Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4)

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  The Severin crouched low when Sharlotte hit the trigger. Rounds ripped through the Audrey, through the seat, through the back. The sound was deafening. The stink of gunpowder and my own adrenaline hung in the air. I prayed Sharlotte’s barrage would rip through the Audrey’s engine, but that wasn’t meant to be.

  The Audrey kept chugging with Marisol at the controls.

  The Severin reversed her Stanley. She was retreating. Sharlotte kept firing until our arm guns clicked empty. We’d torn up the Audrey, blown away the windshield, but the damage seemed to be all cosmetic.

  Now Marisol had a chance to respond. She jammed Tina Machinegun through the smashed front window of the Audrey. She fired the assault rifle at us, point-blank.

  I ducked, and the bullets tore across the seats above me. Stuffing and seat-cover leather sprinkled down on me.

  I couldn’t see, but I jammed both joysticks forward, and we careened into the Audrey. Sharlotte, out of ammo, threw punches with the left arm. We bashed the other Stanley, back and forth, until Marisol escaped by jumping the Audrey right on top of us. Dang, but I kept forgetting about the jump pedal. The thunder of the crashing steel was eclipsed by the crack of the snow and ice above us, a horrendous, treacherous, snapping sound.

  We’d become tangled, both Stanleys married in carnage and twisted metal. Then I felt the Marilyn moving backward toward the cliff’s edge.

  Sharlotte’s voice boomed through the cockpit. “Cavvy, she’s gonna take us down. She’s gonna get us. You have to get out and run.”

  “No way, Sharlotte. I’m not leaving you.”

  Sharlotte tried to pivot our top half while I tried to drive the legs forward, but the Audrey was on us but good. And Marisol was working her forward. A huge block of ice came shuddering down and landed right next to us. Half a meter to the left, and it would’ve crushed us.

  Ice pinged off my window from the Armageddon of frozen snow above us.

  Marisol drove us toward the edge of the highway, and I managed to get Marilyn’s foot back behind us, wedged into something under the snow. However, one of the legs wasn’t working so well. Prolly damaged in the fight. I glanced at the gauge. Our pressure was still good. For now. But Marisol was driving us, meter by meter by meter, toward the edge.

  Both of our engines roared. Smoke and steam swirled around us.

  Sharlotte’s voice filled the cockpit. “Cavvy, get out. Now. Get out, get to safety, ski down the hill. I can hold her. Please. It’s like Pilate said. You have to leave us. We have a duty, and I can’t let this skank win. If you get away, we win. We win.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have five seconds,” Sharlotte said in a deadly voice. “Then I’m taking her down, taking us all down, and that avalanche is going to bury us. You go. Now.”

  We were at the edge of the cliff. The Audrey Hepburn was going to drive us into oblivion. I only had five seconds.

  “Shar, I love you. I love ...”

  “Cavvy, if you love me, you’ll leave me.”

  And I bailed out of the door and dropped down into the snow. I was up in a flash and plucked my skis from where I’d stowed them on the Marilyn.

  The two titans towered over me, their pistons squealing, about to give. From the gunner’s seat, Sharlotte looked down at me, her eyes full of love. For a heartbeat, my sister and I came together. Then her eyes narrowed in determination.

  She spun the top half of the Marilyn around, as hard as she could.

  The dangling belt of missiles became a whip as Sharlotte snapped it around the Audrey. And then?

  The explosion threw me. How far? I’ll never know. Why wasn’t I killed? I’ll never know.

  I was flung to safety. I couldn’t see. It was too loud for me to see anything; all I could hear was the initial explosion of all those missiles going off, and then the fire, and then the cracking, splitting, sliding cacophony of a mountain of snow come falling, sliding, careening, bashing down across the highway and hillside in front of me.

  Thousands of kilograms of snow and ice sweeping over the Marilyn Monroe, over the Audrey Hepburn, over the bodies of Rachel, Dutch, and Wren.

  I stood up, and the blizzard struck me like it hated me for still breathing.

  The chalkdrive froze my skin around my neck.

  In front of me was a field of snow and ice and ... nothing. Nothing.

  (v)

  Freezing wind swept through my hair.

  Dead. My sisters. Dead. The Stanleys gone.

  A sky of ice and snow laughed at me from above. Nothing but snow and ice sneered at me from below. Nothing but white from horizon to horizon.

  Pilate’s prophecy had come true. Twice. I had to deny the people I loved twice, once when I left Pilate and Micaiah behind, and now, just a few days later, my sisters.

  Would I have to deny my friends and family three times, like Peter and the Lord Jesus? Three times, before the cock crows.

  No. I had already lost everyone in the world I loved.

  Nothing left to do. Staying and looking for the dead meant dying, too. Leaving meant a different kind of death.

  I turned.

  I drove my skis away from the killing field, letting it fall away behind me.

  That ice and snow, that cold, I took inside me, and I used it to freeze my soul solid.

  Inside, I was a cold nothing. On the outside, my body worked the skis, my shoulders and arms worked the poles, and I went careening down a steep slope. We’d made it past the summit. It was all downhill.

  We would’ve made it fine if Marisol hadn’t been a Severin.

  That thought made me want to curl up and weep until I died.

  No, had to stop thinking. Thinking led to feeling, and feeling would send me to my knees.

  Right then, emotions were a liability. I’d feel later. Sure, that was the greatest idea ever. I’d feel all that loss and horror later, after I delivered the chalkdrive into the hands of an Outlaw Warlord, who, if she was merciful, would put me down like a rabid dog before my frozen soul could melt.

  Then I could be with my sisters. Sharlotte. Wren. Rachel. I would see Micaiah and Pilate again. Yes, once I was dead, we’d all get together and eat Aunt Bea’s flour tortillas, hot off the stove, dripping with butter and honey.

  Let June Mai Angel fight the ARK to get the truth out into the world. I’d just be the delivery girl.

  That became my one imperative: Deliver the chalkdrive to June Mai Angel.

  I skied down, down, down, until it was time to climb up a ridge. I ate snow. I kept my feelings frozen while I worked my body machine ’cause that was all my body was, a machine to get me to Burlington. I found a stream and drank from the icy water. My migraine pressed nails into my skull, but that was easy enough to ignore.

  Late into the night, I kept moving until I found trees.

  Hungry. My body machine was hungry, but I didn’t have any fuel to give it. At least I could give it heat. I had a lighter in my skirt pocket from the Lopez condos. I carved out a little cave under a tree, snow on all sides, and lit a fire so my eyes had something to do, so I could focus on something other than the ice inside. I kept the fire small, pine needles, sticks, dead and dried limbs on the tree.

  Tearing a gray stick off the tree, I realized that was me.

  Inside the layer of ice covering my soul was my heart, all dead and dried up, like some gray limb on a tree.

  The tree continued to live despite the death and cold.

  And so would I.

  I found Wren’s fateful bullet in my pocket as well, and I turned it over and over in my hand until I had to put it away to sleep.

  I woke up the next morning and continued on. My headache was gone, but I didn’t care about that, other pains had taken its place. The wounds on the bottom of my feet began to hurt in earnest, but I had no more medicine or bandages.

  My body machine ached. Tendons ached. Muscles ached. But dead Eryn Lopez’s clothes kept the machine warm enough to keep going.

  Later on, the
sun burned off the clouds, and the snow began to melt.

  I ran my skis off the snow and onto an old dirt road under a battered sign telling me I was still on Highway 82.

  No more snow.

  Time to make the machine walk.

  I clicked out of the cross-country skis. Threw them on my back.

  I wasn’t just skis in snow anymore. I was hurt feet on ground, every step harder than the last.

  That night I slept under another tree, in pine needles, in front of my little stick fire.

  God didn’t dare give me dreams, or I would’ve used them to tear down the universe and make Him pay for what he had done to this world and to my sisters.

  That little flicker of hate felt good, and I nurtured it like I had nurtured my little fire of dead sticks. It wasn’t a big bonfire, no, ’cause that would melt the ice of my sorrows and expose my twiggy little heart. But the heat of my hate was big enough, hot enough, to hurt, which is what I wanted.

  Like the fire in my Marilyn, now broken, frozen, and gone, I could use the fire of my hate to keep the machine moving.

  I thought about what I’d said to Rachel, that hope was a weapon.

  Well, so was fury. It kept me moving, and it kept me true to my imperative. And if God’s cruelty knew no bounds, I was going to spit on Him by living. Hate became my weapon.

  And it focused me into a single bullet, aiming for Burlington.

  Time to go to war. Again. By walking out of the Rocky Mountains and surviving when everything and everyone around me wanted me dead.

  Including the dried-up stick my wounded heart had become.

  Chapter Nine

  God don’t love us, never did, not a one

  Eve dropped the apple and picked up a gun

  When Adam warned Eve, he warned her like this:

  If you go hunting God, better settle your sins first

  Better sell your mama’s ring next

  ’Cause worlds die when women hunt gods

  All the children cry when women hunt gods.

  —LeAnna Wright

  (i)

  MY ALREADY HURT FEET blistered. The cross-country ski boots were not meant for the marathon distances I was covering. My heels grew wet from the blood and torn skin, but it wasn’t like I could do a thing about that. Walking was torture, but what I was feeling inside hurt more.

  I didn’t have any food, but I had plenty of water around. It was all melting in the warm high-altitude sunshine, and I eventually wrapped my coat around the skis and poles. I thought about casting them aside, but I figured God wasn’t done torturing me with snow just yet. I might need them to get to I-70 and through the Eisenhower Tunnel and down the other side.

  Besides, Waste Not, Want Not, right Mama?

  Highway 82 hit Highway 24. I looked at the signs for a long time. Both were dirt roads, the asphalt long gone, cooked up into road coal.

  It was evening. My hunger had mellowed to a mean, sullen laugh inside of me. My belly had stopped gurgling and started telling me jokes that weren’t funny.

  “Time to sleep, Cavvy,” I said to myself.

  And myself answered. “Cavvy’s dead. Call me Cavatica.”

  “Spider died in Charlotte’s Web. Wilbur lived, though. And Charlotte A. Cavatica had babies to keep him company.”

  “I’m alive? This is life?”

  “Yeah, you are alive, but for how long?”

  “Long enough to follow my one imperative.”

  “’Cause Mama never left nothin’ unfinished.”

  “Wrong, Cavatica Ann. Mama did leave unfinished business. She died in debt to Howerter, with our ranch in arrears and a crazy plan to run cattle west, which we did. Got ’em all the way through to Wendover, me, Wren, and Sharlotte.”

  Saying the names of my sisters was too dangerous. It made the ice inside shift and crack. It threatened to snap my dried-gray heart. So, I shut myself up and sank down against the Highway 24 sign, then collapsed on the ground and slept with my hands in Eryn Lopez’s gloves.

  I woke up cold and slept again to run from the cold and woke up shivering in the early morning light, just oranges and pinks in a weakly colored sky.

  I got up. Started north on Highway 24 toward I-70. I limped along. The blisters were ruining my feet, but then they were already ruined. Had to keep going. Too cold to take off the boots. Even with the boots, I’d prolly lose toes and some fingers from frostbite. Prolly drop flesh onto the pavement like a leper out of the Bible.

  “Hey Jesus,” I yelled at the sky, “you were a lousy, second-rate messiah. Why don’t you heal me, you worthless jackerdan!”

  Jesus didn’t answer me. I prolly sounded too much like Pilate right then, and I figured God would have to ignore someone as chatty as Pilate.

  I thought about Rachel puzzling out the Jesus story. What story was I telling myself?

  Since God wouldn’t talk to me, I talked to myself. “You’re losing it, Cavatica.”

  “Already lost it, skank. Lost it a long time ago.”

  I shambled along the highway as it got warmer, and once again I had to bundle up my coat, gloves, scarf, and hat around the skis.

  I tripped, walked, stumbled, until I came to the refugees running from Leadville, which burned in the distance, sending up a column of smoke.

  Oh, goody, another war.

  (ii)

  Faces of scared people, some bloody, some ashen, some covered in burns, some shot, some stabbed—the faces all blurred until all I saw were the children weeping against their mothers. Babies held to bosoms.

  Some men, not many. Babies, children, and old women—mostly old women. What had happened to the other women, eighteen to sixty? I didn’t know, but I’d learn.

  Some of the people rode bikes, some horses, some rode in steam trucks, others swayed in carts and wagons being pulled by oxen. But all were fleeing Leadville, burning in the distance.

  Most were on foot with their hastily-taken possessions clasped to their chests like the babies to their mothers.

  “Hey, what’s going on in Leadville?” I asked the collection of scared faces. “Is it the ARK? Are there soldiers and tanks and whatnot?”

  That question got me nothing but pale confusion.

  Ha, I had to laugh. A new army to fight. Oh, goody, again.

  The flashing faces answered me in snatches, hastily.

  “Ain’t human.”

  “Big and hairy.”

  “Hogs. You heard of ’em? Mutants.”

  “Tore my husband apart. Two and half meters tall, hairy, and they got guns, and they know how to use ’em.”

  “Juniper mutants. Hell on Earth. Satan’s demons spit up from hell.”

  Had to laugh at that. “Hell. I know about hell.”

  My feet were hell. Even if I managed to save the feet, I knew I’d prolly lose toes. Even ugly, I liked my toes.

  This little piggy went to market.

  This little piggy stayed home.

  This little piggy got killed walking down off Independence Pass.

  “You should come with us, girly,” a man said to me. He had a beard, seemed nice and gentle, and he even had a gold cross on his throat, flecked with blood.

  I patted him. “Yeah, I should, but I can’t. I have to go find June Mai Angel.”

  That shocked him. He stepped back.

  I continued toward Leadville. I wanted to see a hog. I’d been hearing about them for a while now, had seen their footprints, but I wanted to see one for myself to satisfy my curiosity.

  I didn’t make it.

  I walked north through refugees fleeing south. I weaved through them, until I was alone, standing in the middle of farmlands and ranchlands, muddy from the melted snow.

  My feet were on fire, and the flames licked up my calves, and I was tired, just so tired. I figured I’d yell at God some more and then keep on walking.

  Instead, I collapsed onto the patchy gravel scattered across Highway 24’s muddy track. My skis and poles clattered down around me as I lost cons
ciousness.

  That was when Alice found me.

  (iii)

  I woke up in a dark room on a bed. I’d had this experience before, when I woke up in Jenny Bell Scheutz’s house north of Boulder. That room had been yellow and with nice curtains, but it hadn’t smelled like smoke. This one did.

  I sniffed again and smelled smoke and sausages. Say what you will about the poor effects processed meat has on the human physiology, but frying sausage smells like how heaven should.

  I tried to move and couldn’t. Too tired. Best to sleep more.

  But where was I?

  Prolly didn’t matter. My fingers found the chalkdrive around my throat. That mattered. That was my one imperative.

  But what about the sausage? Well, I couldn’t go on if I didn’t eat.

  I pulled myself up; took every ounce of energy I had. It was pitch-black dark outside. I’d slept the day away.

  I pinched my fingers and my toes. I had feeling back in them, though my feet were on fire. Prodding at my wounds, my fingers came away wet with pus. Infection was an enemy that didn’t fight fair. I had to clean away the muck and find antibiotic cream.

  No, my belly shouted at me. You need that sausage!

  “Okay, okay,” I muttered.

  A grunt came from a dark corner. I was in a bedroom, mostly dark, but one wall was missing, which allowed the stars to shine in. I felt at the sheets. They were dusty and full of little pebbles and rocks, prolly from the fighting and explosions. I was in Leadville, all right, but post-attack.

  I lay under several comforters, so I was warm, but my face could tell the night was chilly. My body suddenly felt like it was cooking, and my face was freezing. I was running a high fever, clearly caused by the infection.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Anyone there?”

  My eyes strained against the darkness. My heart began to thud in my chest, but the fear stood like a stranger inside of me. Who cared? Fear was for the living. I had died when I had run while Sharlotte sacrificed herself and everyone else.