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

took the women to the basement of the church where the canisters of Gulo Gamma lay. I wasn’t thinking Dizzymona was doing the gassing, not with her sitting on her throne surrounded by junk food and wrappers and stinking up the place. No, I figured it was prolly Beatrice and other hogs hand-chosen for the initiation.

When Wren had been hit with the Gulo Delta, she’d started healing right away. She had started to change, get bigger, but not until months later. However, the Gulo Delta had been a syringe and the Gulo Gamma a gas. Different formula, and hopefully, God willing, the Gulo Delta was more stable.

After a couple of hours, all the women were sitting on the floor. It was getting colder—less women in the Dairy Queen meant less body heat. As more and more women were taken, my toes started to ache from the cold, but my grimy wool socks and Eryn Lopez’s boots were with Alice.

LaTanya sat next to me, and, thank God, she didn’t try to talk to me. Until she did. “Do you really have a cure for them?” LaTanya asked. “Do you think there’s a cure?”

Others had asked, and I’d shrugged.

With LaTanya, I suddenly felt charitable. This poor woman was about to be led off into the night and gassed. I might as well chat with her; after all, it was the Christian thing to do. My Catholicism, though, was threadbare and ripped and torn, so I didn’t have much left of the mantle of Christ to guide me.

“I don’t know anything for sure,” I said honestly. “I do have knowledge of ARK research, and that’s where the gas first came from, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something to help. I don’t have it personally. But from what I understand, once you become a Gamma, it’s irreversible.”

LaTanya reached out for my hand. She did it unconsciously. So full of fear, she acted on instinct.

I took her hand.

She gazed into my eyes. “You’ll come back to heal me, won’t you? Once they turn me, you’ll help me, right?”

I had to look away. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t lie, right to her face. “LaTanya, I’ll be a hog along with you. I don’t have an escape plan. And I don’t even know if there is a cure.”

“But you’re a Weller,” she whispered. “I’ve talked to these women about you. You, your sisters, your mother ... you’re legends. Legends don’t just die.”

She sounded so young, so full of hope, that it would’ve been a form of murder to disagree. I closed my eyes and wished she would just shut the hell up. She’d told herself a story, like Rachel had done, and I was the hero who could fix the world.

Her hope hurt me.

And yet she wouldn’t stop telling me her tale of hope. “You’ll get away, Cavatica. You’ll get away, and you’ll find a cure, and you’ll tell the U.S. about what’s happening in the Juniper, and they’ll come to get us, to heal us. You’ll save us. I know it.”

The door opened, and a woman near us was dragged off, weeping, pleading, out into the cold, into the darkness. The door slammed shut and we heard the chains rattle as the door was locked once more.

Saving these women wasn’t a part of my imperatives. I needed to get the chalkdrive to June Mai Angel in Burlington so she could tell the world about the cure to the Sterility Epidemic. That was my one imperative. I couldn’t help this poor woman or any of the women being turned into monsters.

But what if ...?

What if the ARK could help them, through gene therapy or whatever?

But the ARK wouldn’t care about them, and the U.S. wouldn’t either. The Juniper was their penal colony, where they sent their broken soldiers, their defective people, their criminals, and anyone else who didn’t fit into the New Morality’s polite society back in the World.

The door opened. Another woman taken.

They were taking them faster, more and more. I looked at my Moto Moto watch. It was creeping into early morning, 2:15 am, and I wanted to be sleeping, but I couldn’t. Not with the crying women, not with the shouts of the hogs, not with the threat of imminent mutation in my life.

Not with LaTanya pleading with me.

“Tell my parents what happened, Cavatica,” she whispered. “Tell them I made it as far as the Eisenhower Tunnel before the Gammas grabbed me. I told as many people in the Juniper as I could about the good news.”

She wasn’t a tourist, coming into the Juniper on some big adventure. She was a missionary telling the world about the good news of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and she’d gotten unlucky. An hour here, an hour there, if she hadn’t been where she’d been when the Gammas came through she might’ve gone through the Juniper just fine. But that hadn’t happened.

“You come alone?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No, my church group was with me. We brought supplies for the poor in the mountains, but the Gammas killed most of them. Some of my friends escaped west, but then the snow hit.”

I’d heard of cycling groups coming into the Juniper, and in Cleveland, I’d even seen a book called Cycle the Juniper! I hadn’t given it a second glance, but I could only imagine what was inside: See the Old West come alive, lose some weight, and enjoy the ride!

Stupid. Tragic. Sad. But Christians coming to save the poor and spread the Gospel? Stupider, more tragic, and sadder somehow.

“Please, Cavatica.”

Her grip on my hand turned sweaty.

I nodded. I couldn’t speak my promise ’cause it might’ve been a lie if I had to use actual words. But I nodded. It was promise enough.

“Really?” another voice asked, someone who had been eavesdropping. “Really, Ms. Weller. You’ll save us?”

I had to nod at her as well, but yeah, I would. Didn’t know how, didn’t know if there was any hope at all, but why not pretend there