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

We drove down I-70 to Burlington, but it wasn’t a town anymore, it was an encampment. Troops, guns, war equipment were everywhere. In the fields, in the meadows, on every empty bit of land, soldiers were bivouacked in every size and shape of tent.

Signs of the siege were everywhere. Sheriff Lily’s office was nothing but rubble. Antonia’s General Store and Feed Shop had been emptied out completely. The office of the Colorado Courier was packed with weary-eyed soldiers, as was the Whole Donut, a pastry shop next door. The Chhaang House Bar and Grill still stood, but it was shot up and scorched. A few of the big trees in the central park had been blown apart and then sawed up for fuel; sawdust covered the ground.

Every house in town had been marked by the combat or wiped clean off the face of the earth, like some Japanese kaiju monster had ambled through Burlington, leaving behind tire tracks, craters, pock marks.

“Is the carousel okay, June?” I asked. “Or did you destroy that, too?”

“No, the Kit Carson Carousel was spared. We made sure. It’s an historic landmark, as you well know. We tried to save as much of the town as possible. The last of the resistance retreated to your ranch, which had the best defenses ... a testament to your mother’s planning. I never met Abigail Weller, but I’ve heard the stories. She was quite a woman.”

“She killed Queenie. Shot her right between the eyes.” Saying that made me think of Dutch and Wren. Then I felt the need to add, “Queenie was an Outlaw Warlord like you.”

“Not like me,” June Mai said. “She was a bandit. I am far more warlord than outlaw.”

I shot back, “You’re outlaw enough to try and pull down the Moby Dick. Outlaw enough to try and kill us over and over. Was that a part of your righteous cause, stealing from innocent people and then murdering them?”

Pilate hugged me tighter. “There you go, Cavvy, I knew there was some Wren in you. Are you going to call her a skank next?”

“Already told her she was an evil skank,” I muttered.

June Mai waited for us to finish and then spoke, “No. She’s right. There is no moral justification for what I did to gather my arms and my soldiers. It was wrong, and yet what I have built, this army, you want to use it to bring the cure of the Sterility Epidemic to the world. What have you done for your own righteous cause, Cavatica? Can you justify all your actions?”

She had me. I’d killed. I’d denied my own people three times. And I’d come to her to benefit from the poisoned fruits of her evil labors.

“Thanks for not blowing up the carousel,” I said in a thick voice.

“You should also thank Dob Howerter. He came through here to try and get a foothold in the Juniper. He could’ve sent his troops in from the north but didn’t. We think it was to save the carousel.” She went on to say that Howerter was still mad she had ousted him out of Lamar and taken over as the territorial governor. The territory officials had joined Howerter in Hays.

“So you’re a dictator,” I said, “and the Colorado territory is under martial law.”

June Mai nodded, “And still, the U.S. government has taken their sweet time to respond, months and months. If a coup had taken over Puerto Rico, ground troops would’ve been dispatched immediately. But then Puerto Rico isn’t a penal colony.”

Getting caught up on current events didn’t much help me feel better. It only made me feel tired.

I realized I had a canteen on my lap; Pilate kept forcing me to drink from it. I hadn’t noticed until right then, but I didn’t want water. Only I did. Maybe food, but only if Aunt Bea cooked it. Or a Gamma sausage, only half of it, ’cause Alice would generally steal the other half.

We pulled up next to the Chhaang House, and I tried to get out but found I couldn’t. My legs had left me. Pilate helped me out, and I had to lean on him.

June and Marie Atlas went into the Chhaang House, which had become their headquarters. I tried to get there, but my legs weren’t working, and I was feeling floaty.

“Look up, Cavvy,” Pilate whispered. “I have a birthday present for you.”

“You missed my birthday,” I said sleepily, but I looked up anyway.

And there, on top of the old grain elevators, was the best zeppelin to plow through the clouds; floating above the cylinders was the Moby Dick, patched up in swaths of brand new Kevlar. The last of the light bathed her in red and winked off her gun turrets and windshields.

All at once, tears filled my eyes.

And before I knew it, I was crying ’cause even in my hopeless, hateful state, seeing Sketchy’s beloved airship floating above my embattled town filled me with love. Still, I knew it was going to be a long walk to the other side of my pain, my trauma, my PTSD.

But I’d seen others walk it. Petal had walked it and got clean. Rachel had walked it, Wren had walked it. And I would, too.

I couldn’t move, so Pilate picked me up and set me down on a seat outside of the Chhaang House.

“Are Sketchy, Tech, Peeperz, in town? Are they okay?”

Pilate nodded.

I fell apart into sobs. “Oh, Pilate, don’t make me do any more of this alone. I was alone for days and days, walking, and I can’t do no more of this quest stuff alone. Please, don’t make me.”

Pilate pulled me close. His own voice got clogged with emotion. “You won’t, Cavatica. If I have anything to say about it, you’ll never have to walk alone again.”

He went on to tell me that Sketchy, Tech, and Peeperz found him and Micaiah walking across the plains up north, near the Scheutz ranch, on their way