War Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 5) by Aaron Ritchey (best short novels .TXT) 📕

The cooler spilled open. The leftover ice, Coke cans, the Lonely Moon cups, they all came tumbling out. I tried to get the guns, but I couldn’t see.

Strong hands grabbed me. I lashed out at what might be a face and felt some soft tissue collapse under my knuckles. It felt like a nose. I’d been aiming for a Gamma belly, which meant whoever had me wasn’t a hog...not big enough.

Short hair. They had short hair. Then I knew: A Vixx was there, maybe Reb or Ronnie or even the first one, whatever her name was. One of them had climbed out of the grave, had healed with the Devil’s help, and was here for revenge.

I was tossed around. Arms encircled me, crushing the life out of me. Still I fought, throwing my hand backward. And got them again in the nose, bashed their face in good, whoever they were.

I was back on the ground. Couldn’t get the guns. Couldn’t find them in the inky blackness. My breath huffed out of me. My heartbeats exploded my ears.

“Cavatica!” It was a man’s voice.

What man alive would want to hurt me? I thought maybe it was Aces, but no, Wren had strangled him. Then maybe Dutch, but Wren had shot him. Wren had killed everyone who wanted to kill us. Everyone except for Tibbs Hoyt.

The shape in the darkness wasn’t fat enough to be that son of a skank.

“Cavatica, it’s me, Pilate.”

And I’d hurt him. That couldn’t be. He was too tough to hurt. Maybe there was someone else in the basement.

A light flicked on. I pulled a .45. “Where are they?” I shrieked. “I’ll get them. Where are they, Pilate?”

Footsteps clacked overhead. The door at the top of the stairs opened. A voice called down. “Are you all right down there?”

I tore through the basement, careened off the cinderblock shelf, upset the VSD TV. It wobbled but didn’t fall. The screen winked on. Blue light shown from the screen looking for an input. I sped to the bottom of the steps.

Pilate tackled me. He ripped the pistol from my hand. He called up. “We’re okay. Just a little PTSD between friends. Nothing to worry about.”

“It’s that girl,” someone whispered. “She has the strange name that begins with a ‘c’. Catty something.”

I recognized the voice. It was Rachel. But she was dead. Killed herself to save us.

“Rachel!” I howled.

Pilate grabbed my face. “Enough. Rachel is dead. We are not under attack. And you need to be quiet.”

I blinked and waited. The nice thing about being hunted for months on end, all you had to do was wait and either things got worse or stayed the same.

Something wet dripped on my face.

I smelled blood.

It was coming from Pilate.

He moved his hand. I’d cracked his nose, twice, and red was running down his face and dripping off his chin. That would ruin my shirt.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked. “Do you recognize me?”

“Yeah. I guess.” My heart wouldn’t stop pounding and I couldn’t breathe, but I knew Pilate. He was wearing his priest’s shirt, but his collar had come unstuck. Bare plastic glowed blue from the light of the VSD.

I just wished he’d let me go. I wanted my guns ready. The people above us might be Severins. The whole house might be full of Severins, grannies and little girls and fat women that might look human but were monsters.

“What if they are Severins up there?” Kept my voice down so they wouldn’t hear us scheming against them.

“They aren’t. Hoyt won. We don’t have to worry about his soldiers anymore.” Pilate leaned his head back. He pulled away and came back with a towel on his face.

I popped the clip of the pistol. Checked my rounds. Full clip. “Maybe,” I said, “but if they come down, I’ll take out the first ten.”

“How very reassuring. That’ll help me to sleep tonight. What about you?” Pilate kept the towel on his face and sat down next to me.

We stared up the hallway at the closed door, bathed in the light of the electric bulb dangling from a string in the hall. Back home, it would’ve been a sapropel lantern, or a candle, but not in Hays. We had the full-on buzz. My life didn’t feel any better for the technology.

“Sorry I busted you in the face,” I whispered. “Sorry twice.”

“Do you want to talk about what’s going on?” he asked. “Or do you think you can drown it all in that cheap Juniper whiskey.”

“Pains for the pain.” I echoed the ad I’d grown up seeing in the Colorado Courier. And I echoed Wren, who had said the same thing the night that Petal pulled a bullet out of her shoulder. Petal would’ve been a good running partner. She’d been a girl who liked to party...no, that wasn’t right, she just liked to anesthetize herself. I could relate.

“Uh huh,” Pilate said. “You do know you are out of your jackering mind with post-traumatic stress disorder. And that your little rebellion act is clichéd and tiresome. And that neither of us will get any peace until we get our happy asses back to the Juniper.”

“Don’t cuss,” I said out of habit. I could cuss all I wanted, but I still didn’t like anyone else doing it. Call me a hypocrite. I dare you.

Pilate chuckled. “The pot is black. The kettle is black. I’m black. Cavatica Ann Weller is black. Names are called.” He removed the towel from his face. “How do I look?”

The skin under his eyes was red and puffy. Soon it would be stormed over with bruises. He’d be a real sight.

“Not so bad,” I lied.

He laughed until the coughing took him. That cough was an ugly thing. He’d gone to a free clinic, and they told him he needed surgery, a lobectomy. We have three lobes in our lungs, on the right side of the body. On the left, we only have two, so there’s room