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

I’d done dirt just like June Mai had done, on my quest, on this bit of sacred duty that might not mean nothing to no one ever.

Alice sank down in front of me. “Hurry!” she bellowed. “Hurry!”

Sweat dripped down the sides of her face and her stink, God all mighty, her stink sank into my nose and grew roots.

It was bestial, but it was my sister. I found a bit of comfort in it, like I always had, for that stink had meant food and it had meant kindness when I was out of my mind on our long walk out of the Rocky Mountains.

I swept fingers through the menus of the charge gun. Cranked that Zeus 2 to maximum and beyond. If I was going to put her down, I was going to put her down right. Blow her head off her shoulders and undo her at a molecular level.

“You know where Sharlotte, June Mai, and Pilate are?” I asked.

She growled at me, spit dripped from her lips, and snot flowed down out of the portholes of her nostrils. Her eyes narrowed.

She was beyond speech and it was only her iron will that kept her on her knees in front of me.

It was her nasty chore to keep herself steady and it was my job to end her life like I’d promised. Should be me and not some stranger. It would be a kindness I could give her.

And we’d already given up our souls and spilled our blood and lost our minds in the quest and what did Alice matter anyway? Short answer. She didn’t. Not this hog in front of me, this twisted bit of nature, forgotten by people and damned by God.

I pressed the Zeus 2 to my shoulder and put my finger on the trigger. The auto-aim froze on her head. Even if I was to jerk aside, the gun would self-correct. It was time to kill.

But there were so many others I wanted to kill and not my adopted sister Alice. Not my best Gamma friend.

Wanted to blast Micaiah’s head off his shoulders, but he had run after sacrificing everything for us.

Wanted to murder that snake Dutch Malhotra, but my sister Wren beat me to it.

But number one on my list, the baddest jackin’ jackerdan was Tiberius Hoyt. He needed to die. He needed his spine ripped from his body, and I’d make a stew out of his sweet meats and feed him his own bits.

But he wasn’t there.

No, only Alice, wanting to die because her mind had snapped and there wasn’t a fix for her.

She grunted and nodded. Her sodden hair flicked sweat on my hands.

It was time.

But I couldn’t.

Not looking her in the eyes I couldn’t.

“Turn around!” I barked. “Turn around and I’ll do it, goddammit. Can’t very well shoot you and look you in the eye at the same time.”

She didn’t turn around. But she threw herself forward, face first into the asphalt. Her fingers clawed at the dirt there, working around in the filth by the dumpster, in the trash of this world.

Garbage, blood, and death, and none of it mattered. Sometimes in this world there isn’t a God, and there is no silence either. There’s just nothing.

I stood there in that nothing and pressed the rifle to her head. Re-focused the auto-correct.

Had to do it. I’d promised. Always do the bad chore first and do it well, and never in my life, except maybe for hacking Sharlotte’s leg off, had I had a worse job to do.

’Cause murder is a job even when it’s a mercy.

Sweat dripped into my eyes, down my face, and onto the barrel. And dammit, I couldn’t. But dammit, I had to. I went to squeeze the trigger.

Then the light stopped me in my tracks. The billion-watt lights from the Kestrel gunships turned the dark alley into a tunnel of washed-out radiance. Alice let out a shriek of mad fury and picked up the dumpster and hurled it into the light, glowing in an ocean of dark clouds and snow.

One of the gunships heaved to, but the dumpster smacked its side. It lost control for a minute, and I figured it would crash down on us.

I wheeled and went to trigger the Zeus 2. Too late.

Needles of electricity sank into me and sent me down onto the ground in spasms and more pain than I’d ever felt. On and on it went, my whole nervous system fried by a Thor stunner... not sure from where, but I couldn’t get up. Couldn’t stop my limbs from flailing and my muscles from being ripped apart by electrons gone wild.

Then I heard a gunshot. Then another. Blood hit me. For a second, I thought I’d been shot—that noise so loud and the smell so familiar from the cordite and the gore.

A shadow appeared over me. A man. “Get rid of the Gamma. I’ll deal with the girl.”

I managed to flop my head around and there was Alice, on the ground, staring at me with empty eyes. Blood puddled under her chest from her ruined heart. That wasn’t what killed her. Blood coursed down the side of her face from the hole in the side of her skull—only way to kill her was to kill her brain or sever her spine. She could’ve healed most any other wound.

My friend Alice was dead. She’d gotten what she wanted. She’d go coco no more.

She was peaceful now. I’d failed her. But she was peaceful.

Felt a bit shocked that I was envious. Then my heart shrank into a dry, cracked stick. Didn’t feel the cold or the snowflakes melting on my face. Only felt the sadness at seeing my biggest of sisters dead in front of me.

“I’ll talk to her in the office inside. Make sure she isn’t armed.” The shadow man’s deep voice again. This time I recognized it.

The voice belonged to the very top of my to-kill list. I was going to get an audience with Tibbs Hoyt. He’d made good