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

software engineers had coded the routines in Percival, something I’d studied in my advanced computing class at the Sally Brown Burke Academy for the Moral and Literate. Lucky me.

It would take some time, but I thought I could manipulate the datetime stamp on my scan though I’d want a goddamn Nobel Peace Prize for the reverse engineering I’d have to do.

Hours later, my brain wanted sleep, but instead I gave her caffeine, so I could go to work. Chewed instant coffee that I drank ’cause Pilate wouldn’t.

I grinned like a maniac. “That’s right, Tibbs. Kill me to stop me.”

Kill me to stop me.

I’d spent months on the road, repeating that phrase over and over. I’d said it to LaTanya before Dizzymona Gamma’d her, and I’d meant it. But then Micaiah had betrayed me, another sucker punch that sent me free-falling to zero.

Though it was still dark outside, the morning had come. The old woman upstairs started banging around, getting ready for the day, cooking breakfast for her granddaughters. They were normal morning noises I hated, hated so much, day after day.

I stashed the slate in the saddle bags Sharlotte had thrown me. They contained all of my old Juniper gear, but I wasn’t ready to dress up like an outlaw yet. Instead, I slipped into my polyester uniform, a dirt-brown dress with the Hurry Curry logo on the right breast and on the back. Then my coat, my scarf, a hat, and mittens. It was well below freezing outside.

Pilate was still sleeping when I slid open the glass patio door and slipped out.

Snow crunched under my cowgirl boots; I’d gotten them cheap from a thrift store. It was three miles to the Hurry Curry. Took me an hour to walk there so I could be there for the breakfast rush.

Dawn was a smudge on the horizon, the sky socked in by storm clouds. Good, the clouds kept the warmth in. A clear blue heaven would drop the temperature ten degrees.

Every space between the suburban houses was filled with shanties and plywood homes, all glowing from Eterna batteries. Automotive relics, once powered by gas, littered lawns. Many of the owners were waiting for the cash to convert them to electricity. For most, that was fantasy.

Some frictionless vehicles were parked on the trash-littered streets, but those were beaters with old-school batteries leaking fluid. It wasn’t a nice neighborhood. Fine by me since I wasn’t nice either.

As I walked, I thought about how I could game Hoyt’s slate and trick it into freeing me.

All to get back to the Juniper because the only way to beat him was to find the location of the secret ARK facility and get proof he had the cure to the Sterility Epidemic.

A mile into my walk, I got tired of thinking in Percival code, so I switched to thinking about Micaiah and everything he had ever said to me. He’d done his best to hide where he’d come from. I knew it was inside the Juniper. Knew it to my bones.

Micaiah inadvertently gave me part of the answers, talking about mountain biking across volcanic rock. He’d also told me that the ARK had perfected shielding against the EM field, so they could get electricity to work in the Juniper.

But the real clue? That was something Hoyt had given me. He wanted me out of the Juniper, permanently, and at first, I thought it was only to keep track of me where electricity worked. No, not quite.

He wanted me out of the Juniper ’cause that’s where the research facility was, where the cure remained, where Micaiah would be. Not that I cared where that damn boy was, not after what he did. He’d always said he was going to keep me safe, and yeah, he did, but he’d sacrificed everything else to do it. He’d paid, I’d paid, and I was done with those bills.

The sun was up when I hit the parking lot of the Hurry Curry. Customers were already inside, eating a Southern Indian breakfast including coffee you poured from one cup to another to cool it down. I liked the poori, big balls of deep-fried dough you dipped in a variety of sauces.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t dread the twelve hours of dishes in front of me.

It could give me time to think about the code.

(ii)

At five o’clock on that Thursday at the end of February, Mary Margaret Morricone and her posse showed up to waitress and work the front end, relieving the day waitresses.

I’d been washing dishes for nine hours by then and I had three more hours to go. The Hurry Curry owner didn’t care much about the workday laws since we were illegals and workers were in short supply. Another gift of the Sterility Epidemic and plummeting population growth.

I had the feeling Mary Margaret only worked there ’cause she was New Morality and felt responsible to help out. She didn’t need the money.

And I think Mary Margaret liked messing with us backend babes, which is how my little crew thought of ourselves. Ironic, given that Floyd was counted among the babes. He drove deliveries and did the stocking. Once Maria and Starla broke up, Maria went to bussing tables while Starla and I did dishes. And Dallas Pat handled garbage and general cleaning, which involved sweeping and mopping. We cleaned. The Yankee white girls in New Morality dresses got the tips and made the money. You’d think they’d be happy with that, but some people can’t be happy unless other people are sad.

It started out innocently enough. Mary Margaret started calling us Junies. I hadn’t been called that in a long time. My former enemy at my fancy Cleveland academy, Becca Olson, referred to me as Juniper trash, which I didn’t like, but Junies hurt more.

And for the backend cleaning crew, it wasn’t correct. Starla was an immigrant from Tamil Nadu, and Dallas Pat had moved to Hays from the American part of Texas. For Maria and