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

felt the opening of a metal pipe. That pipe was less than a meter wide—too small for me to go forward on my belly. The police station would be down that way, down that small pipe.

Unfair. This was too unfair. No one should have to do what I was being forced to do.

I wasn’t about to turn around.

I got on my back and threaded my hands and then my head through the smaller opening. On my back, I pushed with my feet.

My shoulders crammed against the metal walls. The top was only inches from my face. Dust fell, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut even as I huffed it out of my nose and away from my mouth.

Fuel for the fire, I thought. I will use this when it gets harder, ’cause it will get harder. When I can’t stand it no more, I will think of what I did here, and it will give me strength. Fuel for my fury.

Hoyt was to blame, and I would make him feel my hurt.

Like Micaiah said at one point, he wanted his father to feel his life.

Hoyt would feel mine. I’d make certain of that.

I made far less noise, sliding backwards, driving with my feet, down the pipe until my parka got snagged on something and I pressed forward but couldn’t move.

Raising my hands, I tried to push back, but I couldn’t. My coat gave a growl, but the problem was I couldn’t get enough leverage with my hands to push me back. I realized my mistake too late.

The ground above seemed to get heavier. The air grew thinner. What if I was too far from fresh oxygen? What if asphyxiated? Pilate, nor my family, nor anyone would find my corpse. And with all the death above me, no one would smell the sweet stink of my rotting body.

Panic slid into my brain, eyeballs first, as dust fell on me. I wanted to flail in panic.

I’d panicked that first morning in Plainville, when Pilate woke me up by shooting into the dirt around me, and where had it got me?

I snatched control of everything inside of me and quieted myself. I took a long, thin, longer breath and held it. Then slowly let it out.

A wicked, barbed little thought killed me. You’ll have nightmares about this. You’ll have nightmares, and you’ll smell that cow, but the smell won’t be the cow, it will be you. The blackened maggot-infested hide won’t be a Hereford, but your own face.

I smiled at my death—grinned wide. “Go jack yourself,” I said, loudly, loud enough to drive that goddamn thought away.

“You hear something?” a voice echoed through the pipe.

“The prisoners? You know that big woman can talk. She won’t shut up.” The second voice came out bitter. A foul-tempered woman owned that voice.

In that darkness, with panic on me like stink on a skunk, I suppressed a chuckle. Sketch, the big, talkative woman, that was her.

The first voice answered. It was quiet, a quiet talker, and I’d been lucky to hear it.

Bitter was louder. “I know, but the truck came in. Has a Rico Device. Word is, Ops might blow the whole town if the Junies keep it up.”

The first voice muttered. Couldn’t hear her. Dammit.

“Meetchum. What’s her name? Mary something. From up north. Big talk of the Junies owning the Juniper, when everyone knows, no one is here by choice.”

Every cell in me stopped to listen and my mind was given new information to chew on, a nice break from the claustrophobia and promises of death.

It wasn’t Mary Meetchum, but Mavis. So Mavis had sent her people down to help stop the government from rounding us up in camps. But why was the U.S. involved? If a prison is working, why mess with the prisoners like this?

The quiet voice uttered a long stream of muffled syllables.

Bitter Bessy gruffed in a laugh. “They’re going to try and elect him as the territorial governor. Dob Howerter thinks he can govern if we can only get rid of June Mai and the dissidents in Denver.”

I’d grown up laughing at the territorial government in what used to be Colorado. Everyone had. The only law came from superior firepower or an Outlaw Warlord, which wasn’t law at all.

Things came crystal clear. The U.S. was trying to bring the rule of order. Howerter had jumped at the chance of more power. Must be power because he didn’t need the cash. Even if Howerter had lost his fortune in the cattle industry and fighting June Mai, he had Hereford Gold sales to fuel his bank account. Being rich, he put in a bid to work with the U.S. as the territorial governor. Traded in one empire for another. But no one, and I mean no one, would want to give Howerter a penny in taxes. Not after his evil Colorado Territory Ranching Association had driven down prices, which had forced us into the cattle drive in the first place.

“Despite those tattoos, she’s pretty. And smart. She’s already tried to escape twice.” Bitter’s words.

My heart leapt. They were talking about Tech.

Bitter confirmed my suspicion. “She has priors in Illinois. A really bad egg. Spent a lot of time in the Dwight Correctional Center until she agreed to a life in the Juniper. It’s a shame she ruined her skin with all of those tattoos. They’re ugly and distasteful. To think, before New Morality, everyone had tattoos. No wonder God punished us.”

Yeah, whatever. Point was, they had Tech as well as Sketchy.

The next words hit me hard.

“Can’t find the boy,” Bitter said loudly. “We know he’s around, but we can’t find him. And yeah, we’ve searched the Moby Dick a dozen times. If he’s there, we would’ve found him.”

Mutters from Ms. Quiet.

“If he does try and steal it, we’ll blow him out of the air. The Heartbreaker has enough firepower. Sure.”

The Heartbreaker must be the Bobby, and it sure was a war machine.

So Peeperz was free, and I bet he’d squirreled himself away