Inferno Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Pilate steadied the AZ3 on the roof of the cab and shot the other Colt out of the Vixx’s hand. He’d have killed her with a headshot, but his assault rifle jammed.

  I sped across the salt ground and struck the soldier clone across the head with the saw. It dazed her just long enough for Wren to get to her feet.

  Poor Pilate, he was coughing something horrible as he pounded on the AZ3, trying to get the action unstuck. I walloped the Vixx again with the saw—gashed her forehead and scalp. For a moment, the blood blinded her, but already the skin closed over the wound.

  Wren leapt past me and drove a foot into Rachel Vixx’s belly, bringing her to her knees.

  Micaiah tossed Wren the Colt he’d wrestled out of the Vixx’s hand. Wren backed away and aimed the pistol at the Vixx’s head. But my sister was holding her belly as her knees shook; the gun trembled in her fist.

  I raised the saw to strike again, but the Vixx, on her knees, was an echo of the soldier girl I’d killed in the sheriff’s office.

  Please, don’t kill me.

  “Wait!” I shouted. “Don’t.”

  Wren swayed. She was about five seconds from falling, but it was long enough for me to grab the other Colt Terminator out of the dirt.

  The metal, heated by the sun, scorched my sweaty fingers. The energy of all our adrenaline electrified the air like dry lightning.

  Wren’s eyes winced closed, and she fell. She grunted on the ground, still clutching her stomach. Shot there again, the same place as before. We couldn’t escape a fight with a Vixx without getting hurt. Never could.

  Rachel Vixx jerked a leg forward to stand. I stopped her, right there, with one of Wren’s Colt Terminators aimed right between her eyes. If she got to her feet, she’d murder us all. “No. You’re done. Back on your knees.”

  She moved her leg back and knelt before me.

  I stayed out of her reach. “Unholster that Desert Messiah under your arm and throw it down. Do it slow. Then put your hands behind your head.”

  She looked up at me, blinking the blood out of her eye. So much blood. So many gunfights and fistfights and consternation. She dropped her hand-cannon into the dust and laced her fingers behind her skull.

  Again, I thought of the soldier I’d shot.

  Please, don’t kill me.

  A strange quiet fell over our battlefield among the trucks, next to the bus. No birds, no wind, nothing but the heat and the shuffle of feet in the salt.

  I asked Rachel Vixx, “Do you want to live?”

  Wren yelled, “Shoot that thing, Cavvy. Don’t chat with it.”

  The Vixx gazed up into my face. Expressionless. Again, I had the impression that instead of thoughts, she had algorithms deciding her next action.

  If, then, else.

  “Do you even know you’re alive?” I asked.

  Again, nothing.

  “One of your Regios begged me not to shoot her,” I said. “She wanted to live. Do you?”

  If the Vixx didn’t answer me, I’d have to kill her. And I didn’t want that. Jesus said to turn the other cheek. We’d not done that. Not at all. Not once.

  “I want to live,” Rachel Vixx said in her dead voice. “The Cuius Regios have emotions because they are imperfect. I do not have emotions. I want to live so I can complete my imperatives.”

  “This is so jacked up!” Wren shakily tried to aim the Colt, but Micaiah darted over and plucked it out of her hand. Wren fell into a shrieking rant. “Goddammit, Cavvy, you had to cut Sharlotte’s leg off ’cause of her. She would’ve blinded you and not cared a bit. She shot me up. She shot up Micaiah. Kill her. Kill that thing dead!”

  I didn’t glance at her or Micaiah. I kept my eyes focused on the Vixx. What I was doing was dangerous, like trying to have coffee with a rattlesnake. But the more we knew, the better.

  Pilate slid off the truck, but the assault rifle was still jammed. Even if it hadn’t been, his hacking kept him bent over.

  “What are your imperatives?” I asked.

  She answered in a drone. “It is imperative I bring the chalkdrive containing the ARK database back to mission control. It is imperative I eliminate anyone who has knowledge of the chalkdrive. It is imperative I either retrieve Micah Hoyt or eliminate him.”

  “Which is why your sisters tortured him back in the casino,” I muttered. “Before we put them down.”

  “Reb and Ronnie Vixx are not my sisters. We were created at the same time, and we are the same. We are not related. We are the same. So are you confirming their decommissioned state?”

  Wren cackled. “Ain’t decommissioned, skank. I killed one, and Cavvy tricked the other. Both are dead as doornails.”

  Rachel blinked, that computer code mind of hers running processed variables. Not that she was a robot.

  “If I do as you say, will you spare me?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer that. But I did know the opposite. “If you don’t, I will shoot you. I don’t want to. I want you to forget about your imperatives.”

  “Impossible. I was created to follow my imperatives. If I did not follow the imperatives ...” I could see confusion in her eyes for a moment. “If I did not follow my imperatives, I would be put in an error state.”

  “And if I showed you mercy? What then?”

  Back to her programming. “It would prove you are imperfect. Mercy is a liability. Pity is a liability. Emotions are a liability.”

  Pilate had stopped coughing. He walked and stood next to me. “Okay, Cavvy, I’ll take it from here.”

  He’d given up on the AZ3 and held Tina Machinegun.

  Rachel Vixx kept her eyes on him and the rifle, every muscle tense. Her eyes dropped to the Desert Messiah lying in the dust. She was coiled, ready to strike.

  “No,” I whispered. “Not this time.”

  Please, don’t kill me.

  Wren cursed. Micaiah kept silent.

  “You heard her,” Pilate said. “All she is, all she will ever be, is her orders. Her imperatives. Which are to make sure we all die. We don’t have a choice.”

  “We have a choice,” I said. “It’s not an easy choice, but it’s a choice. What if she can change? What if she can find her other side?”

  We’d been talking about that for weeks, about people changing and finding the other side of their pain. For Rosie Petal, it was quitting the drugs that kept her crazy. For Wren, it was deciding to be a part of our family and saving Micaiah, not for the reward money, but ’cause it was the right thing to do.

  For Pilate, getting to the other side was telling me his sins and asking for forgiveness. It also meant he was trying to believe in some kind of God that might love the world and everyone in it. Including the strange soldier girl in front of us. Not human, certainly not, but could we be certain she didn’t have a soul?

  Pilate kept his rifle leveled on the Vixx. She didn’t glance again at her weapon lying on the ground, but I knew she was thinking about it.

  Or maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was considering other options.

  “What if she can change?” I asked. “We’ve killed a lot of people without giving them the chance.”

  Wren exploded. “You shoot her, Pilate. You get her, or I swear I’ll beat y’all to pieces once I get my shakti going again.”

  Luckily, Micaiah had taken Wren’s gun. Otherwise, Wren wouldn’t be talking—she’d be shooting.

  Micaiah stuck one of Wren’s pistols in his belt. “I can help,” he said in a quiet voice. “Right now, she won’t change, she can’t. But I can fix a little part of her.”

  Rachel whipped her head around to stare at him. It wasn’t fear on her face, but it was something close to it.

  Pilate had her covered, so I slid Wren’s other Colt .45 into the back of my jeans and bent to retrieve the .50 caliber Desert Messiah lying on the ground. I cocked back the hammer. Didn’t need to, it had a double-action firing mechanism, but I wanted to make sure Rachel Vixx understood her situation. “Rachel, you’re thinking about making one last go f
or us. If you do, we’ll put you down. I don’t want to do it, but everyone else does. So just be still and let us help you.”

  “Impossible,” she said. “You are foolish to think I will do anything but follow my imperatives. What you are doing is illogical. But I will let you think you have changed me, and then I will retrieve the boy and the chalkdrive and eliminate you all.”

  “Skank can’t lie.” Wren laughed. “And she thinks she’s perfect.”

  Micaiah came up behind her. In his hand, he had a slim, plastic syringe. So tiny, so small, he could’ve fit it in his pocket.

  But what was it? Why did he have it?

  Another Micaiah mystery. What else was he carrying around that we didn’t know about?

  He stuck the syringe in her neck and thumbed down the plunger; he did it quick and jumped back.

  “What did you give her?” Pilate asked.

  Yeah, my same question. I was too shocked to speak.

  Micaiah didn’t answer right away. He gazed down on Rachel, kneeling in the dirt. Then he spoke slowly. “Soldiers don’t need emotions, but people do. If we want to make her human, we have to start with emotions. She was engineered not to have the neurochemicals which make feelings possible. I just gave her a syringe full. She’s about to feel for the first time.”

  “And where did you get such a thing?” I asked sarcastically.

  He shrugged. That hurt me.

  I kept my eyes on Rachel, but I addressed him. “Have you had that syringe all this time? Since you first met us?”

  He didn’t answer. His silence suggested secrets I doubted he’d ever be able to tell me.

  Rachel Vixx leapt to her feet, but she didn’t attack us. No, her eyes rolled wild in her face. Her limbs trembled so she could hardly stand. “You cannot do this to me. You must kill me. Anything else is idiocy.” She fell into a crouch, her arms up as if the sky itself was about to break her bones.

  Wren stood, laughing a little. “Yeah, we’re idiots. But looky there, I think Micaiah filled you full of fraidy-cat juice. I’m liking you scared, Rache, I’m liking it a lot.”

  Rachel’s hands fell, and she clawed at her chest. “Is this ... is this fear? How can you stand it? How can you live with it?”

  She dropped to the ground on all fours and started to weep.

  That shut everyone up, including Pilate.

  I gave him the big pistol, gave Wren her Colt, and walked over to our enemy, making sure I blocked any shot they could take. Using my own body to protect her, I bent down. Yes, what I was doing was foolish, but if I was going to be stupid about anything, I’d be stupid about holding someone while they cried their heart out. And I held Rachel Vixx while she let fall the first real tears of her life. I held her and said the Our Father over her.

  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

  Rachel Vixx had sinned against us, certainly, over and over. But I was going to forgive her. For some reason, God had given me the chance to love an enemy, and I was going to take it.

  We witnessed two births that day. Sharlotte shed her leg and was born again. And the last of the Vixxes, our Rachel, was born that day as well.

  Chapter Five

  Your love is a puzzle I just can’t do

  Your love is a door I can’t get through

  You’re a cougar in the kitchen making stew

  I’m a bear in the bedroom asking for you

  — Al Stainback and the New Developments

  (i)

  BEFORE WE SET OFF TO find the buildings Wren had spied, we ate NDurance protein bars and beef jerky from Sharlotte’s saddlebags. The sun ticked higher into the sky and birds flittered about, trying to find a cloud. In the distance, red-winged blackbirds trilled their staccato whistle. That sound made me feel right at home, though I couldn’t be farther from Burlington.

  Rachel kept cocking her head to listen to the bird song. After her initial outburst, she’d gone dead silent. She crouched, unarmed, outside the bus in the dust, sweating in the heat of the sun, her eyes darting back and forth. We could almost hear her heart fluttering in her chest.

  Sharlotte woke, dazed, and we gave her some water to drink. She sucked on the LifeStraw, then collapsed back into unconsciousness.

  The breeze dropped, and nasty black gnats appeared. Those darn bugs didn’t just buzz in our ears, but settled onto our skin, prolly looking for the salt and moisture of our sweat. We got tired of swiping at them and let them cover us.

  Between the bugs, Sharlotte, Rachel, and Micaiah’s shirtless chest, I had plenty to keep my mind busy. Though I was mad at the boy, I couldn’t help but find myself staring at his skin. He’d cleaned his bullet wounds using hot springs water. The red welts had already healed into scabs. Damaged or not, his body looked good. Then I’d chide myself. Like most of our time together, romance was such an insipid luxury.

  After our quick lunch, we were back shuffling through the desert. Micaiah, Wren, and Pilate tugged Sharlotte across the specter of a road through the greasewood. The spiny branches pulled at our clothes even as the verdant tendril-like leaves slid across our boots. Tall yellow-grasses and green reeds edged the various ponds and channels of the Fish Springs Wildlife Refuge on our left—more water than we could ever drink. Red-headed ducks paddled away before taking flight, their wings slapping the water as they flew away. The slaps matched our steps.

  Rachel moved in an eerie silence in front of me; we brought up the rear. Pilate and Wren insisted we zip-tie Rachel’s hands behind her back, and yes, I kept Tina Machinegun aimed at her. I didn’t think she’d relapse back into a killing machine, but I couldn’t take the chance.

  Even walking, the gnats didn’t let up. They’d try to crawl into my eyes, and I’d have to slap at them or dig them out. The occasional breeze would come, thank Jesus, and blow them away, but they’d always come back as bad as ever.

  As we marched down the ghost of the road, I wondered what it must have been like to be in such a remote location during the Yellowstone Knockout. The Sino-American War started in 2028. Less than a year later, the Chinese hit Yellowstone. I imagined some lonely park ranger listening to the disaster on an internet radio station or watching it on her slate—back then called a tablet—watching in horror as clouds of black smoke poured into the air. The Chinese had used a technologically superior hydrogen bomb which consumed most of the radiation in the initial explosion.

  Instead of murdering the world, the nuclear blast had sealed the Yellowstone Caldera. Even so, smoke and debris had filled the atmosphere. The sky turned an ashy midnight for months on end. Not quite a nuclear winter, but close enough, and truly devastating in the middle of the most horrific war the world had ever seen. The Sino-American War was fought in China, but it affected every country on Earth. Famines in India and Africa. The Food Wars in Europe.

  Almost immediately, the poor ranger’s electronics would’ve cut off.

  The sealed caldera had formed a geological phenomenon called a flood basalt. A huge bladder of lava underneath the crust of the earth channeled molten rock through a narrow throat, which ionized the iron in the soil, creating a static electromagnetic field. The flood basalt inched across the earth, moving like a stop-motion tsunami, creeping toward the Pacific Ocean. The front edge only moved a few centimeters a day, but most likely, it would one day creep onto the beaches of Oregon. The Deccan traps in India had been a flood basalt which had lasted a million years and eventually covered most of the sub-continent.

  Maybe in another million years, the Yellowstone throat would stop vomiting lava and electricity would return to the Juniper.

  Out here in the middle of nowhere, if I’d been a park ranger, and if I’d had a diesel truck, I’d have taken off and not looked back. Would’ve left everything behind. I was hoping that was the case, and we’d find supplies, thirty years old, but supplies nonetheless. If the hapless park rangers had packed up before they fled, Sharlotte might not make it. She needed painkillers and antibiotics in the wors
t way.

  My ankle slowed me down further, and Rachel walked slower to match it, like she wanted me near. Made sense, I guess, since I was the one had saved her. Well, Micaiah and I did.

  At one point, we stopped to give Wren and the others a brief rest. My sister approached Rachel and me and gave us each a long look.

  “She tries anything, I’m going to put her down,” Wren growled. “You get that, Cavvy, right?”

  From my pocket I took the fateful bullet Wren had thrown at Micaiah the night I’d stood up to my sister. I’d gone as far as pointing a gun at her.

  I showed Wren the bullet. “Remember this?”

  A frown cut into Wren’s face. “Micaiah kept secrets. He never tried to kill us.”

  “Rachel isn’t what she was,” I said.

  “You willing to bet our lives on it?” Wren asked.

  I put the bullet back into my pocket. “Let’s keep walking, Wren. Time will tell if I made a mistake or not.”

  “Hopefully we all won’t die ’cause of it.” Wren spat, turned around, and joined Pilate and Micaiah, leashed to Sharlotte’s car seat.

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “Hopefully.”

  Throughout the entire exchange, Rachel didn’t say a peep, barely looking at us. It was almost like she’d escaped into herself, and whatever happened on the outside didn’t matter. Didn’t know if that was good or bad, but I prayed it meant she was learning how to process her new emotions.

  An hour later, we hit the visitor center and research facility of the refuge. It looked like a full-on active compound, and I’d never imagined there would be so many buildings, all built out of red brick. Derelict trucks and big tractors lay exhausted on deflated tires. Cottonwoods and other willows towered over the structures, giving the buildings shade and a homey appearance.

  Pilate preached his sermon on faith. “And you all thought we wouldn’t be taken care of. Well, what do you all think of this little oasis?”

  Wren spit into the dust. “Won’t know if it’s safe until we check. We might meet up with Mormons hell-bent on wives. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Her belly wound was healing, and she had her Colt Terminators strapped to her jeans—sure, she was ready for another fight. She’d said her pistols were a gift from a guy named Dutch Malhotra, and I remembered Pilate had given her a good ribbing about her having a boyfriend. It was hard to imagine Wren in love. She seemed too hard.