Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  And he’d killed his own son to do it.

  (ii)

  “Stand up.” Ronnie Vixx stood in front of me. Reb Vixx was running up from behind.

  Lights off. Coffin dark. Me sweating. Micaiah’s blood on my fingers. The memory of my lips on his cheek, going cold.

  “Goddamn you skanks,” I whispered. “Goddamn you, and goddamn that jack-off Tibbs Hoyt.”

  No answer. They were going to wait for electricity, then they were going to take the chalkdrive, and most likely they’d kill me, too, to cover up their tracks. I was a liability, and I’m sure Hoyt’s orders would’ve been to leave no survivors.

  Lights on. Music blasted through the speakers, a pounding rock and roll song with dubstep thumping breaks, and through the doors, like it was her very own theme song, charged Wren Weller.

  Her Colt Terminators blazed as shells sprinkled the floor.

  Ronnie Vixx turned and then lost her face. Wren was packing .45 hollow points. At that range, it was butchery.

  Wren tore past me and the body of Micaiah. She leapt over Ronnie Vixx’s corpse and hit Reb Vixx going a million kilometers an hour.

  The two warrior women were gonna fight to the death. Blood splattered the floor.

  But Wren couldn’t be alive. Couldn’t. Gut-shot for hours? Suffering as her own bowels poisoned her and her blood gushed. Couldn’t be.

  But it was. Maybe Wren hadn’t been as shot up as I had thought. Or maybe she’d been as contrary with death as she’d been with her family.

  With no light, I lost track of Wren and Reb Vixx as they fought with their knives, slicing, cutting, stabbing. Wren was too ferocious to go down; Reb Vixx too well-engineered.

  The lights flickered on. More music blared, thundering out a hip-hop song, pounding us with bass and beat. Sharlotte rushed through the door. Impossible.

  “Sharlotte!” I tried to yell over the music. “How can you be here?”

  Couldn’t hear what she said, but I heard Wren screaming, “Kill us both, Shar. Kill us both. I wanna ride this skank down to hell.”

  I remembered the weapons. I went for the leftovers of Ronnie Vixx, picked up her charge gun and her AZ3, then turned. A second later I had light and Johnny Cash singing.

  Wren and the Vixx woman wrestled on the floor. Reb Vixx stuck my sister’s own Betty knife into her already torn belly.

  I watched her do it. Just like all the other times in my story, I couldn’t shoot for fear of killing my own sister. Couldn’t ’cause when it came down to it, after all the fighting and tears and arguing, I loved her more than I loved the world.

  And I wasn’t good with guns. But I had an idea.

  In the darkness, I did some emergency engineering with the cable I’d taken from the server room. Maybe I was being stupid. Maybe I should’ve just killed that Reb Vixx where she stood. But like I told Becca Olson, oh so long ago at the Sally Browne Burke Academy for the Moral and Literate, I’d rather be stupid than heartless.

  I stood. The charge gun hung from my shoulder. I emptied the AZ3 into the ceiling to get everyone’s attention. “Reb, I’ll give you the chalkdrive! Wren, stop fighting!”

  Lights came on. Twelve seconds. LeAnna Wright singing about Texas at midnight.

  Wren shrieked at me. “Dammit, Cavvy. Kill us! For once in your goddamn life, shoot to kill!”

  “You stop!” I yelled back. “For once in your own goddamn life, stop fighting and trust me.” I dropped the AZ3 and swung the charge gun around. I let the strap fall from my shoulder.

  Wren released the demon. Reb stood, robotically, figuring Wren was no longer a threat. She was prolly right.

  That soulless Vixx soldier walked over to me, a cobra in combat boots. She reached out a gory glove. “The chalkdrive. Now.”

  Sharlotte stood breathing hard behind me. “Cavvy, no.” Then I figured she saw Micaiah lying dead on the floor, ’cause I heard her gasp his name. I swallowed my sorrow.

  “Don’t worry, Sharlotte.” Then to Reb Vixx, “If I give you the chalkdrive, you’ll leave us alone, okay?”

  Darkness. Reb didn’t answer.

  With my heart fluttering, I was about to ask again when the lights came on. More country music. Country Mac Sterling.

  Reb ripped the charge gun out of my hand. “The chalkdrive. Now.”

  I stood unarmed.

  “She’ll kill us all.” Wren hissed the words through her pain.

  I dug into my pocket and showed Reb Vixx the chalkdrive, the key that would unlock the future of our world, for Juniper folk and Yankees alike.

  Reb snatched it from my hand just as the lights and music went away.

  I had to warn her, but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Let us live, or you’ll be sorry. You’ll be real sorry.”

  When the lights shimmered on, she fired that charge gun at me and Shar, point blank, should’ve roasted us toasty, but it didn’t.

  I’d looped the cable around the front element of the charge gun and fastened bare wires to the grip.

  When she hit the trigger, lightning filled the room.

  As bright as the sun.

  Long streams of electricity blazed up and down Reb Vixx, electrifying her flesh, sizzling her down. The stench of human flesh burning made me sick.

  Twelve seconds worth of hell on earth.

  Darkness cut off the electricity, but we could still hear the horrible sizzle of her cooking skin.

  When the lights came on, what was left of Reb Vixx, headless and blackened and dead, toppled over. Nothing could’ve survived that blast.

  “Thank you, Maggie,” I whispered, “for your very fine batteries.”

  The chalkdrive clattered out of Reb Vixx’s fist and onto the floor. The shielding held. But then, that shielding would have held against a nuclear blast. I’d find that out later, much later.

  “Cavvy, what happened?” Sharlotte asked me in the darkness that followed.

  Before I could explain my engineering or ask Sharlotte how she’d found us, Wren called out, “Cavvy, you there? You alive still?”

  I went to hold her while she died. One last chance to put things right.

  (iii)

  Sharlotte and I knelt beside Wren. She was a mess of blood. She latched onto my arm. “Cavvy, you didn’t shoot me before, did you? I thought you’d shot me. My own family, killing me. But you didn’t. Say you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t, Wren. I’d never. It was the Vixx sisters behind me.”

  Wren shuddered and cried. “Oh, Cavvy, I was scared you did. You know, I petted you as a baby. Like you were my own baby, and I loved you.”

  My tears fell in a rainstorm. “I love you, too, Wren. Always.” In the past weeks, I’d tried to make her believe that. Now I could. “The Vixx sisters are dead, Wren. You killed one, and I tricked the other. But it was you who saved me. You and Sharlotte. And all of us together, we saved the world.”

  “Cavvy!” Wren cried out again.

  I bent and held her close.

  “Cavvy, I wasn’t gonna steal Micaiah. I was gonna bring him back. I was gonna be good, Cavvy. I wanna be good now.”

  “I know, Wren. I know.”

  Wren’s body wracked in pain. “Sharlotte, can you forgive me for all I done to you and Mama? Can you love me? I know I’m trouble, but can you love me?”

  Sharlotte bent closer and picked up a bloodstained hand. “Yeah, Wren, I can. I’m different now, and I can forgive you. I love you.”

  We were together, the Weller sisters, a family, at the very end of things.

  This time when the lights came back, out of the speakers murmured a quiet girl’s voice, singing about redemption and love.

  “I petted you, Cavvy. I petted and kissed you and rocked you to sleep and warmed you when it was cold. Like Mama did for me. Like Sharlotte did.”

  I hugged Wren tighter and kissed her.

  We all cried—maybe tears for Wren, maybe tears for Mama, or maybe just tears ’cause the world brings us hurt. But we can get to the other side of i
t—if not in this life, then the next.

  “Go, Wren,” I said. “Go and find the other side of your pain. Go and rest.”

  “Mama!” Wren cried out. It was an old voice in the darkness, an old plea for comfort, for warmth, for love in this hard, cold world.

  She let go of the fight and relaxed in my arms. Dead.

  “Find your other side,” I whispered to her. “I forgive you. I forgive all your trespasses.”

  “Our Father, who art in heaven,” Sharlotte started.

  I said it with her. Hallowed be thy name. But God wasn’t in heaven right then. He was with us in that room. Crying. God can’t stay in heaven. What can He do there?

  God is with us, always. When we laugh, He laughs. When we cry, He cries. And when we fight for our lives, He fights along with us.

  Until it’s time to take that short walk on home.

  Chapter Twenty

  In the 19th century, greed, corruption, and violence built the American West. Maybe now, those strong Juniper women can re-build it using their compassion, kindness, and feminine strength.

  —Sally Browne Burke

  Informal Remarks on the Juniper

  March 1, 2058

  (i)

  A VOICE ASKED IN THE darkness, “Are you all okay?” I couldn’t believe it. Micaiah.

  Sharlotte sucked in a breath—sounded like she was about to curse.

  Another song came on with an old, reverb guitar riffing, full of hope, the Wild West, and a pioneering spirit.

  And we were about to do some pioneering.

  I left Wren and tumbled into Micaiah, holding him, feeling his skin, warm and alive, kissing him. Micaiah was alive! I wanted to sing it to the stars. But how could that be?

  “Micaiah, how could you—how come—how can you be alive?”

  Then I understood. Micaiah had seemed so lucky to survive the crash, to get away from all of our fights without a bullet touching him, but maybe he wasn’t lucky. Maybe he was engineered. I felt the back of his poofy white pirate shirt and found bullet holes from when he’d been shot off the horse with Wren. He must’ve picked up another Regio’s coat to trick us.

  “You were shot,” I murmured. “Micaiah, can you heal like the Vixxes?”

  “Not now,” he said. He led me back to Wren. In his hand were two syringes. He bent down, and during another twelve-second interval, he found Wren’s vein and slipped that needle in and worked a miracle.

  “Micaiah, what are you doing?” I asked.

  In the blackness I couldn’t see his expression. But his words came out soft and low. “This is the Gulo Delta. The first Gulo serums killed most of the test subjects or twisted them into monsters. But the Gulo Delta, this stuff, just watch.”

  “What’s going on?” Sharlotte asked suspiciously.

  Hope sparked in my chest. “Super soldiers. If they could enhance cellular regeneration with the Vixxes, maybe they could do something similar with other folks.”

  “Not that I understood any of that,” Sharlotte said softly.

  “It means Wren might heal like a Vixx,” Micaiah said, “if we got to her in time. Death is death. My father couldn’t fix that part, or at least I don’t think he could.”

  Lights on and we were all there beside Wren. We watched as the skin started to knit together.

  Lights off. Breath burst from Wren. A rebirth. Roll away the stone from the tomb. Why do you look for the living among the dead?

  Sharlotte’s voice echoed with awe. “How can this be? How can she still be alive?”

  I knew. Micaiah’s syringe, the Gulo Delta, had rescued her from death. Inside, I was doing a happy dance. A miracle. God so loved the world. I gripped Wren’s hand. It all came together in my mind. We’d seen Edger nearly dead, but the next day she’d been healed overnight. Now we knew why.

  “The Vixxes gave Edger the same serum, right?” I paused. “Are you a super soldier?”

  Micaiah laughed a little. “Hardly. You’ve seen me in a fight. But yes, Edger must have been dosed with the Gulo Delta. ARK research scientists delved into the deepest mysteries of micro-cellular biology to try and find a cure for the Sterility Epidemic. And they found some amazing things. Only about two percent of our DNA is used. We used to think the remaining ninety-eight percent was junk. But like that old saying, ‘God don’t make no junk.’”

  Wren spoke out in the darkness. “How come I’m not dead?”

  We all burst into laughter. More light, more music, and leave it to Sharlotte to say, “Aw, Wren, Pilate always said hell would spit you back out like a bad sunflower seed. Damn that man, but he was right.”

  Micaiah hit Wren with another syringe, this one for the pain, and she went out again.

  We carried her out of that place of death and darkness. That tomb.

  I tried to help, but my poor ankle and aching shoulder ganged up on me, nearly bent me over. Almost asked for a little of the Gulo Delta for myself, but Micaiah had used it all on Wren. We had pain medication, but I wanted to save it. God only knew what had happened to our people on the train.

  And we still needed to figure out how Sharlotte had found us.

  Outside, the night was a painter’s palette of blacks, blues, and stars. A big fat moon shone down like a mother gazing on her child. A jeep sat parked in front of the casino. Sharlotte must’ve grabbed it from the train, picked up Wren, and sped across the salt flats to save us from the Vixxes.

  Micaiah helped Sharlotte lay my sister gently into the backseat. Sharlotte gently brushed hair out of Wren’s face. She caught me, watching. She nodded, wordless, and came over and held me for a long time. I hugged my big sister back, and time seemed to rewind back to our lives together on the ranch in Burlington. Me. Wren. Sharlotte. Only this time, we weren’t arguing or fighting.

  We parted. Sharlotte slid behind the wheel of the jeep, and Micaiah rode shotgun. I sat in the back with Wren so I could hold her. We took off into the moonlit landscape.

  The electric lights of the jeep worked now, since we were out of the Juniper and back in the World. We headed west, toward Wendover and the end of our impossible cattle drive.

  “If you lived, and Wren lived, will them Vixxes?” Sharlotte asked.

  Micaiah shook his head. “Severe head trauma, spinal-cord injuries, my father could never fix. Those Vixxes are dead, but there is one left: Rachel. She’s bad, but the Severins are worse. And the ARK has a lot more of them. I’m not sure how many. My father kept their identities, and number, hidden.”

  “If he kept their identities hidden, how do you know about them?” I asked.

  “I met one.” Micaiah took in a deep breath. “I watched her. I watched her change from a normal woman into something ... else ...”

  The way he paused and said that final word jammed fear into my throat. But hopefully, we could avoid them.

  Sharlotte still wasn’t understanding it all. “So was Wren engineered?”

  “No,” I said, “She’s human, but the Gulo Delta healed her.”

  “So far, so good,” Micaiah murmured. I didn’t like the way he said it.

  (ii)

  From the back seat of the jeep, I called out to Sharlotte. “Hey Shar, what happened? How did you know where we were?”

  “Tracked you.” Sharlotte smiled at me in the rearview mirror. She looked so much like Mama right then. “But how come you aren’t asking how I got to y’all so fast? Or how I could leave our headcount to chase after you?”

  I grinned back. “’Cause you know how to leave when you need to leave. And you know when to stay when you need to stay. You know that family is sometimes more important than responsibility. And that Wren and me are more important than cows.”

  Sharlotte couldn’t talk for a minute. I could see the tears in her eyes. We both knew that maybe Mama had it wrong working so much, leaving Sharlotte to raise Wren, and leaving them both to raise me.

  I thought back about how Sharlotte said we were gonna do the cattle drive our own way. Well, we sure did.
<
br />   “Okay, Sharlotte, how did you get to the train so fast?”

  “Flew over the train tracks and found it.” A mischievous grin lit her face. “And not in the Moby either. You think you’re the only one who can do the impossible?”

  “No.” I sighed, so relieved. “Tell me everything.”

  Sharlotte told us her story, and it was quite the adventure. She’d come north looking to rejoin our operation, but stumbled into the Wind River people, picking through the bodies of the ARK army they’d helped destroy. The Psycho Madelines had already run off.

  Sharlotte tried to run, but the Wind River women rode her down, and my sister thought it was the end of her. Instead, the women welcomed her. They’d already talked to Aunt Bea and Crete. And while Aunt Bea had eaten at Mavis Meetchum’s table, Sharlotte had grown up playing with her kids.

  The Wind River people still remembered the buffalo Mavis had given them, and so they gave Sharlotte a present back, one of the single-rider zeppelins I’d seen at the train battle. I recalled the insanely clever design, a thelium air cell carrying a NeoFiber frame, powered by an ultra-light steam engine.

  Couldn’t help it. My mouth fell open.

  “That’s right,” Sharlotte said. “I flew over the train tracks until I found the train, got her stopped, and then grabbed a jeep. Something happened in the landing and busted up the flier, or else I’d have gotten to the casino faster, but I might not have found Wren.”

  My head whirled. All I’d ever heard were horror stories about the Wind River people, but come to find out they’d helped us not once, but twice. And with advanced technology. What other secrets did the Wind River people have?

  I’d learn. But later, much later on.

  Sharlotte continued with her story. In the jeep, she followed the tracks of the ten horses the Vixxes had stolen. Wasn’t long until she found Wren lying in a pool of blood, but Wren said she wouldn’t die until she saw me safe. Like I thought, death had come calling and my sister had told him to go jack himself.

  She clung to life even though at the time she thought I’d shot her, making her worst fear come true—that family would hate her so much that they’d kill her. But it was a lie.