Dandelion Iron Book One

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  The doors were locked, the barns and sheds empty, and the whole ranch was closed down tight. We sold off our extra animals to neighbors, who gave us too much for them. Out of pity. They’d keep an eye on the ranch. We didn’t leave any cattle behind ’cause with the price point the Sysco executive was offering, it would’ve been foolish. Like Sharlotte had said, if we could get that ten million-dollar paycheck, we could come back and buy a new herd and undercut Howerter’s prices. Ha. That would show him.

  Yeah, and if June Mai Angel came and burned it all down, well, what we did wouldn’t matter. All our drama and fear wouldn’t be worth a gutter-dirty dollar bill.

  Well, if that did happen, we’d fight to get our cattle to Nevada and then we’d fight June Mai Angel. Might as well fight two wars if you’re going to fight one.

  Turning back, the cattle spread out before me as far as I could see. We mostly had Herefords, and their glossy red bodies looked dark as dried blood against the yellow grass of the open plains. Their white faces looked like snow banks against the grass.

  I guided Bob D and the rest of our ponies into the mix. That was my job, the remuda, thirty-six horses, two for each of the hands.

  Interstate 70, going west. My desire to fight had waned over the weeks since I’d stood before Mama’s fresh grave. Now, a fear settled in at the impossible thing we were trying to do.

  The first attack came twelve days later, the day after Good Friday, in what used to be Strasburg, Colorado. I didn’t know who hit us, not right away.

  All I knew for sure was that a gorgeous, viable boy fell out of the sky and right into my lap.

  Chapter Eleven

  It’s clear that during the twentieth century we forgot history’s most important lessons. So as a society, let’s take our education from those strong women who built this country hundreds of years ago. Let’s turn our calendars back to when women were chaste, strong, and ever obedient to an ever-loving God. Our greatest lessons lie in our past, not in the present, and certainly not in an unknowable future.

  —Reverend Kip Parson

  From the Eighth Annual International

  New Morality Conference

  June 21, 2057

  (i)

  Dusk outside of Strasburg, Colorado; the wind blew a bone-kissing chill down my parka. We were setting up camp by the ruins of a gas station complex, which at one time would have had pumps, a convenience store, a Taco Bell Express, and showers for the truckers. Now, a few minivan carcasses lay slumped on weed-split concrete. No more gas for the engines. Too electric to work.

  I was building our temporary corral for our remuda of horses—we only needed a few aluminum poles and rope to keep our ponies together ’cause they were so well trained. We’d sold our brood mares along with our nags and colts too weak to make the trip.

  Our regular employees and new hired hands pitched tents, Aunt Bea had her cooking fire going, and I was pounding the aluminum poles into the ground with a three-kilogram sledge. It had been real warm, so the ground wasn’t completely frozen. After threading the rope through eyeholes in the aluminum poles, I commenced to picking Bob D’s hooves. He nickered softly and closed his eyes against the wind. I’d gotten used to his strong horse smell, so much so, it felt like home now, as much as the infinite plain around us.

  I kept glancing up at the cold sky, expecting to see the Moby Dick. Sketchy would scout ahead and come back every couple days, just in case we needed the hay and water in the Moby Dick.

  I’d been right about the water. An average cow needs at least seventy-five liters of water daily, and the Moby couldn’t carry enough for our entire headcount. However, she had pumps, so the plan was, she could water down half the herd, float off, reload, and then come back to water the other half.

  Pretty clever. Mama and Sketchy had planned it down to the liter.

  The history of those first twelve days on the trail was etched on my hands. Dry skin whitened my knuckles. Cuts, scrapes, and scratches cut a roadmap across the backs of my hands. My fingernails remained black and grimy even after I washed them. At the Sally Browne Burke Academy for the Moral and Literate, my hands had been pink and soft, and I wasn’t even girly ’strogen enough to use lotion. But back in the World, my job was to think, and you don’t need tough hands for that.

  Cattle meandered around us—three thousand cows managed by thirteen people. Pilate kept saying we needed someone named Bilbo Baggins to make us an even fourteen, since thirteen was unlucky, though I had no idea what he was talking about. Besides, if you included Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz, we had sixteen.

  I was brushing Bob D down when we heard the first boom. I felt the wrongness of it, though my mind was trying to trick me into thinking one of the cowgirls had fired by accident. My heart knew the truth. That echoing explosion promised violence and killing.

  “What in God’s name was that?” Sharlotte called out from the other side of the gas station.

  “That was something big, like anti-aircraft artillery.” Pilate held his coffee in one hand, and a short slender cigar in the other. He cut them into thirds to make them last.

  Petal stood next to him. She cradled her long sniper rifle to her chest—first time the gun had been out of its case. It was bigger than she was.

  Bella barked her warning bark. Edward and Jacob woofed after her.

  Another explosion. Then another. In the distance, something burned in the twilight sky, burning and falling. The dogs took to howling.

  A zeppelin. Had June Mai Angel hit the Moby Dick?

  “Prepare for incoming!” Pilate yelled over the dogs. “Get out every gun we have!”

  I didn’t have a gun, only my combs, brushes, and hoof picks. Before I could ask anyone what I should do, a little Jimmy airship dropped from the gray sky. The zeppelin was half on fire, the flames melting the Neofiber as it fell in slow motion to hit the ground in a rain of dirt, bashing through sagebrush and scattering burning plastic. The air washed over me in a wave of hellish heat.

  My horses screamed and before I could do anything, they tore out of my temporary corral to streak away across the plains.

  Thank God, it wasn’t the Moby Dick. Definitely a Jimmy-class dirigible, not a Jonesy.

  Something whistled past my ear. A bullet. I couldn’t hear the gunfire ’cause of the crash’s fire not fifty meters away.

  Another bullet whizzed by me. I watched as something emerged out of the fiery light spilling across the prairie. A boy. My age. Tall and lean. Running.

  “Cavvy! Get over here!”

  I heard the words, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the boy speeding toward me, his face smudged, his shirt flapping behind him, his boots kicking up dust. He was being chased but who was after him? Prolly whoever had shot his Jimmy out of the air. Prolly June Mai Angel.

  “For the love of God, Cavvy, get over here!” Sharlotte yelled.

  And I should’ve listened, I really should’ve, but I couldn’t. That boy needed my help.

  Instead of freezing up scared, instead of turning and retreating, which I should’ve done, I gathered up the skirt of my New Morality dress and launched myself after the boy to save him. That was what went through my mind—Gotta save that boy from those outlaws. They’ll sell him for sure.

  I dashed up, grabbed his hand, and pulled him over to a derelict minivan. I hauled open the back door and we both leapt inside onto the rotted flooring, brittle plastic, and rusted metal. He reached back and slammed the door shut, then fell right on top of me.

  Bullets peppered the sides of the minivan. Ping, ping, pang, pang, pang. Above us, a hole punched open showing flickering firelight. My mouth ached with a taste I always got when being shot at. Which was far too often for a nice girl like me.

  I looked up. My eyes stretched wide. He wasn’t just a boy—he was a beautiful boy. Brownish-blonde hair, fashionably long, fell to his eyes, blue eyes, above nice, kissable lips. He lay right on top of me. Right between my legs. All that New Morality stuff went right out the window.
>
  It was like an archangel was ravishing me. His breath puffed out hard. I was clutching him, my head against his chest, hearing his heart beat, smelling him, so powerful, but so good. I should’ve been all embarrassed and shy for being so close to a boy, but all I could think of was I didn’t want to die without kissing him. Strange for me to think that—strange and completely sinful.

  The shooting stopped for a minute. Then yelling, more gunshots, and explosions so big they lit up the inside of the minivan. The boy lifted his head.

  “What do you see?” I asked.

  He glanced down at me. Oh, he was handsome. But more than that, he smiled at me kindly, shyly, and there was some kind of twinkle in his eyes, some kind of bright intelligence. “Sorry to be, um, on you. I’m Muh … Muh … Micaiah.”

  Stutterer. That was all right. He wouldn’t have to talk to kiss me.

  “I’m Cavatica. Where’d you come from?”

  “A zeppelin, they shot us down. Well, tried to hook us first, but then …” His voice faded. His eyes had locked onto something, intensely.

  Horse hooves thundered on the ground.

  Then a gunshot. The horse screamed, then galloped away. Not one of mine, I could tell.

  Pilate’s voice rang out in the distance, “I can guarantee you won’t reach them. I’d recommend finding easier prey.”

  Right next to us, a response. “Omega nine. Execute.”

  Sino talk. Just like in the Moby Dick. These were June Mai Angel’s girls. I shivered, thinking about how brutal they had been on the Moby Dick and those hellish words—you let us in, or we’ll eat you, feet first, so you can watch us do it.

  I hooked a hand around his head and pushed him down. My lips pressed against his ear. “Did you see ninja-type women out there?”

  “Yeah.” His breath tickled my skin. I could feel every square centimeter of him, every bit, every part.

  I couldn’t breathe. It took everything in me to gather enough wind to whisper. “What else did you see?”

  “I think your people are in the gas station. The outlaws have us all surrounded. They want me. I’m sure of it. They know I’m a boy.”

  And of course, the next question—are you viable? That was just what you asked. Oh, you’re a boy. Oh, are you viable? Not that I cared, but if he was, the outlaws could sell him for bank.

  Still didn’t know how he had survived the crash, but my logic wasn’t working so well at that point. I just wanted to rub up against him and kiss him long, wet, and hard. I was out of my mind. Jesus, forgive me.

  “Kiss me.” I didn’t say it.

  Only I did say it.

  Only I never should’ve said it.

  Only I did.

  He raised his head, looking at me like I was crazy, and I was, but I wasn’t, but I was.

  His hair melted into my fingers even as his sweat dripped on me. “If we’re gonna die, I gotta kiss you first.” I pulled his lips to mine and I ate him up, rubbing against him, and him rubbing against me, and we were trying to moan through our kissing and trying to breathe through our moaning, and it was the end of the world, and it was heaven on earth, and it was all so right and all so wrong.

  The doors were yanked open to reveal Wren, her Colt Terminators unholstered, her face bloody in the crash’s firelight.

  An outlaw lay on the ground next to her, shot through the head.

  Out of heaven—thrust into hell.

  Wren spun and fired, yelled, “Run. For the gas station. Go!”

  Didn’t have to tell me twice. Hand in hand, Micaiah and I sprinted the twenty-five meters into the gas station. Half of it was full of disintegrating cardboard boxes. Sharlotte, Pilate, and Petal were inside, but Wren had stayed by the minivan. Didn’t know where everyone else was.

  Petal knelt by a front window, the glass long since busted out. Her long rifle rested on the built-in Neofiber bipod, which she balanced on the sill. The weapon was a Mauser Trip 6 Redux, best sniper rifle in the world. The polymer stock looked skeletal, full of holes to make it lightweight. The fluted muzzle break was as long as my forearm. A ten-round magazine hung down, loaded with .338 Ostrobothnia magnums. Moving at twelve hundred meters per second, that bullet could go through six layers of Kevlar at a thousand meters. Petal gazed through her rifle’s Zeiss Real 18 scope.

  Pilate had told us stories about Petal using bullets to drive nails with Mickey Mauser. That was the name of her rifle.

  Pilate stood next to Petal with his Sino binocs covering his face. Petal murmured a rhyme, distracted with aiming.

  Hickory Dickory dead,

  the kids have holes in their head.

  The clock struck one,

  and they kissed a nun,

  hickory dickory done.

  She abruptly stopped talking, let out a long breath, and pulled the trigger. Dust shook down from the ceiling to swirl in the air. The noise in that little gas station slapped me, like stickpins shoved in my eardrums.

  Sharlotte threw the boy and me behind her. “Get out of the way.”

  I could barely understand her words through the ringing. Sharlotte tromped through cardboard boxes to get to a window, Mama’s Tina Machinegun in her hands.

  Pilate directed her. “Don’t fire, Shar, unless they’re right on top of us. Let Petal get them.” He adjusted his binocs. “Eleven o’clock, baby.”

  Petal rhymed in a scratch of a voice.

  Mary had a little lamb,

  she also had a gun.

  She killed the moon,

  she killed the stars,

  she even killed the sun.

  Long breath out, she fired.

  “Three o’clock,” Pilate said.

  A brief adjustment. Another rhyme.

  Pussy cat, pussy cat,

  where have you been?

  I’ve been to London

  to shoot the queen.

  More thunder.

  Micaiah had his hands over his ears, but he was looking at me with those clever blue eyes. And suddenly, I realized what I’d done. I’d seduced a boy I didn’t know and got all sexy with him. I wanted to feel bad, but my body tingled, thinking about it. His eyes on me didn’t help that any.

  Petal’s abrasive whisper finished the rhyme.

  Pussycat, pussycat,

  what did you there?

  I pushed a pretty princess

  right down the stairs.

  She worked the action on her Mauser. Her next words came out lifeless. “She’s dead, Pilate. I killed her. I’ve killed a lot of them today.”

  “Jesus will forgive you,” Pilate said.

  Wren climbed on top of the minivan, stood right out in the open. Her long dark hair fell across her wool poncho. “Come on, you dirty skanks. I’m all re-loaded and ready to dance. Come on out.”

  “Ten and two,” Pilate called out.

  Petal aimed, shot, aimed, shot.

  Little girl green,

  come blow your mean,

  Charlie’s in the grass,

  and the girl’s got no ass.

  Gunfire behind us, a howl of grief, our dogs barked in a fury. My heart died in my chest. Those were our people. Those were their screams. A door smashed open in the back of the gas station. Light spilled into the darkness of the dying day. Soldier girls, heads silhouetted, charged in. A lot of them.

  Pilate spun. He jerked his sawed-off Beijing Homewrecker out of its holster in a blur. Yelling “Matthew!” he lobbed a 20mm grenade into the middle of them. The gas station filled with fire, dust and death. Tina Machinegun’s rattle followed.

  I nearly tumbled to my knees, I was coughing so hard. Somehow I kept on my feet.

  Pilate had yelled Matthew. Why?

  “Out, now!” he shouted. “Sharlotte, that means you, too!”

  I went to run, do as he said, but then I realized Micaiah knelt on the floor, his eyes white with wild fear, his hands over his ears.

  Again, I had to save him. I grabbed him by his hair, like Wren had grabbed me during the gunfight at the Acade
my. He came, of course he did, but slapped my hand away once we came bursting out of the gas station with Sharlotte and Petal behind us.

  “Mark!” Pilate hollered another boy’s name from inside the gas station.

  And another Homewrecker blast thundered from Pilate’s Mossberg quad cannon. He’d be killed by his own shrapnel. Then what would we do?

  Sharlotte, Micaiah, Petal, and me, we all staggered back to the minivan. Wren stood on top, a target no one could touch.

  We heard, “Luke!” Another grenade exploded inside the gas station. A wall collapsed, sending a cloud of dust across the broken asphalt and weeds.

  An outlaw scampered out of the hole left behind. Wren gunned her down, reaching and firing one Colt Terminator, then the other.

  From roiling smoke, Pilate strode, smirking face and long hair gray with dust. Several loops of the bandolier slung over his shoulder were now empty. He stopped and yelled at an outlaw on the other side of the gas station. “Run away, soldier girl. I have John left. I always liked John. ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ You believeth, soldier girl? If you run, you just might make it.”

  Spurred on by his words, that last outlaw sprinted through the shadowy twilight.

  “Take her down, Petal,” Pilate said in an easy voice.

  Petal’s rifle was too big for her to fire free hand, but in a second she was balancing that beast on its shooting sticks.

  Soldier girl, Soldier girl,

  where have you been?

  I’ve been to purgatory

  counting out sheep.

  The gun boomed, the muzzle flashed, and the fleeing outlaw tumbled down into the sagebrush.

  But she was still alive. In the waning flicker of the crash, I watched her try to crawl away. I felt sick. Such violence. Such horror.

  A hush fell. A little wind. The crackle of fire. And then Petal’s whisper.