Storm Girls (The Juniper Wars Book 4) by Aaron Ritchey (best books to read for students TXT) 📕

snapped a picture of Megan Malone, standing with her unit; she was the only girl. They’d all been scorched and dirty and exhausted after a battle. The men around her seemed huge in comparison. Ms. Malone had been a hundred and fifty-seven centimeters tall; I was taller. But she’d captured the imagination of a generation, and the army wrote a song about her. Soon everyone talked about enlisting like Military Meg.

“A meg we take for Dizzymona’s army. Need new megs. Gammas go coco. Alice kill Edith ’cause Edith go coco.” She growled as she remembered the fight.

Everything she said sprouted questions in my head. I chose one, to take it slow. “What’s a Gamma?”

“Civilians are Alphas, but Betas are soldier girls. Soldiers better than civilians. Gammas are best. Gammas are us. Dizzymona has the rituals to make megs into Gammas. Megs are both alphas and betas.”

So, they called themselves Gammas and not hogs. I was glad I’d never used that word around her.

“Who’s Dizzymona?” I asked.

“She’s Gamma Omega Mother. She the first and last Gamma. She turns megs into Gammas. Her headquarters in Denver. We go to her. You become Gamma.”

Dizzymona must’ve found the canisters of Gulo Gamma first and used them to mutate other normal women into hogs. And of course, they had named themselves after the ARK’s serum and came up with the story of genetic superiority after the fact.

I was destined to become a Gamma if I didn’t escape Alice, and if I didn’t die of my infections. My feet weren’t necrotic yet, but it was coming.

I chose another question for Alice. “You said Edith went coco. What is that?”

Alice let her lower lip fall and her brow dipped. “Sad. Gammas go coco near the end. They must be put down when they go coco.”

“Like loco? Like crazy in Spanish?”

Alice nodded. “Psycho. Loco. Coco. We say coco. I scared Alice go coco. Then words go, thoughts go, and just kill left.”

I nodded and touched her thick, hairy arm. “It must be a side-effect of the drugs. Eventual complete psychotic breakdown. Almost like you have a ticking time bomb inside of you. I’m sorry.”

Alice put one of her massive paws on my hand. It covered my hand completely. “Alice scared ’Teeca become Gamma and go coco. Maybe we go coco together and kill each other. ’Teeca, ’Teeca, it scares me awful.”

“I’m scared, too.” I touched the stubble on her face, like a man’s cheek. Then it hit me—it must be some kind of testosterone mixture in the Gulo Gamma, some kind of leftovers from Tibbs Hoyt’s research into curing the Sterility Epidemic.

I remembered how hairy Wren’s arms had gotten. How Dutch had teased her. Well, I didn’t have to worry about Wren becoming a Gamma or going coco. She was dead. And she had already been coco.

Thinking of Wren, of Dutch, put a crack through the ice inside me. Couldn’t think of them. If the ice melted, if my dried heart was exposed, the sadness and horror of what I’d seen would break me. No, I had to stay cold to say alive.

“What ’Teeca scared of?” Alice asked.

I ground my teeth together to stop the shivering from my fever, the ache in my bones, to cling to the ice inside. “I’m dying, Alice. I need a special kind of medicine called antibiotics.”

Alice nodded. “No, no medicine. Dizzymona make you become Gamma. Then you get the heal. See.” She lifted a Kevlar vest stitched into her patchwork clothes. I saw a gray strip of elastic which must have been her brassiere strap. Couldn’t imagine what they made their underwear out of. Her skin, however hairy, was whole and only a few pink scabs were left from the lashing Jolie had given her.

“All healed. You get the heal, too, when you become Gamma.”

“I don’t want to become a Gamma,” I said, dizzy, getting tired again. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s for the best. I become a Gamma, I heal, and I get to June Mai Angel.”

Alice backhanded me. I was sent sprawling in the yellow grass under the pines.

Fury brought Alice to her feet. “She enemy! You friend enemy? You friend Devil Angel?”

I lifted a hand. I tasted blood in my mouth. “Not friend. I’m her enemy, but I need her help ’cause I have a bigger enemy. Oh, Alice, you hurt me. I was good, and you hurt me.”

Alice burst into tears and held me against her. Stifled, sweating, nauseated, I knew I was dying for sure.

Again.

Alice fell into a weepy rant. “Alice sorry. Bad Alice. If ’Teeca die, Alice won’t know what to do. You more than pet, you sister. You sister to Alice, and Alice so alone. Alice want command, but Gammas think she is soft. Alice can be soft, but she good soldier girl, too. Don’t matter to them. I kill Edith ’cause maybe Alice going coco, too. Alice hurt ’Teeca. Maybe Alice going coco, too.”

I had to cut through her madness and make her understand, ’cause Gamma or not, coco or not, I had my imperative. Get the chalkdrive to June Mai Angel. “Alice, I need antibiotics, or I won’t live to see Dizzymona or become a Gamma.” I let my head fall backwards, and I was out. Out again.

Pain like needles being buried in my arm woke me. But my head was fuzzed for some reason that I didn’t really care. I found I had the urge to giggle.

Alice was back. I could smell her. Shocking, more and more I found her stench comforting, which was stupid, since she might be going coco, which meant she might accidentally kill me in a rage.

No words. No thoughts. Just kill.

That was why Dizzymona and her bunch of hogs needed fresh conscripts. The old ones went psycho and had to be put down.

“Alice, what did you do to me?” I asked. My right forearm burned. I looked down and half the hair on my arms was gone. I snorted out a laugh.

“Medicine,” Alice grunted.