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

the salvage monkeys back in the day. They were huge yellow tractor-type rigs, bouncing around on gigantic rubber wheels, completely steam-powered. June Mai Angel had added grappling hooks and steel cables to them and used Cargadors to pull zeppelins from the sky. These had the right cages for the task, but not grappling hooks. The smell of Old Growth coal filled the air.

The U.S. troops didn’t argue with any of the complaining people. The soldiers didn’t need to. Too well-armed. They continued to march the refugees onward.

I recalled news feeds about the U.S. peacekeepers sweeping through the Eastern Colorado Territory and escorting refugees away from the fighting. Funny, but the people didn’t appear to be refugees... more like prisoners of war. Funny, it takes a lot of guns to be a peacekeeping force. Not funny, the troops and Cargadors pushed the Juniper folk onward while I kept hidden. Once the coast was clear, I walked out onto the blue plastic gravel of I-70.

Pilate joined me. Not sure where he had hidden himself.

We stood there in the clear, cold morning. The sun offered a little warmth, and I was glad for it, ’cause I got none from Pilate.

“Well, Genius, looks like we’re running black ops. If we’re caught, we’ll be sent back to the camp. Hopefully your Cecelia Beckencourt will be long gone by then with Hoyt’s slate.”

I nodded.

“You want praise, Genius?”

I shrugged. Didn’t need it, but I would take it. Then I remembered myself. I snapped to attention. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“You followed the most important rule I have to teach. Don’t get into a fight if you can avoid it. Better to avoid bullets unless you have no other choice.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Pilate relaxed a tad. “And you secured a position at the first sound of trouble. Were you ready with your weapons?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

He nodded. “Good. Looks like we won’t be taking the main road into Burlington. We’ll have to move quiet and avoid daylight. We’ve done this before, only this time...”

I didn’t ask him to continue. I stood, waiting for my next order.

“This time, Cavatica, we’re facing American soldiers, not inhuman clones. It will make shooting them harder. They’re just people, following orders, which is a shame. What a world we live in, where good people follow orders to do awful things they’d rather not do.”

Him saying my name made a little piece of me whine. I wanted him to keep calling me Cavatica, but I knew he didn’t think I was ready to be a person again. To tell you the truth, neither did I.

“Permission to speak, sir.” I said softly.

“Granted.”

“I’m Genius, sir. I’m not Cavatica.”

Pilate walked away from me, took a few steps, and turned his face away, so I couldn’t see whatever emotion was there.

“That’s right, Genius. Get running. You see that ridge over there.” He pointed northwest. “Run to it and run back.”

“Yes, sir.”

I ate and drank water as I ran ’cause if I didn’t, I’d hear hell from my commanding officer. He didn’t like telling me anything twice.

That night, Pilate handed me the ax handle. We’d found shelter in a dilapidated shack leaning like a drunk on the yellow plain.

It was time for evening hand-to-hand combat training.

Which meant I had to hit Pilate with the stick before he plucked it out of my hand and smacked me back.

The gray wood was splintery against my palm. Again, I wondered about the crack in the haft of the ax handle. How long would it last before it cracked completely?

Pilate watched me. Then sighed.

We stood outside the shack, knee-deep in sage.

I lashed out with the stick, but it was a half-hearted attempt. He dodged it easily, grabbed the ax, and then feinted like he was going to strike me across the face. I winced and it was all it took for him to slam me down into the dirt outside the shack.

He smacked my head with the ax handle, prolly not using his full strength, but maybe he did.

“You don’t hate me enough to really take a swing at me,” he smirked. “Well, Genius, I can fix it for you.”

I found a glare for him. The stick knocking on my head felt too much like Hoyt’s knuckles.

(iii)

Six more days of running, training, failing at the ax-handle task, and getting grief for it. I failed to hit him. He punished me by beating on me.

All that work, even the pain, was a blessing. ’Cause at night, I didn’t dream, and I didn’t wake up screaming or scrambling for my guns—too exhausted and worn out and focused.

It was the focus that did it. I wanted to think I could erase the trauma ripping through my mind by focusing on the mission of finding President Jack so he could tell me the location of secret ARK research facility. It was a nice idea. And it might’ve kept me sane. That was a nice idea, only it wasn’t the truth. I was shattered. While my body grew hard, while my balance improved and my skills grew keener, I longed for Pains whiskey and a loaded vape pen full of Rebel Leaf e-juice. Or better yet, a roll of Skye6 EMT, emergency medical tape, so I could ice skate away from the horrors of being human.

Pilate’s lessons helped me even so.

Each night I swore I’d hit him with the ax and each night I failed, but it kept me motivated to try harder the next time.

While I was slow with the stick, I absorbed his other lessons quickly.

You don’t focus on shooting your enemy, you focus on aiming and squeezing the trigger and following your precise shooting techniques.

You don’t hit the front of your enemy. You drive your fist through them. You imagine ramming your fist through their chest and out their back, or through their face and out the back of their skull.

You don’t use your arm to punch or your leg to kick. You use the spin of your body, the vortex of your center, a powerful turn of your