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

My breathing went ragged and it felt like my lungs had been dipped in cold water.

“You okay?” Tech asked, sounding concerned.

She reached out a hand, and I grabbed it and slammed her against the wall. I raised my fist, to pound the pretty out of her face.

Did it all without thinking. That was another lesson from Pilate. You don’t want to think when you fight. You react through physical memory.

But what if your mental memory is lying to you?

I moved backward, tripped over a box of Panzerfaust shells and fell on my butt.

Still couldn’t breathe and I could smell snow, the snow of Independence Pass, and the smoke of the Stanleys, and the avalanche and Sharlotte, Wren, being swept away.

Should’ve searched for them. Shouldn’t have left them behind.

Tech stood over me. “What the hell?”

I managed to get to my feet, but I still stood hunched over, trying to breathe. Could hardly think through the anxiety attack, so I screamed. “Get on with it! You said you wanted to talk to me, well, now talk. We don’t need to inventory the jackering guns. We have more guns and ammunition than we could ever want. Too bad there’s only five of us.”

I didn’t count Peeperz. We weren’t going to risk the boy anymore.

Tech was a woman of few words, and she didn’t like people much, and though we shared a love of technology, we weren’t what you’d call close.

Though we could’ve been. If I’d been older, she would’ve made a play for me back in the day. She was gillian and liked me.

Now, not so much. Her gaze held disgust.

“You want to mother me, or you want to kiss me?” I asked. “Can’t do both.”

“Like Wren,” she said.

“What’s that?” I straightened. Fighting with her was helping me in some awful way. I knew what she was aiming at, and it didn’t really make me mad. Sure I’d become like Wren. We were sisters after all and shared some of the same genetics.

“Wren says things to push people away. You tricked Baptista into believing you were Wren, and I guess you want to be like her.”

Didn’t know if I should get in Tech’s face or retreat, but I couldn’t stand still. I ended up pacing back and forth. “It’s not like that. Maybe Wren turned into Wren ’cause it was the logical progression of living in this world. Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”

“But you do,” Tech said.

I laughed sharply. “Like when you reached out to me? I about hit you and I didn’t choose to do that. Some of us don’t get choices.”

“But you do,” Tech repeated herself. Like software code. You don’t write new code if the old stuff will do. Might as well do the same with words.

“How do you figure that?” I said, my back to her. I’d stopped pacing.

“I met you when you were still young,” she said. “You were kind, innocent, and so smart. We had a connection.”

“’Cause you’re gillian,” I said.

“This is me being a friend to you. No mothering. No kissing. You’re way too young for me and not my type.”

I heard the smile in her voice. Hurt me a little to think I wasn’t her type. Stupid, but then a wicked little fantasy of us kissing filled my head. I pushed it out. My Hays girlfriend, Starla, always said I wasn’t homosexual, I wasn’t heterosexual, and I wasn’t bisexual. I was shut-up-sexual. Shut up and kiss me before I say the wrong thing and ruin everything.

That Starla, so insightful.

I slowly turned around. “What’s your type?” I asked.

“I like kind, innocent, smart girls my age or older,” Tech said.

“I’m not any of those things anymore. I’m just a negative number looking for zero.”

“What does that even mean?” Tech asked.

I shrugged. Smirked. She didn’t need to understand. It made sense to me.

She continued. “I don’t believe you’re the antonym of your former self. You want to be mean, jaded, and dumb, but you aren’t. You’re hurt. And you want to hurt everyone around you. Like Wren.”

“Wren’s a monster now. The world is crazy. We’re in a war. It’s all changed, and being the antonym of who I was makes sense. I don’t have a choice.”

Tech nodded. “Because you paid the price for doing the impossible. It seems to me you’ve run out of that kind of currency. You’re broke, and this war we’re in, it’s going to take your life next.”

“I’m Pilate’s daughter,” I said. “We don’t die. Everyone around us dies, but we don’t die.”

“Maybe, but there are many different kinds of death. You know I’m in AA, right? Sketchy tells everyone. She doesn’t get the whole anonymous thing.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“I don’t have a choice when it comes to drinking. I drink. It’s what I do. But I do have a choice to talk to people, to share my fear and my pain, and I have a choice to pray. I don’t think it matters what I pray to, as long as I pray. But you don’t believe in God anymore, do you?”

I shook my head.

“I’m here,” Tech said. “You can talk to me. You can pray to me if you can’t pray to anything else. Or pray to Pilate. He seems big enough.”

Right then, I knew Wren would’ve cursed and left, but I wasn’t Wren. Tech was talking. Her voice was the sound in the silence.

Months before, that had been our god, our voices in the silence. Could it be again? Could I believe again?

The whole air inside the weapons storeroom changed, and I could feel the shift. I thought about the old scripture, about Jesus appearing when two or more were gathered. As human beings, we were not meant to be alone. And when we gathered together, there was a power there. I’d seen that power work, over and over.

Instead of cursing, instead of leaving, I told Tech the truth. “What if I let go of my fear and pain, and what if nothing is left? I need to fight