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

His coughing was cut short by a sharp cry. Then I heard him strike the ground, hard, with another howl of pain.

I shouldered myself out of the harness and walked bowlegged, my groin and hips sore from the straps. I ran in a crouch to him over yellow grass and bone-white trees.

When I got to Pilate, he latched onto me. His breath came in coughing gasps, but I’d gotten used to his destroyed lungs. He gripped my arm hard.

Around him pooled dark blood, as dark as his wide eyes were white.

Chapter Thirteen

MARLA: IT’S MY BLOOD, Bonney! It’s my blood!

BONNEY: Quit your whining. You got plenty left. Don’t think about your body, girl. It only makes it worse. We’re only just meat, but you can’t think about that.

—“Bullets and Butterflies.” Lonely Moon. Netflix. 7 April 2057. Television.

(i)

The Heartbreaker above us floated back up into the clouds, leaving us three alone in the cottonwoods east of Chatfield Reservoir, just a little southwest of the Platte River. So far, it seemed none of our enemies, not the U.S. nor the ARK, had seen us.

“Gotta get your pants off, Pilate.” I regretted my words immediately.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that.” Pilate gasped laughter. “I’m very popular with the ladies.”

“Daughter here.” I helped him get the pants off. “No jokes like that around me. It makes it even more awkward.”

Blood covered his right thigh. If a branch slashed through his femoral artery, we’d be done, but leave it to Pilate to go out joking about breaking his vow of celibacy.

The coppery stink of blood mingled with the cold snap of the dry grasses. Even the cottonwoods smelled like winter.

Baptista crept up from behind. She snapped a light-stick and we were given a neon green light to work by.

“Jesus,” she hissed behind me when we saw his leg.

The wound was an irregular line down the front of his right thigh, and when I pulled at the skin, I expected to see Pilate’s femur. I didn’t, so he hadn’t been cut to the bone, but he’d come close.

Baptista backed away to throw up in the grass. I heard the splatter of her vomit in the dirt followed by her gurgle and gasping.

“Put pressure on it, Pilate, while I get a thread and needle.”

But we’d also need glue. We’d have to pour glue down into the muscle and tissue and then I’d sew him closed.

“Can’t,” Pilate wheezed. “My left arm is all kinds of broken, and my right isn’t so hot either, though I don’t think it’s fractured. Lucky I’m so damn handsome.”

“Baptista,” I barked. “Get your ass over here.”

She came over, gray-faced, sick on her lips. In the light, Pilate’s wound steamed.

I felt the heat. “Well, at least my hands won’t get cold.”

Pilate laughed.

I laughed too ’cause of the adrenaline and horror of it all.

“Hold the skin closed and apply pressure, Baptista.”

She nodded and complied. In my pack, I found the med-kit. First thing, I slapped on a dose of EMAT tape across his neck, right over the jugular.

“Go easy on the drugs,” Pilate said. “I’ve been clean and sober three years. And this goddamn Juniper doesn’t have any working phones so I can’t call my sponsor.” He glanced up at Baptista. “Damn, broke my anonymity. You won’t tell anyone, will you, Jen?”

Another quick nod or whatever.

I tore open a pack of antibiotic solution and doused the wound. Pilate twisted against the pain.

Then the medical glue. It came in a squeeze tube. “Gotta open the wound now.” Baptista drew back the skin and I squeezed it in like grisly toothpaste.

Pilate glanced away.

“Gotta help, Pilate,” I said. “You’re holding the light. You don’t have to look, but you can’t sit around doing nothing.”

“But that’s why I became a priest. What better excuse is there for getting out of work? Sorry, can’t help, but I’ll pray for you. God listens to me.”

My head bumped into Baptista. “Excuse me, Baptista, but you’re in my light.”

She eased back as I got ready to stitch him up. “Mama didn’t know how to sew.”

“Now that does surprise me,” Pilate said.

“Aunt Bea taught Sharlotte and she taught me. Wren refused to learn.”

“That Wren. What a character,” Pilate coughed, and his body jiggled. The movement sent a fresh stream of blood coursing down his pale skin.

I couldn’t imagine what we looked like. On a cold night, covered in blood, everything bathed in a green light as Pilate and I exchanged jokes.

“How can you not be taking this seriously?” Baptista asked.

“This?” I chuckled. “This ain’t nothin’. If we work fast, we can get him closed up and I won’t have to saw off a limb.”

“She does that to people,” Pilate said, his voice fuzzy from the drugs. “Hacksaw Cavvy, that’s what we call her.”

I corrected him. “Saws Cavatica, actually.”

The med-kit came with prefabricated needles and thread, hooked and proper for the job. I pierced his skin and he hissed, but the pain seemed better. I only hoped the EMAT didn’t put him out completely. He would need to walk after we were done.

And I still had to set the bones in his arm.

“You’re serious,” Baptista whispered.

“Yeah,” I said, hooking through Pilate’s skin, pulling the thread, getting him closed. “I sawed my sister’s leg off. We used to have a medic on the team, but poor Petal died. She helped Pilate the last time he accidentally on-purpose got himself hurt. And dug bullets out of me and my sister.”

“Not you,” Pilate said. “You were shot clean through. But she did patch you together. Am I going to have a bad scar?”

“The worst,” I said. “My stitching is awful, or that’s what Sharlotte would say.”

“No, Sharlotte wouldn’t be talking. She’d be doing it. She has what the experts call control issues.”

“Sharlotte ain’t so bad,” I said. Guilt for what I said on the Hays border poisoned my insides. I’d take back those words if I could. Would my big sister forgive me? I hoped so.

We got