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

Like on TV, people thought Outlaw Warlords should be bloodthirsty, crazy, and horrible. They wanted them safely behind SISBI fences. And they didn’t want them human or decorated U.S. veterans.

June Mai was both. And with a righteous cause. Poor woman. I knew the costs of having a sacred duty.

That last night, after cold rations of jerky, hardtack, and dried fruit, we sat around the fire, all fifteen of us, the air heavy, our moods subdued. We were all thinking the same thing. Tomorrow we’d either get lucky, sneak across the border, or we wouldn’t, and there would be war.

Finally, the quiet became so deep and hard to bear, Marie Atlas asked June Mai to play us a song. They were always so close to one another. June got out her violin and played long, sad songs that drifted over the grasslands, full of her melancholy.

And I saw it. She did feel guilt over the things she had done. And so did I.

She played old Johnny Cash songs, like “Bury Me Not” and “Folsom Prison Blues” and new stuff, like “Cash and Jacks” from LeAnna Wright and “Traffic Stop” by Country Mac Sterling, and a ton of Pearl Cornell and Debra Alan Walker, who were popular at the time.

Then she played classical music, deftly, and you could tell she’d been playing the violin her entire life.

Her music brought all of my guilt, sorrow, and fear up into me, and I ended up closing my eyes and letting Pilate hold me, and I couldn’t find it in me to pray to Jesus, ’cause He and I weren’t on speaking terms. But I did listen to the music, then the quiet, and then Pilate’s heart and his breath, and the smell of his cigar burning in the darkness. It was God enough for me: Pilate and the quiet and the night.

Micaiah sat by himself, listening, watching the fire. I knew he wasn’t feeling, but what was he thinking? What do you think about if you can’t feel?

I couldn’t even begin to answer that. He’d catch my eye, and I’d glance away. Too many memories of us in his eyes.

We all listened in our remorse until it was time to go sleep.

Cold and lonely is the night before war.

(ii)

In the distance, the Plainville Salvage Yards were visible, squat buildings and round hangers surrounded by trash of every description. It was hard to tell what was trash and what was building.

It marked the edge of the Juniper, and I knew the power would be spotty. Here, the effects of the flood basalt flow’s EM field would fluctuate, turning on and off the electrical current in random intervals. On the other side of the Salvage Yards was the border fence, high and topped with razor wire. I’d talked to people who said the Plainville Salvage Yard was where a lot of illegals crossed, swimming through junk.

That section of Kansas had little hillocks, which made recon hard, but we had the Moby overhead, and we had a signaling system. If Sketchy, Tech, or Peeperz saw something, they’d shoot flares into the sky as a warning.

The prairie appeared deserted. Each step seemed to promise victory, until we came down the last of the hills, about a kilometer away from the buildings of the salvage yards and the border.

A lone figure stood on the grasslands, and we all stopped when we saw her. Sitting on my horse Miley, I shivered. Whoever the lone figure was, she seemed so out of place, almost surreal. She leaned on a cane, or maybe a rifle, I couldn’t tell. But she was alone, nothing but grass and prairie dog holes around her.

Pilate, June Mai, and me, we all exchanged glances. June Mai’s girls got their guns ready, but Marie Atlas reminded them to only shoot if ordered.

Micaiah didn’t react at all. Big jackerin’ surprise there.

A cold northern wind prodded dark clouds until half the sky was stygian with a storm.

“Well, hell’s bells.” Pilate smiled. “Looks like someone sold us out after all. Let’s go say howdy anyway, shall we?” Pilate didn’t have his original Beijing homewrecker, but he had found another one, same model—a Mossberg & Sons G203 quad cannon with four barrels for shells, grenades, or mortars. It was an evil weapon in the hands of a priest who kept track of his ammunition by using the names of the gospel writers.

June Mai reached out with a hand. “One last time. Give me the chalkdrive. I can make it across the border.”

Truth be told, I wanted her to take it right then. But then her wanting it so bad didn’t make me trust her much. She easily could’ve been a Severin, and we’d never have known it. If the ARK could brew up something like Marisol, they could take a real person and slip in a fake.

“It’s not going to happen,” I said.

Pilate agreed. “Amen to that, Cavvy. You and Micaiah will get yourselves across that border. And June Mai? You and me will make sure that happens.”

June Mai exhaled in what had to have been frustration. “The rumors of Weller stubbornness are well founded. Very well, like you said, let’s go say howdy.”

We ambled our horses down the hill. Pilate and June Mai took point. Then me. Then Micaiah; Marie Atlas ordered us to spread out so in case of an ambush, we wouldn’t be clumped together.

Our horses felt the tension. Eyeballs rolled, nostrils flared, and some started chewing their bits, clicking and clacking. A few reared, but we were all experienced riders, and we calmed them.

Things got stranger. It was an old woman in a faded seaman’s pea coat over a New Morality dress. She didn’t have a gun, but a cane. Her white hair was pulled tight around her skull in a bun. Care and weariness lined her face. Her long, wool scarf of red and yellow-orange flapped in the breeze. I saw the logo of the Kansas City Chiefs football team