A lull. They must’ve been reloading. “I’m sorry, Cavvy,” Pilate said in that last quick moment of quiet. “I’m sorry for all the things I said. I kind of lost it.” He paused. “They’ll throw in gas grenades to smoke us out.”
His face turned red, then yellow, then shadowy, from the little light spilling into the ruined trailer. He smiled and touched my face with a bloody hand. At some point, he’d been shot. How bad, I didn’t know. “I love you, Cavvy. If Petal did die clean, it’s only because of you and your faith. It’s not much, but it’s a victory.”
He handed me one of the AZ3s. “You ready to go out in a blaze of glory?”
“Yeah,” I said, strangely calm now. This was it. I was going to die fighting next to my daddy. There were worse ways to go. “Let’s get ’em.”
Horses clipped past us, and their riders tossed gas bombs into the trailer.
Pilate threw open the door and leapt out. I was right on his heels. We hit the dirt, back-to-back, guns out.
(iii)
The swirling smoke puked out of the trailer, and a breeze swept it into my face. I coughed it out, squinting through my tears and the sulfurous stink. The wind changed, and I was ready to shoot. Took long enough I know, but problem was, I had no one to shoot at.
No one.
The women who had charged past to throw in the smoke grenades were gone, prolly shot off their mounts. But by who? Not by Wren’s Colts. I’d have recognized their sound. Maybe Breeze and Keys?
After another burst of gunfire in the distance, the night went quiet. Fire crackled, but it had been scattered, the flames going low. A red glow covered the landscape except for where the gas grenade in the trailer billowed black smoke.
A lone horse trotted toward us. I thought it might be Christina Pink and Wren, but it wasn’t. One of the Psycho Madelines sat on the pretty chestnut-colored bay mare, but only for a minute. I expected for her to fire on us, but instead she slid out of the saddle and hit the ground, unmoving. Her yellow dress went over her head to reveal torn white stockings.
The bay mare trotted to me. I checked her over, she was unhurt. Thank God. I’d seen too many horses killed in the last few minutes.
“What the heck, Pilate?” I asked.
Another figure walked through the smoke and fire, drew close. I recognized the gait, her slim form, her mousy, frizzed hair. Petal.
I ran over and pulled her close. Her bones felt sharp and brittle under her skin.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
She nodded. “No spider bite for me. Thanks to you.” Pilate climbed up onto the Chevy Workhorse II to scout. He wasn’t firing or yelling gospel writers, so we were safe for a minute.
Or so it seemed.
“Did you see what happened?” I asked Petal.
A shake of her head. She wandered over to Pilate and touched his boot.
He glanced down. “Why, Rosie Petal, I heard you were dead.”
“Not dead, Pilate, and I didn’t have to fight. It was nice.”
“Nice for you,” Pilate said with a laugh. “I had to fight all those soldiers by myself.”
Ouch. Once again, I’d been worthless in a fight.
Pilate jumped down and held her, petting her hair. I let them have their moment and took my gun and the bay mare out past the smoke and fire.
I couldn’t understand what had happened. One minute Pilate and I were like Butch and Sundance, going out in a rain of bullets, and the next we found ourselves alone.
From the saddle, I couldn’t see anything except for gray plain and night sky. And the bodies of Madelines lying dead in their frou-frou dresses. Who’d killed them?
The darkness seemed to magnify the quiet. Silence. Dead silence. Deeper and more dire after the fighting.
I let the new horse dip her head and pull up some new spring grass, to eat, to get over her nervousness. Then I moved her into the darkness as far as I dared, but still, nothing.
“Wren? Nikki? Tenisha?” Silence answered me. Shapes moved in the gloom, big shadows with long necks and eyes that caught the firelight behind me.
More horses. I maneuvered forward and found five or six horses, all clustered together, still wearing their tack. They must have come together after the fight.
I dismounted and began collecting reins. One of the horses, a big Clydesdale, had a body slung across his saddle. This body wasn’t wearing a dress. This one wore jeans. White bare feet glowed. I touched his shirt, and it was silky, expensive. A little whimper escaped me.
I drew back, turned the Clydesdale around, found the boy’s neck, scratchy with stubble. Like Micaiah. His hair, longish over his eyes. Like Micaiah.
Couldn’t see, could only feel for his pulse, but his neck was still.
The boy across the saddle was dead.
Chapter Eleven
I like failure. We failed at the batteries for years on end, and it made me and my team innovate. No way would the Eternas be as good as they are if we hadn’t spent years screwing them up.
—Maggie Jankowski
informal comments
September 1, 2057
(i)
I PULLED THE HORSES through the darkness until the heat of the fires washed over me. The light was still bad, so I couldn’t check the body.
Same hair. Same build. Same silky shirt I’d felt on me even while I wanted to rip it off of him.
One of the bonfires blazed up. Wren stood in the firelight, hands on her hips. Breeze and Keys flanked her, and I counted their three horses. Thank God all had been spared.
You have to check to see if it’s Micaiah.
I couldn’t.
I stepped out of the saddle and threw the reins of all the horses around a torn bit of metal hanging off the trailer. My legs trembled. I forced them steady. If Micaiah was dead, I’d go on. Not sure how, but I would.
First, I had to pet Christina Pink and hug Wren. Got to do one, but not the other. Wren pushed me away. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, glad to see you too, Cavvy, but I’m not about to get sloppy, kissy girly ’strogen. Not when I didn’t get to fight.”
Breeze and Keys let me hug them, and I did, for a long time.
You have to check to see if it’s Micaiah.
No. Couldn’t.
I turned to Wren. “What happened?”
Wren spit and shook her head. “Goddamn, it was dark out there. But we saw the Psychos come, let them ride past us, and I was fixing to shoot as many as I could, when our old friends, the Regios, showed up. Me, Nikki, Tenisha, we laid low, but they had to have seen us. Those soldier girls were wearing night-vision gear. For real. Had big sniper rifles like Petal only with night-vision scopes as well.”
Pilate moved away and kicked over the dead Madeline who had rode up on us. He pointed. “Shot. Right through the throat. Night vision, you say?”
Wren nodded. “Had these masks with goggles, and they wore camo gear, like the high-end bushy stuff.”
I hadn’t really studied NVDs, or night-vision devices, ’cause all the new stuff was powered with Eterna batteries and wouldn’t work in the Juniper. However, I did know the technology went back as far as World War II. You could slice lenses in a certain way to use every bit of light. Cats saw well at night, and they didn’t need batteries.
Wren chuckled. “So we sat back and watched. After the initial RPG hit the Ford, the Princesses went after you hard, real hard. Then? One by one, those Regio snipers started taking ’em out. Got real serious after they worked over the trailer with a big ol’ machine gun they had on a cart. The Vixx army saved us.” She grinned at me. “Your plan sucked, Cavvy. We’re alive, so I won’t make fun of you too much, but you’re slipping.”
I gave her the best glare I could muster, then needed to know more. Hope was dawning in me, but I needed more information to embrace it fully. “Then where did the Regios go?”
Wren shrugged. “No idea. Could hardly see a thing. The Psycho Princesses wheeled around and took out some of the Regios, but mostly they just wanted to run.
Took their heavy machine gun on its cart, tucked their tails between their legs, and ran. Crazy skanks.”
I spun, rushed off, my heart, my breath, strangled ’cause if the Regios had left, they must know, they must know....
At the Clydesdale, I lifted the boy’s head up. It wasn’t Micaiah. He wore Micaiah’s clothes, but it wasn’t him.
I dropped to the dirt. The next breath I took was sweet. Not sure where my boy was, but he wasn’t dead on the horse above me. And the Madeline had used the present tense. We have him. He’s with us.
When I found the strength to open my eyes, I looked up into the face of a Regio, but not just any ARK army girl, but Legate Baxter, the woman who’d slapped me three times in the Scheutz’s parlor. Charcoal blackened her face—her uniform equally as black. Fake sage bushes covered her shoulders and night-vision goggles hung around her neck.
I only had enough spit to say four words.
“Thanks for saving us.”
Legate Baxter didn’t respond. Instead she held up one of Pilate’s shotgun shells—same make and model as the ammo we’d used against June Mai Angel in Strasburg, then against the Regios in Broomfield.
Proof.
(ii)
The growling sound of internal combustion engines ripped through the night. ATVs sped up, diesel-powered. In minutes, dozens of Regios surrounded us.
Flung over the back of one ATV, I saw a familiar face. Praetor Gianna Edger lay motionless, bungee corded to the back rack of the vehicle. Blood dripped down her gray face and into the dirt. She looked dead.
Legate Baxter pocketed the shotgun shell.
“You going to take us in?” I asked.
“The Praetor is not conscious. We will return and give our report to her superiors. We know where to find you.” She walked away. None of the other Regios said one word to us.
Wren shook her head and kind of laughed. “Now, they’re going to search what’s left of the battlefield, looking for whatever boy they just can’t live without. If you girls are so hard up for dates, Pilate here can show you a good time.”
Petal hissed at my sister but didn’t curse her. Our resident drug addict was improving.
Regios tore the body of the boy off the Clydesdale, searched his pockets, then left him on the ground. They searched the trailer, threw out the tents, the chairs, everything inside. They checked the cab of the Chevy Workhorse II and walked through the remnants of the Ford Excelsior.
Then they left on their ATVs, Legate Baxter leading the way. The diesel engines disappeared into the night.
No shots fired. No threats. But Edger and the shotgun shell meant they had more reason than ever to suspect we knew something about Micaiah. The whole strange encounter with the Regios took about five minutes. Then they were gone, as if they had never been there in the first place.
“Thank God our mystery boy wasn’t with us,” Pilate whispered.
Wren squinted, pondering.
“Whatcha thinking,” I asked her.
“Them skanks are patient and smart. Instead of murdering us or letting us get killed or taking us in for torture, they’re just biding their time. Watching. Waiting. If anything, that makes me nervous. They think they’re so tough they own us.”
“Or Legate Baxter will take the shotgun shell back to the Vixxes, and then they’ll come back to capture us,” I said.
“Wouldn’t that be fun.” Wren spit into the dirt. “Shame I won’t get to kill Edger. I’ve seen dead before, and that girl is coffin meat.”
Edger was bad, but the Vixxes were a whole lot worse.
(iii)
We didn’t bury the body of the boy, no time. We needed to rendezvous with our people to make sure our beefsteaks were okay and the Psycho Madelines hadn’t attacked them.
Pilate checked the boy’s corpse but couldn’t find a wound. The boy’s ribs showed through his chest, and Pilate figured he’d died of either starvation or dehydration. Maybe he’d even been alive at the start of the fight, maybe not. Still didn’t explain why he was wearing Micaiah’s wardrobe.
I said a prayer for both boys.
We tossed all of our gear back into the trailer and headed off, but not before putting out the fires. The last thing in the world we needed was a prairie fire, which could kill as quickly and as viciously as any army on Earth.
Wren galloped ahead on Christina Pink, lighting the way with a sapropel lantern. I drove the Chevy, Petal slept in the backseat, and Pilate rode shotgun. Breeze and Keys rode in the bed.
Wren led us onto a dirt road, overgrown, but better than raw plain. The horses I’d collected followed us, tied to the trailer. I’d named the one I’d ridden Maddy after the Madelines. Couldn’t quite manage Madeline—the name was ruined for me.
The first cows we came across showed the AW of my mother’s brand. Charles Goodnight traipsed over, so intelligent and good-natured. His soft eyes welcomed us back. From his bearing, I knew the night for our people had been quiet. Thank the Lord.
We found the rest of our people at a crossroads where they’d set up a quick camp. Sitting on blankets, they were up drinking coffee and eating cold beans and tortillas.
They let up a whoop when we piled out and into a storm of hugs, kisses, and slaps on the back. We told them the whole story, though I left out the part of me nearly dosing Petal.
We set up a few tents to get at least some sleep and pretend things were normal when they weren’t. Aunt Bea fretted over the demolished state of the chuck wagon while Petal cleaned the gash on my forehead. She hooked in three stitches, which hurt, but I didn’t bother with pain medication. I asked her about Pilate and the blood I’d seen on his hand.
“He lost the tip of his pinkie finger,” she whispered. “They blew off the distal phalanx on his left hand.”
That was the extent of the casualties. Sure, we go up against fifty outlaws in prom dresses, and Pilate loses some of his pinkie finger. The man had the luck of the Devil, and prolly the blessing of Jesus as well.
Exhaustion bit at my thoughts, but I couldn’t lie down until I checked the camp, brought the new horses into the remuda and made sure everyone played nice, though I knew Puff Daddy wasn’t going to like the big Clydesdale. Puff didn’t, and I had to separate them. To make things worse, Christina Pink took a liking to the Clydesdale, which of course made Puff Daddy crazy.
I had to smile at that. Another love triangle, as if Sharlotte, Micaiah, and I weren’t enough. But we weren’t a triangle anymore. We were separate points, no lines connecting anything.
Missing Sharlotte felt like a boot heel on my heart. Micaiah’s wire and grass bracelet tickled my wrist. He’d been with the Psycho Madelines, but where was he now? Not with the Vixxes or their Regios. If they’d discovered him during the fight, they wouldn’t have searched us like they did.
Once the horses had sniffed and bumped the newcomers, they got sleepy again. I left the temporary corral and started back toward the tents.
Someone grabbed me in the darkness, warm with the scent of the sleeping sage heavy in the air.
I knew who it was. Knew him by his heavy boy smell.
Somehow, Micaiah had found his way back to me. He held me tight, and I let him. But no matter how sweet he felt in my arms, I knew we couldn’t go on if he didn’t tell me the truth.
I was determined to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and not stop chewing until I’d sucked down every one of his secrets.
(iv)
I pulled him down into the sagebrush. If those Vixx soldiers were still spying at us, I didn’t want to give them anything for their night-vision goggles to see.
“What the heck, Micaiah,” I whispered, letting myself be mad at him for a minute. “You just took off.”
He nodded. Hunger and rough living had thinned his face and left it dirt-streaked and wan. He rattled around in his new clothes, filthy gray sweatpants two sizes too big and some old Star Wars T-shirt, from the later episodes that my friend April insisted were the best in the series. I didn’t care mu
ch for any of that sci-fi video, and I certainly didn’t like his boots, which had somehow survived his adventures. His fancy alligator-skin boots were meant for nightclubs and city streets, worthless when it came time for real work.
He touched the bracelet. “I’m sorry, Cavvy, but if they’d found me with you and your family, they would’ve killed you all. To keep you quiet. I couldn’t let that happen.” He faltered for a moment, then said, “I love you.”
Those three words made me pause, made me blush, and skyrocketed me into the heavens. “I love you, too.” The words burst out of me.
Dang, I just told a boy I loved him—first time in my life I’d done it, and I had to take a minute to savor all the feelings. Then, yeah, I pulled myself back to Earth. “I love you, but I need the truth. All of it.”
His breath caught. He turned away. I gently took his chin in my hand and turned him back to me. Couldn’t see a thing, but it felt right. “The truth, Micaiah. All of it.”
He let out a long breath. “I managed to elude them because they were watching you. Everyone was watching the Wellers on their impossible cattle drive. I found an old Dodge Ram with an AIS, and I got it working. I drove up north, thinking I’d get to Nevada on my own. I found a huge encampment of the Wind River people, but they didn’t see me. I was heading west on I-80 when my luck ran out. The Psycho Princess grabbed me. You can’t imagine how insane they are.”
“I can. I do. I talked to one. But Micaiah ...” The dang boy was stalling.
He hardly paused at my intrusion. “They knew Pilate was with you. They were going to kill me and Pilate together, in some big ritual. And this other guy, Stephen. I, we, I ...” He shut his eyes and covered them with his hands.
“You and Stephen exchanged clothes.” I helped him, so we could get to his secrets. “You were afraid the Vixxes would see you, and if you had different clothes, you might somehow outwit them. Stephen is dead. You were with him tonight, weren’t you?”
A nod. “He wasn’t doing well. They wanted to crucify Pilate, like Jesus, and they needed two thieves, one on his left and one on his right. That’s why they kept me alive. Once the fighting started, I managed to get away and hide in the grasses until I saw your chuck wagon. I hopped on board, but I was lucky I wasn’t seen. The Regios were everywhere.”
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