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

or ranch. We go join June Mai. Sissy with Dizzymona, me with Mariposa Maria Hernandez, my CO.”

I was impressed she could say that name so clearly, but then it sounded like her commanding officer meant a lot to her.

Alice grimaced and blinked. “Then me with Dizzymona. I say that. I say Sissy gone coco.”

She paused. I knew what was coming, I did, and it exhausted me.

“Alice do it to Sissy to save her. Will ’Teeca do it for Alice?”

I wanted to weep for her, for her killing her sister, but I was cold inside, and the drugs kept me floating above the ice.

I knew what Alice expected me to say. So, I said it, mechanically, how Micaiah might have said it—like how Rachel Vixx might have said it before she got on her meds. ’Cause I wasn’t human anymore. I was like a Vixx, dead inside.

“Yes, Alice, I will put you down when you go coco.”

She nodded, swallowing noisily.

I thought about putting one of her big revolvers up to the back of her head and pulling the trigger, and it made me feel something other than the numbness or the drug. It made me feel sick to my stomach.

Maybe I wasn’t as dead inside as I thought. The dried stick in my chest still had a little green on it under all the ice. I surprised myself by wanting to live, to be free again, to avoid Dizzymona and her Gulo Gamma gas.

“Alice,” I said in a whisper. “I don’t want to be a Gamma. I wanna go free and be an Alpha and not go coco. Will you help me?”

Alice tensed, whirled, and backhanded me across my chest. I went rolling away. I knew she hadn’t used her full strength or she’d have killed me, but it was enough to knock the breath out of me.

“No, ’Teeca. You live and be Gamma. You kill me like I killed my real sissy. You find someone else to kill you. So it goes in a circle.”

She marched off. I pawed at the grass until I could breathe again.

Then I reached for the Skye6 wings I used to fly above all the pain. I found those wings easily enough.

Too easily.

(iii)

The next day, Red Rocks Amphitheater passed on our right as we walked on by. Dozens of hogs and at least fifty megs shuffled along in chains. My feet were better, still tender, but not so bad.

And I didn’t care about them anymore. I didn’t much care about anything—not about the hogs, their megs, or what happened after, not about them, not about me. At one time in my life, I would’ve wanted to free the women, but now they didn’t matter at all. I certainly didn’t want to be a hero. I only needed a little Skye6 and everything would be all right ’cause I only had my one imperative: get the chalkdrive to Burlington and give it to June Mai Angel. By any means necessary.

We walked up to a bow tie of freeway, where I-70 hit C-470, and there was Denver in the distance. I’d gone through it before, when it was empty, but now I could see bodies and vehicles moving up and down the roads, campfires, and their smoke. It was a city, but it was a city of monsters.

Too many of the megs were dropping from exhaustion, so Jolie ordered us all to stop. I looked forward to the dinner of Gamma sausage, though I couldn’t tell that to Alice. She was in a mood, either gone coco or nearly there. I kept my mouth shut.

I thought about my violent new sister and what little of her past she’d shared with me. A strong Nebraska girl, she’d followed her sister to the Sino-American War, hit it just in time for the Battle of the Hutongs, the worst fighting with the most casualties the world had ever seen. Even if Alice’d been eighteen when she signed up, that put her in her mid-thirties, though she didn’t look human enough to really figure on an age.

And then ten long years waiting to get home, only to be dumped into the Juniper. From there, I could piece it together. Dizzymona finds a way to create Gammas, so she doses a bunch of her buddies, and they think to unseat June Mai. June Mai Angel becomes the Devil Angel. Sure.

It was all just Juniper drama and wouldn’t mean much in a few years. If I got the cure to the Sterility Epidemic out, that was important. That would change the world.

Let all these monsters and outlaws fight it out for the sagebrush and ruins. I had my work to do.

Alone, I sat on the side of the Green Mountain, now yellow with late autumn, looked up at the fluffy clouds in the sky. I made shapes out of them: bunnies, puppies, cars, and MG21 assault rifles. No, that one looked like an AZ3. That one was a Stanley. Another looked like Wren with her hands on her hips, sassing some skank in hell.

“Go get ’em, sister,” I said to the sky-Wren. “Go shoot all those devils right between the eyes. Always. Always. Always. Get ’em right between the eyes.”

The other hogs and conscripts were on the slope below me. Though I was alone, I knew they were watching me. If I ran, I wouldn’t be Alice’s pet anymore, I’d be fair game; either a pet or a meg. Like in Glenwood, I was owned. But as long as I was owned, I was safe.

At sunset, Alice brought me a sausage and some burned tortillas in a filthy T-shirt. Full of hog germs, no doubt, but it was napkin enough. I took the food. Eating was fun and good and nice. It made me forget that the next day I’d meet Dizzymona, and I’d get the gas.

Alice gobbled up her sausage, grabbed half of mine, and shoved it into her face, and then chewed and grunted and belched. She slurped water out of