharlotte, and ain’t nothing we can’t tie down. And Micaiah was so eerie smart.

  “Oh, please, please talk to me.” I was crying. Babbling. “Please.”

  Once I was on Bob, Micaiah took the chalkdrive and stuck it into my jean’s pocket.

  I finally understood and cried harder. “Micaiah, wait, no, we can get away. We can outwit them Vixxes. Micaiah, please. Don’t do this.”

  He fixed those soft eyes on me. Tears tracked down his face through the grit.

  He couldn’t talk.

  “Micaiah, let me go fight ’em while you get away. You’re a boy, you’re a viable boy, son of the richest man on earth. I’m just some girl. Just some stupid Juniper girl. Oh please, talk to me.”

  His voice came out low and bitter. “I’ve spent weeks running, afraid, manipulating you, lying. And you and your people have sacrificed everything for me. I’m done.”

  “But you’re a boy, and I’m just a girl. I’m just a girl, and I ain’t worth nothin’.”

  He touched my hands, looked me in the eye and said, “You’re worth more than a hundred of me.” He kissed my hand and held it against his cheek. His words tattooed themselves on my soul. “I love you, Cavatica Weller. You’ve sacrificed enough for me. Now it’s time I sacrifice everything for you.”

  With the AZ3 in one hand, Micaiah took Bob D’s reins in his other. He waited until the storm blew dust and salt one last time, hiding us. Then he whipped my poor horse, sending me away, so he could fight the Vixx sisters and die.

  I rode off. Screaming his name. Over and over.

  Micaiah!

  Micaiah, ’cause Micah Hoyt was dead and buried. And Micaiah was the name of the boy I loved. The name of the boy who loved me.

  No matter what.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We have both Memorial Day and Labor Day for a reason. Sure, you need courage to fight in a war, but do you know what else takes courage? Thursdays. Clocking in at work on any given Thursday—bravest damn thing in the world. Don’t only look at wars for heroes, look in the heart of the everyday worker.

  —Former President Jack Kanton

  Labor Day, September 4, 2045

  (i)

  BOB D SWEPT ME ACROSS the salt toward Wendover, Nevada and the setting sun.

  I struggled, I wept, but I couldn’t get free. The casino was getting farther and farther behind me.

  Then Bob went down. Because he loved me. He kept going when I needed him, and he died right when I needed him to do that, too.

  When Bob D dropped, I lurched forward. The momentum of the fall put pressure on both my shoulders and the zip ties around my wrist. Either one or the other had to give. My shoulders screamed bloody murder, but I managed to get a hand out of the zip ties. All because of the bracelet. The bracelet hadn’t allowed him to secure the zip tie as tightly as it needed, and I was able to pull a hand free. Lucky, but then I was Pilate’s daughter, blessed or cursed to survive.

  I only had seconds before my poor horse fell on top of me.

  Micaiah’s knots were good, but not good enough for my fingers. I unraveled them enough so when Bob D rolled over, I leapt forward, landed on my left shoulder, then my face, sliding along the salt.

  Blood on my face and salt in the wound, it hurt. The gash from the fight with the Madelines broke open. I didn’t care. “Oh, Bob, oh, Bob.”

  His eyes were blank. He was gone.

  Cynics and atheists would say that his heart gave out ’cause Micaiah sent him galloping away and he was already tuckered out. But I knew the truth.

  Bob D died to save my life. To save us all. God rest his beautiful soul.

  “Thanks, Bob.” I petted his mane one last time. “Thank you for dying for me.” I stood, eyes dry, jaws clenched against the pain. Oh, the pain. I’d landed on my left shoulder, where I’d been shot only a few weeks before. My right ankle screamed. The gash on my forehead added to the chorus, throbbing away.

  Hurt, bleeding, and scared, what could I do against the Vixxes? I scanned the area around the casino, three hundred meters away. The salt flats were clear from horizon to horizon. Micaiah and the Vixx soldiers had to be inside the casino.

  How could I fight them? I checked the saddlebags, thinking I might find a gun. But I found something infinitely better.

  I found a slate.

  On the edge of the Juniper, with the wind blowing, I tried the power. For a minute, it glowed, like it wanted to boot up. Shouldn’t have worked. Hard drive should’ve been wiped clean. Maybe the shielding protecting Micaiah’s chalkdrive worked on the slate as well. No time to ponder what that all meant.

  I didn’t know what I was going to do with that slate—only knew that if there was one weapon I could use, it was a computer.

  Back at the academy, I’d ruined Becca Olson with one. Maybe I could take out the Vixx sisters as well.

  I limped toward the casino, holding my left arm, gasping at the pain.

  Inside, Micaiah and the Vixx sisters were deciding the fate of the world.

  Leave it to a Weller to intrude on such a conversation.

  (ii)

  Wind squealed through the guts of the Silver Island Casino. Someone must’ve left an Eterna battery hooked up, ’cause in the dusty twilight the sign flickered on, then off, sounding like a car with a bad starter. Reer, reer, rumphf. It reminded me of the video screens in Buzzkill, Nebraska, on the border of the Juniper.

  Armed with a dead soldier’s slate, I stepped over the broken lock and hobbled through the doors and into gloom. The casino looked like an ancient museum for leftover gambling equipment. Tables and chairs lay piled next to craps tables and slot machines. Roulette wheels rested in dusty stacks. All of the carpet had been rolled up, leaving bare concrete. The place smelled hot, enclosed, musty. The ghosts of stale cigarette smoke haunted every crevice and cranny. I had the idea it might be some kind of warehouse, maybe used to resupply the casinos in Wendover.

  Every five or six seconds, or close to it, the place would try and light and then drop back into darkness. Reer, reer, rumphf.

  A howl sent me scurrying behind a big keno machine painted like a clown’s face, colorless from age.

  “You will tell us where the chalkdrive is,” a voice demanded. Might’ve been Reb Vixx. Or Ronnie. Or both of them talking at the same time, more like demons than sisters.

  Another scream of pain.

  I choked back a sob. The way he was screaming, it wouldn’t be long before he told them everything. He was such a kind, gentle soul. The pain would kill his heart even if it didn’t kill his body.

  “Where is it? You had it in your pocket after we secured you at the train. Where is the chalkdrive now?”

  “I won’t tell you skanks a thing!” Micaiah’s voice burst out. He’d picked up some Juniper slang, Wren’s favorite word.

  How could they be torturing their boss’ son? Then I knew. The Vixxes were just following orders, which meant Tibbs Hoyt cared more about his money and power than his own son.


  Lights flickered in a stutter. A slot machine chinged pathetically. Reer, reer, rumphf. Silence and dark again.

  To my right was a doorway, and that’s where the Vixxes had Micaiah. Prolly where the high stakes poker tables would’ve been. Ironic. The raw metallic smell of blood struck me, and I knew Micaiah had bet his life, every drop of blood, on me running to the border with the chalkdrive. But I was going to do some gambling of my own. Winner take all.

  An empty bar sat across the room next to stairs going up to another level. To my left, the offices. And where there were offices, there was a server room. Sure. Law of nature.

  I snuck away from the keno machine, moving slowly and carefully so the broken glass didn’t crunch under my boots. The front office had become a technology junkyard—castoff laptops, slates, and a stack of Eterna batteries, boxes the sizes of bread loaves. The batteries weren’t Kung Paos, but the older Egg Drop models. I stuck one under my arm and moved deeper into the offices, past broken desks and piles of paper.

  Dim lights sparked on, followed by the reer, reer, rumphf. In the very back of the office stood a door emblazoned with the words “Server Room” in black. If the door was locked, I would’ve busted through it with the raw force of my shakti. The knob turned and led me into the server room, as dark as a cave. But every so often, a fluorescent light would buzz on weakly, giving me some light.

  A Sargasso Sea of cables and wires covered the floor—most of the hardware had been stripped and salvaged out or stacked in the office. But not everything. A busted-up amplifier sat on the floor under looped yellow cables with the ends snipped off.

  The amplifier was still plugged into the casino’s sound system. If I could create a distraction, I might be able to sneak away with Micaiah. I needed a working slate, and I needed a longer duration of working electricity for the entire casino.

  I set the Egg Drop battery down, then thumbed on the slate.

  A flicker. The screen glowed, then winked off.

  If I could get it to boot up, then I could get it into standby mode and set the auto-launch. I couldn’t hear Micaiah, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t being tortured. Hurry, Cavvy, hurry.

  For a minute, I focused my troubleshooting skills on the slate. The hard drive hadn’t been wiped out, but I figured the battery might not have enough juice to fully boot it up. If I increased the energy input with the Egg Drop, I might prolong the electricity enough to get the slate working. Hopefully the Egg Drop had enough juice to not only light up the slate but the casino as well.

  Server rooms had become like utility closets for all electronics. If you had a battery to run your business, you’d keep it in the server room, and a casino that size would have a rack of them. Unless you had a Kung Pao, then you’d need only one.

  I found the battery cabinet. A few batteries sat there dead and dusty—only one glowed. Well, I could add to it.

  A lot of energy flowed from the batteries. If I touched the wrong lead, the next flicker would fry me.

  But I knew what I was doing. The first commandment said not to have any strange gods, but for me, Eterna batteries were idolatry. Growing up in the Juniper, you either hated electricity ’cause you didn’t have it, or you worshipped it.

  I found the leads, found the plugs, and after the next reer, reer, rumphf, I hooked up the new, better Egg Drop, while doing most of my work in the dark. I pulled the power adaptor cord out of the slate’s housing and plugged it into the battery.

  And waited, sweating. My heart went from jamming itself down into my belly to flailing up into my throat.

  This had to work. More power would give me more time, and the electricity might work for five or six seconds longer and not just a stutter.

  Enough time for my plan.

  Please, God, please. You love Pilate enough to keep him alive. Love me enough to save Micaiah and the human race.

  The lights turned full on. I counted to twelve.

  The two batteries went a dull yellow-orange and winked out. Twelve seconds. One second for each of the apostles. In computer time, that was forever.

  Maybe the Vixx sisters wouldn’t notice. I prayed they wouldn’t.

  Next interval, I turned on the slate, and bang, it booted, and I had enough time to hit the standby mode. Next flicker, I set the auto-launch. Any power now would start the slate.

  When things went dark again, I started a Hail Mary. You can say the Hail Mary in eleven seconds. That was my timer.

  Hail Mary, full of grace ...

  Next power interval, I found the pre-loaded media files on the slate—country music and season one of Lonely Moon. Sure, ’cause everyone liked country music and Juniper drama.

  Another Hail Mary. I found the sound recorder. The lights went out. I noticed there wasn’t any more reer, reer, rumphf. Now there was just a big staticky chunk of sound. Chunk. Silence. Darkness.

  Hail Mary, full of grace ...

  At my amen, the lights came back on.

  The slate winked on. I recorded my messages. Set up my batch files. Scheduled them to execute after the auto-launch. In fits, in spurts, waiting in the darkness, I worked in the twelve-second intervals God gave me, saying the Hail Mary. Only Saint Francis might’ve said it more fervently.

  I found the amplifier and plugged in the slate. I found the volume and cranked it up.

  Lights flickered out. I was ready.

  I wasn’t crying.

  I wasn’t even praying.

  I was fighting—fighting those Vixx sisters the only way I knew how—with wires, with a slate, with my head.

  And a head can outgun a gun any old time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Juniper forges women into the hardest steel imaginable.

  —Mavis Meetchum

  Colorado Courier Interview

  September 7, 2046

  (i)

  BEFORE I LEFT THE SERVER room, I coiled some leftover cabling around my good shoulder. Just in case. It was really nice cable. I was pretty sure some active salvage monkey had stashed it there, prolly stole it from the SLC under the noses of the Mormons.

  I limp-skipped through the office. It was so black I banged my left shoulder against a wall, sending shrieking pain through my shoulder. Didn’t have time to stop to nurse it or freak out. I made it into the main casino when the lights flickered on.

  Over the speakers, my own voice roared like glorious thunder.

  “Come out, you dirty skanks! The Weller girls are here, and we have reinforcements. Come out, or we’re coming in after you!”

  Then darkness, silence.

  I inched forward to the doorway. I hid behind a stack of moldering cardboard boxes. The Vixx sisters must’ve lit a flare ’cause a hellish spitting light washed the walls in crimson. They talked in their robotic voices.

  “We must confirm number and resources.”

  “We can negotiate with the boy’s life for intel on the chalkdrive.”

  “Options.”

  “Defend, negotiate, terminate with extreme prejudice.”

  Lights came on. My voice blared over the speakers, playing the next audio file. “We have you surrounded. Come out with your hands up!”

  First Vixx. “I will find an exit. The boy is secondary. Primary mission is the chalkdrive.”

  Second Vixx. “I will confirm assets and risk.”

  Both of the soldier girls sprinted out of the room. Like I thought, they wanted the chalkdrive. Didn’t care too much about the boy.

  My plan worked—worked on Becca Olson and worked on the Vixx sisters.

  I dashed into the room.

  Micaiah hung from the ceiling, ropes tied to beams above the shedding ceiling tiles looped around his armpits. His shirt was unbuttoned. Hands zip tied. Legs zip tied. And bloody. Every inch bloody.

  Using my Betty knife, I sliced through the zip ties on his feet. I pulled over a chair and stood on it to cut the rope holding him to the rafters. He came down on top of me, and we rolled to the floor. But only for a second. I pick
ed him up.

  “Gotta run, Micaiah. Quietly. Gotta run. We only have ...”

  Twelve seconds.

  When the lights flashed on, so did the theme song of Lonely Moon—gunfire and rip-roaring country music. Over the speakers, it sounded like Armageddon.

  God willing, we’d be out of there before the Vixxes guessed it was all a trick.

  “Cavvy ... no ... you run ...” Micaiah could hardly talk. He was slippery from blood, weak from torture, his face twisted in the flare’s fire.

  “Shush, now. Shush. My plan worked.”

  It did, only my exit strategy wasn’t too good. Like always.

  Ronnie Vixx stood in front of the door leading outside.

  At the sound of our footsteps, she turned, her guns up and ready—an AZ3 and a Zeus 2 charge gun. Her face hung expressionless. No thrill of victory for her. Just her mission.

  “The chalkdrive? Where is it?” Not sure which was colder, the metal of her gun barrel or the inhuman iron in her eyes.

  “I buried it out in the desert.” Said it before Micaiah could say a word.

  Ronnie Vixx raised her AZ3, and without even aiming, she gunned Micaiah back against slot machines. The sound of that assault rifle thundering shattered me. The flare in the other room had burned out. In total darkness, Micaiah’s poor body dropped to the floor.

  Lights flickered on, and an old country music song, as mournful as a ghost, whispered through the speakers. Twelve seconds worth.

  Then, back into darkness.

  “The chalkdrive. Where is it?” Same question. Same toneless voice. Same nothing in her soul.

  I ignored her. I went to Micaiah, fell across his body, kissed his face, and touched his bloody chest. My boy. My Micaiah. Gone.

  “If you run, you will die,” she said.

  Couldn’t run. Couldn’t die. Seeing Micaiah’s death had already killed me.

  From behind me clattered the footsteps of Reb Vixx. They’d search me and find the chalkdrive, and no one would ever know Tibbs Hoyt had the cure for sterility. He could continue to sell Male Product and get richer and richer and richer.