Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4)

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  I watched her.

  I knew I should try to escape, sure, but my head was cloudy with the drugs.

  No, I’d let Alice go crazy, and I’d become a hog.

  What about Pilate and our sacred duty? What if, as a Gamma, I lost interest in saving the world, and all I wanted was to kill things and eat sausage? What if my imperatives went out the window?

  No, that wouldn’t happen. Too many people had died. As a Gamma, I’d be big, could heal from most any wound, and then I’d run off to Burlington.

  It was a good plan, but part of me still wasn’t looking forward to mutating.

  Only Alice could save me from Dizzymona and her ritual. Sure, I’d have to lie to her, but I didn’t care about that.

  “Hey, Alice, what if I could make you a Beta again? Then you wouldn’t go coco, and you’d be okay, and I wouldn’t have to put you down.”

  She turned on me and gazed down with her long-lashed eyes, her dark, glittering eyes, the hairy eyebrows.

  A little of my morality caught up with me, and I had to look away to continue my lie. “I might have a cure. I was on my way to Kansas, to go to the same scientists that created Dizzymona’s gas. You healed me, Alice. You found medicine and saved me, so maybe I can save you.”

  She listened intently, so I kept talking. “My sisters got killed so I could carry the message through. You ever hear of the Wellers, Alice?”

  Alice nodded. “Fight Devil Angel. Wellers powerful.”

  “I’m the last of them, Alice. I’m the last of the Burlington Wellers. Me. But if I become a Gamma, if you take me to Dizzymona, I might forget about what I need to do, and what I need to do is important. It’s my job not only to save the Gammas, but to save the world.”

  Alice closed her eyes. “Alice sleepy. Alice don’t understand anything ’Teeca say. Alice too sleepy and sad. You sleep, too.”

  She grabbed me, pulled me close, and I lay awake in the yellow grasses of Green Mountain.

  I’d failed. I’d put my cards on the table, and Alice had been too far gone to help me. Well, I tried.

  I whispered up to Sharlotte up in heaven. “I tried, Shar. I tried.”

  She didn’t answer back.

  I chuckled. “Time for me to go Gamma and giddy-up away. Yee-haw.”

  Ha.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mama was a monster who struck it rich

  Daddy was a button looking for a stitch

  —Iris Heller

  (i)

  THE NEXT MORNING, JOLIE came for me.

  The red of the sunrise painted the acned flesh of her nearly bald head a crimson color, which made the patches of hair look like dried blood. Her pimples glowed yellow. She leered at me with a face nearly divided in half diagonally by a scar. Not sure if she had it before, when she was human, and the process of becoming a Gamma had made it worse, as if someone had taken a chainsaw to her after she’d hogged out.

  Regardless, she spoke in a commanding voice. “Alice, we lose too many megs to dying. We need more. We take your pet. You get no say.”

  Alice didn’t say a word, just glared at Jolie, who picked me up by the arm so she could snuffle at my feet again. “Almost better. Soon she Gamma and her feet okay. She not die. She meg and soon Gamma.”

  Alice shrugged.

  “Speak!” Jolie took me and hit Alice using me. My head bounced off Alice’s chest.

  Alice leapt to her feet and snarled. “Yes, take. I no like. She talk about cure, like being a Gamma bad. Being a Gamma good, so no need cure. Take her. Take her!”

  Jolie dropped me. Then she stuck her huge, misshapen face into mine. “What cure?”

  I half-trusted Alice but didn’t trust Jolie at all. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her that I might have the cure for Gamma-ism or whatever you wanted to call it, around my neck. But I had to give an answer.

  I spoke calmly and clearly to the monster in command. “Dizzymona has a gas called the Gulo Gamma, which can alter your DNA at cellular level—”

  Jolie flicked my head with a finger. Like being hit with a shovel handle. “Too many big words. You say it plain.”

  I was stunned by the blow, but I had to keep talking while choosing the smallest words I could. “Dizzymona’s gas comes from the ARK. They designed it to make super soldiers, only there was a side effect. Becoming a Gamma is a side effect. I know people at the ARK. If can get to Hays, I can talk to them. I know a cure.”

  I didn’t mention Burlington nor June Mai Angel ’cause that wouldn’t make me very popular with Jolie or any of the hogs.

  “You knew this, Alice?” Jolie thundered.

  Alice didn’t answer. She got up and started packing up our little campsite and shoving it into the Vail Recreation District bag.

  I didn’t want Alice to get in trouble, but I wasn’t sure what Jolie wanted to hear. I had to guess, and hoped I guessed right.

  “Alice knew, but she said we needed to tell you. I mean, we only talked about it last night.” I was wincing, hoping I had said the right thing.

  Jolie appraised me. “Yes, we tell Dizzymona. We are Gamma, but we go coco. ARK fix coco. Yes, yes.” I could see the sparkle in her eyes. If she could bring the cure to the Gammas, there might be power in that, enough power to oust Dizzymona.

  That was why Jolie was in command. She was mercenary enough to see how she could use the information to her advantage. Alice—poor Alice—was too heartbroken about going coco in the first place, and of course, the memories of having to put down Sissy.

  Without another word, I was drug away from Alice, who stood on the hill, watching me go.

  She lifted a paw. A goodbye.

  But it couldn’t be a goodbye. I still needed my medicine, the antibiotics and the Skye6. I told Jolie that, and she promised she would have Alice come and dose me when I needed it.

  That made me feel better. I’d get to see Alice again.

  Jolie locked me up at the end of the chain, stainless steel handcuffs on a length of oily, thick-linked chain. They threw cold sausages at us; we all scrambled to pluck them out of the dirt and grass.

  Another Gamma came along with an orange Home Depot twenty-liter bucket with a plastic soup ladle. I watched as my fellow prisoners threw their heads back, opened their mouths, and each was given a ladle-full of the water.

  When my turn came, I followed suit. Head back, the cold water struck my mouth and splashed into the back of my throat. I gagged, but I knew it might be the only water I got for a while.

  I forced myself to stop choking, I threw my head forward, breathing hard out of my nose, waiting until I could slowly swallow the mouthful.

  Then I coughed, sputtered, and grit my teeth.

  The African-American woman next to me touched me kindly. “You’ll get used to it. It’s hard the first couple of times, but the gulping gets easier. Practice makes perfect.”

  I nodded and gave her a good look over. She was older than me, prolly Sharlotte’s age, which meant mid-twenties. She was thick-legged, but thin on top, with dark skin and hair, thick and tightly curled. She had waterproof clothes, real high end, North Face coat and Mortex skirt. From the cut of it, she was full-on New Morality. Her clothes might’ve been expensive at one time, but now were stained and torn.

  She didn’t look like your typical Juniper rancher. No, she seemed like a tourist. Most of the curious and the bold would take trips up in what used to be South Dakota on account of Mount Rushmore, and down in Amarillo when Americans wanted to see what it was like to live hard without electricity. A few were brave enough to risk the Rockies, but not many.

  She put out a hand. “I’m LaTanya Ashley.”

  I had to shake the chains a bit to get my own free, but we eventually shook hands. “I’m Cavatica Weller.”

  Immediately, the whispering started all down the line of chained women.

  LaTanya heard it, got confused, but she didn’t look at them for explanation, she looked at me.

  What could I say? I needed to say something, bu
t everything I thought of either sounded like I was trying to be humble, or I was boasting. I finally sighed, “My mama was Abigail Weller, one of the first women to run her own salvage operation in the Juniper. Then she became the third largest rancher. She died, and me and my sisters ran cattle to Nevada. Made it, too. No one had ever done that before.” I addressed the woman on the other side of LaTanya. “That about cover it?”

  The woman—covered in leather clothes, with rough hands from farming and living at high elevation—nodded. She was Juniper. Prolly knew how to gut and skin a deer. Undoubtedly, that was where her outfit had come from.

  LaTanya wasn’t a Juniper girl. But how could I ask her about her past?

  I couldn’t. I kept quiet and tried not to think about the fact that I was relying on Jolie and Alice to remember about my meds. I might’ve had the last of the Skye6, which depressed me. I didn’t much care about the upsilonteixobactin.

  Without my Skye6, I’d actually have to experience the walk into Denver and not float above it on the ice-skating feeling.

  I was sleeping when LaTanya nudged me and then helped me to stand. “Ms. Weller, we have to get up. We have to walk now or else they’ll beat us. Which is something I can’t get used to, practice makes perfect or not.”

  I had to smile at her; she was trying to joke with me. Her calling me Ms. Weller was also funny, since she was older, but then she was New Morality. I grew even more curious.

  Our conversation ended ’cause two big Gammas came up behind us with still-green cottonwood branches. They started beating the megs until we shuffled away. Chained up together, we all had to move at the same pace, which for me was quite a change since I was used to shambling down the highway, leaning on Alice.

  I was breathless and hurting after the first ten minutes.

  “Hey, Ms. LaTanya,” I called out, huffing, “you can get used to being beat. Trust me. In this ol’ world, you can get used to just about anything.”

  She gave me a smile, full of strong teeth and weary joy. “We’ll just have to practice not liking it. Not ever.”

  “Amen to that.” I’d found another friend, but I didn’t want one—I didn’t want any more strings binding me to the world. I was going to go Gamma and then run off to Burlington. LaTanya, or anyone else, would only hold me back.

  I swore I wouldn’t become friends with her.

  (ii)

  By the time we walked onto Colfax going east, I couldn’t keep up. The handcuffs in the chain dug into my wrists, and I stumbled along on aching feet. The hogs behind hit me, but I was hurting too bad and starved, but more I missed the numb ice of the Skye6. That was really my problem.

  LaTanya kept looking behind me, watching me, her dark skin pale and her eyes wide. No jokes now, as the hogs smacked me with the cottonwood branches, which to them were only switches, but to me were full-on clubs.

  I stumbled and fell, which caused LaTanya to trip. Like dominos, all of us megs went down, halfway up the chains.

  The others shivered, watching, waiting for something to happen.

  A club smashed into my skull, and it was stars and stripes forever. The pain enveloped me, removed all my doubts, all my thoughts. For several long minutes, I felt washed clean. Pain is a pure thing, and we can cling to it when the alternative is thinking too much.

  I’d bit the inside of my mouth and spit out the blood. “Come on, girls, that was a mighty one, but the New York Yankees need one more run to win the Series. Get on it and hit me home.”

  One of the hogs grunted. She was a terrible thing to behold. The muscles of her shoulders and across her neck looked like bunched-up blankets twisted into knots and wrapped around her neck. In comparison, her arms and head were tiny.

  Why such big shoulders, Grandma?

  All the better to hit you with, my dear.

  LaTanya looked on, horrified. I addressed her directly. “Get an eyeful, baby. This is the Juniper. Ain’t like in Lonely Moon, now is it? Damn tourist.”

  She glanced away, ashamed.

  Shoulders McQueen was going to clock me again when I heard a howl. Then both the hogs went down. It happened so fast that I didn’t really register what had happened until Alice, sporting a split lip and bleeding down her chest, howled and picked me up.

  She seized the rusty length of chain connecting me to LaTanya, bellowed some more, and ripped those links apart. She then held me to her chest, stifling me in her foul smell—stinky, but so familiar and oddly comforting.

  “I have you, ’Teeca. I have you. And I won’t never let you go. You sister. You sister to Alice.”

  A bullet skipped by us in a shower of dust and noise.

  I didn’t turn. I knew what was coming.

  Jolie stormed in with her M60 in her grip like a toy rifle. “Alice! What you do! What you think!”

  “She a meg!” Alice thundered. “But she still hurt and can’t go fast. She die. These other Gammas beat her. Not fair. I carry ’til she get the gas and get the heal. I carry. Me. Kill me to stop me.”

  Kill me to stop me.

  Wren might’ve said it. Hell, it could’ve been the Weller family motto. I latched on to it and repeated it to myself over and over.

  Kill me to stop me.

  I’m going to get the chalkdrive to Burlington. Kill me to stop me.

  The tension in the air crackled like pork rinds in grease. I didn’t say a word. When property is being bartered over, the property shuts the hell up.

  I heard Jolie snort and sigh. “You carry her, Alice. But I myself give her to Dizzymona. Fight me and I kill you.”

  “Okey-doke.” Alice threw me over her shoulder. “I carry.”

  The megs got to their feet, the two hogs pushed them on with the cottonwood limbs, with LaTanya in the back, glancing over at me.

  I raised a hand to wave. They were still handcuffed together.

  LaTanya waved back.

  I felt bad for a minute, for what I’d said to her, until Alice laid me on the ground. I knew what was coming, and I was nearly weeping in anticipation. Then Alice gently pressed a strip of the EMAT on my neck. I sighed, closed my eyes, and rode away on the ice of the drug.

  I was jarred awake when Alice plunked me down in a grocery store cart. The sky was blue, the air was warm, and around me was a trail of leftover junk, trash, sofas, clothes, all scattered on the wide street which at one time had been a major thoroughfare back before the Yellowstone Knockout and even after for the salvage monkeys.

  Under me lay the Vail Recreation District bag, but Alice had created a nest using the X-Men comforter, so I didn’t feel the sharp edges of the metal cart all that much. The blue on the handle told me it used to belong to Walmart back in the day. Alice eased my boots off to let my feet breathe and heal.

  “Thanks, Sissy,” I murmured dreamily.

  The wheels shook noisily across the asphalt. It was a rough ride, but if Alice was happy, I was happy. Hell, I’d have been happy right then even if Shoulders McQueen had been beating on me with an entire cottonwood tree.

  The megs and the rest of the Gammas were ahead, and I was glad. Things were back to normal; Alice took care of my body while the Skye6 took me away from my thoughts.

  We passed under a big chunk of freeway, and I knew Pilate would’ve known the name of it, and I thought it might’ve been I-25, but then it didn’t matter, and all the signs were gone, salvaged out. No cars were on the road either. They’d all been salvaged out, too.

  We did come across an industrial stove. It prolly had been plucked out of the Denver Café, an old diner on my right, all the windows smashed, and inside, all the booths gone. Why take the booths and not the stove? Not sure, but sometimes during those rough salvage days, plans changed once the bandits started shooting at you, and you only took what you could run with. Mama had told me lots of stories about competing salvage teams going in and exchanging gunfire as they fought over the carrion of Western civilization left to rot in the Juniper. Scavengers. Salvage monkeys.

  Skyscraper
s rose on my left, the tops ragged ’cause one especially ambitious monkey had wanted to salvage the skyscrapers to the ground. Only did the top ’cause it was too expensive and ill-conceived. Poor Crash Jones. He’d lost a bundle on that project.

  The mint passed on my right, a nice big park, the Capital building, but with the roof gone on account of the gold. The U.S. Military had come in after the Knockout to get the money in the mint and to get the gold on the dome ’cause Lady Liberty was funding a war with China and every bit of cash helped.

  However, everyone had a story about lost mint coins, buried here and there, and every once in a while someone would come up with a map and a Cargador, ’cause you needed the heavy equipment to move tons of pennies around.

  Half a million dollars in pennies is a whole lot of zinc since in modern times, the penny is only about two percent copper. Still, it’d be a good haul.

  Past the Capital was a bookstore, and then? Hog central.

  The buildings on both sides were open, and nightmare faces looked down. Hogs filled the rooftops, shooting off guns. Hogs on the streets, howling. Hogs with more teeth than their mouths could hold. Hogs with huge, knotted veiny arms and legs and howling with beards and breasts wagging. Hogs with every kind of hair style, every kind of tattoo and piercing, all howling and screaming and beating their mallet-hands together and tromping their elephantine feet.

  I saw LaTanya, eyes wide with fear, and the other megs throwing me glances, and part of me knew what they were thinking. If anyone could get them out of this mess, it would be a Weller.

  But I couldn’t think about them. They didn’t have anything to do with my imperative. Get the chalkdrive to Burlington. Kill me to stop me.

  The drugs were just enough in my system to make it all fuzzy and not at all scary, but my mind was clear enough to take it all in. I was feeling pretty good.

  Want to gas me? Sure! It would only make me stronger and heal me up. Do it. I’d worry about going coco later.

  “Alice! Now!” Jolie’s voice knifed through the chaos and cacophony.

  Alice lifted me out of the Walmart shopping cart and set me down in the street in front of the Cathedral. A space cleared in the crowd of hundreds of hogs as the other conscripts were brought forward and were forced to the pavement. In their chains they had no choice, they were pulled down all down the line. Only I stood above them—me, Alice, and Jolie.