Machine-Gun Girls

by Aaron Michael Ritchey

  Edger had the sleeves of her shirt rolled up to reveal a strip of EMAT on her left arm. Emergency Medical Adhesive Tape. What kind of drug was she giving herself? Had she been wounded?

  A terrible thought struck me. What if she’d been at the office building fight? What if she knew all about us and this was some kind of tricky piece of horrific theater?

  No. Couldn’t be. I’d stick with the story I’d told the crew downstairs.

  “Sit.” She barked.

  I sat.

  She turned the gun so the barrel pointed at me. Theatrics. I thought of how Wren had tried to intimidate my principal back in Cleveland. If only Wren had been there, but she was gone.

  More guilt. Another rock for me to swallow.

  “Talk.” A single word from Edger. Renee Vixx hadn’t been chatty either, but at least Edger seemed human enough—harsh and sharp, but human. The one Vixx sister we’d fought had been a snake wearing a human suit.

  “What’s a Praetor?” I asked. Still couldn’t remember where I’d heard that before. Knew I wouldn’t get an answer, but I had to try.

  “Have you seen the boy in the picture?”

  “No.”

  “We discovered the remains of a gun battle in an office complex in what used to be Broomfield. Many of our soldiers were killed. Do you know anything about that?”

  I knew everything about it. I’d been there.

  “Look,” I said, “we ran into June Mai Angel’s girls in Denver. We got shot up and ran away north. I passed out in a mall, prolly in Boulder, and I woke up here. That’s all I know.”

  “You are Cavatica Weller. You are on a cattle drive to Nevada to save your ranch in Burlington. Is that correct?”

  I nodded. The stink of my own sweat assaulted my senses.

  “The boy we are looking for was shot down in a zeppelin by Strasburg, in the Colorado territory. Your cattle drive went through Strasburg, is that correct?”

  “Along I-70, yeah, but we didn’t see any boy or see any zeppelin crash.”

  She stared, unblinking. “In Strasburg we found empty shell casings. We found .45 caliber shells. We found .338 Ostrobothnia magnums. We found twelve-gauge shotgun shells, and we found the remnants of twenty-millimeter grenades. Similar ammunition was used in Broomfield, at the office complex. The evidence is clear. Your team used your guns in Strasburg, and you used them in Broomfield. Where is the boy?”

  Every word she said pounded a steel spike into my spine. She was close to sniffing us out, and she knew it. I kept myself steady. Everything depended on it.

  “Where are the guns?” I asked. “If we have .45s, shotguns, and whatever that other thing you said, well, you’d find us packing them. But I don’t think we have any of those. We have MG21s, sure. It was standard issue in the Sino, so there are a ton of those around. And my sister has an old M16 that might fire twenty-millimeter grenades, but I’m not sure. I don’t know much about guns.”

  If I was going to lie, might as well lie big.

  Edger got really quiet. My body vibrated in the silence. Thank God Micaiah had thought for us to hide the guns. He was there, only a few meters above me, listening. Or maybe he’d found a way out and run off. That was hard to think on.

  I closed my eyes. “I ain’t feeling too well,” I murmured. “I don’t know about a boy or any kind of gun battle with you people. We’re just on our way to Nevada. We stopped over at the Scheutz’s since they knew our Mama. That’s all I know. I guess if you’re gonna beat on me, you better get to it.”

  Silence.

  I waited.

  Edger spoke. “It seems convenient that we find you and the man, both injured from a gun battle, and recently.”

  I shrugged. “Welcome to the Juniper. It’s a hard place.”

  More silence. I thought I heard something shift in the attic above us, but it might’ve been my imagination. I prayed it was.

  “We will continue to question you,” Edger said. “We do not believe you are innocent.”

  Soldiers took me toward the steps.

  Before I could stop myself, I glanced over at the hutch. Long scratches marred the floor, only partially covered by a cardboard box. They looked fresh. We were in trouble.

  Back in the yellow room, I lay on the bed, facing the wall, wondering what Crete was telling Edger. Or Dolly Day. Some of our people, like Tenisha Keys and Nikki Breeze were family, but others we’d hired. Would they give up Micaiah out of fear? Or what if Edger started offering huge sums of money?

  Or what if Edger noticed the marks on the floor? One glance up, she’d see the trapdoor, and all of our lies would be exposed.

  My worried mind fought my exhausted body until, finally, my brain gave in and I slept. I woke up hours later.

  The guard was gone. The light dimmed in the window, getting ready for dark. Cooking noises drifted up from downstairs, the tap of spoons on pans, shuffling sounds of dishes, and the slam of cupboard doors. Those familiar sounds made me ache for when I’d listen to Aunt Bea or Mama cooking on our ranch in Burlington. But my childhood was gone, gone forever.

  I sat up in bed.

  “Good,” a voice said. “You’re awake.”

  My sister Sharlotte rocked herself in the chair in the corner. “You and me have to talk,” she said quietly.

  We had plenty to talk about, but I knew we’d circle around until we landed on one topic in particular.

  Micaiah.

  I wasn’t going to talk with Sharlotte about Micaiah, not about who he was, where he was, and not about his feelings for me. Sharlotte had been hurt enough.

  The highways through the Juniper are paved with good intentions. All of them lead straight to hell.

  (iii)

  Sharlotte leaned forward in the rocking chair. Afternoon light lit up the dust in the air, but her cowgirl hat shadowed her eyes.

  “Where’s Edger and the other Regios?” I asked from my bed.

  “Outside. They’ve created a perimeter. We are all confined to the house while they wait for the Vixxes to come. So far, I think everyone told them the same story.”

  I let out a long breath. “I was worried about Crete and Dolly Day.”

  “So far, so good,” Sharlotte said. “But we’re not out of this yet. We’re going to be taken in for questioning again and again even before the Vixxes get here. Only a matter of time before one of us starts singing like a spring robin.”

  Yeah, it was. And when the Vixxes came? Edger might not have the stomach to torture us, but I’d stared into the rattlesnake eyes of Micaiah’s aunts, and I knew they’d have no problem chopping off our fingers to get us to talk.

  “What about our headcount?” I asked.

  “We let them loose on the open range. Jenny Bell says there’s still enough barbed wire left in the country so they can’t get far. And since it’s spring, and after that snowstorm, there’s enough for them to drink. Our cattle are fine. Wish we could say the same for ourselves.”

  “Do our people know about the Vixxes?” I asked.

  Sharlotte shook her head. “I got the full story from Petal, but we both agreed ... it’s best that our people think it was June Mai’s girls that shot y’all up.”

  “Good.”

  My sister went on. “We had three AZ3s, but I had Nikki and Tenisha bury them. Along with the extra ammo Petal and Pilate had for their guns. Wren kept her own stash with her, and we don’t have any other .45s with us. Thank God. Our boy knew exactly how to keep it all a secret.”

  Of course he did.

  We sat in a heavy quiet for a long time.

  She finally spoke. “I need to know about you and Micaiah.”

  My insides twisted. What could I say?

  Sharlotte took off her hat and held it in her hands. “I need to know where he is and how much you know.”

  I was going to play dumb on that. The less anyone knew about Micaiah the better.

  My mind raced to find words, but my head was full of cotton from the long sleep and the medication.


  “I know you have feelings for him,” Sharlotte said. “Wren told me she found you and him kissing in the mini-van during that first attack. And then after you found us at the mall, he was real distant toward me. While you were unconscious, he barely said two words to me. Something changed, and it has everything to do with your time alone together.” Her next words came out like a whip crack. “That’s fine.”

  No, it wasn’t. Not by the tone of her voice.

  She paused, then said forcefully, “But now is not the time for romance. He came in to get Petal and Pilate’s guns. Did he come in here?”

  I shook my head. The lie strangled me. I wondered if Micaiah felt like that when he played around with the truth. “I don’t know where he is,” I said softly.

  “He’s gone then,” Sharlotte said.

  “I’m sorry. I know how you felt about him as well. I saw it.”

  Sharlotte had to unclamp her jaws to speak “You saw it, and still, first thing you did was run off with him. But then you’re used to always getting what you want.”

  “Not now.” I couldn’t get a deep breath. “We can’t fight about him now. He’s gone.”

  Sharlotte’s grip on her hat turned into a white-knuckled vise. “Of course he’s gone. We were both stupid, so stupid to think a rich boy would ever let himself love girls like us; Juniper girls, not worth a dime. Now he’s gone, and we’re in a mess.”

  “I didn’t run off with him.” An oily anger was wanting to slide down into me, but I fought it. “There was the attack and the stampede, and I didn’t plan any of it. I was going to let you have him.”

  “You were going to,” my sister said, “but you didn’t. ’Cause you’re selfish. Tell me the truth. It don’t matter now, but you kissed him, didn’t you? Even after you saw how much he liked me, you kissed him, and you loved him, didn’t you? And he loved you back.”

  “No. He was yours.” My own words surprised me, but when you start lying, stopping can be a problem.

  “Don’t lie to me!” Sharlotte snapped like a bear trap. “He told you this big story about being on some kind of quest, about getting him to Nevada so he can tell us the truth and give us six million dollars. And you believed every word.”

  “That’s right,” I hissed, the anger taking over. “You did, too, or else you’d have told Edger about him. So don’t be a hypocrite. And don’t you call me a liar. Let’s just drop it. It’s done. He’s gone, and we have to figure a way out of this.”

  Sharlotte’s own rage forced her to her feet. “There is no way out. We were doomed to fail from the start. All ’cause Mama died at the worst possible time. And here we are, paying for her mistakes. All her many mistakes. Power coming back on in the Juniper. Stupid. Mistake one. Borrowing money from Howerter. Another stupid mistake. Then she sends you to that expensive school, and then she signed paper for us to get our headcount to Nevada when it can’t be done. All mistakes. So let the Vixxes come and murder us all. It don’t matter. When I’m dead, I’ll really tell Mama how stupid she was.”

  The optimism she’d had in the Boulder mall was gone, and she paraded her despair around like she was proud of it.

  I huffed in fury, but I kept my voice low. “You take that back. Mama wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t her fault she died.”

  Sharlotte came over and leaned into my face. “Tell me the truth. We might die, but I want to know it for sure. I want the truth about you and Micaiah.”

  I looked her full in the eyes, and all my promises to spare her went right out the window. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted the truth to cut her throat for what she’d said about our dead mother. “Micaiah and I kissed, and he loves me, and he’s just playing you ’cause you’re in charge and he was afraid you’d let Wren sell him, or that you’d send him away to die. But all that changed, didn’t it? Now, you don’t care about the Regios, our cattle drive, or anything. All you want is revenge for not getting him.”

  Sharlotte raised a fist. If I hadn’t been lying in a bed, she would’ve clocked me. Instead, she whirled around and made for the door.

  “That’s right,” I said, “that’s what you do, right? You turn your back on me and run ’cause you can’t deal with things.”

  Sharlotte stopped and talked to me over her shoulder, in a voice dangerously quiet. “I can’t deal with things? I can’t?”

  Uh oh, I’d said the wrong thing.

  Rage trembled through her body. “Who dealt with Mama while you and Wren were gone? Who got us on the road? Who has had to make the hard decisions, over and over? Me. Over and over. Even now. Everyone is looking at me to get us out of this mess, and I ain’t got a clue.”

  I was speechless.

  Sharlotte turned to face me full on. Her face was stony—eyes, cheeks, mouth rock hard. “We were fools to think Micaiah cared about either one of us. He played us both, and now he’s run off. Well, good. A liar-boy like that isn’t worth our love.”

  An awful lump filled my throat. Micaiah did play fast and easy with the truth. All along, I hadn’t known if he was the apple, promising forbidden knowledge, or the snake in the garden, full of evil lies. When I was with him, I believed him. When he was gone, I had my doubts. Which is how it all works when the truth has been stomped under foot and lays like a worm in the dirt.

  She saw my confusion. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m sure his kisses were sweet, but he’s gone and his six-million-dollar reward is gone with him. Good. Prolly just another lie, anyway.”

  Sharlotte’s mouth twisted smaller. “And maybe we won’t be able to escape, but maybe dying here wouldn’t be so bad.” Her anger was leaving now, but the sorrow that remained hurt my heart.

  Her hand snaked into the pocket of her New Morality dress, fiddling with what was inside. I heard paper rustle.

  “What do you have in your pocket, Shar?”

  Instead of answering, she hit me with a non sequitur. “Jenny Bell’s daughters ... the older ones look like Pilate. Like her oldest, Zenobia, she looks exactly like Pilate.”

  “Is ignoring my questions like a hobby for you?” I asked it lightly, as a joke.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sharlotte said. “What I have doesn’t matter, not in the long run, I don’t think.”

  Instead of leaving, she sat down. Surprised me.

  We sat for a long time, not talking. Why hadn’t she left?

  Sharlotte took in a deep breath and asked, “Do you know why you care so much about the ranch?”

  “Why?”

  “You got to leave it,” she said, “and leaving things makes them special. Whenever I think about our ranch, I feel cold and hollow, hateful. We need to pay off our loans to Howerter, and it makes financial sense to keep the land, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live there again. I’m sorry I got mean. You’re right. Fighting about Micaiah doesn’t make sense now.”

  “I’m sorry too, Shar. About everything.” About all my lies of omission and commission. Of what I had done and what I’d failed to do. Me purposefully trying to hurt her. Not telling her about Micaiah in the attic.

  Sharlotte sniffled and took a handkerchief out of the pocket of her New Morality dress and blew her nose. “Here we are, trapped in this house, and I’m coming down with a cold. Doesn’t feel fair.”

  She smiled at me. Kind of shy and embarrassed.

  I smiled back, glad she could forgive me. She took my hand. Another surprise. Who was this new girl? What was happening to my sister?

  “So, Cavvy, what are we going to do?”

  “Wait, Shar, and pray for a miracle.”

  “I can wait,” she said. “Don’t have much of a choice there. But I’m too empty to pray. Losing Mama made me lose myself, I think. I feel so empty inside. Empty. Lost. So hollow that when the wind blows, it blows right through me, and I’m left cold.” She patted my leg, then got up and left the room. Her pretty, tragic words stayed.

  I wondered about Micaiah. We’d have to do something to save him. And then what? How would Sharlotte and I deal with h
aving the boy back with us?

  I didn’t know.

  We ate a silent meal in the parlor that night, all twenty of us, barely talking. We could see the fires of the Regios outside. Every window showed the guards around us, waiting for the Vixxes to come.

  Then the real interrogations would start. And the torture.

  We had to get out of there. I didn’t have a plan, but I was hoping that Micaiah did. I planned on asking him later that night.

  If he was still in the attic.

  If I could move the hutch without waking up the entire house.

  Chapter Three

  The Juniper tests us, but God didn’t create the Juniper to find our weaknesses. God did it so we could find our strengths.

  —Mavis Meetchum

  Colorado Courier Interview

  August 4, 2032

  (i)

  BEFORE I WENT TO BED, I guzzled a ton of water with my pain medication. Drinking water before bedtime was an old trick to make sure I woke up in the middle of the night. Sure, enough, a little after two in the morning, I got out of bed and used the toilet. Then I tiptoed down the hallway to the steps.

  A murmur came from one of the rooms, but it wasn’t talking, too low and muffled. I froze. Waited.

  The murmuring stopped. Prolly a Scheutz girl, stressed out and talking in her sleep.

  Poor Jenny Bell, it felt like I was betraying her, but what would happen if she knew about Micaiah? What would she say? What could she do?

  It was a variable I didn’t want to consider in my already messy equations. In the parlor downstairs, Dolly Day snored like a Cargador with a boiler about to blow.

  I moved up the stairs to the attic room, walking on the edges ’cause everyone knows the center of stairs squeak.

  A board squealed under my foot nonetheless. Made me stop and listen. Every noise seemed like it would bring all of Jenny Bell’s daughters, if not the woman herself, barreling out to search for who was walking around. After a while, though, when nothing happened, I thought it might be safe and kept on creeping upward.