Inferno Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Instead of answering, he put out a hand. I took it, though I wasn’t feeling lovey-dovey. I was too scared, tired, and sad, sad that the dream of our love wasn’t the fairytale I’d wanted it to be.

  But love never is. Not really. Love takes effort and understanding, and in the end, love is hard.

  Shouldn’t be. But it is.

  (vi)

  The next night, thirst drove us to bike in the moonlight, and desperation forced us into the daylight. We couldn’t wait. Satellites be damned.

  By some miracle, just minutes after sunrise, we topped a ridge to see a swath of green cutting through the desert—trees, a river, and next to it, a town.

  “Wonder if it’s deserted,” Wren said.

  “Maybe Rachel beat us to it like she did in Wendover,” I said, though that was unlikely.

  We watched and waited, but nothing moved in the streets, and no smoke marred the air.

  We stepped onto our pedals and zoomed down a hill toward the town.

  Rachel would find us there, and though I loved that woman, trouble followed her like flies to death.

  Chapter Ten

  I couldn’t love you

  ’Cause you weren’t there

  Still you burned me, bones and all

  No boys, no boys, no boys, no more

  The dance floors are empty

  And no one comes to call

  — Iris Heller

  (i)

  WE APPROACHED THE TOWN of Green River carefully ’cause we didn’t know if we’d stumble on an Outlaw Warlord encampment or an outpost of ARK soldiers.

  Wren and Pilate did recon first, while Micaiah and me waited with Sharlotte in a Conoco station off the highway. Sunshine had decayed the dusty pumps and a leak had rusted the shelves inside. Most were empty, but not all. Coke and Pepsi products junked the refrigerators, heating up in the morning light. Quincy Jim’s Nutty Qs, Cheesy Qs, and Chili Qs filled the racks. Quincy Jim products had ruled the convenience store food market back in the 2020s. Sure, the food was absolutely terrible for us on a nutritional level, but QJ products were better preserved than their competitors’.

  Old country music downloads filled a wire carousel: Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Chris LeDoux, Country Mac Sterling, James McMurtry, 16 Horsepower, and The Pistol Annies. I even found some old Kasey Chambers and Slim Cessna CDs. Lots of Taylor Swift as well.

  I shook a ColaBam! to re-mix the sediments then cracked it open—flat, sweet, wonderfully wet. I drank the whole thing, grateful for the preservatives. Egyptians left behind honey. We left behind Dr. Pepper. I offered some to Sharlotte, but she shook her head.

  Micaiah popped open a can of Quincy Jim’s ShockTreatment and drank most of it down.

  “Easy there, Micaiah. That’s full of caffeine and we’re going to have to sleep soon.” I said it as a tease.

  “I understand.” His voice wasn’t fun or anything, just matter-of-fact. The blankness in him had taken over. And yet when he had his emotions, he glittered like diamonds.

  Waiting on Wren and Pilate, I munched nervously on Bonfire Cheesy Qs and tried to focus on the spice and not the stale. It was liking eating cardboard dipped in chili powder.

  Wren rode up. “The town is deserted, but it looks wrong. You’ll see.”

  Didn’t quite know what she meant until we biked down the main street. Then I saw it: the place had been half-abandoned even before the Yellowstone Knockout. Derelict hotels lounged in shambles surrounded by human trash and desert leftovers. Boards blocked up windows, signs missed letters like grins missing teeth, and the whole place seemed more like a corpse than a town.

  Salvagers had breezed through, but not many, and they weren’t desperate. Most likely, Moab had been the draw, and Green River just a wide spot in the road. That was why we’d found Pringles still in the tube at the gas station’s convenience store.

  We rode past a nice Baptist church, and then a bank building that had been downgraded to a thrift store.

  We stopped and pushed open the door into the second-hand place. All the odors were so familiar, the musty smells of time and neglect. Everything I’d owned in my life had smelled like that until it got a washing. Even then, if you sniffed hard enough, you could always detect a little of time’s rankness.

  We opened all the windows to get some air into the place and then brought in Sharlotte. We laid her gently on an old sofa.

  Pilate threw out his arms, happily. “Well, ladies and gentleman, let me be the first to welcome you to Green River, Utah. Population? Us! This place is abandoned, and from what we can tell, there hasn’t been anyone here for a long time.” Then coughing took his voice.

  Wren continued for him. “There’s a river down the street a little way. Pilate and I saw some canoes. Perfect for us so we can get off the highway. I vote we go through town, gather supplies, and take the boats down river and hole up until the ARK gets tired of flying their zeppelins around.”

  She glanced at me to get my approval. I nodded and spoke. “If Rachel is still following the imperatives I gave her, she’ll be keeping them busy. We might be able to stay here for a couple of days. It’s not just the zeppelins; the ARK is going to have access to satellites. Unlike before, when we were on the cattle drive, the ARK now knows we have Micaiah. They can use advanced technology to track us.”

  “That’s wonderful,” Sharlotte muttered. “No way we’re gonna get out of this one. Not all of us. Rachel is keeping them distracted back in the San Rafael Swell. If you leave me, I can do my bit here in Green River.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” I said. I gave Pilate a quick eye, to see if he agreed, and he did. Good.

  “And I thought you were the smart sister,” Sharlotte muttered.

  Micaiah, thankfully, tried to smooth things over. “We should stay together. Even if they do possess satellite images of this area, they are scanning thousands of square kilometers, and communicating any intel will be difficult. I think following the river downstream is a good idea. That way we’ll have water, and if we are careful, we might evade them.”

  “I hate hiding,” Wren said. “But if we can duck ’em here, our trail will go cold. Skanks won’t know where to look for us, satellites or not.”

  Pilate continued to cough in a rattle. Sharlotte had fallen back asleep as sweat dripped down her face from the ravaging fever. And my ankle and shoulder throbbed.

  We had to hide. Running anymore just might put us in our graves.

  (ii)

  So our plan was to stay two days in Green River’s thrift store/bank building—to rest, to gather supplies—and then take off down the river. We’d take watches on the roof of the bank. Someone had constructed an awning there, though the fabric had gone yellow and flapped raggedly, but it would give us some cover.

  I ran a string from the roof to the main room of the thrift store and connected tin cans to either end. It would act as both a telephone and an alarm system. Electricity didn’t function in the Juniper, but sound waves did.

  We slept that first day inside the store, drinking water, eating cans of Quincy Jim canned chili and dehydrated apples, and keeping everyone medicated. I convinced Pilate he needed to start on antibiotics, and he agreed. Sharlotte remained feverish and sullen.

  That first night, Wren and I did most of the salvaging, since it was in our blood. Micaiah helped while Pilate took watch. The moon had shrunk down to a quarter, which meant the satellites would have a harder time seeing us.

  A lot of the houses in Green River still had family pictures on the wall, and I would study the faces, the haircuts, the old-fashioned clothes. Back in the 2020s, they sure didn’t wear much, and what they did wear didn’t cover what it should’ve. Lots of tattoos and piercings and different hair colors. It seemed so extravagant. But all the faces didn’t know they’d be forced to run from their homes—a black sky, no electricity, and death all around. We found a wheelchair and crutches for Sharlotte, but we’d have to make her a peg leg, though she had a whole bunch of healing to do
first.

  I unscrewed a sturdy table leg out of a dining room, thinking I could use it as a prosthetic. All the while I pondered padding, straps, things like that. Shame I couldn’t research prosthetic legs on the Internet.

  We salvaged camping gear, more clothes, more bicycles, and even some creature comforts like soap and extra pairs of underwear. We stumbled upon a survivalist cache as well—boxes of freeze-dried food and extra guns and ammo. Say what you will about Americans, but we are a well-armed people.

  We loaded the salvage into the two canoes beached by the river. The night passed quiet and dark. No zeppelins. No ground troops.

  At one point, Micaiah left us to go relieve Pilate and to bring him gifts we’d found—a stainless steel coffee mug from the local coffee shop and new priest clothes from the local Catholic church, which wasn’t a church really, but an old house off the main street converted into a mission. And though I hated it, Wren found Pilate cheap, cherry cigars. We made him promise he’d only chew them and not smoke them. If he lit up, I’d swipe the foul things off his lips.

  Just before dawn, Wren and I biked back to our thrift store hideout. My sister seemed to be in grand spirits. “Sing me a song, Cavvy.”

  Exhaustion wrapped my head in sweaters; I could hardly think, let alone sing. “No, Wren, you want a song, you sing it. But keep your voice down. We are on the run after all.”

  “Fine.” Wren the sang the silliest song ever about beer. Not whiskey, champagne, nor vodka, but beer.

  I listened even as I tried not to laugh. Her singing voice was terrible, as warbly as a one-winged bird, and yet it was a flashback to our Christmas ride into town back in the day.

  “Your turn,” Wren said, smiling.

  Wouldn’t you know it, but I couldn’t think of a single song lyric. “Tell me what to sing,” I said.

  “How about Amazing Grace?”

  So I started it, and Wren joined in, and we sang our way home. When we finished, Wren sighed. “That was fun. Hey, Cavvy, do you think it’s Sunday?”

  I checked my watch. “Nope. Thursday.” Took a minute to wind it up.

  “Don’t matter, I guess,” Wren said. “I want us to have Mass before we leave. We can go have it in the church where I found the stuff for Pilate.”

  First singing and now church? Was my sister mutating? “Wren, we can’t do that. We have to rest and get out of town.”

  “Always time for church,” Wren said. “It’s what y’all said every Sunday, even when the ranch work was heaviest.”

  “But it’s not Sunday,” I insisted.

  “We missed a bunch of Sundays, so we can make it up today. I want this.” She paused and added, “Please.”

  “You really are trying to change,” I said in wonder.

  “Promised you I would.”

  A voice called out in the darkness. “I’ll believe it when I see it, Irene.” Sharlotte. She was awake, outside, and in her hands was an AZ3, the muzzle pressed to her chin.

  (iii)

  The sight of Sharlotte on the edge of suicide stole my breath. “Easy, Sharlotte. Easy does it.” I got off the bike and limped toward her.

  “You stay back.” The pale light of dawn lit the streets but couldn’t touch the shadows on my sister’s face.

  Wren didn’t say a word. She sat on the bike, watching.

  Sharlotte grimaced. “You ride that bike well, Irene. Why couldn’t you do that when you were eight?”

  “Sharlotte, come on,” I whispered. “Put the gun down.”

  Sharlotte yelled at Wren. “Answer me!”

  Wren slowly got off the bike and gently laid it on the ground. I expected her to scream or maybe shoot the gun out of Sharlotte’s hand or to plead with her not to kill herself.

  Instead, my troublesome sister simply answered the question. “’Cause you wanted me to, Shar. When I get to choose, I like doing stuff. But not when it’s an order.” She then mimicked Mama too well. “‘Sharlotte Jeanne, you go out and teach that no-good Irene to ride a bike. God help me, she might not do a lick of work ’round here, but I’ll not go to my grave with one of my own daughters not knowing how to bicycle.’”

  Wren laughed and talked to the sky. “Well, Mama, you did die. But now I know how to ride a bike, and I love it. You might’ve tried teaching me yourself.”

  Sharlotte glowered at her. I knew she didn’t like anyone talking about Mama. She wasn’t over our mother’s death, and now it seemed like Sharlotte was determined to join her.

  Wren casually walked up to Sharlotte and snatched away the AZ3. Did it quick and so nonchalantly, I think it surprised all of us. She then touched Sharlotte’s face. “Fever’s broke. Good news, I guess.”

  I sighed. Gun gone, fever broke, it should’ve been good news. Didn’t feel like it.

  Sharlotte shut her eyes.

  Wren petted her hair. “You’re gonna get through this, Shar. I know you, know you to your guts. You’re tougher than this. And if you do hurt yourself I’ll kick your jackerin’ ass all over heaven when I get there.”

  “You won’t get there,” Sharlotte whispered. “None of us will. We’re all hell bound.”

  “Satan can go jack himself,” Wren said loudly. “I’ll kick that jackerdan right in the balls ’cause while I ain’t saved yet, I aim to get there. Maybe I won’t have to cheat Jesus at the poker table. Maybe we can both cheat the Devil out of every nickel and leave him scratching his pointy little head. Until then, don’t be such a selfish skank, Sharlotte Jeanne. You don’t wear it well.”

  Wren strutted into the bank building with the AZ3 over her shoulder.

  I bent down and hugged Sharlotte for a long time. As long as she’d let me. Too soon, she pushed me away.

  “I can’t worry about both getting away from the ARK and you too, Sharlotte,” I said. “Promise me you’ll hang for a little while longer. If you ever cared about me, promise me.”

  Sharlotte swallowed and clenched her jaws. She nodded.

  I took her chin in my hand. “Say it out loud.”

  “I promise,” she whispered. Tears filled her eyes. After spending my life with Sharlotte, I knew that her saying those two words meant something. I also knew that if we couldn’t help her through her pain, she might not commit suicide, but she might not ever really live again either. That also was a choice.

  Wren came back and helped me get Sharlotte back into the thrift store. Pilate snored in an easy chair. One of those big thick fantasy books lay open on his chest, prolly had a prologue fifty pages long. Why didn’t those dumb authors start with the dang story?

  At least he wasn’t reading a Gertrude Goodpenny novel. The Wayward Wizardess series had come out after the Yellowstone Knockout.

  “Keep an eye on Sharlotte,” I whispered to Wren. “Make sure she doesn’t—”

  Wren shushed me. “I getcha. Don’t need to say it.”

  I met Micaiah in the stairway to the roof. He was coming down, and I was going up to relieve him. Without saying a word, he pressed the bracelet into my hands and gave me a long look.

  His expression said it all—he was going to take his medication, and we were going to talk, really talk.

  Just then, with everything else going on, he felt like too much work. But I took a deep breath and nodded. We’d promised each other, no matter what.

  I slipped the bracelet onto my wrist. It felt as heavy as the thickest of chains.

  (iv)

  Mama used to complain that us kids never slept. She’d just get comfortable, and then one of us would come and need something, and if you’re a baby, you need a lot, all the time, day and night. Of course, Wren had been the worst, never sleeping for more than forty-five minutes at a time. She’d cry and scream until you either had to pick her up and hold her or get on a fast horse and gallop at least twenty kilometers away.

  And even at twenty kilometers you’d hear Wren scream. She was a soul who couldn’t be ignored.

  Wren was changing, doing better, but now Sharlotte, poor Sharlotte. Wha
t were we going to do about her?

  Even though I’d been up all night, taking a watch wasn’t a big deal for me. Once I set my mind to stay awake, I didn’t get sleepy. Instead, I tried to enjoy the daylight. We’d gone nocturnal, and I missed living under the sun. The ragged awning kept me in shadows and a light breeze cooled me. The cottonwood leaves below chattered in the wind, flickering and fluttering; I could smell their scent. Nothing like the smell of a happy cottonwood tree.

  The rest of the town was dead silent, houses waiting to fall apart, patiently, oh so patiently. They’d lasted thirty years, and they seemed like they could do another thirty easily.

  Birds flitted, chittered, and chattered all along the riverbank. A coyote trailed a few deer through town, and only one mosquito tried to steal a drink from me before I slapped her dead.

  The highway was as black as a snake and more sinister. I could imagine a fleet of Humvees, tanks, troop carriers loaded with thousands of Cuius Regios, all waiting to follow their imperatives.

  The one I’d killed, her eyes kept on pleading at me. Please, don’t kill me.

  I shook off the memory. I’d taken my penance, risked my life, and given Rachel a chance to change. At times, that seemed like atonement enough. Other times, it didn’t.

  Problem was, I’d most likely be called upon to kill again. The idea churned in my stomach. Couldn’t always warn the people you have to murder, not when they were doing their darndest to kill you.

  The door behind me opened. Surprised me, ’cause Micaiah wasn’t set to relieve me for another hour. Then I realized why he was there—he’d dosed himself, and instead of resting, wanted to see me first thing.

  Anger took me for a minute. Sure, he’s all distant, but as soon as he started feeling something, he expected me to be waiting around with open arms.

  I forced myself to soften. If we were going to make any kind of relationship work, I’d have to be compassionate. But right then, we were broken up. I had to stick to my guns. If he couldn’t tell me the truth, all of it, I couldn’t be with him. Period.