Officer Kane ignored the ID. Her eyes darted from her slate to Wren and me. “Are you Cavatica Weller?”
I shook my head ardently. “I’m Elly May Wallach, Willie’s cousin. Please don’t take us away. Please.”
Wren moaned and chewed on the magazine.
I turned to her. “Willie, you had a seizure. Should I get you your eckilepsky medicine? Or do you think you’re going to puke?”
Her eyes flared open. Oh, she was going to smack me good once she got her nervous system back online.
“Do you really think either of them are from the Sally Browne Burke Academy?” Pell asked Officer Kane. “And how are we going to ID them if they really are Juniper girls?”
Hope leapt in my chest. Could this work?
“If she barfs in the car, I’m not cleaning it up,” the third officer grumbled.
“And I’m not doing the paperwork for the hospital visit,” Pell said.
Officer Kane glared at her comrades, then went back to studying me.
I slapped my palms together like I was praying. Heck, I was praying. “Please, ma’am, please don’t take her away for being a party girl. She promises she’ll stop. And I won’t do it no more neither. Please let us go to Auntie Carson’s funeral. If you take us downtown, we’ll miss the whole thing.”
“Come on, Dee,” Pell said. “These girls aren’t gunslingers.”
Officer Kane sighed. “Fine. But you keep yourselves clean, okay?”
My head jerked around in a nervous nod. “Yes, ma’am, clean, like how Sally Burke Browne says to be.”
“It’s Sally Browne Burke.” Officer Kane gestured to Wren. “Is she going to be okay?”
Wren spit out the magazine. “Yeah,” she slurred, “I get spells. I got medicine.”
“I have a sister who had epilepsy,” Pell said, “but we could afford the surgery. Maybe once you get some money, you could look into that.”
I dropped my head. “Ain’t no way we could afford no surgery. But thank you for letting us go.”
Through the speakers, the conductor’s voice announced the train would be leaving.
Officer Pell patted my shoulder. “Take care. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through, but things will get better.”
I nodded, embarrassed.
The few seconds it took them to get off the train felt like a lifetime. Once the door slammed behind them, I could breathe again.
The train moved off and passengers threaded their way into the car. I wanted to yell out in relief, but I didn’t. I thought about our sheriff back in Burlington. She would’ve locked us up, but then, that was in the Juniper. Out in the World, things were different, kinder. Far kinder.
Took a few minutes until Wren finally got her tongue back in her mouth, but her make-up was all over the place. She looked like she had just survived a hard night working parties for tips and kisses.
“You gonna hit me, Wren?” I asked, keeping my distance.
“Nope, Cavvy, you done real good.” She reached into her pocket and came up with our tickets. I stowed the pistol and the stunner in Wren’s army duffle. We walked through three cars and finally found our seats. I stuffed our bags into the overhead compartment.
We were in the clear. No more cops. Officer Kane’s instincts had been undone by our Weller girl shakti.
(iii)
We got off the train in Chicago ’cause the California Zephyr didn’t leave until the next afternoon. In the lobby of the Amtrak station, I called Anju on my slate, and told her where to find Billy’s car. She said the police were still scratching their heads, wondering how we got away. Anju and I shed more tears, then said goodbye.
Wren was out of cash, but I was hungry, so I sold my slate to a Chicago girl for seventy-five dollars. She was real happy ’cause she had the Hayao 4, which didn’t cache as well as the Version 5. She giggled. I felt like I’d sold my right arm.
Dinner was McDonald’s. Wren ate factory-farmed burgers, which I thought was disgusting, but I was sure my yogurt hadn’t come from happy Juniper cows. We took turns pretending to sleep, sitting upright on benches while janitors cleaned around us.
Once we got on the California Zephyr, I washed the make-up off my face, then changed back into my New Morality dress. I felt so much better out of those vulgar clothes. I’d grown up in a dress, and wearing jeans felt like risking hellfire. Wren, of course, stayed swathed in denim.
My sister wasn’t much for casual conversation, but she obsessed over her dental hygiene. She brushed her teeth every fifteen minutes or so. And she didn’t wait until we crossed into the Juniper to dig her dual Colt .45 Terminators out of her army duffle.
I watched as she strapped them smokewagons on her hips, tying off the holsters to her thighs for a quicker draw. The pistols were completely customized—cherry wood grips, extended sixteen-centimeter barrels, and double-stacked magazines giving her fourteen bullets with one in the chamber. If twenty-nine ACP hollow points weren’t enough, you best run.
She couldn’t have gotten her pistols out in Cleveland ’cause of the gun control laws, and her Terminators were too big to hide. I understood why she had taken a 9mm and why she hadn’t had extra ammo for it. The 9mm was just a toy. Her Colts were her everything.
Until we reached Buzzkill, Nebraska, we were officially under American law, but none of the Yankees on the train dared quote statutes to my sister.
I was nervous about leaving the World, but I didn’t have a choice. The police hadn’t harassed us in Chicago, but we were still vulnerable until we crossed into the Juniper. Our sheriff, Lily, in Burlington often said the Juniper scared Yankee police—they wouldn’t go there chasing criminals.
Wren tucked her long Betty knife into a sheath next to her right holster. All weaponed up, Wren gave me the Springfield 9. Two bullets left.
“I get outta line, Cavvy, put me down for good.”
She was joking, but still, I swallowed hard and stuck the pistol in my dress pocket, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it.
Chapter Five
The Sino-American War sure was a hungry thing. The Sino ate up all of our natural resources just like it ate up our sons, our fathers, our brothers. Then it chewed on all of us during the nuclear winter after the Yellowstone Knockout. It even devoured five whole states. Left nothing behind but salvage.
—Former President Jack Kanton
On the 28th Anniversary of the Yellowstone Knockout
March 30, 2057
(i)
The train rolled into Buzzkill, Nebraska after sunset on Thursday night, a day and a half after I used the stunner on Wren. The buildings of the town tumbled together, all squat and gaudy, painted in bright colors. The Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, dressed up like a cowboy, welcomed us from a neon billboard glowing brightly thanks to Eterna batteries. Across the way slumped a hotel painted an eye-biting yellow. A mural of Sita and Rama covered the side. I knew who they were ’cause my friend Satya Nayar did a report on The Ramayana in the fourth grade. Anju also gave me an education, though she’d see me get uncomfortable and switch topics. I’d found the stories interesting, but being Roman Catholic, learning about other gods felt blasphemous.
However, I’d studied enough European history to know religious intolerance led to mass murder, and I wasn’t going to sin by letting hate and fear govern me. So I went out of my way to befriend people of other cultures, including those from a religion that didn’t just have one or two other gods, but millions. Besides, I’d grown up surrounded by Hindus.
The Sino had cut the U.S. population in half, and the Sterility Epidemic didn’t help things any. Employers couldn’t run their businesses without employees, so President Jack relaxed immigration laws and brought over anyone who wanted to come. Mostly, East Indians had answered the call. India hadn’t been pulled into the Sino, and their country was overflowing with folks. As we’ve seen throughout history, immigrant labor is more fluid and more desperate. A lot of Hindus ended up in the Juniper, so in the territories, we had cow
girls and two kinds of Indians, Native Americans and Hindus. Ironic.
Before the Yellowstone Knockout, that section of Nebraska had been empty except for a few ranches and farms, but once folks figured out it had become the edge of civilization, the city of Buzzkill sprang up overnight to handle the salvage work. Mama had told us stories about the early days of Buzzkill. She said it had been a shantytown, more tents than buildings, with stacks of salvage teetering in towers—stuff like used cabling, copper piping, wood, furniture, Nintendo ShockBoxes, and other electronics. It’d lie in piles until auctioneers could sell it off to salvage merchants who would take it east in trains or trucks. Billions of dollars and megatons of junk moved through there.
Now Buzzkill thrived on Juniper livestock and produce. Marketing people, hired by the likes of Dob Howerter and Mavis Meetchum, had convinced the Yankees that Juniper homegrown was healthier for them than anything factory farmed. And better tasting, I might add, though President Jack said Juniper beef tasted like sagebrush and sorrow.
Thanks to some bipartisan hijinks circumnavigating the 22nd Amendment, that man had four terms as president. It gave him ample opportunity to say a lot of clever things, but I never cared much for him. President Jack was no Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he gave up too quickly on the Juniper, in my opinion. First thing he did in office was sign the Masterson-Wayne Act, which officially set the states affected by the Yellowstone Knockout back to being dusty territories, barely governed.
The only real law was the cattle barons and the Outlaw Warlords. Some said Howerter was as bad as an outlaw, though he didn’t move around as much. The Warlords scrapped over territory, trade routes, and taxes. Not that there were real taxes involved, only protection money. Give them cash or they’d burn down your farm and steal your livestock.
Even though it was late, people packed the streets of Buzzkill, Yankees and Juniper folk alike. Women in rainbow saris mixed with girls in worn cowgirl leathers. Quite a party. I could smell the spicy food, and my mouth watered. The food on the train was pretty good, but it wasn’t like down-home Hindu lentils or Mexican carnitas.
The train stopped at the depot near the border of the Juniper, which was the part of Buzzkill I liked the best. Outside were stacks and stacks of computer monitors, TVs, every type of screen, from 25 centimeter slate ECDs to the 550 centimeter Sony Reality Simulator Displays. The screens showed all kinds of video—cooking shows, music Youtubes, old-timey Westerns, that new science fiction show, Altered, and, of course, Lonely Moon.
On the edges of the Juniper, electricity flickered. The screens would buzz out and go dead. Thirty seconds later, they would light back up and the parade of video would go on.
The train’s whistle howled, letting us know the engineers were transitioning from batteries to steam. The firebox prolly burned Old Growth coal, synthesized out of old-growth forests—something about the carbon in the aged wood—but of course the environmentalists were against cutting down ancient trees to use in the Juniper. Only a matter of time before Old Growth was outlawed since most Yankees cared more about old trees than Juniper people.
The door at the front of our train car banged open, and in walked four border guards. No dresses for them. Each wore a uniform, including pants, and carried an MG21 assault rifle. A sharp-faced woman marched down the aisle, asking for tickets and ID.
I tensed, but Wren just laughed. “Don’t get your shakti in a bunch, Cavvy. Those women don’t care about people going into the Juniper. Nope. Only about people getting out. We couldn’t play act our way past them if this train was pointed east, not without ID and a better story than we had in Cleveland.”
Two years ago, I hadn’t really thought about the border crossing ’cause I was fourteen and innocent. Now, with Wren, I was anything but.
The video screens lit up, and I noticed something I’d missed before—a chain-link fence, topped with razor wire. Living in Ohio, I hadn’t really thought much about the effects of the SISBI laws. The news feeds had focused more on the privacy issues involved and less on the security fences around the Juniper.
The woman in charge woke a mother and her little girl a couple of rows down from us. She went through their papers, and then continued until she got to us. Wren gave the woman her ID and our tickets. She barely glanced at it. The guards moved on without a word. Didn’t even give Wren’s guns a second look.
Still, I was in a sweat. Their MG21 machine guns were American standard issue, hardcore military. Once more, assault rifles were going to be a part of my life.
The little girl’s squeal startled me. Her and her mama had got on in Omaha, but the little one had been sleeping. Now, the girl was wide-awake, waving around a comic book.
“Mama, are there really mutants in the Juniper?”
Wren opened her mouth to say something, then closed it.
“Mutants? Maybe. There are all sorts of strange things in the Juniper. Watch now.”
The lights in the cabin went off. Then, darkness for a moment, until the sapropel lights hissed on. A heavy oily smell followed. Sapropel was the leftovers of the leftovers of oil shale like torbanite. It was weak stuff, but I grew up under its murky amber light. Smelling it again, hearing the hiss, sent my heart thumping. The memories. Lord, the memories and the guns.
The train lurched forward down the tracks. Outside, the flickering video screens disappeared behind us, swallowed up by the darkness as we moved west through the open plain of the Juniper; Nebraska land no more.
(ii)
Ten minutes later, the little girl once again peppered her mama with questions. “And what about June Mai Angel? I heard that song about how she pulled the zeppelin out of the sky. The Ballad of the Black Dog, that’s the song. It says she killed them all except for one girl, so she could tell the world how bad June Mai is. Does she rob trains, too?”
“I don’t think so, Laura.”
Wren half stood, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “No, Wren, it ain’t worth it. She’s only a little girl.”
“And what about the savages?” the girl kept on. “In my comic book, they attack trains and kill everyone, but this train is guarded, right Mama? We saw the guards and their big guns.” She meant the border guards, but no, they were long gone.
Wren shook me off and strutted away, all hips and pistols. She sat down next to a frumpy woman in a New Morality dress across the aisle from the girl and her mama.
“Hi, my name is Willie Carson, and I couldn’t help but overhear you talkin’.” Wren smiled, showing white teeth, which should be white, as much as she brushed them.
I sat in my seat praying Wren wouldn’t cuss too much.
The mama pulled her daughter close, eyes glued to Wren’s Colt .45 Terminators. “Can we help you, miss?”
Wren grinned at the mama. “Your daughter had a whole passel of questions about the Juniper, and I was born in the Colorado territory. Lived there and all over the Juniper. My mama was one of the first ones to go in for salvage work after the Yellowstone Knockout.”
The girl sat up straight. “People call it the Yellowstone Knockout,” she said knowingly, “but it wasn’t a knockout at all. We fought the Chinese even after they nuked us. Even in the forever winter times.”
The nuclear winter. For three months, the temperatures across the northern hemisphere fell to subzero, even in June. The temperature stayed low and average rainfall dropped by seventy-five percent for years after that. I’d heard lots of scary stories about that time when the sky went dark and everything not dead wanted to die. Folks didn’t have fresh produce for years—meals came out of a can, and they were grateful for every bite.
The Yellowstone Knockout.
I’d grown up with that great event shadowing every part of my life. Really, it created not just the Juniper, but me, my family, a whole generation.
The Sino-American War started on July 28, 2028. Not even a year later, the Chinese nuked Yellowstone on Good Friday, 2029, which caused all sorts of evil things—darkness, disease, starvati
on. Could’ve been worse. The Chinese used a hydrogen bomb, fusion not fission, so most of the radiation was nullified in the blast. That was just the beginning though.
That intense heat so close to the surface capped off the Yellowstone caldera, one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth. Lucky it did, or it might have been the end of us all. Once the surface was sealed, things got interesting, geologically speaking. The pressure building underground finally cracked open, causing a flood basalt. As it happened, the channelized basalt flowed out of the Yellowstone’s throat in just the right combination of ionized molten iron, direction, and speed that it created a massive electromagnetic field.
And the EM field didn’t go away. A gigantic plume of magma under the ground kept the ionization going as it poured up and out of the ground, pushing the field of cooling lava down the Yellowstone Valley toward the Snake River in Idaho. The problem wasn’t the flowing lava, which moved about thirty centimeters a day, like a slow-moving tsunami wave. The problem was the ionized molten iron coming out of the Yellowstone’s throat. That kept the EM field active and relatively stable. As the video screens in Buzzkill demonstrated, at the edge of the Juniper the power fluctuated. On the border it didn’t fry electronics outright, only disrupted the current. But inside the EM field, it not only killed all electricity, but due to the strong, highly variable magnetic nature of the phenomena, it wiped out any type of compact flash memory. Which was why I had to sell my slate in Chicago.
No one knew how long the EM field would last. The Deccan Traps in India, another example of a flood basalt, had erupted for a million years. We were only thirty years into it. If the lava kept flowing at the current rate it would overtake Boise in about seven thousand years. The geology gave the scientists a lot to study—how it happened and how to bring power back to the Juniper.
Why nuke Yellowstone? That was another question everyone asked, and theories drifted around like cottonwood fluff. Political scientists and military minds argued about it, just like doctors argued over what caused the Sterility Epidemic.
Dandelion Iron Book One Page 5