Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for teens .txt) 📗

Hepburn was going to drive us into oblivion. I only had five seconds.

“Shar, I love you. I love ...”

“Cavvy, if you love me, you’ll leave me.”

And I bailed out of the door and dropped down into the snow. I was up in a flash and plucked my skis from where I’d stowed them on the Marilyn.

The two titans towered over me, their pistons squealing, about to give. From the gunner’s seat, Sharlotte looked down at me, her eyes full of love. For a heartbeat, my sister and I came together. Then her eyes narrowed in determination.

She spun the top half of the Marilyn around, as hard as she could.

The dangling belt of missiles became a whip as Sharlotte snapped it around the Audrey. And then?

The explosion threw me. How far? I’ll never know. Why wasn’t I killed? I’ll never know.

I was flung to safety. I couldn’t see. It was too loud for me to see anything; all I could hear was the initial explosion of all those missiles going off, and then the fire, and then the cracking, splitting, sliding cacophony of a mountain of snow come falling, sliding, careening, bashing down across the highway and hillside in front of me.

Thousands of kilograms of snow and ice sweeping over the Marilyn Monroe, over the Audrey Hepburn, over the bodies of Rachel, Dutch, and Wren.

I stood up, and the blizzard struck me like it hated me for still breathing.

The chalkdrive froze my skin around my neck.

In front of me was a field of snow and ice and ... nothing. Nothing.

(v)

Freezing wind swept through my hair.

Dead. My sisters. Dead. The Stanleys gone.

A sky of ice and snow laughed at me from above. Nothing but snow and ice sneered at me from below. Nothing but white from horizon to horizon.

Pilate’s prophecy had come true. Twice. I had to deny the people I loved twice, once when I left Pilate and Micaiah behind, and now, just a few days later, my sisters.

Would I have to deny my friends and family three times, like Peter and the Lord Jesus? Three times, before the cock crows.

No. I had already lost everyone in the world I loved.

Nothing left to do. Staying and looking for the dead meant dying, too. Leaving meant a different kind of death.

I turned.

I drove my skis away from the killing field, letting it fall away behind me.

That ice and snow, that cold, I took inside me, and I used it to freeze my soul solid.

Inside, I was a cold nothing. On the outside, my body worked the skis, my shoulders and arms worked the poles, and I went careening down a steep slope. We’d made it past the summit. It was all downhill.

We would’ve made it fine if Marisol hadn’t been a Severin.

That thought made me want to curl up and weep until I died.

No, had to stop thinking. Thinking led to feeling, and feeling would send me to my knees.

Right then, emotions were a liability. I’d feel later. Sure, that was the greatest idea ever. I’d feel all that loss and horror later, after I delivered the chalkdrive into the hands of an Outlaw Warlord, who, if she was merciful, would put me down like a rabid dog before my frozen soul could melt.

Then I could be with my sisters. Sharlotte. Wren. Rachel. I would see Micaiah and Pilate again. Yes, once I was dead, we’d all get together and eat Aunt Bea’s flour tortillas, hot off the stove, dripping with butter and honey.

Let June Mai Angel fight the ARK to get the truth out into the world. I’d just be the delivery girl.

That became my one imperative: Deliver the chalkdrive to June Mai Angel.

I skied down, down, down, until it was time to climb up a ridge. I ate snow. I kept my feelings frozen while I worked my body machine ’cause that was all my body was, a machine to get me to Burlington. I found a stream and drank from the icy water. My migraine pressed nails into my skull, but that was easy enough to ignore.

Late into the night, I kept moving until I found trees.

Hungry. My body machine was hungry, but I didn’t have any fuel to give it. At least I could give it heat. I had a lighter in my skirt pocket from the Lopez condos. I carved out a little cave under a tree, snow on all sides, and lit a fire so my eyes had something to do, so I could focus on something other than the ice inside. I kept the fire small, pine needles, sticks, dead and dried limbs on the tree.

Tearing a gray stick off the tree, I realized that was me.

Inside the layer of ice covering my soul was my heart, all dead and dried up, like some gray limb on a tree.

The tree continued to live despite the death and cold.

And so would I.

I found Wren’s fateful bullet in my pocket as well, and I turned it over and over in my hand until I had to put it away to sleep.

I woke up the next morning and continued on. My headache was gone, but I didn’t care about that, other pains had taken its place. The wounds on the bottom of my feet began to hurt in earnest, but I had no more medicine or bandages.

My body machine ached. Tendons ached. Muscles ached. But dead Eryn Lopez’s clothes kept the machine warm enough to keep going.

Later on, the sun burned off the clouds, and the snow began to melt.

I ran my skis off the snow and onto an old dirt road under a battered sign telling me I was still on Highway 82.

No more snow.

Time to make the machine walk.

I clicked out of the cross-country skis. Threw them on my back.

I wasn’t just skis in snow anymore. I was hurt feet on ground, every step harder than the last.

That night I slept under another tree, in pine needles, in front of my little stick fire.

God didn’t dare give me