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

on the Moby. I had to get to him, and I had to blast the police station to bits and free Sketchy and Tech. They could take me to Denver, where I would get to President Jack.

And President Jack would tell me where the secret ARK research facility was.

If I could get out of the pipe.

Footsteps clattered away from the police station. I had what I needed, but one last snatch of conversation drifted down to me.

“Wellers in Denver. You really think they brought those...Hereford Gold...” and then nothing more.

So Sharlotte and Wren were in Denver. And from the sound of it, still alive.

My mind chewed on everything I’d heard, and then I let instinct take over, and it was easy. Kind of.

I dug in with my feet, lifted my back, and pressed my arms, against the pipe. Then I wrenched myself down.

Whatever snarl of metal that had latched onto my coat caught my neck and ripped my skin. Blood dribbled into my hair and dripped from my skin. I could move again, in little stuttering movements, using my arms to push, my feet to pull.

Wasn’t long before I slipped back into the main concrete tunnel. I had room enough to return to my belly. Being back in the tunnel almost felt like I was outside; I had so much room now.

I crawled down cement, through the mud and water and ice and stink until the orange glow lit up the mouth and stars spilled across the sky. I tumbled from the pipe and onto my back.

I laid there, breathing in and out in great inhalations as I tried to forget the horror of what I’d just done. The sweet thrill of adrenaline turned into something else, some great big emotion that might’ve been gratitude or could be hate, but I couldn’t breathe it all in fast enough.

I turned onto my belly and threw up into the dirt. More gasping.

I’d escaped the tunnel.

The task was done and done well. I had information and the beginning of a plan, a baby plan squalling in my skull, even as I writhed in some kind of grateful horror, in some kind of unabashed terrible delight in being alive and escaping.

But the scars of that crawl through the grave, my journey into the underworld, would mark me.

For the rest of my life, I couldn’t be in enclosed spaces. And when I smelled a certain, swampy stink of wet on old cement, I’d lean over to hyperventilate. Sometimes I’d pass out.

And the nightmares. Great God, the nightmares.

Sometimes when we win a battle, we lose things we never thought so precious until they are gone and gone forever.

Chapter Eight

THE SKY IS DIRT ABOVE

As hell is dirt below

Trapped in the middle we’re sorrow

Trapped in the middle we’re snow

—Janis Keeve. “Middle World.” In the Between, Seventeen Records, 2055

(i)

I threw on Wren’s green wool poncho and skulked out of Burlington in the shadows thrown by the numerous fires. I’d memorized the way back to Pilate, past the carousel, and to the fields on the east side of town. Took a bit but he finally called to me.

“What’s a Rico Device?” I asked. My words came out with a blast of mist from the cold air. The smell of the frozen ground seemed to make it colder until the wind shifted, and we got hit with the sharp warmth of my burning town.

“Penguins,” Pilate said with a smirk. “It has something to do with penguins. From that old animated movie.”

“You ever do much of real life?” I asked.

“Not when I can help it.” He chuckled. “Maybe not penguins. Rico is short for Enrico.”

My heart dropped like a rock into mud. “Enrico Fermi.”

“Sounds like a guy who likes pasta,” Pilate quipped. “Tell me everything.”

I gave him all I’d heard, but I didn’t go into detail about the pipe. Foolish, I thought I could stuff those memories and will myself to forget those seconds. Doesn’t work that way, but it took me a bit to learn the lesson.

In return for my intel, he told me about a Rico Device, named after Enrico Fermi, the architect of the atom bomb. A Rico Device was a controlled hydrogen bomb, clean but devastating. Could easily take out Burlington and leave nothing behind but a crater without the radioactive wasteland. The Chinese had used a similar device when they hit Yellowstone.

I grimaced. The plan I had required sacrifice, but it would be a shame for me to lay waste to Burlington. But oh, well.

“You have something?” He’d caught the old mad glimmer of me thinking fast.

“I do,” I said. “But I want you to put your collar back on. If there is a God, I want Him with us tonight.”

Pilate cracked wise. “Pretty sure God’s a girl. Have you talked to many men? Not much there. Women are far more interesting.”

“For you,” I said, then waited for him to answer.

“You seem like your old self,” he finally said. “But I’m sorry, I can’t put on the collar. After what I’ve done, I can’t even flirt with being a priest of God again. And you know how much I like to flirt.”

Nothing much to say to that, so I told him my plan.

I’d steal a zeppelin. He’d go to the police station to lay down suppression fire once I blew the walls out of the cell block. I had wanted him to make a big show of being Father Pilate and getting their attention, but if he wasn’t going to look the part, I wasn’t going to risk his skin. Besides, it would be better for us to keep a low profile. If Pilate was seen in the Juniper, they might figure I was with him. Pilate and Wellers went together like peanut butter and jelly.

“How am I going to know you have the Moby?” he asked. “Our timing is going to have to be perfect.”

“You’ll know.” I said. “Look for Armageddon. Peeperz better be on her, and he better know how to fly her,