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

Even if I managed to save the feet, I knew I’d prolly lose toes. Even ugly, I liked my toes.

This little piggy went to market.

This little piggy stayed home.

This little piggy got killed walking down off Independence Pass.

“You should come with us, girly,” a man said to me. He had a beard, seemed nice and gentle, and he even had a gold cross on his throat, flecked with blood.

I patted him. “Yeah, I should, but I can’t. I have to go find June Mai Angel.”

That shocked him. He stepped back.

I continued toward Leadville. I wanted to see a hog. I’d been hearing about them for a while now, had seen their footprints, but I wanted to see one for myself to satisfy my curiosity.

I didn’t make it.

I walked north through refugees fleeing south. I weaved through them, until I was alone, standing in the middle of farmlands and ranchlands, muddy from the melted snow.

My feet were on fire, and the flames licked up my calves, and I was tired, just so tired. I figured I’d yell at God some more and then keep on walking.

Instead, I collapsed onto the patchy gravel scattered across Highway 24’s muddy track. My skis and poles clattered down around me as I lost consciousness.

That was when Alice found me.

(iii)

I woke up in a dark room on a bed. I’d had this experience before, when I woke up in Jenny Bell Scheutz’s house north of Boulder. That room had been yellow and with nice curtains, but it hadn’t smelled like smoke. This one did.

I sniffed again and smelled smoke and sausages. Say what you will about the poor effects processed meat has on the human physiology, but frying sausage smells like how heaven should.

I tried to move and couldn’t. Too tired. Best to sleep more.

But where was I?

Prolly didn’t matter. My fingers found the chalkdrive around my throat. That mattered. That was my one imperative.

But what about the sausage? Well, I couldn’t go on if I didn’t eat.

I pulled myself up; took every ounce of energy I had. It was pitch-black dark outside. I’d slept the day away.

I pinched my fingers and my toes. I had feeling back in them, though my feet were on fire. Prodding at my wounds, my fingers came away wet with pus. Infection was an enemy that didn’t fight fair. I had to clean away the muck and find antibiotic cream.

No, my belly shouted at me. You need that sausage!

“Okay, okay,” I muttered.

A grunt came from a dark corner. I was in a bedroom, mostly dark, but one wall was missing, which allowed the stars to shine in. I felt at the sheets. They were dusty and full of little pebbles and rocks, prolly from the fighting and explosions. I was in Leadville, all right, but post-attack.

I lay under several comforters, so I was warm, but my face could tell the night was chilly. My body suddenly felt like it was cooking, and my face was freezing. I was running a high fever, clearly caused by the infection.

“Hello?” I asked. “Anyone there?”

My eyes strained against the darkness. My heart began to thud in my chest, but the fear stood like a stranger inside of me. Who cared? Fear was for the living. I had died when I had run while Sharlotte sacrificed herself and everyone else.

Another grunt. A huge shape rose from the corner and pounded over to me in huge room-shaking stomps. It was some kind of monstrosity, but I couldn’t see it.

I could smell it, though. Smelled like a woman who’d never showered ... ever.

A match-flare blinded me for a minute, then a candle, and then squinting; I saw my first hog.

It was a woman. Could tell by the pendulous breasts and thick hips. Long fuzzed-up blonde dreadlocks hung down around a chubby face marred with scars and patches of scraggly beard. A hairy arm several times the size of my leg reached out with a hand as big as a bicycle tire. The monster was three meters tall. At least. The clothes had been stitched together, a patchwork of leather, cotton, what looked like a bedspread, the metallic material of an emergency blanket, and several Kevlar vests.

In her belt was a hammer that looked ridiculously small. Next to it was an array of large handguns and two Remington shotguns. All her weapons had the trigger guards sawed off to accommodate her grotesquely fat fingers.

Small eyes glittered in the candle light. Fat, wet lips spread in a smile to show a mouth of block-like teeth and bright pink gums.

“Pet,” the thing wheezed, and then it clapped its huge palms together. Its forearms were as shaggy as a dog’s belly.

My stomach fell quiet. No more fussing about the sausage. My mind had shut down with the impossible thing that faced me. The dried-stick of my heart trembled and took charge. I had to get away from such a thing. I tried to run.

It was a matter of fight or flight, and I wasn’t about to engage this monstrosity unless I could be in a fully-loaded Stanley with an automatic grenade launcher and hundreds of 40mm shells to fling at this this mutant, this ogre, this hog.

She caught me and flung me back into the bed. My head hit the sheetrock, and I was knocked senseless for a minute.

“My pet. No go. Pretty, pretty pet.” The thing caressed me. Like I was a stray Jack Russell terrier it had caught.

Flight hadn’t worked.

I didn’t have the shakti to fight.

Which left me one alternative. Conversation. “I’m Cavatica. What’s your name?”

Its eyes lit up in the candlelight. At least it was a scented candle, some kind of potpourri that helped cover up a little of the hog’s stink. In reality, pigs smelled better.

“You ’Teeca. Me Alice.”

I wasn’t about to correct Alice on how to pronounce my name. And I shouldn’t have given her my real name in the first place. But I did ask, “Where am I?”

“Camp. Jolie’s camp. Jolie took pets and megs, but