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

“You didn’t get the letter from the pope?” I asked him, glad we weren’t talking about his romantic life.

Despite his blush, he managed a joke. “Oh, I don’t read Roman mail. Look what it did to Peter. Reading Catholic mail can get you crucified upside down.”

“But Pilate, I watched Sharlotte blow herself up. Then an avalanche swept down and covered them. They’re dead. They have to be.”

Pilate shrugged. “Did you see the bodies? Did you feel their wounds like Tommy the doubting doubter did to Jesus H. Christ? The H is for ‘hell, yeah’ by the way.”

I pushed Pilate back, and I felt the anger flood me. I shrieked at him, and it felt good to feel, to scream. “They’re dead! I couldn’t get to the bodies, but they couldn’t have survived. They’re dead! I did what you wanted me to. I denied you! I denied them! I denied Alice! Three times, like Peter. Three times I did it!”

Pilate grabbed my arm, and not too gently either. “Where’s your goddamn faith, Cavatica? You asked me that, and now I’m asking you. Where’s your goddamn faith, Cavatica?”

“I thought I needed hope?” I yelled again. “I thought it was all just hope.”

Pilate smirked. Yes, he knew how to hold me, but he was just as good at pissing me off. “Faith, hope, and love. And what is the greatest of these?” he asked.

“Love! I know my Bible, goddammit!”

“I love you, Cavvy. But have faith. What are the odds that not one but two genetically modified super soldiers died at the same time under the same circumstances? And one was Wren? I won’t believe they’re dead until I take her Colt Terminators off her body, and even then, I’d imagine she’d come back from the dead to fight me for them.”

I went back to that moment, when Sharlotte spun the Marilyn Monroe and sent that chain of missiles into the Audrey Hepburn. Then the thunderous apocalypse of noise as half the mountain covered them in ice and snow. No way.

But what if?

What if in the ice and tumble, either Wren or Rachel had woken up? They would’ve dug our people out, found Marisol, put her down ... and then what? Started east.

What if?

It was a good story I was telling, but I couldn’t believe it. I’d been there. I’d seen the destruction.

I didn’t have much faith, hope, or love in me right then. I did have a whole world of tired and hurt. I took the chain off my neck and tossed it to Pilate.

“I’m done with my imperative, and I’m done with your sacred duty nonsense. You like the world so much, you save it.” I was dizzy, my head was swimming, and I had the idea I’d crawl back onto Mama’s grave and sleep there. The cold might kill me, but then I wouldn’t have to go far to see her again—hold her hand, feel her hugs, listen to her sing.

And Micaiah? I wanted to see him again, but the emotionless thing wasn’t much of a boy any more. Maybe it would be better if I never saw him again.

Pilate held the chalkdrive up to look at it. “You know, the world needs saving all the time. Pretty much daily.” He addressed the darkening sky. “We’ll do it this time, God, but no more. Your stupid, little world better learn how to save itself.”

“Amen, Father.” I laughed a little. Not sure if Pilate was priest or not, but the name fit. He was my daddy after all.

I took a step.

June Mai Angel had stayed away to let Pilate and I talk, but now she marched toward us. She didn’t look happy, not happy at all. But right then, she didn’t seem at all important. She and Pilate could deal with the chalkdrive.

I decided I did want to see Micaiah again before I died. I wanted to learn how he and Pilate managed to escape Glenwood Springs, and why Pilate’s cup and the bracelet had been left there.

Another step. My feet hurt. I was thirsty again and hungry, but I’d been ignoring my body for so long, I could laugh at it.

Stupid body. You think what you want is so, so important.

“She’s going to faint, June.” Pilate called her by her first name, like they were friends.

“No, I ain’t,” I muttered.

June Mai Angel sure didn’t talk much. I figured she’d be real chatty. Nope.

Then I fainted dead away, right into the arms of an Outlaw Warlord.

She turned out to be so different than I had ever imagined.

(ii)

I couldn’t have been out more than a minute. When I woke June Mai was holding me. For such a short, slight woman, her strength was impressive, but then I didn’t weigh much anymore.

“Thanks, June,” I said, and I laughed weakly at calling June Mai Angel by her first name.

She spoke over my head, one word, “Pilate?”

Pilate came over, and they dragged me past the crater where my house had been; my pretty blue room with lace curtains and all my things, all my memories, my whole life now reduced to smoke and ashes. Eryn Lopez died, but her room was saved. I lived, but my room was gone. Who got the better deal?

They carried me to a Ford Explorer with the back chopped out to allow for the ASI attachment. Machine guns and cannons were mounted all over the body—a real war machine.

They put me in the back part of the cab, next to Pilate, who put an arm around me and held me close. The woman with salt and pepper hair, Captain M. Atlas, drove. I noticed people called her Captain Atlas, but more often than not, they called her by her full name, Marie Atlas, every single time. It was how I began to think of her.

Next to Marie Atlas, June Mai rode shotgun.

We took off to the sound of the AIS steam engine chugging. I smelled the dried cow patties burning in the firebox, and it brought me back to our