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

He nodded. “Yes. Get going. If that gunfire goes away so will your chance to find those damn Juniper Outlaw Warlords.”

“I’m hoping those outlaws are my sisters.”

“Then you better get on with it.”

Baptista met me at the door and we jogged down the dirt streets, mostly weeds. All the asphalt was gone, since the salvage team had hit this part of the Denver suburbs hard.

I put up my hood and Baptista adjusted her neck gator. A wickedly chill breeze came off the Rockies and the frail sunshine could do nothing to warm us. Smelling snow, I wondered if a storm would help us or hinder us.

We didn’t go directly to the Home Depot ’cause that was where the fighting was. Instead, Baptista and I took shelter in the Taco Bell, reduced to concrete, bits of rubble and roof. We climbed up one of the sides to spy on the firefight.

Soldiers used a Cargador as cover. They exchanged fire with whoever was in the Home Depot. The huge rubber wheels of the steam-powered super tractor offered great protection and this Cargador had .50 caliber machine guns mounted on the yellow metal. It was a bulldozer of death all right.

Another Cargador came steaming down the cross-street heading toward the back of the Home Depot. More soldiers gripped the sides.

Funny, Baptista saw it before I did. “They all look alike,” she whispered in awe.

Then I saw it too. The fresh batch of Cuius Regios hadn’t been given any sort of diversity. All of them had brown skin, bald pates, not shaved, but bald, and all of their features were exactly the same, emotionless and focused.

“It’s true.” Baptista blinked and seized at each breath. “Sweet God, but they’re all the same.”

“Gloves are off,” I muttered. “Hoyt is here to clean up the Gammas and remove all traces. He’s not hiding a thing, which means the U.S. military must know. They must’ve seen their battalions of clone soldiers.”

“Or maybe not,” Baptista said. “Maybe their superiors don’t look the same, and they organized the perimeter and the Regios moved into the area in secret. That’s probably the case, right? Hoyt doesn’t want the world to know he has a cloned army. Jesus, it’s like the Star Wars prequels.”

“Old video and not too good,” I said, echoing Anjushri’s opinions, not mine. I didn’t like any of that Jedi stuff. Thinking of Anju got me worried for her. I had to find a way to protect her in case my hackery failed or Cecelia Beckencourt got caught. Kneeling in the Taco Bell rubble next to Baptista, I had the beginnings of plan.

But only if the Regios didn’t kill us both outside the Home Depot.

“They really aren’t human,” Baptista said.

“Nope. Not human.” I was ready to shoot and shoot straight.

“We have their flank,” Baptista said. “We creep up, hit them with grenades, and then pick them off the truck. If whoever is in the Home Depot is paying attention, we can catch them in a crossfire.”

“Strategy enough for me.”

We left the Taco Bell and ran in a crouch through the weeds.

Derelict cars lay in a pile on the eastern edge of the Home Depot parking lot. Several fast-growing cottonwoods reached up from cracked pavement, but they were still saplings.

Behind the junked cars, Baptista and I hurled our grenades at the Cargador. She had the better arm and hers clattered into the cab. Mine came up short, but not too bad.

We didn’t wait for the scramble.

Baptista’s AZ3 blasted them with a fury of bullets.

My G18 was quieter, a hissing breath of compressed air as the neofiber darts streaked into the backs of the Regios. The slivers ripped through internal organs and the soldiers fell, clutching themselves, before stiffening in death.

A howl from the Home Deport burst through the cold midmorning air. A hulking creature lumbered toward the Cargador. A Gamma.

And not just any Gamma, but my sister Wren, or what was left of her.

She’d doubled in height and widened to accommodate it. Her curves were more muscle than cushion. Her long hair had gone greasy and her clothes were mismatched patches of body armor, tarps, and sleeping bags bungee corded around her. As far as her face went, any kind of beauty was gone. Her nose had grown grotesque across her cheeks like a disease and her mouth opened in a bizarre line of massive teeth.

Yet her eyes, those dark, pretty nighttime eyes were the same.

She carried an automatic grenade launcher in one massive hand, and a box of ammo in the other, belt fed. She fired the launcher in blasts that reduced the Regios to butcher’s meat and the Cargador to scrap metal. An automatic grenade launcher like that was illegal in most countries because that kind of firepower killed indiscriminately. Good thing Wren was an outlaw with good aim.

I ran to her, to my sister Wren, who stood breathing hard in the smoke and slaughter, huge gasps I could hear from thirty meters away.

“Wren!” I yelled.

And when she saw me, she dropped her gun and ammo and caught me, easily, and held me gently to her heaving chest. Her smell was so like Alice, but different, ’cause this was my sister Wren, however changed.

I gave her a little push, to let her know that the hug was getting a little too much.

She set me down, then knelt, so we could be face to face, eye to eye. But she was so huge now that I felt so small.

And yet, it almost felt familiar. She’d always been so big on the inside, such a force. It was fitting for her to have this huge body to match her enormous spirit. But such a frame, such a face, I remembered how she’d cried when she’d had her teeth smashed out by Renee Vixx.

She’d wept over her pretty back then, and now every bit of her pretty was gone. Her eyes were gentle on me, loving, and she