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

“You come now, ’Teeca. We run. All the hogs are sleeping. Alice waited until you were alone. Clever Alice.”

I grinned back at her. She dug out Eryn Lopez’s socks and cross-country boots and handed them over. I slipped them on. Damn boots. Thank God for ’em. And thank God for Alice.

We snuck out into the cold, but I hadn’t gone two steps when I found myself flung over Alice’s shoulder one more time as she started running down a deserted Colfax, strewn with filth, trash, and lost salvage. The Vail Recreation District bag bounced along with me, strapped to Alice.

I saw the bodies of two hogs Alice must’ve killed, but no one else.

Didn’t see any of my friends from the DQ, didn’t know what happened to them, but then, I would come back for them. Oh yes, I would.

Another imperative.

I was determined. Then Alice pushed a strip of EMAT onto my skin and my head went blissfully floaty again.

Another imperative? What other imperative? I only had one.

(iii)

I skated around on the ice covering my crippled little stick of a heart. Alice ran down Colfax with me on her shoulder. Not sure how she saw anything, it was closet-dark. Around us were just the shadows of houses, salvaged down to their foundations, and then we headed north past the old zoo. I thought about all the stories we’d heard about Denver being overrun with lions and tigers and exotic animals, but most likely they’d been killed by Outlaw Warlords or finally eaten by hogs in the last few months.

Alice dripped sweat on me while she ran, and her stink became so powerful I thought I’d never smell anything ever again. She grunted with exhaustion, but she didn’t stop. Her growls got louder. I had trouble breathing, and my stomach was jounced up and down as she stormed along. Finally, I asked her to let me down so I could try running.

In the darkness, the dirt road was just a bit lighter between two strips of white concrete.

I tried to run on my own, but I couldn’t keep up with Alice. Her legs were longer, she wasn’t sick and didn’t have scabs covering her feet. And she wasn’t ice-skating on Skye6.

She got upset, didn’t yell, but stormed around, waiting for me, as I limped up to her.

“Weak. Alpha weak. Frail, puny, human girl, stupid. Damn Weller girl. Dizzymona stupid for not believing ’Teeca. Dizzymona smart, though, to want to make her a Gamma.”

“How come you didn’t let that happen?” I asked.

Alice grunted and spat a mouthful of mucus on weeds growing out of Colorado Boulevard. “First gas. Then training. Training might’ve made you forget. Training hard.” She shivered.

Wasn’t training, it was brainwashing, and it must be something awful to make a Gamma shudder.

Poor LaTanya. All those poor bottles of beer.

Alice didn’t pause a minute before she flung me back across her shoulder. After that, our only break was for her to fill her Mountain Dew bottle and my Coke bottle with water from barrels along the side of the road that had caught and kept rainwater.

More jostling, bouncing, shaking for me. More running for her. Tireless, but driven, driven by the growing madness in her head.

By sunrise she was gone.

Gone coco.

(iv)

Alice ran me all the way to I-70 and Peña, the road to the airport, where I’d been seven months before. Back during the cattle drive, we’d had a big planning meeting there. I’d suggested going west to the Rockies and up the hogback into Boulder. I figured it was seven months ago, figured it was early November, but I’d lost track of days. It felt right, though.

Morning cracked open cold on the eastern sky, and Alice finally stopped. Breathing hard. She dropped me on the asphalt. She dropped the hockey bag and then huffed, puffed, wiped at the sweat covering her face.

“We can rest, Alice. We can rest now. We made it through Denver. We made it through Dizzymona and her troops.”

Alice growled and then came up to me, sniffed me, and then growled some more.

No words. No thoughts. Just kill. Gone coco.

I’d said I’d put her down. I’d said I’d find a cure for her. I couldn’t do either.

Even if I had the guts to end Alice’s life, she wouldn’t sit still. And I couldn’t get to her revolvers. We’d waited too long.

She snatched up her Mountain Dew bottle of water and sucked it down in long, thirsty gulps.

“Alice?” She ignored me.

She wasn’t Alice any more. She gazed down at me like a hound dog eyeing meat.

“You brought me out here, Alice, ’cause you didn’t want to be a Gamma no more. Isn’t that right?”

She didn’t respond. She woofed a bit, then grimaced, spit, and farted, loud and smelly, right in front of me.

No, she was gone. I was going to have to break my promise, trick her, and hopefully send her off running. Dawn was red in the sky, the cock was about to crow, and I had to deny a sister, a friend, for a third time.

I stood up and pointed west, to downtown Denver, back to where the cathedral was on Colfax. Back to Dizzymona, looking to kill the one who had stolen their last meg from the DQ, the liar girl who had offered a fake cure.

“You see that smoke? There’s food there. And a fight. You wanna fight?”

Alice’s hands curled into fists the size of dogs. She smacked one into the other.

“And you are Alice, you are mighty. You deserve your own command. How come they didn’t give you your own command? Those stupid skanks. Go back there and take it. Get a command, rally your soldiers, and come fight with me in Burlington. Come and be a Weller and fight with us. You understand? If I can, I’m going to make the ARK find a cure for you and the other Gammas and LaTanya. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything.”

Alice didn’t respond. Too many words and she stopped caring after the