Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) Aaron Ritchey (read a book .txt) 📖

Megs? What did that mean?

Fear clamped my throat closed. I had to ask, “What do you do with your pets?”

Alice blinked long-lashed eyes. Funny I’d notice how full and lush her lashes were. “Alice feeds them and takes care of them, but last one died. Sad Alice.”

“You’ll take care of me, Alice?”

Alice nodded, all jiggly and excited. “Yeah, Alice loves ’Teeca.”

“I’m really hungry,” I said softly. “Can you get me one of those sausages?”

My belly gave my genius a standing ovation. My mind, though, knew, once Alice left, I was going to bolt.

I never had the chance. From her utility belt, she took out handcuffs and carefully took my wrist, clicked the cuff in place and then clicked it to the bedframe.

“Alice be back, ’Teeca. Good sausages.”

“Hey, Alice, if I’m your pet, you won’t hurt me, will you?”

Alice’s prominent eyebrows covered her nice lashes as her forehead wrinkled. “’Teeca behave, Alice be nice. ’Teeca be bad, Alice punish. ’Teeca be good, yes?”

I nodded. “Oh yes, ’Teeca be good. What happened to your last pet?”

“Alice punish bad pet. Pet die. Bad pet. Sad Alice.”

With that, Alice thudded out of the side of the house. Then it struck me, she wouldn’t have fit through the door.

Alice didn’t come back, but another hog did. Her face was mashed in, burned, scarred, and her nose took up most of the left side of her face. This one came skulking in, grunting, “Me saw, me saw, me saw Alice’s pretty, pretty pet.”

That was me, the pretty pet, and apparently Alice didn’t own me quite as much as she thought.

(iv)

I went to scream, but this other hog stuck a filthy, meaty hand over my face. “You tell, Edith kill.”

The light was bad, but between her fingers, I saw Edith had huge razors of sharp hair sprouting out of her right shoulder which made her walk hunched over.

The new monster removed her hand from my mouth.

“Where’s Alice?” I asked.

The hog didn’t answer. She gripped the bed frame, ripped off the bar, and then threw me over her shoulder. The handcuffs dangled from my right wrist. My left hand slipped over the spines of hair bristling from her misshapen back. They were sharp enough to cut my hand—another wound for my collection.

Outside, a bonfire burned in the middle of Leadville’s downtown, right on Highway 24, and dozens of the hogs clustered around the fire.

Edith tried to skirt around them, which gave me a better look. All the mutants looked a little different, but all were huge, thick, muscled, tall, some closing in on four meters. Some had buzzed hair, some had long dreads like Alice, some had dark skin, some had white skin. Most had huge noses, pig-like, some nearly elephantine. All were dressed in a mismatch of clothes and military gear. All were armed down to their smelly butts.

They were drinking from bottles, eating the spitting sausages in greasy fists, and yelling, shouting, snorting, gnashing their teeth on the hot meat. The smell of the food made my mouth water, even in my predicament.

“Edith!” a voice growled.

My captor went to run off with me. She wasn’t quick enough. A huge body came crashing over, grabbed her, and flung us both back five meters onto a concrete sidewalk. I hit the cement and rolled to a stop. I pushed my hurt right hand against Eryn Lopez’s pink coat to staunch the bleeding.

Edith rose up, emitting a thunderous howl, and then I saw it was Alice who had saved me. Both those hogs didn’t argue with words but brayed like cannibal mules or psychotic bears starving to death.

The biggest of the hogs marched over. Across her back was a belt-fed M60 machine gun. She wielded it like it was a Daisy pellet gun.

“Alice. Edith. Why fight? Why you fight when it feast time?”

I figured the big hog was Jolie, since it was her camp, or that was what Alice had said. Jolie’s face was disfigured with a scar, filthy lumps of hair sprouted from a scalp which was mostly gnarled flesh covered in bright pink acne. A few of the pimples were a bright yellow with pus.

The hog leader came over, grabbed me, and held me by my leg to inspect me. My hip joint howled.

Alice and Edith were breathing hard, and I could smell their stank breath even from a distance

Jolie grinned, showing those huge teeth, like glacier rocks in her mouth. “You pet or meg?”

“Pet!” I shouted. “I’m Alice’s pet. She loves me now. Edith can’t claim me. I’m Alice’s.”

I prayed it was the right thing to say.

Jolie spun, and I spun with her. My hip joint seemed about to give, my head pounded full of blood, and I came close to blacking out.

“Alice. Why pet? Why not meg?”

“Bad feet, Jolie, and she weak. I found her dead. She’s my pet. See?” From a zippered pocket of her Frankenstein clothes, Alice dug out a small slate, which of course, couldn’t possibly work. Something was taped to the screen.

“See?” Alice insisted. “My pet! See?”

Jolie growled. “My orders say to report all pets and megs. You not tell. You disobey. You still want promotions? You still want command of this unit?”

Alice turned her head, sullen. “Dizzymona put you in command. I follow orders good. Alice does want promotions someday.”

Dizzymona, another monster, the queen of the monsters maybe, but I could see Alice didn’t like the idea of taking orders, not a bit. She wanted to be in command but wasn’t. I thought about how I could use that to my advantage, but I was plumb out of ideas. Being upside down made it hard to plan.

Jolie grunted, “You didn’t follow orders good. Maybe I give pet to Edith.”

Alice shouted, “No! I take a whipping. She my pet. Okey-doke? I take punishment.”

Jolie paused. She brought my feet to her face and sniffed at them like a pig snuffling for mushrooms. She poked and prodded me, then she howled,