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

Alice and Jolie were behind me as I limped along toward where Dizzymona sat, another thistle throne.

Around her were more mannequins, these ones dressed in robes from priests, from altar servers, in cardinal hats, and bishop gowns; all the plastic eyes gazed at the monstrously fat woman seated on a La-Z-Boy armchair while candles burned all around her. Dizzymona was fat, but for a Gamma, she was runty. She was barely taller than me. It was clear that she’d been squat as a human, but now she was just toady. Food orbited her like convenience store asteroids: donuts, Wonder Bread out of the package, open cans of Quincy Jim’s Beefy Qs, Baby Ruth candy bars. Her dark hair was long and caked with old milkshake, maybe, or some kind of milk product. I could smell the curdle coming off her.

All hail the queen of the hogs.

When she talked, her fat lips flapped, and her piggy little eyes glimmered deep inside the lard of her face. “Beatrice says cure. You have cure.”

The tall one, Beatrice, nodded.

Everyone, the creepy mannequins and the four hogs, waited for me to talk.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m Cavatica Weller. My sisters and I took cattle to Wendover, but along the way we found a boy who told us about the Gulo Gamma. That’s the gas you’ve been using to turn your megs into Gammas. He said the ARK could cure you.” I inhaled deep and really started to lie. “This boy gave the cure to me. I memorized the formula. I need to get it to the ARK clinic in Hays, Kansas, but once I get the serum I can bring it back to you all.”

“Tell me cure,” Dizzymona said gruffly.

I knew exactly what to say. “One-part hydrogen, one-part sodium chloride, and two-parts oxygen.” Which of course was saltwater. To them, I figured it would sound all science-y and legit.

No one said anything, so I added, for good measure, “Only the ARK has the ability to brew that up in the right way.” Or I could’ve, with a salt shaker and a puddle.

Dizzymona frowned at me, glanced away, glanced back, and did more frowning followed by a series of grunts.

I kept my eyes welded to her. I could feel the pain in my feet coming, the pain of all my loss, and I knew I was due for another dose of Skye6, and the idea of it made me dizzy. But still—still—I didn’t look away.

“I don’t believe you,” the queen of hogs said with a grunt.

Chapter Twelve

No more bottles of beer on the wall,

No more bottles of beer.

Go to the store and buy some more

Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall.

—Anonymous Folk Song from the mid-twentieth century

(i)

ON MY FIRST TRIP THROUGH Denver on the I-70, back when I had a family and three thousand head of cattle to move, I’d played Fast Food Restaurant Bingo to pass the time. I’d had a scorecard in my mind, and I ticked off boxes as I found different flavors of restaurant now gone derelict.

Across the street from the cathedral was another restaurant I could’ve checked off my list. It was a Dairy Queen, and that’s where they stuffed us, all fifty, shoved inside.

We took turns sitting down, it was so packed. I found a place near the back door, now bare concrete, but I could see the outlines of where the sink had been. The water pipes had all been removed, and now the concrete was dotted with pitch-black holes that looked like unseeing eyes.

I crouched until I could wriggle around to get enough room on the floor for my butt. Had to push back feet and legs, but I managed to clear a space. Barefoot, my feet were hurting me again, so I wanted to sit and let them rest.

A girl glared at me ’cause of the smell. Another woman gave me a nasty look ’cause she thought I should be standing with everyone else.

A few of the other women tried to talk to me, but I shined them on with one-word answers. It’s easy to push people away when you answer every question with a yes, a no, or a shrug.

That was what I did while I tried to come up with a plan. I didn’t care about any of them. I still had Skye6 in my veins and the chalkdrive around my neck. Nothing else mattered.

But I knew I wasn’t going to escape from the DQ. The doors were chained shut, and we had monster guards standing outside, snuffling, hollering, getting in fights, and generally being mean.

My only real hope was Alice, but then she’d turned sullen again after Dizzymona ignored me. She slammed EMAT on my skin and then took off with the Vail Recreation District bag to parts unknown. I couldn’t imagine what kind of nightmare barracks they had or if they slept out in the cold. Jolie had made it clear that Alice was still assigned to her unit and that my sister better behave.

Alice had grunted and snapped a thick-handed salute. It had looked sardonic to me.

Every so often the front doors would open, a woman would be led out, and then the doors would slam shut. When it got dark, the hogs gave us homemade candles to burn. The tallow hissed and sputtered, giving off a smoky, foul light.

We were hungry. We were thirsty. The women around me were scared and talked about what it might be like getting the gas, but I sat, my legs to my chest, as the women slowly thinned out until I could stick my hurting feet out in front of me.

One by one by one the hogs took women, and those women never came back.

I’d been smart to get a place in the back ’cause the hogs would grab whoever was closest and lead them away to whatever fate had in store for them. Alice had mentioned it was dark when she was gassed, and I figured they prolly