It seemed we were free of June Mai Angel, and, yeah, the Vixxes might be watching, but we had nothing to hide, not anymore.
Yet if we continued north, we’d eventually run into the Psycho Princess. One more enemy to face and we were down a gun. Unlike Pilate and Wren, Petal hadn’t put up a fight when the Vixxes grabbed us.
The longer I searched for my sister, the more afraid I got. Sharlotte was always easy to find, to answer questions and to tell you what to do and how to do it.
Everyone had talked to Sharlotte, but no one knew where she was. She’d told Dolly Day and our hired hands to go ahead of us to clip fences. No one had run cattle through this part of the world in centuries, and so the wire of former ranches still stretched across the land.
Then I saw Sharlotte walking Prince far behind the dusty cloud of our Herefords moving across the plain.
Couldn’t figure out why Sharlotte wasn’t in her saddle, unless Prince was foundering. Katy had recovered, or so I’d been told. Now it was prolly Prince’s turn to have something go wrong with him. Horses’ hooves could be fragile. Human hearts? Even more so.
I rode back to my big sister.
I thought she’d start talking right away—about what needed to be done, about why the Vixxes had let us go, where Sketchy and the Moby Dick might be, where Micaiah was—but instead she was wordless. Not a peep.
I didn’t know what to say. Sharlotte always spoke first, and generally, it started with, “I need you to ...”
I got off Bob D to walk next to her. “Sharlotte, why ain’t you riding Prince?”
Her hat dangled from a string in her hand, so I could see her grin sheepishly. “The bounce from the horse is killing my head. Walking is horrible, too, but not as bad. Now I know why Wren is so surly in the morning. Hangovers. Ugh.”
“Last night you said the cattle drive was over,” I said shakily. “Why are we still going north?”
True to form, Sharlotte answered my question with a question. She was not what you would call a good listener. “You read Macbeth in school, Cavvy?”
Such an odd question from Sharlotte. School for Sharlotte had been an inconvenience—a cactus sticker in her thumb while she was trying to work the ranch with Mama.
“Yeah, I read Macbeth, Shar. They made us.”
She nodded. “There’s a line, and it’s always haunted me. Don’t know where I heard it. Maybe Pilate. He’s likely to quote Shakespeare, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Talking about Pilate felt awkward now that the truth was out.
“Someone in that play, Lady Macbeth maybe, says she’s swimming across a river of blood, and it’s as easy to keep going forward as it is to go back. Not like that, you understand, but in that old Shakespeare language.”
I didn’t say that the Shakespeare language was actually English. I didn’t want to shame her for not knowing.
Sharlotte stopped and sighed. We were in a little gully between two bumps of hills. All around us sprouted dandelions in a splash of yellow in the sunlight.
“I gambled you today, Cavvy.”
“I know it. Nearly had to change my underwear.”
Sharlotte smiled. Oh, she looked tired. “I’m a mystery to myself now. Getting drunk. Wanting to give up on the cattle drive. Basking in the love of that boy. Then risking your life to protect him and keep him hidden. He just seems important. More important than us somehow.”
“I felt it, too. The Holy Spirit directed us, I think. Or maybe we’re just contrary.”
Sharlotte knelt down and brushed a hand over the dandelions. “If the Vixxes hadn’t attacked us and killed Jenny Bell, I prolly would’ve stayed on with the Scheutz’s. Sold her the headcount, made payroll, or we could’ve found a homestead near them, and set up selling beefsteak to the Outlaw Warlords, like Jenny Bell. Last night I said I’d go live in the World, but I can’t. Not just ’cause of the SISBI laws, but more I’m Juniper born and bred. I don’t reckon she’ll let me leave.” Sharlotte took in a deep breath. “And so, here we are, in the middle of a river of blood. As far to the other side as it is to go back. Halfway. We all wanted it, but now the halfway feels like hell.”
We were in a mess all right, but I wanted to comfort her. “I’m okay with you gambling me, Sharlotte. I think all of us are okay keeping Micaiah a secret, or else someone would’ve come clean when Edger interrogated us. We made it this far. We can get there.”
“I love dandelions, Cavvy.”
That seemed an odd thing to say. Didn’t know how to ask if she’d gone crazy, so I asked, “Ain’t they just a weed, Shar?”
“Yeah, just a weed. But they can grow anywhere, and they’re pretty, and they’re tough. Like women in the Juniper. Like women everywhere. Tough, pretty, and we can bloom wherever we are. Don’t need a home. Just need land and the sunlight of love.”
I’d never heard Sharlotte talk like that, but here she was, emotion in her voice, saying such a pretty thing. It made me want to hug her, but Sharlotte wasn’t one for hugs. She only ever pet her cows. Never even pet the dogs.
She stared at the weeds around us. “Sally Browne Burke talked about the quiet strength of women, and I liked that. I clung to the New Morality ’cause it seemed like the only sane thing in the world. But I don’t know anymore. Breeze and Keys, their love is so pure. Watching them makes me feel alone. It made me doubt the New Morality even before Mama died. Now that’s she’s dead, I’m lost and gone.”
“You knew about Breeze and Keys?” I asked, shocked.
She grinned. “Why do you think I put them in the same tent?”
I couldn’t talk. How could Sharlotte accept their gillian love? And, in some ways, even encourage it? Both the Catholic Church and the New Morality saw any kind of homosexuality as the gravest of sins. Not venial, but mortal.
I was so surprised. Even more surprised when Sharlotte sat down in the dandelions. “When Micaiah was with me, I felt so good, like a dream come true, but I didn’t really believe it. Felt more like a story than the real thing. And you know, it was like I was supposed to want his love. Girl meets boy and they fall in love, especially if he’s handsome and viable. But it wasn’t him I wanted. Really, I only wanted someone’s affection. I wanted to be wanted. But that’s over.”
I suppose I should’ve been glad Micaiah was all mine, but seeing Sharlotte so hopeless, I didn’t much care. Our love triangle had come undone, but then, so had Sharlotte.
“Mama’s dead,” she whispered. “I feel dead.”
She lay back on the ground, yellow flowers around her ears. “I’m not going to cross to the other shore. I’m going to drown in this river of blood, right here. Dead, among dandelions.”
I dropped to my knees, my heart tossing around beats that left me breathless. “Shar, don’t talk like that. Please, I need you to be strong. If you aren’t strong, who will be? Wren can’t. She’s crazy. For real. Mentally ill, prolly. And Pilate, he’s uncertain. And the rest of them, they’re okay, but they’re not you, Sharlotte. I need you. Who else will lead?”
Sharlotte smiled at me. “What about you, Cavvy? You’re the best of us. Mama was right to send you to school. I was jealous and hated you for it, but it was the right thing to do. I love you, Cavvy. Hate Wren, but love you.”
“If you love me, be my big sister. Be the leader. ’Cause I can’t. I’m too young and feeling it.”
Sharlotte’s long-lashed eyes fell kindly on me. “Pilate says us Weller girls were born old warriors.”
“What does Pilate know, anyway?”
She sat up. “No, Cavvy, I don’t want to be the leader anymore. I got Jenny Bell killed. We shouldn’t have stayed as long as we did, and we should’ve told them about the boy.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Please, Sharlotte.”
The wind blew a strand of hair across her face. “Maybe you’re right. Still, I need to leave, take off and be like Wren for a while. Y’all go on without me.”
Just like tha
t, I became the leader. Even though I was only in the spring of my sixteenth year, I had just been put in charge of the third largest cattle operation in the Colorado territory.
Our leader had quit. Our sniper took an oath to do no harm. We had hundreds and hundreds of kilometers in front of us. Deserts. The Psycho Princess. The Wind River people. The Vixx sisters.
Armageddon.
For a half-second, I thought about turning east, to follow through on Sharlotte’s promise to end the drive right there. But no, Mama had built our cattle operation from nothing. She had bled to give us a house, a life, however hard. She’d killed Queenie, an Outlaw Warlord, to keep us safe in a home she loved. I would not be the one to give up on the dreams she’d built nor forsake the graves there. Never.
We might have been in the middle of a river of blood, but as long as I had breath, I was going to keep on swimming, so I could save our sacred ground.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, help me.
I got to my feet, quaking.
And ’cause I was a Weller to my bones, I got to work.
Chapter Seven
True leadership requires more than courage. It requires an almost irrational determination to follow your vision. Words like duty, honor, and responsibility turn to ash in the fire of such a commitment. The Catholics believe I will burn in hell for my research into the mysteries of human DNA. I say by the time I die, I will have already been completely consumed by my vision of a perfect world.
—Tiberius “Tibbs” Hoyt, Founder of the American
Reproduction Knowledge Initiative
47th World Congress on Human Reproduction
March 11, 2045
(i)
BACK AT THE CHUCK WAGON, I secretly helped Sharlotte gather supplies. I felt so overwhelmed there wasn’t any room in my head to be mad at her.
Late afternoon sunshine made Prince’s coat gleam like he’d been oiled. Tina Machinegun bounced in the holster on the saddle. Sharlotte only took two clips of ammunition and one extra grenade.
Where would she go? What would she do?
I didn’t know. She hugged me for a long time, her head on my shoulder, and I swear to God it was like being embraced by a stranger. This wasn’t my sister. Sharlotte would never just up and leave us, but here she was, on her way.
I watched her ride off. My stomach hurt like I’d swallowed barbed wire.
But I pretended everything was normal. Any time someone asked me a question, I told them what Sharlotte wanted us to do, like she was just over the horizon and would be back at any moment.
Everyone accepted what I said easily. Our employees and hires knew how to run cattle. They’d been doing it their entire lives, and a leader doesn’t need to be good when things are running smoothly. You only need a good leader when life starts throwing bullets into the campfire.
That evening we stopped on a big wide-open plain, thawed out from winter. Spring danced happily across fields full of wild flowers and honeybees.
Around a popping fire of sagebrush and cottonwood, we ate hash made from beans, re-hydrated sausage, and undercooked rice. Poor Allie Chambers and Kasey Romero, they missed such a questionable feast ’cause they were taking watch.
Petal stayed in her tent, Pilate sipped his coffee, and where Sharlotte should’ve been, there sat Wren, eyes still red from the gassing she’d taken that morning, face purple from new bruises, yellow from the old. A bottle of Pains whiskey glued itself to her hand. Distilled in the Juniper, the makers poured their hooch into any old bottle then slapped on a haphazard label. “Pains for the pain,” that was the slogan, and the way Wren guzzled it, she must’ve been positively suffering.
With Allie and Kasey gone, it was nine of us, some sitting on folding Neofiber chairs, some squatting on their haunches, chewing and looking at the fire.
“Where do you think Micaiah is?” Leave it to Crete to ask such a question.
Dolly Day piped up. “Don’t care. I hope that boy doesn’t come back. Call me superstitious, but travelling with a boy is unlucky. Can’t believe y’all were so willing to lay down your lives for him.”
I should’ve argued with her, but I was too busy trying to figure out how I’d tell them I was in charge.
Dang Crete wouldn’t shut up. “Where’s Sharlotte?”
This time Dolly didn’t answer, and the silence stretched out long and uncomfortable.
Aunt Bea sighed and left for her chuck wagon. Our dogs, Bella, Jacob, and Edward, tore after her, hoping for scraps.
Did Bea know what was going on?
Wren teetered up. Even drunk, she’d gotten good at talking with her mouth half-closed to hide her broken teeth. “Don’t know about Sharlotte. She prolly left ’cause she hates me so much. As for Micaiah, that goddamn boy is a jackin’ genius. Ran away and left us knowing nothing. I was stupid to try and beat the truth out of him. Glad I don’t know who he was. Glad I killed as many of those goddamn Regios as I could. Skanks.”
“Why did they let us go?” Dolly asked in a nasty tone.
Wren cackled. “They didn’t let us go. They killed Jenny Bell to show how hard they were, then packed it up, and took off. But not all of them. Left behind a unit to watch us. They know we know something. They’re watching our every move, and I gotta say, it kinda makes me feel all comfy.”
A splinter of dread stabbed my heart. Most likely, I’d never see my boy ever again. No way would he’d come back if the Regios were spying on us. I had to shake away those thoughts and say something. “We’re still going to Nevada. Even if the Vixx sisters are watching, it doesn’t change our day to day.”
Dolly Day ignored me, glared at Wren. “Is that why you’re with us around the fire? I was wondering. If I had my druthers, you’d be ten kilometers that way.” She pointed to the line of sunset glow spread across the Rocky Mountains. “Out there, where you normally are, skulking around.”
Wren’s laughter sounded choked. “Skulking around and keeping you safe. Buncha hypocrites.”
That shut us up for a minute. The fire popped sparks into the darkness.
“What about Sharlotte?” Crete asked again.
I knew I had to tell them the truth, but I couldn’t do it. I prayed for forgiveness, then did my best to pull a Micaiah. I stood and lied my butt off. “Sharlotte’s doing some scouting for us for the next few days or so. She’ll contact me, and I’ll tell you what she says to do. We’ll go slow, take our time. No use hurrying until the Moby finds us again. It’s real dry from here on out.”
Dolly Day squared with me. Distrust fried her piggy little eyes. “So we do what you say, Cavvy?”
“No.” I made sure I kept my words slow and strong. “You’ll be doing what Sharlotte says through me. Business as usual.”
I could see the uproar bubbling, about to burst.
Aunt Bea came back with her pot to ladle out the dregs of dinner. “Yeah, I talked with Sharlotte. It’s okay.”
Aunt Bea and I exchanged glances. She knew I was lying. She also knew if Dolly Day guessed that, there’d be a mutiny.
Breeze added to the lie. “That’s right. Sharlotte’s done this before on other drives. She likes to get a scope on the land. We’ve been so crazy lately, what with the attacks, the blizzard and all, she didn’t have time. Usually, she talks through me, but with Cavvy here, well, Cavvy is family.” Breeze and Keys were sitting next to each other, closer now. Might even been holding hands in the darkness.
Breeze’s words sealed the deal.
“Well,” Dolly Day said, “who am I to question the bosses? I’ll do as I’m told. Too far to go back. Too dangerous, and with June Mai all over Burlington, we’re better off out here. But we have a long way to go. Got the Rockies and the Great Salt Flats. Whole lake of salt, the way I hear it. And we ain’t got no French fries.”
We chuckled uneasily. The joke wasn’t funny, but we needed a little laughing right then. We divided up watches, and most folks went to bed. Well, I didn’t. And Aunt Bea didn’t. She had dishes to do.
“Do you think Sharlotte will come back, mija?” she asked. “I’ve known this family all my life, and I can piece together what happened. Considerate, hardworking Sharlotte Weller finally snapped and pulled a Wren. Gotta say, not too surprised, but her timing is awful.”
I smiled. Bea had us all figured out. “Sharlotte’s just feeling bad about last night, this morning, everything. You know she’s been having trouble since Mama died. They were so close.” I paused. “Thanks, Bea, for covering for me. And thank Nikki, too. I won’t let you down.”
When Bea nodded, her chin disappeared into the fat on her neck. “Aw, mija, we’ll do this together. You ain’t alone out here. Remember, there is only one leader, and that’s the Lord God in heaven.”
“Amen to that, Bea, but we both know He needs someone here on Earth to make the difficult decisions.” I hugged her and got a little girly ’strogen teary.
I then went to check on the horses. Since I was leading now, Crete would have to take over the remuda. She wasn’t going to like that, and I wasn’t either. I cared for those animals and loved the time I got to spend with them.
On the way to my ponies, I crossed paths with Wren. “Sharlotte took off, didn’t she?”
“Scoutin’,” I muttered.
“Uh huh.” Wren grinned. “Don’t worry, she’ll come back. She ain’t got the stomach to really leave. Leavin’ is harder than it looks. Lonelier.”
I needed to make peace with Wren, and part of me wanted to offer her some comfort, so I said words I didn’t really believe. “Look, Wren, I’m sorry we’ve not been so close. I really do love—”
“Don’t.” She spit into the dirt. “You don’t love me, Cavvy, despite what Pilate says. Shame on you for such a lie, but then you’ve learned a lot from that boy. What else has he been teaching you?” She answered her own question before I could defend myself. “Miss Prissy Cavatica Weller, getting all hot and bothered with a guy before marriage. Another hypocrite, just like Sally Browne Burke. I bet she likes a diddle, though she’d deny it to the end. I just hope the diddlin’ didn’t get you pregnant. Last jackerin’ thing this world needs is another Weller girl, and it’ll be harder for you to lead if you’re pregnant.”
Machine-Gun Girls Page 9