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

I watched her.

I knew I should try to escape, sure, but my head was cloudy with the drugs.

No, I’d let Alice go crazy, and I’d become a hog.

What about Pilate and our sacred duty? What if, as a Gamma, I lost interest in saving the world, and all I wanted was to kill things and eat sausage? What if my imperatives went out the window?

No, that wouldn’t happen. Too many people had died. As a Gamma, I’d be big, could heal from most any wound, and then I’d run off to Burlington.

It was a good plan, but part of me still wasn’t looking forward to mutating.

Only Alice could save me from Dizzymona and her ritual. Sure, I’d have to lie to her, but I didn’t care about that.

“Hey, Alice, what if I could make you a Beta again? Then you wouldn’t go coco, and you’d be okay, and I wouldn’t have to put you down.”

She turned on me and gazed down with her long-lashed eyes, her dark, glittering eyes, the hairy eyebrows.

A little of my morality caught up with me, and I had to look away to continue my lie. “I might have a cure. I was on my way to Kansas, to go to the same scientists that created Dizzymona’s gas. You healed me, Alice. You found medicine and saved me, so maybe I can save you.”

She listened intently, so I kept talking. “My sisters got killed so I could carry the message through. You ever hear of the Wellers, Alice?”

Alice nodded. “Fight Devil Angel. Wellers powerful.”

“I’m the last of them, Alice. I’m the last of the Burlington Wellers. Me. But if I become a Gamma, if you take me to Dizzymona, I might forget about what I need to do, and what I need to do is important. It’s my job not only to save the Gammas, but to save the world.”

Alice closed her eyes. “Alice sleepy. Alice don’t understand anything ’Teeca say. Alice too sleepy and sad. You sleep, too.”

She grabbed me, pulled me close, and I lay awake in the yellow grasses of Green Mountain.

I’d failed. I’d put my cards on the table, and Alice had been too far gone to help me. Well, I tried.

I whispered up to Sharlotte up in heaven. “I tried, Shar. I tried.”

She didn’t answer back.

I chuckled. “Time for me to go Gamma and giddy-up away. Yee-haw.”

Ha.

Chapter Eleven

Mama was a monster who struck it rich

Daddy was a button looking for a stitch

—Iris Heller

(i)

THE NEXT MORNING, JOLIE came for me.

The red of the sunrise painted the acned flesh of her nearly bald head a crimson color, which made the patches of hair look like dried blood. Her pimples glowed yellow. She leered at me with a face nearly divided in half diagonally by a scar. Not sure if she had it before, when she was human, and the process of becoming a Gamma had made it worse, as if someone had taken a chainsaw to her after she’d hogged out.

Regardless, she spoke in a commanding voice. “Alice, we lose too many megs to dying. We need more. We take your pet. You get no say.”

Alice didn’t say a word, just glared at Jolie, who picked me up by the arm so she could snuffle at my feet again. “Almost better. Soon she Gamma and her feet okay. She not die. She meg and soon Gamma.”

Alice shrugged.

“Speak!” Jolie took me and hit Alice using me. My head bounced off Alice’s chest.

Alice leapt to her feet and snarled. “Yes, take. I no like. She talk about cure, like being a Gamma bad. Being a Gamma good, so no need cure. Take her. Take her!”

Jolie dropped me. Then she stuck her huge, misshapen face into mine. “What cure?”

I half-trusted Alice but didn’t trust Jolie at all. I wasn’t sure if I should tell her that I might have the cure for Gamma-ism or whatever you wanted to call it, around my neck. But I had to give an answer.

I spoke calmly and clearly to the monster in command. “Dizzymona has a gas called the Gulo Gamma, which can alter your DNA at cellular level—”

Jolie flicked my head with a finger. Like being hit with a shovel handle. “Too many big words. You say it plain.”

I was stunned by the blow, but I had to keep talking while choosing the smallest words I could. “Dizzymona’s gas comes from the ARK. They designed it to make super soldiers, only there was a side effect. Becoming a Gamma is a side effect. I know people at the ARK. If can get to Hays, I can talk to them. I know a cure.”

I didn’t mention Burlington nor June Mai Angel ’cause that wouldn’t make me very popular with Jolie or any of the hogs.

“You knew this, Alice?” Jolie thundered.

Alice didn’t answer. She got up and started packing up our little campsite and shoving it into the Vail Recreation District bag.

I didn’t want Alice to get in trouble, but I wasn’t sure what Jolie wanted to hear. I had to guess, and hoped I guessed right.

“Alice knew, but she said we needed to tell you. I mean, we only talked about it last night.” I was wincing, hoping I had said the right thing.

Jolie appraised me. “Yes, we tell Dizzymona. We are Gamma, but we go coco. ARK fix coco. Yes, yes.” I could see the sparkle in her eyes. If she could bring the cure to the Gammas, there might be power in that, enough power to oust Dizzymona.

That was why Jolie was in command. She was mercenary enough to see how she could use the information to her advantage. Alice—poor Alice—was too heartbroken about going coco in the first place, and of course, the memories of having to put down Sissy.

Without another word, I was drug away from Alice, who stood on the hill, watching me go.

She lifted a paw. A goodbye.

But it couldn’t be a goodbye. I