Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4)

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Hours later I woke up to a sprinkle of hard bits of ice falling from a stone-colored sky. Wasn’t snow. Wasn’t rain. Wasn’t hail. Just pebble-sized bits of soft ice. I opened my mouth to try to catch some in my mouth, but all it did was sting my cheeks. My mouth still felt like I’d spent the night swallowing sand.

  I’d sworn to lie there and die. A good plan. Too bad I didn’t follow it.

  My feet and body hurt too much to walk, so I crawled.

  Kill me to stop me.

  Mama used to say, “Better to crawl forward than run back.” I’d told our team that during the cattle drive. I’d crawled before, back in Utah, trying to get to Sharlotte so we could amputate her leg. My ankle had been the problem then, not my feet. Dang, but we’d been busted up on our adventures.

  And here I was, crawling again ... crawling down I-70 on hands and knees until I couldn’t go on. The stupid wannabe snow fell, but I knew it wouldn’t accumulate and would prolly stop in five minutes. The sky was flinging pebbles at me to make me miserable, so I dug out the X-Men comforter and draped it across my back and head.

  Made it maybe a hundred meters and the comforter slid off me. I crawled on, so cold and damp from those stupid icy bits of snow, but not wet enough so I could wring moisture out of my clothes.

  Still I kept crawling. I left the hockey bag behind; it was getting in my way.

  I made it another hundred meters, then went down onto the weedy dirt road scattered with gravel.

  Wind and cold tried to scrape me off the highway, but I was too heavy and too tired to move on. My fingers ached from the cold.

  Let me freeze.

  My tongue filled my mouth so I thought I’d choke on it. So thirsty. So done for.

  Let me die.

  I’d tried. I’d done my best. Neither God nor the world cared.

  I’d be just another dead girl on the highway. Wouldn’t be the first. Wouldn’t be the last.

  Opening my eyes, I saw the chalkdrive had come out of my shirt and lay on the asphalt directly in my line of sight. A piece of snow fell on it and melted.

  I’d die.

  The chalkdrive would live on.

  I closed my eyes and felt the wind blow across my skin and then ... nothing; for a long time.

  The sun broke through to shine on me. It felt so warm and good that I sighed. God was dead, but the sun would do. It sounded like a LeAnna Wright lyric.

  A shadow moved over me, blocking out the warmth. Something was above me ... something big. I was chilly again, and I ran from the cold by sleeping.

  I didn’t know what stood over me on that lonely road.

  And I didn’t really care.

  (iii)

  The wind had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the sun was setting. The whatever above me did block my sunlight, but it also blocked the wind, for that I was grateful. Colorado wind has a way of not playing fair.

  “Prolly should look to see what’s above you, Cavatica,” I whispered to myself.

  And myself agreed.

  I turned over to lay on my back.

  Standing over me was a horse. But it wasn’t just a horse, it was a horse I knew.

  The whole sky was eclipsed by the dark coat of Pilate’s Arabian stallion, Windshadow, who’d dashed away during our first fight with Renee Vixx and the ARK soldiers seven months before.

  He’d somehow shaken off all his tack and saddle and must have been roaming free for months.

  The stallion dropped his nose to nudge me.

  “Let me be,” I whispered. “I got big plans to die on this highway. Go away.”

  He nudged me again. I smelled his skin, the wild smell of his flanks where he’d brushed through the sage, and the deep odor of the wet mud on his hooves.

  His scent brought me back to life and gave me energy enough to stand and lean against him. I pushed my face into his side.

  “You’ve come to help me, haven’t you? Even you would sacrifice your freedom to help in our quest, our sacred duty, like what Pilate said.”

  The ice inside broke some. Only my love for horses could do it, could make me feel again. Touching the animal, the rough, hairy hide under my hands, the breath and snorting and the clop of his hooves on the pavement, it all brought back a little sanity to my troubled mind.

  Horses. My salvation. Even my thirst seemed to lessen. A tear slid down my face. The ice inside me was breaking up. I didn’t have any more Skye6 to let me ice-skate over it; no, that ice was cracking. The dried stick of my heart was going to be exposed.

  No. Not yet. I had to stay cold until I got my job done.

  But I knew the ice inside was growing thin. Sooner or later, it would melt, crack, slide off my heart, and I’d have to feel the deaths of my sisters and the shame of my betrayals. It was only a matter of time.

  I climbed on top of Windshadow. I turned him back to get the hockey bag and the damp X-Men comforter. I hung the duffle over my shoulder and used the comforter as a saddle blanket. I used my knees to guide him, and Windshadow didn’t mind much. I was so thin now I prolly didn’t weigh much more than a broom. My hip bones protruded plainly, and my breasts were all but gone.

  When I was eating too many cafeteria cookies at my fancy academy in Cleveland, I’d dreamed of being thin, and now I just wanted Gamma sausages, their scorched and doughy tortillas, and a big bowl of Aunt Bea’s green chili. I had no idea what had happened to Aunt Bea, our hires, the crew of the Moby, our dogs. Micaiah most likely had been captured. Pilate had to be dead.

  I didn’t really know what had happened to any of them. But I wanted Aunt Bea’s green chili and refried beans burping in a pot and her homemade tortillas she’d get up before sunrise to pat and make, so full of lard they were greasy and so wonderfully doughy. Yeah, Aunt Bea’s tortillas were far better than hog tortillas.

  And I’d top off that queenly meal with a Coca-Cola, right out of a bottle, just out of the ice.

  Then I had a happy thought, happiest thought I’d had since those halcyon days in our Robber’s Roost outside of Green River, when Micaiah had emotions, and he had aimed all of his passion at me. I’d get to see my ranch again. It might be full of June Mai Angel outlaws, but it would still be wonderful to walk the wrap-around porch of our blue house, overlooking fields of yellow grass, and Mama and Daddy buried in the ground just to the south.

  Maybe Howerter would forgive us our debts out of kindness. If not out of kindness, maybe out of respect for the impossible thing we’d done.

  Night fell, and still Windshadow walked on, as if he knew what I needed and wouldn’t rest until he found it. Like he, too, had my single imperative.

  With a fat moon rising up from the western horizon, another windmill pump was visible in the distance. Windshadow trotted over to it.

  The rusted tub under the spout of the pump was full and overflowing. Even though I soaked the sleeves of my coat, I scooped handfuls of cold water to my mouth. Then I filled both the Mountain Dew and the Coke bottle from the hockey bag.

  Windshadow took his fill of water and ate every last bit of grass from around the tank.

  I stood and petted him, so grateful. I slept beside the tank, my whole world damp and cold, but I had water again, sweet water. And while I was slipping down into a deep starvation sleep, I knew Windshadow had food, and he would be doing all of the walking anyway.

  In the late afternoon of the following day, I realized I was starting to recognize the stretch of I-70. I’d been on it before, heading toward Burlington, heading toward home. Winter had paused, and it was back to being autumn; the air was warm.

  Even though my scrawny butt was aching, and my back had joined in the fun, I was feeling good, better, best I’d felt in weeks, though I was starving to death. Who cared about that, I was on my way to the ranch, on my way home, the land where Mama and Daddy and my baby sisters lay sleeping in the earth.

  I was still feeling good and hopeful when I hit a wall of outlaws standing in a blockade, in steam trucks armed with mounted machineguns
and rocket launchers. They even had a couple of the Cargadors, huge vehicles they used to pull zeppelins out of the sky.

  But they’d failed to get the Moby, me, and Wren. We’d beaten them goddamn outlaws and sent them packing. I’d used a bazooka to destroy the Cargador myself.

  “Hold up, Windshadow,” I said to that fine Arabian.

  He did. We spoke the same language after all.

  Once again, I was staring into the barrels of rifles.

  I straightened and sat tall on Windshadow. “I’m Cavatica Weller. I’ve come home. Now, I’ve got something for June Mai. You kill me, she’ll be real upset ’cause I have something that can change the Juniper, change the world, change everything.”

  No response.

  I slid off of Windshadow. My feet hit the ground. My legs failed me, and I wound up on the ground. The X-Men comforter fell on top of me, which made me feel silly and ridiculous. All my talk of saving the world and I wound up on my butt.

  Slowly, I climbed off the gravel road and back on my feet. My poor, poor feet.

  A woman called out to me, “You will approach us with your hands in the air.”

  Windshadow swung his huge face to look at me with gentle eyes. He knew I had no fight in me. He knew despite the guns, this wouldn’t be a battle, just the end of a long walk.

  I ignored the woman. What could she do? Kill me? Let her.

  Bringing my face to the horse’s, I pushed my forehead against his nose. “You done good, Windshadow. You can go now. Thanks for the ride. I can’t thank you enough.”

  He nickered softly and slowly stepped back.

  I put my hands in the air. “You let my horse go. You want me. Let him go.”

  Women charged forward. At the sound of their footsteps, Windshadow took off across the plain, heading north, a black shadow against the fading light until distance and dust swallowed him up.

  The women watched him go.

  I shuffled through the soldiers. They stood back to let me pass, out of fear, out of pity ...

  I wasn’t sure, but I walked through their ranks, standing tall, walking proud, wearing the X-Men blanket like a regal robe.

  My family, our hands, our hires, we’d made it as a team from Burlington to Wendover, Nevada with three thousand head of cattle. And I’d made it back to Burlington, in a frictionless car, on a bicycle, walking in a steam-powered Stanley robot—thank you, Nikola Nichols. I’d then traveled on cross-country skis, I’d hiked mountain roads, I’d been carried by a Juniper mutant monster, more walking, and then an angelic Arabian stallion brought me the rest of the way like a princess.

  All to get home, to where I stood, dirty, wearing clothes beyond filthy, with hair I could feel was matted where it wasn’t thinned out. With a body sucked dry, from too much trouble, not enough food, too much fear, not enough water, too much disease, not enough medicine.

  I’d walked on wounded feet. Still, I’d walked.

  And who knew? Maybe I could survive this. Maybe June Mai would find mercy in her warlord heart and give me enough money to pay off Howerter and get the ranch going again, ’cause Howerter would want his loan repaid, and with interest. Still, after all the trouble, I had hope that I could make a life in the Juniper again.

  I limped up to an older woman with buzzed dark hair going gray at the temples. She stood with an MG21 assault rifle in her grip, across her chest. Sewn onto the pocket of her shirt was her name, M. Atlas. She had captain bars pinned on her collar.

  “Captain Atlas?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Take me to your leader,” I whispered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Home is where my heart is

  Home is who I am

  When the skies are dark

  And the wind blows cold

  Home is who I am

  —Clover Rollison

  (i)

  JUNE MAI’S SOLDIERS didn’t handcuff me or zip tie my hands behind my back. They weren’t exactly friendly, but they did give me a little water and some strong-tasting jerky which I gnawed. Problem was, I’d gotten used to not eating. I eventually got tired of chewing and spit it out. Soldier girls surrounded me, guns out, watching me from the back of the steam-truck now a troop carrier.

  One girl across from me caught my eye. “My sister was on the Cargador that attacked the Moby Dick. From what I hear, you were the one that killed her.”

  I was feeling tired and mean. I held her gaze and said something Wren might’ve. “If you’d have been on that Cargador, I’d have killed you, too. Prolly shouldn’t attack people in the first place, huh?”

  Then I turned and ignored her to watch the landscape—the line of highway and grasslands beyond, wintering up into yellow seas under a sky going twilight.

  When I was little, sometimes I’d get a horse and ride west on I-70 thinking about the Outlaw Warlords of the Juniper, of the salvaged-out houses, of all that country of plain and sky and mountain.

  It made me excited. It made me scared. And then I’d ride quick back home to Mama and the ranch.

  But that ribbon of dirt and weeds, I knew it now like I knew my own skin.

  Yeah, there was the ditch where we found the dead calf one winter. He’d wandered away and got lost and froze to death.

  Yeah, there was the blackened semi-trailer that I’d used as a house to play in sometimes, where I’d hide sometimes when the fighting on the ranch got too much. One time, Aunt Bea found me there, but she didn’t rush me back. Instead, she played house with me for a while. She was the nice mother and I was the dutiful, sweet daughter, and we made cakes of dirt and drank from broken plastic cups of air pretending it was tea. And it was nice and kind and quiet. Quiet.

  My real home was always so loud.

  The semi disappeared behind us. Next came the start of our fence line. Every post I’d fixed, adjusted, repaired, for all the years of my childhood.

  We hit our driveway too suddenly, and it surprised me. I’d been watching for our house but hadn’t seen it. It was our driveway for sure ’cause it had our mailbox, which Wren liked to shoot up when she got drunk. She’d blow it apart and then blame it on neighbors. We’d know the truth, and Sharlotte would re-build it again. Noise, gunshots, yelling, cursing, and screaming, that was our home

  Not quiet like me and Aunt Bea’s tea party.

  But how could I miss our house? How could I? It was visible from the road, our Victorian house on the hill, riding like a blue ship on an ocean of yellow prairie.

  Then I realized the house was gone. Just. Gone.

  The steam-truck rolled to a stop.

  I leapt down and fell into a limping run.

  “Stop!” Captain Atlas yelled.

  A gunshot rang out followed by a bullet skipping across the ground next to me, but who cared about that?

  I raced up the driveway and leapt over the little trench of concrete we’d put in for better drainage. I crunched over the gravel we’d hauled in from town a decade ago. Wren had liked the effort and sweat of laying the gravel. We thought we’d have to fight her to get her to work, but she had been up early every morning to shovel rock until her hands bled.

  The ice house still stood, where Sharlotte had put Mama’s body, where I’d wept over my dead mother while Pilate held me. The ice house wasn’t blown to the winds, but it was pocked with bullet holes and scorched on the side that faced the back of the ranch house. The old trench where we’d fought Queenie was still there as well, though it was now mostly filled in with trash and debris.

  But ...

  Our pretty blue ranch house, two stories and an attic, was gone. No more. No more.

  I circled the foundation, the blackened concrete, walked over bits of wood, nails, bullet casings, spent mortar shells; grasses all burned up. Our barns were little more than stacks of kindling.

  Gone. Our ranch gone. The whole reason why we’d taken our headcount west was to save the ranch. Now it meant nothing. All of our suffering and death meant nothing ’cause war had come and bl
asted my home from the earth.

  Now only a burned-out crater marked the place where I’d grown up, where I’d been held by my mama and laughed with my daddy, cracking jokes even as he cracked open beers. All the candles Mama had given me weren’t even puddles of wax any more. They were gone.

  Gone.

  Gone.

  Gone.

  I tripped and fell and looked up to see my mama’s headstone. Without thinking, I’d come to where Mama and Daddy and my baby sisters lay buried.

  My fingers tore at the soil. And then I felt that brittle layer of liar ice crack open ’cause the truth of our sorrows can never be covered for long.

  The ice broke, and I fell onto the sharp stick of my heart. Impaled, I howled up at the stars now appearing so cold, so far up in an uncaring sky. The wind and sun had fled my fury, and I felt the tears, the snot, the spittle from my mouth fly as I howled some more.

  Gone.

  Sharlotte Jeanne.

  Irene Marie.

  Daddy.

  Mama.

  Dead.

  I fell into the dirt, face first, scratching at the ground, sobbing. Beyond words. Beyond thought. Like Alice. Gone coco.

  Oh, how brittle our psyches are. Oh, how we like to pretend they aren’t anything but weak glass bottles, and once broken, all our sanity drains out onto the ground.

  Right then, if I’d had a spool of Skye6, I would have covered every bit of my skin. If I’d had a bottle of Pains whiskey, I would drain it down. If I’d had a gun, I would put it to my temple to shoot where the crazy lived in me.

  Life wasn’t just awful, it was mean, a monster, and God was a hog in heaven, squealing at our sorrows before being butchered by something bigger and meaner than Him.

  No. Nothing was in heaven. Like a lyric in that old LeAnna Wright song, “God don’t live in Texas anymore.” He don’t live anywhere, ’cause He couldn’t exist. If He was alive, He was a jackerdan in need of a bullet between the eyes.

  Revenge for Wren. Sharlotte. Rachel. Alice.

  Revenge for Pilate and Micaiah.

  Revenge for our ranch.

  Mama talked to me then. She couldn’t, she was dead, but I heard her. I heard my mother’s voice on the wind.