Dandelion Iron Book One

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  But Micaiah’s Tree of Knowledge mystery joined in. And how he had talked about the peaches, and the pronouns he used—“they” gave them to him. They. It sounded like he hadn’t grown up in a family, but more like in some kind of institution setting. He hated his dad, but what about his aunts and his mom?

  Secrets. The apple kept safely on the tree lest it poison me, or so he said.

  I took in deep breaths, the touch of him, the smell of him, his eyes on me, his hand covering mine.

  I couldn’t fight my heart anymore, so I let my fantasies have free reign. I pictured us traveling the world on his money—London, Paris, Rome, India, Thailand, Australia. We’d get separate rooms in the hotels ’cause of my high moral standards, and he could afford it. Once we were married, we’d come back to Burlington, to live in the ranch house, ’cause he’d paid Howerter back in full.

  Sharlotte was conveniently left out. It was wrong of me, but the thought of Micaiah and me together felt so good that it was easy to forget about reality.

  I was so lost in my own little world I jumped when he called up to me in a quiet voice. “Cavatica, are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We should get some sleep. I don’t think you need to keep watch.”

  I went back inside with him and didn’t sleep a wink all night.

  I listened to Micaiah’s breathing and the shuffle of his movements. He was a noisy sleeper, but he never said a word.

  His dreams, like his secrets, he kept to himself.

  (v)

  I woke up to light filtering down through the window wells of the basement. Took me only a second to see Micaiah was gone.

  I leaned back into the mound of Rocky Mountain News bundles, figuring he’d gone out to relieve himself, and that he would be back.

  Hooves clopped above on the back patio’s concrete, a horse whinnied loudly, and wild shapes threw shadows across the basement windows.

  Something wasn’t right. I could feel it.

  In a flash, I climbed up stacks of papers and boxes until I could heave myself up to the window. Spider webs clung to my fingers. Spiders scattered.

  I ignored them. My eyes were fixed on Micaiah’s familiar boots, his jeans. In less than a second, he was scooped up by figures on horseback. All I could see was the gray-colored camouflage pants they wore and the black combat boots on their feet, stuck in stirrups.

  Before I could do a thing, the riders stormed away.

  Taking Micaiah with them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  During the salvaging days, there were men bandits, but they weren’t organized. Queenie was organized. Women know how to come together. I just wish it was for a better purpose than to steal. As for June Mai Angel, I’m not sure she exists. The stories I’ve heard, well, no Outlaw Warlord could have that many followers and be that organized. June Mai Angel is just Juniper gossip gone bad.

  —Abigail Weller

  Colorado Courier Interview

  June 6, 2057

  (i)

  I bent and touched the tracks in the dirt of the road. Clouds swirled cold in the early morning sky. The ruins of the suburbs spread out to infinity, and I was a lone girl, standing there with a choice to make. Go north and follow the riders. Or go west to try and find my people in Golden.

  I wondered at how capricious the Juniper could be. One minute the boy and I were eating peaches and he’s crying, and the next, he’s stolen away.

  The scales inside of me tipped into balance—the weight of my love for him, Sharlotte’s love, and his promise of six million dollars versus my family, my cattle, and the drive.

  But how many beefsteaks had survived the stampede? Would there be any left to sell? Or would we lose the ranch to Howerter?

  Back and forth, back and forth—my head couldn’t make a decision. My boots finally made the decision, my boots connected to my heart by invisible strings of desire and destiny.

  Full of shakti, I ran north. I still left the AW mark, but I did it hastily, not wanting to lose the spoor of the riders who’d taken the boy.

  I hadn’t gone a kilometer when Pilate, Petal, and Wren found me.

  (ii)

  I recognized the ponies first, then the riders. Windshadow came galloping up ridden by Pilate, Lampchop carrying Petal, and Wren fighting to keep control of Christina Pink. The horse’s muscles flexed tensely, her eyes slits—that fiery mare wanted to run the Devil down.

  Mary B trailed them on long reins. Tina Machinegun was sheathed next to the saddlebags.

  “Is Sharlotte okay?” I asked. “Did Mick and Puff Daddy make it?”

  “Glad you asked about a human first, then horses,” Wren said. “Everyone made it. We dealt with June Mai’s girls. Not sure what all them scary stories are about. Got through ’em easy.” My sister smiled, showing her perfect teeth, bright and recently flossed, knowing her. In the chill, she wore both her Mortex parka and the wool poncho—both a dark green, I wouldn’t have thought the colors would match, but on Wren they did.

  Pilate dismounted and threw his arms around me. “Thank God you left a trail for us to follow.”

  I bristled at his touch and stepped away. The dog. “Yeah, I’m brilliant. But what happened?”

  They told me how June Mai’s girls had hit our crew, but they had missed Wren, who had been riding separate from the herd, which had been her plan all along. It explained why she drifted around alone, only coming in at night to visit Pilate.

  Once the shooting started, Wren gunned down the outlaws from the back while Pilate and Petal hit them from the front.

  The outlaws soon gave up on the attack and dragged the fallen beef off the freeway.

  Wren smirked. “Yeah, we let those skanks have our roadkill.”

  Petal, who seemed half asleep on Lambchop, leaned close to Pilate. “We killed all the Jacquelines and Jills, but we’re done shooting for a little while, aren’t we? I don’t want to shoot anyone for a while. And can I have more medicine?”

  “Soon, Petal,” Pilate said. “And I agree. I think we should avoid any shooting we can.”

  “How many of the headcount did we lose?” I asked.

  “We think about two hundred, but they were still counting them when we took off to find you,” Pilate said. He seemed to care, but not Wren nor Petal.

  My sister whirled Christina Pink around and around, going forward, looking at the tracks, frowning in concentration, letting the hoof prints in the dirt tell their story. “Did you see who took your boy?” she asked.

  I hadn’t, not really, but now that I had a posse, I was keen to get him back. I told them everything I knew and finished up by saying, “We’re going after him.”

  Pilate shook his head slowly and firmly. “No, we’re not. Micaiah broke off from the herd, and June Mai’s bandits leapt on him like coyotes on a calf. Yes, Wren has bested June Mai’s soldiers three times now, but if I were throwing dice in Vegas, I would gratefully take my money off the table and get some pie. I love pie.”

  I had to take a deep breath. If I lost it to crying and screaming, Pilate would throw me over Mary B’s saddle and carry me back to Sharlotte. No, I had to be logical and persuasive. “When we lost those two hundred beefsteaks on the freeway, we also lost nearly a half-million dollars. We have a long way to Nevada and we’re bound to lose more. The boy is our insurance policy. I won’t give up on the ranch, Pilate. I won’t.”

  Petal let out a long, annoyed sigh.

  Wren chortled. “Now you’re thinking straight, Cavvy. That boy is our meal ticket. Even if he’s full of crapjack about his Mama and his money.”

  “Enough,” Pilate snapped harshly. “All of your thinking has been skewed ever since the boy joined our operation. Sharlotte is blind in love, Wren’s greed is staggering, and Cavatica is divided right down the middle.”

  “I just want to save the ranch,” I muttered. I didn’t meet his eyes. Dumb man had called it all perfectly.

  Wren flung me Mary B’s reins. “Saddle up, and let’s get a
fter them.”

  “No,” Pilate said. “I won’t risk our lives for a boy we don’t know a thing about, with a story as thin as a communion wafer.”

  I raised myself up straight, squared my shoulders, and I found the courage to look him in the eye. “I order you to help us get Micaiah back.”

  “How old are you again?” Pilate smirked.

  “I’m Abigail’s daughter. I’m family. Wren agrees with me. You, Father Pilate, are an employee of the Weller ranch. And you are outvoted. We go after him.”

  Pilate opened his mouth.

  I knew what he was going to say, so I cut him off. “I won’t fight. I’ll stay out of harm’s way. And I’m sure you’d rather keep an eye on me than send me off alone with June Mai’s soldiers still around.”

  Pilate closed his mouth.

  “Are you going to ask me to shoot more?” Petal asked.

  He nodded.

  “I will,” she said. “But first my medicine.”

  Another nod from Pilate. Sad. But resigned.

  (iii)

  I didn’t see what medicine Pilate gave Petal ’cause I had to get Mary B ready to run. I went through her saddlebags, inventorying the extra clips and grenades, checked her hooves, and then stepped up into her stirrups.

  I slid Tina Machinegun out of the sheath. But could I really use her?

  A sudden breeze tumbled snowflakes out of the sky, just a few. It’d been threatening bad weather for a while now, and there was no way to tell if all we’d get was spits of snow, or if we’d be buried in a blizzard. The cold air bit any bare skin.

  I fixed my cattling goggles into place, then rode off with my posse through the snowfall and under clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon. The houses around us had been salvaged down hard. Some only had their foundations left. Others leaned in tatters, but the whole place felt more like open prairie now than a suburb. No asphalt anywhere, but weeds, grass, and cactus instead.

  We rode hard until Pilate told us to stop at the bottom of a hillock. Off our horses, we crept up a hill like mice, slipping some in the slush and mud. Spring snow blasted down wet, cold, and blowing. Grasses shivered in that wind. My Mortex parka kept me dry on top, but my leggings and dress were soon soaked.

  At the crest, we dropped to the ground. Petal peered through the Zeiss lens on her rifle, Pilate had his Sino binocs, and Wren used her spotting scope.

  Below us sat an abandoned office complex—four buildings, three stories, all connected with bridges on the second stories. In the middle, cottonwoods rose above the rooftops.

  Fifty meters away sat a derelict Ford Excelsior with an ASI attachment in the bed—most likely abandoned ’cause the technology of those early steam engines had always been real iffy.

  Pilate whispered to Wren, “In those office buildings.”

  “Prolly waiting to meet up with a larger force. But why did they bring the boy north? June Mai’s girls were south.”

  “No idea,” Pilate answered. “They’re inside the office, though, lots of places to hide. Very defendable.”

  “Yeah, if they’re lookin’, they’ll see us comin’.”

  “Not if we hurry. They’re just getting set up. If we go quick, the blowing snow should hide us. We’ll sneak in from the north.”

  Pilate moved his head to look at me. His eyes were colder than the ground we were lying on. “You ordered me here, insisted on coming, and all that’s fine. But now I’m taking over. Our first order of business? Father Pilate’s ten-second boot camp. You don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. Not even about your own pimpled butt. You will do as you are told. Arguing means you are choosing to kill us all. If you are shot, it doesn’t mean you’ll die. You’ll continue to fight, no matter what. Which goes back to what I said first. You don’t know nothin’. You will die if, and only if, I say it’s okay to die. Do you understand?”

  I nodded. His words and that mad-dog stare wiped every thought from my mind, including fear.

  He went on. “Those are not people down there in that office building. They do not eat, they do not sleep, they do not love their babies. They are killers, and when you’re sleeping, they’re awake, making plans on the best way to BBQ our horses and deep-fry us. God did not create the women down there. Satan did. And it’s our job to rid the world of them. Understood?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Good. Now is not the time to be a Christian. This will go quick. For good or bad. You’ll be able to go back to Christianing in a minute.”

  Pilate and Wren returned to planning, and my job wasn’t planning. My job was to do what I was told.

  We slid back down the hill, mounted up, and rode quickly around to the north, then back south, through the ever-thickening snow. It covered us, our ponies, everything, in a cold layer of white. Thank you, Lord.

  The office park was in good condition, comparatively speaking. A roof covered it, and some of the windows remained intact. The computers would be all gone, of course, and most everything else.

  We rode quickly to the west side of the structure. We were out of sight from the windowed bridge connecting the north building to the west. A good place to hide.

  My sister had her back against the building and used a little Hello Kitty compact mirror to look into the courtyard behind her. She held up one finger. Did some other signs. I didn’t get a thing from them.

  Pilate did. He nodded quick. He pointed up.

  She nodded back.

  All that without talking, and they had a plan. I was clueless.

  Pilate tried the door by us. Locked. An unbroken window hung above us.

  Pilate bent down to whisper quietly in my ear. I could barely hear it, with the snow pattering on my parka. “You stay here with the horses. But be ready. We think they’re in this building, or the one down from us. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  Pilate climbed up on Windshadow, and I held the reins. Up at the window, Pilate peeked through. He unholstered his Beijing Homewrecker and waited. The wind gusted, blew snow, then soothed back down.

  Next gust, Pilate smashed through the glass, cleared the edges, and hauled himself up.

  Petal handed her Mickey Mauser up next. Then followed him. Wren stuffed her coat and poncho into Christina Pink’s saddlebags and up she went.

  They would go and fight. I would wait.

  After tying the horses to a bike rack next to the building, I positioned myself right next to that locked door. The horses were skittish, nosing through the snow to get to the grass, but only to worry at it. They weren’t really interested in eating. They could feel it coming. The gunfire, the bloodshed, the death.

  I felt like puking. Tina Machinegun’s cold metal froze my fingers through my Secondskin gloves.

  For a nanosecond, I considered crawling up Windshadow and going into the building, but then decided against it. Pilate would slap the heck out of me. If not him, Wren.

  Nope. My job was the horses. And waiting. I tried to pray a little of the fear out of me, even as I prayed for all our safety.

  Once again, God had other plans.

  An outlaw came around the side of the building, armed with an Armalite AZ3, military issue, brand new. Quite a weapon, it had self-correcting laser targeting, tactical readout, including ammunition count, and water-cooled barrels. Of course the electronics didn’t work, but it was still an amazing weapon.

  There was nothing Juniper about that rifle or her. Sagebrush camo covered her, everything matched, like she herself was military issued. A holster held a huge pistol under her arm. Short hair boxed in a square, Slavic jaw. She walked with an oily precision, as if she was calculating the energy it took to make even the simplest of movements.

  Something was wrong about her. Even from a distance, something was very wrong.

  The sight of her froze me to the ground. She wasn’t one of June Mai Angel’s girls. Who were we fighting? Micaiah’s aunts? He’d said they were worse than any Outlaw Warlord. Part of me hadn’t believed him.

  R
ight then I did.

  That horrible soldier woman threw the fear of God into me and took away every gram of shakti I had.

  She looked right through those horses and caught me up in a dead stare, no surprise, no emotion—a computer clicking through code. If, then, else.

  Execute.

  She raised her rifle and fired.

  (iv)

  When the Devil rises up with a machinegun, you don’t get to choose how you act unless you are trained. I was a civilian, through and through, and I went on instinct. Unfortunately, all my instincts ran fearful.

  Bullets buzzed my face. One clipped my ear.

  First thing I did was drop Tina Machinegun.

  The woman was bad. Whoever she was, that woman radiated evil.

  Before I realized what I was doing, I grabbed Mary B and put her between me and the soldier. ’Cause she wouldn’t murder Mary B, right? People don’t kill horses in cold blood, right?

  Without pausing, she gunned Mary B down right under my hand. The pounding of bullets reverberated through her flesh. The AZ3 fired 7.62 cartridges, which were big and nasty bullets, Teflon-coated, maybe. My pretty pony, my dapple gray, swayed and stumbled, making awful noises. She toppled to lay still in the snow.

  I fled behind Lambchop and the soldier shot her, too. Blood flecked my face. The palomino reared then slumped down onto her side. Bloodied. Bloodied something awful.

  Hooves hammered the ground around my feet. The two remaining horses kicked and yanked against the bike rack. The metal clanged and squealed, like the horses were squealing. Slaughterhouse shrieks.

  The soldier would murder all the horses to get to me. Every single one of them. Well, not if I could help it. I plucked Tina Machinegun off the ground and charged her.

  “Don’t you kill no more of my ponies!” I yelled. “Kill me, but don’t kill any more of my horses!”

  She fired, full auto. I took two bullets, the first in my left arm, the next in my upper chest, near my shoulder.

  Until Petal, with her Mickey Mauser, shot that soldier girl through the heart. I watched the soldier’s head loll back. Blood misted in the air around her.