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

our left. Hard-pack dirt pinged off the driver’s side door and slapped my left cheek.

Marie Atlas sprinted toward them. We’d have to cut her off, but I couldn’t charge straight at her, not with those tanks. We’d be blown to pieces.

I wheeled to the right, through an alleyway of wet stacks of drywall decaying into paste. Micaiah and I in our BMW headed east, toward the border of the Juniper—directly toward the Kestrel gunships and the frictionless Havoks. Directly into their line of fire.

Like a doe charging a line of deer hunters.

“What are you doing?” Micaiah asked calmly.

I answered just as serenely, “Oh, you know, just bein’ a Weller.”

(iii)

I threw the steering wheel left before I hit the border fence. There was a little alley between junked-out plastics and the fence. An old rocking horse lay rotting next to what looked like a slide from a playground structure.

The troops in the Kestrels and the Havoks saw us. The Moby was staying back, out of the range of the gunships and their lightning cannons, their scorpion missiles, and more machine guns than a body could count.

I stopped. I stood up, and you might think me crass, but I gave them my middle fingers, both of them. “Come and get me, skanks!”

Wren would’ve been proud.

The Havoks charged forward to chase us; the gunships followed and were faster. Those Kestrels tried to hit us with their front charge guns. A lightning blast of pure electricity struck the area behind us, melting the plastics and sending bright ropes of energy sizzling across the ground. I stomped on the accelerator before they could fry us.

The SISBI fence came smashing down as the Havoks struck it in a squeal of metal. They chased after us down the narrow alleyway. The alley got tighter, but I didn’t stop. The BMW’s left front panel struck a rack, breaking through it, which sent toys, computers, and household what-not toppling down behind us ... right in the path of the floating Havoks. They smashed into the trash.

Saved by Juniper junk. Story of my life.

Still those frictionless assault vehicles were bound to follow us somehow.

I found an alley that led back to the main corridor and floored it. Derelict car garbage whipped by us.

In seconds Micaiah and I were back on the main avenue.

No sign of Marie Atlas, and the Moby was engaging the tanks. The triple-Xs cut through the metal of one of the tanks and into the flesh of the Regios inside. A rocket whooshed down from the Moby—maybe from the Torrent 6 I’d fired before—and it blasted the other tank into flaming pieces of carnage. Bits of tank plinked down. Well, I didn’t have to worry about those tanks anymore. Thanks, Sketch.

A Kestrel 15.2 gunship passed overhead. Bullets streaked down on either side of us. A Havok followed, guns blazing. I lowered myself in my seat. Sparking bullets riddled the BMW’s sides and trunk.

Things looked bleak ...

Until the lights on the gunship winked off. The fluctuations of the EM field saved us. Without power, the gunship fell out of the sky. That mass of technology struck the ground in a cloud of debris and death and destruction.

The Havok behind us slammed to the ground as well, lights off, frictionless engines useless, dead as a slate without a battery.

The soldiers climbed out.

Mistake.

The Moby’s triple-Xs tore them apart.

The Kestrel was done for, the engines destroyed in the crash, but the Havok’s light flickered on, and the vehicle floated back up. Driverless now but working again. Until the next EM fluctuation took out the electrical systems.

I floored the BMW but didn’t get far. Another gunship chancing destruction caught us, and her machine guns strafed our hood. The whole engine seized up, halting us.

I was thrown forward.

Then Micaiah grabbed me and pulled me out, just before a Havok full of troops came charging though. A Scorpion missile hit the BMW, creating a fountain of scrap metal.

The shock of that explosion stunned me.

Micaiah was yelling, but I couldn’t hear him, couldn’t think, as my racing mind tried to function despite the ringing in my ears. We had four more gunships to face, and three Havoks full of Regios, and Marie Atlas still had the chalkdrive. Micaiah yanked me to another Havok that sat empty. He threw me onto the passenger seat and threw himself behind the wheel as I tried to get my thoughts back online. Behind us were empty seats and hatches that led to the weapons on top. I had enough brain power to consider climbing back there and manning the guns, but I had no idea how long we’d have power.

Micaiah drove a foot down on the accelerator pedal, and we zoomed forward. The Havok didn’t get ten meters before the electricity fizzled out. We leapt from the dead vehicle as a gunship destroyed it completely.

But if we didn’t have power, neither did they.

Another of the gunships tumbled out of the air to join the trash and wreckage.

Three left.

We ran for the Dodge Laredo with the AIS we’d seen before. I pulled a dead Regio out of the driver’s seat—had to sit in her blood to drive. Micaiah rode shotgun. I slammed it into gear, and we chugged forward, picking up speed. We drove around a heap of plastic toys, brittle and faded from sunshine, a whole pile of dolls, toy soldiers, and a scatter of Lego bricks like a sea of hard-edged plastic.

The Havoks behind us went dead and dropped to the ground, but the Regios had gotten clever. They waited, but while they were stuck, me and Micaiah took off, heading north.

The Moby took a hit from a missile, but she swept around and headed for the fence line. There was no help for it. She was outgunned by the ARK airships, and I knew, once she got her electricity on, Sketchy could use the Kung Pao to become the fastest zeppelin in the world.

A gunship dropped. Then another, as they tried to get to safety. The last one roared